A Breakdown of Thefts
January 25, 2008
Click here to view a more detailed breakdown of thefts that occurred at Carmel High School for the 2006 - 2007 school year.
Answers to “Where have you seen this before”
January 25, 2008
1. Poster by registrar window
2. Parent volunteer help desk
3. Counselor request basket
4. Circular brochure distributer
Falling out of love with movies
January 25, 2008
By: Sherry Lu <slu@hilite.org>
Walking into the theatre at the age of 7, I was bubbling with excitement to see my very first movie. The film was “Flubber”; I remember my eyes being glued to the large screen, enchanted by Robin Williams playing a mad scientist and a green ball bouncing around throughout the movie. I lost myself in this fun, make-believe world. Yet for most of us as we grow older, our enthrallment with movies begins to die.
Believe it or not, there was actually a time when going to watch a movie was not only a form of entertainment but an experience in itself. From the era of silent films to the inception of high definition digital movies, films have been an iconic part of American culture since the early 1900s. When the first moviegoers filed in to see Charlie Chaplin sing and dance during “City Lights,” they were able to take in not only the movie but the entire experience of going to a theatre, seeing a film come alive on a larger than life screen and maybe, even for a second, escape to a world beyond their imaginations. That was the whole point and the magic within movies that has captured the attention of people for decades.
However, in the 21st century, many of us have lost that sense of magic when it comes to watching movies. Not many us leave the theater feeling much different than before we entered.
Often, going to see a movie has become a last ditch resort when there is nothing else better to do. Few films leave an impression anymore, and let’s face it, many of us watch so many movies that they all pretty much become one big blur.
For the most part, the loss of movie magic is driven by the inherent nature of our modern world. We have become an extremely fast-paced society. Whether it is in utilizing the computer, the Internet or any other new technologies, we are constantly looking for the next best thing to make our lives easier, quicker and better.
Unfortunately, movies have not escaped this scrutiny and search. Over the past few years, there have been new forms of technology developed that allow people to access a whole plethora of movies easier and faster. With just a call or a click of a mouse, movies on demand, streaming videos or downloads let people watch movies anytime and anywhere.
Piracy has also become an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of this growing trend toward more simplified ways of acquiring and watching movies. Some people even take cameras into the theatre, film the entire movie and then upload these “cam” versions of movies onto streaming video Web sites like youtube.com or veoh.com.
They can also upload these movie files as “torrents” so that people from all over the world are able to download them with just a torrent client and the click of the mouse. Although, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has attempted to crack down on illegal downloads, the problem is too large for any one organization to effectively control. Every year, the entertainment industry loses millions of dollars to piracy. Through these illegal methods, people are able to watch hundreds upon hundreds of movies some that are still in theaters, free of charge and without even leaving their homes. However, it is not about the technology but the impact of that this growing underground market has on us, the consumers.
Undoubtedly, the advantages that the new methods of watching movies give us are very tempting. With streaming or downloading movies, we no longer have to go through a process of looking up movie times, getting dressed, driving to the nearest theater and shelling out nine dollars for a potentially awful film. This way, it cuts out the pre-movie hassles and if it is a bad movie, there is no lingering regret over wasted money. Also it gives us power over the movie. If it is bad, we can just turn it off. If we want to watch another portion, there are the fast forward and rewind buttons.
However, the people who choose to completely neglect watching movies in the theatre are undoubtedly losing out. The experience of watching a film on a 15-inch computer screen is inevitably different than seeing the same film on a 20-foot high definition screen, surrounded by digital sound produced by speakers flanking all sides of the theatre.
A movie is much more than just pictures and sounds; it is the entirety of the theatre experience that should be considered. The sound effects and high picture quality are lost when you see a movie on a smaller screen. Imagine watching “Star Wars” or “Beowulf” on your computer screen.
The visual and sound intensity of movies like those evokes powerful emotions when seen at the theatre but when compressed into a smaller screen on a smaller scale, these same effects might become almost comical and be interpreted as extremely fake.
Most importantly, whether it is by yourself or with friends and family, when you go the movies, it is a chance to get away from the world, be able to completely focus on the film, and for a few hours escape to an imaginative place created for us by directors and actors. Sherry Lu is the student section editor for the HiLite. Contact her at slu@hilite.
We’re all slaves 4 U
January 25, 2008
By: Grace Baranowski <gbaranowski@hilite.org>
Please, no more about Britney.
The whole thing is like a suffocatingly whiney friend who has called too many times, moaning about life’s problems. But the informational snippets don’t come in the form of texts or endless phone calls—they scroll across the bottom of my television screen with all the urgency of CNN “war on terror” updates.
Britney might be the most dramatic current example of an overexposed, struggling celebrity, but she is definitely not alone. Anna Nicole Smith’s death proved the extent to which the media can free fall into depravity, and it doesn’t waste any time now in publicizing her younger peers.
Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton join her ranks, providing “celebrity reporters” endless material. While Spears might flirt with reporters regarding rehab, Lohan has had a torrid affair with the press. In one minute and out the other, caught drinking at a bar and apologizing publicly (to whom?) the next day, Lohan has given the paparazzi enough material to feed magazines, Internet blogs and TV broadcasts already fat with the glut of scandalous behavior.
Yet I understand why the public greedily consumes it all. Celebrity gossip glitters on glossy magazine pages. The lifestyle is everything we can’t have, yet everything we want. The information glut hangs a forbidden fruit, maddeningly swinging in front of us, and the only way we can hope to enjoy it is to spend hours watching the talking heads on E! or perusing blogs. It’s all the glamour and intrigue of a Hollywood lifestyle, without the annoying reality check of a Hollywood mortgage. It’s money, it’s sex, it’s drugs. And sadly, it’s a big chunk of our national media coverage.
Misguided celebrities have become our way out, so we don’t have to deal with the realities of a complicated world outside of Hollywood. For the moment, the trivial dramas of child custodies or drugged-up, partying teen celebs seem more important.
The audience can lose itself in a fantastically foreign world of designer brands and multimillion-dollar movie deals, rather than the solid foreign world of U.N. mutterings and Iraqi suicide bombers. The media itself is guilty of the same hedonistic misdeed. The pure glut of the media as it littered flirty (and pointless) videos of Anna Nicole Smith at her death is evidence. According to a study done by Think Progress, “NBC’s ‘Nightly News’ devoted 14 seconds to Iraq compared to three minutes and 13 seconds to Anna Nicole. CNN referenced Anna Nicole 522 percent more frequently than it did Iraq. MSNBC was even worse — 708 percent more references to Anna Nicole than Iraq.”
During that time, four Marines employed in Iraq died and the sixth helicopter fell from the Iraqi sky in three weeks.
After all, what’s more interesting: a woman covered completely in a dusty blue hijab or a woman writhing, half-naked, and popular for those flaunted assets? It’s simple—sex sells. But for it, we sell our ability to focus or think critically about our nation’s serious issues. By mindlessly absorbing the chatter on the airwaves, we can forget the turmoil in the Middle East. We don’t have to be bothered to think of such things as presidential elections.
Pesky little matters like skyrocketing gas prices or crashing housing markets seem too serious, too big, to think about in the context of Lindsay’s latest collapse or Britney’s most recent motherly faux pas. We sell it not just at the price of fully understanding the world around us, but also at the expense of the people actually in our lives.
It can all be misleading. After seeing a celebrity’s face on the news so many times, one may begin to think that they know the person, and actually, oddly, become shocked or personally affronted if the celebrity acts in a way not personally acceptable to the viewer.
It’s time to realize that celebrities are nothing more than people, built up into idols by the entertainment industry. You don’t know them any more than those beautiful faces know you, even if you’ve wasted a chunk of your own life following theirs.
Instead of falsely investing in the extreme version of a one-sided relationship, don’t trust the hand that feeds you the junk food of information. The media doesn’t give us the information we need to know; they give us what we want to know. They’re the fun aunt that hands out sweets at dinner time, when all we need is a strict father to feed us broccoli. Grace Baranowski is a managing editor for the HiLite. Contact her at gbaranowski@hilite.org.
Voter ID law minor inconvenience
January 25, 2008
By: Jaclyn Chen <jchen@hilite.org>
It’s primary season, and the excitement is stirring around the nation as states mood swing between Clinton and Obama, McCain and Romney. But Indiana faces a decision unlike the others that could change how citizens vote in the future.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case regarding Indiana’s voter ID law. Passed in 2005, the law mandates that all voters present a photo ID at the polls. Previously, the only requirement before a casting ballot was to sign the poll book.
I’ve worked at the polls for two elections now, and I have yet to encounter a problem regarding the law. Some voters thought that they always had to present ID, and the problem, if anything, was generating enough civic duty to get to the poll site, not qualifying to cast a ballot.
The primary purpose of the voter ID law is to prevent fraudulent voting, according to the Office of the Indiana Secretary of State, one of the main supporters of the measure. This law guarantees each citizen’s right to vote once, and only once, in elections. Elections hinge upon counting every last vote, as seen in the 2000 debacle over Florida’s ballots in the presidential election, so this law seeks to alleviate those pains.
Without photo ID, it is virtually impossible to detect in-person vote fraud. Poll workers receive a book with a voter’s information and digitalized signature. Before the law passed, the only verification was matching signatures and, I suppose, checking gender. With only those steps, I could easily think of several ways to commit fraud.
The state Democratic Party and civil rights activists say that the voter ID law disenfranchises certain groups, especially minority, elderly and poor voters, and compare it to Jim Crow-era laws. The fact that the BMV offers IDs free of charge, however, negates this charge because everyone qualifies to receive a photo ID. If the voter can’t get to the BMV, how is he going to get to the polls? The idea escapes me. Providing photo ID is a minimal inconvenience at most and a routine procedure at least.
Some propose using voter registration cards as means of identification. The problem, however, is that Indiana’s extremely bloated voter rolls contains many multiple registrations, and therefore some people have multiple voter cards. A driver’s license, or the BMV-issued ID, is linked to a national database so that no one can hold two at the same time. This ensures the current address of the voter and verifies his registration.
The argument mostly boils down to a political debate. The law passed during a Republican-controlled legislature and was signed by republican governor Mitch Daniels, and the state Democratic Party appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Democrats’ stronghold traditionally lies with the elderly, minority and poor voting blocks, and their arguments to protect their constituents do make sense. However, what’s reasonable and what’s ideal don’t always align, and in this case, I prefer the minor inconvenience over dangerous voter fraud – it is easier to enforce photo ID than it is to deal with the train wreck of a fraudulent election.
If the Supreme Court approves the measure, Indiana’s law could set the precedent for other states, and the decision could render a national law regarding photo ID. Currently, only Indiana, Florida and Georgia require it. Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan and South Dakota have less strict versions of the same law, according to USA Today.
Choosing the president of the United States holds more weight than boarding a plane or cashing a check, and those acts regularly require a form of identification. Even if we demote the economic level of these examples, collecting welfare and food stamps also requires ID. The electoral process should be no exception.
The essence of the American democratic institution lies with this widely coveted right, and efforts in the past to thwart the integrity of the elections have muffled the people’s voice. There will be tiptoeing around any law that alters requirements for the glorified voting process, but even this fragile glass figurine can’t be preserved forever. The laws must adapt to new situations, and the voter ID law currently provides the best possible solution to ensure fair and free elections. Jaclyn Chen is the editor in chief of the HiLite. Contact her at jchen@hilite.org.
Creative writing allows for self-expression
January 25, 2008
By: Meagan McNulty <mmcnulty@hilite.org>
This semester I’m trying something new: creative writing. It sounds simple when it’s written on my schedule, and especially when I tell my second-semester senior peers—but when I pick up my pen to write the first thing on the top of my head in a daily journal required for the class—my mind turns to a blank canvas. No longer do thoughts flow freely, but my subconscious immediately shuts up. As I stare at a blank page, I’m immediately terrified. I definitely didn’t predict that I, someone who has always enjoyed writing anything, would have trouble forming a sentence in a diary, with no strings attached. Hand me a prompt and I’ll readily give you an answer. Give me a book and I’ll write you a report. There is just something about the immediate freedom of writing whatever I feel that sparks blank thoughts.
As I mulled the concept over, I thought of the many mandatory essays, papers, reviews, free response questions and document based questions that I’d written. Subjective facts. There are no risks involved when stating subjective facts because they mean the same thing to everyone who reads them. There is no fear of judgment when writing a response question about the Cold War, unless of course, you state the wrong facts. Unlike other writing assignments, writing creatively allows someone to see beyond what you may present to the outside world. The raw expression captured within pieces that are truly your own reflect no one other than yourself, and to many, including myself, the concept of totally revealing one’s inner thoughts is mind-numbing.
Freedom of expression is something each of us possesses but fear to utilize. In the hyper-critical environment our fast paced society creates, it is no wonder that young girls no longer lock themselves away in their bedrooms to spill their hearts out into their journals like they did in past generations. The lessons we learn today teach us that our written expressions must fit a mold, a precise model of what is acceptable to be read. With little or no time to think creatively, we eventually lose the skill. When faced with the task of writing a DBQ or something personal and completely of one’s choosing, most of us would gladly take the DBQ, where we can put our creative minds on auto-pilot.
By writing what is constantly staged within our heads, we ultimately must come to terms with ourselves. No longer are those words just thoughts bouncing around inside of you, but they’re an idea, your idea, whether you like it or not. The ownership implied within the written statements allows us to fully grasp, or even question how we really feel. This ultimately adds to the fear factor. Seeing something in your head is something completely different than seeing it on paper. Suddenly, when we write, our expressions have taken a new form, something foreign from the way we’re used to seeing them, kept inside ourselves.
The expressions captured within an art form, like creative writing, imply our taking advantage of our freedom of expression. We can express what we want, when we want. When utilized, we learn more about ourselves. We sort through the daily jumbles within our minds, just like filing papers into folders.
The fear one empty piece of paper can provoke is really a bittersweet opportunity. As I let my guard down, and deeply think about an appropriate topic for the first of a semester long series of rants, I make a choice to start something new. Sure, others will read it, and their opinions may be different than my own. Not everyone is going to agree, or even like it at all, for that matter. When we write, we express what we hold dear. Maybe the feelings of intimidation the blank paper creates in us are there to remind us to write what is important to us at the time, which may be the exact opposite of what our classmates are writing next to us. But, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Meagan McNulty is a feature editor for the HiLite. Contact her at mmcnulty@hilite.org.
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