![The Wayland Police Department have issued a warning on the rise of scammers during the holiday season. “Hang up [the phone]. if you get a text and you do not know who it's from, just delete it. Don't click on any links, nothing,” Wayland police chief Edward Burman said. “Every single one of them is a scam.”](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_0954_720-e1734676255647.jpg)
![WHS’s Connect Program ran its annual holiday gift drive to fulfill the wishlist of children enrolled in the Dorchester based non-profit daycare organization, the Yawkey Center. This drive brought the town together and impacted both the students in Connect, as well as the greater Wayland community. “You could see how helpful the town was and how our community came together and wanted to help out a community that wasn't our own [and] kids who were less fortunate than we were,” senior and Connect Program member Jordynn Lee said.](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/screenshot_2024-12-20_at_12.21.24___pm_720-e1734734228474.png)
![The Boy Scouts will be selling trees on Fridays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sundays noon to 6 p.m. until they sell out.
“This event is one of the things that [the Boy Scouts] get to have a direct impact on the community,” freshman Alex Macleod said.](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Screenshot-2024-12-11-at-8.38.38 AM.png)
Wayland Warriors’ Academic Decathlon team competed in the Massachusetts Academic Decathlon at Ashland High School this past Saturday, scoring a victorious third place overall, an improvement over last year.
“I was surprised we came in third,” said Stephanie Liu, a member of the team. “We did really badly in regionals.” The Wayland team had placed fourth among the small schools, and eighteenth among all of the schools, at the regional meet in November.
Several members of the teams received medals. Senior Alex Way won a gold medal in math, receiving a perfect score of 1000. Senior Alison von Rohr won two gold medals, in art and in language/literature, and one silver medal in music. Junior Stephanie Liu won a gold medal in math, a silver medal in language/literature, and a bronze medal in music. Junior Victoria Gore won a silver medal in language/literature.
Academic Decathlon is an interscholastic competition where “decathletes” compete in ten testing events with students from other schools. Subjects range from art to math to language and literature. This year, the general topic of these tests was Latin America, with a focus on Mexico. Next year the subject will be the French Revolution.
Last year, the Wayland team placed eighth at States, and in 2007 they placed fifteenth.