Avi Cantor

Brendan Hall

Staff Writer

A staple of the SLA community has been a substitute teacher in the district. His name is Mr. Orion, Mr. O for short. During his tenure, he garnered a stellar reputation. Many of the students at SLA have great things to say about Mr. O.  Junior Ashton Reigner described Orion as, “ a person that has a lot of great knowledge on life and is a great person to talk to.” Mr. O often goes out of his way to help counsel students with their daily lives. Aside from this he releases his own independent hip-hop music and raps with students here. He even had a rap battle with SLA Junior Raymond Rochester during a period he subbed.

Early Life

Mr. O was born Kia Orion on June 3, 1991. Despite growing up in Spencer, New York he was actually born in New Zealand.  He was born into the family with a Spanish Teacher for a mother and his father who was an author. The town of Spencer only had around 2,000 people in the area. Orion found an interest in Hip-Hop music in his youth and created music of his own while in high school. This became a passion of his he became known for by students here.

After graduating from high school, Orion was accepted to Boston College but dropped out after a year Orion eventually enrolled at Tompkins County Community. From Thompkins, Orion would end up graduating from Cornell University with a Bachelor’s degree in Communication, minor in diversity studies.

Orion’s first adult endeavor was moving to New York City.

He worked at counseling troubled youth called Reconnect Brooklyn.To find better job opportunity he left New York City for Philadelphia. The first job he landed in Philly was as a bartender for the restaurant Bar. + Kitchen. He no longer bartends, but he does still wait tables, on top of being a substitute teacher.

Thoughts on the SLA community.

Mr. O has a lot of gratitude and respect for SLA community. He stated, “I love subbing here because it is so much calmer than other schools.” Orion also said that the school has many creative and unique people that interest him. “I love subbing for the kids as much as they love having me.” He also mentioned that working at this school gives him an important bond. “SLA is what I wish my high school was like.”

Lauren Nicolella

Staff Writer

Since the announcement of the Grammys coveted title of “best new artist”, controversy has revolved around the winner of the best new artist category. Many believe that pop artist Alessia Cara wasn’t deserving of such a storied title due to the fact that the other nominees were TDE’s first lady SZA, teen sensation Khalid, game-changing rapper Lil Uzi Vert, and rising star Julia Michaels.

The main controversies concerned the amount of success these “new” artists had during 2017 if they should’ve been considered “new” and the lack of female musicians that took home awards that night.

Junior Taylor Green was able to see two sides of the whole “new artist” situation, as she had seen the growth and listened to the previously released music before the mentioned nominees went completely mainstream.

“I could totally understand why people were mad and thought it would be SZA or Lil Uzi to get it, considering the fact that they’re played on the radio a lot. I feel Alessia Cara already had her years in 2014-2015, and she did a collab with Troye Sivan and a bunch of other people. Personally, I wouldn’t consider her a new artist, but I also wouldn’t consider Lil Uzi or SZA a new artist either.”

Alessia Cara herself released a statement on Instagram regarding the backlash stating, “I was nominated and won and I am not going to be upset about something I’ve wanted since I was a kid, not to mention have worked really hard for.”

Regarding Alessia’s nomination, Junior Tylier Driscoll believes that the artist may have been placed in the wrong category, to begin with. “I feel like it’s not her fault she won. Why wasn’t she in the best pop song category? I feel like it would’ve made more sense. Especially given that her new song wasn’t bad and was nice to hear on the radio.”

Other female musicians such as Halsey and P!nk addressed not only the situation about Alessia but the Grammy board as a whole. Previously nominated singer Halsey explained how unfair she thought it was that just one woman took home an award. The singer also put out an inspiring message that reveals how crucial women are to the music industry.

“We show the next generation of women and girls and boys and men what it means to be equal, and what it looks like to be fair.”

Overall, the Grammy’s should strive to not only be equal while creating their lists of nominees but also consider that the audience will have a reaction to everything that is put out.

Sarah Berg

Staff Writer

Engineering and Robotics is one of the most prominent clubs at SLA, owing to its competitive element, the camaraderie built between teammates, and the opportunity to build something spectacular. However, an element of stress is also a key component of the club, especially right now. Build season is coming to a close.

The club participates in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition (FRC), and each year works to build a robot that will compete in the tournament. The competition’s build season begins each year on the first Saturday of January.

Junior Bronwyn Goldschneider joined this year and is treasurer of the club. She described the start of build season as a “meeting at Penn where the structure of the game is released”. The game that Goldschneider references is based on a task that a robot must be able to do, such as throw a ball into a hoop or over a wall.

Junior and Chief Systems Engineer Kamil Kielar pointed out that the most difficult part of these competitions is the fact that with every year comes a different game. Subsequently, the team must build an entirely new robot each year.

After the game is revealed, the club gets six weeks to build the robot. Kielar described these weeks as a “very intense time”. He added, “we’re on week six right now, crunch time. At the moment we have a running drivetrain and prototypes for a lot of our mechanisms, but we’re still finalizing their designs, so we’re a little behind.”

In hopes of catching up, the club has been meeting almost every single day. “Last week, we were here on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday till 8:00, Saturday from 10:00 to 5:00, and Sunday from 10:00 to 4:00. This Monday, we stayed till around 8:00, and it’s going to be like that until the end of the season,” listed Kielar. Several years ago, a team even stayed in school until midnight.

In terms of success in FRC this year, the team is hopeful yet realistic. Goldschneider thinks that the chances of winning are “better than last year, but not certain,” and Kielar believes, “we just have to put our minds to it, really get the mechanisms done, and just put it together. I think we have a good chance.”

Rasa Watson and Jeremiah Butler

Staff Writers

At SLA,  the most efficient way for the word to get around is snapchat. People constantly repost school events: pizza sale information, bake sales, party flyers and club meeting information.

A prime example of a group that uses Snapchat as a platform for promotion is the Black Student Union (BSU). Run by Freshman Rene Hart, the group uses the platform to encourage people to come to their meetings and events.

However, school club promotions are just a minor aspect of the Snapchat activity seen in SLA students.

Students use Snapchat to express themselves and show each other what they do during the day.

Despite the meaningless memes and drama such as fights and arguments seen from students at other schools, SLA students tend to avoid such behavior for the most part. SLA students typically use Snapchat as an outlet to share a common interest or just things parents or adults can’t relate to.

“I use Snapchat for sharing places I go to because I do travel a lot and for what I don’t want to share with my parents,” said Sophomore Kai Bradley.

Content on Snapchat may include thoughts about things that others say or do. For instance, if someone was to say the n-word during a class discussion, a response would likely be waiting on snapchat by the end of the period.

Being much bolder about how Snapchat is effective for private uses is not a bad thing in a teenage community. Some things, like who’s dating who or when the next party is happening, are just better left for students and students only.

Last year, Snapchat added a feature where you can have a combined story based off of people in the same location or customize a story so that you can share stories with other people. The SLA community created multiple SLA stories soon after. The stories included people from all grades posting various things all day.

“With the SLA stories, you could see what school is like for all four grades. I thought that was interesting,” said Sophomore Siarra Cummings.

Along with last year’s SLA story, there were loads of hilarious snaps, being seen around in the school. Not only were these snaps funny to look at, but they made peoples days just a little better.

For example, snaps that refer to someone spreading good vibes all 2018 just to be a better person, would influence a student to think maybe they should do the same. If multiple people feel this in SLA, positive vibes are spread throughout the school. Being in a school where work and stress easily go hand in hand, it’s nice to see snippets of funny content to give the watcher a ‘pick me up’.

The SLA story continued into this school year but randomly stopped sometime this fall. When asked, students were unsure or didn’t notice that the story had stopped or vanished.

However, even though there’s a lot of positive content on Snapchat, teenagers will be teenagers and drama will naturally occur. Snapchat gives people the freedom to post whatever they want behind a barrier. There have been multiple alterations that have occurred due to posts on snapchat.

Luckily, Bradley has a solution.

“I think whoever’s in drama should just block that person and continue to use snapchat. It’s really that simple,” Bradley explained.  

Overall, snapchat has a lot of purposes and uses at SLA both positive and negative. From interacting with other students to watching what’s going on, people use snapchat in ways that are influential in SLA even though there are a few negative moments on snapchat, the app plays a pretty positive role on a daily.

“Snapchat is a platform that allows for people to express what they normally would be embarrassed to show in front of people, for the good and the bad, safely hidden behind a screen,” said Bradley.  

 

Eric Valenti

Staff Writer

Educon is right around the corner and people have big expectations.

Starting Friday, January 26th,  Educon is a conference that brings educators from across the U.S. together to discuss all angles of school and technology.

This year Educon is being organized by Physics and Astronomy teacher BJ Enzweiler and English Teacher Amal Giknis, and the student co-chairs are Junior Miguel Rivera and Senior Ella Burrows.

The process is a labor of love for months.

“Since September, myself, Mr. Lehmann, Ms. Giknis, Mr. Enzweiler, and Miguel meet every Tuesday to map out all aspects of the weekend. Then Miguel and I have to have our student volunteer meetings as well,” said Burrows.

“This year, I have been lucky enough to have Miguel, my co-chair help me out a lot with scheduling, working the social media, looking at sessions and so much more to make sure everything is perfect for the weekend!”

So what’s new and different about EduCon this year? Mr. Enzweiler explained that there have been several upgrades to the program.”   

“We are not doing the Friday night non-educator panel. Instead, we are turning that night into the Educator Panel. This means that we aren’t doing any Sunday morning panel,” he explained.

” Second, because we have one panel instead of two, we will be finishing educon earlier on Sunday. Now the conference will be complete at 2:15 pm Sunday.”

Educon is an opportunity for SLA to demonstrate what they do and what works so well — but also what doesn’t work so well. Educon allows for students to show how they learn and to show teachers from around the U.S. how to implicate new tactics when teaching. But like any program, Educon has areas of improvement.  

“I have worked as a volunteer in the past. I remember moving chairs and I was on a panel for math. I think that more underclassmen can be included in the making of educon. I think this because I don’t see a lot of underclassmen last year. However, I think that Ella and I have done a good job at motivating underclasses to come and support.” Rivera stated.

Educon is a chance for everyone in the SLA community to get involved and work together to create a helpful and insightful environment. This year’s Educon is going to have high attendance, great and new panels, and tons of SLA pride. The program is also a fundraiser for the school and typically raises tens of thousands of dollars.

Educon is a time where students are able to collaborate and make SLA into a campus in which students can share SLA techniques and methods globally. Without the students, Educon would lose its spark, the first-hand accounts of SLA’s methods.

“The co-chair also gets to give a speech! Then the weekend is full of awesome sessions and conversations full of learning and meeting people. Thanks to all the lovely student volunteers, the weekend wouldn’t be possible without the food crew and coat check volunteers as well as the floaters! There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes when a student volunteer, so I encourage everyone to try it at least once!” Burrows stated.