The
November 2013
BOLT
20402 Newport Coast Drive, Newport Coast, CA 92657
Volume 13, Issue 3
Rage Hill: (from left, upward) Junior Dino Romeo shows off a ragin’ outfit. Seniors Alex Sun, Alaina Collazo, Avni Patel, Joelle Nanula, Griffin McCalla and Nicky Boulos enjoy a dance filled with blasting music and Guitar Hero games. (from left, downward) More Sage students and friends enjoy the dance, among them junior Liz Farkas, sophomore Mackenzie Gray and freshman Kandis McGee.
Rage Hill By Bailey Super Staff Writer The bass heard ‘round the world emanated from the homecoming “raga” Nov. 2 and disturbed the peace of nary a settler. Or so the “rebel” partygoers thought. Unbeknownst to these party people, music from the carousers leaked across the unpopulated plain, sprawling across the flip side of Newport Coast Drive. The phat beat carried over this unobstructed path and permeated the foundations of junior Cole Parker’s house. “I was in my kitchen and I could hear the music from Sage,” Parker remembers. He could hear the songs so clearly that he “texted the lyrics of each specific song that was playing to [his friend] Liam Murphy, who was at the dance.” As Parker stepped outside to his backyard at approximately 9:15 p.m., he overheard his “neighbor with his window open on the phone calling the police on Sage.” Shortly after, at around 9:30 p.m.,
searchlights from helicopters passing overhead illuminated beamed circles of a pumped-up mosh pit of grooving students. Less than an hour later, the police shut the dance down. Prattle and scuttlebutt skittered through the grapevine throughout the week following the fateful dance as students tried to deduce why the police shut down the dance. Too-loud music seemed a prevalent theme. But what was with the helicopters? And why dance shut-down with only half an hour or so left? It all seemed a tad overkill. Patricia Merz,assistant head of school and a chaperone, confirmed that the police “called it” because of the heavy number of complaints they received from nearby homeowners. Plot twist: unlike Cole Parker’s neighbor, the angry villagers who reported noise pollution reside in Turtle Ridge. That’s Turtle Ridge,
Irvine, not Turtle Ridge, Newport Coast. Our own district could not contain the homecoming dance. Merz remembers a Prom held on the baseball field that ended similarly about six years ago. “This year, we tried to face the speakers and sound inward,” she explained, “but because of the wind, the music carried over the freeway.” Irvine police notified the Newport police of the” jarring party music” polluting the otherwise daintily muted SoCal evening air. Because the majority of the reports stemmed from Irvine, Newport police struggled to find the site of the dance. Already-dispatched helicopters assumed a new mission to locate the source of the loud music. The
dancing crowd and bright lights gave us away. “The police asked us to turn the music down, so we did,” Merz continued, “but they still got complaints from people on the other side of the 73, so we eventually had to shut it down.” The reason for the de-screeching halt was purely because of the sound being too loud. Drugs and/or alcohol, common reasons for police interventions in high school dances, was NOT a factor when authorities prematurely ended Sage’s homecoming. In fact, Merz said, “the policemen were very friendly and hung around afterward to chat. They thought our dance was great.” Indeed, it was.