NOCTILUCA Feb. 2016

AREYOUAWARE? Appleton, Wisconsin February 2016 Volume XXI

Issue I

Page 3

Changes to school attendance policy spark criticism By Rachel Flom

Many teachers are also very willing to create plans and schedules to get students caught up again. Some students feel as though they receive the most grief from secretaries, whose job it is to inform stu- dents of issues regarding their attendance. According to Berlowski, deans from Appleton North met with the District Office to address issues regarding the policy. They decided that atten- dance will now by counted by the minutes a student is at school instead of counting by days or half-days. Those minutes will be added up to equate to the al- lowed 10 school days, which hopefully will decrease the amount of truant students dur- ing the 2015-2016 school year. Families have still not been in- formed about how this policy change will work. There is still the question of how these minutes will add up, if it counts as so many min- utes per class period or per day. Will lunch periods be counted? What about privileges and re- leases? Students and parents still with a rule like this, the draw to sports will be significantly less due to limited competi- tiveness. In fact, students will be less willing to join sports in general. If there is no com- petitiveness, there is no point. Lastly, If WIAA does this, what is next? Seriously. What would be next? If we can’t do these “offensive” chants to pump up the players and students, what can we do? Is WIAA going to ban signs? Are they going to ban chants all together? The WIAA might as well ban student sections. As Wisconsin sports anchor Bill Michaels said in a Facebook post: “at this rate, why keep score?” This is a losing battle for the WIAA and a huge dagger in the heart of Wisconsin high school sports. If they don’t reverse this policy, they don’t deserve to run high school sports in Wisconsin. This is sports, not book club. Let’s keep it that way.

With that, and the policy change at the beginning of the school year, a student can end up in truancy court without much warning. Letters are issued out to families once a student has reached seven days of absence, but delays in the post office and address changes might result in a family not knowing that their child is at risk for being truant. Although the student hand- book was updated with the new policy, families were not di- rectly notified when the district policy changed at the begin- ning of this school year, which resulted in even more students being forced into court. Many students did not even find out about the policy until they were pulled out of their second hour class and given a detention slip. The irony behind this is that students are pulled out of yet another class to be informed that they missed a class, which most students are clearly aware of. Many students were not pleased to hear about the initial policy change. Students with chronic health issues were be- ing threatened with truancy for visiting doctors. Cheyenne DeShaney, a senior at Apple- ton North, says that staff were not accommodating when she

Are you aware that the Appleton Area School District changed its attendance policy? In previous years, policy stated that students would either be counted as missing one half or one full school day. With this policy in place, students who missed a class period for an appointment or slept through their alarm would be considered missing for up to four school periods, even if that was not the reality. Some students would in- tentionally miss extra class periods because they would be considered absent regardless of their actual attendance. Since students are given 10 excused absences before they are considered truant, appoint- ments, family emergencies, and illnesses can push a stu- dent to reach that limit before the end of the school year. After the switch from Par- ent Portal to Infinite Campus, it has also been increasingly more difficult to find exactly how many days a student has been absent, since the website does not add up the total num- ber of absences. Although stu- dents can see how many class periods they’ve missed, they can’t check how many total days they’ve missed during the school year. The WIAA has crossed the line and it is time that student-athletes take a stand against it. High school sports are fun and beneficial to success. At the same time, they are meant to be competitive. They are also supposed to prepare student-athletes for the next level: collegiate athletics. In college, there are count- less chants and anthems that each school’s student section creates. Some of them are vulgar. While those are not family-friendly or necessary for a sporting event, they are part of the atmosphere. While I do not think that those types of chants should be permitted in a high school setting, that is reality on a col- lege level. In addition, those vulgar chants are prohibited from high schools already. The WIAA wants to pro- hibit chants such as: “USA,” “you can’t do that,” “score- board,” “air ball,” and many By Benji Backer

The Student Services office is in charge of inputting absences into Infinite Campus. Photo by Sofia Voet

enough, students have to come back to a staff that blames them for missing school, even when situations state otherwise. Some staff at Appleton North have been extremely ac- commodating to students who miss school. Matthew Ber- lowski, one of two deans at the school, has been willing to sit down with students to go over the policy and where students stand with it. on chants like these is why my generation is turning into a generation full of “victims.” Rules like this are teaching youth to be offended when they shouldn’t be. Not every- thing is offensive and rude. The WIAA obviously cannot look past that. Secondly, these bans ruin competitiveness. Chants from a student section pump up the players and the teams. No matter who is chanting, it pumps student-athletes up. If the opposing student sec- tion is chanting “you can’t do that,” it gives athletes motiva- tion to show them what they can do. It angers us, but it also pumps us up. If the chant is from our own student-section, it gives us confidence. Having a supporting crowd with competitive chants is key to success as a team. It makes the event more com- petitive and ultimately more enjoyable for both teams. It’s hard enough to get students to attend sporting events, but

injured her ankle during a run. “I think [the policy] is stu- pid. I have an injury and I was threatened with truancy even though I have been turning in doctor’s slips,” said DeShaney. Other circumstances like that have led to students requir- ing absences for physical ther- apy and other types of therapy, surgery, and appointments. As if having to catch up with homework and tests isn’t

have many questions for the school, the most pressing one being, “When will we be in- formed?” New WIAA chant rules are ruining high school sports

The student sections at sports games are usually full of shouting and excitement. Photo by Alex Neumann

others. Despite the outrage from high schoolers and adults, the WIAA has stayed true to their course. In fact, the WIAA alerted a Wiscon- sin high school about a stu- dent who tweeted against the policy. She was suspended from her basketball team for five games. These new re- strictions are absurd for a multitude of reasons. First of all, I’m still waiting to hear a reasonable explana-

tion as to why the WIAA finds the chants offensive. Is telling the opposing team that their team is losing offensive? Is chanting “you can’t do that” to a player who caused a pen- alty disrespectful? Is that what we, as a society, have come to? If so, what isn’t offensive anymore? The politically-correct cul- ture in this country has gone over the top and this situation is a prime example. The ban