Adversity Score: A Possibly Unfair Number

Lucie MacGillvray
Staff Writer

Recently, the College Board announced a new score that would be assigned to them based on a students’ environmental circumstances. This “adversity score” would take factors such as location, family situations, and income into consideration. Those with situations that are considered more “unfair” will be assigned a higher score than others which is rated from 1 to 100. After testing the score at 40 universities, it was found that “Applicants from higher levels of disadvantage were more likely to be admitted, suggesting the additional context influenced admissions outcomes” (CollegeBoard). This meant that students coming from poorer neighborhoods were given a higher chance of getting admitted to a university than students from wealthy backgrounds, even if their test scores were similar.
    Although students coming from disadvantaged neighborhoods may have an educational disadvantage, students do not get to choose their living situations. Wealthy children did not choose to be born with money in their families, and poor children did not choose to be born into that either. Giving students advantages based on factors they cannot control seems highly unfair to those who worked extremely hard to earn the scores they did.
    Additionally, the adversity score does not take into account specific data concerning the student or personal family challenges, whether it be that a child has suffered abuse, or has lived through other difficult situations. These challenges are overlooked, and only general data taken from censuses and other data collections are used to score the student. While students living in areas that are deemed wealthy and privileged could have very well suffered many personal obstacles in their lives, the only “challenges” taken into account are monetary.
    On the other hand, those who grew up in a poor setting may have been denied access to the tools that wealthy students had access to. For instance, wealthy students may have been able to afford a multitude of test preparation services, while poorer students could not, creating a large difference in test scores.
     The adversity score takes this into account and allows universities to see the monetary struggles of students that may affect their scores.

Music genres can affect how you feel

Skyler Dobson and Shannon Herbert

Contributing Sociologists

Music is extremely powerful, in the sense that it can draw people together just as quickly as it can tear people apart. Music is able to evolve and differ tremendously between generations and artists, and there still seems to be something for everyone and anyone. Artists are able to create and spread their words of wisdom and love to entertain people, or to even send a message within the deepest lines in the lyrics. In today’s day and age, it is extremely easy to tell if an artist is creating music for attention and money, or if they have a genuine love for the artform, and they want to share their craft for the rest of the world to enjoy. Even if the music falls under the “depressing” category, it can still be enjoyed by many, and can help bring people together. “Uplifting” music obviously has better long term effects on the brains of adolescents, and it is still able to bring people together from all over the world.

    In order to properly approach our interests concerning the topic of music, we first had to identify the problem or question at hand: How do certain genres of music impact people’s mood? With a question in mind, we were then able to discuss how we would approach discoveries we would make surrounding the topic of music relating to mood. We came to the conclusion that we would be able to construct a survey, and get the most information out of students if we structured our questions and statements about what kind of music people listened to, and how it makes them feel. Before surveying the public, we first had to know what we were getting ourselves into. After the information about different genres of music relating to mood and development was retained, we were able to construct a hypothesis, and surveys to collect data to either support or deny our agreed-upon hypothesis. We were thrilled to eventually get the results of our surveys back to either confirm or deny the predictions we had previously made about the music choice of the students of New Hope-Solebury High School, and how their mood was impacted by their choice of music.

    Feeling confident about the background knowledge we both had about our choice of topic, we were finally able to experiment with the numerous amounts of students surrounding us at New Hope. With out carefully constructed questions, we were able to receive a number of differing answers, which supported our hypothesis in a way we weren't expecting. Our hypothesis stated that “If students listen to certain genres of music (uplifting, pop, rap, etc.), then students will be in a better mood.” The songs that would fall under the “depressing” category, mainly hip-hop and rap, were a popular answer among students. Even though students stated that songs that fall under that category boosted their mood, those songs do fall under the “depressing category”. Even though we received no responses that correlated with a negatively impacted mood or a bad experience and an uplifting genre of music, the amount of responses that gave “depressing” genres a positive response overwhelmed the responses that said “uplifting” genres helped express a positive mood and mindset.

    In conclusion, with the help of the students of New Hope-Solebury, and numerous resources online, we were able to support our hypothesis and confirm our thoughts and assumptions about the music choice of our peers. Our research provided us with the different types of music that fell under the “depressing” category, and the uplifting category. Much to our dismay, most of the survey results showed that most of the population of our peers listen to music that is considered depressing. But, our hypothesis was never disproved because there were never any negative results reported back from people that listened to music that is considered to be “uplifting”. Our research and experimentation lead us to the conclusion that music is an extremely complex topic, and someone's music choice is able to completely alter a person's outlook on life, and it can even shift a person's mood completely and instantly, for the better or for the worse.

Prepared by

Connor Fitzgerald

Behind the scenes in Mask & Zany

Sarah Harrison

Staff Writer

Over the past 3 amazing years, I have been a active member of Mask & Zany. I’ve done many musicals and plays, and those were some of the best experiences of my high school career by far. There are a lot of people who come and see the shows, and see what we put together, but there aren’t a lot of people who see what goes on behind the scenes, and what really goes into putting these productions together so quickly, which is what I'm here to shed some light on the entire process of putting a show together. I ’ll start from the beginning. We start out with auditions. We all come in three days after school to do acting, singing, and dancing auditions if it’s a musical. For acting you usually need to have a one minute comedic monologue prepared, and you do it in front of the group, it’s a lot less scary than it sounds because Mask & Zany is like one big family. After acting auditions we have singing auditions. The type of song you do really depends on the musical that we’re doing, but it always has to be at least sixteen measures long. After singing auditions we have dancing auditions, which is always the most fun time. None of us are close to being professionals, so it’s just fun. After we have auditions the real waiting begins. We wait until the cast list comes out, which is always a suspense filled limbo period for everyone. After the list comes out we get to work.

     In the first few rehearsals, we just all sit around in Mrs. Pittner’s room and read through our scripts, and listen to the soundtrack on Spotify. After those few days, we start learning our singing parts for the show with Mr. Bateman, and start blocking with Mrs. Pittner; which is learning the movement and what you do and where you stand on stage. After we have our basic blocking down, we try to start memorizing our lines which can be tough, but the key to learning anything is repetition, so going through it everyday in rehearsal helps. A few weeks in we start dance rehearsals. This year was especially challenging for a lot of us because we had to learn how to tap dance in just a few short weeks. We would have tap rehearsals everyday until we all got it down, even when a lot of us had little dance experience before hand. I’m not surprised because Mask & Zany people are some of the most dedicated and hardworking individuals I've ever met. When all of this is down, and we have everything memorized, we being to stumble through the show, and I mean stumble through. We stop and start constantly to call line, ask what our blocking is, or to fix a lighting cue, but it eventually comes together, it always does even when we think it won’t. Being a part of a production in Mask & Zany is one of the most magical and rewarding things ever. Seeing something that you pour your heart and soul into everyday for months, go from absolutely nothing to full blown production that you’re proud of and are excited to perform, is one of the greatest feeling ever.

     I encourage anyone who is even the smallest amount interested in theater to try out for a show with us. Through the shows and Mask & Zany, I have met some of my closest friends, and being a part of a family like this is once in a lifetime. I know that I was scared and didn’t have a lot of information when I was a freshman, so if you have any questions or want to know any information about what to do for auditions, talk to anyone in the club, or reach out to Mrs. Pittner, she would be thrilled to hear from you. Come join Mask & Zany, we would love to have you!

Extravagance sums up Met Gala 2019

Frany Barile

Staff Writer

This year's Met Gala, a black-tie extravaganza that raises money for the costume institute, was held on May 4. The chosen hosts were Anna Wintour and Alessandro Michele, the creative director of Gucci.

      Every year there is a certain theme that goes along with the event; this year’s theme was “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” Many individuals were confused with the meaning of this year's theme, but it was explained by the host Anna Wintour: “It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon.”

     With the theme that celebrated outrageous and over-the-top looks, it was no surprise that the 2019 Met Gala looks were unlike ever before. One of the most famous looks this year was worn by Lady Gaga. Not only did Lady Gaga arrive in not one, not two, not three, but four different astonishing looks by Brandon Maxwell, she also incorporated into her first look a wagon full of champagne and dancers for her second look. For her third outfit, her attire was complemented by umbrellas. Lastly, she left the audience shook with a flirty striptease.

     Another extravagant look was seen on the red carpet by Billy Porter. The outfit consisted of an embellished catsuit, 10-ft wings, and a 24-karat gold headpiece. What top it all was he was carried in on a black and gold litter by six chiseled and shirtless bearers.

     Katy Perry’s 2019 Met Gala look was one we will never forget. She was dressed in a Moschino chandelier designed by Jeremy Scott that was actually illuminated.

     Lastly, Kacey Musgraves, known as the MVP in previous appearances at the Met Gala, owned her title. She showed up dressed as a Barbie doll, with a blonde wig, and a matching pink convertible.