Rolla High School September 5, 2016

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Rolla High School - 900 Bulldog Run - Rolla, Missouri 65401- Volume 68 - Issue - 1 September 2, 2016 - www.rhsecho.com

Cool Vacations pg 6 Vacations Cool Pokemon Go pg 8

Summer Learning pg 10

In this issue...

New Head Football Coach .........................................................3

New Teachers ...................................................................4 Rumor Has it.................................................................. 12 Completly Credible..........................................................12

Letter from the Editor

I know what you’re thinking; “Only a 12 paged magazine!?” Well, I’ll have you know that our mere staff of 11 people, over half of them being new I might add, killed it this issue. And, due to our first press day only being the eighth day of school, we conquered this great task in the time it usually takes us just to come up with story ideas. Not really, but seriously.

I’ve got some pretty big shoes to fill as Editor-in-Chief this year. I mean, who can top John Giesey’s undescribable sense of humor and writing style, and Maggie Duncan with her great stories and rocking wardrobe. But, I’m ready to take on the challenge. Sure, I had some freak out moments trying to get this issue finished in this crazy short amount of time, but it’s so worth it to see the end product. I know most readers don’t read the whole thing cover to cover and aren’t as focused as I am about it looking good, but I take so much pride in it. And, I feel like that is the most important characteristic an Editor-in-Chief could have.

Now, you might ask, “Wow, the ECHO’s first issue was printed really early this year, I wonder if they’re making more that six issues this time.” Well, my friend, you are correct. We will be printing a total of ten times this year which is super awesome and super crazy, but a good kind of crazy. So, you’ll be hearing from me more times than you probably wanted to, but that’s okay by me. Get ready to hear some rants, inspirational speeches, and just random thoughts that pop into my head as I’m writing this around 2am before press day. I hope you’re as excited for this year as I am. It’s gunna be a goodin’.

ECHO Magazine Staff

Editor In Chief - Celia Parsons, Copy Editors -Adrienne Pyeatt & Connor Wilson, Webmaster - Ashanti Owusu-Brafi Staff Writers - Sophia Gesualdi, Visaka Ho, Caroline Adams, Lydia Giesey, Theresa Laurer, Bailey Allison, and Lorren Black Adviser - Mary Gillis ECHO is an open forum for student expression. All letters to the editor must include the writer’s name, signature and class or position. Anonymous letters will not be published. ECHO reserves the right to reject any letters.

Letters should be sent to ECHO, Rolla High School, 900 Bulldog Run, Rolla, MO 65401.

2 table of contents

1100 North Rolla Street Rolla, MO 65401

Dan Collier, Agent Get your license Get a car Call Dan Collier for a great rate

Office: 573-364-4133 Fax: 573-364-2531 Office Hours Mon-Fri 8:30am to 5:00pm After Hours by Appointment

A Look Into Our New Head Football Coach Kicking off this 2016-17 school year, there are multiple new changes to our school and staff. Not only did we add fifteen new teachers to the building, we also added a new head football coach. Jon Franks was Lebanon’s defensive coordinator for the past eleven seasons at Lebanon High School in Lebanon, Missouri. When the head coach position opened up here at Rolla High, Franks jumped on the opportunity. “[It was] a great opportunity for me and my family,” Franks said.

This season will be Franks’ twenty first season as a football coach. His career started at Missouri Southern State University, where he graduated from and became a graduate assistant there for two years. After that, he headed to Stockton, Missouri as an assistant coach for five years and a head coach for four. He then transferred to Lebanon where he was apart of their football coaching staff the past eleven years. And in Rolla, Mo for his twenty first coaching season, Franks is hoping for many more to come.

With his long history of coaching, Franks expresses why he wanted to become a coach in the first place.

“I really enjoy sports and it was an opportunity to help kids avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve made, the decisions I’ve made and just to give back,” Franks said.

With the tremendous amount of work our football team did in this past offseason and the amount of potential they all have to offer, Franks is looking forward to an exciting year. “[I’m looking forward] to watching our program grow and become exciting and just the change in the whole environment,” Franks said.

s ’ a s s i l E AT

BENTON SQUARE

400 E. 6th St Rolla, MO 65401

573-426-3404

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Murad Spray Tan

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NEW

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Lacie Kolbe

Michael Ellis

She raised a wild racoon but later had to release it back into the wild.

She loves to ride horses and was the Missouri state champion for barrel racing.

He spent a year teaching in the Middle East. Ellis looks forward to having a great first year at Rolla High School.

April Evers

Michael Crowell

In her free time, Evers enjoys doing medieval reenactments with a group called Amtgard. She has also jumped out of an airplane, scubadived, and ridden a motorcycle across a third of the country.

He studied in both Venezuela and Costa Rica. Along with owning a vineyard he is a bee keeper and harvests his own honey.

Jeremy Haberman

He enjoys hunting, fishing, and playing old videogames. While teaching business, he often talks to himself in the classroom.

Nick Zink

In his free time, Coach Zink enjoys running, lifting, and hiking with his dogs. He also prefers to use the black and white snapchat filter. Zink looks forward to working with the students at RHS.

Janice Webb

As a former student of Rolla High School, she played softball. She enjoys reading, hunting, and fishing.

Webb is looking forward to getting back into the groove of high school.

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Photos by Reporters & clipartpanda.com

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Forum & 10th Street Rolla, Missouri

906 North Cedar Street Rolla, Missouri feature 5

Libby Adams, middle, and Caroline Adams, bottom left, in Memphis, Tennessee.

Junior Ami Ikuenobe, with Jessica Qiu and Sophie Gesualdi in Florence, Italy.

Sophomore Olivia Burken and sister, Mia, in Pureto Rico.

Junior Reid Hoss, middle, in Haiti.

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Junior Reid Hoss in Haiti.

SUMMER VACATIONS

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Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and the back-

to-school question, “How was your summer?” Variations of this inquiry politely pop up during conversations with friends, teachers or even just some kid in your math class. For some students at Rolla High, their answers were pretty awesome.

While senior Libby Adams visited her family in Memphis, TN, she also tried out the original Escape Room during her summer.

“We got locked in the Atlas room, which basically our objective was to take hold of the ship, find the captain’s key, and fly home to safety. We all got locked in this room together and we didn’t think we were actually going to get out. But they give you clues because it’s hard to be locked in a room [that] we’d never been in before, we weren’t familiar with the ‘ship,” Adams said Junior Ami Ikuenobe traveled to Spain, France and Italy with the some of the foreign language department here at RHS, as well as some fellow students.

“Mrs. Roller kind of sold me on going to Europe with the school, and when she left I didn’t think we were going to have a chance. But since that [opportunity] was presented to us, I took it. A cool thing that we did was we weren’t supposed to go to Monaco, but we did [anyway]. We ate lunch in front of the Grimaldi Palace, so we had breakfast in France, lunch in Monaco, and dinner in Italy that day,” Ikuenobe said.

Junior Reid Hoss went on a missions trip to Haiti with an organization called CIY Engage and nineteen other strangers.

“There were twenty of us from all around the country; people from Washington, New Jersey, Illinois, Indiana, everywhere.

I flew from St. Louis to Atlanta, where we got to stay the night and get to know each other, then we flew out in the morning.

In Haiti we did [Vacation Bible School] with the kids; we got to build benches for a church and stain them, which was really cool.

We were just there forwhoever needed us, and just got to talk to people about God,” Hoss said.

Adams went on to say that the most satisfying aspect of the escape room wasn’t the escape itself, but rather the teamwork shown by her and her family members.

“Each of us contributed in our own way, and without each other’s help and without all of us that were there, we wouldn’t have gotten out. It took a team, it took the entire family to come together and to realize who had memorizing skills and who was really good at doing different things. Through this, you see teamwork working at it’s finest,” Adams said.

For Ikuenobe, the most memorable part of her trip wasn’t necessarily the most heart-warming, but rather stressful.

“When we were in France, we went to a Roman aqueduct. So, Sophie [Gesualdi, Junior], Jess [Qiu, Junior] and I decided to take a hike in the woods, in a country we’ve never been to before, with no service and no map. So we took a hike so we could get to the top and get a beautiful picture of everything. Then we were trying to get back down, and we realized we were lost. We were lost for about an hour, and kind of ended up in this desert area. But we finally got back-and the only thing that got us back was the promise of gelato, but when we got to the gelato shop, it was closed,” Ikuenobe said.

An unforgettable moment, according to Hoss, was when his missions team visited an orphanage during their trip.

“They said that a kid would just pick us as soon as we pulled up in the van, but I didn’t really believe that. I didn’t believe that a kid would, y’know, pick me and stick with me all day. But when we pulled up in the vans, this little boy named Maurice, he’s eight, and he looked through the window of the bus and pointed at me and just started jumping up and down and screaming. That was really emotional; that a kid picked me and I got to spend all day with him and love on him,” Hoss said.

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What Keeps What Keeps You You b y

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Pokémon GO is the most recent worldwide phenomenon, taking the world by storm. It is the latest Pokémon game released by Niantic and published by Nintendo for mobile devices rather than Nintendo’s, a first for the Pokémon series. It currently has over 130 million downloads worldwide, and during its first few weeks it was one of the most used mobile apps.

During it’s peak back in mid-July, it managed to reach over 21 million daily active users. That’s even bigger than when Candy Crush first released, which was rumored to have peaked at 20 million daily active users.

While Pokémon GO hasn’t completely retained those huge numbers over the past month-plus, it is still a wildly popular game, and most city parks are still flooded with players daily. A large sum of these players are high school students, who had a lot to say about the game.

“Pokémon Go is a virtual game made by Niantic [Labs] in which the real world is mapped onto a virtual world and virtual Pokémon are inserted to the world and generated. It is the goal of the player to capture the Pokémon and to use real life monuments and local attractions to their advantage, and walk around and explore,” Rolla High School Junior Mingway Wang, explained.

So what exactly is it that keeps players hooked to this repetitive but aesthetically pleasing game?

“Because I want to catch ‘em all. It’s worth it because it is free and you go outside a bit more. It gets people outside and keeps them healthy and what not and it’s rewarding when you catch a pokemon. I think if they update it and stuff like that, and add more stuff to it, then it will last” Junior Benjamin Edwards said.

“It makes me go out a lot more, and go to popular landmarks in Rolla. I hang out at parks sometimes and walk around and talk to friends (if I had any that played this game). I can’t necessarily say if it’s worth it or not it’s just a fun thing to do.

I heard about the idea many years ago. I never really followed it, kinda forgot about it and then when it released it became huge on the internet. It sort of drove my interest and I saw a couple of friends playing it and I joined in.” Wang said.

While Pokémon Go can be fun, it can also be quite dangerous. There have been numerous accounts of muggings at Poké Stops with Lure Modules on them around the nation, and there is the possibility of kids staying out later and possibly being at risk. However, most students here at Rolla High School haven’t encountered any of this malicious activity.

“I almost got hit by a car. Don’t get hit by cars. Look both ways before you cross the street,” Junior Mattie Dean warned.

“Dont pokemon go while driving.” Wang said.

Like many video games, Pokémon Go isn’t perfect, the game does have some technical errors within it.

“Some of the systems are a bit wonky at least some of them don’t really work right,” Junior Benjamin Edwards said.

Most people have positive feedback about the game, but there is some active criticism towards it as well. One of Rolla High School’s video game aficionados and his responses weren’t too approving of the game.

“It’s a fun little thing, it gets you to go outside, but honestly there’s a lot of stuff missing. It’s not in-depth, it’s not actually that fun, and it bugs. I think the Pokémon community as a whole really benefitted [from it] but I’m not a part of it so it doesn’t really benefit me. It’s simply not fun. It’s not meant as like a game-game, it’s more of ‘Hey I’m bored I’m gonna open my phone a little bit,” Junior Matthew Fan said.

While it is very popular currently, Pokémon Go is a fad, and only time will tell if this particular fad will last.

“If the developers keep adding stuff it will last a while. But if they leave it here it will die off eventually,” Fan said.

Going Craziest Encounters “

“I was walking around once and for half an hour I couldn’t catch anything, that’s pretty much the most ridiculous thing that

“I caught a wigglytuff” Mingway Wang said.

has happened” Ben Edwards said.

“It’s simply not fun” Matthew Fan said.

Pokemon logo from creativecommons.org

The CollegeExperience B

Every year we lose a hand full of students at Rolla High School so they might open their wings and fly to college. But two people from Rolla High School, Jessica Beetner and Reid Hoss, were able to leave for a three week long camp at Columbia, Missouri’s school, Mizzou for a memorable experience.

“I went to the Missouri Scholar Academy (MSA) in Columbia, Missouri for three weeks. I majored in philosophy and minored in Sociology while I was there. I also took some Physics classes while at MSA,” Beetner says.

While at Missouri Scholar Academy students from all over Missouri chose a ‘major’ and a ‘minor’ subject they would later graduate in. The subjects varied in subject matter letting student meet other students who had the same interests.

“My major was sperm and oocytes. It was like a biology class where we learned how animals develop in the womb, we got to go to the MU pig farm and see piglets be born, and then we got to rectally palpate a cow-basically we got to put our arms inside a cow and see if she was pregnant. We got to dissect cow uteruses, [and] see how it all worked, which was really cool. My minor was a math class, which was like super high caliber math questions to prepare us for the ACT, and it was also really cool,” Hoss says.

Being at the camp was a lot like being in college like staying in dorm rooms and going to classes for more than an hour.

“It was definitely more of a college experience. It was very independent they let you go out on your own, you would go to your major and minor classes for a couple hours a day. Then they would have different opportunities to do physics classes, dissections, and labs.” Beetner says.

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Every student’s day was different depending on which major and minor subject they chose, Reid takes us through his day by day routine: “At MSA, once we picked a Major and a Minor, and we went to classes each day. We started the day off with, obviously, breakfast, then went to classes for our major for three hours. After that, we went to lunch. Then we went to ‘big group’, which was basically describing what your day was like. We had special programs; like there was an artist from Nigeria, and we got to make Ugandan beads, and at night you could go watch the stars from the telescope program, which was really cool. There was probably about two hundred offered programs at the academy.”

“After the big group, we went to our minor classes for an hour. Afterwards we had Personal and Social dynamics (PSD), and we talked about how we use our gifts for other people, not just for ourselves, and how we can build community in our schools and towns. After that, we went to dinner. Then we had our evening programs-like just watching the stars in the quad, or doing whatever. The way the dorms were set up where you have one floor is called a house, and there were two RAs. So they break up forty people on a floor, and twenty go to each RA, and you all do debriefs at night and talk about your day. After all of that, it was lights out.” Hoss says.

In order to get into the program, teachers nominated students from their school to be funded to go to MSA, Reid and Jessica were chosen and were able to stay on Mizzou’s campus for three weeks, to have a wonderful college experience.

Rumor has it...

Students still confused, conflicted about the RHS Dress Code policy that bans the wearing clothing that reveals shoulders B

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In the deep, dark halls of Rolla High School, mildly disgruntled students have been complaining for years about the dress code.

“I feel like some people know how to dress themselves appropriately. I don’t feel like shoulders are distracting in a learning environment. I think a dress code is necessary, but I think the rule about no shoulders is excessive,” junior Hannah Strain said.

This is an understandable reason for dissatisfaction, especially when considering that shoulders are not seen as distracting to the majority of students.

“It’s easy for me to follow the dress code, but I think it’s weird that girls can’t wear tank tops or the clothes they wear over the summer.

Shoulders aren’t distracting,” junior Brett Gonzalez said.

Most students seem to understand that there is a need for a dress code.

“I don’t come to school to see people’s bodies. I don’t mean any disrespect, but I don’t want inappropriate clothing to be accepted. There

is a problem with cleavage, not shoulders,” Strain said.

The policy, though, is in place and won’t be changed any time soon.

Assistant Principal Dr. Amy Herrman clarified.

“Once we allow sleeveless, next thing we’re at is a spaghetti strap.

We don’t want your dress to distract you from your education or others from their education.We’re not going to take the time in the dress code policy to or be able to provide the details to provide specifics. It’s just much easier to say you must have sleeves. Just in the interest of trying to be less distracting,” Dr. Herrman said.

The dress code is altogther unnecessary, but it’s understandable that lines have to be drawn. However, the school should reconsiderits stance on sleeveless clothing as seasonal fashion offers a lot of options that are in no way distracting. Maybe a committee of parents, students, and school administration could put this ugly debate to rest with a rasonable policy. At least, that’s my opinion.

Completely

Credible.

Welcome to the first installment of Completely Credible, the column where I state my opinion on things that I know too much about, all while not providing a single source to back it up. Essentially, a typical news column. The subject of each column is bound to be different, and this will more or less be about whatever happens to catch my attention at the time. While reading, be sure to keep in mind this is purely my opinion on something that probably doesn’t matter.

Of course, Taylor Swift took offense.

By Connor Wilson Having somebody take credit for your Staff Writer entire career and making derogatory comments towards you, that’s a pretty jerk Although this is quickly becoming old news, move. And so, Taylor took to the media it’s something that I was actually asked to saying how misogynistic and offensive the write about: the ridiculous drama between lyrics were. If she would have done this to Kanye West and Taylor Swift. anybody else, everyone would take Taylor’s Kanye West is a man who just can’t stop side in the argument. There’s just one thing being in the spotlight for controversy, and she forgot: this time it is no different. West is under Kanye is crazy. Because Kanye is crazy, he fire from Taylor Swift for certain lyrics he secretly records his phone wrote in the song Famous off of his latest conversations. Because he secretly records album, the Life of Pablo. The lyrics in his phone conversations, he had proof that question heavily implied that Kanye might he called Taylor for permission to use the have relations with Swift because he is the lyrics beforehand, hoping that the song one who made her famous.

would not ruin their relationship. For once, West isn’t actually the bad guy.

This is where I realized two things: Kanye West might actually be insane. From all the controversial things he’s done over the years, to being the kind of person to secretly record all phone conversations.

This is not normal behavior. If you go to his discography, one of his first hits, All Falls Down, is about how Kanye West is actually very insecure and self-conscious. In a more recent song, Real Friends, the song is about distrusting all of your friends. This man has some issues and has made several calls for help, but instead we just laugh at how silly he is.

Now the second thing I realized: Taylor Swift is a total fraud. This girl has built her entire career on pulling herself up by her bootstraps, standing up for herself, and taking a stand for women everywhere. But here’s the thing: she’s been rich all her life.

Taylor Swift drove to high school in a sports car. Not only that, but she completely destroyed her friendship with Kanye West just so she could paint herself as a hero and throw West in the gutters.

In the end, this is just the opinion of some guy in a paper. I’ll leave it up to you to decide how credible I really am.

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