Maize South High School-The Bullseye-Issue 2-March 2020

Bullseye March 2020

Maize South High School

Wichita, KS

Issue 2 Volume 11

Page 7

Leading by

Example

Staff Editor in Chief Piper Pinnetti

table of

Design Editor Rian Dolph

03

WEbsite editor Tyler Trice Bullseye reporters Ben Anderson Tess Bryant-Stucky Advisor Spencer O’Daniel Baseball photo by Tyler Trice News photo courtesy of Carter Marks-Flickr Photo Illustration courtesy of Daniel Foster-Flickr

Follow us Instagram-@mshsbullseye Twitter-@mshsbullseye

The Bullseye is published regularly during the acedemic year by students enrolled in publications at Maize South High School. Content is determined by the staff and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Maize South High School’s faculty, administration, adviser, or student body.

Students are protected in their exercise of press freedom by the First Amendment of the United States and the Kansas Students Publications Act, Kan. Stat. Ann, Sections 72.1504-72.1506.

The editorial board reviews letters to the editor, advertising, and guest commentaries, and reserves the right to edit and refuse material. Reasons can include length, obscenity, material disruption of the education process at MSHS or violation of copyright laws.

Bullseye is a student publication and a forum for student opinion.

Letters to the editor must be signed and around 300 words. Submit a letter to the editor at E110 or to mshsjournalism@usd266.com.

Affirmative

Action

05

06 Wonders of Women

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02-Table of Contents

04/05

07

News happenings Page by: Ben Anderson

Coronavirus outbreak forces state’s hand in closures of schools and work

According to the most recent Sedgwick County reports, there are currently seven cases within Sedgwick County, 98 cases statewide, and three deaths due to the coronavirus outbreak.

No deaths have been confirmed in Wichita at this time.

Governor Laura Kelly made the decision last Wednesday, March 18 to close the Kansas school system, enforce social distancing and reduce the overall spread of the coronavirus. Kansas was the first state in the country to outright close all schools statewide for the remainder of the school year.

Sedgwick County has also enlisted a “stay at home” order effective this week. Furthermore, all restaurants are offering delivery services only. Retail stores, grocery stores and essential service businesses will stay open during the pandemic. President Trump reportedly hopes to open the country back up by the Easter holiday.

A key role for social distancing in public is to reduce the total amount of coronavirus patient and keep hospitals, such as Wesley Hospital pictured above, from being filled over their capacity with those infected.

Photo by News Break

Democratic Debates Advance opposition to Challenge Trump in 2020 election

Heading into April, Joe Biden has a collective lead. for the Democrate nominee position for the 2020 Presidential election. This graphic shows the current primary results with Biden sweeping the majority of the votes.

As the year 2020 progresses, so does the Democrat’s progress to challenge President Trump. In less than week’s time span, several major candidates including Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Mike Bloomberg, and Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the 2020 race.

The former candidates proceeded to support Biden, excluding Warren who has not endorsed either. There are currently 27 primaries that are 100% reported. Many of the recent Democratic rallies throughout the country have been halted due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Buttigieg won the first, Iowa, before dropping out entirely.

Bernie Sanders won seven states early on, and Biden won the remaning 19 states, making Biden the likely candidate to challenge President Donald Trump later this year.

News briefs-03

Affirmative Action Solicits Discrimination Story and Page by: Ben Anderson Graphics by: Tyler Trice

D

espite our progress towards racial equity, discrimination of race and sex still takes place in our everyday lives at school and even the part-time workplace for teens.

Surprisingly, it’s not against who you may think.

On March 6, 1961, President John F. Kennedy required that government employers “not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin” and “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”

These “affirmative action” policies then made their way onto college campuses in the early 1960’s, using the same executive order by JFK. After Kennedy’s death, Lyndon B. Johnson instituted a secondary executive order giving benefits based on sex to women.

04-Editorial/Opinion

Editorial

For upperclassmen in high school in 2020, this means possible exclusion from their college of choice for someone less qualified academically due to race, gender/or sexual orientation status.

Affirmative action policies are the granting of scholarships and grants, status quos of attendance, and modifying ACT and SAT standards for Black and Hispanic students to attend universities by lower academic measurements than white students.

These may have served a role during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s that provided Blacks and a small portion of Hispanics the privilege of college that previously was a rigid goal when faced with racial discrimination.

Since then, the present day effects have been widely questioned by both sides of the political spectrum about their effectiveness overall.

Whites and Asians have been the target of diversity goals, with Ivy League standout Harvard being the most prominent instance.

Diversity goals may be best explained as the ability to promote development from any underrepresented group to create an atmosphere of harmony and equality.

Harvard is very diverse, with around 56 percent being minorities.

Nearly half of the minority population is made up of Asians. Harvard (and many other colleges) evaluate applicants through three categories: academic achievement, extracurriculars and personal qualities.

According to the National Review, Asians consistently scored higher in academics (GPA, ACT, SAT) and extracurriculars, yet are admitted at lower rates due to an elevated standard.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Harvard’s internal affairs rated Asians’ and Whites’ “personal qualities” significantly lower while maxing out Blacks and Hispanics. In 2013, Asians made up around 19 percent of incoming freshman at Harvard, and had an acceptance rate around 23 percent.. Due to these new racial standards, both Asian and White acceptance rates were lowered to around 7 percent, and the remaining percentage of

Editorial continued.... the acceptance rate was applied to other minority groups, most prominently being Blacks and Hispanics.

According to The Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s own internal review, if their rigged “personal quality” standards had not been applied, Asians’ acceptance rate would have met around 43%, and Whites acceptance rate would have made a jump as well.

In 2018, a group called Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard. The case quickly propelled to a federal court.

The court mandated Harvard release admissions records, and the accounts of an “elevated standard” were reinforced by the reports.

For instance, Harvard required a 1370 on the PSAT for Asians, a 1310 for Whites, and around 1270 for students of color (although it varies year to year).

These same policies do not just apply to Harvard. In 2012, Texas University placed Blacks in the top 52 percentile (including financial benefit) at the same rate as Whites in the top 9 percent.

Furthermore, while quotas and higher standards lie below the surface, there are thousands of scholarships provided nationally each year that are exclusively afforded to people based off of race, sex and sexual orientation.

Wichita State University, one of the largest universities in Kansas, employs affirmative action tactics with scholarships as well as with hiring practices.

“WSU’s Office of Equal Opportunity analyzes the WSU workforce each year to evaluate whether we are employing women and people of color at the expected rates given the demographics of the qualified labor pool,” says WSU’s affirmative action page. “When there is a significant gap between our employment rate for women or people of color and their availability in the qualified population, the university strives to make extra efforts to recruit qualified members from the underutilized group.”

These harmful policies have stayed present for the sake of diversity of past subjugated high schoolers and to even out the playing field so to speak.

When looking through university policy on affirmative action online, universities typically assert widespread discrimination on the same basis they afford these exclusive priveleges (race, sex, sexual orientation.)

believe minorities (primarily Blacks) and women could meet the same standards as male Asians and Whites.

While the collective groups benefiting from these policies may wish to retain them, statistically the recipients do not profit either.

In order to maintain minority goals that correlate with the demographics of the general population, universities must requires money for outreach, scholarships, and to hire more people that may or may not be qualified for the position. At times, they may be hired if they present the need for women or more racial minorities.

When placement happens without proper qualificatons applied across the board, students of any race or sex may be unpreprared for prestigious colleges with high academic track records.

According to Springer Research, affirmative action recipients have twice the dropout rate compared to the regular rate. Richmond County Daily Journal reports that over half of affirmative action recipients have an average class placement of the bottom 20 percent. That number drops to 10 percent in law schools.

In addition, affirmative action beneficiaries fail the bar exams four times the rate of non affirmative action recipients according to UCLA School of Law.

In 1996, California introduced Proposition 209 which barred state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in public employment, public contracting, and public education.

Although private colleges continued their affirmative action practices, public universities could not.

Following this proposition, Black attendance dropped, graduation rates for these groups in a four-year bachelor’s program doubled across California.

Still, chief administrators, primarily at all the UC campuses and Berkley, attacked the proposition as racist. The reason? They did not

University administrations keep affirmative action policies in place not to lessen discrimination, or benefit minorites, but purely for the dollar bills it may bring into the university.

With juniors and seniors entering the workforce and college, what we can learn about affirmative action is that not only does it inhibit everyone and every college that partakes, but is simply unfair towards creating an equal playing field for all respective seniors.

Perceiving everyone through a sphere of their group identity over their individual identity dismisses the value of the individual, and undermines the uniqueness and capability of the individual no matter the race, sex, or sexual orientation.

`Perpetuating group identity does nothing but divide communities along these same guidelines. Affirmative action has proven to be a recipe for disaster due to under qualified students taking key spots and elite scholarships from those more academically qualified on paper.

To view one or more races or one sex as incapable of meeting the standards of everyone else is discrimination. To benefit an entire collective based on none other than race, sex, or sexual orientation is discrimination.

Elimination of group identity and emphasis on diversity of thought would mend division and create uniformity for our next generation.

Editorial/Opinion-05

What Is a

woman?

Page by: Piper Pinnetti

In a world of social chaos, there are women who stand still and are making the world a better place. At the end of March, we reflect back on National Women’s Month and exploring what it means to be a woman.

There are endless meanings of what it means to be a woman. For some, being a woman is being gentle and caring with her kids, or consistently being strong and independent with no kids. Others imagine an entirely pink outfit like Elle Woods and getting their degree while others are securing their camouflage uniform and tying their military boots to defend their country.

A woman is not defined by the way she dresses, nor by the way she acts, the only person who can define a woman is yourself.

For English and yearbook teacher Shelly Walston, she feels that a woman is a “person who identifies with that moniker.

I think it can be any person. I think in our ever changing world, it is becoming more and more difficult to nail down what a woman is.”

In our evolving world, the fight for equality has continued after hundreds of years of females battling towards their freedom.

In, 1848, 300 women and men united together in New York to sign the Declaration of Sentiments, a plea for the end of discrimination towards women and one of the first signature laws pushing for equality between men and women. 32 men and nearly 70 women would sign

In 2020, women are still struggling for fair treatment. Walston believes it is the toughest challenge women have to overcome.

“Until women are recognized as being able to do the same quality of work for any job out there, there will always be inequalities of pay and respect for positions,” Walston said.

A woman is not a flower, but a bomb. We, females are gentle to the touch until we have to protect what we love or who we lovethat always comes first.

Walston also knows that all women must “keep fighting because this march towards equality is not over and we have to continue taking steps in that direction. Keep fighting.”

Maize South senior Alanis Stowell believes that women should, “keep fighting because this march towards equality is not over and we have to continue taking steps in that direction. Keep fighting.” Stowell also knows the social toll that 21st century standards take on our women. She thinks overcoming those societal beauty standards and being yourself is a greater goal beyond ignoring the demands for what a woman should be.

“Living up to your own standards and being truly happy with yourself is the greatest love we can give,” Stowell said.

Finding the unique beauty in yourself will give women a new level of confidence they previously have never felt, a divine happiness.

She believes that if it is not truly you, it’s not worth beating yourself up daily about the current make-up fashions and latest trends.

“I’d say never settle for anything less than reality. Perfect is overrated and there’s always a negative, but that doesn’t mean it has to overpower the worth of the positive,” Stowell said.

The toughest challenge for our women today may be in how we actually achieve the balance of peace within yourself. The ability to learn self love, all while balancing the way others judge and treat us each day is the daily battle we wake up to.

sTRONG pASSIONATE pROUD Top 5 CREATORS pROTECTORS Traits 06-Woman’s Feature

passion FOR the

mound

Page by: Tyler Trice

Starring for the Maverick baseball team for his fourth year on the clay, senior Dylan Epke is unrivaled in his passion on and off the field.

Some play for wealth, others play for status, but for Epke, nothing goes above making his family proud.

“I think I play the hardest for my family,” said Epke. “They have been very involved in my career in baseball and I want to make them proud for all they’ve done for me emotionally and financially so far.”

While Epke is appreciative of the seniors that played before him (Maize South brought home a 4A state championship in May of 2017) he recognizes that the 2020 group of seniors is a solid core and foundation for the future of the program.

“I think it’s really cool to be a part of this program,” said Epke, “I think we have had a couple of groups of bad seniors in the past but I hope we can continue to pass the torch and make the program a lot better than it is today.”

Head Baseball Coach Chad Christensen knows his team better than anyone else, and shares a strong bond with his players unrivaled throughout the school.

“We all love to watch him play,” said Christensen.

“He has a real passion for the game. He consistently stays after games and practices and

it’s refreshing to see that begin to rub off on some of the other players.”

Having been introduced to baseball at a young age and playing for over a decade, Epke fell in love with the sport and has pushed himself to be a solid role model for the younger players on the squad.

“His passion for people sets him aside,” said Christensen. “One of the things we talk about in the senior meetings is who in the program has made a lasting impression and why, so when the younger kids are sitting where they are and see him perform the way he does, they strive to live up to the example he has set for his team.”

He capitalizes on free time after practice early in the season to work on his mechanics and hitting.

“Outside of practice I lift every day twice a day,” Epke stated. “I try to hit the tee and stay late with some dudes after practice is over because once it gets into the season it becomes slower in the field.”

Playing for a professional team is an ambitious goal, but Epke acknowledges the odds of playing in the major leagues and plans for his future off the field as well.

Whether it’s earning money playing baseball or building income in the health field during his work career, Epke believes he’ll contribute to the game one way or another.

“It would obviously be cool to play professionally but I know my body, I know I’m not as big as most of those guys ,” said Epke. “But I think I’ll try to go into coaching and give the younger kids a chance on the field like I got.”

Top Right: Senior Dylan Epke swings at a high pitch during a routine batting practice session on Thursday, March 12. This is Epke’s fourth year playing baseball for Maize South and his twelfth year in total playing on the diamond.

Bottom Left: As he shuffles into his throw towards first base, senior Dylan Epke takes ground balls at third base during an in-field activity on Thursday, March 12.

Sports profile-07

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