A first person narrative of the WY power outage

On Wednesday, January 13, as I walked into the Arts Building on my way back from Mariano's, the school was covered in eerie darkness. Suddenly, my friend Sophie Leib-Neri '16 burst out of the orchestra classroom, "Dillon! The power’s been out since 12:30!" Confused, I didn't immediately process what she had just said. Then, behind her, where I would normally see Mr. Mascari's desk and rows of chairs arcing in a semicircle towards the door, I saw only darkness. Finally it clicked, and the questions started running through my head, why is the power out, are the rest of our classes canceled, is everything ok?  Naturally, as a senior, I was more worried about whether class would resume rather than my own safety. As I continued to walk through the 2nd floor of the Arts Building towards the Arts Bridge I saw that the hallway doors were closed. Ok, now this is freaky, I thought to myself. I was concerned that WY was in some sort of lockdown mode. However, as I walked up to the doors and pushed them, they swung right open.

From the Arts Bridge I could see the Blue House lunchroom, hallways, and classrooms, all dark except for one sole light that somehow was still on. Once I was back in Blue House, everything seemed calm. The students were eating their lunches in the dark, like any other day, and I felt at ease as I walked to a table to sit down. I saw Mr. Locks bring his class outside to sit under the one light still on next to Mr. Fanning's office. Eventually Dr. Kenner's voice came on the P.A. She reassured us that everything was fine and that the power had gone out while one of WY's engineers was on the roof working with our electrical systems. Then, she announced that everybody should remain in their current classroom through the end of the period until further notice. At that moment, Blue House erupted with cheers and clapping; Dr. Kenner was still speaking on the P.A., but it was impossible to hear her over the students who were celebrating their good fortune at being able to stay out of class until the power returned. People were taking snapchats, playing music, even a "one six" chant was started as if somehow the power outage was part of a senior blackout. The minor reprieve was short-lived, however, because at 12:55pm students were told to go to their next period. My 6th period class, being a classroom with lots of natural light, continued as per usual and at 1:30pm the lights came back on.

Review of Glenbrook North High School's Torch

The Glenbrook North (GBN) newspaper, the Torch, has been the best newspaper sent to us yet by far. The paper has the strongest articles, creative and (mostly) original pictures, as well as the best layout of any paper we've seen. One of the best things about the GBN newspaper is that its articles are not only full and lengthy, but also that they are relevant to the student body and are written in various styles. For example, on the front page of the GBN paper is an article about how Illinois law has changed so that drinking tickets do not have to be reported to high schools anymore. At first, it may seem that the only link to GBN is that some high schoolers there have probably engaged in underage drinking; however, the author of the article starts the article off by including an example of how the old law prevented a starting player on GBN's varsity football team from competing during the season. Immediately, the author's audience is intrigued by how the change in the law may affect themselves, their peers, or other football stars in the future. After the initial hook, complete with a short summary and quote, the article goes into detail about the difference between the old law and the new law, as well as the reason for the change in the law. Again, the author uses quotes from credible sources on the topic. Additionally, the author interviewed other members of GBN's community and their thoughts on how the new law will affect student behavior. The article provides a complete overview of the "news" being shared with the audience, relates how that information can or will affect GBN students, and includes responses/reactions of people from the GBN community to that information. I think that this article is complete, finished and polished and is a perfect model of how we should think about writing articles in the Beacon. besides providing finished and professional articles, the GBN paper included a variety of writing styles. For example, the article "High school trends: stress and sleep deprivation" on page 5 was written as a narrative from the viewpoint of the author during a typical day at school. Compared with Luke Zarzecki's recent article about sleep deprivation in students, I wouldn't say one is better than the other simply because Luke's article was more informative and the GBN article was more creative, however, I did find the GBN article more interesting. Although some people may want to read and informational piece about the statistics of high schoolers' sleeping habits, I thought the GBN sleep deprivation piece added more to their newspaper than Luke's would because it provided a change in pace from the normal newspaper article structure. Thus, the input of a creative article conveying the same overall idea is more pleasant to read and adds more value to GBN's newspaper. Finally, I really enjoyed the Torch's use of graphics, pictures and drawings in their paper. The only pictures/drawings/graphics not taken or created by students that I could find were the picture on the front page of the paper and the pictures from the "Holiday Gift Guide" article. Other than that, every picture was student created, and yet the pictures were still professional and well executed. My favorite picture was the graphic on page 8 for the "Excessive sitting poses health risks" article, but I also really enjoyed how the Boys Swimming article on page 12 was made to look like a pool itself. Overall this paper was really successful and I think aiming to produce a paper of this quality is a good goal for our Beacon class.

January Burning Up/Burning Out

Burning Up

• Relationships- It’s cuffing season
• Kevin Gates – Watch out for some bangers dropping soon
• Netflix Originals – You watched a tv show live?!? With commercials?!?
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens – It’s not too late to pretend like you saw it when it first came out
• Yeezys- “You ain’t got no yeezys hitta?”
• Frank Ocean- Did you see the tweets?

Burning Out

• Hotline Bling – Stop pla-aying this song, bum bum, bum bum…
• Holiday music – It’s beginning to look a lot like the worst time of the year where it’s still cold and crappy out but there’s nothing to look forward to.
• College applications – If you haven’t finished by now, what are you doing?
• DJ Khaled’s snapchat story – we don’t want… another one
• Finstagrams – They aren’t a secret anymore
• Winter break- Time to get back to reality

New Years Resolutions

1. Learn to shred on the guitar or at least be able to play the songs for the concert.
2. Finish 1st semester with all As and one B in AP Calculus.
3. Eat less junk food.
4. Go on a camping trip with the boys this summer.
5. Beat Grayslake Central High School in lacrosse this season.

People React To Being Called Beautiful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW8BDgLpZkI

     An integrated arts project created by former ChiArts student Shea Glover ‘15, has recently become something of an internet sensation six months after initially being uploaded to Youtube. Her viral video captured the reactions people had after being told they’re beautiful. The mixed reactions, ranging from being flattered to not knowing what to say to threatening to cut Glover if she repeated what she said, produced a truly unique and moving video that now has nearly 8.2 million views on Youtube. In addition to this, the video has been featured in dozens of online publications including People.com, Attn.com, Mashable.com, Cosmopolitan.com, and Seventeen.com.

     In the description Glover writes, “I conducted an independent project, which evidently turned into a social experiment halfway through, regarding beauty at my performing arts high school in Chicago. I want to clarify that my intentions were not to get a reaction out of people. I was simply filming beauty and this is the result. Here it is.” Though the initial goal of the project may not have been to get a reaction out of the people Glover found beautiful, the resulting reactions created a powerful social experiment worth watching.

     Shea has capitalized on her new-found “internet fame” by starting her own movement called #breathebeauty in an attempt to change the way people, particularly young people like herself, perceive and express beauty. Most recently, Shea has created a video called “You Are Not Your Likes” featured on the Huffington Post’s website. In this video Shea encourages millennials and really all people to not let social media determine your self worth. Check the video out below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B9T00P2wsI

"Girls Tennis duo wins State" Correction

The WY girls tennis team placed 6th in the State championship bracket. Oni Jones ‘16 and Camryn Salter ‘18 scored 7 points, the most points for WY’s team, but finished with a record of 4-2. Although Oni Jones and Camryn Salter won games downstate in the IHSA girls tennis double state championship bracket, they did not win the 1st place championship as the title of the article implies. We regret and apologize for any confusion created by this error.

December Issue Beacon Review

     Once again, I believe the quality of The Beacon as a whole went up, although we still had some major problems with this issue. The biggest problems with this issue were in the formatting of the News and Features pages and, or course, the "Girl Tennis duo wins State" article on the sports page. As we now all know, the WY girls tennis team did not win state, however this title was still published in The Beacon. Although mistakes like these should never happen, we can only move forward from this by fact-checking and verifying everything we publish rather than simply asking one person about a story. On the News and Features pages, both the "Interest in Ethnic Studies class grows at WY' article and the "Staff Picks Holiday Playlist" article chose really horrible backgrounds that washed out the text on top of them and made the articles hard to read. In order to fix this, we are going to have to print our test pages in full color as well as be mindful of our color choices when creating the paper in InDesign. Besides these errors, however, I was only able to find one grammar mistake in this issue (a missed comma in Claire's article), and I found no spelling errors in the rest of the issue. My two favorite stories were Claire's "CPS students take action in wake of budget crisis" article and Lydia's "An interview with a college admissions officer" article. Despite Claire's small typo, her article was really well written and interesting. I think it showcased WY's students in a very positive light and was well supported with facts and quotes. Lydia's article was also very interesting to me and I think it probably caught the eye of many seniors going through the college admissions process. Although there is still some things we need to work on as a staff, I think this was our best Beacon issue yet and that the quality of our paper will only increase from here.