September 2021 | The Evergreen, Greenhill School

Volume 57, Issue 1

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C O M I N G

Evergreen

September 29, 2021

C O M I N G

Everything Greenhill

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Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

Homecoming

Back to School

Afghanistan

Half of Upper School students are experiencing their first Homecoming Week after last year’s curtailed activities due to COVID-19, p. 6

Greenhill studens, some of whom haven’t been on campus for 18 months, now encounter eased COVID-19 protocols, p.8

Students born after 9/11 process the chaotic end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, p. 10

Informing Greenhill since 1966

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News Graphic by Khushi Chhaya

Pooja Sanghvi

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pper School students returned to classes in August under a mandatory mask policy that was less rigorous than last year’s. Some students have extended that more casual approach to broader campus COVID-19 protocols, undermining efforts to keep students and faculty safe, community members said.

The new campus policy requires students to wear masks over their nose and mouth inside but gives people freedom to take their masks off outside.

Desks in classrooms can now be three feet apart as opposed to six feet, the result of updated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dallas Health and Human Services.

Additionally, there is no longer a virtual learning option unless a student is placed in quarantine or is identified as a close contact of a person who tested positive for COVID-19.

The new protocols have given more freedom to students, allowing them to wear a plain, solid color, threeply mask of their choice.

Along with the expanded freedom has been an uptick in the number of students who don’t follow the rules, according to sophomore Jadon Lee. “There’s definitely people that don’t wear their masks inside, or they wear their masks underneath their noses,” Lee said.

Students are not the only ones who fail to follow COVID-19 safety protocols, senior Chloe Merriman said.

“The teachers sometimes say something to the [unmasked] students, but usually they don’t,” Merriman said.

Some teachers are among those flouting guidelines, students said.

Multiple students described a teacher who frequently walks around indoors in the Upper School with their mask beneath their chin. These students asked to remain anonymous to avoid a conflict with the faculty member.

outside doesn’t seem to be lessening, maybe it turns out we aren’t allowed to take our masks off outside unless we are eating,” said Worcester. “I also see a point where, as more of our community has the ability to get the vaccine, it’s possible that at some point, we can make the policy maskoptional.”

Transition Period Students are required to maintain masking and distance indoors but are often seen sitting close together or standing shoulder to shoulder without masks outside.

“It definitely can be confusing and hard to understand when we are really serious and when people can have a little bit more leeway,” said Upper School History Department Chair Amy Bresie ‘96.

In some areas such as Rose Hall and the Lecture Hall, students sit one seat away from each other. But in classrooms,

lot of teachers to make that switch, just as hard as it was for the students to go from having a very open campus to one that was super regimented.”

Despite the difficulties of enforcing these rules for teachers, both Bresie and Martinez agree that if these regulations keep students in school, they will implement them without hesitation.

“After experiencing a year of hybrid learning, I don’t think it’s as beneficial to students, so I’m of the opinion that students need to be in person,” said Martinez. “And if that means creating an ‘unfair’ requirement to wear a mask, then I think that’s a small price to pay to have in-person school.”

Lower Divisions Middle School students were recently affected by COVID-19 after a couple of fifth graders tested positive.

Pandemic Fatigue Weariness with pandemic protocols among Greenhill community members mirrors a larger national trend.

After surviving a year of hybrid learning and stringent protocols, people were ready to start this school year with a sense of normalcy. However, because of rising COVID-19 cases resulting from the delta variant, complete normalcy wasn’t possible, said Head of Upper School Trevor Worcester.

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The fatigue of the pandemic has hit the Upper School students. We know that there are breakthrough infections for vaccinated people, and we know that vaccinated people could still carry a viral load that could do something.”

Since mid-August, more than 1,000 people in Dallas County and about 140,000 people nationwide have tested positive for COVID-19 daily, according to the CDC COVID Data Tracker.

“The fatigue of the pandemic has hit the Upper School students,” said Worcester. “It becomes the idea that ‘I’m vaccinated,’ and yet here we are. We know that there are breakthrough infections for vaccinated people, and we know that vaccinated people could still carry a viral load that could do something.”

Worcester says mask policies and safety regulations are subject to change throughout the year depending on how compliant the community is with the guidelines.

“There could come a point where, if our community spread increases tremendously, or if the community spread

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

MASKS ON OR OFF: Sophomores socializing in the Student Center during a break while eating snacks with masks off.

on soft furniture and outside, students sit directly next to each other, without restrictions. Many students echo this feeling of confusion.

“I like the idea of having one grade every time we go in Rose Hall; too many people in Rose Hall would be worrisome,” said Merriman. “But the protocols just don’t make much sense to me.”

Upper School history teacher Adrian Martinez disagrees.

“We have a finite amount of space and a lot of students on campus, so there’s bound to be some inconsistencies,” Martinez said. “As long as the school works to mitigate or limit the occurrence of those exceptions, overall, as long as the kids are able to come to school and be in person, that’s the overriding concern.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, teachers have had to take on the extra burden of enforcing the safety of students and enforcing these regulations.

“It’s definitely a different role,” said Bresie. “I never thought in a million years that part of my job would be making sure that everybody’s nose was covered. It’s surreal.”

Especially at a school like Greenhill where students are given freedom to express themselves, enforcing strict rules was an adjustment for Martinez as well.

“To go from such a relaxed and open environment to one that had to be much more rigid and controlled, it’s tough and takes getting used to,” said Martinez. “It was hard for a

While Director of Student Health Services Katie Trimmer and the contact-tracing team determined which students were at greatest risk, fifth graders were asked to stay home for a day.

However, fifth-grade team leader Rachel Ainsworth says students have been cautious and vigilant in following guidelines, which for them includes masking outside and inside unless they are eating.

“It’s the same situation we were in last year,” said Ainsworth. “Except everyone’s moved on from the pandemic, and we are still stuck where we were.”

Preschool and Lower School are in a similar situation, as they are not eligible to get vaccinated, so both divisions have to follow more stringent masking policies.

“It’s jarring to see this freedom we have contrasted with the need for extra protection of our youngest little friends,” said Bresie. “It makes me nervous sometimes.”

At the end of the day, Worcester says the choices an individual makes, whether to wear their mask or follow guidelines, impacts everyone.

“We are a community, and we need to act like one,” said Worcester. “We are fortunate that we are the one division where everyone can be vaccinated. Every other division in the school doesn’t have that luxury. That’s something that we need to take responsibility of, and we need to work on adhering to our protocols until we know that everyone else can get vaccinated.”

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Evergreen Ever the

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Hark: No Vaccine Mandate Now Valerie Xu

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accine mandates have become a flashpoint in the national debate over COVID-19 protocols, but so far Greenhill and its peer schools have resisted imposing such a requirement on students and faculty.

Despite the Food and Drug Administration’s August approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for people 16 and older, vaccine hesitancy remains a national problem. That’s especially true in rural states and even urban areas like Dallas County, where the vaccination rate for people 12 and older is only 59%, compared with the national average of 64% as of Sept. 17.

Greenhill students and faculty returned to in-person classes this fall without a vaccine requirement.

Head of School Lee Hark says the school is taking every possible precaution to ensure student safety, but a vaccine mandate would only create an additional burden for faculty members.

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I wanted to be a good citizen and make sure that I am healthy for the greater good of my community.”

“I did not want to issue another ultimatum to our employees,” said Hark. “They‘ve been through a lot, and I didn‘t want to add to that difficulty and strain our employees’ relationship with the school.”

Hark also noted that many peer schools in the Dallas Fort-Worth area have not mandated vaccines. Although this did not dictate Greenhill’s decision, implementing a mask mandate would mean that Greenhill would be “alone as an institution,“ Hark said.

Nevertheless, as the delta variant of the novel coronavirus continues to spread, vaccine mandates have gained acceptance. Los Angeles’ school board recently voted to implement a vaccine mandate for all students 12 and older.

President Joe Biden has issued a vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 employees, which has already sparked opposition and legal challenges. The federal mandate could eventually result in a vaccine requirement for Greenhill employees.

Hark says that a vaccine mandate for students is not necessary considering the already high vaccination rates among Greenhill students.

According to a recent school internal survey, 86% of eligible Greenhill students have been vaccinated. This data is even more pronounced among Greenhill faculty members, who have an overall vaccine rate of 93%, according to the internal survey.

“The rate of vaccination for our employees is very high, so mandating it didn‘t feel particularly useful in that respect,” said Hark. “We‘ve continued to do everything we can to encourage people to get vaccinated, and our employees have responded to that.”

Last spring, Greenhill partnered with Carpe Diem Health PLLC, a local clinic, to administer on-campus vaccines at the Marshall Family Performing Arts Center.

This opportunity was opened to all Greenhill students 16 and

older, employees and family members of students and employees.

Students like sophomore Jeannette Yang believe that, especially with cases rising across the country, a vaccine mandate should be implemented at Greenhill as an extra precaution.

“I think it is our duty to get vaccinated, and I think a vaccine mandate will help Greenhill as a community achieve that duty,” said Yang.

Junior Madison Rojas, who received the PfizerBioNTech COVID-19 vaccine over the summer, agrees. Although she thinks Greenhill has done a good job of ensuring student safety during the pandemic, Rojas said that, given that the majority of Greenhill students are not eligible to be vaccinated, it is still important to ensure the health and safety of those students through prevention methods like a vaccine mandate.

“Obviously, if you have a medical reason for why you can‘t get the vaccine, that‘s totally valid,” said Rojas.

“But if you‘re just not getting it based on your own will, then I don‘t see a reason for why you would do that.”

Above all, Rojas says that getting vaccinated is about a moral obligation to the safety of her community and family.

“I wanted to be a good citizen and make sure that I am healthy for the greater good of my community,” said Rojas. “I wanted to be a role model, especially to my little sister.”

Although Rojas says that certain companies and employees might be impacted by the FDA’s approval of the vaccine, she doesn’t believe that there will be much sway among Greenhill students who are still hesitant to take the vaccine.

Especially with so much politicization and misinformation about vaccines, Yang says that even when reputable agencies like the FDA approve the vaccine, people are sometimes too indoctrinated to change their opinions.

“I don‘t really think the FDA changed much for them,” said Yang. “Once people have their mind set on something, they really don‘t want to change it. That‘s why I think the mandates really need to happen, because you‘re not going to be able to just convince someone that the vaccine is safer.”

Hark says he understands the concerns of students and parents who worry the lack of a vaccine mandate might impact the safety of the Greenhill community. People’s choices have “enormous costs for people in the school,” he said.

Nevertheless, under the current climate, where vaccine mandates are not mandatory in most educational institutions and vaccination rates are already high among both student and faculty members, Hark says that he does not want to “impose an extra mandate onto the Greenhill community.”

As of now, Greenhill is taking all the safety and health precautions necessary, like masks and contact tracing, while stopping short of a vaccine mandate for faculty members and students.

Despite the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic, Hark says the overall positivity on campus from students and faculty members makes him hopeful for this year.

“Greenhill’s community is truly special,” said Hark.

“This is not to say that we will not face many challenges

Disaster in Haiti The island-nation of Haiti remains in political turmoil in the aftermath of the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moise. He was shot 12 times inside his home, along with his wife, Martine Moise, who survived. The police have arrested 26 Colombian and two Haitian suspects. Without a designated successor, multiple people have claimed power. The U.N. Security Council and U.S. government have pushed for a new round of elections. Concerns have been raised that with food insecurity among the general population along with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and political violence that the elections will not be free and fair.

In the aftermath of the president’s assassination, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on Aug. 14, leaving devastation across the country. More than 2,200 Haitians have died and more than 300 people are still missing. Infrastructure sustained extensive damage and more than 5,000 houses collapsed. On Sept. 19, there was a 4.2 magnitude earthquake that added to the

COVI D Variants The lambda variant, which was first discovered in Peru, poses a threat to many countries around the world. It has spread rapidly across South America and has reached the United States, with over 200 cases reported in California. The lambda variant was declared a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization in July, though the threat level is still less than the delta and alpha variants.

The mu variant, which emerged after the lambda variant, is most rampant in Chile, Colombia and Peru. Over 2,000 cases have been reported within the United States. It was formally recognized as a “variant of interest” by the WHO in August. Though it ranks lower than the delta variant in terms of threat level, the mutations pose a danger for the future. Experts are worried that the variant will affect vaccine efficacy.

UN General Assembly The 76th session of the U.N. General Assembly opened Sept. 14. The weeklong meeting of the General Assembly, the world’s biggest diplomatic convocation, took place in New York City with over 100 world leaders and high-ranking representatives. It’s a contrast to the almost entirely virtual General Assembly of 2020, but access to the 16-acre U.N. complex in Manhattan remains strictly limited, with mandatory mask-wearing and other pandemic-prevention measures.

Abdulla Shahid of the Maldives, who was sworn in as General Assembly president on Sept. 14, set the theme for the assembly as: “Building resilience through hope – to recover from COVID-19, rebuild sustainability, respond to the needs of the planet, respect the rights of people, and revitalize the United Nations.”

Notably, the new Taliban government in Afghanistan on Sept. 20 submitted the nomination of an ambassador to represent the country at the United Nations. Their choice, Suhail Shaheen, is the organization’s spokesperson. The post is currently occupied

by Ghulam Isaczai, a representative of Afghanistan’s failed, U.S.-backed government. Afghanistan joins Myanmar at the center of a major focus of the assembly: determining the legitimate international representatives of countries with disputed governing authorities.

Photo courtesy of Tia Chatterjee QUICK JAB: Tia Chatterjee receiving the vaccine at the Marshall Family Performing Arts Center after FDA approval.

4 News Evergreen Wednesday, September 29, 2021 Ever Upper School Biology Curriculum Evolves the

Saara Bidiwala

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hile Upper and Middle School students await the construction of a new STEM center to replace the old Agnich Science Building, a revamped science curriculum is already in place.

“We actually went through a designthinking process that allowed us to look at the science program and how it relates to the math program and cross-divisionally,” Upper School Science Department Chair Treavor Kendall said. “We’ve been looking at the science program from many different angles with the goal to improve it and get it to a place where it’s accessible to all students.”

The new Biology course epitomizes these changes by integrating more accessible and relevant issues, teachers said.

“It directly helps students ‘lead authentic, purposeful lives,’” Upper School science teacher Hennah Abubaker said, alluding to the school’s mission statement.

As part of the strategic plan that Greenhill unveiled last year, the Science Department has been trying to foster more innovation – an element of the school’s core value of excellence.

Four years ago, the Science Department decided to change the sequence of the Upper School science courses. Before, high school students took Chemistry in their freshman year, Biology as sophomores and Physics as juniors. Now, incoming freshmen take Physics, sophomores take Chemistry and juniors take Biology.

“There’s a brand of physics that’s very conceptual and very accessible, so not only does it give you a positive physics experience, but it really sets the foundation for chemistry and biology to follow,” Kendall explained. “Once folks have that physics foundation, and then they get the chemistry, the biology that we can offer is more what we call a modern biology, which is moving towards areas in molecular biology and areas that tend to be a little more quantitative versus descriptive.”

Abubaker, Barrett Ide and Sonia Chin led the junior biology restructuring. While Ide has been teaching biology at Greenhill for 22 years, Abubaker and Chin are new teachers in the Upper School – Abubaker coming from the Middle School Science Department and Chin from Friends’ Central School in Pennsylvania.

When the Science Department decided to teach juniors biology, Ide started trying to find ways to better integrate the class with other subjects. Ide says Upper School English Department Chair Joel Garza suggested a book called “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer as a reading for biology students.

After Abubaker and Chin were hired, Ide says it was as if the stars aligned.

Three books anchor the Biology course this year: “Braiding Sweetgrass;” “Fatal

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

“BIO HOUR”: The biology team is teaching students to critically analyze the world around them through free-thinking.

Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the TwentyFirst Century” by Dorothy Roberts; and “The Violence of the Green Revolution” by Vandana Shiva. Compared to traditional textbooks, these books are written in narrative form, and contain fewer diagrams and definitions.

“I didn’t think that there would be a lot of books for biology,” junior Viraja Metta said. “There actually are, and they’re pretty good. ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ talks about the different ways that people perceive science, and it’s really different.”

The three biology teachers explained that part of the reason for the change was to be more inclusive and pertinent to today’s world problems for students. Part of the inspiration for this course was also Chin’s work at her old school.

“I find that biology is really important for a lot of world problems,” Chin said.

“Last year with the pandemic, I decided to do something really different. I basically thought about what major problems I would

Photo Illustration by Nate Stitt NARRATIVE FRAMEWORK: The reworked biology class draws on three nonfiction books that offer alternative views on the core scientific issues that students learn about.

like students to understand at the end of my class and be able to think critically about to go forward in their lives.”

The biology team is using a sciencebacked technique called “culturally responsive teaching,” which places emphasis on the different perspectives students bring into the classroom.

Similar to Chin’s curriculum at Friends’ Central, the Biology curriculum this year is grouped into three main topics: infectious pathogens and human disease; human natural history and evolution; and ecology, energy and climate change.

In the classes, Abubaker, Chin and Ide emphasize teaching students how to ask questions. Every Friday, the classes have a “Bio Hour,” where students research a topic of interest to them and develop questions related to that topic to help them think critically about the world around them.

“I think that we would do better if we could ask better questions, and I’m excited that this course is helping students realize, from the very beginning, that they can ask their own questions,” Ide said.

Junior Helen Jackson says the activity took

some getting used to.

“I didn’t really like [Bio Hour] in the beginning because [my teacher] did really open-ended questions, and, as a person who likes structure, I was not sure what to do with them,” Jackson said. “But as the questions got more detailed, it got a lot better.”

The Biology course is unique in how it assesses students at the end of units. The teachers are giving students free choice for the format of their assessments, so long as the assessments demonstrate students’ understanding of the topic. Abubaker used this system before

at her old school and has noticed a major difference in students’ reception of what they’re being taught.

“If they want to make a bulletin board,

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I think that we would do better if we could ask better questions, and I’m excited that this course is helping students realize, from the very beginning, that they can ask their own questions.”

they can make a bulletin board. If they want to make a 3D model, they can make a 3D model,” Abubaker said. “Essentially, what they have to do with what they [make] is annotate it and tell us why it explains what it is that they’re trying to explain. It’s really beautiful because the student gets to finally connect with science in a way that serves them.”

While this assessment model might seem less rigorous on a surface level, it entails much more critical thinking and perhaps even more effort than a traditional assessment would, Ide said.

“The biology teaching team that we have assembled has a tremendous amount of expertise, and my students have to convince me that they understand what they’re talking about,” Ide said. “We know what we’re talking about, and we can tell when students don’t.”

Though students are the intended learners, all three of the biology teachers have said that they are learning, too.

“We’re learning from each other, and it’s really nice because the kids get to see that as adults we’re still learning,” Abubaker said.

The common goal for Kendall and the three biology teachers for this year is to dispel the phrase “I’m not a science person.”

“We feel everybody is a science person,” Kendall said. “You may not go on to continue to study science in college or university, but we just hope that, after the three to four years that you do take science at Greenhill for, you come away energized, curious and literate in science.”

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

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S.B. 8: The Beginning of the End for Roe

Cam Kettles

Payton Blalock

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n abortion ban was the reason Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was so devastating. Her ascension to the bench solidified not just a conservative majority but a sure conservative majority, even when Chief Justice John Roberts occasionally sides with his more liberal colleagues.

Texas Senate Bill 8, better known as the heartbeat bill, is the logical conclusion to years of pro-life groups slowly chipping away at women’s right to abortions in Texas combined with a far-right majority on the bench.

Even though 77% of the country believes courts should uphold Roe v. Wade and protect women’s right to abortions, the Supreme Court refused to grant opponents of the bill an emergency request to block S.B. 8 on a 5-4 split, with Chief Justice Roberts in the minority.

The bill, which provides no exceptions for rape or incest, outlaws abortions after cardiac activity is detectable or after six weeks of pregnancy.

At six weeks, many women don’t know they are pregnant yet, which makes this bill an almost complete ban on abortions. For women to have time to make any choice at all, they would have to be tracking their menstrual cycle very closely, recognize that they are pregnant immediately, have time to plan a trip to an abortion clinic, travel there and secure the payment. And that’s if they automatically knew what they wanted to do.

This is not the first time Texas and other states have passed similar bills, but until now, federal courts have struck them down because of their glaring contradiction with the precedent set by Roe v. Wade that criminal abortion laws violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, “which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman’s qualified right to terminate her pregnancy.”

But this heartbeat bill is different.

Instead of empowering government officials to enforce the law, S.B. 8 allows citizens to file civil suits against anyone who provides or aids in providing an abortion and explicitly prohibits official enforcement.

This means anyone, including a taxi driver or a friend, could be sued. If successful, the plaintiff would be awarded $10,000.

The bill is practically immune from lower courts’ legal scrutiny because courts can only stop the government’s enforcement of laws – they cannot nullify the law itself.

Because S.B. 8 relies on citizens instead of

A Pro-Choice Conservative Perspective

officials, courts are unable to block it.

Worse, if someone wanted to raise a constitutional challenge against S.B. 8, they would have to sue a Texas state officer for enforcing it because the “sovereign immunity” doctrine protects the state itself from being sued. But Texas state officers don’t enforce the law, so there’s no one to sue.

The reason why I have to explain the timeline of early pregnancy and the legal technicalities hidden in the U.S. penal code is because laws that can radically alter or end women’s lives depend on the code.

This technique to create an ironclad abortion ban is likely to be used in other Republican states as well. At least seven states have begun the process of drafting their own versions of S.B. 8. Without the Supreme Court to overturn them, these bills will withstand legal challenges and subjugate women in every state.

Just because the enforcement isn’t official in nature doesn’t mean the impact hasn’t been severe. Texas abortion clinics have already had to turn away hundreds of patients because cardiac activity has been detected.

Independent of a woman’s right to decide, women are excellent judges of their needs and capabilities. If a woman is pregnant and doesn’t want to be, she is very likely to seek out unlicensed abortion providers in a far more dangerous environment. Old and seemingly resolved fears of women dying from unsafe or botched abortions have automatically reemerged. Many will now be put in such a position simply because they didn’t know when they would no longer be able to access a legal abortion.

In October, the Supreme Court will hear a case from Mississippi, Dobbs v.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

This case allows the court to reverse the precedent of Roe v. Wade entirely. This ruling is expected no later than June 2022.

If the Supreme Court’s ruling on S.B. 8 is any indication, the right to bodily autonomy for women, even in states where it still exists, will be revoked by this time next year.

few weeks ago, Texas shocked the nation by passing a law that prohibits women from getting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and provides bounties to citizens who turn in anyone who provides or facilitates an abortion.

Texas joins more than a dozen states that have recently implemented highly restrictive abortion-related measures. The 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court has made laws like this significantly easier to pass.

As a historically conservative state and a state where around three-quarters of the population identify as Christian, it’s not much of a surprise that Texas was next to pass such an extreme law on abortion.

But that doesn’t make it any less appalling to those who don’t side with the majority.

Laws about abortion are highly controversial no matter which state you live in, and they tend to bring out the most extreme sides of people. I find it interesting that conservatives and liberals are so strictly divided when it comes to abortion, especially when one plan regarding abortion is so well-suited for both parties.

Being pro-choice should appeal to both Democrats and Republicans for different reasons. For Democrats, being pro-choice means protecting reproductive health, rights and justice. It means empowering women and ensuring that they get to choose what happens to their own bodies.

To put this in terms that appeal to more conservative people like myself, being pro-choice means ensuring religious freedom for all and preventing the government from invading your personal life and making choices for you.

Conservatives value personal liberty more than almost anything, and many have expressed it recently by refusing to wear masks in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. They have publicly stood up for their right to choose whether to cover their faces to prevent the spread of a contagious virus, yet they have taken the exact opposite stance when it comes to the right to get an abortion. It’s simply hypocritical to only value personal freedom when it’s convenient for you.

Fiscally, it is also more logical for conservatives to be pro-choice, because it prevents women from having children

that they can’t afford to support without heavier taxation of the upper- and uppermiddle class.

Almost 50% of children living with single mothers live in poverty, and these numbers are sure to increase if abortion is effectively banned for women in Texas.

Conservative ideology prioritizes people working to provide for themselves, which isn’t possible if they have to stay home with a child that they didn’t want or couldn’t afford in the first place.

A common misconception among Republicans is that being pro-choice means supporting abortion. As someone who identifies as a Christian and a conservative, I’ve grappled with this assumption for a long time. In reality, being pro-choice doesn’t mean that you like abortion or would ever consider getting one for yourself. It simply means that you acknowledge others can practice their religious freedom and make their own decisions, just like you get to make yours.

It's completely acceptable for people to have a biblical standpoint that opposes abortion. It only becomes unacceptable when people try to force their religious and political points of view on others who don’t feel the same way.

Outlawing abortion also doesn’t stop abortions from occurring; it just stops them from occurring safely. Almost all illegal abortions are performed under unsafe environments, and it puts people at risks that can be avoided. It’s kind of like the saying, “If you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns.” The same applies here. Outlawing abortion will only stop people from getting legal abortions, but it doesn’t prevent abortion as a whole.

Conservative ideologies closely align with the right to choose and suggest that the government should respect the privacy of its people. It’s highly hypocritical for conservatives to believe in privacy and freedom if it doesn’t extend to the right for women to control their own lives and their own bodies.

Graphic by Jothi Gupta

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Hollywood on the Hill: A Greenhill Homecoming “With the time crunch, we are restricted and have to work very hard to pull off what we want to achieve,” said Najari.

The Student Council has sought further student involvement by hosting Upper School decoration days on the weekends.

“There are so many decorations that need to be made for each pod to look really good,” said Higgins.

“It takes a lot of people to get that done in such a short period of time.”

Sophia Li

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OVID-19 has forced drastic changes in student life and disrupted many community traditions.

A year after the onset of the pandemic, the Upper School Student Council is striving to restore normalcy through Homecoming Week festivities.

The Homecoming Dance is set to take place on Oct. 1. Considering Homecoming’s early date, preparations by Dean of Students Jack Oros and the Student Council started early.

“We had a starting meeting in the summer a week or two before school,” said Student Body Vice President Jasmine Najari. “Student Council comes together, everyone comes in with their ideas for the Homecoming theme, and we boil it down to the top three themes.”

Following the same procedure as previous years, the theme was decided by an Upper School student vote. Once the ballots were counted, “Hollywood” emerged as the 2021 Homecoming theme.

“After the theme has been decided, we have three weeks to put up decorations before Oct. 1,” said Najari.

In the past, Homecoming Week was filled with sports games, social events and cross-grade level competitions.

This year will be no different.

Each day, people dress up according to a certain theme.

There are grade-vs.-grade games known as Color Wars.

Friday lunch features Turnabout Games in which girls play touch football and boys play volleyball.

On Friday night, Oct. 1, the varsity football team will take on Coram Deo Academy in the Homecoming game.

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With the time crunch, we are restricted and have to work very hard to pull off what we want to achieve.”

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The greatest challenge is knowing what is the best thing to do for the students. Do we get rid of it completely? Do we continue on?”

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

Since COVID-19 forced the cancellation of Homecoming events last year, this year’s celebration feels particularly special for many students.

“Half the Upper School has never had a Homecoming, and it’s been two years for everyone else,” said Student Body Secretary Ashton Higgins. “I am excited about having all of these traditions finally back on campus for my last year in the Upper School.”

The unusually early date for this year’s Homecoming put the Student Council on a strict timeline.

Members of Student Council say the effort to provide an enjoyable Homecoming experience while ensuring a safe environment made the planning process especially complicated.

“The greatest challenge is knowing what is the best thing to do for the students,” said Oros. “Do we get rid of it completely? Do we continue on?”

Oros and the Student Council decided to not require masks for outdoor Homecoming events, but masks will still be required for all indoor activities.

For previous Homecoming dances, Greenhill would rent out a ballroom or event center, but Oros and the Student Council decided to take an uncommon approach this year to enhance safety.

“Instead of being in a ballroom, we will have the dance outdoors around campus,” said Oros. “It’s been a long time since we had a dance on campus.”

Despite all the challenges posed by the pandemic, Student Council members say they have high hopes for the outcome of their hard work after a tumultuous year.

“Homecoming Week is a really special time where we come together to decorate the school, dress up every day and promote school spirit all week,” said Higgins. “I hope that excitement translates into a fun Homecoming Week, game and dance.”

Photos by Jothi Gupta and the Evergreen Photo Team

WORK IN PROGRESS: Upper School students collaborate on Hollywood-related decorations for the Homecoming Week.

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Evergreen Ever the

Features

7

A Warrior for Justice Nancy Hollander '61 Receives Distinguished Alumni Award

Photos courtesy of STX films and Nancy Hollander

INTERNATIONAL STAGE: The criminal justice work of Nancy Hollander '61 is highlighted by a major Hollywood film, "The Mauritanian," released earlier this year. Academy Awardwinning actress Jodie Foster, left, playing Nancy Hollander in the film. Hollander, right, has carved out a specialty in national security cases during her career as a defense attorney.

Isabel Martinez

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n her career as an acclaimed defense attorney and human rights advocate, Nancy Hollander ’61 has drawn on core values she embraced as a high school student at Greenhill.

“We did these service projects at Greenhill, and it opened my eyes to people who weren’t like me,” Hollander said.

These encounters set Hollander on a path to being honored with Greenhill School's annual Distinguished Alumni Award.

Hollander spent only her final three years of high school at Greenhill. After graduating from Greenhill in 1961, she attended the University of Michigan.

She studied pre-med before switching to sociology and graduating in1965.

Another decade would pass before Hollander found her life’s calling. In 1978, she graduated magna cum laude from the University of New Mexico School of Law and began the work that would elevate her to international prominence.

Earlier this year, a major Hollywood film highlighted Hollander’s work on behalf of an African man seized by U.S. authorities as a suspected al-Qaida terrorist and held for 14 years without charges at the notorious U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The movie, “The Mauritanian,” tells the true story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a citizen of the northwest African nation of Mauritania, whose case was eventually taken up by Hollander. In the film, Hollander is played

by Academy Award-winning actress Jodie Foster.

“Slahi was the most tortured person in Guantanamo Bay,” Hollander said. “He wrote down his experience at Guantanamo in a diary, and that was later published as a book called ‘The Guantanamo Diary.’”

Hollander’s pursuit of justice on behalf of Slahi — and her success in winning his release in 2016 — were manifestations of her Greenhill experience. She left campus with

a desire to help people as much as possible and make the world a better place, Hollander said.

Although the release of “The Mauritanian” has showcased Hollander’s work to a larger audience, her representation of Slahi is only a fraction of her decades of work as a high-profile criminal defense attorney and human rights activist. She has also argued and won a religious freedom case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“

Slahi was the most tortured person in Guantanamo Bay. He wrote down his experience at Guantanamo in a diary, and that was later published as a book called ‘The Guantanamo Diary.’”

Her professional home since 1980 has been with the firm of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias & Ward P.A., in Albuquerque, New Mexico. With Hollander at the forefront, the firm has built an international reputation for representing individuals and organizations accused of crimes, with a specialty in national security cases.

Hollander has been interviewed many times on "Court TV," "Oprah" and other shows. Among her high-profile clients is former U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who leaked a huge trove of documents on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were published by Wikileaks and other outlets in 2010-2011.

Manning was convicted of violating the Espionage Act and other crimes and was sentenced to 35 years in prison during the Obama presidency. Hollander was the lead counsel on Manning’s appeal and clemency petition. In early 2017, Manning was released after President Obama commuted her sentence.

The case at the heart of “The

Mauritanian” stemmed from the U.S. government’s “war on terror” following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Slahi was taken into U.S. custody because of several factors, including his past travel to Afghanistan in the early 1990s and the fact that his cousin was a spiritual adviser to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Slahi was tortured and interrogated at CIA “black site” prisons in Jordan and Afghanistan before his transfer to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Hollander said.

He was ultimately accused by U.S. officials of recruiting three 9/11 hijackers, but criminal charges were never filed.

“The torture that happened to Mohamedou in the movie—it was much worse, and all of that is real,” Hollander said in an interview with Best Lawyers earlier this year. “Every bit has been corroborated by U.S. sources. They let his book get published with all the torture because it had all been confirmed.”

“

I continue to represent Mr. al-Nashiri in European courts, as he has never been correctly tried by any government.

He has been in prison for 19 years now, being tortured in CIA ‘black sites’ for five of them and now in Guantanamo.”

Slahi discussed his case in an interview with the Irish Independent newspaper earlier this year.

“Personally, I think my arrest was a case of convenience: you know there’s this guy, the Americans described me as smart, he has friends we are interested in, he went to Afghanistan, he speaks languages, he lived in Europe, he went to Canada and you can arrest him,” Slahi said. “We don’t need a warrant, we don’t need a judge, he is not an American citizen, he is not a European citizen, we can do whatever we want with

him. The least we can get with him is get some information we badly need in this so-called war on terror. You know I had no value to them, no value as a human being.”

Hollander has said publicly that she hopes the movie depicting her work in the Slahi case would rekindle American interest in the prisoners still being held at Guantanamo Bay, a facility that President Obama had pledged to close. Yet the facility remains open with dozens of prisoners who have never been charged.

Among those prisoners is another Hollander client: Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian citizen who allegedly planned the bombing of USS Cole in Yemeni waters in 2000, an attack in which 17 U.S. sailors died. Al-Nashiri was captured by the CIA in November 2002.

Unlike Slahi, al-Nashiri is facing charges at Guantanamo that could result in the death penalty.

Hollander has won two cases in the European Court of Human Rights that have provided funds to al-Nashiri’s family and accountability for his torture by the US government.

“I continue to represent Mr. al-Nashiri in European courts, as he has never been correctly tried by any government,” Hollander said. “He has been in prison for 19 years now, being tortured in CIA ‘black sites’ for five of them and now in Guantanamo.”

Hollander has noted that al-Nashiri is only the latest in a series of Al Qaeda-linked figures accused by U.S. authorities of being the “mastermind” of the USS Cole attack.

It’s also another in a long list of cases that Hollander has accepted to ensure that the rule of law and justice get a fair hearing—ideals that grew out of her embrace of service to others as a Greenhill student.

“Service to the community is what I am all about now,” Hollander said. “I always have been about helping people.”

8 Features

Evergreen Ever the

Avery Franks

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idway through the summer, Greenhill administrators were preparing for a school year in which students and faculty would return to a pre-COVID-19 normal, or at least something close to it. And then the delta variant hit, and a return to many of last year’s COVID-19 protocols became the new reality.

The Evergreen recently interviewed Head of School Lee Hark about pandemic challenges, Lee Hark future plans and other subjects.

EVERGREEN: What kind of planning and adjusting went on over the summer?

HARK: I don’t think any of us were expecting to have to spend the last month before school back in COVID triage mode, but that’s obviously where we found ourselves. At the same time, we knew we wanted the school year to feel as much like the normal year as possible, like operating the dining room, not requiring masks outdoors, having some gatherings, and having fans at sporting events. The biggest change is not having remote learning. That was a commitment we made pretty early on, and we’ve fortunately been able to stick with it, at least so far.

EVERGREEN: How flexible will the COVID-19 safety protocols be as the school year progresses?

HARK: We are in wait-and-see mode on this. Our hope is that, when the vaccine is rolled out, and depending on how far they go with eligibility, we’d be able to continue to move in the direction of a more normal year.

Having 45% of our student body ineligible to be vaccinated at this point makes it really complicated. I’m hopeful that as more and

Graphic by Emma Nguyen and Khushi Chhaya

Head of School Lee Hark more of our students become eligible to be vaccinated, we can do more than we’re doing now.

EVERGREEN: How will the school focus attention on social-emotional health, especially after the impacts of COVID-19?

HARK: We know we’re going to need to put resources to that. Last year was a very difficult year for a lot of students, especially those who are struggling with anxiety, depression, and feelings of stress and isolation. We need to put more resources into our counseling program to make sure that we’ve got the staff there to be able to help our students.

We’re going to continue to look at things that might reduce causes of stress.

For example, the move to a block schedule in Middle and Upper School was as much a health and wellness decision as it was a teaching and learning decision. The idea was to slow the pace of the day down a little bit for those students. We’ll continue to look for things like that that are going to help support our students’ health and wellbeing.

EVERGREEN: How has the 2025 Strategic Plan begun to be implemented

this year?

HARK: One of the things that we’ve begun to work on is looking at our curriculum and making sure that the linkages between grades and across grades are really strong, while at the same time maintaining as much teacher autonomy as we possibly can. We want our teachers to be able to teach in the way that they want and put their personal spin on the class. We also want it to be a consistent experience so that students in similar sections or across grade levels have similar experiences.

A major part of the strategic plan is focused on strengthening our community.

[Director of Equity and Inclusion Marcus] Ingram’s work supporting Plural Commons is a big part of that, particularly the Plural Commons ventures. The other major initiative that’s already begun is the construction of the new Science and Innovation Center. We’re making great headway on that project.

EVERGREEN: What is the administration going to do to try to bridge the gaps between grade levels, especially between sixth and seventh grade and during the transition to high school?

HARK: That’s what we call vertical alignment. For instance, if you consider our writing program from pre-K all the way to senior year, there should be a continuous thread that’s woven through those grades.

Each year, students and parents should know what to expect about what they’re going to learn, and then teachers can expect that students have learned something in the grade before. We have pockets of that kind of coordination and alignment, but we need to be sure it’s there across the board – in all programs and disciplines. Achieving that kind of intentional alignment is critical, and it’s really hard work.

EVERGREEN: What are the main takeaways from the class of 2021, especially from their exit interviews?

HARK: For the most part, the class of 2021 did a brilliant job of working through a really challenging year and not wallowing in disappointment. When I did the exit interviews, I didn’t get the sense that they were embittered, angry and disappointed – in fact, they were grateful and reflective.

I would say that across the political spectrum, many seniors noted that it felt to them like we have gotten really bad at being able to talk to each other about disagreements and different ideas. There were a lot of students who were leaving the school feeling as if their opinions didn’t matter. I thought that was really tragic because it’s a terrible way to be walking out the door.

The seniors also said they didn’t see me enough and that they want me to be with the students more and to work harder to get to know them. And they’re right. A lot of the time that I would have had to spend doing that got chewed up by COVID. The faculty would say the same. They want to see me in their classrooms more and to understand their work. Being present is a great way for me to show that I value what they do each day, and I’m going to do it!

One Year Later: From Online to On Campus Ava Iwasko

D

espite COVID-19 concerns, remote learners have successfully returned to in-person learning for the 20212022 school year.

For many students who learned online last year, coming back to school on Aug. 24 for the first time in over a year was an experience filled with mixed emotions.

The last time sophomore Natalie Stachowiak was on campus, she was in Middle School. After a full year online, adjusting to in-person learning, as both a sophomore and student new to the Upper School, had its challenges.

“I was definitely a mixture of anxious and excited,” Stachowiak said. “I was really worried that everyone had been talking to each other a lot more than I had.. The social aspect was a little concerning.”

The first day back also felt strange for senior Maddy Schlegel.

“

I feel like people should be a lot more wary of what they’re doing and if they’re wearing their masks correctly because it isn’t only about them.”

One of the biggest issues for junior Chancey Stefanos is that, while Greenhill has mandated masks and social distancing in inside spaces, she has seen many students not following the guidelines.

Seeing students not properly wearing masks reminded Stefanos of why she did not come on campus for school last year.

“Now that I’m vaccinated, I’m not as anxious as I would have been last year, but

it is still frustrating because I want to be able to enjoy all the things I missed out on last year,” Stefanos said. “I wear my mask because I want to do my part. I want to keep myself and others safe.”

Stachowiak agrees that not all students are doing everything they can to keep everyone at school safe.

“I feel like people should be a lot more wary of what they’re doing and if they’re wearing their masks correctly because it isn’t only about them,” Stachowiak said.

“Even if you don’t care if you get the virus, there are others around you that you are also affecting. At that point, your rights end and another person’s begin.”

Despite the obvious challenges of online learning last school year, such as Wi-Fi issues and feeling disconnected from in-person students and teachers, Stefanos says she still believes she made the right choice to stay home.

“It was absolutely worth it to not go back to school because, while I wanted to, it wouldn’t have been worth getting my parents sick,” she said.

Another positive to staying home during the school year was that students had more time to reflect, said junior Sophia Chao.

“It was eye-opening,” Chao said. “I feel like I learned a lot about social problems, and I had a lot more time to do research on different topics. Obviously, I don’t wish that the pandemic happened, but it was a good period of time to reflect on everything.”

Some online learners found that many students who were in-person last year do not fully understand what their online experiences were like.

“Being back is kind of like being a

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

AT WORK: Junior Sophia Chao, a fully remote student last year, says she had “a lot more time to do research on different topics” and it was an “eye-opening” time. new kid everyone already knows,” said Stachowiak wants to remind others sophomore Jnana Velamuri. “It can why she chose to stay home in the first sometimes be hard to find where your place place. is.”

“Safety always comes first,” she said. “I It is important to remember that don’t regret that I made the decision to keep everyone in the community has had a my family safe.” difficult year in some capacity, Schlegel Even amid worries over what the year said. and her non-masking classmates will bring, “I think we need to recognize that Stefanos is still glad to be back on campus. just because somebody had a different “I’m excited to be back at school experience, that doesn’t mean that life was because I missed my teachers, I missed my easier,” Schlegel said. “I think that people friends, I missed seeing people every day,” should just be a little more compassionate Stefanos said. “It’s exciting because I’m able all around. I think that reminder always to go back to kind of normal.” makes a difference.”

Special Report

CRT

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Critical Race Theory’s Controversy in Curriculum

Khushi Chhaya and Diane Lin

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ust a year ago, even amid protests across the nation against racism and police brutality, most Americans had never heard of Critical Race Theory. Now, the theory is spurring Fox News coverage, national headlines, protests and legislation.

It has become a flashpoint in schools and communities nationwide. Texas and several other states have passed laws attempting to prevent or limit schools from teaching concepts derived from Critical Race Theory, including white privilege, racial equity and systemic racism.

“Up until the last 18 months, most people had not heard about [Critical Race Theory], similar to other academic theories,” Director of Equity and Inclusion Marcus Ingram said. “What I find challenging about this moment though, is that there’s been a conflation of what Critical Race Theory is, and it’s moved into the space of being all things diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Commonly referred to as CRT, Critical Race Theory is a graduate-level theoretical framework that explores racism in society, as well as the concept of race itself. The theory describes racism as not only an individual act by members of the community, but something that is embedded in legal systems as well.

“

We somehow have to reconcile that the ideas about freedom and liberty that we cherish were propagated by deeply flawed people who frequently failed to live up to the ideals they wrote so eloquently about.”

Since it was developed in the 1970s, CRT has largely remained in the realm of higher education. Recently, though, critics have extended the use of the term to include any effort to teach the history of race in the United States.

The conflation of Critical Race Theory with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has ignited intense debate over the extent to which America’s troubled racial history should be discussed in K-12 schools.

Director of Debate Aaron Timmons views efforts to incite outrage over the purported teaching of Critical Race Theory as an attempt to shut down meaningful discussions of race in schools.

“Anytime there is a discussion about race, that then becomes Critical Race Theory,” Timmons said. “This move attempts to silence and makes many moments in history ‘political,’ when they are only facts that make certain populations uncomfortable.”

History Reconsidered Much of the debate centers around history curricula in public schools. At least 28 state legislatures have passed bills limiting classroom discussions about America’s racial history. The Texas legislature earlier this year passed H.B. 3979, which prevents schools or state employees from teaching “an understanding of the 1619 Project,” a New York Times Magazine initiative developed by journalist Nikole HannahJones “to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national

narrative.”

The political right has condemned the project as a manifestation of Critical Race Theory. Similar bills targeting the 1619 Project have been introduced or passed by Republican-dominated legislatures across the nation.

“Many of the people promoting these new laws are confused because the history taught in the classroom is different from what they remember from their social studies experience 20, 30, 40 years ago,” Upper School History Department Chair Amy Bresie said. “Starting in the 1960s, historians began to reconsider this historical lens and started to look for whose voices were being left out of the national story. As such, they went back to archives and started to uncover a much more complicated and interesting story.”

Greenhill Perspective A debate over diversity, equity and inclusion programs has engulfed many schools over the past year. “[Much of the recent national conversation] about diversity, equity and inclusion, [has been] subsumed in this term ‘Critical Race Theory’,” said Ingram.

“But secretly, this conversation is really specifically about blackness and whiteness, and this country just hasn’t been able to be honest with itself.”

K-12 schools across the nation now find themselves struggling with the same issues.

In a late August statement to the Greenhill community titled “On Critical Race Theory: Reflections from Greenhill School’s Office for Equity & Inclusion,” Ingram and his colleagues stated that the school does not exclusively endorse any educational theory or framework, including Critical Race Theory.

“It is possible that Greenhill students may encounter Critical Race Theory within a relevant academic disciplinary context,” the statement said. “This, however, would be no different than the exposure of students to other theories (pluralism, supply and demand, feminism, etc.) that seek to frame ways of understanding individual, organizational, and systemic behaviors in our world.”

In U.S. History, sophomores learn about the history of the nation from multiple perspectives. This includes reading the autobiography of Frederick Douglass and “The Port Chicago 50” by Steve Sheinkin, which explores discrimination faced by African Americans in the U.S. Navy after World War II. Many of Greenhill’s English and history electives, taken by juniors and seniors, examine race as a systemic issue.

“We somehow have to reconcile that the ideas about freedom and liberty that we cherish were propagated by deeply flawed people who frequently failed to live up to the ideals they wrote so eloquently about,” Bresie said. “Honestly, it’s the process of reconciling these ideas that excites me as a student and teacher of American History.”

Junior Azal Amer believes that, while Greenhill does a better job of exposing students to the issues behind systemic racism than many other schools, there is still work to be done.

“I have come across white students that think [racism] doesn’t happen,” Amer said.

“It’s really painful to hear terrorist jokes and other Islamophobic comments made.”

Greenhill administrators have had

meetings with faculty discussing the school’s position on Critical Race Theory.

“We expose students to a variety of theoretical foundations, including the core of Critical Race Theory if it’s germane,” Ingram said. “But we don’t exclusively tie ourselves to any one [theory].”

Head of School Lee Hark says the inclusion of CRT is “part of a complete education.”

A Polarized World Engaging in civil discourse around controversial issues as the greater community becomes increasingly polarized is essential to preparing students for life beyond Greenhill, Head of Upper School Trevor Worcester said.

“We should be teaching students to have those critical thinking skills,” Worcester said.

“I think that’s important that we’re having those conversations, and that we don’t gloss over the polarizing chasm that seems to just continue growing.”

“

Anytime we’re talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, it was subsumed in this term ‘Critical Race Theory’. But secretly, this conversation is really specifically about blackness and whiteness, and this country just hasn’t been able to be honest with itself.”

Timmons says the school needs to do more to facilitate unflinching discussions about race.

“We as an institution don’t have

structural training to navigate issues of race and racism, to facilitate conversations to redirect certain individuals on either side of the aisle to have a discussion as opposed to a yelling match,” Timmons said. “Anytime it gets too intense, I feel I have colleagues that will just shut down the conversation, as opposed to knowing how to navigate the conversation.”

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History is complex, messy, beautiful and horrifying. Only by examining the full spectrum of history can we hope to understand the past and hopefully make better choices in the present. History teaches empathy.

If we fail to teach uncomfortable history – like the horrors of slavery or the mistreatment of indigenous people – we do our students a real disservice.”

Critical Race Theory’s prominence in the media has forced many schools and state legislatures to rethink classroom material. Greenhill, too, will be performing a curriculum audit as part of the school’s strategic plan.

“History is complex, messy, beautiful and horrifying.” Bresie said. “Only by examining the full spectrum of history can we hope to understand the past and hopefully make better choices in the present. History teaches empathy. If we fail to teach uncomfortable history – like the horrors of slavery or the mistreatment of indigenous people – we do our students a real disservice.”

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

AN IMPERFECT HISTORY: For his U.S. History course, Nick Trimmer reads “The Port Chicago 50,” which discusses racial descrimination in the Navy during World War II.

Everg Ever the

10

20 Years Later: The For Jothi Gupta Emma Nguyen Nate Stitt

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wenty years ago, before even the oldest member of the Upper School student body was born, a devastating attack on American soil shook the nation.

The attacks of 9/11.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed after two commercial airplanes were seized by terrorists and flown into the World Trade Center. The perpetrators of 9/11 were operatives of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida group, a militant Islamist organization that was based in Afghanistan at the invitation of the revolutionary Taliban government in Kabul.

“I’ll never forget it,” Upper School History Department Chair Amy Bresie `96 said.

Each year, the school acknowledges the lives lost on that day with a moment of silence during the Founder’s Day assembly, which typically occurs on Sept. 11.

Lesser known are the nearly 3,000 American service members and more than 47,000 Afghan civilians killed in a 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks.

The two events — the 9/11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan — are inextricably linked.

Twenty years ago, there was an attack on U.S. soil.

Recently, the tragic cycle of violence and suffering set in motion on 9/11 came full circle when U.S. military forces withdrew from Afghanistan and bin Laden’s Afghan allies returned to power.

Left behind were thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military and civilian forces in an effort to transform Afghanistan into a Western-style democracy.

Also facing an uncertain fate are Afghan women, who were systematically oppressed and denied basic freedoms under Taliban rule before 9/11.

For Greenhill students and other Americans born after 9/11, the war in Afghanistan is a blur.

The conflict was largely forgotten

by Americans as the United States descended into its own cycle of political strife and social and racial reckoning.

Now, as the deluge of news coverage of America’s chaotic exit from Kabul recedes, many Greenhill students are left to make sense of what the war was all

about and what was done in Afghanistan in the name of the American people: the costs, the legacies and the larger meaning of America’s longest war.

A Tragic Arc Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. and Afghanistan shared a fraught history.

During the Cold War, following the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S. funded a loose coalition of Afghan resistance groups known as the mujahideen. The U.S.-backed groups fought Soviet and pro-Soviet Afghan forces during a decade-long insurgency. In 1989, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan.

The Soviet-backed government in Kabul remained in power until 1992, when the U.S.-supported groups seized control of the capital. The resistance groups splintered, and Afghanistan descended into a civil war that left Kabul in ruins and much of the countryside controlled by former mujahideen commanders and local warlords.

The Taliban — backed by neighboring Pakistan — seized

9/11

Kabul and much of the country in 1996, and declared the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. In time, the Taliban allowed bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization to set up training camps in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. One week after al-Qaida operatives launched the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush signed a joint resolution authorizing the use of force against those responsible for attacking the United States on 9/11.

On Oct. 7, 2001, U.S. aircraft began bombing Taliban and al-Qaida forces in Afghanistan in what was officially called Operation Enduring Freedom. The bombing campaign was assisted by U.S. Army Special Forces teams that began working with an anti-Taliban coalition known as the Northern Alliance.

In mid-November 2001, backed by U.S. bombing, major cities fell to Northern Alliance forces. Kabul was captured on Nov. 13 and the major eastern city of Jalalabad on Nov. 14. That same day the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that called for a “central role” for the United Nations in establishing a transnational administration to fill the void left by the fall of the Taliban.

In sending U.S. forces into Afghanistan in 2001, President Bush had defined the goal: “This particular battle front will last as long as it takes to bring al-Qaida to justice,” he declared. “It may happen tomorrow, it may happen a month from now, it may take a year or two, but we will prevail.”

But bin Laden and his senior al-Qaida operatives eluded U.S. efforts to capture them at Torah Borah in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan in December 2001.

In June 2002, the U.N. facilitated the formation of a transitional Afghan government headed by an ethnic Pashtun tribal leader named Hamid Karzai. By that time, the Bush administration’s focus on Afghanistan was wavering as Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein emerged as the new focus of the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” In March 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan slipped further from the U.S. spotlight.

On May 1, 2003, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared “major combat” over in Afghanistan.

Spreading Violence Afghanistan began to seize U.S. attention again in 2006 as violence flared across the country.

By the time Barack Obama took office with a vow to end the war, U.S. forces were mired in a nasty unconventional war with Taliban forces. Only months after taking office in 2009, Obama agreed to a strategy proposed by his generals to increase U.S. troop strength in an effort to buy time for the training of the Afghan National Army. By July of that year, the U.S. had more than 60,000 troops in Afghanistan.

Obama spent the rest of his time in office trying to extricate Americans from Afghanistan. In 2014, he announced a timetable for withdrawing most U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016.

With the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, a third U.S. administration was left to wrestle with the dilemma of what had become America’s longest war. Trump had campaigned on a pledge to end the war, but he did little to make good on his promise until the midpoint of his term and the prospect of a reelection campaign loomed.

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Wednesday, September 29, 2021

11

rever War In February 2020, the Trump administration signed a peace deal that called for the removal of most U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Shortly after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Trump’s secretary of defense announced that all but 2,500 U.S. troops would be withdrawn from the country in advance of a May 1, 2021, deadline set by the Taliban.

With his inauguration on Jan. 20, Biden inherited the war in Afghanistan.

Biden announced in April that he would remove all U.S. troops by the highly symbolic date of Sept. 11 — the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. But the summer troop drawdown triggered panic within the Afghan government and military. With shocking suddenness, Taliban forces marched into Kabul on Aug. 15.

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan ended with a final spasm of blood and violence. On Aug. 26, as U.S. forces raced to meet a Taliban demand for the full withdrawal by the end of the month and frantic Afghan civilians tried to gain access to U.S. evacuation flights, a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members and injured 18 in an attack at a checkpoint outside Kabul International Airport. At least 60 Afghans were also killed.

Four days later, 10 Afghan civilians — including seven children — were killed in a U.S. drone strike that was initially described by the Pentagon as an attack on another suicide bomber intent on harming to American troops. After media reports questioned the claims that the drone strike thwarted a terror attack, Biden’s secretary of defense subsequently conceded that the U.S. military had made a “horrible mistake.”

On that note, the longest war in U.S. history—the war triggered by the 9/11 attacks—ended.

Intellectual Overload The event that set America on the path to war in Afghanistan came on a day of celebration on the Greenhill calendar. It was Founder’s Day, which marks the school’s birth on Sept. 11, 1950.

On that morning in 2001, students were gathered in a celebratory assembly as had been the custom for decades. Just before the ceremonies began, someone had come on stage to inform Associate Head of School for Mission, Community, and Culture Tom Perryman `81 that a plane had struck one of the World Trade Center Towers in New York City.

“I remember thinking ‘holy cow, that’s crazy,’” Perryman recalled. “But everyone figured that some horrible accident

happened.”

As soon as the assembly ended, Perryman was informed that a second plane had hit the Twin Towers.

“That’s when everybody knew,” he said.

As the initial shock wore off and overseas events spiraled, from the U.S. war against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq, History Department faculty began to discuss how to educate students and stimulate discussion and understanding of what was going on. A new Upper School history elective taught by Scott Cotton was introduced: Understanding Sept. 11 in a Global Context.

“Students needed context and historical understanding about the modern Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in the region,” Cotton said.

Another history elective — Modern Middle East — was also added to the curriculum.

Cotton’s 9/11 class remains popular with a small subset of students interested in history and current events. But as the war in Afghanistan became invisible to most Americans, student interest in the Bush administration’s “war on terror” and the conflict in Afghanistan—events that began before most Upper School students were born—also faded.

The war in Afghanistan became a blank spot in Greenhill students’ memory.

“I wasn’t taught a lot about it, and I didn’t know a lot about it,” said senior Ekaum Soni. “A couple of months before we pulled out, I fell into the YouTube rabbit hole, which helped me gain a lot of context I lacked.”

In recent years, other issues have seized student attention: global warming; gun violence; women’s rights; America’s racial divisions; and the political upheaval and partisan bitterness unleashed by the 2016 election of Donald Trump, among other issues.

“Especially since 2016, that’s when students became interested in current events,” Upper School history teacher Genie Burke said. “They’re more domestically focused on the state of our country, more than a global focus.”

Elusive Hope On Sept. 11, the COVID-19 pandemic precluded the traditional schoolwide assembly to celebrate Founder’s Day for

a second year in a row. This year’s commemoration fell on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and came only days after the heartbreaking end of America’s war in Afghanistan.

Amid the season of fall sports and Homecoming Week and college applications, students drawn to current events and history are still trying to make sense of what happened in Afghanistan and why.

“I think the closest I’ve got to having a conversation [about the war in Afghanistan] is in Global Literature,” senior Jasmine Najari said. “We’re talking about how our family history like social location and identity influence our outlook on the world, and we’re bringing up current events, and we touched on it, but we don’t really dig deep and claw into it.”

Director of Academics Jason Yaffe says the cascading events in Afghanistan are difficult to teach.

“You have U.S. involvement in a foreign affairs matter,” Yaffe said. “You had a rocky set of policies, some leading to success, others to failure, and then you have a humanitarian crisis.”

The lack of general awareness about Afghanistan is largely a symptom of larger national neglect in education towards international issues, some students say.

“A lot of people in America prioritize their own wellness over other people around the world because they think they’re not affected by them,” sophomore Adam Kesselman said.

At a moment when women and liberal-minded people in Afghanistan face a precarious future under Taliban rule, some students at Greenhill feel a sense of despair at the scenes of violence and anguish that marked the end of the U.S. involvement there.

“Seeing all of the international suffering in the news makes me feel somewhat hopeless,” said junior Daniel Smith. “I hate to see the violence that exists – but it does, and my knowledge of that can be hard sometimes.”

Never forget...

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

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Arts

Favorite Places on Campus Upper School Students Share Their Special Spots

“I love the Lower School playground because my friends and I will hang out around there if we just want to chat,” sophomore Abeera Amer said.

“I would have to say one of my favorite places is the sitting area with the chairs that spin around outside the upperclassmen locker room,” senior Tatum Sims said. “I love how secluded and shaded it feels from the rest of campus. I’ve had some great conversations with new friends there.”

“My favorite place on campus is definitely the Quad!” sophomore Zoya Iyer said. “It’s a great place for all my friends to hang out. I have a lot of Lower and Middle School memories there from cookouts and other fun activities like that!”

“I appreciate the Fine Arts Building because I hang out with my friends there during snack or during Community Time when we don’t have an assembly,” junior Leah Smith said.

“I love the library because I often meet my friends there for first period break,” Leah Smith said. “It’s where we catch up, just have a really good time in each other’s company and catch up on homework.”

“My favorite place on campus is The Buzz because it has all my favorite snacks and drinks like hummus and pretzels, sea salt and vinegar chips and chocolate chip cookies,” junior Lian Hahn said.

“One of my favorite places is the steps outside the athletics complex near Brinkmann Field – it’s where I hung out with my track and volleyball teammates before meets and games,” Tatum Sims said.

“It’s a place we all hang out and joke around to loosen up before a big game. We all just sit together and look at the field and green parts of campus.”

Photos by the Evergreen Photo Team

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

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Arts

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Asian Image Weighed in New Marvel Film Sydney Chien, William Maher, Kathrin Peterson uring the first wave of “Kung Fu Mania” in 1972, writer Steve Englehart created “Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu.” The saga’s main character first appeared in Marvel Special Edition Issue 15, and within two issues, Shang-Chi became a sensation.

Critics consider the original Marvel story flawed because Shang-Chi was created by an all-white design team. The team conceived the character as the son of villain Fu-Manchu, English literature’s most famous Asian stereotype.

According to Chinese media critic Xueting Ni, Englehart made many conceptual and visual mistakes. He used the Japanese term for teacher “sensei” instead of the Chinese “shifu” and uses chop-suey fonts, the typographical shortcut for “Asian-ness”, to punctuate fight scenes.

Nonetheless, actor Simu Liu, who played Shang-Chi in the film, sees it as a victory for Asians in the industry.

In the history of Asian representation in films, Liu is the first protagonist superhero. He takes pride in this accomplishment, but says the industry has room to grow.

The movie version of “ShangChi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” has been in development since 2018.

Writer Dave Callaham was tasked with scripting a film that incorporated the key aspects of Shang-Chi’s story but also stripped away controversial and

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Simu Liu actively sought out the role, tweeting, “OK @Marvel, are we gonna talk or what? #Shang Chi.” Eventually, he was cast as Shang-Chi, and the rest is history.

The Evergreen spoke with several Upper School students to get their take on the film.

What are the most interesting aspects of the movie itself or plot?

“I suppose to me what stood out about the movie was that it didn’t really try to do much new. It just elaborated on the previous ideas that have already been established in the Marvel Character Universe (MCU), and it kind of branched back into the main MCU at the end, which was actually pretty interesting to me.”

- freshman Lucas Jakubcanin “I loved the incorporation of culture in the movie. I think that it is really important for people to be able to see themselves in leaders like superheroes.

Also, the action in this movie was topnotch and made it very exciting to watch.”

- junior Ellie Thomas-Dietrich “One thing that stood out to me, without spoiling the movie, was the many references to Chinese culture.

A lot of the time in movies with East Asian and/or Southeast Asian characters, we don’t see insight on their culture and traditions that have been passed on for hundreds of years, so I really appreciated when Shang-Chi had those included in the movie.”

- senior Chloe Merriman

offensive elements.

Japanese-American director Destin Daniel Cretton was hired to direct.

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

movie so there has to be physical conflict regardless.”

- junior Ellie Thomas-Dietrich What should people take away from this movie?

“There’s really no ‘moral of the story’ at the end of the movie, although I think that it’s worth taking away that movies are still in production despite COVID and that the MCU is still releasing quality movies.”

- freshman Lucas Jakubcanin “The importance and difference in family versus chosen family. Both are very impactful on a person and determine their course of action in life. This was heavily portrayed in the movie and was something that stood out to me.”

- junior Ellie Thomas-Dietrich “I think the main thing people should take away from the movie is that we see a lot of actors from ‘Crazy Rich Asians’, a Western movie that had the first almost all-Asian cast in a few decades, in the Shang-Chi movie. I think people should come out of the theaters realizing that the lack of representation in Hollywood of Asian actors is really disappointing.”

- senior Chloe Merriman

What are your opinions on the cultural aspects of the movie?

How is Asian representation in this film?

“The aspect of Chinese mythology was cleverly incorporated into Marvel, and it shows how history can be.”

- freshman Marcus Figueroa

“I think that as more movies are created Asian representation will continue to grow as Asian culture has become more popular worldwide. But I still believe that it is going to take some time to have a more diverse movie cast instead of an all Asian cast. By this I mean most movies that have Asian representation are movies about only Asians.”

“I think the movie did a great job when it came to old traditions/ cultures. Although the typical martial arts movie is often a poor representation of Asian culture, I think this movie can be exempt from that statement since it goes beyond the martial arts, and it’s a Marvel

- freshman Christan Park

3D Art Room Expansion Heightens Possibilities Gabi Appel, Christan Park, Anisa Walji

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his school year, 3D art courses at Greenhill are taught by a new teacher, Erik Tosten, and in a newly renovated space. The 3D Art Room was expanded to create more room to work on projects, spread out and collaborate with others.

Space was added to the back-left corner, as well as to the center wall on the left side of the room. New features include an expanded kiln yard, additional tables, more pottery wheels and extra space to exhibit students’ artwork.

“Having more space in there is going to allow students to think more outside of the box about their artwork,” said Head of Fine Arts Terry Martin. “With the popularity of the 3D art program, having room for students to properly express their abilities was essential.”

Sophomores Devin Davis and Elizabeth Mann agree that the expansion allows for more mobility in the room.

“There is more walking space, and

it no longer feels like we are all on top of each other,” said Davis, who took Advanced Ceramics last year and is taking it again.

“The bigger room makes it easier to move around and also makes a more collaborative space,” said Mann, who is taking Sculpture 2. “I also like how the tables are pushed together again, so we are sitting with more than one person.”

While school is not quite back to normal, Tosten says he is here to lead his students through this unprecedented time.

“Mr. Tosten definitely wants to have one-on-one connections with his students,” said Lily Marshall, an eighth grader taking 3D art this year.

This is Tosten’s 22nd year of teaching. He is teaching students from grades 5-12.

Tosten says he is already witnessing the energy and curiosity of his students.

“The fifth graders just go out of their minds when they get some clay,” Tosten said. “They get to play with it, get their hands dirty, and they love it.”

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

MORE SPACE, MORE CREATION: Middle and Upper School 3D Art students now have access to a larger area that allows them to think outside of the box with their artwork.

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14 Arts

Baskerville: A Comedic Return for Greenhill Theater Aria Kutty and Mayer Sidikaro

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fter more than a year away from the Rose Hall stage, Greenhill’s theater program is stepping back into the spotlight with the production of “Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery.”

The show is a mystery-comedy written by Ken Ludwig and is based on the popular fictional character Sherlock Holmes.

It will run Oct. 28-30.

Upper School Drama and Theater teacher Valerie HaussSmith, who is the show’s director, says the play was chosen because it offers 37 roles and is of a “fun and spooky” nature.

According to Hauss-Smith, Greenhill’s theater program often chooses to do dark plays with a message such as “Carrie,” but this year they are doing the complete opposite.

“I think that it’s a challenge for all of us because it’s a different type of show,” Hauss-Smith said. “It’s a wacky, wacky, wacky show.”

Students have embraced the opportunity to play “Baskerville’s” upbeat personalities.

“This [show] has more lighthearted parts,” said sophomore Maya Desai.

Sherlock Holmes is known for being a quick-witted, brilliant character. For actors, the role is challenging.

“Sherlock Holmes is not really like any normal person,” said senior William McDonald, who is portraying the title character. “I think a lot of it, too, is his energy. You have to think of somebody whose mind is going a mile a minute. The biggest thing I am trying to get the hang of is his pacing.”

COVID-19 safety protocols pose a challenge for the Theater Company during this rehearsal season.

“I think masks play a bigger part in acting than they do in other aspects of life,” said McDonald. “It is harder to talk when you are in a mask, but then also, it is harder to act when you are wearing a mask because half of your face is covered.”

Students have been rehearsing with masks since COVID-19 hit, but it’s still uncertain if they will be required to perform with them. Hauss-Smith says they will adapt to whatever is necessary.

Masked or unmasked, the theater students are willing and excited to put in the work to entertain a live audience once again, Hauss-Smith said.

“I am excited to be able to perform live and have a more normal experience with the play,” said Desai.

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Theater students are back in Rose Hall for the production of the mystery-comedy “Baskerville.”

New Year, Old Routines

Musical Arts Embrace More Normal Rhythms Emily Hu

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and, choir and orchestra are finally returning to familiar schedules and procedures after a year of restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last school year, students wore masks, were heavily monitored and had to follow a myriad of protocols aimed at keeping students and faculty safe.

Rules like the school-wide mask mandate could not be so easily applied to band, choir and orchestra. Teachers couldn’t simply extend the distance between students like desks in classrooms because of is the importance of hearing other students in rehearsal.

Teachers had to find new ways to engage students and conduct rehearsals in a year defined by distancing requirements and the absence of live concerts and events.

“I’ll do whatever I have to do in order for us to continue having band,” said Upper School band teacher Brian Donnell.

“In an ensemble like a band, it’s hard when everyone’s not together,” said Donnell. “Fortunately, though, Upper School students have a lot more playing experience, so they were able to be a lot more independent.”

Choir Gathering in Rose Hall, choir students wore visors on top of their masks while being six feet apart.

“We couldn’t really hear each other because we were wearing masks and visors and sitting very spread out,” said Upper School choir teacher Lucik Aprahamian. “We didn’t have vaccines yet, so it was a lot more important that we stayed physically distanced at all times.”

Recordings replaced events like the Holiday Sing-along, End-of-Year Concert and festivals. Aprahamian says the absence of concerts, events, and live audiences led to a loss of spirit for performers.

Band

Orchestra

Donnell succeeded in his goal of keeping his class going last year. Band students wore slitted masks so they could still play their instruments. Students were given bell covers for their instruments to prevent the airborne spread of COVID-19.

Given that concerts could be adapted to a virtual space, Donnell says he still chose musical pieces for all students to work on. While in-person students played, those online would play along on mute. Eventually, all students went to a studio theater in the Marshall Family Performing Arts Center and recorded their performances, although separated by several feet.

Orchestra was less affected last year because playing stringed instruments doesn’t require the modification or removal of masks.

Nonetheless, orchestra avoided big group rehearsals because students were always in and out, especially during the hybrid schedule in the first semester. Instead, students leaned on chamber music a lot more and rehearsed in smaller groups.

“Although there were some technical issues with being online, everyone made the best of the situation,” said senior Emily Ding.

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

MUSIC WITHOUT LIMITS: Band, choir and orchestra students face practice with fewer COVID-19 restrictions this year.

A New Year The return to a fully in-person school year and the availability of vaccines has resulted in relaxed COVID-19 protocols and a return to many pre-pandemic routines.

“In returning fully to on-campus learning this fall, Greenhill is trying to find a sweet spot in balancing safety and engagement,” said Upper School orchestra teacher Nick Paraskevas.

Those efforts have been fairly successful so far, teachers said.

“I feel a lot better about this school year,” said Aprahamian.

“Last year was just scary for so many reasons. We had to make sure that everyone was safe at school. For remote learners, we had to provide material and content electronically so that they could be as participatory as those at school.”

“

Being online puts up a lot of barriers in terms of putting together an ensemble, so being in-person has finally definitely restored that sense of commuinity within our band.

There’s really no way to duplicate this in an online environment.”

The band and orchestra rooms are set up much more traditionally this year, as students have less rigorous distancing requirements.

“Being online puts up a lot of barriers in terms of putting together an ensemble, so being in-person has definitely restored that sense of community within our band,” said junior Talia Dauer. “There’s really no way to duplicate this in an online environment.”

Students say rehearsals are also smoother.

“Choir is a collaborative activity, so it’s important that we’re able to hear each other as we learn and perfect a piece,” said senior Maddy Schlegel.

Events and concerts are set to return to the way they were in years prior to the pandemic. This has made students and faculty optimistic. .

“Last year, we didn’t really have any landmarks to look forward to, so the return of concerts is definitely very exciting,” said Dauer.

Ding says that being online can’t compare to the atmosphere of performing live.

“Not only can we hope for a return to concerts, but there are also great prospects for vaccine approval for younger students,” said Paraskevas.

That development would bring band, choir and orchestra a big step closer to the pre-pandemic world.

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

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Sports

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Too Hot to Handle?

Greenhill’s Fall Sports Teams Cope With Rising Temperatures

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

GAME TIME: The Hornets practice amid rising temperatures.

THE HEAT IS ON: Greenhill’s football team huddles up.

Field Hockey

Josie Arbuckle

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Head Varsity Field Hockey Coach Brittany Griggs says that heat has prompted the introduction of new practice policies in recent years.

“My first year I used to do two sessions a day from the get-go, but the afternoon sessions were so hot that we either had to go inside or we’d have to sit in the shade,” Griggs said.

“It just wasn’t useful to have afternoon sessions until the school year started.”

At the beginning of the season, goalies could not wear pads if the heat was too extreme. As the season progressed and the players became more acclimated to the heat, practices continued unrestricted, Griggs said.

“When practices are really hot, we always tell the girls, ‘This is what you’ll play in,”’ Griggs said.

Sophomore Zoe Dzialowski says that games are worse than practices in terms of heat.

“We had this one game against Hockaday that was insanely hot, and that really affected how we were playing,” she said. “We were all super dehydrated and tired.”

reenhill’s fall sport teams have been faced with exceptionally high temperatures that have made training and competition difficult.

It’s not a new phenomenon: Texas athletes have struggled with scorching temperatures and the threat of overheating for years. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the mean annual temperature in Texas has increased by approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit since the first half of the 20th century.

“

Taking as many water breaks as physically possible helps the players stay healthy, but football is a tough sport.”

It may not sound like much of an issue, but the threat of heat-related illness and injury has become a persistent challenge for coaches and athletes.

Football

Faculty Dress Code

Head Varsity Football Coach Tony Banks says that taking care of his players while acclimating them to the heat is a top priority.

“Taking as many water breaks as physically possible helps the players stay healthy,” Banks said. “But football is a tough sport. Our practices haven’t experienced too many wholesale changes, and training in heat puts the players in supreme condition.”

While the style of football practices may not have changed much due to heat, new restrictions have been introduced this year to combat overheating on the hottest practice days. Greenhill’s Sports Medicine team recommends players not wear pads on days with higher temperatures.

Sophomore Ethan Vicknair, who plays offensive guard, says the extreme temperatures have undermined the team’s performance.

“For the last game, a lot of us were impacted by the heat,” Vicknair said. “As a team, we couldn’t perform our best, and it had to do with dehydration and heat.”

Competing in cross country in Texas’ infamous heat and humidity is difficult any year, but runners say that it has been nearly insurmountable this particular year.

“It’s like 100 degrees outside, and I just feel like I’m going to pass out at any moment,” said sophomore Seth Lee.

Off the field, the faculty dress code has been amended to accommodate the heat this year. Staff members are allowed to dress more casually, trading collared shirts and khakis for shorts and t-shirts to remain comfortable.

“We thought it would be a good rule to keep educators comfortable,” Head of Athletics and Physical Education Jarrett Shine said.

Teachers and student-athletes at Greenhill are not the only ones coping with sizzling temperatures. Heat levels are rising across the globe.

2020 was the second-warmest year on record according to the NOAA’s temperature data, and land areas hit a record warm.

Averaged across land and ocean regions, the 2020 surface temperature was 1.76 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average of 57 degrees Fahrenheit and 2.14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the pre-Industrial Period.

A Global Issue

Cross Country Head Varsity Cross Country Coach Jason Yaffe acknowledges the difficulty of running in the heat, but he says the temperatures this year are the norm.

“I don’t see it as any different,” Yaffe said. “This is what we get running in Texas in August and September.”

For the past several years, Yaffe said, the team has incorporated heat-related accommodations on the hottest days of practice. The normal 30-minute runs are broken into two 15-minute segments with a break in between.

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

“Climate change is a definite reality, in my opinion,” Yaffe said. “It is changing the way people live and go about their daily lives.”

NOAA also reported historically high emission levels in 2020, exacerbating global warming.

“I feel like it doesn’t cool off until much later,” Griggs said. “It is hotter, a lot of the time.”

Although temperatures everywhere are rising, athletes will continue to practice and compete.

“It’s hot here, it’s hot everywhere,” Banks said. “You still have to play football.”

Ever Evergreen Fall Sports: Back to Semi-Normal the

16 Sports

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Photos by the Evergreen Photo Team

BACK IN THE GYM: The boys volleyball team warms up for a practice by doing dynamic stretches and lunges. This year, students are not required to mask-up during athletics.

Ravi Vasan Payton Blalock

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ollowing an unprecedented year marred by canceled games and curtailed seasons, fall sports athletes are competing under modified COVID-19 protocols that have brought teams a step closer to pre-pandemic seasons.

Only a few months ago, Greenhill administrators and coaches were preparing for a nearly normal school year. But the rise of COVID-19 cases caused by the delta variant required adjustments.

Director of Athletics & Physical Education Jarrett Shine is overseeing the effort to allow athletes to compete under more normal conditions. That includes embracing the return of fans to fall sports events.

Football Varsity Football Head Coach Tony Banks says he believes the modified protocols are working.

“We are as safe as any school in the metroplex [and] I am all about protecting the players,” he said.

Football’s protocols are like other outdoor sports: Students are not required to wear masks at all during practices, but players and coaches are supposed to maskup when they enter buildings or locker rooms.

Field Hockey Varsity Field Hockey Head Coach Brittany Griggs says her team will be able to better prepare for games while still maintaining a safe environment with the new protocols.

Jarrett Shine “We wanted to provide an opportunity for student-athletes to have fans and not really put them through the stressful situation like last year,” Shine said. “I’m trying to get athletics as close to normal as possible so students can really enjoy the experience.”

Greenhill’s girls and boys volleyball teams have had significant changes to their COVID-19 protocols. Last year, the teams were required to wear masks at all times when indoors, including during practices and games. Now, they are allowed to remove masks during any physical activity, including High Performance Center workouts, practices and competitions.

Volleyball “The fact that they allow [players] not to use masks was a huge improvement,” said Varsity Boys Volleyball Head Coach Mauro Grasso.

Varsity Girls Volleyball Head Coach Tatiane Deibert agrees that eliminating mask-wearing from competitions has made the season more manageable.

Tatiane Deibert

Brittany Griggs Although the season is closer to normal, an air of uncertainty remains.

“Unfortunately, as we’ve seen in the last 18 months, things change daily,” Griggs said.

Cheer Cheer had a difficult year last year, with no crowds to entertain or inspire.

This season, the team is performing before normal crowds at Friday nigh football games.

“We were all just very grateful to be cheering on the team,” said Varsity Cheer Senior Captain Lily McArdle.

The team practices indoors but, like other indoor sports, isn’t required to wear masks.

Cross Country Cross Country is less affected by COVID-19 safety protocols because its practices occur outdoors. Runners are not required to wear masks at any time outside, but the athletes are required to wear them when indoors and not engaging in physical activity.

“I think that the new protocols bring our team closer together and make practice feel somewhat closer to normal,” sophomore runner Elizabeth Mann said.

Staff writers Zara Paul, Cole Feldman, Eitan Hahn, Milyon Esayas, Noah Piper, Jack Stone and Juan Barrientos contributed to this report.

Graphic by Emma Nguyen

Ever Evergreen After the Protest: HPC Dress Code

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Emma Rikalo

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ast April, students wore pink and red to advocate for a more equal dress code in the High Performance Center.

The protest was organized by seniors Katie Zweig, Jordan Levy and Sumana Kethu to address unequal enforcement of the HPC dress code based on gender.

Subsequent conversations led to reevaluation of the HPC policies regarding student dress codes.

Some of the policies, such as a requirement to cover up spandex shorts, haven’t changed. The form-fitting shorts are part of the girls volleyball uniform.

“We got used to wearing shorts over spandex,” said Head Varsity Girls Volleyball Coach Tatiane Deibert. “The girls sometimes forget, and we remind them. But I don’t see it as a tremendous deal.”

Junior Erica Fulbright says she didn’t see the point of the rule.

“I can see where it’s coming from, but I feel it’s kind of unnecessary,” Fulbright said.

“Having to change in and out of shorts cuts into practice time a bit.”

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I feel like the biggest problem I had with the dress code was just the inequality of it - boys could do this, but girls couldn’t. This way, it’s all being standardized where boys and girls have the same rules.”

As a response to students’ concerns, administrators and athletic staff met with Zweig and Levy over the summer to hear their dress code suggestions. Zweig and Levy say their meeting focused on discussing gender equality in the HPC, as well as helping design a tank top acceptable to HPC staff.

“When I was talking to all the coaches, I felt heard,” Levy said. “I felt like they understood.”

According to Zweig, student-athletes will be able to wear tank tops, but only the Greenhill-sanctioned ones designed

by Zweig, Director of Sports Performance Jessen Houston and Head of Athletics and Physical Education Jarrett Shine during their meeting. She says this policy change will be reflected in the updated handbook, which is yet to be released.

Senior Claudia Hurst, an Athletics Board representative, says the changes are a step in the right direction.

“I do think the solution is definitely more restrictive than what people were hoping for,” Hurst said. “But I feel like the biggest problem I had with the dress code was just the inequality of it – boys could do

the

this, but girls couldn’t. This way, it’s all being standardized where boys and girls have the same rules. I think that was probably the most important thing I thought needed to be fixed.”

In an email addressed to parents and players, High Performance Center staff confirmed that the new Greenhill tank tops must be purchased by students. That has raised concerns among students.

“That was our number one issue because, at that point, if I want to work out and be comfortable in a tank top, I have to spend the money for it,” said Zweig. “It shouldn’t be a luxury. That should be the baseline.”

Hurst agrees that it would be better if the HPC were to regulate a style of tank top rather than ask students to buy a new one. She also says there’s a discrepancy in banning clothing that in many cases would be acceptable elsewhere on campus.

“If it’s appropriate to wear at school, I don’t know how it would be inappropriate to wear in the HPC,” Hurst said. “I know the coaches have given their take on the issue, saying, ‘You’re just sitting in class, but when you’re lifting weights, sometimes things can be more revealing,’” Hurst said. “But I think it should be about what’s comfortable for you.”

Zweig says this was true not only when comparing classroom and gym attire, but also in what students are allowed to wear when working out in the HPC versus outside.

“The dress code for inside versus outside workouts is completely different, which is also one of our issues,” Zweig said.

“As of last year, inside you couldn’t wear tank tops or spandex. But outside, you could wear spandex, tank tops, sports bras, whatever.”

Despite these concerns, students reported having more positive experiences with the enforcement of the HPC dress code across genders this year.

“They definitely have improved compared to my sophomore year where girls were told to bend down [so HPC staff could check the length of their shorts],” Zweig said. “I would walk in and be told to change before I even entered, and then I look to my right and there’s senior guys without shirts on. I definitely have not seen that this year.”

A High Performance Center senior staff member declined to comment on the issue, adding that full specifics of this year’s official dress code will be released in the upcoming Sports Performance Handbook.

“I just hope that when [the dress code] is announced, it will be enforced in an equitable way and be gender-neutral,” said Assistant Cross Country Coach Amy Bresie.

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

UNFAIR REQUIREMENTS: In the past female athletes say they have been asked to change out of spandex shorts during HPC sessions while boys are not required to do so.

Sports

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Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

CHEER STRONG: Junior varsity cheerleaders work out in the High Performance Center.

Photo by the Evergreen Photo Team

ON THE BENCH: Senior Justin Yu works out on the bench press at the High Performance Center. Female athletes have protested the uneven enforcement of the HPC dress code.

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Evergreen Ever the

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Evergreen Staff Ever

How to Be Successful in AP Latin Diane Lin

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dvanced Placement Latin is one of many courses offered by Greenhill’s Modern and Classical Languages Department. To take this course, students must be recommended for the class by their teacher. Students read excerpts from Caesar’s “De Bello Gallico” and Virgil’s “Aeneid” in English as well as AP course syllabus selections.

AP Latin students should be able to accurately translate from Latin into English the texts they are reading to demonstrate their understanding of grammar and vocabulary. Students learn how to discuss passages within the scope of each work as a whole. Stylistic analysis and interpretation, which develop from a student’s ability to read Latin, are integral parts of this course. Readings from modern critical commentaries and other ancient texts help students place their thoughts and ideas into context.

We’ve asked some AP Latin alumni about the class, and here is what we learned: Should students do anything during the summer to prepare for AP Latin?

“Yes – it’s good for you to know the grammar structure going into the

class. I think you need to be able to pick vocabulary up fast; know how you learn vocabulary best going into the course. And if you took Latin 4, your essays will help you out a lot.” – senior Rachel Wegener What is the workload like in AP Latin?

“Every single night there are lines to prep. Depending on how you prep, it can take anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half. Out-of-class essays are supposed to be done in an hour, so look back on the stuff you did in Latin 3 and Latin 4 for those.” – senior Varsha Gande What kinds of projects did you do in AP Latin, and which ones resonated with you the most?

“There weren’t a lot of projects as much as individual translations. A lot of group projects are coming together to figure out translations or chapters, so while there might not be massive group projects, there is a lot of group work to do.”

– senior Aimee Stachowiak How did you prepare for major projects or exams in AP Latin?

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because they were proportionate to the AP exam, in terms of multiple choice and free response questions. The best way to prep for exams is to prep every day so that, by the end of the unit, you can glance at your notes before the exam. The learning is very much so based on everyday work over tests or exams.” – senior Shruti Siva What methods did you use to improve your skills in AP Latin?

“For my notes, I tried to translate the passages the best I could, but instead of writing translations, I wrote hints about vocabulary and grammar – just the minimal amount so that I could translate it in my head. Whenever you’re looking at lines, always break them up into small chunks.” – senior Shruti Siva How did the AP Latin exam compare to the class?

“The AP Latin exam was so much easier than the class – way easier. I studied a lot of passages that were a lot harder than the ones that appeared on the exam. If you’re doing well in AP Latin, you should do fine on the exam.” – senior Rachel Wegener

“I liked the exams in AP Latin actually

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his last school year has been the most draining of our entire school career.

Last year’s graduating class was unable to participate in many of the traditions that make senior year special here at Greenhill. Freshmen had to experience their first year of high school from afar.

Sophomores and juniors, having experienced a taste of normal high school, had to settle for less-than-ideal circumstances.

Communities are supposed to stay together, and we have sacrificed much of our physical togetherness to stay safe.

We endured this past year with the hope that once we could get vaccinated, things would get better. We could go back to school, socialize and learn the way we’re meant to. The pandemic would be over.

Now we have a vaccine, and better yet, a vaccine that is fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration for people ages 16 and older. While over 2.5 billion people outside the United States have been unable to access their first dose, most Americans can get vaccinated. In fact, we can get vaccinated for free if we’re eligible for the vaccine.

And yet, the pandemic isn’t over in the U.S. because people who have had every opportunity to be vaccinated have chosen not to.

To be clear, we know most students and faculty members have been vaccinated.

To these people, thank you. Our high vaccination rate is the reason we were given more freedom on campus this school year.

But there are still some students that have yet to be vaccinated. To these students: Please get vaccinated.

First of all, it works. Not only is the vaccine proven to reduce the severity of COVID-19, it reduces the risk of transmission considerably. If you don’t care or aren’t worried about getting COVID-19, get vaccinated for the sake of everyone around you. Not being vaccinated is selfish.

It places the people around you at risk.

Every unvaccinated student contributes to the variant problem: more cases cause more mutations, which cause more variants, which means more of a likelihood that vaccines are ineffective, and thus more risk to the members of our community.

Since Aug. 24, at least 18 people at Greenhill have contracted COVID-19.

The danger of being unvaccinated has already been shown.

For each one of these COVID-19 cases, dozens of vaccinated community members had to be tested and had to worry about the safety of their family and friends.

Teachers and administrators sermonize about it every year, but Greenhill truly is a community. We all bear the responsibility to help each other, and at the very least, provide whatever amount of safety we can for each other. We share this campus with over 1,300 people. Many of them are simply too young to be vaccinated.

If you are eligible to be vaccinated, doing so is doing the bare minimum as a member of this community.

Teachers deserve to feel safe in their

classrooms and to come home safely to their too-young-to-be-vaccinated children.

Students need to feel that, when they sit down to do a group project, you, as a peer, have done as much as they have to keep inperson learning a reality.

And don’t forget, we could still move to virtual learning at any moment. We could end up not having a prom, The Buzz could close again, or maybe we won’t be able to eat in the cafeteria. Everything that has returned this school year – all the people, soft furniture and Buzz snacks – is a testament to the privilege Greenhill provides us with.

The choice to be unvaccinated comes from a place of privilege. To be able to not worry about family members that cannot be vaccinated and people who cannot afford to contract COVID-19 is a privilege. To have confidence in your access to healthcare, that you will be treated seriously by healthcare providers should things take a turn for the worse, is a privilege.

To be able to pay for your healthcare is a privilege.

The choice to be unvaccinated is not as simple as two shots in the arm after waiting in a line of cars for fifteen minutes. The choice to be unvaccinated is a choice to risk the well-being of the people around you.

At the Evergreen, we believe that the right choice is to be vaccinated. Vaccines are free and widely available. They make our campus a safer, healthier place. For students who are unvaccinated, we urge you to rethink your decision and the risk it poses to our community.

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national and international events through articles and editorials written and edited by students.

The Evergreen welcomes letters and emails from readers. We reserve the right to edit submissions for accuracy, grammar and length. The Evergreen will not publish material that we judge to be libelous, obscene, invades privacy or constitutes hate speech.

Anonymous letters will not be published.

The Staff Editorial represents the opinion of The Evergreen staff, not necessarily that of Greenhill School.

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Editorial: Seriously. Get Vaccinated.

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To request a correction or clarification, please email Gregg Jones: jonesg@greenhill.org

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

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Rants & Raves A

RAVE to the return of soft

furniture in the Upper School. Even if it doesn’t look like much, we can finally go back to having places to sit in the Upper School that don’t include the Student Center or outside, which doesn’t work if you want to escape mosquitoes.

A RANT to underclassmen in the courtyard. In pre-COVID-19 years, upperclassmen held control over the courtyard. Now the freshmen are taking over, climbing trees and playing catch, occupying valuable and sacred space.

A RAVENT to 10-minute passing periods. It’s pretty nice knowing there’s no need to rush to get to class on time, except if you’re going to science.

However, 10 minutes isn’t really enough time to do anything more than start something productive in the best-case scenario, so it just ends up being more time for socializing.

Not complaining though.

A

RANT to the lunch line.

It doesn’t help that the majority of the line is in the sun during the hottest part of the day. At this point, don’t be surprised if you don’t move in the line for at least 10 minutes with the number of people cutting in and out.

A RAVENT to the walk to the Science Village. The village and classrooms themselves are great and surprisingly well air-conditioned, except for their lack of running water. Who needs water? What’s worse is sprinting there in the scorching heat when your last class gets out late.

RAVE to Community Time no longer being in advisories. I love my advisory, but I’m grateful I no longer have to spend a full 80 minutes there before going back again during lunch like last year. We needed our space!

A RANT to textbook prices.

I honestly shouldn’t be paying hundreds of dollars for a book I’m told I don’t actually need on the first day of school. Math textbooks specifically are unnecessarily expensive, considering they’re only used for homework problems.

A RANT to the locker room change. For years, juniors and seniors have excitedly waited to have their own locker room with the nicer lockers. Now the currect upperclassmen are stuck in the same shared locker room they’ve been in for their entire high school career, while the freshmen get the good locker room.

A RAVE to The Buzz being back in business! It’s safe to say that it was greatly missed.

We’re finally able to get our hands on arguably the best cookies in existence, along with some new Ramen flavors. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the fact that last year’s threeperson limit in The Buzz is gone.

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