Editorials

Why Video Games are not Actually Bad for You

By Cameron Tredal

Video games are extremely demonised when talking about how it relates to your health. A lot of parents will go as far as to blame video games for their kids’ bad grades. Adults seem to blame anything bad kids do on video games. This makes me wonder though if video games are actually bad for you.

How good are video games for your health? They get your brain more active. Studies proved that people that play first person shooters are better at thinking about objects in three dimensions. That is why people that play first person shooter can do keyhole surgery better. Playing video games can help improve eyesight. They exercise eyes through having to aim at enemies. Video games help a lot with contrast sensitivity function. It is the ability to make out changes in brightness of an image. Contrary to popular belief, video games have a lot of health benefits.

What bonus benefits do video games have? When people think of gamers they think of a lonely person playing video games in their basement all alone. With the internet though people now talk while playing games. This makes gamers more social. Communicating on teams helps with teamwork. All of this helps with self esteem, and it also helps with depression. Video games help with reaction time or alertness. Those are just a few of the extra benefits of video games.

People should consider not blaming everything on video games. Overall, video games have a great impact on you. People jump to too many conclusions without doing any research. They can have a great impact on people’s lives. Video games affect you positively, not negatively. Video games should not be so frowned upon in our society.

Fortnite

By Luke Holme

Fortnite has been taking over the lives of teenagers across the country. The online video game was released by Epic Games in 2010 but started gaining attention last year when they released a battle royale gamemode. The rising popularity of the game has also attracted many celebrities such as the rapper Drake, who has live streamed himself playing the online video game. Fortnite is also a candidate to become the next big Esports game. At these competitions, the best players compete against each other for money and prizes.

The goal of a battle royale style game is to survive as long as possible. You start every match in something called a Battle Bus. This flying bus travels across the island, and during this time you pick a spot on the map to land. Once on the ground, you are in a free-for-all with 100 different players to be the last one to survive. Throughout the game, you try and kill as many other plays as possible while collecting better guns and more resources. The aspect of Fortnite, which makes it unique from other battle royales, is the ability to build. During the game you can collect resources such as wood, brick, or metal that can be used to build different types of platforms in order to eliminate your opponent.

Fornite’s unique game has attracted players all over the world who play for hours daily. There are also other notable Battle Royale games, such as PUBG and H1Z1, which both have a large amount of players.

Phone Addicts

By Bethany Phillips

Addiction to technology has become more and more prevalent as the years go by. In 2007, one of the most well known electronic companies, Apple, released their first smartphone named the Iphone. This smartphone release would change the world as we knew it. Since that release, the world has become extremely reliant on their electronics for almost everything in their lives. Some generations don’t even remember a world without it.

Some people may ask, “Are we really addicted? I believe that it is just a piece of technology that I use when I’m bored.” My response to that is, take a look around the room. If you go into any public area, almost without fail, you will see a majority of people on their phones. Even if it’s just to avoid an awkward encounter or to pass time. Smartphones have become an extension of most people. The question is, has this rise in the use of technology affected our world for better or for worse? There is a disconnect between people and the world now, which is ironic seeing as we are more connected than ever.

Although the feeling of wanting what you can’t have has always been around, technology and social media has helped aid that feeling. Social media has become so ingrained into our everyday life that it is considered “weird” if you don’t have a Snapchat. Although I think that social media has extreme negative

Addiction to technology has become more and more prevalent as the years go by. In 2007, one of the most well known electronic companies, Apple, released their first smartphone named the Iphone. This smartphone release would change the world as we knew it. Since that release, the world has become extremely reliant on their electronics for almost everything in their lives. Some generations don’t even remember a world without it.

Some people may ask, “Are we really addicted? I believe that it is just a piece of technology that I use when I’m bored.” My response to that is, take a look around the room. If you go into any public area, almost without fail, you will see a majority of people on their phones. Even if it’s just to avoid an awkward encounter or to pass time. Smartphones have become an extension of most people. The question is, has this rise in the use of technology affected our world for better or for worse? There is a disconnect between people and the world now, which is ironic seeing as we are more connected than ever.

Although the feeling of wanting what you can’t have has always been around, technology and social media has helped aid that feeling. Social media has become so ingrained into our everyday life that it is considered “weird” if you don’t have a Snapchat. Although I think that social media has extreme negative effects on our mental well being, there can be positives. But in most scenarios, the negatives outweigh the positives. The only way we can change the addiction we have all created for ourselves is to look up and see what’s around us.

St. Croix Animal Friends And Our Community

By Danielle Rustand

As of right now, there is sadly no animal shelter in Saint Croix County. In the year of 2005, a group of animal loving citizens, now known as the St. Croix Animal Friends, came together in efforts to change that. Their goal: “To offer a safe refuge, nourishment, and opportunity for a better life to unwanted, abused, or injured animals,” as well as promote responsible pet ownership and unite lost pets with their owners. Their plan is to build a no-kill shelter of approximately 10,000 square feet, with enough room for 60 dogs and 75 cats at a time. They will need to build other rooms as well. These include surgical rooms, a grooming room, and a community education room to name a few. Money is needed for other less known aspects as well, such as ventilation and running water. After some time of raising money and awareness, in 2010 they finally bought the 6.78 acres of land they needed to build the no-kill animal shelter. This land is at the intersection of Highway 65 / I-94, in Roberts, Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, they still have a long way to go. Funds are still needed to actually start building the animal shelter, along with funding plenty other expenses. St. Croix Animal Friends has a variety of different programs available to the public, all of which cost money to run. Some of these programs include their Spay and Neuter Program and Emergency Medical Assistance Program for families who can’t afford these services. For those under financial stress, they also have the Reaching Out Program that provides free pet food to those in need. In order to help the community, they need funds from the community. If interested in more information or donating to help their cause, visit their website at scafshelter.org.

Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts: Separate, but Certainly NOT Equal.

By Grace Hanson

In the Spring of 2007, my brother and dad went to Yellowstone National Park through the Boy Scouts of America. They quite literally scaled mountains in the name of learning, whether it be of leadership, fire starting, or knot tying. My brother, then just under twelve years of age, saw the wonders of nature first hand: geysers, wildlife, hot springs, and waterfalls. He even saw bears. I thought it was the coolest thing I ever heard of. I was only six at the time, and I had never seen a bear. Or a geyser. Or hot springs, or waterfalls, or anything of significance, really. At that same time, I was just beginning my short lived relationship with the Girl Scouts of America. I was a daisy, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: I was a cute little girl who did crafts and talked about feelings at our meetings. More importantly though, I was a vehicle for a corrupt, tax exempt cookie company to sell overpriced, unhealthy, and overrated cookies. It was not exactly the adventure filled scouting life that I had become familiar with through my brothers’ and father’s experience with the Boy Scouts. During Daisies, I wondered when our outpost wilderness camping trip would be? When our Pinewood Derby would be? Neither ever happened. I wondered when I would wake up on the side of a mountain, or start a fire with only a stick and a rock, or know that I was capable of survival and leadership skills; I never did. Instead, I met with my fellow girl scouts in a church and did crafts. It was an infinitely noble pursuit, to make popsicle stick and pipe cleaner picture frames for Fathers’ Day. I hated every moment of it. I resented it. I wanted to quit, and every time I tried, I was met with the response, “it will be more fun later on.” The height of my hatred came when we learned this monstrosity of a song:

Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold. A circle is round, it has no end. That's how long, I will be your friend.

Come on people. Tell me that isn’t the most boring, fluffy, vanilla, girl-scout-esque nonsense you’ve ever heard in your life. This stupid song embodies how useless everything we learned in girl scouts really was: we learned about friendship (which we had already learned about in Kindergarten guidance), we learned about embracing your “talents” (and by talents, I mean they asked us “what are you good at?” and we all said something like “volleyball” or “baking pies” or something ultimately irrelevant to real life), but mostly we learned, first hand, how to waste valuable time, which we could have been using to learn actual skills. And I know what you’re thinking: why attack the Girl Scouts? What did the Girl Scouts ever do to you? That’s exactly my point: they did nothing for me and nothing for countless others.

Time passed. I began to tell my equally bored friends that I wanted to quit. They felt the same way. We all quit. At least two of the troops in my town disbanded, and that was that. I didn’t think much of it at the time; it was just another organization that I mistakenly thought would be fun. I still watched the Boy Scouts with jealousy. They had fun, they all seemed to be friends, and they weren’t patronized while being forced to sell cookies. Their service projects and trips grew as they did. The older they got, the more exciting their latest adventure was. Many of them stayed in the scouts until after middle school, and some even into high school. Off the top of my head, I know at least five Eagle Scouts. I know one “Gold Star Girl” (which, another thing: boys get to be Eagle Scouts, which sounds cool. Girls only get to be Gold Star Girls. Are you serious? The lamest name in history).

It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized how truly pathetic Girl Scouts really was. My brothers were shaped by their time in the Boy Scouts and the community around them. I thought it was unfair, and quite frankly, sexist. Like many other young women, I didn’t really catch onto the fact that Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts were extraordinarily unequal until long after the fact, but let me tell you, if I could go back and push for equality amongst Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, I would. Unfortunately, this is impossible, so the Girl Scouts continue to underperform in teaching young women the essentials of leadership. You probably expect that I’ll say that this is why Boy Scouts should be allowing girls in their club. I do think that it is indeed convient that Boy Scouts are now allowing girls, but I would argue that what would be much more beneficial for both boys and girls would be to dismantle Girls Scouts and start it again from the ground up. Save the cookies for another pathetic club; make this club the picture of equality to the Boy Scouts. Give us camping, give us skill sets, but most of all, give us equality. I think there are numerous benefits to teaching boys and girls separately how to embrace who they are. We all know little kids, and that sometimes, they’re able to be themselves better separate from the opposite gender. Do Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts have to be merged? No, but unless the Girls Scouts completely revamp their approach, the young women in the organization will never be equal to their male counterparts.

The landmark U.S Supreme Court case Brown v Board of Education dealt with race, but resulted in a doctrine that can be applied in any sort of equality case, whether it be race, sexual orientation, or gender. In reference to this case, justice Earl Warren said, “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Although in a perfect world, to satisfy people's’ twisted ideals of what “should” or “shouldn’t be,” there would be perfect, equally balanced, separate groups for girls and boys, but the fact is that Boy Scouts is astronomically more beneficial to boys than Girl Scouts is to girls, therefore, preventing young women to become part of this club is direct discrimination. It is not so much a matter of “political correctness” than it is just a matter of girls having nowhere else to go that will truly teach them about leadership and survival. I seriously doubt that any little girl is exactly eager to join an almost all male club, but if she is just as determined as the boys, who is to say that isn’t the place for her? Girls aren’t joining Boy Scouts because they don’t want to be Girls Scouts; they’re joining because Girls Scouts, frankly, sucks.

Education Inflation

By Abigail Rohl

The modern education system is flawed; everyone knows that. This faulty system goes past K-12 and into higher education. College is, sadly, not protected from the corruption and inflation of today’s greed. Nowadays, everything is about money. Everything surrounds money and everything runs on money. As a result of inflation, college is very pricey. Adults that have been out of college for years are still in serious amounts of debt. Not only does college cost a fortune, but degrees do not mean as much as they once did.

College is expensive, obviously, but what is the reasoning behind this sudden inflation? A normal person would look at this situation and think “greed,” and they would be right. Greed and the steady inflation of our economy is why college is so expensive. It should be less expensive because are a few books and a couple years of education really worth a lifetime of debt? Our generation will go through life with this constant debt bearing down on their shoulders. That will not be good for anyone in the long run.

Among all of the other general issues involving college, a big one is that having a degree has lost its value. People expect you to have a degree, and they judge you if you do not. Even the most basic jobs require some form of higher education. That is ridiculous. Why do I need to have a degree and thousands of dollars in debt in order to sell tires? Arguably, some jobs rightly require degrees. A teacher should be knowledgeable on their subject and actually know how to teach before they step foot into a classroom. Having a degree be required for other, less scholarly, jobs is simply laughable, and it shows how overrated college is becoming.

Colleges need to hike down their very costly fees in order to leave less people troubled by debt. Colleges also need to make degrees more distinct and not like an everyday run-of-the-mill kind of thing. Perhaps colleges cannot decrease their price points, and maybe they cannot control whether degrees are seen as valuable. Either way, something needs to be done about this ridiculous education inflation.