existing NHS officers were present. The inductees were welcomed by principal Greg

Hoyt and special guest speak-

ENTORTheMManhattan High School Volume 101 Issue 25 May. 6, 2013 page 3 page 5 page 4

Forensics team takes first at State

FFA celebrates Agriculture Day Students ready for Girls, Boys State camps

Clubs hold elections in preparation for next year

Student journalists place at Kansas Scholastic Press Association State competiton

Eco-Team takes 10 at State competition

NHS inducts new members

Tracy LeGraphic Editor

The time of year has come for club elections, and many students are campaigning or preparing for new leadership positions.

One of the many clubs at Manhattan High, Students Against Destructive Deci-sions, held their elections right after school on Wednes-day, April 30.

“We had a lot of people running for officer posi-tions...we had a full ballot, it was exciting,” sponsor Kari Quiton-Humes said. “I feel great that so many people wanted to run and I feel great with the outcome.”

Junior Alyssa Frey was chosen as president, junior Katie Dixon as vice presi-dent, sophomore Andrea

Miller as treasurer, junior Krystyn Winiecki as secre-tary and sophomore Han-nah Craig and junior Trevor Hayden as the club’s repre-sentatives.

”I’m really excited,” Frey said. “I was actually kind of nervous because I was run-ning against Hannah and Katie and I know that they’re both really good and they would have been really good in this position. So I was kind of nervous but at the same time I was like, well, if I don’t get it I’ll still be involved but I’m really excited and happy that I did get it… I think that it’s [SADD] really important because a lot of people have experienced loss and things to some of the things that we try to prevent like alcohol abuse, drinking and driving, texting and driving, and that

kind of thing. So I think that the club is really important and I hope that others see its importance, too.”

Frey joined SADD her freshman year, was elected vice president her sopho-more year, and is also this year’s president.

“Alyssa has done a great job as president so it’ll be fun to have her in that role again her senior year,” Quiton-Humes said. “We had a great Spring Fling this year, a great Red Ribbon Week and I think this year there was a lot of in-volvement from kids. At the beginning of the school year our meetings were packed and I’m hoping next year we can repeat that again… I’m excited. I think it’ll be a great year.”

See Clubs page 5

Retta Lazaris Staff Writer

Last Wednesday, the Manhat-tan High FFA chapter celebrated Ag Day by pairing up with various agriculture organizations and FFA chapters from Blue Valley and Ri-ley.

Michaela Braun, a senior at MHS, has been in FFA for two years and was one of the FFA members who helped out with Ag Day.

“It’s a lot of fun because you get to be with all of the kids,” Braun said. “And show them all about ag-riculture.”

Lou Irwin, part of the Master Gardeners Organization, ran one of the educational stands with her co-workers that talked about any-thing a third grader would want to hear, pizza.

“We are teaching the kids that pizza can be a very healthy meal,” Irwin said. “I think that it’s amazing that children know these ingredi-ents already. They seem to be -- for third graders -- some what knowl-edgeable about what’s on their pizza.”

“Without food, fuel and fiber none of us would be here,” Melissa

Wahl, County Coordinator for the Riley County Farm Bureau, said.

“This is our 12th annual Kids Ag Day, that is sponsored by the Riley County Farm Bureau,” Wahl said. “And then we have several other groups that are contributors that help out with the event, as well as the local farmers and vocational ag teachers from the three different area high schools.”

According to Wahl, the Riley County Farm Bureau contacted approximately 30 classes, includ-ing the local public, Christian and home schools.

Third graders from all over Riley County attended Ag Day, including Northview, Riley County, Flint Hills and Olsburg in the morning ses-sion, and Flint Hills Christian, Man-hattan Catholic, Amanda Arnold, Frank Bergman, Roosevelt, Blue-mont and Lee in the afternoon.

“We need to educate our stu-dents; we need to educate ev-eryone,” Wahl said. “More and more families are removed from the working farm as our society progresses. And it used to be that only one or two generations were

See FFA page 5

Sophmore Kyndall Norris and Senior Michaela Braun hold pigs at their Ag Day festiv-ies and celebration. Rhetta Lazaris, Photographer

Maddie RossNews Editor

Girls and Boys State is designed to give young men and women a distinct responsibility and under-standing about their government and community. Sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary, the program has given its students first-hand experience on how both state and local governments work since 1935. Every year the Manhat-tan area strives to send around 15 girls and 15 boys to their respected events.

The program is for students who have just completed their junior year. Participants learn how to run a functioning government as they create their own.

“Being from Spain, I think this will be a great opportunity for me to learn about and experience America’s system of government,” junior Ana Dominguez said.

Girls State is held on the Wash-

See Boyes, Girls state page 5

Tracy LeGraphics Editor

A State placing and med-aling in one of the categories were a good start for Man-hattan High’s students in the Kansas Envirothon compe-tition. Leaving Manhattan High early last Wednesday, five sophomores made their way to Salina for the compe-tition.

“This is the first time in a long time, if at all, that we [MHS] have been involved in the Envirothon,” sponsor Noah Bush said. “It’s a fun group. We had a fun time. We took 10th at State and we medaled in the current issue and so I’m really proud of the kids.”

Sophomores Madeline Marshall, Rachel Chang,

Krista Burton, Alan Brown and Aidan Rosenow were asked to join the team at the beginning of the year and though they admit they weren’t very prepared, they were quite happy with how they performed.

“We didn’t do very well. It was our first year so we didn’t know what to expect. But we had fun and that’s what really matters,” Burton said.

Chang agreed.“It was really fun. It was

our first year so obviously we didn’t do the very best but we learned a lot this year and we have a lot more experience now than at the beginning of the year,” Chang said.

Though the team did not do as well as they wanted to, the State competition greatly

benefited them.“I was proud of how we

did considering the lack of ef-fort of the team overall. We hadn’t prepared for it any-where near as much as we probably needed to so there was a lot of last minute cram-ming involved,” Marshall said. “Now that we have a handle on what the compe-tition is and what we’re sup-posed to be studying, it’ll be a lot easier in the future to know what we need to focus on so that we can do better overall. I feel like we actu-ally have a good chance of placing really well in the next year or two.”

The Envirothon is an out-door high school competition that tests students on differ-ent topics. At the State com-

See Eco-Team page 5

Madeline MarshallStaff Writer

The Manhattan High Fo-rensics Team took first at the State Forensics competition in Olathe this past weekend, continuing a long tradition of high-placement (third last year and first the previous

year). The team had high ex-pectations for themselves all year and fulfilling said expec-tations made their victory even sweeter.

“They were very happy about winning but they were also somewhat relieved be-cause when you’re living up to your own expectations it

can be quite nerve-wrack-ing,” Forensics coach Shawn Rafferty said. “So while they were happy that they won, they were also a tad relieved that they were able to accom-plish something that one, they thought they could, and two, had been trying accom-plish all year. It’s hard to say

we’re going to win all year and then the closer you get to that the harder it is not to buckle under the pressure of the expectation they’d set on themselves.”

The team had many in-dividuals who ranked very highly including two stu-dents, senior Robert Kobza

and junior Peter Sang, who took first in their events and will move on to the national competition.

“It’s a chance to prove how hard we’ve worked all year,” Sang said in reference to their victory.

Sang took first in the Foreign Extemporaneous

Speech event.They have been preparing

for the competition all year.“You spend the entire

week going on every news site and taking all of the ar-ticles for your research are from that week and then we

See Forensics page 5

Juniors Katie Bussmann, Sachin Deyoung, Maddy Fox, Dheepthi Perumal, Caroline Ballard and Abby Githens are inducted into National Honors Society as next year’s officers. Gage Benne, Photographer

Joseph SellStaff Writer

Two Manhattan High students, sophomore Halsey Cam-era and junior Jennie Jordan, managed to place at the Kan-sas Scholastic Press Association State journalism competi-tion. Camera placed fifth in editorial cartooning and Jordan took fourth in photo illustration.

KSPA annually hosts Regional and State competitions for journalism in which students compete to see who are the best writers in different categories. This year MHS qualified eight students for the State competition, which kicked off Satur-day morning at the University of Kansas.

“I feel like I’ve definitely achieved something. I actually surprised myself, didn’t think I’d make it,” Camera said. “It looked like there were I don’t know about 20 kids competing and to get up in fifth place is pretty good for me.”

Camera draws the “Ivan the Ignorant” cartoon each week for The Mentor. This was her first year competing at the KSPA competitions.

“[Placing fourth] felt awesome,” Jordan said. “I was hav-ing a lot of doubts on m photo and when they posted the re-sults I was surprised but really overjoyed.” This year was also the first year Jordan competed at the KSPA competition, hav-ing just joined the Blue M yearbook staff this year. She will be editor-in-chief of the yearbook next year.

Journalism teacher Kristy Nyp was proud of her students’ accomplishments.

“It’s always a good thing to have students place at that level because as a 6A school, we’re competing against some of the best journalism schools in the country,” Nyp said. “Several of

See KSPA page 5

Gage Benne Business Manager

With a year un-der their belt, the newly-sponsored National Honor Society pushes into to the future, picking up 101 new members, as well as new of-ficers. Invitations were sent to 250 qualifying indi-viduals, and more than one-third of the applicants were inducted last Monday night.

"This is my first time doing [induc-tions]," NHS spon-sor Robin Smith said. "So, that number was a lit-tle bit overwhelm-ing. There were a lot of things I had to do to get the letters out, and re-viewed. We end-ed up inducting 54 sophomores and 27 juniors to Na-tional Honor Society, for a

total of 101 new members."Current NHS members

were encouraged to be at

the induction, and all of the

er Pat Lamb gave a talk."I haven't really learned

about NHS until I was in-ducted. I heard about stuff like the point system, which I nev-er really understood but other than that I haven't really been apart of NHS yet, so I don't know what to expect. I very excited though," sophomore Anna Hegarty said.

Last year was Smith's first year be-ing the sponsor for NHS, and of course any first time doing something, there is always a learning curve.

"Next year, with a year's experience un-der my belt, I hope to be a more effective leader, and achieve more goals," Smith. "I want the students to be more connect-ed and more eager to participate in service projects."

The Society also

See NHS page 5

Opinions The Mentor www.mhsmentor.com Page 2

Capital punishment should not existThe editorial is a compilation from a discussion held by the Editorial board. To listen to the conversation that led to this piece, visit www.mhsmentor.com.

A botched execution from a failed lethal injection reig-nited the fierce debate on the death penalty last week. The Oklahoma prisoner, Clayton D. Lockett, woke during the lethal injection, called out in pain and died of a heart attack after officials tried to stop the execution last Tues-day. This is yet another rea-son why capital punishment should not be enforced.

As a group our editorial staff objects to the death penalty. Those among our group who voiced that capi-tal punishment should not exist believe that the deci-sion of whether one should live is held in the hands of that tried criminal. Our majority opinion is that it’s

Kristyn BakerDavid Clinkinbeard

Karl DrownPatrick Falcone

Karl HarmonJordan Hatley

Colten KirkJosh Kohls

Kasey MorrisMallory Morris

Megan RitthisornJeremy Romig

Zane SmithAustin Tatum

EDITORS:Liz Logback, Editor-in-Chief/Trending

Maddie Ross, News EditorSarah Shi, Opinions/Content Editor

Jared Gebhardt, Entertainment EditorGreg Woods, Sports Editor

Connor Bliss, Features EditorKennedy Felice; Danielle Cook, Copy Editors

Alan Brown, Multimedia EditorTracy Le, Graphic DesignerAllison Olsen, Photo Editor

STAFF WRITERS/PHOTOGRAPHERS:Kristen BatsonGage BenneRetta Lazaris

Louis MelgarejoMadeline MarshallMadison Newman

John RockeyJoseph Sell

CIRCULATION:

The Mentor

OTHER:Gage Benne, Business Manager

Kristy Nyp, AdviserThe Mentor is published each Tuesday that school is in session at Manhattan High School, 2100 Poyntz Ave. Manhattan, Kan. Telephone (785) 587-2114. More than 1,500 Mentors are printed each week and distributed free of charge to all faculty members and students. MHS journalists are members of the Scholastic Press Asso-ciation. The Mentor is an open forum that accepts contributions from the public. E-mail us at mhsmentor@gmail.com.

Week:Question of theWhat summer jobs will you be working?

Transitions prove character

Next edition’s Question of the Week: How ’s your life? Submit answers to mhsmen-tor.com or tweet us at @mhsmentoronline

“Music director for the summer youth musical!! Teachers get summer jobs, too!!!!!!!!.” - Chad Pape, choir director

“Papa Murphy’s.” - Jace Morganfield, junior

double-faced to say, “Let’s not kill people, but since you killed someone, we’ll kill you.” Furthermore, it’s not enough to think that just because they’ll die in prison eventually that it’s justified to execute them. Yes, these criminals have done horrible things but it’s not called ‘jus-tice’ to end their life. Nothing is horrifying enough to de-serve the death sentence. In addition, people can change. Granted, not everyone does, but redemption is possible.

Besides hypocrisy, the majority felt that the death penalty hasn’t doesn’t any-thing to stop the crimes that are punished by the death sentences.

However, the dissenting opinion among our editorial group is that there are cer-tain crimes that are too hei-nous to go unpunished, and more specifically without the death sentence. Further-

more, it’s cheaper to execute someone than have to pay his or her prison expenses for a lifetime through taxpayer money.

After hearing about the botched execution Presi-dent Barack Obama asked the Justice Department to reevaluate the execution sys-tem. While Obama supports the death penalty in certain cases, he encourages Ameri-cans to “ask ourselves some difficult and profound ques-tions” about its use.

“I’ve said in the past that there are certain circum-stances in which a crime is so terrible that the applica-tion of the death penalty may be appropriate — mass kill-ings, the killings of children,” Obama said. But he adds, “the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime.”

LizLogback

According to the Program for International Student As-sessment, Finland is ranked near to the top in educa-tional quality. A lot of cities in China, such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, are ranked in the number one and num-ber two spots, almost every time. Finland doesn’t have as high of intelligence scores as China does, but it still has one of the highest-perform-ing education systems in the world.

The United States is in the middle, just like we have been for quite some time. The problem with our edu-cation system is not in the wealthy areas of the country. Those families have the mon-ey and means to give their children the best education possible. The problem with our education system lies in the fact that there are so many families with such a low income that they are be-low the poverty line.

According to the 2011 United States Census Bu-reau, the poverty line in America for a family of four

move on from things we have known most of our lives. And I don’t want this to turn into the cliché “senior column” that talks about embracing every moment and cherish-ing memories (though, ul-timately that is good stuff.) But what I’m picking at is much deeper: How we re-act to this huge transition coming up in our lives deter-mines a lot about our charac-ter and shapes who we are as people. This is one of many, many transitions to come, so learning about yourself and your coping techniques now is almost essential.

Loud rap and caffein-ated drinks is what gets me through.

So maybe my technique of not thinking about or cop-ing with the sad stuff isn’t the “healthiest” or social-work-er-prescribed way of doing things, but for now it works. It keeps me moving and grooving, and most impor-tantly, it keeps me focused on the present and today’s troubles alone.

Poverty plays crucial role in lower education

“Somewhere that pays well but also allows naps because college is expensive and I’m sleepy.” - Madi Fellers, senior

(two children and two adults) is less than $23,021. A fam-ily of this size is estimated to have a basic-needs budget of just over $31,000 in order to stay out of poverty.

Poverty is the most rel-evant factor in determining the outcome of a person’s ed-ucational journey. The pov-erty rate in the United States is about five times as high as Finland’s. A new study, on education and poverty, was reported in “Education Week” in October, and the Southern Education Founda-tion shows that nearly half of all U.S. public school stu-dents live in poverty.

Children in poverty have a higher number of missed school days because they are most likely forced to work or care for family members. Students from 16-24 years of age who live on low income are seven times more likely to drop out of school than those from families with higher incomes.

We usually think, as stu-dents in Manhattan High School, that our education is meaningless. Most of our parents make an income high enough to send us to school and to get an educa-tion in order to send us on to bigger and better things. But even at MHS, there are a surprisingly large number of students whose parents can’t afford to send them to school on their own money. They have to have reduced-price

lunches or get scholarship money in order to go on trips or to actually attend school.

If we, as Americans, want to improve our education system we first have to fig-ure out how to fight poverty. About 50 years ago was the mark when Lyndon B. John-son started the $20 trillion “war on poverty.” Today, it is painfully clear that the war has not been won. Since President Clinton, poverty has increased in every state in the country.

I don’t know much about politics and I’m sure that there are many factors on how the theory to end pov-erty is irrational, but it’s safe to say that it is affecting more than just people’s lifestyles. It’s now starting to affect our education.

According to PISA, the education level in the United States is decreasing. We’re moving more down the list every year. The biggest fac-tor of getting an education, to lead a sustainable life, is the poverty level. So poverty, not race, ethnicity, national origin or where you attend school, is the best predictor of college attendance and completion, which in turn shows the outcome of a per-son’s life and the life of their children. It’s a never-ending circle that we need to be working on breaking for the future of our country.

By now, even the people who don’t watch basketball know what’s going on. For-mer Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was recently found to be the voice behind an audio file in which racist remarks were made. However, that isn’t the whole issue.

The questions being asked and the actions being taken are all well and good right now, but what about back when Sterling was under the gun for the first time he said something that related to racism? And it isn’t just him. Other celebrities and icons have faced similar scrutiny; for example, Paula Deen had a stint about her use of racial slurs not too long ago.

The problem isn’t entirely that racism is still alive and kicking today, it’s that we

often choose to overlook it, and many other things, until the last possible minute, un-til someone gets hurt by it.

Sure, there are settle-ments for lawsuits, but it just keeps the upset party quiet for a little while. It sweeps the issue under the rug for someone else to find.

Racism, like a lot of issues, gets the most attention when someone rich or famous makes the mistake of doing it publicly, or in this case, in a private way that becomes public.

I’m not going to make a big deal of the fact that this came forth from a record-ing of a private conversation between Sterling and his as-sumably now ex-girlfriend, or that the issues of invaded privacy were never really brought up. Regardless, it does bring up the idea that some topics are more impor-tant than others.

No, that doesn’t mean Sterling is a victim, too. He’s been digging this hole for years now, he just now final-ly fell in. Here is something to consider, though: if the recording hadn’t been pub-licized, if Sterling had never been seen as a racist for the

second or even third time around, what would be hap-pening right now? Probably nothing. Our day-to-day lives would continue on without much of a second thought on how racism is still a problem in the U.S. or how it takes a breaking point before any-thing really gets done any-more.

So, what is being done about it all? The obvious an-swer is that Sterling is being punished for his actions and that he got what he deserved, end of story. But what about the regular people, the ones who grow up taught that it’s okay to think people should be treated differently based on where they come from or how they look.

For our society to make any progress towards true equality, we need to start accepting that it’s not just about the celebrities and the top percent of the nation, it’s about everyday people and the ordinary situations. Our focus should be on working to fix the little issues, the little problems, before they become national news and get someone banned from the NBA.

In an itchy blue-sequinned tutu, I took the stage for the first time at the age of four. I picked my nose more than I actually twirled or leaped, but nonetheless my first dance recital was a special one. Now, 14 years later, I prepare to embark on my last dance recital. I no longer pick my nose and I have nine more costumes than that first recital, but the special-ness of being on stage hasn’t changed a bit.

This is a coming of age sto-ry. More experience, more strength, more knowledge and (I would hope) more grace has brought me to the point I am at now. But how

do I just walk away from something that has been so active in my life for as long as I can remember? I can no longer remember my life without dance classes or try-ing on costumes. Dance has been as constant in my life as my brother’s B.O., and now I am expected to let that all go, simply because I have grown up.

Talk about emotional. I’m not even sure how to cope with that, so I just drink a lot of coffee, have random jam-out sessions to Li’l Wayne and push all the ridiculously sad thoughts to the back of my brain.

That’s basically all I can do -- just get up each morning and keep pressing forward. I’ve learned to live in the present because worrying about the future has proved to do nothing beneficial for me. I wince to think about all the time, and precious mo-ments, I’ve wasted worrying about what’s to come.

A lot of y’all are in the same boat as me: ready to

In the past week, there was a list online of the 42 senators who blocked bill S. 1737, the Minimum Wage Fairness Act. This bill would have worked to increase the federal minimum wage as soon as six months after pas-sage to $8.20 an hour, then $9.15 one year after passage of the bill, $10.10 two years after and then to a certain amount determined from year to year based on infla-tion.

The issue stood that some Republican senators may have not voted on the bill since it would help the other party with the midterm elec-tions coming up later this year. That raises the critical question with how political parties operate in this coun-try while much of America is still lacking an adequate minimum wage.

On the topic of minimum wages, we can look to econ-omist Robert Reich, who raises the point in YouTube that if minimum wage was increased with inflation since 1968, the current wage would end up being $10.56. That’s far different from the current wage of $7.25 that has been in effect for close to five years and has ridden out

the recession and a substan-tial increase in the cost of liv-ing in our country. We can-not continue paying a wage that people in our nation are forced to live on.

The specified increases over the next few years would have helped businesses to transition in any costs from raising their employees wag-es and does the job of com-pensating for that increase in living, the inflation from the past four decades and would keep smaller families just above the poverty line.

It won’t just go to high schoolers like us; the wage increase would go hundreds of thousands of workers who have to help support their families on at low wages. It certainly would help stu-dents in this school who face financial troubles and want to help their families out. But it should not just be about us, but how the passage of this bill would have worked gradually over the next few years to get the economy moving again and give peo-ple a bit more money to save and work themselves out of poverty.

In the book, “Back to Full Employment,” Jeannette Wicks-Lin wrote about just how much the minimum wage increases would affect businesses. Wicks-Lin said that if businesses were to off-set the costs of raising wages on to consumers, they would only need to raise prices by less than one percent to en-sure the same profit margin -- certainly miniscule enough for most people to really think

that all prices would go up to an exorbitant amount. We do indeed face an increase in prices, but the amounts that Wicks-Lin describes should not affect consumers like us that much.

What we’re left with is politicians who don’t care enough to enact change for the rest of the nation be-cause they are worried about keeping their job through the next term. Both of Kansas’s senators, Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts, were among the 42 senators who denied bringing the bill to legislation and then passing. The men and women who Kansans chose to represent them are not voting on a bill that can affect thousands of families in the state simply because they are worried about an election. A politician should be worried about how they are going to represent their state’s ambitions, not just if they can maintain a job that pays what most Americans could not even save up in their lifetime.

The minimum wage law that could have come into effect would have helped families across America. The passage of the law ac-counts for the inflation we have seen in several decades and can account for the huge increase in the cost of living over the past few years. We should care as high schoolers since the bill would go a long way in our lifetime to change our economy and could have helped people like us now to save up and prepare for the coming years in our lives.

JaredGebhardt

AllisonOlsen

Minimum wage should rise with inflation

JohnRockey

Issues shouldn’t be brought to light through Hollywood stars only

Entertainment The Mentor www.mhsmentor.com Page 3

Louis MelgarejoStaff Writer

“The Amazing Spiderman 2” swung into theaters May 2 and was nothing less than amazing.

The movie hit all the right notes that a comic-book movie should hit. What was best about the movie is that it knew exactly what it was, -- a superhero movie -- and it didn’t take itself too seri-

Madeline MarshallStaff Writer

This past Friday and Sat-urday, Rezac Auditorium was the venue for the annual Variety show, which was hosted by none other than Batman and The Joker. With performances from many dif-ferent groups including Pops choir, Varsity Choir, Color Guard, Jazz band and many other groups, the show was considered a success.

“I think the show went great,” Tomas Nocetti [Bat-man] said. “We messed up sometimes but in the end ev-erything went perfect.”

The individual acts were also pleased about their per-formance.

“I think my duet with Jil-lian Kiracofe and our guitar-ist Hannah Schmidt went extremely well,” junior Madi Monaco said. “I’m really hap-py we did an act together. I also think my performance with Varsity Choir went great even though we didn’t have our full group there. We worked really hard on ‘Pom-peii’ for a couple weeks and I’m glad we pulled it off.”

“I think the best part of the night would just be that the show ran very well and went smoothly and that all the per-formances were good,” soph-omore color guard member Jennifer Meierer said.

“My favorite part was probably just jamming to all of the acts from behind the curtains,” sophomore jazz band member Lilly Marshall said. “I really liked the string and bell group that played songs from ‘Frozen,’ but my absolute favorite was hearing Claire [Naranjo]’s scat solo during our performance.”

“Hanging out with all the other performers was great,” junior Jillian Kiracofe said. “They are all extremely talented and it’s fun to be around people with similar interests.”

Kristen BatsonStaff Writer

Are movie theaters be-coming less relevant because of new programs like Netflix, Hulu and Redbox? Recent statistics seem to suggest so. While 494 million Redbox movies are rented and 457 million movies are viewed on Hulu each year, the number of movie tickets sold per year is 1.8 billion and has been steadily decreasing.

According to Statistic Brain, people spend two mil-

The Old 97’s new album “Most Messed Up” is the definition of country rock. It has the foot-tapping rhythms with the meaningless lyrics of getting drunk and hook-ing up. The album sticks to this theme for the entire 39 minutes, and not in the the-matically cohesive way, but in the “all the songs sound the same” way. This is not a

Performers had been pre-paring well in advance for this performance, spending countless hours perfecting their acts.

“Varsity practiced daily during class for our part and then Jillian, Hannah and I tried to find time in our busy schedules to practice at each other’s houses whenever we could,” Monaco said.

“For the past two months, we have been practicing ev-ery Monday night for about an hour and a half,” sopho-more Kylee Gullion said. “The week of the show we practiced three nights for the same amount of time.”

“Well, it gave us some work to put together all our acts and we went to our first rehearsal without anything,” Nocetti said. “The three days before the show were a little bit hard due to track practice and homework but we tried our best to meet as many times we could with Joe [Haug].”

“I was very proud of my group, we had a lot of fun performing and I felt that we all were a little braver on stage than we anticipated be-ing,” Kiracofe said.

“In my opinion, I think the show was really cool and a great opportunity to show off many different talents of many different kids from our school,” Monaco said. “This was my first year ever go-ing to the Variety Show and first time ever performing in it, too. My favorite part was either singing with my best friend, Jillian Kiracofe, or listening to Janelle Collado and Charlotte Benjamin sing ‘Demons’ together. They are both so talented. I gained a lot more confidence singing with just Jillian in front of a large audience and I know she and Hannah did too. I was really honored to per-form with my Varsity family and my two great friends Jil-lian and Hannah.”

Variety show features talent

Members of the MHS color guard take part in the Variety Show, displaying both talent and skill at handling their flags.Christian Gulker, photographer

terrible album at all though, and doesn’t have a bad song on it. However, too many of the songs sound similar for it to be anything above ordi-nary.

“Longer Than You’ve Been Alive” starts out the album by deceiving you that you’re listening to a folk album, but is a nice way to ease into an album that doesn’t slow down until the end. It’s an autobiographical tale of the band’s journey amidst sto-ries of drunk misadventures. If this album is the definition of country rock, then “Lets Get Drunk and Get it On” has to be the exact synonym of the genre. As shallow as this song -- and really the whole album – is, it has great hooks and makes you want to whip out an air guitar ev-ery couple of seconds. Some-times it feels like the band’s trying a bit too hard to create

New album provides foot-tapping beats

‘Amazing Spiderman 2’ surpasses past films

Streaming movies becoming popularlion hours on Netflix annual-ly, which could be due to the fact that the cost for a month of subscription, which in-cludes unlimited movies and TV shows, is cheaper than a movie ticket.

“I have to be dedicated to see it in theaters because they’re too expensive to go and watch. They’re $10 a ticket and it keeps getting worse. I have to be like ‘I need to see this now’ and if not, I’ll wait,” junior Alexis Colston said.

The new programs are

a hit with every song on the album, containing hooks es-pecially with the song “Give it Time.”

It’s hard to hate any one specific song, with all of them sounding the same. If you hate the tone of one of the songs, this album is probably not for you because you’ll hate the rest of the 11 which all sound like close replicas. Only one song didn’t really stick with me, that being, “The Ex of All You See.” Lead singer Rhett Miller put on a real weird tone in his voice that sounds as if Sean Con-nery was in the rock-n-roll hall of fame.

“Most Messed Up” is a foot-tapping album that has great sounds that carry all the way through. The problem is the sound never changes and gets boring after a while.

Connor Bliss

ously. It had a goofy comic kind of feel that was spaced throughout the movie and incorporated a serious trag-edy, great visual effects, with mystery mixed in there and Spidey crime fighting action. What more could you want?

Andrew Garfield, who played as the main character Spiderman, did a decent job in playing the part. I did pre-fer his acting compared to his predecessor Tobey Maguire.

Jamie Fox played Electro, Emma Stone played Gwen and Dane DeHaan played Harry, they all did a great job in their acting.

The director, Marc Webb, really hit it out of the park this time. I wasn’t that big of a fan of his first hero movie, “The Amazing Spiderman” (2012), but after seeing the second I’m looking forward to his next movie.

also more convenient. They can be streamed on your phone or laptop while you’re sitting on a bus or in the com-fort of your own home, which users seem to appreciate.

“I watch the majority of movies on Netflix,” junior Kathy Davoudi said, “But it depends on the movie. If it’s a movie I really like, like ‘Captain America,’ I would totally go see it in the mov-ies. Twice. It’s not a money thing, it’s more about conve-nience.”

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Sports The Mentor www.mhsmentor.com Page 4

Baseball sweeps Emporia with easeGreg WoodsSports Editor

Coming off a dominating sweep of Topeka West last week, the Manhattan High School baseball team contin-ued its momentum last Fri-day. The Indians took both games from Emporia, 9-1 and 6-1, and has now won six straight games.

“It was kind of an unin-spired effort all the way around tonight,” manager Don Hess said. “Sometimes you have those days, and we were able to not be at our best and still be successful.”

Manhattan scored one run in the first inning in the first game and used it as fuel for the rest of the contest. Senior Henry de Noble made the start for Manhattan and helped keep the Spartans to one run.

“Wins are wins and we’re happy to take them,” Hess said. “We left a little bit out there today.”

Manhattan blew the game

open in the fourth inning. Se-nior Bret Fehr hit a three-run home run, giving the Indians a 6-1 lead after the frame.

“I’m seeing the ball really well, and my timing’s locked in,” Fehr said. “[Over] the past couple weeks I’ve been hitting the ball hard every day in the cages.”

The Indians brought eight to the plate in the sixth in-ning, scoring three runs and providing insurance for the top of the seventh where they closed out the game.

Junior Jesse Steinbring started the game pitching for MHS in the finale. Steinbring gave up two hits and a run in the top of the first inning, but he held Emporia scoreless the rest of his outing.

“I really like my fastball,” Steinbring said. “I felt like I had some movement on my two-seam fastball today.”

While Manhattan did not score in its half of the first in-ning, it countered with a run in the second off the bat of senior Mike Leeper. Leeper

drove in senior Kellen Myers with an RBI double.

“I had to go [to the plate] with a little bit more focus; just [try] to do my job,” Leep-er said.

The Indians scored one run apiece in the third and fourth innings, the latter as-sisted by a double from Leep-er, who would later come around to score.

Steinbring then retired the next 12 Spartans over six innings, racking up nine strikeouts on the afternoon.

“Jesse [Steinbring] is very competitive,” Hess said. “We knew that if we could figure out how to get three or four runs, we were going to have a chance to win.”

After sweeping Emporia Friday afternoon, the Indi-ans will look to win another pair at Seaman tomorrow.

“Any time you play Sea-man, they’re going to be well-skilled,” Hess said. “We’re going to have to be able to throw the ball over the plate and make the routine plays.”

Senior Jacob Biller winds up to pitch Friday. Manhattan won both games to sweep Emporia, 9-1 and 6-1.Madison Newman, photographer

Athlete of the WeekSenior Bret Fehr

Q: What allowed you to do so well Friday?A: My mechanics have been good the past few weeks and I’m feeling confident.

Q: How long have you been playing baseball?A: I started playing T-ball when I was five years old, so 13 years.

Q: What’s the most challenging part about it?A: Definitely the men-tal part of the game.

Joseph SellStaff Writer

The swim and dive team for Manhattan High School had a long week of competi-tion, starting with a home tournament Wednesday at the K-State Natatorium, then the swimmers traveled to Great Bend Friday, while divers held a tournament at the natatorium. The swim team took first at both tour-naments, and junior Tara Schroller placed first for the dive team Friday.

“We had great competi-tion and our depth really paid off,” head coach Jerry Carpenter said. “We were able to score points with vir-tually all of our girls in each

event.” The team faced some ill-

nesses and had been missing some good swimmers for the meet Wednesday.

“[Having times go up] kind of was [disappointing] but at the same time we still have a few more meets left in the year, and I know I still have time to improve,” junior Ma-riah Scipio said. Scipio fin-ished second in the 200 indi-vidual medley and second in the 50 freestyle on Wednes-day. Other top finishers at the meet Wednesday were senior Amanda Buckwalter, taking second in the 200 and 500 freestyle, and freshman Kelly Wichmann taking first in the 100 backstroke. The team also took first in the 200

Swimming takes two first place finishes

John RockeyStaff Writer

The beginning of the end is upon them.

The Lady Indians continue into their final week before playoffs, defeating Hayden last Monday and then Wich-ita Heights this past Friday. That leaves four games in their season before they go into their Regional competi-tion.

Last Friday, the team jour-neyed to the nation’s windi-est plains to compete against Wichita Heights to finish off their week that included a

Varsity win and J.V. loss to Hayden last Monday.

“They [Wichita Heights] have similar players as they did last year. Their center mid is still there and she is a solid player,” coach Mike Sanchez said.

Far from home, J.V. took a single goal victory that Var-sity met with a resounding 3-1 win to end another suc-cessful week. Sanchez de-scribed the players as a cohe-sive group that’s taking their days one game at a time. The upcoming playoffs will start after they go into a busy two weeks.

Today the team again leaves for Wichita to face Wichita Northwest and they come home for a Thursday game against Highland Park. Next week will be at home on Tuesday against Junction City and their last regular game of the season will be on May 15 at Shawnee Heights before the start of Regional Playoffs.

“We don’t know which teams we’ll face in the post-season yet. We need to take care of the remaining games we have,” Sanchez said.

Soccer tops Wichita Heights

Louis MelgarejoStaff Writer

Spring weath-er often throws sports schedules into havoc, and now that they’re nearing the end of the season Manhattan High School’s boys tennis meets are back to back.

“We’re in the bulk of our schedule right now. We have all our meets around this weekend,” boys tennis coach Joyce Allen said.

Last Tuesday’s meet at Emporia was moved to Fri-

day at Emporia. MHS took seventh place out of the sev-en teams in attendance. The

next day they had a home duel against Olathe North West, where they won two of the eight total matches.

Finally, at yesterday’s Varsity Centennial League meet in Topeka, MHS took

fourth place of 10 teams in attendance .

“Now is a good time for our team to step up because of the Cen-tennial, Regionals and State coming up,” Allen said.

The hectic pace continues, as J.V. has a League tour-nament today in To-peka.

Tennis falls at Emporia, changes schedule

“Now is a good time for our team to step up.”

- Joyce Allen

Kennedy FeliceCopy Editor

The Manhattan High boys track team brought home an-other first place finish from the Topeka Seaman Relays Friday with a combined team score of 118.

“I was really pleased, we had lots of PRs. Obviously our boys did quite well, winning by 40 points, and the girls competed well, too,” head coach Jesse Woodard said. “We had some people that have been hovering around the same marks, and to see them getting those PRs and finally breaking past the humps is always encour-aging.”

The girls team was able to bring home a sixth-place fin-ish with 45 points.

“They all have been work-ing pretty hard and I think they are doing what they need to do,” Woodard said.

The boys 4x100, com-posed of senior Patrick Guvele, senior Henry Bie-ber, junior Tre Daniels, and junior Christian Mack, cur-rently ranked first in the state, brought home another first place finish at 42.66.

Daniels also took second in the in the 100 running 11.10, and Bieber took second in the 200 at 22.7.

“I’m not going to get too excited because anything can happen,” Woodard said. “But, if we keep everybody healthy then I think things may work out for us.”

The distance runners

pushed for excellence with first, second and fourth place finishes in the 3200 by senior Chris Melgares at 9:31.48, junior Michael Melgares at 9:34.86, and senior Jack Keeley running 9:52.52. Chris Melgares also ran 4:20.97 earning a first place finish in the 1600.

“I tell the kids all the time the most impotent meets are our last three meets of the season, League, Regionals and State. We want to win those three if possible,” Wo-odard said. “That has been

our goal since day one and that hasn’t changed so we are going to continue doing everything we can to achieve those goals.

Coming in strong for the girls, senior Alaina Schroed-er took second in the 3200, running 11:13.73 and the 1600 at 5:05.43. In current state standings Schroeder

is the top-ranked 6A girls runner in the 1600. Multiple ath-letes from Manhattan have con-tinued to climb state

rankings as the season pro-gresses.

“They’ve been pushing themselves to the point where it’s beginning to pay off. They may not like it all the time but they set the goals for themselves,” Woo-dard said. “Most of them are going to try to achieve those goals and they know the only way to get there is hard work. Nobody is just going to give it to you.”

Manhattan will travel to Salina this Friday to compete at the Salina Central Relays.

Track boys, girls finish in top spots

“That has been our goal since day one and that hasn’t changed.”

- Jesse Woodard

Chris KlugStaff Writer

Just like a buzzer-beating three pointer in basketball, or a Hail Mary on the last play in football, a walk-off in softball or baseball is always exciting. However, the Man-hattan High School softball team lost the first game of the double header at Empo-ria in walk-off style.

The Indians were able to keep the Spartans from get-ting a big inning and fought hard the whole game before losing 4-3 in the bottom of

the seventh. The Indians were close to getting out of the jam, with the count full, but the Spartans were able to come through with a game winning hit.

Losing the first game was heartbreaking, but gave the Indians a chip on their shoul-der that they took in turn to come out and play a great second game. In a low-scor-ing pitchers duel, the Indians were able to get the best of the Spartans, coming away with a 2-1 victory in yet an-other close game.

The Indians have shown improvement in the past

couple of weeks, splitting with Topeka West and now Emporia. The pitching staff seems to have found a groove and have only given up five runs in the last two games, striking out batters, hitting their spots and getting stron-ger defensive play backing them up.

After two splits in the past two doubleheaders, the In-dians look to get better and continue their success this week as they host Seaman in a makeup game and High-land Park both at Anneberg Park.

medley relay, second in the 200 freestyle relay and first in the 400 freestyle relay.

“Great day for our ladies, facing great competition our depth showed strong yet again,” Carpenter said. “We scored points in 32 of 33 point scoring opportunities [Friday].”

Top finishers on Friday were Buckwalter taking second in the 200 and 500 free, Wichmann taking sec-ond in the 200 IM and 100 breaststroke, senior Alana Bucholtz who took first in the 100 backstroke, and senior Emily Cady who took second in the 100 freestyle.

The team will next com-pete tomorrow at KSU.

Golf takes second at league meet

Softball splits with Emporia in dramatic style

Senior Scott Woods watches a drive Monday afternoon at Stagg Hill. His brother David Woods took third personally while the team took second overall.

Reid Beer, photographer

UPCOMING MATCHES•Today | J.V. | Centennial League

•May 16 | Varsity | State

Features The Mentor www.mhsmentor.com Page 5

Danielle Cook Copy Editor

The curtains were drawn and the lights of McCain Au-ditorium went up, suddenly shining brightly on and draw-ing attention to the stage, where dancers from Wash-ington Dance Studio would spend the evening showing their audience how to “Dance Out Loud,” the theme of this year’s recital.

Following dress rehearsal on Thursday night, Wash-ington’s Senior, Junior and Core Companies performed dances they have rehearsed all year at their annual spring recitals Friday evening and Sunday afternoon at Kansas State University’s McCain Auditorium.

Dancers who performed were of all ages. From pre-dance levels all the way up to more advanced levels of dance, many were com-posed of students from Man-hattan High School. Seniors Emily Andrews, Hannah Ewy, Madi Fellers, Serena Beltz, Liz Logback and Alli-son Olsen performed their final dance recital as part of a Washington Dance Studio’s Senior company, an elite

dance team that they audi-tioned for last spring.

“It was really good. I feel like I gave it my all. It was a good experience. Every re-cital is, but this one was spe-cial because it was my last one,” Andrews said of her 15th and final dance recital with Washington.

Andrews also expressed that dancing with Washing-ton has been a rewarding ex-perience in that it has taught her to work hard to reach goals and dreams.

“I’ve definitely learned how to have a good work ethic. You have to work hard at something to be good at it, and it’s also taught me how to work with other people as a team. I’m really going to miss it all. It’s nice being able to go somewhere every day and kind of having a second family there and doing what you love to do.”

The “family feel” of Senior Company is accredited to all the time the girls spend together both on the dance floor and off.

“Being on Senior Compa-ny was more than just being on a dance team. We are all really close and we had a lot of fun memories like getting

Alan Brown Multimedia Editor

Goal! The sound of millions

of fans cheering resonates throughout the stadium. The announcer bellows through the loudspeaker while the players embrace on the side-lines. Thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean, Manhattan High Students are celebrating. They are Eu-

ropean soccer fans, and they are a rare breed here in the United States.

European soccer teams, particularly those in the Eng-lish Premier League (EPL), have caught the attention o f many students. It has be-come unusual to go a single day at MHS without seeing someone wearing an EPL soccer jersey. Some may find it difficult to understand why these students support teams

Madison NewmanStaff Writer

Many teenagers have tra-ditional jobs in food service or retail while they wait to decide what they want to do later in life. But 17-year-old Reid Beer, Manhattan High junior, already some life goals in mind.

Beer has been handling his own business for the past six months. Beer estimates that he works about 10-15 hours a week on his online store.

Operating a retail busi-ness is in Beer’s blood -- his family owns the local Radio

Shack where he has picked up his business skills. Beer runs an eBay store selling items that he gets directly from China.

“Pretty much I just sell things like phone accesso-ries. It’ll sound really boring but phone batteries are what makes the most money, so that’s what I sell the most of,” Beer said.

Beer has so much busi-ness that he employs juniors Trevor Bashaw, Lisa Zhu and Peter Sang to help him.

“I pay them an hourly wage of $8. Basically they work whenever they want

to, it’s not a set schedule,” Beer said. “Right now we are running kind of like a contest where the person who works the most hours wins concert tickets, and if they work more, the hotel is paid for.”

Beer also has a specific plan for handling the money he makes.

“I save some of it to go back and re-invest and buy more products, and some of it I put into my savings account, mainly for college, and then some if it I just spend,” Beer said.

His expectations for the future are that his business

will grow big. “I hope that someday it

can become something to where it makes me enough money so I could open my own warehouse and make hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Beer said.

Beer first got experience working at his family’s Radio Shack and started his busi-ness there.

“I really liked it and so I started to do it myself. I started finding my own sup-pliers and manufacturers so then I eventually grew it to branching off and doing it on my own,” Beer explained.

There are some draw-backs, especially the time it takes to run the business.

“On the day of prom, I spent three hours doing things for [the business] when I should’ve been get-ting ready,” Beer said.

The biggest time consum-er is the process of shipping: wrapping, labeling, checking off, sealing it, repeat steps one through four over and over.

Listing items online is also very time consuming, some-thing Beer explains as “the most boring part.”

“Oh man I hate it. It takes

like 30 minutes. it’s the worst part. But that’s why I have employees,” Beer said.

Over a month with con-sistent shipments, Beer esti-mates that he can make up to $2,000. Currently, he’s not too consistent so he makes roughly $1,000 instead.

“I’m still using my dad’s credit card, so I can’t spend the money I want on it,” Beer said. However, his older brother is interested in his success and is considering investing in the business this summer, which Beer hopes will help him continue to grow his business.

Seniors perform final recital

Beer entrepreneurial in business

that are so far away. Accord-ing to the fans, the competi-tiveness of the league makes the games especially enter-taining.

“In Europe the quality of play is better,” sophomore Muhammad Ciftci said. “It’s exciting because there is a rivalry between me and my friends.”

May is a particularly ex-citing time of the year for EPL fans. The Champions

League Tournament final will be played this month, and an EPL league champion will be determined as well. Manchester City gained the upper hand yesterday after Liverpool tied with Crystal Palace. Sophomore Matt Turnley, a Liverpool fan, is disappointed by the result. However, he is glad his team is still guraranteed to finish in the top 4.

“It’s just a lot of fun any-

time the team you’re support-ing is successful, and it feels really good to be back on top after Liverpool has struggled a little in past seasons,” Turn-ley said. “They’ve been doing so well this year, ”

One of the challenges of being a EPL fan living in America is the fact that at-tending a game is nearly im-possible. Turnley, however, was fortunate enough to visit London this past year. While

he was there, he and his fam-ily were given tours of soccer stadiums, including those of Chelsea and Arsenal.

“It was a really cool expe-rience. We got to visit the locker rooms, go down to the field, and even got to sit in the player’s seats (the bench),” Turnley said. “It was exciting to actually set foot in some of the places you normally only get to see on TV.”

EuroSoccer fans feel pride

From Forensics Page 1From FFA on Page 1 From Girls State on page 1

From Eco Team on page 1

From AFS on Page 1

From NHS on Page 1

compile it all every Thursday and then we just give a lot of speeches,” Sang said.

“My finals question was ‘Should Shinz Abe, Japanese president, apologize for his recent visit to the Yasukuni Shrine?’” Sang said.

“To be honest, I thought my finals question was prob-ably the best I had all day because I had prepared for it quite a bit more. That was one of the questions I had an-swered in a practice speech earlier in the week, so I bet-ter prepared for it. And I like given speeches over the Asia region, because that’s prob-ably the region that I best know.”

As far as preparation for nationals, Sang’s plan is rath-er simple.

“Two weeks of prep, re-search and two speeches ev-eryday and then I’ll just pack up and go to Nationals,” Sang said.

The seniors on the team are very happy to be end-ing their forensics career on such a strong note.

“It’s probably the best class I’ve taken in my entire high school career and its re-ally helped me with public speaking and now I’m a grad-uation speaker and I would never be able to do that if it weren’t for this class and this program,” senior Hanna Hayden said. “It was a really good four years and if I had to do it all again I would in a heartbeat.”

those schools who we were competing against were win-ning first, second and third place were sweeping these competitions, get national Pacemaker awards for their publications.” Kansas as a whole has nationally-recog-nized journalism programs and has people who are na-tional level competitors, Nyp said.

Over the weekend The Mentor staff also got cri-tiques on the online and print publications in the All-Kansas awards. Although neither publication won the award this year, Nyp feels it’s worth it to have the critique.

“[Winning all Kansas] is our goal every year. My newspaper editors always set as a goal, and our yearbook editors always set as a goal to try to raise our publication to the All-Kansas level, so that’s something that we’re aspir-ing to,” she said.

The Foreign Exchange Program, AFS, had their elections recently as well. Juniors Maddie Ross and Megan Weathers were elected as co-presidents with vice president, sophomore Mackenzie Gwinner, secre-tary, junior Haley Heaton, treasurer, sophomore Ster-ling Edgar, club council, ju-nior Flora Riley, and juniors Riley, Jillian Kiracofe and freshman Kelly Wichmann as representatives.

On Friday, May 9, Thes-pians will hold their Awards Banquet and vote for stu-dents to fulfill the positions of president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, re-porter, points recorder, historian, Student Council representative, state board representatives and class representatives.

burn University campus and Boys State is held on the Kan-sas State University campus.

“I am excited to stay in the dorms and meet new peo-ple,” Dominguez said.

The program consists of learning about government as well as living it. In the first few days, students campaign and hold elections for the

removed; now we’re seeing three or four generations are removed from the farm. It really makes a big differ-ence, because their are not many kids coming from a farm anymore.”

Having an understanding of where food comes from is important, Wahl said.

“It is important to keep on teaching kids about the beneficial side of agriculture, because unfortunately agri-culture has some negative propaganda rushing toward it, and it is a constant battle over what is considered safe or humane.”

These negative assertions are thrown at the agriculture community by organizations like PETA, HSUS and even the MHS lunch-time-favorite Chipotle. The most recent controversial topic is Geneti-cally Modified Food (GMO). Though agriculture special-ist like Wahl claim “it’s so we can feed the world.”

Some argue that the in-creasing amount of chemi-cals going into produce and livestock cause more harm than good. However, Wahl disagrees.

“I belong to Kansas Agri-Women. We post signs along the highway displaying ag-riculture facts,” Wahl said. “And through the years we’ve had to update those signs. The ones that we have just recently updated used to say, ‘One Kansas farmer feeds 121 people.’ The updated signs now read, ‘One Kansas farmer feeds 155 people.’”

petition, the students were tested on forestry, wildlife, aquatics, soils and a current issue (which was sustainable agriculture), and they also gave an oral presentation.

“I personally love being outside and I love enjoying nature and trying to under-stand it more,” Bush said. “For me to be able to take some of my students, be-cause most of these kids are my former biology students, and show them some of the things I love and enjoy about nature, it’s really cool. And the fact that there’s actually a competition that focuses installed the new officers for

the 2014-2015 school year, including the new president, junior Katie Bussmann. Bussmann gave a speech with her visions and goals for the following year.

"One of the things I really liked about what she had to say her desire to send school materials to places that school supplies are very low. I think that that would be an easily obtainable goal, with

From Clubs Page 1

frosties at Wendy’s before rehearsal and stuff like that,” Logback said.

The senior members of Senior company were given a special dance with indi-viual solos interwined for each senior. They rehearsed the dance outside of normal class time and took it to com-petition in March where they recieved first place. The se-nior dance was extra special at the recital because it was the last time for the seniors to perform.

“We went out there and did our solos. We also were crying and the lights stayed on when we did our encore for about five minutes and it was kind of awesome,” Ol-sen said. “I’ve spent 12 years working in dance, so it was pretty emotional for me es-pecially in my senior year.”

Logback was over-whlemed by the crowd’s re-action to the senior dance.

“It was really humbling. At the end of our dance the audience just kept clapping and clapping and as I was standing on the stage holding the final pose it all hit me that I had just performed for the last time. That’s when I start-ed to cry,” Logback said.

Sophomore Megan Herpich, senior Liz Logback and sophomore Amber Daveline dance at the Washington Dance Studio recital this past weekend.

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leaders and congress mem-bers of their new “State.”

Students learn about the processes of government while exerting their own leadership skills.

“I consider myself a strong leader,” Dominguez said. “So we will see how this goes.”

Both Girls State and Boys State will take place during the first week of June.

on something like that, it’s pretty awesome.”

The team has many hopes for the years to come.

“I really hope that we can get a little more serious about the things that we’re doing so we can come to-gether and perform well,” Marshall said. “We were sur-prised that we got anything at all this year, so getting something was great, but I feel like we should be able to place higher and I’m hop-ing that eventually we can qualify for Nationals. That’s my hope, which is kind of out there, but it’d be nice to have our work pay off eventually.”

a lot of benefit to others," Smith said.

Smith also is excited for next year with hopes to in-clude a fashion show and other fundraisers, and com-munity activities. If there is anyone with a suggestion for service projects for NHS in the Manhattan community, whether it's the high school community or family mem-ber of MHS students, Smith welcomes students to stop by her office.

Trending The Mentor www.mhsmentor.com

inals survival guide

f

Madeline MarshallStaff Writer

It’s two in the morning. You’re on your sixth cup of coffee and the only thing that seems to be speeding up is the clock. Your hair is a mess, your gray, stained sweats are in desperate need of being washed and all you can think about is summer vacation. The papers around you seem to be nothing but a jumbled mess and -- oh whats that? They’re turning into birds?

Words are jumping off the pages? No. They’re just hal-lucinations. “Snap out of it,” you think. It’s four now. Less than four hours until school starts and finals begin.

The struggle of prepar-ing for AP Tests and finals is common in high schools across the country, and MHS is no exception. With this being the week that AP test-ing begins, many students have lost the opportunity to study ahead of time. In-stead, student after student

6 helpful studying tips

is left cramming the night before wondering why they ever thought this was a good idea.

However, for many it’s not too late. If you’re wor-ried about finals, or even AP tests that don’t happen until next week, you still have a chance!

For tips on how to study, when to study, what to study and more read on. This is Manhattan High’s Official Fi-nals Survival Guide.

1 2

3 4

5

Turn off your cell phone

Stock pile food Set goals and reward your-self after every half hour

belt out songs from ‘frozen’ and “Let it go”

Grab a pet to cuddle up with

soda

chocolat

e

6make flash cards and write out your notes

quadratic formula

Graphics by Madeline Marshall, Tracy Le and Liz Logback