Student News
Word from the Editors
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the thirteenth issue of Student News!
As we near the end of 2017, there’s a lot to look back on. The oval has opened, the SRC has made considerable progress in working towards its goals, we have elected Nossal’s new School Captains for 2018, and the clubs and societies of Nossal are filled with vitality. 2017 was a varied year - sometimes successful, sometimes not - but the community of Nossal High School has made great progress in all of the areas that make this school the place that it is.
In recognition of this achievement, we - your new Editors - have decided that we’d dedicate this issues to the community of Nossal High School. We’ll be showcasing some of the progress that the student groups have made this year. Among the groups showcased in this issue are Formation, NEST, CBHP, and the NSU.
In this issue, we reflect on how 2017 has progressed; we are optimistic about what 2018 will hold; and we are grateful to the community of Nossal High School, who have committed so much of their knowledge and time to the development of the school, and to the furthering of the goals of its students. Also, we bid a sad farewell to the Class of 2017. Good luck in all your endeavours!
Leo Crnogorcevic and Jordan van Rhyn
Editors of the NHS Student News
CBHP News
Our Mission:
“Using a community-based approach to help mitigate health and social injustices in rural India, whilst creating awareness of these issues in Australia.” (https://www.cbhp.org.au/)
CBHP has expanded significantly since the beginning of 2010. Especially at Nossal, it is now one of the 3 largest extra-curricular societies of the school. The year of 2017 has brought about many new ideas within the society of CBHP. We raised a total of $960 this year with the various events and stalls.
In Term 1, our annual Chari-Tea Bar was run by a group of students during cross country. Every year, we have made a new flavoured iced tea. This year, we attempted to create a mango flavoured iced tea. A profit of $147.80 was made, and it was great to hear from students about their feedback on this year’s tea. Please keep an eye out for next year’s flavour!
In Term 3, we hold our annual game show event. This year, we experimented with “What’s in the box?”, a game where a row of participants will stand as a line to grab the most ping pong balls from boxes containing unidentified objects. The participants must blindly place their hands inside the box without the ability to see the contents, while the audience can enjoy watching the participants shrivel in fear as they frisk around with the items. By the way, one item included was a body part of an organism! This small-scaled event raised a profit of $42.70.
In addition, we also held a “Tree of Knowledge” fundraising event during Parent Teacher Student Conferences. The main aim of this fundraiser was to grow a Tree of Knowledge by purchasing symbolic leaves and flowers as a donation. The Tree as a final product represented a visual display of the total amount raised.
In terms of the internal club structure, this year we’ve attempted a new model of having the club members separated into event groups, as opposed to the old “role allocation groups”. CBHP used to run based on each member specialising in 1 of the 4 major roles (publicity, finance, project, design). However, this year each and every member was allocated to a specific event as opposed to a group. This new structure is still under development, however, it has shown signs of great success this year.
All money raised by the Nossal community this year was transferred to aid CBHP's Vidya Niketan (House of Knowledge) English school in Buldana, India.
We'd like to thank all the members of the CBHP for all their hard work and dedication this year, and hope that this passion continues to grow!!
Kevin Ma and Karina Tam
Leaders of CBHP Nossal
Quote of the Week
“The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject … There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them ... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.” ― Seneca the Younger (4 BCE - 65 CE)
1, 2, 3, FORMATION!
2017 marks the second year of Formation. In 2016, the female empowerment group was founded on the lyrics of Beyoncé’s song Formation, “I dream it, I work hard, I grind til I own it” – a grassroots initiative that was initially aimed at providing a space where female leaders could come together and resolve issues associated with inequality between them and their male counterparts.
Being part of Formation since its, ahem, formation, and being the 2017 coordinator of the Formation Leadership Committee has allowed me to see how Formation has grown as a group in terms of its goals, the audience we are able to reach and the issues we discuss. We set our main goal for this year: to reach a wider audience and educate them on issues that women face day to day.
Last year called for a heavy focus on female leaders, but in 2017, we wanted to expand upon that and inspire and empower everyone in our school, while still maintaining focus on the girls. One major achievement of Formation this year was our decision to open our topic discussions and events to all the members of the school, regardless of gender – something we could not have dreamed of last year. Sometimes, members of the school actively belittled and disparaged our efforts to cultivate self-love and inspiration in the female leaders last year, but now that more and more people can access what we’re all about, there’s not so much of this anymore, showing that the school is willing to grow as Formation grows. For International Women’s Day 2017, we hosted an assembly, with the theme of “An Inspirational Woman in Your Life” and held our small pie-face trivia fundraiser at lunch time, and raised $130 for OneGirl, a charity that provides education to girls in Africa.
Our topic discussions this year were a success, with “Intro to Feminism”, “Stereotypes” and “Empowerment and Internalised Sexism” being the points of discussion. Many students and members of staff attended and we saw many old faces, and even more new faces. Susan, Sam and I would like to thank you all for attending and hope you learned something from our discussions.
We held our first external school event this year, our summit “Women of the Developing World”, where we partnered with student run organisation Feel.Think.Flow to bring a day filled with learning about the differences between a woman’s experience of female agency, social segregation and progress in women’s rights in the developing world, versus in the developed world. The objective summit enabled students from all over the state to participate in thought-provoking discussion and apply their knowledge in an Interactive Political Simulation.
Formation is still a very young initiative at Nossal, but in two years, we have successfully established an identity for ourselves and a strong position within the school community. The structure of our Leadership Committee is undergoing some changes as we experiment to find the best structure that allows for maximum collaboration and efficiency. But as this year’s coordinator, I can very proudly and honestly say that we took a huge step towards achieving our long term goals. Initiating the discussion that Formation initiates is not easy: and yet, the 2017 Formation Leadership Committee (Sam, Jessie, Karina, Christine, Melania, Emily, Kate, Shalini, Susan, Anisha, Victoria and Tithi) has wholeheartedly embraced every challenge along the way and facilitated complex discussion. And for that, I am very grateful and honoured to have worked with you all this year.
To the broader Formation community: I hope you all continue to spread the word and partake in discussion about issues of inequality and promote Formation in your daily lives! Look forward to an even better Formation in 2018, with Sam Choy, vice-captain as coordinator.
Photography credit for the Summit Photos goes to Kelvin Ng of Feel.Think.Flow.
Aria Sunga
Coordinator of the Formation Leadership Committee
NSU News
As the NSU nears the end of 2017, we’re beginning to wrap up our operations for the year. But there is, as always, some activity happening within the NSU camp...
Our recent election for the 2018 NSU Executive returned Leo Crnogorcevic as President, Mimi Ugo as Secretary, Brielle Frichitthavong as Treasurer, and Sheerin Mattoo as Censor. Our thanks go to the clubs and societies that voted in the election as well as to the students who put themselves forward to be a candidate.
The recent NSU Donut Day, which was held on October 19 and 20, was a great success! We raised a significant sum of money which will be used for the benefit of clubs ans societies at Nossal. Our thanks go to the volunteers that helped out with the event.
We are optimistic about what 2018 will hold for clubs and societies at Nossal, and we are grateful - to the community of Nossal High School; to the Executive of 2017, who have committed so much of their personality and time to the development of the organisation that was envisioned all those months ago; to Ms Desaulniers who took on the task of being the NSU’s Supporting Teacher, and who was always amiable and dedicated to the task at hand.
And, of course, we are thankful to the clubs and students of Nossal High School. Without you, our work would be meaningless. So - thank you!
Jordan van Rhyn
NSU President
NEST News
2017 has been a year of success and accomplishments for the Nossal Environment and Sustainability Team. The year began with record high interest from students in joining the team, now with just under 60 regular and active members of the team, highlighting the interest from Nossalonians in reducing Nossal’s environmental impact and making the school more sustainable.
In Term One, NEST was able to raise over $200 for the Dolphin Research Institute, thanks to the annual NEST bake sale at House Swimming, which has contributed towards the monitoring and studying of Australia’s marine mammals. This also marked the start of NEST’s work with the institute, who later sent visitors to attend our Sustainability Summit in Term Three. Term One also saw the creation of NEST’s new ‘Recycling Wall’ which all Nossal staff and students are encouraged to use to help recycle everything from mobile phones to oral care products, which otherwise couldn’t be recycled through regular recycling bins. This has been a great opportunity for everyone to get involved in making Nossal a more sustainable school.
NEST has also worked with the AV Team this year to create the Nossal Wildlife Photographers, who worked together to help catalogue the flora and fauna found around Nossal. This was a part of NEST’s largest achievement this year, having earned its third ResourceSmart School Star!
2017 also was a big year for NEST’s work with other schools and environment groups! NEST leaders actively led workshops at Melbourne High’s annual environmental summit, NEST became more actively involved with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition - working with other schools across the country to help make everywhere more sustainable, and hosting our second ever sustainability summit for schools in Casey and Cardinia!
Hayden Radford
Year 11 NEST Leader
Call for Writers!
Students are welcome and encouraged to email any pieces they would like published on the Student News page to Jordan and Leo at student.news@nossalhs.vic.edu.au.
In saying that, we aim to publish some regular columns in the paper, and we would like some regular writers in 2018 for columns like:
· Hot Topic – a feature article on a current issue
· A "How To" Column
· Recipe Column
· Events Column
· Sports Column
· Person of the week (like an inspiring person)/ Guest Interviews
· Rundown of important student dates
· Human interest articles
· General interest Articles.
So if you want to run a Fashion or games column, please let us know.
Those who are interested in being part of the Editorial Team for the regular sections, please write an expression of interest (no more than 200 words) and also a sample article for your preferred column.
Please email student.news@nossalhs.vic.edu.au with any questions and your expressions of interest.