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A view from a car window. A bridge at sunrise. A ballerina dancing on a road in the woods.

So opens senior Madeleine Fleshman’s short film, “A Screaming Cry in a Silent Room,” which won first place in Video Fairfax’s annual film festival in the high school age category.

“I really enjoy writing but I haven’t taken the time to continue it recently,” Fleshman said, “so this was my chance to combine film with something that functioned more like a short story.”

Fleshman originally created this film to serve as both her final exam and IB exam in her IB Film Study HL II class.
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On April 10, Rick Santorum dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. This was a sad day for politics. Let me explain:

I find Santorum’s social policies odious in the extreme. I feel that his crusade against abortion and contraception represented, whether he viewed it this way or not, an attack against women’s rights. Which are, in fact, human rights.
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As softball players retire to the benches after a grueling batting practice, new head coach John Reina entertains the exhausted girls by cracking jokes. Reina’s amicable personality is something he shares with other new coaches Brian Germain, Harry Wilkes and Dorothy Brown.

According to JV softball player Lindsay Charters, sophomore, Reina “has a different coaching style.”

“Coach Reina is more involved,” Charters said, adding that he regularly attends JV practices in addition to coaching varsity.

Wilkes, the new boys varsity soccer assistant coach, expressed similar sentiments.
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I was dubious when I walked into the theater that was showing John Carter. I feared that Disney would render the original story unrecognizable. My fears, however, were unfounded.

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Virginia legislators are on the verge of passing a bill that would change the way schools deal with serious student offenses. Principals in FCPS and throughout the state are not required to call the parents of a student who is in a situation where he or she could be suspended or expelled.

“Parents need to know when our children are in serious trouble, and I believe that this bill eventually will bring state law closer to that critical goal,” Virginia Senator Chap Petersen said in a statement.

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In President Obama’s most recent State of the Union Address, he spoke of keeping students in school until they turn 18 and of making laws against dropping out of high school. While it’s true that research shows a direct correlation between how long one stays in high school and income later in life, making dropping out uniformly illegal is not the best way to help teens. In fact, it’s the wrong way.

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Black History Month sparks annual debate over its existence—a debate alive and well at Marshall, where the month is primarily recognized via facts on the morning announcements.

Senior Micheas Atkilt said he finds the announcements “demeaning.”

“It appears to me like African-Americans had a bad past so let’s give them a month to go over things that nobody cares about,” Atkilt said. He added that this sentiment was patronizing.

Senior Maha Hassan said she disagrees.

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“I’m so sorry,” Cold War historian and author John Lewis Gaddis said in response to comments of Marshall history students regarding excerpts from his books as learning aids in IB Topics classes. “You must be suffering.”

Despite this lighthearted joke, Gaddis gave ten Marshall seniors and other historians an in-depth lecture on his new book, George F. Kennan: An American Life, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. last Wednesday.

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Following a recommendation to principals from the FCPS Department of Information Technology, Statesmen are now allowed to use their smartphones, laptops and e-readers as freely as their teachers allow.

Teachers may designate their classrooms green, blue, yellow or red, with green designated as “general use” and red as “prohibited.”

“[Technology] is going to be ubiquitous,” Superintendent Jack Dale said. “The question like that is how do we use it?”

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Looking at the summer reading list, you see abusive parents, child soldiers and culture shock. And that is just the International Baccalaureate (IB) and Honors classes. Even though the ?All Students? list is longer, it too has a fair presence of negative and/or depressing content. Why the doom and gloom?Continue Reading