CHILL ON THE HILL

ery own Pre-Med club, the Environmental Action Club hosted a special Chill On The Hill event. With free paint, brushes, and rocks given out to attendees, students were given the chance to paint their very own special rocks either for themselves or to beautify Oak Grove’s campus. More than thirty students joined the painting session at the hill, creating their rocks while enjoying tunes. Some of the rocks have been placed around Oak Grove’s campus so look out for them! Both the Environmental Action Club, Pre-Med, and their members look forward to more fun activities and collaborations in the future.

Written By Emma Anderson

Have you ever gone to free swim after school? Thought about joining the swim team? Or, maybe you just swam in P.E.? No matter why you are in the pool, it’s important to know about safety when it comes to swimming. And our school’s swimming pool is unsafe.

I would say one of the most important issues with our pool is how shallow it is. According to MAHC Facility Design and Construction Module section 4.8.3.3, the requirement for diving blocks is that the pool be at a minimum of six feet and seven inches(6’7”) deep. Our main swimming pool(that has diving blocks) at its deepest is five and a half feet(5’6”) deep. This is an issue for many reasons.

If swimmers dive too deep they could hit the pool floor and injure themselves.

Diving into a shallow pool is considerably slower than diving into a deeper one. Shallower pools cool off faster, meaning that the main pool is significantly colder than the diving pool.

Many students in P.E. classes have either not learned to swim, or have not practiced swimming in a while. Our swimming pool needs to be deep enough to safely teach people to swim.

In addition to the pool not being up to regulations, the pool has not been renovated in at least 15 years*. The reason we have been able to keep using the pool despite the safety issues is because the regulations were put in place in 2012, after our pool had been made, so it wasn’t necessary to renovate the pool right away. Our pool is quite literally falling apart, just the other day students swimming during after school free swim found cracked pieces of the pool [material] (image shown on left, size 11 women’s shoe for comparison).

Our school has acknowledged that the pool needs to be renovated. In the 2004 master plan for construction projects for OG, under recommended safety improvements, pool modernization to increase depth is listed. Yet, in all this time no changes have been made to the pool.

I have written this article with the aim of bringing awareness to such an important safety issue. I hope there are others out there that would also like to see changes made.

Sources: https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/CABCV22016ES

0418/chapter-31b-dph-public-pools https://counsilmanhunsaker.com/minimumwater-depths-under-starting-blocks-2/ OG Campus Master Plan Book-FINAL.pdf

*I was unable to find exact dates.

New Years

October Comic: An Eagle's Halloween

By Mailan Vuong

November Comic: Thanksgiving Parade

By Mailan Vuong