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Omaha Bryan high SchOOlThe OraTOrFeBruary 13, 2015OpiniOns
page 2Omaha Bryan high SchOOl
The OraTOrFeBruary 13, 2015
The Orator
Omaha Bryan high School
Editor-in-ChiefJosh Estabrook
Asst. Editor-in-ChiefKalynn Copenharve
Opinions EditorJasmin Jimenez
Focus EditorEmily Pemble
Sports EditorLuke Doyle
Entertainment EditorAbbie Boiko
Last Look EditorSabrina Ibarra
CartoonistsIan Jordan Chowning
Karla Castrejon
Staff Writers & PhotographersKarla Castrejon
Ruach JohnMorgan Perez-Garcia
Nicole Fischer
AdviserRanae Duncan
The Orator provides a forum for student ex-pression, and editorial comments are not neces-sarily the opinions of the administration, faculty or adviser. The Orator is published monthly for distribution to Bryan High School students, staff members and community members. Advertising rates are available upon request. To inquire about rates, or to place an ad, contact the adviser at 402-557-3142 or [email protected]. Bryan High School is a member of the Nebraska High School Press As-sociation.
Contact Us
Bryan High School4700 Giles Rd.
Omaha, NE 68157(402)557-3100
www.bryan.ops.org
Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor are welcomed and encour-
aged. Drop off your letter in room 101 or email it to
Plan B for marriage leaves students with mixed emotions
Sabrina IbarraLast Look Editor
Hallways turn into wildlife safari excursion
Emily PembleFocus Editor
When trekking through the hallways, the typical ev-eryday student can become a nature observer. The simple process of going from point A to point B has becme a wildlife safari. It’s not unusual to wit-ness the creature known as the hormonal teenage boy leave his pack to make his mating call to the equally hormonal teenage girl. Soon enough it esca-lates. Like in most nature
documentaries, events take a complete turnaround. It’s like watching a happy gazelle get left behind to be brutally mauled by a hungry lion. Public displays of af-fection (PDA) are the same way. High school sweethearts are often holding hands one second and then violently and audibly exchanging saliva the next. Physical contact isn’t the only unsettling aspect of PDA; there’s the verbal aspect too. In the midst of some couples’ bodily contact ,they’re constantly exchang-ing superficial “I love yous” and “we’ll be together forev-ers.” While it may be sicken-ing to witness, it’s amusing
to see the couple broken up and moved on all in the course of a week. In theory, it’s not really that big of a deal. Every-body should get over it, right? NO! There is nothing more annoying than PDA. Seeing PDA is like
Many married couples are unable to maintain their relationships and choose the simplest route to solving their problems: divorce. Divorce is one out of many solutions that is used to solve the problems in marriages. Although many couples think carefully be-fore getting married, divorce is still a constant thing. In today’s society, divorce is frequently heard about and with the divorce rates growing bigger and faster nationally each year, it makes me ask, what are the future generations going to be like? When two people get divorced it becomes a tough situation, but when children are involved it becomes even tougher. Blaming divorced par-ents is never a good reason to act out as a child or teenager, but divorce does make a difference in how a kid feels and acts. As a student, not having both parents active in their
life could be a huge issue and setback. It’s something that kids talk about quite frequently. A majority of the time the separation is not their fault, but the student definitely deals with the consequence one way or another and sometimes more so than the parents. “Having divorced parents can be hard for the simple fact that I don’t have both parents to support me in school. It’s always one or the other,” senior Shayna Torres said. It is almost impossible to give an exact reason as to why divorce happens. This is why so many people make assumptions and have strong feelings one way or another about divorce. There are numerous reasons divorces occur, such as lack of com-munication, laziness, high expectations, unfaithfulness and lack of foundation. Lack of communication is one of the biggest prob-lems a couple may experi-ence. When communication isn’t a problem a couple is able to get through any road block by talking it out. Couples need to learn that no problem is too small to talk about. In a marriage, sharing the
same interests and passions is important. If a couple doesn’t share at least some of the same values, beliefs and interests, there isn’t much left to the relation-ship’s foundation. Being that social media is already an issue that often affects young relationships, one must wonder if it will eventually become a main cause of divorce. Understanding the simple fact that marriage is some-thing valuable and special can help couples in the future when they decide to tie the knot. Building a strong founda-tion and not rushing into marriage can make a huge difference in how a relation-ship plays out in the long run. “I believe that your first marriage should be your only marriage,” sophomore Jessica Chavez said. Although our generation is young, we are getting closer and closer to major events in our lives, like mar-riage. Marriage shouldn’t be something one rushes into. People should think it through and if they think of divorce as plan B, perhaps they shouldn’t walk down the isle.
Scheduling conflicts lead to advanced headaches
Drop out age affects other’s education
Love hidden behind colorful wrappings, high prices
Kalynn CopenharveAsst. Editor-in-Chief
Valentine’s Day no longer holds true meaning, corporate America’s doing
February is the short-est month, but nonetheless eventful. Holidays vary from Thank A Mailman Day, National Tortilla Chip Day to one of cooperate America’s favorites, Val-entine’s Day. Every year, many people enter a near apocalyptic anxiety attack over one little day provoked by the money hungry. Valentine’s Day was created to honor Saint Valentine. Valentine was a Roman Saint who would wed couples in secret when marriage was banned during the Roman Empire. Instead, through several centuries, a day that was meant to praise love and ro-mance has aged like cheese. It started off nice, but now
it’s blatantly ostentatious and is only appealing to the pretentious. Feb. 14 is the day for Hallmark and other corpora-tions to almost dictate how love is personified in our society. For one 24 hour span, love no longer comes from the heart, but from the wallet. Love is embodied through giant teddy bears, flowers and chocolate. “The whole holiday is blown out of propor-tion,” junior Raphael Ayers said, “It’s created a certain interpretation that we have on love.” Love is purely abstract and its concrete manifes-tation in our culture has influenced the masses. Obviously that influence is strong since so many people feed into it.
“We have more about the idea of love than love actu-ally,” Ayers said. It only grants money into the pockets of corporations. There are even standards that go along with Valen-tine’s Day. Some people feel like they have to give and receive the perfect gift. If there’s failure in the slightest, they’re a horrible lost soul incapable of love. Surely many could admit that the holiday does in fact have some perks. Just think about all the discounted candy the day after. No complaints there. Even if it’s packaged in the gaudiest heart adorned wrapper, it’s still candy. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating Valentine’s Day, but sometimes it’s just a little much. Romance
doesn’t have a schedule so it shouldn’t be amplified on a designated day. Therefore, people should just do it all on their own terms. Buying a lavish gift for a significant other shouldn’t be motivated by the works of Hallmark and Lifetime. Holidays can be a great way to commemorate something, and no one should be shamed for tak-ing part in them, but the more commercialization is forced upon them, the closer they become to losing their meaning. “It makes a specific im-age of what love is supposed to look like opposed to what you’re supposed to feel,” Ayers said about the degra-dation that comes along with materialistic tangibles of Valentine’s Day.
Many of us have sat in classes where students show clear signs of not wanting to be there. They talk during instruction and when they are not talking, they are sleeping. They show that they don’t care about passing their classes, and they don’t even give much thought to the fact they might not graduate. As much as many of us wish these types of students would just drop out, it’s not as easy as it seems. The drop out age for students is 18 or older to drop out of school without parent consent or at least 16 years old with par-ent consent. This law was put in place across the nation by Presi-dent Barak Obama in order to keep kids in school and increase graduation rates.
Although the law has good intentions, many students are being nega-tively affected by this older dropout age. The students who want to drop out are not the only ones being negatively af-fected by this. Some students who do not want to be in school tend to be a disruption in their classes and negatively affect the learning environment of those students who do have goals of graduating. There are a handful of students who see going into workforce at a young age more beneficial to them than spending seven hours of their day, five times a week for four years at high school. While they all have their reasons, whether it be finan-cial issues, a job that doesn’t require a high education or another reason, this law is holding students back from the path that they want to choose for their lives. “If people don’t want to be here don’t force them,” senior Ian Hirsh said. Students who would drop out in a heart beat if they
could, mainly only come because of truancy laws. According to guidance director Jeanne Simmons, the kids who don’t want to be in school are typically the kids who don’t make a pres-ence a lot in their classes. “If they don’t come, they end up in truancy court and then on probation,” Sim-mons said. She said that the school tries to get these students in programs that will help and encourage them not to drop out. The General Educational Development (GED) test is harder than students think and it’s hard to get anywhere without it or a high school diploma. Though the schools do put effort into helping these kinds of students, forcing a teenager to spend their days doing something that they see as non beneficial to their lives is not teaching them to start making their own adult decisions. It’s like telling a dog to fetch while still holding on to its leash.
$31- $40+ $21- $30
Valentine’s Day Spending: How much do students expect to spend on Valentine’s Day gi� s this year?
$11- $20 $0- $10
20% 56%28%16%
0%
24% 32%24%
What females and males expect to recieve on Valentine’s Day
Female
Male
Food Stu� ed Animal Flowers Jewelry
16% 36% 20% 28%
60% 0% 16%24%
28% Do
Do you expect to get a Valentine’s Day present?
Female
72 % Don’t
Male
52% Do48 % Don’t
seeing a dead skunk in the middle of the road. It’s rather disgusting and much like road kill; no one really acknowledges it until it af-fects them. “Even if you’re on the sides, you’re still in my way,” junior Alex Lizdas
said, referring to couples who engage in this ritual. A little hand holding won’t hurt anyone, but mouth to mouth contact isn’t needed unless it is to resus-citate someone. The logical thing to do when there is a problem is
Karla CastrejonReporter/ Cartoonist
Orator StaffEditorial
Public displays of affection, best if not seen
“Even if you’re on the sides, you’re still in my way,”
-Alex Lizdas (11)
Separation & Divorce
2% are together but, aren’t married16 % were never married and are separated
44% Of students’ parents
aren’t together
36% of students feel that their parent’s relationship has or will a� ect their current/future relationships
10+ years old5-9 years old0-4 years old
18% 24% 58%
How old were you when your parents separated?
8% of students said that their parents’ break up a� ected their day-to-day lives greatly.
� e number of divorces in Nebraska declined. � ere were 6,307 in 2012 versus 6,367 in 2011. Overall, the divorce rate has been on a slow decline since the 1990s.- Nebraska Department of Health & Human Services
*50 students were intereviewd for this poll
64 % of parents are married
18% of parents are divorced
obviously to fix it. But real-istically, stopping PDA feels like a lost cause. Regardless of how pre-vention would be enforced, couples would not be happy or willing to oblige. Every-one would look at it as just another “stupid” rule.
“Everyone would just go on,” Lizdas said. But seriously, just save it for later. There’s a time and a place for displays of affec-tion and school just isn’t it. PDA in school is like breakdancing at a funeral. It’s completely innapropriete given the location, but no one can really stop them. Everyone just stares at them uncomfortabley. Have some respect for not just your peers and teachers, but for yourself. Go somewhere else, some-where private. There’s no need to dra-matize it all like the Titanic. No one is hitting an iceberg anytime soon, so PDA of-fenders, just let each other go.
Ian Jordan Chowning Cartoonist
I can’t wait until I turn 18.The moment I do,
I’m droppin’ this place.
No oNe cares! Some of uS actually want an educaTIon. PeoPle lIke you ruin it for the reSt of uS!
*50 students were interviewed for this poll.
Educational experience ruined by few
Orator StaffEditorial
The class scheduling here at school has proved to be a problem among many students who take Advanced Placement (AP) classes. With the amount of AP classes that students have the option of taking increasing from tenth, to eleventh and to twelfth grade, students are forced to decide between taking essential AP classes, required core classes or even various electives that they are interested in. The problem isn’t that there aren’t enough spots in students’ schedules; it’s that the classes are scheduled during the same periods. Obviously, it is true that not everyone can have the perfect schedule that they want. However, it is true that administration is more focused on assuring that the scheduling appeals to the masses, rather than the select amount of students trying to take rigorous classes. It seems that it is more important that non-honors classes and electives such as foods or woodshop are offered during different periods because they are more “popular”. It is unfathomable that classes such as AP Biology and AP Chemistry would be offered during the same period, but they are. These classes surely attract the same type of motivated students with an interest in science, yet students are forced to choose between the two. Furthermore, last school
year, the only Honors Physics class was offered during the same period as the only AP Calculus class. These are also two classes that would attract the same type of students. This means that any junior or senior that wanted to stay on track with their science credits while advancing to AP Calculus was forced to take a non-honors physics class. This does not just limit the students’ learning, it also hurts their grade point averages and therefore their transcripts, which colleges and scholarship committees look at. Also, classes such as AP English and AP Government are offered during the first and last periods of the school day, rather than the second and third periods. This has upset many seniors as they are unable to have early release or late start. On the other hand, most students not enrolled in AP classes have not seemed to have any trouble fitting early releases and late starts into their schedules. “I wasn’t able to get an early release or late start because I have AP English and Marketing during my first blocks every day and a career center class during my last blocks every day,” senior Bryanna Copenharve said. Hopefully administration will realize that this is a problem and make changes in the near future. Students should not be penalized for pushing themselves and taking more difficult classes.
