The policy changes are the result of the district’s widening policy of standardization. “If there’s a student at Roosevelt that wants to transfer to Garfield, they would be doing the same subject at the same time,” explains Renee Agatsuma, genetics teacher at Garfield. The typical path of science courses for a Garfield student starts with freshman year biology, followed by marine biology, genetics, or ecology sophomore year, then junior year chemistry, concluding with physics senior year. The new district standard reads: physical science, biology, chemistry, and physics.

For incoming APP students, this won’t hold true. Science curricula through the middle school level have been changing as well.

“There are APP [middle school] students taking biology right now,” says Garfield marine bio teacher Jonathan Stever. “They’ll bypass biology at Garfield, and go right into a tenth grade science class.”

The APP and non-APP split will be apparent with the arrival of next year’s freshmen class.

Although the district is making changes to the science curricula, Garfield science teachers are fighting to keep all the current science classes.

“Marine science and ecology, as a class, also covers physical science,” says Stever, “and we’re trying to help the district understand that.”

“They could go down with the hammer on all physical science classes except those for APP students,” says Stever.

“We could lose a bunch of our classes.”

Surprisingly, what brought about the changes at the high school level were low standardized test scores.

“It’s frustrating, because students know they aren’t required to pass [the HSPE],” says Stever. “A lot of really smart, AP-type kids say to themselves, ‘I’m going to sleep in’, ‘I’m not going to take this.’ Then those scores come in as zeroes and bring the rest of our scores down. It’s kind of ironic.”

However, not all is bleak for fans of the old Garfield science curriculum.
“We’re going to have eight or nine marine science classes next year,” says Stever. “We have six right now.”

Another marine biology expansion comes with the introduction of “Oceanography 101”, a pay-to-enter high school program run by the University of Washington.

“Students can get five university credits at the UW,” says Stever.
Still, the future of Garfield science is uncertain.

“We have some of the best science in the city, or even in the state,” Stever says. “Whether this holds true, time will have to tell.”

Child marriage is a pandemic issue, occurring across the world mostly in rural areas in Africa, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, and India. While laws exist to stop the unconsented marriage of underage women, in practice these laws are often unenforced. For example, some believe that up to 56 percent of Indian women were married before the age of 18.

Surprised? “It’s not a known cause,” Mahie admits. “And it has decreased as the world becomes more developed—it doesn’t happen in cities.” Nonetheless, it is troubling. And it’s hard to understand why it’s allowed to continue.

“They feel like they’re helping their child,” she said of mothers selling their children into marriages. By exchanging them for money, they have one less mouth to feed, and the chance of their girl going into a better life. Is the life of a child bride really better than extreme poverty? It’s hard to say. But the facts of low-age childbirth and abuse are undeniable.

Note, the club is not about trying to end child marriage entirely. “We understand it’s a cultural thing,” said Mahie. “So we’re kind of trying to give them a second option.” The donated money given to the charity goes to pay for these young girls’ education (schooling for child brides is nearly unheard of) and for their operations.

Operations? When a child gives birth, the body at age 14 or 13 or below is often so unequipped to go through it that it can result in a fistula, a hole between the rectum and the vagina. This comes with a host of medical problems.

“They can’t control their urine, they smell bad,” Mahie described. Fistulas can also lead to infections, kidney failure, nerve damage, and paralysis. “Nobody wants to be near them.” Fortunately, the operation to fix a fistula is easy and inexpensive. Unfortunately, western definitions of “inexpensive” are very different from rural third-world definitions of “inexpensive.” SEA BEEs raises money to provide for these operations, as well.

SEA BEEs, aside from meeting weekly in Room 205, does most of their fundraising through bake sales. Though most of their work has been in-school, they have gone outside. “We went to the town hall when the mayor was there,” Mahie said. “And we sold baked goods there.” Next up, she and club vice-president Jacquie Van Patten want to try putting donation jars in local stores, and soliciting donations from larger corporations. Their plans for the future? “Our goal for the end of the year is $500.”

For thousands of child brides in India, Africa, and beyond, that’s a good start.

“Hold on,” I thought as I read this. Apart from all the human rights and ethical concerns blatantly dismissed right there, isn’t “homosexuality is unnatural” a factual claim? Can’t that be definitively proven right or wrong?

And the answer is, yes, it is, and yes, it’s been proven not to be true. Science has proven that the brains of homosexual people are, from early ages, different from the brains of heterosexual people, for no specifc reason, and that it isn’t a conscious choice. So why is the Ugandan government still claiming this? That’s why I don’t understand people sometimes. Listening to a talk by skepticist author Sam Harris about morals, I thought about the belief that most of us are brought up with: that everyone has a right to their own opinions. He said that most values and morals can be reduced to facts, and that, by extension, these facts can be right or wrong.

He gives the analogy of corporal punishment: is it good to allow a young child to be hit with a wooden board, raising bruises, in order to improve that child’s character? Many people would say not, most research would disagree. Then perhaps we can dismiss this point of view as incorrect. Then, we can agree it’s a good idea to ban this practice in schools in the Southwest, and encourage teachers to find less violent ways of dealing with children.

Wait, I just agreed that a tradition hundreds of years old should be outlawed. Yes, I did: because trusted, proffesional research has shown it to be ineffective and harmful. Even respected cultures can have bad ideas about ethics.

“Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human wellbeing that we have to be nonjudgmental about this?” Harris asks. That isn’t to say there’s only one right way to, say, teach a student, but we know there are definitely bad ways as well.

Science and evidence are more than mere forces in our lives: they’re ways of knowing something is true. Like Michael Specter, a writer for the New Yorker, said, “You’re not entitled to your own facts.” I find it sickening that people like Fred Phelps can preach similar thoughts about homosexuality, that congressmen can disagree on the existence of climate change, and that 33 percent of homeopathic chiropractors can believe that vaccinations are useless.

Which brings us to another controversy. In 1998, a British medical journal published a study hinting at a connection between autism and a popular vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella. Hundreds of follow-up studies were done, showing that the connection didn’t exist. Most of the paper’s authors admitted that they had made mistakes in reporting the data.

And yet, 12 years later, we live in the only country where the total number of measles vaccinations is going down, where thousands of parents are refusing to have their children vaccinated at all. Have these parents thought carefully, and decided that the possibility that their child could catch polio, whooping cough, tetanus, hepatitis, and cervical cancer, is worth a nonexistent risk? I don’t think so.

I don’t discourage skepticism. Of course, people should question everything they see—in this world, we have reason to. On the other hand, when they’re offered lots of convincing evidence, there is no reason for them not to believe it, even if it’s not what they originally thought. Just like there’s no reason to beat kids for not paying constant attention in school.

We know it just doesn’t work like that.

In November 2009, the University of California management board voted to increase college tuition by 32 percent. This sparked massive protests throughout the state. Now, more budget cuts and tuition hikes (including nearly doubling the price per unit of some of the state’s largest community colleges) might be on the way, and newly outraged students have assembled again.

But the crisis is nationwide, and California isn’t alone. Public universities in Mississippi are planning for 7 percent increases by 2012. In North Carolina, it’s an 8 percent increase.  At the University of Arizona, 15 percent. It’s already confirmed that tuition at the UW will rise by 14 percent next year, and a federal plan means that other public state college prices could increase by a maximum of 7 percent. That would mean an average of $700 more a year to go to school.

Some colleges are trying other tactics to save money: accepting more out-of-state students, for instance, because colleges know they’ll have to pay much more. (Example? The unusually high number of Garfield students accepted into UC Berkely this year. Yes, there’s a reason.) This doesn’t make local students very happy.

A different walk-out happened at the UW on March 4th, organized by the Student-Worker Commision,. Due to other legislature, the UW could lose $50 million from the Senate and House budget proposals.

For some, rising prices mean family debt. “The middle class has been financing it through debt. The scenario has been that families that have a history of sending kids to college will do whatever if takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt,” said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, who worked with the California protests.

For others, the solution is simpler. No college.

Since the economy has a tendancy to screw up everybody’s plans these days, skyrocketing college prices aren’t necessarily a surprise. But they are troubling. “Go to University,” said Keith Davis to Garfield’s assembled student body, just before bending a frying pan on his torso. But what if we can’t? While it won’t affect everyone (there are still college aid programs, and for some families, paying the extra cash is more of an inconvenience then anything else) the increases will still certainly be enough to make a few formerly college-bound students throw up their hands and work in a McDonald’s instead.

We can’t instantly turn back the recession, nor make new laws, but if it’s all that university students can do to protest and march, perhaps it’s best they keep up. Anyone who plans to go to college might soon be joining them.

When he posts a picture of himself, that’s all the help they need. The secret side of the internet moves into action.

Internet vigilantism is what happens when a group of anonymous internet users work together to punish evil in the world and work towards the greater good. It’s a rare occurrence, because normally when an internet community decides to get together and support a cause, it’s a malicious or bizarre one—like in 2008, when the National Epilepsy Foundation website was hacked and replaced with flashing black and white lights. Or declaring war on the Church of Scientology. Or hacking into and ripping apart Myspace pages for no clear reason.

The unifying factor in these events is that they’re all part of what is known as Anonymous. Composed of an inexact, unspecific set of individuals from a variety of anonymous forums and image-posting sites, Anonymous has been called everything from “domestic terrorists” to “internet superheroes” to “the first internet superconscious.” When Anonymous mobilizes, the results are terrifying. In China, they have another name for Anonymous, based off of the group’s ability to track down anyone: “The Human Flesh Search Engine.”

A few years ago, some teenagers posted some Youtube videos, of themselves abusing cats. Well, if the internet superconscious exists, it likes cats. Despite the fact that the offenders were wearing masks, Anonymous was able to dig through sites like Facebook until they found the person in the video. Eventually, the teens’ phone numbers and addresses were posted online, and between constant spam and harassment by total strangers, the authorities were called and the cat was rescued.

Which takes us to a few months ago, when Zach*, a freshman, was browsing an anonymous image-posting board and saw a user posting child porn. “I posted some pictures of secret agents sneaking around, you know, lighten up the mood … and then he started posting stuff about how his manager was coming. Manager? What?” The poster revealed that he was working at a McDonald’s in Northern California. “He posted pictures of himself, he was at the drive-through. … someone got his iPhone’s GPS signal, then via some Google Map-ing, we found the McDonald’s he was working at. We called the cops, and … Well, I’m pretty sure [he was caught], because he stopped posting.”

If one posts pictures online, they can be found too. “Pretty much every picture contains metadata. Which includes the GPS [coordinates] of where it was taken, shutter speed, pretty much anything you want.”

Zach was quick to point out that it wasn’t just him. “It was all of Anonymous, working together.” He was unapologetic or sympathetic to claims that his actions were immoral or illegal. “If they’re posting the picture, they’re posting the metadata. They can decide to ruin it if they want, but since they’ve decided to leave it on, they’ve sent it to us.”

Internet vigilantism is a highly controversial sport. On one hand, child porn is horrible and illegal. On the other hand, the lengths vigilantes will go to is extreme. Consider the case of Dog Poo Girl, in Korea: a woman who refused to clean up her dog’s Number 2 off the floor of a subway. An onlooker got a few pictures of her, and the Human Flesh Search Engine activated. Within days, her address and family information was in the ether for all to see, and she was shamed into quitting the university she attended.

And most agree that this, to a degree, is unacceptable. “It’s like, in the name of being good, I’m just going to ruin this random person’s life,” sophomore Jocelyn Lee said. “Maybe they should put it into the government.”

“They’re doing it for the right reasons,” sophomore Asher Wycoff argues. Some think that if it were left up to the government, the outcome would be repression of free speech, and that Anonymous’ method is efficient, if brutal and sometimes illegal. The vigilantes, of course, can’t argue. And they don’t plan to stop. “If the police are [with Anonymous],” Zach said, “Then we have bigger problems.”

*Name has been changed

I know, at first, I wasn’t this excited either when I heard he was coming to visit. I also didn’t know who he was. Consider, though, that his grandfather, Jacques Cousteau helped invent the Aqualung, pioneered marine discovery and conservation, inspired the comedy movie “The Life Aquatic” (which, says esteemed editor Max David, “is like the best movie ever,”), and has (here’s the true mark of fame) a Wikipedia page for his boat.

Philippe himself refuses to be outdone: he works for Discovery, was good friends with Steve Irwin, and is at the head of (literally) a dozen oceanic education and environmental organizations. If that’s not enough, he has a blog and a Twitter page (twitter.com/pcousteau, ladies). He insists he has never been a model, but the fact that somebody had to ask says a lot already. We tell it like we see it, Philippe.

He talked to Garfield about habitat destruction, his grandfather, his work with teens in Washington DC, and other things as well: seeing big, glowing Humbolt squids tear each other apart in the open ocean at midnight, and how more people die each year in goldfish-related accidents than shark-related accidents.

He said that even though he’s been to some crazy places, “you don’t have to go to the Arctic, or the Red Sea, to explore new things. We have a scientist at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum that I worked with, and he discovered three new species of insects in his backyard.”

For a natural-minded adult, Cousteau takes a surprising view on technology: “[Technology] can help augment you going outside, because nowadays, if you got a question about something you see in your backyard. You can go on the internet at home, look it up, and find out what’s going on. … But I think it’s important for us also to get outside.”

And what advice does the mighty Cousteau offer for kids looking to become oceanographers in general? “You don’t have to grow up and just be a scientist,” he said (citing the fact that grand-dad Jacques wanted to be a pilot, and Phillipe is a history major).

But he also recommends: “It’s a competitive world out there. Get engaged in programs after school, during the summer. And then, you know, go to university. Gotta go to University.”
Take it from the master, kids.

It’s open.

There are other reasons, of course: it’s online, so you don’t have to keep or rent an expensive and heavy set of encyclopedias around for every time you want to look something up. And, of course, it’s free. But more then that, it’s the concept that it can be edited by anyone– notably, (since they’re the ones that care) up-to-date professionals. This means, that page you just read for your homework on cellular respiration? Probably written by a real biologist. And given the instantaneous edit speed and constant updating of the site, Wikipedia can easily be more correct than a textbook.

Sure, it’s not perfect. There are marriage proposals interspersed with the history of El Salvador, comments from viewers of “The Colbert Report” on the African Elephants page, and blatantly false facts regarding oil spills added by Exxon staff. But the community surrounding Wikipedia is large and constantly wary. For example, when I tried to change the founding date of said cultural capitol of Australia (which, by the way, is Melbourne) from 1835 to 1814, it was caught and corrected within 35 minutes.

Though errors are possible, there’s another factor that makes up for that. A factor that makes Wikipedia appealing and lets it grow, one that has also heralded the spread of open-source applications like the operating system Linux and the Creative Commons license: their total freedom. Open means for everybody.

For instance, that operating system I mentioned (yes, you can run your computer on something other then Windows or Mac) works great, and doesn’t hold you to a copyright code or a terms-of-use agreement designed to keep you paying, just like Wikipedia. You can do whatever you want with it: edit it, tailor it, share it with your friends, and make it fit your needs. Granted, programming your own operating system is something best done in Ms. Martin’s computer classes, but anyone who knows how to type can edit Wikipedia.

On one level, it’s no wonder this scares the dickens out of poor science teachers who just want you to know your photosynthesis. Who can tell what’s right and what’s wrong? However, information is checked again and again, and that decades-old book your teacher would advocate is comparatively eons out of date. The anyone-can-edit approach does mean that incoming information must constantly be checked, but Wikipedia encourages correctness and the latest data even more. The site itself doesn’t even claim to be ineffable, but it’d be silly to throw out a fantastic resource that operates on the values of equality and liberty for the sake of occasional vandalism.

Best of all, the worldwide amount of “open”  material is growing every day. Apart from websites and operating systems, things like pictures and software, as well as blogging platforms and soda recipes, are free for the taking. Who needs to scrape cash to buy Photoshop when there are dozens of similar image editors that you can get for free? It’s easy to see why open content may well be the way of the future. Wikipedia is only the glorious start. And while teachers may not let you cite the website on your homework any time soon, it’s well worth your time to see what’s out there.