Superintendent Jose Banda responded  to the boycott by declaring teachers would give the test by February 22nd, or face a two-week unpaid suspension.

Teachers met with Banda last Friday, and will meet again this week to discuss, but no resolution has been reached so far.

Reasoning for the teacher boycott:

• The Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), the company that sells the MAP, along with Seattle Schools staff, have declared the MAP is not valid at a high school level and the margin of error is greater than the average improvement.

• The test does not test on the Common Core, the curriculum used by Garfield and other district schools.

• Freshmen who take the test lose huge amounts of class time while the library and computer labs, monopolized by the MAP, are closed to other students.

• The MAP was bought while Maria Goodloe-Johnson was the superintendent and on the board of the NWEA, creating a conflict of interest.

• Students do not take the test seriously, which causes achievement scores to drop even if they are learning in the classroom.

• Results from the MAP test are used for teacher evaluations and personnel decisions, yet the results are not accurate and not necessarily indicative of teacher effectiveness.

• The MAP test causes students to “feel stupid” and does harm to non-English speakers, Special Education students, minority and low-income students, and other students with Individual Education Plans.

Garfield students have also begun a protest against the MAP test after Superintendent Banda threatened the teachers with the unpaid suspension.

Currently, the protest focuses on encouraging freshmen to opt-out of the test by emailing Garfield testing coordinator Kris McBride at krmcbride@seattleschools.org. 

The test is not required for graduation nor does it affect grades, so opting out will have no negative impacts on Garfield freshmen.

Students want to be included in discussions later this year about the future of the MAP test and want the district to remove the threat of teacher suspensions.

Students have created a Facebook group, Protest the MAP test to coordinate efforts and keep students up to date on MAP testing and protest news.

Reasoning for the student protest:

• The MAP test is a flawed test that does not accurately reflect student progress, and therefore cannot be used by teachers to improve our education.

• Removing teachers from classrooms during suspensions is counterproductive and and is a detriment to education.

• School resources, including the library and computer labs, that should be available to all students, are closed during testing days.

• The $480,000 spent on the MAP test yearly could be used more effectively in the classroom on textbooks, lab supplies, and other materials.

See the Messenger’s stance on the MAP test protest on pg. 7

On the lighter side:

2012 Senior Pranks

Mr. Howard ran around the lunchroom with a trashcan trying to catch three absolutely petrified chickens. Enough said.

Garfield’s 2012 graduating class pulled this truly memorable prank before they left the doghouse, and got even more reward than they could have ever hoped for.  However, the perpetrators of the prank didn’t get to walk at graduation, so you’ve been warned.

Higgs Boson

In July, CERN researchers discovered the so-called “God particle” first proposed by Einstein as the fundamental particle in the universe. The existence of the mysterious Higgs Boson would also finally explain how on earth physics works (I see you, Lidgman).

Experimenters used the Large Hadron Collider to determine the existence of the particle, then named it after researcher Peter Higgs, who first proposed the possibility of it in 1964.

The Olympics Happened

Yeah, remember that? That was this year. London pulled off a show during the 30th Olympiad that included a few noteworthy moments.

Michael Phelps is the GOAT

Super-swimmer Phelps became the most decorated athlete of all time after he won six medals in London, putting his all –time total up to 22, passing former Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina.

Even though fellow American swimmer Ryan Lochte garnered lots of media attention after taking the cake for the five stupidest things said at the Games (he tried to trademark “Jeah”), Phelps still beat him where it really counted: the pool.

North Korea is presented…next to South Korea’s flag

In perhaps the most ironic moment of the Games, the North Korean women’s soccer team was introduced during a prelims match next to the wrong flag. As a result, the delegation refused to play, and the game started 40 minutes late. The reaction of most people watching the game, however, was a simple “HAH.”

On the heavier side:

Arab Spring

The Arab Spring continued to spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East, this time dominated by Syria. While the conflict began in February, rebel forces gained strength and the conflict was officially dubbed a civil war in July.

The United States has recognized the rebels as the true representation of the Syrian people, but has not backed them militarily. The UN has been sending humanitarian support to the country.

Egypt elected Mohammed Morsi president, but then protested his leadership after he granted himself unlimited powers to protect the nation.

Aurora, Colorado

On July 20th, 12 people were killed, and another 58 injured, as a shooter entered a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. The shooter, suspected to be James Eagan Holmes, used several assault weapons during his attack.

This shooting, along with others that followed in 2012, began a conversation about the gun and mental health laws in the United States, particularly the retracted ban on assault weapons that was effective from 1994 to 2004.

Benghazi Attack

On the 11th anniversary of 9/11, two groups of armed militants stormed the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The group killed 4 people, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and injured 10 others.

After the attack, the Libyan government issued statements supporting the United States. The Libyan people also  began several anti-militia demonstrations through the city and stormed the headquarters of local militias.

Terrorist attacks also took place on the same day at the diplomatic missions of Germany, Switzerland, and the UK.

Israel and Hamas

Israel lauched Operation Pillars of Defense in the Gaza Strip on November 14th as a response to the continued rocket fire from the area. The operation led to the killing of Ahmed Jabari, the military leader of Hamas.

Hamas is an Islamist group that has control of the Gaza Strip. Many countries, including the U.S. and Israel, consider Hamas to be a terrorist group, but much of the Arab world and elsewhere does not support this view.

During this conflict, Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, which intercepts short-range missiles in the air, successfully protected Israeli cities.

Newtown, Connecticut

On December 14th, a shooter entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown and proceeded to kill 20 students between the ages of six and seven,  as well as six adults who worked at the school.

The event, which now has a death toll of 28 people, was the second-deadliest school shooting in United States history, after the massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007.

The perpetrator also used previously banned assault weapons, which has further extended the debates on gun control and mental health care.

Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on much of New England, particularly New York and New Jersey, right before the election. The destruction from the hurricane left thousands of people without power, including much of Long Island and Lower Manhattan.

President Obama stepped in nearly immediately with federal funds and troops to help.

This move garnered Obama some last-minute support around the country, and he earned praise from both sides of the aisle.

However, nature proved once again that she’s a wily lady and stuck New England with a Nor’easter right after Sandy subsided.

Thanks, global warming.

General’s Scandal

General David Petraeus, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, stepped down earlier this month in response to the unraveling of his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.

Broadwell sent threatening messeges to a family friend of Petraeus, Jill Kelley, and she had the FBI investigate. Shortly after Petraeus’ assistant let him in on this, he resigned. The decorated general had commanded U.S. forces in Iraq.

Looks like Petraeus could have taken a leaf out of Snapchat’s book.

Hyphy @ The Hyatt

This November, Garfield’s Junior Statesmen of America chapter made the trek o’er Lake Washington to the Hyatt to lay down some oral dicipline.

The small but determined group of master debaters wowed their Eastside counterparts, blowing them out of the water with their rhetoric and soothing voices.

Later that night, the men of Garfield once again came out on top, earning the awe and respect of their peers while irking the chaperones to no end — not everbody made in through the night unscathed. A quick thank you to Alex Ivanoff for taking one for the team.

On a brighter note, Garfield’s own Federico Gaetini brought home a Best Speaker’s Award (he rapped in Italian!), as well as senior Jack Noland, who picked up two other awards.

Nate Silver is King

Self-proclaimed nerd extraordiniare Nate Silver, writer of the New York Times’s fivethirtyeight blog, became the secondary winner of this year’s election. Silver correctly predicted every state’s outcome in every race except for an Iowa Senate race, and he made math cool again.

Inslee v. McKenna

Winner: Jay Inslee

Why you should care:

The biggest responsibility of the states is to manage education, which Jay Inslee has long been a proponent of and says he will continue to support as the governor.

During his tenure in the House of Representatives, Inslee supported many bills to increase education funding, including grants for high schools, charter schools, and other preperatory schools.

Inslee also supported bills lowering class sizes in elementary and middle schools and diversifying education.

I-1240: Charter Schools

Result: Approved

Why you should care:

Charter schools are governed by a board, much like private schools, but receive public funds and are free to attend. The approval of this system could create up to 40 new schools in the state in the next few years.

Under the new system, interested families can elect to attend a charter school, which typically have smaller class sizes and are subject to less regulation by the district or state. However, the small numbers at these charter schools mean that not all students will be able to attend.

Detractors say these schools will pull funding from the state’s education budget that could otherwise go to public schools.

I-502: Legalization of Marijuana

Result: Passed

Why you should care:

Washington became the first state to legalize recreational marijuana use, closely followed by Colorado.

The law will create over $4 million in revenue for the state through a 25 percent excise tax, licensing fees and other penalties. Nearly 10 percent of this revenue will go to general secondary education funding, and another .75 percent will go to eliminating school dropout rates.

The state can now control the kinds of marijuana-based products and paraphenalia can be produced. It can also control the THC content of marijuana.

Minors, such as students, will no longer be allowed to enter dispensaries. Green cards for under-21’s will also be revoked as a result of the new law.

Finally, minors will be issued a DUI if they are driving with a THC blood concentration of above 0.00.

R-74: Legalization of Gay Marraige

Result: Approved

Why you should care:

Gay marriage has become a hot-topic issue since Harvey Milk was elected in 1977 in San Francisco. In the recent years, many influential political figures, including President Obama, have publically declared their support for gay marriage.

However, up until two weeks ago, no gay marriage bill had been approved by a popular vote. Legislatures and courts had approved gay marriage proposals.

That legacy ended as three states, Washington, Maryland and Maine approved gay marriage laws on Nov. 6.

This new bill allows for gay couples to be married in the state, yet also grants the right for religious officiants to refuse to perform the ceremony.

Back to Aki

Former Garfield counselor Darryl James, who oversaw 10th-12th graders with last names A-E, was transferred to Aki Kurose middle school in order to “complete unfinished work there,” according to a memo published by the counseling office on the Garfield HS webpage.

For seniors, Mr. Willis will be overseeing all application-related needs in order to make the transition as smooth as

“The [Standards-Based] system is a way to focus more on what you are actually learning rather than focusing on just turning in assignment after assignment,” says sophomore Violet Brown.

The class consists of “formative” assessments, your average homework assignment in a typical class, and “summative” assessments, or the tests, essays, and projects in traditional classes.

“The formative is practice for the summative, which is the test.”  says Mr. Gish.

Formative homework does not contribute to final grades, and students can choose which assignments they need to do in order to grasp the material, and skip the others.  The summative tests and projects are the only things that count towards final grades, and can be redone an infinite amount of times.

When the formative assignments, mostly consisting of worksheets, are optional, “there’s not as much busy work,” says Jane Doe*, a sophomore.

However, many students have complained about the changes in the system over the year.  In the original syllabus, the summative assessments were meant to be a gauge of a student’s knowledge, and could be redone.

“One of the biggest drawbacks of the system is that when you do get a bad grade on a summative assessment it’s going to be a while until there’s another summative assessment so you might have a sour grade in the class for a while,” says Brown.

“If you mess up on a test, it really affects your grade, because there’s not a cushion” from other assignments, as in a traditional class,” says Doe*, “which can hurt kids who are bad test-takers.” However, Mr. Gish emphasized that traditional grading systems can hide “failure with success” by assigning extra easy work that can raise grades unnecessarily and not truly reflect a student’s knowledge.

Students have also complained that while the Standards-Based system allows summative assessments to be redone over and over, Mr. Gish’s policy has not allowed as many re-dos.

“At the beginning of the year [Mr. Gish] told us that we would be able to take all the summative assessments as many times as we wanted, but it turns out most of them we are only able to take them two times at most, which seems unfair to me,” says Brown.

“In an attempt to streamline the number of papers going in and out, we said, okay, you’ll come to the summative assessment and that will be it, but really, that flies in the face of the philosophy, so I am altering that and going back to what I think is right,” says Mr. Gish in response to student frustration.

In the future, Gish is working toward a defined system spread throughout the school.  Currently, teachers such as Ms. Hungate-Hawk, Ms. Incorvaia, Ms. Snookal, Ms. Eells, Ms. Farmer, and Ms. Antoncich all use a version of the Standards-Based System.

“If it gets wide support, it should be continued, but the school as a whole should adopt it, not individual teachers,” says sophomore Aaron Goff. Goff worries that college admissions offices “would be taking the B that someone gets in a Standards-Based system — where they sat and rewrote their essay about three times — as less than the A that a kid gets easily in some other class where you basically have to show up and do one worksheet a day.”

“I do think the Standards-Based system should be continued, because in the long run all the formative assignments help a lot with getting good grades on the summative assessments, so people usually have pretty good grades in the classes,” says Brown, though her support is contingent on the issue around the summative assessments being straightened out.

Some students, including Doe*, believe that the system does not add to mastery of the class material, and should not be continued for students next year.

“Personally, I don’t like it,” says Doe*. “It might work for some people… I work better with concrete deadlines where you know you’re turning in this on that day, but it can give some people more flexibility.”

The system is also going to become clearer, both for the student and the teacher, from the beginning.  Gish is working to create a linear progression from the formative assessments to the summative assessments, in order to allow direct learning and a clear idea of what the summative assessments will test on.

“I can’t imagine going back to any other grading system,” says Gish.

*name has been changed

Seattle Public Schools and many other high schools around the nation promote frequently-banned books on their syllabi, including The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse Five, and To Kill a Mockingbird.  More commonly read books such as The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, and Goosebumps have also been banned in some areas, but are still found in school libraries.

Sure, some might consider these books to be offensive. but as the American Library Association states, “banned books week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information and while drawing attention to the harms of censorship.” This is something that should be celebrated. What shouldn’t be happening, however, is the restriction of access to education-related materials on the internet in school.

While administrators from Seattle Public Schools celebrate banned books, many internet websites are blocked because they are distractions to a learning environment.

Seattle Public Schools pledges “to prevent access to obscene, racist, hateful, or violent material.”  However, the Seattle School District’s internet filters go far beyond this basic prevention by blocking material that can be used for educational purposes.

Now  that the internet is becoming the main medium for communication and scholarly learning, students take advantage of the free software from Google, Microsoft, and other companies to store schoolwork online.

Currently, “[the district] doesn’t support email for students,” says Angie Martinez, a technology expert from Seattle Public Schools.  “We just don’t have a way to control it.”

Using electronic media cuts out paper use, costs, and creates hassle for both students and teachers, but isn’t a plausible alternative unless the technology experts at Seattle Public Schools redesign the filters to allow access to online applications such as Google Docs and Dropbox.

While these applications are sometimes allowed, it is often very difficult to access them.

Online email accounts shouldn’t be blocked either, because they can also be tools to supplement educations.

Emails are not supported by Seattle Public Schools because they can be used for “communication with external people outside the district,” says Martinez.

However, students can use these accounts to contact experts and organize their work in ways that textbooks can’t provide.  Taking the initiative to contact an expert shouldn’t be shunned by Seattle Public Schools, but celebrated.  The current policy is too restrictive to allow students to go above and beyond.

While caution is necessary when navigating online information sources, the web can provide more up-to-date information than teachers and textbooks can offer.

Garfield celebrates Banned Book Week as a symbol of rejecting the practice of limiting information.  While many banned books contain racially and  religiously offensive themes, we celebrate these novels as a part of our nation’s literary history.

If we celebrate open access to information, we shouldn’t be limiting that access to educational materials online.

Try to survive the apocalypse

With December 21 fast approaching, you’re going to want to make sure to please the Mayans. They were big on human sacrifice, so to honor Quetzalcoatl, you might want to try sacrificing a freshman. Who knows, the serpent god of the world’s end might just enjoy the scrawny meat on your choice ‘015.

This may also be the time to venture into the chilling world of cryogenetics. If the world somehow survives, but humans don’t, you’ve got seven continents to yourself.

Or you could pull an Austin Powers and shoot your frozen body off into space.Just make sure you bring that special someone with you, because the world’s going to be an awfully lonely place after the apocalypse.

Start a cult

As the end of the world nears, a good first step would be to create a massive following that would accompany you into whatever happens in the future. Of course, there is no better way to do this than to start a cult following.

It would be quite simple, really. Bathrobes, a bulk supply of Kool Aid, and aluminum foil are all you need to lift your cult off the ground and begin your journey into the future.

Skyrim

There is no better way to hide those thoughts of despair that come along with the end of the world than by playing Skyrim [reviewed in A&E this issue].

If you spend 15 hours a day playing,0000000 that would give you 5,475 hours to level-up and explore the vast world that Bethesda has birthed by the time the world ends.

The towns of Whiterun, Solitude, and Riften will be pillaged until every single petty soul gem or leg of goat has been stolen. The mountainous landscape will be littered with the corpses of blood dragons, cave bears, and venomfang skeevers, and who wouldn’t want to spend their final days in such a magical world?

For many Garfield students, fighting restless draugrs is a perfectly acceptable way to spend their final days.

Get fat

Americans these days are obsessed with self image. Nearly every other commercial is an ad for Proactiv or some diet program. Well to heck with all that! When the end of days comes there will be no reason to stay in shape, diet, or even bathe for that matter. I have a feeling that many like-minded folks will be heading over to their favorite pig-out spots to just go ham. An extra hundred pounds here or there never killed anyone, and who cares, it’s the end of the world after all.

Go streaking at the Olympics

Everyone remembers Rubber Chicken Man from the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. This is the time to immortalize yourself by streaking at the London 2012 Games.  All you need is a well televised event such as gymnastics, a strategic covering, and a website to advertise.  We recommend errytang.com.You’ll also want to plan your escape from all the embarrassment until the December apocalypse, and become a modern Neanderthal in some Nordic cave. Just bring your X-Box (see Skyrim).

Tell someone you love them

Sure, it’s cliché.  However, if you’ve found that special someone, now’s the time to tell them.  Make sure to do the whole shebang: candles, flowers, and a moonlight walk along the water.  For the vast majority of you who haven’t found their Wesley, do it anyway. Profess your love to the nearest stranger. You never know, it could end well. If it doesn’t, you could always get a Facebook divorce the next day.

Get arrested

Getting arrested is all about the experience, just talk to Jesse Hagopian. That’s one of many reasons why you don’t want to get arrested for shoplifting, a hit and run, driving under the influence, or any other thoroughly anti-climactic crime.  If you’re going to get arrested, try something like mugging Chuck Norris or breaking into the White House.  Fair warning, though, because trying to get Chuck Norris to give you his wallet could be the last thing you ever do.  It might just be smarter to take on the entire Secret Service.

Win a Darwin Award

This venture is going to take some pretty serious planning, and should also be the last item on your bucket list, because you have to die to receive the award.  Darwin Awards are given to the stupidest deaths each year, recognizing the recipient for “improving our gene pool from removing themselves from it,” according to the awards committee. Getting this award won’t be an easy task, because the  awards committee only chooses the cream of the crop.  You could start with trying to tame a wild animal, or jumping across the Grand Canyon.

“Being seventeen years old is the worst age, politically speaking,” said Garfield senior Zach Ward.  At this point, high schoolers are the most involved in politics, but have the least true voting power.

With true Bulldog spirit, however, several Garfield students, organizations, and alumni are overcoming the barriers against high school students and discovering their own way to become involved in politics.

“Too often it gets to this debate between different opposing adult forces and the voice that’s lost is the actual students saying ‘hey, I can’t get textbooks’” says Toby Crittenden, a ‘00 Garfield graduate who now works with the Washington Bus to get students involved in politics.

The Washington Bus is an organization that works to get young people out to vote and involved in politics, including high schoolers, college students, and others in their twenties.  They support youth-driven politics by helping register voters, working on campaigns for young candidates, and promoting awareness.

The Bus’s emphasis on youth leadership is driven by the people in charge.  According to Crittenden, the staff at the Bus has more people below 30 than those above 30.  This unusual demographic allows the Bus to make politics more accessible to high schoolers, and give them support and motivation to get involved.

As new educational measures center on Seattle Public Schools, and in particular Garfield, adults are making more and more changes to policy that primarily affect students.

The School Board elections are directly related to all public school students.  The decisions made by the School Board affect the types of curriculum in schools, student’s rights, determine the educational budget, and many others.  The results of the School Board’s decisions are felt by high schoolers sitting in class everyday, but not by adults, who only hear about classroom and school-based issues if their children come home and complain.

“People throw these big concepts around, where it’s really felt almost always the most is in young people,” says Crittenden.  Adults don’t experience the impacts of their votes daily, so students have taken the initiative to make their own voices heard.

“I think voting is the single best way to be political, but it’s far, far, far from the only way to be political.… Voting is the output, but what are all the imputs?” says Crittenden.

In order to give students political voices, Garfield graduates Lucas Smith, Jesse Seidman, Alex Jonlin, Caleb Raible-Clark, Lucas Smith and Tal Levy created Senate Bill 5621 while they were students at Garfield.  The bill, sponsored by Senator Scott White, would lower the voting age in school-related elections to 14.  This proposal was an attempt to get the political voice high schoolers are denied, but it was not passed by the Washington State Senate.  In 2005, another bill to lower the voting age, this time to 16, was rejected.

As adult voters and legislators continue to deny students the right to vote, Garfield students have found other ways to make their opinions known and prepare themselves to be educated and inspired voters once they turn 18.

“Everything is political in life.  There are some places where that’s glossed over, and there are some places where that’s more apparent, and I think that becomes very apparent at Garfield” said Crittenden.

Garfield is home to many organizations and individuals who have become politically active before they can vote.

The Junior Statesmen of America, a national organization with many chapters at high schools all over the country, focuses on discussing issues around the world so students are more politically aware and informed about recent events.

JSA, as well as the activism at Garfield, “definitely helped me get more into it (politics) and helped me get more involved” said Haley McFarland, a Garfield senior who is the secretary of JSA.

“I got involved with JSA because I did not know much about how our country was run and the politics and the social and economic issues of our day, and I wanted to know more” said Sam Kennard, a Garfield senior and the treasurer of JSA.  One of JSA’s strengths as an organization is their informative nature, and that it’s not a prerequisite to know anything about the topics discussed.

Each week, Garfield JSA members have discussions on various subjects from human augmentation to the death of Osama Bin Laden.  They also participate in state-wide conventions, organize debates in which students can debate both sides of prominent issues, and host sessions with local adults who are involved in politics, such as School Board candidate Sharon Peaslee.  Although Peaslee did not win election to the School Board over incumbent Peter Maier, students involved in JSA were able to meet a candidate and formulate an informed opinion in this School Board race.

The leaders of JSA are also working to organize a debate between Garfield teaher Hersh Mandleman and a local Tea Party candidate, according to Kennard.  This debate will provide a example for JSA members on debate techniques for conventions.  However, it will also be an informative session about Seattle and Washington State issues that relate to all students and local community members.

“I’ve really enjoyed going to JSA and being able to hear people who have political views that are very different from the ones I have, and it’s not just ‘Oh, they’re idiots, we’re right,’ there’s some fact in a lot of different political beliefs” said Ward.

The new Garfield club by senior Tamara Boyle and sophomore Mohammed Jagana, Youth in Government, creates a mock-Congress and helps students better understand the political system.  In this program, students write up state-related bills and present them to their peers.  In the spring, they take these bills to Olympia and participate in a four-day mock-legislature where each student acts a part of the state government.

Youth in Government “is actually what got me interested in [politics]” said Boyle.  “Being involved in that really made me say ‘Oh, I should do other things’.”  As a result of her involvement in Youth in Governement, Boyle also got involved in student government and interned on Patty Murray’s Senate campaign.

Sophomore Lalah Muth was inspired by a teacher from Youth in Government in eighth grade who would come into her classes and help her class write and debate bills in order to better understand the political process.

“I thought ‘well that was really cool’… and I thought it was kind of fun… and when I got there it was even more fun” said Muth.  “It’s kinda like college.  You’re practicing for something to be better at something else.… If you ever wanted [to create a bill] you would know what to do.”

Debate groups and mock-government groups such as JSA, Youth in Government, and other groups such as Mock-Trial and Debate Club all help high schoolers with the inter-personal skills, political awareness, and government understanding that will help create savvy voters.  Some other Garfield students have gotten involved in today’s politics, instead of waiting for their eighteenth birthday.

Garfield juniors Jasmine Burr and Kian Vesteinsson are both on the advisory board of Seattle Young People’s Project, another youth empowered organization that advocates social justice for youth and engineers projects such as Queer Youth Space Seattle, works towards education reform, created a youth art collective, and fought the old WASL achievement test.  The organization is mostly run by Seattleites in their twenties, and the Board is made up of students under 17.

“People say ‘Oh yeah, it looks good on your college application,’ and I’m like okay, that’s great’ but I don’t want to just do it because it looks good on a college app, I want to do it because I like it, and for this specific program it wasn’t just about empowering youth, it was about getting them more into politics” said Burr.  “At Seattle Young People’s Project, you get the truth about things, and you get more into the community.”

“When I hear the word politics, I don’t really want to talk about it, mainly because it’s just so much.… I used to not care, and now I actually do care, I’m like, well, what is this law going to do for my community, what is it going to do for me, how is it going to benefit me, how is it going to affect my community.… I’m more aware of things going on in my community and around the world, which is really great” continued Burr.

Garfield’s ACLU club is also working with local state chapters of the national organization to promote student rights and civil liberties in Washington State.  Garfield seniors Maya Troll, Anna Jacobsen and Sierra Kaplan-Nelson have all “revitalized” the Garfield ACLU chapter, and are working to spread awareness about student rights in school, fighting against the death penalty, and fighting for the legalization of marijuana.

Their main focus is on student’s rights, especially at Garfield.  Troll, Jacobsen, and Kaplan-Nelson, along with junior Jack Noland are working to spread awareness about the privacy rights that students have, as well as fighting for rights that students should have, according to the leaders.  Their focus is on the random searches the Garfield administration conducts.

ACLU also focuses on informing students of their political system and the various civil issues, and is “dynamic and doing things,” such as working with New Approach Washington, a organization focused on legalizing and then regulating marijuana.  They also work on letter writing campaigns, gather signatures for initiatives, and organize assemblies to promote awareness about issues the ACLU takes a stand on.

“Speaking out …isn’t necessarily a political interest, but a civil duty” said Jacobsen.  Garfield students have taken her statement to the next level, and tied together their own political interests in voting, and been able to vote vicariously by creating change in their communities and influencing the opinions of many others and encouraging adults to vote.

“Unless we say it, no one else is going to say it for us” said Crittenden.

To Get Involved…

JSA — Meets Tuesday at lunch in Mr. Madelman’s room

ACLU — Meets Friday at lunch in the Library

Youth in Government — Talk to Tamara Boyle or Mr. Martin

Washington Bus — www.washingtonbus.org

Seattle Young People’s Project - www.sypp.org

On September 21st in Georgia, Troy Davis was executed for killing a police officer.  He was on death row for 20 years.  This new execution has revived debate over the legality of the death penalty, and will continue as a point of debate through the 2012 presidential election.  As citizens, it’s our obligation to ask, is the death penalty is worth it?

Chauncey and I can agree that capital punishment should not be administered with an “eye for an eye” mentality, but I believe that in some cases, the death penalty can be used fairly.  If we reform the capital punishment system to lower the total number of executions, then the establishment is worth keeping.

Government officials have a right to be protected from the hazards of their jobs.  Capital punishment can be used as a deterrent for criminals, because they know that if they kill a police officer, like Troy Davis did, they will be sentenced to death.  The worst possible outcome of   a detterent is the death of a murderer, but it has the potential to save lives, turning an “eye for an eye” into an eye for two, three or four eyes.  That’s pretty good math.

The death penalty should be used for war crimes in which thousands of civilians die.  That means that Hitler and his Nazi generals would have been executed for the millions and millions killed during the Holocaust.  That means that Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the Serbian leaders responsible for the genocide of the Bosnian people, would be put to death.  That means that men responsible  for the deaths of thousands will die for their crimes against humanity.

Convicting the innocent is an inherent risk in our justice system, and not an issue concerning only the death penalty. However, the capital punishment program’s lengthy appeals system is in place to prevent executions of the innocent.

You hear about the exonerations — over one hundred in total — of people on death row in which criminals originally sentenced to death are released.  This statistic doesn’t necessarily point to the conviction of the innocent, but instead to the thoroughness of the appeals.  Controversy over innocence doesn’t need to end capital punishment completely, but should be a reason to maintain the appeals system and remove the death penalty for all but the worst cases.

Most of those who take an anti-death penalty stance, like Chauncey, believe in a life sentence without parole.  Escapees are relatively non-existent, but  parole has been granted when prisons become overcrowded.  One of the most famous examples of this scenario is the McDuff case in 1998. After being released on parole, this convicted  murderer killed six more people.

The death penalty shouldn’t be used broadly for fear of release, but for secondary offenders. The possibility of release is too high for the punishment to be only a lifetime in prison.

Yes, using the death sentence is expensive.  Chauncey will point to the millions of dollars California would save if they abolished the death penalty.  However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the extra cost isn’t worth it.  Fewer executions means a lower cost, and the death penalty can still  be used for critical cases.

I believe the death penalty shouldn’t be used for redemption, but rather to save other lives.  I know it sounds like pretty backwards logic, but a reform of  the death penalty can keep crimes where civilians die from occurring and save innocent lives.