VOLUME 52, ISSUE 5 222 Memorial Drive Berlin, WI 54923
FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2020
The
Red ‘n’ Green
A BERLIN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT OPEN FORUM SINCE 1924 Newsbriefs Deacon Eberhardy
Reporter
Academic Decathlon competes at regionals
Academic decathlon came in 8th out of 10 in the regionals competition on Friday, Jan. 10 after local testing on Nov. 12 The team had to give presentations and take tests on different topics. “We had to give prepared and impromptu speeches and some of them were really weird but you just have to do it,” sophomore Kayden Fritz said. The team prepared even more than they did for locals to try and make it to state. “We had to read a lot out of this big book we have and lots of studying hard” Fritz said. The team may have scored low but according to Fritz the team kept in good spirits. “We did not lose 100% so thats good,” Fritz said. Although they did not make it to state the team had at least one thing to be proud of. “We beat Winneconne and that was our goal,” Fritz said. Berlin holds annual Winterfest dance Berlins annual Winterfest dance was cut short due to bad weather on Friday, Jan. 18. Instead of starting at 8 p.m. and ending at 12 p.m. the dance wrapped up at 10 p.m. “I like how they still had us come in, even though it was only two hours, people still got to come in with friends and because it was only two hours they could still hang out with their friends, after the dance,” freshman Jeffery Manata said ”,they did not end up just standing around like a lot of people do at longer dances.”
In this
Issue
- Boys and Girls Club Youth of the Year announced, pg. 3 - Meet the Managers, pg. 7
District holds food tasting for ‘20-’21 lunch menu Carlie Streck Business Manager Food vendors from across the state visited the Berlin High School commons on Wednesday Jan. 8 where students from grades first through juniors sampled potential lunch menu items for the 20202021 school year. At the event organized by Superintendent Dr. Carl Cartwright, roughly 75 students were involved in the tasting of around 15 new possible additions to the lunch menu, including many breakfast items. The school district held the event in hopes of allowing students to be involved in something they are the “primary consumer” of. “I have always believed that student input into their educational experience is an important part of ensuring a positive school culture. This includes soliciting student opinion about potential new food offerings for the upcoming school year,” Cartwright said. “As the primary consumer of BASD breakfast and lunches, our student voices must be considered when reviewing the current food offerings as well as potential new offerings.” Students involved were able to sample five breakfast items and rate each item on a 1-5 scale. The students then sampled 13 other lunch menu items and rated those items with tickets placed in either a thumbs up bin, if the student liked
Photo: C. Streck Select students from grades first through juniors, including sophomore Cecilia Bruce-Demuri (pictured above), sampled over 15 different items for the potential 2020-2021 school year lunch menu. The school district will take students’ votes on the items into consideration when planning next year’s lunch menu. “It is my hope that by including student input with the selection of new food offerings, our student participation rate in the BASD food service program will increase,” Superintendent Dr. Carl Cartwright said. the item, or a thumbs down bin, if the student disliked the item. Junior Josie Bartol found the event to be very beneficial to the lunch program as well as to the students that use the lunch program. “I think it will help kids stay for lunch more often if there is a better variety or if students know that there are new options and not just
the same lunches we’re so used to having,” Bartol said. As for Cartwright, he agrees that the tasting brought beneficial results and plans to hold food tastings in the future with more student participation and a larger variety of vendors. “I am pleased that students were more than enthusiastic about the
opportunity to taste and give feedback on various new menu items,” Cartwright said. “Moving forward, I would like to increase the number of students who are able to participate in future food tasting fairs and it is my hope that the BASD food tasting fair will be an annual event that involves students from all three campuses.”
For second time, Sanderfoot saves life with bone marrow Kalynn Wilson
Reporter
Around the U.S many lives are at risk because they are in need of a bone marrow transplant. Through taking action and not being a bystander, a familar face at BHS decided to step in to help decrease that rate. Science teacher Ben Sanderfoot donated bone marrow for a second time on Dec. 17. According to the Health Resource & Services Administration, about 23,000 bone marrow donations were performed in the U.S. in 2017. “Back in college I signed up for Be the Match. I had a lot of family at the time with cancer,” Sanderfoot said. ”I signed up to give someone a chance.” Be the Match is a national bone marrow program. The chances of Sanderfoot’s bone marrow matching someone else’s is a 1 in 430 shot. Sanderfoot has been associated with Be the Match twice now and has experienced two completely different methods of donation.
“The first time was a surgical procedure, and they pulled marrow out of my hip bone. The second time, four days prior to the donation, I was on a drug injection,” Sanderfoot said. According to BetheMatch.org, drug injections are given five days leading up to the donation. Filgrastim, which is a bone marrow stimulant, is given to increase the number of blood-forming cells in the bloodstream. In adults, bone marrow is located in the ribs, vertebrae, sternum, and bones of the pelvis. On the day of donation Sanderfoot was hooked up to an apheresis machine, which filters out bone marrow stem cells. “There was a needle in my right arm, and returned in my left at the same time,” Sanderfoot said. According to BetheMatch.org the apheresis is a machine which takes a donor’s blood, removed through a needle in one arm, then passed through a machine that separates out blood-forming cells. Going through a non-surgical donation this time around, it
was normal to assume the donor would experience no pain. “With drug injections, my sternum, back, hips and femurs experienced pain. Those bones ached, because the drug produced so much,” Sanderfoot said. The drug is given to patients to produce more white blood cells in the body, as well as bone marrow stem cells, so they have enough for the donation. “My cell count is normal at 10,000 and they had to raise it. With the injections, it was then 50,000,” Sanderfoot said. The first time Sanderfoot donated bone marrow was in 2016 to a woman who lived in Connecticut, Elizabeth Turner. It is a rule that after a year, the recipients and the donor can meet. “We met in Boston in August 2018. That was the city she got her treatment in,” Sanderfoot said. “It was awesome. We met in the lobby of the hospital. I went with my parents, and she brought hers.” Sanderfoot also had his parents with him the day of his donation. “My parents where there, as well as a nurse and a doctor. The
nurse was in charge of the machine, and the doctor took care of me,” Sanderfoot said. Bone marrow donation is a very serious process no matter how it is performed. According to GiftofLife.org, only 4 to 6 percent of a person’s healthy marrow is needed to save a life. The donor’s immune system is not in jeopardy because the cells replace themselves within four to six weeks. As with any hospital visit Sanderfoot had some warnings, even though he did not go under the knife. “They wanted me to be careful lifting things. They had to make sure my spleen was okay, due to the extra blood cells,” Sanderfoot said. By the time the donation is all done, a patient’s body has to accept the bone marrow, but the chances of rejection are low. “Patients are given chemo, so the only way it would reject it is if it did not graft together. Then the recipient has a window of time to ask for another donation,” Sanderfoot said.