February 2014 Issue

C HRONICLE the harvard-westlake

Los Angeles • Volume 23 • Issue 6 • Feb. 12, 2014 • hwchronicle.com

BLACC assembly to feature author

By Julia Aizuss and Mazelle Etessami

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

Hello, Dolly!

CAUGHT IN THE ACT: Covi Brannan ’15, right, as Dolly Levi discovers Joey Lieberman ’14, center, as Barnaby Tucker and Brooks Hudgins ’14, left, as Cornelius Hackl in their effort to hide during a performance of “The Matchmaker” last weekend.

Honor Board introduces class meeting discussions, eliminates email case reports

By Julia Aizuss

In an effort to make the Honor Board more transparent and centralize its place in the community, all Honor Board cases will continue to be presented and discussed during class meetings, as they were in the class meetings this past cycle.

The change has been in the works since last year, when both Prefect Council and the Honor Board advisers expressed dissatisfaction with the process, in which students received a short email sum-

marizing the case and an invitation to meet in Chaplain Father J. Young’s office during activities period to discuss the case if they wished.

“In a year and a half of town meetings, I think only one student came,” Head of Upper School Audrius Barzdukas said. “So that was not working. We periodically meet to talk about how all aspects of the Honor Board are going.”

Although everyone agreed those meetings were ineffective, the intent remains the same, Head of Student Affairs Jordan Church said. They

originally switched from the old system in which everyone received long, detailed emails detailing Honor Board cases because such a method encouraged no constructive conversation, education or clarification, which was what Prefect Council and the Honor Board advisers wanted, Church said.

“What we want is for students to learn from the cases and we didn’t feel like that was happening,” Young said.

Instead, the limited amount of one-way information led students to false conclusions that focused too much

on the punishment and not “a more macro or holistic aspect of what’s happening in the case,” Church said.

The next logical move, Church said, was to move to another built-in time like class meeting, since there is no time to hold an all-school assembly.

“We felt that something was better than nothing,” dean and Prefect Council adviser Tamar Adegbile said. “This is a way to ensure more people are having a voice. We had talked a lot about how to make the Honor Code and the Honor • Continued on page A10

Boys’ basketball coach reaches 600-win mark

By Patrick Ryan

Basketball coach Greg Hilliard, who has accumulated nine CIF titles and two state championships in his tenure, added another milestone with his 600th victory Jan. 31, when the boys’ varsity basketball team defeated the Notre Dame Knights 66-60 to snap a

five-game losing skid.

“Greg Hilliard has been one of the great coaches in our school’s history,” Head of Athletics Terry Barnum said.

“What he has accomplished has been nothing short of amazing. He has been a cornerstone of our Athletic Department for so many years, and we are so proud of him.”

INSIDE

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MAKE IT CLASSY: Teachers advertised next year’s classes at Monday’s Academic Fair.

Athletes who have played under Hilliard include Jason and Jarron Collins ’97 and Bryce Taylor ’04, the leading scorer in Wolverine history.

“Winning 600 games is huge,” starting guard Alex Copeland ’15 said. “It just shows his dedication to the school and his devotion to the players and how much it has paid off.”

C1 ONE RING CIRCUS: Three sophomores perform together in aerial acrobatics.

B7

BOUNCING BACK: The boys’ varsity soccer team has attempted to regroup after the dismissal of three veteran players.

Hilliard has been modest regarding the milestone.

“He never seeks the spotlight out for himself, he’s always putting others before himself,” Barnum said. “That’s what makes him a great coach.

He cares so much about his players, and he wants them to succeed so much.”

• More coverage on page C4

When Rhodes Scholar, White House Fellow and entrepreneur Wes Moore opened the newspaper one day, a familiar name jumped out at him — his own. This Wes Moore, however, was convicted of murder and would serve a life sentence without possibility of parole.

Taken aback by the similar circumstances of their upbringing — both were brought up by single widowed mothers mere blocks from each other — Moore dove into their parallel lives and wrote a New York Times bestselling book, “The Other Wes Moore.”

Moore will discuss the discoveries that formed his book at the Black History Month assembly Feb. 19.

“I just remember reading his book and being so blown away, it was just so fascinating to me,” Black Leadership and Culture Club adviser Janiece Richard said.

“The Other Wes Moore” explores how both your own decisions and the decisions others make for you can change your life and other people’s lives, Richard said.

She said she hoped Moore, whom she heard at a conference in January, would deliver a “take-home message” that students, faculty and administration could all relate to.

“I feel like there’s something we can all relate to, some aspect of his life or story, so what it all boils down to is that we’re all the same and that we really decide where our lives go based on the decisions that we make and that other people make for us,” Richard said.

“Our decisions have a powerful impact on our life. I know that sounds corny but it’s true. This is a perfect example of that.”

Students will be able to buy and get copies of Moore’s book signed at a reception after the assembly, which will follow Special Schedule C.

ONtheWEB EYE ON THE SKY: Technology Center Director Chris Gragg interprets an astrological chart.

Watch the video at hwchronicle.com/ gragg

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The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2014 3700 Coldwater Canyon Ave. Studio City, Calif. 91604

Preview

NURTURING MINDS: Andrew Ravan ’15, far right, teaches children at New L.A. Charter how to use tablets for his online tutoring program Bridge to a Brighter Future.

SAY CHEESE: Alberto Rivera ’14, right, shows a Rwandan child how to take a selfie during a trip over semester break to study the effects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

ELIJAH AKHTARZAD/CHRONICLE

SU JIN NAM/CHRONICLE

News A8

Features B4

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

PINPOINT: Malanna Wheat ’14(#15) tracks down a loose ball during the girls’ soccer team’s 1-0 win over Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy.

Sports C1

A&E B10

JOIN THE TROUPE: Improv teacher Dave Bushnell, middle, offers tips to Kayla Shenassa ’14, left, and Tom Thorne ’14 during improv group practice.

offbeat

Students mimic dance video game routines to celebrate end of school week

By Julia Aizuss and Sydney Foreman

Once the clock strikes 2:35 on Friday afternoons, not every classroom gets a full weekend’s rest. Instead, the English classrooms in the Rugby annex welcome students once more, but not for poring over great works of literature — for dancing.

One day around Halloween, Perren Carrillo ’15 hooked up his laptop to Rugby 222’s projector, went on YouTube and found a video of a dance video game. He, Liane Capiral ’15 and Gwynn Pollard ’15 proceeded to mimic the virtu-

al silhouettes’ dance moves to “Monster Mash.”

Carrillo and friends dance to a variety of music that can be found in YouTube videos of the video games Just Dance and Dance Central, whose moves they imitate. However, they are not actually playing the video games, which usually consist of a motion-sensored element and require a proper game console.

“We play all the different versions of dance games,” Carrillo said. “Anything we can find on YouTube.”

Since that first Monster Mash, the group has grown, including about three to eight

participants each time. One week, almost every member of the improv group Scene Monkeys came and danced to “Rasputin.”

Although the group currently comprises a relatively small group of mostly juniors, Carrillo stressed that everyone is welcome to join.

“It’s not about experience or being good,” Carrillo said.

“It’s about just having fun and having a good time with people and laughing at ourselves because we completely mess up the moves.”

Regular participant Lex Ladge ’15 enjoys the variety of songs to choose from, which

The Chronicle, the student newspaper of Harvard-Westlake School, is published nine times per year and distributed free on both the upper and middle school campuses. There are 727 students at the Middle School and 870 students at the Upper School. Subscriptions may be purchased for $20 a year for delivery by mail.

Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the seniors on the Editorial

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

JUST DANCE: Students dance to Boney M.’s 1978 hit “Rasputin” after school in a classroom in Rugby Annex, a weekly tradition. range from songs by Elvis Presley to the Spice Girls. She also uses it as a time to reenergize while studying.

“Some of the more intense ones are surprisingly difficult workouts, but they are still fun nonetheless,” Ladge said.

Carrillo views it as a way to

“relax and take a break from schoolwork.” He does not consider it a club, but both he and Ladge hope to make it more official next year. “[Performing arts teacher Ted] Walch seemed pretty enthusiastic about it,” Ladge said.

Board. Letters to the editor may be submitted to chronicle@hw.com or mailed to 3700 Coldwater Canyon Ave., Studio City, CA 91604. Letters must be signed and may be edited for space and to conform to Chronicle style and format. Advertising questions may be directed to Tara Stone at 310-430-8537. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product or service by the newspaper or the school.

Feb. 12, 2014

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News A3

‘My Story’ event features successful women speakers

By Audrey Wilson

gle with cancer, to “American Idol” singer/songwriter Haley About 400 mothers and Reinhart. daughters gathered in the The event was led by EmMiddle School’s Saperstein ily Greener and Alexis Jones, Theatre Feb. 8 to hear talks founders of “I am That Girl,” from 15 women offering words an inspirational program deof wisdom and inspiration. signed to turn girls’ self-doubt Organized by the Harvard- into self-love.

Westlake Parents Associa“The concept behind [the tion through President Becky event] was mainly to bring toPrange and Ways and Means gether women of the HarvardVP Patty Dickman (Jessica Westlake community and host Dickman ’17), tickets for the an event in which girls can event were feel comfortsold at $50 able being apiece. themselves The My worI think a woman’s without Story team rying about voice can be extremely i n c l u d e d being judged,” AlessanGraham said. strong. With the roles dra Marenzi “I think in at least that I like to ’14, Emma today’s world Graham ’15, there are so choose, they’re ones Emma Kofmany more that aren’t just arm man ’16, Jesopportunities sica Dickman for women candy or the one that ’17, Danielle than ever needs saving.

Spitz ’18 and before, but Chloe Muel—Lily Collins ’07 it is always ler ’19, many a struggle Actress to overcome of whom became involved judgment in through their mothers. order to achieve success, and Guest speakers ranged I hope that My Story at least from actress Paula Jai Parker helped girls feel more comfortto Krys Bragg, a slam poet who able about themselves.” vocalized her mother’s strugStacey Snider, partner,

“

AUDREY WILSON/CHRONICLE

TELLING YOUR TALE: American Idol singer Hailey Reinhart shares her advice and stories at the My Story event Feb 8. At the event, women in the community shared their experiences and their advice.

CEO and Co-Chairman of DreamWorks Studios, (Katie Jones ’15, Natalie Jones ‘17) explained her career path after graduating from University of Pennsylvania and starting at UCLA Law School. Snider was not happy with her jobs working for various law firms and called a professor from Penn for advice, who told Snider to do what she loved.

“It was the first time in my life that I felt the rumbling of discontent,” Snider said. “I wasn’t happy in my summer jobs and it was so out of character for me to not be eager to work. It was a sign to me that I needed to expand my horizons and think about other things that I needed to pursue.”

Snider ultimately found a

career in the movie industry to pursue her passion. She explained, “as soon as I would pick up the script, my fingers would tingle, and I thought this is what I want to do.”

In an interview with actress Lily Collins ’07, Dickman asked, “How has being a woman changed your career and the choices you have made?”

“I think a woman’s voice can be extremely strong,” Collins responded. “With the roles at least that I like to choose, they’re ones that aren’t just the arm candy or the one that needs saving. It’s a character that goes through a growth and self-discovery and believing in herself—like Snow White— where it’s about a young girl who has been told all her life

that she is less than, and then she realizes her potential, and she ends up succeeding.”

Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of Space X, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, explained her journey becoming an engineer when she never saw it as a possible future for herself as a teenager. What she learned from her business partner, Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of Space X, CEO and head of product design at Tesla Motors and co-founder of PayPal, Shotwell explained, is that, “You need to push yourself. A little bit is never good enough.

Make your goals audacious, and even if you fall short – and we always fall short – you’ll achieve something great.”

Middle School requires seventh graders to sign Anti-Bullying Pledge

By Lauren Sonnenberg

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

GO FISH!: Rob Sanders ’15 and Matt Leichenger ’14 discuss Art Tobias’s and Dietrich Schuhl’s The Art and Science of Fly Fishing.

Students browse class options at Academic Fair

By Jake Saferstein

Prefect Council hosted Academic Fair during break Monday to allow sophomores and juniors to learn more about classes offered next year.

The event featured a table on the quad for every class, ranging from Physics to Cinema Studies to AP English Literature to Web Programming.

Booths at the fair featured teachers and students who have taken the class to discuss with prospective students.

Math Department Head Paula Evans teaches the directed Study in Web Programming, one of the courses at Academic Fair, which meets twice a week and teaches five programming languages.

“I think that Academic Fair does a good job because the student represents the class,” Paula Evans said. “Kevin Ho ’14 and a few others came to me to put together the study last year, and now he is rep-

resenting the course. It really shows how anyone can create a curriculum they enjoy.”

The Art and Science of Fly Fishing booth, one of the new Interdisciplinary Studies and Independent Research classes being offered next year, featured props such as a fishing rods and lures that students will make in the class. “[Academic Fair] was moderately effective,” Art and Science of Fly Fishing teacher Dietrich Schuhl said. “It’s good, but I feel like it doesn’t truly demonstrate the course.

It’s really important that students seek out and learn about courses on their own.”

Other booths offered candy and baked goods, and the Prefect Council booth sold Krispy Kreme donuts for $1. Yearbook students walked around with signs to encourage people to sign up for the class.

After students decide what classes to take, they must submit their forms by Feb. 21.

As a result of an internal audit focusing on bullying last year, middle school students were introduced to an anti-bullying pledge, and deans attended a meeting on “Myth-Busting Research on Adolescent Bullying.”

Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said these initiatives came in response to growing public attention to cyber-bullying in the media, but she does not believe that bullying is a problem at Harvard-Westlake.

The audit revealed that, though Harvard-Westlake does not have a bullying problem, the school should be working to prevent such problems, upper school dean Beth Slattery said. “We don’t see it as a huge problem here, compared to what other people are facing. We aren’t trying to put our heads in the sand, but we’re trying to be proactive as opposed to being reactive.”

Head of Middle School Jon Wimbish believes that a focus on anti-bullying is more beneficial at the Middle School because students are in a “developmental stage, because oftentimes in Middle School, kids have to re-establish some sort of hierarchy, and they don’t have the maturity and diplomacy to do that in a gentle way,” he said.

Though the internal audit included both the upper and middle school administrations, only middle school students were officially introduced to the anti-bullying pledge. The Honor Code implores a student to “let my conscience be

my guide” and implicit in this asking students to do anything is an understanding that stu- that differently in their behavdents not bully one another, ior, it’s the same sort of expeceighth grade dean Karen Fu- tations of what we expect from kushima said. a Harvard-Westlake student,” The Anti-Bullying Pledge Fukushima said. acts as “a social reminder to “I wouldn’t say that there our students, that this is a was any expectation on our community where everyone part to the anti-bullying should come here to feel safe, pledge being signed by upper to feel respected,” Wimbish school students or distributsaid. ed to upper school students,” Seventh grade students Wimbish said. “I think each signed this new pledge on a campus has to address their poster that hangs in the sev- needs and meet their students enth grade lounge, and eighth where they are.” and ninth grade students read Whereas the Anti-Buland discussed the pledge in lying Pledge was only applibreak-out sessions, cable to the Middle seventh grade dean School, the meeting Kate Benton said. on “Myth-Busting Parents were emailed Research on Adolesabout the pledge and cent Bullying” includthe accompanying ed middle and upper class meetings. school administrators The pledge is and deans. UCLA adapted from an Professor of DevelAnti-Bullying/Cyberopmental Psycholbullying pledge creogy Jaana Juvonen nathanson’s ated by Phil McGraw, made a presentation Jon Wimbish host of “Dr. Phil.” to deans, chaplains, There are no school psychologists plans to expand the pledge to and athletic leaders Jan. 21. the Upper School. In fact, up- She presented research on per school dean Tamar Adeg- bullying, answered questions bile was unaware that such a from the deans and offered pledge existed. her advice on the school’s reAs those students who sponse to bullying. have signed the pledge at the “She listed and categoMiddle School make their rized ways to handle bullying way to the Upper School, the and when people were throwpledge will expand to the Up- ing out ‘what ifs’ it was much per School with the students, more hypothetical than speFukushima said. Current up- cific cases,” upper school dean per school students have nei- Mike Bird said. “She made us ther signed the pledge nor think more about subtle inseen it. Until then, upper stances of [bullying] and ways school students, though not it gets insidious, but largely directly held accountable to it wasn’t eye-opening. It was the pledge, are expected to re- confirming what we already frain from bullying as it is “not know.”

The Chronicle

A4 News

Feb. 12, 2014

Umbrella injures registrar

By David Woldenberg

Registrar Virginia Schroeder was injured Feb. 3 when she was hit in the face by a green canvas umbrella that blew across the quad.

Schroeder was coming down the steps toward the cafeteria when a gust of wind blew the umbrella off of a lunch table and it flew into her.

She fell, suffering multiple injuries, including damage to her teeth and a broken wrist.

She underwent surgery Feb. 8 for her broken wrist.

Prior to that, she attended multiple medical appointments for her various injuries.

History teacher Eric Zwemer, who was eating lunch by the cafeteria, was the first one to aid Schroeder after he saw the umbrella hit her.

Zwemer described the umbrella flying at her as a surreal moment.

“Of course I went over to her,” Zwemer said. “I think I was the closest. [It] belongs under the heading of freak accident.”

He immediately sent for a dean, and upper school dean Sharon Cuseo called over the trainers to look at Schroeder’s injuries and tend to them.

“I have received many, many good wishes, greetings and support from the Harvard-Westlake community,” Schroeder said. “All the people who helped me in the quad immediately following the accident were wonderful.”

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

Commons discusses new Mission Statement with students, teachers

CUPCAKE DIPLOMACY: President Rick Commons, left, offered Sprinkles Cupcakes to any student or teacher that joined him on the quad Jan. 29-31 during eighth period and after school to discuss what the school’s new mission statement should include.

Slam group to perform for new Poetry Week

By Morganne Ramsey

The Get Lit Players, a performance poetry group of Los Angeles high school students is performing this week at sophomore and junior class meetings as part of Poetry Week, hosted by the English and Visual Arts departments.

The group will recite classic poetry and the players’ original poems that are reactions to those poems. Although the group will not be performing in a senior class meeting, English teacher Sasha Watson said that seniors are wel-

come to attend the other two performances Feb. 13 during third period and Feb. 14 during fifth period. The English Department will also begin holding meetings Feb. 24 for a performance poetry team at Harvard-Westlake to participate in the Get Lit Classic Poetry Slam, a performance poetry competition this May. The students participating will work with English teachers Caroline Miller and Eric Olson to prepare for the competition in. Poetry Week will also feature screenings of videos of students performing their own

poetry. The students are also putting up banners featuring poetry quotes around campus.

In addition to the events, sophomores will study poetry in their English classes this week, and some Latin classes will focus on studying poetry.

Poetry Week is meant to serve as a test-run for the Harvard-Westlake Poetry Festival, which will be held on a Saturday next fall. After Poetry Week, interested students will be able to attend meetings to help plan the festival. The festival will be open to students and faculty from Har-

vard-Westlake and up to 30 other schools in the area. Watson hopes that attendees will hear a keynote address from a poet and attend some workshops. The workshops will cover writing and publishing for students, and teachers will attend workshops on teaching poetry and creating poetic community among students.

“I hope they get the excitement of creating and reading and looking closely at poetry,” Watson said. “I want the idea of poetry as a vibrant art form that’s really relevant to all of us.”

Students develop bracket prediction software robot

By Benjamin Most

York Times created to make football predictions. Students A group of students are on Team Bot could consider working with the Math De- a variety of variables, includpartment to develop the ing rate of scoring, percentage NCAA Basketball Predictor of three-point shots scored or Bot to predict the results of late-game performance, Thill the March Madness tour- said. Some variables could acnament using statistics and curately predict a team’s persports analysis. The formance, while othMath Department ers could fail to do so. will also challenge all “The great thing students to attempt is that there are so to create a more acmany variables one curate tournament could speculate might bracket than the be good,” Thill said.

Bot in a school-wide “The question is which Bracketology conof these variables are test. most closely correlatnathanson’s The student that ed with whether or not William Thill predicts the most a team loses a playoff accurate bracket will game. There’s a great win a $100 Amazon gift card. statistician called George Box The second place finisher will who used to say, ‘All models win a $50 gift card and both are wrong, but some are usethe third and fourth place fin- ful.’ It’s the same thing here.” ishers will win a $25 gift card All students, even those each. A random draw will de- without much knowledge of cide ties. A total of 20 addition- statistics or mathematical al $10 Amazon gift cards will sports analysis, are encourbe awarded randomly to mem- aged to participate. bers on the Bot team or other “It’s so complex, but at the students whose predictions same time it’s so approachwere more accurate than the able,” Thill said. “You don’t Bot’s. Students can enter the have to be the best mathematicompetition using the ESPN cian on Earth to come up with National Collegiate Athletics something that will have some Association bracketology web- predictive power. And even site or join Team Bot by email- if you don’t want to get into ing math teacher and contest that, you can still participate leader William Thill. The stu- in the contest and have bragdents were inspired by the ging rights with your friends if 4th-Down-Bot that the New you’re beating them.”

MARCELLA PARK/CHRONICLE

BACK IN THE GROOVE: Science teacher Walt Werner lectures to his first period Anatomy class.

Science teacher returns from health leave

By Marcella Park

Science teacher Walt Werner returned to school at the beginning of the semester after finishing treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph tissue.

After being diagnosed in June, Werner had taken medical leave starting in October.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Werner had a stem cell transplant.

“Although it was very hard, it went well,” Walt Werner’s wife and history teacher Francine Werner ’68 said. “He’s okay now and just needs to get checked sometimes.”

“It’s good to be back,” Walt Werner said. “It’s wonderful to be back. I missed the school, I missed the students, I missed

the energy. And it’s great to be healthy again.”

After the procedure, Walt Werner was susceptible to infections and stayed in the hospital to recover in a “germfree environment,” Francine Werner said.

He was released from the hospital before Christmas and, once back home, prepared to return to teaching. Francine Werner said she and her husband thought it would be better for him to start teaching again at the beginning of the semester for an easier transition.

“Getting back to work wasn’t hard at all, frankly, once I started to get over the physiological problems — being tired and unmotivated because the doctors just tore my

body down with therapeutic drugs,” Walt Werner said.

While Werner was gone, science teachers Larry Axelrod and Dietrich Schuhl covered his AP Biology classes.

William Peet, who taught at Harvard-Westlake from 19792003, covered Werner’s Human Anatomy and Physiology classes.

Werner took over the anatomy course from Peet after he retired in 2003.

“We were very, very fortunate indeed to have Dr. Peet come in,” Werner said. “Thus far I’ve been pleased with my energy levels, and synergistic interactions with students increase my energy level and make life a little bit more interesting,” he said. “It’s good to be back.”

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/news

News A5

Italian, German to add 2nd level

By Siddarth Kucheria

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SARA EVALL

WORD OF MOUTH: Amelia Miller ’15, middle, and Sara Evall ’15 examine their notes and prepare their responses for debates held in Dallas Feb. 7-9. They will continue to practice and research with the rest of the United States National Debate Team for a debate in March.

2 students join National Debate Team

By Nikta Mansouri

The National Forensics League selected Sara Evall ’15 and Amelia Miller ’15 to compete on the 2014 United States Debate team.

Out of over 120,000 students around the country, nine debaters were selected for the team.

Evall and Miller went to Dallas Feb. 7-9 to meet the rest of the U.S. team, practice rounds and research for their upcoming debate in Slovenia in March.

The team also used the weekend as an opportunity to bond and went bowling together, Miller said.

“We are getting to work with coaches who have established debate programs around the world and are some of the

“

foremost experts in forensics very nice people and do other in the country as well, and interesting things outside of they are all debate, so invaluable rethat’s fun sources and too.” have already Evall and [The team] is helped us all Miller subimprove our mitted a all really talented and skills in the written apsmart and great at format,” Evall plication in said. debate. It’s fun to get to N o v e m b e r “ [ T h e along with a work with and spend team] is all video of them really talentdebating. time with people who ed and smart A p pl i you’ve known of, as and great at cants were debate,” Millnarrowed being really great but er said. “It’s down to 14 never actually met.” fun to get to c o n t e s t a n ts work with and then af—Amelia Miller ’15 and spend ter an intime with terview over people who you’ve known of as video chat, nine of the most being really great, but never qualified and multitalented actually met. They’re also all students were selected, Evall

Tuition increases by 3.7 percent to $33,500 for next school year

By Julia Aizuss

Tuition for the 2014-2015 school year will rise to $33,500 from $32,300, an increase of 3.7 percent, Chief Financial Officer Rob Levin said.

Chair of the Board of Trustees Christine Hazy (Steven ’00, Karissa ’03, Trenton ’05, Courtney ’11) announced next year’s tuition Feb. 3 in a re-enrollment letter online.

“This tuition is expected to keep Harvard-Westlake slightly below the major local independent school median,” Hazy wrote in the letter.

Levin said the increase’s rate, which is about equal to the rate of inflation plus two percent, is the result of an effort to make tuition as low as is prudent. He referenced a saying of Albert Einstein: “make everything as simple as

possible, but no simpler.”

“We can do [a tuition increase of] one percent right now, we can do zero percent right now, we can do [a tuition decrease of negative 10 percent] right now, but there will be consequences that we think are unacceptable,” Levin said. “We figure out what kind of school we want to be, what it’s going to cost to do that efficiently and then what tuition we have to charge to make that happen.”

In fact, the increase of inflation plus two percent is a successful initiative by the Business Office to slow what was an annual tuition increase of inflation plus four percent.

“Could the tuition increase be lower?” Levin said.

“Yeah. Now could it be higher?

Things that we would like to do, but choose not to? Sure.

We can’t do all of it. So for everything we do, we have to say, if we were the parents, would we want to invest more tuition dollars to make this happen.”

The tuition’s consistent annual increase is also part of the school’s duty to be a “shock-absorber,” Levin said.

“When you drive down the street, there are potholes, there are irregularities in the road, there are bumps,” he said. “So if you watch a car going down the street, the tires are bumping all around, but the vehicle, not so much. Annual giving goes up and down.

Your enrollment goes up a little and down a little, the financial aid goes up a little and down a little, you have all these bumps in the road.”

Just as the vehicle should not bounce along with its tires, tuition should not bounce all

said.

“Amelia and I have been competing internationally for the U.S. for the past three years, but since there was a big administrative change this year, we basically had to start fresh in our applications so it was a pretty nerve-wracking process,” Evall said.

Evall and Miller will represent Harvard-Westlake at Old Parklands debate during spring break, and the U.S. debate team has several tournaments lined up for the summer in Canada, Overland Park and locations around the globe.

“The end goal is to go to the world championships, which are in Thailand, over the summer, but only five of the nine students will go, so there is no guarantee that we’ll be attending that,” Evall said.

“

New levels of Italian and German will be added to next year’s curriculum for those who have completed the introductory classes.

The World Language Department will add German level two and Italian two.

Spanish teacher Aaron Bluestein will teach Italian level one, and French teacher Simona Ghirlanda will teach level two.

The classes will be available to native speakers and those who have taken the level one class this year or with the HarvardWestlake Summer Program.

“I chose to offer intermediate and advanced levels to those who had previously been studying with me,” Ghirlanda said.

“Next year instead, since [Bluestein] is willing to help me again, we will be able to offer a level one to those who want to start from scratch and a level two to our current sophomores and juniors who want to continue their Italian,” Ghirlanda said.

Technology center director and math teacher Chris Gragg will teach German levels one and two.

Students who took level one German or Italian look forward to taking the next level of their language.

“I’m looking forward to expanding my knowledge of [German] and how it works,” Anai Finnie ’15 said. “Someday I would love to be fluent.”

We figure out what kind of school we want to be, what it’s going to cost to do that efficiently and then what tuition we have to charge to make that happen.”

—Rob Levin Chief Financial Officer

over, Levin said. Thus during the 2008-2009 recession, the Business Office didn’t raise tuition for the next few years as much as it had to. Conversely, in the past few years, Levin said the Business Office raised tuition more than necessary.

“We’re glad the last two years we didn’t cool it quite as hard as we had to because this year some of the balls bounced against us,” Levin said. “We could have easily [raised tuition] four percent. Had we been restrained last year, we might have gone five percent, but we saw that coming. So instead you have [tuition raised

nathanson’s

by] 3.3, 3.0, 3.7. We’ve got shock-absorbers.”

The Business Office even has a motto for the tuition increases: “steady as she goes.”

Levin added that Chief Accounting Officer David Weil ’93 likes to say “keep calm and carry on,” while former President Tom Hudnut would say, “Radiate calm.”

“I don’t yet know what [President Rick] Commons’ phrase is for that, but that is absolutely his belief,” Levin said. “There’s enough stress in the world without creating it by us lurching around financially.”

A6 News

The Chronicle

inbrief

Feb. 12, 2014

Parents’ Association to discuss drug use

Writer and former dean Caitlin Flanagan (Patrick Hudnut ’16) and attorney Laurie Levenson (Daniela ’17, Havi ’08, Solly ’06) will host a discussion on teenage drinking and drug use at 7 p.m. March 5 in Chalmers. Organized by the Parents’ Association, “Kids and Alcohol/Drugs: The Rules, the Consequences, and the Tools to Guide your Kids,” will cover the dangers of drinking and drugs. The discussion will guide parents through situations and teach them how to deal with substance abuse.

“This is a conversation among parents with parents,” Vice President of Programs Lorraine Berchtold said. “The whole room will discuss and there will be a great exchange of ideas between parents.”

—Sophie Kupiec-Weglinski

Prefects introduce student request page Prefect Council launched a Facebook page to keep students informed on what it is working on and where students can share their ideas.

“With our recent decision to focus our energy on serving the students by improving campus life directly, we felt the time was right to create a Facebook page,” Head Prefect Henry Hahn ’14 said.

Prefect Council sent an email to students Dec. 18 asking what students would like to change to the school. In an email sent Feb. 9, Prefect Council said they’ve been using the responses to make improvements on campus.

—Nikta Mansouri

Model UN competes in Washington D.C. The Model UN program will compete at the National Convention in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Feb. 13-Feb. 16.

“We are writing position papers and learning about each of our countries’ policies to prepare for the conference,” Sara Evall ’15 said. “As nationals are the culminating event of the year, we have been looking forward to it since the club began to meet.”

Head of Student Affairs Jordan Church will accompany the 12 students on the trip.

—Cole Feldman

Prefect Council releases digital ID Prefect Council released an electronic ID application that will replicate normal IDs, including photos, ID numbers and barcodes Jan. 14.

“We’re pretty happy with the progress of the ID,” sophomore prefect Grace Pan ’16 said. “It’s so rewarding to see that the work we put in was productive and beneficial.”

Prefect Council provided students with a link that takes students to the HarvardWestlake website, where they can download the app. The first time students run the app, they are required to log in to gain access.

—Jessica Spitz

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF LEO LAU

Chinese Cultural Club hosts Lunar New Year Celebration

YEAR OF THE HORSE: Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts feeds a lion “hong bao,” an envelope holding money, at the Chinese Cultural Club Lunar New Year Celebration at the Universal Hilton Hotel Feb. 9. Chinese lunar new year was Jan. 31.

AP Physics B class to be split into 2 sections

By Jessica Lee

In response to the College Board’s decision to replace the current AP Physics B exam with separate AP Physics I and AP Physics II assessments, the Upper School will offer two AP Physics B courses starting the 2014-2015 school year.

According to the College Board website, “The National Research Council concluded that AP Physics B is a very broad course that encourages cursory treatment of important topics in physics rather than cultivating a deeper understanding of key foundational principles.”

This decision was made by the College Board several years ago and was scheduled to be implemented in the 2014 school year.

“We are following the lead

“

of the College Board and cre- that the current AP Physics B ating two classes to match course does not cover, Hutchithe two new son said.

AP exams in The 2015 physics,” sciAP Physics ence teachexams will At this point, it’s er Karen also have a hard to get a feel for Hutchison greater emsaid. phasis on exwhat AP Physics I and The AP perimental II will really be like in Physics I class design and will focus on conceptual terms of the level and Ne w t o n i a n understandrigor and the types of mechanics, ing. things students will be waves and AP Physrotational dyics I and AP asked to do.” namics, while Physics II, AP Physics II —Jesse Reiner which are rewill center on the science teacher spectively fluids, therequivalents to modynamthe first and ics, electricity, magnetism and second semesters of collegenuclear physics. level algebra-based physics, Rotational dynamics and will offer more laboratory innuclear physics will both be vestigations and reports for new topics in Physics I and II students to be more directly

Debaters compete, place at tournaments nationally

By Jessica Spitz

had a great tournament as a team, and I’m looking forward Debaters competed in a to competing in the future.” tournament at Stanford UniNine debaters traveled versity Feb 7-Feb. 9 and re- to Las Vegas Feb. 3-Feb. 5 to ceived numerous recognitions. participate in the University Annie Kors ’14 finished of Nevada, Las Vegas Tournathe preliminary rounds as ment. Cohen and Shelby Heitthe top seed and advanced to ner ’14 both lost in the quarthe semifinals, also winning terfinals after having made the third speaker award and it through the preliminary her sixth bid for the Tourna- rounds undefeated. ment of Champions. Cameron Cohen and Heitner were Cohen ’14 and Nick awarded eighth and Steele ’16 both made 19th speaker awards it to triple-octafinals, respectively. but because teamKors and Michael mates are not allowed O’Krent ’14 both to debate each other, made it to the octaCohen let Steele finals, and O’Krent “walk over” him, prowalked over Kors viding an opportunity and advanced to the for Steele to earn a quarterfinals, though nathanson’s second and qualifyKors still won the top Annie ing TOC bid. Cohen speaker award with Kors ’14 won the 20th speak119.1 out of 120 total er award and Steele adjusted points. Julie went on to lose in octafinals, Engel ’14 walked over O’Krent which was one round short of in the quarterfinals and comearning a bid. peted in the semifinals, also “I’m really grateful that winning the fourth speaker Cameron let me walk over him award. O’Krent earned his in triple-octos and gave me qualifying bid for the TOC and another shot at a second bid Engel won her first bid of the to the TOC,” Steele said. “We season.

“

involved in making individual analysis and conjectures on the topics learned in class lectures.

“At this point, it’s hard to get a feel for what AP Physics I and II will really be like in terms of the level of rigor and the types of things that students will be asked to do, so I think we are all just trying to go into it with an open mind,” science teacher Jesse Reiner said. “We’re definitely going to have to do some work over the summer getting ready for the new course.”

The revision to the AP Physics B course was decided with recommendations from the National Research Council and National Science Foundation and the support of AP teachers and faculty members nationwide, the College Board website states.

As we head towards the big end of the year tournaments, I think our team is in a great position to continue our success. We’ve had some amazing accomplishments recently.”

—Shelby Heitner ’14

“As we head towards the big end of the year tournaments, I think our team is in a great position to continue our success,” Heitner said.

“We’ve had some amazing accomplishments recently. I’m especially proud of our sophomores, [Cohen] and [Steele], who have both received bids to the TOC. I can’t wait to see how we will all finish the season.”

Harvard-Westlake hosted the Victory Briefs Tournament at the upper school campus Jan. 3-Jan. 5. Cohen advanced to the quarterfinals and Kors advanced to the semifinals.

Kors received her fifth bid for the TOC and Cohen received his second, officially qualifying him for the TOC at the end of the season.

In Blake, Minn. Dec. 20-22, a total of 176 debaters representing 14 states competed in a national TOC qualifier.

Cohen advanced to the

nathanson’s

octafinals while Kors went undefeated in the preliminary rounds and lost in quarterfinals. Kors won the third speaker award and Cohen won the 12th.

“It’s really exciting,” Cohen said. “We’ve been working extremely hard all year so it’s great to finally be [qualified].

We’re all still working really hard to prepare for future tournaments and especially the TOC.” The debate team will participate in a World Schools Round Robin competition in Dallas, Texas, where they will be competing against students from Australia, Canada, England, Mexico and across the United States March 22-March 30.

In addition, they will compete in tournaments at the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University and the University of Southern California.

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/news

News A7

inbrief

Orchestra room faces acoustics problems

Geology students visit Death Valley

By Jensen Pak and Kenneth Schrupp

Instrumental music students have been experiencing high noise levels in the remodeled orchestra room.

Performing arts teacher Mark Hilt said they were happy with last summer’s remodel but “especially in the jazz classes, where the instruments are amplified, it’s really too loud” and noise from the instruments can be heard in the adjacent choral room, in the deans’ offices on the seconed floor and math classes on the third floor of Chalmers.

Hilt said that a proposal was received from Wenger Corporation, which provides products in musical education, to improve the noise levels in the room. Drapes have been installed temporarily but do not appear to be providing sufficient sound-blocking, Hilt said.

“The curtains appear to make no difference, although it is my feeling the reverb is less with the curtains in place,” performing arts teacher Andrew Villaverde said.

“We asked for the remodel and they gave us what we wanted, it’s just that we haven’t finished it yet,” performing arts teacher Shawn Costantino said. “Mr. Hilt and I are just looking at it as a work in progress that is in the process of being finished.”

PRINTED WITH PERMISISN OF XENIA VIRAGH

BRIDGE TO MYANMAR: Xenia Viragh ’15 visited students in Myanmar during her winter break.

She was able to access the internet with her laptop and hopes to use Skype to tutor students there.

32 students to help Burmese students learn English through Skype

By Sacha Lin

Xenia Viragh ’15 has initiated a program called Mandalay-LA that will use Skype to allow students at Phaung Daw Oo in Myanmar to talk with students here and improve their English conversational skills. Her first task is to raise money to buy computers and tablets for the school, which has only one outdated computer for more than 6,000 students to use.

Phaung Daw Oo is a monastery school that provides free education to underprivileged children. It runs on donations and money it makes from small shops around Mandalay.

Viragh has already paired off 32 students here with students in Myanmar and plans to have partners converse twice a week for one-hour sessions. As

well as helping them improve their English, the project will give volunteers a chance to build a long-term friendship and learn about a new culture. Viragh visited the school during a backpacking trip she took around Myanmar over the summer because her trip leader had previously taught at the monastery.

“I instantly fell in love with the school and felt a deep connection with the students there,” Viragh said. “The atmosphere of the monastery is almost indescribable. All of the students are so enthusiastic and so incredibly driven to learn.”

She saw that although the students could read and write English well, they were still lacking in their ability to speak and hold conversation.

“I thought that the most

beneficial thing to do was set up a program in which the Myanmar students could really practice English as a language and not a subject,” Viragh said.

However, Viragh found that the school had weak Internet connection and was not able to establish one that would work well. When Viragh returned to Myanmar during winter break, she discovered that she had no issues with Internet connection when she used her Macbook.

“I really want MandalayLA to be a firm project before I expand, but I definitely want to connect more students from different schools,” Viragh said.

To promote the program, Viragh has set up a web page that includes updates, pictures, and videos at http://xeniaviragh.com/mandalay-la.

Happiness expert to advise joint faculty

By Noa Yadidi

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF IAN CINNAMON

THEIR BEST SHOT: Ian Cinnamon ’10 poses with co-workers in front of the lab of Y Combinator, an elite accelerator program.

Alumnus raises money for HIV vaccine research

By Claire Goldsmith

As Director of Strategy at the Immunity Project, Ian Cinnamon ’10 raises money to fund research leading to a free preventitive vaccine for HIV. Cinnamon graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013 with a degree in Brain and Cognitive Science.

He now works for the Immunity Project, which aims to develop a vaccine that would prevent HIV. The Immunity Project’s plan is based on “controllers,” people born with a natural immunity to HIV. Researchers who analyzed controllers infected with HIV found that cells in their blood attack and weaken the HIV virus.

They used those cells in the development of the vaccine.

“This would be truly game-

changing in the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” the organization said in a description of its activities on its website.

Last year, the team successfully tested the vaccine in mice, producing the desired immune response. The organization has submitted its research to scientific journals and is currently raising money to fund additional trials in mice. They hope to plan clinical trials with the Food and Drug Administration and then eventually expand clinical trials and fundraising to begin manufacturing.

“In terms of how it’s impacted my future, it’s definitely helped me realize how important it is to work on something that truly impacts people’s lives,” Cinnamon said.

“I know that moving forward I’ll want all my endeavors to reinforce that concept.”

terest, and her area of research is what promotes happiness. I An expert on happiness think she’s going to convey to will speak at a joint faculty us how so much of whether meeting Feb. 18. one is happy or not depends so Sonja Lyubomirsky, a pro- much on attitude and that one fessor of psychology at Uni- can actually become happier versity of California, by just having a better Riverside, will be the attitude.” second speaker to adLyubomirsky, who dress both the midis originally from Rusdle and upper school sia, received her B.A. in faculty this year in psychology, summa cum Saperstein Theatre laude, from Harvard on the middle school University in 1989 and campus.Each year, her Ph.D. in social psythe school picks two chology from Stanford JOSH BLANCHARD speakers to speak at in 1994. the two joint faculty “We very much Sonja meetings, and Lyusupport the notion of Lyubomirsky bomirsky will follow promoting positive atStanford psychology profes- titude at school,” Huybrechts sor Carol Dweck who spoke said. “For example, not just to faculty Oct. 8. The divisions having a counseling and psyheads group, made up of Head chology department that simof School Jeanne Huybrechts, ply deals with crises or kids or Head of Upper School Audrius adults who are having probBarzdukas, Head of Middle lems. But rather, being very School Jon Wimbish, Head of intentional about promoting Athletics Terry Barnum and positive attitude at school.”

Director of Studies Liz ResnHuybrechts hopes that ick, seeks people with a na- such positive attitudes can be tional reputation who they a part of every course and inhope will have insight to offer teraction students and teachteachers that they don’t nor- ers have to make those as posimally hear in the context of tive an experience as possible. working at school, Huybrechts Lyubomirsky’s book “The How said. of Happiness” was published “She’s more than just a in 2008, and her other book happiness expert,” Huybrechts “The Myths of Happiness” was said. “That’s her scholarly in- released in 2013.

All students enrolled in the Geology and Geology Honors courses have already or will be traveling to Death Valley to get hands-on experience with geology.

“I have seen real changes in my students after the trip,” Geology and Geology Honors teacher Wendy Van Norden said. “They ‘get’ it so much better.”

There have already been two trips to Death Valley, which took place from Jan 31.

-Feb. 2 and Feb. 8-Feb. 10, and there will be two more trips from Feb. 21-Feb. 23 and Feb. 23-March 2.

—Jonathan Seymour

Students participate in math competition A total of 98 upper school students participated in the American Math Competition Feb. 2. Two tests were administered, the AMC 10 and AMC 12.

Students are given 25 multiple choice questions to complete in 75 minutes, with the AMC 10 focusing more on concepts in algebra and geometry and the AMC 12 focusing on concepts in pre-calculus.

Every correct answer receives six points. Every incorrect answer receives zero points and every answer left blank receives 1.5 points.

Students who score over 100 points for the AMC 12 or over 120 points on the AMC 10 will qualify for following math competitions.

—Pim Otero

Prefect Council sells Valentine grams Prefect Council began selling Valentines grams Tuesday.

The grams sold will be delivered directly to students’ lockers on Valentine’s Day. Each gram comes with a lollipop and costs $1 each.

Students must pay in cash.

Prefect Council made the announcement through email on Monday, and released an advertisement video that was included in the email and posted on the Prefect Council Facebook page.

“I really like the idea of the Valentine’s Day grams,” Katie Zipkin-Leed ’15 said. “They are really cute and a fun and easy way to get into the Valentine’s Day spirit.”

—Eugenia Ko

Science Bowl teams to open season Both the Science Bowl ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams will compete in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Science Bowl Feb. 22.

The competition will be the teams’ first participation in an official competition this year.

The teams have only competed in a scrimmage against North Hollywood high school Dec. 14 but have been practicing by learning the content included in the toss-up and bonus questions and practicing buzzer strategies used in competitions.

—Scott Nussbaum

The Chronicle

A8 News

Feb. 12, 2014

Junior shares sports medicine research

By Mila Barzdukas

researcher at Children’s Hospital, get her study approved Jamie Skaggs ’15 conduct- by the Internal Review Board ed scientific studies with Chil- and take online classes on good dren’s Hospital and presented clinical practice. She tested for her findings in Ahmenson Lec- three positions: hands on head, ture Hall during break Feb. 3. hands on knees and hands by Skaggs participated in two your sides. studies conducted by ChilShe conducted her study dren’s Hospital last year and on 17 members of last year’s traveled to Singapore last track team. Skaggs detersummer to mined being present her bent over was studies at the best posithe Internation to recovThe presentation tional Youth er in, provwas really informative Sports Sciing coaches ence Conacross the and professionally ference. c o u n t r y executed.”

Skaggs’ wrong. first study “ W h e n —Nathalie Rebolledo ’15 determined you place what posiyour hands on tion was the your knees, best one to be in during recov- you have a greater maximum ery. voluntary ventilation,” Skaggs “Coaches tell us to put our said. “Participants were able hands above our head after we to move more air in and out of run, but it always seemed eas- their lungs in 12 seconds when ier to bend over,” Skaggs said. their hands were on their When Skaggs researched knees.” the topic, she found little reSkaggs hypothesized that search had been done in the when you raise your hands field. Her father, a pediatric above your head, you are using orthopedic surgeon, suggested accessory muscles that would that she do a paper on the sub- otherwise be used to facilitate ject. breathing. She also tested to To conduct her study, she see how flexibility is related also had to become a certified to improved athletic perfor-

“

SCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

MYTHBUSTER: Jamie Skaggs ’15, left, presents her research on the optimal recovery position to students at break Feb. 3. Skaggs hopes to conduct further research in the field of sports medicine. mance.

“Although there is a wide belief that flexibility is good for athletics, there is very little evidence to support this,” Skaggs said. “In fact, numerous studies have shown static stretching before exercise decreases athletic performance.”

“The presentation was really informative and professionally executed,” Nathalie Rebolledo ’15 said. “I don’t run that much, but when I do I will make sure to put my hands on my knees.”

Her study is hopefully going to be the first of many

History department hosts visiting committee

By Tara Stone

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ALAN YOUSEFZADEH

BRIDGING THE GAP: Andrew Ravan ’15, left, and Grace Kotick ’15 tutor a sixth grade student from Valor Academy in math using Skype and Wacom Tablets. Bridge to a Brighter Future tutors meet twice a week, and openings for new tutor positions are available at the beginning of every month.

Bridge to a Brighter Future receives $3,000 grant from Jewish Federation

By Cole Feldman and Jonah Ullendorff

Bridge to a Brighter Future was awarded a $3,000 grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles after winning the ChangeMaker Challenge. The program was selected as one of the winners of the grant out of over 100 applicants. The non-profit is comprised of 15 tutors and 15 students, headed by Andrew Ravan ’15, Elijah Akhtarzad ’15 and Alan Yousefzadeh ’15.

Bridge to a Brighter Future has used some of the grant money to open a second chapter at Milken Community High School.

The program’s main goal is to educate students through technology, making it easier to interact with underprivileged students. Tutors use the Skype platform and Wacom pen tablets to connect with stu-

dents in lower socioeconomic areas to tutor them in math, thus eliminating the need to commute to far locations.

“We thought it would be great to provide additional aid to students through tutoring, while incorporating technology into the process,” Yousefzadeh said.

The highly interactive process helps the students with their homework and creates a strong relationship between the tutor and the tutee. Currently, there are 15 student tutors working with sixth and seventh graders from Valor Academy.

“The students are not only gaining a better understanding of their math curriculum, but also building relationships with their tutors, who become role models for these young, aspiring students,” Yousefzadeh said.

In addition to expanding

conducted with the HarvardWestlake Center for Sports Science whose head athletic trainer is Milo Sini, Skaggs said.

Skaggs encouraged students to get involved with the center, and hopes next to conduct a study on sleep.

the program to Milken, the organization is looking to buy more devices to help with the tutoring and connectivity like Wacom tablets, which are used to illustrate math problems.

“The $3,000 grant is enabling Bridge to a Brighter Future to buy more Wacom Tablets and accessories for our new chapter, and will be used towards Bridge to a Brighter Future expansion as an official nonprofit corporation,” Yousefzadeh said.

The expansion and creation of its second chapter, Bridge to a Brighter Future — Milken, will begin today, where tutors at Milken will connect over Skype with sixth grade students at New L.A. Charter School.

“Bridge to a Brighter Future provides a meaningful, easy, and rewarding opportunity to give back to communities in L.A,” Ravan said.

in review of classes, a roundtable discussion between teachThe History Department ers and the visitors and a final hosted a visiting committee document submitted to the of four working scholars and department. educators from California In March, Cutler and and New York Feb. 3 and 4. Holmes-Chuba will presRespective upper school and ent a report to the Board of middle school department Trustees and start to collecheads Katherine Homes-Chu- tively involve both upper and ba and Matthew Cutler, along middle school departments in with former department head addressing the various issues John Corsello, hosted a panel brought up for the six-year made up of Elisa Milkes from plan. Both departments expect Horace Mann School, Caro- to discuss matters of research lyn McNulty from University projects, the writing program, High School, William Deverell plagiarism, grade level transifrom University of tions and the integraSouthern California tion of technology. and Douglas Smith One concern with from Colburn Music research papers is Conservatory. the large amount of Horace Mann plagiarism, so the deSchool shares simipartment is looking lar viewpoints to forward to a discusHarvard-Westlake in sion on how to shrink terms of student and that number and how nathanson’s parent communities, the visiting schools and Holmes-Chuba have managed to do Katherine had previously helped this.

Homes-Chuba to review their histoThe reviewers ry department. Holmes-Chu- recommended assigning lonba, Cutler and Head of School ger term papers, as it is “hard Jeanne Huybrechts had spent to develop a real argument in some time at a workshop at just five pages,” Huybrechts University High School and said. found the school to be differTeachers were also coment enough from Harvard- mended for their efficient inWestlake to provide diverse tegration of technology in the feedback. classroom.

“You don’t want people who “The students are really foare exactly like you because cused and I see a lot of enthuthat’s not very informative,” siasm for courses,” McNulty Holmes-Chuba said. “The nice said. “I’ve been watching comthing about University is they puter use too: [I’m] delighted know us but they don’t really to see kids are actually taking know us.” notes on their computers.”

During the review, the Specific recommendations History Department present- for the middle school were ed the panel with its six-year rewriting the seventh grade program, the changes they curriculum to include more were contemplating and the American history, improvchanges they were already un- ing the writing program and dergoing. smoothing the transition from The process included a sit- ninth to tenth grade.

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/news

News A9

Design firm consults on Reynolds renovation

By Benjamin Most

SCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

Seniors throw fake semiformal event

SUIT AND TIE: A group of seniors dressed in formal wear sip apple cider during a game of “sparkling cider pong” on the quad during the fake semiformal held Feb. 3. The class of 2012 started the tradition as a way to start off second semester after the real semiformal dance was canceled by the administration in 2011. The semiformal event lasted for all of Activities period.

Parents hold event to benefit financial aid

By Enya Huang

The Harvard-Westlake Parents’ Association hopes to make more than $85,000 from the 2014 Parents’ Gala, “Come Together,” Feb. 22 at the Skirball Guerin Pavilion, Parents Association annual event committee chair Jennifer Lechter (Eliana ’17, Zackary ’19) said.

“This year’s auction theme is ‘Priceless’ because we wanted to have items that were hard to get,” Lechter said.

Parents’ Activities Liaison Portia Collins (Jarron ’97, Jason ’97) donated tickets to the

Staples Center luxury box for the Lakers-Rockets game Feb. 19. A presale auction for the tickets closed on Feb. 9.

The average attendance in past years was about 600 parents, Lechter said.

She is hoping for an attendance of 800 this year. The amount of donations from the Parents’ Gala also varies from year to year, she said.

Proceeds from the Gala will benefit school financial aid and technology, including updating faculty and staff hardware, maintaining the computer labs and providing tech

“

support.

Voice’ fi“We have nale, ‘Danca new aucThis year’s auction ing with the tion category Stars’ finale, theme is ‘Priceless’ that we hope many Lakwill be very ers games, because we wanted to popular with ‘Jimmy Kimhave items that were students and mel Live’ hard to get.” graduates and much, called ‘Shadmuch more,” —Jennifer Lechter she added. “I ow a Professional in your (Eliana ’ 17, Zackary ’ 19) really hope Dream Cathat the reer,’” Lechstudents go ter said. online, see “We have over 15 exciting what’s up on the auction block career paths to choose from. and encourage their parents to We also have tickets to ‘The bid on the items they want.”

Representatives of a design firm which specializes in creating optimal spaces for learning visited the Middle School Feb. 4 to discuss renovations to Reynolds Hall.

Designers for Fielding Nair International talked to faculty and administrators about how they plan to build productive and flexible classrooms at the Middle School to allow for a variety of teaching styles.

“We discussed how spaces and classroom configuration can affect teaching and learning,” Head of Middle School Jon Wimbish said.

Fielding Nair International has built educational facilities around the world in 36 countries and 19 U.S. states. The architecture firm has also worked on $10 billion worth of schools in the past 15 years and won 11 international planning and design awards for their work.

The firm is planning to begin work on Reynolds Hall, which will be known as the Wang Center after the renovations, during the summer.

Visual arts, history, world languages and Human Development classes will be taught in the new renovated classrooms.

The administration hopes to allow for improved use of technology, and changes may include Wi-Fi improvements to the building.

“This is our opportunity to make sure that our classrooms accommodate the needs for a 21st century learning environment,” Wimbish said.

Seniors named Intel research semifinalists

By Zoe Dutton

tumor growth through protein interactions at the City of The Society for Science and Hope hospital. the Public named Di“I’m really vya Siddarth ’14 and thrilled at the award, Megha Srivastava but more exciting is ’14 as semifinalists the opportunity I had in the Intel Science to do this incredible Talent search, one of research,” Siddarth the most prestigious said. “I learned so pre-college science much this summer, competitions in the and it gave me direccountry. tion with what I want nathanson’s Siddarth and to do with my life.”

Divya Srivastava will each They said they Siddarth ’14 win a $1,000 scholarhoped to do more reship for their original research search in the future. that they conducted over the “I might work in the same summer. lab, but I’m interested in com“I entered the competition puter science and chemistry, just so I could have an excuse so I might just do something to write the paper,” Srivastava different next year,” Srivassaid. “Winning is just a cool tava said. “But I’m definitely bonus.” going to continue with some Srivastava insort of research.” terned at the UCLA From the 300 California Nano Syssemifinalists that tems Institute and were recognized nadeveloped a new pH tionally, 40 will be sensor for doctors invited in March to to check the safety Washington, D.C. to of their medications, display their work, enabling hospitals lomeet with sciencated in rural areas tists and vie for the nathanson’s to use the same medifirst place prize of Megha cation as those in ur$100,000.

Srivastava ’14 ban centers without Students were having to transport chemicals selected from 1,794 entrants to a laboratory for testing. from 489 high schools across Siddarth studied how to stop the country.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ED HU

COMMON GROUND: President Rick Commons meets with alumni, trustees and donors in New York, before attending the Headmasters Association meeting in Philadelphia, where his family resides.

Commons visits headmasters meeting

By Jack Goldfisher

President Rick Commons met with New York area alumni, trustees and donors before attending a Headmasters Association meeting in Philadelphia last week.

The alumni came from Harvard and Westlake graduating classes of the 1960s to the Harvard-Westlake class of 2008.

“It was great connecting with people who have such an interest in the success of the school,” Commons said.

This year’s Headmasters Association meeting, which hosted more than 100 principals and heads of school from across the country, focused on health in a school environment.

The seminars confronted topics including sports concussions, adolescent stress and eating disorders, among others. Commons described it as a great chance to discuss opportunities for the campus with other headmasters.

“Additionally, I got to go with [former President Tom]

Hudnut,” Commons said.

“Which was really exciting, because he was actually the one who nominated me to the association seven years ago.”

While in Philadelphia, Commons stayed in his childhood home with his family. He said leaning against the radiator in his old bedroom gave him a chance to reflect.

“I never dreamed, sitting here leaning against this radiator, that my life and my passions would lead me to [Harvard-Westlake],” he said. “But I’m glad they did.”

A10 News

Visual arts teacher starts video series

By Jacob Goodman

Visual arts teacher Kevin O’Malley has started a YouTube lecture series called Classroom 2.0 as part of what he calls the free information movement. The series consists of a group of lectures given by O’Malley on a variety of topics. Currently there are three lectures on the channel, one on Flemish painting and its effects on the renaissance and photography, a four part series on Vincent Van Gogh and an adaption of the high school portfolio lecture given at Harvard-Westlake’s “College Night.”

“For my career, both as a student and a teacher has depended on the generosity of others,” O’Malley said. “My teachers and the institutes that I have taught for are both generous with their time and effort, so it’s my way of paying them back. And information should be free.”

O’Malley shoots the lectures in the photo studio on

the upper school campus during his free time. For his most recent one he used a small student crew but generally prefers to shoot them alone.

O’Malley researches all the lectures months in advance.

The four-part Van Gogh lecture took nine months to accumulate all the information for. The exhibit of renaissance paintings that inspired the most recent video, “Faces, Flanders, Florence 1400’s… and finally photography,” was exhibited at the Huntington Library in August of last year.

“I went to the show seven or eight times and I went, ‘Whoa, there’s a connection here that I think I want to make an original statement on,’” O’Malley said.

O’Malley has found it tricky to recreate face-to face intimacy from a computer screen, he said.

“I’m working from a script that I’ve written, but I try to present it in a way that’s a little bit more intimate so that somebody who watches it is

Honor Board seeks transparency, new policies implemented • Continued from page A1

Board more relevant in our community and not just something people glance over.”

Barzdukas emphasized the Honor Board’s role as more than just a glance-worthy institution.

“The Honor Board does not exist just to adjudicate,” he said. “It also exists to educate and inspire. We want the Honor Board to lead our school in terms of developing good character and academic integrity. I just want to be there to support the Board.”

The new process also increases the Board’s transparency, an issue Honor Board advisers considered when studying the methods of other independent schools.

“Ultimately, it’s about achieving the goal of transparency and helping the community learn about the consequences of poor choices,” Church said.

However, Young said complete transparency is neither feasible nor desirable.

“It’s important for the community to be able to learn from other people’s mistakes, so to that degree I think transparency’s really important,” Young said. “But we never intended nor in this new move do we intend to create a transparent process. That’s not our intent.

Our intent is to become more transparent, but not transparent. With the Honor Board, there is a limit to that.”

In fact, the Honor Board advisers consider anonymity crucial to the case discussions.

Barzdukas expressed reluctance to pin “scarlet letters” to anyone, while Young said, “The perfection for me would be for the student to attend the meetings and still remain anonymous and get

The Chronicle

Feb. 12, 2014

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF KEVIN O’MALLEY

A VIDEO EDUCATION: Visual arts teacher Kevin O’Malley has started a YouTube video lecture series on topics such as the effects of Flemish painting on the Renaissance and Vincent Van Gogh. going to get some sort of human interaction,” O’Malley said. “And I know that’s difficult with YouTube because you’re watching a computer. And that’s one of the big questions out there for online courses. You go to college and you take a class and there are 300 people sitting in the hall and another 300 people sitting

“

in another hall and all their doing is watching a TV screen.

And the question is, is that a good use of your time? Maybe if the teacher’s really dynamic.

That’s what I’m working on trying to convey some sincerity in what I am trying to talk about.”

O’Malley thinks that other Harvard-Westlake teachers

Ultimately, it’s about achieving the goal of transparency and helping the community learn about the consequences of poor choices.”

—Jordan Chruch Director of Student Affairs

a sense of the community reaction to their offense.”

But that has been a noticed a classmate’s absence, fraught subject—whether the she said she would sooner student who was the subject chalk it up to something like a of the Honor Board case doctor’s appointment. To tamp should attend his or her class down on speculation, Corinna meeting. Prefect Council has suggested that case summaries been contemplating giving the no longer reveal what grade the student the option to attend, student is in. However, if the and although Head Prefect student did choose to attend Henry Hahn ’14 was pretty class meeting, Hahn wasn’t sure they had finalized this sure whether they would be decision, opinions were still allowed to participate. Before mixed. attending, the student would “This person is a student, probably have to agree not to they should go to the class challenge the case’s decision, meeting,” Barzdukas said. he said.

“They’re a student. Students “Understandably it’s an go to class meetings.” emotional thing to Young, on the have to be given other hand, was these kinds of uncomfortable consequences,” Hahn with mandating said. “We as a board attendance, although do recognize that not he said he would every student is going privately encourage to agree with every them to do so. decision we make.”

“It’s a doubleHowever, Hahn nathanson’s edged sword, because said he was doubtful J. Young if a student doesn’t the student would attend, it calls participate in such a attention to him or her,” manner, if at all.

Young said. “If the student Young, meanwhile, said does attend, I know it could he was confident students be uncomfortable. I’d probably would be able to discuss the vote for leaving it up to the situation in a depersonalized student.” manner. What concerned him Corinna* ’14, who went more, he said, was the level of before the Honor Board last participation, considering the year, said if given the choice, lack of interest students had she wouldn’t attend a class in meeting in his office. meeting about her case.

“It can’t get any worse “After your Honor Board than the past, though,” Young case, you already have to said. “Even if 25 percent of the meet with Mr. Barzdukas, he students are engaged, that’s already told you what you did heck of a lot more than we’ve was wrong,” she said. “That’s had in the past.” the fifth time you have to Hahn noted that just as hear it. I would want to put it students didn’t attend the behind me and just move on.” town hall meetings because She acknowledged that her they wished to attend clubs absence from class meeting or relax during break, some could draw attention, but students might resent the time was repulsed by the idea that spent in class meeting that students would automatically could have been a free period. begin such speculation. If she However, he was confident the

nathanson’s

class meeting time would be effective for students who were interested in understanding the case and had been unable to attend the town hall meetings. Adegbile said that although the conversations in her class meetings were brief, the students were responsive and attentive.

“I thought it went well,” she said. “They expressed that [the case] seemed straightforward, and they felt good about what they heard.”

Although the new format has just begun, Barzdukas emphasized the administration was open to any suggestion on how to improve it.

“I really think one of the big things is that if anybody has a better idea, we’re open to hearing it and trying it,” he said. “Part of this process is really trying to get the Honor Board and the Honor Code more deeply embedded in our culture, and not have the Honor Board and the Honor Code be a thing apart. All of us need to own the code, all of us need to own the process and be invested in it. That’s what makes a strong community.”

He added that he didn’t think anyone at HarvardWestlake hesitates to speak up. Young, on the other hand, didn’t think it was clear that student criticism is welcome, and added that there are limitations to suggestion, just as a class is open to suggestion but must still ultimately be taught in a certain way.

“In terms of tweaks and making the process a better one,” he said, “absolutely do I think we’re open to suggestions, and I don’t think we’ve made that clear to the community.” *Names have been changed

will eventually join in.

“I’m hoping it would spread to the Harvard-Westlake faculty,” O’Malley said. “I think it’s coming sooner than we think. If you’re teaching the Great Gatsby, [Jeremy] Michaelson could do a wonderful presentation on it. It would hopefully capture a lot of things he’s discovered himself.”

8 seniors selected for scholars program

By Jonathan Seymour

Eight seniors have been chosen by the Commission on Presidential Scholars in the United States Department of Education to be candidates for the Presidential Scholars Program. The seniors are Zoë Bohn ’14, Jonathan Burns ’14, Claire Goldsmith ’14, Vincent Huang ’14, Michelle Lee ’14, Kelsey Ogomori ’14, Jacob Pardo ’14 and Divya Siddarth ’14.

According to the Commission on Presidential Scholars, the program was established to “recognize students and honor some of our nation’s most distinguished graduating high school seniors.”

The program has since been extended to “recognize students who demonstrate exceptional talent in the visual, creative and performing arts.”

Over 3,000 candidates are identified for the program every year based on their exceptional SAT or ACT scores.

To become one of up to 141 Presidential Scholars, the academic and arts candidates must complete and submit candidacy materials for review, including essays, selfassessments, secondary school reports and transcripts by Feb. 27.

“I will try to become a Presidential Scholar,” Burns said. “The application requires a few essays and a teacher recommendation, which I will need to complete. If I am selected, I will be taking a trip to Washington, D.C. this summer.”

According to the Commission, students selected to be Presidential Scholars will be honored by President Obama for representing “excellence in education.”

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/news

News A11

Sophomore interns at Google headquaters

By Henry Vogel

ming institutes such as the program Katz was attending Vince Vaughn and Owen at Cal Tech.

Wilson arrived at the large, Katz was one of 25 students black-glass building in north- and 25 older people working ern California that housed in the field who were accepted Google headquarters. In this into the Trailblazer Program. scene in the movie “The InKatz and the others in the ternship,” a fictional comedy, program first learned about Vaughn and Wilson began issues concerning computer their journey into an intensely science education and the lack competitive intern program at thereof in the world via Google Google. While millions enjoyed hangouts. the film, few can say they exThen, Google paid for each perienced the member of events in the the program movie first to fly to the hand.

Google headThe whole Cami Katz quarters program was a really ’16 is one of in Mounthose few. good experience, and I’d tain View in Last sumnorthern Callove to work at Google mer, Katz atifornia from tended the 15-17, someday because it was Nov. Lead Commuch like the a really cool company puter Science movie “The to intern at.”

Institute at Internship.”

California Upon ar—Cami Katz ’16 rival, the inInstitute of Te c h n o l o g y terns came where she won an award for up with ideas of how they her project she worked on dur- could spread programming ing the camp session. knowledge around the world.

Meanwhile, Google was Katz decided to focus on starting the Google Trailblaz- Latin America, so when the er Program. interns were asked to arrange The goal was to hire ex- themselves in groups of four, ceptional computer scientists she partnered up with two from all around the world and people from Mexico and one bring them together to col- from Argentina, who all were laborate and come up with interested in focusing on Latin ideas to spread programming America. knowledge to billions of people As “The Internship” shows, across the globe. the groups worked intensively, Google only opened its ap- knowing that only one would plications to participants at be selected for a job at Google.

Google sponsored programThe Google Trailblazer Pro-

“

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF CAMI KATZ

TOP OF THE TECH WORLD: Cami Katz ’16, fifth from left, and her team received a $2,500 grant from Google that they are using to execute their proposed plan. The ultimate goal of Katz’s group is to unite small companies in order to team up and teach programming at schools in Latin America. gram worked the same way. received.

Each foursome tried to perfect After the revisions, Katz’s their own idea before pitching group was one of five teams to it to three software earn a $2,500 grant engineers from Google that they will use to and a CEO from anfollow through with other tech company. their idea.

The board listened Katz’s plan is to to each idea and gave unite a lot of smaller every group feedback companies all trying on how to make their to help spread complans more realistic. puter science knowlAfter the weekedge into one alliend at Googleplex, the ance led by Google. nathanson’s nickname for Google They will make a Cami Katz ’16 headquarters, the instandard of educaterns were allotted an extra tion that the smaller compamonth to work on their proj- nies can teach once they gain ects at home and incorporate permission from local governsome of the suggestions they ments to enter the schools in

Latin America.

“Before the summit, we had online meetings for an hour and then we’d have a lot of homework,” Katz said. “It was hard to balance it with school work, and I was working a lot harder than I usually do, but now there isn’t as much to do so I have been able to relax a bit more.”

If her plan works, Katz could potentially work on the project her whole life, she said.

“The whole program was a really good experience, and I’d love to work at Google someday because it was a really cool company to intern at,” Katz said.

C HRONICLE the harvard-westlake

Los Angeles • Volume XXIII • Issue VI • Feb. 12, 2014 • hwchronicle.com

Editors in Chief: Jack Goldfisher, Noa Yadidi Managing Editors: Claire Goldsmith, Sarah Novicoff, Jensen Pak, Patrick Ryan Executive Editors: Julia Aizuss, Lizzy Thomas Presentations Editors: Mazelle Etessami, Sydney Foreman, Emily Segal

Opinion The Chronicle • Feb. 12, 2014

editorial

Sports Editor: Grant Nussbaum News Managing Editors: Elizabeth Madden, Lauren Sonnenberg News Section Heads: Sophie Kupiec-Weglinski, Nikta Mansouri, Jake Saferstein, Jessica Spitz News Assistants: Justine Chen, Cole Feldman, Kristen Gourrier, Eugenia Ko, Jonah Ullendorff Opinion Managing Editors: Beatrice Fingerhut, Kyla Rhynes Opinion Section Heads: Haley Finkelstein, Kenneth Schrupp Opinion Assistants: Alexa Bowers, Kelly Riopelle Features Managing Editors: Eojin Choi, Morganne Ramsey, Lauren Siegel Features Section Heads: Carly Berger, Marcella Park, David Woldenberg Features Assistants: Angela Chon, Sacha Lin, Benjamin Most, Su Jin Nam, Lauren Rothman A&E Managing Editors: James Hur, Alexander McNab A&E Section Heads: Leily Arzy, Zoe Dutton A&E Assistants: Sharon Chow, Siddharth Kucheria, Kelly Loeb, Pim Otero Sports Managing Editors: Lucy Putnam, Sam Sachs Sports Section Heads: Elijah Akhtarzad, Mila Barzdukas, Jordan Garfinkel, Tyler Graham Sports Assistants: Bennett Gross, Caitlin Neapole, Jonathan Seymour, Henry Vogel, Audrey Wilson Chief Copy Editors: Jivani Gengatharan, Enya Huang, Jessica Lee Managing Editors of Chronicle Multimedia: Henry Hahn, Eric Loeb Art Director: Jacob Goodman Chief Photographer: Scott Nussbaum Ads

and

Business Manager: Tara Stone

Chronicle Online Webmaster: David Gisser Adviser: Kathleen Neumeyer The Chronicle is the student newspaper of Harvard-Westlake School. It is published nine times per year. Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the seniors on the Editorial Board.

Letters to the editor may be submitted to chronicle@hw.com or mailed to 3700 Coldwater Canyon, Studio City, CA 91604.

Letters must be signed and may be edited for space and to conform to Chronicle style and format. Harvard-Westlake has an enrollment of 870 10th through 12th grade students. The Chronicle is also distributed at the Middle School, which has 727 7th through 9th grade students.

Stories go through a rigorous editing process and are rewritten by the writers listed on the byline or with additional reporting credits.

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

A step towards increased transparency It seems that everyone on campus, whether student or teacher, has well-defined opinions about the way the Honor Board functions. People constantly raise concerns and voice problems with the institution meant to preserve trust within our community. We too have qualms—too many, in fact, for a single editorial—but transparency has been an oftmentioned concern. The recent decision to read and discuss Honor Board cases in class meeting is a step in the right direction.

Previous efforts to address the transparency issue included school-wide emails, which it’s doubtful the entire student body read, and optional meetings in Father J. Young’s office, which very few students, if any, attended. This new method ensures that every student will hear the entirety of the case and the decision and be given the opportunity to clarify the details of the case.

By discussing cases in class meetings, the Honor Board becomes more fully integrated into school life.

Rather than whispered conversations complaining about decisions, now the conversation’s out in the open and facilitated by deans, some of whom may have even sat on the case. Although the discussions in different class meetings may veer off in different directions, hopefully the conversation will leave the room and pervade the quad, leading to a more informed and thoughtful student body.

However, while the change is on the whole a good one, there are still some kinks that need to be worked out. This past week, when the new method debuted, sophomores and juniors heard the case in their class meetings, while seniors had to wait a weekend before they could participate in any discourse on Monday or even know what happened. We realize it’s not a perfect system and the staggered timing of information dispersal is inevitable, but there’s a simple solution: keep the school-wide emails with the bare-bones summary, so that every student will receive the same core facts at the same time. With an email, students

would also be more prepared for discussion, and it’s always good to have the facts on paper, so to speak, for future reference.

As of yet, it’s unclear what the student who went before the Honor Board in the case will do during these class meetings. Being there means hearing your peers unwittingly judge and jeer at you; not being there means fuelling speculation about which of the absent kids in your dean group was at the center of the case.

Our editorial board is made up of all senior Chronicle staff members, all of us close peers who have worked together for three years. Until now, we have never failed to present a unified opinion on the issues we’ve commented on, despite the fact that any one staff member is free to voice his or her opinion even in the face of an otherwise singular board conclusion.

However, even this board could not come to a consensus as to who should decide whether or not the student attends the class meeting.

A majority of us thought that the choice to attend or not should be made by the student, but a minority strongly felt that he or she should be forced to attend the discussion. If we can’t come to a consensus it makes us wary that there might not be a right answer to this question. Though we believe in this change as a whole, this problem stands as a possible impediment to its future success.

Even with this aspect of the new system undetermined, the only way the method will truly be effective is if we take full advantage of it. The administration and Prefect Council have opened a promising window of transparency, and we would do well to use it.

However, remember to be respectful in your discussions, because the person whose case you’re hearing may end up being in the room with you. This goes for deans too. When your dean asks for your thoughts at the next class meeting, speak up if you have any questions and share your opinions. Don’t let the room sit silent.

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/opinion

Opinion A13

Different sorts of love

By Alexander McNab

T

he first time I told my girlfriend I loved her, she didn’t believe me.

“How can you love me,” she asked, “when on Monday you said you didn’t even want to be in a relationship with me?”

She had a point. It was only a few days prior to my declaration of love that I’d made it very clear that I didn’t believe that our friendship had the emotional depth necessary for a romantic relationship, and, on the Saturday when I told her I loved her, my feelings for her hadn’t changed, but still I was telling the truth. I did love her, just not in the way she thought.

For every situation, every relationship, every person in life, I believe that there is a different type of love. On the Monday she was referring to, my girlfriend and I were just friends, and so the love we shared was friendly.

Later that week, our relationship progressed to a romantic stage, and, although by that Saturday my feelings hadn’t yet caught up to my relationship, I still felt friendly love for my girlfriend and could tell her without hesitation that I loved her.

On that Saturday, as she expressed her doubts, I tried explaining all this to her. “I love almost everyone,” I told her. “I just love different people in different ways.” She considered this and accepted it, probably deciding that she too loved me as a friend.

From that Saturday forward, my girlfriend and I exchanged many “I love you’s,” but that all came to a stop about eight months ago when our romantic relationship ended and our friendship began again.

Many, perhaps most, romantic relationships end because the love has changed or gone away, but, with my girlfriend and me, that wasn’t the case. Our separation was due to an issue of convenience.

Until that point, May 30 to be exact, our entire acquain-

tanceship, friendship and romance had been confined to Beijing, where we were both living as a part of School Year Abroad. On that day, we were leaving China and going back to our American hometowns thousands of miles away from each other.

We parted at Beijing Capital International Airport. She left me at the security gate as she made her way over to another section of the building, where she would board a plane headed for Honolulu while I checked in my boarding pass with the letters LAX printed on the front in large black capitals.

When I got back to America, I tried saying “I love you” again, but it wasn’t long before my old girlfriend stopped receiving the comment in the way that she used to.

Instead of explicitly reciprocating my feelings, she’d tell me that she felt the same way about me but that we were just friends, and she wanted to make sure that I knew that.

I understood her concern. Over the months we’d been together in Beijing, our friendly “I love you’s” became more and more romantic until it got to the point where they became more boyfriendly, more girlfriendly, than friendly.

Back in America, these boyfriendly feelings that I’d developed in China hadn’t changed, and so, as my ex probably sensed, I was saying romantic “I love you’s” in a non-romantic relationship.

It may not be healthy to feel romantic love for someone who’s just a friend. I haven’t yet made up my mind about that, but, regardless, I love Makana Williams in the most romantic sense of the word, but, for her sake and perhaps also for the sake of our friendship, we don’t say that word anymore. Instead, we say “I really care about you as a friend,” but, for me at least, that’s just another way of saying I love you, a lot.

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

Hooked on the Olympics

By Claire Goldsmith

I

n the Goldsmith household, we often say that our family sport is sulking.

This is partially due to our conflicting personalities – without naming names, I’m just going to say that some of us are a little stubborn, and we have a shared tendency (maybe it’s genetic) to fume silently during arguments.

The other reason, though, is that we’re not particularly into big sports. My dad would rather watch regattas than the World Series, and my brother prefers Formula One racing. The Super Bowl is rather a tame affair at our house - you’ll never catch us playing team sports in the backyard like that iconic image of the Kennedy clan, but we’re just fine with that.

This all changes, though, when it comes to the Olympics. Whether it’s summer or winter, for those two weeks, we’re hooked. We become temporary experts, rattling off medal counts and predicting favorites for the various events.

Without knowing absolutely anything about the sports, my brother and I will get into heated arguments

about the specifications of rhythmic gymnastics or the degree to which a diver’s toes are pointed.

I’ve defended the figure skating judges with all the strength I can muster and, minutes later, turned on them in anger when they dare to give low scores to my favorite competitors.

The Olympics have also taught me volumes (okay, assorted tidbits) about the hosting countries all over the world. In 2008, I learned how to say common phrases in Mandarin and watched far too many clips of pandas frolicking in the airtime between events. During the Vancouver Winter Olympics, I found out that 90 percent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border, a fact I still manage to rattle off most times people mention Canada in conversation.

Yes, sometimes they’re absolutely absurd. The 2010 Opening Ceremonies had my mom and me in peals of laughter on the couch, although we assume the humor was unintentional. In the past week or so, I’ve been watching with some amusement – and

rapidly increasing concern – as reports about unfinished construction and questionable accommodations in Sochi came to light.

Newscasters call the Olympics an event that brings the world together, and, although I don’t feel all that connected to viewers across the globe, I would agree in general.

Even though the figures in the snow on the television are complete strangers, watching this conglomeration of athletes from around the world brings my family closer together.

There’s a general sense of excitement that permeates the atmosphere. Whether or not you’re a white-water kayaking fan (it’s the best sport, in case you were wondering), you still feel like you’re part of something when you walk down the street and see televisions in every restaurant displaying the same dazzling feats.

So, in the next two weeks, you’ll find me with my friends and family, cheering outrageously for luge and crosscountry skiing, and I suggest you do the same.

Hermione Granger, more than just a love interest

By Jessica Spitz

L

ast week, J.K. Rowling revealed a confession that rocked the Harry Potter universe. To avoid spoilers, I won’t be too specific, but here’s the gist of it: Rowling admitted that she wishes Hermione Granger, one of Harry Potter’s best friends, had ended up with someone other than who she did at the end of the seventh book.

This revelation sparked heated debate across the Internet, but as passionate fans fought over which couple is superior, a quote by author John Green (who reiterated this point on his blog) popped into my head: “books belong to their readers.”

Almost seven years after the publication of “Harry Pot-

ter and the Deathly Hallows,” I am resistant to suddenly changing my perspective on my favorite childhood books.

Literature, like other forms of art, is meant to be interpreted by an audience. Millions of people all over the world cherish the Harry Potter series; thus, there are millions of different ways to read it.

This issue is especially relevant while I read “As I Lay Dying” in English class.

William Faulkner’s confusing and often vague prose leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and during every discussion, there are disagreements among my classmates about what a sentence actually conveys. I frequently find myself shifting my opinion when I consider someone else’s point

of view, which would not be possible if there were only one way to analyze a book.

This realization gave me the confidence to privately disagree with Rowling on the subject of Hermione’s romantic fate.Once I wrapped my head around this idea, I became somewhat annoyed that Hermione’s love life caused such controversy in the first place.

Due to the popularity of the Harry Potter books, even those who have not read them know a little bit about Hermione. She is the brains of the operation and is commonly referred to as the most brilliant witch of her age. She can perform countless spells and brew complicated potions while also advocating for the

rights of “muggles” and poorly treated magical creatures.

Her two best friends, though brave and honorable, would probably not have made it through their first year at Hogwarts without her.

Hermione is an intelligent, powerful heroine who has been a role model for girls since “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was released in 1997. It frustrates me that she is being reduced to a simple love interest and is not truly appreciated for her significance in the novels. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. All too often, women are seen as objects of affection rather than respected for their accomplishments.

This is especially com-

mon in young adult fiction.

The most interesting aspects of compelling, independent female characters are pushed aside in these books, which instead focus on which boys will ultimately win them as prizes.

The emphasis on love triangles and star crossed lovers sets an example for young girls who think their goals should be to have men fight over them, when they should really be exposed to confident women who create successful lives for themselves.

So who really cares whom Hermione married? Regardless of whom she was supposed to end up with, I will always remember her as the only 13-year-old able to brew a Polyjuice Potion.

A14 Opinion

The Chronicle

Feb. 12, 2014

An eye-opening experience

By Lauren Rothman

A

t Harvard-Westlake, students get upset when they don’t get the Mercedes Benz convertible they asked for. In Rwanda, giving a student an empty water bottle can bring them happiness for the next year. We hear about the poverty and hardships that the vast population of the world faces. However, this concept is hard to grasp until you see it, breathe it, feel it yourself.

I was granted this experience when I traveled to Rwanda during semester break.

We met a man named Kizito who, during the genocide, watched his mother get raped as his house was burned to the ground with his siblings inside. The United States could have done many things to aid Rwanda during the genocide, but instead we passively watched and let it happen. However, Kizito and the rest of the Rwandans do not hold this against us. He welcomed us with open arms, spent time with us every day — and was brought to tears when we left at the airport.

Michael Mapes ’16 bonded with Kizito the most. Their friendship grew stronger and stronger each day, and Mike was seen with him whenever we ate. He never failed to ask where his Rwandan friend was, what he was doing — or if he was doing okay. Kizito returned this affection, and their bond was evident.

At the end of the trip, Mike gave him $150 of his own money to help him get himself and his brother a better life.

The strength and forgiveness of the Rwandans was perhaps the most surprising.

In Rwanda, the love is unconditional and non-judgmental.

Their ability to find this love, stemming from hate with roots so deep, is incredible and cannot be overlooked.

The growth of the people, who were once divided by hatred, is shown in everything they do. We were even able to see this in the children.

I have always been a horrible dancer, and when we went to do traditional Rwandan dancing, I was not very adept.

After five minutes of attempting to look like a native African who is greeting the cows in a tribal dance, I opted out and sat down to watch.

I was approached by a girl who could not have been more than 2 years old. She waddled over, away from her parents, and plopped herself down in my lap. She wore a pink shirt and a pink skirt, both worn but still bright with life. Her large brown eyes, framed with long lashes, were sweet and innocent. She grabbed my necklace and played with it, and I looked to her parents.

I expected them to grab her away from me — and scold her for being around a foreigner, someone they barely knew, someone who did not help them in their deepest time of need. However, they laughed and smiled at me. I stayed with the girl for the next hour, and could not have been happier.

This taught me a lot about forgiveness — and keeping an open mind. I was able to take this with me back to Los Angeles, and I know that I will be a better person because of it.

I am going to work on being less judgmental and will try to find the good in everyone, because if the Rwandans can love us despite our ignorance, then we can at

SU JIN NAM/CHRONICLE

BABY FACE: Lauren Rothman ’16, right, kisses a child who crawled into her lap. Rothman was one of 15 students who went to Rwanda during semester break on an investigative journalism trip. least do our best to try to be like them.

I also learned a lot about the value of education — and how fortunate we are to go to Harvard-Westlake. I always used to take our teachers, their passion and our resources for granted. In Rwanda, an entire school is lucky if it gets a secondhand dictionary. As you look around the immense library at Harvard-Westlake, this may seem hard to grasp, but seeing it in person was truly eye opening.

Traveling to Rwanda has inspired me to work harder, not only for myself, but for those whom I met at the Learning Center.

The Learning Center is a school for young adults.

Equipped with 17 computers,

the one story building hosts around 30 students eager to learn. I brought with me a small 10-page book with basic phrases translated from the local language, Kinyarwanda, to English. I met six women who were fascinated by the little book. We spent hours laughing about the ways we mispronounced the languages, and they were eager to learn from their mistakes. Their ability to make so much out of a book that cost me a dollar still stays with me, and I know I am trying harder with my classes here because of it.

We are so fortunate here, and it seems that we forget it often. The things I will take from the trip — always cleaning my plate, giving money to the homeless, purchasing

water that gives to charities in Africa — those are what I am the most proud of. I have grown as a person and changed for the better, and as I move into the second semester with a new vision of life and a new purpose, I feel that I am at my best version of myself. I wouldn’t change anything about my experience.

“My hope for the future is stronger than my fear,” a strong survivor of the genocide told us.

I see this quote as something we can all use as we go through our lives. Because if the Rwandans were strong enough to overcome the brutality that they experienced, we can be strong enough to handle anything.

Don’t support a harmful industry for personal entertainment

By Lizzy Thomas

O

ne of the things that makes the Hunger Games not just palatable but wildly successful is the just large enough difference between the world of Katniss and the one we inhabit. The government is far worse: Congress might not be able to pass a law, but Barack Obama is no President Snow.

The names are far more ridiculous: someone might have named their baby “Hashtag” a while back, but the vast majority of us have less fantastical, non-textile/ spice names. And, the entertainment is far guiltier: we might enjoy the pain inflicted upon the Real Housewives of “Insert Major Affluent City Here” (and our brain cells) by the questionable decisions of themselves and their cast mates, but that’s nothing compared to watching the systematic murder of children, after all.

But are we really such innocent viewers?

During the Super Bowl a

few weeks ago, I was struck not just by the Peyton Manning-squashing power of the Legion of Boom, but by the man-squashing power of the game itself. The game didn’t have any horrific injury, no one died in MetLife Stadium, and yet science says they were all dying.

Professional football players receive, on average, 900 to 1,500 blows a season, at impact speeds of 25 mph or more, and, as a result, football players are at a 75 percent chance risk of concussion, according to the Sports Concussion Institute. Research presented at last year’s Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science says that concussions can lead shortterm to attention problems and long-term to Parkinsonslike symptoms of permanent memory and attention loss consistent with neurodegenerative disease.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy football, it’s that I do. It’s that

as I watch Robert Mathis slam himself into quarterback after quarterback and find myself hoping for another helmet-crunching Mathis-toquarterback hit, I forget that 44-year-old Brett Favre says he can no longer remember his daughter’s soccer games he attended last summer.

It’s that as I admire how Johnny Football executes Texas A&M’s shotgun formation, the fact escapes me that the brains of 43-year-old Junior Seau, 50-year-old Dave Duerson and other NFL retirees like them were found to be neurodegeneratively damaged in the autopsies performed on them after they turned guns on themselves.

It’s that as I cheer fanatically on our classmates and friends and siblings in home football games, I don’t once think of the students and family members across the country who lose their loved ones when an average of 12 high school and college football players die annually

from injuries incurred in their sport.

So let’s revisit the exercise in Hunger Games parallel and divergence. The difference in entertainment is in obviousness of harm, not in consequence or culpability. The deaths and devastating injuries or impairments resulting from America’s game are, at present, as sure as those of Panem’s. We as fans are as complicit in said deaths and devastating injuries as the Capitol citizens are in those of the tributes.

It’s just that no one died in MetLife Stadium. The tributes to our entertainment suffer much later, much longer, off the screen, so that every radar-accurate pass and field-length run can dazzle away the nagging knowledge that something isn’t right.

There’s another major difference, a more hopeful, less damning one. We, unlike Katniss and Peeta, live in a capitalist society. The NFL was able to throw its $10 bil-

lion clout around for years to conceal the harm caused by concussions, but we are the ultimate source of capital here. Don’t purchase the DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket package, don’t buy that Richard Sherman jersey, don’t get season tickets should that Los Angeles team ever materialize. The NFL has proven, in its desperation to avoid PR problems at the expense of players’ lives, that it is first and foremost a profit-turning business. Threaten, even slightly, that profit and safetyincreasing changes will come — and they’ll trickle down to every level of the sport.

I will not pretend to know what such changes are. I do know, though, that football in its current iteration is unconscionable.

So let’s move to the next one. It’s a progress much easier than the revolution of “Mockingjay,” for the temporary cost of entertainment.

May I recommend “Scandal” in the meantime.

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/opinion

Opinion A15

quadtalk

The Chronicle asked:

“Do you think the new method of discussing Honor Board cases in class meeting will improve Honor Board transparency?”

324 students weighed in on the Chronicle poll “I think the new method of discussing cases in class meeting is a great improvement. Kids are able to ask questions about the specific cases and can talk it through with deans and peers.”

No

1 7 5

Yes

—Libby Sondheimer ’15

1 4 9

“I think it could prolong class meetings and make people listen even less to the cases. I enjoyed just reading them online.”

—Anthony Ulloa ’14

“Out of these methods, which do you think has been the most effective?”

195

325 students weighed in on the Chronicle poll

“Do you consider yourself addicted to Netflix?”

309 students weighed in on the Chronicle poll

Yes 65

66

No

52

243

13 Detailed emailed reports to students

Discussions in class meeting

Short reports and meetings with FJ

Postings of cases outside Chalmers

“How do you think the Honor Board can be more transparent?”

“I’ve always had an issue with that whole concept of transparency. Maybe it’s hard for me to see how people think certain things are okay and certain things aren’t.”

—Matt Leichenger ’14

“What do you most often use to watch television/movies?”

360 students

weighed in on

Netflix or similar services

the Chronicle poll

165 Normal TV programming

81

YouTube “I feel that the Honor Board cases should be private and not a public shaming. The Honor Board becoming more transparent would only make things too public.”

—Grace Gerber ’15

32

Other

25

iTunes

6

ALL PHOTOS BY BEATRICE FINGERHUT/CHRONICLE

Allow yourself to appreciate the unexpected novel

By Julia Aizuss

W

hen I looked at the syllabus for my AP Lit class back in August and saw “Mrs. Dalloway” wasn’t listed, I thought I knew exactly why I was so distraught. I’ve considered it one of my favorite novels and Virginia Woolf one of my favorite authors since I read it in the ninth grade. Ever since, I had looked forward to studying it in a classroom setting, where I’d no doubt get more out of the novel than I had when reading it alone at the age of fourteen.

(The book has traditionally been somewhat of a mainstay in the AP Lit curriculum, along with the “Iliad,” “Hamlet” and “Pride and Prejudice.”)

The more I stewed in anger, the more the exclusion of “Mrs. Dalloway” from the class-wide curriculum seemed wrong. To wit: It’s one of the foremost modernist novels in English literature, if not the foremost

modernist novel (competing, probably, with “Ulysses”). Its difficulty makes it well-suited to being studied in class, especially since it’s unlikely many students would end up reading it outside of one—I’m reminded of the conversations I’ve had with my peers, who have said they loved reading “As I Lay Dying” in junior year but would have had a hard time understanding or appreciating it on their own.

It’s also written by a woman, which is always a plus (I’m not convinced there are enough works by women in our English curriculum, even when you take into account that the focus on historically monumental works will naturally result in more books by men, but that’s a topic for another column).

These were the sorts of points I brought up in class while some of the other AP Lit classes began “Mrs. Dalloway,” becoming such an irritant

that Jocelyn Medawar finally, understandably broke down and declared in graphic detail what she would do if I brought up “Mrs. Dalloway” again. (I hope you can forgive me for writing this column, Ms. Medawar.)

I’ve since quieted down and have attempted to focus on “Heart of Darkness.” I also decided to reread “Mrs. Dalloway,” opening my mother’s old college copy for the first time since freshman year. I only had to read the first page to feel an immediate jolt of connection and think, “Virginia Woolf gets it.”

I’m not sure how to explain “getting it”—or, as I tend to term it in a sort of mythologizing way, “Getting It”—but it’s why I love the writers that I love. Virginia Woolf Gets It, David Foster Wallace Gets It, Joan Didion Gets It. The respective It that each writer Gets might be different, but they’re probably

all associated somehow with that trite phrase “the human condition.” I might just as well think “Virginia Woolf gets me” as “Virginia Woolf gets it.”

“Getting It” is personal, depending on one’s taste. One of the reasons I think Joan Didion Gets It is because no one else understands and writes about California like her, which won’t appeal to someone from New Jersey. But I’ve always had the impression a lot of people think Virginia Woolf Gets It, which is what makes her so enduring.

All I’ve ever wanted out of an English class is to discover and become absorbed in and learn from books I love, and for my classmates to discover books they love—to find writers who, for them, Get It. That’s why I wanted so desperately to read “Mrs. Dalloway”—it was that book for me, and I know it’s been that book for others, so I thought it could be that book

for my classmates too. I still believe that, but as I listened last week to the eager, anticipatory way in which Ms. Medawar introduced our class to “Heart of Darkness,” I realized there’s more than one possibility, that my opinion won’t necessarily hold for everyone else.

I’m not sure our English teachers always manage to choose books that Get It, or whatever their equivalent term is, but you can’t hit a home run every time. Still, I don’t have any right to complain as long as they try to teach us works they truly think we would both love and take something important and personal from, which I guess is what you could call learning.

Whatever I read in English, “Heart of Darkness” and beyond, I’m open to learning from it—and who knows? Maybe I’ll find something that competes with “Mrs. Dalloway.”

exposure

A16

Make me a match MAN OF ONE VICE: Angus O’Brien ’14 sits in the restaurant as drunk apprentice Malachi Stack.

Feb. 12, 2014 Students performed Thornton Wilder’s “The Matchmaker” in Rugby Theater Feb. 7-9. The play, directed by performing arts teacher Ted Walch, featured 15 actors as well as five musical performers.

THIRD DEGREE: Alex McNab ’14 questions Bryce Terman ’15 as Angus O’Brien ‘14 looks on.

THE BAND PLAYED ON: Oliver Sanderson ’15, Sam Clement ’14, Greg Lehrhoff ’14, Jacob Gold ’15, Matthew Lucas ’14 and Jack Cooper ’14 play in the Harmonia Gardens band.

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

YOUNG LOVE: Conor Belfield ’14, playing Ambrose Kemper, tries to convince Emma Pasarow ’14 to elope with him.

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

OUT TO DINNER: Jacob Goodman ’15 waits while Autumn Witz ’15, Brooks Hudgins ’14, Joey Lieberman ’14 and Sophie Sunkin ’14 order at a restaurant.

STORY OF HER LIFE: Delilah Napier ’15 as Flora Van Huysen speaks to Katherine Calvert ’15, who plays Van Huysen’s cook.

IN SECRET: Brooks Hudgins ’14 converses with Joey Lieberman ’14, who hides under a table in Mrs. Irene Malloy’s shop.

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

LIFELINE: Covi Brannan ’15 reads the palm of Alex McNab ’14, who plays Horace Vandergelder.

SCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

Features The Chronicle • Feb. 12, 2014

Nature of Love

Although 62 percent of students have been in relationships, many believe them to be less meaningful than adult relationships, more motivated by hormones than by true love.

J

uliet was only 13 when she fell in love with Romeo, and, spoiler alert, about a week later their relationship met a tragic end.

Long before and long after the Capulets and the Montagues, parents and teenagers have struggled over the nature of young love.

“Romeo and Juliet was just a fling,” Shannyn Schack ’16, who just ended a six-month relationship, said. “You can’t really fall in love in high school. I feel like I can’t fall in love love, like really deep in love. I feel like there’s a part of it that’s reserved for when I’m older.”

“Teenagers think that love is something,” Genny Thomas ’16 said. “But they’re all wrong. It’s a waste of time and energy. Everyone makes such a big deal about relationships, but they’re stupid. You might as well just be friends because labels are stupid. I just hate seeing couples around school. They’re annoying, and they take up space.”

F

or many people though, love is a big deal. Many people who believe that teenagers have the same capability as adults to feel real, romantic love.

“Sure, things are a lot more volatile for teenagers,” English teacher Jeremy Michaelson said. Michaelson is the father of Aidan YetmanMichaelson ’14, who has been in a relationship for the past three years. “But that doesn’t keep them from falling in love. I believe that Aidan loves [his girlfriend]. I would never question that if he told me that. It wasn’t like he was just swooning around the house after he just met her saying that he was in love with her.”

Among those who believe that teenagers can fall in love, there is a debate as to whether or not this love is the same as the love shared in adult relationships.

“When you fall in love as a teenager, it’s a singular and unique experience,” Michaelson said. “When you’re married 20 years, the love takes a different form. When you’re married this long, there’s a comfort that comes from a stable abiding friendship that you have complete faith in. It doesn’t have the tingly excitement [of a teenage relationship], but it’s no less satisfying.”

School counselor Luba Bek believes that the passion in teenage relationships, when

combined with the fact that most teenagers aren’t seeking lifelong partners in their boyfriends and girlfriends, results in a love that is much more pure than adult love.

“It’s more pure, and it’s more intense,” Bek said. “You never forget the first love.

Even people who have Alzheimer’s, the memory that’s forever etched in their brain is the memory of the second decade of their life because this is the memory of the first love, first kiss, first heartbreak. In adults, the love is more accepting than enchanting. It’s love and companionship as opposed to passionate love.

There’s trust, there’s acceptance, there’s forgiveness. It’s calmer. It’s less volatile. It’s kind of less bipolar.”

“You can love someone at any age,” Alyssa Spratt, Yetman-Michaelson’s girlfriend who attends Viewpoint School, said. “A lot of people fall in love, but the emotional depth is the same. I think that you can have a mature relationship at any age. Loving someone can be the same when you’re a teenager as when you’re a full-grown adult, but the situations you’re put in are entirely different.”

• Continued on page B2

ILLUSTRATION BY SYDNEY FOREMAN

B2 Features

The Chronicle

Feb. 12, 2014

Love, actually?

Whether it lasts a lifetime or fleetingly, teenage love can feel just as real and may be as important to emotional growth as adult love, experts say.

soundbytes

“IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW OLD YOU ARE. YOU FEEL IT 100 PERCENT. I REALLY DON’T CARE ABOUT MATURITY... AS HUMAN BEINGS, WE HAVE THE CAPACITY TO LOVE FROM BIRTH.”

-Luba Bek, School Counselor

“THERE IS A LOT MORE TRUST THAT GOES INTO ADULT RELATIONSHIPS BECAUSE THEY REQUIRE COMMITMENT.”

-Sanah Ebrahim ’14 “TEENAGERS ARE OBVIOUSLY NOT AS EXPERIENCED AND MATURE [AS ADULTS], SO THEY MAY NOT SEE SOME THINGS AS ADULTS.

-Julia Ebrahim (Sanah ’14) “IF I WAS IN A RELATIONSHIP, I FEEL LIKE IT’D COMPROMISE MY SCHOOLWORK. BECAUSE YOU’RE WITH EACH OTHER MORE, YOU’RE LESS WITH YOUR STUDIES. “

• Continued from page B1

Michaelson said. “He’s not engaged and get married. I letting his relationship be his never went into a high school The situations teenag- number one priority. None of relationship expecting to even ers face while romantically the schools that he’s applying fall in love, much less find involved are generally char- to are closer than 3,000 miles someone I want to spend the acterized by both adults and to where she’s applying to. I rest of my life with. I pretty teens as being more passionate think he has enough perspecmuch knew I was attracted and less pragmatic. tive to realize that his relato her from the day I met her, “Even though it’s been go- tionship shouldn’t dictate his but I just kind of considered it ing on for a long time, it’s still life.” a friendship. What I probably sort of a honeymoon-type “We’re not going to orwant [now] is being married.” thing, and obviously I don’t see ganize our college ex“When I was gothat with my parents,” Yet- perience around each ing out with boys man-Michaelson said. “[Their other because we in middle school, I relationship is] more an hon- know education is would get ahead of est caring for each other, not important,” Yetmanmyself and be like, like a hot and steamy ro- Michaelson said. “I’m ‘Oh my god. He’s mance.” going to go on a sort the love of my life’ “You have different re- of spiritual journey in or whatever,” Spratt sponsibilities in adult relation- college so that I can said. “From the very ships,” Spratt said. “You have a know who I am and beginning in my rejob, and you have to deal with know what I want. I lationship with Aidnathanson’s finances. It’s just lifestyle dif- do see a permanent an, the attitude was ferences. Aidan and I always future with her, but I Luba Bek different. It wasn’t tell ourselves that if we were know if I don’t focus on wishy washy ‘oh I adults right now we’d probably getting a good education right wanna be in love and stuff.’ be married, but, being teenag- now, then I won’t be able to The relationship kind of starters, it isn’t very convenient be- have that with her.” ed out as just this boy I liked cause we can’t do all the things However, Yetman-Miwhen I was 14.” we want to do.” chaelson said, once he has Some adults don’t have any Parents are almost inher- finished his education, Spratt problem with marriage expecently involved in teenage re- will become his first priority. tations in teenage relationlationships.

Many parents “Sometimes, I’d rather talk ships, although they acknowlattempt to provide relation- to him than do my homework,” edge the short-sightedness of ship advice Spratt said. such far-reaching expectato their love tions.

“But he’s also struck teens. “[Teenagers] see the world a source of “Honestly, motivation.” in black and white,” said Bek, Love changes as I was, iniIn spite of who sees nothing wrong with you get older. There’s tially a little the potential thinking about marriage while bit concerned the kind of love you get in high school. “It’s idealistic. negative efabout [Spratt I’ve been with the school for 23 fect of relafrom having a child and Yetmantionships on years. I know very few couples together, the kind of Michaelson’s academics, that actually stay together. relationparYou can decide you want to go love you get from being some ship],” Mito Harvard, but that doesn’t ents think best friends. There’s all chaelson said. mean it’s going to happen.” relationships “Early on, I kinds of love. themselves Many people attribute the said, ‘Look. can be seen inability to maintain a lifelong —Marianne Hall as a sort of or even long-term relationship You’ve got to consider your that starts as a teenager to the Visual arts teacher schooling. future, and it constant changes in oneself Michaelcan’t be comson is happy and one’s self-perception that pletely dependent upon your that Yetman-Michaelson has kids undergo during this derelationship.’” had the opportunity to be in velopmental phase, but Spratt, “My parents are totally a relationship in high school, while acknowledging she’s cool with all the stuff that’s seeing it as a part of growing changed, does not believe that going on,” Yetman-Michaelson up. her development as a person said. “They just want to make While most seniors are fohas been a hindrance to her sure that I take my time and cused only on college, Spratt relationship. get some more experience and and “We’ve coevolved,” Spratt Yetman-Michaelson’s make sure that this is what I thoughts of the future extend said. “Obviously you’re not gowant.” beyond that. ing to know who you are at Yetman-Michaelson said “I know it’s probably cli14, and you still don’t know he prioritizes his schoolwork ché, but I can definitely see a who you are at 18, but we’ve over his girlfriend. changed together. You never future,” Yetman-Michaelson “He’s not let his relation- said. “We’ve sort of planned reach a point where you know ship narrow his world in a way out what we’re going to do. who you are. You’re always that I’m concerned about,” [We plan] to live together, get changing.”

“

Teenage Dreams

L

ack of realistic expectations is, for m a n y , one of the main differences between adults and teenagers in relationships, but these expectations vary greatly from one teen to another and even over time within relationships.

“Back in seventh grade it was just like ‘oh, she’s cute,’” said Lucas Hernandez ’14, who didn’t think his nearly fiveyear-long relationship with his girlfriend Desiree would last longer than a few months.

“We got together because she and I were good friends, and she was always complaining about Jesse,” her boyfriend at the time.

In the five years since then, Hernandez’s views and expectations of the relationship have changed greatly.

“The great plan is to get married,” said Hernandez, who started thinking about having children with his girlfriend in the eighth grade. “I want kids and so does she. She wants to have kids with me. She could be a great mother to the kids that I would have.”

Hernandez does not think his relationship or the expectations he has are typical of teens, but that’s because Hernandez believes he is more mature than most people his age.

“I can say that who I am right now is already figured out,” Hernandez said. “I stopped being a kid at 14.”

Hernandez said that his parents, for the most part, stay out of his love life, although they don’t necessarily approve of it. “[My mom] didn’t like it,” Hernandez said. “I mean, who

299 students answered a Chronicle poll on what they want out of romantic relationships.

-Tigist Menkir ’14 “I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT ADULT LOVE IS MORE LEGITIMATE THAN TEEN LOVE OR VICE VERSA ... THE LOVE IS EXACTLY THE SAME.

-David Goldberg ’15

52%

Companionship

24%

Love

14% Intimacy SOURCE: CHRONICLE POLL OF 299 STUDENTS GRAPHIC BY MORGANNE RAMSEY

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/features

wants to see t h e i r little boy grow up?”

But Hernandez said that his mom believes that as a teenager who’s about to leave for college, it’s up to him to make his own path in life.

While Hernandez doesn’t believe his relationship affects his schoolwork, his girlfriend, he said, is his top priority.

“If she calls me and she really needs me, I’ll ditch school right away,” Hernandez said.

“I’ll take a train and go see her, [but] we keep each other focused. [She] makes herself second [priority].”

As an adult, Hall acknowledges that her view of boys and relationships as a teenager may have been slightly skewed.

“I just had this fantasy that immediately we’d be married, we’d have children, what our house would look like, this whole crazy thing,” Hall said about Buddy Campbell, her high school crush.

W

e know what we want,” said Cassie* ’16, who wears a pre-engagement ring.

Cassie plans to get married to her boyfriend Blake* ’15 when she’s around 26. “We’ve thought about it a lot. We’re going to have two kids. We’re going to have a girl for sure.

Three would be hard. I think two is a good number.”

While acknowledging that isual arts teacher most teens aren’t mature Marianne Hall, who enough to make decisions has been both mar- about children and engageried and involved ments, Cassie, like Hernandez, in a teen romance, said that believes that her life experithe feelings she felt for her ences have caused her to mahusband were very different ture more quickly than most from those that she felt for and qualify her to make these the boys she liked as a teen- choices.

“I’ve been through it all,” ager. “[As a teenager,] I was in Cassie said. “I had to take love as much as you can be at care of myself from a very the level of maturity I was,” young age. I feel like I got to Hall said. “It was a kind of my mature point when I was love, definitely. Love changes 11. We’re 16 now. [Adulthood] as you get older. There’s the is really not that far away. Dekind of love you get from hav- velopmental-wise, I’m not that ing a child together, the kind worried about it. I’ve done that of love you get from being best already. We’re definitely at our friends. There’s all kinds of mature point.”

Most parents, however, love.”

Teenage love, Hall said, is don’t see their love-stricken much more sexually driven teens as developmentally mature and attempt to provide than adult love. them with “The big relationship plus I think advice. is the sexual I just don’t feel “[My boyone in teen that I’m ready for it. friend’s] mom years,” Hall said. “TeenMaybe after college post used to tell him that noage love can Ph.D. because by then body would be so passionever decline ate because I’m done with school.

Harvard and the hormones —Tigist Menkir ’14 go to UCLA are just way just for you, wilder than but that’s in any other time of your life, and you don’t basically what I would do,” said Cassie, who met Blake know what to do with it.”

Teenagers, Hall believes, in chemistry class and has often get in relationships be- been going out with him for a cause they’re attracted to the month. “My mom thinks [our newness of romance more relationship is] bad because than because they’ve fallen of grades. I think that once it in love. Hall said she believes gets more into second semessex is the strongest biological ter, she’ll warm up to him.”

Cassie, unlike Blake’s mom, drive in teenage relationships because one’s adolescent years doesn’t believe that her relaare the best time to reproduce. tionship has a bad effect on “Throughout history, most her schoolwork.

“It actually has a great efmothers become mothers when they’re 13. I think that’s fect on my school work because what nature did to help us as a now I have a goal,” Cassie said.

“It makes [the future] a lot species,” she said.

When she was growing up, more tangible when you know Hall said, having a boyfriend you’re going to be with this was a requirement for certain one person.”

“I don’t think that there’s a parties and social events.

V

“

Young Love

62%

of students have been in a romantic relationship

Features B3

detriment to your education,” not mature enough to take Bek said. “Every relationship anything seriously. I’m in love is an exercise to perfect your with this boy in my chemistry skills of finding and staying class, but I wouldn’t date him. in a relationship. You learn I’m just not ready to be in a something from it.” relationship, so I’ll just pass Learning how to be in a re- him the hydrochloric acid.” lationship, Bek believes, comes According to psychologist from practice and repetition.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy “You do it. It’s over. You of Needs, Bek said, being in a learn. You move on,” Bek said. relationship as a teenager is She compared being in a high actually very important. school relationship to learning “Having satisfied the baa foreign language: “It’s not sics, your most prominent the newness of the relation- need is the need to belong,” ship but the newness of being Bek said. “To have your family in a relationship. It’s learn- love you, even to have a dog.” ing as opposed to living. With Bek said being in love, paradults, it’s living. When you’re ticularly in romantic love, is fluent in a relationship, especially imporit’s less of a newness.” tant as an adolesCassie said she got cent. into the relationship “In adolescence, because “Why not? It’s [love] is just cruinteresting. It keeps cial,” Bek said. “You my life interesting. experience a lot of Harvard-Westlake is things for the first boring.” time. This is the Cassie was in eight first time you do other relationships besomething on your nathanson’s fore getting with Blake, own. You fall in love Aidan but, she said, “It’s more on your own. ToYetmanreal with [Blake].” gether with love and Michaelson’14 relationships, you’re aiting also searching for to think about yourself, and you’re identifygetting mar- ing yourself by who you love ried is generally and who loves you.” regarded as a good idea, but Love, which is the third there is disagreement among level of the hierarchy after both adults and children on psychological needs and safety whether or not waiting until and security needs, is closely after high school to start a re- intertwined with self-esteem, lationship is a good idea. the fourth level.

“I just don’t feel that I’m Romantic relationships are ready for it,” Tigist Menkir actually more important than ’14 said. “Maybe after college, friendships in high school, Bek post Ph.D. because by then I’m said. In middle school, meandone with school.” while, because kids are less In addition to not wanting developed, romantic relationto be in a relationship, Menkir ships aren’t as essential. doesn’t believe that she is yet Relationships take time, mature enough to be in one. and time usually passes more More maturity, she believes, slowly for teenagers than for is necessary for her to have adults. more proactiveness and inde“A long term relationship pendence, two factors Menkir [for a teenager] is like three considers essential parts of months,” Bek said. any romantic relationship.

“If it’s like a year into a “You’re more independent relationship or maybe less, and have more control of your I think I’d believe [a teenage life [as an adult],” Menkir couple that says they’re in said. “If you’re not proactive in love],” Schack said. “They’ve a relationship, then you won’t accepted their flaws, and be able to keep the other per- they’ve matured in that relason involved.” tionship and they’ve matured Thomas thinks teenage re- as a person. With time, you lationships are pointless. mature. I don’t believe in love “Honestly, how do people at first sight, and I think that not get bored of each other,” everything takes time. I do Thomas said. She said she believe in lucky chances. I do thinks adults need relation- believe in soul mates. That ships more than teens because can happen anytime. It can they don’t have as many op- happen when you’re 82. It can portunities as teens to spend happen when you’re 11.” time with their friends. “I get If Juliet had met Romeo bored of people after 20 min- at 30 instead of 13, poison utes. I love my friends, and and daggers may not have I love my family, but I can’t characterized their relationsee myself being in love with ship. Maybe, as adults, they somebody more than anyone would’ve handled their love else. I’m just not ready to be for each other differently, or committed to anything be- maybe not. cause I’m not even committed to feeding my fish. I’m just *Names have been changed

W

335 students opined on relationships, their significance and their futures in a Chronicle survey.

21%

of students have considered marrying their significant other

90%

of students believe people should be in relationships as teenagers SOURCE: CHRONICLE POLL IMAGES PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SXC.HU GRAPHIC BY MORGANNE RAMSEY AND MARCELLA PARK

B4 Features

The Chronicle

Feb. 12, 2014

PHOTOS BY SU JIN NAM/CHRONICLE

THE LAND OF A THOUSAND HILLS: Su Jin Nam ’16 poses with a genocide survivor, top left. Visual arts department head Cheri Gaulke, right, films as Alberto Rivera ’14 and Lauren Rothman ’16 interview a student with the help of a translator, top right. Noah Bennett ’15 receives traditional Rwandan dance lessons, bottom left. Students looked at preserved bodies of genocide victims at the Murambi Genocide Memorial, bottom center. The group also saw surrounding hills outside the memorial, bottom right.

By Su Jin Nam

‘All of her six children were killed’

O

ne thing was immediately noticeable as I stepped off of the plane: the smell of smoke, hanging thickly in the air. Later, I would discover that it was the smell of burnt trash, but at that time, my only thought was, “Finally.

Rwanda.”

I found out about the Investigative Journalism Adventure to Rwanda last summer and immediately committed myself to the trip. During all of first semester this year, I researched how the country led itself to the point of mass murder.

It didn’t hit me until I was standing in LAX at 5:30 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 24. that I was going to Rwanda, a country I had only heard about once or twice in the news prior to the trip.

I realized that even though I knew much about the country’s torn past, I knew nothing of its current situation.

My dad’s safety briefing, minutes before we separated — always walk around with a buddy, check in with an adult every night, don’t eat things that strange people give you, if you get lost, call the United States Embassy — did nothing to ease my nerves.

The minute we arrived in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, we were met with stares. We were a group of 18 tired Americans in the single-terminal airport, 10,000 miles from home.

In the morning, we caught our first glimpse of Rwanda.

The sprawling hills provided the same breathtaking view everywhere in the country.

Rwanda’s second name, “The Land of a Thousand Hills,” was definitely not a misnomer.

We saw the culture and lifestyle of the Rwandan people whizzing by as we traveled on the bus. I saw people car-

rying water to their homes and women carrying babies on their backs, a basket on their head. We began to wave at the Rwandan people, and most made a welcoming gesture back at us.

Much of the anxiety I felt about going to a recently violent country fell away.

These people were happy and open. They weren’t the hostile and closed-off culture I had imagined that they would be. I was beginning to feel accepted by these people.

Before the trip, each of the students chose a specific topic they wanted to focus on during and in the follow-up activities after the trip. Some compared the Rwandan genocide to the Holocaust, others focused on the children in Rwanda and one group brought soccer balls to distribute and document how the sport was helping the country heal. I decided to turn my attention to the women of Rwanda and what they were doing to heal their country and shape its future.

As I walked through the exhibit on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis in the Kigali Genocide Memorial, I was hit by the magnitude of the killing.

I realized the pictures and descriptions I had come across in America did not even begin to capture the true nature of the genocide. When I came across a certain line of text in one of the descriptions, I sat against the opposite wall, staring at it, reading it over and over again until I couldn’t bear to look at and imagine it any longer. Even when we exited the memorial and got on the bus to go to our next destination, the line wouldn’t stop flashing in my mind as I closed my eyes and rested my head

against the window.

Hutu and Tutsi women were often forced to kill their own Tutsi children.

Later that day we ran into a crowd of children in a village. They smiled and pointed at us. When they came closer, we took pictures with them and taught them how to use our cameras. It was then that I first saw the effects of the healing process with my own eyes, the happiness and acceptance of the new generation.

At the Learning Center, an institution that provides English, music and computer classes for Rwandan youth, we met Kizito, a survivor, who watched his mother get raped and his siblings being burned alive in his house when he was a child.

His mother and brother survived the genocide, but his mother is now bed-ridden with HIV. He traveled with us for most of our trip, and everyday it amazed me how he could look so happy, smiling and laughing with us, even with his painful past.

We visited other survivors who were willing to relive the pain and share their stories.

One woman said that she prayed every night for God to forgive her and to watch over her attackers. I was dumbstruck by her ability to pardon those who had wanted to kill her. Her prosthetic eye rested on me as she said, “Thank you for coming to learn.”

Another survivor’s story was truly heartbreaking. At 82 years old, she had survived two major genocides in 1959 and 1994.

All of her six children were killed, and she lives with one grandchild. She remembers having lost at least 1,000 people in both genocides, all of

whom she knew by name.

What affected me most from her story was the fate of one of her daughters. The woman’s daughter was a Tutsi who married a Hutu man before the genocide. Together, they had a mixed child. When the genocide began, the Hutu son-in-law killed the Tutsi daughter and grandchild.

The son-in-law has recently been released from prison and taunts the woman in the streets of her village.

One of the most uncensored genocide memorials made it apparent to me that, under the healing, the scars still remain.

Murambi Genocide Memorial is a picturesque university that never opened and now showcases the preserved bodies of victims killed there. In the bodies laid down side by side, I could see the wounds, the machete cuts and the forms these people were in as they died. Some have their arms above their face, blocking their attacker even in death. Seeing these bodies was the final step in my realizing the sheer brutality of this genocide, merely 20 years ago.

On the way to Musanze, where we would go gorilla trekking, we visited a school for the deaf. Even though they couldn’t hear the music, they danced to our laughter. As we blew balloons and bubbles, they looked happy. I recalled something that each survivor had been telling us throughout our trip. Education is the way to prevent a future genocide and provide a hopeful future for Rwanda through its younger generation.

The last night yielded a spectacular lightning storm less than five miles away. The sky lit up an electric purple as the night wind blew around us. We watched from the hotel balcony as the thunder boomed.

It was another experience that was purely Rwandan, something I couldn’t witness back home in Los Angeles.

The day we went gorilla trekking, we woke up at 4:30 a.m. The hike through the Rwandan jungle was harsh, and the plants and insects foreign. But the first glimpse of the silverback gorilla made up for all the fears and worries.

The animals were not even five feet away. A baby with a missing foot came closer, and at one point he emptied his bladder on himself. Adolescents in the troop were playing, a mother was cradling her baby and the silverback was napping. It was amazing seeing these creatures who are genetically similar to us in their natural habitat. I had the feeling of being welcomed into their home as we observed them. I reflected back on my time in Rwanda, all the things I experienced and the new world view I had obtained on the hike back down the mountain. I was surprised by how much I had changed in the course of 10 days.

The bus ride back to Kigali was rushed, the possibility of missing our flight hanging over our heads. We arrived at Kigali International Airport, back where our adventure in Rwanda began, on time to make our flight. As I took one last photograph of the airport, I came to the conclusion of the thought process that I had begun on the hike down the mountain.

Somewhere along my journey, I fell in love with this country.

Rwanda and its culture accepted and changed the unlearned me into a cosmopolitan human being. Someday I wish to go back, experience more of the culture and help make the country’s goal of “never again” a reality.

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/features

“Wings of Peace”

By Danielle Stolz ’15

“Seatbelt Monster”

By Charles Schaefer, Providence High School

Features B5

“Iceberg”

By Rachel Lin, SF Art & Film

“You and Me”

By Amanda Reiter ’14

“The SAT Games”

By Molly Cinnamon ’14

“The Lingering War”

By Delilah Napier ’15

“Press Start”

By Luke SoonShiong ’14 and Keaton Heinrichs, Brentwood School “Trampons”

By Kelly Shi, Palo Alto High School

“Last Writes”

By Anita Foroughi, FilmEd Academy of the Arts at Canyon High School

“What Saves Us”

By Noa Schwartz and Lily Zweig, The Righteous Conversations Project

Judges selected 25 films to be screened at the 11th annual Harvard-Westlake Film Festival March 14 at the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. Tickets will be free and will be available at the door of the event. Each film is under 10 minutes, and a guest speaker is soon to be announced by the film festival committee.

“Rokt Lax”

By Lukas Dong, Blair Academy

“Kultakala”

By Christian Flashman and Moss Perricone, Orange County High School of the Arts

“Open the Door”

By Dora Palmer ’15, Emma Bloom, Trey Carlisle, Sofia Servin and Harrison Shea, The Righteous Conversations Project

“Radioactive”

By David Choi and Charles Schaefer, Providence High School

“Paradigm”

By Stephen Boyer, La Salle High School

“Marked”

By Sam Rubin, SF Art & Film

“International Boulevard”

By Rebecca Dharmapalan and Zoë Simone Yi, Oakland School for the Arts

“Niblet: The Story of a Can”

By Marvin Pham, FilmEd Academy of the Arts at Irvine High School

“Notice the Change”

By Marcella Park ’15, Lauren Rothman ’16, Marisa Hattler ’16, Laura Lopez, and Jacob Salners, The Righteous Conversations Project

“In Fiction”

By Andrew Robbin, SF Art & Film

“Epitaph”

By Charles Blecker, SF Art & Film

“Freedom From Fear”

By Alana Feldman, Santa Monica High School

“Disconnect to Connect”

By Sofia Barrett, Sydney Keys, Alice Levine, Troy Loizzo, Samantha Myman, Max Rolnick and Kali Van Dusent, The Righteous Conversations Project

“Anaerobe”

By Danielle Stolz ’15 and Cosima Elwes

“À Mon Père”

By Anita Foroughi, FilmEd Academy of the Arts at Canyon High School

ALL PHOTOS PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE HARVARD-WESTLAKE FILM FESTIVAL

B6 Features

The Chronicle

Feb. 12, 2014

ALL PHOTOS PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SLOANE CHMARA

Sweet Tooth

By Carly Berger

Starting at the beginning of the school year, Chmara Sloane Chmara ’15 opens baked every weekend for her the refrigerator door on a friends and brought her treats Monday morning and grabs to school to get feedback on the pan of crumbled graham the new recipes that she tried. crackers and sugar with choc“I would just bring new olate ganache in the middle things that I made from reciand marshmallows sprinkled pes which I never really tried on top. Chmara baked the bars before, to see what the reacthe night before, and allowed tion was like from my friends,” them to refrigerate Chmara said. overnight. She slices Chmara uses Pinthem into squares, terest as inspiration calling them s’mores for her recipes, which bars and places the she would then alter bars in plastic wrapand add to. Pinterping. Chmara sticks est is a photo blog the custom-made website that allows pink and orange viewers to click on a Sloane’s Sweets and photo, directing them nathanson’s Treats labels onto the to a link where the Sloane wrapping, ties them photo was originally Chmara ’15 with a light pink ribposted. Looking at bon and brings them pictures of food, Chto school for her first day of mara would be directed to a business. website, normally a food blog, Early in November, Chma- where she would then get her ra was telling her dad how she recipes. had brought her baked goods It was on Pinterest that to school and left them in her Chmara discovered a recipe cheerleading bag, only to find for s’mores bars, which she that they had all been eaten by started baking last year. Since eighth period. the bars have to be refrigerat“He knew that there was a ed overnight, Chmara brought high demand, and it was silly them to her friends without for people to take [the treats] even tasting them for the first when I could be making a prof- time. it,” Chmara said.

“I thought they would be Chmara’s father suggested horrible, and I didn’t even try creating Sloane’s Sweets and them, so I just cut them and Treats, and Chmara immedi- brought them to school,” Chately loved the idea of selling mara said. “I remember my her popular baked goods. Ch- friends tasted them and were mara knew that she could be like ‘oh my gosh, these are acsuccessful if she put her mind tually really good’ and I was to it, which is why she started really surprised.” the business.

Chmara now sells the “It just seemed like a highly-acclaimed s’mores bars, really good idea because I am along with superhero cookies very entrepreneurial and have and brownies. The cookies are always had a desire to start brown-butter chocolate chip businesses,” Chmara said. “So cookies, stuffed with nutella this one seemed actually le- and topped with sea salt and a gitimate and something that I large marshmallow. could realistically tackle.”

Chmara’s brownies are not

Long-time baker Sloane Chmara ’15 turned her passion into a business. Sloane’s Sweets and Treats offers desserts such as cookies, brownies and s’mores bars. the typical brownie. They have For her first batch, Chmaa chocolate chip cookie bot- ra received around 30 orders. tom, a middle layer of Oreos She spread the baking out and chocolate chips and a top over a couple of days and made brownie layer. her cookie dough in advance.

“I would say that my most Knowing that the s’mores bars popular treat are the brown- had to be refrigerated overies,” Chmara said. “People night, Chmara baked them in have ordered as many as 20 advance. brownies at a time.”

“All in all, I would say, inChmara charges $4 for two cluding packaging, the baking treats and $10 for six. She do- took close to 10 hours,” Chmanated 25 percent of the pro- ra said. “It sounds like a lot, ceeds from her first sale to the but it was spread out.” charity “No Kid Hungry,” a This is not Chmara’s first non-profit organization that is brush with the baking busilinked with the Food Network ness. Before creating Sloane’s and helps feed children across Sweets and Treats, Chmara America. attempted to start a comShe hopes to donate the pany, “Coupe le Gateau,” same amount of money or which means ‘cut the cake’ more to the organization from in French, with her friends her January profits.

Sarah Winshel ’15 and SoChmara sold her first phia Oman. They filmed cookbatch of treats in December ing tutorials which they were and collected orders at school planning to post on YouTube, and through the Facebook but decided not to go through page she created for her busi- with the idea. ness. Along with the page, ChChmara’s brother and mara created m o t h e r an Instagram sometimes page for her help her with business, the business.

I am very where she Her youngentrepreneurial posts pictures er brother of her sweets. helps get the and have always “ T h e y ingredients had a desire to start are both reout, while businesses so this ally helpful in her mother spreading my packages the one seemed actually business and treats. legitimate and letting people She plans know what to deliver the something that I could is going on, baked goods realistically tackle.” and when or on Mondays how they can —Sloane Chmara ’15 for the rest of order their the year, and treats,” Chsome Fridays mara said. when there is a high demand Chmara’s Facebook page for them. has received over 800 likes, in“Right now, I am still getcluding 100 likes from people ting orders in continuously, who discovered her business which I am really happy about, through Facebook’s sponsored because I wasn’t sure if that applications. Her Instagram was going to happen,” Chmara page has about 200 followers. said.

“

5 steps to make Sloane’s S’mores Bars

1

Combine 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 cups of crushed graham crackers and 7 tablespoons of melted butter. Stir until completely mixed.

2

Press graham cracker mixture into the bottom of a glass pan and bake for 12 minutes at 350°F.

31

In a separate bowl, mix 18 ounces of melted chocolate and 1 cup of milk. Add 2 cups each of marshmallows and chocolate chips when cooled.

41

Place pan under a broiler for 2 minutes until marshmallows are lightly toasted.

51

Allow bars to cool overnight, then cut and serve the following morning.

SOURCE: SLOANE CHMARA GRAPHIC BY CARLY BERGER

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/features

Features B7

Cirque du Sophomore Three sophomores have taken up aerial acrobatics at Kinetic Theory in Culver City, allowing them perform in the circus together.

By Caitlin Neapole

adapt old ones into lots of different styles,” Kofman said.

Dimmed lights set the Troupe members are able stage; a suspended hoop dan- to choose which element they gles in wait. While not an or- would like to focus on, as well dinary extracurricular activity, as aim to be well rounded perthree students have chosen to formers and attain basic trainparticipate in the circus. -Jes- ing in most events. sica Brandon ’16 and Hannah Brandon focuses on single Kelson ’16 joined Emma Kof- point trapeze, where the traman ’16 at an aerial hoop class peze ropes are able to rotate, over the summer, and the three which she learned after taking sophomores have since joined aerial apparatus classes. the pre-professional perfor“Almost immediately I loved mance troupe at Kinetic The- that circus offered a combinaory in Culver City. tion of performance and buildThe girls train nine hours ing strength through flexibila week with one goal in mind: ity,” Brandon said. getting ready for the next show.

Due to prior training, KelEach day the practice routine son chose to have her perfordiffers. mances revolve around hoop Sometimes they will dance and silks. for the first hour of practice, Her coach suggested she warm up as a group or do pi- train in contortion as well so lates. she could incorporate it into Typically after the warm up her aerial acts to widen her arthey stretch for half an hour senal of moves. then split up into their focuses.

The artists have performed “I was 10 times. In adpretty redition, they have luctant, been in two more but I am so shows, “Tales Almost amazingly from the Dark immediately I loved happy that Forest” and I ended up “Dracula: A Symthat circus offered agreeing phony of Terror.” a combination of to take the The Hallowclass,” Keleen shows incorperformance and son said. porated group strength through A f t e r contortion pieces, flexibility. ” hearing trio hoop acts and about flyfull troupe en—Jessica Brandon ’16 semble acts. ing trapeze, Kofman beAll audiences gan taking are welcome, but classes. Three years later she there is a PG-13 recommendaadded aerial classes, including tion for specific performances. hoop, silks and static trapeze to “There is so much to reher repertoire, and fell in love member when you go on stage, with the hoop. She now has as- but I think that pressure repirations to pursue circus per- ally tests the skills you are performance more seriously. Cur- forming,” Brandon said. “I like rently training with Kinetic how having an audience makes Theory, Kofman’s main focuses me better at what I am doing, are hoop and contortion. and it is really rewarding when “I feel like hoop is really a show with an audience goes versatile and gives me the pos- well.” sibility to invent new moves or “Performing is my favorite

“

part about circus because of all the adrenaline that comes with it,” Kelson said.

“I love all the bright lights and being able to see all the people in the audience.”

Despite being unsure about pursuing circus as a profession, Kelson wishes to continue her training until an injury or her scheule no longer allows her to, and said she w o u l d e n j o y the experience of coachi n g younger children in circus.

A s well as having themed shows, Kinetic Theory also holds student cabarets, open to all the studio’s students.

The cabarets display all different styles, apparatuses, themes and skill-levels, and they get to choose whether they would like to have a solo act or not.

“In our group number for the last show, we were workers in a wish factory and it was a really upbeat and energetic piece,” Kofman said.

Although the performers are unsure about how circus will factor into their lives following high school, the unique experience has taught them discipline, and they were able to become apart of a group training for a goal, just as all sports teams do.

“Ultimately I have learned really valuable skills from circus, even if it never becomes my main focus,” Brandon said.

PHOTOS PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SCOTT MCFARLIN

UP IN THE AIR: Emma Kofman ’16, left, Hannah Kelson ’16 and Jessica Brandon ’16 pose for their show, top. Kelson hangs from a suspended hoop in her latest aerial acrobatic show “Dracula: A Symphony of Terror” in Cuver City, directly above.

B8 Features

The Chronicle

AT A SCHOOL WHERE STUDENTS ARE EXTREMELY FOCUSED ON

COLLEGE

ADMISSIONS,

AFFIRMATI E

ACTION CAN BE A TOUCHY SUBJECT.

30% 18%

of students support affirmative action

of students believe that affirmative action helps them

70%of Americans support affirmative action

31% of Americans support giving “blacks and minorities preferential treatment”

$

The median wealth of white households is 18 times that of Hispanic households and 20 times that of black households source: chronicle poll of

305

infographic: zoe dutton students, pew research center

Feb. 12, 2014

Race to the top

By Zoe Dutton

and have access to SAT tutors theless must take it into acand so on, so my SAT scores count when advising students he first thing Avery* need to be reflective of that. who are applying to college. ’13 did after finding But if you look at a kid who’s “I might call [a college] a out that she had been Latino and goes to an inner 50/50 instead of a realistic accepted to college city school and whose parents challenge because historically was buy a school sweatshirt. A don’t speak English, that kid students of color with their week later, it was buried un- could be perfectly qualified to credentials have been admitder a pile of laundry and dirty go to a top university, but be- ted,” Slattery said. “So I will socks in her closet. cause he didn’t have access to make [race] a part of the con“I stopped wearing it be- the same resources, he’s going versation, just as I might do cause I was tired of the com- to score much lower on the that with gender. If I know a ments,” Avery said. “I felt SAT.” particular school’s gender raself-conscious. Usually it’s not Those who support affir- tio is unbalanced, then I might super obvious stuff, but I’ve mative action also besay to a boy ‘well, also had kids say things along lieve that it has a posithat’s a school that’s the lines of ‘you only got in tive impact on more actually looking to because you’re black’ or ‘you than just members of increase their male aren’t going to be able to cut it minority groups. population, so you academically.’”

“You’re enriched by might stand a better Affirmative action is of- rooming with somechance than if you ten a delicate issue at a school one whose first lanwere a girl.’ There where students are so invested guage wasn’t English have been times in college admissions. or being in class with [when I felt race has nathanson’s According to a Chronicle someone who’s from a determined the outpoll of 305 students, 30% sup- totally different sociocome]. But I think Dean Beth port the measure, 42% are economic status,” upit really depends on Slattery against it and 28% are unde- per school dean Beth the school. If you’re cided.

Slattery said. “I think that talking about a school that’s in Affirmative action was ini- people see it in a very narrow the middle of New York City, tiated in the 1960s to coun- light, like ‘you didn’t deserve it’s not going to have that hard teract historic discrimination it and I did.’ I see it as every- a time getting a diverse popufaced by ethnic minorities and one brings different things to lation.” women, allowing them to enter the table, and colleges get to Slattery said that although universities and professions decide what they need in that deans rarely receive comthat had formerly been off- particular class. To be honest, plaints about affirmative aclimits. Then, starting in the it would be a super boring ex- tion outright, she knows it’s a 1990s, several states passed perience if everybody out of topic of discussion among stulaws banning the measure, college came from an experi- dents. including California. Current ence exactly like Harvard“You’ll hear kids snicker,” detractors say that affirma- Westlake. I would not want to Slattery said. “I remember tive action unfairly prioritizes go to that college.” sitting here and listening to less qualified individuals while Statistics show that a uni- three kids talk about somepenalizing whites, Asians and versity’s diversity decreases thing that wasn’t fair, and of women. when affirmative action is the three kids, two of them “I think it’s unfair,” An- eliminated. After California were athletes and one was a gelo* ’14 said. “Although [col- made admission race-blind, development case, all of whom leges] claim that they’re being the number of Latinos and got into schools that they had fair, they’re just maintaining African-Americans enrolled no shot at otherwise and yet racial divisions in another at UC Berkley and UCLA they were complaining about form. It’s still discrimination, dropped over 50 percent, ac- race being a factor.” no matter how good the in- cording to the National CenApart from students learntentions. I study hard, I work ter for Education Statistics, ing about affirmative action as hard, yet somehow I’m less de- and the schools’ graduation it affects them in college adserving because of the color of rates also slightly increased. missions, all juniors discuss my skin.”

Some students, though, ques- the issue as part of their UnitSupporters of affirma- tion how relevant diversity is ed States history classes. tive action counter that the to having a positive college ex“It’s always a sensitive measure is necessary to com- perience. topic,” history teacher Franpensate for social factors “It’s not as though I live cine Werner ’68 said. “I try to that stack the deck on another planet and stick to the history and not get against minorities. don’t know what people caught up in the issue’s more “I strongly beof color are like,” Pay- delicate political side.” lieve that it’s in place ton* ’16 said. “This is For all the debate surto correct an imbalLos Angeles. I already rounding affirmative action, ance,” Jensen McRae have a good sense of plenty of students remain un’15 said. “Because diversity. Sure, race decided.

African-Americans is still an issue in this “I’m not actively against and other people country, but my sitting or for it,” Cameron Victor ’15 of color represent next to a kid whose said. “I understand why colnathanson’s a certain percentskin is darker isn’t go- leges would do that, and I Jensen age of the populaing to change anything. think it’s good that they have McRae ’15 tion, that should be If I’m looking for more more diverse atmospheres and reflected in areas exposure to other cul- that opportunities are opened like college. When you have a tures and lifestyles, I’d rather to minorities. On the other group that’s at such a disad- it not be at the expense of my hand, I am a girl and white so vantage in so many ways, you chances of getting into col- it doesn’t do me any favors. I need to counteract that.” lege.” guess I just find it presumptuMcRae said that affirmaAlthough 61 percent of stu- ous that a college thinks they tive action should be used only dents believe that affirmative know me because of my race.” as a “tiebreaker” between two action has a negative effect Slattery believes that affirstudents of equal ability. Nev- on their chances of admission, mative action is just one more ertheless, she believes that mi- some support it nevertheless. aspect of the college process. nority students can sometimes “During the college pro“People don’t equate all the appear less qualified not be- cess, it was sometimes hard hooks,” Slattery said. “They cause they are any less hard- because I didn’t want to have see affirmative action as unfair working or intelligent, but less of a shot getting in some- but if they have some sort of because they often lack the where because of my race, but connection, that’s not unfair. resources and support system I decided it wasn’t that big a Like I tell parents in meetings, that many at Harvard-West- factor and that it’s important we all want colleges to value lake have. that our country takes steps to whatever our kid has. If I have “If you look at the pure make up for discrimination,” a baseball player, then I hope numbers at certain institu- Zoe Bohn ’14 said, adding the school cares a lot about tions you can see kids who are that ideally affirmative action baseball. If you have a kid not as qualified, but you also would take into account socio- who has a 4.5, it should just be have to take into consider- econmic status in addition to about GPA. We all just want ation socioeconomic factors,” race. what we want, and affirmative McRae said. “For example, Though the school has no action is easy to single out.”

I’m African-American but I official position on affirmative go to a really affluent school action, deans say they never- *Names have been changed

T

Arts&Entertainment The Chronicle • Feb. 12, 2014

PRINTED WIH PERMISSION OF CHLOE SHI

PRINTED WIH PERMISSION OF KATIE SING

GO FIGURE: Chloe Shi ’16 glides over the ice, balancing in the camel position at left. Katie Sing ’16 poses as part of the dancing element in her program.

Ice princesses Two sophomore skaters have branched out from singles competitions into ice theatre and synchronized skating.

By Sarah Novicoff Rotating in the air, straining to turn a third time, Katie Sing ’16 cheats the jump, her foot stopping in the ice, her body continuing to rotate. Limping off the rink, Sing learns her ankle is sprained, one her of countless ice skating injuries in the past few years — a hairline fracture in her lower leg, a sprained ankle, a stress fracture in her right foot and bone bruising on her left being the others.

Sing returned to jumping in December but kept up her spins and footwork even while injured. She now skates four times a week for about two hours each and aims to compete more this year, having only competed in five local tournaments last year due to injury.

“I don’t skate as much as the other, more serious skaters,” Sing said. “I know people who go in the morning and after school every day.

The really good people are homeschooled.”

Some of those “really good people” actually skate at the same rinks as Sing, frequenting the nearby Toyota Sports Arena and Paramount Iceland.

Gracie Gold, the 2014 U.S. national champion who competed in Sochi this month and won a bronze medal, moved to southern California to train with World Figure Skating Hall of Fame coach Frank Carroll while Shotaro Omori, the 2013 World Junior bronze medalist, grew up in the region.

“All of my idols in skating actually skate at the same rink I do,” Sing said. “It’s really inspiring to see them skate.”

Sing began skating 16 girls or boys make formain kindergarten in the tions, like pinwheels, circles wintertime, looking for and blocks, and also perform something festive to do, and lines of footwork. Shi practicdecided to start competing at es with her team on Sundays, age 10 or 11.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, but “I really do like skating,” also continues to practice indiSing said. “I haven’t really vidual routines for solo compethought about why because tition on Saturdays and SunI’ve skated for such a long days after team practice. time.”

Her practice schedule This year, after many years doesn’t usually conflict with of singles competition, Sing schoolwork, but this year, as has joined an ice theater team, always, the sectional synchroperforming big shows and nized ice skating competition routines with up to 23 others, will take place during finals a mix of older and younger week in June. At the Middle skaters.

School, Shi simply moved three Chloe Shi ’16 has also of her finals, but this year branched she will have out beyond to miss secsingles skattionals. If her All of my idols in ing, particiteam makes it skating actually skate pating in the to nationals, less popular at the same rink I do. It’s as they have sport of synmost years in really inspiring to see chronized the past, Shi them skate.” skating. will join them Shi actually there.

—Katie Sing ’16 learned how “ D e f i to skate as nitely there part of a are [times synchronized team in kinder- when I’ve considered quitgarten and still skates at the ting.] Skating season kind of same rink, the Toyota Sports overlaps with the just before Center, as she did when she Thanksgiving and just before was younger. winter break school rush,” Shi “Originally I was totally said. “If I’ve done it before, I against it because I thought by can do it again. So that menice skating team they meant tality and looking forward and hockey,” Shi said. “I thought thinking it will pass eventually ‘no, I’m not going to play hock- is how I get through it.” ey for the life of me.’ EventuSome colleges have synally I decided to give it a try, chronized skating teams, and and it was actually really fun. Shi looks forward to competIt was my first time on the ice ing at that level in the future. so I was really awkward, hold“It’s a lot of fun,” Shi said. ing onto a cone and gripping “It’s unique, and I have a lot of the walls and everything. It really good friends. God, this was definitely trial by fire so I sounds like what anyone says was forced to learn really fast.” about anything ever, but it’s In synchronized skating, true. It’s just really fun.”

“

B10 Features

The Chronicle

Feb. 12, 2014

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

CHANGING FACE: Comedic improv teacher Dave Bushnell recently took up acting again after devoting most of his time to improv. He’s recently guest- starred on shows like “iCarly,” “Happy Endings,” “Monk” and “Important Things with Demtri Martin.” He began advising the new improv group The Jackanapes this fall.

SELF IMPROV-MENT After a two-man tour with “Whose Line is it Anyways?” star Brad Sherwood, Dave Bushnell brings his improv expertise to the new student troupe, The Jackanapes .

By Jacob Goodman On a Friday evening in October, Dave Bushnell runs through the do’s and don’t’s of improv. He throws out terms like “block” and “waffle” to the 13 students who make up the new student improv group, the newlynamed Jackanapes.

Bushnell recently became an official staff member when the Performing Arts Department decided to form a second improv group to accommodate more students who wanted to participate in improv. Bushnell has worked with the Scene Monkeys over the past few years and was given the reins of the new group.

Bushnell grew up in Federal Way, Wash. In high school, he was an exceptional math and competitive speech student, testing out of his first year of college-level calculus and accumulating numerous awards for speech competitions. He always did theatre as an extracurricular, though he said he didn’t receive much support.

“I don’t think anyone meant to be discouraging,” Bushnell said. “It’s just that no one I was connected to knew how to point me in the right direction. I might as well have said ‘I want to study to become a daffodil.’

A ‘career in the arts’ is not always part of the lexicon of working class families and public schools. And really what career-guidance counselor would ever say, ‘Your math skills are exceptional. Have you considered summer stock?’”

Eventually Bushnell was voted “most dramatic” in his high school’s senior class.

He attended Washington State University with plans to become an engineer, but became more and more sidetracked from his engineering classes by what he was doing for his theater classes.

“In hindsight, the classes and experience I gained in the university theater department were all that stuck with me,” Bushnell said.

“There certainly isn’t much call for FORTRAN [Formula Translating

System] programming these days.” cue you to laugh. Improvisors, on the Bushnell took up improv when other hand, say “Shout out: what can one of his acting teachers told him he I do for you?” Somebody sneezes, and needed to be more spontaneous. He it becomes a part of the show.” immediately joined an improv group Bushnell later picked up acting called Seattle Theatresports. After again while still maintaining his imjust a short stint with the troupe, he prov career. He has guest-starred quit the acting class at Washington on shows such as “Parks and RecreUniversity and devoted himself to ation,” “Monk” and “iCarly.” improv.

He says that because he didn’t “It’s hard to say just what the pick up professional acting until latdraw was, maybe the challenge of er in his career, he’s much more apholding my own for preciative of the any length of time parts he receives, without a script,” unlike career acBushnell said. “And tors, who always One thing of course the thrill of want more. pulling laughs out of “There are I’ve learned is, there thin air.” tons of really good are many dangling After working at reasons not to Seattle Theatresports, carrots in this business. get into acting,” he moved down the Bushnell said.

Extras always want coast to San Francisco, “For instance, not a speaking role, cowhere he worked with having a theatre Bay Area Theatresdegree. So given stars always want a ports and eventually the limitations I recurring role, TV stars started with, I’m came to Los Angeles, where he worked with pretty happy with always want films, several improv compamy résumé. One film stars always want nies. thing I’ve learned “For about four is, there are many awards and so on. years, I produced a dangling carrots —Dave Bushnell in this business. weekly show at Acme Comedy Theatre always Improv teacher Extras where I invited playwant a speaking ers from groups like role, co-stars alGroundlings, Improways want a revOlympic, Second City, TheatreS- curring role, TV stars always want ports and others to play in a sort of films, film stars always want awards jam session,” Bushnell said. and so on. No one ever seems to ‘get Bushnell’s good friend, “Whose there,’ and a great many actors are Line is it Anyway?” star Brad Sher- miserable. So I’ve come to it as a wood, eventually invited him to tour latecomer, not as a disillusioned cain a two-man improv show around reer-seeker.” the country, an experience that At Theatresports Los Angeles, showed him the uniqueness of im- which is now Impro Theatre, Bushprov, Bushnell said. nell met performing arts teacher Mi“Improv, like no other theatrical chele Spears whom he has been in a form, completely involves the audi- relationship with for 15 years. ence at all times,” he said. “Think “I fell completely in love right about it: the first thing you’re told away,” he said “Her, not so much.” when you watch a play is silence anyBefore becoming the head of the thing in your possession which might Jackanapes, Bushnell directed at the make noise. Standup comedians tell Harvard-Westlake Playwrights Fesyou, sit down and shut up or I will tival and substituted for Spears with punish you, make noise only when I the Scene Monkeys.

“

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/ae

A&E B11

Winter Concert to feature small groups

By James Hur

MAZELLE ETESSAMI/CHRONICLE

BEHIND THE SCENES: Cinematographer Tony Richmond speaks about his work experiences.

Cinematographer discusses career, filmmaking with Cinema Studies

By Sydney Foreman A movie is only perfect until the first shot of the first day of filming, Tony Richmond (Samantha ’14) told Cinema Studies classes Feb. 5 and Feb. 7 in Ahmanson Lecture Hall.

No matter how much planning there is, he explained, compromises will be inevitable.

Richmond began his career as a messenger boy for Pathway News. After declining an editor position, he worked for Danziger Studio and Bray Studios. After helping out with the movie “Call Me Bwana,” Richmond went on to work on a film in Israel.

There he met cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, who hired him as a member of the camera crew on “Doctor Zhivago” in 1965.

“You need a lot of luck in this business,” Richmond said.

“I always happened to be in the right place in the right time.”

Of the more than 85 movies Richmond has worked on, “Doctor Zhivago” resonated

the most, he said, in part because he got to work with director David Lean.

“Of all of the directors I’ve been around, he’s the most complete director,” Richmond said. “Film is a visual medium, and he was a master of that.”

Richmond said that while filming, Lean “treated actors like marionettes” and had total control. Richmond described a day in which Lean was absent from set and had the prop man come to his hotel room to turn it into an entirely black environment.

“That was his screen,” Richmond said. “He didn’t come out of there until he could see the image.”

Despite referring to Lean as “an extraordinary man,” Richmond said he disliked him out of loyalty to Roeg who was fired from “Doctor Zhivago.”

“The movie could only be cut one way, his way,” Richmond said.

Richmond described the film as a “massive undertak-

ing.” Lean started the movie in December of 1964 and finished it for Oscar submissions of 1965, Richmond said. It won five awards that year, including best adapted screenplay for Robert Bolt’s script. It cost $20 million to make, approximately $250 million by today’s standards.

“With the enormity of the project, you just couldn’t do it today,” Richmond said.

Kennedy Corrin ’14 said she was particularly interested in learning about these types of production specifics.

“I want to be in television production specifically, but it’s always nice to hear from the film side,” Corrin said. “They both kind of go hand in hand.”

After “Doctor Zhivago,” Richmond went to work on major motion pictures such as “Don’t Look Now,” “The Sandlot” and “Legally Blonde.”

“There’s a lot of fun in the movie business,” Richmond said. “It’s something that shouldn’t be taken too seriously.”

Madrigals to sing at convention

By Sharon Chow

The middle school Madrigals will be singing at the American Choral Directors Association Western Division Convention in Santa Barbara Feb. 22 as one of two middle school choir groups invited to perform at the convention.

Every participating choir had to send in three live audio recordings of the past three years one year in ad-

vance to be selected.

“The [judging] process is highly selective,” middle school choir director Nina Burtchaell said. “It is simply an incredible honor to have been chosen from among so many outstanding choral programs throughout five states.”

The Madrigals will sing five songs including “The Shepherds Sing” by Bob Chilcott with Sara Lucas ’17 sing-

ing soprano, Brennan Lee ’17 on the clarinet and professional harpist Amy Wilkins.

There will be 22 other choir groups at the convention.

“I have never had a group work so hard, with so much enthusiasm, dedication, talent and sense of fun than this group,” Burtchaell said. “We just want to go and perform our very best, have fun and represent the school.”

Small groups of two to four students from Symphony, Wind Ensemble and Concert Strings will perform in the Winter Concert Feb. 23 at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica.

Unlike most other concerts, this year’s Winter Concert will heavily feature smaller instrumental groups as opposed to larger ones. They will perform 19 pieces written by a variety of composers, including Bach and Beethoven.

“There is going to be a lot of music and a lot of variety,” conductor Mark Hilt said.

“The students sound amazing.”

Many students have expressed appreciation for having the opportunity to work in small groups.

“I think it helps us grow more as musicians by sharing our knowledge and ideas with our peers,” percussionist Lisa He ’14 said.

The concert will begin at 5 p.m., and admission is free.

27 students received the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, which recognize students for their work in 28 different art forms.

Art Portfolio Gold Key Mazelle Etessami ‘14

Gold Key Ariana Blut ’15 Mazelle Etessami (4) ’14 Koji Everard ’15 Benjamin Goldsmith ‘16

Emma Lesher-Liao ‘14 Danielle Stolz ‘15 Josephine Treadwell ‘16 Scarlett Wildasin ‘16 Aidan Yetman-Michaelson ‘14

Silver Key Mazelle Etessami ’14 Vivian Lin ’16 Alexandria Florent ’15 Lizzette Medina ’14 Alexander Haney ’14 Chelsea Pan ’14 Aidan Yetman-Michaelson ‘14 Samantha Ho ’16

Honorable Mention Clare Chou ‘15 Mazelle Etessami (3) ‘14 Alexandria Florent ‘15 Josh Friedman ‘15 Jacob Goodman (2) ‘15 Diana Kim ‘15 Matt Leichenger ‘14 Emma Lesher-Liao (2) ‘14

Sophia Lopez ‘14 Sarah McAllister (2) ‘15 Grace Pan ‘16 Garrett Robinson ‘15 Gabriela Romano ‘14 Danielle Stolz (2) ‘15 Tara Stone ‘14 Eibhlin Villalta ‘15 SOURCE: ARTANDWRITING.ORG GRAPHIC BY JAMES HUR

OPEN ALONG EDGE

Feb.12, 2014

The Chronicle

B12 Features

flix,” Kano said. “So I guess you could say it’s an addiction.”

While most Netflix users do Last summer, Alex Kano ’14 not receive check-in emails from watched so many episodes of tele- their direct streaming dealer, vision through Netflix’s online many students have habits that streaming service that the com- may fall under or very close to pany felt obligated to check on her Kano’s self-diagnosed addiction. well-being.

“I watch Netflix almost ev“Netflix sent me an email tell- ery day, but I am definitely not ing me how many hours I watched alone,” Alessandra Marenzi ’14 in a row and then asked me if I said. “Most, if not all of my friends was okay,” Kano said. watch Netflix regularly.”

The company’s Glenne Carter ’14 adconcerned email was mits to spending an averbrought on by Kano’s age of one to two hours ravenous consumpevery night watching TV tion of TV shows like on Netflix.

“Breaking Bad”, “Or“It definitely takes ange is the New Black,” away from my school “Lost” and “Scandal” in work,” Carter said. “I prohours-long marathon crastinate with shows. I nathanson’s viewing sessions. watch everything from Glenne The email from Net‘Orange is the New Black’ Carter ’14 flix, combined with the and ‘Gossip Girl’ to ‘Scary way she breezed through Movies.’” all 13 hours of the first season of When he comes upon a show “Orange is the New Black,” has, that he really likes, Max Rothman in part, led Kano to conclude that ’14 devotes a similarly large porshe is addicted to Neflix. tion of his day to using the online “Netflix fulfills all my desires. service to watch it.

I come home and I go to my com“I typically will not watch too puter or Apple TV to watch Net- much Netflix until I find a show

By Lucy Putnam and Lizzy Thomas

NETFLIX ADDICTION

THIS IS ALSO YOUR RETURN ENVELOPE

“

I really like,” Rothman said. “But, and, now, I binge watch shows,” when I find that show, I will watch Luke Soon-Shiong ’14 said. “It has it at least two hours a day, maybe taken over my breaks. It would more, until I am done with the en- be 11 o’clock, and I would say I tire show.” am done with work, but, before I Some other students prefer to know it, it is 5 a.m.” get their Netflix fix in even larger, For some students, their TV binge-sized chunks. time spent on Netflix comes di“On the average weekend, I rectly out of the already-limited spend around six hours on Netf- hours they allot for sleeping. lix,” Kelly Crosson ’14 said. “But “Netflix takes away from my I spent around sleeping time,” 14 hours a day Megan Kaplan ’15 during winter said. “I stay up all On the average break.” night watching it. “ B i n g e weekend I spend around I like that you can watching is my watch many episix hours , but I spent favorite way to sodes in a row.” watch a show,” Despite losing around 14 hours a day Garrett Cayton large amounts during winter break. ’14 said. “I can sleep, Kaplan and avoid the pain—Kelly Crosson ’14 others cite using ful wait between Netflix as an esepisodes, and sential form of the long period stress relief. between seasons, while watching “I do not think it takes away at my own pace. Netflix allows me time from my work because I to get really involved with shows watch it after I am done with my I may have missed on air, and work to de-stress before I go to since it has been out, I have binge sleep,” Kaplan said. watched at least 20 [series], some “It is a problem,” Crosson said. multiple times through.”

“But it is the only thing that de“Recently, I discovered Netflix, stresses me.”

Netflix’s lack of commericals and easy access to entire seasons of shows hooks a lot of TV addicts, who spend hours of their life on Netflix.

NETFLIX

PAID

FIRST CLASS MAIL U.S POSTAGE

Sports The Chronicle • Feb. 12, 2014

SPRING IS IN THE AIR: The girls’ track and field team is among several spring Wolverine squads aiming to repeat as league champions in 2014.

C6-7

Boys’ Soccer

Veteran trio dismissed from squad midseason

Girls’ Soccer

On to the Next One After securing the Mission League title for the third year in a row, the girls’ soccer squad now sets its sights on the elusive CIF title. The team is ranked 10th in the nation by MaxPreps.com.

By Grant Nussbaum and Elijah Akhtarzad

When the boys’ varsity soccer team began its season, Sam Clement ’14, Nick Knight ’14 and Milan Sanchez-Johnson ’15 were starters.

When the team stepped on the field for its Jan. 17 game against Alemany, the three were missing from the field, having all been dismissed from the team prior to the match.

Now, after concluding its regular season with a 2-0 loss against Loyola Feb. 10 and an overall record of 4-5-3, the boys’ soccer squad will continue pursuing a wild card playoff spot without veterans Clement, Knight and SanchezJohnson.

Players said the trio was dismissed from the team because they did not see eyeto-eye with head coach Lucas Bongarra, and that Bongarra felt repeatedly disrespected by the players through their attitudes and frequent absence from practice.

“I’m conflicted about it because I don’t really like Coach Bongarra, but being kicked off the team wasn’t undeserved – I think it was a rash decision on Bongarra’s part, but I can see where it was coming from,” one boys’ soccer player who wished to remain anonymous said. “I mean, a lot of the kids are conflicted about it because on the one hand, Sam, Milan and Nick were pretty good players, but they were disrespectful. That’s not really what you should be doing to any coach, whether you like them or not, there has to be some level of respect – I mean

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

PLAYMAKER: Courtney O’Brien ’15 (#8) corrals the ball in the girls’ soccer team’s 1-0 victory over Flintridge Sacred Heart Feb. 7.

By Eric Loeb At the start of the year, girls’ soccer players and coaches said that winning a Mission League Championship was a major goal for the team this season, and an important first step towards their main aspiration, winning a CIF Championship ring. With a home win against Flintridge Sacred Heart on Friday, Feb. 7, the only team to defeat last year’s league champions in league play, the Wolverine’s win made that first step in clinching the title.

Although the team is focused on preparing for its final regular season matchup, a non-league affair with Valencia on Saturday, Feb.

15, no players or coaches are hiding the fact that earning League Title has them excited for the playoffs, which begin Feb. 21. At this time their opponent and the location of the game have yet to be announced.

“We are excited for the playoffs,” Head Coach Richard Simms said. “We hope everyone will come out and support us.”

The team finished its League season with a record of 9-0-1, undefeated with its only non-victory being a tie against Chaminade, the team that knocked them out of the playoffs last season in a battle so close that it required penalty kicks to resolve. As of press time, the team’s overall

record on the year is 16-1-2, with its only loss being a 0-5 loss to Mira Costa in its third game of the year Dec. 13.

“I think winning the Mission League only encourages us to work harder to prepare for playoffs,” Emma Sanderson ’14 said. “Just as winning the Mater Dei tournament prepared us for league, I believe getting first in the Mission League motivates us to win CIF. I think mentally we have celebrated our win and now we focus on how we can grow as a team and as individuals to better ourselves for the playoffs” According to MaxPreps. com, as of Feb. 4, the team is ranked 10th nationally, fourth in the state of California and

second in Southern Section Division 1, the pool the team would have to go through to accomplish its goal of winning CIF Championship rings for its players and coaches.

These rankings were most likely influenced by the team’s dominance in what is considered a league full of talented teams, including the aforementioned Chaminade, a team also ranked in the top ten of Southern Section Division I. Although the league title does create excitement in the players for playoffs to begin, players say they have been ready to take on the challenge since before the season started.

• Continued on page C5

• Continued on page C3

Baseball

Wolverines prepare to defend title

By Sam Sachs and Jordan Garfinkel

SAM SACHS/CHRONICLE

KING OF THE HILL: Pitcher Jack Flaherty ’14 (above, #9) will try to defend his spot as CIF Southern Section Player of the Year.

are pitching for college baseball teams across the nation from Stanford to Emory.

Jack Flaherty ’14 returns Flaherty may be the most as the centerpiece of a Wol- prominent returning player verine baseball team that is on the team, and possibly in ranked as high as fourth in the southern California, but he is nation by Perfect Game. Fla- not alone in terms of returnherty, the team’s numing talent. Shortstop ber one pitcher and a Brian Ginsberg ’14, utility player, is the a varsity player with only the most recent Flaherty since his Wolverine pitcher unfreshman year and the der eighth year coach second half of the duo Matt LaCour to rethat is poised to beceive national acclaim. come the winningest Flaherty, whose acduo in Harvard-Westcolades include being lake baseball history, nathanson’s named the L.A. Times outfielder Ezra SteinBrian Player of the Year and berg ‘15, utility player Ginsberg ’14 the MaxPreps NationTyler Urbach ’14 and al Player of the year after last outfielder and pitcher Michael year’s stellar junior campaign, Vokulich ’14 all return after follows in the footsteps of Lu- playing in 24 or more of the cas Giolito ’12 and Max Fried team’s 32 games last season. ’12 who were drafted in the “I want to win the Mission first round of the 2012 Major League again, and I want to go League Baseball Draft, and as far as we can go in the playmultiple other pitchers who offs, I want to win it again,”

Vokulich said.

The team’s main competition in Mission League are the rival Loyola Cubs who they split last year’s season series with. The team’s only other two losses last year in league play were at the hands of Notre Dame and Crespi.

“Say what you want about that other team in our league, but that’s pure hype,” Jacob Pardo ’14. “We have guys that have done it before, and no matter what number is next to our name, we expect to win. And if people want to say we’re not the best team in our league, it’ll make it all the more sweet when we prove them wrong. We don’t really care what people say, we just win.”

“I expect us to be really good. I think we’re gonna surprise a lot of people with how well we execute and how good • Continued on page C3

The Chronicle

C2 Sports

Facts &

Figures

4

The baseball team’s preseason national rank, according to USA Baseball.

22.4

Derick Newton’s ’14 average points per game over varsity basketball’s last five games.

Number of games since the varsity girls soccer team’s last loss. The team is 9-0-1 in Mission League play.

31

16

Jake Bracken’s ’14 total number of wins this wrestling season. He lost only five times this year.

Game to watch FEB. 21-22

Wrestling at CIF Championships Westminster High School

A record 10 wrestlers qualified this year for CIF Championships. Leadership from seniors and the strongest freshman class wrestling has had in years will hope to make an impact. The wrestlers that place first, second or third in their weight class qualify for CIF Masters.

KEY PLAYERS

Patrick Halkett ’14 and Jake Bracken ’14 Captains Halkett and Bracken became Mission League champions in their weight classes of 113 lbs. and 132 lbs., respectively, at league finals Feb. 1. Both wrestlers will aim to place in their weight classes at CIF Championships in order to qualify for CIF Masters, the last level of CIF competition and the last tournament before state finals March 7-8.

Junior Varsity

Feb. 12, 2014

Wrestling

10 head to CIF Championships

By Tyler Graham

A total of 10 wrestlers will head to the CIF Championships tournament after placing at the Mission League Finals Feb 1. Team captains Jake Bracken ’14 and Patrick Halkett ’14 both won the title in their respective weight classes at League Finals to lead the squad.

Bracken and Halkett placed first in the 132 lbs. and 113 lbs. weight classes respectively, while fellow seniors Alex Lange ’14 and Connor Kalantari ’14 finished third at 145 lbs. and 195 lbs., respectively.

One junior, two sophomores and three freshmen also placed, thus qualifying for the CIF championships.

Bracken, who was named Harvard-Westlake Student Athlete Advisory Council’s Athlete of the Month in December, finished with a 31-5 individual record on the season.

Along with placing first at League Finals, Bracken’s season included winning the Newbury Park Tournament Dec. 7.

Bracken is pleased about his win at League Finals, but is not taking any time to cel-

ebrate, instead turning his focus to advancing deeper into the postseason, he said.

“I have been preparing for the postseason for a long time and it felt good to get it off to a good start,” Bracken said. “As a team I think we feel pretty good. Qualifying 10 out of 10 wrestlers for CIF is a huge accomplishment and it gave us a lot of confidence. We have two more weeks to keep improving, and I think [Head Coach] Gary [Bairos] has done a great job all season preparing us for this.”

As a leader and captain of the team, Bracken takes great responsibility and pride in not only his own performance, but also that of his teammates.

“I try to make sure I’m relaxed before competition because generally when I do well, we do well as a team,” Bracken said. “During practice we try to stay focused on what each person in the room needs to improve on. We also have guys that are an important part of the team who did not qualify for CIF, but keep showing up every day just to support the rest of the team, which I think will help everybody achieve their personal goals.”

Halkett started his wres-

CAITLIN NEAPOLE/CHRONICLE

BREAKING OUT: Team captain Jake Bracken ’14 attempts to break loose from an opponent’s grasp. Bracken will be heading to CIF after placing first at the Mission League Championship Feb. 1. tling career in seventh grade on the middle school team and will culminate his journey as a League champion.

“It’s really interesting that I came into this sport not really knowing anything, and I sort of moved my way up every year and got better,” Halkett said. “In wrestling what you put in is what you get out, and it’s nice knowing that all the time that I put in had actual benefits.”

Halkett shares Bracken’s optimism about the team’s prospects heading into CIF. “I feel pretty hopeful for everyone going into CIF,” Halkett said. “I think wrestlers like Bracken, myself, and Jake Adler ’17 have a really good chance of placing in CIF and continuing on to CIF Masters. It’s really exciting to be bringing 10 kids who all have a good chance to compete in their weight class.”

Girls’ Basketball

Wolverines aim to end season on high note, make playoff berth

By Jordan Garfinkel

After a strong 9-4 start, the girls’ basketball team’s momentum began to slow down near the end of December, during a period where the Wolverines played five games in six days, winning the first two and falling in the following three.

The Wolverines followed the three game losing streak with a another three game winning streak, defeating Notre Dame, Highland High School and Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy.

Center Glenne Carter ’14 is one of the senior leaders on this young girls’ basketball team and has, along with Zoe Bohn ’14, dominated in the paint this season.

“I think the team was struggling for a few games, but now we have the mindset of taking one game at a time and playing competitively and

leaving it all out on the court,” Carter said. “We can always improve in certain areas like boxing out and just doing the small things.”

“I think that we’ve been playing our hardest,” guard Teeana Contangco ’15 said.

“We’ve just been battling some really tough teams that are pretty highly ranked.”

In their last six games, the Wolverines are 3-3. The team accumulated wins against Louisville, Notre Dame and FSHA. In their last game, the Wolverines fell 54-39 against Chaminade.

“I actually do think there was a mental issue,” Carter said. “We went scared and afraid into games against teams we were expected to lose. But regarding Thursday nights Chaminade game, I think it shows that we now are starting games with the thought that we are going to play our hardest and most in-

tense no matter who our opponents are.”

The Wolverines have one more game left in the season at Alemany tomorrow. Earlier this season, they lost to Alemany Jan. 28 59-34.

“The team has impoved so so much since the summer and fall,” Contangco said.

After the regular season, the Wolverines will march into the CIF playoffs, where they reached the second round during the 2012-2013 season, defeating Notre Dame 47-45 in the first round and then falling to Bishop Montgomery 57-42.

“I am completely satisfied,” Carter said. “I think even though we struggle every once in a while, we don’t hang our heads and we easily start to focus on the next game. I am really confident for the next games and playoffs. We definitely need to come out strong against Alemany on Thursday to show we can compete.”

LUKE HOLTHOUSE/CHRONICLE

THE END IS NEAR: Lindsey Tse ’16 drives the ball to the basket in a league game against FSHA last year. The Wolverines are hoping to beat Alemany for the first time this season tomorrow in their last league game.

Last Game:

School to host relay meet in memory of Carr ’14

L (70-73) @ Loyola

By Patrick Ryan

Girls’ basketball (12-8)

Harvard-Westlake will host the first annual Justin Carr ’14 Memorial Relay Meet March 1 at the Copses Family Aquatics Center.

All members of the Mission League will compete, with the times counting towards CIF qualifying, but not towards league standings.

Carr was a member of the swim team who died of cardiomyopathy last February during a swim practice.

“It’s an opportunity to

Boys’ basketball (7-17)

Last Game: L (57-43) vs. Chaminade

Boys’ soccer (4-12-3) Last Game: L (2-0) @ Loyola

Girls’ soccer (8-6-1) Last Match: W (3-1) vs. FSHA

honor Justin. We know how important he was to our community,” Head of Athletics Terry Barnum said. “With the anniversary of his death coming up pretty soon, it’s a nice way to remember him.”

Head coach Jonathan Carroll said the coaches in the Mission League had wanted to do a relay event at the beginning of the season, and in light of Carr’s passing, they decided it was fitting to rename the event to memorialize Carr.

“I’m very excited about it because it’s a way for us to

really take the time to commemorate Justin, his contribution to the swimming pool and what he meant to the program,” Carroll said.

Both of Carr’s parents, Susan and Darrell, will be in attendance and present the trophy to the winning teams at the meet. The recording of Carr singing the National Anthem will also be played before the meet, just as it was before the Loyola-Harvard-Westlake football game this past August.

Visual arts teacher, Marianne Hall, who was Carr’s art

teacher, designed the trophy.

The design is based on an image of Carr doing his favorite swim stroke.

“We’ve been going to swim meets since Justin was in third or fourth grade,” Susan Carr said. “There can be no better way than going to a meet to honor our son in his absence.

It’s going to be hard, but I think that the trophy designed by his art teacher is a pure reflection of who Justin was and it will forever remain a part of the Harvard-Westlake community.”

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/sports

Sports C3

inbrief

Boys’ Soccer

Collins ’97 attends State of the Union

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

RISING TO THE OCCASION : Midfielder Jack Temko ’14 (#7), left, leaps to win a header in the boys’ soccer team’s 1-0 win over Alemany Feb. 5 to get the team’s record to 4-4-2. Defender Addison Abdo ’14 (#4) , right, gathers the ball before passing in the same game.

Wolverines adjust following dismissals of goalkeeper, defenders before playoffs • Continued from page C1

tried to regroup. multiple victories this season. took over the starting role af“I think that the players Quilici also holds the high- ter Clement was kicked off the you have to pretend that you that were kicked off the team light play of the year for the team. respect him, even if you don’t.” were very vital to the team,” a squad when he caught the “Next year we believe as Knight, who was a capsecond anonymous player said. keeper off his line and kicked a team that we have the abiltain on the squad, believes his “We feel incomplete without a rocket into the upper right ity to win league and make a disagreements with the head them. But I think everyone hand corner of the net from deep playoff run,” Glick said. coach did not warrant being now understands the message 35 yards out to lock up a “Despite losing a great senior removed from the team. that Lucas 3-1 victory class from this year, “[Bongarra] told was trying a g a i n s t we still think that me that, as people, to get across: Notre Dame. talent-wise we can we ‘clashed,’ that we that one’s at“The team compete with anyone. had different ideas titude is just has definitely It’s just a matter of of soccer and that as important i m p r o v e d ,” consistency, staying it would be better as one’s skill Quilici said. healthy, and playing as if we ‘just stopped,’” on the field.”

“I think that a team.”

Knight said. “I did “It’s rewe found the After losing to the not understand that ally cooled play style that Cubs on Monday, the very much. We had off a lot,” the worked for Wolverines will have some conflict earnathanson’s nathanson’s nathanson’s first anonyus the best a to wait about a week lier in the season, Milan SanchezSam Clement ’14 Nick Knight ’14 mous source little too late before they find out but nothing serious Johnson’15 in my opinion. Of said. “When in season so their position in the course I may be blinded, be- he cut them, a large group of next season we will not make CIF Division I bracket. cause I’m probably biased to- us were on the fence about just the same mistake. We will be The Wolverines finished wards myself, but I think my quitting the team. But since at our top form from the first fourth in league and tied teammates would support the that time it’s really calmed game.”

Loyola, the best team in the fact that I did not misbehave down a lot. We’ve really just The Wolverines will look to Mission League, in their first to any extreme level that de- hunched our shoulders and build next year on the core of meeting served that punishment.” gotten through it - we’re real- Cole Fletcher ’15 and Charles “At first, it was hard to adClement, as well as the ly playing more for each other du Manoir ’15. Jono Klein ’15 just to the absence of the playAthletic Department and Bon- than for him.” and Nicolas Greenlee ’15 have ers that were once so vital to garra, declined to comment on When the Wolverines lost also taken on more responsi- our team,” Quilici said. “We the issue. three of their starters midway bility throughout the year due were slowly able to develop a The trio’s dismissal hit the through the season, under- to the removal of the three play style that worked withteam hard and upset their forout these players; however, mer teammates, but having classmen had the opportunity starters. to get more playing time.

Goalkeeper Ryan Shelly ’15 the three seniors are still very played seven games without Henry Quilici ’15 had a returned to play this season missed by the team and there Clement, Knight and SanchezJohnson, the Wolverines have breakout season for the team, as well after tearing his me- still [was] a feeling of incomincluding leading the team to niscus and ACL last year and pleteness lingering.”

Baseball

Team faces high expectations • Continued from page C1

our chemistry is. There’s no question we are prepared, we have the best coaching staff in the country,” Steinberg said.

“I think its cool that after we were at the very top to have a challenge right away, something we can strive to get back to,” junior pitcher Matt Beyer ’15 said. “We are trying not to think about last year at all, so it’s a completely different feeling on the team. Since there are so many new guys, we just have a new mindset for the season that we’re not trying to repeat, we’re trying to win.”

This is the first year that the baseball team is coming off a national championship, and with the loss of several key players, the culture and the mindset is shifting approaching the upcoming spring season.

“Well a lot of locker room type stuff that we did last year left with the seniors, so our challenge is to create our own identity,” Jacob Pardo ’14 said. “But another thing that I think is going to help us is that we’re now lifting with Marcin.

Especially as a team that’s going to rely on some younger guys this year, being as physically prepared as possible is a

big deal. I think we’ve had a really good fall and winter. ” The Wolverines will open the season at Birmingham High School Saturday, March 1. The home opener at O’Malley Family Field will take place Tuesday, March 4.

“I think we need to continue what we have done all fall playing hard as a team and not playing for ourselves,” Jackson Grayson ’15 said.

“We want that second ring. Obviously, having lost a lot from last year, we’re still establishing what each of our roles is going to be, but we have the talent to do it again, no doubt,” Pardo said.

SAM SACHS/CHRONICLE

READY TO RUN: Outfielder Michael Vokulich ’14 takes a leadoff in a game against the rival Loyola Cubs last season.

Jason Collins ’97 attended the State of the Union Address as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama Jan. 28.

The first lady has, in recent years, invited guests relevant to policy issues emphasized in the annual speech. Collins, who last year became the first active male athlete in a major American sport to come out as openly gay, was no exception, as President Barack Obama devoted a short section of his address to LGBT equality and mentioned “marriage equality” for the first time ever in a State of the Union address.

“It’s a big deal that the administration has extended its hand to not only me, but my family, and also sports fans and also the gay community,” Collins said to ESPN. “I cover a lot of different topics.”

—Lizzy Thomas

Fencers to compete in Junior Olympics

Seven students will be participating in the upcoming Fencing Junior Olympics.

Anne Kim ‘15, Enya Huang ’15, Jessie Pfeiffer ‘16, Justin Yoo ‘15, Jack Graham ‘15, Jake Raynis ‘14 and Sophie KupiecWeglinski ’15 will be competing in Portland, Oregon from Feb. 14-17.

The competition is separated into different age groups and weapons. To qualify, fencers had to place in the top three at the district qualifier, which was held at the end of November.

“This is the time where they announce the world teams, who compete at world championships for the United States. I’m already locked into both the U19 and U17 team so I’m extremely excited to hear my name called for both,” Yoo said.

The Fencing Junior Olympics features competition with all three weapons- the saber, epee, and foil.

“Hopefully [I do] well, because if I win U19 I’ll be the best U19 fencer and U17 fencer in the country,” Yoo said.

- Justine Chen

SAAC honors Glick ’15, Tse ’16

The Student Athletic Advisory Council selected Lindsey Tse ’16 of the girls’ basketball team and Matthew Glick ’15 of the boys’ soccer team as the January Student Athletes of the Month.

Tse has been a prominent member of the team for the past two years. She has averaged 11.2 points per game this season.

In a game against Burroughs High School Dec. 13, she scored 33 points. Tse is currently the team’s leading scorer. “[Tse] has put up very impressive numbers this season, and she has been a huge factor in the current winning performance of the girls’ basketball team,” SAAC member Brandon Lim ’16 said. “Glick plays left back and left midfield for the soccer team, and he has been one of the team’s leading scorers this season. Glick has continued to prove himself to be a scoring threat and a great contributor to the team.”

-Jonathan Seymore

C4 Sports

Boys' Basketball

The Chronicle

Feb. 12, 2014

600

Greg Hilliard earned his 600th win as head coach of the HarvardWestlake boys' varsity basketball team with the Wolverines' 66-60 victory over Notre Dame Jan. 31. Hilliard was presented a trophy commemorating the milestone by Head of Athletics Terry Barnum and Head of Upper School Jeanne Huybrechts before the team's Feb. 5 76-73 overtime loss to Alemany.

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

Wolverines fall to Loyola, look for at-large playoff bid

By Grant Nussbaum

as Harvard-Westlake boys’ basketball head coach Jan. Finishing its regular 31 against Notre Dame, finds season with a 66-56 loss Feb. falling behind early to be a 10 against Loyola, the boys’ repeated issue for his team. varsity basketball team will “I think we’re really playing aim to reach CIF playoffs via hard and really playing well to an at-large bid after failing to get in these positions where automatically qualify for the we have a chance because, first time in head coach Greg in almost every case, we’re Hilliard’s 29-year tenure. outmanned as far as quickness The Wolverines finished and athleticism by many of their season at 4-8 these teams in the in Mission League Mission League,” competition and in Hilliard said.

“It sixth place in league seems like the way standings, missing the every game goes is requisite top-four spot we get down by eight to earn an automatic or ten, then we come playoff berth. back, then we get At 11-15 overall, the down again, then team ends its regular we come back. The nathanson’s season with a losing good part is we never Derick Newton ’14 record for the first quit and we always time in over 10 years. The come back, but the bad part Wolverines have had a streaky is we always fall back. I think season, defined by strings of our difficulty is consistency at consecutive losses, and in the that high level for 32 minutes.”

Mission League, topped by a Due to a lack of size on the Loyola team ranked top five in team the Wolverines’ main the nation, the team struggled shortcomings have come on the to gather momentum with boards, with the team having more than one win at a time. been outrebounded in every Head coach Greg Hilliard, game this season. Six-footwho earned his 600th win five Derick Newton ’14, who

played at the small forward position in his sophomore and junior year, has been forced to start at the center position throughout his senior year campaign. Fellow senior big man Sam Weintraub ’14 has missed nearly the entire season with injury, though he did play through it for two minutes and hit a midrange jumper in the team’s senior night game against Alemany Feb. 5.

“We’ve absolutely tried everything – we’ve had all five guys crashing the boards because we’re outmanned physically,” Hilliard said. “We have not outrebounded any game this year, and we’ve still managed to win the 10 games we’ve won. That’s our weakest category at this point.”

Loyola made the Wolverines’ deficiency on the glass particularly apparent in the rivals’ first meeting of the season Jan. 24, as seven-footer Thomas Welsh and the Cubs collected 35 total rebounds to the Wolverines’ 16 total boards as the Wolverines fell to the Cubs 80-39.

“That was one of the

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

STEP-BACK: Forward Derick Newton '14 dribbles between his legs against Alemany in the team's 76-73 overtime loss Feb. 5. roughest games I’ve ever been a part of,” Hilliard said.

“Without Weintraub out there, who did a great job last year of containing [Welsh], we had a tough time.”

Hilliard’s team will find out if Monday’s game against Loyola was their last of the season – as well as the last of

Newton’s, guard Mike Sheng’s ’14 and the seniors’ careers – Feb. 16. If they earn an at-large bid, the Wolverines will likely face a squad from another league in a wild card-style game to determine whether they will enter the CIF Division IV bracket or not.

hwchronicle.com/sports

Feb. 12, 2014

League Champs

Sports C5

The girls' water polo and soccer teams both maintained undefeated league seasons.

As a result, they will both have the top seed from the Mission League for CIF playoffs.

Girls’ Water Polo

Team notches 73rd league victory

By Mila Barzdukas

Fresh off the Irvine tournament, the girls’ water polo team is cruising to the Mission League title and one of the top seeds for CIF playoffs.

The team is 8-0 with two games left in league play.

If the Wolverines win their final two league games, they will make the program’s win streak in the Mission League 75 consecutive games.

“The goal is to go into every game ready to play,” team captain Sydney Cheong ’14 said. “We’ve struggled being ready going into the first quarter and it always takes us a couple minutes to get warmed up and so the goal is to come out strong. When we’re playing really good teams, if you get behind in the first quarter, it can hurt you for the rest of the game.”

The team is wrapping up yet another flawless league season.

Despite strong showings from opponents and a smaller roster, the Wolverines continued their dominance.

Games against Notre Dame, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, Marymount and Alemany all resulted in the Wolverines winning by 10 goals or more.

“The water polo team is great and I'm so proud of all of us winning league,” attacker Genevieve Thomas '16 said.

"It's really cool that we're going to playoffs.”

As the Wolverines are

finishing up league play, they turn towards teams they could potentially face in playoffs.

They are expected to be the top seed from the Mission League.

“We’re hopefully going to be the second seed going into playoffs and the first seed will probably be Los Osos,” Cheong said. “They’re a big team to watch.”

Cheong also said multiple teams will be competitors this season.

"Every team is going to be a big competitor this season," she said. "Every team ranked from one to nine has been beating each other like crazy so it’s kind of an exciting year in that you’ll never know what is going to happen. In a lot of ways that makes it a lot more stressful but it will be fun.”

Current CIF polls seed the Wolverines in second place behind Los Osos. The Wolverines narrowly lost to the Grizzlies 13-11 Jan. 4 and have not played them since.

The squad has faced teams outside the Mission League in recent tournaments.

After a fourth place finish in the Bonita Tournament, the Wolverines entered their last tournament of the season, the Irvine tournament, as preparation for playoffs.

A 15-10 loss to Coronado knocked the squad out of the champions bracket but they bounced back with a 14-2 win over Fountain Valley. In the 4th round the Wolverines lost to Edison 14-6.

“Losing to Coronado first thing was tough but we did not play very consistently,” Caitlin Neapole '16 said. “We had too many ups and downs to take the game away from them. But the loss gave us an idea of how we need to play if we want to win.”

The squad faced Louisville yesterday, but results were not available as of press time.

The final league game is tomorrow, where the Wolverines will play against Alemany for the second time.

CIF brackets will be posted Feb 16. The first round of CIF is scheduled for Feb. 19.

Cheong says the game plan will not change come playoffs.

“The goal is to come out ready to play and to stick to our game plan which is to play good defense and be methodical in our front court,” Cheong said.

Last season, the Wolverines were knocked off 12-7 in the semi-finals by Palos Verdes.

If they win CIF, they will give Head Coach Brian Flacks his second CIF Southern Section title this year.

He previously won CIF with the Boys’ Water Polo team in November.

“It would be really cool to win CIF,” Neapole said. “Just because this team works so hard. Even when we have double days and tournaments every weekend, these girls work harder than what is expected of them. All of that work is about to pay off.”

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SYDNEY CHEONG

EGG BEATER: Rebecca Armstrong '14 prepares to launch the ball for a score. The girls' water polo team defeated Marymount 11-5 Feb. 5 and were subsequently Mission League champions.

Girls’ Soccer

Wolverines win league, aim for CIF playoff title led by Princeton commit Courtney O’Brien ’15, scored “It definitely feels an average of 3.2 goals per good to have won league,” game as of press time, while Northwestern commit its defense, led by Lucy Mackenzie Putnam ’14 Howe ’14 and keeper said.

“But J a c k i e I think we Ridgley ’14, We need to stay would be has only confident allowed 12 calm and composed in regardless goals thus far, pressure situations and an average of heading into playoffs.” not resort to long balls.” less than one Following per game.

—Richard Simms such a S i m m s spectacular Head Coach did, however, s e a s o n , feel the team p l a y e r s still had aren’t the only ones who some room for improvement are confident heading into entering the postseason. bracket season.

“We need to stay calm “The league season and composed in pressure doesn't have a lot to do with situations and not resort to the playoffs,” Simms said. “I long balls,” he said. believe we have a great team As for extra motivation so confidence is high.” as the team approaches the Both Simms and the postseason and as a result its players deserve to be pre-season goal of winning a confident following a season CIF Championship, Simms of dominance on both the says his girls need none. offensive and defensive sides “I think the seniors are of the ball. starting to see the end of The squad finished league their Harvard-Westlake with 59 goals scored versus careers drawing to a close,” just just four goals that they he said. “As a result they are allowed. really appreciating every day The Wolverines' offense, and working very hard.”

• Continued from page C1

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

ONE-TWO PUNCH: Courtney Corrin ’16 (#21) dribbles past a FSHA defender in the squad's 1-0 win to end their Mission League season, top. Courtney O'Brien ’15 blasts a kick down the field while surrounded by two FSHA defenders, bottom. O'Brien recently committed to play at Princeton University.

“

C6 Sports

The Chronicle

Feb. 12, 2014

Boys’ Lacrosse

Team hopes to maintain momentum after title win

By Mila Barzdukas

JACK GOLDFISHER/CHRONICLE

CATCH HIM IF YOU CAN: Roman Holthouse ’15 runs down the field in a game against Oak Park at Ted Slavin Field last season.

The Wolverines lost the game 13-11 in one of four losses last season.

The lacrosse program had its most successful season ever last year. Young but experienced players combined with a new coach to take home the program’s first ever Northern Division trophy. The only thing missing was a Southern Section title, which they lost in a 15-8 game to St. Margaret’s. Despite the loss, the Wolverines are back with the same winning mentality and much more experience.

“I think we have a great shot of winning everything this year,” Jack Temko ’14 said.

“The loss against St. Margaret’s was tough because we played very evenly for the first half and then we relaxed in the third quarter and then they started putting away goals.”

The Wolverines’ first goal is to be the only team to hold the league title this season.

They tied for the title with Crespi last season.

“Overall our biggest rival is Crespi,” Temko said. “But our league is very talented from top to bottom.”

Leading the charge on the field are Gettysburg commit Noah Pompan ’14 and Hamilton commit Temko, who is also reigning Mission League Player of the Year.

By only graduating starter Matt Edelstein ’13 and captain Luke Holthouse ’13, the Wolverines are ready to pick up from where they left off. Two freshmen to watch are Nico Econn ’17 and Shane Houska ’17.

Over the summer, Interim Head Coach Alex Weber

became Program Head after leading the Wolverines to a 15-4 record last year. He is the first coach in four years to last more than one season. In preparation for this year, he added all new coaches to the roster, including a new offensive coordinator.

“We’re going to score a lot,” Temko said. “Our offensive coordinator is developing a bunch of new schemes for us.

Weber says everyone is going to have multiple goals this season.”

“I’m so excited to have Weber back this season,” Joe Woody ’15 said. “He brings an energy that makes everyone feel important, and he’s really good at uniting the team.”

The season opens with a league matchup against Oaks Christian March 3.

Track and Field

Program adds 2 assistant coaches

By Tyler Graham

Three athletes who went to State Championships last year will be returning to take a leadership role on the 2014 squad.

Lizzy Thomas ’14, Alex Florent ’15 and Courtney Corrin ’16 represented last year’s squad at State Championships, and have big plans for the upcoming season, which officially started this week.

Coming off an unprecedentedly decorated offseason, Corrin will aim to step into a leadership role in the 2014 season.

Along with being the reigning Big Red Female Athlete of the Year, Corrin was named Athlete of the Year by the Los Angeles Daily News for girls’ track. The attention Corrin has been receiving be-

gan after she won State and the New Balance National Outdoor championships in her freshman season, both in long jump. Corrin currently holds the national freshman long jump record with a jump of 21 feet even.

“We definitely expect Corrin to take a leadership role on the team even though she is just a sophomore,” long jumper and triple jumper Cole Fletcher ’15 said. “Based on what she has already done and the work ethic that she has showed we all expect her to have a big year.”

Thomas went to State after placing seventh in the girls’ 3200-meter race at CIF Masters. The week before Masters, Thomas placed fourth at Mission League Finals. Thomas starred on the cross-country team in the fall, finishing 20th

overall at state finals last season.

Florent capped off her 2013 season with a second place finish for girls’ high jump at State Championships. Florent currently holds the school record for girls’ high jump.

“Everyone is eager to start the season,” Fletcher said. “After many weeks of training everyone is excited to see what they can do or how much they have improved from last year.

Personally I want to see if I will be able to improve in the long jump.”

Two new coaches were hired to help fill the void after Johanna Hayes left the program to coach at UCLA. Olympic medalists Tasha Danvers and Shawn Crawford will fill out the coaching staff, joining two-time Olympic gold medal winner Felix Sanchez.

Boys’ Volleyball

The boys’ volleyball team lost almost its entire starting lineup to graduation, but this year’s squad features a strong base of juniors and sophomores who hope to be a strong force in the Mission League routinely.

Loyola, who routinley has one of the best boys’ volleyball programs in the nation, is expected to earn another league title. However, a second place finish and a playoff bid is certainly in the grasp of the young Wolverines.

“Although we have lost many seniors who graduated last year, we still have high expectations coming into this season,” outside hitter Hudson Ling ’15 said. “Losing some of the important leaders from last year, the upperclassmen on the team this year will have to step up. Loyola and Notre Dame will have excellent teams this season, but with continual hard work, so will

we. Because our team consists mostly of juniors, our team strives for strong teamwork and communication that will be vital not only this upcoming season, but also the season following.”

The team is led by lone senior Elliot Sassouni ’14, who is expected to be starting libero. An underclassmen trio comprised of Ling, setter Brad Comisar ’15 and outside hitter Scott Nussbaum ’15 are expected to be in the starting rotation as well.

The team will play its first match against Mission League rival Loyola March 3.

During the middle of the season, the club will battle in the Santa Barbara High School tournament and will play in non league matches against Oaks Christian and Simi Valley. With the departure of eight seniors, the underclassmen will have the opportunity to take over more responsibility and leadership roles this year.

“The future this program

HOPS: Scarlett Wildasin ’16 jumps over the last hurdle in a 300m race last year. She is one of two female varsity hurdlers on the team.

The new coaches will coach sprints and hurdles.

“It’s very nice having such winning coaches,” Jamie Skaggs ’15 said. “All of them attended the Olympics, and all of them have experienced being the best. We really are

getting the best coaching in Southern California.”

Both the boys’ and girls’ track and field teams will open up their season at Crespi High School March 6, with the boys’ team facing Crespi and the girls’ team facing Louisville.

Boys’ Tennis

Junior standout leads squad in spring season

Young team takes on Loyola in first match

By Elijah Akhtarzad and Mila Barzdukas

CAITLIN NEAPOLE/CHRONICLE

By Lucy Putnam

ERIC LOEB/CHRONICLE

TOP SPIN: Setter Brad Comisar ’15 prepares to serve the ball in the teams’ match against Newport last season. lies in the hands of the players,” Ling said. “We have many freshman and sophomore junior varsity players who have proved talented and fast learners, as well junior and senior team leaders.”

After falling to Corona Del Mar High School 12-6 in CIF semifinals last year, the boys’ tennis team looks inward to player development to prepare for its upcoming spring season.

“Our team is pretty young this year but we have some good young talent,” team captain Max Rothman ’14 said.

“I’m hoping that we can get back to a fourth consecutive CIF semifinal.”

According to Rothman, Michael Genender ’15 is likely to make a large contribution to the team.

Genender moved up to 17th nationally as reported by Tennis Recruiting Network and second in the Boys’ 18s Southern California Tennis Association. Genender has earned this spot by dominating numerous boys’ 18’s designated tournaments, reputed to be some of the toughest USTA tournaments in Southern California.

“I have been training hard with my coach for upcoming international individual tour-

naments so I will be ready for the matches in high school,” Genender said.

He is not the only team member logging extra hours on the court. Sam Hummel ’14 and Rothman have been training with their coach to prepare to be a principle doubles team.

That said, there have been no full team workouts thus far.

Not only have members of the team put in outside work, but some of their rivals, University High school and Corona del Mar, would seem to have become weaker, losing their top three and two singles players respectively.

“I think we are just focused on trying to play our best at the end of the year and to go deep in the CIF tournament,” said Genender. “We will use these first couple months to test different lineups, get experience and grow as a team.

I don’t think it is a good idea to put emphasis on a particular end result and say that if we make it to this point we had success this year and vice versa.”

Feb. 12, 2014

hwchronicle.com/sports

Softball

Boys’ Golf

New coach seeks to grow program and develop players

make the change possible.

“We wanted to find a coach that could bring some energy After five seasons under to our program, was excited Head Coach Joe Aranda, the about softball, and had an exathletic department has hired tensive softball background.

Claire Rietmann-Grout as the Coach Rietmann-Grout fit all new softball program head. of those categories,” Barnum Prior to coaching at said.

Harvard-Westlake, Rietmann-Grout Rietmann-Grout says she wants to creplayed college softate a softball culture ball at Towson Unithat people in Southversity and coached ern California want to for four years at come to.

Immaculate Heart To accomplish High School. this, her on-the-field “Coaching here is goals for the team nathanson’s an incredible opporare to work hard, Claire tunity. We have the make a name for the Rietmann-Grout best support staff, themselves and win players who want games. Off the field, to succeed and work hard, and she wants the team to do group beautiful facilities,” Rietmann- community service and other Grout said. “The weight room team-bonding activities to help specifically sold me.” chemistry within the squad, Head of Athletics Terry she said.

Barnum made the decision to As a coach, Rietmannhire Rietmann-Grout as the Grout is interested in the proprogram head when Aranda cess and not the results. announced his retirement af“I tend to be the type of ter last season. Barnum said coach where I’m not outcome the Athletic Department was oriented,” she said. “I love to fortunate to be able to make win, but really my goal is about the position a full-time job, and the process of building this the school was great in terms program and building players. of dedicating more resources to If my players step onto the field

Senior captains lead experienced team

By Jordan Garkinel

By Bennett Gross and Henry Vogel

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

UP TO BAT: Jackie Carr ’14 prepares to hit against Oaks Christian last season. and give 100 percent every day, we’ll be successful.”

The team will be without last year’s star pitcher Chloe Pendergast ’13, who is currently pitching at Cornell. Maddy Kaplan ’14, Jessica Johnston ’14 and Molly Steinberg ’14, all returning veterans, are looking to lead the Wolverines to CIF during their senior season. Next year, Kaplan will play at Harvard University while Johnston will play for the University of California at Santa Barbara. The team also has four freshman that Kaplan says are doing well at practice.

Swimming

Coach builds on 2013 finish

By Audrey Wilson

After sending seven athletes to CIF last year, the swimming team has big plans for this upcoming season. Led by second year coach Jonathan Carroll and the newly built Copses Family Pool, the swimmers’ emphasis this season is on improving times and qualifying as many athletes for CIF as possible.

“The major difference this season is numbers,” Henry Copses ’14 said. “As of now we have somewhere in the sixties in terms of number of swimmers signed up to swim this year.”

Copses also described many

changes to the season.

“Many things have changed since last season,” Copses said.

“Brennan Lee ’17 and Claudia Wong ’17, as well as Andy Liu ’14, who swam high school last year, are training. Furthermore, this is the last high school season my fellow seniors and I have with the school. To me that is the greatest difference. It is strange knowing that there is no next year for me on the Harvard-Westlake team that I have been a part of for so long, but I know, under the ever watchful eyes of Coach Carroll, the team will continue succeeding without us.”

With a 5-1 record last year,

Sports C7

the boys’ team has a good shot at a successful season. With new freshmen and returning senior, Sydney Cheong ’14, who was out last year due to injury, the girls’ team is hopeful to go better than their 4-2 record last year.

“My main goal this year in swimming has been to focus on having fun instead of putting crazy amounts of pressure on myself,” Emma Graham ’15 said. “Last year for me was all about getting one specific time and trying to make it to CIF, but this year, I have a much more relaxed outlook and I am dedicated to enjoying myself.

I think as a team we always try to put together good relays

After a winning 12-3 season, the boys’ golf team returns this spring with a more experienced team. The team opens its season March 4 against school rival Loyola High School.

During the 2013 season, Loyola was responsible for two of the team’s three losses, with the other at the hands of Notre Dame.

The team is looking at this first game both as a chance to claim a victory against a longtime rival and also as a test to see where the Wolverines stand as a team compared to the best in the Mission League.

“I think we are the two top teams in league so it’s a good test to have early in the season,” Lepler said. “It’ll really show us where we’re at and where we’ll need to improve, because we won’t be able to get away with silly mistakes.”

Lepler is one of the two captains, along with USCcommit Bakari Bolden ’14 who led the team last year.

Bolden was the only player on last year’sd team to advance to the first round of the individual CIF playoffs.

Along with the senior experience, the Wolverines will also be adding freshman Brandon Kewalramani ’17.

“

“I definitely think this is our best season with regards to chemistry. Varsity has kids from freshman to senior, but we all get along so well that it makes it fun to get out there every day and get better,” Lepler said. “Also, talent wise I think we are stacked this year.

We have a bunch of guys who I think are really going to break out this year and play great golf.”

Head Coach Tony Kewalramani begins his third season with the boys’ golf team, implementing a competitive environment during the three practices per week leading up to the spring season.

“Almost all of our practices count towards your ranking on the team, so day in and day out we are all having to play under pressure, which will prepare us well for league matches,” Lepler said. “I think everyone practices on their own things, but when it comes down to it in matches, making clutch putts can put the team over the top.”

The Wolverines finished in fourth place in the Mission League Championship match last season.

“Our goal is to win league and go on from there. We know we are the best team this year, so we just have to go out there and show it,” Lepler said.

I think as a team we always try to put together good relays and help each other out. Even though swimming has a reputation of being an individual sport, the team aspect is such an important part to our team.”

—Emma Graham ’15

and help each other out. Even though swimming has a reputation of being an individual sport, the team aspect is such an important part.”

A major difference this year, however, is the addition of the Justin E. Carr Relays, a meet held in honor of friend and teammate Justin Carr ’14, who died last year.

“We had planned to have the meet last year to break in

15% Discount for Harvard Westlake Students

nathanson’s

the new pool and then with Justin’s untimely passing we still wanted to have the meet and thought it would be a good way to honor him. The coaches unanimously agreed, and Terry Barnum [Head of Athletics] supported the idea to commemorate him. I think it will provide an opportunity for his teammates to reflect, and hopefully it will get them to ramp up their game.”

Pick-ups and Dine-ins from the regular menu

The Chronicle

C8 Sports

Feb. 12, 2014

One on One

with Mike Sheng ’14

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

DRIBBLE AND DRIVE: Guard Michael Sheng ’14 (#30) dribbles past Alemany defender Brandon Boyd (#3) in the Wolverine’s 76-73 overtime loss to the Warriors Feb. 5.

By Audrey Wilson

Stats:

11-15 Overall season record

445

What does becoming the school’s all-time leader in assists mean to you?

It’s very meaningful. It was a goal that I set out to do my freshman year, and it’s a great feeling to have finally accomplished it. It’s something that I take a lot of pride in, and hopefully I can keep it for a long time.

What has been the best moment of your high school career so far?

Career Assists*

The best moment was winning CIF. We won CIF my freshman year. We knew we had a really good chance because we were ranked number one at the time and we had Damiene Cain ’11 who was really good. We expected to win, it wasn’t really that tough a game – Inglewood was good, but they weren’t great. Everyone was really excited and I got my first ring, so I loved it.

What have your team and individual goals been this season?

Individually my goal was to get the assist record, and the rest are paired with the team’s goals: winning games and making a push for CIF. So far it has been rough, but I think we finally figured it out. Everyone seems motivated, we are getting better at closing games in fourth quarter, and I think, despite our record, we are one of the better teams in our CIF section, so hopefully we can win it.

*School Record

NATHANSON’S

Do you basketball play outside of school, and if so, what team are you on and what is the commitment like?

In the summer I played club for Compton Magic. It’s a big commitment and usually takes away most of my summer, but it’s fun, and I enjoy it. I’m gone most of the month travelling with the team playing games in April and July.

What struggles have you faced as a team this year, and how have you tried to overcome them?

This year it was definitely closing out games in the fourth quarter. It’s our biggest challenge. We usually stay with a team until the last four minutes of a game and then we kind of blow it. We are off and on with our shooting and our defense. That has been our big problem, but I think we are fine now and I think we will be fine for the playoffs.

Head Coach Greg Hilliard recently netted his 600th win at Harvard-Westlake. How does it feel to be part of the team when he reached this milestone?

Being a part of this team and getting that 600th win is a big honor. I’m glad that I got to experience a great celebration of his success at HarvardWestlake.