RJ GRADS TAKE A STAND

ELEVATE OPINIONS OPINION

We encourage student voices submit your opinion piece or letter to the editor for our next issue at rjmedia@regisjesuit.com

BY JACOB GOLD‘23

Soopers Shooting that left nine civilians and wider community members who have a police officer dead and shocked the entire had to deal indirectly with the trauma state. inflicted by mass shootings. For high school students in our country, As much as many students would though, the attack is another one of like to believe that the recent Boulder many reminders that we can be harmed shooting would help the adult world to nearly anywhere during our daily routine. see the terror that comes with walking Regularly, students are taught shooting into a place where a shooting could safety techniques as a normal part of safety happen at any moment, we know that instruction, right alongside fire drills and change never seems come after an act of shelter-in-place practice. Students know terror like this. that, should a lockdown ever occur, they Every time this kind of tragedy

It is not uncommon to read a line or two are to huddle in a corner together as their happens, politicians and public in a news story on a mass shooting teacher locks the door, turns of the lights, speakers alike, many financially backed telling readers about young individuals and retreats to somewhere away from by the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby, helping older people to get safely away from windows. Some teachers tell their students send their ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the threats, and that is for a reason: We all, that they will allow them to text their parents, victims, all while refusing to take any since our early childhood, have been forced letting them know that they have not yet been steps to prevent another tragedy. Those to learn how to survive active shooting harmed. who try to propose solutions are bashed situations. After so much class time spent While it is not something that is for ‘making the issue political.’ Others with teachers going over shooting safety, constantly in our minds as we go throughout flock to claim that the issue is a mental it feels like Locks, Lights, Out of Sight is our day, shootings are a consistent worry health one, but at the same time deny as ingrained in each of our heads as Stop, for many of us. A stack of books dropping any push to improve mental healthcare Drop, and Roll. loudly at the end of the hall often makes in our country. As people begin gathering in public an entire class go silent, hoping not to hear As a generation, we are tired of again in the wake another pop or bang. Nearly every high ‘thoughts and prayers,’ followed by A STACK OF BOOKS of COVID-19, school student I know has had at least one inaction and apathy. We do not want DROPPING LOUDLY AT THE mass shootings worrying experience where they thought they to hear how sorry the adult world is for END OF THE HALL OFTEN MAKES AN ENTIRE CLASS GO SILENT, HOPING NOT in the United States appear might be killed by a shooter. While a few of us have been lucky enough to avoid any serious allowing yet another terrorizing event to take place. We want to hear how it is TO HEAR ANOTHER to be returning traumatic events, others have gone through going to be fixed, and we want to see that POP OR BANG. to regularity as full-on school lockdowns because of threats, change becoming a reality. well, with 3 highly myself included. publicized killings in the last month alone. There is no question that the threat of While it is not a new question, many people school shootings has become a normalized still wonder: Why does ‘Back to Normal’ part of the school experience for this seem to mean ‘Back to Terror’ for ordinary generation – Almost 187,000 students civilians, even children, in our country? across 193 U.S. schools have been In Colorado, we’ve seen more of this kind directly affected by them, according to the of violence than anywhere else, especially Washington Post. That number doesn’t with the news of the recent Boulder King include the massive number of family and

Despite many challenges and a constantly changing schedule due to COVID, the Regis Girls Varsity Basketball team made an impressive run in the State Tournament culminating an appearance in the state championship game at the Broadmoor World Arena this spring.

With an all-time 162-19 home court record, making it to the state championship is an expectation for the girls’ basketball team, yet the boys’ 2020 Elite Eight run surprised everyone. The condition of the Regis girls’ home court and facilities does not reflect their greater success.

Regis, alongside schools nationwide, need to better reflect the equality they preach to their students, rewarding and advertising each athletic team fairly for their successes.

Under the 1972 Title IX law, sex-based discrimination in schools or programs are prohibited and schools are required to provide equal athletic opportunities to male and females at the high school and collegiate levels, yet unequal treatment persists as seen in the NCAA Women’s Basketball teams’ lower quality weight training area, media and meeting spaces, and apparel.

Regis’ story is similar. In the 2019 offseason, air conditioning was finally installed into the Girls Division gym. The coaches’ room in the girl’s gym is simply the gym storage closest with a desk stuffed into it, while the boy’s coaches’ room is a separate room attached to the gym where a desk fits comfortably. Regis places great pride into their athletic programs, but this pride is not always reflected in the facilities for the girls, even with their consistent success. While many claim these inequities faced by women in athletics are due to the difference in the levels of talent, success, and competitiveness, evidence shows otherwise. Many athletes, from the Regis girls’ basketball program, have continued their careers at the collegiate level, including Jada Moore, at Kansas State University, as well as Fran Belibi, at Stanford University in the past two years. As only 1.3% of female high school athletes continue their basketball careers at the Division I level, the talent seen in the Regis program is impressive and the success of the program strongly defies these statistics. We should be rewarding and celebrating this success.

Still others argue that the gyms are assigned by crowd size, but the poor advertisement in the Regis community for the girls’ varsity basketball team directly results in attendance disparities. Neither the faculty or students are clearly informed of both the teams’ success and upcoming events. After returning to class following the State Championship game, the majority of my classmates and teachers were not aware that we even played in the Championship game or the overall accomplishments the team achieved during the season. The successes of all programs and groups in the Regis community should not only be advertised equally but celebrated at a similar level.

All schools, no matter their athletic success or level, need to work to correct the inequities females are faced with daily. While this can seem like a daunting task, the solution to this nation-wide problem must begin in our own community, not just on the basketball court but in all sports, hallways, and classrooms.

When Regis students first walk into the building, they are greeted by a basket of nutri grain bars. High in sugar with only one gram of protein, students can barely last on one for 20 minutes without being just as hungry as before. After first period, the hungry masses raid the cafeteria in search of chips, tater tots, and soda. By lunch, the starving teens have no choice but chicken, fries, and a cookie. If they’re seeking a healthy alternative, a small salad is the only option. If Regis values our physical, emotional, and spiritual health they need to remake the cafeteria to offer only healthy food. In a 5-year study between grades 2-11, the Nutrition Policy Institute housed at the University of California found that schools with a healthy food vendor had a statistically significant advantage over schools with unhealthier food providers. According to a Harvard Health study, healthy food can also improve memory, key to our retention of information. Fruits, vegetables, and whole grains have also been shown to reduce the risk of a memory damaging stroke. Healthy diets also improve self esteem and assist us to having a positive self-image. According to Nutritionist-Recource.org, foods high in nutrition like, spinach, meat, dairy, and eggs, lift your mood and help you to think more optimistically. If Regis provides healthy food, it could drastically improve the students’ mental health at this crucial time. Cancer, diabetes, and heart issues are all long-term effects of unhealthy food; the work begins at our age to develop properly, prevent diseases, and live longer. According to the CDC, poor nutrition does in fact affect your health and increases your risk for diseases. The unhealthy food provided by Regis is actively impacting our physical health. Putting healthy food in the dining hall will improve our athletics, too. Health.Gov reports that a healthy diet helps with sleeping patterns, energy levels, and muscle growth. Adding more protein (meats, beans, soy, dairy, eggs, and seeds) into the cafeteria rather than high-carb chips, cookies, and fries will be especially key as they build the muscle and cartilage so many use every day on the field and court. While some say diet alone can’t help you avoid disease and mental health issues, eating healthy can decrease the risk of getting these diseases and strengthen our immune systems, according to Web MD. Still others ask, “If this is so important, why don't you just pack your own lunch?” As a school community that claims to care about our health, we should provide this food because not all students have the money or time to pack a healthy lunch, and even those that do may forget it. Students deserve to get the protein and nutrients they need to not only thrive in school but also flourish long term. If Regis is actively trying to improve our mental and physical health, they should start looking at not only our activities, classrooms, and counseling offices but also the food we eat.

ELEVATE OPINIONS OPINION

We encourage student voices submit your opinion piece or letter to the editor for our next issue at rjmedia@regisjesuit.com

BY ANDREW GLEASON ‘22

The classroom is pictured as a bright and vibrant place full of ambitious and ready to learn students. However, we all know that this picture is far from reality in many classrooms and for many students. These expectations are simply not possible when tired and groggy students are walking into classrooms unfocused and unprepared for the day. Teens are experiencing a health epidemic, an epidemic of sleep deprivation.

The average high school teenager is getting between 7- 7 ¼ hours of sleep

according to Nationwide Children’s Hospital Nationwide Children’s Hospital. This comes over two hours short of the 9 ¼ hours of sleep that studies and experts have said teens need. As a high school student athlete, I find it very difficult to balance school work, practice, and a social life while getting enough sleep to be attentive for school and energized throughout the day.

It would be in the best interest of school districts to delay school start times to at least 8:30 a.m. for high schools and middle schools in order to improve student health, help students be more attentive in class, and aid in preventing motor vehicle accidents.

According to a 2006 poll2006 poll, 87 percent of high school students reported getting less than eight hours of sleep a night. The problem has since worsened due to technology and school demands leading the American Academy of Pediatrics to label teen sleep deprivation as a “national health epidemic” in a detailed study on teen sleep deprivation. Often the counter argument for delaying school start times is to advocate that students go to bed earlier and manage their time better. Although technology and distractions can play a part in going to bed late, it is a biological issue resulting from puberty. When adolescents hit puberty, their internal sleep clock moves back about two hours and the body does not produce melatonin in time for students to simply “go to bed earlier”. Because sleep is vital in helping regulate emotions, lack of sleep leads to mood disorders like anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. Suicide is the third leading killer for adolescents, and sleep deprivation has a strong link to suicidal thoughts/actions. According to various studies, this is independent of past issues with depression or drug/alcohol abuse. School districts need to account for the massive health benefits that come with pushing back school start times and letting students sleep in.

The effects of sleep deprivation in teens is also rolling over into the classroom and impairing students ability to focus and perform. Studies show that sleep loss in adolescent students worsens their ability to remember, concentrate, and problem solve. A study led by Stanford’s Mary Carskadon surveyed 3,000 students. In the survey it was found that students with higher GPA’s reported getting more sleep on weekdays as well as not sleeping in on weekends. Some students, however, do not have this option to go to sleep earlier. Data shows that if schools helped students sleep more through one hour later start times students grades, attendance, and sleep would increase. Sleep doesn’t just help teens learn when they are awake, it also makes sure information taken in during the day is learned and memorized. “We hypothesize that when teens sleep, the brain is going through processes of consolidation — learning of experiences or making memories,” says to Dr. Harry Yuan, “consolidating the important things and filtering out those unimportant things.”

Later start times could also prevent car accidents on the morning drive to school. When students are trying to maximize sleep while not being late to school, it often results in a rushed and chaotic morning. The crammed schedule often transfers into high risk and high speed driving. A 2014 study A 2014 study in Virginia found that students got in less car crashes in the school districts with later start times compared to those with earlier start times. An Australian study led by Alexandra Mariniuk found that teens who suffered the same amount of sleep deprivation as adults were more impaired when driving. Mariunik found that it only took six hours of sleep to render a teen driver impaired when driving due to lack of sleep. Sleep loss also increasing the odds of partaking in

risky behaviors like drug and alcohol abuse which Mariunik suggests can lead to other impaired forms of driving far after school.

Changing school start times admittedly is not an easy task for administrators, however, it is not impossible. Boulder Valley School District ran in to many obstacles and take into account several factors when pushing for changing school start times. Food service contracts, after school activities, and busing schedules were just a few. Cherry Creek also had to deal with the change in busing schedules by making elementary students start earlier, essentially switching the start times for high schoolers and elementary students which could have negative affects on younger students. In Jeffco county, a shortage of buss drivers is a concern for many residents in the school districts. The district would have to increase spending in order to keep up with the changes in start times. Only 14% of residents. Only 14% of residents were ok with any amount of cost in order to push back start times. As of now the only way to get the funding for the schedule changes would be to take it out of the classroom which isn’t an option at the time for Jeffco according to Jeffco Officials. However, many school districts have been successful across the country including in Colorado with Cherry Creek (over 55,000 students) and Boulder Valley (30,000) have pushed back start times despite the obstacles. Not only did Cherry Creek push back start times, they have also measured significant success in regards to improvement of student attentiveness and happiness.

Lack of sleep in teens is a national epidemic and must be addressed beginning with school start times. The American Academy of Pediatrics has strongly urged schools across the country to start high school days no earlier than 8:30. There will be significant push back, but the health and well being of students should take priority over avoiding rescheduling obstacles. By delaying the school day we can drastically improve the mental health of students while improving their performance in class, overall health and happiness, and keeping them safe on the road.

BY EMMA PETERSON '22

Students spend twelve years in school just to ultimately prepare for one final test with extremely high stakes: their future. The ACT and the SAT are advertised as tests to measure college readiness and predict future academic success, but the testing system does not paint an accurate picture of a student’s potential. Regis Jesuit and every other high school in America need to abolish the SAT and ACT and instead establish more fair, flexible, and unbiased methods of measuring current academic ability and predicting future success.

GPA OVER ACT

Standardized tests like the SAT and ACT really judge a student’s test taking skills and their expensive prep courses instead of a student’s entire high school academic experience and other extracurricular accomplishments, which are actually predictors of college and career success.

Although some argue grade inflation has diminished GPAs’ reliability, a study by University of Chicago Consortium researchers found that the predictive power of GPAs is extremely consistent across high schools while the same isn’t true for standardized test scores. The same study found that at a majority of high schools, there was no connection between student’s ACT scores and eventual college graduation. Additionally, they discovered that students with the highest ACT scores were actually less likely to succeed in college.

“The bottom line is that high school grades are powerful tools for gauging students’ readiness for college, regardless of which high school a student attends, while ACT scores are not,” said Elaine M. Allensworth, Director of the UChicago Consortium.

These tests serve as the base sort of “requirement” for admission to certain colleges. This admission can potentially be jeopardized, simply because of a certain composite score. A study by TestPrepAdvisor.com showed that if SAT/ACT scores were the sole basis of admission, 53% of students who ended up getting accepted, wouldn’t have gotten in even though their complete resumes predicted their success. Diminishing the role of the ACT/SAT will actually result in a more academically successful student body.

CONDUITS OF BIAS

The language of the tests is racially and regionally biased, with the grammar section particularly favoring academic language in lieu of African American Vernacular English and those will multilingual upbringings. This type of bias poses a threat to historically marginalized students, with the average composite ACT score of 23.6 for high income White and Asian students compared to 19.5 for lower income Black and Latino students.

While some claim that these tests offer hard, standardized data to fairly assess all students, these test scores are trying to be “one size fits all” for a diverse country. It’s like asking everyone to make the same dish with slightly different ingredients (backgrounds, circumstances, language, skills) and expecting it to taste the same. A fair way to test actual improvement and performance that isn’t based solely on a test score needs to be established. A fair system like this would represent real life improvement and more accurately depict what a student is capable of.

So while some view it as these test scores offering hard data on ways to help marginalized students get back on track, shouldn’t there be a different, more adjustable way to test intelligence that doesn’t unfairly target the historically marginalized?

PAY TO PLAY These tests most often measure financial stability; success can be bought. Just to simply take these tests, students pay $47.50 for the SAT and $50.50 for the ACT. If they opt into the essay, those prices go up about $20. These test fees are placed on top of the thousands families spend on expensive prep booklets and tutoring.

National Center for Fair and Open Testing says “[these tests] are highly coachable, advantaged students who can afford to spend $800 or more on test preparation classes.”

There are more valuable education opportunities than the countless time students spend preparing for these unfair and ultimately unnecessary tests. Students should be judged on their accomplishments, hard work, and potential and not on one single test score. Therefore these tests need to be abolished and no longer be a part of the college admissions process and schools like Regis need to stop supporting them implicitly through test prep classes and school-sponsored testing days.

We must communicate the facts about these tests and show schools, administrators, and colleges, showing them how extremely harmful and reminding them that we are more than our score.

Let’s not allow twelve years of education to be defined by a single test.