Opinion

Most people love getting as much help as they can. But right when help is ready to be given, it’s thrown away. Such is the tale of Link Crew this year.
In the past, Link Crew has always gathered enough interested people to sign up. Those who have showed a desire to help freshmen got the opportunity to guide ninth-graders through orientation and the rest of their year. Due to the overwhelming number of applications to be on the 2008-2009 Link Crew—more than 200—guidance counselors Frances Saiki and Alinna Satake had to reject nearly half of the applicants.

Numerous studies done over the past few years have shown that the United States is significantly lagging behind other countries in math throughout grades 7-12. The U.S. was ranked 24th out of 29 countries in a study of world's wealthiest countries in of math literacy of 15-year-olds. How can it be that the richest country in the world, a society that places intense pressures on its children to be educated, is being overtaken by other countries in math?

Upperclassmen here and at other schools often complain about the stress associated with the SAT and ACT. The disappearance of such tests would bring immense joy to all students who have yet to take them. However, is this idea as great as it seems?

Disaster struck. Susie Q logged onto to her Facebook account and looked aimlessly for her usual sidebar and updates. But there it was, horrifying and permanent. In plain view, this new layout stared back plain, dull and bumper sticker-less.

September 2008: The new Facebook was officially made mandatory for all users.

The old adage goes “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it,” but it seems Facebook employees disagree. They changed the very functional website to a new, difficult to navigate format.

Forget heavy guidebooks, biased pamphlets and costly travels around the nation. If you want a completely free database of documents, reviews and videos on any of the nation’s top 225 colleges, merely click a button and check out Unigo.com? Unigo.com is the brainchild of Jordan Goldman.

On Sept. 29, the stock market fell a record 777 points after the House of Representative failed to pass the $700 billion bailout plan proposed by President George W. Bush. However, this economic collapse had been forecast for years, and recently started to fall apart.

The days of teachers holding rulers and sending students to a corner with a dunce cap have long passed. Some teachers at a 110-student school in Harrold, Texas, have upgraded to a rather unusual technique: carrying guns. The idea sounds crazy at first but has some merit at a school like this.

A lot of students are too sleep-deprived to function in the morning, so they usually turn to a hot cup of coffee to keep them awake. If they can’t make the run to Starbucks without being late to first period, their first alternative is gum. The craving for sugary sweetness has become just as addicting as the need for caffeine.

Sadly, many teachers do not allow gum chewing in their classrooms because they find it causes too many problems. What they don’t realize is that gum chewing brings many benefits that can improve academic performance to students.

High school students are constantly faced with the challenge of balancing work, school, friends and family in their schedules. This is especially true for seniors at the start of the school year, when they become inundated with college applications. This fall, however, the seniors are not the only stressed group on campus.

Many teachers at Saratoga High are also juggling a more difficult balancing act this year, due to a change in the California Teachers of English Learners (CTEL) requirements.

On Sept. 10, while most Saratogans were just getting into bed, the world’s largest particle accelerator roared to life underneath Geneva, Switzerland. Skeptics thought it might doom the planet, but most scientists saw it for the advance it was.