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0 voLXX stentorian north Carolina school of science and mathematics 1219 broad street, durham nc 27705 To Sleep or To Socialize It’s midnight on First Hunt. A group of guys chal lenge each other to a game of Mario Tennis and soon after, tri umphant yells can be heard. In one room, a few students are carefully scrutinizing textbooks, while in another a few more are blaring music, their impending assignments tugging at the back of their minds. This is a familiar scene throughout campus, where aetivity in any hall does not eease until well after 10:30. Many incoming jun iors have not been exposed to the intense workload at NCSSM, and find that the price of maintaining grades, a soeial life, and their sanity is less sleep than they have been accus tomed to. This, however, can affect students in more signifi cant ways than they expeet. Daniel Cobb, a junior, shares the sentiment, “if you’ve had a long night, you can feel unbearably tired during the first few peri ods.” Recent research reveals sleep deprivation can be ex tremely detrimental to brain ac tivity, and frequently inhibits high level thinking tasks. Re searchers in Loughborough University in England have de termined certain parts of the brain which are responsible for sueh funetions as short term memory, attention, and lan guage eapability are those which work hardest, and conse quentially suffer most from sleep deprivation. Research at Stanford concluded that teenag ers require nine to ten hours of sleep a night, which seems al most impossible in the hustle and bustle of our school and social lives. Sleep deprivation runs rampant throughout the school. “It’s clearly a problem,” noted Daniel Christie, a junior. “Ev eryone here experiences some form of sleep deprivation.” This last statement holds true for most students here. This ehronic problem sent the admin istration searching to find an answer and an effective cure for Seience & Math’s sleep-de prived. Sensing that the heavy workload might be the culprit for our lack of sleep, the admin istration and faculty asked stu dents to record how much time they spent studying outside of class each day. The problem of sleep deprivation is, however, a J li iii Seniors Leslie O Laughlin, Jonathan Drew, and Joy Loudermelt catch up on difficult one to solve. “I’m not really sure what can be done about [sleep deprivation],” commented Dr. Warshayv. “I think our options are limited.” Dr. Warshaw does believe, how ever, that the staff should act as role models for the rest of the student body concerning the is sue of sleep deprivation. When students were* asked about what the main eause of sleep deprivation was, most responded either “work” or “stress.” Some students, however, had other ideas. “Work,” said Brandon Tyndall, a senior. “Well, actually it’s more a combination of work and hav ing a social life.” Mrs. Link, the head of the biology department, refleeted similar views: “I don’t last nights missed rest believe it’s just heavy workload ... I think it’s a combination of a challenging workload [and ex tracurricular activities] which students have to learn how to balance.” There are many so cial and extracurricular activi ties to participate in at NCSSM, See “Sleep" on page 6 Airing the School’s Dirty Laundry Joanne Lee Every weekend students can be seen dragging several weeks worth of laundry to the laundry machines on NCSSM’s campus. It’s a well known fact that these facilities are less than ideal. Complaints about the ma chines range from being too old, too small, too unreliable, too in efficient, too smelly, too gross, to there being too few of them around. When several students were asked for their personal opinion about the faeilities, the overwhelming response was, “It really sueks; bad.” Even stu dents who live close enough to do their-laundry at home had complaints. When the dryers don’t do their job and one runs out of quarters, the three weeks worth of wet laundry is destined to cover any and all of the free hanging space available in a 9’ by 8’dorm room. According to Dr. Joan Barber, Director of Student Life, there has been a lot of work al ready toward remedying the situation. Dr. Barber says that the administration has been aware of the problem for quite cided to end their contract. As of October 15"’, the school will put in bids for a another laun- called MacGray. It would pro vide a system similar to those found on eollege campuses fern' ■■■■■■'■ m III PC,; mm Wet clothes pile up when the driers are not working some time, yet their complaints to the contractor went un heeded. Ultimately, the school found great dissatisfaction with the previous service and de dry service contractor, one that will provide necessary upgrades and new machines. One pos sible direction that is seriously being considered is a company where laundry machines would be upgraded to accept a debit card system. Ideally, parents or students would by a set value of credit from a vendor set up on campus, and when the stu dent goes to do the laundry, the amount would be deducted from that prepaid swipe card. When asked whether all this technology was fea sible for our school’s cir cumstances, Dr. Barber answered, “Yes, definitely.. .it’s more re alistic than ever.” Later on in the year there will be several committee meet ings for anyone who would like to have their input on the situation. While seniors won’t be able to reap many ben efits from these courses of action, juniors should U definitely speak out with 2 any suggestions. As for II a time on when these ’ changes will actually be seen by the students, a representative of the Business and Development Department of NCSSM promises, “defi nitely before the end of this [school] year.”
North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Student Newspaper
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Oct. 1, 2000, edition 1
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