News Briefs Issue 9: New Spanish Accelerated program, BVNW dance team lawsuit and Instagram famous ‘World Record Egg’

EAST:

Students currently enrolling for the 2019-2020 school year now have the option to be placed into Spanish 1 and 2 Accelerated. The year-long elective counts as one credit with the completion of the first two levels of Spanish, giving students the option to then move on to Spanish 3.

The new class follows last year’s addition of French 1 and 2 Accelerated due to East requesting it from the district to provide more options for students interested in taking a language. French 1 and 2 Accelerated teacher Gina Halksworth believes the class has been successful this school year and that the students are enjoying it.

“I would say the big thing is that these kids are interested in language and they’re really serious about getting at least the two years in and even going further,” Halksworth said.

The class builds on concepts from French 1 and French 2 throughout the year. This teaching method has proven to be effective in the classroom, where they are projected to finish the school year in the same place as current French 2 students. The teacher for Spanish 1 and 2 Accelerated is still unknown, though.

The class itself has students from all grade levels, and it gives the opportunity to freshmen who want to start learning a language to have the option for AP and IB languages later on. French teacher Laure Losey says the class also benefits upperclassmen who may be far along in another language and take this class to add to their high school transcript.

“It is ideal to somebody who has had exposure to a language, who is a hard worker and knows that it is going to take a little bit of work, but the end result is going to be great,” Losey said.

LOCAL:

Former Blue Valley Northwest student Camille Sturdivant filed a Civil Rights lawsuit on Dec. 5 for the alleged racial discrimination she faced while on her high school’s dance team. The lawsuit states that her coach made racist remarks about her and limited her opportunities as part of the Dazzler Dance Team because of her race. Fine did not respond to an interview request before this article’s deadline.

According to Sturdivant, during Dazzler tryouts her junior year, former Dazzlers Kevin Murakami and Coach Carley Fine pulled her aside and told her that she couldn’t join a routine because her skin was ‘too dark’ and would take away from the other dancers. They also mentioned that her skin color would ‘clash’ with the costumes, according to the Kansas City Star.

An article from 435 Magazine states that Sturdivant and her parents brought the situation up with the principal Amy Pressly, but her response was that Fine had permission to choose who she wanted in each dance. Fine became the head coach for the following year. Pressly was unable to be contacted to share her stance on the story.

Towards the end of Sturdivant’s senior year, Fine gave Sturdivant her phone to play music off of for one of the routines. When holding the phone, she noticed text messages between Fine and Murakami making more racial comments about Sturdivant and how she made the Missouri Golden Girls dance team.

The Kansas City Star states that Sturdivant took a picture of it and sent it to her parents in which they brought it up with the principal. The school district banned Fine from ever having a job at the district and that she could not attend any Dazzler events. The lawsuit alleges that Fine continued to interact with dancers and was seen on school premises.

NATIONAL:

The Instagram account user “Egg Gang” that broke Kylie Jenner’s record for most liked photo on Jan. 13 now has over 50 million likes as of Jan. 20 with other imitation accounts trying to live up to its fame.

On Jan. 4 a picture of an egg was posted on Instagram with the intention of becoming the most liked photo, overtaking Jenner’s most-liked photo at 18 million likes. Her post was of her daughter Stormi Webster right after she was born in February of last year, and the egg quickly surpassed her former record in nine days.

After the egg became the new record holder, it went viral with companies and celebrities posting pictures referencing the egg, such as Target and Ellen Degeneres. Even Kylie Jenner herself responded with a video of her cracking an egg on the street with the caption, “Take that little egg.” However, this isn’t the only attention the egg has attracted.

Identical accounts on various social media platforms have emerged trying to take credit for Egg Gang’s achievement. Once the record was broken, they received the verification blue check mark on Instagram so it was guaranteed as the official account.

On Twitter, another egg is looking to become the most retweeted tweet taking out Yusaku Maezawa’s record of 5.3 million. His record tweet being to give $923,000 to 100 randomly selected retweeters for them to share.  In the egg account’s bio, they admit that they aren’t the same egg as the one on Instagram, but that hasn’t stopped them from making progress towards their goal. They already have over 1 million retweets as of Jan. 20.

“It’s funny because everybody wants to be the person behind the account,” freshman Audrey Gaillard said.

Gaillard also said when she first came across the account she never expected it to actually meet its goal. In the afternoon of Jan. 12, the egg had just hit 4 million likes, but by the following night it was at over 20 million.

The egg account is still active, having posted two pictures since. One was posted Jan. 18 of the egg with a slight crack in the upper left of its shell. This was followed four days later by a picture with a more expanded crack.