Denebola, Volume 51, Issue 3

Volume 51, Issue III

Denebola Newton South High School

Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Boston, MA Permit Number 54523

www.denebolaonline.net

Tuesday, 7 June 2011

Class of 2011 fina11y graduates; on a scale of 1 to 10, you’re an 11

Senior Cup

Mendelson

David Altman Rachel Leshin

Jeffrey Alkins Kathy O’Keefe

By Jason Yoffe The prestigious Senior Cup award, announced at Newton South’s Graduation, is given to two members of the senior class each year. Nominated by the faculty and voted by their peers, David Altman and Rachel Leshin are this year’s honored recipients.

Altman delved into the world of student government with notable fervor and made a lasting impact on students through his work as a senator. “I’ve always been interested in politics,” Altman said earlier this year. “I really liked watching the presidential debates in 2004 and again in 2008, and liked watching the national conventions.”

According to current senators, Altman played a large role in the group’s legislation, including bills for South’s recycling initiative and park benches, as well as efforts to begin teacher evaluation and community service recognition programs.

Described as level-headed, calm, and innovative, Altman was praised for his leadership abilities, especially while serving as the Senate’s President in his final year.

He also extended his endeavors in government outside of South’s campus. Last summer, he became one of few students to earn an internship at the offices of both Senator Cynthia Creem and State Representative Ruth Balser. He later opted to work with Creem’s campaign.

Altman’s roles in extracurricular leadership translated to the classroom, as well.

“David is certainly a leader in class as he will take the initia-

tive to offer up ideas,” History and Social Science teacher Sean Turley said. “He has a rare gift in that he grasps concepts to such a degree that he can comment on them in ways that are both insightful and quite humorous.

He deeply understands what he studies, and has a powerful curiosity.”

This year Altman shared his enthusiasm for learning by volunteering, without receiving course credit, as a teaching assistant. “He’s reliable, very motivated, and caring,” junior Lee Schlenker, one of Altman’s students, said.

A winner of the prestigious Principal’s Award, Altman embodied the model high school student with his strong desire for learning and his willingness to improve the lives of his peers.

From his niche in the South community, he was able to make a lasting impact on those around him—from the senators with whom he worked to the history students he mentored.

“He will surely be missed,” Turley said. In the fall, Altman will attend Brandeis University.

Leshin acted out her altruism differently. Considered a funny, sweet, and enthusiastic person, she was adept at sensing and then relieving others’ stress and worries.

At one point last her junior year, fully equipped with a sweater-turned apron, Leshin cycled around the staff at The Lion’s Roar writing taking down orders for Take-Out, making jokes, and lightening the mood.

“She’s the kindest person I know in the world,” senior Olivia Larkin said. “She’s so considerate

By Rutul Patel “Look up ‘fantastic’ and you’ll find a picture of Charlotte smiling back at you,” Charlotte Sall’s AP Psychology teacher Sean Turley said.

In each graduating class, one senior receives the Phi Beta Kappa award for exceptional academic achievement. The award is presented to the graduating senior with the highest grade point average. This year, senior Charlotte Sall is the recipient of Newton South’s Phi Beta Kappa award.

Sall’s strong work ethic and commitment to excellence have led her to extraordinary achievement, excelling in her academics as well as numerous

extracurricular activities.

Her extracurricular include stage-managing for many of the South Stage plays.

This year alone she helped with three. She is also on the North American Federation of Temple Youth, and is the vice president of religion and culture for that organization.

Sall’s dedication and passion to school is apparent through her challenging and advanced course load the past fours.

During her senior year her course load involved five of the most challenging courses—AP BC Calculus, AP Psychology, AP Music Theory, AP Physics, and AP English Literature and Composition.

and happy. She always tries to make people feel welcome and keep them in good spirits.”

Aside from the impromptu bouts of role-playing, Leshin has found a home with South Stage.

She projected her bubbly personality into her roles, including an entertaining representation of Amy Lee in this year’s rendition of A Texas Two Step.

It was on the stage and in the pressroom that Leshin’s creativity glowed. As the Senior Editor of the Features Section for The Roar, she helped lead her section to being a consistent contender for monthly in-house awards.

“Rachel had the ability to take something normal and make it something special,” Marsha Patel, a South alumna and former Managing Editor of The Lion’s Roar, said. “She would take a story, add a new perspective to it, and then make it applicable to the student body.”

In these activities alone, Leshin fostered and applied a unique balance of personality.

“She’s very outgoing,” Patel said. “You can see the bubbly side of her, but when she needs to be, she also can buckle down and be serious.”

Leshin also applied her diligent work ethic and creativity into academics. Each year Leshin took numerous challenging courses. This year she carried four AP courses.

Leshin will attend Wesleyan University in the fall.

“With [family members] already having graduated from South, she set out to make an image for herself,” Larkin said.

“I think she definitely accomplished that.”

By Dan Kats Seniors Jeffrey Alkins and Kathy O’Keefe have been chosen by the Athletic Department as the recipients of this year’s Danny Mendelson award. This award is given annually to seniors—one boy and one girl—for demonstrating extraordinary athletic achievement and sportsmanship over their high school careers.

The Danny Mendelson award commemorates the life of Danny Mendelson, who died in 1968 shortly after finishing his Junior school year. He was a role model for all the studentathletes around him, both on and off the field, highly regarded by teachers and members of the South community.

O’Keefe was given a full scholarship to Boston College for her athletic and academic achievements. She will be joining former teammates and Mendelson recipients Bridget Dahlberg (‘09) and Madeleine Reed (‘10) on the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division (NCAA)-I Track and Field team.

During her career—during which she ran Cross Country, Indoor Track, and Outdoor Track for almost every season—she was named AllAmerican eight times, won two National Championships in the 4x1-mile relay, set 10 school records, and was named a Dual County League (DCL) All-Star 10 times. She also recorded the third fastest time in United States history in the Indoor 4x800-meter event, was named Captain for three seasons, and was a DCL Sportsmanship

Phi Beta Kappa

Charlotte Sall

‘[Sall] is thoughtful, responsive, energetic, and very honest in her responses,” Turley said.

“She has boundless energy and a deep sense of dedication to a cause that is extremely rare

Award winner 10 times.

“Kathy is maybe the best distance runner we’ve ever had at Newton South,” Athletic Director Scott Perrin said. “[She is] one of the most highly recognized All-Americans that we’ve had.”

Although her athletic accomplishments make her a phenomenal athlete, her off the field actions make her an extraordinary person. “Kathy’s character and leadership ability is far superior and far better than anything I’ve read in terms of what her athletic accolades are,” Perrin said. “Kathy is the last person who would want to hear how many awards she’s won. That’s how special she is.”

Aside from her athletic achievements, O’Keefe has excelled academically, taking three Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which are Spanish, Calculus, and Physics this year.

During his high school career, Alkins has participated in eight extra curriculars, contributed to both South newspapers, participated in four sports, and has captained a team for three seasons.

Alkins played in the South Football program for three seasons and in the Track and Field program for eight. On the Football team, he split time between the cornerback and running back positions, and in Track he participated in most of the events; however, he began focusing mainly on sprinting, jumping, and running in relays.

“Jeffrey has been a superstar for our Football program, he’s been a great Track athlete, he’s also been able to manage his

dancing, jazz, ballet and hiphop,” Perrin said.

Perrin is impressed with the way Alkins can mentor and guide his teammates, especially while balancing his extra-curriculars and academics. “Jeffrey is a quiet leader who just leads by example,” he said. “His accolades differ from those Kathy has, but he parallels them with the way he leads.”

Although he has been a star on the field, he has received many awards for his academic achievements as well, including a Faculty Award and the Newton METCO Community Scholarship. Alkins was a Class Officer, a Class President, a two-time Black Student Union president, and was named a National Merit Scholar.

Over the course of his time in South, Alkins has challenged himself academically. He is currently enrolled in two AP classes: English Language and Composition and Psychology.

The Athletic Department loses a good deal with the departure of both O’Keefe and Alkins. Each, however, has left their marks on their athletic programs. Their leadership and guidance will fuel South’s success in future years.

“They serve as role models as to how athletes should handle themselves, how athletes should approach athletics, how athletes and student-athletes should approach the balance of academics, social life, and athletics,” Perrin said. “It was one of the years where it was such a joy to give out those awards because of who they are. I’ll miss them both.”

and gratifying to be around,” Turley said.

She has received considerable recognition for her many accomplishments this year.

Aside from graduating top of her class, Sall has been awarded the Cum Laude award, a Theater Arts award, and the Principal’s Award.

Her teachers describe Charlotte as thoughtful, responsive, energetic, and direct and very honest in her responses.

Not only do many teachers consider her “brilliant,” but she has been described as “very adept at finding humor in bad situations,” Turley said.

“When [Sall] recent suffered a concussion,” Turley said,

“she designed a cult project around promoting concussions as a way to avoid work with the tagline ‘one hit and you’re in.’”

Sall will take her brilliance to Princeton University next year.

After graduating from Princeton, Turley sees her “running some medium-sized European country or as a global nonprofit.”

Closer to home, “I think she’s wonderful [at everything she does] and the really cool thing about Charlotte is that she loves to act and she enjoys her extracurriculars, and she also enjoys hanging out with her friends,” Sall’s mom, Julie Salls said.

Denebola

News A2

Denebola Founded in 1960

Editors-in-Chief Dan Kats and Jason Yoffe Executive Editor Rutul Patel Managing Editor Helen Holmes Senior Copy Editor Charlie Temkin Faculty Advisor George Abbott White Technical Advisor Jason Agress

www.denebolaonline.net Denebola enacts a two-fold role in the Newton South community: responsibility to the larger Newton community and the school itself, and responsibility to the individuals who contribute to its pages. This tradition extends back to Newton South’s inception in 1960, and the first issue of the newspaper.

As Newton South High School’s official school newspaper, we are engaged in every facet of the school community, which means fair and equal coverage of South’s sporting events, enrichment and art programs, school organizations, and all other aspects of school life. Additionally, Denebola feels it important to stimulate as well as inform discussion on the essential issues of the day.

Denebola is written, edited, and published by Newton South students. Its publication is entirely supported by advertising; the newspaper receives no funds from the PTSO or similar organizations. Contributions are neither soliticted nor accepted.

Unless stated, opinions are those of the individuals under whose by-lines they appear.

Letters from students, faculty, or members of the Newton community should be addressed to the Editors-in-Chief.

News

Astha Agarwal Daniel Barabasi Andreas Betancourt Dayun Keum Noah Rivkin Robert Wang

Editorials & Opinions Annapurna Ravel (Sr.) Hattie Gawande Jarrett Gorin Tim Newton Daniel Pincus

Centerfold

Sports

Nathan Baskin Mike Berman Josh Carney Zach Pawa

Global Education

Dylan Royce (Sr.) Dina Busaba Peter Natov

Photography

Aley Lewis (Sr.) Anna Garik Emma Sander Jonah Seifer

Graphics

Julia Spector (Sr.) Melanie Erspamer

Arts & Entertainment

Tim Jiang Lizzie Odvarka Victor Qin

Features

Corbin Crinsky Thibaut Xiong

Sophie Scharlin-Pettee (Sr.) Michelle Tian Liana Butchard Jesse Feldstein Courtney Foster Josh Nislick Wendy Ma

Web Editors

Copy Editor

Jaclyn Freshman

Deputy Editor

Ilana Sivachenko

Contributors: Alexandra Fen, Maarten Van Genabeek, Jenny Gerstner, Rachel Davidson, Sam Haas, Sara Wang, Sophie Cash, Matt Fallon, Zoe Clayton, Rose Taylor, Ariel Kaluzhny, Jillian Gundersheim, Dana Cohen-Kaplan, Louisa Warnke, Tali Levin-Schwartz Columnists: Jeff Hurray and Adam Sachs

Volume 51, Issue 3

Denebola, The Official Newspaper of Newton South High School, 140 Brandeis Road, Newton, Mass. 02459

Advisor’s Note

Jane Hogan came by the Denebola office about a month ago. It was a big deal for Denebola, Newton South, and the wider world of “history.”

Jane was the first Editor-inChief of Denebola, 50 years ago. A long time professor of education in western New York state, she had a valuable perspective on the school’s development. Fresh out of college, Jane’s experiences in President Kennedy’s brand new Peace Corps, in two very different locations, were a harbinger for where students are likely to go—global.

Her 1962 Regulus yearbook photo and the one with Vol 50 editors does not provide many clues to the adventure that characterized her Denebola leadership and the years since the Sixties. Only when questioned—a pause, and straight ahead, thoughtful and decisive—did one really catch Jane Hogan.

“We weren’t so much insulated as substantially more conservative then,” Jane Hogan said. “Not necessarily politically,” she corrected her listeners, “so much as what we saw our role as students vis-avie the administration.”

Hogan went on to give as a contextualized example the then-Middlesex County attorney general, one Edward Kennedy.

“While at the printer’s in Brookline their newspaper kids asked us, ‘We hear Ted Kennedy’s coming to South, you gonna interview him?’”

Hogan said.

“If Principal [Donald] Davidson was inviting us to sit

in with our advisor Mr. Nye and the Student Council, we didn’t dare raise the question to Kennedy, ‘We heard you were thrown out of Harvard for plagiarism and cheating, would you care to comment?’”

That line of questioning, according to Hogan, was simply “not supported by those men, it was a cultural norm of things ‘not done’ in the early Sixties rather than an explicit rule.”

In addition to being felt as a “violation” by the administration, future access would not have been offered and “the Denebola journalist’s role in the school would have been called into question,” Hogan said.

On the other hand, a schoolwide controversy about the South “school ring” seemingly trivial on the surface was, to Hogan, nothing less than “an argument about what was Newton South’s identity.” Her listeners had to remember, “that identity was important to us then, and for the school it was by no means assured.”

Denebola was always more to Hogan than narrow journalism. “I never really considered going a newspaper, I used my good writing skills for grants, evaluation reports for the Feds.”

Anything else? “What I saw and enjoyed was the social experience—of the newspaper.

I loved knowing the teachers who were running things, the chance to attend meetings with prominent administrators like Harold Howe [who later went to the Ford Foundation

in NYC].”

Hogan sought other options.

“I had made a conscious decision that I wanted access to a higher sphere of influence, the newspaper was my vehicle. I suspect it was others’, Hogan said.

Going global was a Denebola extension. “Kennedy’s Peace Corps was very selective,” Hogan said. “From Denebola I determined the process would be based not on high but low profile.”

Which meant? “I had to show the recruiters I wasn’t a radical, that wasn’t what the Peace Corps was looking for. If you wanted what I got, Turkey and Malaysia, you had to conform to the expectations and goals of those times.”

She added, “You were a representative of your country, the face of America in some tiny village.”

Afterwards, writing an MA thesis at Boston University, Hogan focused on the disconnect between the presumed altruism of the volunteers and “what the people who were accepting those volunteers actually wanted.”

The Peace Corps wanted to provide water and electricity to “women living in the 15th century,” but those women wanted “pleated skirts and TV, the external trappings of modernization.”

What Jane Hogan had learned years earlier was to learn “how to be a good follower, which, in the end, was also leading because in retrospect, our acceptance and patience laid the groundwork for their children to move into the 21st century.”

By Jason Agress When I graduated from South, I wrote something in Denebola that, at the time, seemed kind of cliché: High school is only what you make of it. It is the choices you make and the experiences you have that determine your happiness and success.

Since writing this several years ago, I’ve gained some perspective. But the more I think about it, the more this mildly cliché assertion rings true to me.

I think Newton South students are amazing. They’re dedicated, responsible, and talented; they play music, do art, make newspapers, excel at athletics, and much more; but, most of all, they care about the things they do. South students are passionate about their ef-

forts and accomplishments – and this, in my opinion, distinguishes them from so many other people in the world.

This year I’ve had the opportunity to advise Denebola.

Throughout this experience, I’ve consistently used words like “impressed,” “proud,” and “amazed.” It’s hard not to given the tremendous accomplishments of the paper’s editors and contributors.

How many other high school papers make a 64-page anniversary edition during their month off from production?

How many other schools have students who go to eight hours of classes, sports practice in the afternoon, work on the newspaper at night, and still consistently achieve honor roll status?

No wonder I use the word

“impressed” so much.

I was able to attend some Denebola seniors’ WISE presentations in late May – you know, during that time at the very end of “senior slump.” But from these presentations, one would never imagine that slump was in high gear. Up to the very last minute, these seniors explored new territories, dedicated time to internships, and gave thoughtful presentations describing their experiences.

Did I mention this year’s senior “prank?” That Wheeler

By George Abbott White

7 June 2011

Latina non delenda est: FY12 budget to cut vital NPS program

There is no doubt that New- weren’t in the middle school wright, Johann Wolfgang von ton is as concerned about ex- program – are former middle Goethe once said, “Those who ceptional scholastic achieve- school Latin scholars. know nothing of foreign lanment as its teenagers are fretful Many contend that Latin, guages know nothing of their about their appearance. But being a dead language, has own.” Latin poses as the conwith the passing of the new summate lingual foundation budget for Fiscal Year 2012 for Goethe’s principle, see(FY12), the district delivers This ruling eliminates a ing as the entire western a seemingly fatal blow to an hemisphere uses Latin’s academic offering that has program which currently alphabet and considering proven to put these insecure has high enrollement - that it fathered the Romance teenagers on top. languages.

176 students between This ruling eliminates the South presently offers the Charles E. Blown and foundation of a program Romance languages French which currently has high Oak Hill Middle Schools. and Spanish, and offers Rusenrollment – 176 students sian, which, along with Latin, between Charles E. Brown uses a complex case system and Oak Hill Middle schools as its grammatical base.

(115 of which are in seventh no practical use in a modern From a historical sense, grade) – and which carries era dominated by linguistic learning Latin offers a unique students into the upper ech- diversity. opportunity to not only learn elon of academics.

Studies have shown, how- the language of the civilization The FY12 budget will serve ever, that Latin students have that propelled the human race the lifeline of the middle outperformed those from all forward to its current state, but school Latin program. With- other foreign languages on the also submerse oneself in Roout these seventh and eighth magnum opus of standardized man culture. grade years, young Latin testing: the SAT. Both Latin teachers for scholars in Newton cannot According to a study by the Newton South’s district, Tom reach high-level Latin cours- Educational Testing Service, Coughlin and Alice Lanckton, es; there can be no Advanced Latin students have exceeded have exposed their students Placement offerings, nor even the national average on the to Roman history in the full a fifth year option. verbal SAT by an average of sense.

In two years, the incoming 172 points, a score higher than On a high school level, freshmen will be forced to French, Spanish, German, and Lanckton adds an element of enroll in a beginner course, Hebrew students have posted Latin culture – specifically a rather than jump right to since the study began in 2003. tandem of famous and comLatin II. Last year, Latin students monly used sayings along with The decision, however, posted an average score of the tradition history from the renders more than an incon- 678, while French students founding of Rome through its venience for potential Latin trailed with a score of 633; reign as an empire – to each students. the national average that year exam she administers.

There is a chance that end- was 501.

Her students learn everything ing the program in middle The influence of the lan- from Greek and Roman myschools will have an ex- guage, however, extends be- thology to the historical context tended impact on high school yond the three-digit values of behind the renowned Carthago enrollment in Latin courses. a test score. delenda est!

The Superintendent’s proQuite frankly, Latin is ubiqMultiple sources have conposed budget states, “Al- uitous. Whether it is expressed firmed that the ending of Latin though Latin will still be of- explicitly, like in South’s motto in middle schools is only defered at the high school level, bona mens omnibus patent finitive for FY12, and that the over time, this will most likely (“a good mind is open to all program can be revived for result in reduced enrollment things”), or implicitly, like in the following fiscal year. The in Latin at all levels.” the brand name Asics, which is hope among students, parents, T h i s i s a n u n d e r s t a t e - an acronym for the English ver- and teachers alike is that next ment. Roughly two-thirds sion of a famous Latin maxim, year the School Committee of South’s current Latin IV Latin still prevails in American and Superintendant will realize class – the highest-level and global culture. the influence of the invaluable course with students who A German poet and play- language.

photo taken from internet source

With the cut of middle school Latin, Latin teacher Alice Lanckton may see less students in her classes.

Hey Denebo-sen11ors: As always, it’s been an enormous pleasure Commons beach – with the creativity and engineering behind it – was also the product of a Denebola senior. Though it was entertaining, imagine the logistical challenges that needed to be solved in order for the endeavor to be such a success.

T h e s e students demonstrated the qualities I’ve already written about – dedication, responsibility, and talent. However, they also showed me how diverse their interests are and how well they seek positive – some-

No wonder I use the word “impressed” so much

times nontraditional – learning experiences. They’re well rounded and have a constant thirst for doing “good things.”

These “good things” are obviously not limited to Denebola’s participants (though the newspaper is, for me, a window into them). I would argue that every student at Newton South is exceptional in some way – and I don’t think this is a coincidence.

South is a great community. Its staff is top notch and fosters an atmosphere in which students can succeed.

Students have teachers whom they trust, rely on, and from whom they can seek guidance.

Students and staff mutually benefit from each other’s contributions to the community. At South, creativity, hard work, and innovation are the norms –

and that’s part of what makes it such a great place to learn and grow as a person.

As I watch the class of 2011 prepare for their graduation, I can’t help but think of how much they’ve accomplished as a group; even more so, I wonder what great things they will go on to in college and beyond.

I’m glad to have played a role in supporting these students in their journeys through high school. I’m joyful when they tell me how much my and my colleagues’ support means to them. I’m proud to call myself a member of the South community.

Good luck to you Volume 50 sen11ors and your 2011 peers. I know you don’t need it, but it’s always nice to hear it anyhow.

7 JUNE 2011

Denebola

This year in pictures

News A3

Denebola

News A4

7 June 2011

Athletes engage in service projects

By Noah Rivkin Over the course of the year, the Newton Athletes Serving Community (ASC) club has been involved in some of the biggest community service projects that Newton has to offer. The ASC use not only athletes but also anyone willing to put in the extra time on a weekend to help out. “[The] ASC is a group that is special because it really spans all different social circles. Although it stands for Athletes Serving Community, the truth is that all kinds of kids from different grades and backgrounds come together to help out with community service in Newton and the Greater Boston area,” ASC Co-President Yoonchan Choi said.

Throughout the year, ASC has helped make many charity events a success.

“Our biggest event is most definitely Christmas in the city,” Choi said. “That’s the event that always reminds me why I participate in ASC. It reminds me of how much I have and that I need to give back to others who are less fortunate that I am.”

As for the Special Olympics, Choi added,

“We really do whatever is needed of us, whether it be helping facilitate the events or making arts and crafts.”

Not only does ASC help with events, its members also provide a positive atmosphere to the activities that they help. At a recent event, the ASC was serving food at an American Legion Post

ASC’s Calender of Events September 2010

Sept 25- Special Olympics Fishing Derby

October 2010

Oct 17- Paddy’s Road Race Oct 31- Boys & Girls Club Road Race

November 2010

Nov 13- Cradles to Crayons

December 2010

Dec 14- Firefighters’ Christmas Party Dec 18- Christmas in the City Part I (Playing Santa) Dec 19- Christmas in the City Part II (The Party)

January 2011

Jan 30- Special Olympics Bowling Derby

February 2011

Feb 13- Special Olympics Basketball Tournament

March 2011

Mar 5- Kevin Clancy Basketball Tournament

April 2011

April 8- Boys & Girls Club Luau

May 2011

May 1- Walk for Hunger May 15- Newton Serves

June 2011

June 5- 4th Annual Newton 10K Race June 19- Special Olympics Summer Games

400 party.

Initially, the party seemed to be bland and uneventful.

“No one was dancing at the party we were at,” junior Lily Maltz said. “We decided that we had to do something to lighten up the mood, so we started a dance party all by ourselves.”

This sense of fun-loving is something that ASC brings to all its events, big or small.

Choi and the other ASC members hope to bring their spirit and aid to the upcoming events in the next school year.

“Although its really frequently said, I think a lot of us in Newton forget sometimes how lucky we are for everything we have and it’s really important for us to give back to the community,” Choi said.

“We can never do enough.

ASC just tries to be there and give the help we can.”

photos contributed by the asc

Superintendent discusses 2012 school finances

By Rutul Patel and Daniel Barabasi Denebola: Can you explain the budget and the decisions you made regarding it?

David Fleishman: The big challenge in the budget was that we had a $4.4 million budget gap which means that our expenses, if we were to take everything that we have right now, every program every teacher, and move it up to next year we would be $4.4 million short. We had to figure out how to come up and meet that gap. We did that in a variety of ways. Our last option was to touch classrooms. We wanted to figure out other ways to solve the budget problem.

For example we looked at administrative items, reducing staff in non-teaching areas. But when you’re talking about $4.4 million, it gets difficult.

We already saved money through privatizing the lunch program. Then we had to reduce some teaching positions.

We knew that but we wanted to figure out another way, like at the elementary schools we reduced some special ed aids and hired more teachers and saved some money. But it turned out that we couldn’t have the same number of teachers as last year.

We also did a $1 million of fees. The reason we did the fees is because it kept the teachers in the classrooms.

And then we reduced teachers across the system. Then the high school principles looked at what courses the students want first and then figure out how we get every teacher we need. In the end we ended up reducing some teaching positions but we really didn’t want to.

My goal is to get some money bank from the state budget that is being finalized, so from those positions that we reduced from the high school I hope we can restore some of those positions. But it was a real challenge to restore those positions because we can’t spend money that we don’t have.

D: How do you feel about cutting the early music classes cut? Classes at the elementary and middle school level.

DF: Class sizes are not going up at the elementary level. So if you think about elementary schools you have teachers in a classroom, in art, in music, in PE, and in the library. At the elementary level we reduced teachers from the library and music unfortunately, but we tried to maintain the teachers

photo from internet source

in the class. We’re hopeful that when we get more money in we can increase art and music class times that were previously reduced. What we didn’t want to do is burden one area disproportionately.

D: Can you tell me about the purpose and history behind the user fees?

DF: We’re putting in fees for athletic, theatre, and for student activities. We don’t love fees, but if we look at the options, our options were to make a lot of reductions or to do the fees.

But what we’re going to do is look at it again in the fall to see what the

impact of the fees are to make sure there aren’t less students participating in activities.

D: The football fees have risen considerably as opposed to other sports. How come we have disproportionate fees across the board?

DF: The reason is that some activities, like football, are a lot more expensive to run. The cost of the equipment and coaching is more for some activities.

The fear is that some students will be unable to pay the fees, so we are making sure that the financial assistance continues.

D: What about clubs and other activities that only use

the space of the school to run?

DF: The school system has to pay some of the advisors, so that’s what some of the fees are for. Also, rather than paying per club you pay $125 at the start of the school year and then do whatever club you want.

D: Some students feel that South is no longer like a public school because of the money that has to be paid for most activities. What is your view on this?

DF: Schools are primarily funded by taxes, but the fees guarantee that we don’t have to fire a lot of teachers. I look at this as tradeoffs. The decision was made that we would rather have the education level the same as in the past and to introduce fees to keep this level up. This year was really tough because we lost a lot of money from the federal government when the stimulus bill expired.

The question for students is would you rather not have fees and have one less class?

D: You say you don’t want to touch classes. But cuts in teachers have increased class sizes dramatically. How effective is learning if there are 36 students per class?

DF: Obviously we want to have class sizes smaller. It’s

not ideal, but students can still learn in large classes although we are losing the ability to do small group discussions. Do I think students will still do well? Yes, but we are still losing some aspects of class. It’s a real challenge, but we are hoping to decrease class sizes if more money comes in.

D: There are some students who feel that North has received the lion’s share of the money from the budget with their “cool” technology. Does the money for North inflict with the budget?

DF: The truth behind this is that whenever you build a high school you borrow the money.

We are paying off the $200 million over the next 30 years, but it still drains some of the money from the budget. Although, newer schools are more energy efficient, so we are saving some money on that.

D: What do you see the near future of the budget effects being?

DF: The goal was to preserve the student experience to the greatest extent possible, thus the fees. For that student who goes back to Newton South next year, we hoped that school looks a lot like it did this year in terms of courses, quality of teachers, and class sizes.

GRAPHICS FROM FY2012 BUDGET

Denebola

7 June 2011

South junior Mehran Jahedi skips senior year for college

By Robert Wang Unlike most of his peers, junior Mehran Jahedi isn’t worrying about senior year anymore.

Instead, he is preparing to head off to college with the Class of 2011 this coming fall.

Following a similar path that his sister, Beeta, took, Jahedi applied to a five year college program, during which he would be able to study at Simon’s Rock College for three years and then study at either Dartmouth or Columbia Technical for the final two years.

Jahedi first heard about this opportunity from his sister’s friend.

Jahedi described the application process as difficult and competitive, requiring similar materials of an early decision application except one year in advance.

In December, Jahedi began writing the application. He was required to submit his transcript, essays, and college supplements.

Jahedi described the essays as difficult, one of which required him to write a philosophical paper. In addition, he had two interviews, and an assessment of his readiness to

live alone.

During the application process, Jahedi contracted mononucleosis, a viral infection that causes a general feeling of fatigue. For the majority of the winter, he was out of school and unable to work, an inconvenience at that critical time frame. As a result, he had difficulty writing a supplement to go along with his application.

While the process was a difficult endeavor, Jahedi says the school itself is relatively relaxed, with smaller class sizes

and less competition.

“There are less than 400 students [at Simmons] and they collaborate more than they compete. It’s a [much] different setting from South,” he said.

In three years, Jahedi will receive a Bachelor’s degree from

Simon’s Rock, and after going to Columbia or Dartmouth Tech, he will receive another degree. Jahedi, however, will not receive his high school diploma since he does not have the required English credits.

As a result, he will be an eligible candidate for certain high level jobs with his Bachelors’ degree but not others since he does not have a high school diploma.

The Advanced Placement (AP) classes Jahedi is currently taking this year include chemistry and United States history, and these will be counted as college credits in Simon’s Rock if he receives a score of five on the AP exam.

He also studied for the Advanced Placement for macroeconomics and microeconomics, but chose to cancel the tests after finding out that PHOTO BY ALEY LEWIS he had been accepted to Simon’s Rock.

Like many seniors, he said he is currently slumping, but he is still trying to maintain respectable grades. For his scholarship, he has to re-apply to the two-year college he plans to attend.

News A5

Class Officers and South Senate Class of 2012 President Greg Ly Officers Ridita Arefin Michael Duggan Ari Ebstein Elizabeth Odvarka Class of 2013 President Emily Ho Officers Yoonchan Choi Chris Keo Shawsheen Rezaei Mike Shugrue Class of 2014 President Susie Frechter Officers Melanie Gundersheim J.H. McBreen Alex Verbitsky

Whitsons brings positive changes to school cafeteria

By Rutul Patel When school started this year, one of the biggest changes that students and faculty noticed was the cafeteria. After a long and difficult struggle with the School Committee, South’s cafeteria, and all the cafeterias in Newton Public School systems, was forced to downsize.

A $500,000 budget cut left the cafeterias crippled.

The Newton Public School food distribution (cafeteria) program ran a deficit of nearly $1 million a year. This was the reason for the budget cut.

The new budget, which cut $500,000 from the NPS food distribution program, aimed to save the city money by removing staff.

This decision, however, also hit the quality of food served. In June of last year the cafeteria at South served 11 different choices each day to students, while in September, after the budget cut was initiated, there were only five.

The fall was a very bleak time for the cafeterias. Where usually there were kids pushing and shoving for the deli or a burger, now the cafe is empty.

The question of cafeteria privatization first arose when the city began looking for ways to minimize expenditures and maximize worker efficiency. Their efforts began after the economic recession caused a financial crisis in Newton.

Although the situation looked bleak for the cafeteria, in January a private company, Whitsons New England Inc., set up shop at South and has seen great reception.

“The food’s a lot better than it was in the fall,” junior Ekin Dedeoglu said.

Bo Mastykaz, a chef and the Manager of Whitsons at South, came to the school in June and immediately noticed its uniqueness.

“We came in here and we saw that the kids are into a healthier style of foods. Since I’ve been here, we’ve served more and more fresh fruits and fruit cups and offered more salads,” Mastykaz said.

Being such a healthy school, Mastykaz hopes to keep offering the foods they do now and bring new products to the school next year.

PHOTOS BY ALEY LEWIS

South and North team up for transportation safety project

By Andreas Betancourt Numerous accidents and fatalities in 2009 and early 2010 prompted Mayor Setti Warren to put together the Transportation Advisory Committee, or TAC for short, to make Newton a safer place.

Within the TAC, there is a sub-committee called the outreach and engagement committee. According to Mark Jurilla, the co-chair of this subcommittee, it was tasked with three main objectives: first, to assess the current transportation situation, second, to look into other modes of transportation, and third, to promote safety in the city.

The sub-committee had “virtually no identified budget,” Lisa Conti, another member of the TAC sub-committee, said. Because of this, the subcommittee wanted it to be as cost-effective as possible.

Conti is a Newton parent with three children currently enrolled in the Newton Public School system.

On December 4, 2009, in the middle of a day with near perfect driving conditions, Conti’s 15-year-old daughter, Arielle Conti, a then freshman at North, was hit by a car while crossing the street. All witnesses said she looked both ways before she crossed at a crosswalk. The accident left her with a broken arm and leg, and “it was completely hushed up,” Conti said.

Neither the school nor the community was notified of the accident by way of an email, a letter, or any kind of announcement.

“If students/people are notified of incidents, they are possibly more likely to be more conscientious…kids need to realize accidents and bad drivers are a reality,” she said.

The man who hit Conti’s daughter is a Newton resident, and according to Conti, already had “a horrific driving record” with multiple suspensions of his license.

This accident triggered Conti to join the TAC. “When the

mayor heard my story he was deeply moved,” Conti said.

“The most effective way to do this is [to be cost effective], and to start a website.”

To create the website, Conti went to both South and North for help with the technical aspect of designing a website.

While the sub-committee is in control of what gets put on the website, the web design and animation are done by three North students and the video components are done by South students.

According to Carol Ober, the film class teacher at South, participation is optional because her two classes only heard about the project about a month ago while students were already working on their final projects.

So far, only one student has submitted a video.

Daniel Freidman, the freshman at South who submitted a video, said he wanted to help raise awareness for traffic safety.

However, he cautioned: “If it’s just another website on the web that you only come across on Stumbleupon.com, it won’t be very effective at all.”

Max Vo, a senior at North working on web design under teacher Chris Murphy agrees.

“In order for the message to really spread, this website has to be effectively publicized, especially to Newton youth,” he said.

The website is directed toward pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists of all ages, so the sub-committee will try to raise publicity primarily through schools, but also through various churches,

synagogues, community centers, and senior centers. Jurilla also plans to issue a press release later this month.

The website itself will cover a broad range of transportationrelated safety, from how to put on a helmet for cyclists to how to safely cross the streetfor pedestrians.

The site will also include other information, like a link to the MBTA website and the top ten most danger- ous intersections

in Newton. Jurilla says he wants it to be a “one stop shop” for Newton residents.

Conti also referenced London as a now very biker-friendly, safe city. “If they can do it, so can we,” she said.

Our primary objective is to cultivate “a culture of safety,” Conti said.

Currently, the website is not up, but it should be operational

by June 22 if all goes according to plan.

GRAPHIC COURTESY OF TCA

Retirements A6

Denebola

7 June 2011

Retirements

Dorothy McQuillan

By Noah Rivkin If anyone had told Dorothy McQuillan in 1973 that she would end up being Newton South’s head Librarian, she would not have believed it. Starting out as an English teacher in the North Reading Public School system, McQuillan had no intentions of becoming a librarian.

However, when a position opened up for fulltime librarian at the high school, they offered McQuillan the job. “From there I went to Simmons to get my librarian’s degree,” McQuillan said. “It was my second time there because I had already gotten my Masters in teaching at Simmons.”

When she attained her librarian’s degree at Simmons, McQuillan kicked off what would end up being a 30 plus year career as a librarian. “I worked in the Sharon public school system for 25 years, and came to Newton South about 11 years ago,” McQuillan said.

McQuillan’s reputation preceded her. In Sharon, where McQuillan used to be the head librarian, McQuillan completely revamped the library.

Colleague and fellow librarian Ethel Downey said, “What she did there was something no one had done with the library before or since.

“She re-organized it, re-fur-

nished it, and most importantly, revitalized it in a way that still stands today.”

As head Librarian at South, McQuillan has made quite the impression. “I’ve worked with her since 2006. Let me assure you that you will not find someone who knows

By Rutul Patel and Robert Wamg After working at Newton South for 24 years, secretary Judy Mobillia is ending her final year at south with the end of this year. Mobilia started her career at South in 1988 working as a part-time secretary for the first 5 years.

In 1990, Mobilia started working in the records office. Back then she had less of a responsibility and workload. “There were smaller classes, less kids, and only threehouses,” Mobillia said.

Today, students can see Mobillia around the back of the main office.

To many she may seem like just an ordinary secretary whose job entails handling casual paperwork and the occasional phone calls, but she’s much more than that.

When students sign up for advance placement (AP) exams, apply for early application (EA) for colleges, or even just fill in their normal course load, all that paper work then goes through Ms. Mobillia.

The geeral processes that nearly all students go through with such ease is thanks to Ms. Mobilia. Complicated paperwork and loop holes having to with the APs are a forte of Mobilia.

“Signing up for the AP exams

was a breeze thanks to Mrs Mobillia,” senior Joe Marini said.

Unbeknownst to most, Mobillia does much more than just the APs exams. She is also the primary person in charge of helping students with early application (EA) for colleges.

“Back when I started, there weren’t that many kids doing

By Astha Agarwal For over 20 years, ELL teacher Carol McNally has worked in one of the most diverse parts of the building and has been listening to and understanding the stories of hundreds of immigrant students from around the world.

Not only has she helped her students learn English, but she has also guided each person in transitioning to South and American culture.

But McNally was not always sure about becoming a teacher.

After majoring in and completing her graduate work in Russian, McNally had no plans to pursue a career in education.

Her teaching career initially began when she had finished college. Upon hearing that Acton-Boxborough was looking for a Russian teacher, she immediately took the job.

“I fell in love with teaching then,” McNally said. After teaching English and Russian at ActonBoxborough for a number of years, McNally came to the Newton Public Schools. She initially taught

at Day Middle School and Newton North before beginning work fulltime at South in 2000.

McNally combined her interest in Russian and English with her passion for working with other

Melissa Hammel with others in the department to go through a NEYC, National Association for the Education of Young Children, certification for the preschool. “It was a very thorough process with many portfolios to fill out,” she commented. Of the three full boxes in her room, there

library has drastically changed, due in large part to her efforts. “When I came here, the library was a much quieter, more traditional place,” McQuillan said. “When I became department head, I made a point of loosening it up and making it more inviting.”

Just as McQuillan has clearly influenced her colleagues, she has gotten much back by working with them. “I really have enjoyed working with the faculty. Not only the people in my department, but also the teachers. They are positive, creative, and always willing to take on a challenge,” McQuillan said. “I’m going to miss the people. They are all just really fun to work with.”

In terms of plans for retirement, McQuillan plans to relax. “I have no big plans as of yet. I’m just going to stay home, play in my garphoto by rutul patel den, and not worry about anything. the organization of a library better I don’t need to go anywhere this than Dorothy,” fellow Librarian summer, because now, I can go Marney Bolstad said. “She’s a low anywhere whenever I want,” Mckey, easy going, and an extremely Quillan said. competent teammate.”

As McQuillan’s influential tenure Downey agreed, “Dorothy at South comes to a close, her colknows libraries in and out. She’s leagues explained just how special can [tell you] where a book is, its a person they are losing. number, its section, whatever [you “She’s a mentor, a guide, a good need to know]; she can do it off the role model, has a great sense of top of her head. It never ceases to humor, and she someone to look up impress me.” to,” Downey said. “We will miss Since her arrival at South, the her terribly.”

By Daniel Barabasi After 14 years of teaching at South, Family and Consumer Sciences Department Head and Early Childhood Education teacher Melissa Hammel is concluding her final year. She has been the department head for the last 8 years and is the current director of South’s preschool program.

When Hammel first came to South, the Family and Consumer Sciences Department was completely different. “We used to be in the Cutler House with much smaller enrollment, around 100 students total,” she said.

In January, 2003, the department moved to Goldrick House. “It was really exciting for us to anticipate the adding of new construction,” Hammel said. “Now we have over 650 students in the department as well.”

Hammel’s primary teaching class, Early Childhood Education, has also seen many transformations in her time at South.

The class, 14 years ago, used to be called Nursery School Techniques and the preschool was only open four times a week for two and a half hours a day.

She also began making changes to the way the preschool was run. Now, the preschool is open every weekday for the full day, with many students helping out.

In the last year, Hammel worked

was a box for each classroom, each with 10 standards exemplified with pictures of the preschool. “It was a lot of a time and effort, but it was worth it,” Hammel said.

Melissa Hammel enjoyed her time at South and realized that the students are one of the things she will miss the most. “I loved working at South, it is a vibrant and educational community,” she said. “It has been a privilege to be with such wonderful students

and staff. [The students] are very professional and have high levels of concentration when assigned a task; they always make sure to finish it perfect.”

Sophomore Emma Race has a similar view of Hammel. “She’s just a really bright and wise person with so much to offer on the education of children,” Race said. “She’s always full of stories and insightful anecdotes which make the class more interesting.

I’ve learned so much this year, and Newton South will definitely be at a loss without her.”

Senior Dorothy Tang, Hammel’s student for three years, will miss Hammel dearly. “She has the warmest smile and laugh,” Tang said. “She’s so caring as she always takes the time to ask about updates in our lives. I think [the thing] I’ll always remember [the most] is her candy jar.”

Hammel also realizes the impact of her, and her department’s, classes. “The Family and Consumer Sciences give students the opportunity to think about carrier choices. It is very timely to the current generation’s interests,” she said. “A lot of my students go on to major in childhood education.”

All in all, South will be losing a treasured teacher, innovator, and friend.

compiling them all and then responsible for the mailing.

While Mobillia was still in the Ed Center, the printing/mailing process of the schedules and report cards was extremely slow. Once she was given the responsibility, however, she the report cards and schedules arrived faster than ever.

Mobilia’s workload has risen quite a bit. The number of students attending South is larger than ever before, which means more work for Mobilia. Even though the workload may have increased, Mobillia still does the job with “speed and ease.”

Throughout her time at South Mobilia has seen it all. She witnessed all the major renovations of the building, the addition of the Goldrick House, and even three generations of students.

Now that her time at South is coming to a photo by rutul patel close, Mobilia looks forearly applications for college. ward to traveling with her famiSome where around 10 percent ly, enjoying the Cape, spending actually did it, but now a days time with her grandchildren, its around 50 percent,” Mobilia and has already planned a trip said. Even though her workload to Italy in October. may have increased, Mobillia ”All I can say is that she’s still does the job with the same a great person to work with. enthusiasm and zeal as the say She’s funny; she’s smart, and she first started.

Im going to miss her so much.

Mobilia is also in charge of The main office, the school, the report cards and schedules they just wont be the same for all the students. She is the without her,” fellow main office person who is in charge of secretary Jackie Casto said.

another program, called the Integrated program, to focus on kids with Asperger’s syndrome and Non-Verbal Learning Disability (NVLD). He used various teaching methods to aide the kids but the co-taught classes were the most successful. Co-taught is a process where Principe and another colleague for a department (i.e. English or math) would teach the same kids at the same time.

During his tenure at South, photo by denebola staff Principe went to North for six

By Rutul Patel months to fill the position interim In January of 1978, current of assistant principal. When he Special Education teacher Anthony came back, he began working in Principe began what was to be a 34 the learning center and has been year career at South. there ever since.

Principe started out in the CutAt the Learning Center, Principe ler Houses’ Life Skills program has had some of his most memo(now called Connections) and rable experiences. worked there for 12 years. Dur“I worked with a student once ing the 1980s, Principe coached who was brilliant and had OCD,” varsity football, but then quit only Principe said. “He was a perfecto come back to coaching in 2003. tionist and wouldn’t hand any of In 1991, Principe made his first his assignments in until they were big switch and began teaching in perfect. He was having a difficult the Turnaround program, a place time when [he and I crossed paths]. for kids who aren’t achieving for The long and short is that after a reasons such as emotional distress three-year relationship, he ended and learning disabilities. up going to Brandeis and then After six years in Turnaround, culinary school.”

Principe developed the Compass What most people do not grasp program in 1997. This program is that Principe’s job description targeted kids with ailments that isn’t only to help kids at the curinterfered with their school work. riculum two level or those with Depression, obsessive compulsive special needs. His job is to monitor disorder, and bipolar disorder were and assist all kinds of kids who are some of the diseases that Principe having a difficult time. tackled.

“I’ve monitored a case load of Later, in 2003, Principe created kids from [Advanced Placement]

level to the curriculum two level ones. My job is to work with kids that have specific learning disabilities and [help them overcome those disabilities],” Principe said.

As his 34th and final year comes to a close, Principe recalls the various changes at South. When he started, he was a part of the younger generation and most of the faculty was his age. Now, “All the older teachers have moved on and the [new generation is coming in],” Principe said.

Principe also sees the size of the school as a real change. There were times when the whole school had only 900 students in it and now the near 2,000 is a giant increase.

But an even bigger change at South was the reception of kids with special needs.

“The faculty is making a strong effort to bring departments together to address the needs of the students,” Principe said.

After finishing this year, Principe has a couple plans for his retirement. Like most teachers, he has dabbled in different professions too. He may look into going back to an older profession of advertising as a possible full time career.

He also wouldn’t mind coaching football again. But for now he plans to take it easy and has already planned a trip to Italy in October.

“It’s been very rewarding [working at South]. I’ve enjoyed coming to work every day and working with the faculty who are respective for kids with disabilities,” Principe said.

Judy Mobilia

Carol McNally

photo by rutul patel

people.

“I love my subject matter-Russian, English, and ELL,” McNally said. “Of all the things that one could do with those subjects, teaching allows the most interactions with people. I really need the interactions with the students

to bring the subject matter alive.”

Teaching in the ELL department has allowed McNally to understand her students and work with them for an extended period of time.

As the ELL students return to her classes year after year, McNally finds it easier to interact with her students for more years than other teachers at South. “[I] have students in [my] classes for a number of years, and [I] really get to know them. So in these two fields, [ELL and Russian], I really got to know the students as human beings, and that, more than the subject matter, was what I found really rewarding.”

McNally used her extra time with her students to the greatest extent possible. “[My] students are interesting people with interesting stories,” McNally said. McNally especially enjoys hearing about her students’ lives in other parts of the other world.

“My best experience is watching our ELL students graduate and see their diplomas,” McNally said.

“Students that come into the US

photo by rutul patel

Anthony Principe

Ann Walker

from another country face many challenges, especially in high school. There is obviously a barrier with language, and coming into a new culture, [but] they’ve [also] left all their friends [behind].”

Teaching at South in particular has been an unique experience for McNally.

“The South community is a wonderfully supportive and collaboratively professional community,” McNally said. “My colleagues are interesting people with interesting stories.”

Over the last two decades, McNally has had the opportunity to meet and work with new people from different backgrounds.

Now, however, McNally says that her teaching career is over.

“I’ve been in education for more than 40 years,” she said.

“It’s time to make room for someone else, [and] it’s time to move on to a different stage of my life.

“I’ll certainly miss my students.

I’ve made many professional relations as well as personal friendships,” she said. “It’s just been a wonderful environment from both a personal and professional point of view, in Newton.”

By Rutul Patel For the last 24 years, Ann Walker has been working at South with students and their special needs, both part time and a full .

Since 1987, Walker has worked at South as a learning center teacher for children with disabilities, and later became the head of the department in 1996 to the present.

Some of the changes that Walker saw with incoming years involved a need for specialization. The department is required to increase the hiring of specialized therapists such as behavior therapists for some students. There are also more teaching assistants now for those who are multi-disabled.

Walker also recalls the development of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) as something that significantly changed over the course of her career. As opposed to the situation during the beginning of Walker’s career, now the program’s vision looks ahead three to five years for an individual student.

“The IEP now includes a transition statement for students when they turn 14 and as they leave South,” Walker said.

Some of Walker’s responsibilities as the department chair include hiring and evaluating staff, keeping the department updated on new regulations

photo by rutul patel

and changes, planning workshops for the department and the school, participating in team meetings, working with other department chairs on administrative issues, and assisting disabled 8th graders and with their transition to NSHS. Walker believes that the most rewarding aspect of her career at South has been that she “[has] always enjoyed the students who have the most challenges, whether it be emotional, visually or hearing impaired or intellectual needs. To see them overcome their obstacles and graduate has certainly been rewarding.”

Walker will be missed, certainly by her fellow coworkers and her students alike as she departs from South.

“It’s been a wonderful journey working with [Walker]. [I] couldn’t have had a better boss,” Walker’s secretary Betty Kershaw said.

7 June 2011

Denebola

Semi 2011

Class of 2012 Juniors party the night away

News A7

Denebola

Centerfold A8

Centerfold A9

7 June 2011

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Amy Merino Boston University Yehonatan Meschede-Krasa Brandeis University Julia Miller Muhlenberg College Linnea Miller University of Massachusetts, Amherst Melissa Miller Clark University Sarah Miller Barnard College Chloe Milliman Case Western Reserve University Tara Misra Emerson College Adrian Montagut McGill University Rajat Mookherjee Boston University Carlos Morales Boston University Ryan Moray University of Iowa Sydney Morin Ithaca College Wendy Moy Brandeis University Sam Mozhgani Temple University Anastasia Murati University of Massachusetts, Amherst Akecia Murray Johnson & Wales University Max Nathanson United States Marine Corps Alexander Nazzaro Bunker Hill Community College Harrison Neff Columbia University Zoe Newberg University of Virginia Hannah Nussbaum McGill University Conor O’Brien Tufts University Eamonn O’Brien University of Tampa Thomas O’Hearne Mount Ida College Katherine O’Keefe Boston College Daniel Older University of Chicago Elena Origlio College of Charleston Abigail Oshins Boston University James Palmer Duke University David Park SUNY Buffalo Daniel Pasquale American University Xuefei Peng Brandeis University Rebecca Penzias Boston University Mitchell Petracca Tulane University Lisa Phat University of Massachusetts, Boston Lara Poe Boston University Austin Pollack Syracuse University Noah Portnoy University of Massachusetts, Amherst Maxwell Posner Guilford College Shireen Pourbemani University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Kara Powtak Framingham State College Justin Quinn George Washington University Daniel Ramin Gap Year Olga Rapoport Emmanuel College Danya Ravid University of Colorado at Boulder Diijon Reid Bridgewater State University Tomer Reiter Carnegie Mellon University Clarissa Ren American University Shervin Rezaei University of Massachusetts, Amherst Jae Won Rhee University of Massachusetts, Amherst Ariel Rivkin Barnard College Curtis Robbins University of Richmond Hannah Robinson Tulane University Campbell Rogers Carnegie Mellon University Caroline Rosa University of Rochester Rachel Rosenbaum Emory University Michael Rosenberg University of Hartford Laura Rosenthal Colby College Chloe Rothman Merrimack College Zachary Rothschild Denison University Melanie Rucinski Harvard University Lindsay Rudolph Mitchell College Kyle Russo George Washington University Adam Sachs Columbia University Alissa Sage Tulane University Shayna Sage University of Rhode Island Shahane Sahakian Alfred University Charlotte Sall Princeton University Anne Sallaway DePaul University Amanda Sands American University Joshua Saulny Lynn University Daniel Sazer Tulane University Adam Scherlis Brown University Jonathan Schmidt Boston University Martha Schnee College of Charleston Emma Schulman Gap Year then Colorado College Madeline Schulman Carnegie Mellon University Rachel Schy Binghamton University Andre Scott University of Hartford Alexander Seibel University of Texas at Austin Sarah Seto Tufts University

Navid Seyedmahmoud Massachusetts Bay Community College Rebecca Shait Union College Emily Shames Wesleyan University Tennyson Shanahan University of Vermont Poonam Shankar SUNY Stonybrook Shan Shao New York University Sandy Shen New York University Julia Shifrin Middlesex Community College Molly Silverman Brandeis University Ashan Singh Tulane University Julia Sloan-Cullen University of Massachusetts, Amherst Steven Soares Hampton University Lee Sokolowski University of Arizona Mollie Solon Boston College Alexander Soltoff Northeastern University Adam Sonnenberg Boston University Ryan Sonnenberg University of Illinois David SooHoo University of Massachusetts, Amherst Yvonne SooHoo Boston University Joseph Step University of Pennsylvania Paulina Sterpe Wellesley College Danielle Stubbe Brandeis University Clement Su Boston University Daniel Tagerman Northwestern University Dorothy Tang Clark University Jacob Tepper Oregon State University Thomas Terrasi Gap Year Hannah Thomas University of Rochester Benjamin Tolkin Washington University in St. Louis Dalia Tomlak University of New Hampshire Michelle Trilling Fitchburg State University Avital Tsivkin Undecided Gabriel Turetsky Boston University Samuel Ustayev University of Massachusetts, Amherst Carolina Vale Rosa Santa Clara University Maarten Van Genabeek University of Washington Michela Vawter Juniata College Matthew Vertescher McGill University Tanya Vladov Suffolk University Patrick Walsh The New School Natalie Walters University of Maryland, College Park

Daniel Wang Stony Brook University Tony Wang Washington University in St. Louis Sarah Wanger Muhlenberg College Lena Warnke University of Southern California Nathaniel Weaver College of Wooster Jocelin Weiss Skidmore College Stephanie Weng Northeastern University Leo Westebbe Clark University Albert Williams University of Massachusetts, Amherst Kaila Williams Regis College Paige Williams Bay Path College Alexander Wong Boston University Connor Wong Drexel University Jennifer Wong Harvard University Eleanor Wood Skidmore College Christina Wu University of Massachusetts, Lowell Cindy Wu Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences Jason Wu Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences Thomas Wu Boston University Zixun Wu LeHigh University Zhuoshi Xie Carnegie Mellon University Yaniv Yacoby Harvard University Danny Yang Bentley University Hye-Jung Yang McGill University Lucy Ye Boston University Wesley Yee Berklee College of Music Dennis Yelizarov New York University Regina Yip University of New Hampshire Isabelle Young Skidmore College Julia Yu Gap Year then Harvard University Kathy Yu Carleton College YingYing Yu Brown University Brian Yung University of Massachusetts, Boston Sophia Zarsky University of Toronto Jessica Zellner-Kline University of Colorado at Boulder Daniel Zhang Massachusetts Institute of Technology Julia Zhang Mount Holyoke College Mengzhou Zhou University of Pennsylvania Samuel Zoloth Colby College

News A10

Denebola

Prom 2011

Seniors cap off their high school life with one last party at the State Room in Boston

7 June 2011

Denebola

7 June 2011

Crosby reinvents Curriculum II

Environmental club’s rebirth

contributed by the environmental club

By Thibaut Xiong Students in the environmental club have been working to make South a more environmentally conscious community.

The Environmental Club, which meets every Wednesday J Block in Room 2101, has existed at South for many years but is still unknown to most.

Lately, the club has been attempting to recruit more underclassmen by gaining recognition in the school.

The primary goals of the club are to educate students on eco-friendly habits and to make South more environmentally aware.

They have helped introduce a new recycling program this year called “mixed recycling,” where all recyclables can be put into one bin to promote participation in recycling.

The club often goes to advisories to let students know about how they can recycle properly and help the environment. Last year, they had speakers come in to do presentations on green architecture.

A typical meeting consists of members brainstorming ideas for environmental awareness, fundraising, and little projects to do around the school. From that, they decide on what issues to focus on more specifically.

Junior Adam Macalister, President of the Environmental Club, said that he joined the club his freshman year because “[he is] very environmentally

conscious and aware and wants to spread that as much as [he] can”.

When Macalister was a rising sophomore, he was one of the only three non-seniors in the club.

Because of his passion for environmental awareness, he did not want the club to die out and so he rallied his friends to join and revived the club the following year.

Most people know how to be more “eco-friendly” through recycling and waste management. On a larger scale, Macalister stated, “in order to make the change that we need to make as a planet, and people as a whole, we need to elect environmentally conscious representatives and put environmental and climate change issues as a priority.”

He recommends to the student body that they should, “do some research, get environmentally aware, and know what’s going on. There are dozens and dozens of organizations that are easy to find and get involved in.

“If joining an organization isn’t an option, just be aware of how your actions affect the environment; try not to be wasteful.”

The club is involved with many outside organizations as well.

This year, members from the club travelled to Washington DC to take part in Power Shift, a youth environmental awareness rally.

The club is also involved in Students for a Just and Stable Future by having its members attend rallies and marches while actively trying to phase out coal burning in Massachusetts by 2015.

By Dan Kats Originating in both Curriculum II Chemistry classes during first semester, a new methodology of teaching Curriculum II students, called Student Centered Modular Learning (SCML), has potential to spread to other classes, departments, and schools.

The approach is currently being explored by the World Languages, History and Social Science, and Mathematics Departments, Newton North High School, and the Newton Middle Schools.

Curriculum II Chemistry Teacher Alan Crosby had a challenge presented to him at the beginning of the school year: teaching a Curriculum II class for the first time.

He came into the year with the intention of teaching his lone block of Curriculum II with the popular method of teaching by lecturing to the class.

However, Crosby soon realized that this approach would not work and would need to be revised. “I’ve got sophomores, juniors, and seniors. I’ve got a range of different abilities and learning styles within the same classroom,” Crosby said.

“And to hold them at the same pace just didn’t seem to me like it would work at all and it became very quickly apparent to me.”

Crosby realized that the students would have to be able to move at different speeds, according to their needs.

Lectured classes have to go at the pace of the slower learners so that they would not get left behind; however, the faster learners would as a result become bored.

This boredom would then evolve into constant disruptions that would slow the class down to an augmented extent.

Crosby also had to address the test anxiety that many Curriculum II students face. This anxiety is caused by years of taking tests without having enough time to absorb the

A lesson in sustainability

By Astha Agarwal Very soon, students will be able to spend their free blocks outside in South’s very own vegetable garden.

In an effort to make South a more sustainable school, senior electives Global Communities Sustainability and Bio Base Initiative (Greenhouse Club) collaborated to grow a garden behind the school.

Starting small, they planted a few crops like beets, radishes, and onions, and herbs such as basil, and parsley.

In the coming years, the group hopes to expand their garden in both s i z e a n d v a r i e t y. “ We h a v e a p l o t that’s 48 by 16 feet, [and] we have maybe a fourth of that cut out,” Senior and global communities student Laura Rosenthal said. “ I t ’s s o m u c h work to dig up the sod and to plant it.

We’re just getting started, [but] we hope that in the coming years the whole plot will be used.”

“We had a late start,” Family and Consumer Sciences teacher Jon Orren said, “as most [plants] will be maturing after school ends.”

Now as the end of the school year approaches, the students are facing several problems.

The plants are expected to grow very quickly and to sprout by year’s end. Unfortunately, there is no one to

News A11

take care of the crops during the summer.

“What makes planting complicated is that summertime is coming up, so we’re going to have to plan something creative for the summer,” junior Lauren Ashbrook said.

After the seniors in the global communities class graduate, the juniors running the Bio Base Initiative plan to continue taking care of the garden. The produce will be made available to the

If they are able to produce enough crops, the students aim to begin a small Farmer’s Market for the faculty and staff, which, over time, they want to expand to service the whole school.

There are “almost endless ways that the garden could be a tool for the entire school community,” Orren said.

“Right now, [however], we don’t have the sheer number of crops that we would need to have a good amount to sell,” Rosa said.

In the future, the group hopes to make the garden available for all South students to visit and enjoy.

“We want it to be a community garden, [but] right now we don’t have that much produce,” Rosa said.

The first step, Rosa said, is to get “other students involved in helping with the garden.”

Orren agreed. photo by dan kats “Any time we get a South community by couple volunteers, next year. it dramatically speeds up the They will give most of process.” their produce to the internaWorking on the garden has tional cuisine and biology been a very unique experience classes, who will be able to for the students involved as use them in various recipes well. and experiments.

“The idea of students being “In the future we want stu- able to take a break from the dents to have access to [the stressful school day and get garden] and we want the caf- outside in the garden, get eteria to start using some of [their] hands dirty, and help our vegetables,” Rosa added. make [their] school make In addition, the group hopes to sustainable, is great,” Ashstart a school-wide compost brook said. system by using compost from “It’s so fun for me to be able the cafeteria and elsewhere as to, [after] a math test, go into fertilizer for their garden. the garden,” she said.

unit’s material.

“I wanted each student to work at a pace that was comfortable,” Crosby said. “I wanted each student to be prepared and feel prepared when they are ready to take a test and for students to become better students by being more dependent on their own skills instead of being dependent on the teacher’s.”

While trying to make his students comfortable, Crosby set out to improve his students’ learning abilities. “The children need to become students. Not all people who call themselves students are what I would call a student,” Crosby said.

“Many are far too teacherdependent; they expect the teacher to tell them what to do.”

Crosby chose two existing methodologies to base SCML on: the Keller Plan and PeerLed Team Learning. When he first crafted the new methodology, Crosby was unsure of how successful it would be and went to the other Curriculum II teacher, Marianne McChesney, for help.

“I was talking to Ms. McChesney and I was talking about the future and just the way I was saying it, she looked at me and she said, ‘are you asking me if I want

to do this again? Because if you are, the answer is yes.’”

Crosby said. “For me, this was a big turning point, I had a lot of self-doubt.”

SCML splits the required work for each term into around five modules and two projects.

Each module is dedicated to one or two closely related chapters.

To complete a module, a student must complete an opening activity, which is a simple lab that introduces the concepts of the chapter(s) of the module, a worksheet, a lab activity, reading notes from the textbook, and a self-assessment, which is a self-quiz that the student can do online to show that he or she is ready for the test.

Whenever he or she feels ready, a student can ask his teacher to give him or her a unit quiz. Grading is not influenced by how well a student does on each quiz, but instead by how many projects and modules the student is able to get through while passing each quiz with a score of 70 percent of better.

If a student does not show competence in the unit material by scoring at least 70 percent, he or she may retake the quiz as many times as necessary to achieve competency.

“There’s no ‘fail,’ there’s ‘how long does it take to de-

velop competency,’” Crosby said.

Each completed module or project counts as one point; if a module is partially completed at the end of the term, Crosby may count it as a one-half point.

Every one and one-half points cause a student’s grade to go up one letter grade; a one-half point causes a student’s grade to go up a third of a letter grade.

Six points are required for an A, four and one-half for a B, three for a C, one and onehalf for a D, and less than one for an F. To complete a module, a student must complete a checklist created by Crosby to ensure that he or she learns all the necessary material. Each item on the checklist must be checked and signed off by a teacher assistant, student teacher, or teacher.

The class is showing that it is successful in helping students learn more. In previous years, the Curriculum II chemistry classes have gotten through between 14 and 16 chapters; however, this year’s SCML classes have students who have gone through all 25 chapters in the textbook with a level of competency.

Crosby also expects that the majority of students will get through 20 chapters.

graphic by daniel barabasi

The graph displays the level agreement of students on the questionnaire. Positive values mean more favorable average answer or a success in the program.

Theft & Vandalism at South

photo by rutul patel

By Daniel Barabasi Within the last year, incidents of vandalism and theft around South have gained school-wide attention, prompting concern and frustration from both students and faculty.

The two largest incidents took place in the library study rooms and in the band room. In response, all music rooms were locked when unattended and the library study rooms were closed until the end of the year.

The library study rooms had a history of being vandalized. The most recent event, however, overtook previous ones.

At first, a wall was punched in one of the study rooms, approximately 14 inches in diameter. In the third study room, the trim around a tile began to come up, and students deposited trash into the hole behind the tile.

“We tried to use a sign-in sheet, but it was too burdensome,” library head Dorothy McQuillan said. “It’s really difficult to control what happens with so many students, so we found the best op-

tion to be closing the study rooms.”

In the past, the library has had problems with stolen and missing books as well.

The band room has had similar problems in the past, however recent actions also stood out.

In the past month, an electric guitar of a student that was in a locked locker has been stolen, and the lock was left broken as well. Around the same time a storage closet door was kicked in, breaking the deadbolt.

Before these incidents, there were reports of microphones and digital interfaces being stolen from the music technology rooms, according to music teacher Jason Squinobal. “ We w a n t t o p r e v e n t [thefts and vandalism] from happening,” Squinobal said.

“Unfortunately, it prevents students from accessing instruments.”

Thefts of student property have also been common at South through out the year. According to Goodwin housemaster Charles Myette, electronics, usually

cell phones and iPods, cash, clothing, and gift cards, are most commonly reported, with an occasional bike or computer as well.

The process for reporting thefts is relatively easy. “If a student or teacher realizes something was taken they come to us [housemasters],” Myette said. “Students tell [the housemasters] what was stolen, where, and at what time. An instinent report is filled out with a contact number.”

In larger cases the information is given to a youth police officer who files an official police report.

Myette recalls that theft has been an unfluctuating event at South, perhaps the only rise coming with emergence of handheld electronics.

Hope still remains for lost or stolen items, Myette said.

“Some stuff gets returned by the police. Occasionally, a good citizen finds the stolen or lost item, and returns it to the owner. It’s a good feeling for some to return items, and I hope more people will realize this in the future.”

Awards A12

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Senior Awards

Department Awards Art

7 June 2011

Cum Laude Awards

Ceramics Award- Lily Fein, Chloe Rothman, Shahara Sahakian Drawing and Painting Award- Jessica Lu Glass Award- Camille Brugnara Photography Book Award- Michele Abercrombie

English

Dorothy Gonson Excellence in Expository Writing- Harry Neff Senior Personal Essay Prize- Rachel Leshin Senior Persuasive Essay Prize- Samantha Levin

Family and Cosumer Sciences

Silver Award- Dorothy Tang Outstanding Service Award- Rebecca Feldman, Jenny Fleisher, Wendy Moy, Rebecca Penzias, Lindsay Rudolf, Dorothy Tang, Jessica Sellner-Kline

Leigh Alon, Sarah Blumenthal, Daniel Connolly, Avery Forrow, Liam Friar, Rina Friedberg, Michael Fuchs, Connie Gong, Samanth Gross, Bianca Ho, Jaclyn Horowitz, Jeffrey Hurray, Jennifer Kaufman, Idun Klakegg, Hyun Lee, Noah Lerner, Rachel Leshin, Samantha Levin, Hejian Liu, Tanya Lyon, Liesl Matzka, David Melly, Yehonatan Meschede-Krasa, Daniel Older, James Palmer, Campbell Rogers, Rachel Rosenbaum, Laura Rosenthal, Melanie Rucinski, Adam Sachs, Alissa Sage, Charlotte Sall, Daniel Sazer, Shan Shao, Joseph Step, Benjamin Tolkin, Tony Wang, Jennifer Wong, Zixun Wu, Zhoushi Xie, Dennis Yelizarov, Julia Yu, Jolie Yu, Daniel Zhang, Mengzhou Zhou

House Marshalls

Fitness, Health, Wellness, and Athletics

Betty Sabetti Award- Emily Shames Leonard S. Adelman Memorial Award- David Melly Danny Mendelson Athletic Awards- Jeffrey Alkins, Kathy O’Keefe

Cutler- Alexandera Fen, Joshua Kruskal, Josh Saulny, Dorothy Tang, Paige Williams Goldrick- Jerret Atkinson, Philip Banaszek, Maria Dare, Michael Fuchs, Kyla Kouadio, Ariel Rivkin Goodwin- Audrey DaDalt, Samuel Dorfman, Meryl Hayes, Aria LaBonte, Lee Sokolowski, Christina Wu Wheeler- Dan Connolly, Maxwell Ebb, Alex Karys, Lily Konowitz, Mitch Petraca, Chloe Rothman

Histroy and Social Sciences

Class Officers

The Paul H Gottlieb Memorial Award- Idun Klakeegg, Ben Tolkin Dr. Marshall Cohen Award for Justice and Action- Rebecca Penzias

Mathematics

A. James Short Mathematic Award- Hyun Lee, Tomer Reiter Computer Science Award- Yaniv Yacoby

Science

Brough-Hood-McLaren Award- Max Ezekiel Science Department Book Award- Tony Wang Sol Verdun Memorial Chemistry Award- Daniel Zhang

World Language

Award for Superior Achievement, Effort and Service- Avery Forrow The James D. Blum Memorial Award Prize Book- Zoe Newberg

Activities Awards

National Forensic League Academic All-Star- Harry Neff, Ben Tolkin, Jolie Yu Theater Arts- Charlotte Sall, Sarah Wanger, Sophia Zarsky

House Awards

Cutler House Meritorious Service Award- Alex Lyon Goldrick House Community Service Award- Camille Brugnara Goodwin House Citizen Award- Jessica Kang Wheeler House Humanitarian Award- Natalie Walters

School-Wide Awards

Irene Bickelman Award- Leo Westebbe Dr. Bob Hoffman Memorial Award- Ashley Dennis Margy Segel-Rozett Humanitarian Award- Murray Levy Terastar- Fernando Andino-Valdez Robert V. Braceland Memorial Award- Nimra Cheema Maxine Chansky Community Service Award- Wendy Moy Philip Leibovich Memorial Award- Catherine Martlin Principal’s Award- David Altman, Daniel Older, Charlotte Sall, Leo Westebbe Socrates Lagios Memorial Award- Shahane Sahakian Robert B. Swett Memorial Award (Leadership)- David Melly Katherine E. Torrant Award- Jason Wu Harold Wolfson Award (Community Service)- Jolie Yu

President- Sophia Zarsky Vice President- Ashan Singh Officers- Jeffrey Alkins, Jeremy Einhorn, Jillian Gundersheim, Sydney Morin

Local Scholarships

Nathan and Eva Brezner Scholarship- Jocelin Weiss Lieutenant Staffort Leighton Brown Memorial ScholarshipFernando Andino Valdez, Aiden Benshimol, Noah Portnoy John C. Chaffin Educational Foundation Scholarships- Lewis Balulu, Akilea, Aiden Benshimol, Jamaree Bonnette, Andrea Braver, Nimra Cheema, Maria Anna Dare, Louis Douglas, Jeremy Einhorn, Ayran Gomes, Kristina Gravlin, Zarinah Gray, Grant Henderson, Cynthia Hoang, Naeun Kang, Daniel Kruse, Aria LaBonte, Jennifer Lynne Lomer, Hannah Maleson, Wendy Moy, Anastasia Murati, Harrison Neff, Lisa Phat, Shireen Pourbemani, Justin Quinn, Olga Rapoport, Dijon Devonte Reid, Adam Scherlis, Andfre Scott, Shan Shao, Dorothy Tang, Amber Tejeda, Samuel Ustayev, Kaila Williams, Christina Wu, Zhoushi Xie, Lucy Ye, Isabelle Young, Mengzhou Zhou Greg Chan Scholarships- Noah Portnoy, Lucy Ye Chernis Family Foundation Scholarship- Daniel Kruse, Amber Tejeda Amelia T. Davidson Scholarship- Sam Ustayev, Mengzhou Zhou Margaret W. Erskine Library Award- Aiden Benshimol David E. Frieze Memorial Fund Award- Lewis Balulu John Fuller Scholarship from the Second Church- Wndy Moy Barbara G. Fullington Award- Jocelin Weiss Charles and Mabel Goldrick Scholarship- Kathy O’Keefe Steven H. Gootman Memorial Award- Nimra Cheema Dr. Paul G. Gottlieb Memorial Scholarship- Amaya Abadia-Manthei Ricky Harrington Memorial Scholarship- Daniel Kruse Dr Bob Hoffman Memorial Scholarhsip- Ashley Dennis Frank Lambert Memorial Scholarship- Patrick Geary Newton Board of Alderman- Shan Shao Newton Center Woman’s Club Scholarship- Jennifer Lynne Lomer, Amber Tejeda Newton Educational Secretaries Association- Daniel Kruse Newton Firefighters’ Association- Patrick Geary Newton METCO Community Scholarship Award- Jeffrey Alkins, Zarinah Gray, Ashley Ellis, Prevenya Harris, Chaela Jones, Tatiana Medina-Barreto, Andre Scott, Prevenya Harris

Faculty Awards

Amaya Abadia-Manthei, Jeffrey Alkins, David Altman, Lewis Balulu, Aaron Belowich, Camille Brugnara, Elizabeth Barberry, Avery Forrow, Laura Haime, Joshua Kruskal, Zoe Newberg, Rebecca Penzias

7 June 2011

Denebola

Hannah Weller’s winning Heintzelman piece: Always Moving Sideways

I Otto Shaughnessy had never felt anything but lonely. And lonely...wasn’t even an emotion, not a real one. He knew that’s what anyone would tell him, if he asked. So Otto kept mostly to himself. Quiet kids got away with thinking anything.

But he couldn’t sleep. This late at night, when he’d been trying for almost two hours.

Or at least what felt like two hours. Even though only an orange glow slithered in around the curtains, leaving the rest of the room dark, and only occasional traffic interrupted perfect silence.

Something squeezed his heart. It felt like nothing, a slimy, slithery hagfish of nothing that wound around his insides and made his chest tight.

He crawled forward until he could look out the window at the foot of the bed, pulled aside a curtain, and gazed out at the street. A car slid past, made a frantic U-turn, and sped back the way it came.

Otto sighed. Sleep would settle on him eventually, if he lay on his bed with his arms outstretched. If he had enough surface area, if he waited long enough, sleep would fall on him like dust in an attic.

He shut his eyes and visited the brown nothingness inside his head. Sometimes, waiting for unconsciousness this way, with an aching body and a buzzing head, Otto imagined his mind as a bright marble floating in his brain.

The trick to sleeping was getting that marble to fall all the way to the bottom of the brown nothingness. Get it to spiral, disintegrate, tumble, wither, melt – and you had your respite.

But no. The marble remained, hard and bright and buzzing in the middle of his head, steadfast in its refusal to sink.

The insomnia had worsened in the last few days. He could never remember falling asleep, and he never felt awake.

Maybe he was trying too hard. He should tire himself out and let the sleep come naturally.

Tire himself out with...what, exactly?

Otto sat up. His room – what little he could see of it – didn’t

offer much. His laptop, on the desk, or a pile of old books he’d been meaning to read. Only the golden letters on their spines were visible; they shimmered in the dark and glittered as if they had something to prove.

Twisting his lips to the side, he cast his eyes around the other half of the room before lighting on the cell on his bedside table.

He picked up his phone and flipped it open. No new messages. Duh. After a few seconds of futile deliberation, he punched in a number he knew by heart.

Holding the phone away from his ear (turning down the volume occurred to him, but didn’t appeal), he stuffed

Quiet kids got away with thinking anything. a sudden panic back down his throat. Who did he think he was, calling someone at three in the morning? He didn’t have a good reason for it. He hadn’t been abandoned on a highway, or stuck at a party with no sober ride home; he just felt a little woozy and depressed.

Nothing new there. Only now he had somebody to bother with it. “...hello?” Van’s voice was sleepy and thick; he sounded as if his throat had been sandpapered.

“Hi. Uh. Van?” Well, too late to change his mind now. He’d already woken the guy up.

“Otto?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you actually calling me at the butt crack of dawn, or am I having another one of those weird dreams?”

Otto paused. As silence bubbled up between them, he could only watch it grow.

“Why’re you calling, anyway? I know my Otto Shaughnessy. There’s no way you’re cool enough to stay up ‘til three AM.” Otto laughed, but he didn’t say anything. The guy had a point; Otto had no pressing need for conversation, or inter-

esting event to process, nothing to analyze or think over. Maybe he could make something up – he was good at that, at lying or sounding dramatic.

The television had provided him with a full set of morals and facial expressions, supplied mostly by gruff detectives and hyperemotional surgeons who always had a monologue to back up what they were doing.

Jesus, though, why did he need a reason for doing something? Why did you always need to have a reason? “...Otto?”

“Sorry. Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

Otto sighed, and licked the crack in his dry lips. “....I think I think too much,” he said, more to the floor than to Van. “I’ll say. Are you okay?”

Otto must’ve sounded really messed up if even Van was worried about him.

“I’m fine! I’m fine. Sorry for calling you, I didn’t mean to wake you up – “ “It’s...it’s no problem. I could use the distraction.” The possibility of a topic change perked Otto up a little. He hopped up onto the window ledge, crossing his legs and staring at the street below. Traffic had plastered a squirrel to the asphalt; only part of its tail had escaped the onslaught of cars. A loose breeze tickled the fur.

“Distraction?” Otto said.

“Why? Did something happen?”

Van sighed. The sound was so breathy, so heavy and laden, Otto could feel it through the phone. A good few seconds passed by before he spoke.

“Nothing...new. I told you about my dad dying a couple days ago, didn’t I?” Otto said nothing. Something stuck in his throat, like a big mushroom or a marble, and the sickness in his stomach sunk lower. They left an empty space in his torso.

“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”

He wasn’t stupid. He knew people’s dads died. It just hadn’t seemed...real. It had seemed like something that happened to other people, on the news.

“Oh.” That’s all Van said.

‘Oh.’ Like his father’s death

was as important as a math midyear. But Otto couldn’t think of a thing to tell him, a small comfort or a consolation – he’d never known anyone whose dad had died, not really. Maybe Van’s nonchalance was normal, or he’d made peace with the idea already. But...still.

“Vincent, I –” “What?” Van laughed. “You calling me by my real name now?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

He stumbled over the words in his mouth, as if a stampede of tragic politeness were thundering through his brain. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “Um, how – ” “Heart attack, I guess. You don’t have to feel bad. My parents divorced when I was a kid; I hardly knew the guy.”

His voice couldn’t support his words. It quivered and sank and became nearly inaudible.

Otto tried to imagine losing one of his parents forever, losing anyone forever.

He couldn’t. It seemed too impossible to hurt; dead parents happened to downtrodden orphans in cheesy adventure movies. Not in real life.

There was a horrible part of him, if you dug down, a nasty disconnected part that hissed ‘How glamorous – how worldly, knowing someone whose father has died. You’re a bit less sheltered now. Silver lining, right?’

“Van, I didn’t...mean to...you

Something stuck in his throat, like a big mushroom or a marble, and the sickness in his stomach sunk lower. They left an empty space in his torso. know. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have called – ” “I keep telling you I don’t mind. I’m not that upset. I’m... not about that, at least. You can’t miss somebody you never really...knew.”

Otto looked back at the squirrel, the street lamp’s sodium glow casting an orange halo around the remaining fur. Cars

had flattened out the body to a smooth mass of gore, slowly sinking into the pavement, and hardly recognizable.

The nastiness faded, but he thought he might know what Van meant.

“What are you upset about, then?” he said. “...I don’t know.”

It was funny, Otto mused, that he was the one pushing for information now. He’d always hated when Van wouldn’t drop a topic that made him uncomfortable, and here he was doing just that.

“Van.” “He just had this dog, that’s all. He left us this dog. It’s ugly as fuck, it looks like somebody ironed its face. I think it’s part bulldog, but it’s a little bigger and skinnier than a normal bulldog, you know?”

Otto laughed. Laughing was all he could think to do. He was useless but he could laugh.

“Yeah, you laugh, but try walking it.”

“So you just have this new responsibility?” Clearing his throat, Otto peeled the phone off his ear. Cool air rushed in to fill its place, and he shivered before raising the phone again.

“No, I don’t really mind. I like dogs. The...” Van kept stopping and starting, or fading in and out, as if it hurt him to talk.

“The thing that...gets me. The thing that absolutely kills me, is that this dog doesn’t know he’s dead. You know? It’s not like I can sit down and tell him his owner died. As far as the mutt knows, my dad’s just off on a business trip...”

Without jumping in, Otto waited for Van to continue.

A short, nervous puff of laughter. “This is so fucking stupid.”

“Just tell me.”

“It’s just...every time somebody comes home. Every time someone opens the door, he jumps up and down and runs around and barks and wags his tail. And he’s...so happy, you know?

“For a few seconds, until the person opens the door?

And I think he thinks it’s my dad coming back, every time.

And when it isn’t he just goes and sits by the door again and waits for the next person to

News A13

come home.”

“Every freaking time.”

Outside, a car rumbled past Otto’s window, right over the squirrel. It made no difference. “...Vince – “ “It just sucks. That’s all that’s upsetting me. It sucks, because every time somebody comes home, he thinks his owner’s back, and nobody can tell the dog that he’s dead, and he’s never coming back ever.

And he might go the rest of his life sitting in front of that door waiting for my dad.

It’s this constant fucking reminder.”

Van probably wasn’t done, but Otto got in a quick “I’m sorry.”

He knew people’s dads died.

It just hadn’t seemed real.

He blew past it. “Ots, I just... you should see his face. Like my mom’s face when my uncle told her over the phone. I have to watch that over and over on this stupid dog. It’s killing me.

I can’t sleep. Why did you call, again?”

Otto could imagine Van, lying belly-up in bed with his phone against his ear, blindly staring at the ceiling.

“It’s weird for me to be giving you advice,” he said, “But you should go back to sleep, you really should. It’ll seem better in the morning. I’m sorry for waking you up.”

“Wait. Actually, don’t hang up,” Van said, slurred words lending a kind of quiet desperation to his voice.

“Why?” Pause. Otto counted the seconds: three, four, five...

“Can you come over? Not now, but...you know, at a reasonable time.”

He laughed, and wondered if Van even knew what he was saying. Otto could just imagine him gnawing the dead skin off his lip, not thinking about consequences.

“Sorry, but shouldn’t you be talking to your girlfriend?

For the best of the story go to denebolaonline.net

Harry Neff’s graduation speech: All About Newton

By Harry Neff

Okay, I want everyone to close your eyes right now. I don’t really care what parents and teachers do (whatever’s good…) but as for the class of 2011, I want every single one of you to close your eyes. I’ll wait. No, really...do it. Great.

Keep them closed.

Now rewind. I want you to cast your senses back in time, and then slowly and gently reel them into the present. I want you start at K for Kindergarten and creep all the way up to grade 12.

What comes to your mind?

What words? What sounds?

What tastes? What smells? What images?

For those of us Veteran Newton Public School kids, we started out pretty much the same: Lunchables, overalls, minivans, building blocks, mushroom cuts, chicken fingers, french fries, and those laminated classroom posters with multicultural little children suspended in space linking arms around planet Earth.

You reel in a little bit more and you remember the Chinese character for ‘water’, the elegant trill of the plastic recorder, the inelegant trill of AOL instant messenger, and maybe the laugh that rose up inside of you when your 5th grade teacher

announced that the boys and girls would need to be split up for this “very special lesson” about “how to be healthy”.

You reel in a bit more, but the line snags on puberty. The connection falters. You can make out the earnest croak of a Saturday morning Bar Mitzvah service, or maybe the lonesome knot in your stomach on “Mix it up at lunch!” day...but as you near hurtle closer and closer to the present, it gets harder and harder for me to come up with cheap little inside jokes. I can’t make all of you smile--keep your eyes closed! I can section you off into groups, assume your tastes, give some shoutouts, divide and conquer...but that’s just it--I’d need to divide-to see individuals before I saw groups...and that would take all night.

Open your eyes, everyone.

Look around, and look at each other. You’re as different as can be, and I definitely can’t read all of your minds.

Sure--we’re all a little taller, a little smarter, a little cooler, and a lot sleepier than when we started out...but there’s little I can say on behalf of all of you.

I can’t hold faith in collective consciousness, and I can’t tie our thirteen or nine or four or two years together with a pretty little bow and call it “the end of an era”. Whose era? What

era?

There are only two things I can talk about now...and I’m not gonna talk about myself, because you all heard my sophomore speech or maybe you sat in front of me during a class. What I will talk about is Newton because that’s where we are and probably where we live and maybe even where

It’s the kind of place where everything is five minutes away.

It’s the kind of place that makes sense--rich in its resources and soft in its judgments.

I say “soft” not because our community is judgment free-it’s not--but it’s neither judgment heavy, and that’s easy to take for granted once you get used to it or get born into it.

See, I look at all of you and I see athletes, actors, politicians, mathematicians, beauticians, doctors, lawyers, scientists, humanists, violinists, activists, artists, designers, writers, thinkers, and yeah--at the risk of sounding cheesy--dreamers. we’re leaving.

Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States bordered to the east by Boston.

It was settled in 1630 as part of “the newe towne”, which was renamed Cambridge in 1638. It is located at 42 20 16 N and 71 12 36 W and was the invention site of Nabisco’s Fig Newton. ...it’s also a great place to grow up, and an awesome place to go to school. It’s the kind of place that can bankrupt a Coldstone Creamery because it got built too close to a J.P. Licks.

Many of us like to think of Newton as this toxic bubble-this oasis of affluence, vapidity, kitsch, and an unconditional liberal slant.

We put on our red Holden Caulfield caps and bemoan the competition, the unattainably high standards, the quiet selfimportance, the upper-middle class arrogance.

We’re not wrong...but maybe--in these moments--we’re not seeing the whole picture.

Correct me if I’m wrong... but we live in a community where--within reason--we can do what we want.

We live in a community where human rights and liberties are a given and their violation is an outrage.

We live in a community whose only binding expectation of us is that we give all we can to make some kind of difference.

No one’s ever herded us toward anything other than our own happiness and the betterment of our world.

We’ve been empowered to choose our priorities, our morals, our loves, our ambitions, our desires, and our goals.

Sure, they told us what to do, but they never told us where to go.

And now, it’s time to go.

See, I look at all of you and I see athletes, actors, politicians, mathematicians, beauticians, doctors, lawyers, scientists, humanists, violinists, activists, artists, designers, writers, thinkers, and yeah--at the risk of sounding cheesy--dreamers.

I’m not projecting you into the future and musing upon what you can become...I’m looking and I’m seeing what you are, what this school and this community have helped you to become and what they have encouraged you to explore.

I can’t talk about “how I found my place at South” because you each have a place and you carved it for yourself and

that would just be redundant!

I can’t say “Hey, remember that football game?” or “that play?” or “that concert?” or “that party?” or “that protest?” or “that tournament?” because they were all going on at the same time and 2011 kids were present at all of them.

I’m proud of you, because I can’t define you, and because you’ve already begun so beautifully and vividly to define yourselves.

You don’t need me to stand up here telling you how to go or where to go or how you should feel about going.

We’ve each of us been given the gift of charting our own course, and I’m not worried about a single one of you.

So go. Go to the college or to the country or to the craft to which you feel you are lead.

You don’t have to plan for the future and you don’t have to worry about the past because these past two or four or nine or thirteen years have made you indestructible.

This school and this city have seen us through, and we’ve been allowed the right to craft our own identities and dream our own dreams.

We are free.

I love you all, and I wish you the very best.

Congratulations.

Opinions Denebola

Opinions A14

7 June 2011

One n’ one: not quite gettin’ it done

By Alexandra Fen If you haven’t done so already, go read the View from the Top. Other than the college section, we all know that since this is not a Volume 50 production, it’s decent at best.

And while we’re being honest, admit this: we’ve been tracking each other’s acceptances and rejections since Early Decision Notifications— so just go straight to the View, slimy Snoils.

That was my “hook,” beloved English teachers.

In years past this prime piece of real estate boasted valedictory speech-styled editorials – ones that pose those dreadfully persistent examples of when trivial aspects of daily life are metaphorical to some broad, yet subtle, rudiment upon which society relies.

Now I promise I am not hatin’—Omer Fine was quoted in the yearbook as saying I was two things, and “hater” was not

one of them—but if Newton South taught me one thing it was to reject conformity (kidding so hard), so I am going to bushwhack through the Senior Commons and forge my own path.

At South, there is a valedictory speech given at graduation, but it is not given by the valedictorian because we do not have one, because we have 420 valedictorians, because we are all the best.

Students and teachers alike sing the praises of this year’s speaker; his charisma, intellect, and ability to positively influence his classmates are well known throughout the school.

Oftentimes, I find myself wondering where I can find sweaters like his and a boyfriend like him.

Alas, I cannot follow in his footsteps when it comes conveying a message during this pivotal time—Harry with his speech and me with all of this.

I applaud him for being optimistic and for investing the utmost faith in our graduating class. Despite all of this, here’s the way I see it: Class of 2011, y’allz need all the help you can get.

This, however, does not go unexpected. The Class of 2011 has suffered through four damaging years of being caught between two of South’s most notorious classes, both of which carved out distinct identities for themselves early in the game and adhered to them with unyielding diligence.

With a dedication to every South student’s safety and security, oh-ten deployed twenty-or-so of the class’s finest to proudly patrol the hallways of the school as the Newton South Police Department (NSPD).

It was a class loved by all and its contributions were most appreciated.

I think our sentiments were

best echoed by a current junior’s Facebook status the night before oh-ten’s last day, wishing as the clock struck 11:11 the Class of 2010 to “please don’t go.”

Meanwhile, the Class of 2012 is exerting additional pressure on us to find our niche by being champions of classwide inclusivity.

Having nine divinely chosen girls to represent the interests of the class and serve as a bastion of unity, the Class of 2012 leaves us feeling fragmented and inferior.

It will not be easy to abandon our resentment for ’10 and ’12 and cope with the repercussions of middle childhood, but neither is the most insuperable of obstacles to face our future.

I ask you to recall a memorable candidate’s speech for class office elections during sophomore year.

Hungry for the support of his classmates and hell-bent on

convincing us all of the inherent evils of our class slogan (one n’ one: gettin’ it done), he preached and preached until he could preach no more.

We pegged him as headed straight for the loony bin even before he broke into his barmitzvah torah portion.

Unfortunately for the Class of 2011, this candidate was on to something. The saga of the elusive “it” is symbolic of our failure as a class in general.

Moreover, once this slogan rubbed off, its successor disappointed much in the same way.

The concept of “doubling the fun” is as impossible as it is annoying.

First off, “fun” isn’t quantifiable. If I asked my TI-89 Thug Edition with External QWERTY Keypad to multiply “fun” by two, it would tell me “ERROR: MULTIPLY BY FUN” in a Nepalese accent.

So asking me to double “fun” is a trick question. So why are

my elected class officers trying to trick me?

Also, I don’t think that it’s fair to assume that all members of the Class of 2011 are Down To Fête.

So much hating on my class, however, is exhausting. And writing this with only one week until graduation, I feel like Karma will strike me down for these harsh words (literally Elizabeth Goodstein will run up to the stage and trip me as I’m reaching for my diploma).

Srsly guys, just because we didn’t enter South with a bang, and even though all the teachers sort of hate our guts, it doesn’t mean we didn’t leave our mark.

Four years and countless laughs, ~*memories*~, and pounds of Lee’s sweet potato fries later, I couldn’t ask for a better class…

Just kidding I definitely could. ;)

Opposing Viewpoints: No Fear Shakespeare: A useful learning aide or cheating?

CON PRO

By Dan Pincus Students throughout South fear Shakespeare. Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and many more of Shakespeare’s plays are read every year by high school students struggling to comprehend the meaning of their archaic language and complex metaphors.

Shakespeare is considered an e s s e n t i a l p a r t o f t h e English curriculum; his works are hailed by many as among the greatest writings of all time.

But in order to actually benefit from the plays we first need to understand them.

I know I often run to S p a r k N o t e s ’s “ N o F e a r Shakespeare” for help, but is that a bad thing? While Shakespeare may technically be written in modern English, his language and style of switching the subject and predicate baffles many a student.

That, coupled with his use of phrases that no longer exist in today’s world, makes Shakespeare in dire need of “translations.”

Today, many teenagers struggle under the weight of their workloads, which, when added to extracurricular activities, are enough to push students to the breaking point. Given students’ schedules, modern translations of challenging texts will provide a valuable bridge to the original, a first step that will allow students to better comprehend Shakespearean prose in less time.

Some believe that a translation of Shakespeare

will only further compromise students’ learning, as the internet has in many ways made the study of text a thing of the past, but they are wrong.

Shakespearean literature is laced with underlying meanings. There are subtle themes throughout his works that require students to understand the language, and I know that after r e a d i n g “No Fear S h a k e speare” I can truly appreciate them.

I had no clue who Ta r q u i n , a character in Macbeth, was without the help of SparkNotes, and without learning who Tarquin is, it is impossible to begin to think about how Macbeth feels as he considers killing Duncan.

These kinds of references to people or things that most students are not privy to is why SparkNotes is necessary for students to be able to even begin to understand Shakespeare a n p r o s e ’s i n n e r w o r k ings.

And while some might say that students will only read a translation of their homework, on the other side of each page is the actual text.

This allows students to easily be able to also read Shakespeare’s actual writing, allowing them to easily tackle his writing in more depth.

There is a reason to fear Shakespeare, and modern translations are helpful when studied along with S h a k e s p e a r e ’s o r i g i n a l texts.

While some are ready to

By Annapurna Ravel Casually leaning toward my desk in math, a friend asks me about last night’s section of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the quiz next block.

My eyes widen as the all too familiar feeling of dread sets in; I had completely forgotten to do the reading. The night before I had set the complex Shakespearean literature aside to work on other subjects and then

d i v e i n t o S h a k e s p e a r e ’s writing without a second though, many students struggle with his works, and a translation provides them with the perfect bridge to help students cross the divide that will allow them to fully appreciate the wonders of his works.

While some might say that “No Fear Shakespeare” takes away some of the learning process of Shakespeare’s plays, without out we wouldn’t be able to comprehend the work at all.

promptly forgot about it.

I jump out of my seat and excuse myself for a “bathroom break,” sprinting to the library.

The friendly blue of SparkNotes pops onto the webpage.

Navigating my way towards the “No Fear Shakespeare” section, relief floods my mind as the printer shoots out pages that I am confident will give me all the answers.

Grabbing the stack, I run back to math stopping only outside the door to stuff them up my shirt and stroll back to my seat, acting as if nothing other

than a rather long trip to the restroom had occurred during my 15 minute absence.

After quickly reading through the handy printouts spread out on my desk, I turn around and answer my friend’s question, confident in the “A” I will soon be receiving.

Sound at all familiar? Unfortunately for most of us at Newton South, it probably does.

However, there is an important lesson that many of South’s students do not realize in the process of choosing the easy way out.

S p a r kNotes’ “No Fear Shakespeare” deprives us of the messages inscribed between the lines.

While it may let us know that “the setting sun was pretty,” for ex PHOTO BY ALEY LEWIS ample, we are robbed of the brilliant rays of light that withdrew beneath the horizon, captivating those who witnessed it, and signifying the shortness of life and the importance of cherishing every moment.

With the constant pressure to do well in our academics as well as to excel in countless more extracurricular activities, many succumb to the lure of “No Fear Shakespeare” and its assurance of easy A’s.

In today’s society, we are already rapidly being propelled into a future in which

we impersonally exchange snippets of thought more frequently than we have actual conversations, in which social networks allow only distant and shallow relationships.

“No Fear Shakespeare” only makes things more impersonal. To make matters worse, online academic aides allow students to bypass the process of actually thinking and instead feed us what English teachers Michael Kennedy and Corinne Popp have classified as “predigested words.”

“No Fear Shakespeare,” in summarizing and rephrasing text, not only subtracts from the beauty of Shakespearea’s rich metaphors and hidden messages, but also completely negates the reason Shakespeare is such an integral part of our education.

While spending hours on a few pages may be frustrating, we are forced to think, analyze, and find meaning within the text on our own grounds, to form our own opinions and find the evidence to support them, a lesson not only important in writing, but also in everyday life.

So next year, when you’re faced yet again with Shakespeare - whether it be Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, or Hamlet - don’t procrastinate or ignore it, daunted by the complex diction.

Face it with confidence, allow yourself a little while to counter the effects of our suffocatingly fast-paced environment and reflect upon literature that came from a time where words were cherished, opinions weren’t borrowed, and one depended on one’s own mind for answers.

Denebola

7 June 2011

Edits A15

Summer reading book review; Zeitoun expected to be great

By Annapurna Ravel Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls… it’s finally here- Zeitoun! Wait, what? While it may sound like the sequel to Jumanji, I’m afraid to tell you that it is in fact this year’s summer reading assignment.

Before you groan at the very mentioning of the book that will most likely stay hidden underneath your bed for most of the summer only to leap out and, to put it accurately, bite you in the butt, humor me and keep reading before you make up your mind to turn the page- you never know, you may not even regret it.

Differing from the artistic style of Persepolis that drew us into the black and white world of Marjane Satrapi and her Iranian roots as well as the short, sweet, and the thought provoking essays from This I Believe II- Zeitoun returns us to the very roots of exceptional literature: simplistic and inspirational, a remarkable story about a single man who shared his humanity with those who suffered in a time when even the most basic ethics were abandoned by those in charge.

Zeitoun relates the fictional story of one man, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, through his experience during and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a catastrophe that may have faded from many of our minds but will no doubt be revived by this moving novel. Zeitoun, as he’s nick-named, is a native Syrian but American Dream-inspired family

man, married to a Kathy- a hardworking southern belle. Owning their own prospering painting and contracting business in New Orleans, Zeitoun watches over the various New Orleans properties he has come to immerse himself and his business in, a job he continues to dedicate himself to regardless of the hurricane raging around him.

N o t only does Zeitoun feel responsible for the upkeep of property, but the residents of New Orleans as well.

O n c e Katrina’s damage is essentially dealt, Zeitoun proceeds to paddle around the city in a canoe he’d bought a few years prior at a yard sale. He makes it his mission to aid neighbors and senior citizens who are unable (or refuse) to evacuate by providing provisions or rescuing them from their temporary rooftop residenc-

es. Meanwhile, the rest of the Zeitoun family is packed into a relative’s house in Baton Rouge, barraged daily with horror-stories featuring post-Katrina damage while awaiting their husband/ father’s arrival.

As a Syrian in the United States post-9/11 and stuck in the chaos of

Katrina, Zeitoun becomes vulnerable to, and eventually the target of terrorist accusations. His mistreatment by government forces is simultaneously horrifying and the fuel for the pageturning second portion of the book.

While the entire book is suspenseful

(for all you procrastinators- no worries, I read the entire book in a single day), the last half is even more so.

All throughout the telling of the family’s Katrina experience, Eggers sprinkles details of Abdulrahman’s and Kathy’s family histories and their pasts together and apart.

Even if one was able to detach completely from the Zeitoun family while reading, a feat which may prove impossible given the amount of detail, Eggers provides in his characters, the shocking course of events that takes place in New Orleans as witnessed

by Abdulrahman Zeitoun would still inevitably cause the reader to feel a mixture of outrage and despair, the majority of which would probably be directed at the United States and its government.

A disaster, fatalities, a city in ruins...

at first glance, this is the classic setting for any decent book attempting to dramatize the events that occurred in 2005; however behind the mechanics of gusting winds, crushed levees, and taken lives are the indirect effects the disaster had on the inhabitants of New Orleans.

Despite claims by Dave Eggers, author of Zeitoun, that “This book does not attempt to be an all-encompassing book about New Orleans or Hurricane Katrina,” out of all the articles I have read and interviews I have watched, I cannot say that I have come across a more comprehensive source despite its fictional premise.

Eggers does a phenomenal job with the tough task of organizing all the material that comprises Zietoun and his literary style is strictly to the point while utilizing excellent story telling skills that keep one engaged. For those looking to discover more than just the story of a family’s hardship during Katrina and the government’s dealings with the crisis, don’t expect a philosophical or literary revelation from Zeitoun.

The story is a work of journalismfree of political undertones (a blessing to those like me who barely know the difference between a Republican and a Democrat) while still providing an in-depth look at the trauma that many may not have been able to discover, or really grasp, until a safe amount of time and distance had been established since the disaster.

Teachers’ use of the internet poses a problem for students

By Jarrett Gorin

The internet has changed the life of our species irrevocably. We use the fantastic tool called the web in almost every aspect of our lives.

But what happens when it’s misused?

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to announce that at Newton South it is. But the culprits are not whom you think.

Teachers are not only using the internet for research and grading, but some teachers are also trying to manipulate the internet to be used academically.

It’s a scary thought; wasn’t the internet supposed to be our generation’s domain?

Most of us have at least one teacher that uses the internet either for homework assignments or for turning in work. At a certain point, however, it can get out of hand.

Let us first divide our internetusing teachers into three categories: the Assigner, the Downloader, and the Emailer.

The Assigner uses the web as a medium for assigning work. The

problem is that in some cases, work does not get posted directly after class, or even directly after school. Students in these classes have to wait for hours for the homework due the next day to be posted.

The Assigners include teachers who favor making students turn in assignments online.

That makes missing a deadline too easy. If you’re even a few minutes late, your hard work could result in an essay or project not being accepted.

Then what, a zero, points off for being late? Either way, unnecessary points are taken off.

When you turn work in during class, you do not have the all-ornothing deadline, which, to make matters worse, is nowhere near the time class starts the following day.

The problem escalates for those students who have other time commitments after school.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that a student has a track meet at Westford Academy – a trip that in-

cludes short journey through New Hampshire – and must submit a homework assignment before midnight that evening.

There is just no way to get the work done on time, so this studentathlete turns it in early the next morning, but is forced to get points taken off for being a few hours late.

Next comes the Downloader. They have total control over when you do your homework. They make you download a page or a link in order to even find your homework. The risk here is that when sites are down or there is a malfunction in our personal computers, it is impossible to do the work at all.

The last category is the Emailer.

Some teachers email out updates on projects or homework assignments to students.

There are a two problems with this. First, some students don’t have email addresses (yes, I do know a few people who don’t have emails), so they’re at a disadvantage when it comes to completing homework.

Second, only some teachers

check their emails it on a regular basis, and sometimes the ones that do don’t always reply. This makes it impossible to email teachers back with questions.

For all of these categories, even if a teacher is extremely efficient in posting assignments and having easy access to a computer, there is still the risk of one’s internet being down or having no access to a computer.

Let’s say that your internet crashes, making it impossible to get the sheets or access the blog to find your homework.

T h e r e ’s n o way to email the teacher about this problem, as there’s no internet.

Yo u t r y calling a friend, but how are they going to give you a link to

a website or get you a worksheet that night? The only options would be to go to the library first thing in the morning before class, or take the zero resulting from missing homework.

The internet is a powerful thing and we students use it increasingly each day as a result of our teachers’ attempts to adapt to the habits of the internet generation.

At this point, however, it has become less a modern tool for scholastic advancement and more a burden that is holding us back.

Internet sensations draw students to pop stars

By Hattie Gawande It has been quite a run for Justin Bieber.

In the words of Antonio “L.A.” Reid, producer of such phenomenons as Rihanna and Usher, “I’ve never seen fans like this.”

Only a year after Bieber’s rise to fame, it took thirty-five police units to break up a riot of teenaged girls at a mall in Long Island, where he was scheduled to appear.

The day before a March show in Liverpool, England, Bieber was warned that, should he step outside his hotel, he would be arrested for “inciting a riot.”

All this for a Canadian teenager who was discovered through home videos his mom posted of him on Youtube.

The story of Rebecca Black, the world’s most notorious “pop singer” and the voice behind that annoyingly catchy song “Friday,” is oddly similar.

She has the same helicopter mom who just wanted to “nurture [her] child’s dreams.” Unlike Bieber’s mom, Black’s mom shelled out four thousand dollars to Ark Music Factory to do so, but the parallels are still unmistakeable: the same use of Youtube to gain popularity; the same near-instant success.

Black summed it up nicely in her interview with Jay Leno: “All of a sudden I look on the computer and there’s, like, 14,000 views, and yesterday it

had 4,000.”

It took Black just over a month to garner millions of views for the music video for her single, “Friday”, which reached the Billboard Hot 100 soon

first ask ourselves three fairly simply questions: 1) Do you like Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black?

2) Have you watched their music

produce their whiny music videos.

All South students would respond to the second question with a “yes”.

Our excuses: “I just wanted to see what everyone was talking about.” “I

after at number 72.

A year after releasing his first single, Bieber’s music video, “Baby”, became the most viewed Youtube video ever.

Knowing all this, there is one question that begs to be asked: considering that “Friday” and “Baby” are the two most “disliked” videos on Youtube, how did Bieber and Black manipulate the site to give them instant fame?

In order to answer that, we must

videos on Youtube?

3) Have you bought any of their songs?

Most high schoolers would respond to the first question with a resounding “no”.

No, we don’t like baby-faced seventeen-year-olds with bowl cuts and disturbingly falsetto voices. No, we don’t like thirteen-year-old girls whose mothers pay music labels to

only saw it to make fun of it.” “My little sister showed me it.” “I saw it so I could ‘dislike’ it.”

Finally, in regards to the third question, many of us, I’m almost certain, have downloaded one or two (or three or four) Bieber singles or Black’s “Friday”, despite the fact that we are All of these people are (or, in Keith Moon’s case, were) insanely gifted, and they are famous because of their gifts—not

because people are curious to see “just how bad they are.”

That it has become so easy to attain stardom just feels wrong. We’re supposed to love music. It should be that if you hate something, you ignore it.

If we played by those rules, Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black would still be nobodies. That much is almost certain.

Of course some would genuinely consider Black and Bieber’s music to be appealing, but far more would recognize the repetitive melodies, annoying vocals, and immature lyrics as generic and talentless.

The moral of the story here isn’t so concrete.

The lesson isn’t that you shouldn’t watch Justin Bieber’s music videos or download “Friday,” and to say that the point of this entire article is to truly love music, even if that is sort of what I mean, is trite.

So here is what you should take away from reading this, as plainly as I can put it: do you like Justin Bieber or Rebecca Black or any of those other forgettable Youtube sensations? If so, by all means go out and exalt with all the other “Beliebers” and “Friday”lovers.

And if not, then don’t watch their music videos only to pan them and make hateful comments. Drop them and find something you like. Maybe then we can begin to weed out the gifted from the average.

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Congratulations Seniors!

Dear Sen11ors, It’s been a long, fun, and sometimes exhausting ride. You had a prom, you went to parties, you hung out with friends. You’ve braved SATs, college apps, and all-nighters to finish that history paper that just won’t go away. And guess what? You made it! And not only did you make it, you made it with class.

Congrats to the classiest class to ever grace the halls of Newton South High School! You da best.

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Sports 7 June 2011

By Maarten Van Genabeek

Being a student at South can be challenging enough, but to be an athlete as well is significantly harder.

During her four years she left a significant impact on the South Athletic Department, playing both Girls’ Soccer and Girls’ Lacrosse all four years.

She started on the Varsity Soccer team during her sophomore year after being on the Junior Varsity (JV) team a year prior. She used this as motivation to become a much better player for the next season.

“Not making Varsity freshman year was very disappointing, but I had a lot of fun with the girls on JV and it motivated me to try even harder during the season and offseason,” Kaufer said.

Her break through came we she struck home a free kick during the North versus South game to win it.

“It was the last few minutes of the game and we knew this was a huge opportunity for us to win it. Celia was so composed.

She stepped up to the ball and literally nailed the perfect shot, putting us up 1-0,” senior and Co-Captain Martha Schnee said.

“I think that was one of the most exciting moments I’ve experienced out of four years of playing for South.”

Kaufer then became a consistent and reliable forward for the lady Lions. The team would eventually lose in the State tournament during a penalty kick shoot out.

During her junior year, Kaufer was the leading goal scorer for the team and led it to a strong finish, even though the Lions did not make the State tournament.

She was named as one of the three captains for the next season to hopefully restore

Sports C1

Denebola Athletes of the Year Celia Kaufer and Tyler McGarry

the team’s success in the State tournament.

Her senior year was her best season for the lady Lions. She scored 19 goals in 16 games and was one of the top goal scorers in the Dual County League (DCL).

Kaufer was on track to lead the DCL in goals scored; however, she suffered a concussion and was forced to sit out the final three games of the season.

As a result, she was named a DCL All-Star this year, won the Girls’ Soccer Most Valuable Player award, and was named an Eastern Regional All-Star second team. She has also won Offensive Player of the Year for the past three years.

Her passion for soccer started at an early age as she played for the club Inter Bandits SC of Boston since she was seven.

“We’ve played together since we were six or seven I think.

It’s really incredible to play with someone that you’ve been playing with since you were a little kid,” senior and Co-Captain Hannah Nussbaum said.

“You kind of know what play they’re going to make before they even make it. You know each other’s styles and habits as players, so there’s a ton of chemistry on the field.”

During 2004, her club team qualified for Nationals and was ranked as one of the best club teams in the country. She still currently plays for them and is the captain.

One of Kaufer’s highly respected qualities is her leadership, which inspires her teammates and underclassmen to work harder during practices and increase their level of play.

“She was always there to pick everyone’s head up and supports every single person on the team 100 percent,” sophomore and forward Karina

photo by jonah seifer

Alfisher said.

She was also a key lacrosse player during her past four years. After being on the Freshman team her freshman year she made the Varsity team as sophomore. She utilized her above average speed and eventually became a starter on the team.

Although the team did not make the State tournament, it was the experience at the Varsity level that led to Kaufer becoming one of the leaders on the team.

Working hard in the offseason, she attended indoor lacrosse training sessions with teammates and players from North. This helped prepare the team for the season to come.

“The indoor lacrosse clinics were great to warm up for the season, and to get comfortable playing with each other.

It also helped getting to know new players so that once the season began most of us were familiar with each other,” senior and Co-Captain Lena Warnke said.

After another year of Varsity under her belt, Kaufer was also voted to be one of the captains for her senior year. As a defender she was the stabalizer in the back that help organize and set up the team. “[Kaufer] was a big help in motivating us during games and practice and made sure we stayed on task,” senior and forward Annie Cui said.

When graduating this year, Kaufer will be bringing her distinguished four-year South athletic career to an end. She will be used as a model for South student-athletes for years to come.

Next year she plans on playing soccer at Washington University in Saint Louis, a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III school.

By Zach Pawa With only two years under his belt at South, Tyler McGarry has made a significant impression on the athletic program. He is a three-sport athlete and is a captain in two of them.

McGarry is respected on the ice and playing field by both his teammates and opponents for his aggression and intensity. He brought each sport he played to a new level.

“When Tyler transferred to South it was a breath of fresh air,” Athletic Director Scott Perrin said. “He immediately made an impact on each team he played on.”

McGarry started his South career in the fall with Football. New to the school and the town, he immediately demanded the respect of his teammates through outstanding play. The following year he was elected a captain of the Football team.

According to his teammates, he showed great leadership and proved that he was correctly chosen for the integral role on the team. “He was a good inspirational leader and knew that game inside and out,” Matt Roberts said. “He was a defensive force to be reckoned with.”

Bringing a new level of intensity and fear on the field was only half the battle for McGarry. “He was a quite leader,” Perrin said. “[He] led by example.”

Known to many of his teammates as a hard worker both on and off the field, McGarry was constantly training to improve his game. Fueled by his competitive nature, McGarry constantly works out and trains to get ahead of the competition.

“He was always working out,” Roberts said. “That was how he would put the fear into the other teams.”

On the ice, McGarry also struck fear into his opponents.

“If I could use one word to describe Tyler it would be intense,” Tucker Marr said. “He brings an intensity to the ice that cannot be matched.”

A captain in hockey as well, McGarry’s work ethic allowed him to be successful on the ice.

“Tyler brought a physical and mental toughness we could all learn from,” Perrin said. “And it showed once he stepped on the ice.”

McGarry used his athleticism to the fullest when on the ice, whether it was while landing a bone-crunching hit or hitting a sizzling slap shot. “You didn’t want to get on Tyler’s bad side,” Marr said. “Because you would definitely pay the price.”

During his junior year, McGarry played on the Baseball team, adding yet another sport to his repertoire.

“Although baseball wasn’t his main sport he was able to contribute,” senior and Captain Alex Foner said. “It shows a lot about his athletic ability.”

During his senior year, McGarry swapped baseball for lacrosse. Two days before the 2011 lacrosse season began, McGarry picked up a lacrosse stick. He decided that he wanted to play a game where he could channel his athleticism.

According to several players, he became on of the team’s best defensive midfielders. During the season, he was a key part in the zone defense, and learned how to catch and throw.

He did not learn lacrosse skills in the offseason; he picked them up as he went, an accomplishment that is impossible to most high school athletes. Not only did he improve vastly, but he became an asset to the team.

“He brought a lot to the table,” Head Coach David

photo by jonah seifer

McCallum said. “A sense of urgency, and physical play, as well as a good field sense.”

Although his lacrosse skills could not compare to that of a Dual County League AllStar that has been playing for his entire life, McGarry’s athleticism challenges that of an All-Star.

“When he stepped on the field he knew he was as strong as anyone out there,” said McCallum. “His athletic ability was able to carry him.”

Realizing McGarry’s potential, lacrosse players were happy to have him join the team, even though he lacked experience.

“It was comforting to know that there was someone who cared about the outcome of the game on our side,” Captain Max Levine said. “He also had the intensity to back it up.”

Although McGarry is known for his intensity, he is also easy to get along with and is praised for his personality.

“He was a very coachable player,” McCallum said. “He has that day-to-day attitude you look for in all athletes.”

McGarry has the ability and desire to step in and play any position when necessary. He is always ready to do what the coach needs for the benefit of the team.

If his coach ever asked him for anything, the answer would be a quick, “yes, coach.”

McGarry not only helped improve every team he was on, but brought them to an entirely new level.

His love for athletics and talent in the sports he played made him an outstanding member of each program. He will be an athlete remembered at South for his dedication, his discipline, and his desire.

McGarry will be continuing his football career at the University of Connecticut next year.

7 June 2011

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Sports C2

Athletic fees expected to rise

by jonah seifer

By Noah Rivkin As a result of the slumping American economy, schools across the country have been forced to make deep budget cuts and hike fees. South is no exception. South athletes will have to pay an increased fee in order to compete in next year’s sports seasons. High school athletics fees are slated to rise from $210 to $300 per sport with a $900 family cap. Some sports, like hockey, will also rise from $260 to $400 and football will see a 95 percent increase from $210 to $400.

“I would probably still play with such high fees, but the increase is a little upsetting.

And next year there’ll be me, my brother, and my sister at South, and together we play a total of seven sports. So we’ll hit the cap pretty early. The increase won’t affect us as badly as they could’ve, but it’s still pretty ridiculous,” Hockey and Lacrosse player Brandon Kee said.

When Ted Dalicandro, the Head Football Coach, started coaching at South, the athletics fee was $125.

“I can understand why they might have to raise user fees to compensate for the budget; we still have a much lower user fee than some other schools in the Dual County League,” sophomore lineman Lucian Cascino said. “What does bother me, however, is that not all of the school’s sports had

an equal increase in fees. That just isn’t fair.”

Football Captain and senior Brandon Caldwell also doesn’t agree with the new budget’s fees.

“I think it’s ridiculous for kids to have to pay that much money to play a sport. I know many teams that already have far less kids than Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School or Acton-Boxborough Regional High School because of [increased fees]. It’s only going to put South teams at a disadvantage,” he said.

Dalicandro takes the fee hikes one step further. “I trust the people above me, but I’m upset. It’s fair to say that the demographic of the football players is different. This will affect those players whose families don’t have as much income. And I hope it doesn’t stop people from playing but [chances are it will],” he said.

“If the fee increase was for, say a sport like tennis then it may not be as heavy of an effect because the demographics are different. It’s a fact.”

Dalicandro also has a budget solution he’d like to propose.

To help cover the gap for athletics, he suggested cutting middle school sports as opposed to high school ones. He sees the middle school athletics program as just an expensive “babysitting program. The practices aren’t legitimate, and there are many leagues outside of school that are [cheaper and train the kids better],” he said.

Attacking high school sports instead of middle school sports with fee-hikes seems ludicrous in Dalicandro’s eyes. “High school is much more competitive, with more riding on the line. There are kids looking for scholarships, and overall changing middle school programs would be much smarter,” he said.

Dalicandro remembers what South’s football program was when he started. There were barely 30 kids on the team and that wasn’t sufficient. Due to illness and injuries the team needed more players and with hard work Dalicandro, gained 20 more. He doesn’t wish to see it go back to previous conditions, especially because of something like a budget.

Volleyball player Ashan Singh had a slightly different opinion on the matter. “To be honest, ultimately, I don’t think the raised sports fees will have a significant effect on the overwhelming majority of South’s athletes, however, it’s sort of ridiculous that the fee never really seems to stop growing. How much is it going to be?” he said.

Hockey and baseball player Dan Fitzpatrick agrees with Singh, “I’ll play the sports because I love them, but the [increases] are pretty outrageous.”

“I hope other people will play despite the fees, otherwise, the school might miss out on some serious athletic talent,” Kee said.

Booster Club hold fundraiser

By Joshua Carney The Newton South High School (NSHS) Booster Club has contributed a large portion of the school’s current training equipment through fundraising.

The recent fundraiser which occurred on May 12 was the seventh annual Booster Club Golf Tournament.

“It was a little larger event than last year, with an exciting new venue—Blue Hill Country Club in Canton, instead of Brae Burn Country Club in Newton, where we’ve had it the last few years,” Booster Club President Jonathan Frieze said. “The 18 hole championship course was in great shape and the weather was terrific.”

The local businesses throughout the community played a key role in the overall success of this tournament. “We had incredible support from sponsors and raffle donations. It really makes you appreciate the generosity of our community when you see how willingly businesses and individuals step up to the plate to support the cause,” Frieze said.

This year the event was a great success. “As a result, despite the difficult economy, we made as much money as we ever have,” Frieze said.

According to the event invitation, the money collected from the tournament is providing equipment and supplies, facility enhancements, recognition awards, couching seminars, and athletic safety initiatives. The invitation also stated that, “The NSHS Athletic Program continues to grow. Lion pride can be felt throughout the school and in the stands as involvement in sports and team placement in league, division and state competition increases.”

With the support system growing for most teams, it is unclear which will receive aid from the Booster Club as well.

“The Booster Club does not place any sport above another,” Booster Club President-to-be Scott Halpryn said.

The Booster Club does not want this money to go to waste, and, as a result, the process of deciding who would be the proper recipient of the money is extensive and thorough. “Every June, Athletic Director Scott Perrin and coaches from each sport make up “wish lists”— requests for things they need or want that the school can’t provide. The [Athletic Director] prioritizes what he needs for the wellness and athletics programs and the coaches ask for sports-specific items,” Frieze said. “Usually, in a note or email, the coaches will explain the reasoning behind their requests. We look at the wish lists and confer with Scott Perrin, [Equipment Manager] Ted Delicandro, and often the coaches, and we basically spend the money until it’s gone.” This process has become an effective way for the Booster Club to divide the money that they have raised.

The money raised by the Booster Club is not saved, it is spent in order to improve athletes’ experiences. “For the most part we spend all the money we raise each year in the year it’s raised. That way, people who contribute know that it is being put to use right away. We work very hard to go through this process in a prioritized, fair, way,” Frieze said.

The Booster Club’s fundraising is not based off of one or several major events like the golf tournament, but throughout the year contributions and “Lion’s wear” apparel add to the overall total.

If the Booster club is not able to help a specific sport or the Athletic Department, they try to advocate for them. For example, “Three years ago I asked

Scott Perrin if Newton South could implement the ‘IMPACT’ concussion program.

He wanted the program but the city didn’t have the funds,” Frieze said. “The Booster Club has paid for it every year and advocated using it at schools across the city. Next year it will be implemented at all Newton schools that have athletics and it will be paid for by the city.”

What Halpryn says he is going to specifically do as president is “to raise awareness of the Booster Club in the high school community.

I’d like the Booster Club to continue to not only be an advocate but also enablers of appropriate programs that will help keep Newton South athletes safe.”

It has been a successful academic year through the eyes of the Booster Club representatives, and Frieze is now in the final month of his presidency. “It’s a blast to watch these terrific athletes doing their best and it’s been a privilege to get to know many of them and the great coaches and staff at South,” Frieze said. “Newton South is getting better every year; our sports are highly competitive in the difficult Dual County League and the completion of the athletic fields and track have put Newton South on a par with any public school in the state.

It’s no wonder that school spirit continues to rise.”

Frieze and the Booster Club have been working to rasie as much money as possible to improve the quality of every student’s athletic experience. “The Newton South Booster Club tries to do our little part to improve the experience for each kid.

Personally, it’s been a very rewarding experience, and loads of fun,” Frieze said.

7 June 2011

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Newton South Sports 2010 - 2011

Sports C3

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Sports C4

Ageless Athletes: Brian Murray

prohibited; participants were forced

By Nathan Baskin to work till they dropped. and Helen Holmes One of the most demanding porBrian Murray is known throughout South as a good-hearted, albeit chal- tions of these dreaded practices was lenging, history teacher. From his when wrestlers had to carry teamscholarly appearance, one would as- mates up flight of stairs. Since Mursume he spent his youth buried deep ray was the smallest wrestler he was in textbooks and perhaps indulging forced to carry the heavyweight.

“It was torture, but it was fun,” in a foreign film or two.

What many students don’t know he said when asked about the exabout Murray, however, is that he perience.

Lacrosse was a rapidly developwas the star midfielder of one of Chicago’s best high school lacrosse ing sport during the time that Murray was growing up teams, as well as an in Chicago, so he amazing wrestler.

Murray attended “I picked up wrestling decided to give it Loyola Academy, because I wanted to a chance. Murray, it turned out, was a Chicago Catholic High school of beat my brother up. It a natural lacrosse 5,000 boys taught was a valuable tool in player. Partly, this was because of his by the Jesuit order, my family.” tremendous speed. located a couple of –Brian Murray At the time Loyhours away from ola Academy had his home. He grew one of the best laup in the northern part of the city, an area called Rogers crosse teams in Chicago, and so Park, abundant with public schools, Murray knew it was going to take but a denominational education was more than just speed to make the team.

Murray’s goal.

Murray practiced religiously, as it Because of this, he decided to make the sacrifice of taking a combined two were, spending most of his free time hour bus and train trip early morning doing wall ball drills, which are drills and late evening. Murray quickly to improve hand-eye coordination and made friends at Loyola Academy, and weak-side strength.

When tryouts came along, he was was easily accepted into the pattern of so surprised to make the team that a large schools.

Murray was of a small stature while when the coach announced his name, growing up, so naturally he felt the he pretended not to hear it. Loyola strong instinct to prove himself. In or- Academy had such talented comder to show up his older brother, Mur- petitors that Murray’s team won the ray decided to try wrestling, which state championship six times while he was there. eventually became his first love.

To become as good as the rest of “I picked up wrestling because I wanted to beat my brother up. It the boys, Murray had to catch up as was a valuable tool in my family,” far as training went. He began to start lifting weights and running.

Murray said.

Murray’s team was so excellent, Murray’s dad had wrestled in high school, and for this reason Murray Murray’s coach was even disapfelt that wrestling was at least in his pointed if they won but the team did genes. Nobody could deny the fact not play the way they were supposed that, as a varsity wrestler at Loyola to. In fact, sometimes the coach beAcademy, Murray had a real natural came so incensed that he made the team run a victory lap. talent for the sport.

After his time at Loyola AcadMurray says that the worst part of wrestling at Loyola Academy was the emy, Murray moved to Boston and grueling red flag practices. A red flag attended Boston College too for practice is a surprise practice that oc- his under-graduate and masters. curs at random in which breaks were At BC, he decided not try out for

the lacrosse team in order to focus more on running and rugby, which he joined as a club sport.

Murray says that the rules of rugby were so confusing that he did not understand how they played the sport in Europe. After BC, he lived in Colorado for a few years, where he learned how to ski and snowboard.

Though an excellent skier, he preferred snowboarding because he used to skate board when he was a small child.

He became so proficient at snowboarding, he spent most of his time riding with the mountain emergency team.

Murray now enjoys cross-country skiing; a tie to his appreciation and love for the environment. He says that at first he had to get used to trekking through the snow, but now he enjoys the sport immensely - he likes to “absorb nature” as he glides through the woods.

A great wrestler, an amazing lacrosse player, an avid snowboarder and an eager cross-country skier as well as one of the most knowledgeable and adept history teachers at South, Murray’s life-long love of sports truly makes him an ageless athlete.

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7 June 2011

Baseball a hit; earns tournament berth

ing ace in Forman, pitching has been

By Zach Pawa Last year the Baseball team was largely responsible for the team’s very hyped; however, this year’s team success.

“Our pitching has been our strong did not receive as much optimism from South fans. With an abundance of suit this year,” May said. “We are not seniors, last year’s team made it to the going to overpower anyone with our style, but we hit our spots.” tournament and won a few games.

Along with pitching, the team exAs Baseball season drew closer this year, people began to wonder who was hibits a strong defense.

“Our defense has been solid so far,” going to fill the holes in the team left by the graduated seniors, one of whom Davis said. “But we need to keep it up was last year’s male Denebola Athlete for the tournament.”

Offense has been the source of the of the Year, Sam Forman.

It became evident that the Baseball team’s struggles so far this season. team would be led by a group of Younger players who have not yet faced a pitcher who can throw 93 MPH sophomores and juniors.

“The younger players have only have struggled.

Howerver, sophomore and third helped the program,” said junior and Dual County League (DCL) All-Star basemen Justin Moy has had a big bat Reed May. “Although they do not have this year. He was named to the DCL the big game experience, they have the All-Star team, and will be a crucial player in the tournament. talent to make up for it.”

“Although our hitMay is one of two juting has slowed niors, the other being John Jennings, who “Although our hitting down, I am not worried,” Foner said. has been on Varsity has slowed down, I “We will make up since his freshman year. am not worried. We for it with strikes and clean fielding.”

The three startwill make up for it In order for the ing sophomores, Jesse Feldstein, Jus- with strikes and clean team to have a successful tournament tin Moy, and Mike fielding.” run, all the pieces Kinch have filled in –Alex Foner of the puzzle have to three crucial starting fall into place. positions and helped “We need to get lead the team to a 12-8 back to basics,” May said. “If we record.

“The three sophomores have been a play like we did in the beginning of the huge help,” senior and Captain Alex season, we will be successful.”

One of the issues the team has been Foner said. “They have learned what success feels like, and will be able dealing with is staying focused.

“We don’t always stay focused to carry this over to the following throughout the whole game,” Foner years.”

With seven games left, the team said. “This leads to lapses at the plate was 10-3. Over the last couple weeks and in the field.”

To achieve its goal of a strong of the season the team went 2-5. The Lions dropped their last game against postseason run, the Lions have to not Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High let the pressure and excitement of the tournament get to them.

School in extra innings.

This should not be hard for the “We had a couple rough games toward the end of the season,” junior seniors and some experienced juniors William Davis said. “But there is no due to their experience with last year’s doubt in my mind that the team can be trip to the tournament, but being a first year Varsity player in the tournament very successful in the tournament.”

BASEBALL, continued on page C5 Although the team lost its pitch-

7 June 2011

Students choose sports over schools

By Mike Berman South allows students in their senior year to spend their fourth term working on a project, which they themselves design on a part-time or full-time basis, instead of going to some of their classes.

These Wise Independent Senior Experiment (WISE) projects are created to help the student explore a personal interest and often lead to a possible career choice.

However, many students choose athletic WISE projects so they could explore their love of sports for school credit.

One senior in particular, Sammie Levin, decided to spend time on a couple of personal hobbies and combine them.

“I chose to do a triathlon because I wanted to physically and mentally challenge myself and push myself to new limits,” Levin said. “I’ve always liked swimming, biking, and running separately, so I figured I would like doing them all together, but I underestimated how hard it really is.”

Athletic WISE projects take up a lot of time even though the race or contest itself is only a short period of time.

This is due to the extensive training that is necessary for a student to reach the physical condition necessary for their challenge.

“I trained for and participated in an Olympic distance triathlon. For the most part, I did all of the training by myself but also had a few sessions with a triathlete trainer to learn about form, technique, pacing, and proper race nutrition.” Levin said. “I did a small sprint triathlon in Sudbury with a friend for practice.”

As the end of the year was getting closer and closer, Levin had to train more frequently in order to participate in a real triathlon in Maryland.

“I started really training at the beginning of March about five days a week, and then in the last month I was training six days a week,” Levin said.

“I swam and biked and did spin classes at the [Jewish Community

Center] and ran on the track there, and when the weather was nice I did all my training outdoors around Newton.”

It has become common for WISE projects to be based on an athletic activity because it teaches the student to be healthy and to live a healthy lifestyle, while also having fun and relaxing.

Being graded for athletic activities forces seniors to go outside and get some fresh air, something they do not do as much as they should do to the pressures of school.

“I think the advantage to doing something sports-related is that it forces you to be active. That was another reason I chose to do a triathlon—I knew that if I did a project that kept me indoors all the time I would just get sluggish and feel like a blob,” Levin said.

“Doing an athletic project lets you get outside and enjoy spring, keeps you from getting too lazy, and can teach you valuable lessons about fitness in general.”

Doing a Wise project allows a student to do something new especially for those that don’t participate in any athletic activities and for term four of their senior year do something that involves breathing and excersizing in the spring air.

At South, a few other kids are doing sports-related projects that include a bike trip to Cape Cod, learning how to skateboard, coaching basketball and taking yoga classes.

“I think kids that choose athletic projects probably do so because they have an interest in or aptitude for sports that they want to expand or further, or maybe they had no former involvement in sports and want to try something new.”

Of course sports isn’t the only topic that students do in order to pursue something that they find interest in.

There plenty of others that chose to do something different, and it will always depend on the certain individual.

“While there are a few sports-related projects, I’d say the majority are

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Baseball has high hopes

BASEBALL, continued from page C4

can be nerve racking.

According to many Varsity underclassmen, the transition from the Freshman or Junior Varsity team to the Varsity team is a difficult one, especially in the middle of the season.

The upperclassmen are hoping that their young teammates adjust quickly to give a much needed boost to the offense.

“Although we have been slumping as a team lately, the tournament is the time for this to change,” Davis said.

“We have been doing everything else so well, if our bats get going I don’t think we can’t be stopped.”

The pitching and fielding need continue to be successful. These two factors have been the strong suit of

“Although our hitting has slowed down, I am not worried. We will make up for it with strikes and clean fielding.”

–Alex Foner

artistic. There are projects involving painting, drawing, pottery, film, photography, sewing, and more. It’ll be so interesting to see all the final products.

photo contributed by sammie levin

There are also a lot dealing with music and a few technology ones, and then there are a lot of kids who did really cool internships.” Levin said.

the team this year and are largely responsible for the team’s tournament berth.

“We have very talented position players,” Foner said. “They will definitely be beneficial going into the tournament.”

These key aspects will lead to success for the South team. Although the odds, in the form of young players, weak hitting, and an end of season slump, seemed to be against it at the beginning of the year the South team now has a chance of progressing far into the tournament.

The expectations are high from the players. “First I wanted to make the tournament,” Foner said. “Now that we made it, I want to win.”

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Denebola

First Year South Staff

7 June 2011

Tell Denebola about their year

Earl Battle Fashion Design Teacher I love the students, they are very fun to be with.

Christopher Bender Campus Aide and South graduate class of 1995 I enjoyed my whole year at South and working with the kids

Peter Hershon American Sign Language Teacher

My teaching experience at Newton South gives me an interesting perspective about the currently fast-paced, informationoriented, and chaotic society.

Shelly Borg Head of Guidance Department

I’ve been bowled over by the support and encouragement of so many people.

I’ve loved getting to know many of our students and look forward to next year.

Alex Palilunas Algebra and Pre-calc Teacher

I am very impressed with the level of hard work that students put into their learning.

In many cases, they go beyond what is required of them.

Molly Gadenz Goldrick Guidance Councilor

I enjoyed meeting and working with new students through the year.

I really enjoyed the comradery of the department and the school

Being a new employess at South has been a joy. Everyone’s an awesome group.

Evan Kelly Technical Theatre Teacher

Jon Orren International Cuisine Teacher

Renee Walsh French Teacher

Jeremy Rischall Guidance Councilor

Richard Drurey Physics Teacher

It was nice seeing how devoted the students are and how many opportunities South programs offer.

Diane Trieger Campus Aide

I liked getting to know the students and staff.

I’ve been truly impressed by the enthusiasm and the energy of the students.

There is real pleasure and joy in teaching these students.

Cheryl Turgel Spanish Teacher

I loved the students here, and the work ethic of everyone is impressive.

I enjoyed getting to know all my students

Jason Squinobal Jazz Improv and Music Tech Teacher I enjoyed my year and taking the Jazz Combo to the Berkley Music Festivel.

Camille Connolly Goodwin House Secretary

I enjoyed working here at South and was amazed by the amount of extracurricular activities that were available to students of all grade levels.

Newton South information gathered by rutul patel and daniel barabasi pcitures by denebola staff

7 June 2011

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7 June 2011

Sports in College Sophie Bikofsky

Hannah Nussbaum Hannah Nussbaum is going to McGill. She decided on McGill because she says she really likes Montreal and the atmosphere of a big city school.

She has only attended the preseason practices but has not yet officially joined the team. She said she is very excited to be able to play soccer in college but at a more relaxed level. “I wanted to play soccer but not too competitively…I like that it’s both challenging and relaxed” said Nussbaum. Even though she wasn’t offered a scholarship, Nussbaum is very excited to be able to play at a more relaxed level in college. She plans on majoring in some sort of Arts or Humanities.

Madeline Frieze Madeline Frieze chose to go to Union college. She likes the size of the campus and its surrounding nature. She likes that it is only two and a half hours from Boston. She likes the track program because she feels that it is challenging yet relaxed and is at the Division 3 level. Even though she did not receive a scholarship she is very excited at the prospect of continuing to run track. She has not yet decided on a major.

Sophie Bikofsky is the starting forward for the South Girls Varsity Basketball team. She was offered many full scholarships but she chose Brown. “ I chose Brown because I thought it was the perfect opportunity for me to mix a great education with a great basketball experience.” said Bikofsky. She likes the campus, coaches and athletes on the team. The Ivy League’s policy of allowing athletes to leave over summer is something that few other D1 schools offered her. She is undecided in what she will be majoring in.

Tyler Epstein Tyler is going to Tufts to play tennis in Div 3. He really likes the program because of the “great and experienced coaches, along with a team of great kids and athletes,” said Epstein. He likes the school because it offers great academics along with a close proximity to Boston. He has decided to go for Div 3 because of its less competitive level of play that will not interfere with his studies. He is very excited that Tufts offers a very strong program in his chosen major, Quantitative Economics.

Grant Henderson Grant Henderson runs the 100- meter and 200-meter for South. He is a DCL All-Star in both events and went to both the State and All-State tournaments for the 100 and 200 meter. He went to Nationals where he placed 16th for the small distance medley. He runs a 11.2 second 100 meter even though he is only a 2nd year track athlete. He has done Indoor for two years and did Outdoor this year. He received offers from a few schools but eventually decided on Kansas as he believes they have a very strong sprinting program.

“I decided to go because of the full scholarship and amount of money they offered me. I also believe they have a very solid team and excel at sprinting” said Henderson. He has yet to decide on a major.

Gabe Turetsky

Turetsky is the first Newton South wrestler to break Abe Rosenfeld’s 129 career wins record with 140 wins of his own.

His victory at the New England Tournament in the 152 pound weight class, along with his impressive record, earned him a spot on the Boston University (BU) Wrestling Team. Turetsky is the only South wrestler who will continue his wrestling career in college next year. He was offered scholarships to several National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Wrestling schools, but he decided on BU. “I decided to go to BU because it is close to Newton and also because I liked the wrestling coach there and the educational [program], as well as wrestling program,” Turetsky said. Boston Univerity is considered to be one of the most prestigious wrestling schools in of Massachusetts. Turetsky plans to pursue a major in either Finance or Business.

Chloe Rothman Chloe Rothman is the starting point guard for South. She has decided to go to Merrimack on a full scholarship. She chose Merrimack because of the fully paid education along with a great campus atmosphere and well kept facilities. Merrimack offers many athletic scholarships and the basketball team seems to be very strong and a good match to her basketball level. She believes the very athleticsoriented college will make her feel very comfortable. She will be majoring in Sports Medicine.

7 June 2011

Features Denebola

View from the Top: Alexandra Fen and Jenny Gerstner

photo by rutul patel

Jealous of Nicky Leiter? A lil’ baby bit? Well, if you’re not among the select few to be in a picture like the one to the right, time is really running out - sorry about it.

Don’t worry, though; there are easier ways to get close to us. We each tend to gravitate towards those exactly like ourselves, so it would be in your best interests to get like us.

But everybody needs a little guidance, so here are 34 not-so-foolproof ways to get started: 1. Find a twin.

2. Find a set of male twins. Actually don’t. Their little brother will inevitably be a better catch.

3. If you’re not Asian - get some. If you’re full Asian - lose some.

4. B’s become A’s by lending a helping hand at J blocks.

5. You are all welcome for May’s dumplings. And the open beds in her treatment rooms.

6. If you’re known as a curse, don’t worry: it’s just a phase.

7. Freshman year: Friday nights in Davo’s basement.

8. Sophomore year: Friday nights with Friday Friends 9. Junior year: Friday nights in AMSCO. 10. Senior year: Friday nights in Oh wait what?

11. When you get dumped for semi, it’s fine. Mediterranean boys may be a force, but they look good in a suit.

12. A note to future Jake Rides

customers: make sure the “Jake” is single - that way, you can save the five dollars for McDonalds.

13. Ladies: we all make mistakes.

Sometimes we wear spandex shorts with button down shirts. Sometimes we hang out with Sam Hyun. Oodles of us have even slipped in Sammie’s basement. Some mistakes are just a bit bigger than others.

14. To all French class eavesdroppers: your hair looked better platinum blonde.

Not. 15. Winter girls are called that for a reason.

16. A kiss here and there is always worth getting a handle on things, especially in a big city.

17. Lena Sternberg is so annoying.

All she talks about is Alexandra Fen! 18. Join Step Squad. Get the street cred. (And the t-shirt).

19. It’s fine to aspire to be a trophy wife.

20. His hair isn’t that nice. And he isnít that tall.

21. Mirroring trips to the dark side will always remain in the Memoirs of a Geisha.

And while we’re here, we’ll take this opportunity to extend our warm-

These extraordinary feats didn’t stop there: besides her literary abilities, Marina proved to be an artist as well.

“I wrote chapter 16 on the huge mirrors that are my closet doors,” said Rakhilin.

“That helped a lot and looked really impressive. The rest of the chapters are on post-it notes around my room. I still see the Thyroid Gland one every night before I fall asleep.”

When the time came to take the exam, Marina had even more work to do.

“I talked with my guidance counselor...and then I got redirected to some ladies at the main office,” said Rakhilin. “Ms. Mobilia handles all of it, so she just took a check for $90 and gave me a pamphlet that was not particularly helpful. I got summoned to this prep day when you fill out papers. There are 26 practice sessions, and they seemed sort of angry that in my ignorance I missed 24 of them.

Then I just showed up, and since I couldn’t sit by the class I just took the last seat left.”

Not only did Marina have to sit aside from the other students, but social interaction with the seniors presented a difficult social conundrum.

“It was definitely awkward because there were two classes of seniors,

and they assumed I was some silent person in their class who they somehow never noticed. I am kind of tall,” Rakhilin said.

It seems that even freshmen cannot avoid prying questions about life after South.

“They did ask me to choose the college I was going to at the prep session, and I got laughed at a bit for being a freshman, but not evilly. Also, it turns out that I misspelled the Psych teacher’s name at the top of my answer sheet, which might not be so great since he’s grading it!”

Marina has high expectations for her test results, but plans to keep pursuing perfection. At the very least, she hopes that her scores will keep improving.

“If I get a 4 this year I’ll be proud, and if I get a 5 I’ll be insanely happy, as will Mr. Rinaldi, but I’ll probably take it again next year. Whenever I get a five, it’ll count as a college course, which is awesome,” she said.

“And since I’ve taken the test, I

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est thank you’s to the Camiel family. The new basement looks great - hardwood floors are definitely the way to go.

23. Aspire to be the hottest and coolest senior Omer knows. Sorry J! 24. Ben Snyder and Matt Roberts you will never get this.

25. What: Marsupial-themed DP. 26. Why: Because birthday dinners are getting kind of old.

27. Strive to get those late night texts from Cutty and Fitz.

Every night.

28. Don’t say you got into college if you didn’t. You know who you are.

29. The Douglass boys. That is all.

30. Dare to venture to the artsy corner. The boys are better spoken, better dressed, and better musicians.

31. Blame it on The Goose Fish.

32. Find someone who’ll do damage control with trash bags if one of his friends wreaks havoc in your beach house.

33. Don’t be sad when we go off to college; our silhouettes will follow each other home.

34. Insert Punky punch line here.

We each tend to gravitate towards those exactly like ourselves, so it would be in your best interests to get like us.

On her own: a fresh attempt at an AP Psychology course

By Courtney Foster As the dreaded bell rang at last, signaling the beginning of history class, freshman Marina Rakhilin hastily put away the paperback book in her backpack.

History teacher Jamie Rinaldi appeared stunned as he glanced across the cover, reading “AP PSYCH” in large, bold print.

“Are you taking an AP class as a freshman?” he asked, astonished.

“No,” she replied, “I’m studying it myself.”

Unlike many seniors at South for whom the prospect of taking an AP class seems daunting, Rakhilin can’t enroll soon enough.

“My brother said it was hard to take five AP tests in his senior year,” Rakhilin said, “And if he could go back and take some his freshman and sophomore years, he would – but since he can’t, I have to.”

Interested in taking an AP freshman year, Marina hit a setback in that she wasn’t able to actually take these high level courses at her age class.

Undaunted, she decided to study the subject herself to make up for her absence of classroom time, a teacher, or a structured curriculum.

“Psychology is supposed to be the easiest AP test to learn by yourself, and

it’s pretty interesting material,” Rakhilin said. “It’s the stuff that everybody already knows, but can’t explain.”

Rakhilin clearly keeps her goals close in sight. Even before the seniors began the class, Rakhilin began to study.

“In August or something, my parents bought me two fancy books that took me all year to read,” Rakhilin said.

However, as everyone knows, it is easy for even the most studious of people to be sidetracked by time constraints.

“It’s all fun when the test is months away,” Rakhilin said, “[But] I really cracked down and studied about three weeks before the test.”

Though she was on her own in her studies, Marina did receive some professional assistance from a graduate of Newton South.

From there, once she realized how challenging the material truly was, she delved into the psychological quirks of her own mind to help her learn it all.

“When my brother visited us (he just graduated from Cornell), he lectured me on the stuff – which helped when I paid attention,” Rakhilin said.

“Then when I realized that this was actually going to be really hard, I began rewriting the book in my own words.”

photo by denebola staff

don’t have to take the class, because then I would just be an annoying know-it-all there. Anyway, I will get credits from it this year or next year.”

This personal pride she feels from embarking on such a task is much of what makes the AP Psych experience worthwhile for Marina, despite being only a freshman.

“I really wish I could just sit in on some of the seniors’ classes, because it can’t be that hard, and I feel like I’ve already proven myself ‘worthy,’” Rakhilin said. “And now I can psychoanalyze people and creep them out!”

You scream, we all scream: frozen goodies at South What is your South’s Favorite Frozen Yogurt Flavors favorite flavor of ice cream?

7 June 2011

The Gerry friend discount

By Josh Nislick Located in the heart of scenic Newton Centre is a restaurant that distances itself from other family businesses. A stone walkway dotted with flowers leads customers to the front door, which is heavily decorated with awards and certificates. The restaurant itself has an elegant blend of traditional decorations and more modern touches, with a sports bar facing an HD television.

Jumbo Seafood, one of the area’s finest Chinese restaurants, is a local hotspot. The restaurant, which opened in December of 2003, is owned and operated by Ken and Cathy Leung.

The Leungs opened their first Jumbo Seafood in Boston in 1995, and the restaurant was an instant success.

“We had Jumbo Seafood in Boston,” Cathy said, “where it became a big hit and a hot spot for chefs’ late night hang outs.”

Not only did Jumbo Seafood have a large and dedicated clientele, the restaurant was also recognized by several organizations for its excellent food.

“We won ‘Best of Boston’ three years from the Boston Magazine,” Cathy said. She added that they also received awards from other magazines.

In 2003, the Leungs decided to open another Jumbo Seafood in closer to home.

“We lived in Newton and many of our customers were from Newton,” Cathy said. “They requested that we open another Jumbo in Newton.”

The Leungs hoped to please their customers by opening a second restaurant, but Cathy said that they had another goal which fueled their decision.

“We wanted to serve better authentic Chinese food in Newton,”

she said.

Ken and Cathy Leung are the parents of Newton South High School student Gerry Leung. Gerry feels that the restaurant is an important part of daily life for his family, and he enjoys reaping the benefits of owning such a business.

“It’s awesome because of the free food,” Gerry said. He does contribute to the maintenance of the restaurant, though: Gerry occasionally has to clean tables, and he is often charged with the duty of finishing the leftovers.

The Leungs have also found ways to use their son to generate business.

Dubbed “The Gerry Friend Discount,” Gerry’s acquaintances are given a price cut on purchases made at Jumbo Seafood.

“It was my idea,” Gerry said, “To get more business.”

Jumbo Seafood has certainly exposed Gerry to the business world.

He has seen how the restaurant can be packed one day and empty the next, and he has also witnessed deceitful customers.

“Some people try to get free meals,” he said, “By pulling out their own hair and putting it in their food.”

Aside from a few dishonest individuals, Gerry feels that many of the restaurant’s customers know each other well, and Gerry is very friendly with the employees.

However, Gerry doubts that he will run his own restaurant when he grows up.

His mother agreed. “Look at him.

Gerry isn’t a business type guy,” she said.

For now, though, Jumbo Seafood is much a part of Gerry’s life. He enjoys his family restaurant-- and, of course, he loves the free food.

photo by aley lewis

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photo by denebola staff

Faculty Focus: Alan Reinstein

and Japan. He met his wife while

By Liana Butchard From Mexico to Japan, from ir- spending time in Israel.

In the course of these travels, regular verbs to Shakespeare sonnets, freshman and senior English Reinstein has picked up quite a few languages. teacher Alan ReinAfter English, stein has seen “The thing that I learned he is most comit all.

The summer the most, was to say ‘yes’... f o r t a b l e w i t h Spanish, but also before his se I just had to trust that it speaks some Henior year of college, Reinstein would all work out for the brew, Japanese and French. made his first best.”

Traveling foray into what -Alan Reinstein so much in his he calls “creative young adult life drifting.” gave Reinstein This journey a unique teachin g consisted of hitch-hiking from New Jersey to Wisconsin perspective. “[I have] a bigger sense of the world and so however with little more than a tent.

While Reinstein doesn’t recom- things unfold, I know th at it will mend this in our day and age of all be fine,” Reinstein said. speeding drivers and pedophiles, he He brings this philosophy into does say that his journey was “really his classroom, making sure to contransformative.” nect individually with each student “The thing that I learned the just to see how they are doing. most, was to say ‘yes,’” Reinstein Now in his twelfth year—first said. He loved±instein said. at Sharon High School and then After college, Reinstein worked to Newton South—of teaching, on a lobster boat in Maine and Reinstein doesn’t fret over insigwith the Royal Hannaford cir- nificant details.

After working as a camp cus. He also lived for some time in Guanajuanto, Mexico, Alaska, counselor for six years, Reinstein

knew that he “wanted to work with kids.” He has always loved reading and creative writing and is enthusiastic about how he still gets to improve, even as a teacher.

Reinstein cares “more about the experience of learning rather than the specific subject.”

This makes teaching English a perfect fit because of the less controlled curriculum than that of Math or History.

He is able to teach what is required but also incorporate his own ideas such as the song and poem of the week that he shares with his freshman classes. Such activities let Reinstein showcase the performance part of teaching, which he loves.

Alan Reinstein puts his own spin on teaching English, combining his many world experiences with his love of both literature and learning in general to create a unique learning environment.

“I want to feel like I can make some kind of connection,” Reinstein said. Ask any of his students, and the likely answer would be that he has overwhelmingly achieved this goal.

Going the distance: Newton South’s Marathon Club

By Jesse Feldstein On Saturday mornings, most high school students find it difficult to get out of bed before noon.

However, forty determined students from Newton South defy that stereotype and get up before 8:00 AM every Saturday to run over ten miles.

Two years ago, Newton South began its first Marathon Club with only eight Newton South students attending.

Over the course of its years in existence, the club has expanded to include over forty runners from both Newton South and from nearby schools.

“It is a program that has a couple of goals,” South teacher Lily Eng said.

Eng has been part of the club for two years.

“Ultimately we aim to bring together diverse groups of students, instill discipline, prove that hard work brings pride, and ultimately complete a marathon.”

While there are many great aspects to the club, according to Eng, the best reward is “the sense of camaraderie. We never run alone. We always run in pairs, even in practice,” she said.

In keeping with traditional preparation for a marathon, the practices are rigorous. The team practices three times a week, twice after school, and one longer run every Saturday morning around 7:00 am.

Beginning their practices in October, the team has gradually increased the distance of their runs.

“It is tough if you play a winter or spring sport because the commitment for the Marathon Club is huge,” Eng said.

All of this practice was in preparation for the Providence Marathon which took place in early May. “Every member who started the race finished it,” Eng said. “Even after the race was over, some runners who finished the race in three or so hours waited another five hours for the rest of their teammates to finish.”

Amazingly, over 90% of the students who began running with the arduous club out stuck with it until the end.

“Some of these kids had never done a run longer than what is mandatory in physical education, and the majority of these kids are not varsity athletes,” Eng said when asked about the physical capability and previous experience of some of the competitors. However, that did not hinder their dedication and grit.

“Complacency is deadly. One should never be satisfied mentally, and equally as important, no one should ever be complacent with their physical status,” Eng said, referring to her motivations behind joining the club.

Ms. Eng believes that satisfaction should never be achieved and that to be a member of the Marathon Club, every runner had to challenge his or herself to fight satisfaction.

“I don’t enjoy running,” Eng said. “The lesson came from the training and the finishing. We trained and worked hard and we all finished.”

Eng also commented on the bond between her and the other members of the club. “We developed more of a relationship than a normal teacher and student could, and that was another benefit to the club,” Eng said.

The club’s captains, seniors Leo Westebbe and Zoe Newberg, “were also definitely key in the team’s journey to success,” Eng said.

The efforts of the team’s two leaders have certainly helped the club reach a new level of excellence and dedication, and all of the members of the club believe it is vital to just come out and give marathon running a try.

photo by aley lewis

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7 June 2011

Club Roundup 2010-2011: Recaping talent

By Izzy Shishko How many clubs do you think were operated at Newton South this year? Ten? Twenty?

Thirty?

Think again: during the 2010-2011 academic year, there were over sixty-five after-school clubs and activities at South, where anyone is welcome to join or, in some cases, at least try out.

The clubs showcase a wide gamut of interests and skills, and are loosely categorized around a variety of themes: academic, athletic, cultural and social, literature and media, music, dance and theatre, social action and politics, travel, and visual arts.

Unfortunately, next year it will cost students money to join a club, due to rec e n t b u d g e t c u t s a c r o ss the Newton Public Schools system. “[There will be] increased reve n u e s t h rough fees to minimize increase in class size and reductions in programs,” the Superintendent said in the Superintendent’s Proposed Fiscal 2012 Budget.

According to Boston. com, next year the Newton School Committee w i l l r e q u i r e h i g h school students to pay a fee of $125 in order to participate in

any student-run activity, including South Senate.

This new fee is expected to raise a total of $271,875.

In addition to that, in the 2011-12 school year, there will be a fee to participate in drama productions and the athletic fee will be raised.

The former is expected to raise $56,550 total, while the latter is expected to increase the total from the athletic fee by $144,235.

When informed of this new fee, many students were enraged. “It’s ridiculous! A club is a voluntary commitment; paying money takes away from the fun of it,” freshman Julie Olesky said.

She is not alone in these thoughts. Many students are now reconsidering their involvement in student-run activities.

“I think that it [the fee] is really unfair to students,” freshman Jack Lovett said. He is a member of South’s Senate and is worried about how the

fee will affect the Senate in years to come. “This could end up making students not want to join South Senate,” Lovett said.

Not all students are so negative with their view on the fee.

“The price increase is worth it because it will hopefully lead to fewer cuts,” freshman Patrick Maher said.

He, along with a few others, pr e f e r s t h a t a s m a l l fee be charged for clubs, drama, and sports with the

extra money going to prevent future cuts. “With such severe budget cuts, these fees are necessary if we want to maintain any semblance of the high school

their winning tradition set by several previous years in the 2010-11 academic year.

With over 120 schools participating in the Mock Trial tournament, the South team defeated the competition to become the Region Four champions.

“Newton South Mock Trial never loses, we have the best coaches, everyone is nice and we are a family after this year,” freshman Mark Hochberg said.

With every student putting in great effort, i t w a s a n a c a d e mic and fun-filled season.

The Speech and Debate team also had a productive year, with many individual stuPHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY THE MOCK TRIAL TEAM dents placing between education that we’ve grown f i r s t p l a c e a n d s e v e n t h used to,” junior Eleanor Rich- p l a c e i n m a n y d i ff e r e n t ard said. categories.

No one can accurately preIn first place, Justin Kidict what will happen with eran won the Varsity Extemp, many clubs next year due to the Daniel Bender-Stern won the fees. However, this past year Prose Reading, and Melanie was particularly successful Rucinski won the Original for a number of competitive Oratory. clubs, such as Mock Trial, In addition, the Speech Speech and Debate team, and Team was awarded second Science team, in which all three place in the Massachusetts teams placed first in at least State Speech Finals this year. one category in their respective There were also additional competitions. awards given, such as honorable The Mock Trial team continued mentions and top novices.

“It was a fun experience. You get to prove your verbal skills and you feel like you are a boss after defeating someone. Most importantly, you gain a lot of selfconfidence,” freshman Oliver Xie said.

The Science Team tied for first place in many categ o r i e s a s w e l l . Another competitive club, the Debate Team, scored fourth place in the debate finals and two students from South, Adam and Ryan Sonnenberg, made it to the State Championships.

There were also several new clubs that were started this year, such as Break Dance, Animal Rights, and World of Warcraft.

While some South clubs are highly competitive, such as Mock Trial, Speech Team, and Science Team, others are quite large but non-competitive, including the Gay/Straight Alliance and South Stage.

However, despite the popularity of South clubs among students, the new club fee could cause a decrease in the amount of people that will join each club, which could ultimately affect how successful the competitive clubs will be in the future as well as discourage prospective students from joining.

The great South metamorphosis: The Grad Ceremony

Before

After

PHOTO BY ALEY LEWIS

PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY DAVID HAN

7 June 2011

The life story of Assassin

By Jeff Hurray and Adam Sachs Assassins! What a concept! Assassin: noun, a fragile cloth featured primarily in Mormon folklore. Assassinate: verb, revolutionizing the pooping experience.

Do you have warts? Do you sleep with crayons? Did you ever see that animated Disney version of Atlantis where Condaleeza rice voices every character? Assassins is the game for you.

The story of Assassins is bound in leather and smells of rich mahogany.

Conceived in Northern Ireland after a romantic game of mancala between two ferns, Assassins burst forth from his mother’s fer(n)tile womb into the cool mist of the Malaysian rainforest, where he was raised by howler monkeys and the wind spirits. Have your parents ever been plants? Well you just don’t understand his struggle. Mancala is a game of wit. I lost the game.

Bathroom policies have really changed over the last 30 years. Have you ever seen a man in a Detroit auto plant get his hair ripped off? In the days of young, you needed a pass to make a poop in a stall. Now, people bring their water guns around for use as makeshift bidets. And they expect it NOT to get confiscated? Fools gold.

Haas avocado. Hadazatsound?

So anyways, the new presence of water guns in the school is how Assassins came to South. Just kidding, his parents moved to Newton and could not afford private school because of the high property taxes. Get it???

GARDEN City, am I right????

To the best of our knowledge, the game of Assassins has nothing to do with Assassins. In fact, he’s already been eliminated because his girlfriend, Stacey Terminator, had him as her first target: “You are so exterminated!” Assassins’ water gun was a flower watering can with which he showered his parents with affection. Have you ever had to water your parents?

Let’s be Sirius [Black] for a moment. Cheesy bread is good!!! Speaking of local heroes, have you met my man Pop from the Barbershop? He told me that he was in the gambling spot, and heard the intricate plot to assassinate us.

USA, what a collaboration of musical talent. AP Gov, the safe haven for field mice. Questions: Why was Little Bunny Foofoo constantly assaulting our field mice? Why did the founding fathers write the constitution? Why is this night different from all other nights? The answer is one and the same: Assassins. Do your parents do Photosynthesis? Did your dad give you verbal permission to market a pressurized tube that expels fecal matter, revolutionizing the pooping experience?

Is Fantasia illiterate? The answer to all of the previous questions is one and the same: No; she’s now reading at a third grade level.

Slam poetry is definitely my favorite stop on the d-line. Where’s Jones? Have you ever noticed that you can’t spell POlitical doOP without Poop? We love you Marc F. Political commentary at its finest: Clinton brings the ball up, drives, dishes to Nader, Nader hesitates, fakes, swings to Kucinich— Kucinich for threeeee????? GOT IT! Roll the balls out boys; our troops are getting gravy. Meanwhile at Newton South High School, campus aides are growing restless.

People are getting wet, and floors slippery.

This is unacceptable. Call the D-team. Lockdown! We have an assassin in the building!

His parents are ferns!

It’s really funny having a class with Assassins because on the first day of school they call out attendance and the teacher has to ask, “Why is there a plural noun on my attendance sheet?”

It’s really funny to discuss emotional problems with Assassins because he has so many. Assassins gets a lot of popularity from this game, but I don’t think he likes all that jazz. He is a simple man.

On an average day, he spends four to six hours in his favorite Toyota, listening to his favorite eight-tracks of Kenny G, and putting Bugles brand chips on his fingers, pretending they are little people, and performing puppet shows for himself. This is his preferred Jazz. He enjoys these puppet shows, and writes about them in his diary every night with your son.

He doesn’t know the difference between people and ferns, and gets quite confused in arboretums.

It’s really funny to play assassins with Assassins because he doesn’t even know the rules or own a water gun.

It’s really funny to go over to Assassins’ house for dinner because his parents are ferns.

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The game of sabotage, betrayal, and treachery

By Rachel Davidson Sabotage, betrayal, treachery – three words that just about sum up Assassins, a game played by seniors starting in the beginning of May and ending on the last day of high school.

The epic battle began on May 9, when coordinators sent out our “targets” via text message and Facebook. Essentially, seniors who paid the five dollars to enter the game were given a week to hunt and “kill” that person. Water guns were our weapons.

Once the target has been “assassinated,” the assassin then inherits the dead person’s target. The game is to continue like this until there is only one person left standing, who then collects the every cent of the money paid by each senior.

While this may seem rather easy, there is a catch. There are tons of safe zones, where no one can be shot, including school, all houses, cars, Bobs, Mighty’s, McDonalds, Anna’s Taqueria, Tango Mango, any sports practice, and any job.

In other words, in order to win the game, you must follow these rules: Never leave your house unless you are hunting.

She had successfully assassinated her target. However, lucky for me, she did not follow winning rule number four: know the safe zones.

After a quick call to debate the kill, I was established as safe and

And the most important rule: trust no one.

I made my first mistake in the game, about 20 minutes in, when I broke the most important rule. I decided to trust my best friend. She called me at approximately 2:45, asking me to come to her house.

Water gun in hand, I drove to her house and parked outside. I called her from inside the safe zone of my car and asked her to check her bushes to make sure no one was hiding there to shoot me. She said that she already had and that the door was unlocked. I loaded my gun and sprinted to the door. I walked inside, and just as I kicked off my shoes and looked up, I was greeted by a surprise. She supersoaked me.

As I stood dripping wet, she began hysterically laughing. In her mind, I was the first one out of the game.

still in the game.

I took my gun, shot her for 24 hours immunity, ran back to my car, and drove away.

A few days later, I went to get my first kill. After a failed hunting attempt the night before, and with the deadline approaching, I was determined to get my target. Last block, we both had a free. Two of my friends tracked him down in school and convinced him to go to Dunkin Donuts.

I got in a car with another friend and followed them. We parked in the lot over and I climbed through the bushes to get to the front of Dunkin Donuts. I hid behind a car and waited. When my target exited the door, I went for the surprise effect and sprayed him. I had successfully gotten my first kill.

The second round of the game got more intense. Everyone who hadn’t killed their target was disqualified, and only truly dedicated assassins remained.

On Tuesday night, I had my first encounter with my assassinator. I went to a friend’s house, unarmed. I stayed for a few hours and as I was preparing to leave I realized one of my friends had disappeared with a water bottle. I refused to leave. 20 minutes later, he reappeared. I went to run to the door, but he followed me.

I was trapped. I grabbed a water bottle for protection and stood by the door. As I opened the door, he stepped out first. I laughed and threw the water on him: 24 hours immunity.

I haven’t left my house unarmed since.

Though Assassin may seem like a childish, meaningless game, I think it is an important way to end our high school experience. Senior Assassin is one of the last things our entire grade comes together for. It unifies the class in a way other activities could not.

In Assassins, it does not matter what clique you are a part of; no one cares what your interests are. Though Assassins has its fair share of sabotage, it leads to newly formed friendships and unspoken bonds.

Senior Assassin is a fun and lighthearted way to close off a stressful four years, no matter who wins the money.

the Youth Program Developer and he helped me do what I needed to do to set up chapter [here],” Gross said.

While the club was started in October 2010, it faced a problem most new groups do: it needed to gain interest and awareness from the South community.

Beyond that, the club’s early goals included raising money, continuing to grow its member base, and organizing itself for Habitat events in the

Greater Boston area.

“We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we could integrate ourselves and get ourselves known in the South community, which was challenging. We really want to get out there next year,” Gross said when asked about the biggest challenges to accomplishing these goals.

Though it is still a small group— boasting roughly 20 regular members, and several others who show up semi-regularly—a look at the member list reveals students with varied interests and backgrounds, a sign that word of the club is spreading.

“Everyone in the club is very nice, sociable, welcoming, supportive... really great people as a whole. The meetings aren’t all business -- we get our laughs in there too. I think it’s safe to say that everyone there are friends and very dedicated to the club and the cause,” Gross said.

In addition, Gross says she is confident that the club will receive official Chapter status by the beginning of

next school year, which will serve to boost its exposure in the community.

The club hopes to parlay this increasing interest into increased fundraising.

Ultimately, without more money, the group is somewhat limited in what it can do. “A major goal of ours is to build actual houses through Habitat for Humanity but we need more funds in order to go on a building trip in the Greater Boston area,” Gross said.

Fortunately, the group has several ideas for raising the necessary funds.

After a few of the ubiquitous bake sales that South clubs are known for, the club decided it wanted to plan an “original and creative event” that hadn’t been done before and wouldn’t fall outside of school regulation. Eventually, the group settled on the Habitat for Humanity Club Arcade Night.

Originally they planned to host it in early May, but after facing scheduling conflicts it had to be cancelled.

“Having it cancelled really bummed us out,” Gross said.

She’s quick to point out the silver lining, though: “But the fact that it was cancelled was not a failure, per se -- it’s good in the sense that because everything is already planned out, we can get it set up right at the beginning of next year.

So look out for Arcade Night, Fall 2011!”

Never disclose your whereabouts to anyone.

Buy the biggest water gun you can find (but before assassin starts so that you cannot be shot while buying it).

Know the safe zones.

graphic by victor qin

Habitat for Humanity fixing the world one plank at a time

By Sam Haas Like many students at South, sophomore Mika Gross participates in an after-school club. Unlike many students at South, however, Gross is a member (and leader) of the Habitat for Humanity Club, a group in its first year at the school.

Established in 1976, Habitat for Humanity is a global organization that works to eliminate homelessness and poverty by helping provide lowcost, good-quality shelter to those who need it most.

A nonprofit organization, Habitat for Humanity relies on volunteer labor and operates with donations of materials and money.

Alongside future homeowners, volunteers build or rebuild houses which are then sold to those homeowners at affordable prices. The mortgage payments for the houses are used to purchase more materials and build more houses.

Gross, who had been involved with Habitat for several years, got the idea to start the club at South during the 2010 Hike for Humanity, a fundraising walk in which individuals and groups walk up the Blue Hills.

Last year, while at the 2010 Hike, the Youth Program Developer at the Habitat for Humanity of Greater Boston Affiliate introduced the idea of starting a chapter at South.

I immediately knew it was something I would love to do. So, throughout the summer, I worked closely with

photos from internet source

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Views from the Bottom:

Three personal essays from South freshmen

It is the little moments at South that matter the most to me

By Sara Wang I have seen South. Have you seen South? Not just looked, but really seen it? It might be right in front of you, you know, but when so many eyes look right through it instead of at it, it’s bound to disappear. Take a moment, and see.

There’s an aquarium at South, you know, and it has no fish in it. It’s hermit crabs and seaweed and starfish pressed against the glass. If you put your face

up to the glass you can see the tiny suckers on the starfish move. It’s like they’re saying hello. Every time you pass by, you might not notice. But now you’ll know.

Pink and white tulips. Not a pink tulip and a white tulip, but pink blending into white into pink again. It reminds me of pink streaks of marker on paper brushed over with a wet paintbrush.

Or, the ombre design of fabric on a prom dress. Did you considered a tulip

for a corsage at prom?

They’re really pretty.

When the wind blows by, it makes them wave their heads. Hello.

On the hill, there. Do you see them? They’re sitting together. The sun’s shining on them.

The ground slopes up, then down, so that a little hill shelters them from most eyes. Just a boy and a girl, on the grass. Or maybe two boys, or two girls. You can’t really tell who they are. But if you peek, it might make your heart melt just a little. With the sun and the hill and them and all. Because they’re GRAPHIC BY VICTOR QIN happy.

And the clouds? You know they’re white and fluffy, sure.

But I bet you don’t know that they’re wings today. Picture yourself. Open the window. Fly away. They can carry you away from here, and you don’t have to do anything but look at them.

Just look at them.

FLASH, then a second later, BOOM. The gray clouds cover the sky as rain pours down. They’re ominous, threatening, frightening the little preschool-

ers as they scream down the hall.

They chased away the white ones, but there’s supposed to be clear skies later.

You can see the white clouds hovering on the horizon but you pray for rain so the game will be canceled. You don’t want to get muddy.

Stop. A person strides down the hall, while another person rushes along behind. “Let me explain.” “I don’t want to hear it, and I don’t want to talk to you! We’re done.” The second person stops. Footsteps echo down the empty hallway. The door opens, then closes.

A lone figure stands in the middle of the hall.

WHOOSH. Wind blows and the drooping heads of the shriveled flowers shiver. They’re yellow, decrepit.

The petals tremble, not yet fallen. A kid runs by. “Look mommy, flowers!”

“They’re dead, honey.” The kid’s lower lips tremble, not yet understanding. “Are the flowers really dead, mommy?” A breeze comes by and the dying tulips shake their heads sadly.

An empty tank in an empty room.

Seaweed lies limply in the trash bins.

The water filter lies on its side next to the sink.

At South, people tend to get wrapped up in their own issues. They’re blind to the world around them. Either that, or so critical of all of the bad things.

Conversations complaining about the graffiti on the walls, the wet and gray

outside, the odor of the bathrooms...

The list goes on.

I could easily have written about that when I wrote this article on my first year at South. But everyone already notices all those things, and, in my opinion, wastes a disproportionately large amount of time on them.

I am not, however, saying that I haven’t noticed those things, because I have. I understand that point of view. But people don’t realize how much they’re missing at times. South is beautiful.

Stop putting all your energy into schoolwork, teachers, and homework.

Take some time to appreciate the school itself. Little moments can make a day better, if we all just slow down to notice them.

Here is my advice: forget about that math test you have next block. Stop stressing over the essay due Thursday.

Relax about the history project you have to finish, or you might miss out on something special.

Lose yourself in the moment with the bubbles in the tank, or the petal of the tulip, or the sunshine on the couple, or the shape of the clouds, or all the other wonderful things there is to see in this school.

Smile. Relax. Enjoy. And when you’re living in that snapshot of a moment, don’t forget to take a deep breath... and be happy.

Transition from middle to high school; a learning experience

By Sophie Cash In eighth grade they tell you, “Don’t worry about high school; it’s big and scary, but you’ll get used to it.” But underneath is an undercurrent of foreboding, of warning.

The big, scary high schoolers that come and talk to you in eighth grade have an accomplished air about them, an air that says, “I’ve been there. I know that school like the back of my hand, and you never will, you immature eighth graders.”

Teachers will try to reassure you, and convince you that “it’ll be ok; you’ll get used to it in no time,” but with all the work and MCAS prep and pep talks, you can tell they want you to be a little scared, so that you’ll try harder The undertones of intimidation and anxiety in those teachers’ voices makes the prospect of high school even more scary than if they had just told us, “high school’s horrible. You’ll get used to it.”

So by the time the summer in between middle school and high school came around, I was trembling in my shoes at the thought of ninth grade.

As it turns out, I was right to be afraid. Partly.

When I entered Newton South for the first time, it was as I expected:

huge, foreboding, giant, scary, enormous, and huge. Oh, and did I say huge? The sheer size of the place was what truly frightened me most.

I had the typical freshman fears of getting lost and missing a whole class; losing my new best friend, the map; or

seemed twice my height and sported facial hair.

Then I met all my teachers, and not one of them had a nail-lined torture closet to use on children. Unheeded were all the threats of detention when students were late to class that were beaten into

my color-coded map and schedule, I rejoiced. I had passed the first test of high school and had made it out alive.

My teachers were all pretty nice, soon I was smiling at upperclassmen, even befriending a few.

I completely booked my schedule

not knowing where the bathroom was.

I was bombarded with over 1,500 new people I didn’t know, half of which

our malleable middle school minds.

In fact, when after about two weeks I finally made it to a class without

with extracurricular activities, and was getting to know many of my classmates. I was doing well in my classes,

and not once had I been stuffed in a dumpster or given a swirly.

As a matter of fact, high school actually seemed better than middle school—and the social ladder certainly didn’t turn out to be the queen bee Mean Girls situation that I had envisioned.

Unfortunately, the worrying isn’t over yet. Sure, I got over the stumbling block of transitioning into high school, but now that I’m there, there’s pressure to maintain my Grade Point Average, study hard for finals, and even work towards getting into a good college.

I know now that what I do really matters for the rest of my life, however cliché that sounds.

We really should have paid attention to the bigger kids when they talked to us in middle school in their undertones of anxiety, because they knew something we didn’t: they knew that our happy, relatively stress-free worlds were about to come crashing down on our heads.

But despite the fact that I now have the shadow of high school stress hanging over me, I feel all the better for it.

I know that I have made a mature, growing transition into the next stage of my life, a transition that I will be able to make again come the next big step.

By Matt Fallon Walking into South on the first day of school, I don’t think I had ever felt more nervous. The hallways were clear of all upperclassmen and I felt lost and alone in my thoughts.

Nevertheless, this was probably my favorite day at South. After spending three years with the same group of kids and the same teachers, school had become almost cloyingly familiar.

Most kids want to avoid unexpected twists and turns, unknown kids and teachers, or anything out of the ordinary at all at a new school, but I looked at it in a different light. To me, Oak Hill Middle School had become anything but interesting and the way I treated my classes became uniform.

I needed change.

I cannot clearly recollect any specific day in middle school, simply because there weren’t enough distinct differences to tell one event from the other. They all sort of morphed together into one big period of monotony. Instead of each day, or even each year even being new and exciting, I got caught in an inescapable cycle of redundancy and mundane drudgery from class to class.

Towards the end of my eighth grade year, however, thoughts of a new school grabbed my attention. Newton

South just appealed to me. Bigger rewards, bigger consequences, bigger kids, and an all around bigger experience awaited my arrival.

Where the closing of the summer and the coming of the school year brings dread to most kids, I was happier than I had been in previous years for the coming of something aberrant and new.

My first impressions of South were not especially exciting. Aesthetically, things seemed exactly as I expected: colored tiles on the floors, murals on the walls, numerous windows. The only difference was that there were quotes across every wall, which, oddly stuck out to me immediately and to which I took an instant liking. Most of the quotes were inspirational and some were even funny. Little things like that made South seem different from Oak Hill.

The biggest mistake I made throughout the year was, amazingly, made before school even started. I guess I set myself up for it, because in middle school I always put a minimal amount of effort into schoolwork, which made the transition between not trying at all to giving my best effort extremely difficult. Thus, when I decided to make it my personal goal as a freshman to get straight A’s and overall be a great student, what seemed like a terrific idea

turned out to be terrifically terrible.

Needless to say, I set the bar way too high. What at first seemed like a great goal, and which for some students is definitely attainable, was nearly impossible for a student like me, who hadn’t done well in any year of elementary or middle school.

I had put myself in a position to fail. My only way out of failure was to accomplish my goal, which was not going to happen.

Each day I didn’t do homework,

or skipped a class because I couldn’t imagine sitting in it for more than five minutes, I dug myself deeper into a hole. After months of missed work and missed classes, my grades began to slip and my relationship with my friends and my teachers began to languish.

Slowly though, days got better, although the realization that I’ll need to put in a legitimate effort to do well has yet to fully kick in - but it’s getting there. My teachers and friends at South have helped in so many ways

and I am forever grateful for them.

Each day that goes by, I am working to feel the same way I did that very first day of school. Nervous, excited and hopeful that the next years of my life will be the best years.

Some days I do feel that way, usually while walking through the halls when the corridors are almost as clear and empty as they were that day months ago. Hopefully sooner rather than later, I’ll be able to feel that way all the time.

South brought the change I needed to begin to succeed

7 June 2011

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Arts and Entertainment D1

Student-directed Light in the Mill impresses mystified students

By Helen Holmes When going to see Light in the Mill, the most recent play performed by Newton South’s budding thespians, expect an enjoyable production rich with suspense and intrigue.

The lights come up on a suspicious looking character, Mr. Dodge, played with convincing creepiness and bitterness by sophomore Harley Greene.

Dodge has a rather dark secret tucked away in the sack he’s so desperate to hide.

This secret spreads to touch all the characters in the Lowell mill, from the no-nonsense Ms. Potter, played by junior Julia Spector, to the shrieking seamstresses, Wilma and Katie, intent on raising as much of a din as possible.

Sophomore Emily Ho is

careful to never let her mannerisms or line delivery slip into saccharine falseness.

Light in the Mill follows the events that occur at a Lowell mill in the 1800s after the seemingly accidental death of the lovely and well-liked Magda Thorn.

Played expertly by freshman photo by aley lewis M a d d y M e y e r, charming as Katie and junior Thorn drifts about the stage Amanda Utstein is downright in a gossamer gown but never hilarious as Wilma. seems intangible.

If not for anything else, Jane - portrayed by sophattend the show to see her omore Gil Blume - Nan, screech at the sight of a pud- Wilma, and Katie discuss the dle of water and leap onto events of her death with opa table to pray to God for posing levels of respect. deliverance, in addition to passing scorching judgement on everybody she meets.

In addition to the excellent character work, the show itself plays out like a darker, more sophisticated Nancy Drew novel.

Perhaps the author of the show caught on to this parallel, because the ingenue of this tale is most cleverly named Nancy (Nan for short).

She is played with doeeyed curiosity and integrity by junior Allie Haber, who is

Jane and Nan mourn the poor girl, while Wilma and Katie waste no time in besmirching her name and crowing over Magda’s rumored faults.

Lurking amongst the shadows is the deceptively sane Mr. Cardon, played convincingly by junior Peter Harrington.

Throughout the course of the show, his mild-mannered demeanor is stripped away to reveal what truly lies beneath.

Without giving away too much, the questions of the whereabouts of the dead girl’s body comes into play, as well as where one’s loyalty must lie: with the truth, or with the security of a paid job?

All those involved present convincing and compelling performances, truly transporting the audience member to a time

where women were objects to be used and abused and men had muttonchops the size of miniature water guns.

Besides the contributions of the actors, those working behind the scenes conjured up a beautiful set.

Multi-leveled to create the illusion of a sewing room and an administrative office, the set had stairs, balconies, and mysterious miniature doors which the actors utilized to great effect.

The costumes, too, perfectly set the tone for the period in which the play is set.

Petticoats, bonnets, and laceup boots were everywhere to be seen.

Even the actors’ hair was curled and flattened as needed to create a convincing look.

All in all, from the plot to the performances to the

pinafores, Light in the Mill works.

It’s another testament to the excellence of the Newton South theater program and to just how good everyone is, from adept senior directors Rina Friedberg and Sarah Wanger to senior stage manager Max Nathanson.

It won’t be the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last, that a South Stage play impresses everyone who sees it.

A show of a showcase: Madeline Schulman’s WISE Project

By Sophia Veksler Senior Madeline Schulman, after recently playing Hamlet in the combined South Stage and Theatre Ink production, organized and directed the 2011 Senior Showcase this May. For her Wise Independent Senior Experiment (WISE) project, she decided to orchestrate the Senior Showcase for the Class of 2011.

The cabaret-style showcase, held on May 20, was a selection of songs, mostly from musicals, performed in a specific order.

Among the collection was “I Won’t Grow Up” from Peter Pan, “Let the Sunshine In” from Hair, and “A Wild Wild Party” from The Wild Party.

Schulman decided to enroll in the WISE program at the end of her junior year. In previous years, Senior Showcases have failed due to a massive lack of organization.

“I wanted my class to have a senior showcase,” she said.

Schulman spent much of her senior year working closely with Jeff Knoedler, Head of the Fine Arts Department, to prepare her WISE project.

She says that Knoedler helped keep her motivation

and spirits up, as well as aiding her to make Schulman’s dream of a Senior Showcase a reality.

Many students who enroll in WISE do so for an opportunity to explore future careers.

Abi Oshins, a performer in the Senior Showcase, is also a participant of WISE. “I did [WISE] because there’s really no other time you are going to pursue exactly what you want to, academically or otherwise,” Oshins said.

Schulman, however, did not use WISE as much for an outlet towards a future career, and she is planning to go to Carnegie Mellon University for acting, as opposed to directing.

Even though directing is not necessarily in her future, the Senior Showcase has given her insight into the other side of show business. “[I have] gained new respect for teachers and directors,” Schulman said.

Though Schulman

knew it would be difficult to pull off, she was determined to succeed.

She suspected that a project this big was going to require time and organization.

At first Schulman believed that she was too disorganized, and that completing this project was going to be extremely difficult.

But over the course of the project, Schulman said she learned that she was “a lot more organized than [she] thought

[she] was.”

Like many students who engage in WISE, Schulman dropped some of her classes to have more time to prepare for this event.

The road to creating a successful senior showcase was an arduous one.

Schulman organized rehearsals during performer’s free blocks and on the weekends.

However, due to her titular role in Hamlet, which opened a week before the scheduled

date of the Showcase, afterschool rehearsals were mostly off limits for Schulman.

Rina Friedberg, who was also a performer in the Showcase, said, “it was hard to rehearse with other people in your numbers if you had different free blocks or different plans after school.”

Besides scheduling rehearsals, Schulman found another difficulty that arose was getting the people involved thoroughly motivated.

Although students volunteered to be in the Showcase, Schulman discovered that many people were having trouble staying entirely dedicated because of the decrease in work that comes as graduation draws nearer.

F o r S c h u l m a n ’s 2011 Senior Showcase, seniors were encouraged, but not required, to participate.

Seniors got involved in the Showcase for a plethora of different reasons.

photo by julia spector

Harry Neff, one of Schulman’s close friends and a Showcase performer, said that he chose t o p a r t i c i pate because he wanted to help out with her WISE project.

“Participating in a minishow cast with all seniors seemed like a fun way to spend my free blocks,” he said.

Friedberg said she decided to join for the same reasons, and because she “wanted Maddy’s WISE project to have as many people involved as possible.”

Oshins got involved in the Senior Showcase “as a way to celebrate four years of South Stage.”

According to Neff, Friedberg, and Oshins, the Senior Showcase should continue on in future years to become a tradition at South.

“The juniors and underclassmen should continue this tradition,” Neff said.

Friedberg added that “[she] had a fantastic time, [she thinks] the show went really well, [and she’s] so impressed with Maddy for putting it together!”

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South Stage: A year in pictures

Pictured, clockwise from top left: Leora Hershman and Nathan Matzka in South Stage Vaudeville; Matthew Lu and Rachel Levy in the Freshman Play; Eugenia Zeng in South Stage Vaudeville; Sam Dorfman, Sarah Wanger, and Jake Light in Lebensraum; Saranya Ramadurai, Holly Higgins, Alissa Sage, Shonda Davis, Kyla Koudio, Deirdre Bryant, Briyana Willis, and Jeffrey Alkins in Hairspray; Sydney Morin, Peter Harrington, Madeline Schulman, Daniel Bender-Stern, Raphael Kasobel, and Sophia Zarsky in Lebensraum; David Rabinowicz, Alissa Sage, and Harry Neff in Hairspray; Raphael Kasobel, Amaya Abadei-Manthei, Madeline Schulman, David Rabinowicz, and Michelle Tian in H a mlet; and S t ephani e S ei den, Maddy Meyer, and Stephanie Foster in the Freshman Play.

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South Stage: Newton South’s Innovative Theatre Program

photos courtesy of jeff knoedler and lisa honeyman

Without the addition of a $150 user fee for all students participants, it may no longer be possible for South Stage to produce plays such as the March Play and “Hamlet”.

To Pay or Not To Pay: That is the question

By Melanie Erspamer and Julia Spector Year in and year out, students leap at the chance to audition for South Stage’s latest production. In the past, the news that one had landed a role in a show was a source of unconditional joy.

This year, however, the news of casting also means the payment of $150 to participate in South Stage, a user fee that has caused some concern to students and parents alike.

As part of the budget cuts happening at Newton South, anyone participating in theatre must now pay an entrance fee, in an effort to trim the gaping hole in funds.

With the addition of this user fee, South Stage will become selfsufficient.

Head of the Fine Arts Department Jeff Knoedler looked into how much money is needed to pay the adult directors for a year and found that with the production elements already paid for by the ticket sales, South Stage would be able to function independently, without any money from the district.

Although this system seems to be a good solution to the budget issue, many students are opposed to the idea.

“They say they really want to integrate theatre programs, but saying that only people whose parents can pay $150 can participate is limiting involvement,” Freshman Sophie Cash said.

Knoedler is aware of this possibility, but hopes that students will continue auditioning regardless of the fee.

“It’s essential that this fee does not cause anyone to feel like they can’t participate in South Stage,” he said. In fact, students can apply for a financial aid waiver, the same way students who play sports can, so that everyone can participate.

Even with this factor, English and Theatre Arts teacher James Honeyman is strongly against the user fees.

“I have always believed that user fees contradict the essence of what it means to be a public school,” he said.

“I believe all students are entitled to participate in the opportunities offered by their public school without paying a dime beyond their family’s tax bill.”

Honeyman believes that if a public school offers any extracurricular activities, they should be free, and if the school is not able to fund those activities, then the school should cut them all together or propose a tax override.

Unfortunately, Honeyman does not think an override in Newton would be possible, as too many people would

vote against it.

If the theater program were to be cut, this decision would receive huge backlash from the vast amount of thespians in Newton South.

Many students and staff members find it hard to choose which situation they prefer. It is hard to make a choice because so much is still unknown.

“Some of the questions I have are: We know actors will be asked to pay the fee, but what about the stage crew?

What about stage managers? What about designers [and] assistant directors?” Knoedler said.

The decision about whether or not the stage crew should have to pay $150 per show is troubling for Tech Director Evan Kelly.

Kelly believes asking the members of stage crew to pay a fee would make the production of shows more complicated.

“The tech crews are in sort of an odd limbo,” Kelly said. “The kids that I have that work on the shows work on all the shows; they don’t usually come in for specific productions.

“Also, almost every single person that we have on tech is involved in a lot of other things, so they don’t have the same kind of time commitment that an actor would have.”

The concern is that many students who participate in stage crew would rather not be involved than pay a fee for every show they participate in.

Since most members work on numerous productions each year, they w o u l d have to pay $150 per show.

A n other fact the both Knoedler and Kelly worry about is that the frequency with w h i c h s o m e

students involved with technical theatre participate is varied.

Some students come every day to work on sets, costumes, and other aspects of the show, while others come only one day a week, and some come even less often.

“It becomes complicated where I would have people that show up maybe for one or two days of work on a given show,” Kelly said. “If we do a per-show user fee for tech crew, it will become very complicated to turn people away and say, ‘You can’t pick up that hammer, you can’t pick up that paint brush, because you haven’t paid the fee for this one day.’”

Among all this conflict, some offer suggestions.

“I think the idea of it is fine because the [program] needs money, and there’s no avoiding the necessity of it, but it’s very expensive,” sophomore Alex Levy said. “$150 is a lot of money, and I think if they make it a smaller amount, they’ll still get enough money to fund [South Stage].”

Freshman Stephanie Seiden believes that there is a way the budget cuts would not be necessary at all.

“We do raise our own money in South Stage,” Seiden said, “so if we raise enough money for whatever show is going to happen, it

should not be necessary for actors to pay their way into the show.”

If indeed South Stage were able to raise money independently, the fees could be lowered or cancelled altogether. Kelly believes the next year will be the trial year to observe how the user fees affect participation.

“It would be a great idea to really carefully track over the next year how [the fees] impact our audition turnouts, who’s turning out for crew, so we can look at it a year down the road and see if it’s the best solution to the problem,” Kelly said.

Although Knoedler says the user fees are against his philosophy, he thinks they are necessary. He points out that theatre is just one of the many activities experiencing user fees.

“I think the precedent with athletic fees is solid, so the people who do athletics probably look at South Stage and wonder, ‘Why don’t they have to pay?’” Knoedler said.

Knoedler also thinks that if the only other option is cutting South Stage, then the fees are absolutely necessary.

“I think our program is an important part of this commun i t y, a n d i f s t u d e n t s n e e d t o pay a little bit to be part of it, that’s better than cutting it.”

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7 June 2011

musical because of Matt Stern, the musical director for both Vaudeville and Hairspray. “I knew I wanted him back,” Knoedler said.

Even though there are many reasons, it is still unsure whether Fall musicals will become annual.

Knoedler said that although he is considering making them regular, out of season musicals have come up fairly randomly over the years, including a musical in June once.

Whenever they are, Knoedler noted that musicals tend to generate a large audience and many students audition.

“This will be a bigger success than [the performances of these last years],” Knoedler said.

“Spelling Bee” Cast List

Rona – Hannah Dober Panch – Alex Levy Chip – Andrew Hardigg Olive – Jess Dagg Marcy – Emily Ho PHOTO COURTESY OF INTERNET SOURCE

South Stage will be producing a fall musical, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” in addition to the regular winter musical, for the first time since 2003.

“Spelling Bee” Coming to South Stage this Fall

By Melanie Erspamer Among the recent increased costs and cuts, one addition stands out: a Fall musical.

There has not been a fall musical at South since 2003; instead, these past years “there has been an improv show then Vaudeville,” Fine and Performing Arts Department Head and Director of Theatre Jeff Knoedler said.

Knoedler was the one who suggested that there be a Fall musical this year, for several reasons.

One is that, according to him, the

fall play is always the main theatre event of the season, and whatever other performance happens, be it Vaudeville or Improv, it is seen as less important.

“I’m trying to equalize the prestige of the shows,” Knoedler said. Still, Knoedler does not want the musical to cost too much time or money.

He thinks the winter musical remains the big musical of the year, and since he began searching for a show, he wanted the fall musical to be small and low tech.

“Musicals are usually very expensive to produce,” Knoedler said.

After eliminating some options, The Putnam County Annual Spelling Bee was decided to be the Fall musical this year.

The musical has a simple plot, but a funny script and catchy music numbers. It is a comedy about a spelling bee where middle school and elementary school students, each with their own quirk, come to compete.

Knoedler thought this musical

would work well in many different ways. “[The Putnam County Annual Spelling Bee] has a good size, a great script, pretty good music, and low tech,” he said.

Because the musical will come out on October 13, there will be little time to prepare, and hosting a high tech show would be difficult.

The Putnam County Annual Spelling Bee has one setting, requires simple costumes, and all-together will be easy to produce.

Knoedler also decided to do a Fall

Logainne (Schwartzy) – Alex Conrad Barfee – Jeremy Oshins Leaf – Sean DiMarco Mitch – Nathan Matzka

Directed by Ms. Nancy CurranWillis

My View: why user fees would be harmful for South Stage

By Zoe Clayton

South Stage has helped transform me from an awkward, insecure freshman into the awkward, yet happy, rising junior I am today.

There is no doubt I would not be who I am if it were not for South Stage.

It has supplied me with incredible theatrical experience (from freshman play all the way to Hamlet’s Ophelia) and it has introduced me to a community of supportive people who are beautiful and talented and whom I really love.

But that isn’t even an exaggeration. In my experience, South Stage really is a community of tightly knit people who want to help each other grow and expand their theatrical horizons. They laugh, live, and sleep in Mr. K’s office like it is their home.

Hey, it is their home. They’re full of constructive criticism and ideas; I learned a lot from the upperclassmen even by just watching what they did and striving to copy it.

By copy, I don’t necessarily mean to produce an exact replicate of their performances (indeed, no performance can ever be duplicated perfectly) but rather try and understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Grasping their thought process is one thing, but applying the basics to my own work yet spinning and twisting it so as to create something different with myself is entirely another.

But watching isn’t enough. I was graced with the privilege of working beside such wonderful and inspiring people this year, not just upperclassmen, and I’ve learned so much because of them.

Before Hamlet, I was what I like to call a physically reserved

actress. I didn’t move much onstage mostly because I felt uncomfortable in my body, as many teenage girls do.

This affected my performances and I was unable to break the rigid position I put myself in.

But slowly, play by play, night by night, class by class, I was able to slip out of that rigid stance due to South Stage and its supportive people, whether they know it or not.

When it finally came time to perform Hamlet, I was thrown into a liberation I had never experienced before.

I could move; I had to move because it was required of me.

I jumped from the ledge of uncertainty and I believe I soared, because now I feel ready to take on any future roles that come my way.

I am determined to put my entire mind, soul, and body into it because I can move now, and that wasn’t possible before I entered South Stage.

Now, I understand South Stage is facing some changes due to budget cuts, and I heard that there will be a fee to perform in each show.

I think that these fees will cause South Stage to lose a lot of talented people all because they won’t be willing to pay.

If there needs to be some sort of payment, perhaps there can be a fee at the beginning of the year for all the South Stage shows, not $125 per show, which is what I heard.

I’d hate to see future classes not participate in South’s amazing theater program because of the costs.

The plays this program puts on, the times spent in Mr. K’s office—I don’t want to see that fade away. South Stage is a beautiful place. It’s the Theater Kid’s home.

Hey, it’s my home now, too.

PHOTO FROM INTERNET SOURCE

Sophomore Zoe Clayton recently played Ophelia in South Stage’s production of “Hamlet” among other South Stage shows.

Denebola

7 June 2011

Arts and Entertainment D5

One student’s look at Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass

By Rose Taylor Dale Chihuly’s installation at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) was a delightful, if not oddly educational, way to spend a Sunday morning.

Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass is the product of glass artist Dale Chihuly’s definitive vision, and a unique installment in the acclaimed MFA. According to Newton South Arts teacher Megan Crist, the exhibit is a big deal seeing as though the MFA has had no major glass exhibitions recently.

And on top of that, the exhibit’s creation was from the mind of Dale Chihuly. “[He is] one of the big ones,” Crist said. “He’s really fantastic.” South’s resident glass teacher, Jeffrey Wixon, had a differing opinion. “I’m not a big fan of his,” he said. “I think his work is too repetitive...it’s all the same curly banana.”

Despite the varied opinions,

the MFA is trying hard to advertise its newest installment.

The exhibit was a bit buried in the museum, especially considering all the publicity, seeing as a casual upwards tilt of one’s head in Boston will most likely reap a glance of a stained-glassemblazoned MFA flag flapping from a nearby pole.

To get there, one must cross through the green rotunda with its Greek-painted ceiling, the dark visitors’ center, and opulent courtyard with its terrifying 20foot stained-glass spiky Chihuly cactus that there is no room for in the downstairs area.

Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass opens with an installation of what looks like red and orange upside-down umbrellas arranged festively about a wall.

The umbrellas look like they are each a solid color from far away, but upon closer inspection are made up of ripples of

opaque and clearer color with contrasting borders.

The edge of the piece lies a few feet from a short biographical description of Chihuly that is printed on the wall, which includes a picture that makes him look about two-thirds pirate, seeing as though he is blind in one eye and wears an eye-patch, one-third mad scientist, and thus a 100 percent artist.

That description cannot be entirely true to life, though, since the exhibit was much too intricate to have been constructed by someone with only the use of one eye.

In truth, the fact gleaned from the helpful writing on the wall that Chihuly, no longer able to create his masterpieces himself, now works with a team of skilled glassblowers to whom he dictates every move.

Following the upside-down umbrellas is a SnowWhite’s-lipstick-colored ball of stalactites and stalagmites called “Scarlet Icicle Chandelier” that casts a criss-crossing pattern of light and dark shadows on the walls of the darkened room.

Next comes the Ikebana Boat, a simple canoe filled to the brim with swan-neck curls and bulbs of brightly colored glass that refl ect against the shiny black stage on which the boat sits, evoking the exhibit’s distinctly

Willy-Wonka-meets-Alice-inWonderland feel.

In the adjoining room are Venetian-style vases and bowls covered in large transparent fivepetal flowers of various colors, braids of glass that look like

but it is not enough to break the tenuous spell that shiny glass casts on the average museum patrons walking by.

That spell continues to hold through the Persian Ceiling, which looks like the clothing

stone, and curly leaves.

At opposite ends of the room are thick-stemmed glass plants that resemble Venus fly traps, and that bookend a series of Chihuly’s sketches of the vases.

Next, in a departure from the vibrant colors and abstract shapes of the exhibit thus far, is a room of creamy brown openrimmed baskets.

These are showcased in the center of the room and interspersed between the woven Native American baskets that inspired them, all against a background of Native American fabrics.

This room transitions into another black stage filled with swan-like, plant-inspired stalks of glass that culminates in an enormous Christmas tree of warmly colored glass tentacles,

of a beautiful, eccentric carnival fortune-teller frozen into glass and spread out above a room.

The room of bulbous, swirling chandeliers lasted all the way through to the final piece “Neodymium Reeds on Logs,” whose reeds look like lavender birthday candles with deep purple flames and whose logs resemble the horseradish on the Seder plate.

The comparative simplicity of this last piece, as well as the little ego boost of having done something cultured at a time normally spent checking Facebook or avoiding preparation for various academic assessments, made the dazzling reeds a fitting ending to a pretty, shiny outing.

PHOTOS FROM INTERNET SOURCE

North, South unite in an ambitious Hamlet

By Daniel Bender-Stern When the cast list for South Stage and Theatre Ink’s joint production of Hamlet was posted, excitement ensued. Two months later, the production, performed in Newton South’s Seasholes Theater, truly lived up to the hype.

The story is well known: a moody Prince suspects his uncle has played foully in the former king’s death, said prince acts upon these suspicions in strange and convoluted ways, and nearly everyone dies.

As Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet often gives actors an extra challenge to create realistic, but entirely original interpretations of the timeless characters on top of all the other necessary caveats, such as character work and blocking, that goes into a show.

This production, however, managed to stray from classical interpretations while upholding the integrity of the text.

Balancing originality and creativity with an understanding of Shakespeare’s message is an incredible accomplishment, and this production achieved

it. The production was especially unique in its casting; many roles were cross-gender cast; most notable was senior Madeline Schulman in the title role.

The very act of casting girls as boys or vice versa raises the bar, as directors must be absolutely sure that any lack of believability will be compensated by raw acting talent and impeccable stage presence.

In the case of this casting decision, Schulman definitely rose to the challenge and exceeded all expectations, which were undoubtably high, especially considering her impressive track record in previous South Stage productions.

The character of Hamlet is on stage for much of the show, but never did Schulman seem to lose even the slightest bit of focus or energy. She carried herself with immense grace, delivering lines naturally but as a character distinctly different from herself.

Her costume, designed by South’s resident Costumer extraordinaire Martha Heller, subtly accentuated the charac-

terization with distinctly masculine apparel, as well as exceptional development throughout the night - as Hamlet becomes increasingly unhinged, so does his costume.

A collar is unbuttoned, a shirt sleeve rolled up, a hem un-tucked. The transition was subtle and fabulous.

Schulman proved herself to be a masterful performer and stood out on stage, but she was never alone in her clear dedication to the production. All actors in the play made strong choices and portrayed distinct characters and objectives, which is often the number one goal in any performance.

Especially notable was sophomore Zoe Clayton who played the role of Ophelia, arguably the largest female role. Clayton’s portrayal showed great depth, as Ophelia gradually morphs from youthful and innocent girl to a desperate woman, scorned by the one she loves.

The audience witnessed her story arc right along with her and saw the changes that Ophelia undergoes as her situation with Hamlet drives her to

insanity.

The actors did not work alone, however. The frequently, and unfairly, unrecognized technical crew brought the production to a new level.

The two schools came together and produced a stunning combined technical team, with the sound and lighting designed

by North students but manned

by South ones.

Actors were consistently well lit, but times when the lighting grew darker added to the unfolding drama of the storyline as well.

The physical set, masterfully created by South Stage’s technical director Evan Kelly, was not merely a platform or two upon which actors entered and exited, a phenomenon which occurs too often in Shakespeare productions.

It included several staircases and archways, held up by sturdy poles, creating a sort of maze through which actors could run and dynamically interact in ways that were never boring.

The magic of the set went further with multi-yard pieces

of cloth that extended from the stage’s ceiling to the floor, allowing the fabric to billow with the iridescent lighting.

The actors utilized them in various ways, sometimes casting darkened and definitely creepy shadows upon them, sometimes latching the cloth to the costume of Hamlet’s father and stretching across the set as he walked, creating an incredible image that left the entire audience in speechless awe.

The truth of it is, Hamlet is an ambitious play. It is difficult to understand, difficult to perform with confidence, and difficult to pull off.

The 29th annual joint highschool Shakespeare production managed to accomplish all three, which is an immense feat for any troupe, let alone high school theatre programs.

This production displayed exactly why the world has performed Shakespeare for generations and why it must always perform Shakespeare, as the Bard’s work both educates and challenges students, allowing them to grow as both performers and human beings.

Every issue the Denebola staffers interview a random South student about the first five songs that come up on his or her iPod Shuffle. This issue’s participant is junior Alex Peterson.

Anything you hope does not make an appearance?

“My Weird Al Yankovich, because it is a part of my life I want to be over.”

“Bang Bang” by Dispatch, from the album Bang Bang Remastered.

“I know every word to it, though it’s not one of my favorite songs. I heard it in seventh grade on the bus.”

“Between Two Lungs” by Florence + the Machine, from the album Lungs.

“Never heard the song, but I really like this album.”

“The Late Greats” by Wilco, from the album A Ghost Is Born.

“I got this on a mix CD at the end of last year, it’s a fair song.”

“Treats” by Sleigh Bells, from the album Treats.

“This song is hardcore, it’s really good and makes me feel awesome.”

“Wild World” by Cat Stevens, from the album Tea for the Tillerman.

“Oh, it’s a sweet song, reminds me of my childhood.”

Anything good we missed?

“At the risk of sounding like a hipster, I really wish more Radiohead had come up because it is some of the most interesting music on my iPod.” PHOTO BY ALEY LEWIS

PHOTOS FROM INTERNET SOURCE

The Fashion Files

By Helen Holmes “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May:” a pretty decent quote written by some obscure author.

What he forgot to mention in his soliloquy was the affect of those aforementioned winds upon the hemlines of high school students eager to frolic in the newly minted warm weather.

Seriously, I cannot even begin to estimate the amount of times I have ventured outside with a skip in my step, car keys in hand, and have been stopped in my tracks by the blinding glare of an errant, bone-white flash of flesh that I really wasn’t expecting from one of my fellow students.

Thus begins my extrapolation upon my long-dormant displeasure with summer dressing.

Fall weather, crisp and chilly, forces the average person to outfit themselves in my personal favorite types of clothing: long pants, sweaters, and most of all, collars.

Unfortunately for the critical fashion connoisseur, summer seems to cue the average hormone-crazy high schooler to abandon any vestiges of taste ingrained in their sun-soaked brains and bare their skin like it’s going out of style.

Bra straps abound, a host of pale legs (including mine) prance proudly across the linoleum, looking vaguely like a forest of ghostly white birch trees.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having visions of Taylor Swift dancing through your head, thus inspiring you to flounce around in a floral dress and ballet flats and pout about that boy who just won’t notice you. There just isn’t anything particularly original about it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the school year is drawing to a close, so be joyful! Have that mango smoothie! Jump in Crystal Lake with all your clothes on (been there, it is so worth it).

But please, for me, restrain yourself from running around with 80 percent of your skin visible. Nobody wants to see that, no matter how incredible your body is.

If you do happen to be aesthetically pleasing, leave the lack of clothing for only very particular social situations, and whilst within these hallowed halls, keep it classy.

I, for one, am a huge fan of high waisted shorts, maxi dresses, and rock band T-shirts.

Another bonus: summer is a great time to accessorize, and stores like Clarie’s and Forever 21 have tons of adorable, inexpensive jewelry that make it easy for you to pile on so many bangles and necklaces that people will be able to hear you coming from dozens of yards away. Hey, it’s better than looking like a floozy, right?

Take it from someone who knows: invested as I was in the high ropes course during my Project Adventure class, I failed to notice that the entire left side of my body slowly turning the color of boiled lobster.

If the Twilight series has taught us anything at all (which somehow I doubt), it is that being pale and antisocial is making a serious comeback.

Think of it this way: has Snooki found true love? No. I doubt she can even find Iraq on a map. Bella Swan, on the other hand, pale as the moon, has found both eternal love and eternal life.

Alright, kids. I’ve made my point. Dress well, stay safe, and hang in there—school is nearly over, and soon you can go do (and wear) whatever the heck you want without me judging you.

Just remember—Facebook exists for the purpose of digital judging, so do your best to look your best if there’s a camera around. I will be watching.

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Denebola

7 June 2011

Global Education Denebola

7 June 2011

Global Education D7

South students head to St. Petersburg on exchange

The Russian exchange in front of a statue of Peter the Great.

By Ariel Kaluzhny

Walking up four flights of stairs gave me time to get nervous. The first two smelled like cats, and I am not a cat person. The second two smelled like cigarette smoke, which is not the best scent in the world either. I took a deep breath anyways; this was Russia, I would have to get used to the smell of cigarettes.

I left for St. Petersburg, Russia before April vacation on the school exchange trip with six other South students and stayed with a host family there for two weeks. Each of us stayed with a family whose child had either come to America the year before or would be coming later that year to stay with us.

When my group arrived in St. Petersburg, we were all picked up at the airport by our respective families. I saw a girl about my age and her mother on the other side of the crowd. I walked over and the girl said, “You must be Ariel.”

“Yes” I responded. “And you’re Elina?” She smiled and nodded, then Yulia, my host mother, grabbed my suitcase, and we left in their car for their apartment.

It was my first time in Russia and my first time meeting the people with whom I would be living for the next two weeks. On the way to their apartment Elina and I exhausted the topics of school and classes, and I soon felt reassured that we would all get along just fine.

I was astonished as I walked into their apartment; it was wide open and well lit, like something out of a magazine. This wasn’t the norm,

photo from internet source

I soon learned; they had recently had it renovated. Their apartment was one of the few I saw where the toilet and the sink were in the same room. Immediately after Elina introduced me to her brother, Gleb, I fell onto my new bed and slept for fifteen hours.

The first few days in St. Petersburg felt surreal. I still felt like an intruder in my host family, and walking along the street only seeing and hearing Russian felt like I was stuck in a Russian store that never ended.

When I hear Russian on the street in the U.S., I always try to listen in, just because I can. In Russia, shockingly, everyone was speaking Russian, except for the German and Finnish tourists.

At one point we were on a trolley when a young woman and an older woman got into a fight about something. Next thing I heard was the old lady yell, “You are just a stupid chicken!” I looked at my friend Danya, and he just responded, “Yup, that’s clean Russian swearing for you.”

To me, who uses “fudge” and “shucks” instead of swears, substituting “chicken” for a swear word didn’t seem all that strange.

Coming from a Russian household myself, I accepted most other Russian customs easily too. Drinking tea about six times a day and into the wee hours of the night and eating blintzes with sweetened condensed milk, layered herring, olivye salad, and perogis with meat are all common in my house, too.

The Church of the Savior on Spilt Blood.

photo by masha uglova

To people in Russia, I was too “normal.” When they asked me questions about my culture my responses didn’t differ greatly from what they were used to. I assured them that other Americans were different.

One thing that never failed to surprise people was the size of our school; with almost 1800 people in only four grades, all under one roof, they thought Newton South seemed ridiculous.

Their school has only 400 students, starts at first grade, and continues through eleventh.

People were also surprised when I told them I played volleyball and tennis. Their school had no sports teams. Their first question would always be, “big tennis?” as opposed to ping-pong.

During my stay in St. Petersburg, I saw all the tourist spots, walked along the Neva, visited the Peterhof Palace, woke up at 2 in the morning to see the bridges open, and climbed to the top of St. Isaac’s Cathedral.

But of all the things in St. Petersburg, the things I will remember the most will be the people I met.

photo by masha uglova

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF chief, arrested on sexual charges

By Dina Busaba At 4:40 PM on May 14, just minutes before takeoff, Dominique StraussKahn, a French Socialist politician, was pulled off of his Air France flight back to Paris and arrested on charges of sexual assault.

Strauss-Kahn, the Head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has been charged with counts of a criminal sexual act, attempted rape, and unlawful imprisonment of a hotel maid.

He had a room in the Sofitel hotel in New York City, rumored to have cost 3,000 dollars per night, where the alleged crime took place on May 14.

The victim, a 32 year-old female hotel maid from the West African nation of Guinea, identified StraussKahn in a police lineup. She is a single mother with a daughter she had at the age of 17.

Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers and investigators are looking into the hotel maid’s past looking for reasons she might be lying. Although they are not relying on this defense, it might help him when the case is taken to a court of law.

She claims he locked her in his hotel room after coming out naked from the shower. He chased her around the room and sexually assaulted her before she managed to escape and call the police.

These are not the first sexual assault charges made against Strauss-Kahn.

In 2008, one year after being named director of the IMF, there was an investigation about a relationship he allegedly had with a female member of his staff. It was ruled that his acts “reflected a serious error in judgment.”

He was not arrested because the relationship seemed to be consensual.

Strauss-Kahn issued a public apology to his wife and the IMF staff on French television. All was seemingly forgiven and forgotten.

Freshman Nicolas Baudin, a French student who immigrated to America when he was five, thinks StraussKahn’s actions “make France look really bad” and finds him to be “shameful.”

Strauss-Kahn has been married to Anne Sinclair, an American-born French journalist, since 1991. Sinclair has defended him throughout the entire scandal, as she has from past allegations.

Recent polls suggested that StraussKahn would have been a front-runner in the upcoming French elections, with a good chance of becoming the Socialist candidate and of beating Nicolas Sarkozy, the current president. The scandal, however, much more serious than its predecessors, may have destroyed such a possibility.

He gave DNA samples willingly after being asked by prosecutors. His attorney said he had nothing to hide.

He was scheduled to appear in court on Monday, May 16 but, because forensic test results were not yet back, his court date was delayed indefinitely and he was detained at Rikers Island jail.

Though his lawyers’ request for 1,000,000 dollar bail was initially rejected, he was granted that bail plus a 5,000,000 dollar bond, provided he remain in his daughter’s New York City apartment under constant guard, on May 19. The charges against him have mounted up to seven, and he could face up to 25 years in prison if found guilty and forced to do his full sentence.

Early in the morning on Tuesday, May 17, Strauss-Kahn was put on suicide watch in Rikers Detention Center, and the next day he resigned from the IMF. DNA evidence linking StraussKahn and the maid were found. Further tests will be performed to fully understand the truth behind the hotel maid’s claims. Strauss-Kahn continues to deny any wrongdoing and strenuously opposes the accusation of sexual assault.

Strauss-Kahn’s formal plea is due to be entered on June 6, and the trial will proceed from there. He will enter a plea of not guilty in a court of law.

With Strauss-Kahn’s political career now diminished by this recent scandal,

there is much to be determined when it comes to the French elections and the IMF. The current favorites to take over the position as head are Christine Lagarde and Agustin Carstens.

Christine Lagarde, France’s Finance Minister, would bring a new perspective as a female head. She is very popular throughout Europe, and will most likely be nominated by the European nations to lead the IMF. Agustin Carstens is Mexico’s central bank boss, and the Mexican finance ministry says it will nominate him. Up until 2006, Cartsens was the deputymanaging director at the IMF. There is controversy over whether or not the head of the IMF should still

photo from internet source

originate from Europe. Countries outside of Europe believe the continent’s nations’ always appointing a head from within the region undermines the legitimacy of the fund.

Baudin believes it “doesn’t matter where the person comes from as long as they are a good fit,” and also noted it’s called the “International Monetary Fund not the European Monetary fund,” so Europe doesn’t hold any permanent ties to the position.

This recent scandal has left a burden on France and many unanswered questions when it comes to the IMF. Both it and the entire French political environment have been radically affected.

Denebola

Centerfold D8

Centerfold D9

11 June 2011

...so now what?

bin Laden is dead...

Nothing wrong with celebrations Jubilation at bin Laden’s death of terrorist’s death is misguided

By Dylan Royce

arguments against the revelry.

The notion that celebrations of a man’s death, no matter how vicious and wrong (which these aren’t), could be in any way comparable to the calculated murder of thousands of innocents, is so ridiculous that refutation of it need draw on no longer.

Finally, the most credible argument against the celebrations is that they will engender hatred of America worldwide and provoke retaliatory attacks. This is a reasonable position but for one problem: it seems fairly unlikely that there is anyone who was okay with the killing of the charismatic leader of radical Islamism, but is enraged to the point of violence by the celebration of it.

While the celebrations do provide justification for attacks against American civilians, since the general public has shown their support for what could have been argued to be the action of a secretive government, the excuse is redundant.

Radical Islam has already developed a rationale for attacks on civilians far more convincing than the one potentially provided by the events of Monday night: because America is a democracy, and be-

On May 2, 2011, at 11:35 PM, President Obama informed the country of the death of Osama bin Laden. Within minutes, spontaneous celebrations erupted across the nation, notably outside the White House, at Ground Zero, in Dearborn, Michigan, the city with the largest proportion of Muslims in the country, and in Citizens Bank Park, where a Phillies-Mets baseball game was in the ninth inning.

These celebrations, in an era of partisan conflict and national pessimism, were a brief moment of unity and happiness for America. But the responses to them were not. Across the country, citizens of all walks of life made it clear that, while they support the strike itself, they view the gloating that followed it as immoral or unwise.

One of their primary arguments is that it is fundamentally wrong to celebrate the death of another human being. While to contest religions’ stances on the matter would be foolish, the secular argument can be easily refuted.

First, bin Laden’s death is not all that we celebrate. We also revel in a clear-cut victory in which there were no American casualties and minimal collateral damage. Such victories are rare these days, and it is only right to celebrate them.

It is clear, however, that the foremost cause of the celebrations was neither a victory in a war nor the survival of our commandos, but the ending of a human being’s life. But why should it not be? This was an exceptionally, almost uniquely evil man.

In death, there is life, and bin Laden’s death may mean the safety of thousands (we now know that bin Celebrations at Ground Zero, Manhattan.

Laden was far more actively in- cause its citizens pay the taxes volved in al-Qaeda than previously that support their government’s acthought). In death, there is justice, tivities, all Americans bear full reand his demise brings a modicum sponsibility for the actions of their of it to those who have lost and government.

Despite its obvious flaws, the arbeen lost.

Concerned citizens have warned gument is sufficient for al-Qaeda’s that this celebration of death is a purposes, and it’s clearly superior public expression of the hatred that to whatever we might have acciMartin Luther King, Jr. and oth- dentally created in our revelry.

There is, however, one last, so ers like him sought to discourage.

While it is clear that “love thine en- far unmentioned cause of celebraemy” has been thrown out the win- tion, one last reason why the revdow, this hatred is not as terrible as elry is not only right and just, but almost necessary, or at least init has been made it out to be.

You need only to analyze your evitable: our current jubilation is own feelings for bin Laden to real- essentially the first America has ize that the hatred you feel towards experienced since the beginning of him is distinctly different from that the War on Terror.

There was no opportunity to which you feel towards, for example, the kid who just tripped you as celebrate when we “won” the Iraq War. There was no Victory Over you walked down the bus aisle.

With the exception of those who Japan Day, no national catharsis. lost friends and relatives to his There was only a strictly legalist machinations, and others personal- end to Operation Iraqi Freedom on ly connected to bin Laden in some August 31, 2010 that many people way, most Americans feel towards bin Laden a cold, theoretical hatred starkly different from the white-hot, visceral rage that many African Americans probably felt towards segregation and its guardians and that many Indians probably felt towards the British when Gandhi counseled peace.

King and Gandhi, in any case, opposed hatred primarily because it could have led to violence. There is no chance at all that the primarily Celebrations at the White House. college-age crowds of that Monday probably didn’t even notice. night could be remotely violent There is no reason to believe that (though there have been several the War in Afghanistan will end minor incidents of anti-Muslim any more dramatically, if it ends at vandalism reported). all. We are fighting in a global conThe hatred that most Americans flict without defined frontiers and feel towards the recently deceased, without defined victories. Since in fact, is probably born largely of 2001, the only national emotions love. Love of the country that was expressed have been sadness and broken on September 11, 2001, frustration. love of the strangers who died that Expecting a nation to slog day, love of the peace that was through nearly a decade in an atshattered by the flames and death. mosphere of war, expressing sadThese loves birthed a hatred for the ness but never joy, is unrealistic. man responsible for the terror.

America is not a nation of automaSome have even gone so far tons, and though I would not feel as to say that our celebrations of comfortable joining in the pseudothis (clearly justified) hatred bring jingoistic partying myself, I do not us down to the level of he whose begrudge my fellow citizens the death we celebrate. This, obvious- right to celebrate the few victories ly, is the most ridiculous of all the we can get.

the question of what, exactly, the mostly college-aged crowd in Washington, D.C. and New York City was celebrating.

Were they celebrating the removal of one of the biggest threats to our nation?

Somehow, a crowd made up of 20 year-olds shouting “USA! USA!” convinces me less of their patriotism or concern for national security and more of their commitment to taking advantage of any opportunity to party.

(Many blogging or writing about the celebration in Washington, D.C. made the comparison to a frat party, complete with beer, vuvuzelas, and flags waved out of the sunroofs of passing cars.)

Were they celebrating revenge for the 9/11 attacks that affected so many Americans?

Most likely many were, especially in New York, and that in itself bothers me.

Thirsting for bin Laden’s blood in retaliation for the bloodshed that occurred a decade ago is hypocritical, no matter the motives of either side.

Many have made the point that whipping ourselves into a frenzy over the death of this PHOTO FROM INTERNET SOURCE one man mimadministration and it removes a ics the celebrations of terrorists on 9/11. very real threat to the U.S. Plus, as I’m sure the relatives Why, then, upon seeing the pictures in the newspaper of of those killed in the terrorist the celebrations, listening to attacks would agree, bin LadNational Public Radio’s stream en’s death doesn’t bring back of interviews with the revelers, the fallen. Taking ten years to and hearing the “We got him!” chase down the man responmantra of South students the sible for the most devastating next day, was my instinct to terrorist attack in American think, “This is wrong”? history—after the fact? Too It took me a while to figure little, too late. out exactly what bothered me Essentially, the celebrations so much. I was happy that the were hypocritical, morbid, man who cast such a shadow pointless, and, on the part of on our nation for so long was the college students, insincere. dead, but I just didn’t feel like Of course, many would say celebrating something so abso- that this entire argument is belutely morbid. side the point—who cares how The majority of the public the celebrations came across; the point is that we have cut off the head of the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world and made the American people that much safer.

That is exactly what my biggest problem with all the revelry is: the celebrations reinforced a nation-wide sense of false PHOTO FROM INTERNET SOURCE security. seems to echo my opinion.

Al-Qaeda still poses a huge According to a reader poll by threat to the U.S., with or withThe Economist, 59 percent of out its iconic leader, and even almost 10,000 polled believe though all the merrymaking that it isn’t right to celebrate has died down, the fallacy rebin Laden’s death. The general mains. consensus among the public Al-Qaeda wants revenge is that it’s wrong to celebrate and it wants to prove that it death, no matter whose death can function without its leadit is, and that bin Laden’s er. Troops in Afghanistan and shouldn’t be celebrated when Pakistan are in danger, as are it came at such a high cost and Americans at home.

Instead of rejoicing at the when thousands are still in dandeath of one man, we should ger in Afghanistan.

When it came down to it, focus on minimizing the effect however, what troubled me was of any retaliation.

By Hattie Gawande It’s hard to believe that the man who masterminded what is widely considered one of the most tragic events in American history, caused a bloody war that has thus far killed over 2,000 troops alone and was the target of an apparently wild goose chase that began during the Clinton administration, was killed a little over a month ago.

Osama bin Laden’s death may go down in history as the event that vindicates over a decade of fruitless search and the bloody war in Afghanistan.

The night of his death, and the day after, Americans publicly celebrated across the nation, with large crowds turning out in New York City and in front of the White House.

More importantly, it was a major success for the Obama

A fortunate upbringing, an unlikely terrorist

By Rutul Patel

On May 2, 2011, the President of the United States of America ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden, one of the most dangerous terrorists to ever exist.

Few people, however, know about bin Laden’s unlikely background. He was an extremely wealthy individual whose fortune was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, much of which he used to finance his organization.

Bin Laden had an incredibly fortunate childhood for the era and location he was born into. Born in 1957 as one of 52 children from a family in the Saudi Arabian Kingdom, it would seem that the family’s income would be spread extremely thin, but bin Laden’s father, Mohamed bin Laden, had become a billionaire at a young age by turning his small-time construction company into the largest in Saudi Arabia.

As the demand for oil increased in the 1960s, the bin Laden family employed their connections with the Saudi royal family to acquire even more wealth.

Tragedy struck the family in

1967. Mohamed bin Laden died in a plane crash, leaving his four wives and 52 children with his immense fortune, which was distributed among them.

Life was quiet for the bin Laden family and Osama until he entered college at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

There, his religiousness took a political turn. One of his professors, Abdullah Azzam, was a Palestinian who founded an organization to help the Mujahedeen repel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the late 1970s. Azzam incorporated Osama into his organization and he soon became its top financer.

Using his family’s connections, bin Laden raised hundreds of thousands of dollars while at the same time joining a US-funded anti-Soviet cell in Afghanistan.

After fighting with the Mujahedeen and other Muslim guerrilla forces for a decade, bin Laden founded al-Qaeda, Arabic for “the base.”

In the early 1990s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan. Victorious, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia with great respect and many plans for

the future.

In 1991, when US forces were stationed in Saudi Arabia, at that country’s request, for the Gulf War, bin Laden was outraged. He hated the US stepping on the same soil as the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina (both located in Saudi Arabia). Due to the resulting friction between Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda, the organization left the country for Sudan.

While there, bin Laden created an extensive terror network funded by his huge funds. At around this time, the United States became aware of the threat posed by his organization.

In 1996 he issued a fatwa, a religious order, named the “Declaration of War Against Americans Who Occupy the Lands of the Two Holy Mosques.”

“There is no more important thing than pushing the American occupier out,” stated the fatwa.

“Youths only want one thing, to kill [U.S. soldiers] so they can get to Paradise.”

It encouraged young Muslim men to fight and die to free the Middle East of American presences. In a CNN interview in 1997,

bin Laden explained his hatred for the US. “The United States is unjust, criminal and tyrannical…

I am declaring a Jihad (holy war) against the US.” Bin Laden, after declaring the Jihad, expanded his terrorist agenda and destroyed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people. He also broadened the scope of the Jihad to all Americans, including civilians.

By this time, he was on the US most-wanted list. He was known to be in Afghanistan (he had been expelled by Sudan) at the time and expected to be working with the Islamist organization, the Taliban.

The connections he made with the Taliban and the safety they provided him with gave him the ability to execute his plans.

“Osama’s protection is our moral and Islamic duty,” one Taliban official was quoted as saying in July 2001.

Al-Qaeda formed a network of training camps and safe houses where recruits from around the world were brought for combat, weapons training, and indoctrination to the secret order.

As long as the Taliban ruled Af-

ghanistan, bin Laden, his four wives and more than ten children were able to avoid capture.

But his orchestration of the 9/11 attacks caused the US to form a coalition to invade Afghanistan to capture him and defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The coalition’s forces removed the Taliban from power and took control of much of the country. Though coalition forces surrounded bin Laden and personnel of both terrorist groups at the cave complex of Tora Bora, he and a fraction of his comrades were able to escape in the ensuing battle.

The US occupied Afghanistan for almost a decade while bin Laden remained elusive. Iraq drew attention away from 9/11’s mastermind, and he seemed to have believed that he had truly eluded the US and was safe where he was. For years, he lived peacefully and comfortably in Pakistan, until almost ten years after 9/11, when President Obama ordered Operation Neptune Spear and brought him to justice.

“His demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity,” Obama said in a speech announcing bin Laden’s death. “Justice has been done.”

GRAPHIC BY DYLAN ROYCE

U.S. foreign policy in a world without bin Laden

By Peter Natov

While Americans proudly watched President Barack Obama announce the death of Osama bin Laden and celebrated the courageous efforts of the Navy SEAL operation in the following days, relations between the United States and its ally, Pakistan, have been quickly deteriorating.

The success of the United States in killing bin Laden was at the same time a Pakistani failure, as American intelligence discovered that bin Laden was living, rather comfortably, under the nose of the Pakistani military in a large compound in Abbottabad, a city only thirty miles north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad and the home of the Pakistan Military Academy.

The SEALs, furthermore, were able to penetrate deep into Pakistani territory, undetected until they were already exiting, a huge embarrassment for the country’s military. U.S.-Pakistani relations have deteriorated as a result, with Pakistan furious over the United States’ decision to not inform the

Pakistani government or military of the operation until it was nearly over.

The location of bin Laden’s compound in the heart of the Pakistan’s military town has raised questions about the country’s role in fighting the global War on Terror. Since the attacks of September 11, the United States has sent billions in foreign aid to Pakistan and called it a key ally in the Muslim world.

Yet despite the aid and claims of support, Pakistan was unable to find the world’s most wanted man while repeatedly denying that he was within its borders.

U.S.-Pakistan relations are at a clear turning point. Following the death of bin Laden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed that Pakistan needs to up its part in the War on Terror: “We will do our part, and we look to the government of Pakistan to take decisive steps in the days ahead,” said Clinton. “Joint action against al-Qaeda and its affiliates will make Pakistan, America and the world safer and more secure.”

Such cooperation is urgent, for Osama bin Laden’s death will cause al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups to seek revenge and speed up the planning process of attacks.

Already such an attack has occurred: a surprise raid by the Pakistani Taliban on a Pakistani naval base in Karachi, the country’s largest city and financial center.

Lasting 18 hours, the Taliban claimed that it had launched the raid, which took 12 lives and resulted in the destruction of two planes, as retaliation for the death of bin Laden.

Although bin Laden’s death is a clear blow to the al-Qaeda, it is not fatal. Although bin Laden was, apparently, very involved in the organization, it seems to have been mostly on an ideological and strategic level. Because he was a hunted man, he had not participated in the organization’s tactical, day-to-day operations for a number of years.

Al-Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was responsible for most of the planning and

is the most likely candidate to succeed bin Laden.

Additionally, al-Qaeda is likely to survive because it has developed into a large, complex, decentralized force spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and the surrounding regions. Al-Qaeda has offshoots with substantial autonomy operating in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and a number of other nations.

For around a decade, the primary goal of the United States in the War on Terrorism has been to capture Osama bin Laden. But with his death, the next goal is unclear.

There will now be an increased number of calls to end the decadelong War in Afghanistan and decrease the presence of American troops around the Middle East and surrounding regions.

Most importantly, the death of bin Laden provides the United States with an opportunity to better its relations with the Muslim world. As al-Qaeda reels from its loss, the primarily secular and nonviolent Arab Spring is increasingly

marginalizing its ideology and organization.

The success of the democratic movements in Tunisia and Egypt and the secular nature of the resistances in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain undermine al-Qaeda’s terrorist and jihadist ideology and may be the final nail in its coffin.

It and other Islamist organizations thrived on economic stagnation and oppressive and corrupt leadership. Now, the Arab Spring threatens to transform the Middle East into a secular, democratic, and economically prosperous region, which would totally deprive al-Qaeda of its support base.

The Arab Spring may have other effects, as well. It has removed leaders who were friends of Israel, such as Mubarak, and leaders who were, at least, beneficial to Israel, such as Syria’s Assad. It may re-

Re-rethinking US-Pakistan relations

By Dylan Royce

Two issues ago, I wrote a column entitled “Rethinking American Foreign Policy in the Middle East.” In it, I identified two actions suspected of Pakistan that must stop for it to continue receiving American military aid. One was its support of the Taliban, the other was its protection of Osama bin Laden. Now, the second suspicion has been confirmed to be at least partially true.

It may seem as though this is vindication of what I wrote in that column: not only has bin Laden been hiding in Pakistan, but he’s been practically next door to its military academy, and it seems fairly unlikely that most or all of the Pakistani government/military/intelligence service was unaware of his presence.

Furthermore, evidence continues to mount that Pakistan is bankrolling the Taliban: on May 15, Amrullah Saleh, former Afghan Intelligence Chief said that Pakistan should be recognized as “a hostile country” because “they take your money… They do not cooperate. They created the Taliban.”

In addition, Pakistan has revealed the identity of the Central Intelligence Agency chief of the Islamabad station.

It must seem that I mean for the above to support my argument from two months ago: not only has Pakistan been caught sort of red-handed with Osama bin Laden, but it continues to support the Taliban, my other concern, and it has acted against us on the intelligence front. But that is not what I write it for, because I regret writing what I did.

The Abottabad raid changed my mind about Pakistan. According to Senator John Kerry, “We have people on the ground in Pakistan because they allow us to have them. We actually worked with them on certain parts of the intelligence that helped to lead to him.”

Though elements of the Pakistani government, military, or intelligence service were almost certainly involved in the hiding of bin Laden, we could not have gotten him without the general cooperation of Pakistan.

Despite all of its misdemeanors listed above (and they are by no measure inconsequential), Pakistan is still, fundamentally, a benefit to, if not an ally of, the United States.

Lawmakers of both countries, however, are now calling for a break in the relationship. Some American senators and congressmen want to end our aid to Pakistan, while some Pakistani Members of Parliament are demanding that we cease the drone strikes or their country will cut our supply lines to Afghanistan. Everyone needs to calm down and take a step back. The fact is, we need each other.

To this point, Pakistan has permitted the United States to carry out drone strikes in its largely ungoverned Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a huge boon to our efforts to combat al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Nine of al-Qaeda’s 20 top commanders, and between 1,400 and 2,400 members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, have been killed by the strikes.

Sadly, civilian casualties have been extensive, but in recent years they appear to have been largely eliminated: the U.S. Government believes that only 30 civilians have been killed in the

last three years.

It is essential that we convince Pakistan to continue to allow the strikes, both for our sake, for Afghanistan’s, and for its own (while continuing the strikes after peace is achieved in Afghanistan would only breed hatred for America in the region, they are at the moment helping us greatly in the war, and act as an excellent bargaining chip in potential upcoming negotiations).

Pakistan is also suffering at the hands of al-Qaeda and the Taliban: over 10,000 Pakistani soldiers and civilians have been killed in their country’s war against the organizations. Therefore, it is in Pakistan’s interest, as well as ours, to remain united in the conflict.

These casualties also prove that, though certain people high up in Pakistan were probably aiding bin Laden, the country as a whole was not. On the contrary, it is actually paying a heavier price than the United States in this war.

Pakistan has so far permitted drone strikes and intelligence operations as well as waged a costly war against our common enemies.

We need it to continue doing so, for Pakistan is currently probably the most important country to our effort to defeat Islamic terrorism.

Should we withdraw aid as some sort of hostage to bend Pakistan to our will, such as forcing it to investigate its intelligence service, such an effort would probably backfire.

That the Pakistani Parliament demanded an end to our drone strikes and condemned the Abbottabad raid while simultaneously granting us (restricted) access to the civilians at the compound, returning our crashed helicopter, and not actually doing anything about drone strikes that occurred as Kerry visited, suggests that it is not as anti-American as some would have us believe.

Rather, its hand is being forced by its own people, who are justifiably angered by our incessant involvement in their country. If we threaten an end to aid, it may force the Parliament to do everything we ask, but it is more likely that such an aggressive action would backfire.

It would be political suicide for a Pakistani politician to bow down before the United States in exchange for money, no matter how much. While we might be able to force Pakistan to expel the remaining al-Qaeda personnel that are likely hiding within its borders, which is obviously the most desirable scenario, it is much more likely that we would simply alienate the nation entirely.

It is best to just be satisfied with their current level of cooperation.

As long as we are allowed to hunt down the terrorists that the Inter-Services Intelligence (the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA) probably shelters, we should be happy, because the alternative could be the total cooperation of the entirety of the Pakistani government with al-Qaeda.

We should overlook the bin Laden incident, and even Pakistan’s possible aid to the Taliban (which is, in any case, probably being supplied by rogue elements of the ISI, not the government itself), as long as it continues to permit us to do what we’ve been doing: waging war against the enemies of Afghanis, Pakistanis, and Americans.

move more, depriving Israel of the regional allies that it has cultivated for decades.

As Palestine moves closer to asking the UN to recognize its statehood, the Obama administration is trying to rebuild momentum for a peace process. In mid-May, President Obama revealed his plan to settle the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

The President proposed a solution in which the Arab world would recognize Israel as a state in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal to its borders in 1967, with mutually agreed-upon territorial exchanges with Palestine, which would be-

come independent.

President Obama’s call for “a sovereign state of Palestine in which the Palestinian people are able to determine their own fate and their own future” is likely prompted by his belief that IsraelPalestinian relations, like al-Qaeda, are reaching a crisis.

Both have been hugely affected by the radical changes precipitated by the Arab Spring, and old, seemingly eternal truths in the region are rapidly unraveling as the entire region hurtles towards a new future without bin Laden and hopefully without al-Qaeda and dictatorships.

Special Features D10

Denebola

7 June 2011

Memorial Day 2011: Remembering 9/11 ten years later May 1, 2011 — President Barack Obama

Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history. The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory -- hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.

And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table.

Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.

On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country.

On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda -- an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.

Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort. We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense. In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support.

And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.

Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world.

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against

our country and our friends and allies. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.

Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must –- and we will -- remain vigilant at home and abroad.

As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was.

That is what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding. Indeed, bin Laden had declared war against Pakistan as well, and ordered attacks against the Pakistani people.

Tonight, I called President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations. And going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates.

The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores, and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens. After nearly 10 years of service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts weigh on me every time I, as Commander-in-Chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who’s been gravely wounded.

So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are. And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.

Tonight, we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work, nor know their names. But tonight, they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.

We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they are part of a generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.

Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores.

And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.

The cause of securing our country is not complete. But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

September 11 memorials have been installed throughout Boston. Above, memorials at Boston Common and Logan Airport.

photos by denebola staff

Denebola

7 June 2011

Arts and Entertainment D11

Art Foci: Harry Neff and Sydney Morin

By Sophie ScharlinPettee “My grandparents often took me to the theatre when I was small; the Arts were always very important to them and they shaped me to feel the same way,” senior Harry Neff said.

Since kindergarten, Neff has been in many a theatre production. Ever since he auditioned for the Jewish Community Center’s production of The Wizard of Oz and was cast as the Wizard, Neff has been working on one show or another.

A committed member of South Stage and captain of the Newton South Speech and Debate team, he has participated in many shows and competitions.

Recently, he played Laertes in Hamlet, Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, Mustafa in The Comedy of Errors, and Vittorio Vidal in Sweet Charity.

As well as theatre, Neff has been competing in Speech competitions with a 10-minute cutting from The Tricky Part by Martin Moran.

Neff is one out of four Speech team captains, winning many an event.

Qualifying for the National Forensics League (NFL) National Qualifiers, he helped the Newton South Speech and Debate team win first place overall in a March competition for Dramatic Interpretation.

Not only that, but Neff will be competing in a national competition in Dallas, Texas this June.

He will be participating in the Dramatic Interpretation event. Neff also received “Outstanding Diction” as a degree from the NFL. As well as actively taking part in the South theatre community, Neff is a member of the Newton Theatre Collective and spent a summer working in the Theatre Arts Program at Northwestern University, or “Cherubs,” as it is also known. “[Cherubs] changed my entire outlook and approach to theatre, and maybe even my life,” Neff said.

“It taught me to maintain an

uncompromising work ethic, and to forge fearlessly into theatrical career with a sense of integrity and honesty.”

Within South, Neff has taken a theatre class each year of high school, with the only exception his senior year.

He is currently taking three Advanced Placement courses and has dabbled in the other creative arts class options in South.

Furthering developing his passion in the Arts, Neff was a Theatre Work Study for the first semester of this year and has previously been involved in photography.

“I’m really just attracted to creative art in general, especially the kinds of things that deal with characters and humans directly,” he said.

Throughout his life Neff has been inspired by many people, watching “any actor who can take risks and maintain an air of effortlessness and naturalism at the same time.”

Neff “grew up watching Jack Nicholson, and is a huge admirer of Colin Firth.”

Meryl Streep, Marlon Brando, Penelope Cruz, Nathan Lane, Kate Winslet, and Cate Blanchett are all icons to Neff, though he believes “that there’s a great deal of good acting going on which goes unnoticed by the masses.”

Arts is a daily part of Neff’s life and he hopes to pursue his passion in the future.

Entering Columbia University in the fall, he plans to major in theatre.

“The program offers the best of anything one could want from a theatre education. The critical theory courses are as intense as the studio acting seminars,” Neff said.

He believes that “whether I wind up onstage or on some other

side of it, I feel like I can get what I want and need out of this department, whatever that might ultimately be.”

After college, Neff feels that “in terms of being an actor, I think there’s a good chance of me pursuing that as a career path.” Though theatre is a competitive career path, Neff hopes his ideals and morale will support him in his thespian journey.

“At the end of the day, though, I dream of mastering every corner of the art of theatre itself...and once you do that, you can really do anything within the industry,” he said.

As well as theatre, Neff likes “reading about people in novels. I want to explore literary criticism in college…taking photos of people and of course, portraying people in a way that contributes to a greater work of theatre.”

Though he is interested in many things, theatre is a big part of his future.

“Nothing has really ever come as close to my heart as theatre has, and I struggle to see how that could ever change,” Neff said.

“I am going to explore the possibilities when I get to school...and if at the end of four years I am still a theatre major, I guess that’ll just be it!”

photo by harry neff

improv later in life,” she said.

What truly inspired her to continue on her improv path was the television-show “Whose Line is it Anyway,” that she loved to watch.

At the end of her freshman year, Morin happened upon the fall improv show’s empty sign-up sheet. Upon taking part in the improv show, Morin discovered a love for improv she had not experienced before.

“On a whim, I signed up, and I think it was one of the best decisions I made in high school,” Morin said. “At the beginning of my sophomore year I auditioned and made it into Children of the Candy Corn, which has been the highlight of my week for three years.”

South’s Children of the Candy Corn, or simply Candy Corn, is a student-run improv group. Improvisation, or improv, is a comedic theatre art where a large photo by sydney morin troupe of people been enthusiastic about the will play certain games onperforming arts ever since she stage, creating a new character was a little girl. “I’ve always each time.

Improv relies on spontaneity loved everything theatrical.

I’ve watched my family’s VHS and an intrinsic feel for graspof Annie so many times I am ing what is funny to a specific pretty sure I wore it out,” she audience, and rather selective groups, as being a successful said.

Like many who find them- improviser is an esteemed and selves involved in theatre, difficult role to play.

Morin’s habitual hilarity and Morin began by performing one song in her elementary comedic personality are disschool’s fifth grade musical, played prominently in Candy Bye Bye Birdie. Her first de- Corn’s shows, showcasing her fining moment, though, was talent and humorous prowess. when Morin took part in her Within the past month, Candy Corn performed at Sunday freshman play.

But the story of her exposure Funday, a gathering put on by to improv is “a long and roman- the class of 2011 as a fundraiser tic tale,” beginning with her ac- for the senior prom budget, and ceptance into the four member at the joint STAND benefit after-school improve troupe at concert and WAI Feast.

Morin also was awarded the Brown Middle School.

Though an emphatic member Senior Superlative of “Funniof the group, it “didn’t really est,” along with Max Grossconvince me that I wanted to do man, by the senior class.

By Sophie ScharlinPettee “My parents say that when they first showed me Peter Pan, I was hypnotized. Since I was little I’ve loved that, with theatre and improv, you can transform yourself into a completely different person and put yourself into situations you might never normally find yourself in.”

Senior Sydney Morin has

Morin recently played the part of Mary-Agnes Gennino in South’s productions of Ruling Passion and Eva June in Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music, and she has taken all four acting classes provided by South. “Basically, when I’m not in rehearsals for a play, I’m probably napping or at Candy Corn practice,” she said, only half-joking.

An emphatic lover of the performing arts, Morin is greatly inspired by the one-and-only Tina Fey. “My dream job would be to just live her life.

She inspires me so much and is such a big role model for me,” she said.

As well as acting in many South Stage productions and being an active member of South’s student-run improv troupe, Morin has been to creative arts summer camps. “I went to CRCAP for a month during the summer before sophomore year where I also took some acting classes.”

As for the next summer, Morin is “so excited” to work in the Newton Theatre Collective.

Looking forward, Morin is planning on attending Ithaca College next fall, though she said that the improv and theatre classes offered did not affect her decision. “I’m not exactly sure about what I want to do with the rest of my life yet, I know that’s surprising,” she joked.

Not only a passionate actress and improviser, Morin has a variety of artistic interests.

“I taught myself how to play the ukulele, which I love to play,” she said. “I took guitar and piano lessons for a while, and although I stopped taking formal lessons, I still continue to play both of those instruments.”

As for the future, Morin said, “I definitely want to keep doing theatre and improv. I won’t commit to them for the rest of my life, but I love both theatre and improv too much to just drop them out of my life completely.” Spoken like a true thespian.

The Illusionist: the timeless story of a Parisian stage magician

By Max Simon Recently one Saturday evening, a few friends and I ventured away from our usual weekend gallivanting to go see a movie, which is a rare occasion nowadays.

We saw the animated film The Illusionist by French director Sylvain Chomet, the same director who created the quirky Triplets of Belleville in 2003.

Together the four of us packed into a tiny theater in Coolidge Corner and comfortably took in the strangers nesting around us.

Despite the film being animated, the audience seemed particularly old compared to us, we soon realized that the movie was not a movie for children, rather, a film for adults seeking refuge in their childhood.

The film’s plot follows the story of an old stage magician

working in Paris around the rabbit from his hat before an unimpressed crowd. late 1950s or early ‘60s.

Despite this, in a way he Perhaps the most warming part of the movie was the compels sympathy from the autitle sequence, depicting ro- dience, as obviously his place mantic, black and white im- in entertainment is dying.

He loses his job and carages of Parisian theaters in ries a solithe height of their I expected the movie to tary poster around with success.

W a t c h - remain wistfully nostal- him selling ing this, I gic...but the film had a his act with expected little to no different agenda. the movie success. to remain O n l y wistfully when an nostalgic, revolving around a old drunk Scottish man dislost generation of entertainers covers his act does he find a and theatric, but the film had sort of relief. a different agenda.

The magician ventures to We first see the magician, a very secluded village in a tall and gray man beside a Scotland and there the isolated dilapidated band in an empty people of that village are truly old theater. mesmerized by the act,.

His act no doubt stinks, as This is as they are equally he pulls a glass from his mouth, mesmerized by the ancient flowers from his sleeve, and a technology of a single electric

light bulb, and the loud blaring of rock and roll.

Here the film displays quite beautifully that magic lies in the small wonders of our world, in the things that we as people often take for granted.

The film’s second half follows the relationship between the old magician and a young woman living in the Scottish town.

She follows the man to Edinburgh and there they live together. The movie, from there on, is mostly silent.

I won’t go much further into the plot than to say that magician begins to fail more as an entertainer and directs his attention on keeping the girl in a state of wonder and enjoyment.

To her, perhaps, he truly is a man who can perform magic, and that makes him feel important and vital in some way.

In the end, before the magician leaves her, he gives a final message in the form of a small note to the young girl.

In only a few words, the note destroys all sense of imagination and wonder anyone could have maintained during the total lenght of this movie.

She has grown up and perhaps has lost a need for

photos from internet sourc

tricks and nonsense, and the appears to be truly magic audience has perhaps grown and his rabbit bites, but for some reason, the audience up also.

They too, over the course and I also wanted him to be of the beautiful film, lost all real and successful.

He lets go, and simultanedelusions of magic and wono u s l y a s the der. young woman T h e I l l u - The story is not about loses interest s i o n i s t magic, but a classic loss in him as both a performer is both a b e a u t i - of innocence in a chang- and a father figure, we do ful and ing world. too. alarmVery relucingly tantly we say “farewell” to depressing film.

The story is not about The Illusionist, and painfully magic, but a classic loss return to reality.

The immaculate and whimof innocence in a changing sical hand drawn animation world.

The film takes place at a cannot hide the swelling turning point in entertain- sadness of the ending.

After the credits rolled, my ment, where the world was losing interest in magic and friends and I, quietly contemVaudeville Theater and gain- plating our loss, sat together ing interest in rock and roll in the car and could not find anything to say for the entire and television.

The old magician never way home.

Denebola

Global D12

7 June 2011

How one thing fits into another: enhancing the Prague Spring program

Editor’s note: Denebola asked two of the Prague Spring program’s co-ordinators to reflect on how research and experiential work outside Newton South enhanced the now-two decades long Central European experience. Each responded to slightly different questions.

Brian Murray

How and why A year ago I took a course at Boston College called Hitler, The Church, and the Holocaust. It was innate interest, and also for professional advancement. This was a rare opportunity, as graduate courses there these days are prohibitively expensive ($3400 +).

As a “Double Eagle”[BC graduate] I knew an advanced level course crossregistered in the Theology and History Departments would probably be a high quality offering. The fact that the instructor, Don Dietrich, was a former Catholic priest was a draw as well.

Readings I was already well versed in Holocaust history, so I saw the course as an excellent content-extension exercise.

Now, Weimar Germany has been an interest of mine for a long time, so delving further into this topic built on an existing foundation. I found Claudia Koonz’s The Nazi Conscience especially provocative and useful for deepening my understanding of both the Weimar and early Nazi periods.

One of the best things about teaching and studying history is the more you learn, the more your interest is stimulated

photo from denebola staff

Five week fellowship in Poland, 2009 I had been reading about the German Resistance (Widerstand) and the Silesian/ Polish town of Kreisau for years.

While Mr. White and I were scouting for 2008 Prague Spring, en route to Berlin from Prague we detoured slightly for meetings in southwestern Poland and this town of Kreisau, today called Krzyzowa.

There is a Krzyzowa Center for European Understanding; it’s the converted estate of the anti-Nazi resistance leader Helmut James von Moltke.

The meeting space is dedicated primarily to healing the wounds between Germans and Poles.

During our visit, we visited the estate and met both the German and Polish staff.

The director, Anne Marie Franke, mentioned she wanted to invite an Englishspeaking teacher to stay at Krzyzowa and develop English language curriculum.

Naturally, I accepted.

Enhancement The course was tremendously useful in helping me to understand Catholic and Protestant churches’ official and unofficial responses to the Nazi state and the Holocaust.

Mid-twentieth century Germany was, in many ways, a testing ground for mankind.

Combinations of punishments and rewards lured many elements of German society, including its churches, into complicity with the Shoah, while transcendence beyond these carrots and sticks empowered other Christians and their leaders (Marga Meusel and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to name only a few) to find solidarity with exposed groups, and to defend them, unto death.

Exploring the various institutional, theological, individual drivers that led various Christians to respond in radically different ways was, for me, profound.

these concerns into contemporary times by looking at how various architectural sites and pieces of public art either masked Nazi brutality in the past, or unmask them today.

I researched and then tied this “masking” theme to sites encountered in the program, such as the 1936 Olympic Stadium (Berlin), and the Theresienstadt [Terezin] Camp (Labem Region, Czech Republic). Both of these compounds and surrounding installments were used to showcase Nazi Germany positively, and play down notions of inhuman treatment of European Jews.

The contemporary “unmasking” theme then became relevant to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Bebelplatz Memorial in Berlin (amongst many others). Both of these sights currently “unmask” or “unpackage” Nazi Germany’s genocidal past. These lines of thought beg the question: why do some societies acknowledge and work through their criminal past, while others do not?

Designing curriculum materials and activities that branch out into art, architecture, and history education, and that orbit around concepts critical to the Prague Spring program was a tremendous opportunity.

Prague Spring connection In lieu of a final research paper, my instructor gave me free reign to develop curriculum for the Prague Spring Program.

Given that many of the course themes revolved around complicity and resistance, I decided, for the program, to extend

Next steps While I’m eager to study a variety of topics, a book I’ve recently read called Stasiland by Anna Funder has really gotten me more & more interested in social life in the former East Germany, or the GDR.

By Alex Kane My response to Terezin? just seeing a concentration camp, is absolutely unimaginable. So many people stuffed into the torture area, you cannot comprehend the numbers. From the outside it looked “nice,” only in one sense. From the exterior you could cover up but when you saw just one of cell blocks and learned that a hundred people were packed into a small room, tiny wooden bunks, it became clear how the Nazis treated the Jews.

What struck me first? no privacy.

People aren’t humans in those circumstances, they are cattle. About the whole

camp, walking through the tunnel to the place where people were executed, you suddenly saw very nice houses where the officers were, swimming pool, yards, children’s’ play areas…these are the last things people see.

The Terezianstadt town adjoining the “small fortress” torture compound seemed more spread out but that’s also a superficial view. A garrison town, it was built for five or seven thousand late 18th century soldiers and family but the actual conditions when it was turned into a ghetto had five or six times that number so of course the sanitary and living conditions

were horrible.

Terezin had many artists and musicians, you saw art by Jews that Nazis approved of but when you saw the pictures in the museum they had a hidden dimension and those not shown, the faces reveal the suffering and the hideous conditions under which Jews were forced to live. It’s like one of those Pointillist paintings—when you look close up you cannot see the images for what they are but when you step back—knowing the deprivation and the fear under which people lived—the other images come to the fore.

I wondered about those who built these

By Jillian Gundersheim My experience? I was nauseated and amazed, simultaneously. Being in a place where so much hatred and destruction towards a people, my religion and heritage, is shocking. To know that history and finally be where it occurred, wild. It was wild for humans to do that to other humans.

Knowing what I did already, at first I could not speak, the tension was palpable.

I felt I should do something, but could not; it had already happened.

The Red Cross incident was the worst for me, especially since they could have made a difference when they “inspected” Terezin in 1944 against all those rumors and complaints. It was the fake bathroom,

the sinks with no piping underneath. The Red Cross was shown around, really just kept to the script. They chose to accept what was so obviously stage managed— afterwards, every Jew involved was shipped off to Auschwitz.

The smallest details upset me, like sorting Jews into different categories— one triangle for Jews who were political, another for those who were gay, and so on. Imagine the imagination of someone making those distinctions! To have put that “system” together, to have sorted humans and kept the data, the height of inhumanity and depravation.

All of this I told my parents, and then found out that the “rescued Torah” in our Temple had come from…Terezin. Finding

this out afterwards was the kind of connection I had hoped to make.

The program changed me, it put a visual setting to all the history I had read.

Holocaust denial? I was there, Terezin was no Hollywood set I could assure a doubter. I loved the tour guide; she made the links between numbers and what we were seeing. If Terezin was a ‘transit camp,’ I cannot imagine a death camp like Sobibor.

The apparent contrast between the Little Fortress of a Jewish star and Christian cross was powerful, we learned the latter commemorated the doctors and nurses of the Red Army who died after the January liberation from typhus, trying to save Terezin inmates from the same diseases.

photo from denebola staff

By Dana Cohen-Kaplan Visiting a concentration camp was a pretty heavy experience, something close to home as I had cousins who died in camps. We saw where political prisoners— Jews and not—were lined up and shot.

Although not a death camp, people were worked and starved to death at Terezin, or, “selected” and sent on trains to Auschwitz.

Either they died in the frying pan, or in the fire.

Terezin squared with what we had learned in the Prague Spring workshops and in my history classes, particularly the “masking/unmasking” notion. It was a neat, orderly small town looked at one way, a series of horrors if you knew 30,000+ were jammed into that same space.

The guide seemed detached, to me. But she must be giving several tours a day and without keeping some distance would be emotionally exhausted herself. The movie we saw, the Nazi propaganda film about Hitler “giving” Terezin to the Jews, had no distance—that, and other images of bulldozers pushing naked bodies into open pits.

I have not shared this yet with my parents but I know now in a concrete way how my reading fits in, how the system actually worked. This summer I will read more Eli Wiesel, knowing the bunk I touched at Terezin was exactly like the one he was crammed into, freezing and terrified, at Buchenwald.

If I returned to Terezin I would want to

Curriculum development My main focus was on developing a curriculum guide for my classroom to help better teach the history of resistance during World War II, with a particular focus on the diversity of resistance that took place in Nazi Germany.

I had relative autonomy during my research and project creation. The only stipulation was that I utilize the resources available at Krzyzowa. It was an extraordinary library. Most of the books I used were donated by the family of the late Beate Ruhm von Oppen, a professor at St. John’s College, Annapolis, whose specialization was the German Resistance.

Although I knew the core history of resistance during World War II, my research introduced me to a number of facts and concepts I hadn’t encountered before, particularly around the extensive debates within what was called the Kreisau Circle and the sophistication of the White Rose’s [Munich] resistance efforts.

More than anything, I probably spent the most time trying to sort out the variety of opposing viewpoints that exist around the legacy of German Resistance, which are more diverse than you might first think.

This ended up being the central understanding question of my unit.

Needless to say, I got a bit carried away with my work - the unit in total is probably about 10 days (and 30 pages) long,

Jamie Rinaldi

much longer than any NSHS teacher could reasonably teach about the topic given the overall curriculum, but I hope one day I’ll be afforded the opportunity to teach it in its entirety.

Wider public On several occasions, I also met with public historians working in Poland, several of whom managed sites or exhibits relating to Polish resistance. Although I was able to bring some of that information into the curriculum, most of the resources they had to share were in Polish, which I (nor many of my German hosts) could read.

At some point I’d like to expand the curriculum I’ve developed to include more on wartime resistance throughout Eastern Europe.

Prague Spring connection Kreisau is a key link in the history of German Resistance. Although a good deal of opposition grew out of Berlin, the remote location of Kreisau offered one faction of resisters a relative escape from the grips of the totalitarian police state.

I should say Krzyzowa is very rural the town literally has one road, and the estate similar to hundreds of other (large) Prussian farms. Because of its location, it isn’t practical to take students there during the Prague Spring program - but

any teacher will tell you, once you travel somewhere you take back with you into the classroom.

What’s next?

The next major focus is to develop a curriculum that encompasses resistance throughout Eastern Europe.

German Resistance, as it took place under the nose of the Nazi regime, needs to be studied with some degree of separation from the larger history of resistance. That said, the history of the partisan resistance throughout Eastern Europe is as an incredible and at times as unbelievable a story.

When I read about the partisans in Yugoslavia, I often end up scratching my head trying to make sense of how people could have found the sheer fortitude to face such merciless odds. Both stories are important and raise similar historical and existential questions about how people respond to despotism, particularly despotism as disgusting as the National Socialism, and accompanying European fascism.

I’m also interesting in tracing these same themes through the resistance movements against Soviet-style dictatorship that developed in the second half of the twentieth century. Krzyzowa is already moving in that direction, as are numerous other museums in Poland.

Students’ reflections on the Terezin concentration camp

photo from denebola staff

structures, ugly barracks and whatever, what was going through their minds?

They were enclosing people so that they could be tormented. I am willing to bet that nothing went through their minds except, I am doing my job, I am getting paid for this work—thinking nothing about the implications, about the people who were being turned into objects.

Neither of my parents had ever visited one of those camps so it was hard for me to explain what I had seen to them.

Terezin is more than a memorial in some abstract sense to the Holocaust, not like, it’s sad we must remember. It’s about

people, not the 6 million; you don’t think about numbers but individuals in a room, marched off to die.

Others with me? Background plays a good deal in how you respond to events.

If you were Jewish, that would sharpen the issue. My great grandparents were not sent to camps but they were displaced, some were killed during the war and that was Ukraine. They were displaced to Uzbekistan, everyone on my grandmother’s side died, that is, all the males. Her father, her brother, her uncle. It comes home in a very concrete and personal way, they talk about it all the time.

photo from denebola staff

come with more numbers and questions, how many died in Terezin and how many were sent “East” to Auschwitz? What exactly were the illnesses and diseases, how many died from them, their ages, their occupations. What did the children eat, where did they get their clothing, what was learned in their “underground” classrooms?

photo from denebola staff

A memorial to the Soviet doctors who lost their lives to Typhoid fever in their successful effort to eliminate it from the camp.

By Louisa Warnke At first I was stunned by how people had been treated, it was obvious seeing cramped spaces and the areas where torture had been committed. We knew about it from our classes, seeing the actual structures and hearing explanations, this was this, this was that, made the emotions actual.

The big sign, ARBEIT MACHT FREI, “work makes [you] free,” was a chilling irony.

I am glad we got to see the children and adult drawings, watercolors, oils, and hear the music that had been composed at Terezin. As we learned in our classes, art is a record, a document but it is also a kind of resistance.

Art is a comfort, it helps people survive in the sense that those camps were trying to de-humanize people by denying them their identity. For an artist making art was a way of keeping a sense of who they had been.

I talked with my parents about what I saw and heard; they have always been shocked by how quickly the Nazi state came into being and how quickly political parties, unions, professional organizations and even churches were made—and chose to be—collaborators in this horror.

Telling my parents about Terezin turned me into a teacher.

Denebola

7 June 2011

Global D13

Prague Spring visits Anne Frank’s school, ice cream shop

By Tali Levin-Schwartz When people think of Anne Frank, they usually think of the Annex where she hid during the Nazi invasion of Amsterdam in 1940.

The museum/education center that the actual Annex is a part was just that; the hidden rear portion of Anne’s father’s business and warehouse on Prinsengracht (prince canal) was then a working class district, but now is quite upscale.

So it’s not Anne Frank’s house, even though signs and the popular understanding makes it seem that way.

During this past Prague Spring program and our first day in Europe, it was decided to do something different than visit the Annex as years before.

We actually got to go to the neighborhood where Anne Frank had immigrated to from Frankfurt, Germany; where she grew up, went to school, rode her bike and had ice creams before she was forced to go into hiding for over two years.

The area is south of Amsterdam’s center, called Merwedplein. The four and five story apartment buildings are built around nicely landscaped courtyards, classic brownish glazed brick in early 20th century Dutch style.

It was really moving to be there, since you realize that it just looks like a normal

apartment building for the time.

And since there is nothing that tells you that it is Anne’s house (except a little statue of her in front of the building) you look around and listen, and realize that life was pretty normal for Anne Frank before the Nazi invasion, the increasing restrictions upon Jews, and fear of round ups.

Even though we were tired after the overnight plane ride, our small group of students and teachers easily followed a Dutch friend of the program’s, Professor Nil Disco, as he took us from our canal landing to the area around her apartment, and then to a bakery – which gave us our first “taste” of Dutch currency exchange and food.

After fresh rolls and bread, we first walked ten minutes to Margo, her older sister’s school, noticing cars people drove, and larger numbers of bikes everyone was riding.

Another ten minutes walk we came on Anne’s Montessori school, larger than Margo’s but different in a way we had not expected. The outside was painted in bright colors over the brick, and also, with huge representations from Anne’s Diary.

In Anne’s writing, several feet tall, it was nice to see people wrote/painted entries onto the outside for everybody to read and see.

I was very touched that people thought of the idea to do that, since I never would have been able to. It was also nice to see that the school that Anne went to is named after her, is still a normal and working school, since we were lucky enough to see children playing in front of it, teachers with them, chatting and going on with normal school activities.

After seeing the two girls’ schools and noticing everything from the trees to the

birds in them, we walked back to the main street where we were hoping to get ice cream from the same place that Anne and

Margo ate ice cream, Oasis, but it is not there anymore, or at least it’s a different kind of shop.

photo from denebola staff

Another change in the program was how Prague Spring students got to Anne’s neighborhood. Past programs walked everywhere in Amsterdam, sometimes getting a little help from Professor Disco on the tram.

This year, the professor became our Captain, on his little boat. (He and his wife and son used to live on a big houseboat on Browersgracht, now they live on an even bigger houseboat in the Amsterdam harbor.)

G e t t i n g to and from Anne’s neighborhood by boat took about twentyfive minutes from Amsterdam’s main train station, Central, with another ten finding a spot, and then tying up.

Canal boats and quiet Dutch trams gave us the full feeling of being in Amsterdam.

Student’s take on the Red Army monument at Treptower, Berlin photo from denebola staff

By Alex Kane What is Treptower and why is it there?

It’s a vast place, southwest of Berlin’s center. Treptower Park is big and, although part of a city of millions, quietly green, wooded and secluded, set back and apart from apartments and busy motorways.

I was told Treptower was a memorial to the Red Army and a cemetery for 5,000 of the estimated 80,000 Russian soldiers who died smashing into Hitler’s Berlin in 1945.

This came as a great surprise to me because I had no idea there were memorials to the Russians in Berlin before joining Prague Spring. It came as a surprise especially since I had had a clear idea that

photo from denebola staff

The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin.

the Germans, especially those in Berlin, despised the Russians. If anything, they would erect monuments to those citizens killed by the Russians.

But as the defeated power the Germans did not have a choice, and in an odd way the very size and shape of the memorial is a kind of warning against war, certainly war coming out of Germany again. It is cared for, protected by the Berlin and German governments because of binding legal arrangements made with their Russian saviors/conquerors.

This enormous, imposing monument of many parts sits on at least a huge city block and is a perfect example of Mr. Murray’s notion of masking and unmasking, as it uses highly polished red granite from Hitler’s former chancery.

Surrounded by carefully landscaped grounds, clean and almost Spartan in design, Treptower is a memorial not only to the Russians who gave their lives but for the Russians, it suggests, who are ready to keep the future safe.

First you experience the long, wide, slightly ascending stone lane that leads to the main memorial. The massive granite portal, ten stories high, opens to lower, arena-like area of numerous square sarcophagi larger than a football field that is, in essence, a whole city block that cannot be utilized for development in Berlin where land is at a premium to say the least.

One mound honors Russian generals, along the sides are 16 thick stone panels (sarcophagi) and then an enormously tall, elevated cast statue at the far end.

The statue has a classic-looking Russian soldier, he is protecting a German child in his arms and has a sword slashing a swastika; from over 40 feet above the ground he looks towards the center of Berlin.

Despite Treptower’s overwhelming size it feels very contained and very complete.

Everything is there to send a message, honoring the soldiers and warning against future aggression.

Weeping Mother Russia is at the entering walkway, exquisite mosaics within the elevated statue’s base (which one walks up three or four sections of stairs to see), and on the sarcophagi powerful relief scenes dramatize the German invasion of the USSR, Soviet response, and the ultimate

photo from denebola staff

Russian victory and glory.

The word glory is thrown around quite a lot in the space of the memorial. For the Russian people the events of WWII are strangely enough remembered more as a heroic triumph of the Red Army, rather than an enormous casualty in the face of humanity itself.

It is no wonder that the Russian day of remembrance for those lost in the war takes a far back-seat to “The Day of Victory” The glory gained by the soldiers who bravely fought for their motherland is easily translated in the feelings of glory for those who overcame the cost of war back at home. For the people of Information about the war on the sarcophagi is in the form of quotes from Joseph Stalin, in Russian and German.

What do the stone reliefs picture?

Initially Germans invading Russia, destroying villages and slaughtering simple peasants. Later panels proclaim (all quotes from Stalin) the goal of the Russian army is the correct one, freeing their Slavic brothers and sisters from the cruel Nazi oppressors.

There is much hateful material, not only about Nazi “scum” but “German scum.”

The language is as inelegant as Stalin was, but the point is direct, clear and very Russian—dedication to the cause, German defeat and Russian victory and glory.

Even to the families who were not totally persuaded by the Communist regime’s propaganda of a just cause above all, the victory is a sort of last line of defense to the

photo from denebola staff

pride of the people who overcame the Nazi assault, not as a state but as a nation.

As Churchill is said to have remarked, World War II was won over the bodies of 20 million Russian soldiers. This was not a world war but Russians fighting against the German fascist regime. And winning.

photo from denebola staff

Pictures from Prague Spring

photo from denebola staff

photo from denebola staff

The site of the execution of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators at the Bendlerblock, Berlin.

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Denebola

7 June 2011

Denebola

7 June 2011

Book Review D15

Book Review ­— George Abbott White — English

Horatio Algier was black.

Actually he wasn’t, the author of uplifting kid’s books whose basic theme of rising from poverty through hard work, honesty, discipline and sheer pluck became part of America’s myth, was a white Harvard graduate from Chelsea.

But Horatio Algier certainly lives on through AfricanAmerican lives, from Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Claude Brown and Malcolm X, and now, Massachusetts’ first black governor, Deval Laurdine Patrick.

Governor Patrick’s measured and illuminating memoir, A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life, brings the very American narrative of adversity confronted and adversity overcome, black and white, into the 21st century with expected reflections on his South Side, Chicago and elite education at Milton Academy, Harvard College, and Harvard Law School.

And quite unexpected reflections, too—given Patrick’s particular and admirable reserve, reflections on his parents and their failed marriage, his touching and complex relationship with his lover/ wife/partner Diane.

And his impressive—really stunning—ability to remain level-headed and react decently in the indecent and chaotic swirl of political and personal contradictions that would, like an F5 tornado, lay waste to any of us.

Like Up From Slavery and Manchild in the Promised Land, these “domestic” explorations might appear not just out of character but irrelevant to the larger story of a “public man” on the move and on the rise.

Following our New England Emerson, however, they are entirely congruent with that still older tradition in which the “lives” and the “moments” of Matthew Arnold and Wordsworth teach invaluable and life long “lessons.”

In his all too-brief account, virtually every page has one or the other.

From a crisis meeting with the Texaco CEO and his executives to the Reagan Justice Department bringing a prominent but aging Alabama Civil Rights advocate to trial on “bogus” voter registration fraud charges.

F r o m M ilto n A cad emy charging Patrick himself with theft from the school “soda concession” to the “old ladies” of his threadbare childhood church in their faded clothing yet dignified manners teaching him the value of “faith in action.”

He opens with a story many of us have heard—and taken to heart—running to catch Chicago’s 54 th and Wabash bus, jumping aboard and discovering he’s short on change.

The cranky driver, what will he do? Kick him off, give a tongue-lashing, humiliate him before the other passengers? Nah, the driver makes up the difference, tosses in the coins, nods sternly—Just

photo by george abbott white

pass it on.

An obvious lesson and the words, in their own way, memorable. And it is a lesson obviously Patrick has been taking to heart ever since: Patrick’s intelligence, learning, articulateness, caring, energy and ability to inspire around very American ideals…passing it on.

There is a sub-text of course, one that, like the story opens and closes, bookends Patrick’s book.

Pass on what, besides generosity?

Hand along the vision, the idealistic secular scripture Roosevelt, Kennedy and now Obama have transformed from clichés into reality by what they said and what they did—what Lincoln said was all in the Declaration of Independence and which constitutes our American civic creed— a l l m e n a re created equal; equality of opportunity, people have a right to participate in the decisions that affect their lives; rule by law not wo/men; fair play; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Although organized as a rough chronology, Patrick’s memoir laces through his late 20 th and early 21 st century account themes of place, family, learning, diversity, faith, personal responsibility and social justice.

Chicago & Family Born in Chicago (1956) with no doctor in attendance, a tiny apartment which Patrick, characteristically, reframes as “multigenerational” but which in fact was also borrowed space his abandoned mother with older sister only shared, having moved back into her parents’ cramped 79th and Calumet tenement—as a writer Patrick engages all our senses.

We get the high velocity arguments of the neighbors, the smells of the infamous stockyards, his grandmother’s roses, a life “centered on food,” not least cornbread.

The TV is “always on, FULL volume,” and Patrick also remembers every stick (and there aren’t many) of furniture, the kitchen is lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling.

We meet a stern father, Pat, of considerable musical ability (jazz sax, and everything else breath goes through), a brooding and sensitive mother, perceptive, self-aware and knowing in her own right but “brooding” over the bad cards Fate has dealt her.

His grandfather is “taciturn,” hard working (50 straight years as a bank janitor), Gram deeply religious but voluble and “swears like a sailor,” and, characteristic understatement again, She collected the gossip…a job that occupied a good deal of her time.

Squeezed half a dozen ways, including a “rotation” that has Patrick on the floor every third night, it is a home life incoherent from the outside, yet focused by an interior shared consciousness.

All of them aspire to a “middle class” life, and one gotten fair and square. Patrick’s mother keeps her two children clean, ordered and motivated, despite the distractions of “generosity” that this or that kid coming to dinner will deplete already

which wine to drink with fish or how to “outWASP the WASPs.” Learning is to make a difference for the most vulnerable, the least privileged and resourced. This is what the old ladies at his church taught early, thanks to them social justice has been at the core of my professional life.

Going global A Reason to Believe, again characteristically, makes little distinction between the beggars and stall sellers in

Despite the continent’s disorganization, the smells, power failures, and poverty he “had never seen before,” there is not only a richness of encounter but, again and again he writes, “the simple kindness of strangers.”

Lessons, which “have served me well,” he writes three decades later, “in the increasingly rich gumbo that is America.”

Between personal and public there is a rich reprocity as well which may have begun during that travel year, sparked by his mother’s surprising visit to see him in Kenya and what became an opening, years later, to a very special walk along the Lake Michigan shore where mother and son close distance.

They become, as with his estranged father after Patrick’s marriage to Diane and the birth of daughters, two adults who simply share a common time and place.

Diane Political leaders have not done well recently with their partners. Campaign trails and legislative workplaces seem littered with the debris of estrangements, betrayals, infidelities, divorce and the inevitable and disedifying instant books and talk show “revelations.”

While Patrick has little to say about his Harvard undergraduate experience (significantly nothing about Dunster House, roommates, classes taken in History and Lit, or books read, professors who were mentors or projects begun)—women he knew, dated or was more deeply involved with are entirely absent.

Until Diane, the kindergarten and 3rd grade teacher who became a skillful labor and employment lawyer came on the scene in Los Angeles when Patrick was clerking.

Her Queens and Brooklyn background, her West Indian school teacher mother and former Navy electrician father, her discipline, energy, empathy and engaging attractiveness were a mature complement, a true partnership.

In addition to seeing a beautiful, capable woman, I sensed there was something deep underneath: a tender heart, a beautiful soul.

Except…this soul has been damaged, like all of us—and in Patrick’s idiom—No cross, no crown. But the immediate effects, a wracking loss of selfconfidence, is just the surface.

Diane, Patrick learns, is coming off a bad marriage, later as more details emerge, it’s not just bad but ugly, and the abusive about-to-be exhusband, who later succumbs to leukemia, a serious barrier to their mutual future.

We all have families Patrick and Diane work it out, they marry, their houses

A Reason to Believe Lessons from an Improbable Life

By Governor Deval Patrick New York: Broadway Books (2011)

slim rations; the mother ’s brother (a heroin addict) will be joined by his daughter and/or his addicted wife; Bully Richard will trounce Patrick again (did Richard steal his bike?).

They never thought of themselves as “poor,” but one Sears school clothes trip a year, mother completed a GED to get and keep a small post office job, then helps get Patrick and his sister out of sweltering Chicago to summer Bible Camp in Michigan where, black and white kids together, they share an experience which will resonate with each well into their future.

Schools and teachers Now there’s no question from the memoir that Patrick does not live in this South Side world, nor that his diligence in school or “loner” reading is so much an escape as gaining perspective. He’s not running away so much as running towards: books, school and teachers.

Teachers really matter, and as Patrick makes clear from beginning to end, he is eager and open to learn from anyone who will “teach” him, whether at the Fly Club at Harvard (avoid) or through the post grad Rockefeller Traveling Fellowship which he finagles into a marginal U.N. job in of all places Sudan (embrace).

He applauds what “all great teachers do—expand your mind, your vision, and your world.” And because father is playing gigs in Manhattan and with this or that woman, and mother and Gram are usually arguing, “What I craved most, love and encouragement, I got from teachers,” Patrick writes.

If he sees things in teachers, teachers see something in Patrick beyond an eager responsiveness. He’s on the move, not on the make. Like the discussion about faith later on, learning is not just about

Khartoum who teach young Patrick how to haggle in the marketplace or recover from an overturned and overloaded lorry in the desert, and A.O. Smith, Milton’s version of a Mr. Chips, who was St. Paul’s and Harvard, flew with the R.A.F., and taught him the value of using words precisely.

“This old Yankee [who] also loved jazz,” Patrick writes, took him along with his own children to the Cape, there and elsewhere taught Patrick the value of finding fathers and fatherly love, and passing that along, too.

Learning the prep dress, manners and discourse (“the code”) of (generally) white Milton Academy in the 1970s is yet another reframing for a kid from (generally) black South Side.

“It wasn’t another world,” Patrick writes, “it was a different planet.”

Despite the importance of learning about white “diversity” Pat Patrick wants his son to be more wary. “He was worried,” Patrick writes, “I would let my guard down.”

Fat chance.

Without malice but with what seems total recall, Patrick even-handedly totes up one offensive and arrogant gaffe after another. At dinner this “knowing” parent lectures Patrick on the “problems” of the “black family” while another (several in fact) “want to touch my hair.”

Not black enough?

White and black certainly are an American “dilemma” but aside from Patrick’s own knowing discriminations within the complex black community, of shading and locale, dialect and custom, are the still more complex levels of diversity he encounters— and appreciates—in Sudan but then, also, in Cairo, down the Nile, in Cameroon, Lagos and Kenya.

in California, later New York and Boston, fill up with family, friends, friends-of-friends and children-of-friends.

Katherine and Sarah are born, Patrick’s mother—never a fan of Diane—falls ill, becomes “disfigured” and ends up twenty ( ! ) years with her son, cared for, yes, by Diane.

Patrick’s father, the “accomplished professional musician” who recorded with Monk and Ellington and once castigated his son for a “lifestyle [he considered] the final surrender to capitalism,” also spends time.

Patrick doesn’t dismiss this critique outright, he also doesn’t take it quite as seriously as he should, nor does he wonder why his father spent the time and energy to pursue him, more than once, with it—a political concern less about style than substance, less about race than class?

Why, save James Vorenberg, no mention of other Harvard Law professors or students, or, issues other than the Legal Aid group? Patrick failed the L.A. bar not once but twice, did it help him appreciate why systemic “reliance” on testing, much less “high stakes” tests might not help those kids just over the Milton line, on Blue Hill Ave? It’s all politics Busy, busy, Patrick has worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, countering rednecks like (now) Senator Jeff Sessions and their FBI enablers. He’s is council for Coca-Cola in Atlantic when the Iraq war begins, “that’s when the seed was planted that I wanted to run [for elective office].”

Improbably?

The word “improbably” occurs early and late, lonely in Chicago as a kid and blackballed by Brookline’s Country Club recently, “impossible” might be the operative word.

Yet discouraged so many times, Patrick never seems to give in to what at Harvard was only a distilled version of classic cynicism, pin always ready to pop the balloon of idealism.

Patrick believes it’s idealism that built America, not language or religion or culture; it’s “a common set of civic ideals,” and he sees his life purpose as acting them out. “Idealism must not be a casualty of reality.”

Someone who can write so candidly and with such empathy of his wife’s tragic depression and of his Justice Department boss, Bill Clinton, who lambastes the Hyatt’s sleazy dismissal of elderly maids as “market fundamentalists,” who, meeting the guy with the funny ears and name, Barack Obama, just once, can say to himself, ‘Here’s a guy to watch,” and who, Thank You Ms. Tactless Healey, “gives a good speech,” the riff, “just words,” is a kind of treasure, a democratic (small ‘d’) gift to the Republic.

One can only hope it’s the gift that keeps on giving, and this small book only the first of many such future accounts of our common future.

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Denebola

7 June 2011