THE Push-Up Brawlers See page 10
VOLUME 52 ISSUE 10
Feeding the Need
Food drives finally comes to close, high school results anticipated Sandra Omari-Boateng Feature Editor
The 2011 student food drive kicked off on Oct. 3 and ended on Monday, Nov. 14. Cedar Falls High School had about seven weeks to collect 30,000 pounds of food, and all of the food and proceeds collected went to the Northeast Iowa Food Bank. Throughout the weeks, each third hour class collected cans and money to contribute to the food drive. Other than just the classrooms raising cans and money, the leadership groups have played an important role in raising funds. There have been many leadership-sponsored events such as the silent auctions, paying off parking tickets, library fines and detention minutes with cans of food. They also had the duct tape a teacher,
dress up on Halloween, minute to win it games, school spirit T-shirts and other fun ways to get involved this year. The leadership groups were also in charge of going to spend the money that was collected at the various grocery stores such as Walmart, HyVee, ALDI and Fareway. After buying the food, the leadership groups also packed all the food into boxes and took it to present to the Northeast Iowa Food Bank. As of last Friday, the school was down from last year’s total, but that estimate didn’t include everything that the leadership groups had collected. “We could always set the bar higher. We could do it. Cedar Falls is definitely a school who was the opportunity to give we just need to realize that we
1015 Division St. Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613 can do more,” counselor Erin Gardner said. The top classrooms, as of week five of the food drive that have raised the most are the classes of Kenton Swartly, Emily Wheeler, Doug Wilkenson and Chad VanCleve. Some classes did some creative things to try to raise the most that they could. Students in English teacher Sandra Omari-Boateng Photo Marguerite DeMoss and Judy Timmins’ classes Seniors Katie Todd, Furkan Pecan and were competing against each other to junior Emma Hahn load food. see which class could collect the most. on with the food drive. Teachers and VanCleve’s class alone raised over administrators have also contributed to 2,000 cans. In the end, they had about the drive. 204 cans per student. This class did a “For some teachers without third lot of things to raise donations. They hours and just teachers in general, went around to different neighborthere were other things we did to hoods collecting donations and also support the food drive like buying a went HyVee and both the Waterloo and school shirt or paying to be able wear Cedar Falls Fareways to try and coljeans on those two days they were lect donations for the costumers and offered,” mathematics teacher Linsey make them aware of what was going Zimmerman said.
NaNoWriMo provides outlet to aspiring student novelists Rhydian Talbot Staff Writer
Ah, November. Pumpkin pie, illfated turkeys, Black Friday shopping and — writing? For thousands of writers, November is just as much about composition as it is about food consumption. National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, began promptly at midnight on the first of the month, at which time writers (amateur or otherwise) sharpened their pencils and wit, embarking on 30 days of untapped creativity. As the title suggests, writers involved in NaNoWriMo face the challenge of writing a 50,000-word novel in one month’s time. The endeavor puts an emphasis on quantity of writing rather than quality, pushing closeted novelists to fulfill aspirations of penning a complete work of fiction. At the conclusion of the month, writers who have met the minimum number of words may submit their work to a publishing company that prints and delivers one copy of the finished prod-
uct to the author. Those accomplished few with printed copies of their novel also secure bragging rights, having “won” NaNoWriMo. The open call to any and all writers reached sophomore Mallory Vallentine, who is participating in the novelwriting challenge for the first time. “I wanted to try it out because my brother had done it for several years, and it always seemed fun to him. I’ve always liked writing, too, so I thought I’d try it,” Vallentine said. With a working genre of sci-fi, Vallentine is playing around with the composition process, trying to find a groove that best suits her schedule and inspirations. One of the stumbling blocks pertinent to almost all novelists, however, is writer’s block, where words and story lines run dry, despite (or, perhaps, because of) constricting time lines. To combat this obstacle, Vallentine tries a variety of techniques to get the creative juices flowing once more. “I always listen to tons of different kinds of music. Typically, I’ll also
See Nanowrimo, page 2
Serving All With her award-winning portrayal of the mother of the Sullivan brothers killed in World War II, sophomore Hannah Ackerman, helped all to honor veterans on Friday, Nov. 11 in the Tori Brandhorst Photos gym.