F LY I N G B E A R S
AP Statistics students captapult gummy bears in experiment
Juniors Chance Andrade and Bhawantha Nilaweera get ready to launch a gummy bear for their AP Statistics class. The students designed the catapult in the experimental design unit. PHOTO BY DYLAN THOMAS
Volume 103 // Issue 7 // Nov. 3, 2015
ANNA HUPP
Staff Writer
The victim rested stiffly on its back in the catapult bucket, eyes staring blankly ahead. The scientist laid out the measuring tape. He signaled to his partner, and the victim was released into the air. It was just another day in AP Statistics last Wednesday as students catapulted gummy bears. “The students have been learning about experimental design in class, so now they’re actually applying it,” AP Statistics teacher Laura Sapp said. “They’re using their knowledge of experimental design to actually create and conduct an experiment where they’re testing whether the angle at which a gummy bear is launched affects how far the gummy bear travels.” The gummy bear lab was worth a test grade. Students weren’t the only ones whose estimations about
the mentor
SEE STATS PAGE 3
FFA attends national convention in Kentucky ANDREA LU
Graphics Editor FFA headed to a four-day convention in Kentucky last week to experience a variety of new things and to meet new people from other FFA chapters. Only senior FFA member Brooke Bliss, her sister Faith, and FFA sponsor Rachel Green attended the convention. “At the convention we went to an opening session, concert, the expo/career fair, FFA mall, a general session, rodeo, Kentucky horse park, and Churchill Downs,” Bliss said. Bliss greatly enjoyed the trip and felt she learned a lot about FFA. “I’ve learned a deeper knowledge of what FFA really is, some additional background on the FFA history and what different careers, colleges, and the current jobs/studies out there today,” Bliss said. “I also learned more information on the background of the Kentucky Derby and their race horses.” Bliss could not choose just one thing about the trip that she liked the most.
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Scholars Bowl places second at Emporia meet ANDREA LU
Graphics Editor Gearing up for their second meet of the season, the Manhattan High Scholars Bowl team headed to Emporia for the Emporia Invitational. The competition consisted of some larger schools and stronger teams than the meet in Salina. “It was a little bit different in the fact that we see different schools down there because they drew from Wichita,” Scholars Bowl coach Ted Dawdy said. “There were some Wichita schools that came up to Emporia and Lawrence Free State and some Topeka schools, they came down so we got to see some Wichita competition that we don’t usually see because that’s a long way to travel. And there was lot more [schools including]
Wichita Independent which is a very high functioning team, Wichita East, you know, [and] Lawrence Free State so we saw some competition we don’t usually see around the area.” The competition was set up in a round robin play with the MHS team ultimately placing second overall. “There were two different pools, 20 teams and [half the teams] were in a pool of 10,” Tim Ekart, Assistant Scholars Bowl Coach, said. “And so we played every team at least once and out of that they took the two best teams from each pool into a semifinal and then a final.” Ekart explained how the MHS Scholars Bowl team did at Emporia. “At Emporia, we went eight and one in pool play. We played some larger school districts, Independent school and Wichita East and St. James Academy
and we lost to Independent School in pool play.” The MHS Scholars Bowl team
“There was one math question we had to do three times over because they kept giving the wrong solutions on the answer key,”
--Owen Li
made it through the semifinals beating both Wichita East schools and then proceeded to the finals where they lost to Hayden. Two team players, senior Sterling Edgar and junior Owen Li, both felt the team could have done better but weren’t necessarily disappointed with
the results. “So what we’ve been doing is we’ve been practicing on Mondays and Tuesdays [and] this tournament was a Monday so we could’ve been out of practice too because it’s been almost a whole week since then,” Edgar said. As for highlights in the competition, Edgar and Li both had noteworthy things to say. “There was one math question we had to do three times over because they kept giving the wrong solutions on the answer key,” Li said. For Edgar, missing a question on Ray Bradbury wasn’t the brightest moment of the team’s performance. “Our team has a tradition where we take Ray Bradbury as our patron author for Scholars Bowl and we make
SEE SCHOLARS PAGE 3
Key Club’s Autozone car wash canceled due to weather, members trick-or-treat for UNICEF MAYA MINOCHA
Staff Writer
This past weekend, Key Club was scheduled to have a car
wash at the Autozone for a fundraiser. The event was cancelled due to inclimate weather conditions. “It had rained the night be-
fore and the day of was super cold,” Key Club president Rachel Chang said. “We figured it was the best option to cancel.” With the temperature being
around 50 degrees, they decided it was best to not do the car wash.
SEE KEY PAGE 3
Debate hosts home tournament to Kansas high schools ELIZABETH UNDERWOOD
Features Editor
Seniors Sterling Edgar, Nathan McClendon and assistant debate coach Kristal Kleiner manage judge registration during the tournament the school hosted. PHOTO BY ANGIE MOSS
GLOBAL NEWS MADELINE MARSHALL Print Editor-in-Chief
Global news is a vital part of news today and can directly affect MHS students. In order to inform our readers, The Mentor has compiled small summaries describing some of the largest happenings in the world today. We encourage the reader to read about these topics, and others, in greater depth.
GOP candidates demand greater control over debates Republican presidential campaigns gathered outside of Washington, D.C. on Sunday night to discuss potential changes to the GOP debates format, a
move that comes amid widespread frustration with the Republican National Committee’s handling of the nomination process. The Republican presidential campaigns that spent days advocating for an overhaul of the debates emerged from the meeting with only modest proposals for change -- and a great deal of disagreement. The campaigns’ requests -- a two-hour time limit, 30 seconds for opening and closing statements, equal speaking time for each candidate -- were remarkably limited in scope when compared to the ambitious proposals put forth in the days leading up the meeting. But the campaigns failed to agree on key proposals, including bringing the so-called undercard candidates onto the main stage. “The last debate was kind of ridiculous,” GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush sadi according to The Washington Post. “I say this
Almost every student’s nightmare is having to spend 11 to 12 extra hours working at school on a Saturday. All over the country, high school debate programs usually have to do that once a season, and Manhattan High’s turn was last weekend. “[MHS students] got to the school...at 6:35, and then all the competitors got there around 7:30, in the morning,” sophomore Lily Colburn said. Setting up and running the somewhat in jest: At least there was someone who fared worse in the last debate than me — CNBC.”
tournaments hosted a new challenge for students as they had to make sure everything was timely and get both judges and debaters to their designated areas. “It’s a different kind of stress because instead of focusing on doing well at the tournament you, you’re focusing on having a well-run tournament,” senior Cathy Lei said. Taking charge and controlling how a tournament plays out is a complex process for students, but also allows them to have hands-on experiences with leading and controlling
the outcome of hosted events. “It could have gone better because there were a lot of issues going around the tournament, especially the fact that it was disorganized,” junior Robin Joung said. “A lot of issues were, basically, a lot of people didn’t know where rooms they were going to be in because a lot of things were mixed up and everything came out late and such.” Members in the Debate program also spent time both setting up and cleaning the school
The incident has brought the discussion of the unfair treatment and abuse of black girls and women to the forefront of the nation’s reignited race discussion.
shooting at the officers, several of whom returned fire, according to the police account. The authorities said the assailant’s motive was unclear. Officials have not released any information about the suspect or those killed.
SEE DEBATE PAGE 3
South Carolina SRO throws black girl, is fired, Shooting leaves four dead reignites racial debates in Colorado Springs Plane crashes over SiThe South Carolina high school Law enforcement authorities nai, kills all on board resource officer at a who was filmed tossing a black teen from her desk and dragging her was fired, officials announced on Wednesday. That officer, Ben Fields, was initially put on unpaid leave after the video surfaced last week. In the original confrontation on Monday, Fields can be heard telling the student to get up. He then grabbed the student as she was in her seat, which caused the girl and the chair to flip over onto the floor. Fields was then seen dragging the girl for several feet and restraining her on the ground. The female student’s attorney told the New York Times that she suffered injuries to her head, arm, neck and back during the incident.
in Colorado investigated a shooting over the weekend that left four people dead, including the suspect, who was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police officers in Colorado Springs. Police officials said Sunday that the officers involved in the shooting on Saturday had been placed on routine administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, according to The Denver Post. The Colorado Springs Police Department said officers encountered a person with a gun just over a halfmile away from a residential area at an intersection with fast-food restaurants, businesses and a high school campus. The person began
A Russian airliner crashed in Egypt above the Sinai peninsula killing all 224 people onboard on Saturday. According to Russia’s top aviation official, it broke apart in mid-air. The Airbus A321-200, bound for St. Petersburg, Russia from the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh dropped “abruptly from 31,000 feet just 23 minutes” after it took off, according to the Associated Press. Aviation experts and search teams are surveying an area of about six square miles looking for bodies and strewn parts of the plane.
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