With fresh leadership and a shared passion for community, the new Running Start Club’s recent meeting sparked a thrilling vision for an impactful and inclusive year ahead.

A key theme that emerged during the recent meeting was the need for the club to serve as a supportive community, particularly for first-generation students navigating the challenges of college.

Last week, Highline College held an event, titled “Love Shouldn’t Hurt”, to bring awareness to domestic abuse and violence.

The event focused on how to determine which is which, what the warning signs are, and how to get help if you are involved in a situation that resembles one of abuse. Participants shared their stories and opinions, generating a powerful discussion about the topic.

Adults across America have had their lives affected by stress, and not in a positive way. Stress increases the risk of illness and even premature death, and an article by PubMed Central (PMC) dives deeper into this topic.

PMC conducted a study and discovered that 33.7% of adults in the U.S. (out of nearly 186 million) have reported that stress has impacted their health to some extent, and out of those who reported this stress, 43% had an increased risk of premature death.

Highline offers numerous avenues to get involved on campus, but there may be no better way to make new friends and bond with others over shared interests than by joining a club. Whether you like sports, reading, games, or anime, the college’s vast number of clubs definitely has something you might enjoy.

Last week, the Thunderword covered only a portion of the opportunities for involvement on campus. Whether you like to move, converse, or curl up with a book, here are some more clubs we’d like to highlight.

Highline offers numerous avenues to get involved on campus, but there may be no better way to make new friends and bond with others over shared interests than by joining a club. Whether you like sports, reading, games, or anime, the college’s vast number of clubs definitely has something you might enjoy.

Do you find yourself wandering around campus after class with a lot of free time, looking to make more friends? Then all you have to do is head right into Building 8 and find out what club might be the best fit for you.

Highline College opens doors to motivated high school students through its Running Start program. While this opportunity to get a start on a college degree while completing the requirements for high school graduation can set students ahead, it doesn’t come without its challenges for high schoolers turned college students.

 “Running Start is a dual credit program in Washington State that allows high school juniors and seniors to take college courses,” according to the Highline running start website. “Students earn both high school and college credit for courses completed.”

For the third year in a row, Highline volleyball reigns as they clinched the Northwest Athletic Conference West Region Championship.

The Thunderbirds are currently 26-1 overall, 10-0 in the west region conference, and currently are on a 25-game win streak. 

The Highline women’s soccer team is back and ready to win after not playing during the fall 2023 season.

The Thunderbirds have recorded an impressive 7-3-2 record (5-3-2 in conference) and currently sit in third in conference standings. This new team has shown tremendous pride in the program under new head coach, Marco Monzonhad.

As we come to the middle of the season, the Highline men’s soccer team has truly shown how powerful of a team they can be. With a new head coach, and a demanding set of sophomores, this team truly has what it takes to be a winning team. 

The team is currently has an impressive 9-2-1 record this season, and have gone 8-1 within the NWAC west conference.

Decatur High School’s football team keeps turning heads in the local community by continuing their undefeated streak, beating Skyview, a consensus top ten 4A team, 15-14. 

The game took place under the lights of Federal Way Memorial Stadium, Oct. 4 at 7 p.m., where we saw the Decatur Gators (now 5-0) face off with the Skyview Storm (3-2). The Gators managed to hold Skyview to two touchdowns while also coming out on top for a hard fought win.

Horror movies have an interesting habit of embodying contemporary societal fears, whether they are the vampire films of the ‘90s, alien invasion films of the ‘80s, or zombie flicks in the 2000s.

The 2020s is no exception either, as our current focal point of terror is far and away forced birth and a lack of reproductive freedoms. 

Having been around since 1975, Iron Maiden, possibly the most popular English Heavy Metal band in the world, has been on countless world tours since its inception and has enjoyed overwhelming popularity and success. 

Iron Maiden performed at the Tacoma Dome this past week, bringing in entire families, stretching across generations, and carrying on their commitment to bringing music and shows to the world. They continue on their “Future Past” tour across North America and Canada.

How much gore can a person handle in one sitting? Movie-goers were put to the test as “Terrifier 3” hit the theaters this fall.

People are preparing for the third movie in the Terrifier series. This movie included warning signs to the audience before walking in as well as vomit bags as some scenes got way too graphic and hard to watch. This may seem like an overreaction, but the resounding feedback for the film highlights just how shocked most audiences have been, even sparking censorship among some cultures.

Despite the fantastical nature of anime, there’s a noticeable lack of both POC (people of color), and/or people who belong to the LGBTQ+ community. Even with its popularity overseas, anime largely remains exclusive to anyone who doesn’t fit a certain mold. 

While anime has instances of darker-skinned characters, they’re fewer in number compared to their lighter counterparts and are almost always Japanese. While dark-skinned Japanese representation is great, it’s only one type of representation.

Bringing us into the spooky season this year was none other than Tim Burton, the King of family-spooky night, with the reprisal of Beetlejuice. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” hits theaters in time to kick off the haunting season, 36 years after the original premiered.

Winona Ryder, Catherine O’hara, and Michael Keaton all reprise their roles as Lydia Deetz, Delia Deetz, and the exorcist himself, Beetlejuice.

When most people hear the word “Battle Royale,” they automatically think of the popular video game genre. But have you ever heard of the origin of the inspiration of that wildly popular video game genre? 

“Battle Royale” started as a science fiction thriller novel written by Koushun Takami. It was completed in 1996 but wasn’t published till 1999. The novel consists of a class of junior high students taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing.

In recent years, the impact that technology has had in the field of education has been a major deal. Ranging from different online learning platforms, to apps and online classrooms that has made it more accessible for students and educators to learn anywhere they want – without being physically present in the classroom. 

Technology has had its impact on students, teachers, and administrators from learning platforms, assessment strategy, and grading. It also produced fear of plagiarism, academic dishonesty, and downright cheating through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Dr. Eric Baer, a geologist serving as the Chair of Pure and Applied Science here at Highline College, led Highline students into the world of volcanoes, what makes them super, and what a disruption an eruption would cause at his Science Seminar hosted by the college earlier this month.

Baer has studied volcanology, the study of volcanoes, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before coming to Highline. He’s researched volcanoes, specifically supervolcanoes, across Japan and the United States.  

On Oct. 8, in Stockholm, John Hopfield, of Princeton University, and Geoffrey Hinton, of the University of Toronto, were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking contributions to Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized Hopefield and Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

Two American astronauts, sent into space for an eight-day mission by a Boeing Starliner, have been stuck for months on the International Space Station (ISS), as their craft was deemed too risky to safely make the return trip home.

On June 7, 2024, Boeing, in conjunction with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), launched the two American astronauts, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunni Williams, into space aboard Boeing’s ‘Starliner’ capsule. The mission: an eight day test of systems aboard Starliner, but this not-exactly-successful mission has turned into an eight-month detour around the planet for the pair.

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) evolving and becoming smarter, faster, and more integrated everyday, have you ever wondered if one day your job positioning might be at the risk of being replaced with AI resulting in you getting laid off?

In the article “AI Job Loss: Shocking Statistics Revealed”  by Daniel L., he revealed that in 2023, 37% of companies that are using AI saw workers lose jobs. It is expected that in 2024 there will be another 44% expected more AI-related job cuts.

Stanford Medicine has published a groundbreaking study that highlights the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) in skin cancer diagnosis.

Professor Eleni Linos, MD, leads the research, which illustrates how deep learning-powered AI can greatly improve the accuracy of skin cancer diagnoses, even for non-specialists, such as primary care physicians and medical students.

In this day and age, electronics are everywhere, and most of them are portable. We’re at a time when even our video game consoles can surf the internet with ease. It’s incredible, but it’s also overwhelming and sometimes dangerous, especially in the hands of kids.

One such danger is content farms. For the uninitiated, a content farm is a channel dedicated to mass-producing low-effort content to force engagement numbers. While content farms are terrible, they’re not the main focus of this article.

If you’ve been on YouTube for longer than ten seconds, you probably know what content farming is. For those unfamiliar, however, content farming is the practice of generating as much content as possible to force engagement and increase viewership. For example, a YouTuber uploading shorts every few hours for days on end.

Content farming is the latest fad for greedy “content creators” to garner more views to get money.

Renowned pop artist Chappell Roan has received drastic responses to her criticism of the U.S. government recently, with countless people either supporting or decrying her hesitancy to endorse a candidate in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

The conversation has now evolved slightly beyond her own position, but it does tell us plenty about our relationship with celebrities and what we believe their social responsibilities need to be.

Per the headline: taking the bus kind of sucks. Well, to be more accurate, using public transportation in Washington is awful. It’s inconsistent, it’s way less organized than in places like New York or Washington D.C. for example, and it can even be confusing. Missing a bus always sucks, but here it’s quite unforgiving.

“This first time I used public transit when visiting Seattle, I got lost and had to call my sister-in-law while she was at work so she could walk me through how to get to her apartment,” said an anonymous Highline student about their experience.

In 1890, while living the life of a luxurious and infamous playwright, Oscar Wilde compiled all his imaginatives on hedonism, temptation, and human nature into a blood-driven, sex-filled young man he most definitely saw himself in, Dorian Gray. 

“The Picture of Dorian Gray” remains Wilde’s only novel, first published in a monthly magazine. Wilde wrote a few versions of the story, censored and edited by his publishers, but an artists’ work is always a reflection of the artist.

It’s that time of year again! So begins another fall quarter, and with it, an array of new experiences. While excitement is in the air, it’s accompanied by all sorts of fears. There are so many new people joining Highline at this time of year and that means change. Change is great, but it can be scary. If you have doubts, what should you do?

The long-fought war between dog and cat lovers is still ongoing. Dog people claim dogs as “man’s best friend”, while cat lovers claim loving cats requires a certain appreciation for individual autonomy. While these paradigms are a couple ways to look at the issue, there is also the extroverted dog versus introverted cat debate. Regardless, all animal lovers can agree that animals improve our lives.

According to Forbes, 66% of households own pets, and of those 66%, 46.5 million households have cats. While dogs beat them out for the majority, 46.5 million is no small number.