Category Archives: Front/Home
School Extends Closure for the Year
Tyler Kavalecz
“I mean, I know with our children, our grandchildren, the end of the school year particularly for seniors is particularly important, the prom, sporting events, so many, many different things, recognitions. And we’re not telling the schools how to do this, but again, the gathering of a significant number of people is a dangerous situation. And it’s a real shame. I just can’t express how sorry I am about that,” DeWine said in his press conference on April 20.
DeWine also expressed his uncertainty about whether the next school year would start in schools or online, but mentioned that schools have already begun preparing for fall.
“We’ve made no decision about the fall yet. We’re going to have to see where we’re going. I know that parents, teachers, administrators are anxious for a decision about the fall, but we are simply not in a position yet to make that decision. I am happy to say though that schools are in fact already preparing for the fall,” DeWine said in his April 20 press conference.
Lexi Shabazz is a senior at the high school that has been affected by schools being closed. The worst part about schools being closed for her is that her senior year is over.
“The worst part of schools being closed is that my senior year is over and I didn’t get to have all the fun at the end of my senior year. Also, I didn’t get to say a goodbye and thank you to the teachers who really made an impact on my time,” Shabazz said.
With schools being closed for the rest of the year, it has had a significant impact on clubs and classes like yearbook, as Shabazz is an editor for the yearbook.
“Well, I am an editor in the yearbook so this has a huge effect on our book! We had to rethink some pages and just try to make it as good for our seniors as possible with all the cancellations,” Shabazz said.
Although she would rather be able to go to school and senior events for the rest of the academic year, Shabazz feels like it was the right decision to close schools. However, even though she feels it was the right decision, Shabazz is still going to miss multiple aspects of school.
“I am most going to miss being in yearbook and student council. These were my favorite classes of the day because I got to be myself with the people who truly cared about what they were dong. I am going to miss being in Mrs. Payne’s room in a test and hearing her tell us the test does not define us. I know it sounds silly, but after hearing it for two years, it becomes a huge part of what makes school so special,” Shabazz said.
Another senior at the high school that has been affected in multiple ways by schools closing is Matthew Duffy.
The worst part about schools being closed for the rest of the academic year for Duffy is that track has been cancelled.
“The worst of school being cancelled for me is the fact that track is cancelled and I am unable to see my friends. It’s really hard to go from seeing your friends and teammates every day to not seeing any of them in over a month,” Duffy said.
However, track is only one of the cancelled school events that Duffy was looking forward too. He was especially looking forward to competing in the senior survivor event, as he has been looking forward to competing in the annual events for a long time.
Although Duffy is disappointed that school has been closed for the rest of the academic year and many fun senior events have been cancelled, he believes it was the right decision to close schools.
“I am very very sad by the decision, but I do believe it is the right decision. It really sucks that I have to miss the most fun and memorable part of my academic career, but if what we are doing is saving lives, I am very understanding that this was the right decision,” Duffy said.
With school being online for the rest of the year, Duffy misses seeing his teachers and classmates, and wishes he could have one more day of school to say goodbye to everyone.
“I just miss seeing my classmates and teachers. I’ve been texting and face timing, but it’s not the same as the person to person daily interactions. As crazy as this sounds, I miss the stress and complaining about school much more than I thought I would. I just wish I had one more day to say goodbye to my teachers and classmates,” Duffy said.
Mrs. Surrena, who teaches art at the high school, is one of the teachers that has had to adjust to school being online for the rest of the year.
School being online for the rest of the year has forced Surrena to simplify her projects and class overall, because she cannot provide examples and supplies as she could at school.
“Closing of the school has affected classes because I’m limited to what kids can do at home. In my classroom, I can rely on all the supplies I have and all the different visual examples I can show. But now, with students not being able to have those or not knowing what everyone has, I really have to simplify and provide many more options than previously,” Surrena said.
Surrena has had to change her class more than a teacher that teaches a core class because she cannot provide the supplies students need for art projects.
“I do more projects that utilize different types of materials that students might not have at home. Whereas now I can’t do that because the supplies aren’t available to everyone. I’m really trying to have kids learn the same concepts that we’d be learning in class, but just through different processes and different materials,” Surrena said.
Although Surrena has had challenges with simplifying her class and grading, her most significant challenge for the rest of the year will be not seeing students.
“I think my biggest challenge is not seeing students. Not having the time to talk to students and build relationships with them, because I really try to get to know my students and some of that is sparked through their artwork and some of that is just sparked through conversation in the classroom. Now we don’t have that. Because we don’t have that, I think teaching can become impersonal,” Surrena said.
Although it has been announced that school will be online for the rest of the academic year and all spring sports have been cancelled, it has not yet been announced when graduation will take place.
Restaurants Move to Takeout/ Delivery
Ashley Hutchinson
At the end of March, Governor Mike DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton placed a state-wide ban on restaurants. Customers could not dine inside any restaurant, and they could only purchase food through carry-out or delivery.
This ban was enacted to stop large groups of people from coming together in one place and to enforce the idea of “social distancing.” Eventually, lawmakers are hoping that bans will stop the spread of COVID-19 in the area and ultimately around the country.
To combat this change, many local businesses have started to be more accessible to the public by still allowing carry-out and even offering new delivery.
While some local businesses may be hurting during this time, some are actually thriving due to services that can deliver food right to one’s door.
Furthermore, services such as DoorDash or UberEats have even stopped some of their delivery fees to help the people around the community, and many of those employees are seeing their service continuing to grow. These companies have even created a no-contact policy, so they can leave the package on the doorstep to prevent the spread of germs.
More locally, restaurants, such as Chipotle or Panera, are even offering free delivery, which keeps customers satisfied while keeping the chains in business. Locally owned businesses such as The Tavern of Stow have also started to deliver to customers.
While many small businesses have not opened up to delivery, almost everywhere is still open for carry-out orders. Examples of these businesses include El Campesino, Thai Gourmet, and Swensons.
If a business does not offer delivery, services previously mentioned such as DoorDash offers many local options for delivery, so food can be delivered right to home while still supporting local businesses.
However, there is still a lack of customers at a majority of local businesses, which affects families and the community as a whole.
When finding food to eat, try to find local family-owned restaurants to give business to. It helps the family, the community and the economy. Making small changes such as this can save so many businesses during these struggling times.
Tiger King Review
Samantha Cole
At any point in your life, ever, have you thought to yourself, “Golly, the American privatized tiger industry is rife with corruption, mysterious deaths, marital scandals, and oddly catchy low-budget country music! I certainly hope a well-known media production company publishes a docu-drama to bring all of these things (and more!) to light!”?
If you are in that minority, congratulations: Netflix has you covered with their complete and utter black horse of a series: Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness.
If you aren’t in that minority, prepare to become concerningly invested in the lore of American tiger-ownership. The topic sounds unbelievably droll–the rich own tigers, they probably aren’t keeping them in the best of circumstances and hopefully the USFWS does something about it. Those were my assumptions.
There is so, so much more to it than that. Tiger King centers around two major tiger-keeping centers (not zoos, as the latter of the two would hasten to inform you of): Joe Exotic’s GW Zoo and Carole Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue.
There are other major players, of course–Doc Antle, another tiger zoo owner who employs a number of women in conditions eerily reminiscent of those in 1963 Playboy clubs; Mario Tabraue, a private tiger owner/former drug kingpin who, despite having been the basis for Scarface’s eponymous character and doing things like, say, sewing open 223 live snakes, stuffing them with cocaine, and stitching them back together, is the most normal of all the people interviewed; and Saff, the man who got attacked by a tiger, underwent amputation, and returned to work five days later, just to name a few.
The amount of people involved in this world is baffling, it really is. And they’ve all got incredibly wild backstories. While, after the first few episodes, the crew starts focusing in on its stars (Exotic and Baskin), more and more people are introduced.
A huge part of Tiger King’s draw, to me, is its nonchalant way of slapping the viewer in the face every five minutes with, “but wait, there’s more!” to which the audience can only respond with bafflement.
Within the first twenty minutes of the first episode, there’s already so, so much going on, it’s impossible to fathom how things could get weirder.
Take its star, Joe Exotic. You’ve made peace with the fact that he has a horrendous mullet, dresses exclusively in fringe, has a voice perpetually in the tonal range of “pre-teen snorting helium,” a career in country music that isn’t half-bad and is in prison. That’s an awful lot of conflicting information, right? There couldn’t be anything else, right?
Then Tiger King decides to show you some interview clips with one of Exotic’s five husbands. And a clip of his polygamist gay wedding, which is, to say the least, not something people tend to expect from a gun-toting Oklahoman redneck.
The series truly has a gift for establishing a comfort zone in what is a very bizarre situation, then surprising you over and over again with completely wild information. And it is not a trick exclusive to GW Zoo, either!
While memes regarding it are everywhere, I still won’t detail the reveal for spoilers’ sake, but one of the best instances of this is in regards to Baskin. Nobody is safe from Tiger King’s reveals.
Post-release and post-popularity, many of the people featured–including Baskin and her current husband–have released statements countering things that Tiger King has implied.
The thing Baskin seems to have missed, however, is what makes Tiger King so interesting: the crew is barely featured. There are no interviews with experts non-affiliated with the tiger scene, no huffy opinions from quirky-yet-memorable cameramen–everything presented is due to the follies of its stars.
They don’t know when to stop talking.
Every opinion given is that of someone involved. All the information surrounding an incident is given freely. There are only about three characters who seem to know when to keep things close to the vest, especially when being interviewed by a camera crew.
This lack of definitive conclusion on what you’re supposed to do with the information is a bit annoying, I’ll admit. The facts of the story don’t have a good conclusion; the audience is left to form their own.
From a journalistic standpoint, that’s a very good way to cap things off. Present unbiased information; let the audience do what they will.
From a storytelling standpoint? It’s awful and I hate it. I lack the fortitude to be satisfied without someone telling me how to feel.
Regardless, the back half of the series, where things become less zany and more sordid, isn’t where the series shines. Tiger King is, legitimately, more about the journey than the destination.
Mounting twists and turns aren’t all the series have to offer, however. The rivalry between Exotic and Baskin is riveting. At the start of the series is a clipshow of Exotic mentioning Baskin, peppered liberally with expletives, which is but a precursor to the drama to come. Exotic does not like Baskin.
The feeling is mutual, however whereas Exotic gives an impressive number of 20-minute harangues on his distaste for Baskin, Baskin pursues a costly legal battle with him.
Analysis of Tiger King invariably leads back to one question: Who, exactly, is the worst of the main three characters? Exotic and Baskin both do some pretty shady things in the pursuit of their rivalry and plenty of things outside of it as well; Antle, while running what is arguably the nicest of the three establishments, is also employing some pretty egregious child-grooming tactics.
It’s another reason I wish the show had given personal opinions on the events contained. Opinions vary wildly; I, personally, see Antle as the worst of the three. A friend finds Joe the worst of the three, citing the thrall he held his husbands in. My father is convinced Baskin is the worst, mostly due to how perfectly she falls into “crazy cat lady” stereotypes that he is vehemently against.
Tiger King’s inherent ability to spark conversation is undoubtedly another facet of its success. While quarantine was a massive boost for the series’ reach, its success cannot be based entirely on luck. Despite all the wild information and wacky dynamics, Tiger King has more to its name: production quality.
Even compared to other series put out by Netflix (for instance, Car Masters: Rust to Riches, put on the site in about the same timeframe, which has camera-work not out of place on an HGTV series), the quality is stellar. Motion graphics occasionally crop up with old documents, there’s a wide breadth of fantastic aerial shots, the dramatic recreations aren’t overdone and they somehow make even old, grainy security camera footage look polished and professional.
There is visible care put into the editing, and it boosts the series a lot. The editors did a fantastic job, throwing in information at exactly the right time. A lesser crew would have not done the story justice.
The success of the series is twofold: the public has something to talk about and make memes over, yes, but a lot more people are aware of the rampant issues with privatized tiger ownership.
There are a lot of issues with privatized tiger ownership. Tiger King makes the viewer stare them in the face.
Before the series, public awareness about big cat abuse wasn’t fantastic. Baskin tried to raise awareness, yes, but she wasn’t wildly successful. Additionally, the event that by all right should have triggered a wave of activism (in 2011, eighteen Bengal tigers, among other animals, escaped a private zoo on Zanesville, OH, and were shot) did nothing except make an awful lot of people sad for a few days, somewhat akin to the Harambe incident.
In terms of pop culture references, the issue did not have any popular documentaries or other media before Tiger King to do what Supersize Me did for childhood obesity–the closest it got was a song titled Truck Stop Tiger by ROAR, a band known for one song popular on TikTok.
Whether Tiger King will incentivise activism remains to be seen. Its pervasive effect on the American consciousness cannot be denied, however. The series has incredibly good word of mouth. As an example: President Trump said he would, “look into,” pardoning Joe Exotic.
While rewatch value on the series isn’t the best, the show is definitely worth taking the time to delve into. Clocking in at a mere five hours and seventeen minutes, Tiger King is an excellent form of escapism with low commitment.
If collecting tarantulas and hating the bunny NPC in the new Animal Crossing game isn’t your speed, Tiger King has plenty of animals, but with many more suspected murders and bisexual trysts. If nothing else, the series makes for incredibly riveting dinner conversation.
