“It amazes me the generosity of the students,” Barrenechea-Carver said. “Hickman students and staff are generous and awesome, they know how to give from their heart.”

They sold various baked goods and lollipops, and some students donated a portion of their pay checks to the cause.

“I think it’s awesome we are helping out people in need,” junior Maria Estrada said.

This school year over 6,700 children participated in the Buddy Pack program.  Back packs contain items such as peanut butter crackers, canned fruits, canned soups, granola bars, and peanut butter.

For more information about the local Buddy Pack program, go to http://sharefoodbringhope.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Benton.pdf

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Following the theme, the book features a multitude of recreations of iconic photographs and paintings such as ‘Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,’ the album cover for the Beatles’ Abbey Road, and the ‘American Gothic’ using students as the subjects of each piece.

“We thought with the whole ‘re’ idea that we strung throughout that book and Internet fads such as ‘Throwback Thursday’ that recreating all those pictures was pretty relevant to this school year,” senior editor-in-chief of the Cresset Susan Jenn said.

The rights to the photos which were not available to the public had to be purchased by the staff.

In a year where the school also saw a refurbished schedule, changing from their traditional one to a modified version of Rock Bridge’s block scheduling, the addition of a new gymnasium, and the recovery of many of Hickman’s athletic programs after sitting in the Bruin’s shadows in recent years; the theme playing off of the word ‘recuperate’ seemed appropriate.

What was not appropriate, however, was the last name change of senior Raigan Mastain on page 270, the page that featured the StuGov club’s photo, as well as the index.  After the electronic file was corrected and indexed, a staff member changed the last name to ‘masturbate’ and saved over the file prepared for the printer.

“I think we trust student judgment all the time, and this time the judgment was misplaced,” Principal Tracey Conrad said. “I feel really sorry for the student who was a victim of such judgment.  It’s not the Kewpie way.”

“Although this clearly wasn’t the ideal outcome for the book, I’m not too upset with it,” Mastain said. “The speed with which the administration worked to combat the issue with the student who made the change helped in easing the negativity of the situation. Although I’m extremely disappointed, I just hope that the book’s merits are revered as highly as this frivolous mistake. I’m beyond proud of the way the book turned out, in spite of this small bump in the road.”

Yearbook adviser Kim Acopolis agreed.

“What happened to Raigan is inexcusable,” Acopolis said. “But, I have to tell you, this is one of my favorite books for many reasons. The editorial staff worked with real world media companies when we sought the proper permission to print the original photos, and it was a great exercise in press law, copyright, and public domain. The cover is gorgeous, the writing is stellar, and they truly sought to cover subjects that would reflect their generation.  I hope, soon, people take notice of those things.”

The staff member responsible was arrested with felony charges.  The original order of 700 books cost $41,000 to print. Highly adhesive stickers with the correct names were placed on the effected pages of the books that had already been handed out.  Members of the yearbook staff spent yesterday putting the stickers on books that had not been picked up.

Some students, who already had their books, became dismissive of orders to bring them to the main office to have their books altered. Students who complied received a free Hickman keychain as compensation.

Before the name change had been noticed the book had received high praise from many.

“It really sucks that this is how this book is going to be remembered,” senior staff member and humor editor Cole Brendel said. “This book took a lot out of the people who had to push at the end to finish it, but we were really satisfied with the end result. I just hope people associate this issue with the quality of the content and not the immaturity of one person.”

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It seems fitting that the upcoming movie The Maze Runner, despite beginning production this month, has not caught the attention of the public. Author James Dashner published the book in 2009 and never reached the popularity of other teen dystopian novels published during that time.

Like the movie, the book The Maze Runner continues to ride on the coattails of the recent demand for a dystopian plot. Publishers market it as “a modern classic, perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and Divergent.” Unfortunately, the book falls short of its promise.

It begins with Thomas, a character with no memory and no last name, entering a microcosm called The Glades, by freight elevator.

Immediately, readers question the impossible maze, where the entirety of the book takes place. Forty young males live and work together with the threat of monsters named Grievers inside the maze.  From there, the reader is left with several other questions that remain unanswered.  While Dashner quickly builds suspense in the book, the lack of resolutions is more aggravation than cliff hanger.

Just as aggravating is Dashner’s diction. Grievers is just one of the numerous slang words throughout the book including klunk, shank, buggin’, sticks, slim it, slinthead and greenbean. Every action and place has its own word, none recognizable to the reader.

The reader struggles past the bizarre diction out of  sheer curiosity. Who is Thomas? Why was he placed in this maze, and for what purpose? How can he survive against the Grievers—a mix of technology and pure monster—with nothing but the crude weapons the gladers (the boys in the maze) build? Why does Thomas have a vague familiarity with the maze and who constructed this seemingly impossibly big and dangerous place?

These questions pull the hopeful reader along, despite weak prose and even weaker characters.   Because like the lack of last name suggests, Thomas is a mystery throughout the book. Dashner pounds into the reader he’s scared, he’s upset, he’s driven and that’s where his characterization ends. Even worse than Thomas, however, is his counterpart.

In the unexpected twist (that’s revealed on the back cover), an unconscious girl named Teressa enters the maze, the only girl that’s ever arrived in the years of the maze’s existence. With secret knowledge of the maze and the intrigue behind her, Dashner weakens Teressa’s character page by page as she remains a mystery, the reader discovering little about her even after she wakes up.

And this is where Dashner fails.  His reoccurring idea of a mystery with no answers fails to satisfy the reader.  There are no hints to help pull the reader along. Instead, Dashner creates more questions, to throw more mystery into the 374 page book full of ambiguous characters living in a far-fetched place with no explanations. Still, the reader keeps going expecting a big reveal in the end where every random clue ties together for a big ah-ha! moment.

There is so much potential in the scary and enigmatic plot, but Dashner fails to deliver reader satisfaction. It’s  a mindless, quick read with unlimited suspense and no resolution.

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“It lasts about an hour. There will be small snack foods and punch. The magazine is also available for sale at the beginning and end of the night,” Editor-in-Chief senior Raigan Mastain said.

The magazine costs $7. Students published in the magazine will be there to read and show their work.

“It’s so they can showcase themselves even further. It’s just as much their magazine as it is ours, as in the staff,” Mastain said.

The editors of the Review, including junior Lisa Simms and senior Maya Ramachandran, will also speak about this year’s production experience.

“The main difference this year is that we received a lot more prose pieces and two dimensional artwork than we have in the past,” Mastain said.

The staff hosts the release each year for the first day of distribution. The staff will sell the magazine at lunch for the next few days.

“We have the event because we hold our connection with the community in Columbia in very high regards. It’s an opportunity for us to invite our patrons, our generous donators, to see the magazine that they’ve helped pay for. It also gives the artists and writers a chance to connect with the staff and the patrons as well. It really is their showcase as much as it is the staff’s,” Mastain said.

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Does it have to still be running? Man, what do I watch the most?  Honestly, if it’s on Netflix….  It’s Trailer Park Boys, but if I got nothing to do then Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

2.      Situation: You think that your best friend’s girlfriend is cheating on him. Do you tell him?

I don’t know. Yeah, I’d tell them. If she’s underage, I can’t get photo documentation because that’s illegal.  I would leave a written note to show the seriousness.

3.      Rhianna or Beyonce?

Who? If it’s online, I have to go with Beyonce.  She’s Illuminati.  You can’t go against them.  That’s truth.

4.      Advice for incoming students about HHS?

Let’s see. Well, first thing is always take a PE class every year and mix that in with a cooking class, definitely.  Load up pretty nicely first two years and then coast.  Start high then decline.

5.      What’s your middle name?

Lane.

6.      What are you going to name your first born?

I don’t know. I think for a guy’s name I’ve always thought about doing something outrageously terrible.  I’d pick a super name out of Game of Thrones.

7.      Candy bar or barbell?

What do you think?  Let’s be honest on that.  I never eat candy because my mom won’t get it for me.  I’d take a Kit Kat bar over most things.

8.       Celebrity lookalike?

Justin Timberlake.  We both have hands.

9.      Elvis Presley or Tim McGraw?

That’s just a terrible question. I’m not responding to that.

10.  Cartoons or reality TV?

If I was still a kid, I don’t know…..this is too tough to be thinking about in the morning.

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Recently, I watched a specific episode that really got to me: season 6, episode 15 “My Long Goodbye.” In this particular episode, good old nurse Laverne Roberts continued to preach to Dr. Cox how everything happened for a reason after an 8 year old girl had gotten stabbed in a robbery. While the young girl made a full recovery, the audience is thrown for a loop when Nurse Roberts got in a car accident en route to Sacred Heart. Unfortunately, Laverne was left brain dead by the accident and was taken off life support.

While watching this episode, I bawled my eyes out. I’m not a big crier. The Notebook, Titanic, Marley and Me? Not a single tear. But there I was in bed sobbing like Laverne was my friend too. I wasn’t emotionally prepared for her passing and it showed. I consciously knew that she was just a tv character and that the actress was still alive. I even knew that the same actress would appear in later episodes but not as Laverne (an inside joke amongst the cast that executive producer Bill Lawrence explained in an interview once.) So why did the passing of a fictional character impact me so much?

Neuroeconomist Paul J Zak and one of his graduate students designed an experiment to test why people cry while watching tv and movies. His findings were that “we cry at movies because the oxytocin in the human brain is imperfectly tuned. It does not differentiate between actual human beings and flickering images of human beings. Either one is enough to kick oxytocin into high gear and impel our empathy.”

I was mourning the loss of Laverne as if she was a close friend of mine because my subconscious had established a connection between the two of us. The release of oxytocin while watching different shows is the same reason I genuinely want good things to happen to each of the characters and why there’s a short burst of emptiness after the series finale of my current tv addiction.

Perhaps that’s why tv is so entertaining; it combines real world empathy with hypothetical people and situations, but everything felt while watching is genuine emotion. At least next time I’m blubbering like an idiot, I can do it with confidence knowing I’m not crazy to feel like I, personally, lost something because to my brain, I did.

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 “I sent in an audition video this fall and they chose about 300 out of over 1000 high school students from all over the country to come there and preform. We had three rehearsals everyday (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) for a total of 24 hours of rehearsal. We learned six pieces of music and preformed them on Saturday,” Moore said.

The conference flew in prominent choir singers to perform for the students while they weren’t in rehearsals.

“We performed in front of hundreds of incredible choir directions from around America and the whole place is full of “Choral Legends” as Mr. Felts calls them,” Moore said.

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