CMS Press Cycle 5 2009 web edition (Read-Only)€¦ · Do You Know Mrs. P-K? 2 2 NFL Combine/Draft...

The popular fry? The casual chicken nugget? The hearty paper bag from home? Sometimes, being teen-agers, we don’t really realize what were actu-ally putting in our mouths. We are too caught up with friends, grades, and other dis-tractions. On the con-trary, a good start to a better life is a healthy well-balanced diet. Part of the problem for bad nutritional habits in

CAMEL RACING By Colton, George, David, JT, Jack

HUNGRY FOR NUTRITION? By Maddy, Juliana, Jazz , Natalie

Many people may not know about an excit-ing sport that takes place in many countries world-wide. This interesting sport is camel racing. Camel racing, as you might think is a sport where jockeys ride on the backs of camels.

Camel racing can

be found in Saudi Ara-bia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Mongolia and Australia. There are many people that race camels all over the world, but mostly in those six countries. There are even some races in Texas. Camel racing

happens throughout the year, but mostly during the spring and summer months. One interesting thing about camel racing is who is riding on the camel.

Camel racing has been around our world for centuries. It is a

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Inside this issue:

Pays to Get Good Grades Do You Know Mrs. P-K?

2 2

NFL Combine/Draft Budget Busters

3 3

Obsessions DEW Tour

4 4

Budget Cuts 5

Editorials 10- 28

Staff Photos 39- 40

School Distr ict of the Chathams—Chatham Middle School Web Edit ion: www.chatham-nj .org (CMS Home page) Faculty : D. Kesselbrenner

CMS-7 PRESS MARCH 2009

VOLUME 1, I SSUE 5

2008-2009

teenagers is the lack of healthy options at schools. A group of our trained journalists did a thorough investigation of our school’s lunch menu, other schools’ menus in the surround-ing areas, and the sug-gested healthy diet for teens. We hope this information improves your knowledge on nutri-tion, and puts you on track for living a health-ier life. The following paragraphs are directed

towards teenagers, parents, and school district administra-tors for improving our community’s health in general.

To begin with, Chatham Middle School has many dif-ferent choices for lunch. Though there are options to choose from, some aren’t always very appetizing to many of the stu-


There has always been controversy on whether schools should financially reward their students. Some say it drives them to learn, others see learning as an obligation, and not something you should get paid for. Some schools pay for different things like: re-port card grades, coming to class, tests and exams, passing school, etc. Students get from $8 an hour while participating in an after-school study program, to as much as $300 for attending 90% of classes a year! Plenty of states are trying it such as New York, Maryland, Kansas, and Georgia. Are these programs even working? How much are the kids really getting paid? What do some of our own teach-ers think about these programs?

Many different schools are experimenting with this program. Students attending schools in Baltimore are earning up to $110 on state tests for getting high grades on the test. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, many students are making big bucks, $300 is easy if you come to school for 90% of the school year. The schools are paying stu-dents to come because in some schools kids do not attend regularly. Atlanta schools are even paying their stu-dents for joining after school activities, getting paid $8 an hour, which is more than the minimum wage. In Chicago


Do you really KNOW Mrs. P-K? You all probably know Mrs. P-K as the nice and enthusiastic drama teacher. What you don’t know is that she has been in countless plays, commercials and movies. She is a very excit-ing person who has a great life. She has been very successful in her act-ing and teaching career. The most recent movie she will be in is Duplicity, in which she will play an Italian airport patron. This movie will be coming out in about a month. Mrs. P-K also directed the CMS play five times. Her entire family supports her in what she does. She has a five year old boy and girl and a three and a half year old daughter plus a wonderful hus-band who she has been married to for nine years.

Mrs. P-K first taught theater arts in Hudson County Community College. She chose to teach theater arts because her teachers believed in her and she wanted to pass down the knowledge of the theater. She enjoys teaching students because Theater Arts is a place where kids can be free and get away from academic pressure. When she was growing up, she wanted to be an astronaut. Before teaching in Chatham, Mrs. P-K


IT PAY$ TO GET GOOD GRADE$ By Danielle, Tess, Julia, Regan

DO YOU REALLY KNOW MRS. P-K? By Jess, Amy, Katherine, Kristin

With the first overall pick in the 2009 draft the Detroit Lions select… On April 25th and 26th, in New York City, hundreds of players await to see if they will be drafted into National Football League. Before the two days of the draft, these players have had many workouts to prove their skills to the 32 NFL teams who

are watching. Most nota-bly, prospective players have participated in the NFL combines. How a player performs during this combine, decides their fate in the draft. The NFL draft is much more than two days of teams picking players, it’s picking what player will bring their skills to the table, game in and game out.

The NFL combine took place in Indianapolis, Indi-ana during the week of February 18-24. Over three hun-dred of the very best college players were invited to the NFL combine, where hundreds of NFL scouts from every NFL team intently watched. These scouts were looking for the fastest, strongest, and most skilled players at each position. Players can impress scouts in the 40 yard dash, bench press, vertical jump, broad jump, 3 cone drill, 20 yard shuffle, 60 yard shuffle, and drills for their specific position. Some players who are already ranked pretty high don’t need to run the 40 yard dash. Players also take men-tal tests to rate their football intelligence both on and off the field. In past years, some players stock has been


What is the next project for our school? What do the principal, and some of the teachers have to say about the school and the budget? Since we are all in a bad spot with the economy, a lot of people are concerned about what the money for our school district is doing. There are a few new projects heading our way for next year! We asked Mr. Accardi, Mrs. Webb, and Mr. Desautels what they thought. We got a lot of information from them that will give you more of an insight on what the future holds. Learning about the budget proposes for our school is important, and helps kids understand how hard it is to make a school run smoothly.

We talked with Mr. Accardi to see what he had to say about the economic issues and the budget plan. He told us that because of the current economic crisis, we need to save as much money as possible. We wondered about the next project that our school is considering for the coming year. He explained that the District is pur-chasing a new grading software. The new package will provide information for our Progress Reports, Report Cards, Schedules, and the daily Attendance. All of the District Schools will have the same program, so once we journey to CHS, Mr. Accardi will be able to transfer our information very easily. In addition to all of this information, Mr. Accardi also gave us an inside scoop. The Board Education has decided they probably will not cut Theatre Arts! Clearly, Mr. Accardi had a lot to say to say about Chatham’s new budget plan. Another person we spoke with is Mrs. Webb. We asked her how she felt about the 4% tax increase, and she replied, “I know that the people in Chatham feel that their taxes are high, but where I live now, taxes just went up 48%. The economy is a bad time for everyone.” We were very interested in her response, which is why we


NFL COMBINE AND NFL DRAFT By Robert, Will, Ian, Daniel

BUDGET BUSTER$ By Chloe. Lindsey, Catherine, Grace, Sarah

CMS-7 PRESS

Do you have the new Vera Bradley Bag? How about the very popular iTouch? Well, to be honest, you’re not alone. These items, along with a few others are very popular at Chatham Middle School. But be-fore these items were popular, there were other obsessions in their place.

For some reason, the students at CMS are passionate about having the same things as eve-

rybody else. Take Uggs, for instance. They are comfortable, silky shoes that every girl seems to adore. And, why not? Since you can dress them up or down, they are perfect for any oc-casion. Next, there’s the iPod craze. The instant the school bell rings, half of the students have a pair of head-phones in their ears. Whether it’s from the iPod Nano, Chromatic, or iTouch, CMS students

can always be found blasting music in their ears. Last, the Vera Brad-ley bag seems to be the perfect touch to a Middle School girl’s outfit, used as a book bag. Because of this, the hallways before and after school are a sea of flowery patterns. Though these trends may seem magnificent now, sooner or later you’ll be fixated with something else! Do you even remem-ber the fads at Lafay-


events, in 3 different sports. In skateboarding, there are two types Street, Vert, and park. Vert is skateboarding on ramps, seeing how Vert stands for vertical using ramps. Street is using objects and obstacle that you might find in while you were skateboarding in the street. The Dew Tour also features sports like BMX and FMX. In BMX there is dirt course, and riders compete on an

The AST Dew Tour is an action sports tour that takes place during the summer. It is the world’s first season-long extreme sports tour. The Dew Tour is sponsored by Mountain Dew. Hence Dew tour. The Dew Tour is owned by ALLI, the sports alli-ance, NBC, Universal, and MTV, as well as USA Network.

The Dew Tour consists of multiple

outside park of dirt ramps and jumps. In BMX there is also park and vert. In fact, skate and BMX share the same Vert ramp. In park, riders try to score the highest score per run. Overall, the Dew Tour travels through-out America, to different spots/cities where different events take place.

The Winter Dew Tour is an action sports tour with three multi-sport events spanning the United States. Athletes can win up to $1.5 million prize. The Winter Dew Tour’s first season was last December (2008). The Winter Dew Tour started a whole new type of competition for snowboarders and skiers alike. The Winter Dew Tour takes place in different places, such as Breckenridge in Colorado, Mount Snow in West Dover VT, and the Toyota Championship in Tahoe California.


OBSESSIONS OF A CHATHAM STUDENT By Sam, Maggie, Cameron, Sydney

AST DEW TOUR By Jean-Christophe, Ian, Sean, Timmy

VOLUME 1 , ISSUE 5

It’s that time of year again. It is the time to come up with a new school budget for next year. Of course things need to be cut from the budget. The Board of Education has been trying to figure out what to cut. They have narrowed the options to eighth grade lessons, the Theater Arts program, and freshman sports. We in-terviewed Ms. Spriggs, Mrs. P-K, and Mr. Mazurkiewicz. It is very unfortunate that something will have to be cut, but sadly something must go.

One of the things the Board may take away is music lessons for eighth graders. Ms. Spriggs stated, “That lessons give a chance to focus on small group instead of the entire band at once. It really helps kids who want to change instruments. You can get more personalized instruction and get more of a bond with the smaller group and get to know your band mates.” She also stated that, “If we didn’t have lessons then the performance quality would go down”. Ms. Spriggs is really concerned about keeping lessons. When she says the performance quality would go down, she means it. The private lessons should be savored and put to good use. It gives the student’s time with Ms. Spriggs and Mrs. DeBiasse to perfect and practice their music.

Another thing the Board is thinking about cutting is freshmen sports at C.H.S. We spoke to Mr. Ma-zurkiewicz and he told us that freshman sports are an important transition for the kids who are not ready to play on the JV or the Varsity level. He also said that the transition gives them the experience to get to the Varsity level. Another thing he said was if we did not have freshman sports students would lose the transition that fresh-man sports provides, especially for the athlete who is reaching their athletic maturity.

The Board of Education may also try to cut Theater Arts. We interviewed Mrs. P-K and asked her what she thinks is important about Theater Arts, She thinks that Theater Arts allows students to get away from aca-demics and be able to get skills that they cannot get from other classes. We asked her what she thought Theater Arts gave to students and she replied, “…fun at school, confidence in front of crowds, a chance to socialize with friends and time to do stage combat.” We asked her what she thought would happen if we did not have this class and she replied “students would not get the elective of their choice and be stuck with classes like art, chorus, and study hall.” The point is we need Theater Arts.

The Board of Education, unfortunately, may have to take away one of these classes. Everyone has a reason to like or dislike these classes. But the Board is taking away these classes because of budget cuts not because of their educational opinion of them. One of the classes will have to go and will no longer be a part of the program at the Chatham School District. The Board finds these particular three classes not so important compared to all the others. In conclusion, the Board of Education is forced to make the difficult decisions on behalf of the Chathams.

BUDGET CUTS By, Hunter, Michael, Chris, Matthew

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 5 2008-2009

CMS

dents. Chatham, and many other schools in New Jersey and elsewhere, use Dowling Food Service Management, INC. who supplies the food. The Dowling Food Service tries to make a well balanced meal for students. An exam-ple of the meals are Build Your Burger on a roll, Chicken Quesadilla, Pasta and Meat Sauce, Pancakes and sausage, Tacos, Chicken Nuggets, and Pizza. Though it all sounds pretty healthy, are they really? That is a question that many students ask. Dowling Food service meets the required nutritional criteria for the state. They serve healthy food to the students, but the only thing we have commented on is the appealing side. Some of the foods that Dowling serves we find are unappealing in many ways. We mean are sausages really supposed to bounce? Are the taco shells really supposed to be stale? Is garlic bread supposed to be drenched in butter? Is the meat sauce really supposed to look unnatural? Even though some cheeses are made with mold, is it really supposed to taste funky like it...? NOOOOO!!!!!!! Are the foods that they are serving really the healthiest and most appealing choices?

“Please lose the junk food and eat healthy, real food,” is something many teens have been told by their parents. With all the events in teen’s lives, they barely have any time to eat properly. Teens enjoy the fattening, unhealthy food that tastes good. But even though it may taste good to your taste buds it’s not good for your body in many ways. Eating food that is unhealthy can mess with your emotions. Eating healthy and keeping a good diet helps maintain your brain and keeps you level emotionally. Teens should be eating lots of protein and carbohy-drates. Protein plays a key role in maintaining your muscles, hair, nails, skin, eyes, and many of your internal or-gans. In order to grow, protein is needed. Also, protein helps your red blood cells stay strong. Sometimes when you think of protein you many think of gross, unappealing foods but you’re wrong. Eggs, cheese, soy products, fish, beans, nuts, turkey, beef, chicken, and pork are only some of the foods that contain protein. Another thing that teens should be eating more of is carbohydrates. Carbohydrates help your nervous system function properly. It also helps your muscles and internal organs. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans are some of the main foods with carbohydrates. Teens should eat a filling breakfast and at least one other healthy meal a day. Every meal should contain a good source of protein, vegetables, and whole grains. In conclusion, teens are so busy with their activities, they rarely eat a healthy meal but they should try to maintain a healthy diet and eat properly. Eating properly helps your body function and keeps you well nourished.

Improving your diet will affect you in the future because if you don’t start a healthy diet now, odds are you won’t in the future, leading to being an unhealthy adult. Teen growth spurts is one of the most drastic changes in a kid’s life. To help your body with its needs, your body needs increased calories and nutrients. Studies show that children need to be exposed to a new food 10 or more times before the kid accepts it. If it is a slow process for you to adapt to balancing your diet, take these tips. Try not to eat so late at night, at least not after seven. This way your food will digest better, and the food won’t just sit there. Another thing you can do is try to eat more vegetables and salads with your meals. By doing that you’re getting your protein and still having your healthy nutrients. When you eat breakfast in the morning, try to eat it with fruits more often to help boost your energy in the morning for a LOOOOOOOOOONNNNNGGG day of school. STAY AWAY FROM FAST FOOD RES-TAURANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is ok to treat yourself every once in a while, but c’mon Burger King burgers every day??? We don’t think so. Even if you’re in a rush try and take something with you on the go. Don’t eat snacks before din-ner; all you are is wasting your dinner on a bag of Cheetos. That’s surely not the way to go! If you take a sandwich to school make sure its whole wheat, it is much better for you. If you eat lunch at school don’t drench the fries in salt, HIGH SODIUM ISN’T THE WAY TO GO! These tips will help you have better guidelines on what you are putting in your mouth.

School district administrators and food companies, such as Dowling Food Service Management should take into consideration many of those tips from the previous paragraph. It’s not just the kid’s responsibility; adults need to help as well by providing good food options. We all know times are tough, and our economy isn’t it the best shape. But there must still be a way to improve food options at school and at home. Maybe reducing portion

Nutrition (Continued from page 1)


CMS-7 PRESS

sport where camels run from one point to another and the first camel that crosses the finish line wins. At young ages children are kidnapped from their countries and are used as camel jockeys, and these child jockeys have to weigh about 33 pounds so the camels can run faster with less weight. These races are being bet on and the loser jockey might be starved, beaten, or even beaten to death. Over the years there have been complaints to Dubai that they should not kidnap young children to be used as camel jockeys there-fore they were forced to make robot jockeys. These robot jockeys are controlled from people’s cars that drive beside the camels.

Nowadays, instead of using child jockeys, they use robot jockeys made from a wireless receiver which ac-tivates the drill holding a riding crop. This is better because many people protested against using children because they believed this was child abuse. These robots are controlled by people in cars right outside the race track rid-ing alongside the camels. These robot jockeys are lighter than the children, because the child jockeys weigh 33 pounds, and the robot jockeys only weigh 10 pounds. Many people have found a new way to improve these jockeys, but it is not exactly fair, because they are enhanced. These enhanced jockeys are more effective in racing and expensive at the same time. The manufacturers of these enhanced robot jockeys use a long riding crop, a more powerful drill, and they also use a wireless receiver. Finally, these robot jockeys are a more effective and safer way to ride camels.

Camel racing is seen all around the world. The Camel Cup takes place is Alice Springs in Imperija. Camel racing has been around since 1970. It takes place every year on July 11 in the Todd River Bed, Imperija. There are 4 races and the winner can get 1000 to 1600 dollars. In the Camel Cup there can be as many as 15 camels at a time. The winner is given a trophy at the end of the day. Another championship is the annual Kings Cup Camel Race in Saudi Arabia. There are up to 2000 competitors although there are only 20 to 30 competitors per race.

Camel racing is vicious sport that is not safe to our world. There are kids being used as jockeys and five year olds dying. It would be a great sport if all the countries that include camel racing used the light weight ro-bots. The sport would increase in popularity and would be a lot safer. This sport takes place in blazing hot des-serts in the Middle East. In conclusion, camel racing is a very interesting sport.

Camel (Continued from page 1)

sizes, or buying a surplus of healthy foods, might help to make healthy food more affordable. We should have more greens, granola, and freshly prepared foods as an option, and scratch the frozen fries and unhealthy foods. We are in dire need of change, or obesity will become a HUGE issue. It is apparent that everyone needs to pitch in!

Having a good nutritional diet will benefit you in many ways to be healthy and stay healthy. Obesity is run-ning wild throughout the schools. Health is very important to your body especially now at this age. Try and think about all the junk food you put in your mouth a week. Can you actually believe how much fat and grease you put in your mouths?! You are supposed to have 1,600-1,800 calories a day. Can you imagine if you eat this stuff every day?! If you eat this junk food this whole year you will not have good nutrition, and your energy will suffer. Kids are supposed to gain 6.5 pounds a year and if you are eating 6 pounds of food a day you will gain a total of 6 pounds. If you are not eating what you need to be eating you are affecting your body, even if you don’t feel it. High cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, joint disease, strokes, arthritis, and other series of dis-eases are all caused from obesity. In 20 years from now do you want to be just laying down on the couch with no energy, or would you rather be energetic from eating the healthy foods you need and not being ashamed of eating the food because you had experience from eating it while you were young? We think you should take the first op-



taught in Jersey City and in Hoboken. Even though Mrs. P-K is teaching us about the wonderful world of Theater, She still performs on the sidelines.

Break a leg! Not literally, break a leg means good luck in theatre. That’s what Mrs. Priano-Keyser does best. Mrs. P-K started acting in high school. She is one of a kind. If Mrs. P-K was to be told she couldn’t do thea-tre anymore, she wouldn’t know what to do with her life. When theatre arts was threatened to be taken away from the Chatham school district, she said she was “devastated”. Mrs. PK believes that theatre is a place to get away from real life problems. No wonder she wants to go back to acting full time if she ever retires. Mrs. P-K has had a long journey to get to where she is today. She first became interested in drama when she was in 7th grade. She went to three different colleges. She went to Point Park in 1992 and she graduated with a theater degree. She went to Villanova in 1994 and got her masters in theater. Then she went to St. Peters in 2002 and got her master’s in education. In 1998 Ms. P.K. became a teacher at CMS. For five years Mrs. P-K directed the CMS play. (1998-2003) She also got married in 1999. As one can see, a lot of wonderful and exciting things have happened in Mrs. P-K’s life!

Mrs. P-K (Continued from page 2)

CMS-7 PRESS

some schools are checking their students’ grades every five weeks, to make sure they are up to par. If they re-ceive an A they will get $50, B will get you $35, and C will give you $20. A profit of $4,000 could be earned by a straight-A student by the time they are in their sophomore year of high school. Some people believe this is a bribe for the students to get good grades. Many different schools in a wide range of places are using this way to bribe their students to do better and better.

The success of this method varies for different schools, and there is a wide range of money paid depend-ing on the school attended. Money is working as a great incentive for students all over the country, even though it may not be teaching a good lesson. A student attending Uplift Community High School said that getting $4,000 will definitely change his mind about school. He planned to study in order to pass his classes and receive the money. This shows that for some students money can really change their idea about the effort work they should put in for class. Would money make you try harder in school?

Many people have different opinions on rewarding students. We went to the administration and asked them for their opinion on this topic. First, we questioned our Principal, Mr. Accardi, and one of our Assistant Prin-cipals, Mr. Trebour. They had the same general idea that money is not a good motive for kids to do their home-work. When we asked Mr. Accardi what he thought about this, he stated that some things, like grades, have a separate important value other than money. He also mentioned that this method would motivate kids to get better grades, but that it would be the wrong motivation to do so. Mr. Trebour also had the same ideas that Mr. Accardi had, but he took into consideration that in our community, the kids are already high achieving and well taken care of by their parents, so there is really no reason for using money as a motivation. Of course, other people had their own opinion about this topic. Ms. Silverman, our 7th grade guidance counselor, said that paying kids for their grades was an interesting idea and that she could see why people thought so. Like the other administrators, Ms. Silverman thought that money isn’t a good motivation because parents have been trying it for years and it only sometimes works. Even though you may want money for good grades, it would never give you an internal motive to do well in school for other reasons.

There are plenty of mixed opinions on whether kids should get paid for good grades. Plenty of schools pay their kids, and plenty don’t. Some say it is a great way to motivate kids, others don’t think it’s necessary. Maybe in some communities money in a great incentive for kids to do their work, but would it work in Chatham? Do kids already have the luxury of money and the money from school wouldn’t matter for them? We’ll leave you to decide.

Grades (Continued from page 2)


hurt because they do not know the game very well. Overall, the NFL combine will decide where and when these elite college players will be drafted.

A standout of this year’s combine is Aaron Curry, a linebacker from Wake Forrest. He was a stand out in most of the drills of the combine. For example, in the 40 yard dash he ran a 4:5 which is pretty impressive for a line backer; he benched 25 reps of 250 pounds; he jumped 37 inches in the vertical jump; he jumped 10 feet and 4 inches on the broad jump (long distance jump), and ran the 60 yard shuffle in 11 seconds. Other standouts in-clude, quarter back Matthew Stafford of Georgia, receiver Michael Crabtree of Texas Tech, defensive tackle B.J Raji of Boston College, and offensive tackle Jason Smith of Baylor.

All of the players in the combine/draft had to have been somewhat good. There are seven rounds in the draft and thirty-two picks in each round, therefore 224 of the 300 players will get the chance to go into the NFL. In the preseason, they have to prove to their coaches that they are good enough to be on the team so they don’t get cut. This is known as the rookie signings. A good example of a lucky draft pick is Tom Brady of the New Eng-land Patriots. He was selected in the 6th round of the draft and has led his team to 3 Super Bowl wins. A player who is amazing now, but was cut during the rookie signings is Derrick Ward of the New York Giants, he was cut by the Jets and picked up by the Giants soon after. All of these players work hard on the field and worked hard in their classrooms, and it has brought them to what they have always wanted to do, play pro football.

If a player gets drafted to a team in the first or second round instead of the 5th round, the player could make millions of dollars instead of hundreds of thousands of the dollars. Most of the time the combine is what determines how high a player will be picked in the draft. During the combine players will go up and down depending on how well the player works out you. Players can be evaluated for how much they can lift, how fast they can run a 40 yard dash, and certain drills depending on their position. Say a player ran a 4.5 in the 40 yard dash, and an-other person ran the 40 yard dash in a 4.9, the player who ran the better time could be drafted in the first round while the other player could be drafted in the fifth round.

For some players in the combine they have to work hard in order to make the draft in two different places. For example, men like William Beatty, a talented athlete who works extremely hard on the field no matter what it’s about. Due to his great performance in the combine he will be drafted higher than most people expected. Beatty, could surprise many people, and could be drafted in the higher rounds because of his combine perform-ance. Beatty prepared for the combine by practicing the performance tests, building his strength, and practice running the 40 yard dash to get faster. As one can see players like William Beatty work hard on and off the field in order to succeed.

With the 32nd pick in the seventh round of the 2009 NFL draft, the Pittsburgh Steelers select… On April 26, 2009 the wait will finally be done, all seven rounds of the NFL draft will conclude. Some players will be very happy after this draft, because of how high they went in the draft, while others will be disappointed because of when they were drafted. A lot of the times, these players status in the draft was decided way before this during the NFL combine. In conclusion, the NFL combine is very important for players entering the NFL draft, because most of the time it decides their fate in the draft.

Draft/ Combine (Continued from page 3)

tion, but hey it’s your life, but nutrition does take a big part of it. Nutrition makes you have a better life style and a better you.

In conclusion, good nutrition is important for growing teens. We need to get on the healthy track for life, with well-balanced diets, academics, and other activities.


E D I TO R I A LSE D I TO R I A LSE D I TO R I A LSE D I TO R I A LS

CMS-7 PRESS

Would You Like Some Chemicals With That?

By Chloe If you had to guess, how many times do you

think you have been to Burger King? McDonalds? Wendy’s? These are just some examples of restau-rants that don’t serve organic food. When you buy food labeled "organic," you can be sure that it was produced using the highest production and handling standards. The price on organic food is much higher than the price on non-organic food, which can be a problem for some people. Organic food is produced by farmers who don’t use bio-persistent nonselective chemical pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers. (In other words, these farmers don’t use growth hor-mones on their animals and crops.) Do you really want to be putting horrible chemicals into your body?

Primarily, all around the world there are mil-lions of restaurants that serve food that is not certi-fied organic. Eating food that is not organic isn’t nec-essarily fatal; it can just really hurt your body. If you go to restaurants that don’t serve organic foods, there is a good chance that the food was produced in a factory where the animals are injected with growth hormones. When you eat this meat, the chemicals are now in your body. Some fruits like bananas you don’t have to buy organic because you don’t eat the skin. Other fruits like apples you do need to buy organic because the skin is thinner, and sometimes you eat the skin. As you can see, organic food is an important part of eating healthy.

Furthermore, something that annoys some people is that organic food is priced much higher than non-organic food. In my opinion, eating organic is worth the extra bucks. Although, for some people, they can’t spare any extra dollars right now, so they have no choice. The only reason why organic food is priced higher than regular food is because it takes much more elbow grease to produce it. The workers


Camping for Life?

By Cameron Have you ever con-

sidered what it would be like not to live in your perfect suburban house or apartment, without perfect cars, perfect jobs, or perfect clothes? Welcome to the life of the home-less people of America. The beginning of a depression starts with a recession--a recession like we are in now. The economic times right now are dire; the worst they’ve been since, spookily enough, the Great Depression. Bad economic times mean several things: foreclosures, layoffs, and sometimes even poverty. In the capital city of Sacramento, California, a strange lifestyle is occurring. It is called a tent city. A tent city is a simple concept: a tiny tent on a patch of cold, muddy ground. Tent cities have up to 1,200 residents. Have you ever whined when you had to sleep in a large tent with thick, warm sleeping bags, on a closed campground site five whole miles away from suburbia and the nearest mall? Oh, and you had to cook your own dinner, and you couldn’t text your friends? Poor little spoiled Chatham kid! How did you live through it? Rest assured: whatever you ‘lived through’, a resident of a tent city goes through something at least ten times worse. The people who reside in tent cities have fallen on hard times. Whether they lost their jobs, couldn’t afford their house, or invested poorly in stocks, the general problem is the same: lack of money. Their new homes are cramped tents worn thin from the elements, planted on the ground. The meals they eat now are boiled potatoes and sometimes meat on a good day; nothing to eat on a bad day. Their tents offer no protection against violence, weather, and have little to no privacy. These are not troubled homeless people mumbling to themselves in an alley, they are people with families and lives…people who once had jobs and homes. Living in a tent city is a bit




Golden Doodles By Colton

Have you ever wanted a dog that does-n’t shed and is loveable at the same time? Then

look no further, the Golden doodle is the type of dog for you. These dogs are half Golden Retriever, half Poodle. Since Poodles don’t shed, breeding ensures that neither do Golden doodles. These dogs are the perfect house pets, since they don’t shed and have all the love of a Golden Retriever. These dogs are very friendly with other pets, kids, and other people in general. Their poodle side gives them very minimal to no shedding at all. They only need to be walked a few times a week. If you have ei-ther a fenced off front yard, or back yard for them to frolic in they need even less walking. They even are great with families with allergies. For instance, my dad is allergic to dogs, and my Golden Doodle even sleeps on my parent’s bed, and he is fine because they don’t shed. They are also very intelligent. They inherit this from their poodle side as well as their minimal to no shedding trait. Finally, these dogs make perfect house pets. Golden Doodles are also very adventurous, and this can get them into trouble sometimes. For example, my Golden doodle, Sandie, will sometimes get into our trash cans, or take food off the counter. They also can become afraid very easily, because sometimes, if they fall in water they will immediately get out, but if they wade into the water they will stay in it for a while. They are also afraid of thunder, because when they here this they will look frightened, and will most likely want to stay by your side. They do spend a lot of time lying down, but most dogs do this so it is natural. In conclusion, these dogs are not perfect, like all other beings. These dogs are great for families with allergies because they don’t shed. They are also friendly dogs and great with people. They also don’t need to be


The Unfair Advantage By Regan

In the world of swimming there are plenty of different styles of suits people wear. Regular suits, knee-skins, and full-body suits, etc. In addition to that, plenty of different material is used in making different suits. In has been ruled by USA Swimming, that no child 12 years or younger is allowed to wear a full-body suit. I think that kids 12 and under should be allowed to wear full-body suits. It isn’t much different than allowing older kids to wear them, and is even putting kids 12 and un-der at a disadvantage. First, a full-body suit does put the swimmer wearing it at an advantage. It covers more of the body. It is like a regular suit, but it extends down the legs all the way to the ankles. This makes your legs more streamlined, so the water doesn’t drag you as much. In addition, the suit is made of a special mate-rial. The swimmer wearing the dry suit has less gravity pushing down on them than someone wearing a regular suit. They make you more buoyant, therefore lighter in the water and able to go faster. The material and tightness of the suit also resists letting water in mak-ing you even lighter. This suit provides plenty of ad-vantages. Laws were passed saying no child 12 years old or younger is permitted to wear a full-body suit. They don’t want the suit bringing kids up a level in competi-tion. As Australian head coach Alan Thompson put it,”… it’s just not what is necessary in this sport.” I dis-agree. I believe this law is not fair. The law was passed because they don’t want the competition to go up a level, yet some people are already at that level with or without the suit. I personally would love to wear a full-body suit if it means improvement in my performance. I take swimming very seriously, and if someone like me was to wear a full body suit, it wouldn’t change the competition level that much. There isn’t going to be much of a difference whether you are 12 or



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Sports Make a Difference

By Sarah

Are you looking for a quick and easy way to meet new people? Are you the one who gets a lecture every Saturday about “getting up and exercising?” And, are you the one who starts fights about who cheated in a soccer game in gym? Although these problems may seem hard to get by, there’s a simple solution to each one. This is to play sports. Sports help you meet new people, become a better sport, and they help you stay fit. Playing sports, even if it’s something small and on the side, can really make a dif-ference in your life.

To start, sports are one of the greatest ways to meet new people. You learn to take in constructive criticism from the people you meet on the field, and use it to get better and better. At the end of last summer, I joined the 8th Grade Chatham United Team, and didn’t just improve my kicks and passes. I met a bunch of people who I could count on, laugh with, and really just enjoy being around. That’s the great thing about soccer, basketball, lacrosse, softball, and pretty much all team sports. You really get close with every-one on your team, and you get used to working with other people to win the game. Clearly, playing on or joining a sports team is an easy way to have fun, and to meet new people.

Also, playing on a team, or doing an individual sport can help you to become a better sport, on and off the field. Many people are just naturally competi-tive, and this isn’t a bad thing. Still, being too com-petitive, or having the feeling that you need to be the best at EVERYTHING can way you down, and get you into some pretty nasty arguments. There are many ways to get that need to win feeling away, but sports


Kara DioGuardi: A Third Wheel?

By Sam

For seven straight seasons, American Idol has been one of the most popular shows on television. In fact, in mid-Season 6, the show reached a highpoint of 37.7 million viewers. From there, however, the ratings began to decrease slightly. Though it wasn’t by much, it still caused peo-ple to wonder. It’s possible that fans became bored of the worn-out format. Maybe, the three judges and their predictable comments were no longer appealing. Or maybe the contestants weren’t interesting enough. Either way, many changes were made to this show, the biggest being the introduction of a fourth judge, Kara DioGuardi. Kara DioGuardi is a very popular and desired songwriter. As of now, she has had 39 albums in the top 10 of the Billboard’s Top 200 Chart. She has written and co-written songs for Christina Aguilera, Ashley Tisdale, Kelly Clarkson, The Pussycat Dolls, Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, Faith Hill, and many oth-ers. Additionally, she is a co-owner of Arthouse En-tertainment, a company that has produced many popu-lar songs. Kara has won a BMI Award, was nominated for a Latin Grammy, and was presented the TAXI A&R Award. Before reaching this success, however, she faced some struggles along the way. Her many at-tempts to have a solo or band career never flourished, as she had hoped. Instead, songwriting became her main occupation, until July 2006, when she became a judge in The One: Making a Music Star. This was a show similar to American Idol that unfortunately had the opposite effect on the public. It had disastrous results, with the second lowest rating for a TV show premiere on a major American network, and was imme-diately cancelled. From there, she continued with songwriting and musical production. Last year, her career suddenly turned out to be a lot more glamorous




Lacrosse: Best Sport on Earth!

By Sean In my opinion lacrosse is the best sport in the world. La-

crosse is one of the most popular sports in Chatham. Lacrosse is a team sport that was organized by sev-eral Native American tribes. The Native American tribes used to play the game non-stop for days and they would use their enemies’ heads as the lacrosse ball. Believe it or not, lacrosse is the national summer sport of Canada. Lacrosse is known as “the fastest game on two feet”.

There are four different positions on a la-crosse field: midfield, attack, defense, and goalie with twenty players on the field (ten from each team). The objective of the game is to score and not let the other team score by either checking them or taking the ball away from them. I am a goalie and it is my job to stop the shots coming from the other team. It is also the goalie’s job to direct the defense and stop all the shots that are coming at them. The boy’s lacrosse players have to wear shoulder pads, elbow pads, hel-met, and gloves. In addition the goalies have to wear a chest protector, gloves, and a helmet.

The game is started by a face off. The face off is played at the start of the game, the start of each quarter, the start of the 2nd half, when either team scores, or when play is restarted with a face off. When one team has position of the ball, the ref yells position and that is when the defense and attack and come out of the restraining box. If the defense or attack comes out of the box before the ref yells position the other team gets the ball.

Penalties are a big part in the game of la-crosse. When a player gets a penalty they have to sit in the penalty box for 30seconds to 3minutes. The penalties include: slashing, tripping, cross checking, unsportsmanlike conduct, unnecessary roughness, ille-gal crosse, illegal body checking, illegal gloves, holding,


New York Gi-ants

New Defensive Coordinator: Good or Bad?

By Daniel After the Giants defensive coordinator, Steve

Spagnulo, was hired by the Rams as their new head coach, the Giants were left without a defensive coor-dinator. At first, Spagnulo was a linebacker coach for the Eagles, and then was hired by the Giants as their defensive coordinator. He had been with the Giants for two seasons. Spagnulo was a very good defensive coordinator, and helped lead the Giants to an upset Super Bowl win against the Patriots, who were seeking perfection.

He is now gone, and a new defensive coordina-tor Bill Sheridan, has taken his place. Spagnulo set the bar very high with a Super Bowl win, and many people already don’t like him, just because he took Spagnulo’s space. All Giants fans wanted him to stay; unfortu-nately Spagnulo went to the Rams.

I believe Bill Sheridan will be a pretty good coordinator, and he will only get better, although many fans believe he could be bad because it’s his first year on the job, he has been in the NFL for four years, all with the Giants. I believe he will be a good coordina-tor, apparently so does Tom Coughlin who said, “Bill is a good coach,” when Coughlin selected him to be their new defensive coordinator. I believe the fans, who believe he will not be good, should help support him, so he’s more comfortable and makes more progress, and he can help the Giants defense.

In conclusion, I don’t care that Spagnulo’s gone, yea, he was good, but I believe Sheridan will be just as good, and everybody should support him. Any fan that doesn’t isn’t a true Giants fan. So, I believe he will be good, and may help lead the Giants to an-other Super Bowl victory.


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Stressed Out By Catherine

How can I finish my science project, go to lacrosse practice, study for a math test, and get the rest of my homework done all in one night? Lots of kids face similar questions many nights in the week. Nobody likes stress. It makes us tired, grumpy, and not pleasant to be around. Many teens face stress, and stress comes from the way your mind and body reacts to big changes. Some factors that cause stress are too many academic pressures, and taking too many activities at one time First, one cause of stress is the pressure of school. You feel pressured to do well on tests and quizzes, do your homework, and get a good grade on your report card! Many kids agree that there is lots of homework, and studying, but it helps us get good grades. Don’t worry because there are many ways to relieve this stress. One way to do this is to breaking your huge amount of tasks into smaller more manage-able tasks. For example, if you have many different little assignments do them in parts and then take a five minute break after you do each part. The key is to just focus on little things instead of stressing out about every assignment. Another thing you can do to relieve the stress is to take deep breaths and just focus on your breathing for five minutes. Next time you think you can’t get everything done try these sug-gestions to minimize the stress of schoolwork.

Secondly, besides having the stress of school-work there is the stress of taking too many activities at one time. Many kids do after school activities like sports, art and music classes, and other fun things. After school activities are good for kids to find inter-ests that they enjoy, but having an over load of after school activities is not. Lots of kids overload on the after school activities so there is no time to do home-work, hang out with friends, or just relax. Having too much after school activities causes lots of stress. But, for the people with the activity overload there are


Would You Kill an Albino? By Maggie

“I feel like I’m being hunted.” This was said by Mr. Mluge, an Albino living in Tanzania (pronounced Tan-zuh-nee-a), which is in Af-rica. This is one of the most common places for Albi-nos to live, and is now one of the most common places to be killed. Albinism is a genetic disease where you have two recessive genes that affect the pigment in your skin, hair, and eyes, which means that you have extremely pale skin, very light eyes, and incredibly white hair. Most of the time, Albinos have problems with seeing, and some are even diagnosed legally blind. Albinos are very sensitive to the sun and are easily at risk in getting skin cancer. Albinism isn’t contagious and you cannot tell if someone is an albino just by looking at them. In Tanzania there is a huge problem with Albinos; they’re being hunted. People believe that albino bones and blood can be used for superstitions. One superstition is that if you sprinkle Albino’s blood in mines, you will find gold. People use Albino’s blood for other superstitions such as potions that are be-lieved to be magical drinks that can change you in cer-tain ways. ”They’re all just as stupid. There is nothing ‘spiritual’ about behaving like you’re still in the Stone Age.” This was quoted by a police officer who recently arrested a man in Tanzania who was attempting to sell his Albino wife to Congolese leaders.

We are more advanced here in America than in Tanzania, so we don’t treat Albinos the way they do because we know more about them. Under The Same Sun is a group that is trying to show people in Africa that Albinos are not that different than normal peo-ple, other than the pigment in their skin. One six year old girl recently was found dead with her head and limbs removed. The attackers broke into her home and tied up the girl’s parents just before shooting her head off. This is just one of the many killings being pursued in Tanzania. She was the sixth killing from




America’s Game By Timmy

Have you ever heard the term America’s Game? Well if you have, usually you have heard it in terms of baseball. Although, baseball is not the only sport created by in America, there is also basketball and football. I think that the real America’s Game should be football.

Although basketball, baseball, and football were created by the Americans, one specifically is known as America’s Game, baseball. I think football should be America’s game because football is the only sport out of the three that has never in the Olym-pics. Yes, there is the CFL (Canadian Football League) and the EFL (European Football League), but they cannot be compared in their quality of skill to the American League. Basketball, on the other hand, is played in the Olympics, and a total of 56 nations have a team to play basketball. Baseball is played in the in the Olympics, but is not as big as the most Olympic sports because it is during the baseball season so they just use players from the minor league. Al-though, the more popular WBC (World Baseball Clas-sic) is basically like the Olympics, except specifically for baseball. Baseball has also been almost been taken over by Southern, or Eastern countries such as Cuba, Dominican Republic, Korea, and Japan. Based on the time period, baseball comes first, then football, and last basketball. Baseball was created for the first time on June 19, 1846 in Hobo-ken. Football was created November 6, 1869 at Rut-gers. Basketball was created in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts. They have all been created in a 45 year time period so that does not matter much. As you can see, I think that football should be America’s real game. Lacrosse is out of the ques-tion, even though I play it, it was created by Indians in the 12th century. I think that football is the best sport.

Family Feasts By Julia Do you eat din-

ner with your family every night? When you sit down to dinner does your family share what they did that day? Eating din-ner with your family can be very important. This opens the door of communication between you and your par-ents. It allows you to tell your parents what went on during your day and what you have planned for tomor-row. Eating dinner with your family throughout the week can also be good for your health. It has been proven that teens that sit down to eat dinner with their family are less likely to use drugs. Overall, eating dinner with your family can be very beneficial to your life.

When you eat dinner with your family you probably do not talk about drugs or your health, right? You may not know it but by eating dinner with your family it can prevent you from becoming involved in the use of drugs. Parental influence and involvement are crucial in preventing teen drug abuse. Dr. Bowden and Dr. Zeisz have conducted a study that proved that teens that eat dinner with their family on a regular basis are less likely to use drugs or be depressed. Also, it has been proven that teen girls who eat dinner with their family at least 5 times a week are 1/3 less likely to have eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Even though you think you may just be sitting down to eat dinner and that it is pointless, it really can have an effect on your life. You may not believe it, but kids that eat dinner with their family at least four times a week are more likely to get better grades. Researchers have found that teens that sit down to eat dinner with their family are more likely to receive A’s and B’s in school more often than others that do not have dinner with their family. Have you ever wondered where your good grades came from? Eating dinner with your families of course!



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How Impor-tant is Out-door Play?

By Michael

Do you play outdoors often? Well, it is a very important part of your everyday routine. Instead of doing something inside why not get your butt off the couch and get outside? You can do wiffle ball, any sport, and yard games. Outdoor fun gives you exercise that burns calories and possibly social time with friends and family for outdoor fun. Why wouldn’t you do this? First of all, it is very important to exercise. Why not make that time fly by with some outdoor fun. There are infinite things to do to break a sweat and burn calories while having fun. For example, just a couple of hours of rollerblading burns about 900 calo-ries. Even just some simple jogging for an hour at a steady pace of 5 mph can burn 500 calories. This is so easy and so effective for your health. In addition to exercise, you can bond with friends or family with outdoor play. You can play yard games and toss around the ball or anything to get fresh air and time with close people. If you join a sports club, you can meet many people from many places. For example, I play soccer and I met a bunch of new people on my new team from places like Randolph, and Montville. Sports programs can get you socialized with people from all around or people you can get to know better. Outdoor playing is a good way to meet new people and have fun. As one can see, outdoor play does more than get you fresh air. It gives you exercise and time with new or known people. You can throw the baseball, kick the soccer ball, or anything to get you out of your seat and outside. With spring around the corner, it is a big thing to consider. So drop what you are doing and enjoy the time you have and outside!

Have you ever had the dinner experience of a

life time? By Amy

Benihana is just that place! It’s a place that you can pretty much have what you desire and as much of it as you want. It all comes down to two things. The experience and the menu! You will be so over-whelmed and excited you just will not know where to stop! You should definitely check this place out with a family style dinner on a Satur-day night. Benihana is not a normal sit down dinner, it is hibachi style! The cook cooks right in front of your seat. You get your meal right off the stove and you watch them cook your own food. Sometimes the cooks even put on a little show for you with the salt and pepper shakers, and when they sharpen up the knives in the beginning of the meals. In addition they also do tricks with the shrimp tails after cutting up the shrimp. Another word for hibachi is Teppanyaki. Benihana first opened their doors in 1964. Benihana has become the longest running dinner show in the world. Also, in addition to having the hibachi style dinner show, there is a sushi bar where you can be seated and have sushi. Benihana is the perfect dinner for biseness or a friendly family dinner! One of the best things at Benihana where it all really starts is the menu! The menu contains chicken, beef or seafood, along with vegetables. The meal also begins with a delicate Japanese onion soup, followed by a salad with a ginger dressing. Further-more, your entrée will be served with homemade dip-ping sauces and steamed rice, or if you prefer, Beni-hana’s mouthwatering hibachi chicken rice. They also offer tempura, sushi and special rolls made just for you. Benihana has a delicious menu that is calling your




Which Spring Sport Will YOU

Play? By Grace

Spring is a great season for hanging outside with friends in the sun, but you can’t forget about staying active! The two major spring sports for Chatham-ites are softball and lacrosse. Personally, I believe that lacrosse is a more lively sport than soft-ball, meaning you get more exercise when you play it. Softball is still a great sport to play, but by playing lacrosse, you are burning more calories as well as get-ting a bunch of exercise. Now, let me explain why I believe that playing lacrosse is better for you, as well as more fun to play. First of all, I know that there is also quite a lot of running in softball, but there is also a lot of standing around. Since lacrosse is a running sport, you are almost never standing still, but instead you are running around the whole game trying to score a goal. As soon as the two center players make the draw and toss the ball in the air, everyone is moving around. In softball, you swing at a ball while holding a bat, but you do this while you are standing still. The only part of running that you have in softball is when you try to get a run for your team, or when you’re fielding and you’re chasing after a ball so you can get your opponent out. You are burning more calories when you play lacrosse, because you are running around more than you are during softball. Another reason you should play lacrosse in-stead of softball is that it is also more fun! Softball lovers may argue that softball is more fun than la-crosse, but this is just my opinion. Anyway, during lacrosse you are running around and passing back and forth with your teammates (which are almost always your friends!), but during softball, you only interact with your teammates/friends once in a while. Also, during lacrosse you are running up and down the field, passing back and forth, and scoring goals almost all


We Need a Play-off System in College Football

By Robert As of right now a great sport is being ruined by an absurd system that can easily be fixed. In col-lege football they use a system called the BCS which stands for Bowl Championship Series to determine the best college football team. In this series, a com-mittee chooses 8 teams to be in the 4 major bowls, The Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and the Orange Bowl. Next, the committee chooses what they think to be the two best teams in college foot-ball to play each other in the BCS National Champion-ship Game. This sounds all well and good, but every year a few teams are snubbed from being in the Na-tional Championship Game. If the committee, in-stead of having this bogus system, could just have an eight team playoff, a lot of controversy would be solved, and college football would be much more in-teresting. This year there was a lot more controversy than past years which brought up this topic. This year, Florida played Oklahoma in the National Cham-pionship Game, but two other teams had great argu-ments to play in the game. First, Oklahoma and Flor-ida both had records of 12-1, Oklahoma’s only lost to Texas, and Florida only lost to Ole Miss. These teams both deserved a chance for a National Title, and many others teams did, too. The controversy came with two teams, Utah and Texas, who both had legiti-mate arguments to be compete for a National Title. If there was an 8 team playoff system, then all four of these teams plus four other teams could compete for a National Title.

First, the Utah Utes have a strong argument to be in the National Championship Game because the Utes were the only Division 1 team to record a per-fect record, 13-0. One might ask why the Utes were not in the Championship Game if they had the best



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The New York Jets By David

Lots of people think the Jets are a bad team. The New

York Jets are not a great team, but are they bad? Two seasons ago the Jets had a record of 4-12. That was bad. Last season they went 9-7. That was not great, but it was a lot better than having only four wins. The Jets have defiantly gotten a lot better. The Jets beat the Tennessee Titans who, at the time, were 10-0. Lots of New York Giants fans will say that the Jets are bad. The Jets beat the Giants in pre-season. The Giants fans will argue that pre-season does not matter or even count, but the Jets still won. The Jets did have some bad players like Brett Favre. In the be-ginning of the 2008 season the Jets made Favre play the offense that Chad Pennington, the old Jets quar-terback, had played. At the end of the season when Favre was tired out, the Jets let him play the offense Favre was used to from the Green Bay Packers. In 2007 The Jets also did not have a good of-fensive line, but with the addition of Alan Faneca, Da-mien Woody, and Brandon Moore in 2008, they were a lot better. The offensive line also had two good veter-ans, D’Brickashaw Ferguson and Nick Mangold. Alan Faneca, Nick Mangold, and Damien Woody all live in Chatham. Nick Mangold is one of the best centers in the NFL. Alan Faneca and Damien Woody both have been on winning Super Bowl teams, Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots. Now the question is if the Jets will be good in 2009. Right now the Jets do not have a definite quar-ter back. So far there are three players that could be the Jets, Kellen Clemence, Erik Ainge, and Brett Rat-liff. Or the Jets could get a rookie in the draft. The Jets also have two great running backs, Thomas Jones and Leon Washington. The Jets will also have a second year tight end, Dustin Keller. So, hopefully the New York Jets will be a great team in 2009.

La La Land of Dreams By Katherine

Have you ever said “I didn’t dream last night”

or “Why did I dream that”? Well it isn’t that you didn’t dream, it’s more like you didn’t remember. Everyone dreams every night. People dream in color, black & white, or brown. Also the reason you never understand it is because our minds take bits of pieces from memo-ries to add together. And the reason you don’t remem-ber some dreams is because it was during REM. REM is rapid eye movement. You have most of your dreams in REM and in all you forget 90% of dreams. Then there is stress. Stress causes nightmares (especially if you have a lot). Or maybe stress gives you a hard time to fall asleep. And when you get less sleep you actually have MORE dreams. Then about 5 years ago a lady named Eva Salem had a fight with a crocodile. But then she won & woke up. Eva is a mom who was only having 4 hours of sleep. That is why she had such a crazy dream. Hopefully she is now having less crazy dreams and more sleep. Knowing about dreams is a very important thing if you want to understand them, especially when some-times you need to figure out your worries through dreams. Dreams are always out there even if you don’t think they are.



Global Warming By Hunter

There is a big controversy on weather global warming is real or not. Some people say it is and some people say it isn’t. I feel that global warming is real. There are many facts to prove that global warming is real. The aver-age climate temperature has increased by 1.4°F since the early 1900’s. Many experts think that the temperature will rise another 2.5°F to 10.4°F by 2100. This rate of increase even if it is the smaller one would be much larger than the normal rate. We need to adopt new ways. We need to recycle, plant trees, and use more green technolo-gies. And that’s just the start. So, global warming is real and we need to do something about it.


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Should Zoo Animals Be Kept in a Zoo?

By Jess With the exception of a

few, Animals should be in cages. Most animals like chimpanzees, lions, tigers, etc. probably should be kept in a zoo. It is not a bad thing that the ani-mals should be kept in a zoo; it just will make it safer for people and the animals. Most zoos these days do not put their animals in cages they put them in secure open environments. People who own these types of animals could be attacked.

There are many ways that attacks could happen like the recent chimp attack. a woman, who had had her chimpanzee for fourteen years, at-tacked her neighbor out of the blue. Many people have thought that since the woman who was at-tacked was a neighbor that the chimp, Travis, didn’t recognize her and thought she came to take away his beloved owner and attacked.

There are many reasons that animals should not be house hold pets. First, animals are not hu-mans and they do not always obey. Second, they are not very clean and some carry diseases. Last, they should NOT get treated like humans. In the case above, the animal just attacked because it didn’t recognize the person. If you had guests over that could happen to you. Most of the time, the only good household pets would be dogs, cats, birds, fish and the like. Even though most people have these animals they are not always safe and clean. For in-stance, a cat could scratch you if they are not happy and dogs can bite.

in many cases the pets are trained to be-have not bite. Having a snake as a pet might not be as very good Idea. We are all entitled to have our own opinions but in my opinion, it’s crazy! Snakes can be very dangerous, they bite, they grow, and if they get too big it is hard to fit them in the house.


Living in China By Kristin

Living in China was a great experi-ence for me. I got to go to Xian to see the terracotta soldiers, eat scorpions, meet other expatriates

like my family and me, and learn Chinese. When I first got to the Beijing International Airport, my aunt and uncle picked me up. We went to eat at their restaurant and then the jetlag kicked in. Two days after we went to my Nainai’s house and said hi, ate xianbing, said hi to more relatives, and then went to sleep. A week later we went to the airport to catch a plane to Shanghai, and then Suzhou. We would be living in Suzhou for the next two years.

My mom and dad had put me in a private school and made me take the emerging course. I met Nikki (Bulgaria), Haiku (Denmark), Akira (Japan), Joori (Korea), Arturo and Leo (Mexico) and ten more kids. In the emerging class, we learned to speak Chinese very fast. In other words, we had to take ALL of our classes in Chi-nese, if you didn’t understand (which was most of the time), you would probably fail. Luckily, we had the most awesome teacher, Fang Lao Shi or Miss. Fang. She helped us get over the Z’s, S’s and Q’s of the tricky Chinese lan-guage.

During the school year, I got to go to Xian, Hong Kong, Guilin, Hangzhou, Jiangsu, Korea, Japan, and many others. Since we were living in a foreign country, we missed our comfort food like pizza and French fries. On Sundays we would go to Walking Street and stop by the Häagen-Dazs store. We’d get our ice cream and stop by the pet store, except it wasn’t a store. It was a gigantic place where you could find anything. They had plants, grasshoppers, birds, dogs, chickens, cats…. It goes on and on. After we’d look at the animals, we would go to a temple and feed the 400 year old turtles. The temple had two of three 400 year old turtles in China. We would usually only see one but it was always fun watching the fish fight over the food.




Reaching the Stars By Tess

Were you one of those kids who wanted to be an astronaut when you grew up? Many kids say that they want to be an astronaut but don’t know what it really takes. All of the pretty stars and planets are the things that really attract kids to this job. They are too overwhelmed by these things that they don’t even consider the behind the scene work.

Being an astronaut is a very complicated and dangerous job. There are three main requirements that you have to pass to become an astronaut. First of all, you are required to have a Bachelors degree from an accredited institution in engineering, biological science, physical science, or mathematic. You also need to have at least 1,000 hours of pilot-in-command time in a jet aircraft. Lastly, you need to pass a NASA space physi-cal. The standards for this test are:

You must have 20/20 vision You must have a good blood pressure You need to be between 5ft. 4in. and 6ft. 4in. You need to be extremely smart in your field and

able to work well under pressure. There are many jobs that are associated with

being an astronaut. Besides actually going up in space, you could work at the Mission Control Center in Hous-ton, Texas. Working in the MCC takes just about the same amount of skill and effort that is needed for go-ing up in space. The majority of the people that work in the MCC are engineers meaning that they are well edu-cated and extremely smart. The engineers talk to the astronauts in space and help them solve any problems that they have. They also receive the information that the astronauts retrieve in space. Many people might ask why you want to take such a big risk to be an astronaut. There is only a risk if you actually go up in space. Besides that there are almost no risks at all. This is why I believe that if you are really passionate about being an astronaut, you shouldn’t let anything get in your way. In fifth grade,


Mineral Oil… a Deathly Cosmetic?

By Lindsey One of the main ingredi-

ents in cosmetic products such as Baby Oil, Liquid Soap, and Vase-line is mineral oil. Mineral oil is a clear unscented liquid that does not spoil, and is very inexpensive. In this article you will learn about what mineral oil is and what it does to your skin and your body’s health. You will also learn what cosmetic compa-nies put mineral oil in their products. Mineral oil makes your skin super smooth, but is it really healthy for your skin?

First off, mineral oil is the left over liquid and byproduct from the distillation of gasoline. Companies spend more money disposing of mineral oil, than they do making it. Many people think that mineral oil causes smooth healthy skin, but what they don’t know might surprise them. As you apply mineral oil to your skin, which is the largest organ in your body, it acts as an-other layer of skin and clogs pores. Adding another layer of “skin” lowers the skin’s ability to eliminate tox-ins. The oil travels down to the liver once it is ab-sorbed, and is then broken down by it. Next, it goes down to the intestinal tract and it absorbs all of the fat-soluble vitamins that are found in the intestine. This process is stealing all of the important vitamins from the body. As you can see, mineral oil might be the solution to your dry skin, but perhaps, not the solution to a healthy body.

Which companies put mineral oil in their prod-ucts and why do they use it in their products? To start, Johnson is a famous and well known company that is well known for their affective creams and cosmetics. Their baby oil and many other companies’ baby oil may contain a huge amount of baby oil which is not healthy for people’s bodies. St. Ive’s creams, such as their anti inch cream and extra dry cream, contains mineral oil also. In the end, many famous cosmetic companies that



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Sports Drinks vs. Water By Danielle

Many kids are always bringing sports drinks to practices and games, but why not just a drink plain old water. Water is better for you when you are playing a sport because it quenches your thirst the fastest, doesn’t have any added sugar, and it doesn’t harm your teeth. Many schools are debating on whether to keep sports drinks in vending machines or getting rid of them. The reasoning on this is because many sports drinks have lots of added sugars and more than three times the sodium in sodas.

Now a day’s many people are worried about their weight and what’s healthy and not. Many people now believe in drinking sports drinks because they will fill them up and not have too many calories. They are wrong because one can of Gatorade has sev-enty-five calories, twenty-one grams of sugar, and 165 milligrams of sodium. How is that for “healthy?” When you take in too much sugar and sodium is not good, and that is pretty much all that is in many sports drinks. If you over drink a sports drink it could result in, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and so on.

Most people drink them because they see famous athletes drinking one, and think they really work, but the chances famous people are drink-ing one every day are pretty slim. Sports drinks have lots of sugar in them, and it won’t quench your thirst fast so you will waste lots of the drink and still be thirsty, and that can add up to a lot of money. Water provides all the nutrients you need to be healthy and stay active. Now even many schools are selling sports drinks, and that is one more place you can buy them now. Some schools recently got rid of sodas, so sports drinks could be next to go.

Last year, sales of sports drinks reached an all time high of 7.5 billion sold. In California, there was an experiment that showed if a person drinks a 20-


Text Lingo idk

By Jazz Jk, lol, nmu, ily, ttyl,

idk, bff, bffl, rofl, ilysm, brb, g2g, tgif, hbu, nvm, l8r, u?, r, OMG!,4get, 2,ur and etc. are all uses of text lingo. If this was translated to the normal English lan-guage it would say, just kidding, laugh out loud nothing much you, I love you, talk to you later, I don't know, best friend forever, best friend for life, rolling on the floor laughing, I love you so much, be right back, got to go, thank g-d it’s Friday, how about you, never mind, later, you, are, oh my god, forget, to, and your. As you can see texting language is waaaay more com-plicated then the English language itself. Haha lol, we kids take the easier route of things now, so text lingo is an easier way to say things in a shorter time. For example if you want to say oh my g-d my best friend forever is coming to my house later. You would say in text world, Omg my bff is coming to my house l8r. Now that’s a shorter sentence isn’t it? To sum this up this way of language is much easier than English. Text lingo is great and all, but once you get attached to it you use it in everyday life, including your school life. The easiest use of text lingo that may slip into a paper you may be writing is u! WARN-ING: AVOID U AT ALL COST, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ARE TYPING!!!!! When you do this, it can make a killer impact on your overall grade on that paper, or if you do it constantly, you probably won’t have the grade you really want. Would you rather be the queen of texting, or the honor roll student? It makes you think doesn’t it? Is text lingo a good thing or is it just something to ruin your English grade???? Text lingo does have its ups and downs, but the one thing that is good is the separation from the English language and also, PARENT LANGUAGE!!!! We need to take a breather every once in a while from




Athletic Scholar-ship- The Com-petitive Edge

By Maddy There are several things to take into consideration when

you are ready to choose a college. One important thing that many high school students look for is a school that they can get into on a scholarship. Over the years there has been a lot of competition over athletic schol-arships. Now that so many kids are involved with ath-letics, together with the economy being so bad, there are even more students who will be competing for ath-letic scholarships. Many people know that it takes a lot of hard work and dedication in order to be awarded a scholar-ship, but there are also numerous requirements that have been met, such as good grades, talent, and suffi-cient standard test scores. It’s not easy to receive athletic scholarships, but over 600 colleges offer them. There are also different kinds of college schol-arships. Many people don’t realize, but sometimes scholarships don’t last the whole four years. It could possibly only last one year and the students may have to renew it. There is a lot of pressure put on college scholarship athletes because they have to keep their grades up while playing the sport. When you’re on scholarship it can turn out to be more of a job than a sport, but a fun job. To start off, grades are of great importance to college scholarship athletes. Athletic scholarships are largely run by the rules of the NCAA (National Colle-giate Athletic Association). Even before college, high schools students have to follow the guidelines from the rule know as Proposition 42. This rule states that big colleges (who are members of the NCAA) can’t offer athletic scholarships to high school students who don’t have both a 2.0 grade point average in college-preparatory courses and a score of 700 out of 1,600 on the SATs or 15 out of 35 on the ACTs. At most col-


Turf Fields By Natalie

Many sports are played on fields. But when the rain hits, the fields become un-playable. Turf fields, in my opinion are a great option. Turf fields can never be too wet. They were purposely made for people to use in all conditions. Soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, and football are some sports that use turf regardless of weather conditions. The only problem is that here in Chatham we aren’t allowed to use them a lot. Chatham fields are always drenched so many people ask, “What’s the point of building turf fields if we can’t use them?” Turf fields can be used with unlimited fre-quency. No matter what the weather turns out to be, turf fields stays open. They remain accessible for ma-jor events and sports. On the other hand, grass fields can only be played on, if they remain in a good condi-tion. Before turf was created, grass fields were the number one option. Even though they were the only option they had their problems. The change of the seasons affected the grass. During the winter, the grass would harden and become unplayable. In spring, the fields become muddy with the thaw. Later they would turn into dried straw from the summer heat. But now with the invention of turf fields, weather and seasons don’t matter. Fields are always playable. The town of Chatham limits the usage of turf fields. High School sports are given first priority. Only certain sports are allowed to use the fields dur-ing any given season. Chatham United’s field usage is constrained. We rarely use the turf fields. As a result of this, we get rained out because of the state of the grass fields. Area residents complain about the use of turf fields. They feel it disturbs the peace and causes increased traffic. In order to accommodate them the town restricts the usage of turf fields to certain hours. The result is that turf fields are idol and the grass fields are unplayable. Sports come to a stand-



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Alexander Ovechkin By Ian

The Washington Capi-tals are a hockey team that plays in Washington D.C. Their star left wing, Alexander Ovechkin, is the leading goal scorer and arguably the best overall player in the NHL. Alexander Ovechkin is surprisingly young; he is only 22 years old and started playing when, by acci-dent stumbled into a hockey stick at a toy store and wouldn’t let go. His parents knew that he would start to love hockey. He was born in Russia and two years ago scored the winning goal to put Russia over Canada in the Olympics to win the gold. At age 16 he was drafted to play on the Russian national team. At the NHL all star game, Alex scored the first goal of the game and after he won the Skills competition for the breakaway challenge. When Alex was little, he played hockey every-day and progressed and got better until a coach from the national team, Victor Trikhonov selected him to play in the Ceska Poistovna Eurotour Tournament. He would be the youngest skater to ever play on the Rus-sian National Team in the history of Russian Hockey. He was also joined by best friend, Alexander Semin, who played hockey with Alex ever since he was seven. They were together on the same line and both scored in the first two games. He finished the tournament with 1 goal, 2 assists, in three games. At the age of seventeen, he was named Captain of the junior team although he was the youngest on the team. Over the years Ovechkin started to play on the Russian Super league team, The Moscow Dynamo. He led the league with the most goals. He won the best left wing award for the super league when he was eighteen and began to get interested in the United States and the NHL. In the NHL draft on June 24, 2004, he was drafted to the Washington Capitals and along came


Soldiers deserve prepaid cell phones from Government

By Will While I was down in Florida with my brother before he

went to Korea, his cell phone broke in half. Even though he was able to get a brand new one when he got home, I think he should have received one from the Government instead of having to use his own money to pay for it. I say this because he currently serving in the military and I think since the Govern-ment is stationing him away from his family; this would be a great way to give back so he can at least talk to his family while he is on duty without using his own money to make a call. I think soldiers need cell phones because if their cell phone breaks on the job and they need a new one ASAP, they wouldn’t be able to get a new one because the phone company might not allow it. As one can see, my position is that soldiers deserve prepaid cell phones straight from the Government. First off I think soldiers deserve prepaid cell phones from the Government because they have to spend most of their time away from their family and friends. If soldiers had prepaid phones, they wouldn’t have to worry about their loved ones being home with their children left to pay all the bills, at least now they would have one less bill to pay. If they didn’t have a phone they would have to use a pay phone and waste their money to make a call for every minute they’re using the pay phone. Another point, if a soldier’s cell phone breaks on the job and they need a new one, they might not be as lucky as my brother and would have to go without until they can get a new one. I was thinking that the offi-cers in charge at the base would have a certain spot where a bunch of new phones were waiting for a des-perate soldier who needed one. Now I don’t know




How Music Helps You Focus By Juliana

Do you have a hard time focusing on homework? Are you a person who is easily distracted? If so, lis-tening to music might help you. Music helps kids stimulate their minds and be more creative. It also makes the dullest jobs enjoyable and helps clear men-tal blocks to creativity. In the following paragraphs, I will explain the power of music. There are so many beneficial effects of music. Music can help you get through boring work or focus creatively almost every day. Music affects your brain waves. It can create mentally stimulating environ-ments for creativity. Music also helps you relax and can move out stressors that block creativity. Music can improve your video game scores. Music can be used as a learning tool, and is said to help students retain math. In a recent study, instructors in math at Essex County College and Rutgers-Newark found that when they played Baroque background music in their classes there were significant differences. 86% of students surveyed enjoyed classes more, and found it less chal-lenging. Research also shows that Baroque music helps learning foreign languages and improves test perform-ances. Why Baroque music? Baroque music pulses between 50 to 80 beats per minute. This stabilizes mental, physical, and emotional rhythms. In order to have deep concentration and focus on large amounts of con-tent information, Baroque music is very helpful. Music also has an effect on mood. If you are in a bad mood, listening to upbeat cheerful music can make you happier. Listening to soft music can calm you, which helps you focus. You can express your feelings through music. This also helps to be more creative. As one can see, music has an influential affect on people. It can help you focus, be creative, and do well in school. If you are having trouble focusing, I sug-gest you put your iPod on, turn the music up, and finish your homework!

Hockey is the Best Sport By Jack

Hockey is not just the best sport, it is also my favorite. The NHL started around 1924. By 1926 the NHL consisted of 10 teams. Because the Great De-pression it reduced the NHL to six teams, known as the “Original Six”. In 1967 the NHL doubled size and made the Western conference. By 1992 the NHL had all 30 teams.

Hockey is my favorite sport because it’s fun and it is good exercise. Even though your shift may only be 45 seconds, for those 45 seconds you are skating as fast as you can. 45 seconds does not seem like a lot but when the players come off they are winded and breathing hard. If you want to get in shape you should play hockey.

Another reason that hockey is the best sport is because when you score you feel really special. When you go down the ice and you deek or shoot and you see it go past the goalie, and all your teammates come over tap you on the head and congratulate you, you feel like you really helped your team. Almost as exciting is an assist. It also feels good to know that you are the one that set the person up to score.


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Jack Johnson By George

Have you ever heard of Jack Johnson? Well if not then I am going to tell you a little bit about him. Jack was born on May 18 1975. He is a singer-songwriter, musician, film maker, and surfer. He was born and raised on the north shores

of Oahu, Hawaii by his father Jeff Johnson. Jeff John-son was a famous surfer which inspired Jack to start surfing and skating at the age of five. At 17 he was in-vited to the pipeline masters as the youngest kid to re-ceive an invitation. The pipeline masters is a surf contest that takes place on Sunset Beach in Oahu. Unfortunately he was disqualified from the competition because he failed to catch three waves in a certain amount of time. About a week after the competition, he surfed pipeline again with a couple of friends. Sadly, he suffered a bad injury and needed almost 150 stitches. He claims that this in-jury is the reason behind why he is so mellow. Because Jack had so much free time due to his injury, he started to focus on writing songs and playing guitar. He was influenced to play guitar like other singer- songwriters including Neil Young and Jimmy Buffett. However, it wasn’t until he graduated high school and got accepted to University of California, Santa Barbara, that he developed his passion for music. He graduated with a degree in film. Jack got his first breakthrough after a day of surfing with his friend G. Love. As it turned out G. Love ended up recording his first song “Rodeo Clowns” for his 1999 album. Jack sang and played on that album and received more and more attention. He played all over the country performing in concerts. He played rhythm guitar for the party band Soil while he attended college. During college he mar-ried his wife Kim and dedicated the song, “Bubbly Toes” to her; they have 2 kids and are a happy family. Jack is still playing concerts to this day and continues to surf and shred gnar.

Surf or Skate By Ian Over the years

people have been shred-ding tasty Gnarr Gnarr But it’s always been a con-troversial issue over which is better, surfing or skat-ing. Now people argue that skateboarding is better because skaters can skate all year round, and you don’t have to wait for the right waves. Still, surfing is like an experience that can’t be beat. But both sports were developed around hanging with your brohas and enjoying , life and so obviously skateboarding is bet-ter.

Skateboarding is easy to learn but it takes time to learn tricks. It is easier to learn and ride around, unlike a surfboard where just getting up is hard. The skate board is fun because you can shred anywhere at any time of the year. Then you don’t have to deal with crowded beaches. But with a skateboard you have to change the wheels out if you get flat spots, or even worse, your deck could snap. These things usually like around $15. And you also have to get new bearings for the wheels around $12. When you skateboard you can just sort of just hang out and cruise around, but with a surf board you have to main-tain a constant level of energy to stay up. Surfing is one of the most challenging sports to learn, and once you learn to surf it’s not something that you can do perfectly. The downside to surfing is that there are sharks, and then there is the fact that you can drown. When you’re surfing there is a rush of adrenaline and that’s it. Although it’s like snowboard-ing with a freedom of the skate board, your time is limited to that wave. Surfing is also extremely energy consuming. As you can see there are definite disad-vantages to surfing. Surfing and skateboarding are both fun but skateboarding is much more fun, and easier. Surfing is also not something that people can enjoy all year but skateboarding is. When it comes to surfing or skate-boarding we all know that skateboarding is better.



BMX Free-style is the Best Sport By JT

Have you heard of BMX? BMX is an ex-

treme sport that was made in the 1960’s in California. I think BMX is the best sport because there is nothing like the feeling of flying through the air. This was cre-ated by kids who would copy the tricks of their moto-cross heroes, but on their bikes instead of a dirt bike. BMX biggest point was in the 1960s when everyone just learned about, and then more and more people began to ride. In the sport people do dangerous tricks like spinning the entire bike around also none as a tail whip. People of all ages can do it and it is a great thrill to do. As people get better and better they do back flips, spins, and grabs. Some of the minor tricks are manual or riding on the back wheel, and bar spins. Like any thing you do BMX takes practice and hard work to do tricks. On the way of learning new tricks you can guar-antee you will get hurt once. There is four type of riding they are vert when you ride on big vertical ramps, park when you ride in skate park, street when you ride what you can find when cruising the street, and the last is dirt when you use dirt jumps. All these types of riding are fun, but vert is the most dangerous, because you are riding on ramps from a size of fourteen to twenty feet high, that are vertical. On these ramps you do tricks flying high in the air. The safest is dirt, because it hurts least when you fall, and you have more control because you don’t have to keep balanced going vertical or watch for other riders like when riding park, or cars like when riding street. In conclusion, I think bmx is the best sport, and people of all ages can get the thrill of riding at their own levels. People think that it is a stupid thing to do, but dont judge it if you haven’t done this sport be-


Overprotective Parents By Sydney

All parents love their chil-dren in some way; some hug them, some wake up early and make lunch for them as a nice gesture. Kids grow out of these customs, and parents will always love their kids, but some show their affection a little bit too much. This is where it gets a little weird. Most kids get a little annoyed after awhile, and they get mad at the parents for doing this. Kids just want to be alone. They don’t want parents not trusting them and looking over their shoulder when they’re on the computer. Kids don’t like it when parents don’t let them do things that other kids can, like go to a friend’s house because the par-ents don’t think that the other parents are capable on supervising their child. Overprotective parents always hurt their kids. Not physically, but emotionally, and this can hurt their child badly.

When everybody was little they wanted their parents to come everywhere with them, school, bed, anywhere thinkable. The child missed them always. When every child gets old enough, some of them notice that their parents won’t let them do anything other kids their age can. They are overprotective parents. When parents overprotect their child, the child is not ready to face the world. It is scary for the child and they might not succeed like other children that do not have overprotective parents. To tell if you have an overprotective parent you will notice that the parent is not letting you do things other children your age can. They will not let you go places like over to a friend’s house because the overprotective parents don’t think that it is suitable place to go, so they want to hover over the child and make them be “safe”. But, they are not safe. They are not safe from their parents because the child will turn out wrong and the kid will not be ready for the world around him or her.

Some children have overprotective par-ents that corrupt their world around them. You may



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Animal Abuse

By Matt

Animal abuse is very inhumane. There are many reasons for animal abuse including the selling of hides for making heavy winter coats for women, and creat-ing puppy mills to sell abused puppies. Animal abuse is very bad and we need you to help to stop it, before it gets any worse.

Okay, we all know that animal cruelty is bad so here’s what you can do to stop it. First, join programs and persuade parents to join programs such as foun-dations like Lakota Wolf. This preserve is trying to breed more wolves for New Jersey because wild wolves have not been seen for a century in New Jer-sey. This preserve is located in Columbia, New Jersey and you can see the wolves there in any season (although spring is when best they have wolf pups). Second, report abuses to foundations such as ASPCA because most of the saving of animals is done by these groups. These problems become known to these groups because of concerned people contacting them and tell-ing them your concern. Here is how you can identify an abused animal:

Tick or flea infestations. Such a condition, if left untreated by a veterinarian, can lead to an animal's death. Wounds on the body. Patches of missing hair. Extremely thin, starving animals. Limping. An owner striking or otherwise physically abusing an animal. Dogs who are repeatedly left alone without food and water, often chained up in a yard. Dogs who have been hit by cars-or are showing any of the signs listed above-and have not been taken to a veterinarian. Dogs who are kept outside without shelter in ex-


Obama: Savior or Destroyer? By Chris

Obama’s been causing many controversies these few months he has been in office. Is he a first-class president, or will he is our downfall? The main arguments about him are his view on the Iraq war. The view from my perspective is that Obama will have hos-tility coming right to him from the citizen’s.

To start, he says he’s all against war and that he will immediately take out the troops, but how long is that going to take? Eighteen months is how long it is going to take. Equally important, Obama just wants to sit and have a nice talk with the terrorists. Of course, it would be much better to talk before meaningless bloodshed, but it is doubtful that will happen. Also, some of this is George Bush’s fault, yes, but still Obama promised all of this and should keep to his promise.

Finally, Obama is a good president, just has bad perspectives about ways to deal with the issues. This article should have changed your view on him, but if not that is your choice. Once more, there weren’t many choices in the election of 2008, so it was a diffi-cult choice.

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have a tendency to really solve the problem. One example would be if you’re playing soccer against a really good team, and the score is all tied up. So, someone is dribbling for the goal, and you see a teammate start to yell and insist that the player went out of bounds. You have two choices in this scenario. You could agree with the person on your team, gain possession of the ball, and maybe score a goal. Or, you could tell the person on your team that you didn’t see the ball go out of bounds, and be a good sport. I feel that if you’ve experienced situations like this in the past, you’ll probably pick option two, because you know that being on a team is all about being fair, and stay-ing true to the rules. Being fair, and a good sport isn’t always easy, and the score might not always end up the way you want, but at least you know that when the game is over you’ll be willing congratulate the other team. Sports may not be the only way the help you become a good sport, but they definitely are one of the best ways.

Lastly, sports help you stay fit. Studies show that at the moment 75% of Americans are overweight, and 40% are obese. You might feel like lying on the couch and eating gummy worms all day Saturday, and that’s very relaxing, until it becomes a habit. By playing sports, going for an early morning walk, or doing lap swim at the YMCA, staying fit is a breeze. Plus, unlike dieting, or finding some difficult, and gloomy way to stay fit, sports can be lots of fun! Find and empty field, and kick a soccer ball instead of spending endless hours staring at a television screen. Believe me, all your hard work will pay off, and you might even find that you love sports, and have a hidden talent at a specific one.

Sports (Continued from page 12)

the time. During softball, however, you are standing around for most of the game, waiting for someone to hit the ball so you can catch it, and then throw it to another player to get the player on the other team out. I know that this isn’t the only cycle that goes on through the whole game, but that’s what it seems like most of the time. Dur-ing lacrosse, however, there are many different plays going on throughout the game, so it’s not as boring to watch. I think that lacrosse is better sport to play, but softball is a close second. Lacrosse gives you more exer-cise because you are almost never standing still. In softball, there is running, but there is also a lot of standing around and waiting for the ball to be hit. In lacrosse, as soon as the two center players make the draw, the entire field of players is moving around almost instantly. Softball players have to wait for the ball to be hit for them to move, and even then not all of the players on the field are moving. In conclusion, playing lacrosse is much better for your body, and it is also more fun to play!

Spring Sport (Continued from page 17)

September to November. Almost 50 people have fled from Africa because of this violence, and people in Tanza-nia are scared for their lives.

Local residents of Tanzania are trying to capture this craziness, and some have succeeded, but many are in hiding after threats from the witchdoctor’s they have exposed. These people are also feared for their lives, but they also fear for the albino’s lives. If nothing is done about these murders, every albino in Tanzania could be killed; around 4,000 to 173,000 people. Most bodies are left limbless, and some even have a hole in the neck from where the assassins drained blood from the Albinos. People don’t always kill the albinos, but they torture them! Taking their limbs off and draining their blood? Now, Albinos not only need to be protected from the sun to live, but protected from being attacked as well.

There are people who are trying to help these Albinos, and there are support groups to help them accept themselves, and learn how to live a normal life. One group, called Under the Same Sun is very successful in help-

Albino (Continued from page 14)



record in Division 1 football. The reason is because Utah is in a smaller conference, the Mountain West Confer-ence, instead of being in one of the big conferences like the Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big East, Big 10, or the Pac-10. The Utes did not play the same quality opponents that the big conference teams did, which wound up being the deciding factor why the committee did not choose the Utes to be in Championship Game. In my opinion, this is totally unfair. I believe no matter who you play, or what conference you play in, if you have the best record in Division 1 you should be able to battle in playoffs for a National Title. I am not saying that Utah should be in the National Title game over Oklahoma or Florida, but that they should be able to play each other to see what team is most worthy for the National Title.

Next, the Texas Longhorns were another team that was definitely worthy of having the title of National Champion. The Longhorns had a record of 11-1 virtually the same record as Florida and Oklahoma. The thing that made the Longhorns worthy for a National Title was beating Oklahoma. Usually in sports the first tie breaker is head-to-head, but for some reason the committee did not use this. Their reasoning was that since Oklahoma beat Texas Tech convincingly, 65-21, and they didn’t make the cut. Texas Longhorns lost to Texas Tech. I believe this is bogus; Texas should have a chance at the National Title. If they made a playoff system in college football, no teams would be snubbed from a National Title like teams are now.

Additionally, college football would be a lot more interesting if there was a playoff system. Not only would it give many teams a chance to play for a National Title, but it would be much more intriguing. For ex-ample, people love college basketball, because of the excitement in the NCAA tournament, March Madness. If

College Playoffs (Continued from page 17)


interference, off sides, pushing, screening, stalling, and warding off. If a player gets five fouls they are out of the game. When that player is sitting out their team is man down and the other team is man up. In a man down situation the team has to defend with one less player in usually what is called a zone defense or box-in-one. In the box-in-one the defense makes a box with two midfielders up top and two defense players close to the cage. The one comes from the one defense player in the middle of the box. The other team has the advantage of scoring.

Lacrosse is starting to be in every country in the world and it keeps on growing. Lacrosse is the best sport in the world because it is a way to meet new people and get to know new friends. I have made a lot of friends in my career and I am going to make a lot more in the future. In my opinion, lacrosse is the best sport in the world and is the best way to make new friends.

LAX (Continued from page 13)

name! In conclusion, Benihana offers a number of different foods. It also is a very entertaining meal that will satisfy any one. Another fun event to do there would be having your birthday there or just even having a party. 180 Morris Tpke, Short hills NJ, is calling your name so please try to get there and experience the dinner of a life time!

Benihana (Continued from page 16)

ing Albinos. You can visit their website www.underthesamesun.com to help you fully understand what’s going on in Tanzania. This shows you just what people with Albinism look like and how heartbreaking it is to see them being murdered and tortured for their bones and blood. There are other programs that have been escorting kids to school, so they can’t be jumped while walking. Albinism is a huge problem in Tanzania, and the government has been working to protect these people and they have been trying to catch the witchdoctors. Now, not only do they have to hide from the sun, but from being killed as well.

Albino (Continued from page 29)

13 when it comes to competition. Would wearing a full-body suit make a difference either? In addition to that point, the difference in time can mean a lot with this suit. Let’s say a 12 or younger

and 13 or 14 year old are both going for a specific qualifying time or going for first place, and the 13 or 14 year old was wearing a full-body suit. If they are both equally good swimmers, the 13 or 14 year old is most likely going to get the time or beat the other swimmer. The 12 or younger is kept from a gold medal because they are not permitted to wear a certain suit. Does that seem fair? Another example, maybe there was an 11 year old looking to get into the country ranks. They swim and just miss the time by .05! If they were to have had a full-body suit on, the time would have been in their back pocket. There are plenty of other examples of when a full-body suit would come in handy.

Prohibiting younger kids from wearing this suit is not fair. With all the advantages it provides it could be a great thing for kids of all ages. The suit wouldn’t bring the level of competition up anymore than it already is. And not being able to wear it doesn’t allow younger kids to reach their full potential. It has the potential to keep certain kids from the gold medal that they deserve. This suit is a great addition to competitive swimming, and

Unfair (Continued from page 11)

have to work twice as hard in an organic farm than in a regular farm. Because the owners of the farm have to pay their workers more money, they have to sell their products for more money. I hope that everyone realizes that buying organic food with a little extra money is definitely worth it.

In conclusion, eating organic is really something to think about trying. It will make you live much longer because your body will be much healthier. Also, people need to be informed of what they are putting into their body. In fact, I asked twenty people what they thought the word “organic” means, and half of them were wrong. Six were very close to the correct definition, and only four were right. What does that tell you? I think all of the students in our school should know about this. As you can see eating organic is very important to a healthy body. In my opinion, everybody should do a favor for themselves, and fill their body with food that is tasty and good for you too!

Organic (Continued from page 10)

of a vicious cycle in that when the residents try to get jobs, they are usually turned down because of where they live. Why are people talking about disbanding the tent cities? Even though times are hard, these people had a choice between the homeless shelter, and a small home of their own, tent or no tent. Obviously, many of them chose the tent city. It is a matter of pride. For them, even though they are jobless, destitute, and virtually home-less, tent cities are an option that present a small amount of ownership, whereas the homeless shelter, although a good organization, does not. These people have already lost their jobs, homes, and cars, why rob them of their dignity? At least they will still have something that is theirs. Portland, Seattle, Phoenix, and Reno, Nevada are no strangers to tent cities. They all have at least one permanent tent city. During the current economic situation, this will only get worse. Could tent cities be the next possible Hoovervilles? Brace yourself for more change. Most importantly, be grateful for what you have now; be-cause you never know what tomorrow will bring.

Camping (Continued from page 10)

walked a lot, and they are smart. Based on these reasons I believe the Golden doodle is a great dog to get for families with or without pet allergies. In conclusion, these dogs are great because they are lovable and don’t shed at the same time.

Golden Doodles (Continued from page 11)

asked her more questions. Mrs. Webb also added that she thinks our school needs to, “Get back to basics, and that would mean some of the extra programs that have made Chatham schools special would need to be pared back.” When we asked her what she thinks we need to get rid of, she said “One of the things that I find interest-ing is that we are cutting back technology since the teachers aren’t tech savvy when it comes to mechanical diffi-culties. You can’t imagine how many times Mrs. D has come to the rescue when things break down. With so much money put into technology, you would think they would want to keep it maintained.” As you can see, Mrs. Webb is very interested in this particular topic, and we are very thankful that she shared her opinion with us.

After talking with Mrs. Webb, we interviewed Mr. Desautels (who is a 7th grade Life Science teacher, as well as an 8th grade Physical Science teacher here at CMS). We first asked him what he would add to the school program, and he replied, “I would add more technology.” When we asked him what he thought was the most valu-able thing in our school, and he told us, “I think the most important thing is the Smartboard.” He also told us that he would add laptops in every classroom if he could change one thing in CMS. Thank you for sharing your opinion with us, Mr. D! In summary, the economy is down and many people are worried, and do not want to lose their jobs. After interviewing Mr. Accardi, Mrs. Webb, and Mr. Desautels we learned about the different perspectives and feelings about this controversial issue, and how people feel about the budget. The economy is in trouble and schools are not able to afford what they usually can. As one can see, schools are a place to learn and have fun, so we should all try to help the economy get back in shape.

Budget Busters (Continued from page 3)


ette? As everyone knows, new trends and fads bring back memories of old fashions (and maybe not the coolest)

fads. Take Webkinz, Heelys, and Livestrongs as an example. Everyone loved carrying Webkinz around and gliding on Heelys, and also layering tons of Livestrongs. But as we made the transition from Lafayette to CMS, the inter-est in our former favorite things faded. The waning fascination with Heelys was not exactly coincidental—they were banned from the school because of how dangerous they were. There isn’t much of an explanation for Webkinz, though, other than the fact that we’re too old for stuffed animals. Livestrongs are a bit of a mystery. Nobody really knows why they lost their style- maybe because people stopped caring about others. As fads going out and being in form an intricate weave of a style, who knows what next year trends is will bring.

As you can see, there are many, many trends going around our school. The interesting part, though, is that we probably won’t be using Vera Bradley bags or wearing Uggs in five years. At that time, there will be something else for everyone to be obsessed with, because that’s how trends work. It’s important not to get too focused on these fads, because it’s only a matter of time before we forget about them. If one thing will remain constant, it’s that there will always be something new that’s considered “in”.

Fads/Fashion (Continued from page 4)

are sold in drug stores worldwide have the potential to weaken people’s bodies and lower their health. In conclusion, Mineral oil helps in healing the outside of the body, but it can be un-healthy for the inside

of the body and the vitamins it produces. Not only does mineral oil come in a raw form but it can also come in oils and creams. Although mineral oil is such a successful product, is it really worth using it and losing all of the essen-tial vitamins that you will not be able to get back after you use it. In summary, mineral oil is a great way heal dry skin, but can also be unhealthy.

Mineral Oil (Continued from page 21)

Some of the athletes from the winter tour were Shaun White, Hannah Teter, Tanner Hall, and Simon Dumont. The events include slopestyle and superpipe. In slopestyle riders are free to choose their own routes on a course with different terrain features, like bumps, rails, and jumps. The judges choose the winner on the difficulty or execu-tion of each trick. In superpipe, riders try and land their own tricks inside an 18-foot tall superpipe. Judges rank them based on their flow, height, and difficulty of tricks. All the events are televised live on NBC, and other cov-erage on USA, MTV, and MTV2. This past Winter Dew Tour, the athletes named “athlete of the year” were Shaun White, Tanner Hall, Kelly Clark, and Spencer O’Brien. Overall, the Winter Dew Tour is the best winter sports tours of all.

DEW Tour (Continued from page 4)

CMS-7 PRESS

college football has an eight team playoff, it could get the publicity and excitement of March Madness. If anyone asked a real college football, all fans no matter what team they root for will say they want a playoff.

In the current system, there are a lot of things that are unfair reasons for teams around the country not to be the National Title game. I have already demonstrated two reasons with Utah and Texas, one team in a smaller conference the other because of a margin of victory. There are also many other bad reasons why teams are not in the National championship game. For example, the committee counts against teams losing at the end of the season. Such as, what happened to Alabama. Alabama lost their last game of the year after being undefeated. Additionally, they were playing arguable without their best player, Andre Smith. This is also totally unfair. A team was undefeated the whole year, then loses their last game without their best player, and is unable to compete for the National Title. If we had a playoff system, then even if teams lost their last game they would still be able to compete for a National Title.

To conclude, if there was an eight team playoff in college football, not only would there be no con-troversy but it would be much more interesting. Even President Barack Obama said when asked if there was one thing he could change in sports it would be he to have a playoff system in college football. It would give a chance to smaller schools that have a really good record to play big teams. If there was an eight team playoff, then it wouldn’t leave a committee to decide who plays in the National Championship Game, but instead teams would get to play each other to see who would play in the game.

College Playoffs (Continued from page 30)

Animals can get crazy sometimes, one minute they can be fine and the next minute they can attack. To conclude, it is not a very smart idea to keep zoo animals in your house. With the exceptions of the cou-

ple of animals I referred to in the second paragraph. My opinion is very strong that I do not think that it is a good thing at all to have zoo animals in your house because, they attack, they are dirty, they are untrained to behave well, they are big a vicious! Finally, zoo animals should be kept in a zoo not your household, don’t make that mis-take!

Pets (Continued from page 20)

Living in China was a great experience for me because I got to learn a new language and put it to use. I got to try new foods and learn how to make them. I also got to meet cousins and relatives and ex-cousins that I had never even known about. On Chinese New Year, I would always ketou and get hongbao and not understand why, now, because I have lived in China, I can now understand why we eat dumplings at 1 in the morning, why we bow down to get our red pockets, and why we each have our own traditions. Living in China has given me a better un-derstanding of the world, myself, and other cultures and ethnic backgrounds. I don’t think I could ever forget China.

Living in China (Continued from page 20)

and when she was asked to be a judge, starting Season 8, on American Idol. Now, half-way through Season 8, Kara DioGuardi has been receiving mixed reviews. Some see her as a

“third wheel”, who is adding nothing to the show at all. In my opinion, she is a very charismatic and bright person who is bringing a new personality to American Idol. It’s too early to tell if she is drawing in new audiences and fans, but she definitely seems to be enjoying and succeeding in her job. To end with, Kara DioGuardi has finally reached fame, as a judge on one of the most anticipated shows on television.

Idol (Continued from page 12)

ounce sports drink each day they will gain around 13 pounds each year. By drinking these drinks you eventually will crash, and feel sluggish and tired. Sports drinks are definitely not for drinking when you are just sitting around, and that could increase risks even more. With the many risks sports drinks could cause why drink them?

What many people don’t realize is when you are working out you are sweating, and a lot of water is lost through sweat. So, sticking to water is the best choice and this choice will benefit in the end. Keep drinking water and you will feel better, have real energy instead of just getting sugar from sports drinks, and you will be healthy, one of the most important reasons.

Sports Drinks (Continued from page 22)

the English language, so we do that by talking in improper grammar and best of all, there is no one there to grade it! You can text with u, r, or even 2 without teacher on your back. The other major great thing in it is ur parents don’t understand a thing ur saying!!!! It is good to let ur parents know some things in your life but ur social life, I THINK NOT. U see, my mom rocks and I can tell her anything, but at the same time I don’t want to tell her eve-rything. So if she sees you texting on ur phone saying ttyl, or OMG, or anything, ur parents have no clue, taking them off your back. Not being graded on ur mistakes, and getting out of parent language is a pretty good life isn’t it?! Hahahaha lol, well I hope you took the good and bad things about text lingo, and if not, good luck in English class, or have fun typing those looooong text messages. Jk, but seriously text lingo is the easy way out, but not always the best, and though it may not be the best way at the sametime it is the easiest. Confusing much?...........I THINK SO! Text lingo is an up and down pattern good side is good and the bad side is bad, but the bad side can be good and the good side can be bad. All in all text lingo is trickier then it may seem. Rofl on how funny this situa-tion is. Taking a breather from the English language, and shorter messages is good, but even though ur becoming the queen of texting ur English grade is probably suffering. So again text lingo, idk about that, but 4 now who knows. Ttyl, bye!

Text Lingo (Continued from page 22)

our class went to Buehler Challenger & Science Center. When we went for the first time, I didn’t get much out of it. Then, recently, I went back with some friends and I learned so much more than I did before. Coming out of that trip I decided that I wanted to either be an astronaut or work in Mission Control. While I was at Buehler, I was so fascinated with everything that they taught us. When I told all of my friends, they thought that I was crazy. The fact that the space shuttle can even get off of the ground amazes me. For so many people, going up into space is their biggest dream. If somebody has a big dream, you shouldn’t let anything get in their way.

Besides the person going up in space, it is very scary for the loved ones of the astronauts who go up in space. The fact that they might never see their friend or family member again is terrifying for many people. This is the main reason why people disagree with space travel. Losing a loved one is too much of a cost to pay for many people. Another big fear of space traveling is losing your life while you’re up in space. Not getting enough oxygen, catching on fire, and many other things trigger fear of space traveling. As you can see, many people are scared of traveling in space and are scared for their loved ones for the same reasons.

I believe that doing what your heart tells you and following your dreams is more important than someone else says to you. If you truly think that being as an astronaut is what you want to do, than nothing should stop you.

Astronaut (Continued from page 21)

ways to relieve the stress. First, cut down on the activities, and stick to the ones that you really have an interest in. Second, schedule breaks to socialize with friends or relax at home so you don’t get caught up in your activities and forget about your friends. Remember after school activities are good for you, but don’t overload! In summary, some ways you can get stress is from academic pressures, and too many after school activi-ties. Many people face stress, and there are many ways to eliminate it. Stress can make people grumpy, and tired. It also makes people not fun to be around.ven though stress is very bad there are ways to relieve it. So, next time you feel stressed try some of these solutions to feel better.

Stress (Continued from page 14)

leges and universities the scholarship athletes have to maintain a grade point average of 2.5 or higher. If the student athletes don’t maintain that average they can lose their scholarship, even if they are the best athlete on their team. The result is that it is easier for an athlete to get into school – but harder to stay in. Playing a sport on scholarship for a college team may seem like fun and games to some, but in reality it is a serious commitment. You’ve probably hear of the fun college life with partying, staying up late, and having the time of your life. Well, if you are serious athlete, you will need a completely different lifestyle. Your schedule will probably require studying, eating, sleeping, and of course, many hours dedicated to your sport. You have to stay focused and motivated, wake up early, have countless hours of sports practice, study and sleep for a game you might have the next day. Traveling for games forces students to miss tests and exams and as you can guess doesn’t make professors very happy. It is extremely challenging to keep your grades up when your sport takes precedent over your studies. But in reality, you cannot keep your athletic scholarship when you cannot keep your grades up. Some students who can’t handle the pressure end up quitting and then they lose their scholarships. Receiving an athletic scholarship does prove itself to be hard work. The student athletes will find them-selves working harder than they ever have. If you are passionate about a sport you will find that all of the hard work pays off. Colleges are very expensive these days and what better way to get your tuition paid for then by doing something that you love?

Scholarships (Continued from page 23)

still. These restrictions render the fact that turf can be used with unlimited frequency meaningless. In conclusion, the turf fields in Chatham have turned into a big waste of money. They are made for bad weather but are limited for other resources. High School gets first priority and other younger aged teams do not get the option to play on turf. These limitations make people question the point of turf fields.

Turf (Continued from page 23)

Last year for my 6th grade survey project, I asked: In your home how many times out of a seven day week does your family eat dinner all together? This survey was given to about 35% of last year’s 6th grade, and the re-sults were surprising. 54 % said that they eat dinner with their family 4 nights or less during the week. Even though this is not a good figure and astonishing 19% said they ate dinner with their families everyday during the week. I myself, eat dinner with my family at least five times a week. I believe it is very important to take the time to sit down and enjoy a meal with your parents.

As you can see, eating dinner with your family can have a big impact on your life. It can be good for your health in many different ways, and can help to improve your grades. So next time you sit down to eat dinner with your family, remember how important it can be.

Feasts (Continued from page 15)

Alexander Semin. The first year with the Capitals he had a dashing 46 goals and 47 assists. Alex’s weak spot was his back checking and defense. Although Alex is the lead scorer in the league, he isn’t the best defensemen. He was caught out of position, and that lead to some easy goals. But he bounced back from his slump in no time at all. He would ultimately tie the legendary Viktor Kozlov, who is also on the Capitals for the goal leader. This season, Alex is the goal leader with an astonishing 49 goals. He is 9 goals over Zack Parise. As one can see, Alexander Ovechkin is by far the overall best scorer skater. Hopefully he will lead his team to the Finals and win the cup to bring back home to Washington where it belongs.

Alexander (Continued from page 24)

about the soldiers, but if I were them, I would think this is a pretty good idea just having extra phones for the worst accidents that could happen to the phone while on the job. In summary, I believe that soldiers deserve prepaid cell phones because they have to spend most of their time away from their family and friends. I think they should get one because they are away from their family and friends all the time and also I find it the perfect way to give back to the men and women serving our country. As for my second idea I think that the Government could have extra phones in a certain spot in every military station and if an accident happened to the soldier’s phone it could be replaced immediately instead of waiting a month or longer for a new one from the phone company. These are my reasons for why soldiers deserve prepaid phones from the Government.

Cell Phones (Continued from page 24)

Animal abuse is really bad and the reasons for this are flabbergasting because of cruel, unreliable people that cannot be trusted to take care of an animal. This needs to be stopped before it spreads; it is already bad enough it does not need to get any worse. Animals should have the same rights as us, don’t you agree? If you do agree help stop this,animal abuse. The animals need your help, so help the cause and start saving animals as soon as possible.

(Continued from page 37)

cause it is a lot of fun and a great thrill of flying through the air doing technical tricks and flips, unlike any other sport.

BMX (Continued from page 27)

notice that you have these parents and if you notice this you have to take action fast. You have to sit down with the overprotective parents and any siblings of yours that feel the same way. Tell your parents that you feel ex-cluded from the rest of the world and you do not live in a bubble with the parents. You have to explore. Then give examples of the times that you missed out like the field trip last month or going to a party, but all your friends had fun and nobody got hurt. Then when you finally give all the examples say to your parents that you need more freedom and responsibility. Remember to start slowly and build it up; don’t go right into the thing that you wish for. Tell them that you want to be home alone for a little while and after time ask for more responsibility. Give examples of the things that you did well on such as getting good grades, or if you helped out with something in your house like setting the table or taking out the trash. After they say yes or no never whine or run away screaming; your parents may not like the idea of letting you be alone or going places with your friends. But, men-tion that you respect what your parent’s idea of living and give them the same option a couple months later.

Children do not like when their parents hover over them. Especially when the parent seems to do well, but the parents are actually messing up the child’s life. When they hover over their child the child thinks that the parents will be with them forever protecting them from good or bad, but when the child is in the real world they cannot live correctly. Not like other children who do not have overprotective parents. 67% of parents think that they are overprotective and this 67% of parents will have their child turn out wrong. The child will not be like others and will probably be excluded from others that could be his friend if the parents weren’t overpro-tective. The message that I am stating is that parents should not hover over their children, let the child be on their own.

Overprotective (Continued from page 27)

treme weather conditions. Animals who cower in fear or act aggressively when approached by their owners. (This list is noted by http://www.aspca.org/fight-animal-cruelty/top-10-ways-to-prevent-animal.html) Other ways to help is to adopt animals and have your pet spayed. Here are some of the main reasons for animal abuse. First, money, many people get money from killing ani-mals. Specially for making expensive fur coats, which needs roughly 15-20 animals for each garment. Small foxes and rabbits can be sold for a minimum of 2000 dollars for one hide. Killing an animal to sell its hide is very cruel. The way they get the hide is usually starving the animal so no blood gets on the fur. Another way to get money is from working in puppy mills. These inhumane places use dogs to have puppies usually three times a year. Then in return, the dog gets abused and has physical problems. The puppies are sold for unfair prices which are way too high for the physical condition of the puppy, which is why it is a good idea to check the background of a dog before buying. Finally, the last main reason for animal abuse is lazy owners that don’t want to take care of an ani-mal anymore. Owners want the young animal because it is cute and then forget the fact that that animal is still going to grow larger, so they abandon them or leave them on the streets. These animals need help; we need your help to stop animal abuse. Thousands of animals are saved each year but thousands die each year, too. Who has made a difference? Many people have made a difference by adopting a pet. I adopted a dog that came from LifeLine Rescue. She came here from a puppy mill and then a high kill shelter in Alabama. Just by adopting this dog, I have become a part of something bigger. I have become a part of saving animals from the abuse and the neglect of people that don’t know how to care of a loyal pet. Also, I am a part of LifeLine Rescue and ASPCA, great foundations that work with police that fight for animals rights, while rescuing them from abuse and bad owners. Even around town I have seen animal neglect happening. I have also seen dogs eating out of garbage cans in Chatham. This is not right, it is horrible, help stop it.

Animcal Abuse (Continued from page 28)


CMS Press Cycle 5 2009 web edition (Read-Only)€¦ · Do You Know Mrs. P-K? 2 2 NFL Combine/Draft...

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