Students successfully competed in music festival 

Mid-Pacific students took the top three spots in the teen division of the 39th Annual KZOO Music Festival contest on Nov. 3. Sophomore Tyler Devere took 1st place, sophomore Karlee Tanaka placed 2nd, and freshman Alaina Visi got 3rd place. 

The judges were record label artists and producers who flew from Japan to judge the contestants. One champion is selected to fly to Japan and compete in the worldwide finals.

“I enjoyed it because it was a much bigger venue than where I’ve ever performed. There were so many more contestants and talented people,” said Tanaka. For the competition, she sang U & I by Ailee in Japanese. An estimated 400 people watched the contest.

Fewer students inducted into NHS

There were fewer students inducted into the National Honor Society (NHS) compared to last year. About the same amount of students were eligible, but there weren’t as many students who applied, said NHS Advisor Bill Wheeler. 

The NHS inducted 14 students for the 2019-2020 school year on Nov. 26. 

“Part of the issue with students when they apply to NHS is that they don’t fill out the application very well. They’re too humble, and (the applications) are not as complete as we want to see,” said Wheeler.  

Civil Beat featured students poems

Four Mid-Pacific students are now published poets, thanks to the Civil Beat Neighborhood Haiku contest. Civil Beat is an investigative news website that writes about local news happening in Hawaii. Participants in the contest based their poems around their neighborhoods, and wrote haikus based on the number of syllables in their zip code.

Freshman English teacher Maya Garcia assigned the Neighborhood Haiku as homework. They were also given the opportunity to submit their work to the contest. 

“I liked that there was a set amount of syllables and that everyone’s was going to sound different and be different because they’re not all following the exact same pattern, so I feel that it also gave it more of a challenge,” said freshman Anastasia Morse, who was one of the four students who had their haikus featured on Civil Beat’s Instagram account.

Freshman class service project

The 9th grade collected two carloads full of toiletries for the Institute of Human Services as a way to help homelessness in Hawaii. 

They had a service project, a toiletry drive, which focused on helping the homeless on Oahu. From Oct. 4 to Nov. 1, students dropped off donations in their homerooms. Students could donate items such as toothpaste, shampoo and soap. 

“We wanted to do something to give back to our community. We thought about the situation with the homeless on Oahu and we wanted to be useful and helpful to them. One of the things that they don’t have access to is showers and bathrooms,” said freshman class advisor Kymbal Roley.