Falconer - September 2014

Falconer The Torrey Pines High School

Friday, September 26, 2014 | Vol. 40, Issue 2, 28 pages | San Diego, CA | www.tphsfalconer.com

A5

A12

A14

A19

A24 photo by robbie johnson/falconer

SCHERR BACK AS ATHLETIC TRAINER

B1

After being released, then rehired, by Rehab United, Christina Scherr has returned to TPHS. By Anna Lee

Longtime TPHS athletic trainer Christina Scherr was rehired and returned to TPHS on Sept. 12 after a short period during which Rehab United, the private company with which the SDUHSD contracts to provide athletic trainer services to district athletes, did not renew her contract. During the short interim period, Scherr was replaced by Justin Porta, also an employee of Rehab United.

According to Scherr, she was informed three weeks before football season began that her contract as athletic trainer would not be renewed. After her departure, Scherr created the Twitter @TPAT4L for students and parents to express their support of her return.

“I received so many texts, tweets and emails from so many kids ... alumni and parents,” Scherr said. “I was completely overwhelmed, yet at the same time, [I] felt so much appreciation for all that I have done over the years.”

According to TPHS Foundation executive director Bobbi Karlson, many coaches and parents were upset by Scherr’s departure.

“I have stacks of letters in support of her … endorsing her, asking, ‘Please hire her back,’” Karlson said. “It was overwhelming.”

Students also expressed disappointment at Scherr’s release.

“She is like a mother to us,” varsity football player Jack Hoeprich (12) said.

“She really cares about us. She [goes] above and beyond. She stays after her hours and does a lot more work than she needs to.”

Rehab United rehired Scherr partly due to the reaction from the community, according to Karlson.

“Christina had been with us for eight years … Parents didn’t really feel like that [experience] could be replaced by anyone else,” Karlson said.

Sherr said her responsibilities include

Free parking permits available in the SDUHSD

By Irene Yu STAFF WRITER Free parking permits are now available at all SDUHSD schools as the result of a complaint filed May 2 regarding the legality of extra charges for school services, according to Principal David Jaffe.

Sally Smith, a San Diego attorney, filed the complaint against the SDUHSD for charges concerning parking permits, textbook replacements, transportation for athletics, transcripts and caps and gowns.

“The one thing that [the district] didn’t do correctly last year was charging for cap and gowns, but for all six other things the district was within its rights to charge,” Jaffe said.

However, Smith said that none of these items should carry charges in public education.

“Everyone should have an equal opportunity, whether they have money or not,” Smith said.

Smith believes that the SDUHSD should not be allowed to charge for

see PERMITS, A3

the “prevention, assessment, evaluation, treatment and rehabilitation of athletic injuries.” The athletic trainer also communicates with coaches, families and doctors. “[The job] ranges from wound care, to evaluation of injuries to determine the next appropriate level of care, to lifesaving knowledge and skills,” Scherr said.

“A lot of times, it’s treating a small thing and trying to keep it from becoming a big thing, so the student athlete can continue to participate in the sport without having to miss [playing time].”

Scherr is “highly involved” with and very supportive of the TPHS athletic programs.

She used to attend all on-campus games, and if there were simultaneous games at different locations, she would either pick the event with the greatest risk of injury or “make rounds.”

see TRAINER, A3

“

Other countries cannot comprehend the radical patriotism that characterizes the American people.

-Maya Rao See ISIS, A8

opinion.......................A5 feature.....................A10 a&e..........................A14 sports......................A19 backpage.................A24 focus.........................B1

SDUHSD enforces staff identification policy

By Amanda Chen STAFF WRITER A new district policy effective during the 2014-2015 school year requires staff and school personnel to wear certified identification badges at all times while on campus to address safety concerns and improve efficiency during emergency procedures, according to Assistant Principal Rob Coppo.

Coppo said that the increased prevalence of school shootings has made campus safety a particularly high priority for schools, and TPHS is no exception.

“The idea ... has been floating on campus for years, but it ultimately was a districtwide decision,” Coppo said.

With over 140 full-time staff members at TPHS, ID badges have become crucial for identification on a daily basis.

“For example, we have instructional assistants who work with special needs kids … but

[without identification], you don’t know if they’re teachers,” Coppo said. “From an administrative standpoint, it allows us to quickly identify any adult on campus who shouldn’t be.”

During the May wildfires, hundreds of people were evacuated to TPHS. The identification policy was developed in part to improve future facilitation of similar emergency procedures.

“Rescue people show up and don’t know who works here and who doesn’t,” Coppo said. “[ID badges] allow them to [identify staff] and then we can work with them.”

However, the implementation of the new rule was met with some initial opposition. “[The idea of badges] is ... foreign to us,” English teacher Robert Caughey said. “Like all new things, there was some resistance to it.”

Nevertheless, TPHS has undergone a full adoption of the policy.

“I believe that the [identification policy] is a good thing,” English teacher Roxzana Sudo said.

“It adds a layer of security to our campus.”

A2 the falconer

news

september 26, 2014

Community remembers Cathedral student

By Sarah Chan & Lily Nilipour FEATURE EDITOR & STAFF WRITER

Many TPHS students mourned the loss of Cathedral Catholic High School student Yancy Jay Sia Zolina (11), who apparently committed suicide on Sept. 11, by attending masses and memorials held throughout the week after his death.

A funeral service was held at the St. Therese of Carmel Catholic Church on Sept. 20, where family, friends and students from high schools throughout San Diego gathered to commemorate Zolina.

“During the service, it was very emotional ... [Zolina’s] brother gave this beautiful eulogy that was so sad,” Jackie Weinrich (11) said. “But afterwards, there was a reception, and it was more happy. People were talking about the good things and just [supporting one another].

According to Sara Esmaili (11), Zolina was happy and outgoing, displaying no outward signs of the imminent suicide. “[On the day of Zolina’s suicide, a friend told me that] he went to school and had a bunch of cash in his hand and bought everyone lunch,” Esmaili said. “He gave away his ukulele. He just wanted to do good things. The fact that he was so sad and just played it off so happy is the part that kills me … he saw nothing, nothing at the end of the tunnel.”

Prior to the funeral, there was a mass held at Cathedral on Sept.

12, and two memorials held for Zolina at the El Camino Memorial Park on Sept. 18 and 19.

“When I showed up [at the mass], it seemed like all of Cathedral was there,” Dylan Bona (11) said “All the seats were packed; people were standing up and around the edges of the room, [and] and out the doors Nic Venzon (11) believes the mass was a communal “coping mechanism.” Bona and Venzon were both family friends of Zolina’s, and participated in church activities with him.

“Over the phone, talking about what happened was a lot easier,” Venzon said. “But as soon as you entered the mass and they played the first song, ‘Give Us Clean Hands,’ everybody was in shambles. But it was nice because you got to reflect with people who knew him and just share pain.”

According to Esmaili, TPHS and Cathedral students wrote the letter “J” on their wrists, made shirts and posted memories of Zolina on social media.

“A lot of times when someone dies, people tend to romanticize it and make them greater than they were,” Weinrich said. “But he was one of the most genuinely charismatic people that I know.”

Venzon hopes that by sharing information about Zolina, the public can “appreciate [Zolina] for who he was” and “remember his story,” even if they did not know him personally.

“He would come up to you even if he didn’t know you, and he’d fall in love with a characteristic of you,” Venzon said. “He would like you even if you didn’t like him, and his aunt said that when people threw stones at him, he

threw back love.”

People were shocked after hearing about Zolina’s death, according to Cathedral students and those from other high schools.

“I didn’t really have a reaction, I was in disbelief,” Venzon said.

“I just sat down and became thankful for all the things I had in life and the struggles I don’t have to go through.”

Esmaili, too, personally felt the impact of his death.

“Jay and I were good friends, and he’d call me all the time,” Esmaili said. “But all of a sudden, he’s not here anymore … I can’t call him, I can’t do anything, he’s not physically there.”

Commemorating Zolina has prompted self-reflection from members of the student community.

“I now cherish every living moment,” Esmaili said.

“I randomly text my friends and tell them that I love them and I hope they know that. Maybe [if I] texted Jay that, he wouldn’t have [committed suicide].”

Weinrich’s perspective on the treatment of others has been broadened.

“It made me realize that [anyone can be hurting],” Weinrich said. “You never know if saying a cruel word to someone can affect them, even if they seem like they just brush it off. Kindness is just really important.”

TPHS counseling and Principal David Jaffe contacted Cathedral administrators and offered the help of TPHS counselors but were told Cathedral believed they could handle the student load,”

according to TPHS counselor Jayme Cambra.

“We met with our students who were friends with him, and we’re continuing to do that,” Cambra said. “If any student feels like he or she needs to talk about it, we’re here to do that.”

PALs teacher Donald Collins said those contemplating suicide must be encouraged let others know they are in need.

“Usually when people are looking at ending their life, what they’re really looking at is trying to end the pain or suffering,” Collins said. “And with more tools, more understanding, people can find a way to end the difficulty rather than their lives.”

The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-2738255.

PHOTO BY ROBBIE JOHNSON/FALCONER

IN LOVING MEMORY: CCHS students honored Jay Zolina (11), who committed suicide on Sept. 11, with posters at the football game on Sept. 12. Memorial services were held throughout the following week.

news

tphsfalconer.com

PARKING

TRAINER

continued from A1

continued from A1

such items and notes that staff members are not charged for parking.

“It concerns me that students are placed in different categories than staff and are used to generate funding.” Smith said.

“That’s inequitable.”

Smith encourages students to file complaints if they are charged to participate in school activities.

“All students should be concerned,” Smith said. “We should be teaching students about [all such] laws, not only the ones that the schools benefit from.”

The $40 charge for parking was removed, in addition to the fee for caps and gowns. Even though Jaffe believes the charges are acceptable, he said the school removed them as a “courtesy to the students.”

With parking permits now provided without a cost, the number of student drivers parking in the lot has increased, congesting traffic conditions and increasing accident rates, according to Amanda Stroiman (12).

“It was a good idea to make [the permits] free, but I’m not sure if it will help bigger problems in the parking lot,” Stroiman said.

Rylee Miller (11) recently experienced a mild crash while pulling out of the student parking lot during a lunch break. “[The other driver] was already backed up, and I just hit him.” Miller said.

There are currently no specific regulations in place to resolve this problem.

“We monitor through supervision, but [students] park in public parking lots at their own risk,” Jaffe said.

To lower their risk of accidents, students like Rocky Maas (12) chooses to park across the street from campus.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories about people who get their cars scratched up and dented,” Maas said. “I like my car too much to park in the school parking lot.”

Students are required to take the Start Smart safe driving course before receiving permits and must have parking stickers on their cars. The sticker allows administration to monitor who is parking in the lots to ensure campus safety.

“It’s a team approach when it comes to injuries ... I’m just one of the players,” Scherr said.

Porta will also stay at TPHS, though occasionally he may be asked to help other athletic trainers in the district. He is “excited” to be at TPHS in his new position and to be working with Scherr.

“She has been at the school for a long time and has a very good knowledge of not only the facilities, but also the coaches, athletes and students,” Porta said. “This is an asset for both of us because we can bounce ideas off each other.”

Scherr and Porta coordinate a schedule each day and take care of practice duties together. They also communicate with coaches to determine what teams need, both on a “regular day-to-day basis” and on game days.

According to Porta, he and Scherr decide who will cover a game if there are no simultaneous games, leaving the other available to help other teams. In some cases, as with football games, both cover an event.

“We ... split the coverage when there are multiple competitions, [but] we are both available for all athletes at any [other] time,” Porta said.

According to varsity volleyball

player Camille Oemcke (12), having both Porta and Scherr on board may make the system more efficient. However, she also feels that, because of Scherr’s return, things have not changed much.

“Everyone knows Christina, so in a sense it’s just like last year,” Oemcke said.

the falconer Porta also said he hopes nothing will change besides “having the ability to utilize multiple athletic trainers.”

“We both have a lot of experience in athletic training, so working in a team will be more about learning [to work with] each other to best utilize our attributes,” Porta said.

A3

According to Hoeprich, members of the football team feel they can easily relate to Porta and feel comfortable with him.

“He’s a good guy,” Hoeprich said. “He does his job well. I really do like him.”

Scherr, meanwhile, feels it is “great to be back ... hitting the ground running.”

PHOTO BY MILES ARNOLD/FALCONER

HELPING HANDS: Athletic trainer Christina Scherr stretches varsity football player Quinn Morimoto (12). Scherr garnered widespread support for her return to TPHS from parents and students.

Selection of food at TPHS changes

By Sarah Chan & Kevin Chih FEATURE EDITOR & STAFF WRITER

The selection of food sold at TPHS has changed since July 1 to comply with the nutrition standards required by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act implemented by the Department of Agriculture, which set regulations for snack foods and beverages sold at schools nationwide.

“There was a change in our regulations which affected the amount of salt, sugar, fat, calories and whole grains in our [manufacturers’] products,” SDUHSD director of nutrition services Richard Mariam said.

“Our manufacturers had to

alter a lot of the products and, unfortunately, when you raise the nutrition level of products, even if you lower the portion sizes, the costs still go up.”

Because of these changes, many popular snacks and beverages like Munchies and Gatorade are no longer available, according to nutrition supervisor Rose Hernandez.

“They’ve changed the options,” Sheyda Khonji (11) said. “A lot of the snack foods are different and they don’t provide a lot of things that people liked.”

Because of these changes, Khonji has gone from buying foods at school multiple times a week to buying none at all.

The changes were posted on the bulletin boards near the lunch

lines prior to implementation, but many students were surprised and upset by the increased prices and decreased portions.

“I think [the prices and portions are] ridiculous,” Khonji said. “Across the board, no one is happy with these new measures … everyone’s disappointed with the size and price [of school food].”

Although many snack options have changed, lunch combos still cost the same as they did last year, and breakfast is available to all students, free of charge.

“We’re participating in a federal program known as Provision II so that students can get breakfast at no charge,” Mariam said. “It’s a grab-andgo type system, [where students]

can get a bread item or a pastry along with fruit juice and milk.”

Breakfast is distributed in front of the B building and the media center from 7-7:35 a.m., and an average of 67 students take advantage of the program daily, according to Hernandez.

Cole Chodorow (10), who picks up breakfast regularly, believes that the free breakfasts are highly beneficial.

“I can focus more in class when I get breakfast at school, because I feel less hungry,” he said. “It’s also nice because students can get breakfast even if they are close to being late to school.”

Menus for breakfast and lunch can be found on the TPHS school website.

A4 the falconer

news

september 26, 2014

Various construction projects have been completed or are currently under development around campus.

All current construction should be fully completed by August 2015, at the latest.

Malfunctioning stadium lights at the Ed Burke field were recently repaired, ensuring proper lighting for all future games.

Classrooms in the E building have been renovated with ventilation and air conditioning that was previously ineffective.

Footing was dug and underground utilities were built for new science lab classrooms, expected to be finished in August 2015.

Construction on the new weight room and roof structure is underway and is scheduled for completion by November.

Eucalyptus trees were removed from campus in July due to the safety hazard of falling trees and branches.

LEAP

A concrete wall near the football stadium was recently knocked down to make room for road expansion.

INFOGRAPHIC BY SARAH BROWN AND ANNA LI/FALCONER

AP English Lit

AP English Lang AP US History

AP Euro/World Languages Biology

Chemistry Physics

AP Biology

AP Chemistry AP Physics B/C AP Enviro Sc

Algebra I/Geo Algebra II/Trig Precalculus

AP Calculus

Back-to-School Special Available until Oct 18* ONE FREE HOUR with each package of 5 hours *see our website for details

anne@leapaheadtutoring.com 858 336 6514 www.leapaheadtutoring.com 568 Stevens Ave Solana Beach CA 92075

THE CENTER FOR MARTIAL ARTS Would like to wish all Falcons an outstanding 2014/15 school year!

LEAP AHEAD TUTORING

TUTORING

English (Honors)

LEAP AHEAD

*Information provided by SDUHSD

Carmel Valley 858.755.6470

cmakicks.com

Encinitas 760.942.6470

Real Results. + Math + Science + Homework Help + Study Skills + ACT | SAT Test Prep

Students who work with a College Tutor improve their grades and test scores.

We will develop an individualized statement of goals and help you achieve them.

What’s your goal?

Tell us. We will help you reach it!

collegetutors.com 858.201.4900 Del Mar Highlands Town Center | Ste. • 12925 El Camino Real, Ste J23

ART BY ELLESE NGUYEN/FALCON ARTIST

PRO

By Charu Sinha

BACKPAGE EDITOR

Black author and activist bell hooks writes in her seminal collection of essays “Killing Rage: Ending Racism” that “our freedom is sweet. It will be sweeter when we are all free.”

When considering the state of black people in contemporary American society, it is essential to establish that they are, in large part, not free.

To be black in America is to be bound to the legacy of slavery, one that echoes insidiously in our collective consciousness and manifests itself in virtually every facet of American life. Reparations for slavery — compensation of some sort given to the descendants of slaves — would work to formally acknowledge the existence of this legacy in the hope of one day truly eradicating it.

To fully understand the logic behind reparations, one must first recognize the systemic oppression and institutional racism upon which this country is built and from which those in power have greatly benefitted and continue to benefit.

We are born into an inherently uneven playing field. Every generation of Americans shoulders the weight of a shared history. For black people, this means accepting not only the personal burden of an ancestry brutalized and dehumanized at the hands of the U.S. government, but also the innumerable burdens of the systems of oppression still in place in the United States — the legal, political and economic institutions that are and have been embedded with white hegemony and cultural prejudice for hundreds of years.

Reparations would play a significant role in dismantling these systems and unambiguously addressing the

Reparations may be provided to the descendants of slaves, though a formal decision on the matter and a compensation method have not been determined. lingering, omnipresent history of inequity in this country. The reason reparations come into play is twofold; firstly to compensate — monetarily or otherwise — for the immeasurable historical disadvantages slavery and its legacy have precipitated, and secondly to hold the U.S. government accountable for its substantial role in the oppression of black people, both as slaves and as free humans.

The specifics of the compensatory end are anything but concrete.

Some proponents argue that land reparations that were originally issued to black people after the Civil War and never carried out should now be reissued as grants to descendants of slaves. Others are pushing for a more comprehensive approach, one that includes reparations in the form of land, ownership of companies, and stock.

The logistics of reparations — assigning a monetary value to the tragedy of slavery — are admittedly messy. However, what is truly important is that a national conversation is sparked, with the fact that black oppression lingers to this day as an accepted given, not as a contentious point that people of color have to reestablish in every debate had over race. The only way contemporary institutional and ideological racism will be widely acknowledged in mainstream America — and thus the only way for a healthy and productive nationwide dialogue to begin — is for the U.S. government to formally acknowledge its part in the subjugation of black Americans for the past 300 years.

The U.S. government has avoided officially apologizing for the greatest stain on this country’s history for far too long and has thus unconsciously — or perhaps consciously — invalidated the suffering and heritable anguish of each generation of black Americans.

Our country must unequivocally address the parts of its past it has long ignored and let fester in the streets of the inner city, in the halls of legal and political institutions and in the minds and hearts of everyday Americans.

We asked you...

Should the descendants of African slaves be paid reparations for slavery?

21%

79%

YES

NO

said

said

Black Americans deserve compensation to make up for their relative lack of wealth or social mobility, but can such a policy be justified as a way of remedying past wrongdoing? From this perspective, slave reparations are neither a moral requirement nor a practical possibility.

Reparations raise many questions about collective responsibility, since it is difficult to isolate genuinely collective wrongs from individual harms committed by individual people. The vast majority of Americans do not descend from Southern slaveholders, making it strange to insist that everyone pay for reparations through tax dollars. But it would also be difficult to identify the descendants of slaves and slaveholders, or at least determine how “pure” an ancestral connection would justify present-day Americans paying or receiving reparations. Many scholars, like Peter Flaherty and John Carlisle of the National Legal and Policy Center, argue the concept of unjust enrichment is false; slavery hurt everyone, not just blacks, from denizens of a postwar South whose economy was stunted by reliance on a cash crop to poor whites unable to accumulate wealth when competing with free slave labor and the planter aristocracy.

The type of reparations is also a major point of contention.

Because any compensation would be qualitatively different from the harms of slavery, there is widespread disagreement about what reparations — whether lotterystyle cash payments, educational services or affirmative action — should actually look like.

Another concern is nonidentity.

Blacks supposedly deserve reparations because slavery affected their present existence. But if slavery had never occurred, the course of American and African history would have been altered; it is implausible that the ancestors of current black Americans would have met and had children under the same circumstances. The people who make

CON

By Varun Bhave NEWS EDITOR

up the present black population would not exist. To claim reparations is to assert that slavery was a wrong that should be rectified. But that demand constitutes a rejection of the life of every black American, as well as most other Americans. Appealing to counterfactuals might appear unintuitive or racist, but goods are only good for certain agents. A piece of artwork might be good for critics since they can appreciate its beauty, but good for an art thief for different reasons. In the same way, ex-slaves could demand reparations for a horrific institution that damaged them greatly, but it can be argued that blacks today would be worse off, i.e. nonexistent, had their ancestors not come to the Americas.

Reparations could never be fully restorative; economists have estimated the cash value of slaves’ lost work hours at trillions of dollars.

Many other groups have been oppressed in American history, including immigrants and Native Americans; even if blacks deserve compensation, making up for similar wrongs inconsistently is just as racist as doing nothing. Aside from being insufficient, reparations send the wrong message. They reify the roles of oppressor and oppressed, requiring that Americans be tied to the identities of their ancestors. Reparations create the false impression that the solution to tackling the legacy of slavery is some handout to black “victims” rather than a continuous battle against all forms of structural inequality, regardless of the causes.

A6 the falconer

opinion

september 26, 2014

STAFF EDITORIAL: CELEBRITY NUDES LEAKED denominator in these incidents — women are consistently the main targets. These events do not just represent a violation of privacy, but a pattern of blatant objectification of women.

Women are almost exclusively targets for exploitation like this. It must be established that victims are not accountable for an attack they in no way asked for or caused. Don’t say the celebrities should not have taken the photos in the first place; that logic is absurd when applied to other situations: If you do not want to get robbed, you should not own anything of value; if you do not want to be murdered, you should not live.

The celebrities did not take nude photos with the danger of someone hacking into their private accounts in mind — rarely does anyone consider such possibilities. People have a right to do what they wish with their own bodies in private, and celebrities are not guilty of any careless or immoral act in exercising that right.

Apple, meanwhile, does have a responsibility to address this issue.

“

“

Zachary Zheng (9)

Diane Peng (10)

I really don’t believe that taxpayer resources should be applied ... I don’t think it should be investigated on a national level.

It claimed that the hacker obtained the pictures by retrieving account passwords and that the problem does not lie with iCloud’s security.

However, many of the stolen photos had already been deleted on the users’ devices. Obviously, Apple’s system is not faultless. Although the company should not be prosecuted, it still is obligated to investigate the security breach and ensure customer privacy.

However, again, it is not as though this is an unprecedented scandal. The buzz will eventually die down. Involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation in tracking down the hacker seems to be a waste of valuable resources. The leak of nude pictures is in no way a national threat and should therefore not warrant the same response as one. And the fact that it is celebrities whose privacy is being violated ultimately makes no difference: Anyone’s reputation would be harmed by a situation like this. It is unreasonable to put special emphasis on this case simply because it involves famous figures.

ART BY ANNA LEE/FALCONER

Nearly 200 nude photos of celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, were posted on the Internet forum 4chan by an unidentified hacker on Aug. 31. Apple has confirmed that the hacker obtained the photos through a targeted attack on iCloud account information. The photos have been disseminated to various websites and social networks, including Tumblr and Reddit, though the images have since been removed and banned from the latter.

On Sept. 21, just three weeks later, more nude pictures of celebrities like Gabrielle Union were posted on 4chan, though they were removed immediately. The question of who to hold responsible for the violation of privacy, and how it should be investigated, remains.

It is not as though celebrity nude leaks are a new type of scandal. The nudes of stars like Rihanna, Vanessa Hudgens and Miley Cyrus have all been splashed across the Internet before, but never to such a degree.

However, there is one common

STUDENT VOICES

[The FBI is] supposed to do something to protect the [user] so the hacker cannot hack into [their device] again.

Should FBI resources be used to investigate the hacking and leaking of celebrity nude photos?

”

”

I think personally that the FBI should devote their time to it, as any invasion of privacy is an important matter.

The FBI shouldn’t get involved because it’s not a national threat — if that happened to a normal person, [they] wouldn’t.

Colin Jiang (11)

Alyson Wirtz (12)

Snoop Dogg made an alter ego imitating a white guy!

That’s so unbelievably racist.

But wait, dude, look at this!

It’s so funny.

HAHAHA, totally!

He’s just like a black guy!

the strip

Falconer

The Torrey Pines High School

We, the Falconer staff, are dedicated to creating a monthly newspaper with the intent of encouraging independent thinking, expanding our knowledge of journalism, and providing the TPHS student body and community with a truthful, unbiased news source, in accordance with our First Amendment rights.

3710 Del Mar Heights Road San Diego, CA 92130 PHONE: (858) 755-0125 x2245 FAX: (858) 523-0794 E-MAIL: falconer.ads@gmail.com WEBSITE: www.tphsfalconer.com

The Falconer is the student newspaper of Torrey Pines High School. Its content, which is the responsibility of the Falconer staff, is not subject to administrative approval. Unsigned editorials represent the opinions of the staff, while opinion columns represent the writer’s perspective.

Advertisements do not necessarily represent the newspaper’s viewpoint. The Falconer, an open forum, welcomes signed letters on pertinent issues from the TPHS community, which may be submitted to room 102, via e-mail at falconer. ads@gmail.com or to Mia Smith’s mailbox in the administration building. Letters may be edited for length and grammar.

Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Public Relations Copy Editors News Editor Assistant News Editor Opinion Editor Feature Editors Focus Content Editor Entertainment Editors Sports Editor Sports Design Editor Backpage Editor Polls Manager Photo Editor Adviser

Katie Mulkowsky Sarah Brown Anna Li Caroline Rutten Maya Rao Austin Zhang Varun Bhave Tasia Mochernak Anna Lee Sarah Chan Sarah Kim Charu Sinha Alex Jen Alice Qu Fernando Stepensky Grace Bruton Charu Sinha Caroline Rutten Grace Bruton Mia Boardman Smith

by Carolyn Chu

Staff Writers: Amanda Chen Kevin Chih Maya Kota Lily Nilipour Maya Parella Irene Yu Webmaster: Ben Lawson Photographers: Miles Arnold Eric Cunningham Myles Hamilton Robbie Johnson Michael Lee Kenneth Lin Avery Spicker

Artists: Tori Austin Marisa Chang Grace Chen Kelsey Chen Teresa Chen Carolyn Chu Anna Huang Jacki Li Ellese Nguyen Micaela Roy Grace Yang

opinion

tphsfalconer.com

the falconer

A7

Persons of color need representation in Hollywood OPINION EDITOR

Movies were never superficial business. Hollywood is one of the most prominent features of modern American society, reaching far beyond the confines of the United States.

The industry, rooted in the country of equality, liberty and opportunity, exerts influence across the globe, and messages conveyed in movies hold tremendous power. However, Hollywood is not a reflection of American values. In fact, the powersthat-be behind that famous white sign perpetuate inequality: Hollywood erases and oppresses persons of color through the contemptible whitewashing of actors.

White actors have been playing persons of color in the movie business for decades, and though in past years it was a far more overtly offensive practice — like Mickey Rooney’s yellow face in the 1961 “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” — that does not mean the repercussions of whitewashing actors have become any less detrimental. Representation — or a lack thereof — in the media is nothing to scoff at.

Entertainment influences everyone, often subconsciously.

When children grow up only seeing white actors as heroes or action stars or the romantic comedy heroine, they adopt the idea that only white people are relevant, that white people are better, and that a person of color cannot be the protagonist of a story.

This is not an acceptable mindset in any society — that the racial majority matters more than the minority.

According to a 2006 report by the University of California, Los Angeles Chicano Studies Research Center, which focuses on scholarly research of the Chicano-Latino population, 69 percent of lead roles in that year alone were written for white actors.

And in the past eight years, it does not seem as though much has changed: White actors still play the title characters in most Hollywoodproduced movies even if the original character is not meant to be white, and even if the movie is set in a time and place when a white person could not realistically be the protagonist.

The upcoming Biblical movie “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” set in Egypt, stars Christian Bale as Moses, Joel Edgerton as Rhamses and Sigourney Weaver as Tuya — all white actors. It makes very little sense to have an all-white cast of main characters when their Biblical versions are, in fact, North African.

And this erasure of persons of color is all too common in Biblical movies, including the already released “Noah,” which also had an all-white cast — even the extras. “Noah”

PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE ANNA LI The Falconer managing editor makes more metaphors in 800 words than in an entire John Green novel.

PHOTO BY KENNETH LIN/FALCONER

screenwriter Ari Handel explained his reasoning for this: “As a mythical story, the race of the individuals doesn’t matter. They’re supposed to be stand-ins for all people.”

His argument itself makes an appalling statement: White people are the only possible stand-ins for humankind, and no other race could possibly represent humanity. It does not matter, Handel says. Except that it apparently does matter, which is precisely the reason “Noah” had a deliberately all-white cast.

Of course, there have been persons of color cast as white characters, like Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

However, a certain double standard does exist when it comes to this scenario; casting a person of color in the role of a white character is not the same thing as the reverse. White people are not being erased from movies, are not experiencing the same oppression as persons of color when white actors like Rooney Mara, playing Tiger Lily in the 2015 film “Pan,” are cast as Native American characters.

According to the UCLA CSRC report, only 0.5 percent of lead roles in Hollywood productions were for Native Americans. White people have adequate representation in every corner of society. Persons of color lack it in most.

At this point, the lack of presence of persons of color in movies is nauseating. Hollywood does not just innocently “racebend” a few characters for the sake of hiring

the best actors.

Hollywood’s refusal to give persons of color proper representation is an act of oppression that has nearly systematically marginalized the huge variety of ethnicities that so desperately need representation in the media. Whitewashing needs to end before another generation grows up with the idea that whites are the only race capable of representing the whole of humanity.

I write this at midnight, on my bed, in the dark, because I can’t sleep when I keep thinking about things I have to do. And even though I’ve turned the brightness on my laptop display all the way down, I am blinded by the space I must occupy with a strong personal voice — a voice I’m not sure I understand or possess.

Though I love to write other people’s stories, I have incredible difficulty writing my own.

Elementary school was a simpler time, not because we learned only basic arithmetic and vocabulary words fit for a second grader, but because everything had instructions.

I learned to succeed by following numbered lists and poring over the DIRECTIONS that headed every worksheet. Before this year, I was terrified of two things: having to find my own way and somehow going in finding it.

Like many almost-adults, I am currently in the process of proving my worthiness for higher education with an array of grades and test scores — oh, and the College Board forgot that I took the SAT. And as most TPHS students are, I am constantly overwhelmed by the checklists and forms and letters of recommendation and “foolproof” ways to write a winning essay. Which, by the way, I haven’t yet done. April is such a tumultuous time on campus, but it doesn’t even come close to the scramble of things to be done before Nov. 15. It both amazes and concerns me that I am the one deciding what to do with the next four years of my life and where I might want it to happen — right now I still need permission to use the restroom, but apparently soon I will be making drastically life-altering decisions.

Having been in classes with the overachievers for most of my high school career, I learned when to tune out the stress-induced, sleep-

deprived conversations about school and college — which was all the time. This is mostly because I didn’t want to think about college, but also because there were already few parts of my life that didn’t constantly remind me of the ominous “future.”

I can probably count them on one hand. I acknowledged then that it was important, but I still do not see why the Common Application should consume my entire being, and I refuse to let that happen.

and I wish I could tell that to every single one of those 30-year-old freshmen suffering stress-induced nervous breakdowns. Did you know that five minutes away there’s an ocean that touches 43 countries and looks different at each time of day?

I sometimes wonder why we are so close to it, yet most of the people in the freezing cold waters are simply visiting from elsewhere. It’s rare to see a high school student taking the time to appreciate the view during school without anxious thoughts of the future filling their mind.

I’m not scared of thinking about the future anymore simply because I’ve realized that there’s no point in always worrying about what’s ahead.

No matter at what point in life I’ll be, there will always be a “next step” to stress over, and I’ve just chosen to stress as little as necessary.

ART BY GRACE CHEN/FALCON ARTIST

By Anna Lee

I am terrified of two things: having to find my own way, and somehow going amiss in finding it.

It’s amusing to me how much some people care. The college map issue of the Falconer is still the only issue some people pick up, as if knowing who’s going to Harvard is the biggest thing that’s happened at school since the college map the previous June. One of our most widely-read stories was about CEO changes at Summa, because executive drama at everyone’s favorite test prep institute is the most scandalous thing ever to happen in Carmel Valley.

There are freshmen who worry about which perfect combination of AP classes will blow away every single admissions officer who ever lived, and it reminds me of those fill-in-theblank worksheets from elementary school — just with a lot more tears and sleepless nights. It’s sort of sad that for some, the biggest criterion for joining extracurricular activities is, “Will this look good on my college application?”

There is so much more to high school than finishing homework and being president of every club and looking like a prodigy on paper,

Maybe there’s a little beauty in not knowing which ocean you’ll be closer to in a few months.

It’s been three weeks since the College Board website erroneously told me that I haven’t yet taken SAT the Almighty, but now I think it’s ridiculously comical that I almost had that breakdown after reading those words. I can’t believe I was so frazzled over the automated voice telling me to call back during open hours — it was 9 p.m. on a Saturday.

It’s still crazy that this giant non-profit with the stupid acorn logo holds my future in its palm. A future that is a mystery I don’t need to solve yet.

I have absolutely no clue what I’ll be doing next July, but maybe that’s OK. Maybe there’s a little beauty in not knowing which ocean you’ll be closer to in a few months.

A8 the falconer

opinion

september 26, 2014

Obama must send troops to combat ISIS COPY EDITOR

Expelled from al-Qaida for ruthlessness and intractability, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is making a name for itself as one of the most extreme and brutal terrorist organizations in the world. With more than 5,500 civilian deaths in six months, a dozen American recruits and two graphic beheadings of American journalists attributed to ISIS, it is obvious what President Barack Obama’s next action should be: war. According to polling firm YouGov, 63 percent of U.S. citizens support military intervention against ISIS militants, and it appears to be the one issue on which both Democrats and Republicans can agree. Even Congress wants war.

There seems to be only one thing that Obama wants, however, and that is an uncomplicated life. With Obama continuing to evade direct military action, he will not only lose the support of the American people — according to Gallup, he has only a 41 percent approval rating that has dipped as low as 38 percent several times — he will be unable to stop the mass murders of innocents in Iraq and Syria.

The broadcast executions of

journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff have sparked outrage in the United States and calls for Obama to take some definitive action against ISIS. In an address on Sept. 10, Obama outlined a plan for military intervention against ISIS — or a lack thereof. He reinforced his position that U.S. troops would not directly fight ISIS, leaving the work to 475 combat troops, who aim to arm and train Syrian rebels, an action which could prove to be extremely unwise.

After all, the Afghanis that the United States armed during the Cold War to combat the Soviet Union turned into the Taliban, affiliated with al-Qaida, sworn enemies of the United States.

The second half of Obama’s speech was confusing, as he went off on a tangent about how the United States is one of the greatest countries in the world. He talked about the economy improving and our industry booming, which was unrelated to the topic of his speech. The one definitive statement that he made was that enemies of the United States would find no safe haven on the earth, but those words ring hollow without any accompanying force.

Airstrikes, much like Obama’s speech, have not done much. Every few days, a plane will take out one or two Humvees, but for the most part, ISIS is too large and too dispersed for airstrikes to do any real damage. ISIS is a light infantry terrorist organization, and Christopher Harmer, senior Navy analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, says that

the United States cannot defeat ISIS by “dropping a couple of bombs here and there.”

Still, Obama’s stance against military intervention is firm.

Americans have not forgotten the last war in Iraq, and Obama is not eager to drag a war-weary United States into more military conflict.

Obama’s hesitation to reenter Iraq is understandable, especially since U.S. forces were relatively unwelcome only a few years ago.

But those few years have turned Iraq into a divided country and Syria into a state torn apart by civil war.

ISIS is not killing soldiers, it is killing civilians. ISIS is killing Americans.

From its birth, the United States has relied on nationalism to carry the country through everything. Its citizens won a revolution, survived a civil war and came out on top when the world was tearing itself apart.

Its success can only be attributed to the faith of its citizens. Other countries cannot comprehend the radical patriotism that characterizes the American people. Even when statistics and facts guaranteed that we could not win, we pushed on. And we won in those instances.

Obama’s approach, therefore, is decidedly unAmerican. He directly

contradicts the will of the people, but more importantly, he does not seem to care. After expressing his grief over Foley’s execution, for instance, he took a trip to a golf course, leaving the American people to wonder how their president could smile and laugh while a man was murdered and ISIS was on the loose. Maybe Obama went there to relax, to think about how to handle the situation. Perhaps the golf balls spelled out his answer for him.

If Obama cannot put his own enjoyment aside for the sake of the country, he should not be president.

The glory days after Osama bin-Laden’s assassination are over, but Obama acts like they have just begun. A self-professed “family

man,” Obama’s behavior is more befitting a stay-at-home father than the president of the most powerful nation in the world.

The United States needs to send ISIS a message that it will not give in. ISIS is not the first enemy that the United States has made, nor will it be the last. With every adversary comes a new conflict, and with every conflict comes losses. But without military intervention that includes U.S. ground troops in Iraq and Syria, the damage ISIS will inflict will be far worse than the losses the United States will bear. The time for caution is over. It is time to fight.

ART BY TERESA CHEN/FALCON ARTIST

By Maya Rao

Ferguson reveals need to monitor police actions COPY EDITOR

United States citizens tend to attribute admirable qualities to their emergency response personnel, and for good reason.

We see firefighters as self-sacrificing heroes who risk their lives to battle blazes.

Paramedics are highly trained medical workers who give treatment without asking questions. Police officers work to keep order and safety in neighborhoods across the country.

And for the most part, emergency workers are deserving of such admiration. However, no institution is perfect, and no system is without its flaws. Recent events have made it clear that several measures need to be taken in order to better hold police officers accountable for their actions on duty.

The town of Ferguson, Mo., has recently undergone a series of controversial protests and police actions following the fatal shooting of the unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson. Following the shooting, large crowds assembled to protest what they perceived as excessive force and brutality by the Ferguson police department. The protestors were assaulted by officers in riot gear using tear gas and rubber bullets.

The situation in Ferguson has opened up a broader discussion on

police accountability. In Ferguson, there is still dispute between witnesses and the police over what exactly happened. Many witnesses have reported that Brown simply attempted to resist Wilson, though the police department has maintained that Brown deliberately charged the policeman and even moved to grab the officer’s firearm.

Police responses to the protestors have also been characterized as excessively forceful.

However, Ferguson has also drawn attention for the reason Brown was the target of such aggression from the police. Police officers are human, prone to human bias. But when they are unable to set aside prejudice, it can spawn racial profiling, an infringement on the rights of others.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, which promotes and defends rights and freedoms, “skin color [in the U.S.] has become evidence of the propensity to commit crime and, police use this ‘evidence’ ... all the time” Racial profiling is a long-standing problem in the United States. The Ferguson situation is a clear example of racial prejudice surfacing violently, but unequal scrutiny and targeting of communities and individuals of color is rampant throughout the nation. Protests by groups such as the Westboro Baptist Church and the infamous Ku Klux Klan are not met with as much ferocity by the police as the protests of the mostly black citizens of Ferguson. It is impossible to eliminate discriminatory mindsets through policy; however, it is absolutely imperative that police actions be more closely monitored for accountability and that liberty and capacity to use force be restricted.

The most effective way to counter

this racial profiling is to increase police accountability.

One tool used to increase accountability are body cameras, which are attached to the uniforms of police officers. Videotaped evidence could have eliminated the uncertainty surrounding the events in that led up to Brown’s death. Police officers will also be less inclined to take impulsive actions and overuse the threat of force or apply actual force if they know that they are being recorded.

Police access to military-grade weapons should also be more carefully controlled.

Currently, the Department of Defense runs a program known as the Excess Property Program, which allows it to supply police departments with surplus military equipment. Police departments, including the Ferguson department, receive equipment and vehicles such as grenade launchers, drones, boats, armored vehicles and helicopters. Since there are very few times when such powerful implementations are required, equipping police departments with so much military hardware can skew the mindsets of police personnel. In order to ensure that police officers do not abuse such equipment it is key that access to this degree of hardware is regulated.

Another measure that should be taken to curb potential police misconduct is a strengthened protection of journalists that report on events where police may be overstepping bounds. In the early days of the Ferguson protests, journalists were rounded up and sent to an area away from the protests, and several journalists were briefly arrested before being released. One of the most important forms of oversight

is the will of an informed people.

Many legal and social changes in this country have been enacted by the public in the past, and it is the media that allows the people to become aware of prominent issues like the protests in Ferguson. The freedom of the press is one of the oldest rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and thus it is imperative that the media be adequately protected from unjust detention and prevention from work when they are investigating police activity.

Finally, more hiring practices that encourage racial diversity on police departments should be established

as well. It becomes much more difficult for departments to produce coordinated actions across the board against persons of color when persons of color are represented on their staffs.

Taking away the means of law enforcement officers to perpetrate racial profiling and stepping up supervision can effectively drive home the message that such backwards methods of policing will neither be tolerated nor accepted any longer. The oppression of persons of color by the very force meant to serve and protect has already gone on for far too long.

ART BY ANNA LEE/FALCONER

By Austin Zhang

tphsfalconer.com

advertisement

the falconer

Richard— Next stop, MIT

Where can we take you?

After completing their studies at MiraCosta College, students transfer to great 4-year institutions like Cornell, MIT, UC Irvine, SDSU and UC San Diego. At just $46/credit, you can’t afford not to enroll at MiraCosta College!

Learn more at miracosta.edu/nextstop.

Connect with us.

A9

Right Hand Woman

by Caroline Rutten and Austin Zhang Even during her four years at TPHS, Cara Dolnik, formerly Assistant Principal Cara Couvillion, was a minority in the administration. As she moved through her career, she became familiar with the many aspects of reconciling work as an assistant principal and life as a woman.

“Being an administrator takes a lot of time,” Dolnik said. “When you get into this job, you have to sacrifice some of your personal life. In the traditional household, the mom stays home and takes care of the kids.

For me, it was a personal choice, but I know as I move forward I need to find a balance.”

Now that Dolnik has become principal of Carmel Valley Middle School, TPHS lacks the female presence that, to some, created a more accepting environment.

“My experience [at TPHS] was a lot more enjoyable [with Dolnik,]” Skyelar Carillo (12), who was close to Dolnik said. “It was nice to have a female as one of the administrators ... it was nice to have a female who understood.”

According to Meera Kota (12), connecting with a female administrator can provide a sense of comfort that stems from shared experiences.

“Males in general just don’t have the same experiences as females, and when it comes to relationships within the school and with your friends, girls just go through different things than guys do,” Kota said. “I feel like having a female assistant principal would be good because she’d be able to address those specifically.”

According to Peer Assistant Listeners president Bailey Pope (12), having a female administrator on campus “embodied female power” at TPHS, and with no female authority figure on campus, this representation is no longer apparent.

During her four years at TPHS, Dolnik handled a variety of issues as assistant principal, but also addressed the concerns of girls more closely.

“I was the one who usually had to dress code and have more uncomfortable conversations with the girls,” Dolnik said. “It was easier for me to say these things to [a girl], rather than a male … but I really think [the assistant principals] worked as a team.”

In practice, though, Dolnik’s official responsibilities were not significantly different from those of her male counterparts.

“The assistant principals at a high school have different assigned supervision areas,” Assistant Principal Rob Coppo said. “Every few years we tend to rotate those duties so we get a handle on all of them.”

According to Coppo, gender should not strongly affect an assistant principal’s work capabilities, because “the job is the job,” but “having a female perspective on certain issues … can be helpful.”

Dolnik’s presence played a significant role in the administrative dynamic. However, according to new Assistant Principal Michael Santos, efficacy will not change dramatically in her absence.

“I think the way that our district works is that we try to get the best individuals on the team,” Santos said. “Male or female, we’re all going to work the hardest and do what’s best for the kids … because we all abide by the same policies and procedures.”

Additionally, not having a female administrator at TPHS should not affect a student’s or a teacher’s ability to communicate with or feel

are there pOtential PROBLEMS with an all male admin team?

supported by the assistant principals, according to athletic director and chemistry teacher Charlenne Falcis-Stevens.

“I can still make a connection with any of the assistant principals, but I don’t know how other teachers feel,” Falcis-Stevens said. “I don’t think it matters to them if they are speaking to a male or female.”

According to counselor Chanelle Lary, the female-dominated staff now provide the feminine voice in school operations and in student relations.

“We’re definitely aware of the fact that there is not a female presence on the administrative team, and therefore that provides us with that role in meetings or with certain students … [we] become that female presence,” Lary said.

According to Dolnik, merit and ability, not gender, is the determining factor in administrative skill.

“It matters if I’m an [appealing] principal, if I’m representing the students, the teachers, the staff and the community,” Dolnik said. “[Most people] don’t care if I’m male or female, but rather if I have the knowledge to answer questions and make decisions.”

With Dolnik now departed from TPHS, students and faculty will miss the qualities she brought to campus, according to Falcis-Stevens.

“She was a great listener,” FalcisStevens said.

“Her primary concern was the best interest of the students and staff. She made it easy for me to go talk to her and let her know my concerns about students or things in general.”

Dolnik, settling into her new position as prinicpal of CVMS, will continue to adapt as she brings her insights and experience to her new workplace.

% 4 5 ts n e d u t s f o

said

NO

ART BY SARAH KIM/FALCONER

feature

tphsfalconer.com

PEER ASSISTANT LISTENERS One of the TPHS PALs talks about the PALs’ mission to facilitate new friendships.

Screenwriter Steven Rogers once wrote, “Beginnings are usually scary, endings are usually sad; it’s what you do in between that counts the most.”

Moving to a new school is challenging, but when reaching out to others, you will realize that we all go through the same experiences in high school.

Making long-lasting friendships can dramatically improve your time in high school.

Friends are an integral part of high school life. They can help with academic pressures and provide stability during both good and bad periods. When students feel included, they tend to have higher grades, greater selfesteem and better health.

“Everyone from my elementary school went to Carmel Valley Middle School, and I went to Earl Warren,” a PAL said. “I felt alone and sat in the library every day at lunch where I read James Patterson mystery novels and told myself I didn’t need to reach out. I did not make friends easily.

I eventually made more friends by being outgoing in my classes, and I slowly became part of a closeknit circle of friends. If you’re not outgoing or approachable, people are going to have a hard time attempting to become your friend.

I am glad that I made the effort.”

If you see someone sitting alone, maybe a new student to TPHS, reach out, smile and say hello. Who knows? You may be meeting a lifelong friend. We encourage you to make today meaningful — make a new friend or at least introduce yourself to someone new.

There are many ways to get connected on campus: You can join clubs, sports and activities.

FalconFest, which takes place during the first week of November, is another way to connect with other students. FalconFest is a fun, powerful all-day event that helps students really connect with others.

Also, the Together As One club, dedicated to increasing friendship, is another way of welcoming new students to TPHS. Together As One meets every 2-4-6 lunch in room 49. If you are looking to find a friend, welcome new students, or have a great place to eat and meet people, bring your lunch and join us.

the falconer

ONEin 2,870 It is not every day one finds herself in a boat in the middle of a lake, freezing cold water slowly leaking in and legs purpling by the minute. But, when Francesca DeRosa (11) found herself stuck in a sinking boat for two hours, she endured the chilly temperatures and sacrificed her comfort for her art: acting.

DeRosa started her career at age five, traveling with her parents across the country on modeling jobs for clothing companies like Ralph Lauren, Gap, Children’s Place and Land’s End. “My parents have always been super supportive,” DeRosa said. “My mom would constantly travel with me, and we’d be in New York doing photo shoots.”

Eventually, DeRosa transitioned from modeling to acting, first appearing in television shows, like “Without A Trace” and “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”

But roles did not just conveniently arrive at her doorstep. DeRosa endured the “stressful” process of making trips between San Diego and Los Angeles for auditions, and finally started acting at age 11. “[Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?] was a process of 12 different auditions with callbacks, so that’s going back and forth to L.A. for one role, and it’s crazy,” DeRosa said. “You actually have to be educated.

They don’t tell you the answers to the questions on the show, which is a shocker to many people.”

DeRosa eventually moved on from television shows to small independent movies; her first role was as the daughter of the lead character in “Christmas with a Capital C.” After “Christmas with a Capital C,” DeRosa was cast in the “Mickey Matson” trilogy as Matson’s sidekick, the “energetic, outgoing, sassy and smart aleck” Sully Braginton, according to DeRosa. While Sully may have a confident persona, DeRosa still can’t calm her nerves at the start of filming a project any more than she could have predicted that she would have been freezing in the middle of a lake in Michigan where the second “Mickey Matson” movie was filmed.

“The first day when you’re walking on set and you’re meeting new people, you get a little nervous since you don’t know what it’s going to be like, and you don’t know anyone,” DeRosa said. “All of a sudden you just start saying your lines and you feel like no one’s there. It’s like you’re living that role,

A11

Working actress Francesca DeRosa shares her life on and off the big screen.

and you’re actually jumping off the side of a boat or fighting bad guys. You really just transform into the character, so you have all these different emotions and thoughts going through your mind.”

Movie audiences see the movie play out on screen but according to DeRosa, much more goes on behind the scenes than directing.

“It’s weird because there’s so many people that you don’t see when you’re watching a movie,” DeRosa said. “There are 50 people doing the lighting, and knowing everyone that writes the movie and films it and does the lighting and the grips is really cool.”

As much as DeRosa loves acting, it can also take its toll.

“Sometimes I’m filming from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. when we’re doing night shoots, so that’s exhausting,” DeRosa said.

After filming is over, DeRosa spends time with fellow actors and actresses at local hospitals, showing children scenes of the movie and giving out signed DVDs. “I think it’s so cool that we get to impact people’s lives like that, and I love everyone I get to meet along the way,” DeRosa said.

Although DeRosa has fun hanging out with fellow actors, being away from home for acting also takes a toll on her school relations and work. Since she was filming “Mickey Matson” in Michigan, DeRosa was absent for the first six weeks of school.

“Last year was also my first year at [TPHS] so [my absence] affected me in so many ways,” DeRosa said. “I didn’t have friends who I could text and say, ‘Hey, can you help me with this,’ because I didn’t know anyone here.”

Legally required on-set tutors helped DeRosa with schoolwork, but most of what she learned was self-taught. Still, DeRosa considers her absence from school a fair trade-off because she is “rewarded” by being able to do what she loves.

Even though having a job may be hard to balance with academics, it fosters a sense of responsibility and develops valuable communication skills.

So while the lake water may be ice cold, stepping into a new character with a change of clothes will keep DeRosa standing firmly in the boat that will perhaps take her on a journey to stardom.

by Alice Qu

Francesca DeRosa (11) PHOTO BY ERIC CUNNINGHAM/FALCONER

A12 the falconer

feature

september 26, 2014

THE PSYCHOLOGY With one hand wiping the sweat off his brow and the other scraping paint off a ruined canvas, local contemporary artist Kevin Winger is one failed attempt away from chucking his work out a window.

He haphazardly grabs another mangled paint tube from his desk, ready to admit defeat for the night, until at last he finds the perfect shade of blue for his serene ocean.

As an artist, Winger understands that the use of color plays a significant role in eliciting emotions from potential buyers. Certain colors are associated with certain moods, which can drastically affect the overall impression of a painting. These associations, part of a science formally known as color psychology, occur both consciously and subconsciously throughout everyday life. Often, they depend on an individual’s cultural background: For instance, white represents purity and innocence in American culture but death in Asian.

However, the psychological reactions to colors, specifically the moods certain hues trigger, are innate to all humans and deal with the complex processes of the brain.

“I think every paint has its own mood or emotional landscape,” Winger said.

Winger relies on color psychology to help him establish certain moods in his art, with red and yellow serving as common themes in his work to create joy. Traditionally, red is associated with feelings of anger and intensity, but by mixing the color with yellow, a palette that is commonly perceived as happy, the overall mood of his painting becomes lighter.

In a study by scientific journal Psychology Today, 48 participants were asked to rank 32 colors. Brown and olive were found to be significantly less favored by study participants than colors like orange or yellow, and bright reds, blues and greens were ranked the highest. Afterwards, 74 participants were shown a certain color and then asked to write as many descriptions as possible about objects associated with that color.

“Blue tends to feel relaxing, [while] red and yellow have been proven to be very excitable colors,” art teacher Julie Limerick says. “[That is] why McDonald’s uses red and yellow.”

Accordingly, businesses also use color psychology to help advertise products or create an inviting mood in their offices. According to marketing teacher Jim Anthony, sit-down restaurants favor softer colors to create a more relaxed atmosphere, while colors like red and yellow are associated with fast food.

“It’s supposed to make you eat faster, which gets you in and out of the door so that more people can come in,” Anthony said.

Color can also affect people’s perceptions of temperature.

According to Forbes, businesses located in cold environments paint their rooms and hallways warmer tones, like orange and yellow, to simulate warmth and trick people into thinking that the temperature is a few degrees higher than it actually is. The same is true for businesses in warm environments, who choose cooler colors like blue or purple to reduce heating and air conditioning costs.

Color can even be used as a form of therapy. As colors are intertwined with human emotions, they can be used to purposefully change internal feelings.

“We, as human beings, have certain reactions [from colors] on a conscious and unconscious level,” said Kyoko Tanaka, founder of the San Diego-based color

therapy business, Be Your Color.

Tanaka focuses on bringing a sense of contentment and happiness to her clients through the use of color therapy. Her methods of treatment elicit specific emotions through the interaction of certain hues, such as bringing a depressed person joy with bright yellows.

She also integrates the five senses into her therapy to complete the experience, integrating color into establishing a positive environment.

After working for more than 20 years as a graphic designer, Tanaka decided to change her career in order to “help more people.” She has been working as a color therapy specialist for the last 3½ years.

Certain colors have exceedingly intense emotional and

We like to think that everything is happening below the level and we’re not really aware of what’s going on, but there’s so much information out there. I think we are fairly aware, for the most part, of how they affect us.

Jim Anthony

marketing teacher psychological impact on people because of the objects and ideas they represent.

“Gold isn’t a color, but it has very profound physiological impact on people because it’s associated with wealth,” Winger said.

Winger has unconsciously begun using more joyful colors in his work, reflecting his improved life and state of mind.

Student artist Teresa Chen (12), however, gravitates toward cooler colors, though she sometimes starts pieces with specific moods or color combinations in mind. “[Sometimes, my pieces are] really spontaneous,” Chen said. “I mix whatever comes first, [and] it generally just turns out blue.”

Blue, which Francisca Vasconselos (11) uses often in her work, is linked with openness and tranquility.

“Blue is kind of calm, serene,” Vasconselos said. “A lot of people also like blue.”

In fact, blue is the most popular color, according to business

We, as human beings, have certain reactions [to color] on a conscious and unconscious level.

Kyoko Tanaka

founder of “be your color” magazine Forbes, because when our ancestors saw blue — a clear open sky, for example, or a watering hole — it was a good sign. Blue can also be perceived as cool or cold.

Similarly, green sparks creativity because people associate it with nature, regrowth and hope. Businesses with green walls, according to Forbes, increase productivity. Orange, a color featured prominently in companies like Home Depot, is associated with good value.

Though some of these connections may be subconscious, people are, on some level, aware of what certain colors signify.

“We like to think everything is happening below the level and we’re not really aware of what’s going on, but there’s so much information out there, I think we are fairly aware, for the most part, of how they affect us,” Anthony said.

Colors elicit a variety of emotions, ranging from the serenity of blue to the excitability of red and yellows. They are central to advertising campaigns, and though some effects of colors vary between cultures, others trigger universal human responses.

BY MAYA PARELLA AND MAYA RAO

...

Nearly three decades after its premiere, the legacy of “The Breakfast Club” lives on in the hallways of TPHS and teen culture everywhere.

The Falconer investigates the difficulties of adolescent identity and belonging through the lens of those iconic characters by deconstructing the five labels that seem to confine and define us all.

Everyone knows “rich kids.” They drive fancy cars, wear designer clothes and peer disdainfully over the tops of their Gucci sunglasses at the rest of the student body. They are stereotyped as the supreme overlords and very often the “mean kids” of high school society, but, according to Hana Chitgari (11), they are very different from their personas in present-day movies and books.

“I just shop at average places like Forever21,” Chitgari said. “I don’t think people really know whether I’m wealthy or not based on how I act or how I dress.”

Since TPHS is located in a relatively affluent area, many families are well-to-do, and some enjoy flaunting their wealth, according to Sara Esmaili (11).

“People that are extremely well-off tend to show it off more,” Esmaili said. “They wear [name-brand] clothes and have nice cars.”

Andre Nordan (11) believes that although people use expensive cars to show off, most TPHS students do not dress in distinctively pricey clothing.

“I don’t think the rich kid stereotype is a huge subject on campus, but it’s noticeable,” Nordan said.

Many students who attend TPHS live in Rancho Santa Fe, one of the wealthiest areas in San Diego, which has led to the creation of a “Rancho” stereotype on campus.

“Rancho kids … have huge houses and nice cars,” Duncan Eshom (11) said. “They get what they want and they live in country clubs. Most kids expect that if you are from Rancho you just do whatever your parents do and … don’t have to work in life.”

Eshom said that people expect him to have “parties or kickbacks” all the time because he is wealthy, and has faced some negativity due to his financial status.

Esmaili has also been judged by her peers for being wealthy, often leading people to believe that she is the traditional “mean girl.” Chitgari has faced similar judgement, with people assuming that she would not need an education because her family is well-off.

“Someone told me one time ... ‘I don’t know why you study so hard or try so hard, because you’re rich,’” Chitgari said. “I just looked at them and [said] ... ‘my wealth has nothing to do with my education.’ I want to get a great education. I’m not rich enough to live off my parents’ money for the rest of my life.”

The classic ‘80s movie “The Breakfast Club” casts Molly Ringwald as pampered princess Claire Standish: the perfect, popular girl who brings sushi in a bento box for lunch, wears diamond earrings to school and gets everything she wants. As the movie unfolds, however, the other characters discover there is

a lot more to Claire than they first assume. She reveals, for example, that she is a virgin who feels pressured to have sex and that her parents use her as a pawn in their fights. In the same way, Halleh Radvar (11) states that her life contradicts what most people believe is the typical “rich kid” lifestyle.

“People think [that because] my parents are rich, I can go to [college] wherever I want and drive whatever car I want, but I can’t really do that,” Radvar said. “I am Persian, so [I] basically have three choices: [I] can be either a doctor, lawyer or engineer of some sort. It’s always that kind of pressure that’s put on me.”

Nordan regularly feels parental pressure, but believes that it is helpful “to a certain extent.”

“My lifestyle is upper-class, so college is expected, but I’ve always wanted to go personally,” Nordan said. “I’ve felt pressure, but in a way I think it’s beneficial.”

Esmaili feels that a similar pressure comes from her high status.

“I am extremely grateful for everything I have, and everything I have is extremely lavish compared to [what] others [have, in general],” Esmaili said. “I have a lot, but I work hard for it.”

Since she is being raised in a wealthy family, Esmaili feels the need to get a job that can support an equally luxurious lifestyle.

“I want to be either a dentist or a cosmetic dermatologist,” Esmaili said. “I interned for a cosmetic dermatology center, which got me super interested, but I have done medicine programs over the summer.

I know I want to do something [in that field] because I know that I need to get a job that will support my lifestyle, [but] I am [actually] interested in it.”

Chitgari said that because she has been raised in a wealthy household, she realizes the value of everything she has. “[My parents] faced a lot of hardships because they were 17 [when] they moved [from Iran] and the revolution was going on,” Chitgari said. “They had to leave everything behind. And the fact that my dad moved from Iran to Italy to America and [we are] so well-off — it just makes me feel really guilty if I don’t [succeed]. If he could face all that ... and still be welloff, and I had everything given to me, then I should also be able to study really hard and go to a good school and be successful because he was able to be successful in a harder situation.”

Faced with parental pressure and social judgement, “rich kids” deal with far more than fashion trends.

Loaded with textbooks instead of shopping bags, the affluent students of TPHS cast off the “rich kid” stereotype, prioritizing their education over popularity.

By Tasia Mochernak and Maya Rao

The epitome of a ‘80s high school rebel, John Bender planted his motorcycle boots firmly on the table and slouched back in his chair with a “don’t give a s**t” attitude in “The Breakfast Club.” After all, being pretty bad feels pretty good. Even though the archetypal “rebel” with a leather jacket and gloves is not often seen at TPHS, rebels still exist — just in a different form.

“I think the definition of a rebel has changed over time because as the environments of schools change and rules change, people change,” Lauren Zhu (11), who does not identify herself as a rebel, said.

According to Nima Asgharzadeh (12), who is considered a rebel by his friends, a rebel is someone who “breaks all the [school] rules.”

Asgharzadeh holds the typical mindset of a modern-day high school rebel: a lackadaisical attitude, choosing not to conform to the usual expectations regarding high school students.

While there is some truth to the negative connotation of a stereotypical “don’t care about school” rebel, not all rebels are the same, according to Luke* (11), who used to be acknowledged as a rebel but has deviated from that connotation.

“Rebellious people don’t always have to be bad,” Luke said. “They just think differently.”

Likewise, Assistant Principal Rob Coppo claims a rebel is someone who “questions the status quo,” for example in fashion, music or academics. “[A nonrebel] is someone who follows what other kids are doing, which leads them to make bad decisions,” Coppo said. “The rebels don’t usually end up in my office because they are rebelling against the bad decisions other kids are making. The ‘rebel’ I might see in my office … has something else going on, and we have to dig a little deeper to see what’s led that kid to be in my office.”

Furthermore, according to Coppo, there is a difference between being a “rebel, [who] is creative, and being openly defiant.”

Unsurprisingly, quintessential brainiac Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall), clad in a green sweater and high-waisted denim, ends up penning the group essay by himself at the end of the film “The Breakfast Club” — but he sure looks heroic doing it.

Almost 30 years have passed since “The Breakfast Club” was formed during that fateful Saturday detention. In Brian’s time, to be a brainiac was to be socially awkward, even socially inferior to jocks or other cliques. Now, the brainiac stereotype illustrated by Brian still exists, though it seems to be less apparent at TPHS. “The connotation [of brainiac] is changing,” math club president Gha Young Lee (12) said. “The line is really blurred. If you look past the term ‘brainiac,’ you see different aspects branching from that term. They might be really into fashion and chemistry. We should recognize the diverse aspects of people.”

The term “brainiac,” a cross between brain and maniac, was taken from a 1950s Superman villain who uses his advanced understanding of the sciences to create his own devices and powers. While “brainiac” has been less colloquial in recent years, the terms “nerd” and “geek,” though they do not share the same connotation, have replaced “brainiac” as terms referring to people who take interest in academic ventures.

“The term itself has had a negative connotation,” Lee said. “Nerd, geek, brainiac — I think they’re just terms that people coined because [they] felt intimidated that [brainiacs] were pursuing their academic interests.”

While self-proclaimed brainiac Chris Butler

(11) notes that the traditional stereotype of “4 foot, 90 pounds, wiry and small” still exists, he finds that the media has become more accurate in its depiction of brainiacs.

“If you are looking at [media that] portrays a high school, then brainiacs tend to be looked down upon,” Butler said. “But if they are

Zhu also agrees that simply breaking school rules does not make a student a rebel.

“A rebel is someone who really, really transcends [the norm],” Zhu said. “Not caring about school is just being apathetic.”

Regardless of the different definitions of the contemporary rebel, it is undeniable that the label “rebel” is still apparent in school hallways, despite the higher socio-economic level of TPHS. “Kids who grew up in an affluent neighborhood are just as likely to be rebels as kids who didn’t,” Coppo said.

Besides the differences between social classes, other reasons can prompt rebellious behavior.

“Being a rebel can be cool, some kids might like [rebelling] … with all their friends,” Asgharzadeh said. “But it can be bad because you can get a bad reputation and mess up with your school and get bad grades.”

According to Jacob Belshin (12), a friend of Asgharzadeh, students may become rebels out of a desire for attention. “[Rebels] think if they do bad stuff or shout in class, they will be cool, but it’s not, it’s just annoying,” Belshin said. “It’s not cool to be a rebel.”

While leather jackets and gloves may be out of style, the ideology of John Bender still exists in the minds of the TPHS rebel.

“I feel like [rebels are] still the same — they don’t care about school and show up late and shout and are a distraction,” Belshin said.

“Little things have changed, but not the big [picture].”

Much has changed over the last 30 years — different rules lead to different rule breakers — but the same infamous “eat my shorts” attitude that John Bender portrayed, with boots on the table and fist in the air, lives on.

By Caroline Rutten and Sarah Kim

portrayed [in] something that focuses [on life] after high school, you’ll see the brainiacs typically have better jobs, more money and are more successful.”

The 1984 film “The Revenge of the Nerds” featured a starkly different social context than previous nerd portrayals, turning the idea of jocks bullying nerds on its head. The release of “The Social Network” in 2010 capitalized on the success of famed brainiac Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg and other industry giants like Steve Jobs have revolutionized what it means to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math — the so-called STEM fields — and made vast fortunes in the process. Being a geek has now become trendy, with cultural phenomena like “Star Trek,” anime and comic books moving into the mainstream.

“I think that people who pursue STEM are so much more successful,” Butler said. “I find so many people who like technology [at TPHS] that we don’t have so much of a problem of being looked down on here.”

Lee agrees with Butler that “[TPHS] is pretty accepting of academics” and respectful of her academic pursuits.

“But other communities that are [not] academically-oriented, based on geography, might look down up on nerds or brainiacs,” Lee said.

Although Brian may have felt the sting of social segregation more than Lee and Butler do, perhaps in a sequel to “The Breakfast Club,” Brian might endow a new library at Shermer High School with the money from his start-up and keep a flare gun on the top of his bookshelf to remind him of how far he has come.

By Sarah Brown

Swaggering down the hall and flashing his cardinal and gold letterman jacket, varsity football and baseball player Christian Gange (12) shoves a small freshman into a trash can and cockily high-fives his teammates — except not really.

Although in some ways high school has changed radically over the last few decades, the jock stereotype has remained a constant, portrayed in movies and on television as bullies with all brawn, no brains and a letterman jacket to prove it. Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez), the jock of the iconic ‘80s movie “The Breakfast Club,” embodies all of these traits on the surface. However, like Andrew’s friends discover by the end of the movie, many so-called “jocks” subvert that stereotype, becoming more “person” than “athlete.”

“A lot of kids on our football team are very smart, a lot smarter than we get credit for,” Gange said. “And we’re not as mean. I’m a nicer guy when I’m not playing football.”

Gange believes that the jock stereotype, as portrayed in “The Breakfast Club,” is “off,” and produces the false assumption that athletes are not well-rounded.

“I’m in ASB, I take AP classes; I feel like I can do a lot more than run a football,” Gange said. “People will judge you and think that’s all you are, when there’s much more to all this. We don’t wear letterman jackets around and we don’t talk about sports all the time.”

History teacher Jim Harrah, who played football, baseball, football and track during high school, faced similar stereotyping.

“I never considered myself a jock because academics were always really important,” Harrah said. “I was perceived as a jock probably because most of what I did outside a classroom was sports all year long. I was a person focusing on academics ... but I just loved the outdoors.”

According to varsity softball player Mikaila Reyes (11), the stereotype has evolved since Harrah attended high school.

“People thought of jocks as really cool kids who only partied, but you realize they are actual people,” Reyes said.

However, Reyes feels that the typical perception of a jock has also remained the same in some ways.

“I dont think it includes girls or other sports,” Reyes said.

“I think when people think of jocks, they still think of the wrestlers, the football players, the guys that are really tough and big.”

This type of “uber jock,” according to Harrah, is the character

on which Andrew of “The Breakfast Club” is based, someone who has all the categories of the jock stereotype. While Harrah acknowledges that the persona still exists at other schools, he believes it is far less evident at TPHS. “I’ve seen examples of that [stereotype] probably earlier in our school history, but I would say now, because our school is so diversified, there’s so many activities that jocks don’t rule the place,” Harrah said. “I think there’s more opportunities, which has diluted the dominance of the stereotype.”

However, varsity football player Ben Spitters (11) still sees examples of the jock stereotype limiting opportunities for some athletes.

“At school, there’s some pressure — like I’d probably get a lot of hate if I tried out for a play or did something like that,” Spitters said. “I feel like personally I would just do it if I wanted to, but I definitely know kids who have been limited by stereotypes and not done what they wanted to.”

This pressure manifests in forms outside of high school social boundaries as well. In “The Breakfast Club,” Andrew was under heavy pressure from his father to succeed as a wrestler.

But Gange, despite playing two varsity sports, has never felt any external pressure to excel.

“It’s only pressure I put on myself,” Gange said. “My parents don’t put a lot of pressure on me like that.”

Unlike Gange, however, Reyes often times feels the pressure to succeed — in both sports and academics.

“I’ve been playing softball for about ten years. I really enjoy playing it, it’s fun to be a part of the team ... because you’re part of the school and you’re making a contribution,” Reyes said.

“But it’s very time-consuming … and it’s difficult with school and all the classes I’m taking.”

At times, it seems difficult to imagine athletes outside of their stereotypes, as real people instead of characters. Reyes is more than just a softball player, Harrah was not just a jock, Spitters does well in school, Gange is far from a bully — and Andrew Clark, as it turned out, had more in common with his fellow disciplinary detainees than he ever could have imagined.

By Sarah Chan and Anna Lee

feature

tphsfalconer.com

the falconer

A13

:

KI EA

WN

DO

BR

IT

NG

OF COLOR THEORY

goodness, innocence, purity

wealth, fertility, freshness

love, warmth, intensity

tranquility, loyalty, trust

courage & confidence

royalty & spirituality

brightness, energy, happiness

protection, drama, solidity

art by sarah chan and sarah kim/falconer

*Information provided by Forbes Magazine

Don’t blink — you might miss him. Jack Whitten moves on to his next trick pretty quickly.

By trick, I mean a sleight-of-hand, a disappearing act where his art will go through yet another costume change. And by quickly, I mean he paints fast and he thinks fast — whether he’s dragging an Afro comb through a bed of wet acrylic paint before it dries, or coming up with new ways of creating blue. Or pink, or purple, or green, for that matter.

For 50 years, Whitten has created. He has changed what it means to “paint,” taking acrylic and altering it until the final product does not look like paint on canvas, like it could not possibly have come from the can. That and more is evident in his retrospective “Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting” at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla, showing until Jan. 4.

The show starts with his 1964 “Psychic Eclipse,” a roughly 2 foot by 2 foot work of nylon fabric and acrylic paint on canvas. Painted jet black save for some swathes of white, the work appears to be a photograph capturing a puff of smoke. It looks like chalk dust, making it easy to forget that the show is about painting. The piece shrouds Whitten’s creative process in mystery, setting the stage for the rest of his unpainterly works.

In the 1960s, the world was captivated by abstract expressionism, when artists threw wet paint onto a canvas to see what effects ensued.

So when Whitten said “every painter wants to escape art history,” it was surprising. In the ‘70s, he chose to eliminate the flick of the wrist and the splash of the brush, and moved onto something completely new.

He came up with the Developer. It was Whitten’s first magic wand, a huge, rake-like tool.

Bucket after bucket, 10, sometimes 12 gallons of wet paint would be slathered onto the surface, and one drag, one action, one pull across with The Developer revealed all the colors underneath.

That’s how “Chinese Sincerity” was birthed in 1974. Forty years later, we see the picture perfectly preserved. A flood of dark purple washes up and stops, with air bubbles revealing melted, blurred messes of orange and dark red. There’s a part where the Developer was perhaps snagged, a wound in the thick layering where a small sliver of navy blue and white peek through.

Three seconds — that’s how long Whitten said it took.

According to Whitten, his art acts as a “loop,” as the painting enters the viewer’s consciousness and introduces texture, tactility and most importantly, color — a satisfying way of approaching Whitten’s art. After all, who wouldn’t want to feel bold and bright red?

“Five Decades of Painting” reads like a giant Greek epic, except for one minor detail: There is no denouement. Whitten’s art is the climax, and his transformations of paint just keep on running.

Nothing looks the same. It’s incredible.

ART BY JACK WHITTEN COURTESY ALEXANDER GRAY ASSOCIATES AND ZENO X GALLERY PHOTOS BY MICHAEL LEE/FALCONER

“When someone’s got me down to ‘either/or,’ I use the F-word,” Whitten said at a lecture at MCASD on Sept. 19. “I want to taste it all, I want to experiment with it all.”

So in the ‘90s, Whitten shifted gears, removing himself from the height of his own abstraction, dispensing with conventions once and for all.

The Developer? Forget about it. Wet paint? Not a chance. This was his dry period now, when Whitten found he could pour paint into a slab of acrylic, freeze it and cut it into tiles. He would use some of the tiny squares for the painting and smash the rest like glass, leaving a beautiful mess of colored shards and residue all over his work.

We see that in “Black Monolith, II: Homage to Ralph Ellison The Invisible Man,” the only piece in the show that uses more than paint — molasses, copper, salt, coal, ash, chocolate, onion, herbs, rust, eggshell and a Gillette razor blade, to be exact. It all spiraled into this: something heavy, something random and something as bright as 1,369 lit lightbulbs.

The work, which forms an anonymous silhouette, takes the basic form of a mosaic. But the piece is not invisible; it does not blend in and it does not go unnoticed. Each piece of paint has a unique identity. Flecks of chocolate are frozen in pieces of clear acrylic; nearby, stone-like tiles are covered by a burnt sienna patina. Chunks of acrylic sprinkled with onion and herbs are inlaid next to shards of emerald and pearl. Walking past, you see your reflection. It glitters.

Whitten cracks a joke with “Apps for Obama,” a gradient blue mosaic with raised acrylic squares, circles and irregular shapes laid out like an iPhone screen, as if to say, “Mr. President, you’ve got to ditch the Blackberry.”

The most recent piece in the show is “Black Monolith, V Full Circle: For LeRoi Jones A.K.A. Amiri Baraka.” The work is monumental. It’s a perfectly contained, chaotic explosion of color and texture in one giant circle. Look up close and see what Whitten’s crafted this time. Spider webs of hot glue, the end of a drumstick, splinters of obsidian, gum, a rubber band, the sole of a shoe, all drenched in black, green, blue, red and white.

This last painting brought the show full circle indeed, an ending to an experience overwhelming but well worth it. Never have I ever been subjected to such unconventional beauty. Poet Baraka’s words are ideal: “Closing the eyes. As/simple an act. You float.” Relax. Let the colors sink in.

In the best magic trick of all, Whitten himself is the rabbit in the hat. He is the magician. With 50 years of painting — 50 years of constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing — his art is full of warm surprises, and each turn around the corner brings something new. Whitten is without a conclusion. He is Houdini escaped from the straitjacket, Odysseus on an extended journey.

He’s always been ahead of his time in “painting,” and now he’s giving us time to catch up.

entertainment

tphsfalconer.com

the falconer

A15

Curtain Call: “Kingdom City” This captivating play is a compelling take on enforcing outdated values in modern times.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JIM CARMODY

High school students in California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas and Massachusetts enjoy the full protection of the free speech and free press rights provided by the First Amendment. Set in Missouri, Sheri Wilner’s “Kingdom City” centers around the cancellation of a high school production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” and makes a statement about the consequences of silencing students’ voices.

The play, showing at the La Jolla Playhouse until Oct. 5, targets high school censorship through biting social commentary on the effect of enforcing conservative religious values on high school students.

The small, six-person cast acts as a compelling cross section of a tiny town warped by an archaic religious institution. It becomes clear that Luke (Ian Littleworth), the church’s youth minister, and Matt (Austyn Myers), a teenager struggling with his religion and reality, are reflective of the rest of Kingdom City’s population. Miriam (Kate Blumberg), a New York City director-turned-high school drama teacher, carries scenes in which the other students’ presences are implied, although there are no other actors on stage.

Several subplots colored with different characters and exploring marital conflict, teenage melodrama and spiritual dilemmas all converge at a purity ceremony that cements several Kingdom City teens, including Katie (Cristina Gerla) and Matt, as virgins until marriage.

The play follows Katie, Matt and Juilliard-aspiring diva Crystal (Katie Sapper) as they put on “The Crucible” in Miriam’s drama class, a play suitable to the school

principal’s religious sensibilities.

Luke’s purity class, which preceded the ceremony, encouraged the students to exercise their own agency and “draw the line” when it comes to sexual promiscuity. He then hypocritically draws the line for his students and encourages the principal — who is a patron of the church — to cancel the play because of the “passionate kiss” between Katie and Matt, who play Elizabeth and John Proctor, respectively. Crystal, who staunchly refuses to conform to the rest of Kingdom City’s religious ideals, and is the only who realizes the horror of being trapped within

Cast:

Showings:

Kate Blumberg

Miriam

conservative values despite her being a unsympathetic character. Her relationship with Miriam is rocky, alternating between admiration for the New York City native and childish anger that Miriam will not provide Crystal with the validation she desires. Sapper effectively characterizes the angsty teenager whose snark conceals the hurt of trauma and whose temperamental outbursts hint at an inability to cope with a horrific situation. Her intense portrayal of Crystal is initially grating, but later plot developments revealing Crystal’s past elevate her performance to an impressively profound degree.

Sept. 23-28, 30

Cristina Gerla

Katie

Ian Littleworth

Luke

Austyn Myers

Matt

Katie Sapper

Crystal

La Jolla Playhouse

Todd Weeks

Daniel

Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre

Oct. 1-5

Where:

Although the actors playing Miriam and David are married off-stage, their on-stage chemistry would suggest otherwise — namely, that there is an unnatural and uncomfortable energy between the two that hinders their ability to portray a convincing married couple. Blumberg plays Miriam as having almost two personalities: the somewhat confused yet admirably driven teacher to the students. and the overexcited justice warrior when recounting her plans to her husband.

The play leaves unanswered questions regarding the parents’ stance on censorship, but this ambiguity may in fact be a conscious decision on the writer’s part to emphasize the parents’ submission to religious authority.

The characters are painted with a broad brush, and almost appear as derivative of the typical teen fiction.

Although they appear to be shallow archetypes, the play is purposely establishing that these characters are cut from the cloth of small-town America. The small cast is representative of any community ruled to an unsettling degree by religious principles.

“Kingdom City” is performed on a narrow black box stage different from the traditional theater setting. The intimacy of the venue accentuates the stifling atmosphere built by the looming authorities of Kingdom City.

Even though the overexaggeration of certain scenes was comically unbelievable, the play was an excellently layered portrait of a town in the chokehold of religion, and the occasionally subpar acting was overshadowed by an intricate plot and compelling themes.

By Anna Li and Irene Yu

Showtimes: Tue/Wed

7:30 p.m.

Thur/Fri/Sat

8 p.m.

Sat/Sun

2 p.m.

Sun.

7 p.m.

A16 the falconer

arts & entertainment

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL LEE/FALCONER

There’s something reassuring about restaurants being named after a sole founder — it suggests a long, welcoming history, a knack for crafting classic menu items (or unique family recipes) that come out just right. It makes diners feel like they’re on a first-name basis with the establishment itself, which is a plus, given that ordering and eating food in a new restaurant can be daunting. Harry’s Coffee Shop is no different. Harry J. Rudolph, Jr. opened shop in 1960; today, Harry’s three grown children, run it.

The diner stands out among a sea of plain white buildings with its bright red awning and retro lettering.

Built on the hope that it would bring happiness and a sense of “neighborhood comfort” to customers, the diner quickly became a hotspot for breakfast when it opened in 1960.

Now, the bustling restaurant has a long wait time even in the early hours of the morning, testifying to the fact that challenging parking conditions cannot deter customers from Harry’s comforting ambience.

Twenty minutes after our arrival, my family and I were finally seated and struggling to choose breakfast. Prices tipped toward the high end, but we were willing to make the sacrifice for good food. The cracked leather seats and many

As much as I love eating warm, fluffy french toast and enjoying it with a steaming mug of rich coffee, I also love being able to sleep in until lunchtime. To me, waking up at an ungodly hour to eat is a concept I have never been able to understand. And so, even with all the hype surrounding Claire’s on Cedros, I could not help but regret taking this review after I realized that eating breakfast usually involves waking up before lunchtime.

Waking up at a record early hour on a weekend, my mind was ready to eat at the place rumored to be the most amazing breakfast spot ever, even if my stomach was not. But by the time my companions and I were actually able to enter the restaurant — after a 30-minute wait that testified to its popularity — my stomach and mind reached the consensus that all I wanted in that moment was a warm, hearty breakfast.

The comfortable ambiance of the restaurant and the friendly servers, helped to create a relaxing familial mood, perfect for sitting around and chatting with friends.

The menu offered a variety of egg dishes and other breakfast foods, in addition to a lunch and dinner menu.

We decided to order a Blackberry Stuffed French Toast

september 26, 2014

pictures that adorned the walls made me feel at home.

Framed newspaper articles above the booths, most of which were faded yellow with age, boasted of the restaurant’s excellence, and the humdrum background noise that comes with classic breakfast diners was soothing and familiar.

While my mother and sister both chose heaping plates of pancakes, I decided to give the lunch menu a go – big mistake. In a restaurant renowned for its breakfast delights, it is no wonder that the deluxe cheeseburger fell flat with its rubbery lettuce, tasteless patty and bland hamburger buns.

Of course, the next course of action was to eat off the plates of my dining companions.

Never in my life have I tasted such delicious, mouthwatering pancakes. Biting into them reminded me of eating cake, the almost sponge-like feel making me disappointed to swallow. They weren’t tough and overcooked, but just the right amount of fluffy. The thick syrup and soft butter, already melted from the warm temperature, coated the pancakes in rich taste, making every bite richly sweet. I chewed in contentment and nostalgia, reminded of happy childhood memories of weekend breakfast. Unfortunately, the eggs tasted as though they had sat out for a long time, but the sausage patties that came as a side dish were so good, with their slight hint of spice, that we had to order a second round.

In the end, I did feel as if I had found a piece of home in this diner. Looking back, I should have adhered to my love of late breakfasts instead of taking a risk with the cheeseburger, but I still consider this experience successful.

I will be seeing a lot of Harry’s Coffee Shop in my future.

By Maya Parella

($10.95), and an Original Clairecake Short Stack with chocolate chips ($9.90). After another grueling 30-minute wait, our long-anticipated food finally arrived.

I was pleasantly surprised to see ricotta cheese spread inside the french toast, which was topped with fresh blackberries and blackberry compote, but I worried that the cheese flavor would be too overpowering. The combination, however, fit together surprisingly well, as the light sweetness and creamy texture of the cheese complimented the fluffiness of the bread. Although I originally wished for a sweeter fruit, the sharpness of the blackberries contrasted nicely with the sweetness and soft, spongy consistency of the bread, keeping the dish from being too sour.

Lightly flavored with cinnamon, the Original Clairecakes, the restaurant’s version of pancakes, were topped with maple syrup — a perfect fit for my sweet tooth. Light and moist, they practically melted in my mouth, leaving a chocolatey aftertaste and a desire for nothing more than another mouthful.

If I had more room in my stomach, I no doubt would have ordered all the other Clairecake options — Multigrain, Lemon Ricotta, Gluten Free and Pumpkin.

Just when I thought that Claire’s on Cedros could not get any better, we were served complimentary heart-shaped shortbread cookies with our check.

Filled to the brim with comfort food and satisfaction, the one-hour wait was already in the back of my mind, and Claire’s on Cedros became one of my favorite places to eat. Waking up early may not be my thing, but the homey ambiance and high quality food presented at Claire’s at Cedros makes every minute of lost sleep worth it.

By Sarah Kim

PHOTOS BY ROBBIE JOHNSON/FALCONER

entertainment

tphsfalconer.com

If there was a Grammy award for Best Lyrics, it would definitely not go to alt-J. The band’s lyrics, for the most part, bring to mind a ransom note — cut and pasted together in the most random and detached way.

Lyrical ability is not the only thing absent from the recent sophomore album This Is All Yours — bassist Gwil Sainsbury left the English indie rock now trio in early 2014.

In “The Gospel of John Hurt,” lead vocalist Joe Newman begins the song by chanting “no space/L-shaped/Tetris,” lyrics with little relevance to a song about a ‘70s sci-fi film.

“Bloodflood Pt. II,” a New Age orchestral piece with Gus Unger-Hamilton and Newman’s intertwining voices, and “Nara” are prime examples of the quintessential alt-J: whole tracks solely dedicated to pointless, barely intelligible mumbling.

In the lead single, “Hunger of the Pine,” Newman actually forms coherent sentences, but the combination of repeated phrases and ill-conceived inserts of Miley Cyrus echoing in the background make me wish that there were no lyrics at all.

“Every Other Freckle” offers a completely unexpected change in style with line after line of sordid similes. Newman sings “I’m gonna bed into you like a cat beds into a beanbag” and “turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet.” Thanks but no thanks, Joe. Perhaps the lyrics do, in fact, have some sort of poetic nuance that I cannot fully appreciate, but as with their previous album, I have yet to discover it.

However, what sets alt-J completely apart from similar groups, like the ever-predictable English dream pop band The xx, is its mastery of sound. This Is All Yours, as a whole, is an audio masterpiece loaded with complex polyphonic textures, ethereal vocal harmonies, musical homages to their home country of England and a wide range of instrumentation.

“Intro,” the opening track, takes the listener on a fourminute audio journey, beginning with alternating choral melodies that provide a new take on stale a cappella

renditions of modern day pop. Layered wails reminiscent of 20th century rock, Far Eastern folk melodies and the tempered electro-dubstep come together and introduce the expanse of sounds incorporated later. The album then transitions into “Arrival in Nara, ” an exceptional instrumental interlude.

“Left Hand Free,” a catchy, alternative single written in light of the commercial failure “Hunger of the Pine” in order to please their American record label, is distinctively uncharacteristic of alt-J — nonetheless, I could not get it out of my head, while I struggled to remember the other tracks.

Where this album does fall short of An Awesome Wave is in its occasional awkward transition; after “Left Hand Free” the album quickly cuts to “Garden of England,” a whole minute of an English sounding, anachronistic flute solo.

“Warm Foothills,” featuring Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes and three English vocalists, is the best of both worlds — all the elements of an upbeat folk tune are hybridized with alt-J’s haunting monastic accompaniment.

The album comes full circle with “Leaving Nara,” the final of three tracks inspired by the band’s brief stay in the Japanese city of Nara.

Fortunately for them, the group’s initial fear of approaching the new album without Sainsbury proves groundless in This Is All Yours. Lyrics aside, alt-J’s new album not only manages to preserve the band’s unique style and high standard of production, but also showcases both the group’s musical versatility, absent on An Awesome Wave, and alt-J’s ever-evolving sound, appropriate for a band named after ∆, the Greek symbol for change.

By Amanda Chen

the falconer

A17

Thom Green Drums

Joe Newman Guitar / Lead Vocals

Gus Unger-Hamilton Keyboards / Vocals

PHOTO COURTESY OF INFECTIOUS RECORDS

W hy Pay M o r e ?

Online Drive Ed

858.900.7680 westcoastdrivingschool.net

Only $19.99 * Pass Your Drive Test! * Avoid Traffic Tickets! * Prevent Deadly Collisions.

$245 .00 6 Hou the W r Behind heel P ackag e

* Complete Lessons in just 2-4 Weeks.

We come to your location. Home or School!

Lessons available 7 days per week.

.

A18 the falconer

entertainment

september 26, 2014

Falconer staffers share their takes on current happenings in the world of art and entertainment.

“The definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to f*** her anymore,” says Tina Fey in her wonderfully candid memoir, “Bossypants.”

If we accept this definition as true, then Joan Rivers — the abrasive, irreverent, iconic comedian who passed away at age 81 on Sept. 4 — was clinically insane. She didn’t just “keep talking,” she elbowed, shoved and screeched her way into a permanent position in a volatile, unforgiving pop cultural landscape that was, at many points in her career, less than welcoming. Rivers’ notorious loudness was directly proportional to the imminence of a compulsory expiration date Hollywood placed on her femininity, sexuality and marketability — which is to say, she didn’t care if you didn’t want to f*** her; she didn’t care if her face had been, in her own words, “tucked in more times than a bed sheet at the Holiday Inn”; she didn’t care if pearl-clutching pundits threw tomatoes at her ever-present microphone and kicked at her soapbox; she didn’t even care if anyone was listening to what she had to say, because she knew you were going to hear it anyway. The woman would not shut up.

I could waste space talking about Rivers’ career triumphs, her unparalleled work ethic, the trailblazing path she set for female and male stand-ups alike, and the personal and professional setbacks she faced with a take-no-prisoners brashness and a decidedly unladylike smirk. I could, but I won’t, because I know one thing for certain: If you are reading this and are a living, breathing human, Rivers has, in some way, offended you deeply. Throughout her tenure as resident celebrity gadfly, she made racist, homophobic, sexist, sizeist and altogether insensitive remarks that overshadowed her remarkable talent and broadcast her presumed callousness to an increasingly hostile American audience — a hostility that plagues her postmortem, as many continue to insist her tactlessness negates her cultural legacy. I will not try to convince you that her jokes were always appropriate because I would be lying — they never were — nor will I make excuses for what were, on many occasions, inexcusable comments. What I will tell you is what she meant to me, because this is my column and thus, as I understand it, everything is ultimately about me.

I first saw Rivers on her Comedy Central Roast, in which she said the following: “All babies look like Renée Zellweger pushed against a glass window.”

My first thought was, “Ew. Ugh. Why?” My second thought was, “God, that’s funny.”

This is a thought process that encapsulates Joan’s comedy as well as, I believe, her career as a whole. She was our collective id, giving shape and form to those voiceless thoughts the rest of us dutifully stifle and lock away in polite company. Embedded deep in the structural fabric of her shtick was the inherent awareness that those topics

we deem fundamentally unfunny or off-limits — babies’ dumb faces, for one — are precisely those that are ripe for the comedic picking: a paradox that, once imparted unto me by Rivers’ oeuvre, forever changed my understanding of humor.

Rivers deconstructed the prickly hotbeds of sex, fame, violence and death with the incontrovertible knowledge that granting certain subjects immunity to comedic criticism out of politically correct respect is, in actuality, allowing them the sort of authority that precipitates fear. Whatever her target — celebrity culture, sexism, politics, herself — Rivers tread that elusive line between that which makes us cringe and that which makes us laugh, wielding the power this balance spawns to formidable comedic effect. The fact that she so often missed the target, that she was undeniably messy but nonetheless never apologized for the collateral damage, made her all the more compelling. It made her human. In a public arena that bristled at her patent refusal to cater to anyone’s sensibility, Rivers retained, fabulously and impossibly, an unchangeable sense of self.

After her husband committed suicide in 1987, Rivers famously joked, “He wanted to be cremated. I told him I’d scatter his ashes at Neiman Marcus — that way, I’d visit him every day.” Do not mistake her absurdity for heartlessness, or her comedy for apathy. Rivers intuitively understood, perhaps better than any comic who ever lived, that to truly conquer a fear is to laugh at it. She took us by the hand, led us to the cliff’s edge, peered skeptically at the shark-infested waters below and quipped, “Those sharks are fat. The water’s fine.” And so we jumped.

If you’ve ever been a student of history teacher Lars Trupe, chances are that you’ve heard him talk about Jeff Koons. Maybe “talk” isn’t the right word — he once said that if he had two nukes, the first would be used on Las Vegas and the second on Koons.

But who is Koons? One thing is for sure: His art won’t reveal anything, since it has zero personality and no signs of handiwork or emotion — but I’ll try my best to explain. Koons is a contemporary American artist known for his reproductions of everyday objects — right now, people are clamoring over his rather unfortunate career-spanning retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

He’s created giant balloon dogs out of stainless steel, put a group of Hoovers in a glass case, and made a series of works with kittens in socks and puppies on park benches. Think Air Bud and its offensive and asinine subsequent spinoffs — only worse.

But Jeff Koons is a contemporary artist, so what does that say about contemporary art? Surely it must be trash, right?

Let’s back up a bit and define a few terms. Modern art is everything created from the 1870s until the 1970s, which includes the works of greats like van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso. Contemporary art is produced in the current period of time, and is usually defined as all art post-1945. There is some confusion due to the fact that “modern” and “contemporary” are synonyms, but the consensus among my friends and peers is that modern and contemporary art are perceived to be stupid. From the piece of rectangular plastic standing in a gallery to the monochrome canvas hanging next to six others of the same kind, there are some crazy pieces. I understand why these works would be scoffed at — there is no immediate value, no effort put into the work itself. Now, I won’t try to defend contemporary art and force everyone to look at it the “right” way

— because, there is no “right” way — but I will say this: not all art has some deeper, philosophical, figurative meaning. That canvas isn’t supposed to be about life nor is it supposed to be some critique on society, no matter what those glossy, pretentious magazines want to tell you. Instead, modern and contemporary art is, a lot of the time, about color, about material, about how something looks, about how something is made and about how something may make you feel.

Let me give a couple examples. Walking around the UCSD campus, you might have seen the two blue, V-shaped fences running through the eucalyptus groves. They are a work of art by California Light and Space artist Robert Irwin — “Two Running Violet V Forms,” to be exact. But two fences covered in blue plastic? Really? Take a closer look next time — the piece acts as a screen that reflects and absorbs the San Diego sunlight to create an arresting visual experience. Depending on the time of day and the location of the viewer, the captured light might result in a see-through and slightly tinted blue, a deep, dark and gorgeous blue or even a light, pastel and barelynoticeable blue that disappears into the sky.

Yayoi Kusama’s “Obliteration Room” is a room that started out entirely white and was furnished with sofas, utensils and empty bookcases. After a few weeks of visitors coming in and “obliterating” the space with multi-colored, multi-sized polkadot stickers chosen by the artist, the result is an explosion of color, a beautiful swarm of red, blue, green, whatever — and the viewer’s jaw drops.

As much as I’ve tried to shed some light on the aforementioned works of art, I simply can’t do that for every single work of art. There will always be something new, something foreign, something so ballsy and offensive that you won’t be able to think it’s art. Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ,” or Tracey Emin’s “My Bed —” a leftover of dirty sheets, empty liquor bottles and pregnancy tests strewn all over a dirty bed.

I am often asked how contemporary art can be so terrible, shocking and disgusting and still be “art.” But that doesn’t just refer to art made in the now. All art was contemporary when it was first made. When Michelangelo sculpted nudes, you can bet they were controversial, with their detail down to the last muscle and vein. The same goes for every other artist you know — they were defining what art was in the period of time they lived in, and bringing the elements of their own life into their art. Art reflects life, and if life isn’t pretty and beautiful and picture-perfect all the time, then not all art has to be oil-painted water lilies or landscapes of Yosemite. I admit, it takes a considerable effort on the viewer’s part, but the result can be immensely satisfying. I have found myself in rooms immersed in neon light and walked into rooms kitted out to look like a mad scientist’s abandoned laboratory. I have also stepped all over a work of art, eaten part of a work of art and taken home part of a work of art. It’s pretty fun.

Falcons claw Wolverines 42-14

By Fernando Stepensky

By Varun Bhave NEWS EDITOR The TPHS football team (1-3) defeated the Westview High School Wolverines (1-3) 4214 on Sept. 19, picking up its first victory of the season with a strong rushing attack and tenacious defense.

The Falcons made a statement in their opening possession, chewing up five minutes on an 80-yard drive that saw long runs by Christian Gange (12) and Murray Kim (11) and was capped by a 2-yard touchdown push

by Quinn Morimoto (12).

“Having so many able-bodied backs adept at gaining yards was important,” offensive lineman Brian Wahl (12) said. “They were each good in their own aspects — like inside runs or outside runs — and it made sure the defense didn’t get comfortable.”

A Wolverine turnover on downs gave the Falcons a short field, which they exploited to reach the end zone again on Jack Hoeprich’s PUSH: Running back Jack Hoeprich (3) (12) 5-yard run.

(TOP). Running back Murray Kim (30) tries “I ran in untouched,” Hoeprich said. “The o[ffensive] line was executing their blocks … their lead. While they failed to score, punter there was so much room to run because of and kicker Brandon Hong (12) backed up the Wolverines at their own 5-yard line, how well they did their jobs.”

Up 14-0, the defense made another huge preventing them from getting downfield stop, with defensive end Joey Demarco before halftime.

In the first minute of the second half, (12) and linebacker Roland Wheeler (12) sacking Wolverine quarterback Carlton linebacker Tristen Alesi (11) intercepted Bjork to force a long 4th and 8 that Westview Bjork’s errant pass and returned it for a failed to convert. However, the Falcons pick-six, giving the Falcons a comfortable lost a fumble on their ensuing possession; 28-7 lead.

“We came through in the plays that Westview capitalized on the turnover and a costly pass interference penalty, narrowing mattered to get those turnovers,” Wheeler the lead to 14-7 with seven minutes left in said. “That was important, especially since we’d lost a couple of close the half. Despite the games already.” setback, Falcon offense After an exchange of bounced back with an If we were beating possessions, the Wolverines 80-yard touchdown found themselves pinned drive by quarterback them, we would show to their own 2-yard line by Sandy Plashkes (12). no mercy and put up Hong’s deep punt. Westview Morimoto scored for the turned the ball over once second time. the number of points more, with their punter “We’d tried to reestablish the fastwe did. fumbling in the end zone, and one play later Kim scored on paced offense, but still -Jack Hoeprich a 2-yard touchdown run to could grind out long Running back put the game away at 35-7. drives,” Wahl said.

While Bjork did manage to “Being explosive and throw a touchdown pass early hitting off the ball boosted our morale and in the fourth quarter, the Wolverine offense helped [the offense] stay on the field.”

Linebacker Jared Rosen’s (11) recovery of was unable to get in sync for the rest of the Westview running back AJ Leonard’s fumble game. They failed to dial up big gains on the gave the Falcons another shot at building ground because, according to Hoeprich, “[the

“

PHOTOS BY ERIC CUNNINGHAM/FALCONER

prepares to stiff arm a Wolverine defender to get extra yardage on a run (BOTTOM). defense] was flying to the ball and filling in the gaps, creating mayhem.”

“We knew Westview ran an up-tempo offense and we’d need to line up quickly and be we were on the same page,” Wheeler said.

“Our defensive line worked really hard. They did a good job of getting penetration that made it easier in coverage.”

Although the Falcons started to pull their starters by the middle of the fourth quarter, Hoeprich did add another touchdown run with six minutes remaining in the game.

“Everyone was irritated [at the start of the season],” Hoeprich said. “We’d been playing well and still it wasn’t clicking. We were not taking ‘no’ for an answer. If we were beating them, we would show no mercy and put up the number of points we did.”

Westview coach Mike Woodward was not available for comment after the game.

“Even though we [were] 0-3, we lost to three of the highest ranked teams in Southern California and Utah,” TPHS head coach Ron Gladnick said. “We’ve been in every game. Although this isn’t a league game, it’s a stepping stone for when we hit the playoffs. We played hard from the first whistle to the last whistle and executed the practice plan.”

TPHS will play at Poway High School (13) today at 7 p.m.

With recent events surrounding players in the National Football League, a lot of blame has been put on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, but I blame the owners, and everyone else should as well.

First, given the events that have transpired in and around the NFL this week, I would have canceled NFL games for at least a week had I been commissioner, because players should be responsible for other players’ offfield behavior.

It is no secret that Goodell was too easy on Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens player who knocked his wife unconscious. He also should have been stricter on Adrian Peterson, who abused his 4-year-old son, and Greg Hardy, who assaulted and threatened a woman, but Goodell is not entirely at fault. By that, I mean that Goodell publicly announces decisions, but the NFL’s 32 owners are the ones who hold power. The NFL is full of politics, with no better example than Rice’s two-game ban.

I would have fined the Vikings, Panthers and Ravens $300,000 for how they each handled their situations. It is truly ridiculous that good players are excused from crimes like assault, but rookies are cut if they get so much as a parking ticket.

Physically harming a woman seems unfathomable to me, and any man who can bring himself to do such a thing should be punished to the full extent of the law. There is just no possible excuse for ever putting your hands on a woman the way these players have -- ever.

However, people who are placing the blame solely on Goodell are unaware of the way the NFL works, because Goodell is just the owners’ scapegoat when things go poorly. I don’t think Goodell will either retire or be fired. Goodell has done an excellent job as commissioner over the years and deserves to keep his position.

On a tangentially related note, I have decided to stop using the moniker “Lady Falcons” in reference to girls’ sports teams, since specifying gender for girls but not for boys implies that the girls’ sports teams are a subset of the boys’ teams. Of course that isn’t true; female athletes are just as much Falcons as their male counterparts, and to differentiate between the two groups of athletes is to suggest otherwise.

It was brought to my attention last year that the phrase offended a reader. Although at the time I was not convinced the phrase needed to be changed or that it was sexist, after further thought, it does make sense to stop using the phrase. All Falcons are just plain old Falcons, without a need for a gender descriptor like “Lady Falcons.”

A20 the falconer

sports

Girls tennis easily defeats Poway

By Irene Yu STAFF WRITER

Girls tennis defeated Poway High School 13-5 with Kelsey Chen (12), Hannah Zhao (9) and Tasia Mochernak (11) playing singles; CC Schwab (12) and Kathy Wang (9) playing line one doubles; Agostina Waisfeld (11) and Alexa Meyer (10) playing line two doubles; and Sheyda Khonji (11) and Lily Nilipour (10) playing line three doubles.

“I don’t see any reason why this team shouldn’t go undefeated,” coach John DeLille said. “As long as they keep their focus, then we’ll be fine.”

Tennis co-captain Chen was confident that the team would secure victory as well.

“We’re playing a lot better than last year,” Chen said. “This year we’re definitely more whole, as one team.”

All three TPHS singles lines struggled most while playing Poway line one singles player Frances Cornwall. Some doubles teams also struggled against Poway’s number one doubles team: Savannah Goode and Charity Monroe. “[Poway] has all their top players back, so the game was pretty similar [to the game last year],” Schwab said. “Some people [on the TPHS team] haven’t played for a long time, so they’re not doing their best, but they’re still making it work.”

Even though the Falcons have a number of new or inexperienced players, the team swept the first round in both singles and doubles. Chen won 6-2, Zhao won 6-0 and Mochernak won 6-0. In doubles, Schwab and Wang won 6-0, Waisfeld and Meyer won 6-2, and Khonji and Nilipour won 6-0.

After the first round, starting players were subbed out with Michelle Temby (11) playing for Chen, Sofie Beachboard (10) playing for Nilipour, Shayla Parthasarathy (10) playing for Zhao. Nicole Beachboard (11) played for Khonji in the third round.

“I think everything went great today,” DeLille said. “We had some great games with our subs today, and I think overall, we look pretty tough.”

The only matches lost were Temby losing 2-6, Parthasarathy losing 1-6, Sofie and Khonji losing 2-6, and Sophie and Nicole

losing 3-6.

“We only lost two seniors and another player. but we got five new people,” Schwab said. “[Poway] still has all their top players, but we’re doing pretty well anyway.”

The Falcons will compete at Mt. Carmel High School on Sept 25.

PHOTO BY MICHAEL LEE/FALCONER

SWING: Michelle Temby (11) hits a hard backhand down the line, causing an unforced error from Poway High School. Temby lost her game 2-6, but the Falcons ultimately won 13 sets.

september 26, 2014

CROSS-COUNTRY Cross-country sprinted to a second place finish in the 2.75 mile freshman race and a first place finish in the 2.75 mile senior race, with a third place finish by Jacqueline Garner (12) in the senior race.

“I was shooting for first, but I was ... happy with the result,” Garner said. “I [beat my] personal record by a minute.”

Garner ran a 15:46, losing to Bryanna Fuller of Rancho Bernardo High School, (15:38), and Angela Ortlieb of San Pasqual High School, (15:42).

“We have competed pretty regularly for the past few years, and it varies who wins,” Garner said. “This time they got the best of me, but I’m looking to take them down in the future.”

Darren Edmonds (11) said the boys could have placed higher than they did but that the girls team looks “strong” this season.

“We did reasonably well,” Edmonds said. “Not as well as we should be doing at the end of the season, but we’re building up.”

The senior and junior teams both finished 12th in the 2.95 mile race, but captain Drew Christofferson (12) still feels “confident” moving forward through the rest of the season.

“We’ve been putting in a lot of hard work as a team and I think [we] raced very well,” Christofferson said. “We were able to execute our ... strategies and work [well] in all of the races.”

The Falcons will compete on Sept. 27 in the 41st Stanford Cross-Country Invitational.

By Maya Rao

tphsfalconer.com

sports

f/stop

brianna haire varsity dance team sept. 19, 8:03:36 p.m.

camera: canon eos 5d mark iii lens: canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM iso: 5000 exp: 1/1000 seconds f/stop: f/3.5 by grace bruton

the falconer

A21

A22 the falconer

sports

september 26, 2014

Field hockey plays Serra Tournament

By Lily Nilipour STAFF WRITER TPHS field hockey won two out of three games at the Serra Tournament on Sept. 20, placing second overall in their Group C pool.

The Falcons defeated Otay Ranch High School 5-0 in their first match of the tournament, scoring their first goal within five minutes, but TPHS was unable to score again in the first half, though it dominated the ball and gained multiple corners.

“We’re used to playing on turf, and it was slower grass, so it slowed our movement,” coach J.J. Javelet said. “We didn’t have too much time to warm up, but once we kind of got used to [the grass] and the flow of the game, we warmed up to speed.”

Throughout the second half, TPHS scored four more goals, though Javelet said that there could have been more.

“We were still getting into the 25 and we wanted to get the ball into the circle, but we’re not finding a stick,” Javelet said. “We’re just throwing it into there. [We could improve] connecting on passes and taking more shots as we get into the circle.”

TPHS expected competition similar to Otay Ranch in their second opponent, University City High School, according to Javelet.

“They packed the 25 and the circle defensively,” Javelet said. “They’re kind of a feisty team, a little scrappy, so we had to play tough and play through some fouls.”

The match began with UCHS putting some early pressure on TPHS, but strong defense prevented any goals. Soon the momentum switched, and center midfielder Gabriella Jimenez (11) scored off a corner at ten minutes with an assist by center backfielder Farah Farjood (11). In the second half, Farjood and forward Danielle Jackel (11) each scored, ending the game at a 3-0.

“It was going to come down to goal differential at the end of this,” Javelet said.

“There were some teams who were able to put a lot of goals in on some other teams.”

Jimenez said that the Falcons’ corners could have been executed better, but it was difficult to maneuver because of the thick grass on the field.

Javelet expected the final game against rival Scripps Ranch High School to be the most difficult of the three games. The two teams played on Sept. 12 at home, a game Scripps Ranch won 5-2.

“It was really going to [come down to] who could play their game, minimize the touches of the key players, and then really execute on their shots and their corner opportunities,” Javelet said.

The Falcons’ inability to keep control of

the ball resulted in an early goal by Scripps Ranch at around three minutes and another at 16 minutes. Close to halftime, Scripps Ranch received multiple corners, but didn’t manage to get through the Falcons’ goalkeeper.

“It didn’t faze us, thankfully, and we were able to keep them in the midfield and not give them many opportunities,” forward Alayna Tomlinson (12) said. “We have a really strong defense, so when things like that happen early, it’s just kind of freaky.”

In the second half, neither team scored, but TPHS’ defense was incessantly under pressure due to multiple corners and attacks.

Although there were a few opportunities to get on the scoreboard, the Falcons ultimately failed to follow through and were shut out by Scripps Ranch 2-0. “[SRHS] has some good players, they have some good speed, great stick skills, they pass well together, so every time you go up against a good team it’s always a challenging game,” Javelet said.

Farjood said TPHS could have received more balls in the midfield, an integral part of the game. According to Farjood and Tomlinson, the temperature, which was in the mid-80s, as well as the exhaustion from the two previous games, contributed to players’ flagging stamina.

“I just think we really wanted it; the effort was there for us,” Farjood said. “It was just a long day.”

Scripps Ranch coach Jane Morrill said

fatigue also posed a challenge for her players, but they battled through it.

“We were just trying to play our game, and not play the other team’s game,” Morrill said.

According to Tomlinson, players could have taken more shots on goal in the circle.

Javelet said they will continue to work on the execution of their corners and better passing in the future. The team will play in the elimination rounds on Sept. 27.

PHOTOS BY GRACE BRUTON/FALCONER

ATTACK: Gabi Jimenez (11) dribbles the ball past Otay Ranch defenders (TOP). Rylie Pope (19) quickly passes the ball to a nearby teamate through two onlooking defenders (BOTTOM).

VOLLEYBALL Girls volleyball took home the third place trophy against 64 teams from high schools nationwide at the Durango Fall Classic Tournament in Las Vegas, Nev. on Sept. 18 and 19.

Going into the tournament, the Falcons aimed to “three-peat” -win for the third consecutive year -- according to outside defensive specialist Hannah Miller (12).

According to Miller, the competition was fierce, but the team was secure in its skills after being named champions two years running.

“We came in confident, but not overconfident,” Miller said.

The Falcons won all three matches on the first day of the tournament against Bishop O’Gorman High School of Sioux Falls, S.D., Laguna Beach High School of Laguna Beach, Calif., and Durango High School of Las Vegas, Nev. The turning point in their tournament performance occurred on the second day, when the Falcons lost to Assumption High School of Louisville, Ky., 2025, 21-25.

“We had a bad moment when our team chemistry wasn’t flowing,” opposite Mollie Frager said. “Assumption’s defense was scrappy.”

Miller said serve-receive play was the Falcon weak point that contributed to their loss, and when it became clear that they would lose the match against Assumption, the Falcons began “mentally breaking down.”

Miller said it was difficult for the Falcons to bounce back the lapse, and their game play was greatly impacted.

Miller said that although the tournament snapped their 5-game winning streak, the Falcons have taken it as an opportunity to bond and grow. Coach Brennan Dean said he is pleased with the effort the girls put in throughout the tournament, even though they did not bring home first place.

“They played really [well] and fought hard,” Dean said. “I’m just really proud of the way they played.”

The Falcons will play the Canyon Crest Academy Ravens at TPHS on Sept. 24.

By Maya Parella

Full Potential Martial Arts MMMMM •MLearnMselfMdefense •MBoostMyourMconfidence •MEnjoyMfunMworkoutsm One Full Month $20 Only! ...ExpiresM12-1-14. ... .

www.FullPotentialMA.com

....-.....

tphsfalconer.com

sports

the falconer

A23

TAKE A KNEE a concussion each year,” Romines said. “I am used to getting injuries and I suppose I just accept that it comes with the territory.”

Christian Gange acknowledges the possibility of injuries in the future, however.

“If it ever got to a point where I thought any injuries were going to affect my life 20, 30 years from now I would start questioning whether [playing is] the right decision,” Gange said.

However, Gange has had his fair share of injuries.

“I’ve torn the labrums in both of my shoulders … [they] just kept dislocating and when I got surgery I got physical therapy for three months,” Gange said.

“They always hurt and … I’m not as strong as I used to be. I can see that being a long-term thing.”

In the NFL, long-term injuries apparently hastened the end of many professional careers, including the late Chargers linebacker Junior Seau and former fullback Kevin Turner, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Last year, after an increasing number of football-related brain injuries became apparent in retired players, the NFL proposed a $765 million settlement in a concussion-related lawsuit. More than 4,800 former athletes

P

I am definitely always very nervous whenever my kids play any sport ... I couldn’t ever tell them no, though.

Angie Gange suffering from long-term effects of brain injuries, such as dementia, depression and Alzheimer’s, sued the league, accusing it of concealing the dangers of concussions and other possible brain injuries. The lawsuit contended that the NFL was liable for negligence. The $765 million settlement figure was to compensate victims, underwrite research and pay for medical examinations but has since been dismissed by a judge as far less than will be necessary to compensate all affected players.

Additionally, “helmet-to-helmet” collisions are banned in the NFL and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Following an investigation on “helmet-to-helmet” contact by the U.S. Congress, the NFL took a tougher stance on the issue by instituting stiffer fines than had been in place previously, and suspending players from games. The league’s hope is that multi-game suspensions will be more effective deterrents than even six-figure fines, which have failed to deter a few players the league considers “repeat offenders.”

“Especially [with] everything going on in the NFL now, I think its trickling down to the high school level and that makes me feel better, that the equipment is going to be at a higher standard and the trainers and coaches will be more careful,” Angie Gange said.

According to USA Today, more than 20 percent of youth football players have pretended to be in good enough condition to continue playing, succumbing to their coaches’ sometimes dismissive comments about injuries.

“I have definitely said that I was fine when I wasn’t in order to play for my team,” Wahl said.

Coaches, however are “always looking out for players’ best interests,” Gladnick said.

“If you have a real injury, coaches will listen rather than just say ‘Suck it up, kid,’” Wahl said.

Though one in three Americans are concerned with injuries their children could sustain by playing football, another 30 percent of adults say they are less concerned about injury because coaches, parents and players are more informed about possible injury and appropriate precautions, according to the HBO Real Sports/Marist Poll. Many say the future of the NFL and NCAA football may depend on assuaging more parents’ fears about football safety.

By Maya Kota and Fernando Stepensky

PHOTO BY ERIC CUNNINGHAM/FALCONER PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY GRACE BRUTON/FALCONER

���� ������

ing

About one in three American parents say knowing the connection between concussions and long-term brain injury makes them less likely to allow a son to participate in the game. One in five say the connection is the key factor in that decision, according to a HBO Real Sports/Marist Poll.

According to the Associated Press, football is the sport most likely to lead to concussions and is also the sport most disliked by parents.

Concussions occur between 43,000 and 67,000 times per year in high school football across the nation, according to the National Athletics Trainers’ Association. Over the past eight years, brain injuries in child and adolescent athletes has jumped more than 60 percent.

At TPHS, coaches take measures to ensure players have both the proper equipment and knowledge in order to play safe.

“This year we got new helmets that are designed to really stop concussions,” said Christian Gange (12) varsity running back and linebacker. “We always spend extra time learning how to ... avoid any kind of concussion. Our coaches are very on it. [They train us] almost every day on how to make a safe tackle.”

Coaches have made strides to ensure that players understand all of the necessary precautions and considerations in playing football.

“We have meetings in the beginning of the year to make sure everyone understands the dangers and risks of playing football,” offensive and defensive lineman Brain Wahl (12) said. “I know now that I have to be more prepared when it comes to staying hydrated and playing safe.”

Practice techniques have also been altered to ensure player safety.

“We do everything we can to safeguard our players from [getting injured, using everything from] the best equipment to the best techniques,” varsity football coach Ron Gladnick said. “We have modified how we practice. We don’t have as many full-contact practices … and we work on teaching technique.”

Even though the TPHS football team has put forth extensive effort to increase awareness and take safety precautions, parental concerns over the risks of the sport persist.

“My mom is always very worried when it comes to [me playing],” Gange said. “She wouldn’t force me to quit but generally would feel more comfortable if I stopped playing. Most of our moms don’t like to see their sons getting hit all night, but they accept it.”

Gange’s mother, Angie Gange, acknowledged that her son playing such a rough sport is a constant worry, but she would never forbid him to play.

“I am definitely always very nervous whenever my kids play any sport,” Angie said. “As long as they are protected and are smart about it and the coaches are responsible and the players are taught the rules of the game, then I couldn’t ever tell him no.”

Although many parents express fear and worry for their children’s safety, some of the players themselves are not concerned about the health risks.

While the Washington Post reported that over the past five years, girls’ soccer has accounted for the third-highest rate of concussions in high school sports, Veronica Romines (12), varsity soccer goalie, has had four concussions, but remains a confident player.

“I tend not to worry about things that might happen because they also might not h a p p e n , ” Romines said.

“About one or two people usually get

A MESSAGE FROM TPHS ADMINISTRATION:

Things are heating up in a very literal way around campus as school-day temperatures hit record highs. Here are some tips to beat the heat: • During the peak sun hours of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the B building, with its marvelous skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows, will be transformed into a 135,700 square foot toaster oven. If you happen to be sitting in class and, due to the heat, experience any of the following symptoms: dizziness, headaches, melting skin, hallucinations, blurred vision or early onset Alzheimer’s, simply grit your teeth and whisper the Falcon Fight Song several times. If you still require assistance (unlikely), help yourself to a sip of lukewarm maybe-water from one of our three complimentary on-campus fountains. Go! Fight! Win! • If two or more (weak and dishonorable) kids in your class succumb to heat stroke, all 52 students in your class may have to relocate to an air conditioned room, as per (overindulgent and unnecessary) district protocol. In order to reach the haven of the sort-of less-hot E Building, you and your class will have to mass-migrate across the quad, at the open mercy of the cruel and unforgiving afternoon sun. Before you trek across this burning hellscape, consider bringing survival supplies as listed: a 3-day supply of water, a solar-powered radio, a multi-purpose Swiss army knife, a non-perishable collection of canned foods and a weather-resistant nylon tarp (available at the Student Store for $6! $5 with ASB card!). Know this: Not all of you will survive the journey. Do not stop to honor the fallen. Soldier on towards the promised land (sort-of less-hot E Building).

• We should clarify that much of the E Building is not actually air conditioned. Rather, our assistant principals alternate operating a hand-crank 3-blade fan, which then distributes air to four rooms at a rate of one complete rotation per minute. Thank you for your brave work, APs! We also have a few exciting updates to announce: • You may have noticed that the many trees that used to droop limply throughout campus have been ripped wholesale by the root and destroyed, leaving behind yellowing lawns, dusty topsoil and, perhaps most interestingly, an arrangement of large boulders near the outdoor bathrooms not entirely unlike a small-scale replica of Stonehenge. This was definitely a conscious landscaping choice and not an inadvertent result of year-long Prop AA renovations. We simply decided that a campus resembling the barren, lifeless stretches of the Mojave Desert and without discernible distractions, is most conducive to a healthy and productive learning environment.

• Speaking of Prop AA renovations, we are happy to reveal that the tranquil drilling and construction noises you may be hearing during class and the increasingly congested traffic inconveniencing everyone in the mornings are the direct consequences of a thrilling development; we are building a new and improved weight room! We realize that the one thing every TPHS student wishes for at the end of each school day is a weight room that could meet all of their personal fitness needs — we have heard your prayers, TPHS, and we are answering them! Using millions of dollars granted to us by the state of California — enough for several hundred portable air conditioners, but why think inside the box, right? — we will soon provide, among a myriad of other exciting exercise equipment, not 10, not 20, but 300 Shake Weights, ready for use in one calendar year. Start counting down the days, Falcons!

Except for the thing about it being as hot as the seventh circle of hell and the thing about the million dollar weight room and all of the other things, basically. These are not jokes.

Know the facts. Get angry.