4 Featuresfriday, February 28, 2014 Tom Tom

gabi gerganreporter

Valedictorians work hard for their grades

It is that moment where a student stands on stage with the cap and gown and gives a motivating speech to the entire class with tears running down his/her face in a shaky voice that makes it a worthwhile and amaz-ing moment that any high school student can achieve. There are those endless nights of studying, weekends full of homework, and overwhelming college-level classes, but all of this is worth it to some students in order to be the valedictorians of the class.

There are a few things that are required to be valedictorian: students must have earned a minimum of ten credits each year, and this includes at least 14 advanced credits and 12 credits in Advance Placement (AP) classes.

Students must also maintain at least an A- in every class taken through the four years. The students who are remaining after all the requirements and with the highest class rank will be honored as valedictorian.

“If you get anything less than an A-, you are basically excluded,” scholarship adviser James Sheridan said.

In addition to having straight A’s all four years, student must also take at least 14 ad-vanced class credits and end high school with 12 credits in AP classes.

Being valedictorian is strictly based on academics and taking those seven advanced classes and six AP classes to add up to 19 honors credits.

“I think they are going to change that [policy] to just saying that you need to have a certain number of honors credits,” Sheri-dan said.

Each advanced class gives students one honors credit a year, while each AP class gives students two honors credits a year. The total number of honors points needed to be valedictorian adds up to 19.

“One easy way to tell if you have got enough honors credits is at the end of your senior year, if you are ranked number 1 in the class, then you have enough credits,” Sheridan said.

Sheridan mentioned that there are some-times students who are ranked number one, but do not qualify as valedictorian because of a B earned in one or more classes some-where along in their high school careers. In addition to grades, valedictorians are respon-

sible for coming up with the inspirational and memorable speeches for graduation day.

“I mean it would be cool to make a speech in front of the entire graduating class, but I am not really counting on being the one to give that speech,” junior Mary LaPorte said.

LaPorte does not necessarily wish to give the graduation speech but she noticed that last year both Bellevue East and Bellevue West had graduation speeches with refer-ences from the movie “Mean Girls.” LaPorte said that the next valedictorian should keep this in mind.

“The speech I want to give is nothing like the speeches I have given in class. I want it to be special and something people will re-member,” senior Rebecca Zawistowski said.

LaPorte said that being valedictorian is not her number one priority. Not all candi-dates for valedictorian are excited about the speech process.

“Valedictorian is just a title. What will really matter in 10 years is what you did in high school; what you learned, who you met and how you prepared for the real world,” LaPorte said.

Zawistowski said that she feels a lot of people deserve to be valedictorian and she

What really is in your diet sodaerin matherreporter

All around Bellevue East high school there are vending machines. Students can purchase soda, but only diet soda. A lot of people do not think about what they are consuming when they go to the vending ma-chines at school and get a diet soda.

“I do not pay attention to the facts about it when I am thirsty; I just go get one and drink it,” junior Skylar Bedore said.

Soda is a drink that is consumed daily. In many diet drinks there is an ingredient called aspartame. Aspartame is a low-calorie sweetener that is used a sugar in some drinks and foods.

Aspartame has impacted Bellevue East because the only drinks they sell in the vend-ing machines are diet. It might be better to have diet soda calorie wise, but with the sweetener that is in it, it is heard to be just as dangerous as regular soda.

But according to aspartame.com, aspar-tame is a safe sweetener that has been tested on many different things, many different times.

“Aspartame was tested on animals,

healthy adults, children, infants, and diabet-ics. FDA [The Food and Drug Administra-tion] approved its use in 1981,” health para Kimberly Grenon said.

After the FDA had approved the artificial sweetener, there were studies of conflicting results with what the FDA had said, accord-ing to fitday.com

“Some studies seem to find evidence of a carcinogenic property of aspartame through animal testing. Later, it was commonly un-derstood that the studies could not provide a cause and effect link between aspartame and cancer,” according to fitday.com

Research studies by Lendon Smith, M.D. show that there are many side effects after consuming such a great amount of aspar-tame. It has effects inside the body and out. For example, something that could happen is someone could lose their eyesight or have a heart attack.

“The FDA has approved the use of 50 milligrams of aspartame for every kilogram of body weight that you have. However, if you do the math, you’ll realize that this is a very large amount of aspartame,” according to fitday.com

FBLA students get down to business with Bank of Nebraskatheresa castro

reporter

feels bad because she has not had to work as hard as some people. Zawistowski is in the running to be valedictorian this year since she has gotten straight A’s all throughout her high school career.

“[Being a valedictorian] would mean a ton, I have worked very hard throughout the years and seeing it pay off would just show that I did the right thing,” Zawistowski said.

Virtually anyone can be valedictorian of their class. As long as students are willing to work hard by getting the straight A’s in all classes and taking the AP classes every year, then becoming valedictorian is very possible.

There is no limit on the number of vale-dictorians East can have; however Sheridan said that it is rare to have more than a hand-ful of students still keeping up the pace by the end of the year.

The most valedictorians Sheridan has seen at East has been 10 in 2005 and in 2009; this year there will be 5 or less valedictori-ans.

“[Being valedictorian] means that I have no regrets. It just proves to me that what I’ve done is not a waste of time,” Zawistowski said.

When one hears or reads the term “business,” many things may come to mind. Thoughts of how officially they dress, and of strict business behavior, make people associate business with being boring or repetitive in na-ture, or of people working long hours in tiny cubicles. The staff at the Bank of Nebraska are work-ing together with FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) to change those negative connota-tions through sharing their per-sonal lives and their mini cinna-mon rolls.

The members of FBLA visited the Bank of Nebraska on Jan. 29 on a field trip, furthering the con-nections between banking and FBLA. The FBLA team at Bel-levue East is competing in “Part-

nership with Business” this year, and participated in this field trip to learn more about how banking is related to the community.

“We were able to discuss our partnership goals and what we’ve accomplished this year together in regards to banking education and the creation of a new ‘Nebraska Student Checking Account,’” business communications instruc-tor Andrew Werner said.

The new Nebraska Student Checking Account aims to help students to learn how to get bet-ter credit to get a head start on life. Through getting banking ac-counts, students can improve their financial skills early and the bank can gain more business.

“We wanted to create a student checking account because they’ll be able to have the students be able to create an account with that they can put their money towards

and to have the sense of owner-ship so that they’re one step for-ward in growing up,”sophomore Colin Hensel said.

The meeting began with FBLA sponsor Andrew Werner thanking the staff at the Bank of Nebraska for inviting the students partici-pating in FBLA and offering to share their personal experiences with them. Twelve of the staff members at the Bank of Nebras-ka talked about their positions and how they had obtained them; many had been in FBLA during their high school years.

“It was nice to see that we’re kind of in the same position that they are. They were really able to connect with us on a personal lev-el and I really liked that,” senior Miranda Keeler said.

Being able to connect with the Bank of Nebraska strengthened the familiarity between the two

Seniors Miranda Keeler, Haley Ourada, junior Kate Reyome and sopho-more Colin Hensel present on their partnership with Business to the Bank of Nebraska Aossociates. Photo by Sam Finan

groups. This will further involve the community with business.

“After this experience this year, I feel we all know a lot about how to be financially successful,

we created a useful product for the youth in our community, net-worked with business profession-als, and had fun at the same time,” Werner said.

BELLEVUE EAST HIGH SCHOOLDESIREE WILSONGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION

BELLEVUE  EAST  HIGH  SCHOOL    DESIREE  WILSON  GRAPHIC  ILLUSTRATION