Advisors:

Mrs. Picheco

Ms. McArdle

Writers:

Michael Agate

Taylor Crecca

Audrey Downs

Kat Lima-Galazka

Rohit Gunda

Grace Hickey

Emma LeClerc

Sophia Paolella

Matthew Wich

Inside this issue:

Pep Rally 1

AMAs 2

Election News 3

Madison Talen Show 4

NCAA Football 6

Wet Paws Grooming 6

Nirvana 7

Madison Middle School

Panther Press

Pep Rally Audrey Downs

On Friday, September 23rd,

2016, Madison Middle School held its first pep rally of the school year! Every year, it's a wonderful event that all stu-dents enjoy. All grades showed their

school spirit by dressing in their grade’s color. The sixth graders were dressed in white, seventh graders dressed in yel-low, and the eighth graders in blue.

Sixth graders chose the song “Sweatshirt” by Jacob Sartorius as their class song, while seventh graders chose “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots and the eighth graders selected “Pokemon Go” as theme song. The sixth graders

dominated on the volleyball court, but in the end, the teachers stole the show.

They conquered the sixth graders and claimed victory. Seventh grade won the

relay race which activities such as bouncing tennis balls into recycling

bins, stuffing heavy textbooks into bags, and last but definitely not least, bottle flipping (something we know students are very good at). Eighth graders were champions of what was arguably the

most challenging game. Students had to collect as many rubber balls with a

laundry basket as fast as possible. All in all, it was a lot of fun and it seems each

grade level came out a winner!

The iPhone 7

Michael Agate

The iPhone 7 has many new updates such as the waterproofing the phone and making the screen more resilient to drops. What peo-ple need to know is that there are no headphone jacks! This affects people a lot because most people don’t want to have to go out and buy wireless headphones. People will be outraged because of this. But the Apple marketing chief said "our smartphones are packed with technologies, faster proces-sors...and all of it fights for space." The iPhone 7 will be cheaper to buy for the gig because of all the new features and upgrades. There are two new colors for this version, jet black and matte black. This will be a big step up because there hasn't been a black colored iPhone in so long . Apple has added many more features like the waterproof designs and the pressure sensitive button. The iPhone 7 will have many features similar to the 6s such as 3D touch and new camera. The iPhone 7 is already being pur-chased around the world and peo-ple are loving it!

Page 2

American Music Awards Sophia Paolella

Calling all music lovers! On

Sunday November 20th, many of the biggest stars in all genres of music today including Ariana Grande, The Chainsmokers, Bruno Mars, Shawn Mendes, Niall Horan, Drake and more, gathered for one of the biggest nights in music history: The American Music Awards. This night was filled with amazing musical performances, and heart warming moments from all of our favorite stars.

One of the highlights of the night was the musical performances. To open the show, hosts Gigi Hadid and Jay Pharaoh introduced the opening act of the night, Bruno Mars, who performed his new single “24k Magic.” This performance was filled with high energy and crazy dance moves. Next, Niall Horan got up on stage to perform his new solo debut single “This Town” with an acoustic guitar and a small band. Later in the show, Shawn Mendes performed “Treat You Better” and “Mercy,” two songs fresh off his second album “Illuminate.” He performed “Treat You Better” with a small band and an electric guitar, and sat down to perform an acoustic version of “Mercy” on the piano. Justin Bieber also performed live from his “Purpose” world tour which streamed from Europe. As for collaborations, Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande performed their song “Side to Side”, and The Chainsmokers performed their song “Closer” with Halsey. Two other newer artists, Twenty One Pilots and The Weekend also performed on the AMA stage.

Another huge part of the night is the awards. The biggest award by far went to Ariana Grande, who won Artist

of the Year. She gave an emotional, appreciative speech. She beat out fellow nominees, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Rihanna, and Carrie Underwood and others. Another big award of the night was Breakout Artist of the Year, and that went to Zayn, who beat out fellow nominees Alessia Cara, The Chainsmokers, DNCE, and Shawn Mendes. Favorite Female Pop/Rock artist went to Selena Gomez who received this with an amazing comeback, and an emotional speech to follow her win. As for nominations, Drake set a new record at 13 nominations, which beat out the one and only Michael Jackson’s record set in 1984, at 11 nominations. Drake won 4 of the 13 possible awards. Justin Bieber won 4 awards as well.

While the American Music Awards are very competitive, everyone had fun. Everyone was happy to see their friends and fellow label mates. From a spectator’s point of view, it was an amazing show. Even though I was just sitting home on the couch, all of the winners had amazing speeches and thanked their fans profusely for the awards. The performances were amazing, especially Shawn Mendes who performed for the first time on the AMA stage, as well as Niall Horan claiming his first solo performance without One Direction. This show definitely met the standards of a great American music award show. I look forward to what next year has in store!

Page 3

Why Donald Trump Was Elected President Rohit Gunda

The recent election was not the first time a president has lost the popular vote, but still be-came president. In fact, it has happened six times with one candidate even winning by more than 540,000 votes. The 2016 election could result in Hillary winning the popular vote by more than 2 million votes, a new record if the numbers hold steady. The electoral college was originally cre-ated because the founders thought the people could not properly inform themselves on the best president, so they elected people, known as rep-resentatives to do it for them. Since then, the electoral college has changed to be more repre-sentative of peoples’ votes. It can still lead to controversial results, as it did in this election. In addition to the election results, the candidates themselves are controversial and had a very heated campaign trail leading up to the election.

A lot of people believe everything they hear, and once they’ve made up their mind, it’s hard to change it. In this way, many things from the election were misinterpreted. One of the most important controversial topics: taxes. Hilla-ry’s plan is simple, she wants to raise taxes on the upper class. She wants all other taxes basi-cally the same. Trump wants to lower all taxes. He proposed no taxes for those with low in-comes and a 15% tax on business. Another im-portant subject is immigration. Aside from what Clinton has already relieved, there is some shocking news. Hillary Clinton actually support-ed a fence along the Mexican border. At the same time, she also supports legalizing citizens (DREAM Act) and does not want a wall. On the other hand, Donald Trump is pro wall and against illegal immigration. He wants to deport most illegal immigrants. Trump and Hillary both support the vast majority of the things their par-ties support. Trump does not want gun control, fewer taxes and not stopping global warming. Hillary is the exact opposite, and both candidates follow their party even if it doesn’t seem that way. Both Candidates have views that either greatly differ or are similar to each other.

Now here’s where it gets confusing: Trump won the presidency; he won 302 electoral votes, whereas Hillary Clinton won only 232. Hillary won the popular vote, 62,523,126, to Trump’s 61,201,031 votes. But how did Trump get more electoral votes? More people actually voted for Hillary Clinton in all the states com-bined. The electors, however, chose Trump as their president because their state had a majority with Trump. Clinton’s states had bigger popula-tions and might have won with a bigger margin which pushed her popular vote.

So, how did Trump win the electoral col-lege but not the popular vote?

Example = a state with 50 people, one with 25, another with 27. If all 50 people vote for candidate A in the first state, 13 vote for candidate B in the next state and 14 vote for Candidate B, then A wins the popu-lar vote 75 to 27 but loses the electoral vote 52-50.

The 2016 election will definitely be one to remember because of all the drama that oc-cured. The candidates clashed in epic debates and insults were thrown. In the end, we should have no more protests and should just deal with it. After all, we are the same country and already

have enough drama. In fact, when Rutherford Hayes was elected president (lost popular, won electoral) democrats deemed it the end of the

world. Everything ended up fine and Hayes was a great president. We should just give the guy a

chance!

Page 4

Madison’s Got Talent Taylor Crecca

The Madison Middle School talent show was a fun opportunity for students to show what they are made of. It is a wonderful fundraiser that helps contribute to projects that K.A.R.E. puts on for the benefit of various charities. The show was filled with 26 acts of talent, all amazing. Some of my personal favorites were: Param Pithiadia and Colin MacNeill playing Crazy Train. These boys have some skills. They played fluently and put on a great performance Joe-Eddy Vilsaint sung “America The Beauti-ful”. He made it look easy to stand up there and sing one of our country’s greatest songs. It is unbelievable that he was able to memorize it as well. Olivia Ray sung “Lost Boy”, one of the most-popular songs from 2016. She did an incredible job.

Miss. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Audrey Downs

Miss. Peregrine’s home for peculiar children was an excellent movie and although it was frightening, it had a happy ending and was very eventful. The story goes some-thing like this: Jake is an average teenage boy who is a bit of a social outcast. After getting an urgent call from his grandfather, who has dementia, he goes to see what has happened. When Jake arrives at his grandfather’s house, he finds his grandpa near death in his backyard. Jake is horri-fied to see a knife in his hand and his grandfather’s eyes missing. Suddenly, Jake senses the presence of something dangerous. He catches a glimpse of a long, lanky figure stalking along the edge of the forest in the backyard. Jake has no idea the enthralling adventures this day will lead to. He will conquer both death and time, discovering himself and what his life was meant to be all the while. I don’t want to spoil the story, but make sure to see the movie when it comes out in D.V.D. (you can also read the book)!

Football Fashion:

Wacky Uniforms in the NCAAF

Pittsburgh Panthers, Oregon Ducks, Louisville Cardinals, what do they all have in common? Crazy uniforms! Here are a few of the wackiest. 1) Oregon with their “Once a Duck” uni-forms made the crowd roar with laughter. Oregon wore orange facemasks and footwear to resem-ble their mighty Ducks. Believe it or not, Oregon has 512 uniform combinations. 2) The Air Force Falcons debuted a hel-met “Shark Teeth.” This helmet has a shark on each side. Like a shark, they ate away at Georgia State 48-14.

3) The Indiana Hoosiers brought on the candy stripe against Nebraska. This idea was adapted from their basketball team’s warm up pants, be-cause Indiana is a huge basketball school. With chrome red helmets and throwbacks galore, those are just a few of wacky uniforms in college football.

Page 5

Those Teenage Struggles Sophia Paolella

Your alarm clock buzzes at 6 am. You hit the snooze button, and try to sleep for a few more minutes, but are rudely awakened again when your alarm clock starts blaring for the second time. You drag yourself out of bed, and stumble into the bathroom to get ready. While you’re in the middle of brushing your teeth, you look up at the reflection staring back at you, and you see a huge red pimple right in the middle of your fore-head. Oh shoot. Not this again. You try to ignore the gigantic blemish on your head as you fix your hair, and go back into your room to endure the tedious task of picking out an outfit. After you’re all ready to go, you grab something quick for breakfast in hopes of not missing the bus this morning. As you board the bus and sit down, you put your headphones on, or talk to your friends for the ride. You hop off the bus once you arrive at school, where you prepare to survive seven hours of boredom. An essay due in Language Arts, a quiz in Math, a new project assigned in Social Studies, and a lab re-port due in Science. Ugh it’s such an overwhelming day! You struggle through all your classes until you re-alize its seventh period, and it’s almost time to go home. The bell rings forty five minutes later and you follow the herd of your classmates and charge for the door. You make it through another bus ride, and you walk in the door, grab a snack, and head up to your room to start on one of the most dreaded activities for a teenager: homework. As you begin the task of completing homework, you try to rub the pain out of your head from the head-ache brewing. In what seems like no time, you check the clock and realize you have practice. After practice, you come home and shower, before passing out and going to sleep. Now, not every day is just like this. Some days are easi-

er, and some are even more challenging, but you al-ways have to realize that the next day will come. Things

can all get a little too much sometimes when you’re a teenager, but everyone has to go through some tough days, right? Always remember, parents, friends, a hob-by, and even some caring teachers will give you a rea-

son to laugh or smile, and will always make you feel better no matter how bad your day is!

NCAA Football

Matthew Wich

Will Alabama take home the title this year in the NCAA Football National Championship? Last year, they defeated Clemson in the National Champion-ship 45-40, but they had Heisman winner Derrick

Henry (Running Back) and Jake Coker (Quarterback). Now, with a new quarterback,

what’s going to happen? Well this new Quarter-back isn’t just any new quarterback. His name is

Jalen Hurts and he comes from Channelview, Tex-as. He has thrown for over 1835 yards, with nine touchdowns. Alabama also is perfect against four

top 25 opponents (USC, Arkansas, Tennessee and Ole Miss). My prediction, Alabama is going

back to the National Championship. But, who will they have to face? My next final contenders are

Louisville, Ohio State and Clemson. Let’s off with Louisville. Their quarterback (Lamar Jackson) has over 3000 passing yards, and a little bit over 1300

rushing yards. He has a combined total of 46 touchdowns! He as lead his team to a 9-1 start

and is leading the ACC Conference. After Clem-son’s, Michigan’s and Washington’s loss, Louis-ville must win out to be a playoff contender. Next

comes Clemson. After beating Louisville and play-ing against them with Louisville’s Lamar Jackson

(number one in the Heisman race) who knows what second in the race (Deshaun Watson, their quarterback) is capable of. (Well, we know is ca-pable of beating the number at the time, the third

ranked team in the country. Next comes Ohio State. Third place in the Heisman votes, J.T. Bar-rett continues to excite the crowd. With a tough season ahead, like having to play Wisconsin,

Michigan, Michigan State and Nebraska, it would be a very impressive season for J.T. Barrett and Ohio State if they won out. Not only would it be impressive, they need it! After a loss to Penn

State, they need to win out. If they don’t, it will be a crazy BIG TEN Conference Championship (it

could potentially be Penn State vs. Nebraska). The Ohio State Michigan game could potentially be the definition of who is in the playoff? Can you answer

the question, ‘Who’s In?’

Page 6

Wet Paws Grace Hickey & Emma LeClerc

Wet Paws Dog Grooming; fueled by pas-sion, founded on love, located at 4224 Madison Av-enue in Trumbull. Wet Paws was just opened by Olivier Leibowitz and Tamara Peterson. They begin by offering basics such as bathing, breed-specific cuts, and teeth brushing, as well as deep coat condi-tioning. They will then begin to get more serious with full services. These include de-shedding and shave downs and deep conditioning and moisturiz-ing for dry/irritated skin and coats. They are also offering specials such as free “wash-N-dash” for local and state k-9 police dogs. Come into the store today or book you appointment and first time cus-tomers will receive 15% off their entire purchase. After your dog’s grooming he or she will pampered with bows or bandanas. Stop by for the experience for your pet's lifetime!

KAT’S ADVICE COLUMN

Dear KAT,

My mom won't let me dye my hair the way I want. I want to dye it with red and golden streaks, but she said that it's for cra-zy people. I want to be myself and dying my hair makes me feel like an individual. Why doesn't she want me to dye my hair?

-Sammy

Dear Sammy,

Maybe your Mom isn't ready to let you grow up. Sometimes, parents have a

hard time letting you do things on your own, like making major hair decisions. I

have a friend whose parents won't let her cut her hair shorter than her shoulders until

she's 15. I have another friend who isn't allowed to wear all-black clothes because she's "not old enough." However, my par-ents are more chill. For example, my par-ents let me break all of these rules. I wear black non stop, and I literally have bright

purple hair. But to do this, I had to go through months and months of begging

and whining. I told them that I was growing up and I liked being different. Good Luck!

Page 7

Nirvana

Kat Lima-Galazka

Few bands in rock history have had a more immediate impact on contemporary pop music than Nirvana did in the early 90’s. The trio hit the scene in 1991, when most of the radio blasted heavy metal bands, like Poison and Def Leppard, 24/7. Within hours of the release of Nirvana's rebellious, angry single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and its twisted anti-pep-rally video, the rules had changed. Rolling Stone magazine stated, “Artifice was devalued; pure, raw emotion was king.”

Of course, none of this would have started without lead singer and guitarist, Kurt Cobain. He was a happy, outgoing, and en-ergetic child. However, when he was eight, his mother and father divorced, leaving him constantly moving from one set of relatives to another. Throughout his youth, he loved The Beatles, but after his parents’ divorce, he discovered heavier music, like Led Zep-pelin, Black Sabbath, and KISS. In high school, he was very unpopular, and became a deeply saddened person. He discovered drugs as a way out of his deep pit of depres-sion, and hung out with outlaws (who later would inspire his songs).

In 1987, he met bassist, Krist Novose-lic, and they decided to form a band. During its initial months, the band went through a series of names, starting with Skid Row and including Bliss, and Ted Ed Fred. The group finally settled on Nirvana, which Cobain said was chosen because "I wanted a name that was kind of beautiful or nice and pretty in-stead of a mean, raunchy punk name like the Angry Samoans." The band didn’t meet drummer, Dave Grohl, until 1990.

Nirvana's first debut album, called “Bleach”, came out in 1989, and was mostly popular with the underground-rock communi-ty. The next year, Nirvana recorded six new songs (including “Smells Like Teen Spirit”) with producer Butch Vig. They came out with their new album, “Nevermind”. After a ship-ment of 50,000 copies, the record kept sell-ing, eventually bumping new albums by Mi-chael Jackson, U2, and MC Hammer from the top of the chart. “Nevermind” sold 10 mil-lion copies in the U.S. alone. As their songs climbed the charts, Cobain became uncer-tain of the group's rise, worrying that fans were missing the point of Nirvana’s “anti-establishment” message. The next year, they released a new album, “In Utero”, which debuted at #1 and produced the modern ra-dio hits “Heart-Shaped Box” and “All Apolo-gies.”

Nirvana’s reign was tragically cut short on April 4th, 1994, when Cobain took his own life. The news media, fans, and radi-os mourned his death with specials about Nirvana, and the generations they inspired. Nirvana changed the way music was made, and inspired a new genre of music, called ‘Grunge’. Through Cobain, a generation learned that it was okay to be different, to be an outcast, to challenge what you were told, and to challenge what was being sold.