I will always remember the first song I loved as a kid. It was Beast of Burden by the Rolling Stones; now, this song is nostalgic for me. It reminds me of a blissful childhood, and every single time I hear the opening lead guitar, I cannot help but smile. I forced both of my parents to play this song on repeat in the car, at home and everywhere.
I often think about how the greatest of music is behind us. We still appreciate these legends and their contribution to society, but they are done producing music. Everybody knows that Ringo Starr’s solo career in the 2000s pales in comparison to his contributions to the Beatles, and it seems to be a universal truth that rock is dead. New rock does not have the same vibrancy and heartiness that the classics do. That is what I thought wholeheartedly, until I heard the Rolling Stones’ new single, Living in a Ghost Town. This is their first original music since 2012, and I could not be more happy. Apparently the Stones began working on this single last year, but in light of Covid-19, they decided to polish it, and give it a new twist. In my opinion, this is their best new single. This song does not remind me of any past Stones album, but I love it. This single is bluesy, and it swings so beautifully, while retaining elements of a Rolling Stones song that we all love. The harmonica solos are especially unique, and one cannot help but listen to the song over and over again. The lyrics are simplistic, but timely. Some lines really resonate with me, such as: I’m going nowhere, shut up all alone / So much time to lose just staring at my phone This is symbolic of how I feel during the day. Once I feel mentally exhausted after a day of online school, it is extremely difficult to muster up the strength to be productive. Instead, I pass a lot of time mindlessly scrolling through my phone. preachers were a-preaching, charities beseeching, politicians dealing This is what it feels like as well, and the Stones seem to encapsulate my anxiety. Every press briefing with the Trump administration hurts a little bit. When Trump continuously touts hydroxychloroquine amid overwhelming scientific evidence that says otherwise, it is difficult to be hopeful. It truly feels like we are living in a ghost town. I drove past Rivers Edge park the other day, and it was astonishingly empty. Then, I went to the grocery store to get some necessities for my mom. Aisles were empty, and the new system of living feels so apocalyptic. What happened to civilization as we know it? Here is one final lyric that sums up how we are feeling: Life was so beautiful Then we all got locked down The Stones make the message clear, and it is simple. Before this lock down, we all took so much for granted. Life is beautiful and it goes by so quickly. It is important to appreciate what we have and embrace every moment, because now, we are living in a ghost town.
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Furthermore, what parts of the dress code apply during special events like Spirit Week and jeans days? Why are students permitted to wear jeans but girls are still prohibited from wearing crop tops or “too short” skirts?
Dakota Whitlock ‘20 can only remember one or two time boys had to stay after morning assembly to discuss the dress code in his four years in the upper school. “It was really basic: just things like hair length, no piercing, proper collared shirts and tucked in shirts.” On the other hand, female students have had one this year already–an elaborate affair where all the female teachers stayed behind to address skirt length in particular. Embarrasingly, Dr. Elizabeth Martin had come that day to talk about a service opportunity, was present for the whole meeting. The biggest problems girls have with the dress code, already mentioned above, were only magnified by what can be seen as missteps. The reasoning behind the most recent crackdown–protecting the girls, maintaining a level of propriety, and parent complaints–raised eyebrows through the rows. Aside from the aforementioned dress code issues, one area where students have a lot to say is the topic of formal dress. Recently, we saw the introduction of blazers for the girls. Yes, this makes the dress code more equal. Yes, now all of the students look uniform. But, if that is our guiding principle of uniformity, where are the pants? Currently, the formal dress code prohibits female students from wearing pants. Special issue Lands End skirts are required, and for cold days leggings or tights are recommended. But in Roanoke where temperatures easily drop below freezing in the wintertime, is that enough? Girls say no–even the thickest tights do not guard against the cold as well as khakis. Aside from these practical concerns, restricting female students to skirts raises another question: is it even fair? Boys can wear pants on formal dress days, and they look professional. Why is that not the same for girls? Schools like St Anne’s-Belfield School allow female students to wear slacks on their equivalent of formal dress days, and many other private schools are doing the same thing to modernize their uniforms. Will North Cross ever follow in these schools’ footsteps? That remains a question that can only be answered by senior staff and the head of school. This past week, the Herald conducted a short survey among students on the topic of the 2020 Presidential Election.
While election coverage can be confusing, this survey isolates the opinions of NCS high school students to paint a clearer picture. The Herald’s polling is largely consistent with that of America as a whole, with senator Bernie Sanders and current president Donald Trump leading the democratic and republican races, respectively. For the democratic presidential nominees, Mayor Mike Bloomberg is polling second in this survey but third nationally. Vice president Joe Biden is pilling fifth in this survey but second nationally. However, when one looks at the overall bid for president, Donald Trump has a strong lead, just like he does on a national level. In addition to the presidential nominees, students were also asked their opinions on several pressing issues like the electoral college and the national voting age. Like most Americans, students mostly believe that the voting age should stay as it is at 18. Students also fall in line when it comes to the electoral college We also asked students whether U.S. elections should be voted upon through the Electoral College, or instead directly through the popular vote. Our results demonstrated that we have students on either end of the poll; this one was perhaps most polarized. Our student body also was divided between who should be the 2020 Presidential nominee; Bernie Sanders was the most popular Democrat, which corresponds with national data about young people. But there was a close tie between former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, who was not allowed to be on the Virginia ballot, or President Trump as the Republican nominee, which might reflect the support for Trump among students.
raise concern within the student body.
Unfair punishment distribution is also a hot button issue. Many female students call to attention how some seem to get away with any skirt length while others are put under fire for any skirt they wear. How strictly teachers enforce skirt length rules versus boy’s hair length and facial hair is also deemed unfair by many female students. Furthermore, what parts of the dress code apply during special events like Spirit Week and jeans days? Why are students permitted to wear jeans but girls are still prohibited from wearing crop tops or “too short” skirts? Dakota Whitlock ‘20 can only remember one or two time boys had to stay after morning assembly to discuss the dress code in his four years in the upper school. “It was really basic: just things like hair length, no piercing, proper collared shirts and tucked in shirts.” On the other hand, female students have had one this year already–an elaborate affair where all the female teachers stayed behind to address skirt length in particular. Embarrasingly, Dr. Elizabeth Martin had come that day to talk about a service opportunity, was present for the whole meeting. The biggest problems girls have with the dress code, already mentioned above, were only magnified by what can be seen as missteps. The reasoning behind the most recent crackdown–protecting the girls, maintaining a level of propriety, and parent complaints–raised eyebrows through the rows. Aside from the aforementioned dress code issues, one area where students have a lot to say is the topic of formal dress. Recently, we saw the introduction of blazers for the girls. Yes, this makes the dress code more equal. Yes, now all of the students look uniform. But, if that is our guiding principle of uniformity, where are the pants? Currently, the formal dress code prohibits female students from wearing pants. Special issue Lands End skirts are required, and for cold days leggings or tights are recommended. But in Roanoke where temperatures easily drop below freezing in the wintertime, is that enough? Girls say no–even the thickest tights do not guard against the cold as well as khakis. Aside from these practical concerns, restricting female students to skirts raises another question: is it even fair? Boys can wear pants on formal dress days, and they look professional. Why is that not the same for girls? Schools like St Anne’s-Belfield School allow female students to wear slacks on their equivalent of formal dress days, and many other private schools are doing the same thing to modernize their uniforms. Will North Cross ever follow in these schools’ footsteps? That remains a question that can only be answered by senior staff and the head of school. This past week, the Herald conducted a short survey among students on the topic of the 2020 Presidential Election. While election coverage can be confusing, this survey isolates the opinions of NCS high school students to paint a clearer picture. The Herald’s polling is largely consistent with that of America as a whole, with senator Bernie Sanders and current president Donald Trump leading the democratic and republican races, respectively. For the democratic presidential nominees, Mayor Mike Bloomberg is polling second in this survey but third nationally. Vice president Joe Biden is pilling fifth in this survey but second nationally. However, when one looks at the overall bid for president, Donald Trump has a strong lead, just like he does on a national level. In addition to the presidential nominees, students were also asked their opinions on several pressing issues like the electoral college and the national voting age. Like most Americans, students mostly believe that the voting age should stay as it is at 18. Students also fall in line when it comes to the electoral college We also asked students whether U.S. elections should be voted upon through the Electoral College, or instead directly through the popular vote. Our results demonstrated that we have students on either end of the poll; this one was perhaps most polarized. Our student body also was divided between who should be the 2020 Presidential nominee; Bernie Sanders was the most popular Democrat, which corresponds with national data about young people. But there was a close tie between former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, who was not allowed to be on the Virginia ballot, or President Trump as the Republican nominee, which might reflect the support for Trump among students.
As Willis Hall reels from the shock of the expulsion of four students for drug use on a school trip several weeks ago, questions arise regarding how these offenses can be prevented in the future. Drugs, both legal and illegal, continue to play an increasingly larger role in American society. North Cross, however, is explicit in its rejection of drug and alcohol use on and off campus. According to the North Cross Student and Parent Handbook, “NCS believes that no level of adolescent involvement with drugs and alcohol is healthy or safe. Therefore, students will always hear as part of our programming that we believe they should be drug and alcohol free throughout their high school years.” While a student cannot be suspended or expelled for using drugs outside of campus, North Cross reserves the right to discipline students and notify their parents if the school becomes aware of these activities. Although North Cross condemns drug and alcohol use, no plan or curriculum exists which could serve to educate the student body on these substances. Headmaster Dr. Christian J. Proctor strongly believes that drug education is a necessary and essential component of a high-school education. A drug education program is “high on [Proctor’s] wish list,” although North Cross currently lacks such a curriculum. “The reality is the best step we can take [to prevent drug use] is finding a counselor who has experience in drug and alcohol education who puts together a consistent, stable, ongoing drug education program,” Proctor said. “When kids are exposed to a message multiple times by someone they have a relationship with, that’s the best way to reduce drug use.” Without an adequate drug education program that students can engage with and learn from, North Cross students are much less likely to gain a balanced, educated and objective understanding of the dangers of narcotics. While parents do have a responsibility to educate their children on the dangers of alcohol and drugs as well, North Cross cannot rely on their instruction alone. By lacking a drug and alcohol curriculum, North Cross is increasing the risk of its students using, abusing and becoming addicted to illicit substances. The largest obstacle in the way of a comprehensive program for drug education is a lack of specific expertise and funds, as Proctor explained. “Primarily [what is preventing a program] is that there’s a certain skill set you have to have to be able to create a drug/alcohol learning program ... and we don’t have anybody on campus right now that has the skill set or the time in their schedule,” Proctor said. “... most schools where there’s a program like that, there’s somebody whose pretty heavily tasked with that as their goal.” Addressing the problem of drug use is not easy, as there is no one factor that leads to drug use; instead it is a compilation of conditions and lapses of judgment. Upper School Director Mark Thompson sees drug prevention as a three-fingered operation. “There are probably three different pieces to combating drug use in the school: what students can do, what the school can do and what the parents can do,” he said. “No one individual can be entirely responsible, although students ultimately make the choices to use or not to use; it is in the control of the students. There is only so much parents and the school can do; it needs to be an effort by all three.” These efforts in many schools culminate in a drug education program, which North Cross does not currently have. This does not mean that the school has its head in the sand; rather it is a monetary issue. “We are trying to work a counselor into the budget,” Thompson said. “Right now we do not have personnel to formally address drug and alcohol issues, but that has been a topic of conversation with Dr. Proctor. It is something that we are trying to do, but we are trying to fit it into the budget.” As Thompson referred to, the parents of students have a large role in preventing drug use. Not only do parents have the opportunity to supervise their children’s behavior, they also have the responsibility to help them distinguish right from wrong and make smart decisions. “Parents need to in some cases have honest conversations with their children about what they are doing,” he said. “Parents need to be aware of what their children are doing and do their best to know where they are and whom they are with.” The bottom line is very simple: drugs such as marijuana and alcohol have a hold on part of our student body. What we do as a student body and as a community will define our future as a legitimate safe learning environment. Thompson does not see drugs as a new issue and has maintained an identical stance on the issue both before and after the most recent incident. “My message is the same whether it is before or after: alcohol and drugs have no place in the lives of teenagers in terms of them being productive,” he said. “Unfortunately, I fully realize that teenagers will experiment and in some cases use drugs and alcohol. Studies have shown that for students who use drugs and alcohol, the earlier they start, the bigger the issue can be, and there is nothing productive about it.” Whenever a drug related incident does occur, Proctor has also been consistent in his message to the student body. “I’ve been working with teens as a teacher and an administrator for 27 years, since ‘88,” Proctor said, “and the reality is when we look at marijuana use as teachers and as educators ... we see kids becoming less interested ... and now is the time you are supposed to be interested.” However, post-drug-incident exhortations by the Headmaster are not enough to eliminate North Cross’s drug problem. The only way to effectively deal with the issue at hand is a comprehensive drug-education program, and this essential tool is dangerously absent from the school. Until such a program is created, drug-incidents will continue to occur and lives will continue to be scarred by the consequences. Freedom of the press and speech are not optional in the United States of America. The First Amendment does not state that those liberties are afforded as long as no one is offended or disagrees. Similarly in France, the site of terror attacks against the staff members of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the law on the freedom of the press guarantees these individual rights. While French law provides some amount of defense for libel, the magazine was well within its legal rights to publish cartoons criticizing religion. If the terrorists thought that they had grounds for libel charges against Charlie Hebdo, they could have, through the unique French legal system, taken the magazine to court and made them prove their statements. If proven guilty, Charlie would have incurred either fiscal penalties or been forced to make public apologies. The morality of deciding to publish cartoons that deliberately offend large groups of people is questionable, as some would argue that whatever entertainment value they provide is heavily outweighed by the outrage they produce. While this is a legitimate concern, it would have much more weight if the cartoons had only attacked one religion, thus providing a basis for libel charges. However, Charlie does not pull any punches, mocking Christianity and Judaism along with Islam. By not showing bias against one particular religion, Charlie merely put up a mirror to show, admittedly from a far-left perspective, the flaws in each religion as they see it. A magazine like Charlie Hebdo typically thrives from dissent, as they are similar to Justin Bieber and Alex Rodriguez in that people love to hate them, but a group of terrorists decided that 12 people deserved to lose their lives over a series of cartoons. The irony remains that the terrorists’ efforts may have backfired, as they have shifted the global spotlight onto Charlie and necessitated the colossal uptick in production of the Charlie Hebdo magazines from the normal 60,000 to over seven million copies of the first issue since the attack. That means Charlie made more than 21 million Euros (roughly $25 million) in the last two weeks. While the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the events surrounding it in Paris are indeed tragic, it is important to put this attack into context. The perpetrators were all French citizens who were radicalized at home; this corresponds with a disturbing trend in Europe of Muslim and immigrant communities becoming religiously radicalized by a lack of socio-economic integration into their adopted countries. Muslims and immigrants across Europe continue to face endemic poverty and discrimination by native Europeans; however, the American press under-reports these aspects of European society, ignoring a crucial aspect of the Charlie Hebdo attack. Many countries in Western Europe, including France, the United Kingdom, and Germany, who have recently opened themselves to immigration from areas such as the Middle East, parts of Africa, and South Asia, have experienced major bouts of xenophobia and racism from segments of their native populations. On the same week of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the German anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant protest group PEGIDA staged large demonstrations across Germany, demanding the expulsion of immigrants and a return to traditional, “untainted” Judeo-Christian values. However, these events garnered little attention in the press compared to the massacre in France that occurred simultaneously, even though this continued hostility towards “non-native” cultures in Europe is perhaps the most direct cause of Islamic and anti-Western terrorism seen in Europe today. These types of attacks, however, committed by alienated Muslims or foreigners, are a smaller threat to the United States than they are to Europe. As a historical nation of immigrants, American society accepts foreign cultures and peoples relatively easily into its midst, and, although exceptions exist, American Muslims are far better integrated into our culture than they are in Europe. It is also important to remember that the Charlie Hebdo massacre, although brutal and inhumane, is an extremely small event compared to the many acts of terrorism that occur across the world on a daily basis. In Nigeria, for example, the sadistic insurgent group Boko Haram massacred over 150 people in a raid on the town of Baga, also on the same week of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, however this incident and countless others have also been under-reported and forgotten by the international community. Dozens die in war-torn nations such as Syria and the Central African Republic every day, and yet these conflicts and deaths rarely make headlines. Even a terrorist attack on a school in Pakistan, which killed a shocking 141 children, received far less attention than the Paris attack, even though the death toll was eight times as high. The lack of reporting, coverage, and general awareness of these events indicates a dangerously Eurocentric perspective from the media. Not only is the subject of the freedom of press significant around the world, but also in our tight-knit community. At the beginning of January, the Willis Hall Herald’s third issue was pulled from campus. The controversy over publishing an article covering a sensitive topic caused the issue to be withdrawn. However, according to the theory of freedom of press, the staff had every right to address the topic, and it would have been un-journalistic to have swept the matter under the rug. One of the primary reasons for its removal was Visitors’ Day. While from an administrative point of view, the publications may have persuaded visitors to look elsewhere for their child’s education, do such issues not happen elsewhere? Every high school has honor issues. These issues need to be addressed in order to teach others of the consequences. It is important to admit to one’s wrongdoings, and to learn and move on from mistakes. Charlie Hebdo published many controversial cartoons that eventually led to the massacre of the editorial staff. Such extreme responses are not expected from readers, and there are other ways to address publications that are viewed as offensive. For instance, letters to the editor is way in which one can express one’s feelings without causing harm. In such case, the staff can review the response, and discuss whether they should publish such controversial topics just because they have the right. However, the staff has to keep in mind that an editorial should not create indifferent responses. Not everyone can be pleased by one opinion on a controversial issue. Therefore, even though the third issue was withdrawn due to negative views, the staff will continue to produce editorials that can produce different emotional responses, just like Charlie Hebdo published an issue of cartoons following the massacre. Sometimes there are few incidents that happen in the community, and sometimes there are extreme occurrences. This includes all that is positive and negative. However, no matter the case, the community has every right to know what is happening, and a journalism staff has an obligation to inform them. While we will not go as far as to attack someone’s religion, we will not be kept quiet on big matters concerning our community. |
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