Monthly Archives: September 2009

On Monday, Meeker High School’s FBLA officers, Erica Roybal, Logan Sanderson, Jake Nieslanik, Gabie Goettel, Cameron Glasscock, and Jessica Mullins, along with chapter advisor Mrs. Pfau, left Meeker to attend an FBLA conference in Grand Junction.

The conference was held at Grand Junction High School.

I am posting this from my iPhone, I’m hoping that, in the future, we can provide more updates in this fashion.

I talked to an armory expert for the Colorado State Patrol to see what he thought about Six Days In Fallujah and, about how the State Patrol uses video games to train their officers. He talked with me about the Patrol and notified me that they do indeed use a game for training.

However, it is more of a simulation than a game. The simulation is of various issues that the officer may run into while out on the job. The officers are given modified guns that are designed to shoot laser beams instead of bullets. They will go through a dangerous situation just as if it was real life.

They will pull someone over, and do a drug search. If they find drugs in the car, (which they will) they will ask the person to step out of the vehicle. If they do all of the follow up procedures correctly, the situation will not escalate. However, if they make even one mistake, the situation can become extremely “dangerous” really quickly.

The simulation is run by superior officers from a computer in an office near the room. So, they can monitor what the officers are doing, and how they handle the situation. They will control whether or not the person will become hostile or will follow the officer’s orders.

This training is very close to some of the games you can buy today. It has the same basic concept, but doesn’t last nearly as long; and is operated differently. The outcome is controlled by the people in the office for the training simulation, but in games like Killzone 2 and Call of Duty: World at War, the outcomes are already programmed into the game. There are many different outcomes in the games, but they will not change because someone sitting in the next room hits a button.

I also asked Mr. Sims what he thought about Six Days In Fallujah. He told me that he had indeed heard about this game, and although he didn’t know a lot about it, he had an opinion on it. He told me that the game, in his opinion, should not be released to the public for teenagers to get their hands on. However, if an adult who wanted to know what the situation was like wanted to pick up a copy of the game and play it, that would be okay. He also thought that it would be a great thing for them to use for training.

Is that a civilian or an enemy? Those are the decisions that will have to be made. Six Days In Fallujah is a third-person shooter game made by Atomic Games releasing in 2010 for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac. It will be a realistic representation of Operation Phantom Fury, the second battle of Fallujah.

The Battle of Fallujah was the largest urban battle of the Iraq War. Thirty-eight U.S. soldiers died in the battle, and more than 1,000 insurgents were killed. There are many families who lost loved ones in the battle that are expressing their true feelings about this game.

Atomic Games has received letters, e-mails, and telephone calls expressing dislike of the game. However, they have also received many letters, e-mails, and telephone calls from people who really want this game to happen.

There are about 40-50 Marines working with Atomic who were actually in the battle. They have photographs, maps, and video of things that they experienced through the battle. The soldiers are working on every step of the game with Atomic, and are making sure that every detail is just how it would be in real life. Any building will come to the ground, just as it would in reality; any structure will react realistically to being shot and hit with explosives.

The Marines will tell the programmers just how much damage each weapon will deal to the enemies and the environment. They will tell them how the soldiers would really react to the things going on around them. The game uses realistic military tactics during play.

The players will have to make moral decisions throughout the game, as well. If there is a woman running at them, they tell her to stop, and she doesn’t stop; what do you do? Do you shoot the woman and mistakenly kill a scared civilian? Do you let her keep running at you, and possibly get your whole squad killed from an IED that was attached to the woman’s back? Those are the kinds of decisions that will be placed upon players of the game.

The purpose of Atomic Games was to make a documentary-styled game, that would show players the horrors of being in the Iraq War. They wanted to show people that didn’t know anything about the Marines and how the Marines operate in war, what it was really like to be in the Battle of Fallujah.

The game would make you actually care about the people you were fighting beside. You would care about their safety, and you would react to their deaths, as if it was a real person. This is what they are wanting people to experience, this is what they were hoping for. A realistic representation of the horrors of war.

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Editor’s Note: Here is another archived article from the Cowboy Roundup Issue #20 published on March 6, 1970. It is titled “Student Council”.

The Student Council met Tuesday in Room 111. The minutes from the last meeting were read and approved.

The G.A.A. [Girl's Athletic Association] sponsored a dance on February 21. The price voted on by the Student Council was $1.00 stag and $1.25 a couple. This was to be the set price to be charged, however, only [$0.75] and $1.00 was charged. The Student Council voted that the members of the G.A.A. are to apologize to the students for this mistake.

Last week several of the Student Council members attended a League Student Council Meeting in Craig. At this meeting it was voted that each school in our league have a Clean-In Day. A $100.00 prize will be given to the mining school and a $50.00 prize for second place. It will be judged by the area to be cleaned, the improvements made, and by the number of students taking part. The date for this Clean-In has not yet been set.

Also the subject of sportsmanship pendants was voted on. Glenwood Springs is to receive both our football and wrestling pendants, Craig our basketball pendant, and Steamboat Springs our miscellaneous pendant. The school receiving the most pendants will be awarded the sportsmanship trophy for this year.

The Cowboy Trail - Oil Painting by DJ Collins

Welcome to the Cowboy Roundup! We hope you have fun reading; make sure to leave comments and subscribe to the RSS feed.

Editor’s Note: Every week or so, we are going to publish an article from the library’s old Cowboy Roundup archive. This particular article is from “Issue No. 1″ published on September 12, 1969, and was written by Debbie Jackson. It is titled “Beware, Freshmen”.

Note: WE NO LONGER HAVE “STOOGE DAYS” AT MEEKER HIGH SCHOOL.

On September 3, as you walked down the hall, an excruciatingly strong smell of garlic hit you full in the face. You turned the corner and there, in a small and obscure crevice, you found a poor freshman, bearing his burden alone. His (or her!) stooge master was in class and he (or she) had a couple of peaceful moments to himself. His special description was “stooge”. Thursday and Friday, September 4th and 5th were his special days.

“Stooge Days” is an old tradition at Meeker High, started between fifteen and twenty-five years ago. The plan of the tradition is simply “get the freshmen.” Each senior has his own stooge (a senior boy usually ends of with a girl stooge and a senior girl gets a boy stooge.) A module is designated for freshman [sic] and senior classes to meet and freshman [sic] names are pulled out of a hat by the seniors. From that moment on, until the appointed end of Stooge Days, the freshmen aren’t safe anywhere.

This is, of course, all in fun and even while the freshmen were in their anguish, they smiled sweetly and put forth a brave front. Cheerup, pals! It’s Over!

-Debbie Jackson

Welcome to the “Cowboy Roundup”, Meeker High School’s student newspaper. This blog is part of an effort by the high school’s journalism class to provide a frequently updated news source for information regarding our high school, our school district, our community, our country, and our world.

Many of our post categories have not appeared yet since there are no articles under them. The journalism class will be working hard over the next couple weeks to add more information to the website. Currently, we only have one article in the “special interests” category, but we should be adding several more tomorrow and throughout the week.

I, Logan Sanderson, am the editor for this year. If you have any questions or comments, I encourage you to use the blog’s built in comment system.

Our blog is hosted by DreamHost, and uses WordPress, a blog tool and publishing platform. We are currently using a customized pre-built template, but I plan to create my own within the next few months.

We would like to thank Ken Sanderson Electric for covering the costs of web hosting and domain registration for this year.

Thank you for reading the “Cowboy Roundup”, we hope that you will return frequently for the latest updates!

This is the first post on the site; it is intended to serve as a test.

This website is an effort to create an online student newspaper for Meeker High School.