By DAVIDA WALKER

Staff writer

            The winner of the contest to name the new high school newspaper was Sarah Brown, a fifth-grade student from Sidney C. Huntington elementary school.

            Her suggested name now sits atop the front page of the newspaper. On her entry form, she wrote that the name should be the title for the sports section. The journalism class, in its voting earlier this month, decided they liked the name so much they’d use it for the entire newspaper.

            Sarah won a $25 gift certificate to Sweetsir’s store.

            This year we had to change our newspaper’s name because both Galena Interior Learning Academy and the Sidney C. Huntington high school have united to form a larger high school, said Paul Apfelbeck, the journalism class teacher. He said that it wasn’t fair to have the name GILA Monster when there were now students from the community in the classes, so we had to change it.

            The journalism class sponsored the contest earlier this year, putting suggestion boxes at both the GILA and SHS campuses and at the Ptarmigan Hall dorms.

            Students and teachers suggested more than 100 names during the week-long voting period. Mr. Apfelbeck said the inappropriate names (The Galena High Times) and obviously silly names (The Hawk Nugget) were set aside. About one-quarter of the suggestions wanted to keep The GILA Monster as the name of the school paper.

            The journalism class made its decision on Oct. 8.

            The class looked at more than 50 names. The class decided the name by first working in three separate groups, each of which picked ten favorite names. The class then divided up into three groups with different students and selected six out of the 30 names from the first selection. Those names which were selected in this round remained; the rest were rejected. The class then met as a group and voted for the top three. The name out of top three with the higher number of votes won the contest.

            This is the third name change for the newspaper. When the boarding school was known as Project Education Residential School, the school newspaper was called PERS  Speaks Out. After the school was renamed GILA, students selected the name The GILA Monster.