By Brianna Vargas
Assistant Editor

The simplest way to save the planet, and your wallet, is to recycle. Recycling is an easy process anyone can do at home and at school. A-TECH has its very own recycling club. This club provides each classroom in the school with a recycle bin and encourages teachers and students to throw away their papers in the bin, rather than in the actual trashcan.

“Every Thursday, we collect the bins from every classroom in the school and throw them out into the recycling bin outside,” said Recycling Club President junior Donna Schwartz.

“Recycling is very important and we’re trying to get the school more involved,” said Recycling Club adviser Mrs. Belin.

The entire Clark Country School District (CCSD) is trying to get every school in the district involved in recycling. CCSD has created a teachers message area that allows all teachers to talk about the recycling in their school. Recently, they have suggested to the teachers about a pilot program that puts recycling trashcans into lunchrooms and has the custodians involved in conserving the environment too.

“So much plastic is in the lunchroom,” said Mrs. Belin. “All that goes straight to landfills when we could be recycling it.

Recycling at home is an even easier process. Those printer cartridges thrown away in the trash have dangerous chemicals inside that harm the environment. A simple step to fix this, is recycling those cartridges with The Recycling Factory. Just contact the website to get a form and fill it out with your personal information. Send the form along with the cartridges to “The Recycling Factory” and in a few weeks, a check from Nevada’s garbage collecting services for the ink cartridges will be in your home mail.

The Republic Services Inc. will even provide each home with the crates it needs to recycle for free. To get started, email or call Republic Services and ask them for paper, plastic/tin, and glass crates. Their contact information can be found on the website according to area code. The company will happily send the crates and a schedule of the recycling pick up times.

Every year, millions of trees are cut down to provide the world with everyday paper products. According to planetpal.com, every year, over 26 million trees are lost. This is a detrimental for the planet, because trees provide oxygen, but one easy-though practical- solution to this is recycling used paper products. If all Sunday newspapers in the US were recycled every year, those millions of trees would be saved. Recycled paper uses half the energy needed to make regular paper and requires 75 percent less water than making it from freshly grown fibers.  Recycling one ton of paper generates enough energy to power an average American home for six months, according to Recycling Revolutions.

Not only is recycling good for the environment, it also provides jobs; in the current recession America creating new jobs is a must. Last year, California created a new recycling addition to their public services that enables the state to reduce the amount of trash produced and in turn created 85,000 jobs. California has recently even made recycling a law. They’re taking this going green phenomenon to the max.

Recycling is slowly catching on. So far, 8,550 curbside, residential and business recycling exist in the US. Take part in the on-going fad, recycle.

Iun Chen
Junior Staff Writer

On Saturday, March 14 from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM, A-TECH’s Key Club had its spring social at Desert Breeze Park. Because the week of March 9 was fitness week, the Key Club activities during the social were themed around fitness, therefore naming the event Key-lympics.

The event started at 1:00 PM, but many of the officers arrived at the park earlier.

When the four stations were set up, the social started with an icebreaker, Red Rover. Many of the boys used a lot of force to get through.

After Red Rover, the Love Game was played. The Love Game is a game where one person goes to anyone they choose and says anything lovey-dovey to that person. The person could come up with a cheesy pick-up line, use an action, or make something up.

After the Love Game, one last icebreaker was played, Ride That Pony. After the group gathers in a circle, a random amount of people run around while chanting: “Here we go, ride that pony. Ride around that big, fat pony. Here we go, ride that pony. This is how we do it.” The runners then stop and then chant: “Front, front, front, my baby. Side, side, side, my baby. Back, back, back, my baby. This is how we do it,” while dancing with the person they stop on. Then the game restarts.

When the icebreakers were over at around 2:00 PM, everyone was divided into eight teams of five. After naming the teams, the games began.

Station one was the Sponge Race. Members of each team had to spread out while standing in a line. At one end, there was a bucket filled with water. At the other end, there was an empty bucket. When Emily Hong, Key Club president who was in charge of Station One, said, “Go”, the first person would get as much water in the sponge as possible, and then pass it down the line. When it reached the last person, that person would squeeze the sponge into the empty bucket and then run it back to the front, where filling the sponge would begin again. Emily Hong gave the two teams that competed against each other two and a half minutes to do this. When time was up, whichever team got the most water in their bucket got a point for winning.

Station two was the Chicken Fight.  Everyone on both teams would hold one leg up with their hand, and then try to attack someone on the opposing team. If someone dropped their foot on the ground because of an attack, that person would be out. People would have to keep attacking until there was one person left. The chicken fight was played twice.

Station three was Skin the Snake and the Snake Game. Skin the Snake started out by getting into a line. When the team gets into one line, the person in front puts their left hand in between their legs, and holds the right hand of the person behind him/her. This goes the same for the rest of the line. Then carefully and quickly, the line walks back, while the person at the end lies down on the floor, with the line still moving backward, until the last person, who is the person in front, is down. Then the line goes in reverse, until all the members are up.

“I think you haven’t lived until you’ve Skinned the Snake,” says freshman Sean Lim.

The Snake Game starts out with each team holding another person’s waist. The last person in the line has a tail on the back of them. The front person of each line then has to grab the tail in order to win. The object of the game is to run and grab the tail of the last person in the other line while staying in one connected line.

Station four was the relay race. Both teams made the human knot, which is when one person holds the hands of two different people that are facing opposite them, and then tried to untangle themselves. After they were untangled, they had to run to the cones. From there, two people from each team did the wheelbarrow back, two people did the three-legged race back, and one did the crab walk back. Whichever team was the first to get all five members back was declared the winner.

The circulation of games ended at around 3:00 PM, but some people left a little before, leaving the teams uneven. Some games had to have three teams play against each other.

When all the teams had been to all stations, the officers totaled up the scores, and whoever won, was the first team to eat pizza. Team ‘O’ had the most points, so they got to eat first.

Pizza was served with soda. After eating, there was free time to hang out. Many groups of people walked across the park to buy boba at the Easy Life Boba Tea shop. Other groups went to go play football in the field. Many of the other groups sat at the tables and socialized.

The event was supposed to end at 6:00 PM, but it did end early. Many people stayed past 6:00 PM, but some left before.

Tyler Livingston
Copy Editor

On Monday, March 23, A-TECH was under the administration of Principal Jesse Sutherland, a junior-turned-head-honcho, through the Maverick Messenger’s “Principal for a Day” drawing.

Drawing entries were sold from Wednesday, March 11 to Wednesday, March 18 in the SAC during lunch and outside after school.

Out of over 100 entries purchased, Sutherland’s name was drawn on Friday, March 20.

As part of the “Principal for a Day” drawing, not only did Sutherland get to experience Ms. Diamond’s duties, she experienced his. A-TECH’s real principal went to most of Sutherland’s classes and did the work that Jesse would have done if it had been a regular school day.

A block Graphics class with Mr. Blount was Ms. Diamond’s first period on Monday, March 23.  The day didn’t start out well for A-TECH’s former principal.

“I was marked absent to first period,” Ms. Diamond explained.  “I was more than thirty minutes late.”

In her first period Graphics class, Ms. Diamond had to color in drawings left for her by Principal Sutherland.  Diamond’s new classmates would not help her with her work because it was her job.

“I want a parent conference because the students picked on me,” joked Ms. Diamond.

Ms. Diamond was marked truant to Ms. Spence’s fourth period Probability and Statistics class because she didn’t get to the classroom until the passing period between fourth and fifth.

“I was sad that I didn’t get to Ms. Spence’s class, she’s great,” Ms. Diamond said, adding “I still have to turn in the assignment.”

Fifth period Physics with Mr. Johnson was a struggle for Ms. Diamond and her lab group, who hadn’t done their homework.  When the time came for Ms. Diamond and the rest of Group 5 to present the problem assigned to them, no one could explain how to find the answer.

Ms. Diamond, a college English major, thought her sixth period Composition Honors class with Ms. Norby would be her easiest one all day, since she knew all of the information Ms. Norby was teaching.

Instead, Diamond found Ms. Norby’s class to be difficult since there was no hand-raising.  Students could talk freely as long as they weren’t interrupting anybody, and it was hard for Ms. Diamond to control herself.  She resorted to making a paper airplane.

“I was going to throw it across the room,” Ms. Diamond recalled, “but there wasn’t time.”

Thinking back to her day as Jesse Sutherland, Ms. Diamond liked Mr. Blount’s class the best.

“In all those other classes, I had to think,” Ms. Diamond explained.

Sutherland’s day as principal, on the other hand, was much more relaxed.

“I sorted out unsats and I evaluated Ms. Silverman,” Principal Sutherland said.  Sutherland was given pizza for lunch (another part of the “Principal for a Day” competition) which he shared with three friends.

He also performed cafeteria duty.

Principal Sutherland’s favorite part of his temporary job was the feeling of importance.

“Instead of being just a student, I was so much more.  It’s really cool to be somebody.”

Photo Courtesy of iesb.net

Alyssa Hahn
Junior Staff Writer

“Race to Witch Mountain” was advertised as a cute, simple movie, for people of all ages to enjoy. In reality, however, it was a huge disappointment.

In “Race to Witch Mountain,” taxi driver Jack Bruno, Dwayne Johnson, encounters two kids who mysteriously appear in his cab, asking him to take them to a location in the middle of nowhere. After deciding it would be wrong to leave two innocent children, Seth (Alexander Ludwig) and Sara (Anna Sophia Robb), alone in such a desolate area, Bruno follows them and discovers these children aren’t ordinary children, but aliens who have come to Earth to retrieve evidence of an experiment, which might save their home planet. However, the search gets tough when the government and an alien from their home planet come after them.

With a fairly simple plot, “Race to Witch Mountain” should have been easy to follow, but insane camera angles made understanding it impossible. During the many fight scenes between Jack Bruno and the mysterious alien who came to Earth to hunt down the children, the camera seemed to swing wildly about, preventing everyone in the audience from seeing what was actually going on.

Not only did weird camera angles make the story hard to follow, few things were explained throughout the movie. Nobody had a clue as to why Seth and Sara were even on Earth in the first place, until the movie was nearly three-quarters of the way over. People appeared out of nowhere without even an explanation of who they were or what they wanted. Why the mysterious alien was hunting the children is still a mystery to those who have seen the movie.

The acting was also a letdown. Every action or word that came out of the children’s mouths seemed forced and robotic. It would have been understandable if that were the director’s intention, but even that was unclear. Seth and Sara were fully capable of being emotional, but when they were, it all seemed fake and awkward.

“Race to Witch Mountain” should have been an extremely simple movie to understand, but instead it was confusing and all over the place. The plot would have been enjoyable, but it seemed to have gotten lost beneath messy camera angles and bad acting.

Emily Browning
Junior Staff Member

As every sophomore and freshman in P.E. knows, March 9 through March 13 was what P.E. teachers called “fitness week.”

During fitness week, students discovered just what hard work meant for the unprepared body. After doing practically nothing for the past seventy percent of the school year, P.E. students had to work a lot harder than they are used to.

“It was really cold,” said sophomore Beatriz Guerra, “and we had to exercise a lot.”

“She (Ms. Johnson) gave different class periods different amounts of work,” said Guerra. “I heard that on at least one day, eighth period didn’t have to do anything at all.”

Most students credit work on Ms. Johnson’s second period class, members of which decided that they didn’t want to participate in working out with a cardio video and striked by not dressing out. As was expected, the strike died out as soon as Ms. Johnson threatened to lower grades, but the damage remained the same.

“It wasn’t second period’s fault,” Guerra, who is in second period, defended.

“No, it’s not true,” Ms. Johnson said regarding the fault of second period. “Every year for the last fifteen years I’ve done fitness things twice a year. But I didn’t do it last year.”

Regardless of whose fault it was, the effect of the week remains the same: hard work.

Friday the thirteenth seemed to be, for once, a good day if only because it marked the end of fitness week. Sophomores and Freshmen alike went home knowing the torture was over. However, on Monday March 16, P.E. teachers had a fresh and bitter surprise for their students. They called it fitness week part two. So, for another week, students suffered through excruciating exercises and wondered when the torture would stop.

“It’s horrible,” said sophomore Tabitha Ponciano. “I’ve been in pain for the last four days.”

“As physical educators, we saw that we weren’t meeting our fitness goals. Most people don’t feel as if P.E. is a part of everyday life, so they see it as cruel and unusual punishment when it’s just a part of the curriculum.”

Alexis Hanselman
Senior Staff Writer

With the school year almost over, many National Honor Society and Key Club members are in a rush to fulfill their community service hour requirements.

NHS students have from September to April to complete 21 hours of community service. After completing their service hours, students will be recognized with a certificate and a pin at the NHS ceremony. Students that have two or more years of recognition will get chords to wear on graduation.

Key Club members do not have a certain number of hours that they have to complete. They simply do community service and throw in a couple of cheers along the way. However, the more community service hours a student completes, the better their resumes will look when they apply to college.

For those students who are stressing about getting all of their hours in by next month, there are plenty of places to get hours quick.

Students can always do walks for certain diseases like leukemia and diabetes. These walks not only are considered community service but they all help to raise money to help find cures for these diseases. Depending on what walk the student wants to do will depend on when the student will be able to do it. There is a walk on April 25 called the Fit Family Health Awareness walk. It helps provide awareness for obesity, diabetes, and other medical conditions. The walk starts at 9 a.m. and is at Town Square, 6605 Las Vegas Blvd South.

In-school activities which students may volunteer for include school dances, and working in the cafeteria during lunches. Other things that students can do for service hours include the Birthday Closet and recycling club. The Birthday Closet is held the last Friday of every month at Martinez Elementary. All students have to do to participate is sign up with Ms. Guild in room 321. Recycling club meets on Thursdays after school in room 404.

Other things that students can do for service hours include tutoring other students at A-TECH. Students can ask their teachers in core subject areas if they have students that need tutoring. It’s completely up to the teacher whether to allow this, but if they do it can be counted as community service hours.

Students can help out at their siblings’ schools as well. They can go to the school office and ask if any teachers need help. This could be grading papers or helping out with the current activity. Students must contact the office of the school before hand.

“I volunteer with animal rescue groups,” said junior Montana Ridgeway. “I do three hours every weekend so it’s easy for me to get in community service hours.”

Students have to be at least 16 or 18 years old to volunteer at an animal shelter depending on which shelter the students wants to volunteer at. Students can also volunteer at hospitals in Las Vegas as well. It is important to check with the hospital before hand to make sure that the student meets the age requirements. Some hospitals, like Mountain View Hospital, will take anyone over the age of 14. Other hospitals might not, so it is important to check ahead.

Students who are concerned about trying to get in all their hours by next month should not worry. There are plenty of things to do for quick community service hours. From babysitting to walking for diabetes, there is always something to do for service hours.

Omar Zepeda
Junior Staff Writer

In the past months, fast touch-screen cell phones have increased in popularity. Texting and mobile e-mailing has become a very popular pastime. The Palm Pre, a smart touch screen slider phone, was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

“It’s pretty cool,” said freshman Juan Rodriguez about the palm pre.

The Palm Pre uses the Palm Synergy feature on the phone to connect to Outlook, Google, and Facebook calendars. If you have contacts in different places, this phone can link them together. This feature makes it easy to find the information you need.

The Palm Pre can have multiple applications open at once.  This includes e-mail, maps, photos, and web sites. This phone lets you easily switch through your applications. New Text and email messages are indicated on the notification bar when they are received.

The Pre’s browser is very fast. The applications on the phone are connected to the Internet and updated daily. One of its special applications is the Universal search; a search engine that searches contacts, applications, Google, and Wikipedia all at once.

The Synergy application lets all of the conversations with the same person be grouped in one chat window. The users can also see who is online through their contacts, and can start a new conversation by touching a contact. E-mail can be checked from Outlook or other e-mail accounts like Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo. Owners can use their Palm Pre in Wi-Fi hotspots and you can look up directions with the built in GPS.

Another good thing about the Pre is it’s cool design, including a slide out keyboard for fast typing.  It can be closed and rotated it to view music, Web sites, photos, and videos in widescreen.

The Palm Pre has a 3.1-inch touch screen with a 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display. It also has a full QWERTY keyboard, Built in GPS, three mega pixel camera with flash, 8 giga-bytes of storage, Bluetooth, and a micro USB connector.

Vincent Martinez
Senior Staff Writer

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) spent $35,000 and took a year and a half to update its school alert system. This new alert system has been used by hundreds of other colleges around the U.S. The alert system sends text messages or voice alerts to keep students aware of anything that could be dangerous.

Many students attending UNLV do not currently know of the program, UNLV also does not ask the students if they wish to be alerted by phone; the school automatically places their number on the alert list upon enrollment. One other concern of the update is that the school will need to spend $10,000 for the messages to be sent each year, which may raise the cost for students entering and attending UNLV.

Jake Hay, an A-TECH sophomore likes the idea. ”I believe the idea was well thought of since I personally would rather spend some money on messages to be safe.”

UNLV wants to create a much wider and improved alert system, including new sirens, PA systems and electronic billboards, but this new upgrade may take some time due to school budget cuts, since the cost will be another $400,000.

Alexis Hanselman
Senior Staff Writer

After two weeks, Student Council’s Safe Nest drive just recently ended on March 20.

Safe Nest is an organization that raises items to help victims of all types of domestic violence no matter age, race, or gender. They even help abused animals. The items that were brought to the drive included school supplies, toys, books, hairbrushes, combs, toothpaste, Kleenex, toilet paper, boxed cereal, canned fruit, canned Spaghetti O’s, macaroni and cheese, sugar, and ketchup.

Students had the opportunity to bring in the selected items in to their English classrooms and the English class that collected the most items won a prize.

This is not a new event at A-TECH — this same drive took place last year as well. Student Council learned of this organization in the 07-08 school year and decided to support it again in the 08-09 school year. Since many students participated last year, Student Council was hoping that many students would participate this year as well.

“I knew about the organization last year,” said senior class President Ann Marie Palabrica. “I thought it would be a good idea to do the drive again.”

“It is just good natured and a good way to give back,” said sophomore class President Patrin Alquisada. “Students will participate because it is a good thing to do.”

Through out the Safe Drive, A-TECH collected a total of 255 items. Ms. Schultz’s eighth period class was the class that brought in the most items. They brought in a total of 78 items.

Alyssa Hahn
Junior Staff Writer

Spring is approaching and one thing is running through the minds of members of all the clubs around A-TECH: the annual school carnival. Clubs that wish to participate in the carnival and have a booth of their own have very limited time to prepare as it will be on March 27.

Among the people contributing to the carnival are Student Council members and Key Club. Though other clubs contribute to the carnival, Key Club is the one that does the majority of the work.

“A few months of preparation go into this carnival,” says A-TECH sophomore and Key Club member Joshua Jensen. “We have to get in contact with the clubs who want to put up booths and, last year, Key Club was the one to set up the velcro wall.”

The upcoming carnival is supposedly going to be just like the one that was held last year, which many students attended.

“It was awesome,” says junior Kristine Bautista. “The jumper was my favorite part and the stuff they gave away, like candy, was pretty cool too.”

With such hard work going into this carnival, the contributors are hoping the carnival will be as popular as it was the previous year. Last year, some of the booths included a bounce house, face painting, and games. The games included a fishing game in which students had to fish for ducks hosted by Guitar Club and sumo wrestling.

This year, Guitar Club will be putting up the same booth. “We have Rocking Ducks,” says Guitar Club’s advisor Mr. Gearhart, “You basically have to fish for ducks. Everybody wins candy and if you actually win the game, you get to keep the duck. It’ll be fun. We’ll be kind of dressed like pirates. We’ll wear pirate hats.”

With Guitar Club dressed as pirates and Key Club working so hard to prepare, this year’s carnival is expected to be a success.

“People better come,” adds Joshua Jensen. “It’s going to be amazing this year because of all the hard work Key Club put into this.”