High School Confidential

By Jeff Zalesin

	The author is a sophmore at Briarcliff High School, where he is arts editor and writer for student newspaper The Briarcliff Bulletin.

The ever-changing sound of rock n’ roll has done what art at its best has always done: display the spirit and attitudes of a society. But, like all art forms, rock has known slumps as well as peaks.

The 1980s saw video games begin to play a major role in millions of adolescent lives. While only a few rock stars have captivated eager youth in the last 20 years, the virtual gaming business has enjoyed very steady growth.

Enter Guitar Hero. The game, first released in 2005 for PlayStation 2, was an instant hit. Featuring a soundtrack of both classic and modern rock songs, it allowed anyone and everyone to assume the role of “guitar hero,” with no musical experience required.

Playing some of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded was suddenly as simple as watching cues on the video screen and pressing the right buttons on the guitar-shaped controller. And with two sequels and an ever growing fan base, Guitar Hero shows no signs of retreating into the realm of bygone fads.
Like Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero has become a veritable instrument for measuring one’s coordination, patience, and abundance of free time.

One teen’s Bible
Indeed, achievement as a virtual “guitar hero” has taken on immense social weight. Briarcliff sophomore Elliot Tusk, an accomplished violinist who has never so much as touched a real guitar, is quick to proclaim himself “the Guitar Hero.” “Guitar Hero is like the new Bible,” he theorized.
Some remain skeptical, insistent that playing the guitar itself is a worthier use of time. It seems that Guitar Hero’s champions are disproportionately non-guitarists.

Guitarists tend to see Guitar Hero as little more than a feeble imitation of the “real deal.” The game reduces each song to a formulaic science, leaving no room for personal expression. Thus, the deeply personal elements of the musical experience are lost in translation.

It’s difficult to deny, however, that Guitar Hero has been successful as a means of spreading musical knowledge. “I found 10 of the songs on my iPod through Guitar Hero,” said Billy Huegel, citing “Dead” by My Chemical Romance as his “new favorite song.”

Keith Richards wannabes
The brand new Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock features the most diverse selection of tunes yet, ranging from classics like The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” to recent indie favorites like “Helicopter” by Bloc Party.

For lovers of music, this raises a natural question: what will Guitar Hero do for the future of rock n’ roll? Will it inspire a young generation of rockers to put down the controller and pick up a real guitar? Or, by cutting out the learning curve and allowing gamers to simulate the thrill of playing with a band, will it render genuine musicianship obsolete?

Time will tell whether our generation will produce ambitious, well-informed rockers or complacent gamers who see music as an opportunity to rack up points.
For now, the truth is plain enough: no video game will ever replace the sheer, visceral joy of making real music with real people.

But if Guitar Hero can help draw the masses back to the great American art that is rock n’ roll, we’re all ears.

By Kaminie Balkaran

	The author is a senior at Somers High School.

What does it matter if someone works at a soup kitchen to help them get into their dream school?

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” A doctrine voiced by Mahatma Gandhi that many American teens actually live by.

There is much that can be said about American teens, not all of it good, but many of us have a deep sense of caring and compassion for others. Americans, on the whole, are among the world’s most charitable people.

Look at the membership in programs like Habitat for Humanity, Big Brothers and Sisters, and Boys and Girls clubs.

Recently, I overheard an adult saying these good works weren’t exactly what he’d call charity. Too many of today’s teens, he feels, are only doing good works because they are looking to get something out of it (club memberships and college acceptances), and that doesn’t qualify as charity.

If that statement angers you, join the club.

I wish I said something to him, because the comment was overly broad, and unfairly negative about teens today.

An act of charity, whether to get a club membership or not, is still an act of charity.

Who really cares if someone works at a soup kitchen only because they want to, or because they’re doing it to get into their dream school? In my opinion, the only thing that matters is that the soup kitchen had an extra hand for that day.

That might be too simplistic, but I would rather give people an incentive to do charity work than not. If we didn’t have incentives, a lot of teens, as well as adults, wouldn’t do any type of community service at all.

Incentives are okay
Maybe it isn’t right to endorse the idea that nothing is for free, by saying that incentives to get people to do community service is okay. Yet, without incentives, there would be a lot less people working to right the wrongs of the world.

Incentives used by community service projects help to get people involved on a larger scale. It would be ideal if people automatically took the time to do community service out of the goodness of their hearts, but let’s get real.

If incentives push people in the right direction, why is that wrong? In the end, community service projects flourish, and both sides benefit.

There are many teens who work hard to bring about change in the world for nothing in return. And they are wonderful role models. For the rest of us, using incentives helps to provide a steady volunteer force.

Maybe we could all stand to gain from acting more selflessly. The fact so many teens get out there and do something at all to serve their communities and their world is more the point.

We should focus on all the good that is being done to help make this world a better place.

It is nitpicky, and missing the point, to criticize community service hours that are used on college applications and for club memberships.

By Hannah Berkman

	Hannah Berkman is co-Editor-in-Chief of the Briarcliff Bulletin at Briarcliff High School. This article is excerpted from a report she wrote for a five-week journalism program in summer 2007 at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Hillary Clinton was among the first Presidential candidates to send voters text messages such as the one in the headline.

More than 18 billion text messages were sent in the United States in December 2006. Political campaigns are grasping the potential these numbers represent.
The 2008 Presidential election features three current front-runners who use text messaging to reach out to the general public: Senators Clinton and Barak Obama, and former Senator John Edwards.

Text messages from presidential candidates generate excitement and elicit support. They provide the cell phone user with information from the campaign trail, sometimes including pictures, and are sent only to those who have signed up for the messages.

Text messaging also provides politicians with an inexpensive mode of communication. Text messages on average cost 10 cents each to send— a small price to pay in comparison with the millions of dollars candidates spend on television advertisements.

According to an Associated Press-AOL-Pew study released in 2003, people between 18 and 29 are more inclined to use the “special features” their phones offer.

300 messages a month
A Telephia study published in The New York Times in August reported that this age group sends as many text messages as phone calls, averaging 300 of each per month.

“The use of text messaging is directed to a younger audience,” said New York Times congressional correspondent Jeff Zeleny. “The big question, though, is will it make younger people actually vote? The campaigns hope so, by getting people involved and by making them feel as though they are part of a larger movement or a greater purpose.”

Robert Calvert, professor of political science emeritus at DePauw University and former elected member of the Greencastle, Indiana, City Council, described younger voters as more susceptible to technological campaigns because of the environment in which they grew up.

“Such a device will appeal to younger persons, or at least the less intelligent or more media-conditioned among them,” he said. “We’re talking, after all, about a generation that has been virtually raised on modern media, TV and now the Internet.”

Georgetown University political science professor Joanne Rappaport put it bluntly. She finds political text messages “terribly invasive.”

“If I got any, I would erase them immediately,” she added. “Maybe younger people would welcome them, but I don’t.”

Comfort level, not issues
“Voters tend to select candidates with whom they feel most comfortable, not with whom they agree with on specific issues,” said Shawn Healy, McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum’s resident scholar.

For now, this specific use of technology is being exhibited primarily by Democratic candidates. Several Republican candidates, though, such as former Gov. Mitt Romney, have expressed interest in following suit. Mindy Finn, his campaign director of e-strategy, told the Chicago Tribune he will begin using text messages “very soon, at a time that makes sense.”

According to Calvert, the Democratic Party has been more inclined to appeal to younger generations since the student rebellions of the 1960s.

“The young rebels of those days were nothing if not alienated from the ordinary political process, which they regarded variously as simply corrupt, a mere tool of the ‘establishment,’ or ‘irrelevant,’ as they dismissively put it,” he said. The Democratic party of 1972 then tried to attract the “rebellious young” of the era and since has emphasized the importance of youth in party support.

Calvert said the recent increased use of technology will change American politics.

Getting by without Facebook

By Jeff Zalesin

	The author is a sophmore at Briarcliff High School, where he is arts editor and writer for student newspaper The Briarcliff Bulletin.

At Briarcliff High School, I have no friends. I identify with no particular hobbies or interests, and my birthday is unworthy of note. It should suffice to say that I simply do not exist. While these statements are thankfully untrue, they might easily be inferred from my one great social failing: more than a full year into my high school experience, I remain absent from Facebook. Facebook, as any high school student will know, has become as essential as cell phones and email as a means of interaction between college and, more recently, high school students. The social networking website, originally designed for use by college students, has rapidly overtaken its predecessor MySpace as the obligatory self-representation in cyberspace. Think of Facebook as a sort of governing bureaucracy among youths of a certain age; the information contained within the network is considered official and definitive. Thus, to accept a friend request through Facebook is to validate a real-life friendship, while a Facebook “poke” or “hug” is akin to the physical action. Indeed, to sign up for Facebook is to register one’s existence.

As I know firsthand, unofficial existence as a high school student can be a trying endeavor. Attaining a classmate’s birthday might require an actual conversation, and planning an event entails individual emails or (God forbid) phone calls to invitees. And in the brief few years since “Facebook” joined the ranks of “Tivo” and “Google” as a grammatically confused verb, I’ve scarcely met an amiable new acquaintance who didn’t promise, “I’ll Facebook you!” Forced to explain that I am unFacebookable, I usually justify my abstinence by saying that “I like my freedom.” Indeed, to my naïve eyes, it looks as though Facebook can be as much of a burden as it is a savior. Imagine, Facebook nation, the possible consequences of leaving your profile unattended for a week: You could miss a friend’s birthday. You could brutally (though inadvertently) ignore a friend request from a new real-life friend. You could miss out on the inside joke of the century. “Sometimes people might have a party or an event in which the main way to alert people is through Facebook invitations,” says Facebook enthusiast Chloe Effron, “and then people don’t hear about it until much later, if they don’t check.” For one with Facebook, such failings are inexcusable. Tending to a Facebook profile has become a daily responsibility in the life of a typical teen; one I have, thus far, refused to accept.

Like the cell phone and the computer, a Facebook profile may soon be too commonplace to live without. Then, stubborn holdouts like me will have no choice but to put aside their grudges and take a place on digital society’s bandwagon. If I do choose to pull myself out of the Dark Ages and join the legions of teen Facebook dwellers, I will do so with one indelible memory in mind. On the last day of my teen tour this summer, I watched two of my friends say their final farewell. Caught in a teary embrace, one whispered to the other, “Get a Facebook.”