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Lawsuit against theater director advances New information concerning the case against Cornwell is released
ART BY Maddy Franco
PHOTO ESSAY
SPORTS Girls soccer player Liz Luck dominates the field her sophomore year. pg. 11
ART BY Ava Wong
For their final production of the year, Starlight Theatre Company brings Newsies to life. pg. 16 PHOTO BY Arden Ray
PHOTO BY Nick Wood
Vol. 35, Issue 4 www.thedispatchonline.net James Bowie High School 4103 W. Slaughter Lane, Austin, TX, 78749
THE DISPATCH FRIDAY, FEB.17 2023
Pride in Publishing
Austin freezes Lucille Price Editor-in-Chief
Facing icy roads, freezing rain, dodging tree debris, and damaged power lines, Austinites felt the wrath of an intense ice storm that lasted nearly 72 hours. The crisis struck late on Monday, Jan. 30, and tested the strength of the community and infrastructure. Tuesday temperatures reached 29 F with freezing rain until Thursday according to www. accuweather.com. Austin Independent School District (AISD) opted to close all AISD campuses and related events from Tuesday, Jan. 31 until Friday, Feb. 3 and many districts nearby followed. “Teachers were informed about changes and the implications of those changes in terms of programs and operations,” Principal Mark Robinson said. “For example, when did athletic games need to be rescheduled? When could we start fine arts practices again? Or because we resumed operations over the weekend, what was allowed and what was not allowed and so there was a lot of communication about that." Bowie’s varsity basketball team was directly impacted by the shut down. Boys varsity basketball coach Trey Lindsey oversees the challenges presented by rescheduling games in the middle of the season. “We're the only team in the
district having to play four games in five days because we had a situation with Akins where they basically opted not to play us Saturday,” Lindsey said. “So we had to go Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday in two back-to-back games and we’re right in the middle of a run towards the playoffs.” The team was unable to practice for three of the four days during the storm, but was able to get a practice in on Friday afternoon when weather conditions were safer. “We thought we were playing Saturday originally but that game ended up getting canceled the morning of the game so that was bad in itself,” Lindsey said. “It was an adventure but we were able to do one shoot around on that Friday, and then we were able to practice Saturday, but those were three days off in the middle of the season that we were obviously not expecting but we got a couple practices in and then back at it on Monday and we played that night.” Junior player Mason Wasserberger felt the effects of playing back to back games. “My legs are so sore right now, everyone's tired. But we wanted to get in the gym during the ice storm but stuff was all closed pretty much, I've heard some complaints but we all know that we have to pretty much win out to make the playoffs and a lot of them are se-
niors so they know this is like their last week of basketball so they're still enjoying it,” Wasserberger said. “Just trying to enjoy every moment with each other before it ends." Both Wasserberger and his coach have hope for their team despite the obstacles the icy weather brought them this season. “Four games in five days is gonna take a toll on kids and three of those are on the road,” Lindsey said. “So, I wish we could even say we have more home games but we got tough kids and they know it's the home stretch and they know that it's for everything now to extend our season so they're not complaining, they're showing up and they are in good moods every day, they're in good spirits and feeling good so I think we'll be just fine.” Lindsey was reminded of the 2021 snow storm’s rolling blackouts caused by Texas’ inadequate power grid which canceled school. “After hearing AISD was canceling events, we were all a little nervous after the winter storms and how that's gone,” Lindsey said. “Basically every basketball season for the last four years has had some sort of interruption if you’re in Austin, so I think every coach around the city felt similar. We were all texting each other like, ‘oh, here we go again’ but luckily [storm conditions] didn't get too bad.” Robinson felt similarly. “With the way that we all left school on Monday, it was eerily reminiscent of previous times when we knew that we needed to take everything with us because we might not be coming back for a while so I think everybody agreed that it was the right thing to do when we saw the freezing conditions, to keep everybody safe at
WREAKING HAVOC: A tree in Austin splits due to the weight of ice on it's branches. Multiple interstates were shut down in Texas as a result of slick roads. PHOTO BY Michael Reeves
ART BY Lucille Price
The original civil lawsuit filed on Sept. 29, 2022 targeting Bowie’s long time head theatre director Diane “Betsy” Cornwell with accusations of sexual harassment, drug coercion, and emotional and verbal abuse has progressed. A group of new plaintiffs have joined the original group of five Bowie alumni who originally filed the lawsuit. On January 13, 2023, four previous Bowie students Luke Fisher, Rose Collins, Suzanne Edwards, and Sarah Alessandro were added in a new lawsuit filed against her in state District Court. Cornwell has been dropped from the concurrent Federal Court case, which is now focused on Austin Independent School District (AISD). The new state lawsuit against AISD includes allegations of assault and failure to report sexual assault. Collins attended Bowie from 2015 to 2019. The lawsuit states that she was sexually assaulted by another member of the Starlight Theater Company (STC) and Cornwell declined to remove or otherwise discipline perpetrators of same. The lawsuit claims Collins asked the student to stop and the plaintiff alleges they didn’t. Alessandro, who attended Bowie from 20072011, stated that her high school theater environment was toxic during her time in the STC. The suit details a moment in which Alessandro claims that Cornwell purposely tripped her on stage and showed no remorse. Alessandro claims that the "emotional recall" unit in class negatively impacted her and remembered the lessons to be traumatizing for her. "It felt like we were being graded on who can cry the most who can talk about the worst thing and throughout the entire process, we were very much encouraged to be as intense, deep, and emotional as possible" former Bowie student Austin Civatte said. Civatte's decision to withdraw from Bowie before graduation was motivated by the negative impact that the conditions of his theater class, led by Cornwell, brought to his school life. “I was trying to find some comfort in a teacher that I really did look up to despite everything that I had heard, and everything that I had been through, I wanted to be comforted,” Civatte said. “And all I got was ridiculed and confused. She laughed in my face. And I just ended the conversation as soon as I could, and that day, I finalized plans to leave the school and I did not finish my senior year at Bowie.” The suit demands that Cornwell’s name be removed from the new Performing Arts facility, and to include proper training and monitoring for theater directors. “I had friends who were plus-sized who were who were made fun of for their weight, were of a certain race, and would be cast as if there was one black role in a show, no matter how minor that role was, regardless of that actors talent,” Civatte said. “Yeah, you're gonna be put in that role, but I have several friends on the trans-spectrum who were consistently mis-gendered, making their body dysphoria so much worse.” Dispatch staff reached out to Bowie principal Mark Robinson, who stated he could not comment on personnel matters. The Dispatch reached out to AISD for comment, but received no response at press time. STORY BY Lucille Price
IN-DEPTH Artificial Intelligence changes the face of education with programs such as ChatGpt. pg. 7
POLITICS Federal government has banned the app TikTok on all government issued phones. pg.3
home,” Robinson said. “I had no concerns with being home on Tuesday and Wednesday and then since there were still concerns about freezing rain that morning, it made sense that we would need time to make sure that we could get everybody safely to school. We did see the ice and broken limbs and we knew that we had significant power outages in the city.” According to www.nytimes. com, Travis county had 146,000 customers without power. Unlike the storm of 2021, the 2023 ice storm’s power outages were a result of falling trees weighed down by frozen rain. “We’re still in the process of cleanup. We were asked to take care of what we could and so I think students are probably seeing that in the last few days,” Robinson said. “But anything that's too big or we're gonna require heavy equipment for us to fix trees that may be over sidewalks or that we have concerns about continuing to fall, we’ve surrounded those with caution tape so that they don't present an immediate danger until the district can come help us with that clean-up.” Despite maintaining power, Bowie was hit by the storm with broken tree limbs. Student council Vice President Bailey Alsup knew and her team has worked to keep “I was really sad about how destructive the ice storm was to lots of plants around the area at Bowie because in student council we have been working so hard on the school’s gardens all year just to have them freeze over,” Alsup said.
Becoming an adult: high schoolers hit milestones Madeleine Travis Dispatch Reporter
INDEX:
NEWS 1, 2 POLITICS 3 FEATURES 4 , 5
Percentage of licensed drivers in the U.S. by age 1983
80.4
2008
65.4
94.9 91.7
2018
91.8
82.0
90.9
80.1
60.9
46.2 31.1
25.6
16
18
drive without waiting on someone to give you a ride everywhere. “Driving is like a sense of freedom, finally I got to do whatever I wanted
IN-DEPTH 7, 8-9 SPORTS 10, 11 ENTERTAINMENT 12
20-24
without having to worry about people finding me,” Harrison said. “The fact that my parents couldn’t track me, because that's when they said, alright
REVIEWS 13 OPINIONS 14, 15 PHOTO ESSAY 6,16
FIND US AT @jbhs_dispatch
35-39
ART BY Lucille Price
license was like and the struggles that he encountered along the way. “The only day I was able to go was In the process of leaving high Valentine's Day. I was doing in-person school, there are many responsibilities school at that time and since Valenthat students have to take on top of tine's Day was a late start I tried to get their normal day-to-day tasks. This my permit done,” Harrison said. “I part of growing up is something that waited there for four hours and did schools don't teach and means that not get it. I was just waiting there students have to learn to do these and then I had to go to school new things on their own. This or else I'd be counted absent. I can be a scary experience for left and came back another day people but is a good way to where I knew I would be able learn how to do adult things on to just be scot-free without your own. getting counted absent.” For senior Cade HarriHarrison also expressed son, getting his license how he originally felt was a huge leap and about driving and how he responsibility towards slowly learned to become adulthood. He explains more comfortable on the when the topic first started coming to mind how Cade Harrison road. “My mom was always it feels to finally have Senior cursing at people for driva way to get around on ing poorly,” Harrison said. your own where ever and “When I started paying more attention whenever you want. to how people were driving, I realized “It's like a sense of freedom, you're how right my mom was. I was a little free. Finally, I got to do whatever I scared because of how reckless some wanted without having to worry about people can be.” people finding me,” Harrison said. Harrison tells about how it feels to Harrison proceeds to say what the process of going from his permit to his finally get your license and be able to
'you can turn off all tracking on your READ MORE “Bowie students prepare” pg. 5