16 YEARBOOK

disintegrating quotes

Ella Marsden

Amanda Black

Jade Foo

Each year, Libertyville High School’s yearbook staff reports that between 20 to 25 quotes submitted by the senior class are removed for including inappropriate content. Consequently, the 2019-20 yearbook will not include senior quotes. Though many factors played into this decision, the largest motivator was the school’s desire to avoid seemingly inevitable harm.

The incident that sparked discussion about the topic at Libertyville took place at nearby Highland Park High School (HPHS) last

spring. Before working at LHS, Principal Tom Koulentes held the same position at HPHS; his son graduated last year in the midst of the tumult caused by the controversial quotes.

“While my decision wasn’t a direct result of what happened at HPHS, that situation certainly weighed heavily on my mind as I processed this situation with our administration and our yearbook staff,” Dr. Koulentes shared via email.

At HPHS, two quotes deemed offensive managed to get through the filters of yearbook staff and school administration and were published in their yearbook. According to the Chicago Tribune, one of the controversial quotes read, “If you tell a big enough lie, and you tell it often enough, it will be believed.” Though attributed in the yearbook as “anonymous,” it is commonly associated with Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany.

Once the books were distributed, the quotes raised commotion among the

predominantly Jewish community; these quotes caused the school to halt distribution of the yearbooks. It’s unclear which other quote was brought to the attention of the HPHS administration for offensive content. When this story hit news channels, the LHS administration and Dr. Koulentes began conversations with the LHS yearbook staff about the issue. Dr. Koulentes explained the rationale for initiating these talks: “For us as adults, we were looking and seeing that these yearbook quotes had the potential to become something that really created a lot of division and negativity and pain in a school community at a time when it should be very joyous and celebratory.”

The decision to remove the quotes was not made quickly, nor was it solely the administration’s. “Before any decision was made, the yearbook sponsor (Ms. Kristen Connolly), [Student Activities Director Mrs. Jennifer Uliks] and I met with the yearbook staff,” Dr. Koulentes explained.

“We told the staff our concerns, and we listened to their concerns—because quite frankly, there were some students on the yearbook staff who were also concerned about the quotes,” Dr. Koulentes said. “We came to a consensus that we would not be including quotes anymore in the yearbook.”

Dr. Koulentes emphasized that while the yearbook staff did have swaying power in the verdict, the final decision to eliminate senior quotes was his. Before making any concrete decisions, Dr. Koulentes ensured that removing senior quotes would not violate any free speech laws, including the Speech Rights of Student Journalists Act. This state law, according to the Student Press Law Center, “provides that student editors are responsible for the content of their media. School officials can intervene only when the content falls within specific categories of unprotected expression.”

“Before we made this decision, we checked with our district office, and we checked with our school’s legal firm, and we believe that we’re operating clearly within the bounds of the law and of student rights,” Dr. Koulentes clarified.

While some students may believe that senior quotes are a long-standing LHS tradition, Ms. Connolly pointed out that they were an addition to the yearbook at Libertyville in 2016. So while they have been a tradition in recent years, it’s not a persevering tradition that’s been around since the beginning of the yearbook.

The yearbook’s editor-in-chief this year, senior Mark Plunkett, added that he thinks when people heard about the decision to eliminate senior quotes, they made assumptions about the editing process. As Plunkett explained, there’s an elaborate process to edit senior quotes.

“All the editors and our advisor run through [the quotes] at least three times, then it’s sent to Mrs. Uliks and a few other people at the administrative office, and they check over it, and then send it back to us. And [finally,] we check it an additional two more times.”

Additionally, Plunkett mentioned that getting seniors to submit their quotes was a difficult process in itself. Between waiting on initial responses and weeding out the inappropriate ones, this process takes up a significant amount of time.

The time the yearbook staff will save by not including senior quotes allows them to focus on other aspects of the book. They’re aware that students are unhappy with the decision but haven’t let that affect their work ethic.

“The whole negative [response] isn’t really having a great effect on our staff as a whole. If anything, it’s making us work harder and make other aspects of the book more encompassing towards the seniors who did lose this privilege,” Plunkett explained. For example, there will be an additional spread in the yearbook devoted to seniors as a different way to pay tribute to the graduating class. In the Student Life section, this will include a story focusing on senior activities as well as a spread of photos from the year, Plunkett said.

In an email sent to the entire school, Dr. Koulentes expressed that he is happy to hear ideas for a different way the senior class could leave their mark on the school: “I’m open to thinking about what the senior class would want to do as a way to say ‘This is who we really are and this is what we stand for as a class,’” he wrote.

As an alternative to publishing senior quotes in the yearbook, Dr. Koulentes also brought up social media. He explained that virtually every student has some sort of social media account where they can attach Due to the controversy caused by previous inappropriate yearbook quotes, Dr. Koulentes and the yearbook staff have made the decision to no longer include senior quotes.

“The whole negative [response] isn’t really having a great effect on our staff as a whole. If anything, it’s making us work harder and make other aspects of the book more encompassing towards the seniors who did lose this privilege,”

- Senior Mark Plunkett

their quotes instead. “If you learn that the quote you put in was hurtful to somebody, even though you didn’t intend it to be, you can immediately pull that down and put a new quote in; in the yearbook, you can’t do that,” Dr. Koulentes said.

Senior Jennifer Short also has a possible replacement for senior quotes: seniors could decorate their graduation caps. After seeing that nearby Mundelein High School seniors decorate theirs, Short wants to bring the tradition to LHS.

“It just so happens that the year I’m a senior and was going to try anyways to make it happen, we got rid of senior quotes, so I think that decorating our caps could be a sort of trade-in,” Short said in a text message.

The decision to remove the quotes has not been universally accepted by the senior class; in fact, senior Christian Voelker created an online petition with hopes of changing the minds of the members of the district’s Board of Education.

This petition was eventually blocked by the school’s Wi-Fi. Dr. Koulentes said he did not know the reasoning behind it being blocked but suspects that the petition did not comply with the school’s acceptable use policies. This would result in the inability to access that page while connected to the Wi-Fi network, he explained.

When Voelker and fellow senior Jonah Armenta realized that the petition could no longer be accessed on the school’s Wi-Fi, they created a paper version. They collected roughly 260 signatures primarily from the senior class but also received support from some underclassmen.

Voelker expressed that his anger was rooted in the fact that having a senior quote is something that he had been looking forward to throughout his high school career. To finally reach senior year and have this privilege taken away was frustrating, Voelker shared.

He added an idea for a way that the yearbook could continue publishing senior quotes while avoiding potential harm:

“If a student submits a quote that’s highly inappropriate, maybe they get some form of punishment other than getting their quote removed. That way everybody else still gets to have a senior quote.”

Though initially mad, once Short heard the reasoning behind the decision, her viewpoint changed: “When I got the entire story by talking to my friend who is on yearbook and reading the story about what happened at Highland Park, I see why we would get rid of them due to the stress it puts on the yearbook staff.”

Ultimately, Dr. Koulentes understands that students may not be happy with his decision but hopes that they remain respectful towards the yearbook staff. “It’s really important for people to understand that this isn’t something that just happened at another school by one student one time,” he said.

Mark Plunkett, the yearbook’s editor-in-chief, provided insight on the complicated process for editing and acquiring senior quotes. He also explained that there will be new pages devoted to seniors featuring senior activities and photos from throughout the year.

Megan Lenzi

In what should come as a surprise to no one, there is not one person on the Drops of Ink staff who holds a positive opinion of standardized testing. At best, people were ambivalent.

Test scores are an integral part of the application process for colleges, and this, working in tandem with the one-dimensional view of students they exacerbate, is a source of mass discontent among high school students. And how can you blame us? There are multitudes of circumstances that could potentially influence — for better or for worse — the score a student receives, none of which a test score has the capacity to measure.

Although there is a growing movement among some colleges to place less stock in test scores, the majority of institutions still utilize them as a baseline to see if a student’s application should be considered. Naturally, this leaves many students feeling disheartened and ultimately frustrated, as anyone would be if the validity of their efforts spanning four arduous years of high school hinged on a single test score. Additionally, a dichotomy exists between the content of these tests, the manner in which they are prepared for and the reality of the college experience. This is evidenced in how they are tutored for, where many students are not taught content but rather test-taking strategies and time management. As a measurement of college readiness, many people hold that tests like the ACT and SAT do not live up to what they claim to measure. Compared to the plentiful variety of majors offered for undergraduate students, the range of subjects assessed in these tests are shockingly deficient. The one somewhat relevant proficiency that standardized tests gauge is mental endurance, which is ultimately made a moot point in recognizing that there are very few instances when college students will take a four-hour test. To circumvent this, it would be nice to give students a choice in the order that they take the sections, so that nobody would have to take their worst section last, when they are mentally exhausted.

But there is one thing that seems to be ever-central to the debate surrounding standardized tests: their “fairness,” or whether or not they live up to the standardized component of their name. A “standard” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an idea or thing used as a measure, norm, or model in comparative evaluation.” However, in taking into account economic circumstances and fluctuations in the quality of education from district to district, can we call these tests standardized? Wealthier school districts have a clear advantage in that their focus is not expended on preventing students from

The ACT/SAT is an integral part of the college application process. However, does standardized testing fairly determine college readiness?

dropping out, as opposed to less affluent districts, meaning their central goal is college readiness. Furthermore, many residents of wealthy districts have excess money to spend on commodities like pricey tutoring hours and prep books, meaning that their children go into test day better prepared than those who are unable to afford the same luxuries.

In discussions among students at LHS concerning the equity of standardized testing, the influence of economic circumstance is not often brought up, at least not in a manner directly related to its effect on us. Although there are many facets of these tests that unequivocally ought to be improved upon or even completely changed, it is important to recognize the privilege that the students of LHS enjoy regarding these tests. It’s easy to get caught up in the stress and frustration wrought by expectations placed upon us by peers, parents or colleges. However, we are one of the best public high schools in the state, with SAT and ACT averages, respectively, soaring above the national average at 1211 and 25.9 in comparison to 1068 and a 20.8.

So, despite the animosity that students at LHS may feel towards these tests, it is essential to acknowledge the privilege we possess on account of where we live, which serves as nothing but a benefit in the long run. Although the same problems with these tests do also apply to us, by no means have we gotten the short end of the standards.

Moira Duffy

The United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) is considered the best women’s soccer team in the world, and they have the stats to back them up. Their recent victory in the 2019 World Cup was preceded by four Women’s World Cup titles and four Olympic gold medals. In addition, the notoriety of the USWNT has only increased with the recent controversy over the lack of equal pay between the men’s and women’s U.S. national teams.

The issue of equal pay between men and women in sports on a national level, especially for soccer, has been pushed to the fore of the discourse because of a lawsuit hearing set to take place in May 2020 between the USWNT roster (which consists of 28 players) and the U.S. Soccer Federation.

The focus of this socalled debate is whether the pay differences are a result of gender discrimination or, rather, if it stems from fundamental distinctions in the system that explain and justify why pay differs; for example, the women have a fixed salary, while the men have a play-for-pay system. According to The Washington Post, female U.S. soccer players sign contracts with an annual salary of $100,000 and receive additional bonuses for wins and ties. The men don’t get annual salaries, but they get much larger bonuses per match; this includes a guarantee of $5,000 if they lose. Another bonus relates to World Cup appearances. According to The Guardian, the players on the USMNT would have received a $108,695 bonus if they qualified for the 2018 World Cup (which they did not). Members on the USWNT, conversely, earned $37,500 each for entering the World Cup.

According to USA Today, prior to 2017, if the women played and won 20 exhibition games, they got $99,000 for the season ($4,950 per game). The men’s team, on the other hand, would get $263,320 ($13,166 per game). Following that contract, the USWNT was able to make a new collective bargaining agreement with a 30 percent increase in base salary as well as certain “bonuses,” the exact value of which are unknown to the public. Still, a large pay gap exists even with the 30 percent increase.

In terms of the World Cup, to make matters more complicated, the players’ checks come from two separate organizations: The Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and U.S. Soccer. For the FIFA payments, the men’s tournament has a total of $400 million and a winning team take-home of $38 million. Women’s play has a total of $30 million and a $4 million bonus if they win, according to Fox Sports Network.

According to the Fast Company business magazine, the $30 million prize money for this past women’s World Cup was actually double the $15 million prize money from 2015, but that’s rather

dismal when compared to the $400 million in prize money for the 2018 men’s World Cup.

Experts have predicted that the lawsuit may not even have to come to fruition in the courts. Rather, the USWNT can negotiate more equitable pay with the FIFA money (due to the obvious discrepancy) but not with the U.S. Soccer money, which would solidify a stalemate between the USWNT and U.S. Soccer. Ultimately, the gender discrimination lawsuit will most likely benefit the USWNT, at least according to sports commentator Julie Foudy, a former national team player herself, especially considering U.S. Soccer should want the women’s team as loyal employees for the federation rather than as their enemies. After all, U.S. Soccer is a non-profit organization (with budget control nevertheless) that claims to want to raise popularity for soccer, an objective the women’s team easily accomplishes.

The controversy over equal pay begs the discussion of how men’s and women’s sports coexist. With the current systems in place, any kind of reevaluation of pay would have to prove that in spite of the inherently different systems, the female athletes have been lowballed in payment.

Perhaps the best way to go about navigating these crises isn’t to immediately form a stance, but to fully educate ourselves on the complexities of the situation -- of the gray area that few seem to want to acknowledge. Puzzling out the details of a problem not nearly as clear-cut as it should be can be confusing and frustrating, but if we don’t even try to understand, we unknowingly undermine its relevance.

The discussion of pay discrimination between the men’s and women’s team is complicated by different systems that dictate how and when pay is distributed, but ultimately, the USWNT, through the 2020 lawsuit, is looking to finally get the pay their immeasurable popularity, work and success merits. Courtesy of Flickr The victory of the United States Women’s National Team in the 2019 Women’s World Cup ignited a debate over equal pay and how exactly the sports world handles differences between men’s and women’s athletics, especially financially.

video games don’t

Christian Roberts

cause violence

Peyton Rodriguez

Ian Cox

Growing up, video games were an integral part of my childhood. I still remember playing video games, some of them violent, like “Battlefield 2” and “Medal of Honor: Rising Sun” on PS2 at the age of 7. To this day, I, and many other kids like me, play video games on a daily basis, and have never once had the urge to commit an act of violence or partake in a physical altercation with one another.

Video games have come under fire in the news recently by many powerful Republicans for supposedly desensitizing kids and for causing some to commit mass shootings and other horrible acts of violence. President Trump weighed in on the issue, saying, “We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace.” GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was also amongst the people arguing for regulations on the video game industry and the sale of violent video games, appearing on several news stations to spread this message. The lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, claimed, just one day after the El Paso shooting, which killed 22 people, that he sees “a video game industry that teaches young people to kill.” Since his statements on Aug. 4, at least 65 shootings have occurred, which have killed or injured more than 372 people, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Not all of these shootings were considered “mass shootings,” however, as a 2015 Congressional report identified mass shootings as “four or more people being killed.” However, these aren’t new sentiments. After the Columbine school shooting in 1999, which killed 14 people, calls were made by then-President Bill Clinton to investigate violent video games and their correlation with violent behavior. Even Senator Mitt Romney, in his 2008 presidential campaign, cited video games as an inspiration for a 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech that left 32 people dead. It doesn’t end there, though. Following the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, claimed that video games were the main factor of the shooting, stating that the video game industry is a “corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.” Ironic, right?

Politicians often insist that there are studies to back up their claims but such studies don’t exist. In fact, of the studies that do exist, they all point to the contrary. Oxford University published a study in February 2019 stating that “adolescents’ recent violent video game play is not a statistically or practically significant correlate of their aggressive behaviour.” The University of New York and the American Psychological Association also both published studies reporting the same findings early in 2019.

Even the Supreme Court denied the existence of any such correlation between video games and violence. In a 2011 court case called Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, which sought to get rid of a law that banned the sale of violent video games to children, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the video game industry, claiming that “psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively.”

Even after these countless studies on violence and video games have reported that there is no correlation, politicians still constantly blame video games for mass shootings and other inhumane acts. Why? Because it’s easier for politicians and organizations to use video games as a scapegoat rather than addressing the complex social and political issues that underlie the ubiquitous gun violence in America.

How come every first-world country plays almost as many video games as the U.S, but the U.S is the only one with a gun violence issue? The U.S ranks 10th in firearm-related deaths per 100,000 people per year, at 12.21 deaths, per the CIA World Factbook. Countries with more deaths than the U.S. include dangerous places such as Honduras, Venezuela and Swaziland. The next-closest first-world country near the U.S. was France, with a rate of 2.83 deaths, and they are the seventh-largest video game producer in the world, per World’s Top Exports. Statistics don’t lie, and these ones show that we shouldn’t be worrying about banning the sale of violent video games, but instead combating the other underlying factors that cause people to commit these senseless acts of violence. Many video games have recently come under fire including creative video games like Minecra ft and more violent video games like Call of Duty.