May 2010

After CIF reprimand, new committee to oversee fan behavior.

C hronicle >>Page C5

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Harvard-Westlake School • North Hollywood, CA • Volume XIX • Issue 8 • May 26, 2010 • chronicle.hw.com

Hateful note targets gay student

By Allegra Tepper

Allegra Tepper and michelle Yousefzadeh/chronicle

STEM FEST: Members of the Robotics Club operate their mechanical creation at STEM Fest on Monday (top). Matin Bondad-Pichvai ’11 controls the festival’s music (bottom left). Kristen London ’10 and Caroline Groth ’10 hang from the geodesic dome they designed. See full coverage, page A8.

Faculty choose Joe-Wong to present valedictory speech at commencement

By Nicki Resnikoff

Claresta Joe-Wong ’10 will present the valedictory speech at this year’s commencement ceremony on June 11.

“The Harvard-Westlake valedictorian is selected from among the top students don hagopian/chronicle in the class,” Head of School Claresta Jeanne Huybrechts said.

Joe-Wong ’10 There is no exact number of candidates, but the final selection is generally made from a pool of two to five students, Huybrechts said.

The valedictorian is then decided by a faculty vote.

“The academic record—including GPA and coursework completed—of each student is considered along with his/her ability to create and deliver a valedictory speech,” Huybrechts said.

While the selection of valedictorian is officially announced at the Cum Laude Assembly which took place on Monday, May 17, Huybrechts informed Joe-Wong of the honor earlier this month.

Joe-Wong said that Assistant to the Head of School Emily Kennedy asked her to go to Huybrechts’ office about graduation announce-

ments.

“She is extremely unassuming and was clearly shocked when I told her,” Huybrechts said of Joe-Wong.

“It felt incredible,” Joe-Wong said of being informed that she was selected to be valedictorian. “It was such an honor to be elected by my teachers.”

Joe-Wong will be attending Princeton University next year.

As valedictorian, she will be one of only two representatives of the Class of 2010 to give speeches at the commencement ceremony.

The other speech will be given by salutatorian Chase Morgan ’10, who was elected by his classmates.

As of now, Joe-Wong has written a draft of her speech.

“Naturally, I am excited,” she said.

In addition to writing and delivering a speech, the valedictorian receives a congratulatory certificate and plaque.

Also, Joe-Wong’s name will be permanently engraved on a trophy.

“Claresta has certainly distinguished herself academically and, according to all her teachers, she is a poised, thoughtful, and articulate young woman,” Huybrechts said. “I believe she’ll have something quite interesting to say at Commencement.”

An anonymous threatening and homophobic note left in an openly gay junior boy’s backpack led Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts and Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra to address all class meetings last week, in which they referred to the note as a disappointing anomaly.

The note, which read, “If it were legal to kill [expletive], you’d be first,” was classified as harassment upon being reported to the Los Angeles Police Department by the student’s family. Campus security reviewed surveillance tapes and the handwriting on the note, but no suspects have been identified.

“Our attitude is always that we are going to expend every ounce of our investigative skills,” Head of Security Jim Crawford said. “We’re not going to stop until we have no avenues to follow.”

Even so, from the victim’s perspective, the chances of finding the culpable parties are grim.

“It doesn’t sound like they are going to figure out who did this, and at first, it made me so angry,” he said. “Then I realized that whether this person is still in the community or not, the issue is beyond this one incident. It’s about educating people in the long run so this doesn’t happen again.

“This isn’t just a gay issue. It’s a hate issue. It’s a minority issue. Even if this person is gone, it’s not like this couldn’t happen again.”

Approximately 100 students and teachers gathered in Rugby for a Gay Straight Alliance meeting on Monday, May 17 to discuss the incident and measures that should be taken in response. An overwhelming majority agreed that this incident was more than just a small act of hate or homophobia. Students spoke up to suggest integrating gay rights lessons into the U.S. History curriculums and including more gay-friendly literature in English courses.

“I am going to leave [curriculum changes] in the hands of the Faculty Academic Committee and individual departments to consider,” Huybrechts said. “I think it’s very important that we don’t overreact to this. If nothing like this has happened in over a decade, generally speaking, this is an accepting community of kind and thoughtful students.”

Eli Petzold ’10 voiced similar beliefs at the meeting, also calling the incident an anomaly in the Harvard-Westlake community. Another student said the vocal support of homosexuality from faculty and students which have resulted from the note made him feel more comfortable with his sexuality, as well as more willing to stand up to people who use homophobic slurs.

“Had it happened a few years ago I would have been saddened,” Joe Girton ’10 said. “Now we are moving in the right direction and this was just a speed bump. I think we have been legitimizing the anti-gay movement as something that is very centric to the older population. I always assume that people in our generation are accepting. The most shocking was that it was someone our age.”

English teacher Martha Wheelock called the incident a textbook example of the “immorality of inertia,” and urged students to take this opportunity to begin speaking up. While the victim initially asked the administration if he could address the student body at an assembly, he concluded that it would not have the impact he thinks this issue deserves.

“My only opportunity was at a class meeting for the junior class, and I didn’t want to speak out to a bunch of my classmates texting,” he said.

For more coverage, see A9 and B Section

Community Service

271 98 1 See full coverage, page A7

Upper school students who had not fulfiilled the service requirement

by May 21.

Seniors who had not fulfilled their service requirement by May 21.

Number of approved trips required to fulfill the requirement.

source: COMMUNITY COUNCIL

preview Nearly a third of upper school student body has yet to complete community service requirement.

Study suggests potential link between high cell phone usage and brain cancer.

Studies link lack of exposure to sunlight and sleep deprivation.

on the

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A9

The Chronicle condemns the writer of a hateful note for hiding behind the veil of anonymity. jamie kim/Chronicle

B9

Ryan lash/Chronicle

candice navi/chronicle

Three seniors work at a movie theater and have created a featurelength film.

feat

PHOTO GALLERY: See photos of Studies in Scientific Research students talking to KNBC local news about a sending a weather balloon 80,000 feet into the air.

es ur

Candice Navi/Chronicle

• POLL: Vote on how we should approach the community service requirement for students.

chronicle.hw.com

podcasts videos photos blogs

Left-fielder Brennan Boesch ’04 breaks into the Detroit Tigers’ starting lineup.

sp ort s

C2

Omission:

new beginnings education teacher Adia Armstrong.

Mikaela was born on April 25 at 19 inches long, weighing seven pounds and 10 ounces. On May 7, Tuva was born weighing eight pounds and 10 ounces. William was born on April 26, weighing eight pounds and seven ounces. Nia was born on Feb. 15.

—Justine Goode

The April 28 issue of The Chronicle listed winners of the Grand Concours national French competition. Eleonore Lund-Simon ’12 received first place in the French IV division. We regret the omission.

courtesy of the the Detroit News

VIDEO: Watch students get pummeled by water balloons in video clips from last Friday’s Water Day.

There are four additions to the school family with the births of Mikaela Marie, daughter of middle school foreign language teacher Andrew Brabbee, Tuva June, daughter of Upper School Dean Coordinator Ryan Wilson, William Orion, son of middle school math teacher Regan Galvan, and Nia Cheryl, daughter of middle school physical

Chamber Singers end their year singing the national anthem at Dodger Stadium.

Nancy Sunkin

Hung and Swoope are named athletes of the year by The Chronicle.

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The Chronicle Wednesday, May 26, 2010 Volume XIX Issue 8

May 26, 2010

The

C hronicle

A time-honored tradition

Code mandates fire drills, school has yet to comply

By Alice Phillips

Ingrid Chang/Chronicle

Graduating with honors: Max Simchowitz ’10 shakes Head of School Jeanne Huybrecht’s hand as he is inducted into the Harvard-Westlake Cum Laude chapter on Monday, May 17. Fifty-six seniors were inducted during the after-school assembly in Rugby.

FAC approves consequences for dropping classes late in year

By Daniel Rothberg

In an effort to bring consistency to the process of dropping classes, the Faculty Academic Committee has approved a new policy that sets restrictions on when students are permitted to drop a course.

Starting next year, students enrolled in a year-long course will have up to one week after the first quarter ends to decide whether they wish to drop it. If a student chooses to withdraw from a class after that point, the action will be noted on his or her official transcript.

The same rule will apply for semester courses. However, due to the shorter length of those courses, students will have four weeks to decide whether they wish to drop them.

FAC Chairman Kent Nealis said that the consequence for dropping a class after the official deadline is meant to serve as a punishment for not fulfilling a commitment to complete the course. “[Dropping a class] is something that should be done with a fair amount of thoughtfulness,” Nealis said.

Under the old policy, requests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis, Upper School Dean Canh Oxelson said.

“We really didn’t have a policy where we

could say with any consistency [that] it’s too late to pick up a new class or it’s too late to drop a class,” Oxelson said.

Nealis and Oxelson believe that a relatively small number of students will be affected by the new policy.

Oxelson also said that a withdrawal noted on a student’s transcript might negatively affect him or her during the college process.

“If it does turn out that a student has a withdraw on their transcript it does raise a little bit of a red flag with a college because they are going to want to know why the withdraw happened,” he said.

Nealis said that exceptions may be made to the policy should extenuating circumstances arise.

“If there are significant extenuating circumstances, certainly allowances would be made and strict adherence to policy is not something we are going to demand as a matter of course,” Nealis said.

“It will force kids to be more thoughtful about what they are going to take and thoughtful about whether they can handle that particular course load,” Oxelson said. “I actually don’t think that a lot of students will end up with a withdraw on their transcript becasue most students know early enough whether or not they want to stay in a class.”

Forbes ranks H-W 12th best American prep school Forbes magazine published a list ranking the 20 “Best Prep Schools” in America.

Fifty-five ‘candidate schools’ were evaluated to create teh top 20 list. To decide the top 20 rankings, Forbes considered four factors: percentage of students who matriculate to the Ivy League, MIT, and Stanford, student-to-faculty ratio, percentage of faculty members who hold advanced degrees and the school’s endowment.

Here is how Harvard-Westlake compared to the top 20:

Ivy League, MIT and Stanford matriculation

aculty holding 10th (30%) Fadvanced degrees

3rd (84%)

>>Forbes weighed the Ivy League, MIT and

>>The fraction of faculty holding advanced

School’s

Student : faculty

Stanford matriculation percentages from the past five years as 50 percent of its rankings calculation. Among the top 20 schools, the average was 30.9 percent. Trinity in Manhattan (first overall) placed first with 41 percent.

endowment

16th ($45 million)

>>Endowment was worth one sixth of the calcu-

lation. The average endowment among the 20 schools is $204 million. Two of the schools that were ranked in the top 20 declined to state their endowments. Phillips Exeter (eighth overall) placed first with $854 million.

degrees was worth one sixth of the calculation. Among the top 20 schools, the average was 76.3 percent. Horace Mann (second overall) placed first with 94 percent.

ratio

News A3

chronicle.hw.com

16th (8:1)

>>The student to faculty ratio was worth one sixth of Forbes’ calculation. The average ratio was 6.6:1. Six of the 20 schools tied for first with 5:1 ratios.

source: Forbes.com Graphic By Alice Phillips

and

Daniel Rothberg

Despite a rule in the California Education Code that “a fire drill shall be held at the secondary [school] level not less than twice every school year,” no fire drills have been conducted during the 2009-2010 school year.

Head of Security Jim Crawford said the understanding of administrators was that lockdown drills (in which students barricade their classrooms as if the school was under attack) could fulfill the code’s requirement. Crawford was unaware that the education code in question specifically referred to fire drills.

After reviewing section 32001 of the California Education Code, Information Officer Pam Slater with the Department of Education confirmed that independently funded private schools are required to comply with this section of the code.

“If we aren’t complying with it, we’re going to do them,” Crawford said. “We are going to shove them in at the end of the school year. If they are not done we could be subject to fines.”

“I’m confident in our emergency response, but that doesn’t negate the fact that we have to have drills twice a year. Period,” Crawford said.

Because of an increased focus on A.L.I.C.E training, which is intended to prepare students for an on-campus shooter, the school planned to conduct a lockdown drill this year, Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra said. Those plans were delayed because the siren intended to alert campus of a lockdown was put on backorder. “[The lockdown drill] was going to take priority over other drills,” Salamandra said. “We try not to have too many disturbances or disruptions [in the schedule] throughout the year.”

Crawford said that even though “everybody knows how to do a fire drill,” he would rather practice them more frequently.

“If I had it my way I’d do a drill once a month,” Crawford said.

Although the backordered siren has arrived and has been installed, Salamandra said that administrators are having difficulty planning a lockdown drill because the school hopes to notify neighbors in the area of any upcoming lockdown drill (the siren can be heard up to half a mile away from campus).

Students face punishment for alcohol, drugs found in limos

By Jordan Freisleben

Administrators gave “a disappointed lecture” to students from two prom limos about alcohol and drug use at school functions after contraband was discovered in those limos, one of the students in attendance said.

The obligatory meeting was held Friday afternoon in Feldman-Horn gallery with Director of Student Affairs Jordan Church, Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra, and Chaplain Father J. Young.

The administration was notified of the contraband by one of the limo drivers.

Among the items found were “huge amounts of alcohol, marijuana and marijuanarelated stuff from prescription places, such as lollipops and brownies,” according to a school authority who wished to remain anonymous.

From 3 to 7 p.m. tomorrow, the students from the limos will be required to clean the insides and outsides of the yellow school buses, school suburbans and school maintenance vehicles.

“I feel bad that the school has to deal with this,” a student, who wished to remain anonymous, said. “But I feel like we were made scapegoats because we were the only ones to get caught when a dozen other limos had just as much if not more stuff than we had.”

Another student, who also wished to remain anonymous, believes that the school’s response was justified.

“I think we deserved the punishment,” she said.

“It’s symbolic of how the administration felt about the situation. The kids involved tarnished Harvard-Westlake.

By making us clean and detail [the vehicles], it’s an attempt to remedy the things we did.”

Young acknowledged that there were probably other limos containing contraband.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if there were other limos,” he said.

“But these [two limos] were the ones that were brought to our attention.”

The administration gave students from the limos the option of signing a document exonerating them from blame, Young said.

“The sheet actually says ‘I’ve examined my conscience and I don’t feel like I’ve had any part of this,’” he said. “It was an alternative to interviewing kids separately to see who was guiltier than the next person, because we realize that not everyone shared equal responsibility.”

A student from one limo feels that every passenger was in some way culpable.

“There’s a wide broad spectrum of who was involved and who did what,” the student said. “But everyone has some kind of responsibility whether it’s massive or miniscule.”

An emergency room doctor will also speak with the students and their parents about the dangers of alcohol poisoning and the potentially deadly effects of consuming alcohol in the amount in which it was found in the limos.

“Our fear was that with the relatively small amount of students consuming so much alcohol, there would have definitely been trips to the hospital,” Young said.

The number of students involved makes Young believe that this is the most serious prom offense he has encountered.

A4 News

The

C hronicle

May 26, 2010

chronicle.hw.com

courtesy of ian cinnamon

ryan lash/chronicle

spotlight: Adam Moelis ’10 and Jacob Witten ’10 are interviewed by a KNBC news crew about their recent balloon launch. The experiment was part of a project for the Studies in Scientific Research class.

Seniors’ SSR project captures footage of Earth from 80,000 feet

By Austin Block

After almost three hours of searching, four seniors and a parent found the treasure: a large helium balloon attached to a video camera, heating pads and a cheap Boost Mobile cell phone.

About six and a half hours earlier and 53 miles away, they had launched the weather balloon, intending to capture video footage of Earth’s curvature.

The balloon, originally six feet in diameter, swelled as it rose. It was approximately 20 feet in diameter, at about 80,000 above the ground, when it popped.

Though the camera ran out of batteries between 40,000 and 50,000 feet up, participant Adam Moelis ’10 said the camera, which rotated in the wind inside the balloon, captured footage of the ground, mountains and other features of Earth from miles up.

“You can kind of see layers of the atmosphere if you pause it at the right moment,” Moelis said. “We pulled some pictures but they’re low quality because it’s video.”

For Moelis, Ryder Moody ’10 and Jacob Witten ’10, the April 25 launch was the culmination of a year’s worth of work in the Studies and Scientific Research class.

At the beginning of the school year, Moody and Witten saw that two MIT students had, on a low budget, launched a balloon with a time-lapse camera and taken pictures of Earth’s curvature.

“We decided that it looked really cool and [was] attainable on our budget so we decided to go for it,” Witten said.

The three spent the year preparing for the launch.

“We’ve been working on it all year just because [there are] so many variables that could go wrong,” Moelis said. “Some of them you can control, some of them you can’t control but you want to maximize the chances that you’ll be able to be successful and control what you can control. There’s a lot of things to take into account.”

Though weather conditions were an uncontrollable variable, the three students could control the descent rate of the parachute, prevent the camera

on the

web

• Georgia Duan ’03 studies opera at the San Francisco Conservatory and will sing “Queen of the Night” with the Freiburg Opera this summer.

• Lisa Peters teaches a sewing class for faculty members.

more coverage at chronicle.hw.com

and phone from freezing and calculate exactly how much helium was necessary to make the balloon lift fast enough.

They also had to get clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration for the launch, supply the FAA with the date, time and details of the launch, and notify the organization two weeks before the launch.

During the flight, they had to maintain contact with the FAA until the balloon returned to Earth.

The process was not without obstacles. The April 25 launch was not the first time they tried to send up a balloon.

About a month earlier, their first attempt ended in disaster.

“We had a false start where we launched it and it just flew into a telephone pole,” Witten said. “We were all ready to go and it just didn’t rise and it hit a telephone pole and everything broke.”

On the day of the successful launch, the timelapse camera that the group intended to use would not turn on, and they had to substitute a video camera. They put the camera, heat warmers and phone inside a Styrofoam box and cut a hole in the box out of which the lens could poke.

Finding the balloon once it had landed posed further difficulties. The cell phone had no service higher than 5,000 feet up, so the group had to wait until it came back down to receive a signal from the phone.

The signal told them that the balloon was 53 miles east of the launch site.

The crew, made up of Moelis, Moody, Witten, fellow SSR student Ian Cinnamon ’10, and Moody’s father, drove to the landing area.

“It basically landed in the middle of the desert,” Witten said. “We actually had a GPS reading from when it was about 2,000 feet up, I believe, but nothing after that so we had about a square mile radius that we knew it was in, so we just wandered around in the desert. We weren’t sure. We actually talked to a helicopter company. We called to see how much it would cost for them to do a flyby but just as they were calling us back we found it.”

Then came the press. On May 12, a KNBC crew

picture this: The camera in the balloon shoots footage of Earth from thousands of feet in the air.

courtesy of ian cinnamon

blast off: Seniors Adam Moelis, Ryder Moody, Jacob Witten and Ian Cinnamon (left to right) hold their equipment at their balloon launch April 25. descended on the Upper School to film a piece on the team’s accomplishment. The crew interviewed the students and their teacher, Antonio Nassar. The students showed the crew their Styrofoam box setup.

The piece aired on Channel 4, KNBC, during the 5 p.m. news, on Friday May 14.

Moelis said the group intends to launch the balloon over the summer, this time with a time-lapse camera.

“We really want to [launch another balloon] because we have all the stuff,” Moelis said. “We could be ready to launch even tomorrow because we have everything. We would just need helium and another balloon. And because our camera ran out we really want to do it again. We’re going to make sure the battery lasts this time. Hopefully we won’t have a camera issue and if all goes as planned, yes we will do it again and hopefully we’ll get a camera working up to 80,000 feet this time. That would be awesome.”

The team presented their project to the faculty last week.

The students now have to compile what Moelis called a “detailed overview” of the project for subsequent students to imitate. They also made a poster for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math festival on Monday.

“Watching [the balloon] go up was an amazing experience,” Witten said. “It was just like everything we had done the whole year just seemed worth it.”

Junior fellowship winner to visit Italy

By Daniel Rothberg

In less than one month, Junior Summer Fellowship award winner Jordan Freisleben ’11 will document the aftermath of an earthquake that devastated an Italian town last year.

A fluent Italian speaker, Freisleben plans to interview local officials, residents and spokespeople for advocacy groups about the damage to l’Aquila and Italy’s response to the earthquake.

Freisleben plans on spending about two weeks in the town, and on compiling her findings in an investigative report. In addition, she plans to create a photo essay about the damage to l’Aquila.

The school awards a grant to one junior every year to explore a topic of his or her choosing during the summer before senior year.

Students interested in applying for the grant must submit a proposal that includes a budget, itinerary and a list goals for the project, Freisleben said.

Sixty thousand residents of l’Aquila lost their homes and many medieval structures collapsed during the earthquake, according to BBC News.

“It completely devastated their town,” Freisleben said.

Freisleben believes that the Italian government has focused too little attention on rebuilding l’Aquila. She said that in her pro-

posal she compared the emergency relief effort in l’Aquila to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

“For decades, Abruzzo, the region where l’Aquila is, has been the poorest region in Italy,” Freisleben said. “It lacks in natural resources [and] it lacks in tourism. So when this happened it was not a priority for Italy.”

“I just want to spread awareness and show that people’s lives are ruined,” Freisleben said. “I pretty much want to show people that this didn’t go away, the effects of this are still lingering [and are] really damaging to a whole community of people.”

May 26, 2010

The

C hronicle

Faculty depart for other opportunities

By Jessica Barzilay, Allison Hamburger

and

Campus Leaders Fourteen students were elected by their peers to serve as prefects for the 2010-2011 school year.

Head Prefects

Senior Prefects

Adam Wolf

Junior Prefects

Brooke Levin David Olodort Katie Price Rishi Bagrodia

Sophomore Prefects

Morgan Hallock

Michael Wagmeister

Katie Lim

Coffee and conversation

chloe lister/Chronicle

sing your heart out: Chase Morgan ’10 performs at the year’s third Coffee House in Chalmers on Monday. Students and teachers sang, played instruments and performed comedy at the the event, which was organized by the Prefect Council.

National organization names Thill Teacher of the Future

By Jordan Freisleben

Chris Holthouse

Christine Kanoff Austin Lewis Jamie Temko

News A5

Saj Sri-Kumar

Four faculty and staff members will not be returning to HarvardWestlake in the fall, Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said.

Upper School Dean Tamar Adegbile will be on maternity leave from October through the end of first semester. Her students will join other dean groups for the time she is away.

“I’m really excited for Ms. Adegbile, and Ms. Bird was my Choices and Challenges teacher, so I already know her,” said Christina Yang ’12, who will be in Mike Bird’s dean group while Adegbile is on leave.

Middle school English, French and Debate teacher Claire Pasternack is leaving to complete a one-year masters’ program at Stanford University’s School of Education. The upcoming months hold more than just the beginning of graduate school for Pasternack, who will marry her boyfriend of nearly seven years this August. She will also join her fiancé, Brian Goldsmith ’00 at Stanford. He has just completed his first year at Stanford Law School. Pasternack said she is sad to leave Harvard-Westlake, her community for the past four years.

“Harvard-Westlake will always be my first job, my first experience teaching and the place where I figured out what I want to do in life,” she said.

Middle school science teacher Hillary Ethe ’00 will not be returning from maternity leave next year. Ethe and her husband, middle school English teacher Jordan Ethe, recently welcomed a son Cassius, who will be four months old on Friday.

Ethe plans to spend more time bonding with and getting to know her son. She has started Mommy and Me yoga classes and has seen movies with other new mothers and their children. She plans on pursuing activities, such as music classes and story time at the local library in the months to come.

Ethe said that her decision to leave Harvard-Westlake was both easy and hard to make.

“It was easy in that I knew I wanted to spend this next year with my son,” Ethe said. “It was simultaneously very difficult because I love my work – the energy that teaching middle school science affords is unmatchable and the camaraderie I have with my colleagues makes coming to work each day a joy for me.”

Ethe said that she hopes to return to teaching middle school science at Harvard-Westlake in the future should a position become available.

Ethe’s colleague Colby Genrich, a middle school science teacher, will also not return next year.

Genrich said he plans to attend medical school next year.

“It’s a change of career, obviously, for me and I am extremely excited about the opportunity,” Genrich said.

After 11 years of working in Computer Services, Nar Santiago is moving to Boulder, Colo. to “explore some other ventures,” he said.

Melanie Borinstein

chronicle.hw.com

Sam Wolk

graphic by rebecca nussbaum, and Lara Sokoloff

Math teacher Bill Thill was named one of 20 Teachers of the Future by the National Association of Independent Schools.

The Teachers of the Future program was established in 2007 to honor teachers who “shared their expertise in teaching through technology” and employed “creative ways of teaching,” according to the NAIS website.

Thill was nominated for the award by Math Department Head Paula Evans.

Evans and Thill agree that most of the Math Department’s work is done through collaboration.

“The faculty here is so forward-thinking that anyone could be a Teacher of the Future,” Evans said.

Evans said she nominated Thill because of the timeliness of his pursuits. “[Thill] is working with data analysis that is very, very current,” she said. “Data analysis became part of the new SAT, which is very important for our students here. But this ‘current topic’ is something that [Thill] cares about and has been diligently working in for 15 years.”

“We work very much as a team here,” Thill said. “It’s nice to be noticed but it’s only a function of the fact we work collaboratively and we all bring

things to the table. interested them,” he It’s one thing to have said. an idea and another Thill views educato have experience tion-targeted techwith people with exnology as a way of perience.” measuring his stuA key part of dents’ understandThill’s teaching is ing. emphasizing collabo“What I try to foration amongst stucus on is activities dents, he said. to see what students Nathanson ’s/chronicle “Technology is one understand and what Bill Thill way, but there are a they have yet to unlot of different ways derstand,” he said. to harness kids’ knowledge,” In addition to using Fathom Thill said. with his AP Statistics class, “You want them to collabo- Thill uses Microsoft Excel in rate effectively and learn from his Precalculus class and does each other – how can I help stu- a “pre-AP” version of the AP dents share their knowledge? Statistics survey with his AlgeIt changes how they view their bra 2: Fundamentals class. peers and their colleagues,” he The 20 teachers honored will said. be expected to moderate an onAlthough Thill integrates line teachers’ discussion forum technology in all of the classes and post a teaching demonhe teaches, he uses the most stration video on the iTunes U technological tools in AP Sta- website. tistics.

Thill will also attend a twoHis statistics class used the day Summer Education Instiprogram Fathom to create a tute for teachers, sponsored by web-based survey comparing Apple.

Harvard-Westlake students “The event is for the honand Loomis Chaffee High ored teachers to work with School students in Windsor, Apple products, like the iPad, Conn. and work together to rethink Thill required students to the classroom,” he said. create two research questions “Any one of us [in the Math to analyze differences be- Department] is equally deservtween students at the two high ing, for sure.” said Thill. “It’s a schools, using data from the team effort.” website survey. “[Evans] has helped us col“What I liked was that it was laborate with each other, which real data from real people and is what I’m trying to teach the students asking questions that kids,” he said.

A6 News

inbrief

The

C hronicle

May 26, 2010

chronicle.hw.com

Student e-mail addresses to change in August A new student e-mail system to be introduced next school year will address privacy concerns and include updated technology, said Director of Computer Services Dave Ruben.

Due to privacy concerns, accounts will use the domain name “hwemail.com” instead of the current “hwstudents.com.”

The change was implemented so that it is not obvious that the accounts are connected to HarvardWestlake.

Next year’s seniors will keep their current e-mail account so that their commucnication with colleges regarding the admission process is not interrupted.

—Saj Sri-Kumar

Locker selections to be held online next year Sign-ups for lockers will be held online for the first time next year, Assistant to the Head of Upper School Michelle Bracken said.

Students will log on the Student Portal to select an individual locker.

The seniority system, where seniors are allowed to select lockers first, followed by juniors and finally by sophomores, will be preserved.

—Saj Sri-Kumar

Medical student shares experience with students Lauren Wolchok, the daughter of middle school science teacher Sandra Wolchok, spoke to upper school students last Wednesday about her experiences as an undergraduate at Harvard University and at UCLA Medical School.

Wolchok majored in geology at Harvard and took two years off before entering medical school.

Wolchok offered to answer any additional questions that the students may have via e-mail.

—Michelle Yousefzadeh

Gaulke names juniors as Film Festival directors Nicholas Lieberman ’11 and Jacqueline Sir ’11 were selected by Film Festival faculty adviser and Visual Arts Department Head Cheri Gaulke to direct the 2011 HarvardWestlake Film Festival.

Lieberman and Sir were both involved in the festival this year, reviewing submissions and helping decide which films were screened.

—Catherine Wang

Students and alumni win awards at film festivals Harvard-Westlake students and alumni recently won awards from film festivals around the nation.

At the Cine Youth Film Festival Lucas Casso ’09 and Adam Maltz ’09 won the Best Music Video Award for “Dem Shoes” and Jamie Ember ’12 and Ethan Mantel ’07won the Best Comedy Junior Division award.

Olivia Chuba’s ’12 “The Stand” won her “Best Junior Filmmaker” from the Griffon International Film Festival. Chuba also won the Best Fiction and Achievement in Directing awards from the South Bay Student Film Festival.

Also at the South Bay Student Film Festival, “Dem Shoes” won Best Music Video and “Still Life” won the Goerge Mieles ‘Trip to the Moon’ award.

—Alice Phillips

Nancy sunkin

oh say can you sing: Chamber Singers performed at the Dodgers game against the San Diego Padres Wednesday May 19. The Chamber Singers sang the national anthem and “God Bless America”for their final ensemble performances of the year.

Singers perform national anthem, ‘God Bless America’ at Dodgers game

By Jordan Freisleben

In their last ensemble performance of the year, the Chamber Singers did not sing a classical piece from the 19th century or a piece in a foreign language. As opposed to a more typical classical concert, the singers congregated on the field at Dodger Stadium before the Dodgers game against the San Diego Padres on Thursday.

They sang the national anthem before the game, then “God Bless America” before the Seventh Inning Stretch, both times conducted by Choral Director Rodger Guerrero. The choir was given the opportunity to sing by Howard Sunkin (Erica ’10), a senior vice president of the McCourt Group.

Frank McCourt (Gavin ’09) owns the Dodgers.

“It was awesome and something we’re always going to remember even after high school,” Chamber Singer Ben Platt ’11 said.The Chamber Singers performed the National Anthem at Homecoming in October. This was the first time they

performed at a non-school sporting event.

“It was fun,” Berni Barta ’10 said. “It was nice that we got to sing together again because all of our other performances were over.”

The choir found out that they would be singing at the game two weeks in advance. Despite the relatively short notice, the choir did not need to practice that many times.

“It wasn’t one of our classical concerts,” Jack Petok ’11 said.

“We barely had to rehearse.”

With more than 30,000 fans in the stands at Dodger Stadium, this was the largest audience for which the Chamber Singers have ever performed.

“I was more excited than nervous,” Barta said. “We had been singing together for so long that it was exciting to sing at Dodger Stadium.”

“It was really a great chance to show our school pride and what Harvard-Westlake singers can do,” Petok said. “Especially in front of an audience of some 30,000 people.”

Teachers earn raises based on self-evaluation

By Sammy Roth

Teachers spend a lot of time grading tests, commenting on essays and writing comments for report cards. But even as teachers evaluate their students, they face another task: evaluating themselves. At the beginning of the school year, every faculty member begins a self-evaluation process which can impact his or her salary for the next year.

In the budget they present each year to the Board of Trustees for approval, President of Harvard-Westlake Tom Hudnut, Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts and the Business Office designate a certain amount of money for salary increases. But not every faculty member receives the same raise. With the self-evaluations as a key factor, Huybrechts determines exactly how large a raise each faculty member deserves.

Salary increases at Harvard-Westlake have always been based on merit, and this is also the case at many independent schools, Huybrechts said.

“It’s not unusual in public school for increases to be based on some set scale that is sometimes but not always established by a union, and that seems inherently unfair, because not every teacher is alike,” Huybrechts said.

This year, the average raise was three percent. Raises are based primarily on self-evaluations because of the quality of the teachers, Director of Studies Deborah Dowling said.

“Because we have such a high caliber of teachers, we figure that the best evaluator of most of them is themselves,” Dowling said.

“I think that professionals take what they do very seriously, so that external evaluations on a regular basis are almost unnecessary,” Upper School Math Department Head Paula Evans said. “And that’s where I think this process is so wonderful, because it recognizes that.”

The self-evaluation starts in September, when faculty members write a report detailing their goals for the upcoming school year, including their plans for improving their teaching techniques.

This “professional development” can be anything from attending conferences and workshops to working with school Technology Integration Specialist Jennifer Lamkins on how to use technology in the classroom, Dowling said. In January, faculty members write about how they have contributed to the school, detailing contributions such as clubs they have sponsored, community service trips they have organized and curriculum they have helped develop.

Then in February or March, Huybrechts, Dowling and either Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra or Head of Middle School Ronnie Cazeau meet with each middle school and upper school department head. At these meetings, which Evans said last about one hour and 15 minutes, the department heads tell Huybrechts about what each faculty member said in his or her self-evaluation. They also give their own evaluation of the teachers based on having watched them work and meeting with them throughout the year, Upper School English Department Head Larry Weber said. Salamandra and Cazeau sometimes report information they have heard from students, Huybrechts said.

Huybrechts explained that finalizing salaries is often difficult.

“One teacher teaches five classes, and coaches a team and does committees.

That would seemingly be contributing a lot to the school,” Huybrechts said.

“Whereas there might be another teacher who doesn’t coach a team, but does a tremendous amount of curriculum development for their academic team and who is just an outstanding teacher in a difficult course. So it is very difficult to compare those two teachers.”

“I can’t say that there’s an absolute way, that there’s a specific algorithm for calculating a salary increase,” Huybrechts said. “It is complicated.”

Evans said the self-evaluations are a fair way for teachers to be represented to the administration.

“They write the basis of it. So they have a control,” Evans said. “If they’re not fairly represented, it’s because they didn’t represent themselves well.”

She added that she sometimes puts her own emphasis on parts of the teachers’ self-evaluations.

“I’m really proud of all my colleagues, and I think sometimes in our society we try to not say too much when we’re speaking for ourselves,” she said.

Weber said he likes to excerpt some part of each teacher’s self-evaluation in his report to Huybrechts.

“I mostly see myself as an advocate for the excellent teachers who work here,” Weber said.

Although the self-evaluation is important in determining salary increases, it is not the only factor Huybrechts considers. She said she gives teachers larger than average increases at “pivotal points in their careers.”

“For example, if a teacher after a couple of years has just proven to be invaluable and just an outstanding teacher, then that teacher might expect a bigger than usual raise,” Huybrechts said.

She said this early, large raises are important in helping ensure that good teachers stay at the school, especially in a city as expensive as Los Angeles.

But on the whole, Huybrechts said, faculty members generally do not receive wildly different salary increases.

“It is the norm for teachers at this school to be very good at what they do,” she said. “So there are not big fluctuations in salary increases as a result of that, because almost everybody is doing a very, very good job.”

May 26, 2010

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inbrief

Model UN club elects next year’s Secretariat

The Model UN club elected the three memebers of the 2010-2011 Secretariat on May 17.

The club elected Bryn Woollacott ’11 as president, Vivien Mao ’12 as vice-president and Jasmine McAllister ’11 as secretary.

Because Mao, an incoming junior, was elected to the Secretariat, no junior representative was elected.

The Secretariat will meet next year to elect a treasurer.

—Lara Sokoloff

Jeanne Huybrechts

let’s build a house: Students from the school’s Habitat for Humanity chapter and other volunteers put up one of the walls at a construction site May 23. All students in attendance fulfilled their community service requirement.

As deadline nears, 271 students must still fulfill service requirement

By Alex Leichenger

Nearly one-third of the upper school student body has yet to fulfill the community service requirement. As of Friday, some 271 students have not completed a four-hour handson project in a group of at least four Harvard-Westlake students.

The community service deadline is June 2.

The Community Council has held an array of events during the last several weekends and discussed ways to prevent widespread procrastination in the future.

“Probably one of the most radical ideas we’ve tossed around is the idea of eliminating the requirement and concentrating on people who really want to be there in the first place,” Community Council Father J. Young said. “I’m not saying at all we’re going to do that, but it is an idea we’ve talked about.”

The Council has also considered increasing the requirement, Young said.

The body is continuing to think of new ways to provide opportunities to fulfill the current requirement. One of their ideas is planning enough events during a single weekend for an entire grade of students to fulfill their requirements, though Young believes it is logistically unrealistic.

On a smaller scale, Young mentioned the idea of students completing community service in dean groups. The Community Council already implemented many community service projects for sports teams this year.

Ninety-eight of the students who had not completed the assignment were seniors. The school maintains a policy that seniors who do not complete their community service by the June 2 deadline will not receive diplomas at commencement June 11, Assistant to the Head of Upper School Michelle Bracken said. Students who fail to finish the required community service by the deadline are often required to complete eight additional hours of service over the summer, Community Council adviser Jordan Church said.

Young said that there’s not a lack of publicity for the Council and the requirement which is causing students not to do itfulfilled it.

“If they’re not aware of the [requirement] by now, it’s because they’re choosing not to be aware of it,” Young said. “If

I was a senior right now, it’d be really hard for me not to be aware that I have to do it.”

Community Council Head Cindy Ok ’10 agreed that the Council publicizes its events and mission extensively through e-mails, posters, the Community Service Week earlier this year and the first Community Council publication, which will come out soon. don hagopian/chronicle However, she believes many students do Cindy Ok ’10 not know anything about the Council or the requirement.

“A lot of kids actually don’t even know what Community Council is,” she said.

The number of events is also not a factor, Young and Ok said, though many events in the final weeks have lacked enough space for all the students who have not yet fulfilled the requirement.

“If you look at the number of events that we host throughout the year and the numnathanson ’s/chronicle ber of spots that creates on an annual basis, J. Young we’ve more than covered the entire student body,” Young said. “So we don’t feel compelled to do like 20 events on one weekend at the end of school to make up for kids’ procrastination.”

Ok praised the great deal of students who want to go “above and beyond” the requirement, but acknowledged she’s frustrated with the students who have not completed the requirement.

“We can’t change the attitudes of the student body,” Ok said. “We have no power over the concern or lack of enthusiasm that [some] students bring to the table. We do our job by planning events and trying to build up the community and trying to form the bonds in Harvard-Westlake, while obviously keeping the mission to take that energy and bring it to the greater Los Angeles area and the community of New Orleans and areas overseas. But [the Community Council] as a group of 16 students will never be able to change whether or not people are interested in our mission.”

Israeli teachers meet with faculty, students

By Daniel Rothberg

Three teachers from Ironi Dalet High School in Tel Aviv met with administrators and students and toured sites in Los Angeles with faculty last week as part of a teacher exchange program.

The delegation comprised the school’s principal, the director of Ironi Dalet’s gifted program and an eighth grade dean.

Chaplain Emily Feigenson and Middle School Communications Department Head Jen Bladen visited Ironi Dalet earlier this year and helped coordinate Harvard-Westlake’s involvement in the trip.

The educators from Ironi Dalet met with several Harvard-Westlake administrators, including Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts and Head of the Middle School Ronnie Codrington-Cazeau.

The meetings were intended to build relationships between the educators of both schools, according to the itinerary.

Additionally, the participants discussed trying to build an exchange pro-

gram with Ironi Dalet, Bladen said.

“We never anticipated that the teacher exchange would be the last step.

We’ve always hoped that we would have a permanent relationship with this other school,” Bladen said. “How that manifests itself is yet to be seen.”

Bladen said that several issues stand in the way of developing a student exchange program.

“There are so many factors,” Bladen said. “To be really frank, security is a factor for them coming here and for us going there.”

At the Upper School, the delegation attended two panels of Harvard-Westlake students.

The students on the first panel were chosen to represent the different aspects of student life, while the second panel comprised several Peer Support leaders and prefects.

The participants on the first panel spoke primarily about what they thought of their experience at HarvardWestlake and what they might change about the school.

At the end of the panel, Ironi Dalet’s

principal, Naomi Tissona, said she was amazed by how similar Harvard-Westlake is to her school.

Prior to the panels, Head Prefects Reid Lidow and Jennie Porter showed the delegation around the Upper School.

“I think they loved the school,” Lidow said. “They were amazed by our facilities.”

The Israeli delegation celebrated Shavuot, a Jewish holiday that commemorates the receiving of the torah, at Donald and Paula Etra’s (Harry ’05, Dorothy ’08, Anna ’10 and Jonathan ’11) home on May 18.

The Israeli delegation also socialized with Harvard-Westlake teachers at offcampus events.

On Thursday, the delegation had dinner in Koreatown with several middle school teachers.

Bladen said that the delegation especially enjoyed this dinner because they had never eaten Korean food before and were impressed that English teacher Steve Chae was able to order the meal in Korean.

Foreign Outlook not published for first time Foreign Outlook magazine will not be published for the first time since its inception because of a lack of submissions.

This year, there were only enough submissions to fill the French and Spanish sections, leaving the Chinese, Japanese and Latin sections empty.

“We did have some good submissions,” Editor-in-Chief Andrew Zaragoza ’10 said. “It is just a shame that we didn’t have enough submissions for all five sections.”

—Ester Khachatryan

NASA astronaut gives presentation to students A NASA astronaut, who launched into space on board the space shuttle Atlantis last May, told students about his mission to fix the Hubble telescope at an optional middle school assembly May 11.

Astronaut Mike Massimino said the purpose of his visit was to educate students about the space program.

“I learned a lot more about what astronauts do,” said Luke Holthouse ’13, who went to the assembly with his biology class. “Not a lot of people have been to space and here he was with his space suit at our school.”

—Daniel Rothberg

School hosts bowling competition for faculty

About 40 faculty members from both the Middle School and Upper School competed against each other in a bowling game at Pinz Bowling Alley, after school May 7. The Middle School has hosted a bowling game for the past three years, but this is the first year upper school faculty members were invited.

“It seemed like a good idea,” Upper School Dean of Faculty Walt Werner said. “There is not very much interaction between the Upper School and the Middle School, so bowling seemed like one way to get together.”

—Megan Kawasaki

Catalog of former teacher’s art available A book containing images of former Visual Arts teacher Carl Wilson’s artwork, which were displayed in the Feldman-Horn gallery Feb. 1 to Feb. 26 is now being sold on Amazon.

The book, “Menifee’s Mark,” was put together after his death, and includes essays written by history teacher Eric Zwemer, Visual Arts Department Head Cheri Gaulke and President of Harvard-Westlake Tom Hudnut. An art historian also wrote an essay on Wilson’s work.

The paperback book sells on Amazon.com for $7.49.

—Sofia Davila and Victoria Pearson

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STEM Fest showcases students’ math, science projects in lounge

By Saj Sri-Kumar

Soccer-playing robots and go-karts were among the attractions at STEM Fest during activities period on Monday morning.

The event, hosted by the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics committee, featured displays of projects done by classes and clubs during the school year.

A major attractions was the soccer-playing robot built by the Robotics Club. The robot was featured in the nationwide For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology competition, where it placed 15th out of 60.

Computer science teacher Jacob Hazard’s Advanced Topics in Computer Science class displayed projects that they had been preparing for the entire school year.

The projects “are totally self-designed,” Hazard said. “They help each other to complete them.”

Spencer Gordon ’10, one of Hazard’s students, presented his computer game at the STEM Fest. Gordon’s game was “tile-based,” a style of video game programming that uses a square grid of tiles for each level. Almost every classic video game, from Mario to Zelda, uses tiles to animate them, Gordon said.

“Instead of animating a different sky for each level, you can make one sky tile and fill in the background.

You can make a tile for ground, for water, and nearly everything else.”

Gordon said that basing his video game on tile made the programming much more efficient, and as a result, he was able to finish the game in under a year.

Sticking with the same computer game theme as Gordon, Nick Treuer ’10 designed his own version of Nintendo’s classic game Super Mario. Truer found that programming the game took much longer than he expected, but he believes that his version “is better than the original.”

Many of Hazard’s students designed applications to run on cell phones, such as Apple’s iPhone and phones with Google’s Android operating system. Nick

Mancall-Bitel ’10 designed a drum machine simulator for the iPhone that he plans to publish in the near future.

The Computer Science Club demonstrated two projects. Gabe Benjamin’s ’11 iHW iPhone application, which was featured in the April issue of The Chronicle, was displayed alongside the club’s simulation of the ancient Chinese board game Go. As part of their project for science teacher Antonio Nassar’s Studies in Scientific Research class, Riley Guerin ’11 and Niko Natsis ’11 displayed the gokart they made. Guerin and Natsis put together their go-kart by building a frame and adding an engine that they had purchased.

They tested it with different gasoline octane levels, and found that a higher octane level resulted in higher efficiency. They also experimented by cleaning out parts of the engine and found that the resulting increased oxygen exposure also increased the efficiency of the engine.

STEM Fest had three main purposes, according to Upper School Math Department Head Paula Evans, who organized the event.

The first purpose was to celebrate the accomplishments of the students and allow them to present their projects to the school community. Students can “meet the robot and check out the weather balloon whose ride was featured on NBC,” Evans said, referring to the SSR students who took video of the Earth’s curvature from a weather balloon they launched.

Second, the event meant to be educational. Exhibits by student researchers on topics such as using technology to alleviate poverty and help the environment were accompanied by discussions with researchers on smaller topics. Evans referred specifically to Alex Glancy’s ’10 and Jaqui Lee’s ’10 solar cooker, which is the same model as the ones being distributed to refugee camps in Chad.

Finally, the event was supposed to be fun for all students, Evans said. The STEM committee hired a DJ and served refreshments such as Jamba Juice smoothies and cookies.

Parents….Is your student leaving

for college? Do you want to talk about it?

The transition has already started. The summer before college can be rough on parents.

You may argue more, or be more emotional than usual. Then you will take your student to college, and come home to a different life and different communication with your student.

As the mother of two H-W grads, I know how it feels.

Individual consultations available, and support groups forming.

Barbara Schochet Ph.D. Licensed Psychologist 11340 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 245 Los Angeles, CA 90064 (310)479-8751

Candice navi/chronicle

hybrid kart: Antonio Nassar and Spencer Gisser ’10 look at a hybrid go-kart on display at STEM Fest. The kart was constructed by students in the Studies in Scientific Research class for an experiment on maximizing fuel efficiency.

Vandals steal electronics from 3 cars on Coldwater

By Alice Phillips

Vandals smashed in the passengerside windows of Faith Chung’s ’10 Mercedes-Benz SUV, Tyler Greeno’s ’12 Volkswagon Passat and Michael Kagan’s ’12 Mercedes-Benz on Coldwater Canyon on Friday, May 14.

Chung’s Garmin GPS and Greeno’s Kenwood GPS were ripped from their cars’ dashboards, where they had been installed in plain sight. Kagan did not have a GPS, but the vandals took the radio that was built in to his center console.

Greeno said that a phone charger and several pairs of sunglasses in his car were left untouched even though the vandals could have seen them while stealing his GPS. After the students reported that their cars had been broken into, the school’s security team documented the incidents.

Green continued to park on Cold-

water after the incident.

“I doubt it’ll happen again,” he said.

“I try not to park on Coldwater now and park in Upper St. Michael’s instead.” Chung said, “But [when I have to park on Coldwater I don’t mind] because, now that my GPS is gone, I don’t have anything valuable in my car.”

On March 17, two students’ cars were broken into. The vandals in that incident also broke in the cars’ passenger-side windows and ripped out the GPS devices on the cars’ dashboards.

Head of Security Jim Crawford said that students should hide any valuables when they park their cars, especially in our neighborhood.

“There are always a few car thefts on Coldwater every year,” Crawford said. He said that because of the nature of the surrounding neighborhoods, petty theft is to be expected, especially outside a school, where vandals know that students may not think to hide their valuables.

Junior to compete in Indiana for spot on U.S. Biology Olympiad team

By Emily Khaykin

lasted approximately two hours, which Adelmann and After qualifying as a fithe others took after school nalist earlier this month, one day in the library.

Hank Adelmann ’11 will The 20 finalists from compete for a spot on the around the country will U.S. National Biology team meet for a 10-day sympoat the U.S. Biology Olymsium and lab introduction at piad Finals June 6-18.

Purdue University in Lafay“I’m taking Human Anatette, In. before taking the finathanson ’s/chronicle omy and AP Biology this Hank Adelmann ’11 nal exams. At the end of the year and I felt that those two weeks, they will take classes were preparation in two final exams, one practiand of themselves,” Adelmann said. cal and one theoretical.

Adelmann and seven other HarThe students with the four highvard-Westlake students qualified for est scores will represent the United the semifinals. The semifinal round States at the 2010 International Biolconsisted of a three-part test that ogy Olympiad in Changwon, Korea.

opinion Harvard-Westlake School

Volume XIX

Issue 8

May 26, 2010

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3700 Coldwater Canyon, North Hollywood, CA 91604 Editors in Chief: Sam Adams, Hana Al-Henaid Managing Editors: Sammy Roth, Allegra Tepper Executive Editor: Michelle Nosratian Presentations Editor: Candice Navi Multimedia Editor: Jamie Kim Business Manager: Neha Nimmagadda Ads Manager: David Burton Assistants: Jordan Gavens, Victor Yoon Chief Copy Editor: Ellina Chulpaeff Copy Editors: Spencer Gisser, Ester Khachatryan, Catherine Wang

“It just takes one.”

Jamie Kim and Vivien mao/CHRONICLE

Faced with a faceless crime

H

ate lives in all of our backpacks. Our history textbooks and English novels are filled with that great, loathsome force that drives one human to reject another. However, when one student found in his backpack a homophobic threat two weeks ago, our community was assaulted by the fact that hatred exists even in our own hallways.

Perhaps even worse than the unvarnished bigotry that lies in the note is the fact that it was written and delivered anonymously. Though the threatening nature of the note should be indefensible to even the most fervent defender of free speech, we live in a free society in which everyone is entitled to speak his or her opinions. But if the speaker cannot stand by his or her words and actions and does so anonymously, he or she is a coward who deserves no such liberty.

The act of placing a death threat in a backpack is no better than members of the Ku Klux Klan who burned crosses on lawns only under the protection and anonymity of white robes.

When we first heard of the disgraceful note, our reaction was a visceral one of near disbelief.

Of course stories of hateful acts appear from time to time, but never this close to home. Even the despicable online comments from a few years ago that led to lawsuits against the school and perpetrators could be rationalized to some degree as a misguided practical joke that spiraled into something twisted in the span of a few keystrokes.

This note, however, was something premeditated and

planned out. It is truly disturbing to think about one of our own taking a piece of paper and writing such a message, perhaps during science class or maybe after finishing an English reading.

We applaud the way the community reacted.

The first meeting of the reinvigorated Gay-Straight Alliance drew a huge crowd. Members of the administration talked to each class about it during meetings. The response mechanisms of our school worked the way they should have. We encourage even more dialogue in the coming weeks.

But there is only one way to truly restore our faith in the general goodness of our little community; the writer of the note must come forward. Just as the Honor Board operates in relative transparency to restore the student-teacher trust after academic transgressions, we need to clear the air in the community with a public disciplinary process, though it is hard to imagine justice in any form other than expulsion. However, the cowardice shown by the writer up to this point all but ensures he or she will stay ignominiously in the shadows. We have a right to free speech, but not to consequence-free speech.

Failure to complete service

W

hen the Community Council was conceived two years ago, its purpose was to create a student-run service-oriented community. The purely hours-based requirement was abolished in favor of a more collaborative system in which students could work together to help the community.

However, as the year comes to a close and about 200 students, says Director of Student Affairs Jordan Church, have yet to fulfill their requirement, it is clear that the experiment has failed.

The current system discourages students from becoming involved in charitable causes by themselves.

In its place is a culture that encourages getting the requirement over with by doing a one-time afternoon project like a beach cleanup. Depth and meaning in service is sacrificed in favor of togetherness.

The lack of faculty sponsorship is one of the main reasons the Community Council has failed in its purpose. Students who want to organize a group event are required to find a faculty sponsor. However, it is the same small cadre of adults who agree to supervise time and again, resulting in a dearth of support for these events. If service is compulsory for students, it should also be for all staff and faculty. If it is to live up to its name, the Community Council must involve our entire community, not just students.

We do not blame the members of the Community Council for the large number of students who have not completed their requirement. Frequent e-mails were sent out advertising upcoming opportunities, using humor to entice potential volunteers. It’s like the proverbial horse to water: you can lead a student

to service, but you can’t make him serve.

Furthermore, the senior class is in the middle of a throwaway month. APs are over and we are attending very few, if any, real classes. Why not use the month in between the conclusion of APs and graduation as a chance for students to become involved full-time in a charitable cause? We would learn far more from such real-world experience outside the Harvard-Westlake bubble than from the current skeleton academic schedule. As much as we cringe to give sports rival Loyola credit for anything, they have a more enlightened community service program similar to what we are proposing.

Students should be encouraged to find a program they love early in their time here and stick with it all the way through. The spirit of service the school so staunchly seeks can be instilled through a commitment to a charity over a long period of time, not one afternoon once a year.

The Community Council was formed to get rid of the culture of finishing the community service requirement in as little time as possible, but has in fact exacerbated the problem. The council need not necessarily be abolished, but the way our school approaches community service needs a fundamental rethinking.

News Managing Editors: Nicki Resnikoff, Michelle Yousefzadeh Section Heads: Emily Khaykin, Alice Phillips, Daniel Rothberg Assistants: Jessica Barzilay, Maddy Baxter, Hank Gerba, Sanjana Kucheria, Marissa Lepor, Rebecca Nussbaum, Hunter Price, Lara Sokoloff, Saj Sri-Kumar Opinion Managing Editors: Anna Etra, Erin Moy Section Heads: Kelly Ohriner, Jean Park Assistants: Eli Haims, Vivien Mao, Anabel Pasarow, Nick Pritzker Features and Arts & Entertainment Managing Editors: Drew Lash, Lauren Seo Features Section Heads: Jordan Freisleben, Olivia Kwitny, Mary Rose Fissinger Features Assistants: Evan Brown, Melanie Chan, Lauren Choi, Camille de Ry, Allison Hamburger, Claire Hong, Megan Kawasaki, Chelsea Khakshouri, Joyce Kim, Ryan Lash, Lauren Li Arts & Entertainment Section Heads: Ingrid Chang, Matthew Lee, Sade Tavangarian Arts & Entertainment Assistants: Justine Goode, Noelle Lyons Sports Managing Editors: Jack Davis, Alex Edel Sports Writer: Jonah Rosenbaum Photo Coordinator: Alec Caso Section Heads: Austin Block, Ashley Khakshouri, Alex Leichenger Assistants: Sofia Davila, David Gobel, David Kolin, Tiffany Liao, Judd Liebman, Austin Lee, Julius Pak, Victoria Pearson, Chelsey Taylor-Vaughn Multimedia: Alex Gura, Chloe Lister, Nika Madyoon, Abbie Neufeld, Meagan Wang, Susan Wang Web Designer: Jake Staahl Adviser: Kathleen Neumeyer The Chronicle is the student newspaper of Harvard-Westlake School. It is published eight times per year. Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the senior members of the Editorial Board. Advertising questions may be directed to Business Manager Neha Nimmagada at (818) 481-2087. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product or service by the newspaper or the school.

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Alice

Phillips

We don’t all want to be scientists

I

s it true that there is a general dearth of knowledge about careers in science, technology, engineering and math as compared to knowledge about careers in the humanities? Or is it the case that society in general has decided that students in STEM fields are better fit for the “21st century” and We can therefore those students should be given more because we encouragement? Or maybe not society in general so much as the Harvard-Westlake community. think we During spring break I visited too many can, but colleges to count. Their viewbooks postulated apparently that they were all unique, but one of the more interesting trends could be found in their Class we didn’t of 2013 Profile section. Here, colleges love to think we report high diversity percentages and numbers of students who stated an interest in earning a could Ph.D. in a field other than science. become So, if colleges feel that being able to boast of engineers...” high interest in advanced humanities degrees is more interesting than being able to boast of undoubtedly high interest in advanced science degrees, why does Harvard-Westlake leap to promote knowledge of careers in STEM but not to promote knowledge of careers in the humanities? If you were to ask, a lot of kids would tell you that they want to be lawyers, doctors, politicians, engineers, businesspeople and other “professionals” as adults. Something tells me that the number of students who would tell you that they want to earn an M.A. or Ph.D. in Russian literature or Colonial History would not be overwhelmingly high as compared to the number of students interested in earning an advanced degree in physics.

The science department is possibly one of the most highly publicized departments on campus. They have frequent guest speakers, a comparatively robust selection of electives for a core subject area and a class devoted to scientific research (whose students’ findings are published in a 24 page full-color magazine) while the foreign language department has neither the money nor the student interest to publish its foreign language magazine. Why spend our time and budget encouraging the student body to become computer scientists and biochemical engineers when F. Scott Fitzgerald and Richard Hofstadter play just as integral roles in the progression and development of American society as their scientific and mathematical contemporaries? The issue isn’t whether or not STEM fields are important, the issue is that those fields shouldn’t be so heavily valued over the humanities. We can because we think we can, but apparently we didn’t think we could become engineers or mathematicians.

Am I missing something? Where is the next great political scientist or the next great literary critic if not among the youth? And who in their right minds would say that we are more interested in becoming an academic in the humanities than we are in becoming a doctor?

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When silence can’t be forgiven

A

n openly gay boy receives an anonymous death threat at an elite private school in Los Angeles. The school is notified and suddenly the police are involved. The investigators look at handwriting samples and video surveillance tapes. Still, two weeks later, there are no answers. The note remains a mystery.

This string of events occurred on our campus. However, they could have just as easily made up the storyline for a “Lifetime” special and perhaps that is what frightened us so. It is a rare occasion for intolerance on campus to manifest itself in a dramatic and overt act. Gangs of students do not roam the halls of Chalmers looking to harass gay students and fistfights do not break out in the quad because of the color of one’s skin.

JAMIE KIM/CHRONICLE

Rides not forgotten

A

t 6:45 a.m., I would get on the bus and walk back the 10 aisles to where my friends are seated.

After five years we had settled into a routine, with the same seats awaiting our arrival with the same people meeting our gazes as we walked to the back of the Westchester bus.

“Did you watch ‘Glee’ last night?” someone would ask. Unanimous nods surrounded me, and we instantly launch into a discussion of how much funnier this episode was than the last one.

We were all regular riders, and if someone didn’t take the bus as frequently as us, our jokes would seem insensitive or just not funny at all.

However after meeting each other in seventh grade like most people at school, we’ve learned to ignore their annoyed stares and continue on with our jokes. Actions like these are ones only best friends can acquire, and while I do have friends that aren’t on the bus, it’s mostly these friends I relate to most.

We comforted one another when we had problems and had an unofficial rule that what we say on the bus stays on the bus.

We all live in the same neighborhood within a 15-minute radius, and commutes to each other’s houses were geographically feasible. Carpools then developed, thus bettering our relationships between one another, and between our parents.

If one of us missed the bus, it was so easy to text our friends and ask what stop it was at, thus reuniting us once more.

The hour long bus ride is more than enough to get a better understanding of our friends before everyone else did when they

Instead, bigotry on campus is usually displayed in a subtler and seemingly less harmful manner.

Students whisper and stare when two gay boys or girls walk through the quad together. Inscribed into the wooden desks are racial slurs and homophobic epithets. Students sit together in groups and tease each other with discriminatory labels without any regard for how offensive that may be to others.

Unlike the note, this type of intolerance is prevalent. Too often we see and quickly forget instances of this type of intolerance. Many of us have abandoned our sensitivities and turned a blind eye towards this type of prejudiced behavior. It is easier to pretend that we live without intolerance than to confront it.

While it may be easy to blame the

Noelle

lyons saw us arrive at school, throw our sports bags near the Taper gym and stroll in through the quad.

We would all walk in together, and most often head toward the cafeteria where we would meet up with other friends who weren’t on the bus.

They would have no knowledge of what we had been previously talking about, and that was okay. Together we would merely walk, or run—depending how late the bus was—to our first period class.

For the past five years, I’ve had numerous bus drivers. Some were fired, some got other jobs and some just didn’t return the next day.

And the next one that would replace them would be forced to learn the whole bus route all over again.

They came so often, we stopped bothering to learn their names and just gave them nicknames for us to remember. One was the “certificate guy,” who complained that if we didn’t stop standing up so much he was going to lose his bus certificate, and thus lose his job. That was back in eighth grade, and the list goes on and on.

Then they would show up to our stops late, and we were left telling them the direction to school so we could get there on time. Bus drivers came and went, but friends were forever.

Gradually, one by one, we all got our drivers licenses and became less frequent riders. Instead, wenow park on Coldwater and meet up in the quad. It's not the same.

I miss the discussions we had, the songs we sang together until people gave us death stares. These were moments I can't take back, and most are left up to memory.

Daniel

Rothberg note on a lone perpetrator or a group of perpetrators as the case may be, we are all culpable.

Every time we heard a discriminatory remark or chose to ignore prejudiced behavior rather than report it, we allowed this to happen.

By standing by, we silently rendered these actions acceptable.

Just because intolerance on campus might not be as blatant, doesn’t mean it is any less damaging.

We are given the freedom of being able to have and express our own opinions. However, that liberty has its limits. I don’t advocate that students should be punished for what they think; yet, punitive action must be taken when one’s opinion manifests itself in a way that degrades the personal integrity of another. There should be a consequence for even

small acts of intolerance.

Almost every day, we raise the bar higher in academics as well as in our extracurricular endeavors.

So, why not raise our standard of what is appropriate and respectful conduct? At the very least, we should try to become more conscious of how actions affect others and by doing so, move beyond the indecent epithets and etchings. We have a responsibility as students and moreover, as members of a community, to strive towards adhering to a common code of decency.

In front of our peers, we were required to sign the Honor Code and in agreeing to the contract, we promised to “not violate the person of others or the person of the school.”

We are all bound to that agreement; now we all must strive to abide by it.

May 26, 2010

The

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quadtalk Has the homophobic note changed the way you viewour community?

“It has just been a reminder that we have yet to defeat racism, homophobia, and hatred in the world.”

—Jack Petok ’11

Opinion A11

chronicle.hw.com

makinggrades

A+ A+ B+ F

The Chronicle evaluates recent campus developments

Chamber Singers sing the National Anthem and “God Bless America” at the Dodgers game.

Seniors Nick Treuer, Ian Cinnamon, Adam Moelis, Ryder Moody, and Jacob Witten appear on local television.

Water Day sponsored by the Student Athlete Advisory Council and the Social Committee.

CIF referees reprimand HarvardWestlake for unruly fan behavior.

“I Thought that this school was as tolerant as realistically possible.

The Whole situation makes me angry.”

bynumbers

The Chronicle polled 347 students who weighed in on the community service requirement and the homophobic note.

—Hannah Zipperman ’12

Hate Crime

“Even though it was ony one person, it still shocks me and the whole community should be held accountable.”

—Peter Schwartz ‘10

220

Has the homophobic note affected the way you view the HarvardWestlake community?

There are still some problems but we are still overall tolerant

77 50

It hasn’t affected my opinion, we were never completely tolerant It didn’t affect my opinion, we are still tolerant of everyone

How should we approach the community service requirement for students? “we’ve come a long way since I’ve been working here.

I don’t want to overact too much. By and large, I know kids are safer here than they have been in the past.”

—Vanna Cairns, Upper School Dean

Community Service

Continue with the system already established by Community Council Switch back to the hour system Take a month off school to complete community service There should be no requirement

126 125

52 40

Results based on an online poll e-mailed to Harvard-Westlake upper school students through http://www.surveymonkey.com.

May 26, 2010

Atwelve

making a splash

3

An after school field day hosted by the Student Athletic Advisory Council brought water fun to Ted Slavin Field last Friday.

6

4 5

2

1 photos by candice navi and michelle yousefzadeh/Chronicle

SURF ’N TURF: (1) April Rosner ’10 squirts Sam Corea ’10 with a water gun. (2) Olivia Schiavelli ’12 and Priyanka Bagrodia ’12 enjoy the Slip ’n Slide on Ted Slavin field. (3) Henry Mantel ’10 takes matters into his own hands. (4) David Abergel ’11 fills a water balloon. (5) Max Quilici ’12 gets hit with a water balloon. (6) Elijah Lowenstein ’10 dodges a bucket of water that was thrown at him. (7) Josh Kang ’11 bumps a volleyball to his friends. (8) Alex Glancy ’10 and Jasmine McAllister ’11 race each other to the Slip ’n Slide.

7

8

features The

Harvard-Westlake School

Chronicle

Volume XIX

Issue 8

May 26, 2010

steppingout

Just how open-minded is our community?

Pages B6-B7.

Graphic by candice navi

B2 Features

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May 26, 2010

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Outlaw texters ignore hazards

By Nicki Resnikoff

Marla ’10* is immersed in the middle of a stimulating telephone conversation. The road ahead of her must take the backseat to her conversation. She makes a turn onto a residential street, but there’s something wrong. She is too close to a man opening his trunk. Disregarding the call, Marla’s reflexes kick in and she narrowly misses running over the man’s foot with her tires. Her reflexes weren’t fast enough however, and Marla’s car rear-ends the man’s, causing damage to both cars.

“It was right when I started driving and I was unnecessarily cocky,” she said.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, driver inattention is the leading cause of car crashes.

A significant source of driver inattention is cell phone use.

A half million people are injured and 6,000 are killed annually due to driver distraction caused by cell phone usage, according to the NHTSA. Due to the fact that “cell phone use is the number one association with traffic collisions,” text messaging is now illegal in California, according to California Highway Patrol Sgt. Trent Cross.

California State Bill 28 went into effect Jan. 1 this year and “specifically bans the use of an electronic wireless communications device to write or read a text-based communication while driving a motor vehicle,” according to a press release from the Office of the Governor.

According to the press release, base fines for first time offenders will be $20, while subsequent offenses will cost the perpetrators $50 base fines.

Despite the law, many students continue to text while they drive.

One such student is Alex Glancy ’10. Glancy is aware that she is not able to fully focus on the road when she is texting friends.

“I think my driving is impaired because I’m looking down and trying to type,” she said.

“There have been moments when I’ve had to veer because I’m texting.”

So if it’s illegal and dangerous, why do it?

“Sometimes, I’m on my way to pick someone up and it’s a really urgent text,” Glancy said.

“Sometimes, I feel I want to multitask.”

The texting ban does not only apply when the vehicle is actually moving, but also when the car is stopped such as at traffic lights and in standstill traffic, according to CHP spokesperson Jamie Coffee.

“You are still operating the vehicle, therefore you should not be composing, reading or sending text messages,” Coffee said. “The point is we want you to be able to react.”

According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, 25 states as well as Washington, D.C. and Guam have laws banning all text messaging for drivers.

California is also one of many states in which police accident report forms include a category for cell phone and electronic equipment distraction.

While Governor Arnold Shwarzenegger signed the bill to ban texting in Sept. 2008, he signed a bill in 2006 prohibiting drivers from talking on mobile phones unless they used a hands-free device.

The law also banned any cell phone use, including with hands-free devices by drivers under 18 years old.

Recently, the Oprah Winfrey Show aired an episode entitled “America’s New Deadly Obsession.” The episode was about the dangers of using a phone while driving.

According to the show, 71 percent of people

soundbytes Despite the law prohibiting the use of cell phones while driving, students can’t resist checking their texts.

“

“

<<

lauren seo/chronicle

i know i shouldn’t be texting while i’m driving, but i do it anyways.”

—Annelise Alexander ’11

texting while driving isn’t safe, but it depends on how experienced the driver is.”

—Max Druz ’10

>>

ages 18 to 49 admit to talking on the phone or texting while driving.

While the practice is wide spread, it is also extremely dangerous. It is often compared with drunk driving.

“Texting behind the wheel is the equivalent of having four drinks and driving,” Winfrey said.

Winfrey has started a No Phone Zone Pledge, asking people to pledge to not text while driving, not text as well as only talk on the phone using a hands-free device or not text or use a phone at all while driving.

Although hands-free devices are safer than holding a phone, talking is still distracting.

“I have a Bluetooth device so it’s surround sound in my car,” Glancy said. “But even then I still get distracted. I drive somewhere and I can’t remember how I got there.”

Marla was not using a hands-free device, and her conversation almost led to a major injury.

In response to the many accidents caused by texting drivers, many companies are developing applications for smart-phones that prevent texting while driving, or somehow make it safer.

For instance, Texecution, is an app for Android-powered phones. When moving faster than 10 mph, texting is disabled by the app.

Similarly, Key2SafeDriving disables the screen of a cell phone when in a moving vehicle.

Other applications make sending text messages safer as opposed to completely disabling texting while driving.

One such app is Vlingo, which lets the user compose and send text messages verbally as well as search the Internet and update Twitter and Facebook with verbal commands.

Vlingo is currently compatible with Blackberry phones, iPhones, Nokia phones and certain Windows Mobile phones. * Names have been changed

“

i don’t do it because it’s against my morals.”

—Roy Murdock ’11

“

>>

I do it when i know there are no people around.”

—Sam Sobel ’11

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lauren seo/chronicle

lauren seo/chronicle

“

lauren seo/chronicle

I’m really trying to stop and keep my phone in my purse.”

—Natalie Margolin ’10

>>

lauren seo/chronicle

May 26, 2010

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Reducing radiation

2

Although the correlation between brain damage and cell phone use has not yet been conclusively proven, the consequences of too much radiation are dangerous enough to merit wpaying attention to lowering your level of radiation exposure.

The higher the specific absorption rate (SAR) is, the more radio frequency energy your body is aborbing. The SAR rating of a phone can be checked on www.fcc.gov.

Your cell phone works harder to find a signal in places with weak coverage, causing it to release more radiation than it would if there were more coverage.

3

1

5 The farther away your phone is from you, the less radiation you receive.

infographic by matthew lee and lauren seo www.ewg.org

Tumor fears don’t faze cell phone users

By Daniel Rothberg

With growing speculation that cell phone usage is correlated to the development of brain tumors, Jamie Temko’s ’11 mother has been nagging her to reduce her cell phone dependence.

“I probably should be more worried than I am,” Temko said. “My mom is really conscious of it. She hates that I charge my phone next to my bed [and] she hates when I’m texting all the time.”

Temko has tried to reform her habits by taking measures that include moving her charger further from her bed and, when possible, keeping her cell phone in a bag rather than on herself.

“If I can avoid using my cell phone, I will,” Temko said.

Last week, the World Health Organization released a much awaited study that presented mixed results. While the study reported no definitive correlation between high cell phone use and brain cancer, evidence suggested that those who use their cell phone more often may be at a higher risk for brain tumors, neurosurgeon John Yu said. The study defined high cell phone users as those who use cell phones on average for more than 30 minutes per day. (The World Health Organization’s report has come under criticism because it was partly funded by cell phone companies, Yu said).

Regardless of whether conclusive evidence exits linking cell phones to the development of brain tumors, Yu believes that it would be wise for students to take precautions in case evidence emerges in the future.

However, many students are not worried about the possibility that cell phones are correlated to cancer and have not cut down on their cell phone use.

“What am I going to do, not use my cell phone? You can get cancer from anything nowadays,” Emily Wallach ’11 said.

“I will not deny it. I am very attached to my cell phone.”

The theory that cell phones might cause cancer stems from the belief that the radio frequency energy that is emitted from cell phones may have a causative effect on the development of brain tumors. The effect of RF waves has not been well studied and therefore the extent to which the waves are detrimental is inconclusive, Yu said.

“In the absence of data definitively showing that they’re safe, it may behoove younger people to try to use the wired earphones or a Bluetooth device,” Yu said.

According to The American Cancer Society, some ways that one can decrease exposure to RF waves include using a hands-free device, limiting one’s cell phone use and choose a mobile phone that emits lower amounts of RF energy.

For two reasons, exposure to RF energy could potentially be more dangerous for adolescents than for adults, Yu said. As a result of the fact that, in adolescents, brain cells are still developing, adolescents are more susceptible to being affected by toxic energy or substances, Yu said. Additionally, the skull of an adolescent is thinner than that of an adult.

For this reason, energy has to travel a shorter distance to affect the tissue.

Another variable to consider in the debate over cell phones and brain cancer is the fact that cell phones are a relatively new phenomenon, Yu said.

“All this data is very preliminary because cell phone usage has only come widely into use over the last 10 to 15 years and the time that it takes for a toxin to induce a tumor is on average usually at least 10 years,” Yu said. “So I think if there is going to be any correlation with the use of cell phones, the answers will come probably [in] a decade or two but it’s something we can sort out now.”

“

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justine goode/chronicle

Cell phones are way too essential for modern life.”

—Gavin Allman ’12

i don’t think cell phones are dangerous unless you’re strapping it to the side of your head.”

—Chloe Korban ’10

>>

“

<<

lauren seo/chronicle

lauren seo/chronicle

the studies done are inconclusive so I’m not worried, and i don’t think i use my phone enough anyways.”

—Jack Petok ’11

lauren seo/chronicle

B4 Features

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Great debaters Junior debate superstars reach the top this season by competing at Tournament of Champions.

By Sade Tavangarian

W

ith five minutes to spare before their first round, Jake Sonnenberg ’11 and Ben Sprung-Keyser ’11 relax and can only think about one thing: taking the gold. As they confidently walk into their rounds, they take deep breaths and let the flow of their arguments raise them to the top.

Sonnenberg and Sprung-Keyser have been debating since fifth grade after being introduced to the activity by their teacher. Their teacher suggested the class build three-person teams to compete in the parliamentary middle school debate program.

“It was coincidental how my teacher exposed us to the program. I didn’t know what debating meant but I knew I loved to argue with people,” Sonnenberg recalled.

As Sonnenberg, Sprung-Keyser and teammate Chris Holthouse ’11, who all attended Curtis, invested more time in the program, they decided to give their first tournament a try.

The team went 0-5. “I was set to quit our team.

We finished last place, but I ended up winning first speaker award at the tournament. That changed, ” Sonnenberg said.

The team won several league tournaments throughout the fifth and sixth grades and won nationals in sixth grade.

When Holthouse, Sonnenberg and SprungKesyer came to the Middle School they discovered there was no debate program at the campus.

“We marched into Huybrechts’ office and told her we wanted to continue debate and start a club at the school,” Sonnenberg said.

Middle school teachers history teachers Matthew Cutler, Karen Fukushima and Stephen Chan sponsored the team and the boys officially brought back the debate program to the Middle School. The program is now run by English and Foreign Language teacher Claire Pasternack and Librarian David Wee. The boys soon started to take home the gold at every tournament they entered in seventh and eighth grade. Currently, with 100 students, the program is a huge success. The Middle School now offers debate class as an alternative to public speaking for eighth graders. This year, over half of the grade took the class.

When Sonnenberg and Sprung-Keyser came to the Upper School, they did not immediately join debate.

“I came to the Upper School trying to figure out what I wanted to do so I wasn’t sure if I should start debate again,” Sprung-Keyser said.

The transition from parliamentary to the Lincoln-Douglas style of debate intimidated the

“

The depth of argumentation, strategy, and critical thinking can’t be found anywhere else.”

—Jake Sonnenberg ‘11

debaters at first, but soon enough they both fell in love with the program.

“I started going to practices and seriously invested my time this year in LD. It’s much faster, technical and worthwhile,” Sprung-Keyser said.

Sonnenberg’s biggest concern was the fear that he wouldn’t be as successful in the new program. “I heard LD was a lot faster talking, more research and most of the kids at tournaments were juniors and seniors,” he said.

“I am excited to learn something new and get involved with something different. The depth of argumentation, strategy, and critical thinking can’t be found anywhere else,” Sonnenberg said.

Junior year was a huge achievement for both debaters as they both received bids to compete in the prestigious Tournament of Champions on the weekend of May 1 in Lexington at the University of Kentucky. In order to attend the TOCs debaters need two bids to compete.

Sprung-Keyser received his at the Victory Briefs Tournament in January at UCLA after making octos and making semifinals at the Golden Desert tournament.

Sonnenberg received his bid after winning first place at the Meadows tournament in Las Vegas and reaching finals at Harvard University. He broke at every tournament this year and was invited to three Round Robins at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Ten, the Harker School in San Jose and the Harvard round.

“It is fantastic to have a smart partner to be able to work with. It is helpful to push each other,” Sprung-Keyser said.

Not only are they involved on the school debate team, but both are also members of the U.S. World Champion team. They debated in South Korea in November and plan to debate in London this summer. Sprung-Keyser also debated in Qatar for two weeks in February.

“The best thing about debate for me is no issue is as clear-cut as it first appears. It sounds cliché but you get to see the good and bad sides of topics as you learn to debate both sides,” Sonnenberg said.

“I’m 100 percent sure I want to continue debate in college. Whether its policy, LD or parliamentary, I’m excited,” he said.

Behind the scenes

By Julius Pak

A timer beeps three times. One of the two suit-clad students stands up.

“Opponent ready? Judge ready?” With confirmation from both, arguments begin to pour out of his mouth at speeds of more than 500 words per minute. While most people would find this form of argumentation to be as intelligible as gibberish, this is just another round for these two debates who argue in the style of Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Modeled after the senatorial debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858, a Lincoln-Douglas debate round lasts approximately 40 minutes, and follows a resolution that is released by the National Forensics League every two months with topics ranging from whether or not standardized

courtesy of jake sonnenberg

sade tavangarian/chronicle

courtesy of jake sonnenberg

sade tavangarian/chronicle

star debaters: Ben Sprung-Keyser ’11, Assistant Coach Peter Van Elswyk, Michelle Choi ’12, and Jake Sonnenberg ’11 walk through Harvard University at a tournament (from top). TOC semifinalist Jake Sonnenberg (second from top).

Van Elswyk, Sonnenberg, and coach Mike Bietz enjoy victory at Harker (second from bottom). Ben Sprung-Keyser reminisces about his two bids (bottom).

The upper school debate team specializes in the Lincoln-Douglas style of debating.

exit exams should be required for high school graduation to debating the prohibition of economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool. Despite begin a “team,” the debate rounds themselves are competed individually.

The team has achieved many successes, having “broken” into elimination rounds more than 40 times this past year alone, including into six championships, won more than ten speaker awards above 10th place, and qualified several members to the national Tournament and the prestigious Tournament of Champions. The National Tournament will be held in Kansas City, Missouri in mid-June, and the Tournament of Champions will be hosted by the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky from May 1-3.

Recently, the debate team competed in the Woodward Novice/Second Year Nation-

al Tournament in Atlanta, Georgia, where schools from nine states competed. In the novice division, two freshmen broke into elimination rounds. Andrew Sohn ’13 and Brendan Gallagher ’13, Gallagher finished the preliminary rounds as the first seed and ninth speaker, and reached the semifinals of the tournament. In the second year division of the tournament, sophomores Michelle Choi ’12 and Adam Bennett ’12 won sixth and eighth speaker awards, sixth and eighth places respectively. Choi lost in her quarterfinal round to the eventual champion for the tournament.

“It was a really fun and exciting round. She debated really well and I was somewhat surprised when the round went to me,” said the winner of the tournament, Kyle Allen Niesen of Brentwood.

May 26, 2010

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light up my life

Recent studies show that teenagers who are not exposed to enough sunlight during the day are more susceptible to sleep deficiency.

By Spencer Gisser

An article recently published by the American Psychological Association concluded that sleep deprivation may undermine teen health.

Teens need more sleep than adults as the body and mind develops and grows. The article published by the APA characterized the sleep deprivation most teenagers experience as “tantamount to abuse.”

Mary A. Carskadon, Ph.D. said that teens get an average of seven and a half hours of sleep on school nights, far short of the nine and a quarter hours of sleep that teens biologically require.

In studies on teens that Carskadon has conducted, teens showed signs of narcolepsy, a major sleep disorder. In a matter of minutes, teens would fall into a deep REM sleep, a state usually attained in adults after sleeping for 30 minutes.

According to Carskadon, sleep deprivation can lead to depression over a long period of time.

Taking extra naps over the weekends helps stem the reservoir of overdue sleep that teens build up, but naps are at the cost of interrupting circadian rhythms, the body’s natural cycles of wake and sleep.

Offset circadian cycles may result in falling asleep during the day while staying awake at night, for example.

Sleep experienced while circadian rhythms are telling the body to wake up can be very restless and low-quality, making the little sleep that teenagers do get count for even less.

A study published in the medical journal

Neuroendocrinology Letters by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute concluded that teenagers who do not receive enough blue light, such as is found in sunlight, suffer from an interrupted circadian rhythm.

Matthew Goldhaber ’11 agreed with the conclusion. “It’s probably a combination of stress and lack of sunlight, but I do think that lack of sunlight can definitely affect a sleep cycle,” he said.

The off-set circadian rhythm in teenagers is being described as “teenage night owl syndrome” by sleep researchers, said Mariana G. Figueiro, a member of the institute’s Lighting Research Center.

Specifically, the absence of enough blue light is to blame for offset circadian rhythms in teens. Blue wavelengths of light can be found in white light, which is a mixture of many wavelengths of light. According to Figueiro, daylight is the best source of bluewavelength light.

Sleep cycles are regulated by the chemical melatonin. The body’s circadian rhythm is supposed to correspond to a 24 hour day, but circadian cycles are actually 24 hours and six minutes. To cope with the extra six minutes, the brain resets circadian rhythms every day upon exposure to blue light. In the absence of blue light, melatonin is released six minutes later every day.

Researchers at RPI studied 11 middle school students who wore goggles that blocked blue light. Their circadian rhythms were offset by an average of six minutes every day, consistent with the sleep cycles of those who are not exposed to any light at all.

Dr. Judith Owens, an associate pediatrics professor at Brown University and sleep

medicine specialist, said that the RPI study showed that “there’s a biologically based shift in the natural sleep onset and wake-up time.

I think what this study shows is that you can impact that shift with light manipulation.”

The study at RPI took place at Smith Middle School in Chapel Hill, N.C., a school designed to allow sunlight to reach its classrooms. According to the Los Angeles Times, the orange goggles that the students wore were intended to imitate the conditions found in schools that are not designed for lighting.

Over an extended period of time, the lack of blue light may contribute to sleep deprivation. Teens that are deprived of blue light are woken up for school before their belated sleep cycles are complete. Unfinished sleep cycles create a reservoir of overdue sleep, making teens tired during the day.

The lack of exposure to enough blue light contributes to the larger problem of the sleep deprivation that teens currently experience.

“Almost all teenagers, as they reach puberty, become walking zombies because they are getting far too little sleep,” said Cornell University psychologist Dr. James B. Maas.

According to school counselor Dr. Luba Bek, sleep deprivation at the school due to blue-light deprivation contributes minimally to “the regular sleep deprivation that students experience” due to homework and studying.

When asked about the effects of blue light, Rae Wright ’11 said, “I think teen’s sleep cycles are more affected by their stress levels.

When there is less sunlight it definitly puts a damper on my day, but I know personally I get much less sleep when I am worrying about a test the next day or all the homework I procrastinate until a later time.”

Ways to feel more awake during the day:

1

Go to bed at a routine time

2

Don’t drink caffeine in the afternoon

3

Exercise outside during the day

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Do homework in the quad to get more blue light

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Don’t watch television in bed Graphic by joyce kim Source: PEDIATRICIAN Hye-Young Kang, M.D.

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B6 Features

May 26, 2010 The

Ch

e accepting without ex

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words can hurt

“I think [the derogatory use of the word ‘gay’] has become integrated in our culture in a bad way.

I personally disagree with it but it’s impossible to change...it has become like a slang term.”

—Errol Bilgin ’11

“We have convinced ourselves that the use of the word ‘gay’ is pretty harmless. I am not overly optimistic that we are going to see the eradication of the word in the same way we saw the eradication of the ‘n’ word.”

—Fr. J. Young

support systems

Nathanson’s/chronicle

By Mary Rose Fissinger

anielle Strassman ’11 stood in Rugby 204 on Monday, May 17, at the first meeting of the Gay-Straight Alliance in over a year, and quickly realized there were far too many people to fit in one classroom. The group was moved into Rugby Auditorium, and it was there, with roughly 150 faculty and students in attendance, that the Gay-Straight Alliance experienced its official revival.

Strassman is responsible for reviving the group after a junior boy found a threatening note in his backpack.

“As soon as the note happened, all the gay students felt really violated by it, even though it was only one student [who received it],” Strassman said.

She sent out an e-mail to people who had signed up for GSA at the beginning of the year and anybody else she could think of who might be interested, to inform them of the meeting.

She also set up a Facebook group.

The reformation of GSA hit a slight road bump when the administration realized that, because it had been inactive for so long, there was no longer a faculty adviser, and clubs technically cannot exist without a mentor.

However, Visual Arts Department Head Cheri Gaulke quickly signed on to head the group along with student leaders Gabe Benjamin ’11 and Strassman.

When it was first started in the mid-1990s

by Luba Bek and Ed Hu, the group did many “awareness campaigns” to explain the myths and terminology of homosexuality.

“We called them awareness campaigns because we figured people have a fear of the unknown,” said Bek. GSA also brought speakers such as comedian Ellen DeGeneres, activist Kevin Jennings, and Hollywood producer Bonnie Curtis.

Strassman and Benjamin plan to make the GSA a much more active force next year by meeting more frequently and planning their own awareness campaigns. They’ve discussed trying to work more gay writers into the English curriculum, and spending more time in History class discussing significant gay political figures.

Anyone can join the group.

“It’s a club where you don’t declare your sexuality,” said Bek. “It’s a club you go to to promote awareness and activism.”

However, there is a club on campus, headed

by Bek, that is exclusively for gay students. Project 10 (or P10 for short), so named because an

Mary Rose Fissinger/Chronicle

estimated 10 percent of the population is gay, meets weekly and requires a meeting with Bek before admission. The point is to provide a comfortable atmosphere for gay students, whether they’re out to no one or everyone or somewhere in between.

Strassman described it as “Peer Support, only gay.”

Bek started P10 in the early 1990s. Originally, there were three or four members at each meeting. Now, there are 15 or 20. A lot of the time, the group just talks about school or what happened over the weekend, but that’s not what the group is really about, Bek said. Some students who join P10 are not out to anyone, but they become more comfortable with the idea of coming out as other members of the group share their own stories and answer questions about their experiences, Bek said.

The main goal is to give gay students a place to go and a group of friends to turn to who understand what they’re going through, and help them become comfortable with who they are. “[Helping students come out] is not the purpose of the group, but I think they go hand in hand.

If you’re more comfortable, you’re more likely to come out,” Strassman said.

She joined P10 at the beginning of her sophomore year, and that summer came out to her parents. She also attributed her progression towards coming out to the fact that the Upper School is a much more accepting atmosphere than the Middle School, where she felt more alone.

“P10 is the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “It was the first time I’d known other gay kids.”

Some students attend P10 not to become more comfortable with themselves, but to help others. “I didn’t necessarily need help myself with discovering my own sexual identity, but I was happy to show others who may have been questioning that there is a group to turn to,” Graham Cairns ’12 said.

“The ultimate goal is to get to the point where it’s not like ‘I’m gay.’ It’s like ‘I’m John, I run track, I hate math, I’m gay and I have a dog,’” Bek said.

However, Stacy* ’11 is a gay student who chooses not to attend P10. She said she feels there is a cult-ish aspect to it, and that the students in it define themselves by being gay, which she wants to avoid.

“I like the concept of Gay-Straight Alliance more because there’s less of an ‘us against them’ mentality,” she said. * name has been changed

Nathans

“We are very po at Harvard-Wes be much better general very acc warm. A lot of u fact that even if accepting and w going to be pol and not hurt an being by saying

hronicle

Features B7

chronicle.hw.com

exceptions xceptions

son’s/chronicle

olitically correct stlake... It would if we were in cepting and us are. I like the f you are not warm, you are litically correct nother human g this or that.”

—Luba Bek

“I think the use of homophobic terms stems from a social fear. It’s a subconscious attack on that demographic to prove that you’re not like that.”

—Greg Comanor ’10

Nathanson’s/chronicle

An anonymous note jars the community on a campus that seems like a safe place to be different.

campus provides comfort zone

By Allegra Tepper

O

and

Jean Park

ne by one, couples arrived for the typical pre-prom ritual.

Like twosomes off the ark, the pairs lined up for Kodak moments while parents cooed as their children took part in this most valued rite of passage.

Among the seniors fastening corsages and boutonnieres were Eli Petzold ’10 and Simon Hunegs ’10, who have been an openly gay couple for the last six months.

I didn’t really think twice about attending prom with my boyfriend,” Hunegs said. “It just felt normal.”

Same sex couples attending prom together isn’t generally considered the social norm. In March, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against a Mississippi high school that cancelled their prom rather than allow a Lesbian student attend with her girlfriend in a tuxedo.

But for Hunegs and Petzold, prom was never a matter of dressing in drag, stirring controversy or making a statement on behalf of homosexuals everywhere.

“We made jokes about wearing pink but really it was no statement at all,” Petzold said. “This was just me, wanting to share this night with my boyfriend.”

Hunegs, Petzold, and several other openly gay students said that Harvard-Westlake has provided a safe environment for their sexuality, and they’ve rarely felt uncomfortable with their sexuality.

Joe Girton ’10 said the number of gay and lesbian students who are open about their sexuality at school has spiked in recent years.

Some attribute the growth to Project 10, a club dedicated to creating a supportive atmosphere for students to talk about their sexuality.

“Being among peers going through the exact same thing at the exact same time meant more than anything,” Girton said. “When I first came out, the meetings were more serious, and we’d talk about talking to our parents. As it progressed and more and more people came out, it became more of a club than a support group, and now we just talk about cute guys. I can now name 15 gay students off the top of my head.”

One anonymous student agreed that P10 has strayed from its original purpose, becoming more of a “gossip mill,” watch Youtube videos about gay people, and a forum to flaunt sexualI didn’t really ity rather than work through it. think twice “The club went to the West Hollywood Halloween Parade together,” he said. “It became this place where people were pracabout tically shouting, ‘I’m here and I’m queer.’ When you do that, attending prom you put out this image that is so polarizing, and it turns people off and makes the whole thing distasteful. It makes me underwith my stand why people would have a problem with gay people. I don’t boyfriend. It need a rainbow boa to feel comfortable with my sexuality.”

While some students choose to come out in P10, others use just felt normal” the English department’s junior year personal essay assign—Simon Hunegs ‘10 ment to explore their sexuality more deeply.

English teacher Martha Wheelock was approached by a student a few years ago who expressed confusion about his sexuality and thought the essay would prove a good outlet. Describing herself as a “sounding board,” Wheelock helped her student practice expressing his own thoughts about his sexuality before he finally talked to his family and close friends about it.

“A personal essay is where a student can sort out their life and thoughts,” says Wheelock. “The purpose is to assess a moment of awareness in your life, about how to look at yourself, how not to be silent.”

Luba Bek, the sponsor of P10, came out to the student body in a 1994 issue of the Chronicle. Her letter to the editor titled “Russian teacher ‘comes out’ to school community,” discussed the pride she could finally take in being a Lesbian upon her naturalization as an American citizen.

One student said that he even felt comfortable including his sexuality in his online identity.

“I was redoing my Facebook profile last week, and upon reaching the category ‘Interested in,’ I realized there was no reason to hide it,” he said.

“I’m comfortable with who I am. It doesn’t define me; it’s just a single aspect of my character.”

Last year, Kevin Jennings, who founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, spoke during a school assembly about his goal to keep schools a place of respect, regardless of sexual orientation. Clips of his speech are now shown in the sophomore Choices and Challenges classes.

Chief Advancement Officer Ed Hu, who is also open about his sexual preference, and Bek speak to classes as well.

Some students believe that the open community fostered on campus has made it an even more comfortable environment than their homes.

One student said that his family treats their sexuality like something that belongs in the news, like the stories on Proposition 8, while their school friends are supportive without forcing a constant discourse.

“My parents are starting to realize that it’s no different than a straight relationship,” Petzold said. “But at school, it was a regular relationship from the start. I don’t think sexuality is even that big a deal. That’s why I didn’t come out to my parents until I was in that relationship. They knew, and I felt stupid saying I’m gay.”

And so, Hunegs and Petzold plan to continue going on dates for Ethiopian food, sharing their favorite music and books and doing the things common of a “typical, high school relationship.”

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graphics by Ingrid Chang and Mary Rose fissinger

B8 Features

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High Stakes

May 26, 2010

chronicle.hw.com

The Chronicle followed three seniors through the college process. Finally, they reveal their identities, reflect on their final year and offer advice.

By Allegra Tepper

Photos by allegra tepper/chronicle

Kat Arenella ’10

Elijah Lowenstein ’10

Zaakirah Daniels ’10

Taylor*

Shawn*

Annabelle*

Intended major: Human Development

Intended major: History

Intended major: Undecided

Was this outcome expected or unexpected?

Was this outcome expected or unexpected?

What did you learn about yourself through the college process?

Totally unexpected. I wasn’t even considering Cornell at the end of junior year. I’m a very open person, and I kept it on because I was talking to the track coach, and I ended up falling in love.

USC was always high on my list, and I expected to end up either there or at Columbia.

This was very unexpected. Originally, I wasn’t even going to apply to Wash.

U. because most of the schools I was applying to were reaches. I only applied there on the very last day of the deadline because it didn’t have a supplement.

I thought it was too high a reach and I had other reaches that I knew more about.

I learned that comfort is important to me. I didn’t realize I needed a place that was small and supportive until I visited them, but it’s exactly what I need.

What excites you most about freshman year at Cornell?

What did you learn about yourself?

Being with a new community of people in a completely different environment.

Going into the social sciences, I will be able to apply my experiences to my studies and my knowledge to my life at Cornell. I’m curious to find out if West Coast kids really are more relaxed than our East Coast counterparts. I’m excited to experience four distinct seasons.

Any advice for the juniors?

Start your essays early, and do the Harvard-Westlake summer essay workshop. I only got two out of 12 essays done over the summer, and all-nighters before the deadline are no fun.

My social security number.

What do you wish you had known?

I wish I had known how random [the college process] is. I got into a lot of schools I had no chance of getting into and I didn’t get into schools I would have put down $500 that I would have.

Any advice for the juniors?

I think once you send everything, just be content that you did the best you could do. Leave it at that, and don’t think about it. Stress won’t tip the balance in your favor. Work hard, send them in and then just live life.

What did you wish you had known?

I wish I had known that I didn’t need to stress. I think I would have ended up at the same place even if I hadn’t worked this hard. I wish I had taken more time to smell the roses, but there are plenty of rose gardens at Scripps, so there’s still hope for me yet.

What was the worst advice you received?

I feel like I would have done a lot better if I had done more activities.

I think schools would have liked me better if I was a little more well-rounded, and not just a student who deeply developed one talent.

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The

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arts&entertainment

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film trio

Austin Park ’10, Graham Parkes ’10 and Will Hellwarth ’10 created, wrote, directed, and edited their own feature-length film.

By Matthew Lee

C

Photos by Candice Navi/chronicle

A NIGHT AT THE THEATRE: Austin Park ’10, Graham Parkes ’10, and Will Hellwarth ’10 stand outside the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, where they’ve worked and developed the friendship that evolved into a feature length film team (below). Park and Parkes bounce ideas off each other (above).

offee cups littered the room as the sleep deprived Graham Parkes ’10, Will Hellwarth ’10, and Austin Park ’10 edited a scene they shot earlier that night. It was 4 a.m. and in the haze of the cavelike editing room the three came up with what they thought was the most brilliant technique the film world had ever seen.

They chopped up scenes in a stop motion style, punching each other encouragingly at their accomplishment. When they awoke, however, and rewatched the previous night’s work, they realized it was merely an experimental blur of exhaustion. So went the tribulations of creating their feature length film, “Dreams of Convenience.”

Long before they began working on the film, Parkes and Park shared a passion for film that continues to this day. The two are both taking Directed Studies in Cinema, in which they watch and discuss film with Ted Walch, who calls the duo “Parks and Recreation.”

Parkes and Park work at the American Cinematheque’s Aero movie theatre in Santa Monica. The two are often joined by Hellwarth, even though he is not a paid employee of the theater. Parkes first got a job at the Aero through his friend Oliver Lewin, and Park later joined him.

Park said that all three have had unique experiences at the Aero.

“We‘ve met crazy people,” Parkes said. “There’s this one homeless guy named Mohammed, and he pays for his movie tickets with obscure CDs. He comes to the Aero every week and he always has these CDs and we have no idea where he gets them from. There’s also my old manager who would only ‘meow’ to me in different tones instead of saying real words.”

Their jobs include setting up the marquee, selling tickets, and serving popcorn. Park said that their jobs spoil them because they get to watch free movies and let friends in for free.

The three were also all involved in the Playwrights Festival. Park directed the one-act play which Parkes wrote, while Parkes directed a play written by Ava Kofman ’10. Hellwarth is acting in “It Ends with a Kiss,” written by Arielle Basich ’11.

The “triumvirate,” as they call themselves, began work on their 90 minute film about a boy who dreams of having sex with his older brother’s girlfriend during the summer going into 10th grade. Parkes wrote a 30-page script, and they cast schoolmates Megan Fleming ‘10, Kofman, and Chet Hanks ’09. Besides the Harvard-Westlake students, other cast members included Ollie Lewin, a Crossroads student at the time of production, and Dileep Rao. A struggling actor and Parkes’ tutor at the time, Rao soon after landed a supporting role in the film “Avatar.”

In addition to working on the flim the whole summer, Parkes, Hellwarth, and Park worked on the film every weekend during their sophomore year. Each played a distinct role during filming. Hellwarth was the lighting and sound director. Parkes and Hellwarth agreed that Park was the executor who brought all of Parkes’ creative ideas to fruition.

All three worked on directing and editing.

“We’d be shooting a scene outside and then we’d notice that Graham had been gone for a while. When we’d go up to his room to see if he was actually rewriting a scene as we had told him to, we’d find just find him playing videogames on his pink Nintendo DS,” Park recalled while laughing. The roles of teenage boys and film makers often butted heads, Hellwarth said.

Although the threesome is now inseparable, relations weren’t always friendly. Hellwarth had been friends with Park since elementary school and Parkes since seventh grade, but Park and Parkes didn’t get along at the Middle School. Their mutual interest in film, Parkes said.

The two attended a mutual friends’ sleepover party at the end of ninth grade and spent the entire night side by side in the same bed discussing films.

When the film was completed, the three were disappointed with the final product. Upon revisiting it three months later, however, they were suddenly filled with the pride and joy of creating what they call their “baby.”

“We went from believing that this was sub-art to believing that we were the innovators of this field,” Hellwarth said, half jokingly.

“It’s an extremely underground film, and I like having a really specific audience. Only two people have seen it, and neither of them liked it. My dad fell asleep in the middle of it,” Parkes said.

Unlike Park and Parkes, Hellwarth has no plans of going into film, but instead is passionate about video games. He writes for an online video game website called 8th Circuit and recently wrote an article discussing video games as a form of art. He intends to study game design at the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC, while Parkes plans to study dramatic writing at the Tisch School of New York University and Park has ambitions of directing films and music videos after college. All three are planning to work on a project together over the summer.

B10 Features

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arts&entertainment

May 26, 2010

PHOTOS BY ALLEGRA TEPPER/chronicle

funny face: Susanna Wolk ’10 strikes a pose while in character with the assistance of Scene Monkey Nick Lieberman ’11 (left). Megan Fleming ’10 plays a part in an improvisational game with castmate Ava Kofman ’10 (top right). Hank Doughan ’12 makes a face while in a skit with Jack Usher ’11 and Ben Platt ’11 (bottom right).

Monkeying around

By Allegra Tepper Bulgarian microwave accidents, Ventura Boulevard caverns, lasagna beat poetry — oh my!

Saturday night was nothing if not eventful for the Scene Monkeys as they took the stage during the Playwrights Festival.

May has been a marathon month for the improv comedy troupe.

They performed in six shows this weekend, in addition to a double feature in Rugby on May 14 and a Mother’s Day appearance at the Hollywood Improv on May 9.

This year’s shows featured some Scene Monkeys classics, like the family dinner table and improvised Shakespearean tales, as well as new tricks like charity anthems based on seemingly pointless causes and an impromptu tribute to the Oscars.

Scene Monkeys brought laughs at Hollywood comedy club Improv and at a show in Rugby auditorium.

“Our shows have included a lot more singing lately,” Natalie Margolin ’10 said.

“It’s never planned, but somehow the games always take a turn for the musical,” she said. “That’s the true improv.”

Chase Morgan ’10 attributes the musical prevalence to the abundance of singers who are in the group this year.

The troupe is accompanied by Spencer Horstman ’10 on piano, who provides everything from the blues background to a tune about the woes of senior prom to the classical notes of a ballet about lessons learned during freshman year.

These sketches, coupled with an opera about commencement ceremonies made the May 14 shows very sentimental and senior-centric for the Monkeys.

Sunday’s 7 p.m. show marked the final appearance of seven senior members.

Festival to honor Kutler, Siegler

By Ashley Khakshouri

A benefit concert honoring the memory of Brendan Kutler ’10 and Julia Siegler ’14 will take place Sunday, May 30 in Rugby Auditorium. Organized by Cindy Ok ’10 and Jacob Axelrad ’10, the show is a joint effort between the middle school and upper school dancers, singers and instrumentalists.

The groups featured in the festival are the middle school Dance Production, the Middle School Jazz Ensemble, middle school Chorale, combined upper school and middle school String Ensembles, the Upper School Jazz Explorers, upper school Jazz Band, and upper school Dance classes. Selections from the upper school Cabaret concert will be performed as well.

Tickets are on sale in the middle and upper school bookstores. All proceeds benefit the memorial funds set up for Kutler and Siegler.

David Burton ’11 won a competition sponsored by the National Association for Negro Musicians on May 8. He competed for the Georgia Laster Branch which holds an annual piano competition, pulling student musicians from the greater Los Angeles area.

The type of music performed at NATHANSON’S these competitions ranges from David Burton ’11 classical music, jazz, and contemporary music.

The 14 competing individuals played piano, viola, violin, and sang. Burton found out about the competition last year from his piano teacher. That year he competed and won the third place title.

He didn’t know the piece he was going to perform until two weeks before the competition, he said.

“I had to change up the other piece I was going to play because it wasn’t ready,” he said. “I was a little nervous

By Catherine Wang

“I think our Rugby shows were the most successful,” Margolin said.

“We have an hour and a half to showcase what we’ve been working on all year, and the energy and passion was so high on those nights,” she said.

“The Playwrights shows are far more experimental; you either hit the games or you don’t. We jump off cliffs sometimes, take the risks and use it as a learning experience,” she said.

The group has rehearsed for three hours every Friday this year.

Margolin compares the dynamic of the group to one of a Peer Support group.

“It’ s a bunch of random friends put into a situation together, and we all became really close because of how much we care about our shows,” Margolin said.

“It’s a lighter vibe.”

Junior wins 1st place in piano contest about the whole thing because I was one of two kids who didn’t go to an arts school.”

Burton did not expect to win first place, he said.

“It was a nerve-racking experience because I was surrounded by people with tremendous talent. I was surprised and I just went in with confidence looking to play my piece to the best of my abilities,” Burton Said.

Burton performed “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” by Bach on the piano.

He enjoyed meeting new people and listening to the music they had prepared for this competition, he said.

“It was a tough competition and I’m just happy I had a chance to perform amongst the National Association for Negro Musicians and accredited musicians from Los Angeles,” Burton said.

He was awarded with a $700 scholarship. Burton will be playing at a concert on July 11 where they will hand it to him.

Having won the competition this year, he is not allowed to participate in it next year. However, he looks forward to competing in the senior competition held by the National Association for Negro Musicians, he said.

May 26, 2010

The

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they’ve got rhythm: During the jazz concert on May 1 in Rugby Auditorium, Russell Madison ’10 plays his saxaphone during the concert (left), Garbiella Maia ’10

Rugby blues

By Kelly Ohriner

Commotion filled Rugby Auditorium as the Spring Jazz Concert began. The students in Jazz Band ran through the aisles playing Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” while a slideshow played of the Jazz trip to Europe.

“It was untraditional for us to start off the show like this. Usually we just enter through the wings and take our seats. It was fun and a really cool transition into our first piece,” said Jazz Band bassist, Alex Silverman’10.

Shawn Costantino, director of all jazz groups, dedicated this show to the seniors in the jazz program.

“The senior class is one of the best jazz grades ever so we gave them a big sendoff,” said Jazz Band bassist Hank Adelmann’11.

“I felt really honored because Costantino wanted to make sure all of us seniors got recognized. I think

arts&entertainment

Features B11

chloe Lister/Chronicle

performs on her trumpet (middle left), Kevin Schwartzwald ’11 focuses on a violin piece (middle right), and Robert Reeves ‘10 plays the alto saxophone (right).

Spring Jazz Concert was dedicated to senior musicians to recognize their talent.

we have a really great group of seniors and I think Costantino wanted to make sure our talent was acknowledged especially in our last big concert of the year,” said Silverman.

Jazz Ensemble started the show off with songs like “How High the Moon” by Morgan Lewis and “St. Louis Blues” by W.C. Handy.

“I really liked ‘How High the Moon’ because we worked really hard on it and it sounded really good.

It was also pretty catchy,” said Jazz Ensemble trumpet player Jordan Butler ’11.

Studio Jazz Band followed Jazz Ensemble with songs including “Big Swing Face” by Bill Potts and “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder.

“I only played in ‘Superstition’ and ‘There Will Never Be Another You’ but I really liked the other songs Studio Jazz played too. My favorite song we did was probably ‘Superstition’ though because it’s always fun doing a classic,” said Studio Jazz guitarist, Maguire Parsons ’11.

The concert ended with the Jazz Band, a band of almost all seniors. They finished the night off with songs including “Solar” by Miles Davis, “Come On, Come Over” by Jaco Pastorius, and “Hunting Wabbits” by Gordon Goodwin. “‘Come On, Come Over’ was really special to me because it’s one of my favorite songs. It was written by one of my favorite bass players and I would always play it on my own. So, when Costantino told us we were going to perform it, I got really excited and it was a really fun feature for me,” Silverman said.

“The concert was overall really memorable since it was the last time I would play with these guys and I’ve been playing with some of them for around five years. It was a really special night for a lot of us,” Silverman said.

The Jazz bands will perform in one last benefit concert on May 29 with all the proceeds going to Inner City Arts. Many of the student bands will be featured alongside Jeff Hamilton.

Spring orchestra concert Alumnae seek out teenage features film themes experiences for new film

By Alex Gura

In an unlikely combination, a musical piece using marbles as an instrument was featured in the same concert as a medley of film themes at the Spring Orchestra Concert. A combined orchestra concert, it featured the Symphony Orchestra, Concert Strings, Wind Ensemble, and Percussion Ensemble on April 30 at Saint Michael’s Church, their usual venue. The concert was conducted by musical director Mark Hilt, who is the head of the orchestra program.

Each section focused on a different type of music in the concert, Symphony cellist Devon Breton-Pakozdi, ’12 said.

Wind ensemble focused on a mostly traditional repertoire, though they started the concert with a modern piece.

Concert Strings, however, played a mixture of Baroque and modern music, ranging from a piece written in the 18th century to one written less than 20 years ago.

Percussion Ensemble played more modern, complex music, with Hanna Kostaama, ’12, using a pair of marbles instead of her usual instrument, a piano.

Symphony Orchestra played the most traditional repertoire out of all of them according to Pakozdi, and ended the concert with “Leroy Anderson Favorites”, a medley of excerpts from movie soundtracks.

“I thought the concert was powerful in its diversity of music,” said Pakozdi, “and it was a great performance.”

However, for Symphony bassoonist Connor Pasich, ’12, the highlight of the performance was not the music.

“Mr. Hilt nearly tripped off the conductor’s podium,” said Pasich, “Richard Chung caught him and avoided a disaster.”

Celebration of senior art

By Ingrid Chang

On Tuesday June 1, an event showcasing the works of every senior in the visual arts program will take place in Feldman-Horn Gallery.

The exhibition will be hung before the event, from Monday, May 24 until the end of the year.

The show, called Celebration of Seniors, is the only one all year that includes work from AP Studio Art, Drawing and Painting III, Photography III, Advanced Video Art II, Advanced Video Art III, Ceramics, and Sculpture all together.

About 70 students will be displaying work. Each 2-D artist is given one panel of wall space to fill in whatever way they choose. Music videos will be shown in the gallery and other video projects will be shown in the FH 107 lecture hall.

The event will also showcase musical talent; senior soloists will be singing in the chapel.

An awards ceremony will take place at the event. All visual arts students are eligible for the Art Department Award, and individual awards will also be given in each discipline.

One student will be awarded the Tobias Award, which comes with a grant to be used to make art.

By Allegra Tepper

It was a time filled with mayonnaisecovered railings, prom drama, and Chronicle deadlines; from the perspectives of Amy Andelson ’00 and Emily Meyer ’01, it would seem that not much has changed over the last 10 years at 3700 Coldwater Canyon.

But while to them it might appear as though time froze at Harvard-Westlake, they’ve come a long way since their days as students. The pair is now working on a feature film titled “Wishful Thinking,” and they returned to their alma mater on May 10 and 14 to talk to current students about what it’s like to be in high school today.

The script is a coming-of-age story about a quirky girl who discovers her powers to hear people’s thoughts. Selena Gomez is currently attached to play the protagonist, who uses her abilities to go after her crush and make the school a better place.

“She gets caught up in the drama of popularity, but ultimately realizes that everyone is more multi-faceted than she assumed, and that her true love lies with her best friend,” Meyer said.

The script was sold as a pitch to New Line Cinema. Inspired by an article from The New York Times that looked “inside the mind of that teenage boy who’s dating your daughter,” the film is what the pair calls a bit of “fantasy fulfillment” in response to the confusion and frustration of their high school memories.

Meyer and Andelson are now working on a second draft of the film, using the material they took from conversations with Harvard-Westlake students.

“We are really into the prom proposals we heard about,” Andelson said. “We think [the anecdotes we got from the students] add color to the film, and they will probably resonate with the audience we’re trying to get to see the film.”

Upon meeting with Tess Hatch ’11 and Emily Wallach ’11, the duo was struck by a pang of nostalgia.

“They are best friends so it reminded us a lot about ourselves,” Meyer said. “We like to think we are tuned in, but [Andelson’s] 10-year reunion is coming up. It’s inspiring

for us to come here and sit in the quad and see all the excitement and vitality.”

“We were most interested in how technology affects teens because you’re so connected all the time,” Andelson said. “We were also just surprised by how happy everyone seemed. We think we went to high school at a time where everyone was angsty. Now there seems to be more levity.”

Classmates from Meyer’s and Andelson’s high school days can look forward to spotting easily recognizable references to old crushes and flames in the film. In high school, neither one of the writers participated in film nor theatre, saying they felt “intimidated” by those processes. However, upon graduating, Andelson attended the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television and both she and Meyer started working in industry agencies and studios out of college.

Today, they have two films under their belts, “Step Up 2: The Streets” and “Step Up 3-D.” In total they’ve written five scripts together, and Meyer says that they’re proud of what is considered a successful starting track record.

“Our first film was a contemporary adaptation of ‘The Great Gatsby,’” Andelson said. It was our baby and it was set in the east coast private school scene. This was before ‘Gossip Girl’ so now it seems derivative.”

Having been friends since middle school, Meyer and Andelson say they think they know what twins feel like. Living two blocks apart and writing together every day, they say they have to pinch themselves to make sure their fortunate circumstances are real.

“There are so many ups and downs to the film industry,” Andelson said. “I don’t know how people go through it alone.”

Meyer and Andelson don’t foresee splitting up as a creative team anytime soon.

They are already thinking about their next projects, with plans to start pitching television series ideas to production companies.

While they’re open to all types of stories, Meyer and Andelson think that they naturally gravitate towards high school narratives.

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May 26, 2010

taking center stage Writing, performing, or singing, students took the main roles in the annual Playwrights Festival

By Claire Hong

This was the most fun of all the theater productions.”

—Elana Fruchtman ‘10

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2

A boy runs down an aisle in Rugby Theatre towards the stage. His clothes are tattered, and he has dirt smeared over his face and body.

He is the only one on stage, and he is crying.

The boy was Ben Platt ’11, play the role of a survivor in the postapocalypto play “What the Thunder Said.” The play was written by Eli Petzold ’10 and directed by Susanna Wolk ’10. The plays then went through an extensive editing process with a mentor of the writer’s choice, which consisted of teachers, professional writers, actors, directors and dramaturges.

Along with their own individual mentors, Performing Arts teacher Christopher Moore aided students throughout the entire process.

He was also the producer for the Playwrights Festival.

Only 10 were selected to appear in the Playwrights Festival. All plays were written and acted by students, and some even had student directors.

The festival ran from May 20 through May 23.

The first play presented on the opening night was Ava Kofman’s ’10 “Hunter in the Snow.” It was directed by Graham Parkes ’10, who had also written a play for the festival, “The Crowdpleaser.”

Rebecca Hutman ’12, who starred in Kelsey Woo’s ’11 “The ABC’s of Growing Up,” said, “I really enjoyed doing student written plays, and our writer, Kelsey, was especially involved which made the experience even more unique. Whenever you read a book or a play you always wish you could get inside the writer’s head a little and understand it from their perspective, so it was great to be able to have that communication and see how she had envisioned the show.”

Of the 10 plays that were picked, only two were written by sophomores, Wyatt Kroopf ’12 and Leland Frankel ’12.

Jacob Axelrad’s ’10 play, “The Sky’s the Limit,” won the Leon C. Fan Memorial Award.

“It’s incredible to be honored with this award. It means so much to be recognized by the Performing Arts Department, and I’m so grateful to the Fan family. Playwriting is something that I love to do and to be encouraged by this award is absolutely amazing,” he said.

photos by Chloe Lister/ Chronicle

3

being in one acts was completely new and out of my comfort zone and ended up being so rewarding.”

—Charlie Mischer ‘10

4

A student run affair: (1) Elana Fruchtman ’10 plays the last woman on Earth. (2) Brooke Levin ’12 and Sam Sobel ’11 share a passionate kiss. (3) Chase Morgan ’10 braids Hallie Brookman’s ’12 hair. (4) Hank Doughan ’12 performs with the Scene Monkeys. (5) Eli Petzold ’10 and Jack Petock ’11 shock Gabrielle Kuhn ’12.

5

sports The

Harvard-Westlake School

Chronicle

Volume XIX

Issue 8 May 26, 2010

Despite successful season, lacrosse to get new coach

By Alex Leichenger

Austin Block/chronicle

Austin Block/chronicle

Forehand, Backhand: Number one singles player Matt Wagner ’11 hits a volley during warmup in the first round of CIF playoffs (top). Jackson Frons ’12 chases down a ball (bottom).

Boys’ tennis reaches CIF semifinals, defeats rival

By Austin Block

Over two months ago, the boys’ tennis team lost a match. As of press time, the team had not lost since, riding a 10-game win streak into the playoffs, capturing the league singles and doubles titles, and cruising to the semifinals of CIF playoffs with 16-2, 10-8 and 10-8 victories.

The team captured the league championship with a perfect 10-0 record. The team hasn’t lost a league match in Head Coach Chris Simpson’s 10-year stewardship of the team. In the league finals, Matt Wagner ’11 took the singles title with a 6-2, 4-6, 10-5 win over a Chaminade freshman.

The doubles team of Chris Kenney ’10 and Spencer Suk ’10 won 6-3, 6-3 over Andrew Berman ’10 and Kyle Martin-Patterson ’10.

The team compiled a 21-4 overall record. It narrowly beat rival Brentwood 10-8 on the road on April 28. It also clinched its fourth Bay Area Classic title with an 11-7 win over Santa Monica on April 14.

The Wolverines were on the brink of elimination in the second round of CIF playoffs, but they mounted a comeback that saved them from a loss to Northwood High School. The final score

was 10-8.

“We probably should have lost to them and we came back and everyone really showed a lot of fight to win that match because we didn’t want to go out on that note,” Kenney said.

In the quarterfinals, the team defeated rival Peninsula, who had defeated the Wolverines 11-7 early in the season.

“It was especially exciting because we’ve lost to them every single time since our freshman year. They’ve been our nemesis,” Kenney said.

“It was a complete team effort. We had everyone winning some matches. I think everyone won at least one match.”

The team faced University High School in the CIF semifinals on Tuesday after press time. University defeated the Wolverines 12-5 in the same round last year.

“It will be good to get a little revenge,” Kenney said. “They’re really good. They’re the one seed and they’re undefeated this year.”

In CIF individuals, Wagner and the team of Kenney and Suk lost in the third round. Berman and Patterson, who advanced to CIF individual playoffs despite falling to their teammates in the league final, will play in the round of 16 Friday.

Despite leading the boys’ lacrosse team to its best record in his tenure, Head Coach Mark Haddad will not return next season. Players were informed of the decision by Head of Athletics Audrius Barzdukas in a meeting last Wednesday.

The Wolverines lost 14-11 to Agoura in the second round of CIF playoffs May 6, finishing with an overall record of 12-5.

After an 8-7 loss to Chaminade April 27, they finished third place in league with a 5-3 mark. “[The athletic department] evaluates every single program at the end of the season, and we do take into consideration long-term prospects,” Barzdukas said. “We ask ourselves a simple question: is the program going in the right direction?

It’s really a focus on process rather than wins and losses and outcome.”

Barzdukas did not elaborate on what aspect of the lacrosse program needed the most improvement, but acknowledged that he was not fully satisfied with the progress being made.

“I absolutely thought there were areas where I thought we could do better,” he said.

Barzdukas said there is no timetable for choosing Haddad’s successor. Candidates will be evaluated based on five criteria: leadership ability, “technical knowledge of the game,” the ability to run an organized program for all six grades, the ability to be a good “cultural fit” for the school, and exemplary character, Barzdukas said.

“The school is committed to giving those kids who play lacrosse the best leader we can find,” he said.

After a loss to eventual league champion Chaminade and a win over Thatcher, the Wolverines opened the playoffs with a victory over Oak Park at Ted Slavin Field. The team won 10 of 11 games in March and April before the Chaminade defeat.

Conor O’Toole ’10 led the team in goals (42) and assists (17) to finish with a team-high 59 points. Will Oliver ’11 finished second on the team with 32 points, and Evan Meister ’12 was third with 30.

Five players were sidelined by injury during the season-ending loss to Agoura, including Cory Wizenberg ’11, who finished fifth on the team in points (23) despite missing over half the season with a broken collarbone.

“For how low we were on numbers, I think we did well,” Wizenberg said.

Wizenberg figures to be a key cog for the squad next season as it adjusts to a new coaching staff.

“I think it’s a good step for the program,” Wizenberg said.

“But [Haddad] has been my coach for the last three years, so it’ll be weird.”

“I think one of the things that makes Harvard-Westlake unique, is that whenever we decide to do anything, serving hamburgers in the cafeteria to putting on one-act plays to building a sports program, whenever we decide to do anything, we decide that we’re going to do it well,” Barzdukas said. “And I think that’s what we have to do with lacrosse. It’s blowing up across Southern California, its blowing up across the United States. If we want, our school can be very, very good at lacrosse, and so I think we should want that.”

inside: C2

Junior plays competitive croquet

C3

Runners from nationally ranked girls’ track and field team advance to state finals

C8

Athletes of the Year: Nicole Hung, Erik Swoope

C2 Sports

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May 26, 2010

Boesch shines in major leagues

By Jack Davis

and

Judd Liebman

Since making his major league debut on April 23, Detroit Tiger Brennan Boesch ’04 has become the team’s starting left fielder and is currently batting .340 with four home runs and 22 runs batted in, in just 94 at bats.

Coaches and teammates alike are excited about the rookie’s start and his progress already.

“Brennan Boesch needs a lot of work in the outfield.

It’s our job to make him an average outfielder. If you make him an average outfielder, you are really going to have something [good],” manager Jim Leyland told the Detroit Free Press.

Despite some struggles in the field, Boesch is delivering at the plate for the Tigers. His 22 runs batted in are top among American League rookies and had a very impressive homecoming in three games against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In those games, which many family members and old friends from Harvard-Westlake attended, Boesch went three for 12 with a home run, three runs batted in and a walk.

“It feels great to be back home,” Boesch said. “It was a dream come true to just make the big leagues and be able to play at the highest level, but luckily I got called up early enough that I got to come back to Los Angeles for a series,” Boesch said.

Boesch relished the chance to play in front of all of his family and friends.

“At Dodger Stadium, with my parents in the crowd with all my friends and other family, it doesn’t get much better than that,” Boesch said.

Boesch didn’t take long to get acclimated to the majors; on the first pitch he saw in his debut, Boesch doubled off the opposite field wall against former all-star Rich Harden.

“But that was definitely a thrill to get up there and get that first hit out of the way. I could relax a little bit.

I can’t say I played completely relaxed my first day, but it was a good step in the right direction,” Boesch told the Detroit Free Press.

Boesch’s teammates have been impressed by his play.

“He’s good. He’s been a big addition for this team and doing well hitting the ball and getting a lot of RBI,” right fielder Magglio Ordonez told the Free Press.

Even players not on the Tigers have taken notice of how well Boesch is playing.

“Maybe once a year comes a hitter that really stands out to me, a rookie hitter. This guy is impressive,” New York Yankees All-Star first baseman Mark Teixeria told the Free Press.

Since Boesch joined the Tigers on April 23 the club has gone 16-13 after starting the season with a 9-6 record.

Courtesy of the Detroit News

Courtesy of the Detroit News

Rookie of the year?: Brennan Boesch ’04 signs autographs for fans (top) and watches a hit (bottom). Since his debut April 24 against the Texas Rangers, Boesch had hit .340 with four homers and 22 RBIs through Sunday as the starting leftfielder for the Detroit Tigers. Boesch hit a grand slam in his first major league visit to Los Angeles April 30 at Angel Stadium.

Competitive croquet

Adel Kamal ’11 plays golf croquet competitively. As of last year, he was the fifth ranked youth in the nation.

By Austin Block

Courtesy of Adel Kamal

aim for the wicket: Adel Kamal ’11 hits the ball as his younger sister looks on. The two recently played doubles together in a tournament in Pasadena.

Two or three times a month, Adel Kamal ’11 works on his jump shot on a court in Pasadena with his father. However, this particular jump shot is nothing like those of his teammates on the JV basketball team. It’s a difficult skill that involves striking a croquet ball with a mallet to send the ball over a ball and through a wicket. Though it isn’t easy, “it’s probably the most fun shot to hit if you know how to do it,” he said.

As of last year, Kamal was ranked fifth in the nation in the youth division of the golf croquet rankings. He practices on weekends under the tutelage of his father, Dr. Mohammed Kamal, the winner of the Dec. 1 national golf croquet championship in West Palm Beach, Fla. There are two distinctly different types of croquet: association croquet and golf croquet. Though association croquet is more popular in the United States, Kamal plays golf croquet because his father, who learned to play while growing up in Egypt, learned the game that was more popular

there.

“It’s like chess on grass,” Kamal said. “It’s sort of a mental game and you have to come up with big plays. You feel the pressure but it’s such an easy-going game that you can still work through it. It’s fun.”

Two summers ago, he competed in the youth national championship and placed fifth in singles competition and third in doubles.

“As far as the competition goes, [it was] really competitive, people [were present] that played almost every day with the school like a normal sports team,” Kamal said.

Dr. Kamal taught his son the sport at a young age, and Kamal has been playing ever since. Dr. Kamal works with all three of his children individually on their croquet skills during their weekend practice sessions. Kamal’s younger brother was ranked sixth in the youth rankings last year and sometimes competes in doubles matches with his older brother. Kamal said his croquet game doesn’t interfere with his basketball schedule.

“I don’t practice croquet reli-

giously,” he said. “It’s more of a hobby for me. I don’t really have it set. I usually plan it around free weekends and things like that.”

Everyone in the Kamal family plays croquet except for Kamal’s mother. He said croquet is a bonding experience for his family.

“We’ve bonded over it ever since my brother was born because that was the first time I got to share my croquet skills with someone,” he said. “Even before then I guess between me and my dad.”

Kamal recently played doubles with his younger sister in his father’s tournament, the 1st Annual Mohammed and Friends Croquet Tournament in Pasadena, placing second. David Burton ’11 and Noor Fateh ’11 also competed.

Prior to the tournament, Kamal had taken a one year “hiatus” from tournament play, though he continued to practice two to three times a month. A recent arm injury that required surgery has sidelined him in both sports.

“This is probably the longest I’ve gone without it for forever,” he said. “I definitely miss it. I’ll be back into it soon enough.”

May 26, 2010

The

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chronicle.hw.com

Sports C3

Boys’ golf falls in 2nd CIF round

By Austin Block

Courtesy of Roger On

Sprint: Chris Vanderschans ’10 races in league prelims on May 3 (left). Kei Goldberg ’12 pole vaults at league finals. Boys’ track finished 4-3 while the girls’ track team won league finishing 6-0 and placed second overall in CIF.

Track competes in CIF playoffs The girls’ track team, ranked first in Nike’s medium-sized school track rankings, finished second overall at CIF playoffs. Two runners and the girls’ 4x400 relay team advanced to Masters.

By Alex Edel

and

Meagan Wang

The girls’ track team placed second overall at Div. III CIF, losing to Oak Park by only three points, the best that any track team has finished since moving to Division III in 1993. Amy Weissenbach ’12, Matthew Bedford ’10 and the girls’ 4x400 relay will advance to Masters.

The girls’and boys’ track teams have finished their regular season with 6-0 and 4-3 overall records respectively. Competing in Division III, girls’ track was ranked first for medium sized schools nationally in the Nike Team Nationals.

After many different pace changes in the event, both Weissenbach and Cami Chapus ’12 were able to finish the event second and sixth respectively. Weissenbach finished with her best time ever, qualifying for masters.

She continued on to also win and qualify for masters in the 800 meters.

Lauren Hansen ’11 competed in the individual 200 meters, finishing third and setting a new school record with a time of 56.34 seconds.

“We have run a tremendous program for years with multiple league titles and top 10 CIF finishes,” Head track coach Jonas Koolsbergen said.

Last year, the girls’ track team won the Mission

League Championship and finished fourth at the CIF finals. This year, the competition was harder because a group of Division II schools dropped to Division III. The girls that competed in the CIF were Hansson, Weissenbach, Chapus, Zaakirah Daniels ’10, Jenny Porter ’10, Hilary King ’10, Sydney Haydel ’11, Nicole Nesbit ’10 and Kei Goldberg ’12.

Four boys also competed in the 4x200 relay but did not make it to the CIF finals meet, and Bedford also competed in the individual 200 and 400 meter races.

Early in the season, Bedford broke not only school records but also set the lead state marker in the 200 and 400 meter races. At CIF finals, Bedford raced head to head against Irvine Woodbridge’s Jalen Craver in the 400 meters. Although Bedford did finish second, he set a new school record with a time of 47.92 seconds, placing him fourth going into the Masters meet.

He also finished third in the 200 meters with a time of 21.65 seconds. The meet concluded with the 4x=400 meter girls’ relay. Hansen ran first, getting a quick head start, and was followed by Porter, Daniels and Weissenbach. They finished in first place and are now the second team in school history to make Masters.

Koolsbergen called the girls’ team this year “our best, most balanced, well rounded team in school history.”

A third place finish in the Mission League finals allowed the boys’ golf team to sneak into CIF playoffs. In the first round of CIF, the team finished third, guaranteeing itself a spot in the second round.

In the second round, the Southern Section team finals, the team finished 19th out of 24 at Redhawk Country Club and missed out on state playoffs.

The Wolverines finished with a 6-6 overall and league record and finished third in the league standings.

The team eked out a crucial 196-195 win over Loyola in its second to last match of the season, and it fell in another close match to Loyola 209205 two days later to end the regular season.

Over the course of the season, the team played six head-to-head two game series against its league opponents. The Wolverines were swept in their first series, swept Alemany in the second, and then split their last four series.

Captain Jeff Wibawa ’10, committed to playing for Rice University, won Mission League MVP and Charlie Benell ’12 was given All-League honors. Both he and Wibawa qualified for CIF individual playoffs.

In the first round of CIF, Wibawa shot a 73 and moved on to the second round. Benell also shot a 73 but was disqualified for taking an illegal drop from a water hazard.

“I am extremely happy and proud of this season, in many ways more so than any other season,” Head Coach Scott Wood said. “We lost three Division I golfers and were dead in the water halfway through the season.”

Wood attributes the contributions of many different players to the team breaking out of a mid-season slump.

“We had young players like Max Goodley ’12, Andrew Sohn ’13 and Michael Aronson ’13 come into their own, as well as hard workers like Ernie Zaferis ’11 and great players like Charlie and Jeff take the team on their shoulders and will themselves into the playoffs and to the second round of CIF, same as last years team,” Wood said.

“The fact that they got to playoffs by defeating Chaminade, Loyola and St. Francis to close the season gave them the confidence and belief that they were looking for all year,” Wood said. “All of the adversity served us well, we never gave up, and we rode our momentum into the playoffs and got the absolute most out of our team.”

The team will return next year without its captain and best player.

“We are going to miss Jeff Wibawa first of all because he may very well be the best golfer ever to play for me at Harvard-Westlake,” Wood said. “On top of that he was an extraordinary leader.”

If Wibawa places in the top 24 in the second round of CIF playoffs he will advance to the state championship qualifier and have the chance to compete for a state title.

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Baseball wins 1st round playoff game

By Jack Davis

Austin BLock/chronicle

Pitching motion: Connor Dillman ’11 pitches in the baseball team’s 9-4 home loss to Crespi on May 7. The team won its CIF first round game Friday.

May 26, 2010

After winning their first two playoff games the varsity boys’ baseball team faced off against number one seed Glendora yesterday in the second round of CIF playoffs at newly renovated O’Malley Family Field.

While the Wolverines have gotten on a roll in the playoffs, just two weeks ago even just a playoff berth was in doubt for the team. The team lost four of its final five games including losing three of four league games. The squad ended the season with a 5-7 league record and needed a victory in the last game of the regular season against Dos Pueblos in order to secure a wild card berth, giving the team a chance to continue their season.

Instead of opening up the playoffs in the first round of CIF, the Wolverines started the playoffs with a wild card round game against Arroyo Grande.

The typical seven innings weren’t enough to decide the contest with both teams deadlocked at 3-3 until the 13th inning. Then pinch hitter Arden Pabst ’13 hit a home run with two runners on, giving the Wolverines a 6-3 lead they would not relinquish.

The victory sent the Wolverines to the first round of CIF where they had to travel to Foothill, a team seeded higher than them in playoff seedings.

The Wolverines jumped out to a quick 4-1 lead after three innings behind an Austin Wilson ’10 home run and the first career home run for Joe Corrigan ’13. The Wolverines held off Foothill rallies winning 5-2 sending them to the

second round of CIF playoffs against top seeded Glendora.

Despite the stiff competition they faced in the playoffs, head coach Matt LaCour felt that the team’s tough league opponents had prepared them well for the playoffs.

“We are not going to see anybody that is going to be any better than teams we have been playing all season long,” LaCour said.

Glendora boasts one of the top prospects in the nation in UCLA commit Adam Plutko, who may even bypass his college career if he goes high enough in the draft.

Before the game LaCour said facing Plutko, “should be a lot of fun” and even though Glendora is the top ranked team in bracket it was just “another game on the way to the big prize.”

LaCour credits a lot of the team’s success to the toughness of his players.

“Each player has had a different path. I think the one common trait that they all have and we have, as a team is toughness. We have brought ourselves back from bid deficits this year and we don’t have any give up in us,” LaCour said.

Tuesday’s game against Glendora was the team’s fifth game on its new field and they had lost the previous four games on O’Malley Family Field.

“We really want to break the new field in with a victory,” outfield Oliver Lowry ’10 said before the game. “Being able to do that against the top seed, against one of the top pitchers in the nation, nothing would be nicer than that,” Lowry said.

Dos Pueblos knocks volleyball out of CIF

By Judd Liebman

Despite a late win streak, the boys’ volleyball team was knocked out of the playoffs by Dos Pueblos in the first round. The early loss was both unexpected and an underachievement for the team, Matthew Goldhaber ’11 said.

The team lost the best-of-five in three close games.

“We were expecting to go farther.

The game was away and they had the crowd on their side, it was a quite emotional game,” middle blocker Myles Teasley ’10 said. “The loss was disappointing. There were so many ways we would have won. We missed serves, couldn’t put the ball in away, and we made a lot of mistakes.”

The Wolverines ended the regular season with an 8-4 record, supplemented by a 16-10-1 overall record.

The team started the season with an unfamiliar coach, Adam Black.

Black added discipline to the team, which was somewhat unorganized last season, Teasley said. Black added new training techniques that readied the team for the end of their season. The team was physically prepared for their game mainly due to Black’s coaching, Teasley said. “[Black] made everything systemized and orderly. He helped us get ready for the season,” Teasley said. “There is no way the season should have ended like that. The bus ride back was brutally silent.”

Austin BLock/chronicle

Fastball: Christina Cavanaugh ’10 pitches in the team’s game against Alemany on May 11. The team finished with a 3-7 in league and 8-16 overall.

Softball drops last 3 league contests, misses playoffs

By Alec Caso

Ending their season with a league record of 3-7 and an overall record of 8-16 prevented the softball team from entering CIF. The team played their first league game in a close loss to Chaminade 1-2.

In their second game, the team scored a victory over Louisville 23-1, the team lost its third game to Alemany 0-10.

“It was hard fought game, especially at home,” right fielder Arielle Basich ’11 said.

The team participated in two tournaments, the Lancaster High Desert Tournament and the Charter Oak Tournament. In the Lancaster High Desert Tournament, the team had two wins and two losses. In the Charter

Oak Tournament, the team had one win and three losses.

Following the Charter Oak Tournament the team played seven league games, bringing its record to 3-7. The team won its fourth game against Flintridge 9-2 but would continue to lose their next two games to Chaminade and Notre Dame. However, the Wolverines beat Louisville again 8-2.

They lost their last three games, playing their final game against Flintridge on Thursday May 13.

“Losing to Flintridge was a disappointing loss. We beat them the first time but the second game was very different,” said Basich.

The team is losing five senior players, including starting pitcher Christina Cavanaugh ’10.

May 26, 2010

The

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CIF honors wrestlers at Angel Stadium

By Catherine Wang

The varsity wrestling team was honored at an Angels game on April 27 for having the highest average un-weighted GPA among high school wrestling teams in Southern California. The CIF Academic Champions Ceremony honored the teams with the highest average GPA among Southern California teams in their respective sports.

The top female and male teams in the small school and big school category were honored for each sport. Harvard-Westlake won in the small school category.

Wrestlers Nick Treuer ’10, Patrick Newman ’10, Russell Wolfe ’12, Brandon Chen ’12, and coach Gary Bairos attended the ceremony.

“Anyone on the team could go to the ceremony,” Wolfe said. “I thought it was pretty cool.”

The team, whose average un-weighted GPA is 3.4, was honored before the game began, and seniors Treuer and Newman took a picture behind home

plate holding the “big blue” banner they received as their award.

None of the team stayed for the game.

“I wish we went to a Dodger game instead,” Newman said.

The players appreciated the recongition for their accomplishments.

“We have a small team with a lot of really smart kids, so it’s nice we were recognized,” Newman said.

Last year, the team’s average GPA was second highest in Southern California.

“We knew we had a really good chance of winning the award this year,” Newman said.

This award culminates a successful season for the wrestling team. Team captain Treuer won the individual CIF Coastal Section championship in the 152-pound class in February by pinning the top seed in the first period of the final.

“I think it speaks highly of our team that we were honored both athletically and academically,” Treuer said.

Courtesy of Nick Treuer

Scholar-athletes: (from left to right) Coach Gary Bairos, Brandon Chen ’12, Nick Treuer ’10, Patrick Newman ’10, and Russell Wolfe ’12 stand outside Angel Stadium after being honored for the wrestling team’s academic credentials.

Conduct citations spur formation of committee

By David Burton and Rebecca Nussbaum

YOU SHOULD BE HErE

join us for The suMMer prograM aT harvard-WesTlake Arts: • Acting • Arts and Crafts • Ceramics • Dance • Film and TV • Music • Performing Arts • Photography and Video • Pottery • Sculpture • Theater • Visual Arts Athletics: • General Sports • Baseball and Softball • Basketball • Cheerleading • Fencing • Field Hockey • Fitness • Football • Lacrosse • Soccer • Swimming • Track and Field • Volleyball Academics: • General Academics • Computers • Creative Writing • Finance • Journalism for Newspaper and Yearbook • Languages • Liberal Arts • Math • SAT Prep • Science HARVARD-WESTLAKE SUMMER PROGRAM For more information and registration, please visit our website www.hw.com/summerprograms.

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A program initiated by the Sports Council for next year aims to correct the negative behavior of sports fans and refocus the attention at athletic events onto the athletes.

After CIF officials approached Head of Athletics Audrius Barzdukas at the girls’ basketball CIF state finals and the boys’ CIF soccer finals about the unacceptable behavior of students and parents, the program was proposed at the Sports Council’s April meeting and will be led by science teacher Dietrich Schuhl.

The inappropriate behavior consisted of taunting referees and players on the opposing team.

“It is to the point where it is almost embarrassing for the whole school because everything our student athletes do reflects on Harvard-Westlake as a whole,” Schuhl said.

“We have to ask ourselves if we really want to be viewed in this negative manner,” Schuhl said.

The object of the program is to educate the student body on the behavior appropriate for sports events and enforce the newly clarified rules.

However, Chair of Sports Council David Hinden is confident that once the behavioral standards are clearly stated and students understand what is expected of them, students will comply with the rules.

“I think that just about every adult on campus agrees with this policy.

Now it’s just about implementing it,” Hinden said.

So far there have been no consequences for fan behavior, but CIF has given us a warning.

Schuhl says that we have a bull’s eye on our back, so we need to fix the situation to avoid consequences in the future.

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“

High School sports are pUre. We should keep it that way.”

—Audrius Barzdukas Head of Athletics

“The problem with negative cheering is that it escalates. One fan says something and the next fan takes it even further, pushing and testing what they can get away with,” Barzdukas said.

A program will be proposed over the summer to Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra and the Athletic Department by Upper School Visual Arts Department Head Cheri Gaulke, Hinden, mathematics teacher Kanwal Kochar, and Schuhl.

It will be launched next year, but Hinden expects that it will have to be continually monitored over many years.

“We have allowed this negative fan culture to evolve, rather than shape it, and it has grown to the point where we have to take a stand against it,” Barzdukas said.

Negative cheering is commonly shown on television in college and professional sports, so it seems okay to do at the high school level, Schuhl said.

“High school sports are pure,” Barzdukas said. “We should keep it that way.”

Cheers are offensive if they are directed toward a particular player.

Even the airball cheer, which has become essential to the basketball culture, is inappropriate, according to Schuhl.

“The spectacle should be on the field, not in the stands,” Hinden said.

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C6 Sports

The

C hronicle

May 26, 2010

chronicle.hw.com

Swimming places high in league meet

By Jonah Rosenbaum

Courtesy of Darlene BIBLE

Powering through: Danny Fujinaka ’10 swims the 200 Individual Medley in league finals. Nine swimmers moved on to the Division 1 CIF meet.

Boys’ golf The JV boys’ golf team ended its season with a 3-5 record. Its closest losses were to Loyola, 221-230, Chaminade, 208-222, and Notre Dame, 233-235. The team beat Loyola and Chaminade later in the season, 208-218 and 205-217, respectively.

The team lost two matches by more than 15 strokes. Later in the season, the team beat two of the schools that it lost to at the beginning of the season.

“We started out by losing a couple of matches in a row, but after four losses, the players on our team became more competitive and our scores improved,” Brian Harwitt ’11 said.

—David Kolin

Lacrosse The JV lacrosse team finished the season winning three of their last four games.

“Overall we performed very well, [and] we had a large improvement in many players,” said JV team captain Connor Pasich ’12.

The team finished with a record of 5-8-1, which was weaker than last season, when they won six games and lost four, but the young and inexperienced team has improved this year, Pasich said.

Next year, the team will include members of the middle school lacrosse team, which went undefeated this season and captured the league title.

“We have a lot of players from the Middle School and freshmen coming up, so I think that next year we should be very strong,” Pasich said.

—David Gobel

Baseball After a somewhat tumultuous season, JV boys’ baseball managed to put together a 6-6-0 league record, starting pitcher Alex RandLewis ’12 said. The team’s league season started with a three game winning streak that was ended by Loyola.

“The season was full of ups and downs. Our pitching staff threw strikes most of the time but we

After the girls’ swimming team took first place in the Mission League and the boys took second, nine swimmers advanced to the Division 1 CIF meet.

Allison Merz ’10, Shanshan Heh ’12, Catherine Wang ’11, Alexandra Edel ’10, James McNamara ’10, Danny Fujinaka ’10, Sam Ruddy ’11, Mitchell Oei ’11 and Russell Madison ’10 all competed in the invitational meet which took place in Belmont Shores.

The boys’ 400 free relay finished fourth and James McNamara finished fifth in the 100 yard butterfly with a time of 50.86 seconds.

“CIF was a great finish for us. We had a really strong season, and we finished particularly strong towards the end of the year. Everyone performed well all year and we had a lot of CIF qualifiers,” Allison Merz ’10 said.

“Once we got to CIF everyone was swimming their best and it was really impressive how many girls advanced to the finals. (In swimming, the top 16 swimmers or relay teams advance to the finals). We are a relatively small

JVRoundup

didn’t always have the productivity we needed at the plate,” RandLewis said.

The team ended with a 15-10-1 overall record.

O’Malley Family Field was ready for play on May 4. The JV squad was excited to play on the new field and it served as a motivation tool at the end of the season.

“The facility definitely motivated us to represent Harvard-Westlake well,” Rand-Lewis said. “We want to have a winning record on the new fantastic field.”

—Judd Liebman

Boys’ tennis The JV boys’ tennis team finished their season undefeated for the second consecutive time. Their overall record is 18-0 with a 9-0 league record.

During the season, they played two consecutive shutout games 180, defeating league teams Crespi and St. Francis. They won their last league match on May 3 against Chaminade, 16-2.

“We’re a really strong team and it feels great being undefeated champs. All our hard work really paid off,” said Jonathan Chu ’12 of their perfect season, —Tiffany Liao

Track and field Despite starting the season with early losses, the boys’ track and field team joined the girls’ team, who had just recently suffered their first league loss, to recover at the end of its season with a strong performance at the Mission League Finals on May 6 at Los Angeles Valley College.

The team broke over 10 school records and won eight JV championships.

Nikki Goren ’12 took first place in the 1600 and 3200 meter runs.

Maddy Morency ’12 won the 100 and 200 meter runs. Kathy BoltonFord ’11 and Alex Markes ’11 were both champions in the triple jump event.

Drew Tuttle ’11 won high jump, and Judd Liebman ’12 finished first in the 800 meter run.

“The team improved immensely from the beginning of the season,” Head Coach Jonas Koolsbergen

school competing in division one, but we were able to hold our own,” Merz said.

Merz attributed the team’s success to consistent hard work in practice, which led to measured improvement as the season progressed.

“We are a very different team now then we were at the start of the season,” Merz said.

The boys’ team felt that they finished their season on a high note as well, finishing second only to nationally ranked Loyola.

“We did really well in league. We finished second behind Loyola which is one of the best teams in the country,” Fujinaka said.

“We all worked really hard all season and as a result we always performed our best. CIF was great because I feel like we got the best performance possible from every person on our team.

I was happy with how I did individually and our relay team (Fujinaka ’10, Ruddy, McNamara and Madison) finished 4th. It was a great way to end our senior season and I’m happy with how things ended,” Fujinaka said.

said. “We had a good season on every level of the track and field program.”

—Julius Pak

Swimming With near perfect league records of 5-1, the JV swimming teams ended their season with wins in their final few games and overall records of 8-1 and 6-3 for the boys’ team and girls’ team, respectively.

The boys’ JV swimming team started the season with a six-game winning streak. The team was then hit by a loss against Loyola, 38-116, but recovered and won the last two meets of their season, against Oaks Christian, 108-46, and Alemany, 116-38.

The girls’ JV swimming team lost three games at the beginning of their season, but came back with a five-game winning streak.

Darlene Bible, the head of the swimming program, said that she felt that the teams did very well, calling the season “great results from hard work and dedication.”

—Austin Lee

Alex Leichenger/chronicle

take a breath: Richard Polo ’12 swims the butterfly in a meet against Alemany April 22.

Boys’ volleyball The JV boys’ volleyball team finished with an overall record of 8-7. The team started their season “with a couple of easy matches against Oaks Christian, St. Francis and Alemany, all matches won in two games,” Casey Fullman ’12 said.

“Our chemistry was really there at the [Royal High tournament] the weekend before Loyola and that helped us take Loyola to three in a match we should have won in two games,” Fullman said.

After the Loyola game, “our chemistry went down slightly and we lost a couple of tough matches,” Fullman said.

“Everyone got competitive in their positions and we started to play as individuals instead of as a team and prove ourselves to the coaches and try to get moved up [to varsity] for playoffs,” Schapiro said.

“It became an individual mentality and you can’t win volleyball games with six individuals on the court,” he said.

—Chelsey Taylor-Vaughn

Courtesy of Roger ON

here, you take it: Laurel Aberle ’13 hands the baton to Sam Ottavi-Perez ’12 in the JV 4x100 race at League Finals.

May 26, 2010

The

C hronicle

chronicle.hw.com

Sports C7

County honors girls’ basketball state champions

By Jonah Rosenbaum

COurtesy of the Advancement Office

Austin Block/chronicle

Makeover: Connor Dillman ’11 pitches at the renovated O’Malley Family Field in a league game against Crespi (top). A new scoreboard was built as a part of the project (bottom).

After claiming its first state championship in school history, the girls’ basketball team was honored by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

The team left from school at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 18, accompanied by Athletic Director Terry Barnum and President of Harvard-Westlake Thomas Hudnut.

They were honored with scrolls commending them on their season, sat in on an official meeting and were included on the official agenda.

The meeting began with the honoring of the former University of Southern California president, and the USC marching band performed.

When that was over, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky explained that the girls had won the state championship, and personally congratulated the whole team. The event was covered by several local television stations.

“It was a nice bookend to the season to be recognized by the county and Supervisor Yaroslavsky. The whole team was really honored to be able to participate in this event,” Nicole Hung ’10 said. “It was a great experience. We got to see how a political meeting works and it was really humbling to actually see ourselves on the agenda. Supervisor Yaroslavsky told us how proud we should be of everything we accomplished this season, and it reminded us how special this season was for all of us,” Hung said.

“It was a great experience. We all felt extremely honored to be there, and I think it was something that we will always remember,” Sydney Haydel ’10 said.

Renovated O’Malley Family Field opens for 4 home games Alum Ballard named top

By Jack Davis

The new O’Malley Family Field officially opened April 27 after months of renovation to the previously named Franklin Field were finished. All in all the project cost just over $1.1 million, with around $700,000 coming in a donation from the O’Malley family who had the field named in their honor.

Construction on Franklin Field began in November after the Harvard-Westlake Athletic Department determined the field was in serious need of an overhaul.

“Players were the driving force,” said Head of Athletics Audrius Barzdukas. “They kept telling us playing away games was preferable to playing at home, that’s a sign.”

Renovations began in November, starting with the field being graded and leveled. The infamous short left field fence was pushed back, the configuration of the field was changed. New sprinklers, plumbing, dugouts, bullpens, and a clubhouse were put in. New sunken-in dugouts, gave additional seats along the baselines had better sight lines.

Despite the start of the field being slightly delayed because of rainy weather and complaints from neighbors, the school was able to reach its goal of playing on O’Malley Family Field in the 2010 season. The building of a hitting facility behind the right field fence has not been completed.

Barzdukas and baseball coach Matt LaCour are thrilled with the results of the project.

“The school has built a fantastic facility and once the hitting facility is finished it will be second to none,” LaCour said.

“The field is still like that new car right now, you don’t want to put a dent into it, but that will wear off soon. It’s a great place to be. The playing surface has really started to solidify, makes me want to take groundballs again. We are lucky to have it,” LaCour said.

“O’Malley Family Field was an HarvardWestlake community project.

The players pushed us to do it. Families and alums came through with resources and support. VicePresident John Amato led us through the approval process. J.D. DeMatte built it. The result is a jewel of a field,” Barzdukas said.

The new field will serve more than just an increased aesthetic appeal, as having such a nice facility is expected to bring long term benefits to the baseball program.

“The hitting facility will allow us to practice in bad weather and with the surface being graded properly we will get back on the field a lot quicker after we get rain. We will be able to practice functionally all three of our upper school teams at the facility at one time and have enough room for every player to get the amount of reps that are necessary,” LaCour said.

“I love playing on this field and I see little kids coming out to our games and kind us just sitting there in awe,” outfielder Oliver Lowry ’10 said. “It is such a great place to play, I think it will bring kids to the program who otherwise might not have come.”

female athlete at Brown

By Austin Lee

time. In addition, she was named Bridget Ballard C o S I DA / E S P N ’06 was awarded The Magazine the Marjorie Brown First Team AcaSmith award for her demic All-District performances on in women’s soccer.

Brown University’s For her perforsoccer and swim mances in swimteams. ming, Ballard was Ballard, who was the co-recipient of from www.brownbears.com on Harvard-Westthe Martha Joulake’s cross country, Bridget Ballard ’06 kowsky Scholarsoccer, swim and Athlete Award for track and field teams, her performance is co-captain on Brown’s soc- in the pool and as a student. cer team, having played in evDarlene Bible, who coached ery minute of every game this Ballard during her swimming year and competes in freestyle career here, called her the best and backstroke on the swim athelete she has ever coached team. at Harvard-Westlake.

Along with the Marjorie “The only other girl I have Brown Smith award, which is coached as talented athleticalgiven to the most outstand- ly was Dara Torres,” she said. ing female varsity athlete in “She had an amazing blend Brown each year, Ballard also of size, speed, technical abilreceived All-Ivy recognition ity and intelligence,” said girls’ this year, the third in her ca- soccer coach Richard Simms. reer and made the Academic “She was a tremendous leader All-Ivy list for the second and just a great person.”

Sophomore skeet shooter wins 3rd place in state Junior Olympics

By Vivien Mao Connor Donahue ’12 recently received bronze in the California division of the Junior Olympics in Skeet Shooting. On April 24, Donahue took part in his first competition in skeet, where he shot 150 targets total.

After medaling, it was decided that in July, he would go to the Colorado Springs Olympic Training facility to participate in the Junior Olympic Championships. Donahue has been shooting since he was in middle school and often goes airsofting with his friends as practice. He has been a police

cadet in training for nearly a year and hopes to serve in the army when he finishes college.

Donahue was always interesting in shooting and has always found it enjoyable and different.

Training for a couple of months, Donahue has spent much time practicing in skeet shooting facilities and learning how to handle a pistol in shooting ranges.

As a police cadet, he receives training from his local station, and often patrols with police to gain experience in the field. Skeet shooting was not originally his main focus, as he started with it only last year.

Donahue started with sporting clays, and then switched to skeet shooting after two years.

His coach told him to try out for the Junior Olympics with skeet shooting because sporting clays was not an Olympic sport. If he medals in the championships in Colorado, Donahue will be eligible to try out for the 2012 Olympics in London.

“I was really excited when I medaled in my first ever skeet competition,” Donahue said.

“Getting to go to the national Junior Olympics is the beginning of a yearlong dream coming true.”

Courtesy of Connor DONAHUE

Sharpshooter: Connor Donahue ’12 placed third in the California Junior Olympics, his first skeet shooting competition.

May 26, 2010

athletes of the year

Sports C8 Each year The Chronicle chooses one male athlete and one female athlete as the most accomplished athletes of the school year. Basketball players Nicole Hung ’10 and Erik Swoope ’10 are this year’s picks.

In every big game this year, boys’ basketball could count on Swoope to carry the team. He averaged 35 points per game against Loyola and led the Wolverines to their first undefeated Mission League record in 13 years.

Statsheet: Points Per Game: 17.7 Rebounds Per Game: 9.0 Assists Per Game: 2.2 Steals Per Game: 2.1

“

she was a great teammate and did a great at job scoring. Even off the Court, she was someone to look up to.

Statsheet:

Erik Swoope

Points Per Game: 21.8 Field-Goal Percentage: 75% Rebounds Per Game: 8.9 Steals Per Game: 2.8 Source: MaxPreps

Q A

jack davis/chronicle

Q A Q A

After such a successful career filled with plenty of individual accolades and team success, what thoughts come to mind when you look back at your Harvard-Westlake career?

Overall the things that come back as memories are all the hilarious times I had with my teammates spending all the time getting to where our dreams and ambitions took us both on and off the court. All the moments that have helped turn me into the person I am now and the hunger I still have for beating some of the teams we lost to.

How do you think you grew as a player and a person during your Harvard-Westlake tenure?

Basically every aspect of my daily life was heavily impacted, meaning my mental focus to achieve small goals and well as big aspirations in games and in the classroom. My ability to be a leader and develop leadership qualities grew through my experiences, as well as learning how to help teammates. This year especially I developed an overall killer instinct and I especially thank the coaches and my big brother for that because they really stayed on me about sacrificing everything to push myself to play the best I can. Lastly, I saw just how much fun the game of basketball is even with all the pressures of college recruitment, academics, stress etc. At the end of the day basketball is always what I want to play and be involved in.

collegebound

Swoope will be playing basketball for the University of Miami. Unlike most of his classmates, he will be arriving in Miami a mere 17 days after he graduates to start training with his new team.

After debating between attending Stanford and Princeton, Hung chose Princeton. The Tigers went to the NCAA tournament this year and finished the season with a 26-3 overall record and went undefeated in the Ivy League.

Source: MaxPreps

Nicole Hung

Alex Edel/chronicle

Hung was so good at basketball that it was easy to forget that she played tennis, much less as the number one doubles player. However, Hung’s most significant achievements undoubtedly came on the court, where she was the go-to scorer for the state champions.

Q A

—Sydney Haydel ‘10 Hung’s teammate

What is the transition like from playing tennis full time to playing basketball?

Usually the first two weeks when I come back to basketball are pretty rough. The difference in conditioning from doubles tennis to basketball is huge. Usually I am able to work on basketball technique during tennis season but I don’t have time to do a lot of conditioning like running on the track so I am always pretty out of shape at the beginning of season.

What do you think is the most important thing that you have taken away from competing on two different varsity teams for four years?

I think that both sports complimented each other. Tennis is tougher mentally and that helped me in the basketball season but then basketball was about cooperating with other people and being more part of a team so I just think that I was able to take aspects of both sports and use them to my advantage.

seniors The

Harvard-Westlake School

Volume XIX

Chronicle

Issue 8

May 26, 2010

Six years have passed since the Class of 2010 bought the ticket and took the ride that is Harvard-Westlake.

Before passing through the gates for a final time, The Chronicle takes a look back at the moments that have shaped our lives. photo by candice navi

D2 Seniors

The

C hronicle

chronicle.hw.com

May 26, 2010

2 seniors to travel abroad for gap years

By Austin Block

Ladies who lunch: Chamber Singer seniors Erica Sunkin, Doni Hunter-Sallustio, Jilli Marine, Lauren Seo, Irene Manousiouthakis, Christine Lo and Kelly Rodriguez sing at the Senior Girls’ Event May 8 at the Skirball Center. The girls sang “All My Life” and “For Good.” Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, a Democrat from Nevada, speaks at the luncheon about her family history and her political career.

Photos By candice navi/chronicle

Mothers, daughters do lunch

By Erin Moy

At the Senior Girls’ event May 8 at the Skirball Center, a Nevada Congresswoman advised senior girls and their mothers to take part actively in the democratic process and take advantage of educational opportunities.

Upon arriving at the annual luncheon, senior girls and their mothers were greeted by a photographer at the entrance to a courtyard.

The photographer took the mothers and daughters’ pictures before they headed into the courtyard.

A floral theme was prevalent at the luncheon, with flowery decorations on the courtyard walls. Student jazz musicians Jordan Bryan ’11, Chris Freedman ’12, Brooke Levin ’12 and Noah Weinman ’12 performed in the courtyard while the girls and their mothers mingled outside before lunch.

Once inside, the floral theme continued at the tables, with floral centerpieces that matched the invitations the guests received the mail.

Along with the centerpieces, the tables were decorated with pink tablecloths and napkins.

After everyone was settled in at their tables, senior girls from the Bel Canto choir and the Chamber Singers sang while the first course was served.

Then Shelley Berkley, the aunt of Megan Fleming ’10, spoke about her journey to the House of Representatives.

Berkeley humorously reecounted to the crowd the story of her family’s journey from the East Coast to Nevada, which was punctuated with the audience’s laugher. Berkeley ended on a serious note.

“When one door closes, a window opens,” Berkley quoted her mother as saying, while she discussed getting involved in the democratic process.

The luncheon wound down with a dessert that included cupcakes, chocolate-covered strawberries and cookies.

As the pairs of mothers and daughters departed, they were invited to take the centerpieces from their tables, as well as pick up their pictures, that were placed in silver frames that were engraved with “HarvardWestlake 2010.”

Reitmans speak to senior boys, fathers at annual event

By Sammy Roth

Filmmaker Jason Reitman ’95 told senior boys and their fathers to “find your voice” at the annual Senior Boys’ Event.

Reitman spoke alongside his own father, director and producer Ivan Reitman.

The event, which included lunch and cost $60 per person to attend, took place Saturday, May 8 at the Los Angeles Athletic Club downtown.

The Reitmans were introduced by President Tom Hudnut.

Jason Reitman told his audience that when he graduated from high school, he planned to become a doctor.

But after struggling with pre-med work at Skidmore College, he realized that he might be going down the wrong career path.

He had a budding interest in making movies, however, and decided that the University of Southern California would be the better place to pursue that interest.

He traveled to USC and tried to arrange a meeting with

its admissions director, but all he could get was a few minutes with her as she walked to her car.

It turned out that was enough. By the time the conversation ended, Jason had talked his way into USC, he said.

“He put himself in charge of his own destiny,” Ivan said.

Ivan is known for directing and producing the first two “Ghostbusters” movies.

Jason was nominated in the Best Director category at this year’s Academy Awards for his film, “Up in the Air,” which revolved around a man who spends much of his time on airplanes.

The Senior Boys’ Event’s theme was, “Our Seniors Take Flight,” and the centerpiece at each table included miniature airplanes.

Ivan encouraged students to “take advantage of the really close relationship” between fathers and sons.

Jason recalled learning from his dad on a father-son retreat to a Nevada rodeo that Harvard-Westlake held while he was in 8th grade.

“It was a very important

moment for my dad and I, two Jews in Nevada on this rodeo trip, when my dad said to me, ‘Do you want to go to Reno?’” he recalled.

The two of them went to Reno and had a great time, which helped Reitman learn to “seize the moment,” he said.

The Reitmans also discussed collaborating for the first time on “Up in the Air,” which Ivan produced.

Ivan said he is used to working with first-time directors, and that it was difficult for him at first to let his son, already an established director, do his job.

“I had to learn to lay off,” he said.

Jason, for his part, had to remind himself that his dad was really a producer, and that he should not just “shrug him off.”

Jason noted that the two biggest influences on his life have been his father and Harvard-Westlake.

“This school will have a greater impact on you than you will ever imagine,” he said.

“I really hope that fifteen years from now you can feel what I feel.”

At least two students will take gap years next year.

The Brownstein Fellowship, a financial award given each year to one senior to support a gap year involving service and travel, was given to Gavin Cook ’10. Cook was notified he would receive the award a few weeks ago after being picked by the Brownstein Fellowship nathanson ’s/chronicle Selection Committee. Amy Schmidt ’10 will Gavin Cook ’10 spend nine months in Israel with the Year Course program.

Cook, who spent his junior year in Beijing with the School Year Abroad program, plans to spend three months volunteering and learning Hindi in India, and five or six months in China. He said he will spend his first two to three months in China volunteering at a center for disabled children in Shanghai, then spend two or three months teaching English to underprivileged students in Wujiang, a nathanson ’s/chronicle rural area outside Shanghai. In between the Amy Schmidt ’10 two trips, he will take a six week break in Los Angeles.

“I spent my junior year in China with School Year Abroad and I wanted to do more volunteer work than I could because it was junior year abroad. It wasn’t at all like a gap year,” Cook said. “I had to take the SATs in China and I had to do essays and homework and things, so while I got a pretty immersive cultural experience, I didn’t have time to do volunteer work and really just dive really deep into service, and that’s what I’ll do with the gap year.”

Cook submitted a three-part application for the Selection Committee, which included an essay, a budget and what the Harvard-Westlake website calls a “program and itinerary.”

“I wanted to go to India because I’ve always found it fascinating, and I thought ‘Why not?’” Cook said. “I have the opportunity to go to India, so I thought I would just go ahead and take it and there are lots of opportunities for service in India, so it just worked out. I love China and if I had a year to do whatever I wanted I thought I would go back to China and volunteer.”

Schmidt will spend three months in Jerusalem, three months in the Negev desert and three months in a small town in Israel.

She will take a specialty culinary program, take classes, see family and friends who live in Israel and do community service.

“I didn’t want to go straight to college and mostly my whole principle was that when I went to Israel when I was 16, I really fell in love with it and I decided that I wanted to go there and spend an extended period of time there and get to know the people, learn Hebrew better, see my friends, see my family,” Schmidt said. “Then when the idea of a gap year program came up and my mom and I were looking at a couple of different programs, and we found this one at the Gap Year Fair and we were really interested in the whole concept of them setting you up and just living there, going to classes, doing community service, and then the options of doing specialty tracks and stuff and so we just decided that we would do this one. I’m very happy about this.”

This summer, Cook will work to save additional money for the gap year.

“I have an internship at a law firm downtown — a paid internship — so that will be exciting, and I’m also teaching a Chinese class to some family friends and I will be doing Chinese tutoring as well,” Cook said.

Cook, who is fluent in Chinese, said he is excited to learn Hindi. He has already begun studying Hindi on the Internet.

Cook said he wants to do volunteer work because he feels a sense of responsibility and because it makes him happy.

“I feel the need to help others because it would make me feel happy,” Cook said. “It’s one of the very few things that I think a person can do that will really make them feel truly happy, and I feel also that I have been very fortunate to have gone to Harvard-Westlake, and I’ll be going to Princeton, and I feel like, ‘Why not give back?’ Giving back is awesome, and I also just feel the urge to really give back.”

Cook will go to India with the Himalayan Gap Year program and to China with the Project Abroad program. He will stay with a host family in Wujiang.

Seniors choose salutatorian

By Michelle Yousefzadeh

them laugh enough so they don’t care that I’m making them think,” Morgan said.

As an actor in many performing arts shows and a senior prefect, Morgan is not a newcomer to public

Chase Morgan ’10 will speak at commencement June 11 as salutatorian.

The salutatorian usually delivers a light-hearted and humorous speech.

Morgan was elected by the senior class after students nathanson ’s/chronicle were asked to vote for any Chase senior at a class meeting.

Morgan ’10 Morgan had secretly hoped to be chosen as salutatorian, he said. Although speaking. he has not begun to write his “My years of performing speech, he has thought about have made me jaded to being it. nervous before speaking,” he “Essentially, I want to make said.

May 26, 2010

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senior seminars Senior Transition Day last Thursday helped prepare seniors for life in college. It began with speeches from guest alumni, which were followed by two periods of senior seminars.

Other seminars: Sex in college Managing money in college Travel on a budget Dr. Moon’s six-pack of great books

Dorm room first aid Quick, easy meals to make in your dorm room Healthy, simple meals to make with a hotplate or a blender

What to see on your Fortune telling for next trip to Europe fun and profit

Boys learn about sex

By Jonah Rosenbaum

“Check your underwear, change the socks and take a good look in the mirror. Say to yourself, ‘If I get naked tonight, will I be OK with how I look?” Athletic Director Terry Barnum told to a group of senior boys attending the “Sex in College” seminar for boys.

Barnum, along with Director of Student Affairs Jordan Church and Dean Coordinator Ryan Wilson, gave advice regarding sex and sexual situations in colleges. Among the topics covered were hygiene, dealing with roommates learning that a friend is gay, safe sex and respectful approaches to girls and sexuality. Wilson advised that students really get to know a girl before sex, and Church stressed the importance of frequent showering and grooming. All three seminar leaders reiterated that “guys can be hoes too.”

chloe lister/chronicle

philosophy: Simona Ghirlanda teaches seniors about the 20th century movement.

Language teacher explains existentialism

By Allegra Tepper

“Explaining it in 40 minutes is preposterous,” French teacher Simona Ghirlanda told the seniors signed up for the seminar, “Hell is Other People: An Introduction to Existentialism.”

Merriam-Webster defines it as “a chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad.”

Ghirlanda took a more personal approach to defining it. “[Studying existentialism] teaches

you to be a more decent person,” she said. “You become aware of the fact that we are hell for someone else just by looking at them and judging them.”

Ghirlanda said that after a threatening note was left in a gay student’s backpack almost two weeks ago, she knew teaching this seminar was meant to be.

“To the existentialists, someone who leaves an anonymous note might as well be invisible,” Ghirlanda said. “You are assuming a position of nonexistence.”

Ghirlanda explained that while the concept might seem like an extremely intellectual belonging to the past, it’s less remote than we think and is actually around us every day.

“If I helped and made just one person think about being less judgmental today, then I’ve done my part,” she said.

Classmates honor Kutler by studying Japanese director

By Sammy Roth

To honor their former classmate Brendan Kutler, six Directed Studies in the Cinema students presented “The Films of Akira Kurosawa” as a seminar on Senior Transition Day. Kutler had planned to do his directed studies end-of-year project on Kurosawa, an acclaimed Japanese director. After Kutler died in his sleep in December, all but one of the Directed Studies in the Cinema students decided to drop their own projects and work on Kutler’s.

Jesse Orrall ’10 said the decision to switch from his own project to Kurosawa was not difficult.

“For me it was a really easy decision because Brendan was so excited about Kurosawa,” Orrall said.

Forty-nine students signed up for the seminar. Kutler’s parents, Jon and Sara Kutler, were also in attendance.

It was the only seminar which was not about transitioning to college and was also the only one to last two periods instead of one.

“It was a unique event,” Cinema Studies teacher Ted Walch said. “It seemed the right time and the right place to honor Brendan in this way.”

Seniors Jacob Gindi, Reid Lidow, Kyle Martin-Patterson, Jesse Orrall, Austin Park and Graham Parkes made presen-

tations about Kurosawa’s films. Anthony Bundak ’10 intended to make a presentation, but got sick the night before and was unable to participate, Walch said.

Walch was pleased with how the seminar went.

“Without any exaggeration I can say that the seminar was one of the highlights of my teaching career,” Walch said. “The clarity, composure and compactness with which each student made his presentation spoke to the thoroughness of their preparation.”

Orrall said he was “a little freaked out” during rehearsal about how the presentation would go, but that everything worked out perfectly in the end.

“I was thrilled with how everyone did,” Orrall said. “They had great things to say and showed awesome clips.”

Many clips had no dialogue, which was part of Kurosawa’s style.

“Kurosawa has a really good way of conveying emotion via action, and not dialogue,” Gindi said while explaining the film, “Ran,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”

“I know that Brendan was very interested in Japanese culture,” Orrall said. “I always assumed that it was natural that he would be interested in Kurosawa.”

During the seminar, the students and Walch wore matching shirts reading “AK BK,” for Kurosawa and Kutler.

chloe lister/chronicle

threading: Justin Chen ’10 focuses on his Mending and Sewing project during the senior seminar.

Seniors learn to sew

By Alex Edel

After walking out of the senior seminar on “Mending and Sewing, students had the tools and materials to mend a seam and sew on a button. Costume Designer Lisa Peters had two pieces of cloth, a box that held 200 different safety pins and a box containing colors of thread, scissors, needles small buttons and various colors of thread for each student.

Peters started the seminar with the basics, putting thread through needles. She taught the attendees to do a simple stitch that would mend any ripped seam in a very short amount of time. The seminar’s aim was to teach students to be able to manage clothing disasters by themselves.

“When I went home that night I sewed together a hole in my sweatpants and I sewed a button on one of my sweaters,” Alex Glancy ’10 said. “I felt so productive fixing my own clothes.”

Peters also gave each person a packet with information on how to wash clothing and a table to help organize a cleaning schedule for dorms and bathrooms.

D4 Seniors

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coming attractions

The 281 graduating seniors will be leaving our fair school to attend over 80 colleges across the nation in 28 different states.

Alex Abergel Colgate

Julia Cambre Stanford

Megan Fleming NYU (Tisch)

William Hinson Vanderbilt

Sebastian Li Wash U., St. Louis

Sam Adams Harvard

Katherine Casey Cornell

Charles Fogarty Bowdoin

AJ Hong Wash U., St. Louis (Olin)

Reid Lidow USC

Hana Al-Henaid Stanford

Christina Cavanaugh Lehigh

David Fox Michigan

Amanda Horowitz UC San Diego

Jackson Liguori Yale

Todd Albert U. Penn

Aaron Chan USC

Elana Fruchtman Vassar

Spencer Horstman Columbia

Edwin Lim Northwestern

Christie Angelich USC

Jennifer Chan Williams

Daniel Fujinaka Brown

Jonathan Hsu Carnegie Mellon

Richard Liu U. Penn

Enrique Aquino USC (Annenberg)

Justin Chen Northwestern

Rutna Gadh Cornell

Simon Hunegs Brown

Christine Lo NYU (Stern)

Katherine Arenella Scripps

Monica Chen Columbia

Alexandra Geller Tufts

Nicole Hung Princeton

Kristen London Cornell (Engineering)

Michael Attanasio MIT

Nick Chuba USC (Thornton)

Justin Genter Emory

Donilyn Hunter-Sallustio U. Washington

Ruben Lopez USC

Jacob Axelrad Michigan

Ellina Chulpaeff UC Berkeley

Emma Gilhuly Wesleyan

Jacquelyn Jasuta Hamilton

Billie Lourd Wesleyan

Thalia Bajakian USC (Roski)

Faith Chung Bryn Mawr

Jacob Gindi Brown

Claresta Joe-Wong Princeton

Elijah Lowenstein Wash U., St. Louis

Rohun Bansal U. Penn (Engineering)

Heidi Chung Boston University

Sylvia Gintowt-Gindick Michigan

Claire Kao Columbia (Engineering)

Oliver Lowry Wash U., St. Louis

Christopher Barnum Stanford

Ian Cinnamon MIT

James Gipson Harvard

Michael Karsh Brown

Daniel Lundberg Carnegie Mellon

Katherine Barrall Columbia (Engineering)

Sylvie Cohen Carleton

Joseph Girton Columbia

Austin Kelly Michigan

Jason Maccabee U. Penn

Catherine Barsky Dartmouth

Greg Comanor Wash U., St. Louis

Spencer Gisser Harvard

Christopher Kenney Naval Academy

Robert Mack USC

Berni Barta U. Penn

Gavin Cook Princeton (Deferring)

Alexandra Glancy Northwestern

Ester Khachatryan Deferring

Mark Mackey Wash U., St. Louis (Olin)

Matthew Bedford UCLA

Joan Corea Manhattanville College

Hilary Godinez UC Davis

Ian Kieffer USC

Russell Madison Wesleyan

Gina Benedicto Michigan

Carleigh Coyne Notre Dame

Andrew Goldberg Michigan

Jamie Kim Stanford

Ilica Mahajan MIT

Marisa Berger Johns Hopkins

Caitlyn Croft Colgate

Gina Goldberg Hamilton

Jeff Kim USC

Nicholas Mancall-Bitel U. Penn

Dayna Berkowitz USC

Romina Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Alessandro Sarah Lawrence

Bridget Golob Dartmouth

Robert Kim Michigan

Irene Manousiouthakis U. Penn (Engineering)

Lauren Berliner Michigan

Zaakirah Daniels Cornell

Spencer Gordon Brown

Ava Kofman Yale

Henry Mantel Brandeis

Andrew Berman U. Penn

Jeffrey Dastin Yale

Caroline Groth Stanford

Spencer Koo Princeton

Alexandria Mao NYU

Jay Bhatia NYU

Jack Davis Duke

Jake Gutman U. Penn

Chloe Korban UCLA

Natalie Margolin Kenyon

Eve Bilger U. Penn

Paige Dewey USC (Deferring)

Jenna Hamburger Boston University

Matthew Krisiloff U Chicago

Jillian Marine Michigan

John Billingsley Case Western

Jared Drooks Wisconsin

Jeffrey Handler Wash U., St. Louis

Victor Kroh U Miami

Kyle Martin-Patterson Wash U., St. Louis (Olin)

Haley Boysen USC

Max Druz Columbia

Caroline Hartig Duke

Nicola Kronstadt Cornell

Adam Braun Emory

Alexandra Edel Middlebury

Molly Hartwick Notre Dame

Jack Kuhlenschmidt Vanderbilt

Riley Mate Savannah College of Art & Design

Aidan Brewster Michigan

Joseph Edwards Cornell

Sydney Haydel Hawaii

Ethan Kurtzman Michigan

Benjamin Brown NYU

Azuka Ehi Boston College

Jack Healy USC

Jessica Lange NYU

Nathaniel Bulluck Middlebury

Sam Epstein USC

Isabelle Heller U Texas, Austin

Drew Lash Johns Hopkins

Anthony Bundak Declined to State

Anna Etra Barnard

William Hellwarth USC (Viterbi)

Jake Lasker U. Penn (Wharton)

Christine Byun Columbia

Natasha Ettensberger Boston College

Brian Hentschel Pomona

Jacqueline Lee Yale

Joseph Cadiff Amherst

Jacqueline Feiler Brown

Patrick Hentschel Fordham

Maarten Lefor Claremont McKenna

Malcolm Caldwell-Meeks Georgetown

Jorie Feldman Reed

Ashley Herrarte USC (Marshall)

Gabriela Leslie Stanford

Matthew Calvert Vanderbilt

Jacob Fernandez Earlham

Megan Hilliard Hampshire

Eva Levy Columbia

Jillian McAndrews Boston College Chelsea McMahon Vanderbilt James McNamara Brown Barrett Meister Hamilton Leah Merkle USC Allison Merz Amherst Jesse Mirman Whitman College Charles Mischer NYU

May 26, 2010

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Joseph Rafidi MIT

Ryder Moody Columbia (Engineering)

Amanda Ragde American

Schuyler Moore Harvard

Aarti Rao Swarthmore

Max Moray Michigan

Michael Raynis Harvard

Alexandra Morency Emerson

Courtney Reamer U. Penn

Chase Morgan NYU (Gallatin)

Robert Reeves U. Washington

Katherine Morrissey Boston College

Nicole Resnikoff U. Penn

Erin Moy Wellesley

Rexford Richardson U. Texas, Austin

Olivia Nathanson Cornell

Ayrten Rodriguez Northeastern

Niko Natsis Michigan

Grant Roper U. Penn

Candice Navi USC

Jonah Rosenbaum Michigan

Nicole Nesbit UC Santa Barbara

Marissa Rosenthal Bowdoin

Kathryn Neubauer Michigan

April Rosner Michigan

Patrick Newman Wesleyan

Samuel Roth Columbia

Neha Nimmagadda Northwestern

Adam Rubin Boston University

Megan Norton UCLA

Alexandra Sacks Scripps

Michelle Nosratian UCLA

Jake Schine USC (Marshall)

Susan Nussbaum U. Penn

Amy Schmidt USC (Deferring)

Jonathan Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Hara Vanderbilt

Timothy Schorr Wesleyan

Conor Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Toole Bowdoin

Peter Schwartz Cornell

Daniel Ohriner USC

Talia Seehoff Wash U., St. Louis

Cindy Ok Yale

Lauren Seo Wesleyan

Nicholas Okano Yale

Bruno Seros-Ulloa Cornell

Jesse Orrall UCLA

Andrew Shanfeld Michigan

Adedoyin Oyekan Columbia

Matthew Share UC Santa Barbara

Jennifer Padilla Declined to State

Charlotte Shih Boston College

Bruno Paredes UC Davis

Alex Silverman U. Penn

Austin Park Vassar

Max Simchowitz Princeton

Catherine Park NYU (Gallatin)

Rachelle Song USC (Roski)

Yujin Park Yale

Jakob Staahl UC Santa Barbara

Graham Parkes NYU (Tisch)

Casper Stockwell UC San Diego

Frances Perez Declined to State

AJ Sugarman Stanford

Elijah Petzold Brown

Spencer Suk Vanderbilt

Ryan Plueger Pepperdine

Erica Sunkin USC

Alexander Popof Stanford

Erik Swoope U Miami

USC 29 Michigan 18

U. Penn 17

NYU 12 Columbia 11 Wash. U, St. Louis 11

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Eli Moghavem USC

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Jennifer Porter U Chicago

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Adam Moelis U. Penn (Wharton)

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Krystal Sze Cornell

Christopher Vanderchans Wash U., St. Louis

Susanna Wolk Harvard

Myles Teasley Davidson

Alexandra Venegas Carnegie Mellon

Pauline Woo NYU

Allegra Tepper USC (Annenberg)

Andrew Wang Harvard

Danielle Wright Syracuse

Brett Thompson University of Virginia

Brandon Wang UC Irvine

Caitlin Yagher USC (Marshall)

Andrew Tobias Williams

Gracie Warwick USC

Tiffany Yang UC Irvine

Bryce Tobias Declined to State

Harper Wayne U Maryland (Journalism)

Claudine Yee Brown

Shira Toister Wash U., St. Louis

Emma Weinman Bard

Michelle Yousefzadeh USC

Jordan Tolson U Miami

Robert Weitz Michigan

Katrina Zandberg Dartmouth

Bryan Trader Duke

Jeffrey Wibawa Rice (Engineering)

Andrew Zaragoza Yale

Nick Treuer Wesleyan

Shantele Wicks USC (Marshall)

Janine Zelden Chapman

Tennyson Turner Arizona State (Herberger)

Austin Wilson Stanford

Amy Zhang NYU

Thomas Ufland UC San Diego

Jacob Witten Amherst

Max Zipperman Claremont McKenna

Olivia Van Iderstine Vanderbilt

Ernest Wolfe Williams

Brendan Zwaneveld UCLA

D6 Seniors

May 26, 2010 The

rides of our lives

Ch

It was sometimes scary, sometimes stressful, always exciting.

The six years the Class of 2010 spent together at Harvard-Westlake made for a wild ride.

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he admissions ticket had come in the mail five months before in the form of a big red folder with confetti. After what seemed like an eternity of excited sleepless nights of what life will be like on the other side of elementary school, we spent a week making friends at Fast Start and we were off. At first the Middle School was terrifying. Never knowing what we would find around the corner, our puny seventh grade bodies trembled with a mixture of excitement and fear in a world ruled by intimidating teachers and confident freshmen. But luckily we could explore this strange and scary new world together. We would eat lunch with Jake Schine, who purchased 100 lunch cards in one year and subsequently had his photo put up in the cafeteria in honor of his accomplishment. That’s not to say we all got out of our first year unscathed, though—when Jay Bhatia fell off a rock-climbing wall and broke his leg

W during retreat, we were reminded that we were playing in the big leagues now, and we didn’t have a safety net anymore to catch us when we fell. When Robert Kim electrocuted himself during a lab, we learned that we would have to suffer for our academics. But we soon found our footing among the school community: after the all-seventh grader dodgeball team “The Monstars” won the school wide tournament, we all learned that maybe HarvardWestlake wasn’t so big and scary after all.

e had proven ourselves in the scary s e v e n t h grade and were now confident Wolverines. We actually knew where places were on campus. Some of us could even give tours of the Middle School. Classes weren’t too bad anymore. We had built friendships, forged in the collective journey through the unknown the year before. It was time to kick back and relax, safe in the knowledge that our grades wouldn’t get reported to college. We all enjoyed the video of Niraali Pandiri shaking it to the Black Eyed Peas for her Dance Production audition. We fashioned elaborate protective containers for eggs and then unintentionally attempted to make omelettes on the ground below after their eventual failures. We cheered as burly football player Tucker Best got into a dumpling-eating contest with underdog Cindy Ok. We cringed when he puked all over the grotto after coming up short

10

in the dea ishm wou com in t bias bec par scho

tilt-a-whirl

bumper cars

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n a new campus with newfound freedom and responsibility, it was a bit of a bumpy ride. Our permits soon turned into licenses, which oftentimes quickly turned into our first accidents. The heretofore mysterious world of high school parties became open to us. Our calves became strong as we traversed the vertical upper school campus daily. Our minds became strong as we slowly acclimated to a quantum leap in workload. An elite cadre dubbed themselves the Dreamboyz and just like that 18 guys ascended to the class aristocracy.

We stood in awe of Meg Norton as she and the rest of the volleyball team obliterated the competition on the way to a state title. We had to arrive at school excruciatingly early to secure a spot on Coldwater, since sophomores aren’t permitted to park on campus. The first clouds of the college process storm gathered as we started to think about SATs, APs, GPAs and threeyear plans. Sadly, though, we didn’t all make it out of sophomore year. After two midterms were stolen, we lost several of our own forever. No one said it wouldn’t be a bumpy ride.

I

t was all a blur. We came out of some reason, junior year will alw though we were constantly speed exams, essays and questionnaires our friends. We traveled through Am and a series of novels. The words of guided us to confront slavery. The J Great Gatsby” came to life in our cla Moments like when Casper Stockwell proclaimed that “no woman could am kept us going through the long, dark us got our first tastes of college life deafening crescendo as we tore the w presents. Finally, we were done. The in sight. And all we could do while wa snicker at those underclassmen who w

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ferris wheel

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8

duel. And we groaned when the ans closed the sitting area for a week as punment. We had cool freshmen friends and uld engage in the time-honored tradition of mplaining about the class below us. Love was the air: Olivia Van Iderstine and Bryce Tos’s six-hour relationship on Valentine’s Day ame all the buzz. Life was good, for the most rt. But we were ready to take over middle ool supremacy as ninth graders.

11

it feeling more than a bit nauseous. But for ways hold a special place in our hearts. Even ding through an endless cycle of scantrons, s, we still managed to find time to waste with merican history through a history textbook Toni Morrison and Abraham Lincoln both Jazz Age that Fitzgerald presented in “The assmates’ jazz concerts throughout the year. l brought his pet pig, Bob, to semiformal and mount to the bond that me and my pig share” k nights spent hunched over desks. Most of on spring break trips. The year came to a wrapping off of too many APs like Christmas hard part was over, we knew. The end was alking away from our time in 11th grade was were boarding the ride right behind us.

T

9

he view from the top was beautiful.

No longer did we have to deal with older kids because, well, we were the oldest kids. No longer did we get intimidated; we did the intimidating now. Sure, our locker area was all but eliminated due to the construction of the new campus (which to this day scares us) and the academics were kicked up a notch. We were in high school, with a couple dozen new members in our ranks. We were outgrowing our environment, though, as shown by the overcrowded buses that led us to force the seventh graders to sit three to a seat before getting scolded by

the administration for our bullying. From the zenith of the Ferris wheel we could see the strange new world that is the Upper School.

Our athletes practiced there from time to time, though we had to leave early to catch the late bus back to North Faring. Our freshman football team went unscored upon well into the second half of its season before tragically falling at Homecoming. We urgently vied to get one of the Pinkberry desserts that Catie Yagher brought for her birthday. We awkwardly asked our dates, pretended to know how to order corsages and strapped on our dancing shoes for our first-ever semiformal.

12 T

his was it. Senior year was what we had been waiting for, when everything was supposed to come together. The first stretch was an uphill battle: grades still mattered, college applications were stacking up in front of us and all of a sudden we felt the crushing prospect of figuring out the next step in our journey the higher and higher we climbed. We wrote our application essays, took any final standardized tests, tried to keep our grades up we started to socialize with more urgency.

Together we mourned the loss of one of our brightest stars after Brendan Kutler died suddenly in his sleep during winter break. It seemed like every time we went to a sporting event we would end up rushing the field—after the varsity football team’s Homecoming game and the basketball team’s evisceration of Loyola to name two. And as soon as we walked out of our final midterm, we knew we had reached the top and the climb was over. Ahead of us lay the exhilarating prospect of college, behind us all the good times we had shared, and around us were the amaz-

roller coaster ing people with whom we had the pleasure of climbing. All that was left was the glorious descent. Some of our grades dropped precipitously, but it’s OK—any time spent not studying meant we were spending time with each other while we still had a chance.

Our time spent at Harvard-Westlake all came to the glorious spring climaxes of Coachella and Prom, where most any persisting social boundaries fell in favor of a shared good time. We laughed together as Chase Morgan and Megan Hilliard strolled into Prom donning a dress and a tuxedo, respectively.

Sometimes we took the merry-making too far, like when a prank that involved hiding the backpacks of juniors and sophomores led to the breaking of a laptop and camera. But then, just as we were getting used to being seniors, we abruptly found ourselves at the end of the year. Most of us have very few classes now that APs are done; graduation and the great unknown looms ahead. Until then, though, we’ll just adjust our senior rings and regret the fact that we can’t get back in line for one more ride.

illustrations by Emma Weinman

D8 Seniors

My senior year checklist

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Remember the Edel people, not story Alex

I

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May 26, 2010 Anna

Etra

wanted my senior column to be epic. I wanted to have the one senior rom. The most stereotypical American high school experience.

When I told a friend about my prom I said it was OK, but that I column where people talked about it for years after. I tried. I wrote 600 was kind of glad that it was over. He responded by saying “Well words comparing my six years at Harvard-Westlake to the corresponding at least you can check off one more thing on the list of things six seasons of “Lost,” but ultimately let Sammy cover that one. I picked you have ’till you graduate! You are almost done.” I was a little taken up my 10th grade Choices and Challenges letter a few weeks early to get some aback by this response, mostly because I realized that it is completely inspiration from my ambitious sophomore self. I talked about the fact that even true. Everything in the last year has been hurried and rushed through though I joined multiple committees and councils senior year, the yearbook in order to reach the elusive finish line of graduation. I have not really didn’t accurately reflect how active I was in the Harvard-Westlake community. I cared about the actual events but more just finishing them in order to be took a stroll down memory lane recounting the significant moments of my young closer to June 11.

Harvard-Westlake career.

Everything that I have done in senior year Luckily, I will always have those columns for me. But for has just been another box ticked in the list of this, I have something else in mind, a things that a typical American high school senior combination of them. completes. I had fun at Prom but was almost When I come to think about it, relieved when it was over. My last high school there are surprisingly few things I swim meet was fun but I felt no significance when regret about my Harvard-Westlake it was over. Every time I finished another one of experience. I mostly regret not trying the senior “rites of passages” I felt a significant enough new things and utilizing the lack of climax. I realized that I have been just facilities that were available to us. going through the motions of finishing up my On the other hand, there is so high school career. much I won’t regret. I don’t regret I wish that instead of rushing through and the extra classes I took in 11th grade, I just waiting for lockdown to end, that I would don’t regret my 10 minutes of seventh have taken more time and slowed down to grade Chorus and I don’t regret my have fun in my last school sponsored dance.

As I watched some of the best swimmers in three years on the Chronicle, Opinion California compete at CIF, it felt no different section represent! from any other meet. When my dad came up I cannot write my senior column to me at the end and said “How does it feel without saying that I wore a lot of neon Erin M to have competed in your last high school oy, Ale clothes at the Middle School, and I was x Edel swim meet?” I realized I didn’t know, and to and An inept at opening my locker in eighth na Etr be honest it did not feel any different. a (from grade.

Shoutout to the Charmin Ultra le f t).

Instead of experiencing everything jingle and the scratch and sniff versions for the last time, I have really just been of Shakespeare. I only went to one waiting for these events to be over. I have semiformal, and enjoyed the various day come to this conclusion a bit late in the trips to the beach, Universal Studios, Magic year as we now have just three weeks Mountain and Disneyland. until graduation. In a way it does not Don’t worry, there are no spoilers ahead. feel like it is coming to an end, because I But there is a major lesson I learned from have treated the entire last year of high the finale of “Lost.” Not only the fact that school like a check list, never pausing to staying up extremely late is not beneficial, look back and appreciate all the friends but although there was so much mystery that I have made or to enjoy the senior in the show, the plot line was confusing and specific events that are scattered convoluted, and relatively few people remained throughout the year. loyal to the show. “Lost,” like Harvard-Westlake, I know that this school has was about the people. The people I met here, and prepared me for college and of course, the memories I made at Harvard-Westlake will it has its pros and cons, but it has be unparallel to those formed when I travel to served me well. I regret that I have resisted many of the community New York on Aug. 22. aspects of this school, but vow I won’t be able to replicate being an honorary that in the last three weeks I will swim team member. My nightly sleepovers with make an effort to take part in my roommate will not compare to my high school these events. I am going to senior school night sleepovers. But, on that airplane ride retreat and Grad Night. to school, I won’t be wearing my light blue Lacoste Instead of just waiting for these shirt, fold-over maroon Hard Tail skirt and black events to be over so that I can be Juicy flip-flops as I did when I boarded flight 1992 to closer to graduation and leaving 700 North Faring Road. high school behind, I am going In six years, I will have attended five graduations, to have fun with my friends taken nine AP tests, learned all 280 of my classmates’ and enjoy the last few minutes names (and the ones who left) had 40 teachers, took of senior year. For all the 46 classes, played four sports seasons, experimented underclassmen who can’t wait with eight electives, attended 24 Chronicle layouts, to be done with high school, filled out 15 requests for excused absences at the Upper take your time through senior School, missed 216 periods 10th through 12th grade and year; it will go by faster than sat through one fake detention. And then, I graduated. you know!

Sleepless in North Hollywood

Erin

Moy I

t’s the old story. Girl meets school. Girl and school hit it off and (cue video montage) they have a happy few years together.

Then (cue soundtrack) things hit a rough patch and sleepless nights, crying and sweatpants ensue. Girl and school eventually make up through a series of emotional events and, on a beautiful June morning filled with friends and family, the camera fades out and the credits start.

The title would be “Sleepless in North Hollywood,” a romantic comedy filled with highs and lows, laughter and tears. It would be an instant Hollywood classic.

For the past six years, HarvardWestlake has taken a leading role in my life. From the moment I got my confetti-filled acceptance letter, I knew that Harvard-Westlake was “the one.” The anticipation that led up to the first day was memorable.

The anxiety attached to the perfect outfit and acceptable conversation topics to bring up at a table of new acquaintances all melted away as I gradually learned that HarvardWestlake accepted me for who I was. The middle school campus was

beautiful and welcoming, and it seemed as though the idyllic, sunsoaked periods on the Fire Road would never end. It was early days yet.

Inevitably, Harvard-Westlake and I became more serious. Time had taken its toll on both of us and, as a result, we both expected more from each other. Things were rocky as we moved to the upper school campus and multiple distractions came in the form of sports, extra-curricular activities and the College Board. Darkness began to loom over my happy relationship with Harvard-Westlake.

Ben and Jerry’s provided a shoulder to lean on when Harvard-Westlake brought me down, helping me through the aforementioned sleepless nights, crying and sweatpants in ways that Harvard-Westlake never could. It was in the beginning of senior year when I thought I would be more than happy to sever all ties and move on that something changed.

There are always those moments in romantic comedies when the main character makes a pivotal decision, when they break out into a jog and then into a sprint as they dodge cars on a crowded city street, intent to

reach whatever goal they have set.

The soundtrack is blaring in the background, faces blur in the crowd, but all the audience can feel is panic.

They are fearful that the hero or heroine is not going to make it, that they are going to miss their moment and the past hour of film they have just sat through was for nothing. The tension mounts as they all anxiously await the outcome.

The past six years have been the build-up to that moment and, to be honest, we were all fearful that we weren’t going to make it to college and would miss our moment on the graduation stage. We can hear the soundtrack getting louder in the background and feel ourselves break into sprints, but mostly we are focused on the panic of facing the unknown of the next four years. Panic because, despite the confidence we made in our choices, we may not be entirely ready to welcome another school into our lives.

This year was the end of a long, drama filled relationship. HarvardWestlake and I will not share a tearful, emotionally charged renewal of vows on June 11 but will instead

say our goodbyes. We have invested a lot in each other-countless hours and numerous days-but in the long run, we both know that we have simply out grown each other.

Just like high school, romantic comedies have a prepared formula with token characters, swanky wardrobes and expected outcomes. No one is ever surprised with the ending; we more or less get what we came in expecting, either a diploma or a couple that lives happily ever after.

When the credits start to roll in a romantic comedy, the audience rarely hesitates to leave their seats. Much like I expect we will be at graduation, few of us will have false starts or delayed exits off the stage.

We know that we are finished.

June 11 is the last scene in “Sleepless in North Hollywood” where nothing is left but smiles, soft lighting and a mixture of nostalgia and excitement as an uplifting song with a deeper message plays as the camera pans out on a setting sun.

We are ready to move on and, though we are sad to see it go, we know that we’ll always have North Faring.

May 26, 2010

Passion vs.

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recently read a column by David Brooks entitled he end of any “What It Takes,” that argued that Supreme school year Court nominee Elena Kagan is the epitome of a brings finals personality type, commonly found at elite colleges, and APs, the that is “prudential rather than poetic.” promise of sleeping “These were bright students who had been formed in and sunbathing at by the meritocratic system...They had great grades, the beach every day. perfect teacher recommendations, broad extracurricular It is marked also by interests, admirable self-confidence and winning yearbooks and along personalities,” the article read. with them the time “If they had any flaw, it was that they often had a to recall memories to professional and strategic attitude toward life. They scribble in the inside were not intellectual risk-takers. They regarded covers and inserts. professors as bosses to be pleased rather than authorities Entries usually to be challenged.” feature a standard These words immediately struck a chord. I can’t message like, “I’m so help but think how relevant Brooks’ observation is to glad we were friends graduating seniors across the country. After all, if there this year and survived was one lesson we took away from the college process, (insert teacher’s isn’t it precisely the one on “what it takes”? name here)’s class,” How many of our successes in high school were or something more the result of pragmatic calculations, and how many intimate, yet equally were the (perhaps) not fully intended byproducts of generic. true intellectualism, of riskier, but purer impulses? In For notes to those my case, far too many. A few instances that come to we know, we seem to mind: strategically designating a showy but playable always throw in some all-purpose audition/competition piece over riskier memories to incite pieces that I preferred; as a junior, wrestling with the reminiscent laughs. perfect ratio of my time commitments to schoolwork, However, in looking to Chronicle, and to music (i.e., how much time could through my Vox Populi I afford to devote to The Chronicle while maintaining Ellina Chulpaeff, Jamie from the past six years, a GPA that would keep me in the running for a spot at Kim, Nicki Resnikoff, I am baffled by half the College A, B, or C of my choice?).

Michelle Yousefzadeh so-called “memories” Once upon a time, I told a school that five words that (clockwise from top) written across the best describe me are “earnest, conscientious, motivated, pages in vibrantly self-aware, and facetious.” And it worked — surprise! — colored sharpies. We, said college ended up accepting me. In retrospect, any as teenagers, have honest self-designation, based on my actions throughout so many inside jokes high school, would lead me to one word: careful. Or with our friends that strategic. That neither word was seen anywhere in that we have a tendency application should lead to what rather disappointing to recall them much conclusion? faster than the true We live in a world where it often takes being strategic memories themselves. to succeed. Aversion to risk has certainly served Kagan These inside jokes well; despite Brooks’ objections, one would think that are not real memories, but they are what being “prudential, deliberate, and cautious,” would take her very far as a we document and remember — at least justice on the Court. for now.

And yet, it’s unsettling to think that if I continue on this path, one It’s not just in yearbooks that we do I’ve treaded for the past six years, I will never be able to consider myself this; Facebook even has a section for an intellectual risk-taker, driven by passion rather than purpose. What’s “favorite quotes,” jokes are in old journals worse is that I won’t change overnight. and diaries and we at the Chronicle even As we leave Harvard-Westlake and start new chapters in our lives, had our own website MLIC with trivial, I present this challenge to myself and to my classmates. Let’s strive hilarious, “So Chronicle” things from to be more than hollow micromanaging machines. Let’s try be more layout. responsible citizens, not by attending the next beach cleanup, but by The problem is, when we look back being more conscious and self-aware. Let’s take the time to introspect, at these yearbooks in a few years, the to determine our own set of deeply held values. And as we’re dashing off cryptic phrases and absurd quotes won’t towards our next immediate goal, let’s remember those values. We don’t mean much to us. Open your 7th grade need to give up our goals, as long as we have the capacity to look beyond yearbook and go to that note from your them.

Michelle

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Bursting with green eagerness

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once thought that it was cool to wear a lime green boho skirt, an equally limey tank top, gold Rocketdog shoes and plastic earrings. This was my outfit for my first day of Harvard-Westlake.

In my 7th grade mindset’s defense, I was coming from a world of navy and white uniforms and K-Swiss sneakers. The thought of being able to wear anything of any color and any style was overwhelming.

The possibilities were endless.

Likewise, my options for classes, clubs, activities, people to meet and food were nearly endless and as my parents were pretty trusting of my judgment, I actually had complete freedom to do whatever I wanted. I was dropped off in the AD building and I headed to first period English with Steve Chae, halo of neon green and all.

Looking back on all my choices, I’ve realized how many times I’ve messed up. Like my outfit choice for the first day, I made decisions that weren’t always the best.

They usually involved choosing a class that was too fast paced or committing to too many activities.

Still, it was through these mistakes that I was able to learn to recover.

Our school provided the ideal learning environment as there was always a way to get back to the road of success. Think about it,

teacher’s offices are fundamentally designed to accommodate students. Their desks always have room for another chair and their schedules are designed with open periods meant for meetings with students. My transition from North Faring road to Coldwater Canyon has been full of potholes and detours but there has always been a teacher to talk to or another chance to learn from my mistakes.

Our school provided the perfect environment to grow as a student.

Almost every teacher here is intensely passionate about what they’re teaching. With abundant resources, we have been able to pursue any whim or project. I was able to take any class that sounded interesting to me and although my one semester of drama steered me clear of any ambition of performing, I still learned so much.

I may not have been an H-W poster child, as I didn’t take all AP’s and I didn’t get straight A’s, but I do feel like the school allowed me to be a certain type of motivated, creative, prepared scholar, not possible for me to achieve at any other school.

Harvard-Westlake definitely breeds a specific type of student. I commend the senior class on our efforts, successes and the amount we’ve grown since we started.

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best friend that takes up a whole page and read through it. The note is sure to bring back a rush of feelings, but how much of that note is memories that you can truly recall? Does the note bring you back to a day at the beach, or does it bring to mind vague memories of things people said or did that made you laugh for about a year after it happened?

When I look at my high school yearbooks in five years, I want to remember the time Anna and I took the PSAT at Milken one morning because we had missed when it was given at school and then went to Cheesecake Factory and shoe shopping at DSW at the Galleria. Or what about when Ellina helped me when I was a brand new driver and got stuck in a parking spot at Fashion Square, and getting out would surely scratch my new prized possession even more than getting into the spot did.

Instead, I will be reminded that she does not find it possible to run while wearing lip gloss and once asked “Do eskimos have sex to keep warm?” Or what about the time Anna and I took the PSAT at Milken one morning because we had missed when it was given at school and then went to Cheesecake Factory and shoe shopping at DSW at the Galleria?

Do these inside jokes mean anything?

How heartfelt will these messages seem in years? We might be better off signing “U rock. Don’t ever change.”

After all, in “Lizzie McGuire” (a staple of my childhood), after keeping Lizzie’s yearbook, in the hope to find the words to express his true feelings, Gordo signs this extremely generic message, only adding on that he truly means it. This moves Lizzie so much she kisses him. Granted, there was no need to recall memories as earlier in the episode there was a “best of ” segment as they flipped through the yearbook. Still, a simple message seems so much more impactful and lasting than a list of things that make us giggle now.

I’m not preaching; I am guilty of this.

I’m just a little regretful and I hope that in signing our final Harvard-Westlake yearbooks this week that we try to write something that will mean something in the future. I’m not saying every note should be as simple, yet meaningful as Gordo’s, or that we should not talk about funny memories in yearbooks, but that these amazingly heartfelt messages may soon seem cheapened or insignificant.

Ellina

hate goodbyes. This column has been on my mind for the past three years and I am still unable to create a sweet and concise evaluation of how I had spent what are arguably the most formative years of my youth. Some drafts of this reflection included cheesy epigraphs attempting to summarize my high school experience, anecdotes about my favorite moments at HarvardWestlake and extended metaphors about our high school evolution. After numerous eradicated drafts, I finally understand why I have been unable to reflect on my Harvard-Westlake experience — I was not expecting goodbye to come so fast.

Although I have spent what felt like an eternity at Harvard-Westlake, it seems like I was a newcomer here just yesterday. I still remember feeling knots in my stomach boarding East Valley 2 for the first time, my confusion with the rotating schedule, the invigorating feeling of receiving my first A, and being astonished by my classmates.

Over time, the knots went away, I mastered the schedule, and the novelty of acing daily quizzes wore off. What remains to this day is the impression my classmates have made on me.

I have spent the last four years of my life surrounded by some of the most ambitious and talented people I have ever met. Of course, sitting in English class with published writers, speaking broken Spanish with quadrilingual friends, and painting with future Fine Arts majors was intimidating. But being surrounded by this caliber of talent pushed me to

strive to better myself. Although I firmly believe that my determination is internal, I’m not ready to let go of the external motivations of my friends dragging me to surprisingly informative club meetings during break or organizing creative events to fulfill my community service requirements with team mates.

How can I let go of the friends who have been there for me since the first day, smiling at me during my anxious stroll through rows of unfamiliar faces on that first time boarding the bus, dashing with me to class after confusing our free periods, and sympathizing over Ben and Jerry’s after impossible Physics tests?

I have spent the majority of my time here concentrating on college admissions, unable to appreciate the little moments taken for granted that I would later cherish. In the end, my fondest memories don’t include receiving ACT scores in the top percentile or perfecting cheers.

Instead, they include power naps at friends’ houses before such exams and the time my best friend got lost attempting to find the cheer bus and could only describe her present location as “There are lots of houses here. Oh, and trees!”

I am confident that there are plenty of whimsical moments like this to follow and that I will encounter more inspirational individuals throughout my lifetime. Thus, I have made a resolution: graduation will be but a mere stepping stone into a world of new experiences that will add to our Harvard-Westlake foundation, and not goodbye. To quote Dawson’s Creek, this is the end of something simple and the beginning of everything else.

D10 Seniors

No answers, no problem

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Rules of the road

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May 26, 2010 Hana

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ince my first journey to 3700 Coldwater Canyon more than three years ago, ix years ago, I started a journey, not knowing where it would I’ve always known I was a bit different. Joining the school as a sophomore take me, what I would take from it, and most importantly, how it only compounded to my feeling that I wasn’t quite like everyone else. Now, as would end. a wizened senior, I realize the time has come to address the elephant in the I’m talking, of course, about watching “Lost.” The show’s sixth room. I don’t actually live in LA — I live in the county, not the city. Forty two miles and final season came to a close on Sunday night, with a series finale east of H-W rests my quaint home in the City of Trees and PhD’s: Claremont, California. titled, appropriately, “The End.” (If you haven’t seen it, stop reading; My trek to school officially begins by getting on the 210 West at Towne Avenue in spoilers will abound.) There were high expectations for the “Lost” Claremont. After three years, nine freeways and 40,000 miles, I’ve picked up a few finale; would it explain six years of time travel, mysterious smoke and tips along the way. As a sophomore, I drove to school with my sister. From the paselectromagnetic anomalies? Would it provide answers? senger seat, I had a fantastic view of the license plates of passersby, and I took an I used to hope that after six long years, every answer would be unprecedented interest in them to relieve my boredom (a certain restlessness tends revealed. But even with the arrival of the end, questions remain. to kick in around mile 29). Within the first few months of the school year, I made the And this time, I’m talking about six years of Harvard-Westlake. groundbreaking discovery that the license plates for non-commercial trucks regisI know that during the last six years, I spent a lot of time working tered in California all begin with a number then a letter and five more numbers. All hard — in class, at home, on the bus at 7:30 a.m., trying to stay awake. other non-commercial vehicles begin with a number followed by three letters then But I don’t know why I did it. To get into college? Because I was supposed three numbers. With that realization, I independently recognized the slight distincto enjoy every minute of it? tion between the license plates of trucks from that of the rest of C-class vehicles regI know I’ve learned a lot of information and memorized many facts. istered in California. I knew that one day this would be meaningful knowledge — one But I don’t know what my career will be, or whether anything I’ve day. Sitting in a car for at least 85 miles a day was no longer without purpose! Like learned will be useful when I choose one. smog disappearing from the LA skyline after a rainstorm, my life suddenly became I know I’ve made close friends. But in a few short clearer. Discovering that piece of trivia gold and the excitemonths we’ll scatter across the country, and as much as ment that came with my small discovery taught me the it pains me to say it, I don’t know with whom I’ll stay priceless lesson that life is in the details. close and with whom I’ll lose touch.

The year wrapped up, as they tend to do, and when Above all, I know that I’ve somehow become the junior year rolled around, things got serious. On a Friday person I am. But I do I know who that person is? morning in early spring last year, I couldn’t help but notice Like the millions who watched “Lost,” the end is here a massive 18-wheeler driving about 200 pigs west, towards and I’m left with as many questions as answers.

LA. Seeing the curly pink tails poke out of the truck was A key part of “Lost’s” final season were the “flashan interesting way to start my morning, but I continued sideways,” in which the castaways of Oceanic 815 on my way without giving the animals much more thought. experience what their lives would be like had their On my way home, however, life lesson number two was plane never crashed. But over time, they are able to solemnly learned. Around Pasadena, I saw the same truck “remember” everything that transpired in the original driving east with me. But now, it was empty. I felt like Fern timeline—the experiences they had, the friends they in “Charlottle’s Web” as I realized that 200 little Wilburs made and the love they found. And this makes each of had been driven to the slaughterhouse. Unlike Fern, howthem uniquely and feverishly happy. ever, I could not save them or send them to live on ZuckerAnd then during the final scene of “The End,” it’s man’s farm. To add insult to injury, I continued to see that revealed out that the flash-sideways are some form of an 18-wheeler on my trek for the next two weeks. It was the afterlife, a place the castaways went after they died but spring of my discontent, to say the least. Through the sad before “moving on.” When they are ready to move on, fate of hundreds of pigs, I learned to remember that somethey let a white light consume them. As my brother said times, bad things happen to good pigs. And no one knows when we finished the episode: “What just happened?” which little piggy will go to market and which little piggy The end of “Lost” didn’t answer all of its biggest will stay home. questions, and that’s because “Lost” was never about the Sammy Roth, Lauren Seo, Hana As spring turned to summer, and summer to fall, I reanswers. It was about strangers who were lost in their Al-Henaid, Candice Navi (clockwise) turned to my beaten path. The final lesson I have to share lives, crashed on an island and found second chances. It comes though my experience with traffic. Driving in Los was about the lasting memories they made together, and Angeles rush hour traffic has taught me more than I ever realizing that these memories were what mattered. cared to learn. I’ve parked my car on the 101 as a helicopter When my time at Harvard-Westlake ends in two landed 20 feet in front of me, I’ve taken detours through weeks, I won’t yet know where I’m going in life. or downtown because of a mile-long police blockade and I’ve with whom. Nor will I truly understand who Harvardtried basically every freeway in Los Angeles at some point Westlake has made me. I won’t have all the answers. over the past three years. Through these experiences, I’ve What I will have, though, are memories. Memories of learned the importance of spontaneity. Life will throw stress and joy, of friends and homework, of good times detours at me, I’ll have to backtrack and sometimes I’ll and bad times. Mostly good times, though. just turn around and go home. But if my trips to HarvardFor now, that’s enough, because the end has never been Westlake are any indication, no matter the journey, I’ll the important part. It’s always been about the journey. always end up exactly where I need to be.

Candice

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Showdown with the clock

am Clarissa Dalloway. Or at least, I have a theory about how similar we are.

For those of you who don’t know, Virginia Woolf ’s novel “Mrs. Dalloway” is the best book I’ve read. If you haven’t read it, go do so now (my column can wait). But back to my theory. Clarissa and I have the same fundamental themes ruling our lives: a fear of time and a desire for human connection.

Between living and remembering, Clarissa is always stunned when Big Ben chimes and “leaden circles dissolve in the air” every hour. “Story of my life” is an understatement. Birthdays, the ending of a month, my alarm going off five days a week at 6:47 a.m., the computers shutting down in Weiler at 11 p.m. as we frantically try to print A2, or when exactly 30 minutes have passed during a funny episode of “Community.”

With every period ended, every newspaper distributed, every bag of apples consumed, I am aware of time disappearing. All these and more serve as my own menacing, chiming Big Ben. For my whole life, it’s been “Candice Versus Time” (a constant uphill battle that I have inevitably lost). Then I read the thoughts of Septimus Smith, Peter Walsh and Sally Seton in my AP Literature class with Larry Weber. I gawked at the chapter-less 194 pages and the third person stream of consciousness. Who cares about an aging woman’s preparations for a

trivial party? And why is she afraid of clocks?

I reached the bottom of page 191 and read: “Cleverness was silly.

One must say simply what one felt.” Those 10 simple words led to my new philosophy.

Genuine connections were made with people I had kept at arm’s length for years; acquaintances became friends and strangers became familiar faces. Classes became more than a place of test taking, but a time for camaraderie and fun. Gone was the clutter of preconceived notions. I stopped over thinking and filtering and just lived. Although this shift had repercussions academically, I couldn’t care less. Clarissa confirmed what I had known all along; friendships made, moments experienced and memories formed are all that will remain.

The Chronicle, I owe you for the best memories of my Harvard-Westlake career. Thank you for giving my random and completely useless understanding of Photoshop and design a purpose and my neurotic-germaphobicbasket-case personality a home.

I finally stopped fearing the heat of the sun. Leaden circles of time dissolved in the air and my life continued, uninterrupted. I was finally able to stop noting the passage of every second and I lived.

No longer do I think of my life in chapters or volumes; humanity cannot be anything but a stream of consciousness, unremitting.

Lauren

View from here Seo

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he other night I was up at Alomar, a vista point overlooking Los Angeles. It’s a view we’ve all seen before – the glow on the horizon, the moving headlights of cars, the twinkling lights of buildings as if someone sprinkled the city with glitter.

The sight’s always been beautiful, but for some reason that night the view just took my breath away. I don’t know whether it was how much I liked the weather or the exhilaration I felt from climbing up that hill, but I couldn’t help thinking: this is my city. This is my home.

Of course, as it usually goes, with this discovered appreciation came the realization that it wouldn’t be with me for long. In just three months, I’ll open my eyes and be 2,500 miles away in a town that couldn’t be any more different from Los Angeles if it tried. For me, this is scary. The idea that I won’t be able to see my sister in the morning or drive down to Westwood for a boba run or call up my best friend and join in on her family barbeque is like acid dissolving the safety net I’ve never had to question before.

Clearly, change isn’t my thing. At the end of freshman year, I dealt with my fears by going crazy taking mental snapshots of every last moment on the lower campus. Embarrassingly enough, I actually remember thinking ‘that was the last 2:49 p.m. I’ll ever sit in this chair in my life!’ Yes, I was that kid.

Leaving this campus, though, my take on my final moments here is astronomically different. The fears are definitely still there, but instead of wallowing in the second before, I’ve been channeling that energy into living in the moment now. (I know that sounds

cheesy, but phrases become trite for a reason.) I don’t know how else to describe the way friends have become warmer, jokes funnier, revisited adventures more thrilling. I see the One Acts plays and am blown away by the talent of my classmates. I record with the Chamber Singers in St. Saviors and feel genuine chills as the echoes of the final chord ring above our heads. It’s like someone cranked up my appreciation dial and I’m just enjoying every instant with whomever I’m with.

To clarify, it’s not that these past few months have been the exception to a lackluster Harvard-Westlake career. When I’m curled up in bed at 3 a.m. having a heart-to-heart with my roommate about the things that made us who we are, I’m going to say that when it comes to my high school experience, I am more than satisfied. I’ve had the petty drama, the intense study lockdowns, the post-all-nighter caffeine jitters, the high school relationship, the thoughtprovoking conversations, the night to learn from, the group bonding (I love you, Chronicle), the prom date, the college acceptance letter. I’ve done all I can as a high school teenager, and if I had to name any regrets, I would only name the people I wish I’d known better.

Looking at the view in front of me, I can see picturesque New England buildings and maybe a few faces I know now, all veiled in a thick mist of uncertainty. One day I know this mist will lift to reveal the faces of friends I haven’t met yet and the experiences that will make me say “Oh, college” and I won’t help but think: this is my town.

This is my home.

May 26, 2010

Life goes on

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ife goes on. I’m going to graduate in a few weeks, and then all that t wouldn’t be unheard of to say my home address is 3700 Coldwater Canyon, stands between college and me is a few months of summer. I can’t Weiler Hall. Sure, it’s not where I hit the hay, store my wardrobe or eat wait! I’m going to be living my own life. I’ll be making new friends my midnight snack (although these all happen from time to time). I’ve just and having my own experiences. I’ll be living with someone I’ve never arrived “home” from the final Chronicle layout weekend of 24 total. That’s met. I’ll have to solve my own problems and figure out my own routines. I’ll 24 weekends of barely-met deadlines; of raunchy jokes at 10 a.m.; of fights to the death over the Oxford comma, and nights when we ask ourselves if we could just be taking classes that I want to take with great professors. Everyone tells me spend the night sleeping in Weiler Hall. that I’m going to have the greatest time at college, and I completely believe them.

I started thinking about this column years ago. I wanted it to be the one that makes you cry; instead, it’s the one that makes me cry, because I’ve realized that But it’s weird for me to think that everyone else is going to have his or her this is, in fact, the last thing I will write for this newspaper. own experiences too. Each of us is going to be living separate lives completely The Chronicle has, without a doubt, defined my high school experience. A independent from one another. All my friends are going to be dispersed few days ago, I was asked in an interview if I felt like my peers view me as “The across the country. We won’t even have weather in common anymore. Sure, there are endless means of communication today—sporadic phone calls, texts, Newspaper Girl,” and perhaps that is the case for a handful of them.

What occurred to me though, was that regardless of what e-mails, Facebook messages, and video chats—but none of them guarantee my peers think, I see myself as that girl. I’ve experienced any sort of relationship with the person on the other end. And the better part of Harvard-Westlake through the viewfinder that’s what scares me. of my camera and the ink I put to paper. Of course I could A few days ago, a recent alumna regret not storming the field when the football team came to talk to my dean reigned victorious at Homecoming, instead falling off the group. She said that when you wet players’ bench trying to snap the action. I could fuss graduate from high school, over those kickbacks I missed to stay at home and bust you imagine yourself keeping out one of my all too frequent last minute columns. I in touch with everyone, but in could sit here contemplating whether the time I spent reality, you can only manage to in Weiler for those glorious Monday night crunches truly keep up with two or three really did make the critical difference in my GPA. But friends from home. It makes you know what? I wouldn’t want it any other way. sense when you think about it.

Successfully capturing the moment gives me a natural Like I said, each of us will be high that I’ve failed to find anywhere else. making new friends and having Some six months ago, I sat in a hotel ballroom our own experiences. That doesn’t 3,000 miles away at the National Scholastic Press leave a lot of room for the everyday Association convention, which is essentially journalism details of too many other friends’ junkie’s paradise. I clasped hands with my fellow staff lives that are completely different members, eagerly anticipating the announcement of from our own. That terrifies me. the Pacemaker winners, the high school journalism I’ve been going to school with equivalent of the Pulitzer. Our palms grew sweaty these friends for the past six years. with anxiety that brewed inside us, our pulses racing We’ve grown up together. We started without any intention of quitting until we heard as timid little 12-year-olds awkwardly those comforting words. And then they came. We’d going to Bat Mitzvahs together, and won! The waterworks took me by complete and now we’re adults who can vote. And utter surprise; I’d never cried tears of joy before, because of that, we’ve made bonds that and suddenly I felt like a first time grandmother. can’t ever be recreated. I don’t want I couldn’t control my shaking hands when they my friendships to simply vanish into passed the plaque to me for a photo op. I thought, thin air just because we have to finish how can a high school publication be the thing growing up separately. that reduces me into a blubbering baby? But I Life at home doesn’t stop either. Just let the joy wash over me because I’d never felt because I’m not there, doesn’t mean my anything like it before. family will stop living their lives. My Get ready because here comes the cliché: sister will go to school without me, my The Chronicle staff is a family. I grew up with family will eat dinner without me, have this family, and they’re the most outrageous, conversations without me, joke around gregarious, eccentric group I’ve ever been so without me—things will change without lucky to be a part of. We bicker, we listen, we me. Life at home doesn’t just pop in and f t). cry, we laugh, we throw punches and high out of existence according to my schedule. rom le f ( s m Ada m fives, and we eat. A lot.

If Harvard-Westlake has taught me a S d h an Saying goodbye to family is never easy. It’s anything, it’s that it’s all about the effort ew L as r D , r e a Tepp r probable that four weeks from today, I’ll be we’re willing to put in. If you don’t care, you g e ll A hit with a sense of emptiness when I have can write the entire paper the night before no obligations to spend those unfathomable it’s due and accept that you didn’t do your hours in those stuffy rooms, sweating out best. Or you can put in the effort. You can the deadlines and staring at monitors write a draft a couple weeks early, have your until my eyes cross with the people I hold teacher look at it and give you feedback, which so dear. But I’m not going to cry tears of can be the sounding board for improvement. sadness that it’s over. I’m going to let those You wanted it, so you made it happen. It’s right powerful waterworks of joy wash over me, there in the motto “They can because they ecstatic that I had these fantastic four think they can.” If I want to keep in touch with years with this remarkably outlandish my friends and stay up to speed with my family family, and I can only hope that the next while we all live separate lives, all I have to do is publication will be half the ride this was. put in the effort.

Notes to my 12-year-old self

Sam

Adams J ust as I’ve gotten the hang of Harvard-Westlake six years later, it’s over. Great. I’m equal parts nostalgic about the time I’ve spent here and anxious about what the next step holds for me.

Reminds me of myself six years ago, barreling toward graduation from my safe, tiny elementary school and embarking on the massively intimidating journey that is HarvardWestlake. Feeling very much in communion with this preteen bundle of hormones, I thought I would share a few of the things I wish I could tell myself back then: Congratulations! You’re done with the middle school application process. Don’t sweat the fact you got waitlisted by Crossroads, you never really wanted to go there anyway—you’re far too much of a conformist. Take a breather. You won’t have to start playing for keeps in school for a couple years.

Real life is the same as high school, which is the same as elementary school. Once you break free of the shackles of your current weekday

penitentiary, everything will be completely different, right? Wrong.

Social interactions don’t change.

The insecurities and sexual tension (maybe it goes by another name in sixth grade, but you know what I mean) that dictates the way most of us interact don’t go away, so learn to love them.

You will kiss a girl. Don’t worry your 12-year-old self about it.

Yes, Harvard-Westlake is as hard as they say it is. Yes, you’ll probably go just a little bit crazy as a result of it. No, it’s not a perfect place.

But would you do it all over again?

In an instant.

Don’t be afraid to go into Algebra I instead of Pre-Algebra in seventh grade. There will always be people much, much smarter than you in your math classes, but ultimately you’ll be glad that you chose to take the harder way.

Apologize to Danny Fujinaka for getting his shoe caught in a basketball hoop in fourth grade. If you don’t, you’ll still feel bad about it almost a decade later.

Never take for granted the fact that you get to see all of your friends basically every day.

Spend as little time in Silent Study as possible, no matter how advantageous you tell parents it is when giving tours.

Still can’t decide whether or not you want to play flag football next year? Do it. That’s not to say you’ll be any good (you won’t), or that your scrawny delusion that you can play contact sports will ever go away (it won’t). Over the next couple of years as you graduate into tackle football and lacrosse, you’ll receive more than your fair share of bruises and sprains and ego-demolishing body slams, but getting up one more time than you fall down is a sign of character.

Einstein didn’t know what he was saying when he defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Latin is a dead language. You only go to church once a month—you probably aren’t going to become Pope. Save yourself two years and

just take Spanish.

As you go through high school, make grades a priority but not the only priority. Go to parties. Spend time doing nothing with friends.

Don’t stress too much about blowing it on a test every now and then; it all comes out in the wash.

It’ll take you a few years before you figure yourself out. Be patient.

You’ll join clubs and quit them.

You’ll try out personalities and abandon them. Do it until you find what fits you. You will, eventually.

And yes, Harvard-Westlake is a big and scary place to a 12-year-old. But the funny thing about big and scary places is they force you to become big and fearless to match them. Which is reassuring for the new next step.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I’m glad I didn’t know any of the above pearls of wisdom back then. I wouldn’t trade the surprises that came along the way for anything. Those exhilarating moments that make our pulse skyrocket and our breath freeze, both for good and bad, are the ones that make us who we are.

D twelve

May 26, 2010

The Big Night

The seniors donned dressy attire on May 15 for one last thrill ride.

ryan lash/chronicle

Courtesy of olivia Van Iderstine

Allegra Tepper/chronicle

courtesy of patrick newman Allegra Tepper/chronicle

Prom: (Clockwise from top left). Emma Weinman ’10, Paige Dewey ’10, Ali Sacks ’10, and Olivia Van Iderstine ’10 laugh while posing for a photo. Prom king and queen Jake Staahl ’10 and Jennie Porter ’10 dance. Sam Adams ’10, Nick Chuba ’10, Jason Maccabee’10, Charlie Mischer ’10, Jacob Axelrod ’10, Peter Schwarts ’10 and Ernest Wolfe ’10 pose for a photo. Patrick Newman ’10 places a corsage on Emma Gilhuly’s ’10 wrist. Chris Kenney’10, Kristen London ’10, and date, Lauren Berliner ’10, Jay Bhatia ’10, Claire Kao’10, Justin Chen ’10, and date, Lauren Seo ’10, Joe Girton’10, Marisa Berger’10, Alex Mao ’10, and date, smile for a photo before boarding a limo. Chloe Korban ’10 and Cate Barsky ’10, heads of the prom committee hold the crowns for the Prom King and Queen.

It was 8 p.m., and what was left of the Beverly Hills daylight shimmered off the attire of the hundreds of senior girls on the arms of their dates making their way across the expansive driveway of the Sofitel Hotel. The clacking of occasion heels against the lobby’s black marble floor pierced the buzz of excited voices as the crowd busily made its way up the modern steel, glass and marble staircase before lockdown was enforced. At the top of the stairs lay the milestone event they had all been waiting for: Prom 2010.

A panoply of gourmet desserts prepared by SIMON LA Chef Kerry Simon greeted the guests on the black tableclothed tables by the entrance. Among the sweets provided were Rice Krispie treats, boxes of candied walnuts, assorted cupcakes and cookies.

To cater to those who skipped dinner prior to the event, hors d’ouvres were also laid out on the table farther off. The arrangement of food included mini-iron chef burgers, freshly made pizzas, marinated chicken satay and tiger shrimp kabab.

Beyond the main entrance room lay a lounge area equipped with divans and tall tables made for socializing over pomegranate drinks, where the dressed-up students could mingle with an easy view of the formal dress their

classmates chose for the night.

Teenagers with dancing feet proceeded to the ballroom, where a DJ mixed tracks for those on the dance floor. Guests who wanted a tangible reminder of the evening headed over to the photo booth for quick prints, or to the professionals of Sunset Studios for a formal portrait. From short dresses to long gowns, formal wear to crossdressing, the cameras saw it all that night.

At 10:30 p.m. the ballroom floor was cleared to announced the results of the votes taken earlier in the night for Prom King and Queen. The crowns were brought out, and Jake Staahl ’10 and Jenny Porter ’10 were called up to accept their titles and be the first couple to dance to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.” As the night drew to a close, seniors took a trip down memory lane as images submitted by the students themselves were projected on the ballroom wall.

Guests began to trickle out, and soon crowds crossed the mirrored, backlit lobby, spilling out into the driveway.

Entering their respective limos, groups were carried off into a night they would remember for the rest of their lives.

-Lauren Seo

courtesy of marisa berger