The Spectator ● November 18, 2015
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News Health Council Distributes Reusable Water Bottles By Queenie Xiang and Blythe Zadrozny
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and NASA
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ver 120 people were left dead and 300 more have been hospitalized following the series of coordinated attacks that shook Paris on Friday night, November 13. Bombings and gunfire struck six sites around the city, including The Bataclan theater, local restaurants, and the area outside the Stade de France. The Islamic State declared itself responsible for the attacks, but its claim has not been verified. President Francois Hollande has blamed the group for the massacre, calling it an “act of war.”
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Russian charter jet going from Egypt to St. Petersburg was bombed over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people aboard. The attack is allegedly the work of the group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which is operating as the Sinai Province of the Islamic State.
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fter seven years of deliberation, President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was intended to bring crude oil from Canada to Texas, on November 6. While the largely Republican group of supporters hoped the plan would create US jobs, critics, most of them Democrats, worried about the environmental issues associated with the project.
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he Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade agreement between 12 countries, excluding China, on the coast of the Pacific—was released on November 5. The proposal set low tariffs to encourage trade with the nations, which produce over half the world’s goods, and also set new environmental and labor standards.
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overnor Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday, November 10 that he would use executive authority to gradually raise the minimum wage for state employees to $15 an hour by 2018, making New York the first state to push for such a comparatively high minimum wage for such a large population of workers.
Collapsible, reusable water bottles were distributed at no cost to most freshmen and sophomores during homeroom on Tuesday, October 27. The issuing of water bottles is a joint project between the Stuyvesant Wellness Council and Environmental Club, with additional help from SPARK. The initiative aims to encourage healthy and environmentally friendly habits amongst Stuyvesant students. The Wellness Council and Environmental Club purchased 2,500 water bottles through a Department of Education supplier named Winegard Direct. However, only a portion of these has been delivered. The Wellness Council is not yet sure when the remaining bottles will be delivered. One of the main goals of distributing these reusable water bottles is to encourage Stuyvesant students to reduce waste. “What happens right now is that students buy or bring water in plastic bottles […] which [are] then disposed of, usually not [by] recycling. With the water bottles, however, we hope that our community resorts to the [reusable] water bottles and thus reduce[s] the need for plastic bottles,” junior and Wellness Council copresident Hasan Tukhtamishev said in an e-mail interview. The campaign also aims to promote healthy living. “Bottled water is not really checked; it is only checked by the companies that produce it. So technically, we don’t even know what we are drinking, and we don’t know the quality. We definitely know the
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quality of New York City tap water,” Physical Education Teacher and Wellness Council Faculty Advisor Anna Markova said.
“The water bottles are incentive for [students] to start thinking healthier and more economically.” —Anna Markova, Physical Education teacher and Stuyvesant Wellness Council Faculty Advisor
Students have mixed opinions on the initiative so far. “It’s good that they’re trying to get more students to drink water every day, but I don’t really know if it’ll work because people don’t seem like they’re using them,” sophomore Clare Babski said. The Wellness Council and Environmental Club began by separating ideas for projects, and
combining their campaigns later on. The Wellness Council had ordered the bottles and was planning on expanding on an event from the previous school year where they handed out reusable water bottles and granola bars. At the same time, the Environmental Club was in the process of brainstorming ways to reduce waste. “We found out that the Wellness Council was having their own water bottle initiative, so we [said] let’s join forces. And from then on, we put things together,” senior and Environmental Club secretary Ose Agboneni said. SPARK was also involved, working on the publicity for the campaign. “They needed to get about 3,500 [posters] done [in] a short period of time, and, at least for my part, I was able to get them 700 out of the 3,500 that were distributed,” SPARK coordinator Angel Colon said. The funding for the project came from the Stuyvesant Parent Association, with the Environmental Club contributing some of the prize money from a recycling competition to support the campaign. Club leaders are happy with the outcome so far and hope to develop the campaign in future years, whether or not they continue to be financially supported. “If we do have consistent funding, then we hope to provide the future freshmen every year with water bottles. If not, we hope that the freshmen this year, when they are in their upperclassmen years, will rise up to promote healthy living,” junior and Wellness Council co-president Nicole Cheng said.