Author Spotlight
Lily Simmons
On Jan. 24, 2023, Bulletin Scientists announced we’re closer to a metaphorical “Doomsday” than we’ve ever been – 90 seconds. The Doomsday clock is a metaphor for how much time humanity has until we face a level of danger threatening our extinction.
The more danger humanity is in, the closer the minute hand gets to midnight — Doomsday. The clock has been moved forward 5 minutes and 30 seconds since its creation in 1947.
Factors like climate change and the threat of nuclear war impact the clock’s timing, which is assessed in January of each year. The clock has been moved forward 10 seconds from last January — 100 seconds until midnight.
Russia is second to the U.S. in global production of gas and energy, according to iea.org, so the Ukrainian invasion motivated European countries to become independent of Russia for supplies such as oil. This leads to more independent production and emission which leads to a rise in pollution and global warming, according to thebulletin.org.
But critics of the Doomsday Clock don’t agree that it’s accurate and believe that there’s not enough evidence to back up the claims. Nevertheless, many believe that it can serve as a wake up call to humanity.
“We can’t prove this ‘doomsday thing’ from a logical standpoint,” Environmental Ed teacher Rusty Debey said. “But there are signs that humanity is headed in the wrong direction.”
Belinder Elementary will work with Children’s Mercy Hospital to pilot a new project to train its entire staff in life-saving health procedures including CPR and AED.
The pilot – Project ADAM – was founded in 1999 after the death of 17-year-old Wisconsin native Adam Lemel. Lemel collapsed, went into cardiac arrest and died while playing basketball — an AED could’ve saved his life.
The pilot works to provide schools with the resources and supplies necessary to save lives in the case of cardiac arrest, heart attacks and other life threatening situations, according to projectadam.com.
“As a school nurse, it’s very important to have a strong, knowledgeable staff to back you up and help in the case of an emergency,” said Belinder school nurse Lindsey Goss. “Since there is only one of me, chances are good that I will not be the first responder at the scene of an emergency. The more staff members that are trained on how to react in the emergency situations, the better the chance of survival for the victim.”
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the country, according to The England Journal of Medicine, and cardiac arrest is the most common immediate death. The average survival rate of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests is only 10.6% according to the American Heart Association.
Young people are not excluded from the risk of sudden cardiac arrest — it’s responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths in children from 5-19, according to simonsheart.org. The goal of The ADAM project is to lower that number significantly by arming schools with the necessary training.
Belinder will be the first school in SMSD to do this, with the goal that all SMSD schools will join this project in the future.
“Belinder is simply the pilot school for SMSD, and once we obtain our Heart Safe Designation,” said Goss. “I hope that it will spark other schools’ interest throughout the district.”
Student Council will host a raffle at the upcoming Sweetheart dance which will be themed “Queen of Heart.” The raffle allots for six winners of $10 Chipotle gift cards, in an effort to sell more tickets earlier in the week.
The first 300 people to buy tickets for the dance on Monday through Wednesday of the week of Feb. 6 through Feb. 10 will receive a playing card. At the dance, a suit and a card number will be called, and the six people that have the card will win a $10 Chipotle gift card. This is the first time STUCO has done a raffle at a dance.
The goal of this is to promote early ticket purchases, raise funds for STUCO and popularize the dance.
STUCO has introduced the raffle because of the high amount of people that procrastinate on buying tickets – waiting until Friday or the day of to buy tickets at a higher price. This overwhelms STUCO because they don’t have a grasp on how many people will attend the dance. With students buying tickets earlier, STUCO can predict the amount of students coming and prepare accordingly.
The raffle will happen around halfway through the dance at 9 p.m. The goal is to get people in the door and encourage them to stay for longer than the usual 20-30 minutes.
“We’re trying to get people to stay at dances long by adding fun things to do, hopefully people will stay and get to really appreciate the dances,” junior STUCO class representative Adam Minto said. “It’s also just a fun reward to people who show up and we hope to do more things like this.”
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