May 2012

TRAVELING THROUGH SPACE:

POINTS OF VIEW: Upper school students and teachers discuss politics in advance of the June primaries.

C

B2-3 D6-7

The class of 2012 prepares to leave the solar system of Harvard-Westlake.

The Harvard -Westlake

hronicle

Los Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue VIII • May 30, 2012

Chalmers renovation to begin in summer

By Eli Haims

8 compete at Masters, 6 qualify for State Meet

By Julius Pak

PHOTOS BY LIZZY THOMAS

MASTERS CHAMPIONS: Defending state champion Cami Chapus ’12, top, leads the pack in the 1600-meter race at the Masters meet on May 25. National record holder Amy Weissenbach ’12, above, finished first in the 800-meter race, running 2:05.55, her fastest time this season.

INSIDE

A11 NOT JUST TOYS: Teachers experiment with iPads as part of the technology initiative.

Six of eight athletes the varsity track and field team sent to the CIF Masters meet May 25 qualified to compete at the state meet in Clovis, Calif. this weekend. Competitors that finished in the top five of each event or reached a qualifying mark advanced to the State Preliminaries June 1.

“It was a great performance and we were thrilled to get all of those athletes to the State Meet,” Head of Program and Varsity Head Coach Jonas Koolsbergen said. “Today was just another tremendous day and another great step for another great season.”

The team’s performance at Cerritos College followed the CIF Finals a week before, where the track team won a collective four CIF titles.

At Masters, Amy Weissenbach ’12 captured her third title in a row in the 800-meter event, the first female in section history to do so in the event. Weissenbach, who holds the national female high school record for the 800, finished in 2:05.55, the fast-

B12 MONKEY BUSINESS: The Scene Monkeys improv group performed in Rugby Theater May 18.

est and third fastest time clocked this season in the state and the country, respectively.

“It is a rarified event,” Koolsbergen said. “It is achieved by the best the [CIF] Southern Section has ever seen.”

Coming back from a blister injury that forced her to drop out of several events at CIF Finals, Cami Chapus ’12 won her race in the 1600-meter event.

Her 4:43.90 is the fastest time run in the state this year.

The two co-captains, paired with freshmen Imani Cook-Gist ’15 and Shea Copeland ’15, were just edged out from capturing the Masters title in the 4x400-meter relay by less than 0.4 seconds, but they still qualified for the state meet.

Last year, the team finished in first place, but an official disqualified Weissenbach and her team for crossing into her opponent’s path while attempting to make a pass on the home stretch. The coaches called for a video replay, but the disqualification ruling Continued on page C5

C1

UNEXPECTED COLLAPSE:

Despite a numberone seed and the top left-handed pitcher in the nation, the baseball team fell early in the playoffs.

Construction will begin in Chalmers Hall after graduation to make room for the Head of Upper School’s office, which is currently located on the third floor of Seaver, Head of Campus Construction De Matte said. Head of Upper School Audrius Barzdukas and his assistant will occupy the space currently used by Dean Coordinators Camille De Santos and Ryan Wilson and Upper School Deans Vanna Cairns and Mike Bird.

The Chalmers construction will join the two other major construction projects on campus – the installation of a 50-meter pool and the building of the Kutler Center – in addition to major work being done on Coldwater Canyon.

Two new deans’ offices will be built in Chalmers West, adjacent to the offices used by Chaplain Father J. Young and Director of Student Affairs Jordan Church. The wall erected last summer to divide the Chalmers West lounge from the Chalmers East “Mini-Mudd” library will be knocked down soon after graduation, De Matte said. The offices of the dean coordinators will move Continued on page A10

Football player, violinist to give commencement valediction

By Michael Rothberg

Richard Chung ’12 was far from the biggest player on the field when he started playing tackle football in seventh grade, but he was tenacious.

Chung stuck nathanson ’s/chronicle with football Richard Chung ’12 through his entire high school career and has risen through the ranks, playing tight end on the varsity team for the past two years.

Also a committed violinist, Chung was chosen by a faculty vote to deliver this year’s valedictory speech at the Commencement Ceremony.

“Probably the best thing I did in high school was play football,” Chung said. “It was a lot of fun, a great bonding experience. I got to meet a lot of great fellow classmates.

Despite his efforts to maintain a high academic standard, Chung said Continued on page D3

The Chronicle Wednesday, May 30, 2012 3700 Coldwater Canyon Ave. Studio City, Calif. 91604

A2 Preview

Features B12

MAZELLE ETESSAMI

WORLDLY PHOTOS: Mazelle Etessami ’14 took photographs of native people in the Himalayas on a community service trip in 2009 with her family. Etessami has won

numerous awards, including a gold medal from the National Scholastic Arts competition, and has had her work displayed in the President’s Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Sports C4

News A4

KEANE MURAOKA-ROBERTSON/CHRONICLE

FREEZING: Cameron Komisar ’12, Evan Meister ’12 and Katie Price ’12, from left, use liquid nitrogen to make ice cream at the Beyond the Test Fest last week.

Seniors D3

ALLISON HAMBURGER/CHRONICLE

LUKE HOLTHOUSE/CHRONICLE

DOWN AND OUT: Max Rothman ’14, left, volleys a ball during the CIF Semifinals as Dylan Eisner ’13 watches. The team lost 12-6, ending its playoff run.

Offbeat

‘KEEPING YOUR CLOTHES WEARABLE’: Costume designer Lisa Peters helps Maria Quinonez ’12 sew a button during Senior Transition Day.

Senior designs, sews prom dress for over 4 months

By Rachel Schwartz

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF RUBY BOYD

METAMORPHASIS: Ruby Boyd ’12 wears the prom dress she made with the help of costume designer Lisa Peters.

On a fabric expedition to the downtown fashion district, Ruby Boyd ’12 spotted a white silk charmeuse covered in life sized butterflies.

“I saw that fabric and thought, wow, that would make a kickass prom dress,” Boyd said.

Boyd has a sewing machine at home and learned to sew at a young age, but she gained new skills and techniques in Lisa Peter’s costume design class last year.

She helped design costumes for the production of the musical “Pippin” last year and chose all of the costumes for this year’s play “The Laramie Project” as part of her senior directed study in costume design.

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 seniors on the Editorial Board. Letters to the editor may be submitted to chronicle@hw.com or mailed to 3700 Coldwater Canyon Ave., Studio City, CA 91604. Letters must be

“[Boyd] is dedicated and just an allaround awesome gal,” Peters said.

The prom dress took Boyd a total four months since she worked on the project mostly during her free periods at school under Peters’ guidance.

“I just think the costume shop is awesome,” Boyd said.

She started by finding a pattern and cutting the dress out of muslin, a sturdy fabric used to make preliminary versions of clothing. After Peters fit the muslin dress on Ruby she started working with the silk.

“Altering the muslin helps because then you don’t have to do alterations once the dress is sewn. That would be hard,” Boyd said.

She was inspired for the project by the pattern of the fabric.

“I think it’s romantic and silly and fun,” Boyd said. “It’s not your typical prom dress.”

Even Peters, who has decades of experience, said sewing with silk is challenging. Silk is tricky because it is prone to stretching out of shape if a seamstress cuts it on the bias or against the grain of the silk.

“I had to cut on the bias because of the pattern,” Boyd said. “I had to be really careful about not stretching the fabric too much,” Boyd said.

She ended up finishing a week before the prom. Boyd said her favorite part of the dress ended up being the bow in the back.

“It’s disconcerting when it’s all in pieces,” she said. “You put so much time in, but it all comes together.”

signed and may be edited for space and to conform to Chronicle style and format.

Advertising questions may be directed to Alex Gura at (310) 467-1797. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product or service by the newspaper or the school.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Stand outs

News A3

Students and faculty were honored at the end-of-the-year Awards Assembly on Tuesday, May 29. Winners of Bishop’s Medal and Veritas Award, the Blanche Nelson Boyle Award, George Coleman Edwards Award and David Justin Rascoff award will be recognized on Friday, June 8.

Bishop Garver Award >> Judd Liebman ’12, Lara Sokoloff ’12

Valedictorian >> Richard Chung ’12

Honors well-rounded seniors who have a record of excellence in scholarship, leadership, athletics or performing arts, community participation and teamwork

Salutatorian >> Hank Doughan ’12

Cuscaden Blackwood Medal >> Emily Plotkin ’13

Brendan Kutler ‘10 “Two Hats” Award >> Theo Davis ’13 Awarded to a junior who takes academic risks to pursue his or her interdisciplinary interests, engages in intellectual pursuits outside the classroom and who demonstrates humility and kindness

Given to a member of the junior class for outstanding contribution to the life of the school and is selected by senior class officers as well as faculty members

Humanitas Award >> Rishi Bagrodia ’12

Frederick Douglass Diversity Award >> Anders Villalta ’12

Honors a senior who epitomizes service to the school, friendliness, courtesy, kindliness and consideration for others, a sense of sincerity and humor and loyalty to the community

Recognizes a senior who has embraced either his or her own culture creatively, courageously and compassionately or that of others based on ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation

Lester Medvene Award >> Molly Cinnamon ’14

Lamar Trotti Jr. Award >> Gabby Trujillo ’12 Established in memory of Lamar Trotti ‘50 and awarded to a senior who made the biggest transformation in his or her life and work during his or her years at high school

Created in the memory of Lester Medvene known for his “curiosity of mind and dedication of spirit” and is given to a sophomore who has made a meaningful contribution to the life of the school

Jerry Margolis Award >> Jake Chapman ’12

Morris Michael Landres Award >> Katie Ehrlich ’14 Given to a sophomore who has shown “consistent effort, dedication and promise” by working on one of the school’s student publications

Named in honor of Performing Arts teacher Jerry Margolis who taught for 36 years and helped create his department and has been awarded since 2006 to a student in the performing arts program

Ryan Lash ’12, Tamkin Community Service Award >> Sandhya Nadadur ’12

Rensselaer Award >> Michael Zaks ’13 Given to a student who has distinguished him or herself in math and science. If the student chooses to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he or she receives a four-year scholarship.

Honors seniors for their dedication to community service

Junior Summer Fellowship >> Katya Kokol ’13

Senior Academic Awards

The fellowship allows a student $4,000 to study abroad in the summer before his or her junior year. This year, seven other juniors also received grants.

Computer Science >> Wiley Webb ’12 Ducommun Award (Mathematics) >> Julie Ko ’12 English >> Justin Sohn ’12

Senior Athletic Awards Athletic Director’s Award >> Lauren Li ’12, Matt Wolfen ’12

Foreign Language >> Elenore Lund-Simon ’12

Recognizes a senior who participates in an athletic program working in “non-competition service to the Athletic Department”

The Foreign Language Department honored students for their work in individual languages separately in an assembly last Monday. See A6 for further coverage.

Lee Carlson Award for Athletics >>

History/Social Studies >> Richard Chung ’12

Max Fried ’12, Cami Chapus ’12, Amy Weissenbach ’12

Awarded to seniors who demonstrates excellence in athletics

Schumacher Award >> Cami Chapus ’12 and Charlie Porter ’12

Performing Arts >> Jake Chapman ’12 and Hank Doughan ’12

Given to seniors who have contributed the most to school athletics during their senior year

Publications Chronicle Award >> Claire Hong ’12, Saj Sri-Kumar ’12 Vox Populi Award >> Garrett Ishida ’12

Faculty Awards Garrett Hardin Award >> Cheri Gaulke (distinguished service) Krista McClain (early achievement)

Sandifer Creative Writing Award >> Jessica Gold ’12 Science >>Julie Ko ’12 Speech and Debate >>Michelle Choi ’12 Visual Arts >> Anders Villalta ’12

Given to a senior faculty member for distinguished service and a junior faculty members for early achievement

Rascoff Faculty Awards >> Qinru Zhou

William L. Davis Award (Economics) >> Gaby Velkes ’12 Yellin Family Award for Women’s Studies >> Zena Edosomwan ’12

Created in honor of Justin Rascoff ‘91 and funds summer sabbaticals for a faculty member SOURCE: EMILY KENNEDY GRAPHIC BY JULIA AIZUSS, DAVID LIM AND ELIZABETH MADDEN

2 years, no limits The Thiel Fellowship awards $100,000 each to 20 young entrepreneurs to pursue innvoation in science and technology.

>> Created by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal

>> Open to “budding

entrepreneurs” ages 14 to 20

>> Winners must drop out of school and consider moving to California

>> Scientists, entrepreneurs

and investors mentor and advise Thiel Fellows

>> Fellows are encouraged

to work with each other to foster team innovation SOURCE: THIEL FOUNDATION GRAPHIC BY JACK GOLDFISHER AND CLAIRE GOLDSMITH

Alumnus wins ‘20 under 20’ Thiel fellowship

By David Lim

Charlie Stigler ’11 won the “20 under 20” Thiel Fellowship and will use his $100,000 grant to develop new digital platforms for education over the next two years.

Venture capitalist Peter Thiel, the founder of Pay-Pal and an early investor in Facebook, created the fellowship in his name to encourage students to drop out of college and pursue their own projects. Thiel believes that a traditional college education, seen as a prerequisite to most careers, stifles innovation, noting many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who never completed college.

During the two years in which he will receive a monthly stipend, Stigler will have access to a network of mentors in business and industry via the Thiel Foundation. He also decided to move to the Bay Area to be closer to the Foundation’s resources.

A current freshman at Columbia University, Stigler will work in adapting technology for the classroom.

“

At the last minute I decided I should probably play it safe and toss in a throwaway application just in case. It turned out to be a good idea.

—Charlie Stigler ‘11 “20 under 20” Thiel Fellow

“Imagine, as an example, textbooks with contents that change based on how [students] learn best,” Stigler said. “My current project is a platform for creating interactive web experiences using video. I want to start by using this platform to help teachers gather feedback on their classroom instruction and help them improve their teaching effectiveness.”

Stigler heard about the fellowship from a friend a day or two before the deadline.

“I didn’t think I’d be selected, and besides I wasn’t sure whether I actually wanted to drop out of college and

nathanson ’s/chronicle

take it even if I was selected,” he said.

“At the last minute I decided I should probably play it safe and toss in a throwaway application just in case. It turned out to be a good idea.”

Stigler added that he considers his high school education to have been a step above of his classmates at Columbia.

“Almost all my teachers actually helped me learn, which might sound pretty standard but is actually surprisingly rare when I talk to students from other schools,” Stigler said. “I want to make that Harvard-Westlake quality learning available to more people.”

The Chronicle

A4 News

Huybrechts to visit Obama’s alma mater

May 30, 2012

By Lara Sokoloff Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts will travel to the Punahou School in Hawaii to attend bi-annual Independent Schools with Maximum nathanson ’s/chronicle Capacity meetings.

Jeanne Huybrechts INMAX is a group of 10 large, complex schools that agree to collaborate in service of improvement, Huybrechts said.

Complex schools are those with more than one campus, more than 1,000 students and programs that serve the greater community.

President Barack Obama attended Punahou and presidential candidate Mitt Romney attended the Cranbrook School in Michigan, another school attending INMAX. “If all goes as expected, both presidential candidates will have gone to independent schools for high school, and both will have gone to an INMAX school,” Huybrechts said.

“Of course we will [graduate a future president]” she said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

While in Hawaii, Huybrechts will visit two other INMAX schools, the Iolani School and Kamehameha School, in addition to Punahou.

Other consortiums that the school is a part of, such as the California Association for Independent Schools, do not include schools anywhere near the size of Harvard-Westlake, she said.

“We are able to share the best practices and learn from each other in ways that would not be possible if we were just collaborating with small independent schools,” Huybrechts said.

The group meets twice a year, once in conjunction with the National Association for Independent Schools meeting and once in the summer at an INMAX campus.

School heads came to HarvardWestlake four years ago.

Other INMAX schools include the Bolles School in Jacksonville, Fla. and the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pa.

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

ARIELLE MAXNER/CHRONICLE

BREAKING BOUNDARIES: Kenneth Kim ’13, left, prepares the robotics team’s basketball shooting robot, which took two months to build. Elle Wilson ’13, right, walks on non-Newtonian fluid.

Android. Booths gave juniors tips on senior privileges and senior independent studies.

“It is simply cool to see the iPhone apps, video games, math-science films, robots and other stuff created by students,” Evans said.

Under the direction of chemistry teacher Krista McClain, students wearing capes and wizard hats poured liquid nitrogen on milk, sugar and vanilla to make ice cream. The Robotics Club controlled a gleaming metal robot that shot baskets and balanced on a wobbling platform as students cheered.

TiCS students created a “Dip Your Hand” communal art project where students could draw, paint or handprint a giant tarp, reflecting the school year’s motto, “Make Your Mark.” The group artwork is currently displayed above Chalmers.

“It’s different than the usual STEMfest because it’s more about going beyond the classroom and outside of what we’ve learned academically in a fun and creative manner with your friends,” TiCS student Meghan Hart-

man ’12 said as she stamped the canvas with neon paint.

In Ahmanson Lecture Hall, students watched the Math and Technology Film Festival, comprised of student films about the STEM subjects. Films included Molly Cinnamon’s ’14 “This is Laura,” which won second place in a National Center for Women in Technology contest for movies about the future of technology.

“It was great that other students had the chance to see my film and blow off steam while still learning about science,” Cinnamon said.

“Students said that they learned a great deal about senior independent study, internship opportunities and Junior Fellowships,” Evans said.

“The response was that it was the best [STEMfest] ever.”

Next year, Evans plans to incorporate Prefect Council to keep the field games, group art project and other community activities. She also hopes to delevelop a better venue in which to “showcase the great student work that goes beyond the normal classroom.”

STEMfest expands to include games, humanities, communal art project

By Claire Goldsmith

Students walked across a pool of non-Newtonian fluid and posed with “STEM Claus” May 21 during break at the “Beyond the Test Fest.”

The display of class projects ran for the past three years as “STEMFest.”

However, students in Topics in Calculus and Statistics, who organized the event, rebranded the event to reflect its expansion to cover disciplines outside science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

“As early as the first STEMfest, we saw the students were interested in exploring and bettering their world through science and technology,” Committee Head and Math Department Chair Paula Evans said.

Studies in Scientific Research students displayed projects in Munger Science Center, showcasing the experiments they designed and performed throughout the year, while Advanced Topics in Computer Science presented video games and mobile apps like Julie Ko’s ’12 ladder climbing game app for

Exploring their roots Two juniors were granted $4,000 to study Asian culture. Both recipients will use the money to study the culture of their ancestors.

“I’m excited to immerse myself in Korean culture and to experience life there. The last time I went was eight years ago, so I hope I’ll get a lot out of this trip.” nathanson ’s/chronicle

Jamie Chang ’13

“I’m really looking forward to gaing a greater understanding of the Turkish government from the viewpoint of the people.

In the process of doing so, I will be exposed to an entirely different culture and society, which will also be amazing.” nathanson ’s/chronicle

Demren Sinik ’13

2 win Asia Initiative grants

By Camille Shooshani

Gunter-Gross Asia Initiative grants were awarded to Jamie Chang ’13 and Demren Sinik ’13 to “to immerse themselves and explore Asian culture and society and to be able to bring that back to Harvard-Westlake,” history teacher Larry Klein said.

The juniors were chosen out of nine applicants for the $4,000 grant because “they both struck at the heart of the initiative.”

Chang will travel to South Korea to photograph elderly people for 12 days.

“In Korean funerals, the casket is never opened and so there’s something called a Yung Jung Sajin, which is basically a photograph of the person,” Chang said. “Some people can’t afford a photo or are physically unable to go to a photography studio, so I’m going to go to them, take their photos and frame them.”

Chang planned to photograph over 50 seniors and was inspired by her own grandparents, who took their own photos years before.

“It sounds kind of morbid to Americans because it’s not a part of American culture, but it’s an essential part of Korean culture,” Chang said.

Chang said the last time she went to Korea was eight years ago and that she is excited to go after such a long time.

While there, Chang plans to keep a daily journal to document her experience. She will also make two scrapbooks, one for the seniors in Korea and one for Harvard-Westlake. Chang is planning to create a website where she will display her photos in an online gallery.

Sinik will travel to eastern Turkey to research the changing political tides in the country.

“There’s a chance that the constitution might change to become more conservative, and I want to visit college campuses to see if young people share that wish,” Sinik said.

Sinik will study the the role of military in the government and the “clash between conservatism and secularism,” he said.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

News A5

6 faculty members set to depart

By Keane Muraoka-Robertson

Five Middle School faculty members and Upper School English teacher Jennifer Raphael will not return next fall. Departing Middle School faculty members include Technical Director Will Adashek ’01, Associate Director of Admission and Enrollment Manager Davin Bergquist, part-time librarian Juliana Goitein, math teacher Garrett Stern and English teacher Jill Turner.

STEVE CHAE/SPECTRUM

LESSONS LEARNED: Head of Middle School Ronnie Codrington-Cazeau will begin next year as Head of School

at Evergreen School in the Seattle area. Cazeau began as a teacher, but she has headed the Middle School for five years.

Codrington-Cazeau to leave after 17 years

By Lauren Sonnenberg

started collecting Elmo memorabilia in 1991 and has lost count of the many When Julia Siegler ’14 died after dolls that “make [her] smile.” being struck by a car as she crossed “Ms. Cazeau is an inspiration for Sunset Boulevard, handfuls of her dev- me to come to class excited every day astated friends gravitated to Head of and eager to learn,” said Jono Klein Middle School Ronnie Codrington-Ca- ’15, a student in Cazeau’s history class. zeau’s office.

“She is always charismatic and funny Surrounded by Elmo dolls and pic- during class, and she made the whole tures from students past, Emily Segal class genuinely interested in the cur’14 and other grieving classmates spent riculum.” hours exchanging stories with Cazeau.

Cazeau graduated from Wellesley “Going to College in 1991 school was really with a degree in hard, and Ms. CaAnthropology zeau’s office was a and earned her Her enthusiasm for young safe place for all of Master of Scipeople is infectious, and I us,” Segal said. ence degree in “There was hope to embody her joyful Educational Adnever a doubt that ministration from spirit as I return to the when tragedy hit Pepperdine Unia class, students versity in 2001.

Middle School.” could head to CaAfter teaching —Jon Wimbish English and Sozeau’s office to Upper School Dean cial Studies for find comfort and solace,” said Cafour years at Park melia Somers ’14, School in Brookanother frequent visitor to Cazeau’s line, Mass., Cazeau and her husband office. moved to California so he could pursue Students gathered there during a career in aerospace engineering. Cafree periods, sitting at a table snacking zeau accepted a job at Harvard-Westwith friends and ventured into “Nar- lake as a seventh grade English and nia,” a student-named corner of her history teacher in 1995. Two years later office where kids played music and en- she became a seventh grade dean and joyed each other’s company. ninth grade history teacher, and later Cazeau’s office draws students in she was asked by President Thomas C. during happy as well as sad times. She Hudnut to be Head of Middle School, a

“

Raphael to pursue career as poet, professional writer

By Keane Muraoka-Robertson

After teaching Upper School English for the last five years, Jennifer Raphael will be leaving to pursue a career as writer and take poetry classes.

Raphael started teaching in the fall of 2005.

Since then, she has taught English II and English III to sophomores and juniors, respectively. “‘The Virgin Suicides’ is my favorite book [to teach],” Raphael said.

“It’s a well-written, gripping tale about growing up that really speaks to the students.”

Raphael fondly remembers when she first started teaching at HarvardWestlake. She is still amazed by how warm her new colleagues were.

“I have an amazing team with the English department and they are so welcoming,” Raphael said.

“From the moment she joined the department, Ms. Raphael been a pleasure to work with,” Upper School English teacher Jeremy Michaelson said. “She’s very centered, the kind of poised, thoughtful person who inspires trust.

“She’s just solid, a great reader, a great friend, someone who knows exactly who she is and is able to be generous and giving as a result,” Michaelson said. “You can’t really ask much more from a colleague.”

Robert Lee ’14, one of her current studens, will miss class discussions the most.

“She is really nice, and she is also really interesting because she has a lot to say about things,” Lee said. “She poses good questions and we always have a good discussion. She’s good at sparking conversations among stu-

position she has held for five years.

Along with Cazeau, seventh grade dean Kate Benton, former Director of Advancement Alan Ball and English teacher Julia Grody joined the staff, and Cazeau says that together they helped each other in their first year at a new school.

“Harvard-Westlake is a great place to be new because you make great friends and form instant familial bonds with your colleagues,” Cazeau said.

A love for her students and a great first year kept Cazeau at HarvardWestlake for the next 17 years, she said.

Beyond her adoration for students, Cazeau hopes to be remembered for her “love of Elmo and warm spirit.”

She plans to bring this to her new job as Head of School at Evergreen School in the Seattle area.

“What I always noted, and I worked closely with her for a number of years, she was always student centered in problem solving,” Ninth Grade Dean Paul Mastin said. “It was always helping that student out of the situation, making sure that the solution was right for the individual child.”

Upper School Dean Jon Wimbish will replace Cazeau as Head of Middle School next year.

“Her enthusiasm for young people is infectious, and I hope to embody her joyful spirit as I come back to the Middle School,” he said.

Will Adashek ’01 Adashek will be leaving to work professionally as a light designer and cinematographer.

He oversaw the technical and production elements of performing arts events and assemblies at the Middle School. He also taught Stagecraft and Advanced Stagecraft classes.

“I will miss working with my students the most,” Adashek said. “I am tremendously impressed by their ability to think as designers, and especially by their ability to work with the advanced equipment in our amazing facilities. I am proud of the work we did together these last few years.”

Jill Turner Turner, who has taught English at Harvard-Westlake for six years, will be leaving to take care of her 3 year old son. Turner taught at both the Upper School and Middle School during her tenure at the school.

“Our second son was born with a very rare medical condition called TEF/ EA,” Turner said. “He has experienced most of the complications that go along with it. While he’s doing really well, the next couple of years are going to be full of a number of medical challenges for him,” she said. “I’m going to be focusing on him, his medical appointments and our other 6-year old son.”

Davin Bergquist Next year, Bergquist will serve as the Associate Director of College Counseling at the Cambridge School of Weston, an independent secondary school located outside of Boston, Mass. Though he enjoyed his time at Harvard-Westlake, Bergquist said that Los Angeles clashed with the East Coast dynamic of his childhood. Bergquist managed school enrollment, interviewed and evaluated prospective students, taught a summer school class on writing college essays and advised Choices and Challenges classes.

“This is a really remarkable place,” Bergquist said. “I am lucky to have been a part of this community.”

Though English teacher Jennifer Raphael will “miss being here,” she is leaving to take poetry classes and write professionally. She has been teaching here for five years.

“

I loved getting to know studetns through their art and literature. That’s been really fulfilling and fun.

—Jennifer Raphael Upper School English teacher

dents.”

In addition to teaching English, Raphael was the faculty adviser of Stonecutters, a literary magazine, for five years.

“I loved working with the students on something outside their classroom work and getting to know them through their art and literature,” Ra-

nathanson ’s/chronicle

phael. “That’s been really fulfilling and fun.”

Raphael majored in American Studies at UCLA, and later went to USC for graduate school. She is looking forward to taking classes again and studying poetry.

“I love this school and I’m going to miss being here,” Raphael said.

The Chronicle

A6 News

inbrief

May 30, 2012

Bookstores go paperless, use electronic checkout The middle school and the upper school bookstores have updated their checkout system to be completely electronic. The change was brought on by a desire to be more “green,” according to bookstore manager Irma Hernandez.

“I think [the system] is working really well,” Hernandez said. “It’s definitely had a tremendous effect on how much paper [the bookstore is] using.”

The new system requires that customers type in their birthday to confirm their purchase instead of signing a paper receipt.

Both campuses plan to keep the same system for next year, because of its effectiveness in reducing the amount of paper used by the bookstores and its efficiency.

—Elizabeth Madden

Deans to release updated website later this week

For the past three months, Dean Coordinators Camille da Santos and Ryan Wilson and Upper School Deans Beth Slattery and Jon Wimbish have been revamping the upper school dean website, which will launch later this week.

“The purpose of these changes is to make our website a one stop destination for most things concerning the three year dean process,” Wimbish said.

The website will include information on college counseling, summer programs, gap years, college tours, recommended books, dean contact information, dean sponsored events and a calendar.

—Keane Muraoka-Robertson

Stonecutters features more than 20 student works

Stone-cutters, the annual literary magazine that showcases upper school students’ art and writing, came out May 21. The magazine contains over 20 literary works and works of art, including poems, drawings, paintings and photographs produced by sophomores, juniors and seniors.

The editors-in-chief of the magazine, Jamie Chang ’13, Jessica Gold ’12 and Wyatt Kroopf ’12, were assisted by faculty advisers English teacher Jennifer Raphael and visual arts teacher Alyssa Sherwood.

Anders Villalta ’12 won the cover contest held in February with his painting, “It starts with a touch.” All students were invited to come to school on a weekend and vote on the submissions to decide whether or not they should be included in the issue.

“I think the overall process was great… the issue looks great and I’m really happy with how everything turned out,” Chang said.

—Noa Yadidi

2 win ASC awards, score in top 20 on regional exam Jeffrey Bu ’12 and Kenneth Kim ’13 won awards from the American Chemical Society for their achievement on the ACS Chemistry Olympiad exam.

Both attended the Southern California LA region’s ACS awards ceremony May 18 at Mt. Saint Mary’s Doheny campus, an awards banquet that honors the students who made the Southern California ACS National Olympiad Team.

Kim and Bu won awards for being in the top 20 scorers in the regional exam, a two-hour multiple-choice test prepared by the National Office of the ACS Educational division that students took in March. In April, they were nominated to take the national exam. Additionally, Kim won an award for scoring highest in the school.

—Noa Yadidi

MICHAEL SUGERMAN/CHRONICLE

CERTIFICATION: Upper School Foreign Language Department Head Paul Chenier shakes hands with May Peterson ’13.

Peterson and other Advanced Placement language students were inducted into various honor societies on May 22.

National Honors Society inducts 139 at annual foreign language assembly

By Jensen Pak

The National Language Honors Society and foreign language teachers honored 139 students in an assembly on Tuesday, May 22. In addition to honoring these students, one senior in each language was commended for their educational progress. High school students studying Chinese, French, Latin and Spanish were inducted into the society for “consistent achievement and stellar performance in a language,” Foreign Language Department Chair Paul Chenier said.

Chenier opened the assembly, introducing the foreign language teachers and explaining that students who have completed a language to level four or higher would be awarded.

Chenier compared the honored sophomores to the “Young Turks” of the early twentieth century who “went above and beyond.” He likened the juniors to the Greek titan Atlas, as they

“bear the weight of our stellar [foreign language] program, always enduring.”

Finally, the seniors were paralleled to “elder statesmen, powerful and wise, who we thank for their time in the program.”

A leader for each language department gave an opening statement before calling the students studying that language in alphabetical order.

Chinese teacher Qinru Zhou began his speech for the National Chinese Honors awards, and Chinese teacher Binbin Wei finished his statement. The French students, prompted by French teacher Marilyn Shield, rose and read an oath promising to uphold the study of French culture and language. Latin teacher Derek Wilairat addressed the Latin honors students, saying, “you have given literature new life.” The Spanish students also rose and read a statement, completing their induction.

Zhou awarded Gus Woythaler ’12 the senior Chinese award, describing

him as “not only a young man with passion, but truly self-motivated.” Jessica Barzilay ’12, who “proved it is possible to be an engaged and conscientious student to the very end,” Foreign Language teacher Geoff Bird said, was given the senior French honor. Natalie Epstein ’12 received the senior Latin award from Chenier, who believed that she “certainly honored the tradition of the Latin program.”. Valedictorian Richard Chung ’12 was given the senior Spanish award as he has “proven to be a distinguished student of language and literature,” Foreign Language teacher Roser Gelida said.

The assembly was concluded with Spanish teacher Javier Zaragoza announcing the Foreign Outlook magazine. All the honored students faced the applauding audience.

“These students have shown a strong dedication to their subject,” Chenier said. “They should be proud of this achievement.”

Approximately 40 fail to meet extended community service deadline

By Michael Sugerman

Roughly 40 students failed to meet the community service requirement, even after a 14-day extension to May 21.

After around 80 students missed the originathanson ’s/chronicle nal May 7 cutoff, Father J. Young Head of School Harry Salamandra sent an email to the delinquents offering a chance to complete the requirement. Students who fulfilled the mandatory four hours of service in groups of four by the May 21 extension will matriculate without penalty, Chaplain Father J. Young said.

The remaining 40 have an increased stipulation of eight hours of service by June 8. Seniors who miss the second extension will not receive diplomas and transcripts will not be issued to colleges.

Sophomores and juniors who fail to complete their hours by June 8 will have a heightened service requirement of at least 12 hours, which must be completed before registration in the fall.

Despite the number of those who failed to meet the requirement, Community Council member Emily Plotkin ’13 is still optimistic due to Community Council’s initiative to organize sports team events. Community Council made a concerted effort this year to organize more events for teams to complete their requirements together.

“I think this year we’ve had the least number of people ever to not fulfill their requirement,” she said. “And I think that can be attributed to sports teams. Since it’s Harvard-Westlake, most everyone is involved in those team service events.”

Though many students each year fail to complete service hours by the original deadline, Plotkin doubts that the guidelines will change. She said that compared to most other schools, the Harvard-Westlake requirement is incredibly light and that four hours of work with a group of four should not be difficult to manage.

“The Community Council, Father J. Young and Jordan Church feel like group service is a lot more meaningful,” she said. “You get to share the experience. It’s like team bonding.”

Girls Learn International club hosts bake sale

By Tara Stone

The Girls Learn International club held a name-your-own-price bake sale in the quad to raise funds for the GLI organization on May 25.

In addition to preparing an assortment of baked goods, club members designed posters describing the poor state of female education internationally. Funds from the sale will be used to pay for textbooks and other school supplies, computer labs, teacher salaries and student scholarships.

The bake sale raised $780.39, Club President Amanda Aizuss said.

“We are really surprised that we raised that much, and we’re really happy about it,” she said. “The costs for maintaining schools abroad are so much less than that.”

GLI works to pair charitable schools from many different states with underdeveloped schools abroad to promote the education of young women worldwide.

Harvard-Westlake recently joined the international organization but does

not yet have a partner school. By next year, club president Amanda Aizuss ’13 said the club expects to pair with a school in South America.

“Education is vital,” club member Tiggy Menkir ’14 said. “It is the most important thing you need to change in order to improve a girl’s life.”

Aizuss referenced a GLI partner school where it costs $133 to maintain a computer lab, $55 a month for teacher salaries, $11 for desks, $4.50 on average for student books and $271 for seven student scholarships.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

News A7

inbrief

Future dean to host meeting with students

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF JULIETTE WEST

FRIEND OF THE ANIMALS: Juliette West ’14 strokes an elephant’s skin in Thailand during the filming of “How I Be-

came an Elephant.” The documentary focuses on her quest for proper treatment of elephants and to stop animal abuse.

Sophomore fights for end to elephant abuse, raises awareness through film

By Mazelle Etessami, Cherish Molezion and Lauren Sonnenberg

Juliette West ’14, star of the documentary advocating against elephant exploitation titled, “How I Became an Elephant,” spoke to over 1,200 students at Herbert Hoover Elementary School in San Francisco May 11. The movie was later screened at the Sausalito Film Festival May 12.

While on a trip to South East Asia in 2009, West met Lek Chailert, called Asia’s “Elephant Lady” for her work to protect elephants from illegal trade and abuse. This encounter inspired West to take action.

Directors Tim Gorski and Synthian Sharp and Producer Jorja Fox followed West as she discovered the threats of extinction elephants face.

As a 9-year-old animal lover, West

worked for proper animal treatment and began raising money for a pet adoption center. At 13, West campaigned to move an elephant from the Los Angeles Zoo into a sanctuary by writing letters to city council members.

West was horrified to learn that elephants used for entertainment performances or to give rides are often victims of abuse. West said elephant captivity deprives elephants of the constant mental and social stimulation they require and the proper exercise and habitat they deserve. To domesticate them, elephants are often starved, beaten relentlessly and forced into a wooden cage called a crush box for up to a few weeks.

“The thing that struck me the most was that it was such a hidden thing,” West said. “Elephants in zoos were suffering and elephants who perform and give rides were abused so much. It

really bothered me that it was such a well-kept secret, and the elephants deserve for it to be made public.”

She filmed the documentary with a crew of roughly 15 people for two weeks on location in Thailand.

In December 2011, the final cut of the documentary was completed and released. The film was recently screened at the Hot Docs Doc Shop in Toronto, Canada from April 26 to May 6. It was also screened at the LA Awareness Festival on May 6.

Since the film’s release, West has visited schools in California and Montana to educate students about the abuse of elephants.

West said young audiences are most important. Youths, who make up a large percentage of targeted consumers for circuses and zoos, she said, must understand that these public avenues for elephants are inhumane.

Carney’s to give 50 percent discount on Thursday Students will receive a 50 percent discount at Carney’s on Thursday, May 31, the Prefect Council announced.

Upper school students will need their student ID cards to receive the discount. Previous discount events have been received well by students, said junior prefect and future Head prefect Katie Lim ’13. The prefects were able to get the discounts after talking to the manager.

“The discounts have been pretty successful and this last one is a great opportunity for students to enjoy during finals,” junior prefect and fture Head Prefect Michael Wagmeister ’13 said.

— Eojin Choi

Students win awards after national placement exams Fifty-six Harvard-Westlake students won awards for the National Latin Exam, and numerous students ranked in the top 10 for the French Grand Concours.

The National Latin Exam, which took place on March 15, covered Latin language, grammar and culture.

At the Latin II level, Thomas Thorne ’14 received a perfect score.

Rhett Gentile ’13 Kenneth Kim ’13, Jensen Pak ’14 and Ashley Wu ’13 also received the Oxford Classical Dictionary Award because they had won gold for four years.

The French Grand Concours is also a national contest open to all high school students, and it took place on May 14 at the Upper School. A perfect score is first place, one wrong is second place, and the ranking continues until 10th place.

— Jessica Lee

HWPA raises $20,000 more than last year

By Ana Scuric

The Harvard-Westlake Parents Association’s Party raised over $164,000 for financial aid this year, exceeding last year’s total by $20,000.

The Parents Association sold 450 tickets for its annual event, Rock’N’Art, held April 28 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The event included an online auction and a new auction called Art Jukebox, which sold 65 pieces of art including art from professional artists and teachers’ works. Art Jukebox made $20,000, while the rest of the online auction brought in a total of more than $75,000.

“It was a fantastic art exhibit and auction which tied into our music and art theme,” Parents Association Head Susi Gaylord (Ben ’13) said.

During the event at LACMA, parents enjoyed a night of art, dining and music. A concert was held featuring Billy Steinberg (Ezra ’15), who sang original songs like “True Colors,” Rick Knowles, The Janks and pop and R&B singer JoJo Levesque.

AttendeiGoodie bags handed out at the event were woven from masai by a Tanzanian woman who will now be supported for three years from the funds she earned making the bags.

The HWPA donated centerpieces filled with art supplies to LA’s Best to support its after-school art programs for young children.

Future Upper School Dean Christopher Jones will host a reception Thursday for his soon-to-be students.

Jones will lead Upper School Dean Jon Wimbish’s group next fall, when Wimbish replaces Ronnie CodringtonCazeau as Head of Middle School.

Wimbish’s current sophomores, juniors and their families will meet Jones at an open house in Feldman Horn gallery from 4 to 6:30 p.m.. Jones will also attend a few dean meetings during his visit. Jones is currently a college counselor at Columbus Academy in Columbus, Ohio.

“It’ll be good to have him on campus,” Wimbish said. “At that point we will also meet to start the transition process, talking about how we will collaborate on letters of recommendation, going through my student caseload and talking about each student and their personalities.”

— Allison Hamburger

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE ROBINSON FAMILY

TEAMMATES: Robinson, far right, smiles wtih baseball teammates Colburn Pittman ’12, Langston McElroy ’12 and Jesus Morales ’12 in front of their team’s trophies.

Cancer Society to remember Chris Robinson’ 13 with walk-a-thon

By David Lim

Chris Robinson’s family will hold a walk-a-thon in his memory sponsored by the American Cancer Society on June 23 at Ladera Little League’s Juniors Field. Former baseball teammate Austin Schoff ’13 worked to organize the service event with Community Council.

Robinson left early in his first year at Harvard-Westlake as a ninth grader when he was diagnosed with leukemia and died last November after a two and half year long battle with the disease.

“Chris was a good friend of mine for a long time and I wanted to find a way to help out the family,” Schoff said.

“They’re going through a lot.”

Before the event, students will be able to join “Team Beebop” online and make a donation to the American Cancer Society.

“I met Chris before I came into ninth grade and we became friends pretty quickly,” Schoff said. “Chris was a great friend of mine and his family really reached out to me, and so this seemed like an important way to help them out.”

‘Funny and engaging’ actor speaks with cinema classes Television actor and screenwriter John Considine told Cinema Studies students about his experiences behind and in front of the camera.

“John [Considine] is one of my oldest and closest friends,” Cinema Studies teacher Ted Walch said. “I thought he was terrific.”

Considine spoke about his work with director Robert Altman, who the students studied. He explained Altman’s “off-beat improvisational directing style.”

“He was funny and engaging, and had many years of experience to draw from,” Peter Schuhlman ’12 said.

Walch purchased copies of Considine’s autobiography for his students and Considine signed them.

—Camille Shooshani

The Chronicle

A8 News

Sophomore places 4th in state science fair

May 30, 2012

By Sarah Novicoff

Divya Siddarth ’14 won fourth place in the California State Science Fair Behavioral and Social Sciences Senior Division at the California nathanson ’s/chronicle Science Center. A total of 993 stuDivya Siddarth dents from 421 schools participated in the fair from April 30 to May 1, 29 of them in Siddarth’s division. Three other students qualified.

Siddarth qualified for the state fair for her fifth consecutive year after winning first place in the Los Angeles County Fair March 29-31 at the Pasadena Convention Center. Her project, “Mood and Other Health Benefits of Yoga, Tai Chi and Aerobic Exercise,” focused on the effects of the activities in older adults. She found that those who participated in yoga and tai chi performed better on every single mood variable measured and reported fewer sleep problems when compared to aerobic exercise participants.

After years of doing yoga for fun, Siddarth began to realize that it helped her relax and was inspired to find out whether that translated to scientific health results. She visited her local YMCA and talked to many instructors before finding a few that would allow her to talk to their students. In the end, Siddarth had 42 volunteers fill out three separate validated surveys. One focused on mood, another on general health and the third on sleep patterns.

Two of the surveys are available online while the third Siddarth obtained from a licensed psychologist whom she had worked with over the summer.

DARREN LEOW/CHICAGO MAROON

TAKING THE PRIZE: Matthew Krisiloff ’10 won $10,000 for creating CrowdCoin, a digital system that facilitates charity

Alumnus wins prize for charity button

By Eojin Choi

An alumnus and his team won $10,000 in the University of Chicago’s Social Innovation competition for creating CrowdCoin, a system that allows consumers to make digital charity donations in store checkout lines.

Matthew Krisiloff ’10, a sophomore at the University of Chicago and the CEO of CrowdCoin, developed the business plan with other students on the team after working on it for about six months.

Their idea was inspired by the desire to eliminate spare change while helping the community through donations.

The system works by integrating the CrowdCoin hardware with computer-based cash registers, which allows the customer to choose if they want to donate some of their change.

Pressing the central button once rounds up their transaction to the nearest quarter, and pressing it twice rounds it up to the nearest dollar.

This donation data is then sent to

8 debaters to compete internationally

the CrowdCoin company, which transfers the money to partner charities.

After testing the button at charity bake sales and student-run cafés, CrowdCoin has begun using the system and has raised about $12,000 so far.

Krisiloff and his team also placed second at Northwestern’s Entrepreneur Competition, and the team is expecting to be able to raise millions for charities.

This summer, they are planning to participate in the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’ Accelerated Development Program, which will provide them with office spaces, mentoring and other resources to help further develop their business. Though the program was originally designed for MBA students, Krisiloff ’s team will participate as undergraduates.

“To me, everything I’m doing goes far beyond a business plan competition,” Krisiloff said. “We’re already testing some assumptions in local coffee shops, and we plan to launch the full version in stores by the end of this summer.”

Krisiloff first became interested in joining the competition after winning the University of Chicago’s competition with Entom Foods last year.

The previous business plan he worked on was about incorporating insects into the American diet as an acceptable food source, since insects are nutritious and resource-efficient compared to more traditional meat sources.

However, because many westerners are repulsed by insects, the Entom Foods team has been exploring ways to extract insect meat to help make Americans feel more comfortable about eating bugs.

Krisiloff said that his experience at Harvard-Westlake served as an important foundation for the work he is currently doing while majoring in Law, Letters, and Society.

“Harvard-Westlake was a great start for all my work, as I acquired a strong work ethic there,” Krisiloff said. “[I] was exposed to many bright people who regularly challenged me and encouraged me to think critically.”

3 juniors to conduct stem cell research at USC this summer

By Julia Aizuss

By Jack Goldfisher

Eight students will compete at international debate tournaments in Chile, Turkey and the Czech Republic over the summer.

Michelle Choi ’12, Tommy Choi ’14, Zoe Dutton ’15, Sara Evall ’15, Luke Holthouse ’13, Timothy Song ’15, Miranda Van Iderstine ’13 and Elle Wilson ’13 will each attend one of the World Schools Debate Championships and compete against representatives from almost 50 countries.

The students are part of The Debate Union, a national debate organization based at Claremont McKenna College. The organization, the official international representative of Team USA debate, is not affiliated with Harvard-Westlake, but many debaters choose to participate on the international level through the organization.

Teams are comprised of three members with each giving an eightminute speech, and one speaker from each team closing the debate with a four-minute speech.

The first tournament will be the Eurasian Schools Championship in June in Turkey, followed by the Pan American Tournament in July in Chile and finally the Heart of Europe Championship in Olomouc, Czech Republic in August.

Wilson, who will be attending the Heart of Europe Tournament with

donations in checkout lines, for the University of Chicago’s Social Innovation competition. CrowdCoin has raised about $12,000.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF MIRANDA VAN IDERSTINE

SEASONED TRAVELLERS: Miranda van Iderstine ’13 and Elle Wilson ’13 travelled to New Zealand last summer as part of the U.S. debate team.

Holthouse, Dutton and Song, said Team USA constantly changes the members of its teams based on scheduling conflicts and the team’s goals.

Wilson and Michelle Choi attended a World Schools tournament in South Africa in mid January, and although they placed 38th, they “got a lot of really good practice and a lot of really good experience,” Wilson said. Michelle Choi will compete at the Eurasian Schools tournament with her brother Tommy, Van Iderstine and Evall.

“A lot of the teams are from Middle Eastern countries, so it’s cool to talk to them about international issues,” she said. “Young people often don’t agree with their governments’ decisions, and these tournaments are a great way to understand that.”

know about and I thought it was kind of cool, and after it really fascinated Three students will research stem me,” Adler said. cells at the University of Southern CalThe students were matched with ifornia this summer.

USC research scientists whom they Kevin Adler ’13, Sophie McAllister will work with based on their inter’13 and Ashley Wu ’13 will participate views. They have already begun corin an eight-week internship as part responding with these researchers, of the USC Early Investigator High McAllister said, who recently met up School Summer Program in Stem Cell with her mentor. In addition to conResearch. The Upper School Science ducting original research on embryDepartment narrowed down the ap- onic stem cells, Adler, McAllister and plications for the Wu will participate in internship to six stuforums and seminars dents, who were then about the political, It’s an opportunity interviewed together ethical and regulatory at the Eli and Edythe aspects of stem cell that’s not usually Broad Center for Rescience and how to reavailable — how generative Medicine late this information and Stem Cell Reto the general public. often do you get to search, where they the end of the prowork with stem cells?” At will conduct their gram, they will presresearch, by the head —Sophie McAllister ent their research at of the program and an EiHS conference. the researchers inEliza Kellman ’12 volved. was offered a chance McAllister worked last summer to participate in stem cell research at at the Coastal Marine Lab, which she the Eli and Edythe Broad Center laboalso discovered through school, and it ratories. Though the program stipulatsparked her interest in lab-based re- ed that the students accepted for the search. available spots should be juniors, the “It’s an opportunity that’s not usu- interviewers were “so impressed with ally available — how often do you get to her that they offered her a position in work with stem cells?” McAllister said. the stem cell lab of the woman helping The opportunity also appealed to to run the program,” Upper School SciAdler, who attended a presentation ence Department Larry Axelrod said. on stem cells at Cedars-Sinai Medical Kellman, however, turned down Center last year. the offer to travel and spend time with “Before it was something I didn’t family this summer.

“

May 30, 2012

chronicle.hw.com

Faculty demographic lacks minority representation

By Rebecca Nussbaum

Two hundred and ten faculty members have much to boast of, including 121 masters degrees, 31 doctoral degrees and an average tenure of 11 years.

However, one thing that the faculty lacks is racial diversity. Improving faculty diversity is one of the school’s main goals for the next six years, Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said.

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the California Association of Independent Schools highlighted diversity deficiency as a major issue in a report last year that renewed HarvardWestlake’s accreditation.

“The school has a long-standing commitment to recruit and retain excellent teachers from underrepresented populations,” the WASC report reads.

“This aligns with the school’s interest in attracting and enrolling students from those communities. The school has done well in attracting those students; […] however, the increase in the number of teachers of color has not coincided with this increase in student diversity.”

Percentages of minority teachers are nearly half of those of minority students, and the most notable gap is in the population of African-American teachers.

The only black full-time classroom teacher is middle school history and social studies teacher George Gaskin. Other black faculty include Head of Middle School Ronnie Codrington-Cazeau, who will leave the Middle School next year to head the Evergreen School in suburban Seattle, Upper School Dean Tamar Adegbile and future Head of Athletics Terry Barnum, making the faculty just under two percent African American, compared to 10 percent Asian and five

percent Hispanic.

Faculty demographics will remain consistent next year because although Cazeau is leaving, Christopher Jones will replace Jon Wimbish as an upper school dean, keeping the African American percentage of around two percent.

“I think the school would be better served by having more teachers that better represent the student body,” Huybrechts said. “I think our student body is more diverse than our faculty is, and that is something that we’ve committed to rectify in our last accreditation.”

Adegbile said a diverse faculty would benefit the school.

“I think it’s ideal to have a diverse faculty, not only for underrepresented students to see people who look like them in the classroom, but also for majority students to experience as well,” Adegbile said.

Black Leadership and Culture Club President Evan Brown ’12 “definitely” feels the lack of black teachers on campus.

“It is important for black students at Harvard-Westlake to see leadership positions filled with some black faculty as well,” Brown said.

Although diversifying the faculty is the ultimate goal, it is difficult to accomplish because high retention rates leave few openings for new teachers, Adegbile said.

“It’s kind of a blessing and a curse,” she said. “It’s amazing how many [teachers] you talk to, and they’ve been here for 17 or 20 years. But that in and of itself doesn’t allow for a lot of openings to seek new people.”

However, when there is a job opening, race will play a role in the hiring process, Huybrechts said.

2 to study in Rennes, Beijing

By Claire Goldsmith

Two sophomores will spend the 2012-2013 school year living with host families in foreign countries as part of the School Year Abroad program.

Alex McNab nathanson ’s/chronicle ’14 will live in BeiMatthew Kelson ’14 jing, China while Matthew Kelson ’14 will attend the program in Rennes, France.

In Beijing, McNab will integrate immersion in Chinese culture with his studies, exploring the city nathanson ’s/chronicle and his new surAlex McNab ‘14 roundings.

“We’ll be in a history class one day, learning about building the Great Wall of China, and the next day we’ll be at the Great Wall of China,” McNab said. “They’ll also take us to places where we can really experience China and its people.”

McNab, who requested a family with “lots of kids” in his housing questionnaire, is most excited to meet new people and take advantage of the opportunities afforded him in the program.

“Having a new family will be hardest to adjust to,” he said. “I can meet new kids, and I’m used to going to new environments, but my home environment won’t be the same with a different family.

“I want to experience myself in a totally different way than I can experience myself here in America,” McNab said. “When I get back, I will be able to speak Chinese better and also know myself better.”

In the SYA school in Rennes, Kelson will take AP French Language and Culture, French Culture, French History and Art History classes, all taught in French, as well as traditional English and math classes in English. A fencer and member of Model United Nations, he hopes to sample new extracurricular activities in Rennes through the SYA school.

“I didn’t really want to have a conventional junior year, and going to Europe has always been something I would like to do,” Kelson said. “I’m excited about meeting new people, particularly French kids.”

On the weekends, SYA plans small trips to French cities and landmarks for SYA students but also allows them to travel independently throughout France in their free time.

“I want to go to Paris and maybe the south of France,” Kelson said. “I’ve been to Paris once, and I love Paris. I’ve never seen the south of France and it seems really incredible.”

Jeremy Bradford ’14 and Hansel Cortez ’14 will live with host families in France for five weeks in July and August as part of the SYA summer program.

Both have taken French for two years and want to expand their grasp of the language.

“It seemed like a great experience because I love French and want to be eloquent in it,” said Bradford.

Two sophomores will take the first semester of their junior year to live in the Colorado backcountry. Conor Belfield ’14 and Rachel Burdorf ’14 hope to hone their leadership skills in the Rocky Mountains at High Mountain Institute, reinforcing their studies with expeditions in the Rockies “I’m very excited because [the semester] is something I’ll never get another chance to do,” Belfield said.

“Living in Los Angles, you are always in a very urban surrounding, so it will be cool to experience things I’ve never done in a different environment.”

News A9

A low turnover in faculty hinders school’s “long-standing commitment to recruit and retain excellent teachers from underrepresented populations,” cited in last year’s WASC report.

“

It’s ideal to have a diverse faculty, not only for under-represented students to see people who look like them in the classroom, but also for majority students to experience as well.”

—Tamar Adegbile Upper School Dean

“All of us who are responsible for building our faculty have that in the front of our minds,” Huybrechts said. “If we are considering two candidates who are equal in every other way but one is from an underrepresented group, then we would probably hire that person because that person brings to the faculty something we don’t already have.”

This was exemplified in replacing Upper School Dean Jon Wimbish, Adegbile said. After Upper School Dean Canh Oxelson left for Horace Mann School in New York last year, the deans lost one of their two African-American members.

“There was definitely an important thought about, ‘Okay, we’re losing Mr. Oxelson, and it would be ideal to have a great candidate who could also add to that diversity and restore what we lost because we don’t have a lot of room to lose one [black faculty member],’” Huybrechts said.

However, improving faculty diversity may not be as simple as looking at race, Gaskin said. Merely looking at the numbers does not ensure the diversity of viewpoint that the school is hoping for, he said.

“I’m a little bit uncomfortable with the assumption that because there is

nathanson ’s/chronicle

diversity ethnically there are diverse viewpoints that are expressed,” he said.

“That’s not necessarily the case all the time.”

“A lot of times the view of diversity is a shallow view,” he said. “The fact that you want to see pictures of your faculty of different shades of color I think is very, very shallow. I think it trivializes what people do in making the color of their skin more important than what they do as teachers.”

Adegbile is surprised that students have not talked to her about the lack of minority teachers at the Upper School, and she wonders if they notice it.

“I haven’t had many students approach me, African-American or otherwise, saying, ‘Hey, we notice this,’” Adegbile said. “Faculty talk about it, my colleagues talk about it, I think adults recognize the problem, but I’d wondered if students are aware of it or maybe it doesn’t really stand out to them.”

Brown, an alumna of The Mirman School, said that by now she is accustomed to having mostly white teachers.

“I’m kind of desensitized to it, and I think that’s true for most students,” she said. “It would definitely be appreciated and noted if more black faculty were hired.”

The Chronicle

A10 News

May 30, 2012

Club members write blogs on campus life

Excellence, Justice, Honor

By Jamie Chang

son said. “I think that’s a great idea, so I said yes immediately.”

Harvard-Westlake Voices runs a Students who want their posts to be website where students may submit published on the H-W Voices website, blog posts about topics ranging from hwvoices.wordpress.com must email studying to finals to embarrassing their posts to both Cinnamon and Wilyearbook photos. Founder and Presi- son. Cinnamon and Wilson edit the dent Molly Cinnamon ’14 began the posts and then put them on the webH-W Voices club in September. site. Currently, there are 10 bloggers, “I started reading the MIT blogs ranging from sophomores to seniors, once my brother was Cinnamon said. accepted there, and Both CinI was impressed by namon and Blogging is so differ- Wilson said the how the bloggers exent than any other form of H-W press themselves in Voices such creative ways,” club has made communication. It’s more Cinnamon said. tremendous relaxed, more open and progress “Blogging is so difin ferent than any othblogging this more personal.” er form of commupast year.

—Molly Cinnamon ‘14 nication. It’s more “What I’m Club Founder most impressed relaxed, more open, and more personal. with is the solid Harvard-Westlake and consistent has such a unique student body, so I performance from almost all the blogwanted to create a forum in which all gers throughout the year,” Wilson said. its many voices could be heard.”

“They delivered new material on a When first starting the club, Cin- range of topics at the same time pernamon went to summer school and sonal, with an eye focused on the H-W dean coordinator Ryan Wilson to be community, and just the gestalt of bethe faculty adviser. ing a teenager.”

Cinnamon explained to Wilson at During the past seven months, the the start of the year that “the goal of H-W Voices website has gotten 8,500 H-W Voices is to allow the unique voic- views. Wilson says H-W Voices “crees of our campus to share their per- ates dialogue and provokes thought sonal experiences, therefore further from across the community.” opening up communication between “I credit Molly with her vision and students and students, faculty and fac- organization, as well as the bloggers for ulty and students and faculty.” their enthusiasm and creativity,” Wil“Molly Cinnamon had this great son said. “I expect it [H-W Voices] to idea for a club that extends the greater grow to include more voices from the conversation in the community,” Wil- community, teachers especially.”

“

jamie chang/chronicle

WITH HONOR: Fifty-five students were inducted into the Cum Laude Society for academic distinction in a ceremony afterschool on Monday, May 21. Mark Swerdlow ’12 shakes President Tom Hudnut’s hand after recieving a certificate.

Junior wins Italian essay competition

By Mariel Brunman

Annie Wasserman ’13 placed first in an Italian essay writing competition run by the Consulate General of Italy and the Department of Italian Language nathanson ’s/chronicle and Research at Annie Wasserman ‘13 UCLA. The competition took place on May 12.

Wasserman started learning Italian two years ago through a HarvardWestlake summer course, then continued through Directed Studies.

The Directed Studies: Italian students prepared for the AP exam during the second semester, so she had been preparing other types of essays for a while, Wasserman said.

“Students that took the test were primarily native Italian speakers, so I was extremely surprised when I found out I had done well,” Wasserman said.

“I originally took the test going out on a limb.”

Daniel kim/chronicle

RIGHT ON SCHEDULE: Workers smooth the newly-poured concrete on the bottom level of the new pool, left. The framing for

Lizzy thomas/chronicle

the Kutler Center is finished, right and the library is scheduled to move back from Mini-Mudd in Chalmers in August.

Pool, Kutler construction to finish on time Continued from page A1

to the Chalmers East stage where the librarians worked this year.

Yesterday, all of the components of the pool were due to arrive after being shipped through the Panama Canal from Italy and the pool should be framed within five to six days.

This type of pool, which is made of metal walls covered with PVC and then finished with a vinyl coating, was requested Barzdukas as it is supposed to allow swimmers to put up faster times.

De Matte said that the dimensions

of this type of pool are laser certified, ensuring that it is exactly 50 meters.

“Oaks Christian built a 50-meter pool out of shotcrete,” De Matte said.

“It’s too small, by about a half of an inch. They can’t do major competitions in it. It’s always a gamble with a shotcrete pool, there is no gamble with this.

It’s a big, big deal for us.”

De Matte said that construction on Coldwater Canyon is not going to impede the pool work at all.

The pool and the Kutler Center are both on schedule to open in time for the 2012-2013 school year.

“We’re still looking to open up at the very end of August for the new year at this point,” De Matte said. “It’s going to be tight but we’re going to make it.”

The framing for the Kutler Center has been completed and work is being done on heating, ventilation, air conditioning and fire safety systems, in addition to dry walling.

Following graduation, preparations will begin to move the contents of “Mini-Mudd” back to the Seeley G. Mudd Library, which underwent an extensive renovation and remodel as part of the Kutler Center project.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

‘One-to-one’ initiative to explore digital teaching

By David Lim

There’s an app for that

News A11

With increased opportunities to use touch tablets and laptops, Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts works toward fulfilling her goal to integrate technology into the school.

Teachers have begun experimenting with iPad applications as teaching aids.

This April, teachers unboxed their new iPads in the first step towards a one-to-one computing initiative that Math Department chair Paula Evans uses this app will push for every student to have EduCreation to send videos to students as they study at home. their own computing device starting at the Middle School in 2013.

Foreign Language Department chair Paul Chenier is Wheelock’s Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts testing out the electronic version of the textbook. emphasized the timing is right for the Latin expansive computer program, calling Evans and Math teacher Kevin Weis use this app the iPad “tipping point technology.”

Wolfram “You need to take notice of [iPads] to graph and solve complex equations in class.

Alpha because they are really useful as teaching tools, whereas heavy laptops are SOURCES: PAULA EVANS, PAUL CHENIER AND KEVIN WEIS GRAPHIC BY NIKA MADYOON cumbersome for students and there weren’t a critical number of textbooks replace traditional teaching materials.

In addition to note-taking apps she available before,” Huybrechts said.

The implementation process has uses at meetings, Evans uses an app The Educational Technology Committee, led by math teacher Jeff Snapp, started with teachers finding uses for called EduCreation to send math videos to her students and utilizes Wollooked into equipping every person on iPads in the classroom.

“We are dis- framAlpha to graph and solve complex campus with a covering appli- equations. computer since cations available Math teacher Kevin Weis shares the start of Huyon iPads that are Evans’ enthusiasm. brechts’ tenure, You need to take notice incredibly well“I can imagine my students all holdshe said. of iPads because they are suited for disci- ing iPads, using their fingers to manip“We almost pline-specific top- ulate a three-dimensional surface, the did this with the really useful as teaching ics,” Director of graph of z=sin(xy) perhaps, pinching it tablet computer tools.”

Studies Elizabeth to zoom in on its maximums and minifour years ago, said, who mums,” Weis said. and I’m glad we —Jeanne Huybrechts Resnick has been planning He also sees the potential for studidn’t because the Head of School details of the iPad dents to take quizzes on iPads and for tablet computer rollout. the math department to make custom wasn’t the right The math de- interactive textbooks. piece of technolpartment has compiled useful iPad Foreign Language Department ogy,” Huybrechts said.

At a meeting of the middle school apps on a spreadsheet created by math Chair Paul Chenier calls using e-books Faculty Academic Committee, she teacher Michael Mori, Department a “no-brainer.”

“You can a get digital copy of the brought $1,800 of books and binders Chair Paula Evans said.

Evans said using technology is part new AP text before the print copy and that the average student purchases of a greater push by teachers to “flip they’re a fraction of the price,” he said. while at the Middle School.

Chenier, an avid iPad user, down“If we can reduce half the weight their classroom,” bringing more interand half the cost, it’s zero sum,” Huy- active activities in class, instead of at loaded a $6 Latin dictionary app that costs $150 in paper form. brechts said, citing iPads’ potential to home.

>> >>

>>

“

“There are a lot of apps out there that are being designed for the classroom,” he said. “Everyone’s just thinking this is going to be big.”

Foreign language teacher Nancy Holme-Elledge said she is excited for the more flexible, individualized teaching the iPad will bring to her class.

Based on her experiences implementing the language lab in 2005 and working on a upgrade for next December, Holme-Elledge is cautious.

“If [the technology] is unreliable or just a toy and doesn’t promote learning, it’s not interesting to me,” she said.

In teaching his own subject, at least, history teacher Dror Yaron has his doubts about how the iPad will enhance his classroom experience, calling interactive apps “superficial renditions of presenting information.”

“On a human level, I need to engage my students by looking them in the eye,” Yaron said. “I really feel them intellectually, and I’m concerned that the technology will get in the way.”

History teacher Francine Werner, who previously did not allow computers in her class, shares Yaron’s concern that the technology may hamper students from learning how to filter what to write down their notes when they can type every word a teacher says.

“But if this is the way of the future, we’re going to have to find a way [to teach notetaking], maybe through trial and error,” Werner said.

But Werner isn’t concerned with the devices’ potential for distraction.

“I know people doodle even without using computers,” she said. “There’s some very fine artwork that goes on in the middle of the most brilliant lectures.”

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pinion Los Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue VIII

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Don’t just try to prevent teenage drinking — educate us for the future

High school teaches us about many academic subjects, equipping us with knowledge to take on the world. But equally important, it prepares us for life after graduation.

Life after graduation, in our world, means college. A large part of college is a student’s social life, which, often times, includes drinking alcohol.

This is where many of our students lack tools necessary to stay safe in a college environment.

Maybe no high school student can drink safely, as alcohol is an illegal toxin for everyone on campus that can cause significant problems, but the school should give us the knowledge to make our own decisions regarding our health.

The school has managed to plan fun, social events that are not marred by alcohol, but that does not help prepare us for the college world where alcohol is present.

Teaching prevention works for some, but most high school students will encounter or experiment with alcohol.

The school teaches safe sex rather than abstinence during Choices and Challenges, not to encourage us to have sex, but to prepare us if we decide to.

Some students are reminded

of these lessons at the end of senior year during “Sex for Males” and “Sex for Females” senior seminars. The same idea should be applied to alcohol.

Obviously, administrators cannot encourage drinking.

Obviously, they cannot say underage drinking is acceptable.

But they can use high school as an opportunity to teach us safe party habits.

Whether we are the ones consuming alcohol or not, it will be present.

Some of our friends will drink. Some of our teammates will drink. And many, if not most, of our future classmates will drink in college.

Many of the lessons taught in Choices and Challenges regarding alcohol are long forgotten by senior year, when we ready ourselves for college. It is necessary to teach sophomores about drinking responsibly, but we need a

refresher course before we enter college.

What should you do if someone has alcohol poisoning?

What if our friends are vomiting? What if their eyes roll back?

We need small seminars throughout senior year to teach us about drinking alcohol in the future. We need to know how much is too much.

Are five beers too much?

Can we take six shots of vodka and expect to function? What happens if you mix different types of alcohol?

Some of us will resort to learning by experience.

Hopefully, the worst that will happen is a bad hangover that fades, but some of the worst effects won’t fade and can be life changing.

We need more specific education so we don’t make choices that can change our lives. Or take them.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Opinion A13

By Alex McNab

Forgetting the stereotype

I

RACHEL SCHWARTZ/CHRONICLE

Don’t mistake Facebook for action

By Michael Rothberg

E

very now and then, someone posts a link on Facebook to a charity or cause like stopping genocide in a foreign country or shutting down puppy mills. Usually, the links are asking for money or just “raising awareness.” However, no matter how noble the cause, there is something unsettling about seeing these posts on Facebook.

Granted, it can be useful to promote a charity with a social networking website, but if people think that simply posting on behalf of these causes will singlehandedly solve a problem, they are kidding themselves.

While a viral post can garner thousands, if not millions, of “likes” or “shares” for a specific cause, if no substantial action is taken, nothing is accomplished in the end. This passive form of activism is an exercise in futility.

Earlier this year, a campaign to “Stop Kony” went viral on Facebook after the release of a short film made by the no-governmental organization Invisible Children Inc. The

video, which was viewed by 90 million people on YouTube, was an exposé on Joseph Kony, the Ugandan leader of the Lord’s Resistant Army.

The leaders of the movement claimed that by drawing widespread “awareness,” Kony would somehow be brought to justice. The logo for the movement was a poster, which looked vaguely like Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign poster designed by Shephard Fairey. It depicted Kony juxtaposed with Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden with the simple tagline: “The Worst.”

This inflammatory message spread like wildfire, receiving over 800,000 likes on Facebook. Liking Kony 2012 on Facebook became a trendy thing to do.

Despite all of this “awareness,” nothing was really done. The movement fizzled out of the limelight and became somewhat of a national laughingstock after Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell was arrested for a public nude escapade.

In no way do I doubt that bringing Kony to justice is a worthy cause,

as he is guilty of many unspeakable, violent crimes. However, the Kony 2012 movement took the wrong approach to solving the problem. They just told people about the problem and expected others to deal with it.

If people really want to make a difference, they need to leave their computer monitors.

In 1960, four students from an all-black college in Greensboro, N.C. acted against segregation by sitting in at a segregated lunch counter.

These protestors took direct action on the issue rather than just proclaiming a strong stance on it.

They sparked many other “sit-ins” across the country and played a major role in the success of the Civil Rights movement.

Websites like Facebook are helpful when it comes to communication.

They can connect people from all around the world. They can be useful for gathering support. They can spread new ideas and maybe even work as a makeshift public opinion poll. Facebook is not activism. Action is activism.

am going to China to be a better black man. In America, I am trapped by expectations that I have to live up to. I am expected to be black.

White kids tell me black is ghetto.

Black is uneducated. Black is fried chicken and Kool-Aid. Black is Chris Tucker and Dave Chappelle and Gary Coleman in “Diff ’rent Strokes” saying “What ‘choo talkin’ ‘bout Willis.”

I am more Barack Obama, Bill Cosby and W.E.B. Dubois. I am educated. I speak well, I dress well and I’m not from the hood, so I am not considered black. I have to pretend that I am.

In my school, I can’t say nuthin’ correct so that I can show the white kids how ghetto I am.

In my neighborhood, I am ashamed to tell the black kids that I go to one of the top private schools in the country because they’ll say I go to “whiteboy school.” I don’t want them to think that I am just like every other white, prep-school kid.

I feel as though I am always acting.

I play one role at home and another at school, but neither of them is me.

I don’t think white kids worry about being white as much as black kids worry about being black, and I envy them for that. Sometimes, I envy them so much that I wish I wasn’t black anymore. So I am going to the other side of the world with School Year Abroad to stop being black for nine months.

Hopefully, as a Chinese man, I will be able to discover what it is to be myself and not a stereotype. There, I will be living up to the Chinese expectation of me and not the white man’s. I hope to find a happy medium between the two that is just me.

I won’t have to speak stupid or act hood or sag my pants, but I don’t know if this will work. It is very possible that I’ll get to China and I’ll be the only black man there, so I’ll become blacker and even less of myself out of a feeling that I need to be some sort of a representative for my entire race. But I don’t want to. I don’t want my life to be a performance.

The late Gil Scott-Heron, a blackactivist rapper, said “We’re all actors in this, I suppose.”

I suppose he was right.

English class should foster love of literature

By Julia Aizuss

L

ast week I walked out of another argumentative English class, still pondering the themes of forgiveness, moral ideals and honesty that I had debated with other students in our overly air-conditioned classroom. The novel we were reading, Tobias Wolff ’s “Old School,” the story of a boarding school student who aspires to be a writer, had led to lively discussion over the past few weeks.

As someone who loves English class, I had definitely enjoyed it. But despite the arguments about philosopher Ayn Rand, the attempts to define morality and the analyses of the Bible’s Parable of the Lost Son, I still felt that day, as I had throughout the year, that something was missing.

Where was the attention to language? Literature isn’t only about

themes and ideas. Language is a huge factor too. Though it’s a factor I read closely for in the books I read outside of school, I’ve rarely seen it incorporated into class discussions.

One of the aims of our English program is to instill an understanding of literature. I think we’ve got that covered — we can all agree that we spend substantial time isolating the themes of the novels we discuss and analyzing each word of the evidence we use in our essays.

We dissect the language to extract and argue the themes embedded within, but we seldom put the language back together again and appreciate it for what it is.

Earlier this year, when I was writing an essay for Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” I found my-

self struggling to use one piece of evidence until I discarded it, realizing its significance wasn’t in its potential for analysis but in the rhythmic alliteration of its wording. Wilde hadn’t used certain words for their meanings so much as for their beauty. This, however, was irrelevant to my essay and irrelevant to the way English class was conducted. I could never read aloud “in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days” and ask everyone to just appreciate it. Instead, I’d probably receive blank stares wondering what the point was, or which particular word was supposed to be close read.

Paying attention to the language makes a difference. My older sister, who read “The Great Gatsby” for her

English class a few months ago, told me recently she wouldn’t have liked it as much if she hadn’t followed my suggestion to pay attention to the language instead of solely to its themes.

Our English program sends us off into the world as people who can read a book and be able to understand its greater themes, but this alone doesn’t constitute a full appreciation for literature. Without learning how the tools of good writing are used to create a good book, we miss out on much of what makes literature great and this, in turn, diminishes our enjoyment.

Language is the backbone of literature, after all. You won’t find a book review where the quality and style of language isn’t taken into account. Our English classes should take these into account too.

The Chronicle

A14 Opinion

May 30, 2012

Plays should count as art

By Claire Goldsmith

F

lipping through the course catalog, I circled several electives that intrigued me, only to realize I couldn’t take any of them because I was required to take an art class. I admit I could have done it this year, but that would have meant giving up Chronicle or not fulfilling my PE requirement.

The University of California requires a “yearlong course of visual and performing arts, chosen from the following: dance, drama/theater, music or visual art.” Harvard-Westlake currently allows students to take two non-consecutive semesters of art to fulfill the requirement, so why couldn’t it be broken into trimesters as well? If trimesters of sports practice can count towards PE requirement, trimesters of extracurricular arts deserve the same status.

Students who participate in plays, pit orchestra and other arts events spend as much time rehearsing after school as an athlete would practicing during his trimester-long season.

Preparations can take up to three months, including daily afterschool and occasional weekend rehearsals.

While I enjoyed acting in the Playwright’s Festival, my play involved countless hours of rehearsal. In addition to blocking out scenes with the cast, actors put in time memorizing lines and finding costumes. This time investment makes for an excellent production, but participants deserve to have their contributions recognized as part of the arts requirement.

Say you take a full-year art class that meets four out of five days per cycle, amounting to 99 hours of art.

Or, say you’re in a musical that rehearses for two hours a day, four times per week, for 10 weeks total. Add weekend rehearsals and tech week and you’ve spent a total of 104 hours on this production.

You spent more time on your musical in three months than in your art class the entire year. Three productions would comprise 312 hours, over three times the arts demanded by the requirement. Participating in the arts should count towards one’s art requirement just as being on a sports team counts towards one’s athletic requirement.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF DANIEL WHITE

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS: Ally White ’13 (far left) poses in Paris with fellow School Year Abroad students in front

of the Eiffel Tower. She has been studying in Rennes, France since September and has also traveled throughout Europe.

My experiences abroad: ‘the fastest months of my life’

By Ally White

T

ime plays tricks on us. Nine months, the length of the school year — is it an eternity, or barely the blink of an eye?

As I sit at my computer in Rennes, France, it is hard for me to imagine that in less than a week, I will have finished my nine months here. I feel as if I arrived only a month ago. I also feel like I have lived here all my life.

People said my nine months at School Year Abroad would be the fastest months of my life. Those predictions have been proven true.

I prodded myself into this program with the idea that if I didn’t, I would later be filled with regret, and then I plunged into the depths of a new continent, a new culture and a new family.

I have to struggle to realize how much I have experienced. I have surely traveled more this year than I will ever again travel in a compa-

rable period.

And I have surely accumulated more hours on a bus this year than I will accumulate in all the remaining years of my life.

To my surprise, I have found that a command of the French language facilitates travel far beyond the geographic borders of France.

French enabled me to move around very comfortably in San Sebastian, Spain, to get directions to the Manneken Pis in Belgium and to barter for a Berber bracelet in Morocco.

I was even able to translate for my dad when a man in Marrakech offered him “all my camels for the girl,” meaning me. (My father declined, saying, “Do you know how much it would cost to get camels to Los Angeles?”)

Knowing French and French people has proven valuable in other ways as well, ways less tangible,

Exploring classes after APs

By Lizzy Thomas

I

spent the third quarter counting the days until my APs were over. Too many late nights and too few late mornings will do that. The nights where I would fall asleep at 7 p.m., wake up at 10 p.m. to do a physics and/or chemistry lab, fall asleep again at 1 a.m. and get up at 4 a.m. to complete any number of unfinished assignments were especially fun, but by spring break, I was ready for this prolonged flirtation with sleep deprivation to be over.

So when I walked out of Hamilton Gym after my final AP test, I was thrilled (and also tired). I went home immediately.

The next day at school, I had five frees, a fact seemingly great because of the homework I’d eschewed the night before for somewhere between three to six hours of quality “Parks and Recreation” time.

And it was great — for the first

two periods, until I found that even an entire night’s homework for my remaining classes only took about two periods to complete. At that point I resorted to mindless internet surfing and fell down an internet rabbit hole, so to speak.

The problem was quickly alleviated. A few days earlier, a friend and I had, on a whim, asked Blaise Eitner if we could sit in on his Oceanography and Marine Biology class now that our other sciences were done. He agreed, and we attended our first OMB class the next day.

If you had told me back in midMarch that I would essentially be picking up another class after APs, I might have started to cry because that’s how I felt all the time back then. The idea of using up any of my free time, so hard fought for, would have been unbearable.

OMB is as free a time as that

harder to explain and probably more important.

I feel as if my eyes have been opened to a new and larger world, one I would never have comprehended without this new type of experience.

Just as someone who has been blind since birth could never truly appreciate color, I think that without this complete immersion into French culture it would have been impossible for me to appreciate how differently other cultures perceive and think about the world. This experience has allowed me to see that they perceive and think about the world differently.

If getting out of one’s comfort zone promotes growth, I have grown more than I know how to express.

But what fascinates me is the extent to which I feel comfortable in a place that felt so foreign such a short time ago.

All too often, in our effort to assemble the most impressive schedules possible, we discount classes whose names do not start with “Advanced Placement.”

aimless internet surfing, but infinitely more interesting and informative. I do not take notes nor will I take the final. Why would I? This class will not appear on my transcript, and thus will not impress colleges.

But I love it. I love the teacher, I love the subject matter and I love Optimus Prime, the iguana scratching away in the background.

On my first day of class, we watched a part of the “Planet Blue” series and as sharks leapt out of the water and octopuses scuttled about before me, I found myself relaxed in a way I hadn’t been in class all year.

There is almost negative pressure on me — if I can manage to answer a question correctly, my new classmates are impressed and the fact that I don’t know the answer the majority of the time can be chalked up to the fact that I’m only in this class for the last two weeks of school.

In a year where, so often, the academic and life choices I’ve made have been for reasons beyond my own personal happiness and sense of enjoyment, taking this class was a choice made purely for my own fun.

Because of the AP schedule, I experienced part of a class that I otherwise wouldn’t have taken.

All too often, in our effort to assemble the most impressive schedules possible, we discount classes whose names do not start with “Advanced Placement.”

It’s something I certainly do. It’s not entirely a bad thing — I loved my APs this year and found them interesting and challenging. And while I don’t see myself giving up APs anytime soon, I realize now there are other classes that are just as interesting. It doesn’t hurt to ask a teacher if he or she would let you sit in on the class just for the fun of it.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

letters

Hallie Brookman ’12 has been out of school with an illness for the past few months. She saw most of her classmates for the first time at Prom on Saturday, May 19, where she was crowned Prom Queen.

I don’t think there are enough words that can truly express how grateful I am for the incredible support of the HarvardWestlake community. Thank you all SO much for absolutely everything… the “Get Well Hallie” video, all of your thoughtful prayers, letters, bracelets, love and support have meant the world to me. While I was in the hospital, all I could think about was getting back to school and seeing all of my friends, teachers and deans that I had missed so much. When I finally came to visit Harvard-Westlake, seeing everyone and being back on campus was the greatest feeling ever! These past few months have been an extremely challenging time, but I feel so lucky and blessed that I am now on the road to my full recovery. To you, my Harvard-Westlake family, I am forever grateful.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF LYNNE BROOKMAN

SMILE BRIGHT: Hallie Brookman ’12 walks at Ring Ceremony earlier this year. She has been out of school due to illness for the past few months. Brookman was accepted Early Decision to the University of Pennsylvania in December.

Xoxo, Hallie Brookman

Opinion A15

reportcard

The editorial board of the Chronicle evaluates recent campus developments.

A A+ B C F

Signups for Senior Retreat exceed last year’s by over 50.

Halkirk Ave. reopens for traffic.

Students use rubber bands meant to hold yearbooks and inserts together as slingshots.

Hamilton Gym is too hot for APs and final exams.

Construction prohibits left turns into the main driveway on Coldwater Canyon.

quadtalk

Do you think the school does a good enough job of teaching students about alcohol?

“I think we definitely are very educated on alcohol between choices and challenges and human development, so I think personally I was informed of the risks, but school cannot enforce usage outside of campus.”

—Emily Plotkin ’13

349 students weighed in on the Chronicle poll:

233

Yes RACHEL SCHWARTZ/CHRONICLE

The school should be more practical in teaching us about binge drinking. They should have done a better job.

—Megan Hartman ’12 RACHEL SCHWARTZ/CHRONICLE

No

116

“[The administration] just sweeps the question under the rug and points fingers at us whenever an event like semi-formal becomes a “big” issue. The administration does not know currently how to combat binge drinking because they do not understand why students drink.”

—Garrett Ishida ’12

“The school does everything possible to teach us—I really believe that. But no lecture or pamphlet can really teach you how uninhibited and out of control a person can become when under the influence.”

“I think the school definitely does a good job of educating students on alcohol, especially through the Choices and Challenges class.

The class teaches you about alcohol, how to avoid it, what the consequences are, etc.”

—Matthew Lucas ’14

—Larry Zhang ’14 RACHEL SCHWARTZ/CHRONICLE

exposure

May 30, 2012

A16

2

IT’S DE-LOVELY: 1: Danny Roth ’12 and Elana Meer ’13 serenade each other during “You’re the Top.” 2: Bella Gonzalez ’12, Meer, Lexi Fadel ’13 and Alex Berman ’14 dance the Charleston in “Anything Goes.” 3: Peter Kim ’14, Michael Zaks ’13, Christopher Yang ’14, Arthur Troy ’14, Jordan Gutierriez ’14 and Amiya Brown ’14 sing about “Friendship.” 4: Alex Gura ’12 duets with Halle Levitt ’12 on “You’re Sensational.” 5: Charlie Troy ’12 and Dubovitsky strike a pose. 6: Wagmeister and Bella Hicks ’12 share a look during a number.

3

Cabaret

4

5

Catchy tunes and double entendres filled Rugby Theater as the upper school choral groups paid tribute to composer Cole Porter.

By Sarah Novicoff

1

As the lights dimmed and music floated out of the piano, performers from Bel Canto, Wolverine Chorus and Chamber Singers streamed onto Rugby stage for the opening number of the biannual Cabaret show.

The show focused on the works of Cole Porter and was titled “It’s Delightful, It’s Delicious, It’s De-Cabaret!” based on Porter’s song “It’s De-Lovely.”

The show opened on May 25 at 7 p.m. and was performed twice more on May

26 at 2 p.m. and at 7:30 p.m.

The show consisted of a mix of large group numbers and smaller student combinations and blended vocal performances with acting and comedy. The Jazz Singers were also featured before the show and after intermission.

The Wolverine Chorus’ performance of “Friendship” elicited the most chuckles of the night when the song concluded with each boy dropping his friend as two girls walked on stage.

“My favorite part of the show was watching the boys do ‘Friendship’ be-

cause you could really see how much fun they were having,” Bel Canto member Elizabeth Cohen ’14 said.

To close the show, all three choral groups received a standing ovation for their performance of “Every Time We Say Goodbye.” “[Cole Porter is] funny, wry and more than a little bit bawdy at times,” Choral Director Rodger Guerrero said. “In short, he’s the kind of intellectual musical showman that we want our students performing and learning from.”

6

PHOTOS BY JAMIE CHANG

F

The Chronicle • May 30, 2012

eatures Los Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue VIII

Diving in the deep

A wealth of marine life awaits in the quiet, peaceful underwater world of the ocean for scuba divers.

By Michael Rothberg For Bronty O’Leary ’13, everything is quiet, serene and relaxing below the surface. Equipped with a tankful of gas, she slowly descends deeper into the abyss of the ocean, encountering all sorts of marine life along the way.

O’Leary, who was certified when she was 13, has scubadived all around the world in places like Adaman Ocean around Thailand, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

“It has been so much fun going to places and not only seeing the culture but also everything the ocean has to offer,” O’Leary said. “My favorite part about diving is seeing things that are really rare like huge Manta Rays and belugas, which were incredible.”

In addition to being an open water diver, Keane Muraoka-Robertson ’13 is a certified rescue diver after extensive training in the Caribbean islands. “[Rescue diving certification] was much more difficult to get than the advanced open water diver certification because it required a lot of memorization of medical procedures and what to do in certain scenarios,” Muraoka-Robertson said. “It was also very physically straining. Although luckily I have never been in a situation where I need to use my training, I think that it’s something that is very

good for a diver to have. ” Since she had a nasal deviated septum, Muraoka-Robertson was unable to equalize pressures when underwater.

To correct the condition, she underwent surgery this past November.

“It was awful not being able to do something that I love,” MuraokaRobertson said. “Each dive is unique and you never know what you will see.

It’s a completely different world down there and a great escape from our chaotic lives.”

Henry Noonan ’13, who was certified as a freshman, said he enjoys scuba diving, but he also warned of the potential danger involved with the sport.

“Once I was diving with my friend and he went up too fast and a blood vessel in his eye popped from the nitrogen bubbles in his bloodstream, which caused his mask to fill with blood,” Noonan said. “It was extremely traumatizing. It is a very dangerous hobby, and people need to understand that this activity could very well kill you.”

Ben Weissenbach ’15 learned to scuba dive in preparation for a marine biology trip with the middle school to Tahiti, Moorea and Rangiroa during spring break.

“I like being able to see animals and underwater life closer than we can from the surface,” Weissenbach said.

CHLOE LISTER/CHRONICLE

The Chronicle

B2 Features

Politics as usual

May 30, 2012

As the California primary approaches next week and party conventions loom this summer, a wide spectrum of political beliefs are voiced on campus.

Liberal views dominate political climate

By Rachel Schwartz

for those people.”

Andrew Miller ’13, also a RepubBringing up money, religion or poli- lican, finds no problem with teachers tics may be a dinner party sin, but at sharing their views. school there is no such rule against dis“Sometimes it’s kind of entertaincussion of politics in or out of the class- ing to see how they put one view over room. While such potentially heated the other,” Miller said. “I actually think discussion is part of some courses, that it’s nice that they’re being honest most teachers try to keep their per- with you and not hiding it.” sonal opinions out of their lessons.

Self-described leftist Jack Wilding “I think everyone in this depart- ’13 and self-described libertarian Wiment is extremely self-conscious about ley Webb ’12 agree that some teachers’ trying to present an unbiased point professionalism is better than others. of view,” history teacher Ken Neisser Wilding has never experienced teacher said. bias, but said his French teacher told History classes present the biggest him to tone down his personal politics opportunity for political discussion to in his AP essays. take place, since “Politics are politics are an awkward. There essential part of is really no way to studying the past, Politics are awkward, there get around that,” history teacher Wilding said. is really no way to get Drew Maddock “Sometimes it’s said. around that. Sometimes it’s impossible to stop “It’s pretty debate from deimpossible to stop debate hard to cover up generating into a your true feelscreaming fight.” from degenerating into a ings,” Maddock In general, screaming fight.” said.

“Teachers Wilding finds are trusted to be —Jack Wilding ’13 that with such a reasonable and large consensus to respect diverse and such a small opinions.” minority, there is Some students find teachers’ beliefs no point in opening up about complex to be thinly veiled, even if they don’t issues like the economy, a topic more directly reveal their personal opinions. hotly contested.

These students said the overwhelming Webb said that for the most part, majority of both faculty and students he learns what his teachers’ personal are liberal. politics are when he develops personal “I can see how a few of Harvard- relationships. He thinks of history difWestlake’s conservatives can feel re- ferently because he feels he has had ally bogged down since everyone just experience with very biased teachers. says ‘No, you’re wrong,’” Sam Lyons ’13 Maddock loves to discuss polisaid. “First and foremost, I’m a patriot. tics with his students outside of class There’s been a decline in patriotism as long as they come in with an open among liberals. I’m a fiscal conserva- mind, he said. tive.”

“Anybody can come in [to the hisUnlike some conservatives on cam- tory department office],” Maddock pus, however, Lyons does not try to said. “We talk to all different types of disguise his views. students: tall, short, left and right…

“I live to argue,” Lyons said. “I was the problem is the occasional teacher very liberal when I was younger. I love who thinks anyone who disagrees with to be the person who says things that them is an idiot.” others disagree with and who provokes While Lyons loves talking with histhem to share their views. Especially tory teachers who he considers very for those who are socially conservative. well-informed about both sides of an I can understand that it is very tough issue, he said English teachers are not

“

“

Conflicts of interest

The school is pretty apolitical until you enter a government class, where most people are liberal. No one talks about politics unless you’re in a class where it’s relevant.”

—Adam Bennett ’12

nathanson ’s/chronicle

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as open.

“In smaller debates with English teachers, I think they just brush off my points,” Lyons said. “I’ve come to expect it. I would really like to go to a school where there was a big conglomeration of different views. I really like to understand how people think, especially politically. Plus if everyone agrees with you, it’s just so boring.”

Math teacher Kevin Weis said he considers himself a political minority as a Libertarian, but feels open about his beliefs.

“I do not feel any pressure about being in an ideological minority,” Weis said. “My views are in the minority in the general population as well, so I am used to it. If anything I would say I feel less pressure while at work, as Harvard-Westlake is a very open and supportive place.”

Weis said while he is socially liberal, he believes in very limited government and the separation of government from the economic sphere, similar to the model of the separation of church and state.

“I don’t think my political beliefs are really that controversial, and I have never felt any pressure to hide them,” Weis said. “I did, for my first few years at Harvard-Westlake, feel like I needed to hide the fact that I am an atheist, though I admit that this pressure was self-inflicted. I think that atheists are currently one of the most misunderstood and persecuted minorities in America.”

Neisser said bias at Harvard-Westlake is not a problem since impartiality can only serve to make teaching more difficult and limit class discussion and critical analysis. Both Maddock and Neisser stressed that being nonpartisan does not mean stopping political commentary in class, whether discussion is about past or present.

“Criticizing Gilded Age corruption is objective regardless of whether you are liberal or conservative economically,” Neisser said.

“The failure to talk about it is not the solution,” Maddock said. “Some people may think that is how it should be, but they should be talking about what matters in the world.”

With the school’s mostly leftist environment, more conservative views are often swept aside in criticism.

I think [the political climate is] completely biased liberally.

Conservatives here have to keep their mouths shut so that they don’t get harassed.”

—Alex Fleischman ’13

nathanson ’s/chronicle

“

I feel like there isn’t political pressure if you’re strong in what you believe. If you’re not confident or outspoken, you’re influenced by the people around you.

—Sophie Gunter ’14

nathanson ’s/chronicle

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Features B3

Casting Their Ballots A poll sent out Saturday via SurveyMonkey asked upper school students the question “How do you identify yourself politically?” to gauge their opinions on various socioeconomic issues.

364 weighed in on fiscal issues: ICLE AUSTIN LEE/CHRON

Very liberal

39 99

Liberal

128

Moderate

375 weighed in on social issues:

182

Very liberal

112

Liberal Moderate

Conservative

Very conservative

66 32

Conservative

Very conservative

49 17 15

GRAPHIC BY GABBY FRANCHINA AND MEGAN KAWASAKI

Rocking the vote

By Justine Goode

When Nadia Dubovitsky ’12 turned 18, she celebrated by going to a gas station and purchasing a pack of Camel cigarettes and a Mega Millions lotto ticket. She wasn’t planning on using either of them — it was simply an easy way to take advantage of her new adulthood. Many new opportunities arise when teenagers become legal: they can now legally get tattoos and piercings, go gambling and register to vote. But Dubovitsky said she has yet to take advantage of the last opportunity, though she plans on doing so well before the 2012 presidential election in November.

To register to vote in California, one must be a United States citizen, a resident of California, 18 years of age or older on Election Day, not in prison or in county jail and not found by a court to be mentally incompetent. To register is simple: just pick up a voter registration form at a county elections office, library or U.S. Post Office, fill it out and make sure it is postmarked or hand-delivered to a county elections office at least 15 days before the election.

“Registering to vote takes no time at all,” history teacher Drew Maddock said. “You pick up a voter registration form at the Post Office or you sign up at one of those tables you always see

Some seniors and juniors will get their first chance to vote in the June 5 primary or the November election.

outside Target or the super market. If because the year I turn 18 just happens you haven’t registered, what are you to be a big election year,” she said. waiting for?”

However, she aims to stay informed Wesley Friedman ’12 will cast his and remain involved in the election in vote in the upcoming primary. whatever way she can.

“It’s exciting to vote in an election “I try to stay up-to-date with for the first time,” Friedman said. “As what’s going on in the primaries, and cliché as it sounds, it’s an important I will try to stay aware of everything part of being a U.S. citizen.” that is going on,” she said. “I haven’t Charlie Troy ’12 is also eligible to really thought about volunteering, but vote and intends to do so in the presi- I guess that would be my other option.” dential election.

Lexi Fadel ’13 “It makes me will be able to vote feel like I can acin the 2012 presitually have a say dential election.

Although my vote doesn’t in what the gov“I like it,” she count for much, it still ernment is dosaid. “I feel like I ing,” Troy said. have some more makes me feel like I’m “Although my power and freeactually an adult and also vote doesn’t count dom. I also like for much, it still how I will have a more connected to this makes me feel say on who will country.” like I’m actually run the country an adult and also —Charlie Troy ’12 that I live in.” more connected Some of her to this country.” good friends will However, Troy still does not know also be able to vote, and they occasionwhich candidate he will be voting for, ally discuss it, but she said the matter since he “has not been impressed by doesn’t come up around friends who any of them so far.” will not be eligible.

In the upcoming November elecWith such a major political event tion, some of the current junior class on the horizon, U.S. history teachers will be able to vote, but most of it won’t. are eager to draw intriguing parallels Maddie Lear’s ’13 birthday falls just af- to past elections, using current events ter the election in late November. quizzes to jumpstart discussions.

“I’m really disappointed, especially “After a current events quiz, we’ll

“

take a good 15, 20 minutes, maybe even the whole class and have a good discussion on the current events themselves,” history teacher Dror Yaron said. “In Andrew Jackson’s election that he had with John Quincy Adams, there’s all kinds of back and forth, spewing accusations, and so I might relate it to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. It’s one of these elements that have become apparent in American history, especially in politics and election season — to skirt the issues and instead unfortunately focus on the personal stuff. These gratuitous attacks really stray from the real issues that need to be tended to. So we weave it in, whether there are historical events that are pertinent or current events.”

While teaching their classes, some history teachers like Neisser and Yaron said they generally do not remain objective, nor do they take a single side, trying to convey all sides of a political situation.

“Given that one of the first things most of us history teachers talk about with our classes is the inherently subjective nature of history, one could say objectivity in any discussion of the subject is an impossibility,” Neisser said.

“As my students look at the great issues that divided our country over the course of its history, I want them to understand fully the underpinnings of those issues.”

B4 Features

The Chronicle

Sophomore crafts jewelry in Rome

By Hank Gerba If his measurements were not perfect, the piece would have to be scrapped. Carefully marking a sheet of copper, Jack Cooper ’14 finalized the design of the necklace he was working on.

Cooper spent last summer in a jewelry shop just outside of Rome, a job which satisfied his desire to work with his hands, he said.

Cooper’s family has always had deep ties to Europe. His mother was born in Holland, and for the past 14 summers, the family traveled there to visit friends and family. Because of the amount of time he has lived there Cooper is fluent in Dutch. This past summer, Cooper wanted to have a new experience.

“I told my parents that I wanted to spend the summer in Rome,” Cooper said.” “I wanted to make something.

I remembered that when I was seven years old Diego told me that when I was older he would give me a job at his shop.”

Diego Percossi Papi, a family friend, owns a jewelry company called Percossi Papi and gladly took Cooper in as an employee.

Waking up every morning, Cooper had breakfast with his father before arriving at the bus stop. After a 45-minute bus ride out of Rome he arrived at his workplace, a small workshop with 12 desks, one for each worker.

Cooper mostly worked on necklaces and occasionally earrings.

After cleaning and sanding a thin sheet of copper, he drew lines on it to make sure his measurements were perfect.

He then traced designs given to him by Diego or Diego’s son. Finally, strips of copper were used to form the shapes from the design.

“It has to be perfect to a fraction of a millimeter,” Cooper said. “If anything

is off, even by a little, it really shows.”

The strips were glued down to the baseplate. Stones or other ornaments were then glued in place. Finally the piece would be electroplated, covering the piece in gold or a variety of other metals.

“I usually left work around 2 p.m., which was early enough that I could still do all the sightseeing that I wanted to do. So, it worked out pretty well.”

Because he no longer has access to the equipment he worked with in Italy, Cooper has shifted his focus from metalwork to projects that he can accomplish at home.

“A friend of mine described a wood necklace that was in the shape of a mustache. It had broken, and I thought to myself ‘you know, I could make that with stuff I have at home,’” Cooper said.

After cutting the wood to the correct shape, sanding the edges to round them and coating the piece with lacquer, Cooper attached it to a necklace and gave to his friend.

For about a year Cooper has been making bracelets out of paracord, a lightweight nylon rope consisting of a sheath with seven inner yarns.

Extremely durable and flexible, it is perfect for intricate weaving. He has learned several knots and bracelet patterns, some by memory.

“I really started using it on a whim.

I had known it was out there and that it was a greatly versatile material,” Cooper said. “At some point I found a blog which gave instructions on making different types of knots, and from there I started applying them to bracelets and experimenting with combining them.”

In the coming summer, Copper might be working for a company in Holland which constructs yachts and other small ships.

“It would be a great way of pulling together the skills I’ve gained recently, and hopefully I can make it happen.”

May 30, 2012

ANDREW COOPER

JACK COOPER

ROMAN HOLIDAY: Jack Cooper ’12 crafts jewelry at Percossi Papi, a company based in Rome, top. He makes intricate, durable bracelets out of paracord, bottom.

Walking to remember

By Elana Zeltser

SOPHIE GOLUB

ALEXI ROSENFELD, AJR PHOTOGRAPHY

NEVER FORGET: Joel Spielberger ’12 takes a dip in the Dead Sea in Israel, top. Jon Alkalai ’12 tours a graveyard of a concentration camp in Poland during the first week of the program, right. Spielberger, far left, marches with two other students from Los Angeles, left.

DEBORAH HASEN-KLEIN

Joel Spielberger ’12 hung his head as he toured the remains of a concentration camp in Poland alongside Holocaust survivors who made narrow escapes only 60 years ago.

“They would stand in front of a gas chamber and say ‘I watched my sister go in there,’” Spielberger said.

Spielberger was accompanied by Jon Alkalai ’12, Jason Rostovsky ’12, Shana Saleh ’12 and 200 other students from the Los Angeles area on the annual, two-week March of the Living program.

On the second day of the trip, they were joined by international March of the Living factions, reaching a grand total of nearly 12,000 people. Together they chanted, sang and marched in step between the concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau.

The one-hour long walk took place on Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Rememberence Day, paying homage to the millions who lost their lives in the camps.

“I realized how connected I was to the land that I was in,” Alkalai said.

“It was something that I was proud of myself for doing.”

Following the march, the Los Angeles division visited four different concentration camps during their oneweek stay in Poland.

The camp Mydonic was the most intact, and students were able to navigate through gas chambers and crematoriums that looked as they did during the Holocaust.

As the tour commenced, students were handed letters written to them by their parents before the start of the trip.

“My parents just reminded me why it was important that I was there and how proud they are of me,” Alkalai said. “Everyone was reading these letters and everyone was bawling. It was really sad, but it was also a very powerful moment.”

Alkalai and Spielberger said one of the most inspirational part of the trips was listening to the survivors recount their experiences.

“They told us all their stories all the time,” Alkalai said. “They were treated like holy people when they were around us.”

After bussing through Poland, the 200 students took a plane to Israel, just in time for Israeli Independence Day. “The whole point of the program is you go to Poland and witness the lowest point in Jewish history, and then you fly straight to Israel to celebrate what the Jews have become today,” Alkalai said.

In Israel, they went to the Western Wall to honor those executed in the Holocaust.

“There were a lot of nameless faces and faceless names that died in gas chambers, and the whole trip was about honoring them,” Spielberger said.

Ultimately, Spielberger said he left the trip feeling grateful.

“It gave me a sense of humbleness and appreciation of my life compared to the life I would have had only 60 years ago,” Spielberger said.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Features B5

School’s Protectors Head of Security Jim Crawford and security guard Mark Geiger give students and faculty safety tools to use at school and in their every day lives.

Geiger patrols campus 24/5

By Saj Sri-Kumar

It’s 3 p.m. on a Monday, and streams of students and teachers head through the main driveway on their way home.

Security Guard Mark Geiger looks on, knowing that he will not be going home any time soon.

Geiger does not leave campus between Sunday evening and Friday night, and occasionally stays into Saturday. He serves during the school day and from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. each weeknight.

At night, he patrols the campus and investigates the alarms that occasionally go off in some of the school’s buildings. They are mostly false alarms, but Geiger has run into thieves before.

A former officer with the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department, Geiger discovered a pair of thieves attempting to steal sound and light equipment from Rugby Theatre. Two years ago the thieves fled with eight wireless microphone body packs, valued at around $1,000-$1,500 each, but Geiger prevented them from making off with all the equipment they had piled up. Since, the school has constructed additional fences to make it tougher to get on to campus unseen, and Geiger said theft has diminished.

Despite long hours and staying on campus for nearly five straight days at

a time, Geiger said he still manages to there are some times when she wishes get some sleep. he could stay home.

For the first few years, Geiger slept Night duty is only one of Geiger’s in the front seat of his car. Since then, roles as a security guard. however, he has found better accomDuring the day, he is the first face modations on campus that he declined many people see when they arrive to reveal. However, in recent months, on campus. He, along with the other he has found it tougher to find time to guards, directs cars in the school’s sleep. parking lots and making sure visitors “There’s less know where to go. sleep now,” he Geiger finds said. “There are his work with the more hours in the Alert, Lockdown, I’m tired of everyone telling Inform, day because of Counconstruction.” me that I need to get more ter and Evacuate Still, Geiger program most sleep. They tell me that I’m fulfilling. doesn’t complain The about the lack of program teaches going to die young. Well, sleep. students how to I’ve already lived through “I can sleep best defend themyoung.” when I die,” he selves if a shooter said. “I’m tired of arrives on cam—Mark Geiger pus, stressing aceveryone telling Security Guard tive resistance to me that I need to get more sleep. a shooter rather They tell me that than passive subI’m going to die mission. young. Well, I’ve already lived through Geiger initiated A.L.I.C.E. at Haryoung.” vard-Westlake. He researched the proOne of the biggest downsides to gram, which had been put in use elseworking the nightshift is that he is where, and brought it to the attention away from his family for the whole of Head of Security Jim Crawford. week.

Crawford and Geiger subsequently Geiger’s wife, a hospital worker, is took a course on the A.L.I.C.E. pro“very understanding,” he said, although gram, and they began to teach the

“

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF CJL

program to students and teachers two years ago.

Geiger said he enjoys teaching the program because he believes it has the potential to help students later in life.

He poses as a shooter in drills where students practice defending themselves from a gunman on campus.

Beyond just preparation for incidents on campus, Geiger said he sees ALICE as a way to prepare students for the rest of their lives.

“If you go through life and face an incident and you assert yourself, then you’re using the principles of A.L.I.C.E.,” he said.

Geiger has suffered a broken finger, toe and rib all while engaging the students in the drills, but said he doesn’t mind what he called “minor injuries.”

“It’s worth the tradeoff,” he said.

“If I can do something that will have a lasting impact on people and maybe help them later on, that’s what matters. It’s just part of the job.”

Compared to his former job as a sheriff ’s deputy, Geiger said he enjoys that his current job doesn’t require him to investigate cases such as homicides, plane crashes and child molestation.

“You guys are the second happiest place on earth,” he said.

The one happier place? “Disneyworld,” he said with a grin. “I dig that place.”

Crawford began guarding grounds at 19

By Michael Rothberg

At 19, only a year older than many of the seniors, Jim Crawford began working as a security officer at Harvard School. Crawford, now Director of Security, has operated security for both campuses Jim Cawford of Harvard-WestHead of Security lake since 1980.

When he turned 20, Crawford joined the Los Angeles Police Academy, working at the school to earn extra money.

In the police force, Crawford worked the night shift from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. as a patrol in South Central divi-

sion of the LAPD. “When I was younger, chasing [criminals] on foot and in cars was fun, but now that I am 50, it is not what I want to do anymore,” Crawford said.

He became a homicide detective in Rampart, where he investigated arrests made by patrol officers involving gang homicides as part of the City Resources Against Street Hoodlums program.

“I did not quite know the stuff that went on — shootings and the family issues, crimes against women and children. I have seen just about everything,” Crawford said.

After about 20 years, Crawford moved to the San Fernando Valley, where he handled robberies, burglaries and juvenile crimes. While in the LAPD, Crawford continued to run security at the school and experienced its change over the years.

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In 1980 the campus didn’t have cameras, alarms or fences. Security was doing about $5,000 worth of work a year, which is comparatively less than what they do now, Crawford said.

Harvard-Westlake improved security in response to computer thefts and rising crime rates around the school, eventually installing gates, alarms and cameras along with a fence around the campus perimeter.

To help organize the security program, Crawford founded CJL, a company that provides security and transportation for Harvard-Westlake as well as other private schools. The security staff has expanded from two to 53 employees, all of whom have experience in law enforcement as sheriff ’s deputies or police officers.

“Pretty much all the aspects of the investigations that are done in the school are conducted by my com-

pany, so we do workers compensaion investigations on employees that get hurt.

It is a pretty wide range,” Crawford said.

The security program focuses on preparedness for emergencies and terrorism by adding supplies to bunkers and expanding school wide drills.

“Now we’re gearing up for more serious incidents,” Crawford said.

The Chronicle

B6 Features

Taking

Rid

By Leslie D

to the sea

With summer approaching and the weather heating up, students are cooling off and getting excercise by surfing, scuba diving, wakeboarding and sailing.

Juniors become hooked on sailing

By David Gisser

Michael Gromis ’13 sped over waves on a blue lake on a breezy summer afternoon.

“It is a really great feeling because you are going really fast and you feel almost like you are flying because your boat is coming out of the water a little bit,” Gromis said.

He sails competitively every summer at a month-long summer camp in Wisconsin. Gromis participates in regattas, in which different camps race the clock and each other.

“You have to be extremely technical and precise because you have to make use of all of the wind you can get when there are 70 other boats,” Gromis said.

Since he does not have the opportunity to sail often during the year,

May 3

Gromis looks forward to camp where he can improve and practice the sport.

“I sail because it is just a really fun thing nathanson ’s/chronicle to do. It’s exSarah Shelby citing and there is just nothing like it,” Gromis said. “I think more people need to be exposed to [sailing] because anybody who will try it will have a really exciting time and get hooked.”

Sarah Shelby ’13 discovered sailing at Four Winds camp in the Orca Island in Washington State.

“I just wanted one more camp experience before I went to high school,

so I applied as a camper, but then sailing just became an extra part of that,” Shelby said.

While sailing in Washnathanson ’s/chronicle ington, Shelby Michael Gromis found that “directly controlling [a sailboat] that takes you through the water is really liberating.”

“It is something special to be able to control something that takes you on a ride when you think about transportation you think of cars or bicycles, but sailing is something really special,” Shelby said.

It’s earl prepare for sell Wolfe ’ wax and a b ing on a T-s a full body board and d ite surf spot Surfers ery free mo students, li Rosa ’12, ev “I surf e “It’s my favo De La R was four an of the Surf became a co brother, Ern

by Middle Wolfe bega Now, surfin sport is mor “It’s alm Wolfe said. and all tha in the wate really relax you don’t ha except surfi ing.”

“Surfing ture, it’s a w it’s really fu As co-pr Rosa plan s for the club the Jimmy

Wat

By Michael S

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF BEN GAYLORD

MAKING WAVES: Ben Gaylord ’13 leans into the wake on his slalom ski, spraying a tail of water behind him. Slalom skiing involves relying on only one ski rather than two. Gaylord learned to waterski and wakeboard when he was 8 years old, but prefers waterskiing.

Though s to be the bes which she at coordination,” Huybrechts w Erie Rough R childhood.

When she brechts and Toledo, Ohio, shore of Lake her younger s formed a tigh “I still ha mer days spen ing and swim nity club hou show,” Huybr not romantic it was so muc part of a day some fancy m per to contin was calmest early evening.

Despite la

30, 2012

chronicle.hw.com

Features B7

ding the swells

Dinkin

ly in the morning, and to r his day at the beach, Rus’12 grabs a power bar, surf big towel. Instead of throwshirt and shorts, he zips on wetsuit. He grabs his surfdrives to El Porto, his favort in Manhattan Beach. like Wolfe spend almost evoment in the water. Some ike Wolfe and Gabe De La ven go before school. every day,” De La Rosa said. orite thing to do.”

Rosa learned to surf when he nd is now the co-president Club along with Wolfe, who o-head of the club after his nest ’10, graduated. Taught School Dean John Kim, an surfing in sixth grade. ng at least once a week, the re than just a hobby for him. most like a spiritual thing,” . “Being one with nature at. When you’re sitting out er, waiting for the waves is xing. It’s like an hour where ave to think about anything fing. It’s really the best feel-

g kind of connects me to naway to get exercise, and plus un,” De La Rosa said. residents, Wolfe and De La surf trips, make tank tops b members and volunteer at Miller Memorial Founda-

tion, a nonprofit organization specializing in ocean therapy, which is a combination of occupational therapies and recreational therapies through surfing.

“We teach foster kids, veterans and Marines with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to surf as a way to cope with the horrors of war,” Wolfe said.

“It’s a great way to cleanse yourself physically and spiritually and to forget about all your issues and just surf. The Marines will go out when the waves are really big. When they come back to shore, they are always like ‘dude lets go again!’ They are really the best and always super hyped.”

Both De La Rosa and Wolfe surf mostly at El Porto.

“There are so many variables that go into a good surf spot,” Wolfe said.

“The weather and the swell are big factors. Malibu is also really great.”

Unlike Wolfe and De La Rosa, Mathew Bailey ’13 surfs mostly in Topanga. Although he only started surfing two years ago, Bailey currently surfs three to four hours a day in the afternoon.

“Surfing is fun, and I love it,” Bailey said. “The water makes me feel alive.”

Griffin Morgan ’13 agreed with Bailey about the charm of the water.

“I like the water in general. You forget about everything else when you’re shredding,” Morgan said.

Morgan, who used to surf three to four times a week, has not surfed in seven months because of a leg injury.

“Sometimes I really miss it,” Morgan said.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF RUSSELL WOLFE

SHREDDING: Russell Wolfe ’12 crouches and balances on his surfboard, riding the wave behind him. He almost surfs every day in El Porto, a surf spot in Manhattan Beach.

terskiiers create a splash with twists and flips

Sugerman

she didn’t consider herself st waterskiier on the lake, ttributed to poor “foot-eye ” Head of School Jeanne was a member of the Lake Riders for four years of her

e was 13 years old, Huyher family relocated to , where they lived on the e Erie. There, Huybrechts, siblings and their neighbors ht-knit waterskiing troupe. ave memories of long sumnt on the lake, boating, skimming, and in the commuuse planning our annual ski rechts said. “I’m absolutely cizing the past when I say ch fun. Spending the better y learning how to perform moves on skis, forgoing supnue skiing because the lake in the late afternoon and . They were all good times.” acking the coordination to

match up with her more athletically in- water sports in Maryland. She enjoys clined brothers and sister, Huybrechts slalom skiing most, in which skiers use kept herself occupied by designing cos- one ski rather than two to quickly cut tumes and decorative flags spelling back and forth across wake.

L.E.R.R, (the “It’s just group’s initials). a thrill when “My exyou’re going perience with really fast and I’m absolutely not romanticizing doing the Lake Erie hard Rough Riders turns,” she the past when I say it was so was rewarding said.

“Every much fun.” nonetheless, betime you do it, cause I learned just want —Jeanne Huybrechts you some things to do it more.”

Head of School about myself,” Wi l s o n she said. “First, also does some I learned that “trick skiing,” there was something I was very good turning rapidly in midair and propelling at: supporting talented people. The good herself off of wake. skiers, in this case. And second, that I “I can do 360s and 180s on trick skis,” loved being part of a team — a team that she said. “I’m not as good at that yet. worked purposefully toward the goal of Wakeboarding I can do jumps and 180s. doing something great.”

I think I got a 360 once. For slalom skiElle Wilson ’13 learned to waterski ing though, it’s less about the tricks and and wakeboard when she was 8 years more about the quality of turns and how old, but she prefers to waterski. She said hard you can cut out and go about pershe fell in love with the sport when she fecting technique. You can still do some tried it at Camp Tockwogh, a camp for cool tricks with slalom skis. I can do a

“

toehold, where I let go of the strap and put my foot in it. But that’s more for show.”

Ben Gaylord ’13 wakeboards and waterskis during the summer. Like Wilson, he began when he was 8 years old, though he skis less frequently.

He has waterskied on the Colorado River, at a family friend’s private lake in Greensboro, N.C. and in Big Bear, Calif.

He prefers the Colorado River and has been there four or five times.

“The weather is nicest there,” he said. “It’s really hot, so when you get in the water it’s really refreshing. And it’s really exhilarating. When you waterski, you’re moving really fast. At least with slalom skiing, it’s also really technical so you can get better and cut across wake more easily.”

He has also tried wakeskating simply for fun, which is like wakeboarding without the bindings.

Because of this freedom, he decided not to focus on technique, rather jumping off waves of wake, hurling his body into the air and attempting twists and flips.

GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY AUSTIN LEE, ARIELLE MAXNER, GABBY FRANCHINA, MICHAEL ROTHBERG AND VICTOR YOON

The Chronicle

B8 Features

May 30, 2012

Tutors use personal teaching methods to help students

By Chelsea Khakshouri

on the SATs, several National Merit FinalOn any given day, you can find a ists and dozens with group of Harvard-Westlake students 800s in individual catoccupying Sally Shultz’s (Brian ’11, egories, she said.

Eric ’08) dining room, spending sev“I have been so eral hours taking practice SAT exams. lucky to have [Shultz] Upstairs, Shultz is seated in her black as my tutor,” Emchair with a bowl of candy to her right ily Persky ’13 said. and stacks of practice SAT materials “She helped me to organized in shelves behind her. improve more than I On Monday afternoons, Sunday could have imagined, mornings and afternoons, another and what she taught group hangs out at the Fatburger on me has not only helped the corner of Beverly Glen and Ven- me with my SATs but has tura Boulevards, taking a break from also helped me improve my their AP Physics B tutoring sessions work and test taking skills in at Dynamics Education Center in the all of my classes at school. Even strip mall across the street. Because now that I am done with my SATs, their tutor, Sammy Sands*, works at I still love going over to her house beanother private school, he prefers for cause we all became such a family.” his name not to be published.

Shultz uses “Structured Reading,” Shultz and Sands are two of many a technique she has developed for over tutors who work with students after the last 20 years. school and on weekends to prepare “Structured Reading provides an for SAT exams and keep up with class organizational template for both the work. Shultz tutors the critical read- critical analysis of the passages and ing and writing sections of the SAT the logical argument for the essay,” as well as the Shultz said. essay portion As a former while Sands tuHarvard-Westlake I have been so lucky to tors students in parent, Shultz unmath and sciderstands the curhave Sally as my tutor. She ence. and culhelped me to improve more riculum “Since I folture of the school, than I could have imagined. she said. low the curriculum at Harvard“Junior year I still love going over to Westlake, the weighs so heavily her house because we all writing skills on my kids that we translate directneed to get through became such a family.” ly into the classthe year together, —Emily Persky ’13 as a team,” she room,” Shultz said. said. “That’s why Sands started tutoring in 1991 and we share bowls of chocolate, hot cocoa founded Dynamics Education Cen- in the winter, shaved ice in the sumter in 1999, where Harvard-Westlake mer, pizza after major practice tests students are tutored in SAT, SAT IIs, and laughs that can be heard in the physics, calculus and other subjects. next zip code.”

More than 20 students taking AP Shultz emails what she calls “Vocab Physics B see him weekly. in the News” to her students and their “[Sands] is a magician,” Aus- parents three to five times a week. The tin Sherman ’12 said. “He can turn a emails contain an article with a bolded struggling physics student into a PhD.” vocabulary word defined at the botShultz said she tutors 30 to 40 Har- tom. Her new vocabulary rap “Genius vard-Westlake students. She said that in Training” will be available on iTunes what drew them to her were her cli- soon. ents’ consistent scores. This year, she “My students proudly text me when has two students with perfect scores they know the vocabulary on tests or

“

ILLUSTRATION BY SYDNEY FOREMAN AND AIDAN MICHAELSON

in classroom discussions,” Shultz said.

“It’s oddly exciting.” “[Shultz] would bring the lessons to life by making them personal,” Natalie Epstein ’12 said. “I honestly looked forward to every lesson from someone who was both a wonderful tutor and a wonderful friend.”

Sands, a native of Burma who moved to the United States in 1987 and to Los Angeles in 1989, has his own way of teaching math and science, he said.

His technique, the “master key,” simplifies each chapters’ major concepts and aims to give students confidence to tackle any problems they encounter.

When Sands took physics in the seventh grade, it was very difficult for him to understand the teacher, he said.

“I started thinking that there must be a better way to understand physics,” he said. “I started breaking it down step by step, saw the common steps in all the chapters, filtered out the guidelines and now call it the ‘master key.’”

Sands is also known for making jokes during class, which he says helps the kids stay attentive.

“I am like a performer, and students are my audience,” he said.

Sands hopes to start an online tutoring service which he hopes will one day reach students all over the world.

“I would like to spread my method to all kids, not just those that can afford it,” Sands said. “Teaching is in my blood. It’s my passion.” * name has been changed

Sharing study guides raises variety of issues

By Claire Hong

Nikki Volpert ’12 has been making study guides to help herself study for her midterms and finals since the ninth grade. This year was the first time she tried to sell them because other students always manage to get them, she said.

“I kind of figured that this year I would keep track of who had it and make profit from the hours I worked on it and all of the paper and ink I had to use to print them out,” she said. “I only ended up selling like two copies and giving the rest out for free.”

Devon Breton-Pakozdi ’12 also tried to sell his history study guide in 10th grade. He had difficulty selling them due to school policy, which prohibits him from selling anything on campus in exchange for money that is not school sanctioned, such as club bake sales that raise money for charity. He decided to give them away and hasn’t written any to give out since.

“The school’s policy against cash transactions on campus made it clear to me very quickly that selling them would be very difficult,” he said. “Eli [Haims ’12,] with whom I made a history study guide that year, and I ultimately ended up giving away many copies of our study guides for free to any students who wanted them.”

Although some students who got his study guides expressed concern of receiving wrong information, he said

“

that was not a concern for him.

“Concerns about The main reason I [sold study guides] factual accuracy, while not troubling to us, was because everyone always ended were issues for people up with my study guides anyways, to whom we gave the getting them by some backwards way study guides,” he said.

“We wrote much of where I didn’t even know they had it.” the study guides late at night and at stress—Nikki Volpert ’12 ful times, the weekends before finals, and “I feel that the best way to deal I wouldn’t be surprised with the problems of student-created if some mistakes snuck their way in.”

“I usually just copy down my notes, study guides is through committed use adding facts from our textbooks, so of tools such as Moodle, GoogleDocs I’ve never been too worried that the and class-specific websites,” he said. information I wrote was wrong consid- “In this way, everyone is held accountering they came from pretty credible able for the work they put in, but that sources,” Volpert said. “I have obviously work can take place whenever is conmade typos that people make fun of, venient for them.”

Many students take advantage of but that’s pretty much the only thing the study guides made by their classthat I’ve been worried about.”

Breton-Pakozdi also realized that mates, but others object to receiving while his study guides helped him them.

“I would rather make my own study study, his classmates did not always guide than buy one,” Brenda Flores ’13 find them beneficial.

“I soon realized that the format- said. “I learn a lot more typing up my ting and shorthand I used were very own notes and organizing it myself personal,” he said. “While they worked compared to memorizing the informavery well for me, a number of people tion on another person’s study guide.”

This year, Volpert found it particucommented that even reading the study guide at all was a real challenge larly helpful to make study guides.

“Especially for art history, making for them.”

Breton-Pakozdi said he figured out them forced me to place the paintings, other ways to study with his classmates sculptures and architecture with the so that everyone involved could benefit. correct artists and eras,” she said.

nathanson ’s/chronicle

May 30, 2012

highstakes

chronicle.hw.com

Features B9

Introducing the rising seniors

By Elana Zeltser

Courtney*, the athlete

Francesca*, the all around

When Courtney first began playing her sport in the fourth grade, she did not realize that it would become a year–round commitment for her.

However, when she joined both club and Harvard-Westlake teams, practice became the main focus of her time and energy.

“I decided it was something I really loved to do and want to continue doing,” Courtney said.

While she also loves writing and plans to take the creative writing course next year, Courtney finds it challenging to balance the work load with her practice schedule.

“It is really tough because you really have to plan ahead,” Courtney said.

“If you have a tournament that weekend, you have to get all your homework done Friday night.”

Now as she begins thinking about the college process, Courtney hopes to find a school where she can play Division III volleyball.

“It’s my dream to play in college,” Courtney said. “I’m talking to a lot of different coaches and trying to find a good fit for me.”

Arthur*, the artist Doug*, the brain Doug flies through his avanced placment science homework afer quickly completing a math assignment.

“Even if I have a lab that takes a long time, it never feels that long to me because I really enjoy it,” Doug said.

In fact, Doug has always felt that his investment in his academic subject was his “thing,” he said.

“I have friends that are really into athletics, but I was never good at sports,” he said. “Some of my friends have played video games since they were born, practically, but I was never good at those either.”

Doug found that his talent lies in the sciences, particularly Chemistry and Biochemistry, and is considering the pre-med track for college. After touring colleges during spring break, Doug is still unsure what college he is interested in, although he knows he wants to be near a big city.

Meet four juniors whom The Chronicle will follow throughout their college processes next year.

Carrying athletic equipment, sheet music and multiple binders and notebooks, Francesca’s backpack can get pretty heavy. She is head of a HarvardWestlake club and is committed to arts, athletics, design and academics.

With five AP classes and two fullyear electives lined up for next year, Fancesca said she needs to find ways to balance the load.

“It’s all about coordinating everything,” Francesca said. “I use my free periods to catch up on stuff and always have to stay up pretty late.”

Sometimes her multiple activities conflict, and she follows the guidelines laid out by the school to decide what takes precedence.

“For example, a playoff takes precedence over rehearsal, but a practice does not,” Francesca said.

She now understands the triumphs and stresses that accomapany a wide variety of activities.

“If a friend complains that they have too much work or practice or rehersal, I often have a frame of reference and can feel for them,” Francesca said.

Arthur grew up taking tap lessons, playing piano and singing in choruses, but it was not until he came to Harvard-Westlake that he discovered his true passion was acting.

“It was doing the musicals and the plays and Summer Intensive Acting Workshop at Harvard-Westlake when I decided, ‘wait a second, I’m really clicking with this. This is really the sort of speaking to me in a way that other things haven’t,’” Arthur said.

“I’ve been pursuing it, and now I want to pursue it forever.”

Arthur chose to fill up his course load with theatre and music based classes. He is taking our performing arts classes next year.

Striving for a career in theater, Arthur will apply to liberal arts colleges, acting conservatories and universities with specialized acting programs.

Schools near theater hubs like New York and Chicago are extremely appealing to Arthur, he said. He is also tempted by a less focused college career to benefit his art in the long run.

“Acting is experience,” Arthur said.

“If you experience something, you can better act it.” * names have been changed

ILLUSTRATIONS BY AIDAN YETMAN-MICHAELSON

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The Chronicle • May 30, 2012

rts & E ntertainment

B10

Los Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue VIII

MARISSA LEPOR

Seniors display art, perform individually

By Sarah Novicoff

DANIELLE DUHL

ARTISTIC FLAIR: This fish was painted by Danielle Duhl ’12. Marissa Lepor ’12’s painting represents art and chemistry. The sky is DNA, and the grass is the horizontal structure of grass roots, top right.

The Senior Art Show, displaying the achievements of senior artists in Photography, 3-D Art, Advanced Drawing and Painting and AP Studio Art, opened in Feldman Horn Gallery at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

“It is really a celebration of seniors,” Melissa Flores ’12 said. “It is a time to show off work that hasn’t been shown over the past three years.”

The Senior Solo Night followed the art show at 7 p.m. and presented an opportunity for seniors to show off their voices individually. Though many had been in choir for three years, the performance allowed them to showcase their vocal talents in a way they hadn’t been previously. Singers had the free-

dom to choose any song they wanted to perform.

“It’s a culmination of three years of working really hard in the Performing Arts department,” Chamber Singer Charlie Troy ’12 said. “It’s nothing like normal choir music, and it’s a great opportunity for people to really have fun in one last shebang.”

Most students were accompanied

by Dr. Sara Shakliyan-Mendez, but some opted to have other students play for them. Troy accompanied Bella Gonzalez ’12 and Justine Goode ’12 on guitar.

Sally McGrath ’12 sang “The Right Man,” a Christina Aguilera song.

“It’s a song that I’ve sung by myself in my car for years, and I felt like it was time to take it public,” she said.

Dance inspired by real events and stories

Jazz bands perform at club, to hold benefit concert

Upper school dance classes Advanced Dance I and Advanced Dance II showcased their dances during sixth and eighth periods Tuesday.

The perfornathanson ’s/chronicle mances included Camelia Somers ’14 solos, duets, trios and group dances, inspired by events in the students’ lives or stories they wanted to tell.

All of the choreography in the dances was done by the students with help from dance teachers Cynthia Winter and Katie Lowry.

The show’s free-for-all theme allowed the dancers to perform any dance they wanted.

“It’s a really nice way for us to end the year with a show where we can choreograph dances about anything,” Camelia Somers ’14 said. “It’s been a really fun year, and this is a great way to wrap it up.

The showcase was held during sixth and eighth periods because finals and APs posed a conflict for both rehearsal and performance time.

The dancers have been working on the showcase for several months, and it was their last performance of the school year.

All members of Advanced Dance I and Advanced Dance II were featured in the show.

Three upper school jazz ensembles hit the stage May 22 at the Catalina Jazz Club as a part of the Young Artist Jazz Series.

Founded in 1996, the Series aims to provide young musicians the opportunity to exhibit their talent in front of a live audience.

The ensembles included Sam Lyons and Friends, Advanced Jazz Combo and Jazz Explorers.

The set was composed of original compositions by Jake Chapman ’12, Roy Hargrove’s “Strasbourg St. Denis” and “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music.” This was the seniors’ final school performance.

“I think the best part of the whole experience was just really bonding together with my fellow combo mates as we put in so many hours day after day in preparation for not just this gig but other performances as well,” Bradley Ho ’12 said. “We really got to know each other really well.”

The performance was especially important for seniors due to the venue’s prestige and charm. [“It’s my] favorite place to play because it’s classic and the stage just feels better there,” Jazz Explorer Noah Weinman ’12 said. Also, Catalina is the place where [I] most often go and see other shows.”

Cited by Jazz Director Shawn Costantino as the most esteemed jazz club on the west coast, the Catalina regularly hosts professional acts at-

By Jivani Gengatharan and Lauren Sonnenberg

By Emily Segal

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

TAKING CENTER STAGE: Jon Alkalai ’12 plays guitar, top, while Rishi Bagrodia ’12 belts out a solo, bottom.

tended by Harvard-Westlake students.

“Just a week ago I went straight from the middle school jazz combo concert to see Chick Korea at the Catalina,” Costantino said.

Several renowned musicians such as Grammy-nominated Anthony Wilson and Gerald Clayton have performed at the Catalina Jazz Club.

In addition to the Catalina’s prestige and the draw of its acts, the club also has a great jazz ambiance, Explorer Chris Freedman ’12 said.

To cap off the year’s jazz performances, award winning tenor saxophone player Walter Smith III will host Harvard-Westlake’s seventh Jazz Benefit Concert for Inner City Arts June 2. All proceeds from the event will be donated to Inner City Arts, an organization that brings art education to students around Los Angeles.

The entire concert is organized by Harvard-Westlake students. Weinman and Freedman are the student producers of the benefit concert which will take place in Rugby Theater at 7 p.m.

The Harvard-Westlake Jazz Explorers will also perform with the other students who have been grouped into bands to perform music. wwMusicians from local schools are invited to take classes with the professionals.

The Master Classes offered will feature Ambrose Akinmusire, Adam Benjamin, Harish Raghavan, Kendrick Scott, and Smith. [“These musicians are] some of the biggest musicians on the scene today,” Weinman said.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Lights, camera, action F

A&E B11

Emma Pasarow ’14 and Autumn Witz ’15 hope to land roles in movies and television shows. Pasarow was an extra in “Touch” while Witz acted in a Target commerical. By Alex McNab

Hitting her Target

irst agent, first audition, first time on TV, she hit her target in more ways than one. After three years of trying to get an agent, Autumn Witz ’15 is the star of a new Target commercial that aired May 13 on CBS, NBC, ABC and the CW. The commercial begins with Witz’s character siting on a couch knitting with her grandmother. Witz then asks her grandmother for a piece of candy, to which her grandmother replies, “Of course, dear.” Once Witz reaches into the bowl, she discovers that the candy is really old and stuck together. Witz gives her grandmother a confused glance, and the commercial ends.

Witz, who has been acting since she was 5, had just started her homework after getting back from rehearsal for the middle school play, “Putnam County Spelling Bee,” when her mother told her that her agent had called and he had gotten her an audition.

“I actually thought that she was joking,” Witz said.

In preparation for her audition, Witz watched videos on slating, identifying herself in front of the camera, and practiced her line, “Grandma, can

I have some candy?”

“Well I guess this is it,” a surprisingly relaxed Witz thought to herself the next day as she approached the casting building on Beverly Boulevard, she said.

The casting director was not the mean, serious person Witz’s mother had prepared her for, Witz said. He was very nice and told lots of jokes.

He kept Witz for five minutes, making her repeat her line five times in different emotions, giving Witz confidence that she would be called back. She was called back, and the next day she repeated her line two more times, but this time there were only seven girls auditioning with her.

On March 12, Witz found out she had gotten the part.

“I was in a state of shock,” she said.

She told all of her friends and “Putnam County Spelling Bee” cast members that she’d gotten the part.

On Thursday, she was fitted for her costume. The costume designers put Witz’s hair in pigtail braids and a snail twirl. She wore a blue striped shirt, denim shorts, gray leggings, bright blue striped socks, a cherry necklace, a

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF AUTUMN WITZ

TARGET: Autumn Witz ’15 acted in a commercial for Target, which aired on May 13 on CBS, NBC, ABC and the CW. The commercial was filmed at Universal Studios. blue bracelet and beige shoes.

On March 20, Witz skipped school to shoot the commercial, which was filmed at the Universal Studios back lot on the historic set where “C.S.I.,” “The Muppets Movie” and “The Phantom of the Opera” were filmed.

The shooting finished in time for Witz to go back to school for “Putnam

E

County Spelling Bee” rehearsal, although director Jim Doughan wasn’t pleased by her tardiness, Witz said.

“I hope that I can do more commercials,” said Witz, but she hopes to one day act in movies.

During the summer, Witz will be looking for an agent to get her auditions for TV and movie parts.

3 lines for Tween Girl

mma Pasarow ’14 spent the evening of May 3 sitting in front of her television with half of her face covered by a pillow while she watched herself nathanson ’s/chronicle in a pink sweater Emma Pasarow ’14 playing Tween Girl behind Kiefer Sutherland.

Pasarow made her television debut on “Zone of Exclusion,” the eighth episode of the new Fox television series “Touch,” which is about a genius kid who can see patterns that connect the world’s people and events. She heard about the part from a friend’s father, who is the assistant director of the show.

“It was less than a second and anyone could’ve done it,” she said.

“They saw this part, Tween Girl, and he knows that I like to act, so he just asked me if I wanted to audition.”

Because it was an extra, there were only two other girls present at the audition, both about Pasarow’s age and height. The three girls stood in a line and acted as though they were flirting and texting the three boys across from them, who were supposed to be their boyfriends.

As the auditions took place, the assistant director watched from behind, and after talking with the director, he told Pasarow she had gotten the part.

“I had no expectations, so the fact that I got [the part] was like ‘Whoa, I can’t believe this is actually happening,’” Pasarow said. “I’m not really one to jump for joy, but in my brain, I was. ” Filming started the next day.

“I was really nervous because it was my first time, and I was in the presence of Sutherland,” Pasarow said. “I didn’t want to disappoint anyone, and I wanted to make sure I did my best even though it was just 10 seconds.”

She worked two 10-hour work days.

“We just did it again and again and again,” she said. “It’s absolutely mindblowing that we spent a whole day on two minutes.”

Despite the repetitiveness of filming, Pasarow said she was only bored during her legally mandated three hours of school.

“I was on Cloud 9 all day,” she said.

“This is so cliché, but it was literally like a dream come true because I’ve never done anything like this. I’ve only dreamed about it, so even though I was doing it over and over again, I would’ve done it for 10 more hours.”

Originally, Pasarow didn’t speak in her role, but after Sutherland complained to the director, she was given three lines.

Pasarow said she thought she was on episode seven and believed she had been cut until she found out she was actually on episode eight, a week later.

She didn’t tell any of her friends she would be on TV, but they eventually found out.

Pasarow’s parents called family and friends to inform them of her appearance.

“Seeing myself on the screen, that’s something I’ve never done before except for home videos,” she said. “I ended up not really liking it. I wanted to change everything from the way I said the line to my body language to my facial [expression], but I’ve never seen something that I’ve been in and liked it.”

Pasarow hopes to be a movie star, but she says that for now, she wants to focus on school. In the meantime, she is writing a script for the Playwright’s Festival with Grace Levin ’14 and plans to major in acting in college.

“This is probably the only thing I’m going to be doing for a while,” she said.

“I want to enjoy high school, and I want to enjoy college and then enjoy acting.”

Pasarow still cannot believe she was on television, she said.

“It’s just not something that happens to people,” she said.

The Chronicle

B12 Features

May 30, 2012

Photo Ready

Mazelle Etessami ’14 snaps photographs of native people while traveling the world with her family on community service trips.

By Mariel Brunman Mazelle Etessami ’14 quietly stood at attention, surveying the people around her.

She brought her Nikon D40 up to eye level and snapped, causnathanson ’s/chronicle ing the shutter Mazelle Etessami to whir. Etessami has honed her photography skills to act as a bridge between subjects she meets abroad and characters in her life at home.

“The thing I like most is that there is something powerful and unique about telling stories through photos,” Etessami said. “There’s something special you can do with pictures. I’ve been so much luckier than so many people and have been able to see so much more than others, so with one click of a camera I can try to bridge that gap.”

At a young age, Etessami was first inspired by photography when her father would hand her his camera. She began snapping photos on family vacations, and at 13 her father gave her a Nikon as a present before a family trip to do volunteer work in the Himalayas.

Etessami would pick up her camera when there wasn’t much to do at the family’s campsite and would wander off, taking photos of people around the site.

“I think what really inspired me were the people that were there, be-

cause it is hard to not be inspired in that environment,” Etessami said.

Although Etessami has been interested in photography from a young age, she regrets that she can’t take photographs more often because of her busy schedule, she said.

In eighth grade, Etessami’s art teacher at The Mirman School submitted a photograph she had taken on her trip to the Himalayas to a National Scholastic Arts competition. Etessami won a gold medal for the photo, and it was later picked as one of 30 national gold winners to be displayed in the President’s Gallery, in Washington, D.C. She has also won two gold medals at the regional level, one silver medal and one honorable mention from Scholastic Arts. Her photos have also won first and third place in the Photo of the Year category from the National Scholastic Press Association.

Despite her commitment to photography, Etessami refuses to upgrade to a newer Nikon.

“I have a weird attachment to my camera,” Etessami said. “It’s old, and compared to modern models, it’s not as nice, but I just really like it because the pictures I like the most were taken with that camera, so I stick with it.”

Although Etessami has won awards for her photographs, “it’s weird when people compliment my pictures because I don’t see anything special in them,” she said. “I think anyone with a camera could take the picture if they were given that subject matter, so I just see myself as really lucky to be able to travel to a lot of the places.”

SNAPSHOT: While in a village in the Himalayas, Etessami took a photo of an elderly man, named “Life’s Journey,” which won a gold national medal from the National Scholastic Arts Award, and was displayed at the President’s Gallery, top left. Etessami’s photo “Legacy,” was taken in a village in Zambia, above. Her photograph of a child, titled “The Olive Branch,” in Zambia won a regional gold medal, left.

PHOTOS BY MAZELLE ETESSAMI

Monkey business on stage

By David Lim

DAVID LIM/CHRONICLE

FUNNY BUSINESS: Joey Lieberman ’14 and Daniel Palumbo ’14 act in the “Scraps of Paper” skit during the Scene Monkey show on May 18.

Clad in their usual brightly-colored shirts, the Scene Monkeys ran down the aisles cheering and jumped on stage to kick off two performances of their annual improv show in Rugby Theater on May 18. In each 90-minute show, the 17 members of the all-student comedy group acted in scenes ranging from a “super indie” beat poetry lounge to a ballet about a frog who couldn’t jump.

The Monkeys started off many of their scenes by asking the audience for ideas. The nearly full auditorium helped concoct a crime that cops Lucas Foster ’13 and David Feinerman ’12 would interrogate Nick Healy ’13 for in the earlier 5 p.m. show. Healy was led out of the room and had to guess on stage that he was accused of speaking French in a barn with a xylophone.

They also drew inspiration from each other in improv games such as “Growing, Shrinking Machine” where performers added themselves to the act one by one, creating a new scene with every new actor. Hank Doughan ’12 started off brushing his teeth when Healy jumped in and the scene changed to the duo attempting to eat a

massive cob of corn.

After Tara Joshi ’14 and Haleh Kanani ’12 also stepped in, Natalie Epstein ’12 presided over a couples game show between the girls and the pair of Doughan and Healy. Then, the performers left the scene in the order they came on stage and the machine “shrunk” back down to a lone Doughan brushing away.

In the 7 p.m. show, Epstein leapfrogged over Joey Lieberman ’14 in a ballet with a frog who can’t jump.

Towards the end of the show, the Scene Monkeys lined up in a row and answered questions from the audience.

However, this was no ordinary Q&A session, as each Monkey pitched in one word to every sentence they answered.

“Periwinkle must be the best color because it sparkles,” the Scene Monkeys answered when asked what their favorite color was.

In typical Monkey fashion, they closed both shows by inviting the audience to come up with the subject of a music video. While four Monkeys grabbed mics and belted out their tunes, the rest danced it out behind them to the tune of the new song “The Petting Zoo.”

on the

web

at chronicle.hw.com

VIDEO: Scene Monkeys performed an improv skit show on May 18 in Rugby Theatre.

http://bit.ly/KVmtsd Scan barcode with a QR reader on your smartphone to watch the video online.

ports S The Chronicle • May 30, 2012

Los Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue VIII

Off the Block The swim team’s season came to a close with a record-setting CIF Finals meet.

C3

struck

out

ROBBIE LOEB/CHRONICLE

Rough draft

No. 1 seeded baseball fails in 2nd round

ROBBIE LOEB ON BASEBALL

By Camille Shooshani

The up-and-down journey of the baseball program came to a screeching halt with the team’s loss to Placentia Valencia in the second round of CIF playoffs, one round earlier than last year, to a team who snuck into the postseason with a 4-8 league record.

Rewind to late February and the team seemed unstoppable. Righthanded pitcher Lucas Giolito ’12 hit 100 mph on the radar gun in the final preseason game, reached number one in many MLB first round draft mockups and looked like he might pass up UCLA to play in the major leagues.

Top-ranked southpaw Max Fried ’12 landed on the team in September in a fluke after Montclair Prep shut down its athletic program. Add to that recently-named Mission League MVP Jack Flaherty ’14 and Div. I recruits Joe Corrigan ’13 and Arden Pabst ’13, and the team appeared ready to dominate CIF playoffs come May. “[I] just wanted our guys to take Continued on page C4, CIF

ROBBIE LOEB/CHRONICLE

CAMILLE SHOOSHANI/CHRONICLE

PICKED OFF: First baseman Joe Corrigan ’13 tags a Ventura County baserunner as Jack Flaherty ’14 looks on, above. Max Fried ’12, bottom left, and Lucas Giolito ’12, bottom right, will likely be top 10 picks in the June 4 MLB Draft.

There is a constant buzz at O’Malley Family Field, home of MLB Draft prospects Max Fried ’12 and Lucas Giolito ’12.

At every game, a mob of major league scouts stands behind the backstop, whispering analyses to each other about either Fried’s killer curve or the status of Giolito’s injured elbow.

Fried’s and Giolito’s names appear almost weekly on ESPN.com and they commanded the cover of the April edition of ESPNHS magazine.

After nine months of hype about Fried-Giolito mania, draft day has finally arrived. The futures of the Wolverine elite will be determined on June 4, when they will stand in the national spotlight for a brief moment before disappearing into the shadows of the minor leagues.

If you never got the chance to see these pitchers in action, then you missed out on something special.

You won’t see them wearing MLB hats for two to five years, or the day may never even come.

Their career paths could vary anywhere from MLB dropout Bryan Continued on page C4, Major Leagues

Junior quarterback commits to Vanderbilt

By Robbie Loeb

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

COMMODORE: Quarterback Chad Kanoff ’13 will join the Vanderbilt Commodores in Nashville, Tenn. in 2013.

Chad Kanoff ’13 verbally committed to Vanderbilt on Monday, positioning himself between the crosshairs of the 300-pound SEC defenders that notoriously punish opposing quarterbacks.

“I’m ready to beat 300-pound linemen from LSU,” the 6-foot-4 200-pound Kanoff said. “It means a lot [to go to the SEC]. It’s the best conference in the nation, undoubtedly, and I think it would be really cool. Every week you get to go to the meccas of college football.”

The Commodores, from Nashville, Tenn., went 2-6 in the SEC last season under first-year Head Coach James Franklin. The Commodores’ starting quarterback Jordan Rodgers, brother of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, will graduate after the 2013 season.

Kanoff has been linked to Vanderbilt since the Commodore coaches

were first made him an offer in early February.

“They like my size, but also that I can turn a negative play into a positive play,” Kanoff said. “It’s a good fit for me, athletically, academically and socially. It’s got good academics, it’s got a good football team and it’s in a cool place in Nashville.”

Kanoff said he needed to decide on a school as early as possible so his position would not be filled.

“With quarterback recruiting now, you kind of have to, otherwise you’ll be left out,” he said. “Most places only take one and maybe two quarterbacks, but once they have their guys, they’re done.”

Vanderbilt already has another quarterback from the class of 2013 that verbally committed, Johnathan McCrary of Cedar Grove High School in Ellenwood, Ga. On ESPN, McCrary is ranked 16th among dual threat quarterbacks while Kanoff sits in the ninth

spot.

Kanoff may decide to graduate from high school a semester early next year to attend the Commodores’ spring training, but said the Vanderbilt coaches would leave that decision entirely up to him.

“They don’t pressure me either way,” he said. “If I wanted to, then they’d be happy to take me, but if I don’t, they’re fine.”

Kanoff received other offers from San Diego State and Yale, and drew interest from Colorado, Duke, Oklahoma State, Rutgers and Washington.

“Now I can just get ready for my senior season and not have to worry about who’s coming in and all of that,” Kanoff said.

While he is only a verbal commitment and cannot sign a letter of intent until February, he said he would not go back on his decision.

“I’m 100 percent committed,” he said. “I’m not going to waiver on that.”

The Chronicle

3

Max Fried’s total strikeouts in the baseball team’s Division II playoff opener against Ventura on May 17.

117

67

The lacrosse team’s total number of goals scored, averaging eight goals per game.

Robbie loeb/chronicle

Field Hockey Bradley Schine Princeton

Brian Graziano UPenn

Langdon Froomer Johns Hopkins

Sofia Davila Wesleyan

Zena Edosomwan Harvard

Katie Price Bucknell

Reba Magier Swarthmore

Danielle Duhl Duke

Track and Field

at State Meet

Jay Kleinbart Emerson

June 1-2 @ Buchanan High School

Briana Nesbit Cal Poly Pomona

Leslie Schuman Emory

Golf

Charlie Porter Richmond International Soccer Academy

Girls’ 4x400 relay Chapus and Weissenbach will also compete in the 4x400 relay at the state meet with Imani Cook-Ghist ’15 and Shea Copeland ’15.

Chapus and Weissenbach finished first in the event last year with Lauren Hansson ’11 and KC Cord ’11 but were later disqualified for an inside pass.

Girls’ High Jump Alex Florrent ’15 rounds out the trio of freshman girls competing in Fresno. She qualified for the high jump after finishing second at CIF Masters with a height of 5 feet 7 inches. She set a school record earlier this year at 5 feet 10 inches.

Boys’ Pole Vault Ben Gaylord ’13 will be the lone representative of the boys’ track & field team at this year’s State Meet. Gaylord qualified for the pole vault after finishing in fourth place with a height of 15 feet 3 inches. Gaylord is the two-time defending Mission League Champion in the event.

Wade Clement Duke

Shanshan Heh Johns Hopkins

Max Goodley Emory

Lacrosse Max Fried UCLA

Lucas Giolito UCLA

luke holthouse/chronicle

Evan Meister Colorado College

Lauren Li UPenn

Graphic by Camille Shooshani

Sports writing threw me a curveball

Girls’ 800-meter run Amy Weissenbach ’12 looks to “three-peat” in the 800 after winning the event at the CIF Masters meet with a time of 2:05.55. She won the event in 2010 then set a national record at last year’s State Meet with a time of 2:02.04.

Charlie Benell Texas A&M

julius pak/chronicle

Baseball

Girls’ 1600-meter race Cami Chapus ’12 will try to defend her State Championship in the 1600. She qualified for the State Meet after winning the event at the CIF Masters meet with a time of 4:43.90.

Her winning time at last year’s state meet was 4:40.88.

Bella Gonzalez UC Berkeley

Jackson Frons Middlebury

in Clovis, Calif.

Events to Watch:

Alec Zwaneveld UCLA

Stephen Carr Emerson

Lucy Tilton Columbia

Basketball

game of the month

Six track and field athletes qualified for the State Preliminary Meet on Friday, June 1. The top five finishers in each event will advance to the State Finals meet the following day.

Aaron de Toledo Middlebury

Swimming

Inches jumped by Alex Florent ’15 in the high jump to finish second at CIF Masters.

Kei Goldberg Amy Weissenbach WashU Stanford

Water Polo

10

Elana Crowe Johns Hopkins

Cami Chapus Stanford

Josiah Yiu Johns Hopkins

Kristen Lee UC Berkeley

Volleyball

Male swimmers who broke school records at the CIF Finals meet at Riverside College May 12.

Cameron Komisar Middlebury

Andrew Green Georgetown

Cross Country/ Track & Field

The softball team’s on-base percentage this season with 778 total plate appearances and 259 hits.

Soccer

.440

Movin’ on up

Tennis

-5

Bakari Bolden’s ’14 18hole score on the last day of league finals to clinch the title.

Thirty-four athletes from the class of 2012 committed to colleges for their respective sports.

The athletes will play at 21 different schools.

Football

Facts & Figures

May 30, 2012

Fencing

C2 Sports

By Camille Shooshani

I

n September, I couldn’t tell you how a faceoff worked. Or what a tight end did. Or why a pickle had anything to do with baseball.

I was blissfully unaware of almost anything sports-related. I tuned it out and limited my thoughts on the topic to David Beckham and Posh Spice.

Fast forward nine months and I’m writing features about the baseball team, skimming the Los Angeles Times Sports section daily and spending hours flipping through lacrosse photos.

When I was thrust into the sports section of the Chronicle at the end of my sophomore year, I was terrified. My ignorance baffled my entire section.

I once made the mistake of thinking out loud, “I really need to get my nails done.”

They haven’t let me live it down since. It was almost as bad as when I asked who Joe Torre was or why anyone really cared about March Madness.

“Did the sports section head just say that?” they repeated over and over.

Volley? RBI? Charity stripe?

English was quickly losing all familiarity because now we were speaking another language. Somehow I was expected to write a story in this foreign tongue. The constant barrage of seemingly meaningless chatter left me dizzy.

It was pretty embarrassing, at first. Imagine trying to interview a coach about a sport you can barely understand. I got a lot of blank stares and confused looks.

Suddenly though, I was spending my Fridays at football games and afternoons at tennis matches. In a year filled with stress, I found myself spending more time reporting sports news than working on any homework.

As soon as I got a grip on my sport for the season, a new one began, presenting me with a whole new playbook.

It wasn’t the rules, players or coaches that overwhelmed me. It was

knowing what was actually relevant.

By the time spring sports season rolled around, I somehow ended up covering one of the school’s most high profile sports. With two MLB recruits and an almost guaranteed league title, baseball was a big deal.

I fumbled through my first game.

It took two hours with help from my co-section writer to get down a solid 90 words.

I will never master the intricacies of sports writing to the extent of any professional reporter, or even to the extent of my co-section heads. I’ll always need a little bit of clarification.

It’s a new perspective, though, a place I could have never seen myself nine months ago. I’m the type of person who likes to stick to what’s familiar, but sports writing forced me to branch out.

When my adviser placed me in the sports section, I’m pretty sure she had no idea what she was getting me into. It’s probably one of the best things that’s ever accidently happened to me. It was a blessing disguised very, very well.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Sports C3

inbrief

UAA conference names alumnus rookie of year

DANIEL KIM/CHRONICLE

STREAM LINE: Henry Copses ’14 swims the freestyle in the swim team’s meet against Crespi April 26. The Wolverines lost

the meet 103-67, but finished their season 4-2 overall with wins against Notre Dame, Agoura, Alemany and Chaminade.

Swimmer breaks 3 school records in CIF Finals, boys finish 13th

By Michael Aronson

Three different swimmers broke two or more school records in the CIF finals meet at Riverside College May 12. Patrick Kang ’12 broke three records and Max Quilici ’12 and Colin Lynch ’14 each broke two.

Kang broke his first record in the 100-yard breaststroke, swimming against three of his club team training partners in the event.

Kang touched the wall in 57.41 seconds, grabbing the fourth slot, but his club teammate Hunter Cobleigh edged Kang by just over a second to grab the title.

Though Kang lost the race, he set a school record in the event and outswam defending champion Peter Kropp from rival Loyola by 0.16 seconds.

“I honestly wasn’t expecting to go anywhere near that time,” Kang said.

“When [Cobleigh] races with me in

practice, he blows me out of the water, so I was pretty happy getting as close as I did to him. I just wanted to keep up with him, and at least I still have a chance to beat him when we race in practice.”

Kang’s record-breaking meet did not stop with the breaststroke.

He set records along with John Chu ’15, Lynch and Quilici in the 200-yard free relay with a time of 1:27.17 and in the 200-yard medley relay with Andy Liu ’14, Lynch and Quilici, beating the old record of 1:38.96 with a time of 1:36.13 seconds.

“For the relays, our teams swam extraordinarily fast,” Kang said. “If we swam our regular times, we wouldn’t have broken the record.”

“The fact that we did this at my very last meet as a Harvard-Westlake athlete made it all the more special,” Quilici said. “I can’t think of a more perfect way to end the season. It will be an honor to come back to Harvard-

Westlake and see my name on the record board at the new pool, right up there with those of my teammates and graduates who I look up to.”

The boys finished 13th overall with 84.5 points in the meet, far superior to last year’s four-point performance at CIF finals. Their regular season culminated in a 103-67 loss to Crespi to finish 4-2 for the year.

JV Swimming A shutout 118-0 win over Chaminade allowed the JV swim team to finish .500.

Overall Record: 3-3 Last two meets: Crespi L(103-51) Chaminade W(118-0) SOURCE: HW.COM/ATHLETICS

Cheer, soccer, swimming get new coaches

By Luke Holthouse

and

Lucy Putnam

Three Wolverine teams got new Head Coaches over Memorial Day weekend.

Former Laker Girl Octavia Ellison will head the cheerleading program, Jonathan Carroll will assume control of the boys’ and girls’ swimming program and Lucas Bongarra will usher in the next step in the relationship between Harvard-Westlake and the Italian soccer club AC Milan as head coach of the boys’ soccer team.

Ellison will replace Jessica Miller as the varsity cheer team’s head coach and head of the budding middle school cheer program. Miller resigned to pursue other career options.

She said she hopes to use he expeiences with the Lakers to improve the program.

Ellison danced with the Lakers for the last three years, but she retired from professional dancing at the end of the Lakers’ playoff run this season.

“It’s definitely going to be different,” Ellison said. “But there’s a lot that I learned, and a lot I can apply here like a sense of professionalism and the dance technique.”

Carroll will replace Cheyne Bloch as the head coach of both the girls’ and boys’ swimming teams.

Carroll was Aquatics Director at Redondo Union and coached the Redondo club team, Beach Cities Swimming. He was an adjunct professor at Occidental College, teaching courses in their education minor and credentialing program. Carroll will aim to develop a culture around the swimming and

diving teams similar to the other programs that are perennially successful.

“I would like to see us have more top eight finalists at the division level,” Carroll said. “I know the talent capable of accomplishing this goal is already on campus. It is my job with my coaching staff to help the athletes realize it.”

Carroll is excited to lead a new chapter of the swimming program in a brand new pool. The Copses Family Aquatic Center is slated to be finished by the start of the 2012-2013 school year.

“When you have a facility like the one being put together here, the opportunity to develop something special in the aquatics program goes up exponentially,” he said.

That said, Carroll understands the challenge to blend the program under Darlene Bible and what he thinks will take it to the next level but says he has worked through similar situations in the past and is confident he will be solved.

Over the years Carroll has worked with numerous Harvard-Westlake swimmers as a club coach, to the point of feeling as though he knew the program. But as the newest member of the staff said “I am officially part of the family, and I look forward to not only carrying out the athletic vision set out

by Audrius Barzdukas, but also becoming part of the larger Harvard-Westlake community.”

Previous Head Coach Bible said “We have been interviewing for months and Jon is a bright, enthusiastic, knowledgeable swim coach with a desire to teach and coach swimming at Harvard-West-

lake. I am excited to hand off my clipboard to such a terrific young coach.”

Bongarra will replace Felix Arroyo as the Head of the Boys Soccer program. Arroyo will maintain a position in the program with a role yet to be determined, but Bongarra will also become the Head Coach of the varsity program.

Bongarra is currently the head of youth development for AC Milan in Southern California. The hire will help foster the budding relationship between Harvard-Westlake and the Italian soccer club. Harvard-Westlake is attempting to utilize AC Milan’s coaching, training and physical therapy methods to improve the school’s soccer program while AC Milan is trying to develop potential future players through the Wolverines’ soccer program as well as develop the team’s brand.

“I think the idea is to keep bringing the brands together I think the idea that we have is,” Bongarra said. “My personal experience as a coach and my experience in development that with AC Milan is something that the program can benefit from. The program is at a good place. The idea is to add and to take it to the next level.”

Bongarra will use his experience from working with AC Milan, who won the Italian “Serie A” league championship in 2011, to add the “Milan Lab” training system to the soccer teams from 7-12th grade. The Milan Lab program utilizes a unique array of heart rate monitors, body mass indicators and jumping exercises to track the fitness level of players at different times throughout their career.

The University Athletic Association conference named Emory baseball player Connor Dillman ’11 Rookie of the Year for the 2012 season.

As a Wolverine, Dillman was named to the CIF Southern Section All-Star team in 2011, a year the team won its first Mission League title.

Dillman won eight games on the mound this year and threw 76 strikeouts for the Emory Eagles.

He led Emory pitchers with a 2.35 ERA and pitched a complete game shutout to beat Brandeis University, the first Emory player to do so in nine seasons.

The Eagles finished 26-12 this season.

—Michael Aronson

Former middle hitter, setter named BC captains

Both captains of next year’s Boston College girls’ volleyball team will be Harvard-Westlake alums. Former Wolverine setter Kellie Barnum ‘11 and middle hitter Krystle Higgins ‘09 played two season with each other as Wolverines.

Barnum recorded 684 assists last season, and Higgins ranks sixth on the all-time blocks list at Boston College with 252.

Higgins was a part of the 2007 State Championship winning team while Barnum won two Mission League Championships with the Wolverines in 2009 and 2010.

—Luke Holthouse

Stanford alumna wins girls’ water polo title Ashley Grossman ’11 won the NCAA national championship as a member of the Stanford women’s water polo team. This is the second consecutive title for the Cardinal.

The team defeated USC 6-4 in the championship game after beating UC Irvine in the semifinals 12-3.

Grossman lettered four years for the Wolverines, leading them to a CIF championship during her senior year after losing in the finals her freshman year.

—Patrick Ryan

Basketball player alum transfers to junior college Former USC basketball player Danilo Dragovic ’11 will transfer to Navarro College, a junior college in Corsicana, Texas.

He walked on to the USC basketball this year as a freshman but did not get any playing time for the Trojans.

He only attended Harvard-Westlake for his senior year but was ruled ineligible to play on the school’s basketball team because of recruiting rules.

—Luke Holthouse

Former basketball player to use extra year at USC After playing four years at the University of Tennessee, former Wolverine basketball player Renaldo Woolridge ’08 will return home to play at USC. Woolridge received the extra year of eligibility from the National Collegiate Athletic Assciation after filing a medical hardship waiver.

He missed significant time at Tennessee all four years due to various injuries. He told the Los Angeles Times that he wanted to finish his college career close to home.

—Luke Holthouse

The Chronicle

C4 Sports

May 30, 2012

Boys’ tennis wins League, drops in CIF semifinals

By Luke Holthouse

Conditioning proved to be the difference between boys’ tennis and Corona Del Mar in the semifinals of Div. I CIF playoffs. The third-seeded Wolverines had a chance to pull off an upset against the Sea Kings, who were ranked as the second best team in the playoff bracket, but floundered in the final round of the match and lost by a score of 12-6.

“We were a little flat,” doubles player Harrison Kalt ’13 said. “The energy was a little low, and I think that was the main difference.”

After winning only one of six sets in the first round of play, the Wolverines took four of six sets in the second round.

The Wolverines had a chance to force a tiebreaker by winning four of six sets in the third and final round.

However, the Wolverines dropped five of six sets in the third round.

“We put ourselves in a hole,” Head Coach Chris Simpson said. “We gave ourselves a chance, but you have got to be fit for three matches. If it’s a sunny or hot day, you’ve got to be able to deal with it.”

The Wolverines fell one match short of meeting tennis powerhouse University High School of Irvine in the final round of playoffs for a rematch of last year’s CIF championship.

The Wolverines lost 14-4 last year, and University looks to defend their title against Corona Del Mar in the final today for the third straight year.

Simpson said the team would not have had a strong chance of beating University.

“There’s always University in Irvine that doesn’t graduate anyone,” Simpson said. “They’ll just keep adding silverware unless something shocking happens.”

The Wolverines ended their season with a 23-4 overall record and a perfect 10-0 record in Mission League play, winning their sixteenth straight league championship.

Simpson said the team dominates its league, made up of private schools, but has much tougher competition when it gets to playoffs and has to compete with larger, public schools.

“With the school work, with the late nights, with the other tests and the APs, there are all these things that our kids have to go through a little bit tougher than some of the other public schools,” he said. “We’re in it, we’re the best private high school this decade and we’ll continue to be, but there’s things that we’ll address. Fitness is the number one thing.”

Five members of the team will graduate this June. Top singles players Jackson Frons ’12 will play at Middlebury next year and Jeffrey Bu ’12 will play at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The team’s best doubles pair, Adam Williams ’12 and Jaime West ’12, as well as backup Austin Hopp ’12 will also graduate.

“Overall, I think we had a great season,” Bu said. “It’s just a bad way to end it unfortunately.”

Doubles player Dylan Eisner ’13 said the team should add plenty of talent next year.

He said that freshman Jaird Meyer ’15, Parker Chusid ’15 and Michael Geneder ’15 should make big improvements next year and that the team might also benefit from the services of his younger brother Jared Eisner ’16.

“We had a lot of alternates this year that will be good for our team next year,” Eisner said. “I don’t know if we’ll be better, but I think we’ll be similar.”

LUKE HOLTHOUSE/CHRONICLE

SIDE SPIN: Freshman standout Michael Genender ’15 hits a serve in the tennis team’s 12-6 loss to Corona Del Mar in the semifinal match of CIF playoffs May 22.

JV Tennis

NATHANSON’S

“I think I played pretty well throughout the season even though it could be frustrating sometimes.

Overall though the season was enjoyable.”

- Nicholas Brooks ’14

Overall Record: 13-1 League Record: 8-0 Last two games: St. Francis W(14-4) Loyola W(13-5) SOURCE: HW.COM/ATHLETICS

Pitchers to enter Major Leagues Continued from page C1, Major Leagues

ROBBIE LOEB/CHRONICLE

WIN OR GO HOME: Second baseman Alex Horowiz, left, throws to first in the baseball team’s 3-0 first round win over Ven-

tura. Pitcher Jack Flaherty ’14, right, runs back to third base in the Ventura game under Head Coach Matt Lacour’s instruction.

Baseball loses in CIF 2nd round to Valencia Continued from page C1, CIF

things one step at a time,” Head Coach Matt LaCour said.

In March, league play opened at home against Alemany. Expectations intensified as Giolito took the mound.

Giolito and Alemany’s Cody Thompson faced off, neither giving up hits in the first inning. Giolito slipped in the second though, allowing two runs that the Wolverines could not answer.

Midway through the seventh, Giolito gripped his arm in discomfort and walked off. The 6-foot-6 powerhouse, meant to lead the team to CIF finals in Dodger Stadium, never played in the Mission League again. After two weeks, the the Wolverines had fallen from No. 6 to No. 50 in the rankings.

“Baseball takes you through twists and turns,” LaCour said. “It’s important to learn things along the way. I think our team learned things that week that helped the rest of the season.”

But the team quickly pulled itself together, finishing second at the USA Baseball National High School Invitational in April.

The league title came down to a win

at Loyola May 10. Flaherty pitched and homered and the Wolverines finished with a 7-3 victory to clinch league.

“When Jack [Flaherty] is aggressive, he’s special,” LaCour said. “I don’t think a sophomore has ever won [Mission League MVP] so that’s a tremendous accomplishment [as well].”

“We lost Alemany and we lost Lucas [Giolito] but we really came together,” catcher Pabst said. “We matured and learned from that.”

The Wolverines breezed through the first round of CIF against Ventura County with Fried’s complete game shutout. Fried struck out 10 batters and allowed only five hits. After allowing a run in the first inning, Valencia pitcher Zach Williams completely shut down the Wolverines’ offense for the rest of the game, allowing five hits and fanning nine. Valencia had scored three runs by the end of the fourth and the Wolverines had trouble keeping up.

“He was able to shut us down,” Flaherty said. “He outpitched me.”

“They had a guy on the mound that we knew was good, and he was really good against us that day,” LaCour said.

“The game is sometimes as simple as

that.”

“This is a game where you can lose on any given day,” first baseman Joe Corrigan ’13 said. “It’s frustrating but you need to realize that going into the sport. It was a tough way to end it, but you still need to look back on it as it being a good season.”

“We won league, and we can’t get too hung up on that. We’ve just got to keep going,” Pabst said. “We were a solid team. We had a solid year.”

JV Baseball The JV boys’ baseball team won its last five games, outscoring opponents by 23 runs.

Overall Record: 17-7-1 League Record: 10-2-0 Last two games: Loyola W(9-1) Loyola W(7-6) SOURCE: HW.COM/ATHLETICS

Bullington, the first pitcher selected in 2002, to reigning AL MVP Justin Verlander, who was selected in 2004.

If healthy, the 6-foot-6 righty has Verlander potential. Where he goes in the draft depends on which team is willing to gamble on his elbow.

Giolito started out in the running for the top overall selection, and his value rose once he started busting out 100 mph fastballs. But right when scouts began locking him in as the top pick, an elbow injury cut his season short. The strain has the potential to drop him out of the first round.

ESPN’s latest mock draft pegs him at third to the Seattle Mariners, behind Stanford pitcher Mark Appel and a high school outfielder from Georgia, Byron Buxton. Giolito threw for scouts last week and showed good progress in his rehab.

Fried had the opposite trend. He began the season projected towards the bottom of the first round, but after impressive outings against Culver City in April and in the first round of CIF playoffs, his stock skyrocketed to where he was even projected above Giolito. Fried struck out 14 of 21 batters in the Culver City game, probably his most dominant game of the season. In the Ventura County playoff game, his final outing as a Wolverine, he allowed five hits and fanned 10 in a complete game shutout.

ESPN’s latest mock draft has Fried going ninth to the Miami Marlins, but sources say that Chicago Cubs General Manager Theo Epstein likes him at sixth.

Scouts say Fried features the best curveball in the nation and projects to be a starter in the big leagues.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Softball ends League drought, falls in playoffs

By Luke Holthouse

and

Sports C5

David Kolin

A full decade separated the softball team from its last Mission League Championship when the team began its quest for one this season. Ten games and no losses later, the Wolverines emerged from the league play with their goal for the season accomplished.

A 10-10 tie with Notre Dame during the first league game of the season was the lone blemish on the league record of the Wolverines. They won their next nine games in league by a combined score of 92-19.

“I was extremely happy for the girls,” Head Coach Joe Aranda said.

“They had worked extremely hard to get to this point, and it had been a long dry spell for us. We had kind of been the doormat for a while, so to finally get over that hump and climb over that mountain was extremely gratifying.”

The first-place finish in league clinched a playoff spot for the Wolverines.

After beating Charter Oaks 2-1 in the first round, the team’s season came to a close May 22, when Warren High School beat the Wolverines for the second year in a row.

Warren dropped the Wolverines 9-0 in the first round of playoffs last year and, the Bears eliminated the Wolverines 9-2 in the second round this year. The loss snapped a seven game winning streak for the Wolverines that stretched back to the Valley Invitational Tournament in late April.

“We could have beaten them if we had just taken advantage of our opportunities,” pitcher Lauren Li ’12. “That being said, Warren is a great team.”

The Wolverines stranded fourteen runners on base during the game and

LUKE HOLTHOUSE/CHRONICLE

LEAGUE REDEMPTION: Jackie Carr ’14 connects with the ball in the softball team’s 11-6 win over Alemany. The win loaded the bases in three different innings without scoring, Aranda said.

Outfielder Jordan Ellison ’15 said the team hit well, but just did not string the hits together at the right time.

“There were a lot of people left on base,” Ellison said. “There just was not as much clutch hitting as we’ve had in the past.”

Two seniors will leave the team this year, Li and Tiffany Liao ’12. Li was the first pitcher in the rotation while Liao was a utility player.

Pitcher Chloe Pendergast ’13 said she and Madeline Kaplan ’13 will have the difficult challenge of replacing Li’s contributions in the circle. Li was a member of the varsity squad all four years of her high school career. Kaplan, who returned to the team this season after missing a year from school be-

was the final league game of the season for the Wolverines, who clinched their first Mission League Championship since 2002.

JV Softball

cause of a serious concussion, started in right field and didn’t pitch because of an elbow injury.

“Hopefully she’ll be back,” Pendergast said. “As of now, I’d be the only pitcher, and that’d be really hard, so hopefully her elbow is all good to go.”

With eight of nine starters from the team returning, third baseman Theo Miesse ’13 expects the team to make another run at a league title. “[Li and Liao] are both really great players both on and off the field,” Miesse said. “I really enjoyed having them as teammates and friends. But, at the same time, I feel like we still have a lot of talent on our team, so [their leaving] will definitely impact the team, but we’ll get through it. I think we’ll have an awesome season next year.”

Overall Record: 2-12-1 League Record: 0-8-0 Last two games: Alemany L(20-1) Flintridge SH L(19-2) “We started off the season well with a win and a tie, but we struggled with keeping up in league due to injuries.”

- Aliyah Daniels ’14 NATHANSON’S

SOURCE: HW.COM/ATHLETICS

6 track and field members move to State Finals Meet Continued from page A1

LIZZY THOMAS/CHRONICLE

ARM PUMP: David Manahan ’14 runs the 800-meter event at the CIF Masters meet at Cerritos College May 25.

stood.

“Of course our individual events are so important to us, but we really want that 4x4,” Chapus said. “Since there are freshmen coming in with us, we really wanted to go up to the state meet and give them the best shot we have. Our freshmen are so fast, Amy [Weissenbach] and I both know. We’re just so close.”

Standout underclassmen David Manahan ’14 and Garrett Robinson ’15 both narrowly missed out on competing at their first state meet by less than half a second. Robinson missed the qualifying time by forty-six-hundredths of a second. Despite posting the 15th fastest time in the state, Manahan took sixth place in the heat, and was forty-seven-hundredths of a second away from meeting the state qualifying time.

“Their performances as freshmen and sophomores at that level speak volumes at their overall talent and their future as track and field athletes,” Koolsbergen said. “Both have tremendous and tremendous callings.”

On the field, high jumper Alex Florent ’15 qualified for the State meet with her second-place finish. Although she jumped the same height as the winner at 5’7”, she needed more jumps to clear the bar than her opponent, and thus finished as runner-up.

Ben Gaylord ’13 just made the cut for State in the pole vault event since he met the cutoff height of 15’3”.

The Wolverines’ delegation to the state meet this year includes a record number of four freshmen.

“This is the greatest freshman

class in the history of the school,” Koolsbergen said. “In these years there’s been one freshman who has ever run in the Masters meet, and this year we’ve had four. The freshman class is better than ever.”

Chapus said the quality of the freshman class bodes well for the future of the team.

“Especially since these freshmen are getting the experience that they’re getting at the Masters Meet and some of them are going into the State Meet next week, by their junior year, the State Meet will be their traditional meet,” she said.

The weekend before, at CIF Finals, Manahan captured the boys’ 800 title.

“When I was talking with the coaches, we both agreed that [winning] was entirely possible,” Manahan said. “But when it was actually happening, when I came down the final 100[-meter] stretch, and I saw that I was in the lead, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really happening.’”

Co-captains Chapus and Weissenbach successfully defended their individual CIF titles in the 1600 and

800, respectively, as well as the 4x400 relay.

This weekend’s meet will be the last performance for the dynamic duo of Chapus and Weissenbach to represent Harvard-Westlake.

“It’s harder going into the state meet this year as opposed to last year,” Chapus said. “Last year, I wasn’t really ranked at all and nobody really knew I was out there, and I just went for it. But this year, I have to go out there to run instead of other people.

It will be fun since the whole atmosphere of the state meet is great. The whole thing has been great.”

With the loss of the duo that has brought to the program more than 25 titles from all levels from league to state, the team will have to begin its transition to a team without Chapus and Weissenbach going into the state competition.

“It’s going to be different with Amy [Weissenbach] and Cami [Chapus], but we’re still looking to be a major player in the sport and to continue the level of excellence we’ve set so far,” Koolsbergen said.

JV Track

NATHANSON’S

“I think our season ended relatively well.

I ended my JV season with a personal record, but it wasn’t as fast as I would’ve liked.”

- Larry Zhang ’14

Overall Boys’ Record: 0-6 Last meet: Crespi L(45-28)

Overall Girls’ Record: 3-3 Last meet: Louisville W(65-41) SOURCE: HW.COM/ATHLETICS

C6 Sports

The Chronicle

May 30, 2012

Volleyball falls in 1st round, finishes season 17-10 overall

By Luke Holthouse

DANIEL KIM/chronicle

GET UP: Outside hitter Chase Klein ’13 tips the ball over Loyola’s double block in the boys’ volleyball team’s April 19 three-set loss to the top-ranked Loyola Cubs.

A coin flip might have been the difference between the Wolverines advancing to the second round of playoffs and getting knocked out in round one.

After tying with Crespi for second place in league at the end of the regular season, with both teams at 8-4 in League play, a coin flip decided which team would be seeded second and third in the playoff bracket.

The Wolverines lost the flip. Middle blocker Jake Schapiro ’12 said they would have had an easier opponent and home court advantage had they won the flip.

Instead, Crespi hosted Santa Margarita in the first round, while the Wolverines had to travel to Huntington Beach and were defeated by the Oilers.

The Wolverines were defeated in four sets, after taking the first, winning 2624, but dropped the next three sets 2515, 25-19, 25-14.

“We lost the coin flip, and because we had to go to Huntington and play them versus a home game in the first round against an easier team, it didn’t help,” middle blocker Jake Schapiro ’12 said. “We probably could have won a first round game.”

Chase Klein ’13 said that Huntington’s depth and size in the middle allowed them to outplay the Wolverines.

“We really took it to them and beat them in the first game,” outside hitter Klein said. “It was a combination of us believing halfway through the game that we could beat that team and they were caught a little off guard.”

Huntington Beach was the top seed out of its league, and Santa Margarita was its league’s thrid seed.

“You would like to be the second seed so you could get home court advantage in the first round,” Head Coach Adam Black said. “We played pretty well against Huntington Beach, and I’m pretty confident we would have played that way against Santa Margarita.”

The Wolverines finished their season 17-10 overall and 8-4 in league.

Three of seven starters will return next year in Klein, libero Matt Douglas ’15 and middle blocker Davey Hartmeir ’14.

Klein said the team’s biggest question going into the offseason is who will replace Stephen Carr ’12 as the starting setter.

“Carr has been our starter for three and a half years,” Klein said. “I think Eric [Dritley ’13] is definitely a good option, so are Douglas and Brad Komisar ’15.”

Klein expects outside hitter Keith Leonard ’13 to replace Porter as the team’s second outside hitter, will be a big X-factor for the 2013 team.

“We’ll lose a little bit of fire power, but [Leonard] was really the most improved player in my eyes this season,” Klein said. “I think if he works a little this summer, he could be really good for us.”

JV Volleyball After winning the first six games of their season, the Wolverines regressed, losing four of their last six.

Overall Record: 19-10-1 League Record: 8-4-0 Source: hw.com/athletics

Boys’ golf drops in 1st round, team captain loses in 2nd round

By Robbie Loeb

Up-and-comer Bakari Bolden ’14 and graduating star Charlie Benell ’12 were the only members of the boys’ golf team to qualify for the postseason, but neither could complete their run to state.

Bolden shot the round of his life on May 2, a 5-under 67, to win the Mission League Individuals and take home Mission League MVP honors.

In Bolden’s league-winning round, he stood 3-under before bogeying on the 13th hole. He recovered with birdies on four of the final five holes to win the tournament by a single stroke.

“I’m excited to see what else I can do in two more years,” Bolden said.

Benell posted an even par for the round at league finals to take seventh place. With their strong performances at the league round of Individuals, Benell and Bolden advanced to CIF Individuals.

In the first round of CIF Individuals on May 14, Bolden was eliminated after shooting a 9-over 81, while Benell advanced with a 72.

Benell got off to a terrible start in the May 21 second round of CIF Individuals at Victoria Country Club, he said, after bogeying four of the first five holes.

He picked himself up and shot 1-under for the remainder of the round to stay alive.

Benell finished with a 75, which was one stroke behind the cutoff to advance, but because twenty-seven golfers shot 74 or under in the round, and there were 28 spots in State Qualifiers, the 11 golfers who shot 75 entered a sudden death playoff to compete for the final spot in the next round.

In the playoff, each golfer with the lowest score on each hole advances to the next hole. Five golfers, including Benell, advanced past the first playoff hole after shooting par.

On hole two, Benell’s par was bested by a playoff-winning birdie and he was eliminated from CIF two rounds shy of State Finals.

“I’m a little disappointed,” Benell said. “I should’ve made it farther, but I’m proud of the way I played this year.”

Despite his departure to Texas A&M, Benell has confidence that next year’s squad has potential under Bolden’s leadership.

“I think the team next year has potential to go as far as we’ve ever gone,” Benell said. “We had a great year, and we had a lot of kids step up.

Bakari’s going to be a great leader next year and has unlimited potential.”

DANIEL KIM/chronicle

RIVALRY MATCH: Midfielder Justice Sefas ’13, right, faces off in the boys’ 8-5 loss at home against the rival cubs April 17. The boys finished their season 10-4 overall.

Lacrosse out early in playoffs

By Charlton Azuoma

and

David Gobel

After narrowly defeating Crespi 8-7 to clinch a second consecutive Mission League title, the lacrosse team was eliminated in the first round of CIF playoffs with a 13-8 loss to Mira Costa May 1.

“I honestly think most of [the reason we lost] was because we had backto-back games,” team co-captain Connor Pasich ’12 said. “I think that if we were fresh and prepared for the Mira Costa game, we would have had a much better shot.”

After winning the Mission League last year, the team experienced some major changes with a significantly altered starting lineup and a new coach in Jay Pfeifer.

“We only had three returning

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starters from last year, one on offense and two on defense, and really I didn’t think we were going to win the Mission League this year,” co-captain Evan Meister ’12 said.

However, with strong play from many underclassmen, the Wolverines were able to continue the success they had last season, Pasich said.

“Our biggest improvement [this season] was getting an ability to work together well, which is something we didn’t really have at the beginning of the season because there were a bunch of guys coming up from JV. And we had a new coach,” Pasich said. “We had a lot of guys who stepped that didn’t have much of a role last year.”

Next year, the team will lose three major starters in Meister, Pasich and goalie Matthew Mantel ’12.

May 30, 2012

chronicle.hw.com

A new way of healing

Sports C7

In her day-to-day treatment of Wolverine athletes, trainer Sandee Teruya sometimes foregoes commonplace healing methods for something unorthodox — pranic healing, with her 18-sided white quartz crystal.

By Lizzy Thomas

On days before their games, the Mission League champion varsity baseball team often goes to trainer Sandee Teruya to have LIZZY THOMAS/CHRONICLE her stand five Sandee Teruya or so feet away from them, doing what appears to be gesticulating towards them with a sharp rock.

The rock is Teruya’s 18-sided quartz crystal, and serves as an integral part of what’s known as pranic healing, a treatment that looks to balance the body’s energy and is praised by actress Melanie Griffith and Dr. Mehmet Oz. “It’s a crazy sort of Eastern medical philosophy — it’s very esoteric,” Teruya said, as she pulled out her leatherwrapped crystal, first from a mirrored, beaded navy blue bag and then from a Chanel sunglasses case. “Our energy fields can get contaminated, so when we have injuries, we feel the product of that. What I do is I try to clean that out and smooth everything over.”

Teruya trained with master healer Stephen Co, who opened the first pranic healing center outside his native Philippines in Chino Hills. Co trained with grand master Choa Kok Sui, the founder of pranic healing who still resides in the Philippines. Choa traveled the world educating others in pranic healing up until his death in 2007. Teruya went to a crystal show with a large room filled with quartz crystals to pick out a crystal of her own. The prices, Teruya said, ranged from $50 to upwards of $2,000. Teruya went down the tables, picking up each crystal to see if

LIZZY THOMAS/CHRONICLE

CRYSTAL CLEAR: Trainer Sandee Teruya picked this white quartz crystal out for use in her pranic healing practice from a room filled with ones like it. she felt a particular connection to it.

“I was worried that my crystal would be one of the $2,000 ones, and I would just have to buy it,” Teruya said.

Teruya’s crystal proved to be more mid-range, costing her a relatively reasonable $650 and not sacrificing any of the connection she sought.

“I just had a feeling,” she said.

In the Harvard-Westlake training room, Teruya frequently waves her crystal about a foot or so away from her patients’ bodies, as she seeks to bring about a positive change in their auras.

“I tell them, ‘I’m not going to change what you have to do for your test or paper, but I’m going to make you feel more relaxed about doing it,’” Teruya said.

The time Teruya spends working

on students varies based not only on their injuries but also on what they have going on in their non-athletic lives.

She references three baseball players where, of the three, it was the least injured one who took the longest to work on but who also warranted the greatest reaction from her in terms of her own energy and aura.

“Sometimes I feel sick when working on someone, and I have to clear out everything later on,” she said.

Teruya’s crystal requires cleaning too, with a special lavender extract concoction she mixes herself and that she joking calls her “cosmic Purell.”

Teruya, who saw great success with her use of pranic healing during her time as head athletic trainer for the WNBA’s Los

SPECIAL OCCASION DRESSES: PROM

Angeles Sparks, first brought out her crystal during her first year at Harvard-Westlake, when a volleyball player’s ankle seemingly refused to get better in time for the playoffs.

“I said, ‘Do you want to try something crazy?’” Teruya said.

Evidently, the long-since graduated player did, and Teruya began to incorporate pranic healing more regularly into her Harvard-Westlake routine. Though Teruya says players usually notice a real difference some hours after treatment, one of the most dramatic effects she saw was much more immediate, when a soccer player had an allergic reaction during a game that left him with his eyes almost swollen shut. Teruya only worked on him for 10 minutes, but was able to dramatically decrease the swelling.

“While I worked on him, I could see the swelling going down,” Teruya said.

“He was able to return to the game and he never had the reaction again.”

Current students are crystal converts as well. Lucas Giolito ’12, who was sidelined this season with an elbow injury, receives the treatment regularly.

“She always notices that my sinuses are a little stuffed because I think I have some allergies,” Giolito said.

“They always clear out after. She’s combing out my aura.”

Teruya cautions that, in spite of her own success with it, pranic healing is not some kind of miracle cure-all.

“I don’t really take myself very seriously, but I just have a really strong intention to help people,” she said.

“But in terms of healing or Eastern medicine, people expect it to be miraculous. But when we do Game Ready [ice treatment] or stem [electric shock treatment], you’re not healed in one session. This is a treatment as much as anything else.”

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C8 Sports

Diving in with

May 30, 2012

Patrick Kang ’12 Swimmer

School record times:

1:27.17 1:36.13 57.41 200-yard free relay

200-yard medley relay

100-yard breaststroke PATRICK RYAN/CHRONICLE

At his last CIF finals, Patrick Kang ’12 broke three school records, one individual record in the 100-yard breaststroke and two with his teammates, the 200-yard free relay and 200-yard medley relay.

By Patrick Ryan

Q A Q A

Did you expect to swim as well as you did at CIF?

Kang: “We had already broken the medley record before going to CIF, but I didn’t think that we would drop that much time. In the 200-free relay, I looked up [during the race] and saw that we were a second off from the record. But when I saw the final time, I yelled ‘we broke the record!’ and I was pumped. I was really happy when I broke the records because I never thought I would be able to reach those times.”

Did you exceed the goals you set for yourself this year?

Kang: “I definitely felt like I exceeded my own expectations. I know that the team started out strong, and while we struggled a little bit against Crespi and losing to Loyola by 13 points, we were as close as we have ever been to beating them, or have been a while.

Q A Q A

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF DARLENE BIBLE

BUTTERFLY : Patrick Kang ’12 swims butterfly in the Wolverines’ League Finals meet at Los Angeles Valley College May 1. After qualifying in the breastsroke event at CIF prelims,

What does it mean to now hold three records?

Kang: “It’s an honor to be up on the board with some of the guys that I looked up to when I was a sophomore. I always thought that swimmers like Danny Fujinaka ’10 and James McNamara ’10 were amazing, and I still think they are on the board, and my name is up there with them. So it’s kind of shocking, and I am very honored to be there.”

Which win do you think was most important this season?

Kang: I mean, in the Mission League, Loyola and Crespi were on a level way above the other schools. I think since we lost to Loyola by only 13 points, and they were CIF Champs last year. Being able to come that close was kind of amazing.

Q A

Q A

Kang swam a school record setting time of 57.41, edging out Loyola’s Peter Kropp for a fourth place finish overall. Kang was also a part of two relay teams that broke school records.

Which of your records are you most proud of ?

Kang: “I want to say my individual event because that also qualified for a bigger meet outside of school, but I truly am proud of both of the relays. It was an honor swimming with the people that I have been able to swim with, and I can’t say that [the records] were all mine.

Without every other swimmer on each of the teams, we wouldn’t have gotten the records at all.”

Was it important to you to break the records in your last meet at Harvard-Westlake?

Kang: “Definitely. I definitely say that for two of the records which are relays, I give a lot of credit to my teammates who have helped me along the way. Honestly, for my individual event, I never thought I would be able to swim that time, and it’s pretty awesome.”

Q A Q A

How long do you think your records will last?

Kang: “I think all of them will be broken when the sophomores are seniors. This sophomore class has a huge amount of talent. I think John Copses ’14 next year or the year after will definitely break my 100-breaststroke record. I have full faith in him. The 200-free relay might stand depending on what freshmen come in, but the 200-medley record I feel like will be broken along with the breaststroke record.”

What do you hope to make of your future in swimming?

Kang: “I think going just collegiate level would be awesome­— being able to compete against Ivy League Champions and do well there. NCAA Division I is pretty fast, so if I could make it there I’d go crazy. But I think after college I’d probably stop. Maybe I would help out here and there with a couple teams, but I don’t think I’d continue seriously after college.”

S

The Chronicle • Class of 2012

eniors Los Angeles • Volume XXI • Issue VIII

GRAPHIC BY CHLOE LISTER AND VICTOR YOON

The Chronicle

D2 Seniors

inbrief

May 30, 2012 Old School

Record number of seniors to attend annual retreat

A record number of 193 seniors will travel to CedarLake Camp in Big Bear June 5-7 for the fourth annual Senior Retreat.

Upper School Dean Jon Wimbish said the retreat has grown in popularity each year. He attributed this year’s increase of over 50 students to electronic sign-ups, an increased use of Facebook for advertising the event and word of mouth from previous years.

Attendees will hike, play sports, do arts and crafts and participate in lake activities at the optional retreat, said Lauren Choi ’12, who helped to plan the event.

—Allison Hamburger

Senior class raises $7.6 K for endowment fund The senior class has raised $7,600 for financial aid with 76 percent of the class donating.

A number of potential gift options were voted on by the senior class, and the Scholar Endowment Fund was selected.

“It was most important that we allow other students the opportunity to come to Harvard-Westlake and experience what a great educational opportunity this is,” Co-Chair of the Alumni Association David Olodort ’12 said.

—David Gisser

6 faculty members to be honored at breakfast

Seniors and faculty will attend the annual breakfast at the Sportsmen’s Lodge Hotel the morning of graduation.

The breakfast will honor the three middle school and three upper school teachers who were chosen by the seniors to be the recipients of the Senior Tribute Awards.

Additionally, the senior recipients of the George Coleman Edwards Award, the David Justin Rascoff Award and the Blanche Nelson Boyle Award will be announced.

The breakfast will begin at 8 a.m. and end by 9:15 a.m. so seniors can get to the Upper School for the start of graduation at 10 a.m..

—Victor Yoon

Seniors, faculty to park at Sportsmen’s Lodge

Seniors will park at the Sportsmen’s Lodge Hotel on Ventura Boulevard for the commencement ceremony at Ted Slavin Field on May 19.

Parents and guests will be able to park in the limited spaces available on campus.

Shuttles will carry passengers back and forth from campus and the hotel along Coldwater Canyon Avenue for those that do not wish to walk.

People who park at the hotel must move their cars from the hotel parking lot by 1 p.m..

—Julius Pak

Senior breakfast kicks off Senior Transition Day

The annual Senior Breakfast kicked off Senior Transition Day Thursday, May 24. The event, organized by next year’s Head Prefects Katie Lim ’13 and Michael Wagmeister ’13, was catered by the cafeteria and featured musical performances by underclassmen.

The musical portion of the breakfast was anchored by three main performances: Nick Healy ’13, Robert Lee ’14 and Mathew Leichenger ’14 played as a jazz combo, Marissa Chupack ’13 sang accompanied by Deborah Malamud ’13 on piano and Elana Meer ’13 sang while Lim played guitar.

—Lizzy Thomas

GRABBING GRUB: Sam Kaner ’12, Jesus Morales ’12 and Ian Ma ’12, from left, top their hamburgers and hotdogs

Another option

By Lara Sokoloff

at the Senior Barbeque on May 22. Many students wore elementary school attire as part of Senior Throwback Day.

Five seniors are taking a year off before starting college to work on political campaigns, travel internationally and explore religion.

Council. She hopes to conclude the year in Thailand to study Eastern reFive seniors will take a gap year ligions, but has yet to work out the finext year to hone language skills, ex- nancial arrangements for the final leg. plore the United States and foreign Hutman applied for and was awardcountries, study religion and make ed the Obama Organizing Fellowship, a music rather than attend college. Two 12-week volunteer program sponsored others are also considering taking a by the Obama campaign. A an rrganizgap year, but have yet to work out the ing fellow, Hutman will manage voter details. outreach, voter recruitment and overThe recipient of the Michael see other volunteers at phone banks, Brownstein ’99 MeHutman said. morial Gap Year FelHutman lowship Program has first visited not been announced, ARDC last It kind of boggled my mind but has been narsummer on that it was something you rowed down to two her summer finalists who will be program in Iscould do, that you could interviewed later rael and knew take a year off and have this week, Chief Adshe wanted to vancement Officer return to volyour acceptance hold.”

Ed Hu said. Hu reunteer.

She —Rebecca Hutman ’12 will be working quested that the finalists not be named in the youth in this story. First awarded in 2008, the program, a transitional school that award grants up to $10,000 to a senior aims to assimilate immigrant children for a gap year that incorporates both before they enter the public school systravel and service to others, according tem teaching English, dance and drato the application. ma. She will then intern in the main Graham Cairns ’12 is taking a year office to learn about refugee policy and off before beginning the Sciences Po international human rights codes, she Dual Degree Program in fall of 2013. said.

The program begins with two years in She then hopes to participate in a France and finishes with two years at Rustic Pathways homestay program in Columbia University in New York.

Thailand, she said.

Cairns will continue to volunteer Hutman first found out that taking for Teenline, a confidential telephone a gap year was an option five years ago, helpline for teenagers. Cairns cur- but didn’t commit to one until recently. rently volunteers there, but plans to “It kind of boggled my mind that it get more involved by helping train new was something you could do, that you volunteers. He also has an internship could take a year off and have your acwith the Point Foundation, a Lesbian, ceptance hold, hit pause and then go Gay, Bisexual, Transgender outreach back to your life as you had planned it,” organization, and will continue doing she said. his own LGBT work at high schools.

Hutman will attend Wesleyan UniCairns also said he needs to learn versity in the fall of 2013.

French for a class he will be taking his Roz Naimi ’12 hopes to go to Peru, second year in college, which will be Nepal, Morocco and then Ghana for given entirely in French. two months each, working with Pro“I want to get off the treadmill, I’m World, an organization which offers kind of tired,” he said. “But I also kind hands-on development projects in loof need to do need to because I need to cations around the world, according to learn French.” the organization’s website.

Tim Choe ’12 will travel and record Naimi first thought about taking music during his gap year. He hopes to a gap year at the beginning of senior visit France and Korea on his own and year, she said. make music at home, where he has a “Throughout my college explorastudio. He said classmate Billy Single- tion, I wasn’t really finding anywhere ton ’12 may also take the year off to that I could see myself at or that I record music with him. wanted to go next year,” she said. “A lot Choe will attend Azusa Pacific in of it was just that I felt that I wanted September 2013. something different.”

Rebecca Hutman ’12 will start her Naimi will attend Pitzer College in gap year working for President Barack September 2013.

Obama’s reelection campaign. She will Steven Ring ’12 will spend his gap then return to Los Angeles in Novem- year working manual labor jobs around ber and get a job through the holidays. the United States. He plans to spend In January, she will travel to Tel Aviv, three months with the Southwest Conwhere she will volunteer with refugees servation Corp doing trail work in the at the African Refugee Development four corners area before getting a job

“

working on the crew of a boat on the Mississippi River or the Gulf of Mexico as a cook or swabbing decks.

He then plans to work on farms first on the east coast then in Hawaii through the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, an organization that links volunteers with organic farmers. In exchange for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, housing and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles, according to the WWOOF website.

“I’m tired of private school and white people, and I didn’t want to just jump into that again,” he said.

Ring chose to stay in the United States to learn about his culture, he said.

“I want to understand my country better, I want to make some money, I want to be really out of my element, I want to be thrown into situations where I really don’t know what to do because they’re unprecedented,” Ring said.

Ring will attend Kenyon College in September 2013.

Varsity basketball players Zena Edosomwan ’12 and Josh Hearlihy ’12 will both attend Massachusetts prep school Northfield Mount Hermon next year. Edosomwan plans attend Harvard University in the fall of 2013, he said. After committing to University of Utah earlier this year, Head Coach Larry Krystkowiak requested that Hearlihy opt out of his letter of intent.

Hearlihy will spend next year playing for the Hoggers and looking for new scholarship opportunities, he said.

International hopefuls Three other seniors are considering taking a gap year.

Eliza Kellman ’12 hopes to work on organic farms in France, Belgium and Switzerland and study Buddhism in India or Nepal if she opts to take a year off.

Micah Sperling ’12 will spend six months teaching English and taking Japanese classes in Japan, and three months working on the Obama campaign, if he can find a job in Japan.

Adam Wininger ’12 hopes to travel in Australia, Brazil and Southeast Asia.

SOURCE: ELIZA KELLMAN, MICAH SPERLING AND ADAM WININGER GRAPHIC BY ELI HAIMS

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Thinking outside the box

Seniors D3

After their independent study ideas were approved by a faculty committee, 14 students worked for a semester on their projects.

Along with their customary offcampus privileges, some students also took advantage of the senior independent study program to pursue their interests.

Priyanka Bagrodia Priyanka Bagrodia ’12 watched eight criminal trials and wrote a paper comparing her views of the legal system in real life to that presented by the entertainment media. She wrote the paper along with two additional appendices detailing the legal cases and shows.

—Noa Yadidi Melanie Chan Combining her love of design with her study of Spanish literature, Melanie Chan ’12 produced a paper on “what inspired Antoni Gaudi to create his unique buildings.”

Chan investigated two periods of the celebrated architect’s life to analyze the influences on his work.

—Jessica Barzilay Christopher Freedman Christopher Freedman ’12 wrote a paper about how American expatriate literature deals with the nature of originality, relating the “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller and the “Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway.

“Crafting a thesis around these two books was enjoyable and made a lot of sense,” Freedman said.

—Lucy Putnam Jessica Gold Jessica Gold ’12 presented fictional stories on girls from three different cultures in a 15-page paper.

Gold attended Oxbridge Summer Programs and made friends from all over the world. She was inspired to do her project by “how we were all similar and how we were all different.”

—Sarah Novicoff Claire Hong By comparing the theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to her personal dreams under the guidance of psychology teacher Michelle Bracken, Claire Hong ’12 discovered that finding the distinction between reality and the subconscious could become difficult,

Michael Rothberg/chronicle

Putting it into action: Dani Wieder ’12, far left, instructs her adviser, upper school English teacher Adam Howshe said.

—Mariel Brunman

Karen Kim Assisted by Latin teacher Paul Chenier, Karen Kim ’12 examined Greek and Sumerian myths, as well as the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss.

She then connected various myths she had studied.

“I found it fascinating that they all had the same fundamental structures.

It was almost a psychedelic experience,” Kim said.

—Mariel Brunman Wyatt Kroopf Wyatt Kroopf ’12 wrote a play in two acts entitled “Rotten Fruit” about three people living together: two men and one woman, who are all best friends.

“It was a fun challenge,” Kroopf said. “It was hard to create a really full story arc from start to finish, but it felt good to try to do that.”

—Michael Rothberg Sandhya Nadadur After studying Spanish literature in 11th grade, Sandhya Nadadur ’12 was inspired to analyze how three lit-

ard, second from left, and other students before they perform a read-through of her play that she wrote for her senior project.

erary genres, realism, magical realism and fantastic literature, are portrayed in reality.

—Keane Muraoka-Robertson Hannah Schoen In a 50-page paper, Hannah Schoen ’12 explored U.S. relations with the Middle East after 1991 for her independent study project, mentored by history teacher Dror Yaron.

“It’s something that comes up in the news quite often and I think it’s really important and interesting to study an issue so prevalent in my lifetime,” Schoen said.

—Rachel Schwartz Justin Sohn Justin Sohn ’12 read “The Waves”

by Virginia Woolf five times to fully analzye the work in a 44-page paper, advised by English teacher Malina Mamigonian.

“It’s exploring the relationship between Woolf as an author figure, the characters and the world they face and the reader, and how she tries to dissipate the barrier between each form of reality,” Sohn said.

—Allison Hamburger

Anders Villalta Anders Villalta ’12 created a digital model of a sustainably designed home.

When Villalta presented his independent study before the Board of Trustees a trustees contacted the architect building her house about Villalta’s project, and he now has an interview lined up for an internship with this architect.

—Julia Aizuss Charlie Troy Charlie Troy ’12 researched how five economists, Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, John S. Mill, Karl Marx and John Keynes, affected modern economic thought today.

“In my last essay, I connected each of the economists and showed an evolution of economic thought,” Troy said.

—Aaron Lyons Dani Wieder Dani Wieder ‘12 wrote an 85-page play following a 1950s housewife’s discovery of Greek heroines.

Wieder calls it a “study” of women’s roles in the time period rather than a “criticism.”

—David Lim

Preparation for college Seniors attended seminars May 24 to learn skills for life after high school in a variety of fields, from travel advice to tips on college relationships.

>> Basic car care Science teacher Walt Werner taught students about basic maintenance for their cars.

>> Psychology of flirting and attraction Students played a “dating game” in order to analyze their own skills, as well as discussing behavior and body language.

>> Sex in college Gender-separated seminars talked about relationships, safety and health.

>> Basic sewing and how to keep clothes wearable Costume Director Lisa Peters taught students basic stitches to sew on buttons and tears in their clothing.

>> Managing money in college Chief Financial Officer Rob Levin and Jono Wagmeister ’09 taught students the basics of saving and investing their money.

>> Dorm room dinner parties Melissa Kahn ’99 advised students on how to spruce up their dorm rooms to give a more formal, dinner-party atmosphere.

>> Art as a tool for independence Students learned to create collages and choose and store inspirational art.

>> Existentialist philosophy Taught by French teacher Simona Ghirlanda, this course debated philosophical issues to prepare students for college courses and to caution them against bullying.

>> What is well being?

Dean Coordinator Ryan Wilson shared tips on how to maintain emotional health.

>> Dorm room first aid Students were taught how to use first aid kits and defibrillators, as well as learning when it is appropriate to call 911.

Source: HarrY Salamandra Graphic By David Kolin and saj sri-kumar

Chloe Lister/chronicle

mastery: Valedictorian Richard Chung ’12, right, plays the violin in a December 2010 orchestra concert. Chung was named the valedictorian based on merit.

Chung to give valedictory Continued from page A1

football was the most demanding activity he did in high school.

“Football was a huge challenge physically and mentally,” Chung said.

“Football really pushed me in a way that a classroom couldn’t.”

In addition to football, Chung said he plays pickup basketball with his friends on the weekend to unwind and stay in shape.

Chung has practiced and performed the violin since seventh grade and played in the orchestra at HarvardWestlake. He said he does not plan to continue playing in college, but has enjoyed the experience in high school.

“I really like music, especially classical music so being able to play with a group was a lot of fun,” Chung said.

“And this year, going to Disneyland, that was a lot of fun too.”

Since he devotes hours every day to both football and violin, Chung said he sometimes has difficulty juggling his activities with academics.

Throughout his high school career, Chung has been especially interested in the study of history. He said that after taking Assimilation and Conflict last year, he was inspired to research the Los Angeles riots in greater depth, which he pursued in a Directed Studies class.

“It was really meaningful and interesting to research that,” Chung said.

He said that being chosen by the faculty to deliver the valedictory speech “was definitely a big surprise, but obviously a great honor.”

Chung will attend Yale in the fall.

The Chronicle

D4 Seniors

Entering new orbits

Jon Alkalai University of Illinois

Reyna Calderon Barnard

Amanda Allen USC

Colin Campbell University of Michigan (Engineering)

Gavin Allman Carleton College Jose Alvarez Boston College Aneri Amin University of Chicago Bosilika An Declined to state Elias Aquino Connecticut College Joel Argueta MIT Jackie Arkush Kenyon Charlton Azuoma Loyola Marymount University Claire Baba Declined to state Priyanka Bagrodia Georgetown (Walsh) Rishi Bagrodia Johns Hopkins Daniel Bai Case Western Jessica Barzilay Harvard Maddy Baxter University of Michigan Oscar Beer University of Rochester Charlie Benell Texas A&M Adam Bennett Brown Ryan Blackwell USC Simone Bookman NYU Ruby Boyd Oberlin Fede Brecha Duke Devon Breton-Pakozdi Yale Hallie Brookman University of Pennsylvania Evan Brown Bard College Jeffrey Bu MIT Tootsie Burns USC Graham Cairns Columbia (Sciences Po, deferring)

Gravitational

Pull

These six universities attracted the largest number of students from the class of 2012.

Stephen Carr Emerson Duncan Chalfant USC Melanie Chan Georgetown Jake Chapman Columbia Cami Chapus Stanford Brandon Chen University of Iowa Autumn Chiklis USC (Theatre) Timothy Choe Azusa Pacific (deferring) Lauren Choi Cornell (Hotel) Michelle Choi Harvard Jonathan Chu Renssaeler Polytechnic Institute Olivia Chuba Barnard

Ariana DuBelko Southern Methodist University Nadia Dubovitsky University of Michigan (Honors) Danielle Duhl Duke Ian Durra University of Washington Zena Edosomwan Northfield Mt. Herman Academy (Postgraduate) Jamie Ember Wesleyan Natalie Epstein Yale Jamie Feiler Hampshire College David Feinerman University of Michigan Graydon Feinstein NYU Brandon Finkelstein University of Michigan Melissa Flores Barnard Leland Frankel UCLA (Theater, Film, and Television)

Richard Chung Yale

Chris Freedman Oberlin Conservatory of Music

Wade Clement Duke

Max Fried UCLA

Bradley Coon USC (Marshall)

Wesley Friedman Harvard

Taylor Coon USC (Marshall)

Jackson Frons Middlebury

Elena Crowe Johns Hopkins

Langdon Froomer Johns Hopkins

Lukas Czinger Yale

Adit Gadh Emory

Sofia Davila Wesleyan

Jordan Gavens University of Michigan

Aaron de Toledo Middlebury

Hank Gerba Northeastern

Cami de Ry Brown

Emma Gerber NYU (Steinhardt)

Gabe De La Rosa Colorado College

Lucas Giolito UCLA

Brandon Deere University of Michigan

David Gobel Washington University, St. Louis

Hank Doughan CSUN Alan Dritley Southern Methodist University Lucas Druz Bard College

20 USC

Jessica Gold Duke Kei Goldberg Washington University, St. Louis Harry Goldfisher Harvard

May 30, 2012 The seniors depart from the Harvard-Westlake universe to attend 85 schools across the world.

Bella Gonzalez UC Berkeley

Claire Hong Georgetown

Justine Goode Oberlin

Austin Hopp Cornell (Engineering)

Max Goodley Emory

Jamison Huang University of Chicago

Alex Goodwin University of Michigan

Jackson Hudgins Carleton College

Charlotte Gordon Washington University, St. Louis

Paris Humphrey Dickinson

Nikki Goren Vanderbilt Arianna Gramajo Oxford Brian Graziano University of Pennsylvania

Rebecca Hutman Wesleyan (deferring) Garrett Ishida Cornell (Engineering) Jamias Jones University of Oregon Asha Jordan NYU (Gallatin)

Andrew Green Georgetown

Michael Kagan Boston University

Tyler Greeno George Washington

Haleh Kanani Kenyon

Ben Greif United States Military Academy, West Point

Sam Kaner Cornell

Brian Gross University of Miami (Audio Engineering)

Patrick Kang Dartmouth

Samantha Grosslight Denison University

Lily Katz University of Michigan

Cheston Gunawan Stanford

Megan Kawasaki Washington University, St. Louis

Alex Gura University of Chicago Josh Ha Northwestern (Weinberg) Catherine Haber Barnard Eli Haims Columbia

Eliza Kellman Vassar Chelsea Khakshouri USC (Cinematic Arts) Aletheia Kim University of the Pacific Daniel Kim Cornell

Allison Hamburger Brown

Karen Kim UC Berkeley

Meghan Hartman Barnard

Michael Kim NYU (Steinhardt)

Josh Hearlihy Northfield Mt. Herman Academy (Postgraduate)

Sophiea Kim USC (Roski)

Matt Heartney Columbia (Fu) Shanshan Heh Johns Hopkins Bella Hicks University of Michigan

Tracey Kim UCLA (Arts and Architecture) Joe Kitaj University of Wisconsin

Nicole Hirschhorn Harvard Bradley Ho USC Crystal Ho USC Justin Ho Washington University, St. Louis

19

University of

Michigan

Jay Kleinbart Emerson Julie Ko MIT David Kolin Pomona College Cameron Komisar Middlebury

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012 Danielle Korman Washington University, St. Louis Hanna Kostamaa Brown Nora Kroopf Colorado College

Caroline Maeda NYU (Gallatin)

Connor Pasich Rice University

Reba Magier Swarthmore

Victoria Pearson United States Military Academy, West Point

Jordan Mandel University of Arizona

Wyatt Kroopf Oberlin

Matt Mantel University of Delaware (Engineering)

Sanjana Kucheria NYU

Vivien Mao St. Andrews (Honors)

Gabi Kuhn Eugene Lang

Natalie Margolin University of Montana

Ryan Lash University of Michigan (Art and Design)

Sarah Markowitz Pitzer

Jack Law-Warschaw NYU

Arielle Maxner University of Michigan (Honors)

Austin Lee Princeton

Cathy Mayer Kenyon

Connie Lee Declined to state

Langston McElroy Vanderbilt (Engineering)

Eusene Lee Babson College

Sally McGrath Georgetown

John Lee Columbia

Camden McRae Harvard

Jonathan Lee UC Berkeley

Evan Meister Colorado College

Kristen Lee UC Berkeley

Corinne Miller Stanford

Nick Lenard University of the Pacific

Jesus Morales University of Michigan (Engineering)

Marissa Lepor Columbia Brooke Levin Yale Halle Levitt Southern Methodist University Lauren Li University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) Tiffany Liao Wellesley Judd Liebman Amherst Chloe Lister USC (Cinematic Arts) Julian Lopez Lewis and Clark College Kameron Lucas Woodbury University (Media, Culture and Design) Sarah Lund Dartmouth Eleonore Lund-Simon Georgetown (McDonough) Ian Ma Northeastern Marka Maberry-Gaulke Eckerd College Xochi Maberry-Gaulke Evergreen State College Nika Madyoon Columbia

13 NYU

Seniors D5 Mark Seuthe DigiPen Institute of Technology

Cesar Velazquez Cal Lutheran Gaby Velkes Cornell (CALS)

Justin Shabahang Boston University

Colburn Pittman Ohio State University

Austin Sherman University of Pennsylvania

Richard Polo Princeton

Billy Singleton University of Colorado Boulder

Charlie Porter Richmond International Academic and Soccer Academy

Alán Sneider USC

Max Warwick Boston College (Carroll)

Lara Sokoloff Yale

Max Quilici USC (Thornton)

Micah Sperling University of Chicago

Maria Quinonez Yale

Joel Spielberger Northeastern

Alex Rand-Lewis Northeastern

Jamie West Washington University, St. Louis (Engineering, Olin)

Evan Stanley NYU (Tisch)

Jacob Reamer NYU (Gallatin)

Dani Wieder University of Chicago

Justin Stein Stanford

Alejandra Reynoso Stanford

Adam Williams Yale

Sarah Stolz Case Western

Steven Ring Kenyon (deferring)

Wiley Webb Stanford

Amy Weissenbach Stanford

Morgan St. Jean USC (Thornton)

Will Reagan University of Michigan

Lauren Waters George Washington

Noah Weinman Kenyon

Saj Sri-Kumar Stanford

Natasha Rawjee USC

David Wan University of Michigan

Susan Wang NYU (Stern)

Justin Sohn Brown

Katie Price Bucknell

Nikki Volpert University of Michigan

Meagan Wang USC (Keck)

Brigid Sofen Cornell (Hotel)

Hunter Price Vanderbilt

Anders Villalta Oberlin

Jill Wilson University of the Arts

Elliot Storey Tufts

Maddy Morency Skidmore

Noah Ross Vassar

Alexandre Moritz University of Chicago

Jason Rostovsky University of Pennsylvania

Liliana Muscarella UC Santa Barbara (Honors)

Daniel Roth NYU (Steinhardt)

Christine Sull Washington University, St. Louis

Sandhya Nadadur USC

Alex Rowland Wesleyan

Mark Swerdlow Stanford

Roz Naimi Pitzer (deferring)

Royce Ryu Stanford

Elaine Tang University of Chicago

George Natsis University of Michigan

Shana Saleh USC

Shana Tavangarian Declined to state

Briana Nesbit Cal Poly Pomona

Ethan Samuels Emory

Chelsey Taylor-Vaughn Pitzer

Danni Xia University of Michigan (Honors)

Abbie Neufeld Wesleyan

Jake Schapiro Duke

Parker Thomas University of Chicago

Justin Yadegar USC

Taylor Nunley Vassar

Olivia Schiavelli Boston University

Lucy Tilton Columbia

Christina Yang USC (Science Honors)

Rebecca Nussbaum University of Pennsylvania

Cooper Schilling Boston University

Taylor Yang Declined to state

David Olodort Northwestern (McCormick)

Bradley Schine Princeton

Will Tobias Southern Methodist University (Lyle)

Blaise Ormond Boston University

Hannah Schoen Princeton

Sam Ottavi-Perez Boston College

Peter Schulman Kenyon

Julius Pak University of Chicago

Leslie Schuman Emory

Michael Park Emerson

Sarah Seo Wesleyan

Anabel Pasarow Wesleyan

Lia Seraydarian Carleton College

Stanford

12

Tess Winebaum Bucknell

Aaron Strauss Cornell

Madison Tully University of Wisconsin (Honors) Sophie Turner Duke Ryan Vanderschans University of Michigan

Chicago

Matthew Wolfen University of Pennsylvania Gus Woythaler Stanford

Victor Yoon University of Pennsylvania

Gabby Trujillo UC Santa Cruz

University of

Russell Wolfe Colorado College

Josiah Yiu Johns Hopkins

Charlie Troy Stanford

9

Adam Wininger University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)

James Zhang NYU Hannah Zipperman Kenyon Alec Zwaneveld UCLA

9 University of

Pennsylvania ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDERS VILLALTA

2012: A Spa The Chronicle

D6 Seniors

May 30,

As graduation approaches, time at Harvard-Westlake seems like a journey through the stars. Here are glimpses of steps from along the way.

7

“Retreat!” cheered Dean Roderick Huston at class meetings, hands fashioned into his signature “rock-on” gesture. He faced a crowd of pimply American Apparel clad adolescents, boys with swishy shoulder-length hair and girls adjusting their side bangs.

Our year began with trips to Pali Camp and Joshua Tree National Park, where a mouse bit Lauren Choi’s ’12 nose and Ruby Boyd ’12 broke her arm.

But as we came back to campus and settled into our Reynolds Hall locker area, we needed support from our booster rockets to keep our young teenage selves on track. Matt Heartney ’12 threw up on the Marshall Center stairs after eating too many Pixy Stix at the school dance, and we pushed the boundaries with some scandals. But our love for HarvardWestlake flourished as we proudly toured prospective students around at Family Visiting Days.

Blasting off Harvard-Westlake life began in an explosion of new teachers, a six-day cycle and free periods. One day we were sixth graders, coming here comfortable with our old schools and small classes, and he next, we were middle school students, hesitant but excited.

In his welcoming speech, Vice President John Amato warned us of the turbulence of takeoff — which Will Reagan ’12 experienced first-hand on Halloween when he ate a sheep’s brain from the science lab.

As we dressed up for Bar Mitzvahs and made new friends dancing to Akon’s “Smack That,” the Curtis and John Thomas Dye cliques slowly disintegrated.

We rolled our eyes when Dean Julie Harris gave us detentions for leaving our calculators on the floor in the locker area.

We had hurtled into middle school life at 25,000 miles per hour, and there was no turning back. Our bumpy journey had officially begun.

Navigating the asteroid belt

10 Dodging upperclassmen and water balloons, we ventured into the Upper School, an asteroid belt we struggled to navigate.

We were timid, afraid to walk through the quad without a friend by our side. Peer Support and Coffee Houses brought us closer together, while new drivers’ permits gave us new freedoms.

We lost retreat and daily breaks, but learned to live without them.

Our leg muscles strengthened as

we grew accustomed to the staircase culture, and we picked up facts along the way: that one Munger staircase leads to nowhere, the right stairwell between the quad and Seaver must be avoided and that it is surprisingly possible to trek from the bookstore to history in only five minutes.

The seniors stole our backpacks, breaking Michelle Choi’s ’12 laptop. But with that final obstacle, we proved our rightful place on Coldwater Canyon.

11

Skirting the black hole

By the cul field day, our m was finally behi our booster r high school.

8

Lo boo

, 2012

chronicle.hw.com

ace Odyssey

9

Seniors D7

Greeting aliens

lminating Jacobson Cup most rambunctious year ind us, and we jettisoned rockets, gearing up for

8

We soon found ourselves in alien territory. With a remodeled campus and dozens of new classmates to meet, our familiar Middle School had changed, but we were up to the challenge of making it ours. We tried to get to know all of the new faces, as we gaped at Zena Edosomwan’s ’12 height, were impressed by Catherine Haber’s ’12 dancing and wondered who Charlie Troy’s ’12 girlfriend of the week would be.

We embraced our roles as leaders on campus, even when that meant donning a neon SQUID vest.

We braved the Colorado River, walked head down past Noah Ross ’12 and Marka Maberry-Gaulke ’12 in “the couples corner” and laughed

osing our oster rockets

Little did we know, the asteroid belt was nothing compared to junior year.

We lost Ishan Bose-Pyne ’12 in September, rocking our class to its core. Such a tragic event united us in mourning as we embarked on what would be our toughest academic year. As we tried to reorient the ship, the black hole held its grasp on us. SATs, GPAs, tutors, tests and college lists threatened to consume our well-being and our social lives. We left class meetings wide-eyed after deans showed us admissions statistics.

We reluctantly accepted the cancellation of future Semiformals, knowing that our behavior catalyzed the decision.

Junior year darkness could have swallowed us up and made us lose sight of the future, but Gatsby’s green light of hope pulled us through the year, promising a senior year of memories and fun.

as Jake Schapiro ’12 fashioned ChalfIDs for every holiday.

Scattered craters marked the walls of the new buildings as we settled into the locker area and cafeteria, perhaps a bit too roughly. We eagerly awaited our birthdays when it would be our turn to have a locker decorated with wrapping paper, bows and candy.

As pseudo high-schoolers, we shuttled over the hill to the Upper School for sports practices and ordered our first corsages for semiformal, but we knew the terrace was still our domain. After our final bites of cafeteria sushi and Federico’s sandwiches, we bade farewell to the Middle School.

Leaving the solar system

12

We were determined to make the most of our time left in the solar system. We shrugged off the small temporary library and construction traffic on Coldwater and took advantage of our role as leaders on campus.

With senior privileges in hand, we branched off from cafeteria lunches. First loyal to our Il Tramezzino Chicken Specials, we found the beauty of variety in Which Wich subs.

We threw our own parties, dancing to Wiley Webb’s ’12 cosmic beats. Although we failed to unite with a senior prank idea, our fake semiformal in the quad will no doubt “make a mark” in HarvardWestlake history.

As we watched Prom King and Queen Max Quilici ’12 and Hallie Brookman ’12 dance together at the Loews Hotel, we knew we could only smile at this cliched moment. With graduation a week away, there is no denying that we will soon be in a new solar system. Although we will no longer be traveling in the same ship, we will always have shared the journey of growing up together.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDERS VILLALTA

The Chronicle

D8 Seniors

May 30, 2012

A yearbook note for H-W

This isn’t goodbye

A

I

By Cami

de

By Megan Kawasaki

Ry

s yearbooks were handed out at the end of Senior Transition day, I was not immediately flipping through pages of Vox Populi’s hard work but stressing out about the yearbook notes I would soon have to write. I began brainstorming ideas, making sure I would not leave anything out. But now comes the big one.

The yearbook note to Harvard-Westlake. The final goodbye.

Dear Harvard-Westlake, H-W, School, Prison, HDUB, I remember when we first met.

I was wearing a white Abercrombie tank top with a pink cardigan and a mature pencil skirt. I was the same height that I am now, but, thankfully, my face has stretched and my pimples have gone away. You treated me well, yet you were still big and scary and watching my every move. I finally knew that you liked me when you sent a locker combination via email and accepted me, and we’ve been frenemies ever since.

I’m not going to lie, HarvardWestlake, I really hated you sometimes. You trapped me at Pali on eighth grade retreat where I truly believed I was walking to my death on a three-mile hike. At the Upper School, you once again required me to walk more than I would have liked to, but this time it was up stairs, which reinforced the fact that I am not athletic.

But other than this, HarvardWestlake, you were a great friend.

You showed me that even though I am a girl, I can be good at math. You accepted me even when I died my hair black and gave myself ugly bangs. You brought history teacher Dror Yaron to my rescue fourth period during junior year where he would brighten my day by rubbing a lemon and Purell all over his head. You forced me to read The Bible, The Iliad and Beowulf, and while they were torturous to read, getting through them was extremely fulfilling. Your 10th grade personality test taught me that I was 99 percent introverted, and although the result was slightly surprising, it proved to be accurate and made me understand my strangeness a lot better. But finally, Harvard-Westlake, you gave me Peer Support, which took me through an up-and-down journey of getting to know myself and my peers in a way that I would never have. Peer Support pushed me out of my comfort zone into a room of 12 strangers the beginning of sophomore, junior and senior year and left me with 36 new people that I would never have gotten to know. You introduced me to the school psychologists Luba Bek and Sheila Siegel who gave me explanations to people’s behaviors that always bewildered me. Above all, you helped me help others. So thanks Harvard-Westlake. Peace out and stay cool. HAGS.

JUDD LIEBMAN/CHRONICLE

Megan Kawasaki ’12, Cami de Ry ’12, Chloe Lister ’12 and Anabel Pasarow ’12.

Life through a lens

By Chloe Lister

I

experienced a large portion of my Harvard-Westlake career through the lens of my camera.

I wouldn’t follow that with the cliché “I don’t regret a minute of it.”

Several times, I’ve felt that it’s isolated me; instead of a participant, I’ve been an observer. On ‘80s Day, I hunted for that perfect angle while my friends danced to “Footloose.” At Clubs Fair, I couldn’t inquire about Junior Classical League or Foreign Outlook because I was checking my aperture and shutter speed. My white balance has been more important than enjoying myself.

My most frequent accessory is a five-pound hunk of metal, glass and plastic. It’s been easy to let define me.

On several occasions I photographed Hank Adelmann ’11, but we never actually spoke until this past summer when he informed me that he had thought of me as the “shy camera girl.” And I’m sure he’s not the only one. It’s difficult to socialize between the clicks of my shutter.

That may be why it’s so strange that my camera has also brought me closer to the Harvard-Westlake community. For instance, I’ve never been a “sports person.” I can’t keep track of rules and frankly, with no offense to my athletic friends, I’m bored by watching people scramble after some ball. Going to a school musical or jazz concert isn’t the first way I’d choose to spend my Saturday night. But a photography assignment is an assignment, and they’ve landed me at these sorts of events.

Because of that, I’ve gotten to see the students I’ve only known from my math or English class dance, sing and score winning goals. Their talent is frankly overwhelming.

However, photojournalism only makes up half the time I’ve spent looking through my viewfinder.

There are currently a grand total of 11 seniors in the school’s photography program. We’ve dubbed ourselves the “Ohana” after a quote from the movie Lilo and Stitch: “Ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind or forgotten.”

I’ve gotten close to people through AP Biology and Cinema Studies, but I’ve never seen an entire class come together quite like my Ohana. After all, it wasn’t in Biology class that we ordered matching sweatshirts.

I am positive that we wouldn’t be Ohana without our teacher, visual arts teacher Kevin O’Malley.

He hasn’t just taught us to meter and compose. He’s taught us how to look at the world. He’s helped us to discover our distinctive style and infuse our personalities in our photogrpahs.

You can see Emma Gerber’s ’12 affectionate relationship with her horses in her black and white negatives taken at her barn, Sophie Turner’s ’12 interest in the unknown in her voyeuristic street photography and Asha Jordan’s ’12 appreciation for subtle beauty in her unconventionally-composed photos of the human body.

They may not be my Ohana by blood, but I love them all the same, and even when we’re on different ends of the country, I know that none of us will be left behind or forgotten.

As much as I’ve resented how many times I’ve had to hang my camera around my neck, I really am thankful for all the experiences it’s brought me. Because when it comes down to it, I would rather be known as the shy camera girl than not known at all.

t’s hard to think that it’s all over.

Six of the most formative years of my life have passed in what feels like a ludicrously short period of time, and I find it difficult to summarize an adequate reflection of my HarvardWestlake experience. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t had any coffee today.

Maybe it’s perpetual fatigue from sleeping five to six hours a night for the past year. More likely, it’s because I find myself struggling to part with a community that I’ve grown so close to, and because if I do end up finishing this column, it will act as the goodbye that I’m not quite ready to say. As I prepare to part from the school that has become my second home, nostalgia pulls me back to the beginning.

I can still remember how overwhelmingly new everything seemed as a seventh grader, from the huge campus to the variety of classes available.

It was an entirely different world, one in which I feared I could never truly flourish in because of my shyness and insecurity. I believed that if I stayed silent and didn’t get in anyone’s way, I would make it through unscathed.

Harvard-Westlake, however, guided me down a different path.

The thick shell that I had built up slowly broke apart as the welcoming people and the positive atmosphere of the school chipped away at it. The once frightening and new became exciting, and from there, I’ve had such enjoyable experiences. Spending free periods chatting with teachers over tea, working late nights in Weiler to finish issues of the Chronicle, laughing at overcrowded lunch tables. Going to Chipotle for lunch for the umpteenth day in a row. Playing for sports teams I thought I could never join. Sadly, now that I’ve acknowledged how much impact the school has had on me, it makes it that much harder to go.

Recently, my life has been consumed by thoughts of college and the future, and I haven’t had the chance to reflect on my time here as much as I would have liked to. I thought that my senior year would last the longest, but everything has happened so fast that I feel as though I’m speeding away, hurtling towards the great big unknown of the real world.

Rather than saying goodbye though, I would just like to say thank you. Thank you to the school for forcing me out of my shell. Thank you to my friends for encouraging me to try the new and intriguing. And thank you to the teachers and my dean Mike Bird who taught me how to work hard and have self-confidence.

Harvard-Westlake pushed me to go out and make something of my life, a gift for which I will be forever grateful. All of the memories and companions I’ve made here will continue to guide and influence me. I don’t want to push them away just yet.

My H-W survival guide: an homage to this institution

By Anabel Pasarow

M

y four years here have been great. Stressful, no doubt, but unmistakably rewarding. I’m extremely excited for next year, but I can’t help feeling sad as my time here comes to a close.

As an homage to this institution that has done so much for me, I wanted to list some little known truths and advice for survival at the Upper School.

1. I spent too much time dodging scary seniors in the quad by way of unnecessarily long routes to class.

Know that whatever snide comments you imagine them uttering at the sight of you probably aren’t being said.

I made too many fake Chalmers bathroom trips when my friends didn’t respond to my texts inquiring about

their whereabouts. Don’t do this.

Don’t rely on your friends to dictate where you are and what you’re doing.

2. The cafeteria tostadas are really good. Take advantage of them, but don’t be too hasty. Wait at least 10 minutes into the period to minimize waiting-in-line time.

3. It’s all about the tropical flavor at H-Dub Smoothie Hub. 4. The apples and peanut butter combo is a Harvard-Westlake girl staple. Try it.

5. Don’t talk in silent study because the people around you are plotting to kill you as you speak.

6. There is no evil greater in this world than sniffling during tests.

No amount of sniffling will alleviate your congestion for more than a few seconds. Nose-blowing is eons less annoying and much more effective.

7. Don’t be afraid to raise your hand in class. That cute boy in your class is too preoccupied staring at the cleavage of the girl opposite him to think your comment about Hamlet is stupid, which it probably isn’t anyway.

8. Don’t make rash decisions about what you are and are not good at. Too often I decided that a class wasn’t for me and subsequently did worse throughout the year than I probably could have otherwise. Deciding early on that AP Economics was too hard left me feeling hopeless and unmotivated the night before each test.

9. Use a backpack rather than a one-shoulder bag. While Jansports might not be as fashion-forward, they displace the weight of your books equally. Wearing a backpack is cuter than being a lopsided old lady.

10. When you become a senior,

don’t wear sunglasses in the quad. You will give your class a bad name, and underclassmen won’t think you’re as cool as you think you are.

11. Utilize the little “To” button when sending an email on the Harvard-Westlake email Outlook. This provides the email address of your recipient and saves time. When I discovered this, mid-way through senior year, the joy I felt was otherworldly.

12. Don’t let fear hold you back extracurricularly. I wish I participated in singing at the Upper School, but my insane stage fright kept me from it. Some of the best choices I made at this school were to join the Chronicle and to take Creative Writing. Try as many new things as possible. Defy stereotypes and break the boundaries of your niche. Be a linebacker linguist with a knack for Shakespeare.

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Seniors D9

Building to this moment

Clubbing with nerds

By Jessica Barzilay

B

By Allison Hamburger

C

onfession: I am one fifth of arguably the nerdiest group on campus. I am a member of Math

Club.

Ever since I joined the club this fall, I have understood that association with a math club begs for judgment in many high schools. It is not the yearbook photo you necessarily want to show off to your kids.

Still, I am a voluntary member, though sometimes I wonder how that came to be.

In seventh grade, I tested out a different club, the book group known as Book Bistro. Eager to make friends and discuss a favorite pastime, I tiptoed into Middle School Librarian Maxine Lucas’ office for the first meeting of the year. I perched uncomfortably at a desk chair between only two other students. I don’t think I said a word the entire meeting, and I never attended another one.

Five years later, I made a different decision. I walked out of my first Math Club meeting and found myself returning the following week and each week after that. I did not consciously try to undo my previous Book Bistro denial, but undoubtedly my first days at the Middle School were long gone.

So what changed? Believe it or not, my time at this school has actually taught me something.

I learned how to contentedly be a nerd at Harvard-Westlake. It’s not the only thing I learned nor is it the sole definition of my high school experience, but it’s important. I entered this school hesitant and selfdoubtful, but gradually those qualities turned around.

Six years is a long time for people under age 20. Here, we work hard, we study and we learn, but we also grow up and hopefully start to figure out what makes us happy. We change.

Both as an institution and a collection of remarkable teachers, Harvard-Westlake lets us do that. It helps us do that. It lets us succeed and fail, change our minds and maybe even become a little bit more mature than our 12-year-old selves. (Granted, given senior classes’ continual obsessions with water balloons, sometimes I doubt this notion. We still have a ways to go.)

So Math Club is considered nerdy.

That doesn’t matter. I love it, and that’s enough to quell my lingering self-consciousness. Seventh grade me could not have said the same.

Math Club convened Tuesday afternoon for the final time this year.

And I am proud to say that I will miss it.

AUSTIN LEE/CHRONICLE

‘WE ARE NOT ALONE’: Justine Goode ’12, Allison Hamburger ’12, Jessica Barzilay ’12 and Julius Pak ’12 channel the dance scene from “The Breakfast Club.”

Finding my voice: kind of, sort of, not really

By Julius Pak

I

f anyone had told me that I would take up public speaking as my primary extracurricular or run a section in a newspaper when I first entered the Harvard-Westlake community six years ago, I would have laughed.

Well, not really, since I would have been terrified to speak to, let alone mock anyone for thinking I could achieve what was at that time stuff of fiction. But somehow, through some sick and twisted move by fate, what were once fanciful dreams became reality.

For the majority of my life, I could hardly talk to anyone. Completely destitute of even an iota of social competency, I could not even form in my head the words I wanted to say.

Anyone who witnessed any of my initial ventures into oratory, from my hapless excuses for Prefect Council election speeches to the meaningless stammers that escaped my mouth whenever I tried to answer a question in class, would agree. Kids at various points throughout my life have told me that I would never amount to anything due to my inability to construct coherent sentences.

It was probably because of the aforementioned problems that my parents conscripted me into the debate team freshman year in an attempt to jam some semblance of social acceptability into me.

And that’s when it kind of happened.

I just have a lot of feelings

By Justine Goode

S

ay the words “Mean Girls” to almost any teenage girl, and her eyes will immediately light up.

The saga of Cady Heron as she attempts to navigate Girl World is one that most high schoolers can relate to, and I am no exception.

I mean, I didn’t really encounter the titular mean girls at any point, but I have had people mispronounce my name a lot (Justin? Justin Good?) and I did have a crush on a guy in my 11th grade math class.

But if there’s one quote that sums up my Harvard-Westlake experience more than anything, it’s Damien defensively explaining why he hasn’t been more helpful in the plot to take down Regina George: “I’ve been really busy with choir...”

As a sophomore, the day of my Chamber Singers audition was by far the most important one of the year and possibly my life. I can’t remember how it actually went, but I do know that I was physically shaking and that I had to sight-read.

For those of you who don’t know, sight-reading is the devil. I refused to check the final list the morning it was posted, instead holing up in the library, trying to put as much distance between myself and the choir room as possible. I know the tension is unbearable so I’ll just go ahead and spoil it: I made the cut! You can stop applauding now.

That year, we traveled halfway across the world together. Being in Spain with Chamber was one of the best experiences of my life, one that I still can’t believe actually happened.

At first, I was shipped off to a debate camp where I knew no one and had no inkling about what was going on, especially since more advanced debaters enjoyed bandying about the Scrabble-winning names of philosophers like Slavoj Žižek (93 points) and Władysław Tatarkiewiczin (101 points). A firm grasp on topics I had never heard of, like philosophical hermeneutics or eleatic monism, were intellectual necessities.

Beyond the complex terminology, lay a simple and elegant method of thinking that I found appealing, and that led me to pursue the activity further. The more and more tournaments I went to, the more and more I was forced to talk, since you can hardly win a debate tournament without words (gifs and memes only get you so far). And the more and more I was forced to talk, the more and more easy it became to continue talking.

Today, I’m still not the most adept conversationalist, but everyone seems to cherish the baby steps. I have built up the courage to raise my hand in class more often. I have built up the courage to mock people through various Tumblrs. I have even built up the courage to ask a girl to prom (albeit still incredibly awkwardly). It seems somewhat fitting that the motto of the National Forensics League, the national organizer for debate tournaments, is “Giving Youth a Voice.”

In the end, if I can find a way to get through a place that demands sociability like Harvard-Westlake, then anyone can.

y the time we arrive at the end of our senior year at HarvardWestlake, a lot has changed.

Friends, classes, campuses, interests, outlooks and, most importantly, we ourselves have evolved from our seventh grade beginnings to make us the people we are today, on the verge of graduation. However, one aspect of our high school education has remained pretty consistent — construction.

The openness to change, the striving for growth, the desire to engage in a process of constant self-improvement — all of the connotations and symbolism of construction projects seem to correspond well to the lessons this school has instilled in us. But Harvard-Westlake taught me an even greater lesson: I don’t have to stick to one metaphor.

English teachers guided us through this opening chapter of our lives, teaching us to detect and define hidden connections in the world around us. The science department introduced experimental evidence and troubleshooting to prepare us for obstacles we will face and cases we will make. History showed us how to carry the past with us, to take who we were with us as we become who we will be. Foreign language gave us a new vocabulary with which to conceptualize the world. Community service empowered us to change the world, one light switch or care package at a time.

At Harvard-Westlake, I could explore all of my interests and discover new ones. Best of all, I could do it alongside such an amazing group of people. Friends, classmates, teachers, administrators, a fascinating, fun, one-of-a-kind community.

It’s not possible to sum up this six-year, life-changing experience in a single Chronicle column. I’ll miss seeing all of the familiar faces as I walk through the quad each morning, my nervous anticipation before making an announcement at class meeting, the cafeteria traffic jams during break, the rush to get yearbook signatures, the affectionate riffs on the character education motto of the year and the feeling at home on 3700 Coldwater Canyon.

So, we may have entered as little more than blueprints, but, like the construction, we are far from completed. At school, we could continue to grow in the classroom and on the field, to meet new people and try new things all the way through the end of senior year. That curiosity, that excitement, that feeling of unlimited potential — that is what I’ll continue to build my future with as I graduate.

I feel so lucky that there was one period every day where I could just go and sing, do my favorite hobby with some of my favorite people. Choir was also uniquely challenging and artistically fulfilling and all that.

Listening to our voices blend in the cool, still air of cathedrals, the music resonated with me in a way it hadn’t before, and I felt a visceral connection to every person around me. As we roamed the streets of Madrid and Cordoba, dancing in discotheques and becoming connoisseurs of calamari, people I had never talked to before the trip became some of my best friends.

I walked around campus with more confidence after that, because I knew that no matter how bad junior year got, some part of that experience would still be alive fifth period on the bottom floor of Chalmers.

Adding Jazz Singers to my senior year schedule meant that I was in choir room every single day of the week. But I loved being a Chamber senior — I got to help initiate new members in a ritual not fit for publi-

cation (we’re a cult, it’s fine) and sing/ cry “Silent Night” with my classmates at our last winter concert in Santa Monica. I finally perfected the art of faking whatever Latin/German/Tagalog lyrics we were supposed to have memorized. Any inhibitions I once had as a shy Bel Canto sophomore fell away as my friends and I dropped it low backstage at Cabaret.

I feel so lucky that there was one period every day where I could just go and sing, do my favorite hobby with some of my favorite people. It was also uniquely challenging and artistically fulfilling and helped me grow as a performer and all that.

Damien had his priorities straight.

Because as fun as it would be to help overthrow an evil teen dictator, choir is better.

I miss my red dress already.

Hi guys, I’m Saj

The Chronicle

May 30, 2012

Chemical bonding

By Eli Haims

W

By Saj Sri-Kumar

A

s I prepare to graduate from high school, my biggest regret is not studying too little for the physics test I could have done better on, or even the wealth of opportunities that were available to me that I lacked the time to take advantage of. Rather, what I lament the most is the fact that I will graduate having never met some of the people in my class.

I’m not talking about people I don’t know well, or people with whom I couldn’t advance much beyond small talk. Rather, I’m talking about the five or 10 people in the grade who I can’t even remember meeting and who exist in my head only as a name and a face.

Is this my fault? Perhaps. Maybe I could have been more motivated to seek out these people. But from talking to others, I know I’m not alone — the problem is endemic to the school.

You might ask why, with a class size of less than 300, is it so difficult to at least have a conversation with everyone at least once. It is clearly not for lack of extracurricular activities or small, intimate classes, as we have both of those. Rather, the problem lies in the fact that we have too many opportunities at this school.

Take the Chronicle, for example.

After three years on this publication, I can safely say that I know every member of the staff well. Likewise, I’m sure that everyone on the football team is well acquainted with one another.

However, because we retreat down the stairs to Weiler Hall at the close of the school day whereas they flock

JUDD LIEBMAN/CHRONICLE

on the field for practice, there is little opportunity for us to interact or talk with one another.

This stratification pervades all aspects of Harvard-Westlake, even in the classroom. With innumerable different math tracks and enough history courses to make even some college students envious, the probabilities tell us that there are bound to be a few people whose class we never end up with. In fact, there is even a bias toward having the same people in your classes, as you are likely to have similar interests and thus sign up for the same classes in the upper grade levels.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that there’s never really been an effort to fix the problem, or even recognize that the problem exists. By the time we’re at the Upper School,

there’s no longer any attempt to force people to socialize outside of their friend groups, such as the randomly assigned retreat groups of Middle School or, on a more basic level, the single-level English and history classes in previous years.

I don’t mean to decry the specialization that the school allows us to pursue. In fact, I think that’s probably one of the greatest things about us. But when it goes so far as to make it so that a relatively small group of students can’t get to know one another over the course of high school, we need something to tie us back together, something to force us to step outside of the comfort of our friends to meet people new.

It may be too late for us, but hopefully future years won’t have to suffer the same fate.

The Backpack Chronicles

By Nika Madyoon

Y

ou can tell a lot about a person by the things they carry. The objects we tote around every day, the mementos we hold dear — from these things we can catch a glimpse of what each of us represents, where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re headed.

My Harvard-Westlake journey began with seventh grade me (think shorter, rounder, ponytail, Havaianas) marching onto campus, two-strapping my forest green Jansport like a champ. My Tech & Skills binder and silver Motorola Razr in tow, I was on top of the world. The workload was light and the living was good.

Fast forward to freshman year.

New campus, new haircut, new classic, brown Kipling. My backpack kept everything: field hockey uniforms, English books, copies of the history midterm review song Adam Bennett ’12 and I wrote to the tune of “My Humps.” I began carrying debate cases and books for two language classes instead of one. I carried things that represented how fun learning can be, and all of those things were in my bag, zipped up and ready to go by 9 o’clock every night.

Tenth grade, for lack of a less annoying cliché, was a slap in the face. The same backpack became an obstacle to maneuvering the imposing terrain of the Upper School. It held a planner. I finally felt the need to plan rather than simply decorate. I had a slew of workbooks for my first RAISING THE ROOF: Eli Haims ’12, Nika Madyoon ’12 and Saj Sri-Kumar ’12, from left, take a break from layout to bask in the sun on the roof of Weiler Hall.

Advanced Placement class. I carried copies of stories later reduced to 100word briefs for the Chronicle. And towards the end, I carried apprehension for junior year that weighed more than anything else.

Every day of 11th grade, I kept an empty coffee thermos at the bottom of my Kipling. Academic responsibilities, weekend debate trips and nights spent in Weiler Hall made my morning java a must. I carried Princeton Review books and power-bar lunches. My backpack got me into trouble at times (I’ll never forget the day its zipper ripped open as I climbed the Seaver stairs and my books spilled onto the sophomore boys behind me). And though it spent embarrassing amounts of time in the library, it was always amongst bags belonging to my friends, who all suffered with me.

My senior year backpack was perfect. It was sturdy enough to endure the torrential storm of first quarter and lightweight enough to keep me at ease during second semester. It housed an innumerable quantity of college essay drafts that I loved, hated and loved again in Dean Jon Wimbish’s office. Mockups of Foreign Outlook pages and rolls of film for the Photography I class I took to fulfill my art requirement. I kept my wallet for off-campus excursions.

Over time, my backpack gradually became

altogether unnecessary.

It’s weird to look back and see how the contents of my backpack have changed since I began my time here.

Each year was a different chapter, each academic class a challenging, inspiring endeavor. Every year on the last day of school I would go home and empty my backpack, stacking textbooks, notebooks and graded essays into an insurmountable pile of accomplishments. This year, I won’t be partaking in my tried and trusted ritual. The things I carry have been reduced to my phone and my wallet.

At last, I will end the year, and my time at Harvard-Westlake, a different way: backpack empty, brain chockful.

hen I think back on my high school experience in a decade or two, I’m not going to remember how Eric Zwemer commented that my essay looked like I wrote it with my feet on my first World and Europe II test, nor am I going to remember how hard Suzanne Lee’s Advanced Placement Calculus BC class was. Chances are, I’m not going to remember how much I wanted to kill myself when I was editing a stack of Chronicle sports pages as the clock ticked from Saturday night to Sunday morning of a layout weekend and I started reading “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” before realizing that the page had no content and I’ve been trying to make sense of made-up pseudo-Latin filler text. No, I won’t remember the name of 90 percent of my classmates, and I will most likely be in contact with only a few. What I will remember, however, is my 10th grade Honors Chemistry and 11th grade Advanced Placement Chemistry teacher, Krista McClain, whom I consider the closest person to a mentor that I have ever had.

I guess it just started with a curious itch about chemistry in the first weeks of 10th grade. Staying after class to ask a couple of questions before fourth period transitioned to spending periods at the desk now occupied by physics teacher Joe Dangerfield. McClain’s desk quickly became a place to find friends and hang out.

After nearly three years of this, I consider McClain to be closer to a friend than to a teacher. I was at her wedding over the summer, had lunch with her and her husband last week and spent a large number of my free periods in her office this year.

On nearly every college tour I went on over the past couple of years, I was told to take advantage of professors’ office hours, both to get help with the material and to get to know the professors. There is no reason that you have to wait until college for this.

Harvard-Westlake has a lot of amazing teachers and faculty. Find one in an area you’re interested in and take advantage of him or her. Ask about his or her experience studying his or her chosen field in college, what made him or her decide to become a teacher, what his or her family is like. You will be shocked at what you find out and how close you can get to a teacher.

This relationship has defined my past three years at Harvard-Westlake.

Thank you, Ms. McClain.

ARIELLE MAXNER/CHRONICLE

D10 Seniors

chronicle.hw.com

May 30, 2012

Second semester: camp 2.0

By Lara Sokoloff

Seniors D11

Lessons beyond the classroom

By Judd Liebman

D

uring one of the first class meetings of sophomore year, Upper School Dean Vanna Cairns asked us to go around the room and say a word that we thought accurately described ourselves. You couldn’t repeat a word that someone else had said. Many of the athletes said their sport, some people talked about friends or family. My word was camp.

I had just finished my last year at Camp Laurel South in Casco, Maine, where I had spent four weeks of my summer for the last seven years. The withdrawals lasted into September.

When I returned to school, it was still at the forefront of my mind. So I picked it as my word.

Over two years have gone by since that class meeting, and only recently do I feel I have somewhat returned to camp. When I was younger, camp was always the end goal. There were years when I lived summer to summer, pushing through the school year only to return to Crescent Lake.

But during high school, there was no camp to carry me through the year. I began sophomore year with camp memories fresh in my mind. I adjusted to the different academic environment, the heavier workload, the older and mature seniors that commanded the campus. I came out alive, only to endure the traumas of junior year.

I SAJ SRI-KUMAR/CHRONICLE

SUPPORTIVE STAFF: Executive Editor Rebecca Nussbaum ’12 laughs as Editors in Chief Lara Sokoloff ’12 and Judd Liebman carry her outside of Weiler Hall.

The workload was unprecedented, and expectations seemed to be unreachable. But I suffered through.

Then came senior year. The anticipated cakewalk never came. Although the workload was very manageable, the year was wracked by academic and social dramas.

But now at the end of senior year, I seem to again be spending my days making friendship bracelets, playing tennis and board games and making s’mores. Literally.

A few weekends ago my friends and I got together to make bracelets for a friend who has been sick. I have been playing tennis with a friend almost weekly for a few months. I played Scrabble in math class last week. And a friend invited me over on Sunday night to make s’mores.

Sometimes I wish I had been having this much fun throughout all of high school. But part of what made camp so special was knowing that it would only last four weeks. And the same holds for this period of my life. I can’t look back on my time at Harvard-Westlake wishing that I had taken myself less seriously, wishing that I had just a little more fun. Because if I had, then the end of senior year would not be nearly as sweet.

Come fall I will start college and begin working again. “Camp” will end.

But it is only until the next session.

I will never return to Laurel South as a camper again. But just as my summers were month-long gems for seven years of my childhood, I hope periods like this will continue to enrich my life in the future.

Sh*t Harvard-Westlake students don’t say

By Rebecca Nussbaum Harvard-Westlake is truly an incredible institution, and I am so grateful to have spent six years here. My teachers had high expectations and gave me the freedom to choose how to meet them, a combination which challenged me while allowing me to grow in my own direction. Looking back on these years, I can’t help but feel nostalgic about the time passed. But I’m also proud of who I’ve become. My 18-year-old self is infinitely more confident and self-aware than my 12-year-old self, and I know that I have my school to thank for that. But rather than spending paragraphs writing some generic note of gratitude to all who I’ve encountered, I will use this space to lightly poke fun at this school I have grown to love.

• Yes, another A on an English essay!

• Mixed berry smoothies!

• Is Yale a likely, or a most likely?

• Of course I know when this period ends.

• No, I won’t come to the cafeteria with you.

• I’m so glad I made a history study guide!

• “Why are you in such a good mood?” “I just looked at the college stats book!!!”

• It’s the same temperature as when I woke up, so I dressed super appropriately today!

• I’ll never get tired of this iPhone case.

• I studied for APs all weekend.

• Yay, there’s break today!

• It’s nice how there’s a party this weekend. Everyone is so willing to host for the night!

• There is NO line for tostadas!

• It’s good that I remember how to

• Kevin Weis’s eyes didn’t sparkle at all today.

format footnotes.

• I remembered to use turnitin.com!

• Unexcused absences! Ya!

• Can we walk up to the history office for fun?

• I’m going to the basketball game even though we’re not playing Loyola.

• Cami Chapus ’12 is just really slow.

• My parents only care if I try my hardest.

• Pairot charged me so much for lunch.

• I love the valley!

JUDD LIEBMAN/CHRONICLE

• The junior lot is super convenient.

ANABEL PASAROW/CHRONICLE

t’s easy to forget teachers are humans. I used to believe they slept at school and didn’t go to malls or have a social life. Our teachers are so dedicated that it seems as if we are the only things that matter to them. They spend hours reading essays, grading tests, preparing lessons and meeting with students. We rarely see them focusing on anything else.

Extreme devotion to the students has become the norm at Harvard-Westlake, and that says something about our teachers.

But these people can be more than just academic teachers if we let them be. Contrary to popular belief, they were not born yesterday. They all went to high school. They all applied and went to college. And they all have a myriad of life lessons they want to pass on. So be open them.

As a senior, I began utilizing my teachers as more than just teachers quite often. I forged mentor-like relationships with teachers I have had throughout high school and went to them when I was lost in the college process. They knew me well, and could provide personal, informed opinions about where they saw me best next year. I kept them updated, and a couple of my teachers seemed to appreciate that.

I went to Upper School Chaplain Father J. Young when I needed friendship advice. He helped me save a few friendships and move on after fights.

He is one of many faculty members I cannot thank enough for helping me mature out of childhood, through adolescence, and into early adulthood.

Let teachers be more than just teachers. Let them mentor you and help you through high school problems. They had drama in high school.

Some had the same trouble you are having. Whether it’s balancing your social life with academics or deciding where to apply to college, your teachers know how they handled the situation you are in. All of them are willing to share their experiences, and most of them can help.

The conversations I have had with these mentors were truthful and only resemble a teachers-student relationship because of how much I was learning.

Not every discussion has to be about that point you missed on the math test. Not every question you have has to be about an assignment.

You are allowed to have conversations with your teachers that do not relate to school. And I strongly urge you to do so.

LARA SOKOLOFF/CHRONICLE

prom2012

May 30, 2012

D12

5 3 4 A night to remember SANDY VOLPERT

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WENDIE ST. JEAN

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SARAH SEO

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF EVAN BROWN

Seniors arrived at the Loews Hotel in gowns and tuxes ready to dine and dance at Prom.

By Rebecca Nusbaum Seniors dressed their best on May 19 for the final dance of their high school careers. Before prom, many students went to friends’ houses and took photos together to commemorate the night.

Upon arriving at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica, they were greeted by deans and invited to vote for Prom King and Queen.

After a dinner of chicken, salad and vegetables, the dance floor was opened.

Students spent the night dancing, posing for caricature drawings and taking pictures with dates or friends.

Towards the end of the evening, every-

TED PASAROW

one gathered to watch Prom King Max Quilici ’12 and Queen Hallie Brookman ’12 dance together and then joined them in the slow dance. They watched a slideshow put together by prefects Katie Price ’12 and Evan Brown ’12. Photos represented all six years at Harvard-Westlake.

“It was really fun for me to piece together different chapters of the HarvardWestlake story,” Price said. “It was definitely nostalgic but really fun at the same time.” “[Prom] definitely lived up to my expectations and far beyond that,” Catherine Haber ’12 said. “It was so phenomenal, and I’m so glad I got to share it with all of my best friends.”

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PETER KAGAN

LAUREN CHOI

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MATT EMBER

STRIKE A POSE: 1. Prom King Max Quilici ’12 and Prom Queen Halle Brookman ’12 dance to “Forever Young” by Alphaville. 2. Morgan St. Jean ’12 pins a boutonniere on her date, Steven Carr ’12. 3. Austin Sherman ’12 and Alex Goodwin ’12 watch their dates Nikki Volpert ’12, Chelsea Khakshouri ’12 and Taylor Burns ’12 show off their corsages. 4. Adam Williams ’12 gets his boutonniere pinned by his date Evan Brown ’12. 5. Matt Wolfen ’12, Jordan Gavens ’12, Joe Kitaj ’12, Anabel Pasarow ’12, George Natsis ’12 and Sophie Turner ’12, from left, pose at a pre-prom gathering. 6.

Jon Alkalai ’12 and Adam Wininger ’12 jokingly pose as a couple. 7. Lucas Giolito ’12, Max Fried ’12, Alex Rand Lewis ’12, Brandon Deere ’12 and Ryan Vanderschans ’12, from right, members of the baseball team, pose wearing tuxes. 8. Xochi MayberryGaulke ’12, Lily Katz ’12 and Jamie Ember ’12 show off their dresses.