Tag Archives: Eli Bolus

Online registration to take effect today as students register for next year

By Eli Bolus and Meghan Poff 

Class registration for next year’s courses will be an online ordeal.  The change is not only to cut down on paperwork, but to prepare students for online college class registration.

The registration will be done through INOW and information will be given at a presentation in English classes over the next several days depending on grade.

At the presentation, students will receive a packet with their INOW login information and a set of step-by-step instructions showing students how to register for classes.

Once students have made their class decisions, they can log onto INOW anytime and register for their classes.

Counselor Mark Clark said that it would be preferable if students could register within a week of receiving their information since the counselors have so many schedules to approve.

Clark said the online registration will greatly cut down on work students have to do, but will actually increase the work of counselors because of the “double-checking” they will have to do.

Clark also said as long as students put course numbers in correctly, the transition will be smooth and will cut down on the number of schedule changes.

With the new registration system, students will be able to identify and correct schedule mistakes earlier than in recent years, he said.

Counselors will be available in the spine at lunch next week to answer questions that students have.

Readers who have something to say about the online registration process can post comments below.

Cyberbullying laws slow to catch up with growing social media

By: Eli Bolus

Bullying, and more specifically cyberbullying, has gotten a lot of media publicity lately.  Stories have been written and news programs like Fox News have done video specials.  However, cyberbullying is still a rather new concept, and school systems are still trying to keep up.

Principal Janie Whaley said the first time she heard the term “cyberbullying” was only three or four years ago, and with the rise of technology and social media it has become more of a problem within schools.

The only set guidelines against cyberbullying are those that fall under the basic anti-bullying rules the school has. Assistant principal Rob Willman said that the district only defines what “cyber harassment” is.  The same is true for state law, as Indiana Code defines harassment and obscene messages as “ [someone who] uses a computer network or other form of electronic communication to:
(A) communicate with a person; or
(B) transmit an obscene message or indecent or profane words to a person.”

Whaley said the main task is determining if the cyberbullying is an issue within the school day and “nine out of 10 times it is.”

Willman said students are sometimes reluctant to bring in evidence of cyberbullying because of the exchange that goes on between both parties.  If it is clear that both parties were harassing or insulting the other, then it is a conflict and not an act of bullying and must be dealt with differently.

Willman said the key is for students to be comfortable to come forward and to trust the staff enough to tell them when this happens.  Whaley said cyberbullying will continue to be a problem with more and more kids getting phones with internet access.  

Meet The Candidates: Ron Paul

By Eli Bolus

Candidate:  Ron Paul

Political Party: Republican

Qualifications: Congressman of Texas

Website: www.ronpaul2012.com

Stance on Issues

Economy: Wants to restore America to a world economic power by eliminating income taxes, capital gains, and death taxes, and refusing to raise debt ceiling.

Energy:  Remove restrictions on drilling so companies can drill in the U.S. and repeal the federal tax on gasoline, saving 18 cents per gallon.

Education:  Believes that shutting down the Department of Education will improve the quality of education by encouraging homeschooling and private schools.

Environment:  Wants oil drilling in America and believes that global warming is not “a major problem threatening civilization.”

National Security:  Avoid long expensive land wars, abolish the TSA and ensure veterans receive the care, benefits, and honors when they return.

Abortion: Pro-Life

Immigration: Against amnesty, deportation, and a fence on the U.S. Mexico border but thinks the 14th Amendment should be altered to not allow automatic citizenship for people born in America.

Websites protest SOPA by going offline

By Eli Bolus and Chase Gosman

Today hundreds of websites will go down and be unusable for the remainder of the day.  This is not a technical error but a unified act of defiance to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that will be going through Congress this February.

The SOPA will allow the government to block any website that violates the rules they will set.  For example if a person claims a site is infringing on copyright laws the government can block anyone using an American I.P. from accessing it.  This means user-generated sites like YouTube and Flickr would be affected greatly.

As expected much of the internet has responded in outrage.  Among the websites going black for the remainder of today are all of Wikipedia’s pages, barring the SOPA page, greenpeace.com and reddit.com.  By going black a website blocks all material.

Websites hope that by doing this more people will become informed of the bill and attempt to contact their congressmen.  Those who would like to learn more about SOPA can read about it on wikipedia.com.