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6
Coral
Reef Sr. High
Fall 2010
Opinions
No IDs: are we in more danger?
Does the lack of visible IDs make us more vulnerable to intruders?
We want
vegetables
Vegetarians want
healthy cafeteria food
DAIANA TORRES
Staff Writer
The menu in the cafeteria has been
a dilemma since the beginning of the
public school system and this year is no
different. It has come to the attention that
a significant percentage of students are
eating less in the cafeteria and the issue
of lack of vegetarian food plays a big role
in this dilemma.
The cafeteria forces the students to
get ‘a meal’ which, the majority of the
time, includes beef or poultry and ‘a
side’ of a salad or fruit with the option of
milk or juice. Vegetarian students cannot
get food in the cafeteria because once
they reach the cash register they aren’t
allowed to pay for what is considered
‘an incomplete meal’ since they lack the
‘meal’ component of our lunch tray.
“I can’t eat cafeteria food. I’m a
vegetarian,” said IB senior Amelia
Grant. “If they had food for vegetarians
I wouldn’t go without food or constantly
eat pizza.”
Amelia isn’t the only one. IB Senior
Jessica Stavro says, “Digesting meat
is hard on your stomach even when it’s
fresh and school food is not fresh. It
comes frozen.”
Jessica believes that it is not about
adding a vegetarian side, instead it is
about adjusting the cafeteria food to
better the quality of the food our students
are eating “food that has too much salt
and too much grease and is not healthy.”
The situation can be helped by “adding a
veggie stand a salad bar would help but
we aren’t going to eat salad every day,”
says Jessica.
Most students would agree that the
cafeteria food, not only in Coral Reef
but also in majority of the Miami-Dade
County Public Schools, isn’t as tasteful
as we would like. Also to the fact that it
is obvious that majority of the time food
is passed from one day to the next and
therefore the food the next day is less
tasteful than the day before and is many
times hard, like the macaroni and cheese
of which the macaroni the following day
are hard and very unpleasant to eat.
These very students find themselves
supporting a healthier menu in the
cafeteria and even agreeing to eat adding
a vegetarian section to the menu if it will
better the food quality in our schools,
yet why is it that these accommodations
haven’t been implied to our school menu is
beyond understanding for many students,
especially when more schools everyday
are bringing up the obesity issue in teens
and how it is increasing every day.
ERICA BACOURT
Staff Writer
We’ve experienced a lot of changes
this school year at Coral Reef: different
counselors, new teachers, new students,
and of course, new uniforms. Some were
elated about it, others not so much.
However, one change that
may be miniscule and often
overlooked is our student ID
policy. We no longer have to wear
our IDs on our necks; we just have to
have them with us.
From a student’s perspective, the
majority feel that this is a great thing.
Ta’von Brooks, a junior in the business
and finance academy says, “We already
have on a uniform shirt, so I don’t see the
purpose in wearing an I.D too.”
Many students have this same rationale
but they don’t see the other side to that
argument. What if some random stranger
walked into the school with a black polo
shirt on and harmed one or more of the
students?
Ashley Alexander, an IB junior, has
It was the first time I had ever seen a
detached spinal cord. I had never seen a
boy crumpled, dead in the passenger seat.
I had never seen a pool of blood displayed
on a big screen in the auditorium in front of
almost 700 minors. But, most shockingly,
I had never seen any of this being called
“educational.”
Believe it or not, this traumatizing
footage was school sanctioned. As part of
a failed attempt to teach the student body
about the dangers of driving while drunk
or texting, the school brought in a police
officer to scare and disgust students with
this unnecessary show of violence and
gore.
The presentation began mildly.
“No crashes are accidents,” said the
policewoman. Wait. Hold up. No crashes
are accidents? We are to blame the victims
for their own death, always? As you can
see, this show was a misguided attempt
from the start.
“I’m sick of funerals, sick of lines
waiting to go to the viewing,” she continued,
in a manner so detached that already
students were feeling uncomfortable.
Around the room, murmurs of shock could
be heard. But then the sadistic theatrics
began.
“Turn off the lights! We can’t see,”
yelled the students. Little did they know
how much they would later regret that
decision. The first slide wasn’t terrible.
Though it was shocking, an image of a car
split in two after a collision with a tree, it
was not over-the-top. However, the next
slide was.
It displayed a student of Archbishop
Carroll High School. For over five
minutes the photo of his body, crumpled
and broken, torso bruised, and neck at a
sickening angle remained on the screen.
Students yelled for the officer to “please,
thought about this scenario many times
and explains her thoughts. “So some
random man walks into the school with a
black polo on, because any random person
owns a white or a black polo, and hurt
some kids in the school. After they get
h i m and arrest him, the damage
is going to already be
done. Everyone’s parent,
especially those whose
kids got hurt, will
be extremely mad.
Then we’re going
to have to start
wearing our
I.D’s again
anyway. So
I say we
should just
wear them.”
Kiara Moyer, a sophomore
i n the legal academy says, “It’s better
to be safe than sorry.”
Wearing our I.D’s is a safety precaution
that can’t be disregarded simply because
we put on a shirt in a common color. Many
of the administration and staff will argue
that the emblem on the shirts take care of
please, change the slide,” but she refused,
replying, “You [the seniors] need to see
this. You need to always remember this.”
Where has respect gone? A huge lack
of respect was shown for both the dead
student, whose body was displayed like an
exhibit at a freak show, or for the students,
who were politely pleading for the removal
of the traumatizing image.
And where were the adults, you know,
the ones whose job is to protect and teach
us? If they were there, they did not speak
out against the atrocity.
And it gets worse.
At this point, students were beginning
to leave due to the fact that they did not
want to pollute their minds with such
disturbing images. How I envy the ones
who left.
After fifteen minutes of other photos
from this horrific accident, each more
gruesome then the next, a new theme was
touched upon. Actually, it can’t really be
called a theme. It was more like a new type
of gore.
We saw another victim’s torso. And his
face. His crushed, bloody, face. His legs
were nowhere to be seen. At this point,
students were leaving in waves, many
of them crying, others clutching their
stomachs. I joined them after the police
officer displayed an image of his lower
body, entrails trailing across the asphalt,
vertebrae lying intact on the highway,
making his lack of upper body even more
obvious.
Now, reader, I could go by hearsay and
that problem. Number one, what if a kid
can’t afford emblems on every shirt and
the best they can do is a polo with no logo
at all? Will we deprive them of a quality
education at Coral Reef because of that?
That wouldn’t be fair. Number two, if
someone wants to do wrong they will.
They could easily buy a patch and pretend
that they come to the school.
In a nutshell, a polo doesn’t do the job
for security. Having no IDs could actually
be more of a bad thing if something serious
were to happen at Coral Reef. If someone
fainted on their way to the bathroom and
didn’t have their ID, because the student
didn’t follow the rules, how would anyone
identify them quickly? An ID comes in
handy no matter what the situation may
be. So, while some students think it’s a
positive thing and other students think like
Courtney Taylor, a junior in the business
and finance academy. “I don’t care about
I.D’s, I just don’t want uniform.”
Students have to think about the worst
case scenario and argue both sides of the
argument to understand that not wearing
I.D’s could be a big mistake.
Traumatizing event school sanctioned
Students left school disgusted and shocked at what they had been shown
EMMA SINGER
Editor in Chief
www.savemolives.com
describe to you the rest of the presentation.
But I won’t. I will only tell you what I saw,
what I felt, and what I heard with my own
two ears.
On the subject of proper terms, I
have a question. If we are not allowed to
watch rated R movies without parental
permission, why was this acceptable? If
I am not mistaken, scare tactics are the
weapon of choice for fascist government
regimes and leaders. I did not need a horror
show to be taught not to drink and drive. I
did not need to see what I saw. But I did
need to do something.
However important the message
may be, this was the wrong way to inform
students of the dangers of drinking and
driving. Make sure you let your voice be
heard.
What should be done now? Well,
students, if this presentation was even
half as upsetting to you as it was to me,
I recommend that you make your feelings
known. By giving yourself a voice, you are
giving yourself the power to change things.
Write a letter to your counselor. Have your
parents call the school. Do whatever you
need to in order to speak out.
But however disgusting the presentation
may have been, the message was true. Be
safe. Do not drink and drive. Do not text
and drive.
But do not show this presentation
again.