Wingspan New Caney High School

21650 Loop 494

Awards From: Columbia School of Journalism, UIL, and San Jacinto College - Central.

New Caney, Texas 77357

Nov/De. 2016

Student Reaction to Trump Election - Pg 2

First Playoff Win in School History Pg 3 Photos by Cory Campbell, Ishmael Porrata

Why Journalists Got Election Wrong Opinion - Pg 8

Trump Pulls Off Upset Michigan was the last state called for Donald Trump in November moving his Electoral College (EC) count to 306 total to Hillary Clinton’s 232, though election results are being challenged by Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein. This is the first time that a Republican won Michigan in the Presidential election since 1988, though Michigan is one of three states being contested by Stein.

Trump took the election by flipping 12 counties to the Republican side. Neither Trump nor Clinton received a majority of votes overall but both surpassed 60 million. In the weeks leading up to the election, only the L.A. Times had Trump leading Clinton. Except for L.A. Times, Polling Results (below) Predict Clinton Win

Student Feelings About Trump Presidency Clinton, Trump Both Bad I don’t think it is a good thing that Trump was elected, but he’s better than Hillary. He is more driven to improve America instead of worrying about what the rest of the world is doing.

The illegals in the country should be granted citizenship (through earning it.) Haley Mcintyre

Trump Speaks Truth I am very pleased with the results of the 2016 presidential election. It is about time we got a strong leader who speaks the truth.

I will add that Romans 13:7 states to abide by the government, because he placed it there. So Trumps election should be to fulfil a greater plan. Joshua Hignight

Bad Choices Both candidates were bad choices. I’m tired of the election. Let’s move on.

Dylan Muniz

Presley Fontenot

Trump Bad Man

Citizenship For All

It is bad Trump won. I liked Obama and Trump is a bad man.

I think we should make everyone in the United States an American citizen, because they are in America.

William Applegate

Jonathan Castillo

Mixed Emotions About Election

Accept Win

The fact that Trump was elected gives me mixed emotions. A lot of things he says he will do seem good, but I bet he is lying on some or most promises.

I think it is good that Trump won.

I wish a third party could have won, but at least it wasn’t Hillary. I just want a president that honors veterans daily in their heart........ Destiny Burnham

The Law of God The election is very indifferent to me. The president should meet the qualifications of a good leader, however, a good leader is one who lives in Christ, and makes decisions based on the Law of God and the faith of Jesus. Does Trump meet those qualifications? I’m not sure. His decisions will be brought to life in time.

It is good because Donald Trump seems to be a very good conservative person. Also, I think that even though some of the people aren’t happy, they should accept that he won and get on with their life. Jacob Divel

American Exceptionalism Is it good or bad that Trump won? In my heart I believe that Mr. Trump winning was a good thing, because he believes in American exceptionalism. He’s committed to education and he demands high performance. After all, he has been known to fire anyone that does not meet his high standards. Trump is planning to build a great wall on our southern border between the U.S. and Mexico, and the best part is he is planning to have Mexico pay for the wall.

He will also terminate President Obama’s illegal executive order on immigration, another awesome reason why it’s a good thing Trump got elected.

Lastly, he will bring our country out of the deep dark depths we are in. He will bring Christian morals back to our society, and that is the most important thing.

Nobody will be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump. Islamic terrorism is eating up larger portions of the Middle East and getting rich. They even built a hotel making themselves a direct competitor with Trump hotels.

He was a good selection, compared to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton

Angel Dovie

Good Decision To Elect Trump I think Trump will be a really good president, and I think he will start to change our country back to a conservative, Christian-based one. Firstly, he will attempt to deport illegal immigrants, that are taking American jobs. I’m not sure he will go through with it, but it’s a start.

Cory Campbell

Break Apart Country Donald Trump winning has pros and cons. With him being a business man, he will get some things done to help our country and with debt. But, he has some things that I do not agree with, like being rude to immigrants. This will break apart our country. Emily Oxley

Road to First Football Playoff Win ranked Manvel in the next round of the playoffs at the University of Houston stadium. Manvel advanced to the regional semifinals for the seventh consecutive season by defeating New Caney 69-21 in a Division I Region III-5A area playoff game at TDECU Stadium. The No. 3 state-ranked Mavericks (12-0) have 12 wins for the fourth time since 2011 and went on to face reigning Division II champion Cedar Park (12-0) at Kyle Field in College Station. Continued on next page. By Brianna Linde, Micah Davis, Zane Wyatt, and Emily Oxley New Caney made football history by getting past the first round of the playoffs by defeating the Beaumont Central Jaguars 31-28 in tripple overtime. Jason Gonzales nailed a 26-yard field goal in the third overtime period to send New Caney past Central in a Class 5A Region II bidistrict game at Turner Stadium in Humble. The Eagles went on to face powerful and state-

The Eagles finished the regular season with one loss to district rival Crosby and a major win over undefeated Porter. Marte Allison finished regular season number sixth in state in scoring with 24 touchdowns and receiver Eli Akin finished sixth in state with 1,039 yards in receptions. Jacob Divel finished 10th in Texas in the number of quarterback sacks (10). Sending the team off to the playoffs (left and below).

Table Top Club By Henry McMichael Clutching his axe, the mighty Thu’um stealthily waits for the large green monstrosity to appear out of the shadows. The foul beast emerges to prey on the sheep, and Thu’um lunges out of the tree with all of his four foot terror. It slashes down at the Ogre with his great axe, bashing the front of its face!! The Ogre swings its great club but misses, for Thu’um is too short. Thu’um swings again, slashes the Ogre’s gut, smiting the beast and saving the farm he was hired to protect. On the afternoon of November 14, the TTC (Table Top Club) held one of its weekly meetings in which D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) was played. D&D is a role-playing fantasy board game in which players live in a world created and guided by a single DM (Dungeon Master). Held in room B111, students, and some teachers gather together to adventure in the fictional world of Golden Requiem (the world the DMs created) and live another life as an adventurer in a guild.

Founded a few weeks into the school year, TTC is run by three DMs who are also guild masters for the players in the game. TTC originally was founded when one of the guild masters wanted a location to start his own table top D&D session with the other guild masters as players. Attention soon rose about the TTC, and the amount of members continued to grow. “This is a truly a unique club,” Michael Dowel, one of our regular members said. He lives the life of the mighty Thuim Holderheck. “You make many friends through the personification you create using your character.” The TTC weekly meetings occur every Monday and Wednesday at Mr. Matolla’s room in B111. Monday’s are more geared towards D&D, while Wednesday’s are for other board games such as King Of Tokyo, Shadows Over Camelot, and Risk. For more information, contact the sponsor Mr. Matolla, or one of the guild masters: Henry (Polybius) McMichael, Gabriel (Alenia) Cabrera, Marcus (Sebastian) Llopez, or Kaliev (Shizune) Carrier.

Dungens and Dragons at home fun.

America The Great By Ali Rami

“Let’s move to Canada” or, “It’s all over...” is the only thing that I hear when I try to start a relevant conversation regarding politics. It baffles me. Instead of talking about ways of fixing a problem, we resort to violent protest or biased reporting. Really, what has changed? Have we, as a country of immigrants, really fallen as low as to label what a “true” American is? What happened to the honor instilled within us as defenders of the man’s unalienable rights? The answer is quite simple really; Americans have ceased to be American. A paradoxical notion meant to spark a heated argument with you as the reader. That is how problems are solved – through discussion. The wheel wasn’t invented because cavemen were bickering with each other about whose rock was bigger. This leads to my dilemma - Immigration. Every year the US department of Homeland Security admit 500,000 legal immigrants into the United States. That’s a huge number. What it doesn’t account for is the 11.4 million undocumented aliens that reside in today’s modern day America. We can’t handle it! As time progresses the number only gets larger and larger, with everyday brings new variables into the mix. How do we, as the country founded by immigrants, solve this problem? Well,

there are two main plans, if you will, that hope to solve our conundrum. The first being the president elect’s, which calls for the mass deportation of all aliens that reside within the US, the end of all amnesty programs designed to help immigrants, and probably the most well know of his pre-presidential promises; “Let’s build a wall!” On the other side we have the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton’s proposition. Clinton proposes to end the 3 or 10-year bar that hinders any current illegals (for lack of a better term) from trying to attain their legal status. Try and defend current president, Barack Obama’s, executive actions called DAPA and DACA, which try to protect families from dismemberment. Lastly, Clinton wants to extend the benefits of the Affordable Care Act to all families, regardless of their current immigration status. In my opinion, both of the immigration policies have their benefits and drawbacks. Donald J. Trump’s immigration policies are too right winged and Clinton’s just as far on the left! What America needs is balance. We need an immigration system that pardons immigrants who do their best to better not only their lives but their community, just as much as we need a system to punish and deport those that try and take advantage of the systems generosity. Personally, as the son of immigrants, I feel that our current immigration policy is too weak. There are too many people abusing others contributions to society. With that being said, everybody has a story. It is too optimistic to think that every illegal immigrant would be willing to oust themselves for a chance at a legal life, but that is what we need!

Ali Rami is a first generation American.

Why didn’t journalists see the Trump election coming? By Jim Becka, Wingspan Adviser In 1979 I was covering a news story about the mysterious death of Karen Silkwood, an Oklahoma nuclear facility worker. I met the Nederland, Texas Silkwood family and they felt her death was a homicide. My news judgment was that the story was going to be big. As a United Press International (UPI) reporter for Louisiana and Texas, I filed my stories through New Orleans, but, the UPI bureau chief did not agree with my feelings. Reluctantly, UPI used my story and a week later the CBS Evening News picked up the story. It eventually became a Hollywood movie with Cher and Meryl Streep. Fortunately, I had good journalism teachers. But, future journalism students may not be as fortunate. As a journalism teacher and news consumer old enough to remember the Goldwater-Johnson election, I have seen journalism go from objectivity and fairness to activism, sensationalism, and irrelevance. The Trump election is a great example. The major culprit is high schools replacing certified journalism teachers with English and art teachers. English teachers may do an excellent job teaching journalism, but it is not part of their college training. When I arrived at New Caney High School in 1997 I attended a journalism workshop where one English teacher said she does not teach the First Amendment, the Fairness Doctrine, or how students should be able to recognize a newsworthy event. She said “all that stuff in the first half of the journalism textbook does not need to be taught.” Bobby Hawthorne, retired Texas UIL director, authored the Radical Write, the story of how high school journalism classes have drifted toward English essays that end up on refrigerators with no serious readers. Hawthorne jokes that he sometimes takes English essays on long flights to help him sleep. He says that high school is an exciting time in a young person’s life; however, high school journalism classes are churning out publications with cover stories featur-

Poster from the Christic Institute archives.

ing routine school club meetings. My 90-year-old mother-in-law died with copies of her high school newspaper in her bedroom. The stories held her interest for 70-plus years. But, high school newspapers are dying from lack of school administer support. Journalists predicted the defeat of Trump because of an unwillingness to look at the election the way it would have been viewed by Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, or Katharine Graham. Objectivity and news judgment are not difficult to understand. When Kinky Friedman ran for president he spoke for a high school workshop at San Jacinto College. My students grabbed him for an interview as he stepped off the stage. The rest of the students watched. “Why are all the students watching us interview a guy running for president?” said one of my students with a puzzled look. “Why aren’t they interviewing him?” The answer is that many high school journalism classes have become writing busywork with few realworld experiences outside the classroom.

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Wingspan Published monthly by Journalism for New Caney High School and the East Montgomery County community. Opinions in the Wingspan do not reflect high school or district administration. Editor of the Wingspan is Billy Elliott. The photo editor is Cory Campbell. Jim Becka is the adviser/teacher. Story ideas and letters to the editor are welcome and should be mailed to [email protected]. They should be signed and have contact information.