4 • News
Pony Express J.J. Pearce High School
Student Council plays important role in
helping the Richardson community
By Sam Mohkamkar
Assistant News Editor
The Student Council consists
of students who are committed
to helping the community. They
discuss ways to better the lives
of people less fortunate and are
able to relay information to the
student body through the fourthperiod class representatives.
The class representatives get
their information from the council once every three to four weeks
in Mrs. Becky Keeton’s room.
The class representatives meet
together during their fourth period class to discuss the events and
projects that they help run. When
they have a problem or if they’re
stuck, Ms. Keeton, the long-time
StuCo sponsor, helps them out.
The Student Council is student-run. “I most definitely get
a fair amount of say in decisions
we make because we honestly
all work together on everything.
We do the same amount of work
and all just help each other when
making important council decisions,” Student Council president
Abby Kanicka said.
The representatives relay the
council decisions to the fourth
period classes.
“Our only job is to relay information from the Student Council
officers back to our class. The officers are responsible for making
the decisions,” representative Sarah Jolly said.
The Student Council sponsors many service projects which
usually take place in and around
Richardson. So far this year their
major school events have been the
teacher breakfast, the freshman
orientation, Homecoming, the
baked potato luncheon, and the
annual Bukhair Christmas drive.
The council helped run the
Bukhair drive and collected donated presents from each class
to be sent to families at Carolyn
Bukhair Elementary School.
The council is currently running a canned food drive which
will benefit the Network of Community Ministries and help families in Richardson and Dallas by
providing them with roughly 30
pounds of food each.
The drive began on Jan. 28 and
will run through Feb. 13. Their
goal is to collect 10,000 cans of
food, and the class that contributes the most will win a pizza
party and the teacher of the class
will win a free substitute teacher
for the day.
The StuCo officers are president Abby Kanicka, vice president
Mathew Jolly, secretary Hannah
Cone, historian Carly Hamilton
and treasurer Oren Yacoel.
“I would have been happy
with any officer role, but I chose
president because my strength is
more suited to a leadership role
in general rather than something
specific like taking notes or dealing with money. I wasn’t in StuCo
cabinet before this year, but I have
been a class representative for my
fourth period since my freshman
year,” Abby said.
The Student Council is staffed
by students who care about the
wellbeing of local people.
“I love how Student Council
makes it really easy for us to serve
those less fortunate,” junior Taryn
Marstella said.
Orchestra hopeful of recruiting students
By Megan Smith
Staff Writer
With enrollment for the 2013-2014 school year
just around the corner, the battle for recruiting students has started. On Jan. 29 and 30, 13 members of
the Pearce orchestra went to North Junior High and
Parkhill Junior High to try to persuade current junior high students to join the high school orchestra.
“Basically, for recruiting, we just go back to the
junior highs and tell them what high school orchestra is like,” sophomore Jackie Miller said.
“I think it helps them because they get to hear
what high school is like from current high school
students instead of just from their teachers.”
“If they’re still in orchestra after three years,
they’re probably an orchestra kid,” orchestra director Melissa Livings said.
Orchestra is a place to make friends and join a
family.
“I talked about how freshman year I almost went
to Richardson High School and how thankful I am
that I didn’t,” senior Leila Ghanbarabbasi said.
“The members of the orchestra instantly became
some of my best friends.”
Though signing up for the orchestra comes with
the impending worry of having to audition, longtime members encouraged the younger kids to not
worry too much about it.
“I shared my story about being moved down an
orchestra at North, but still sticking with it for all
four years of high school,” senior Kurt Steiss said.
“That was pretty much to show them that it
doesn’t always matter which orchestra you’re in,
you’re going to make friends no matter where you’re
placed,” Kurt continued.
Orchestra isn’t all about playing music. There are
added benefits to joining the large musical ensemble.
“Obviously we focused a bunch on orchestra,” senior Kusha Gharahi said. “We talked about the social
life that comes with orchestra, the spring trip and
just the sheer fun of orchestra.”
Like the band and the choir, the orchestra takes
an annual spring trip in March or April. Last year
they went to San Antonio and this year they will be
heading to Corpus Christi.
“If what we’ve said about being a giant, loving
family hasn’t persuaded you to stick with orchestra
in high school, the spring trip alone should,” sophomore Nicole Picquet said at Parkhill while recruiting.
February 13, 2013
Five band members
named to All-State Band
By Alex Stauffer
Assignments Editor
Every year Pearce students
audition for All-State Band.
This year Pearce had five
students make the 5A state
band. These students were
Ben Beall, Ben Quarles, Alex
Bressler, Dylan de la Garza
and Josh Cohen.
There are several steps to
making the All-State Band.
“The process involves two
main steps, which is the AllRegion and Area auditions,”
junior and three time All-State
member Ben Quarles said.
All-Region was held the
first week of December, followed by Area, which was
held on Jan. 12. “At area you
compete with the top players
from each of the regions in the
area for the top spots to advance to All-State. Once you
advance to state, you are given
new music to practice for chair
placement.”
This year the All-State process begins on Feb. 13. “AllState begins on Feb. 13. The
clinics will go from Thursday
to the day of the concerts on
Saturday, in which each AllState group will perform,”
Ben continued.
Each year this preparation for state coincides with
the TMEA convention in San
Antonio. “TMEA holds an annual convention in which tens
of thousands of people attend
to check out the latest instrument models, music education
software, guest performances
from groups all over the state,
and lectures from some of the
greatest music educators in the
country,” Ben said.
The convention also starts
on Feb. 13 and goes through
Feb. 16. At the end of the convention, all of the different
All-State groups from band,
orchestra and choir perform.
This year their big concert
will be held on Feb. 16 at the
Lila Cockrell Theatre. “To
close the convention, the all
state groups will come and
perform under the direction of
some of the greatest directors
in the country. These will be
concerts you wouldn’t want to
miss,” Ben said.
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