The Smoke Signal

By: Frank Chen At every school assembly, every football game, and every Girls volleyball home game since the start of the school year, MSJ spectators can find a group of animated girls dressed in black, green, and white. With a smile on their faces and pom-poms in hand, MSJ Cheerleaders tirelessly lead the way in school spirit. A couple of years ago, there were only a few students on the squad. In 2009, however, with the help of their new coach, Ashley Dollard, the MSJ Cheer team has been growing . Cheerleading, just like any other varsity sports team,…

By: Sai Chilakapati With yet another month of NBA canceled due to the lockout, more and more NBA fans will have to turn to college basketball as a substitute. But this upcoming college season will not disappoint them. With many high-caliber teams, eager returning players, and a talented freshman class, the upcoming season seems to be a perfect sub for the NBA. The Duke Blue Devils, with their disappointing loss to Arizona in last year’s sweet sixteen round matchup, are primed with new talent to show America that they can win a title. Though they lost three of their best…

Come check out the editorial staff’s top picks for their favorite songs from musicals! Post in the comments to tell us your favorite musical music!   Create a playlist at MixPod.com

Magnificent ‘Hair’ By: Jade Shi In Diane Paulus’ 2010 US National Tour of Hair, the embodying values of the hippie movement of the 1960s and the cultural movement that questioned the foundations of our society and a country at war, speak. Hair opens with the soothing and rousing anthem of “Aquarius”, a celebration of love and peace, paving a way for a cluster of characters to introduce themselves to the audience and address their concerns: air pollution, racial equality, and free love, in addition to protesting the Vietnam War. The all-loving Berger, a self-claimed “psychedelic teddy bear”, Steel Burkhardt, performs with…

The Opinion of the Smoke Signal  Editorial Board Two years ago, the Smoke Signal conducted a front-page investigative report regarding MSJ’s “Ventilation Crisis”. The purpose of the report, featuring a school-wide survey as well as district involvement, was to raise a red flag about MSJ’s various general equipment failures. These malfunctions ranged from issues concerning classroom heating and air conditioning (AC), to broken clocks, intercoms, and doors. The most prominent concern was with the “temperature lockout,” or the implementation of district control of central heating and the AC. This seizure of control was to be seen as a “more efficient…

On November 2, the entire Smoke Signal staff went to San Francisco to watch and review the musical Hair. This musical, which was set in the late 1960s, spoke of topics that shocked, surprised, and entertained us. The teenagers in the 1960s and 1970s were quite different from us today; they had to worry about war and being drafted. But above all, these teenagers were free-spirited and all they wanted was love. While we were in San Francisco, we got to experience the Occupy movement first hand. Our first-year journalists interviewed men and women walking down the streets and questioned them about their experience…