September 2022 Issue

Weighted GPAs postponed

By Claire Conner

The Faculty Academic Com mittee (FAC) chose not to vote on a proposal by the Up per School Dean Team to add weighted GPAs to seniors’ tran scripts this year, effectively post poning consideration of the ad dition to next year at the earliest.

Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said although deans as sumed the proposal would be approved for this year, the FAC wanted to take more time to consider the new policy’s poten tial impacts beyond transcripts.

“The deans thought that this would kind of be a no-brainer and that it wouldn’t be a big deal to anybody because it was more about college stuff, but I think the biggest thing the department chairs felt was that we want to make sure we are doing it with all of the information,” Slattery said. “This is the first they had heard of it, and it seemed like we made this big decision three years ago to do it one way, and we’re not going to, in an afternoon, decide to flip that switch.”

80% of 94 seniors polled by The Chronicle said they would like both their weighted and un weighted GPA to be included in their transcripts this year, and 87% of the 149 sophomores and juniors polled said they would want the same policy for their senior year transcripts.

Slattery said the committee thought a last-minute addition of weighted GPAs to current seniors’ transcripts would be unfair to students who chose their high school classes with the assumption that their GPAs would be unweighted when they graduated.

“It fell to the fact that it was a little bit of a bait and switch to seniors who had made deci sions based on information we had given them about it just being an unweighted GPA and that it would not be appropriate to, in September, decide that we were going to change that,” Slattery said.

• Continued on A3

Community remembers legendary teacher Ted Walch after his death

By Fallon Dern and Davis Marks

In a crowded St. Saviour’s Chapel, President Rick Com mons rings a church bell 30 times in succession. It’s lunch time, and pews full of students, faculty and staff listen to the chimes, one for each year Performing Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies Teacher Ted Walch taught at the school.

Walch passed Sept. 8 after a two-month battle with terminal brain cancer. Following the news of Walch’s death, members of the community gathered in the church to celebrate his life and legacy. When reflecting upon the memorial service held on Sept. 9, Commons said he feels it was something Walch himself would have wanted.

“I think Mr. Walch decid ed that he wanted the school to actually benefit from the experi ence of his public passing,” Com mons said. “From the moment he called me in July to say that he had this terminal diagnosis, till the moment he died on Sep tember 8, he [wanted] to make it possible for the school to cel ebrate relationships between stu

dents and teachers that transform the way students think and live. He [wanted] this very sad event to be a celebration of what’s best about Harvard-Westlake, and it’s been very difficult to miss his in tentions about how he wants us to mourn his passing.”

Commons said Walch had a uniquely meaningful impact through his teaching, and that the wisdom and kindness he demonstrated over his three decades at the school shaped the community for the better.

“There are people who have had longer ten ures, but there isn’t anybody I can think of who’s had a more impactful tenure than Ted Walch,” Commons said. “It’s of ten the case that the older teach ers get, the harder it is for them to connect with people of a high school age. That was not true for Mr. Walch, and if anything, he got better at it. What Ted Walch did for students and colleagues

at Harvard-Westlake in each of those 30 years is something to re member and be inspired by.”

Walch was born in Sedalia, Missouri (Missoura, as he called it), the youngest of four brothers. From an early age, he engrossed himself in movies, idolizing James Dean and dreaming of being a Hollywood or Broadway actor. Eventually, Walch attend ed Kenyon College in Gam bier, Ohio, and quickly became a part of the dra ma program.

“I’ve claimed to not be afraid of dying for a while, and it’s time to put my money where my mouth is.”

— Ted Walch Performing arts teacher

After his final performance as Treplev in Ken yon’s produc tion of Chekov’s “The Seagull,” director and drama profes sor Jim Micheal told Walch he felt like his acting didn’t stand out, but knew that he had the potential to pursue other elements of performing arts. Micheal took Walch under his wing for a four-year-long in tensive exploration of set design, prop creation, stage management and costume artistry.

School updates visions

By Chloe Park and Grant Park

President Rick Commons pre sented the school’s renewed Visions to members of the school com munity at the annual State of the School Address on Sept. 7.

The newly released Visions identify the following six areas for growth for the upcoming year: health and wellbeing of students; personal character and commu nity citizenship; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI); extraordinary teaching and learning; admitting the most promising students in Los Angeles to the school and develop ing River Park.

The Visions for 2020, which were published in early 2015, pri oritized students’ happiness and balance, along with commitment to inclusion, new ways to serve Los Angeles, commitment to character and engaging pedagogy, curric ular innovation and professional growth. Commons said the Visions for 2020 were created with the in tention of addressing the most rele vant concern at the time.

“[In 2015], we were mainly talking about the well-being of students and focused on happi ness and balance,” Commons said. “There was a sense that too many of our students did not have bal ance in their life and were not find ing joy in their experience at Har vard-Westlake. So, we spent a lot of time thinking about how to make it possible for ambitious, talented kids who were working hard and pursuing busy lives to define joy, get more sleep and have more bal ance in their lives, which is a tough challenge as we all know. That’s been a focus for a long time.”

Commons said the evolving challenges students face prompted the school to make health and well being the first of the six Visions.

“What has arisen particularly since the pandemic is a fuller un derstanding that the challenges that high achieving adolescents face include mental and emotion al health, and a much higher rate than we understood and were wit nessing back in 2014 and 2015,” Commons said.

Celebrating a Decade: The Brendan Kutler Center honored its first 10 years of existence during the month of September.

There’s Levels to This: Jackson Tanner ’24 describes the effect that publishing Annual Giving “circles” has on the community.

Give Me Some Space: Students and faculty exam ine the social pressure that attending school dances puts on relationships.

Latino Heritage Month: The community reflects on the effect of whitewashing Latino characters in televi sion and film.

LEAVING BEHIND A LEGACY: Ted Walch poses for a picture in Rugby Auditorium in 2006. The school hosted a memorial service for him in Saint Saviour’s Chapel the day after he passed away. He was 80 years old.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ALEXIS ARINSBURG

Lungs of steeL: Girls varsity Cross Country won their heat at the Wood bridge Cross Country Classic on September 16.

School revises Visions

“So, [mental and emotional health] has risen to prominence in how we think about how to pro tect and serve our students going forward. It’s the first of the six Vi sions, and it acknowledges from the outset that we have a public health crisis around adolescents’ mental health. Harvard-Westlake does not want to be in the position of ignoring or doing things that exacerbate the problem.”

Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the school measures progress by analyzing data col lected by the counseling depart ment and by working with Di rector of Institutional Research Mike Barker.

“Now, we have Barker, who has implemented a few surveys and done a good job of tracking the students’ use of our counsel ing service,” Slattery said. “The data is more subjective than ob jective compared to self-report ed feelings expressed in surveys, but I think we finally have a fair amount of data to see how kids are doing.”

Another component of the newly released Visions is admit ting the most promising students from across the Los Angeles area.

Commons said the school’s in creased financial aid program will give it the ability to expand its outreach and enroll a greater number of talented students who need financial aid.

“[That Vision] has long been Harvard-Westlake’s ambition,” Commons said. “It’s pointed in the way that vision is written, especially at removing financial barriers. Because our financial aid program, while robust and using an investment of over 14 million dollars, does not admit all the students, we are not at that need-blind place some of the most selective colleges are at. We try to align, to some degree, our outreach with our ability to pro vide financial aid. As financial aid grows, our outreach will grow.”

Security team conducts ALICE training for sophomores and juniors in class meetings

By Connor Tang

The school resumed its Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate (ALICE) training pro gram for students Sept. 16. The school was unable to hold train ing for the past two years because of the pandemic.

ALICE is an emergency pro tocol that is used in the case of a violent intruder or threat to cam pus safety. Student Discipline and Attendance Coordinator Gabriel Preciado, who helped administer the training, said ALICE prepara tion was successful in past years.

“[The scenarios] take place at the training room near St. Mi chael’s Chapel,” Preciado said.

“The training has been taking place for 10 years now, and it works really well to keep our community safe and prepared.”

The first part of the training is a presentation on the steps of ALICE and instructions on ex

amples of appropriate counter-re sponses, and the second part of the training consists of interac tive scenarios set inside a classroom where stu dents are required to counter and disarm the fake intruders, accord ing to Preciado.

Students are split into dean groups and are led to the scenario room by the security team and Head of Se curity Jim Crawford, where they are briefed on the scenarios. One scenario has the shooter come in unan nounced, and the other scenario gives students time to barricade the classroom and prepare. Stu dents are seated in a classroom setting with desks and are armed with tennis balls against a padded security guard with a fake rifle. Both scenarios take about three minutes to complete, according

to Crawford.

Security Guard Mark Geiger said the scenarios are similar to real-life emergencies and are effective in forcing students to act.

“[The scenarios] go really fast,” Geiger said. “When they enter, the students get loud and start throwing the ten nis balls, and [some body] has to take control of the gun, similar to a real situation.”

John Xu ’25, who participated in the ALICE train ing on Sept. 19, said the drill was not as realistic and practical as an actual emergency.

“[The active shooter drill] did what it was supposed to achieve, and that is to put us in a situation in which we have to use some sort of counter-attack or violent measure,” Xu said. “Since every one knew it wasn’t a real shooter,

most people didn’t feel scared. [They were instead] more excited about it.”

Xu said the interactive train ing made him feel more prepared for the possible danger of an ac tual intruder.

“This was the first time I’ve ever tried counter-attacking drills against intruders, so in terms of preparedness, HW is better than other schools I’ve been to,” Xu said.

Geiger said the hands-on training was helpful preparation for potential threats.

“In the moment, you have to think what your best option might be and run with it,” Geiger said. “It might be fighting, it might be running, it might be just stay ing inside a room and making that room as safe as you can. You’ve got people just sitting there, going about their day. If you’ve got things like this happening in ele mentary schools, there’s a possi bility for anything.”

Kings provide tickets for students

By Alex Dinh

Prefect Council announced a new partnership between the school and the Los Angeles Kings that will offer every upper school student, faculty and alumnus two free Kings tickets. The announce ment, which was made Sept. 22, listed four games to choose from.

The Kings have a program offering schools free tickets to encourage turnout to games and build community, according to Junior Prefect and Assistant News Editor Davis Marks ’24. Recipients can pay to upgrade their seats or buy more tickets.

Junior Prefect Nyla Shelton ’24 said the partnership will pro vide members of the school com munity with a fun experience.

“Prefect Council is always looking for more opportunities to promote connections and bond ing amongst the Harvard-West lake community,” Shelton said. “When an idea of a partnership with the Kings first came about,

we were very excited as this felt like something that would cater to students, faculty and alumni.”

Shelton said coordinating the partnership required effort.

“Completing this partnership involved coordinating with our faculty advisors, alumni coordi nators and LA Kings’ associates,” Shelton said. “We met many times to ensure this opportunity would be a hassle-free and fun opportunity for all members of the HW community.”

Nate Arnold ’25 said he is ex cited to spend time with his dad at his first Kings game since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’ve always loved going to the Kings games from such a young age with my father,” Arnold said. “I haven’t been [to a game] in a while because of COVID, but it would make me and my dad so happy, and I’m sure everyone would have the same loving expe rience at the Kings game.”

Cross Country and Track Coach Jonas Koolsbergen ’83 said the partnership will provide

the Kings with more fans, and the school community will have an opportunity to socialize at a fun event.

“More fans is something any team is always going to enjoy at any level,” Koolsbergen said. “NHL action is exciting. Be ing partnered with the Kings is great for the school, and if people in the Harvard-Westlake com munity see each other outside of school, seeing each other at games is a good thing. ”

George Ma ’25 said he also has fond memories of going to Kings games with family.

“I remember when I was at the Kings game with my parents and my brother,” Ma said. “It was an unreal experience in which I enjoyed spending time with my family. I would definitely like to go again if HW offered me two more tickets.”

STAYING SAFE AT SCHOOL: Campus security guards give a mandatory presentation on a potential active shooting situation during class meeting. The ALICE training was delivered to sophomores and juniors, and also included interactive scenarios where students had to physically disarm intruders.

CONNER TANG/CHRONICLE

L. Wood

Gabriel Preciado

Community Health Office organizes flu shot and COVID-19 vaccine clinics

By Sammy Glassman

Elements Pharmacy partnered with the school to hold booster shot and flu vaccination clinics at both the middle school and up per school campuses Sept. 4-8. The booster clinics were open to faculty members, and the flu vaccine clinics were open to stu dents and faculty.

The Community Health Of fice said the flu shot clinics are meant to maximize campus and student safety and prevent con fusion resulting from the over lap of symptoms between the flu and COVID-19.

Daniella Goldrich ’23 said although she has already gotten

a flu shot at her doctor’s office, she is appreciative of the school’s efforts to prevent the spread of illnesses on campus.

“It’s great that the school is doing its part to keep our com munity safe,” Goldrich said. “I’m particularly grateful that they’re making it easier for students to have access to the flu shot by distributing it at our school. This will make it much easier for our school community to stay healthy during these stressful and uncertain times.”

Andrew Eitner ’23, who re ceived his flu vaccine from the school’s clinic, said the school’s decision to hold the clinics made getting vaccinated more accessi

List of national merit semifinalists released

By Max Turetzky

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) selected 40 seniors as Semifinalists in the National Merit Program on Sept. 19. Each year, the NMSC hosts a nationwide program, founded in 1955, where students contend for college scholarships, worth a combined $28 million, based on academic merit.

Last year, 497 students at the school, 284 sophomores and 213 juniors, took the PSAT/ NMSQT, the test required to qualify as a Semifinalist.

The school had more Semifi nalists than any other high school in Los Angeles County, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. Other college preparatory schools had fewer qualifying students, with nine from Flintridge Preparatory School, seven from the Polytechnic School and six from Geffen Acade my at UCLA.

Konnie Duan ’23 said she was excited to hear she had qualified as a Semifinalist.

“When I first found out I was a National Merit Semifinalist, I was ecstatic,” Duan said. “I was also very happy to find out that so many of my classmates received

this honor as well. I will be com pleting the application to become a scholar soon.”

Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the school’s high number of qualifying students is due to its strong focus on academic performance.

“Our school has, up until re cently, required a standardized test fo admission and admitted students who perform well on the ISEE at a high rate,” Slattery said. “It’s no surprise that our PSAT scores are strong. Many of our students are also prepping for the actual SAT in advance of the PSAT, so they are well-prepared when they take it.”

Slattery said most Semifi nalists representing the school will likely also qualify as Final ists, which requires an in-depth application process involving teacher recommendations, aca demic records, and an essay.

“A very large percentage of our Semifinalists become Fi nalists, with the only exception being students who [choose] to not take the actual SAT, which has historically been required in order to become a Finalist,” Slattery said. “A much smaller percentage become National Merit Scholars.”

ble to the community.

“The shot is free [at school], as opposed to other places, so it seemed like the best option,” Ei tner said. “It’s a free shot. It was fast and easy.”

Administrative Assistant Pa tricia Nolte said that she receives the flu shot annually but that she used the school’s vaccine clinic this fall.

“I get vaccinated for the flu every year and have taken [get ting vaccinated] for granted so many years now that I would’ve [gotten vaccinated] either way,” Nolte said. “For the most part, I feel comfortable that I’ve done enough to protect myself and others.”

Although she did not go to the school’s vaccination clinic and opted to receive the flu vaccine from her own doctor, Charlotte Hogan ’24 said she welcomes and encourages the school’s efforts to prioritize student health. She said the pandemic has changed the way students and teachers treat mild cold symptoms.

“It’s completely unusual be cause usually if you’re sick you just power through, [and] you get through the day,” Hogan said. “It’s definitely out of the or dinary [for the school to say], ‘If you have a cold, don’t come to school,’ but I think it’s great that the school is offering vaccines to the whole [school] community.”

Weighted GPAs delayed

FAC Chair and Science Teacher Heather Audesirk said the deans’ proposal was intended to give colleges more information about applicants from the school.

“The reasoning behind the proposal included but was not limited to the fact that in the wake of the pandemic, the num ber of applications received at many colleges increased dra matically, which meant that not all have the time to recalculate GPAs for all transcripts they receive,” Audesirk said. “This means that if some schools pro vide a weighted GPA and others don’t, those that don’t might not be viewed in the same category as those that do. In addition, with out weighting on GPAs, the vast majority of HW students end up in the 3.5-4.0 range, which makes it difficult to distinguish between students in that range without taking time to look at their transcripts in detail.”

Audesirk said FAC will con tinue to deliberate over the addition of weighted GPAs throughout the year, along with considering other aca demic policies that could be issued concurrently.

“The vast majority of the com mittee was in favor of continuing discussions on the topic, and potentially introducing a new Honors and [Advanced Place ment (AP)] maximums proposal at the same time, rather than vot ing at this time,” Audesirk said. “While the deans weren’t entirely in favor of this decision, they said that they understood the reasons that we weren’t ready to make this decision now.”

FOURTH TIME’S THE CHARM: The Community Health Office hosted COVID-19 booster and flu shot clinics in St. Saviour’s Chapel. The clinics are a continuation of the school’s work to prevent students from contracting COVID-19 and protect the community during the flu season.

ALDEN DETMER/CHRONICLE

HWOP expands outreach

By William Liu

Prefect Council organized all performing arts outreach clubs under the leadership of the Har vard-Westlake Outreach Perform ers (HWOP) to facilitate collabo ration and growth between them, Sept. 16.

Jazz Band Outreach Perform ers (JBOP), Cadence for a Cause (CFC), TEMPO and Plus One are among the clubs involved in the change. While the clubs will continue to be run individually, Prefect Council implemented a system in which HWOP would help oversee and organize joint community service events among the groups.

Sophomore Prefect Daisy Pritzker ’25 said the main reasons for the partnership are limited time, space and funding.

“Prefect Council can only sup port and schedule so many clubs due to financial restrictions, time restraints and a limited number of classrooms available,” Pritzker said. “Since there are so many dif ferent outreach performer groups with similar purposes, we decided that merging them with HWOP would be more beneficial than cutting them.”

HWOP leader Goldie Grube ’23 said she is looking forward to the collaboration.

“We will see how [the part nership] plays out this year, but I think it will work out great,” Grube said. “Clubs like Cadence for a Cause are still around. It’s just that HWOP this year is in charge [of the partnership.]”

HWOP leader Elise Fried ’24 said she believes the partnership will open new doors for perform ing arts outreach.

“With the combined assets of the different branches of the per forming arts outreach team, we will have increased opportunities to perform and showcase our in terests,” Fried said. “As a leader of HWOP, I’m overjoyed to be at the forefront of this project since outreach involving the perform ing arts is something I’m incredi bly passionate about.”

College representatives return for in-person admissions question and answer sessions

By Nathan Wang

The Upper School Deans be gan hosting fully in-person col lege representative visits to the school this fall. Open to juniors and seniors, the visits include 25-minute sessions that allow students to have specific ques tions answered in the meetings.

Due to COVID-19 con straints, many college represen tative meetings in the past two years were held through Zoom. However, the school arranged strictly in-person visits this year.

Starting Sept. 6 and lasting until early Nov., over 100 different col leges will visit the upper school campus.

Dean Coordinator Camille da Santos said she is glad to see ju niors and seniors show interest in college representative meetings.

“The college representative visits are a fantastic opportunity and I am pleased that so many students are taking advantage of them this year,” da Santos said. “Not only do they allow students

to learn more about different col leges, they also allow students to learn more about themselves.”

Luke Madden ’24 said in-per son meetings allow him to explore more possibilities and broaden his prospective college list.

“These college visits allow me to listen and talk to representa tives […] to see which ones pique my interest and I should research further,” Madden said. “[College representatives] answering ques tions fully and linking [them] to other information really helps in terest me in colleges.”

Jewish Theological Seminary Associate Director of Undergrad uate Admissions Madison Reisler, who visited the school Sept. 20, said in-person college representa tive meetings allow for both the representative and the student to get better acquainted with each other during the meeting.

“For the representatives, these visits paint a clearer picture of a high school’s geography, land scape, demographics and charac teristics of the students and ad

ministration,” Reisler said. “For students, these visits would ide ally alleviate some tension within the application process.”

Emerson College Senior Asso ciate Director of Admission Amy Mitchell, who has been a college representative at the school for 16 consecutive years, said her in-per son visits prompt students to ask thoughtful questions.

“Being in person allows for a much more natural flow of con versation,” Mitchell said. “Often, questions arise that a student wouldn’t think of if it weren’t for this in-person meeting.”

University of Florida West Coast Regional Admissions Of ficer Pam Lang said interacting with prospective students in per son fosters more engaging and insightful discussions about the admissions process.

“I believe my main role is to provide guidance in the admis sion process, which begins with sharing university information,” Lang said. “Meeting students in person and allowing them to feel

comfortable in my presence facil itates open communication and honest questions.”

Emily Silkina ’23 said she pre fers in-person visits as compared to virtual meetings because of the tiresome Zoom experience.

“I feel more comfortable learning about the colleges in per son rather than being on Zoom, which feels like I am listening to a pre-recorded video,” Silkina said. “I attended [an online meeting] last year, and I couldn’t really concentrate during it.”

Nathalie Paniagua ’23 said she was able to form better relation ships with college representatives when she attended in-person meetings rather than attending meetings online.

“College representative meet ings help [me] make better connections with the college representatives because [the rep resentatives are] able to connect returning faces with names, espe cially when you approach them and ask thoughtful questions,” Paniagua said.

Prefects release homecoming theme

By Olivia Phillips

Prefect Council announced “Fly Me to the Moon” as the theme for the Homecoming for mal in an email Sept. 14. The for mal event will take place Oct. 8 at the upper school campus from 7 p.m to 11 p.m.

Senior Prefect Rowan Jen ’23 said the theme has been in the works since early August, and the committee undergoes a specific process to prepare for the event.

“Everyone [on the Home coming committee] pitches in what ideas worked or didn’t work in the past, we go through a pro cess where we propose names and then [we see] what sticks and what doesn’t,” Jen said. “After that, most of Homecoming in volves back and forth discussions with [party planners] in terms of the logistics of actually putting the event on.”

Shiara Navarro ’25 said the theme is interesting and will

make the dance entertaining. “I don’t know if [Prefect Coun cil] got inspiration from the ru mors of the Met Gala being space themed, but I feel like it’s a cool theme because you can do a lot with it,” Navarro said. “I’m ex cited because we’re on a different campus now, so [sophomores] get to experience how the Upper School does it.”

Asha Haley ’23 said the theme leaves a lot of room for interpre tation, which can give the Home coming committee and attendees greater creative freedom.

“There’s lots of potential for cool decorations,” Haley said. “I got my dress before the theme was announced, so it’s not really galaxy-related, [but I’m] excited to see what [other] people will come up with.”

Lok Gertschen-Klaseus ’25 said he thinks the theme will not result in as much flexibility for the students because the theme limits what outfits they have to

choose from.

“[Homecoming will] be fun, but hard to dress for because there’s not a lot of colors or styles that really fit the theme,” Gertschen-Klaseus said. “The gal axy color scheme is very specific, so I feel like [the students] won’t be able to show as much creativi ty within their outfits.”

Jen said the galaxy theme will influence many other elements of the event. He said the lighting, prop placement and general lay out of the Homecoming dance have all been planned by the committee with the intention of curating an engaging and the matic experience.

In the weeks leading up to Homecoming, Jen said students will begin to receive more details about the dance.

“I’d be on the lookout for more information as time goes on,” Jen said. “The main thing is to make sure that everyone [knows] that ticket sales start soon.”

COLLEGE CONNECTIONS: A college admissions officer from Georgetown University answers student questions about Georgetown’s campus, academics, athetics, student life and financial aid. Prospective students were encouraged to attend the meeting and ask any questions they might have.

NATHAN WANG/CHRONICLE

By Davis Marks

The Kutler Center is cele brating its 10th anniversary this month. Founded in September 2012 and named after the late Brendan Kutler ’10, the center houses the school’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and Independent Research (ISIR).

Kutler Center and Summer Programs Director Jim Pat terson said the school’s first conversations about interdis ciplinary studies came out of a national discussion about school curriculum.

“If you look at independent schools across the country, many are steeped in the tradi tional liberal arts and sciences curriculum,” Patterson said. “However, in higher education, there was an interest in try ing to explore the intersection between different disciplines, which began to permeate sec ondary schools as well.”

When Kutler died unexpect edly during his senior year De cember 29, 2009, his parents, Jon and Sara Kutler, worked with the school to find a way to honor him. History and ISIR Department Head Larry Klein, who served as the first Direc tor of the Kutler Center, said the school’s limited discussions of interdisciplinary curricu lum development consolidated when the Kutlers approached the school.

“The creation of the Kut ler Center gave an avenue for the coalescence of ideas about innovation in approaches and coursework to move beyond traditional curriculum,” Klein said. “After Brendan passed away, his parents became in conversation with [former Head of School] Jeanne Huybrechts, who had been envisioning push ing the school forward in its approaches, to best capture the essence of Brennan and his ex perience at the school, through the creation of the [Kutler Cen

ter] and its vision of facilitating the unbonded pursuit of intel lectual curiosity and discovery.”

Kutler enjoyed making con nections between disciplines including computer science, cinema studies, Japanese lan guage and culture, music and photography, often taking class es without credit because of his love for learning, according to Patterson. Klein said the Kutler Center was inspired by Kutler’s appreciation of the intersection between different disciplines.

“The inspiration for what was planned and what [the Kutler Center] has become was really grounded in Brendan himself,” Klein said. “Brendan was a student who had an enormous intellectual curiosi ty, and he bent the boundaries of what ac ademic pursuit and the quest for knowledge look like.”

Huybrechts pro posed official plans for the Kutler Center to the Kutlers in Febru ary of 2010. In order to create a physical space for the Center, the Mudd Library was renovated, and a building connecting the library and the Seaver Academic Center was constructed. After 19 months of construction, the Kutler fami ly cut the ribbon and officially opened the Kutler Center at a ceremony Sept. 28, 2012.

Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said instead of honor ing Kutler through a traditional scholarship, the Kutler Center has allowed his legacy to active ly contribute to student life.

“Brendan was my student, so I was there for the inception and the meeting where we de cided that instead of having a scholarship in Brendan’s name, we would create this thing,” Slattery said. “I’m so proud that it actually came to fruition [because] I remember saying to

Sara Kutler that one day, ‘We’re going to actually say his name every day on campus,’ and we do say Kutler every day.”

Patterson became the new Kutler Center Director and Klein became ISIR Depart ment Chair in 2015. Patterson said although the Kutler Center still works to promote interdis ciplinary studies and indepen dent research, he has worked to ensure it pushes the school’s curriculum forward and sup ports students’ passions.

“In many ways, the original vision of the Kutler Center still guides us,” Patterson said. “One piece that originally was not ex plicitly stated is that the Kutler Center helps the school’s cur riculum and pedago gy, which has become much more important recently. Another piece that wasn’t explicitly stated is the idea that the Kutler Center is a place where students can come to find sup port for their interests and passions.”

In addition to the courses offered by the ISIR Department, the Kutler Center offers a variety of events and programs. Some of these programs include Junior and Sophomore Fellowships, which provide grants for students to pursue an independent research project during the summer, the Scholar in Residence program, in which the school brings scholars and speakers to share their knowledge with the communi ty, support for students who are taking gap years and partnerships with community organizations.

President Rick Commons said the Kutler Center gives students the option to pursue a passion in either an academi cally intense or relaxed setting, depending on what they want.

“I think the variety of cours es and experiences is what is most exciting,” Commons said.

“The Kutler Center just expands the way in which students can learn at Harvard-Westlake, as they can double down on an area that they really are excited about or can step off the tread mill of academic intensity.”

Each year, the Kutler Cen ter gives the Two Hats Award, named to reflect Brendan Kut ler’s interest in multiple fields and his habit of wearing two baseball hats, to a junior who reflects Brendan’s values. Fer nanda Herrera ’23, who won the award last year, said she thinks the Kutler Center is important because it allows students to learn about unique topics and express themselves.

“In a school as competitive and time-consuming as Har vard-Westlake, it’s important for students to continue to nur ture their love for the pursuit of knowledge,” Herrera said. “I’m not saying the other core classes don’t accomplish that, but I do believe there is some thing very special about ac tively choosing niche topics to study for the sake of learning. Our community greatly ben efits from the Kutler Center because it allows us to express ourselves as well as form bonds with other students over topics that might not be brought up in everyday conversation.”

History Teacher Lilas Lane, who teaches From Sappho to #MeToo: Intro to Gender Stud ies within the Kutler Center, said she is impressed by the ways the Kutler Center helps students take advanced classes that are often only available in higher education.

“The Kutler Center is one of the best examples of how special Harvard-Westlake is as an aca demic institution,” Lane said.

“The opportunity for students to explore such a wide range of innovative, topical and so phisticated electives, courses that most students do not get a chance to take until college, if

ever, is remarkable. ”

History Teacher Erik Wade, who teaches Black Diasporas: Hip Hop and Modern America in the Kutler Center, said while interdisciplinary studies have been prominent for decades, the work the Kutler Center is doing prepares students for their future.

“Some say interdisciplin ary studies is the future of the work we’re doing,” Wade said. “In reality, this approach goes back to the 60s, 70s and 80s. If we’re not doing interdisci plinary work or exposing our students to it, we’re doing them a disservice in preparation for higher education, their careers and their everyday lives.”

Lane said appreciates the Kutler Center providing her the opportunity to teach a subject she is passionate about.

“What I love best about the Kutler Center is that these courses draw on the particular strengths and interests of the fac ulty members who teach them,” Lane said. “The Kutler Center gives faculty an opportunity to teach to our interests and pas sions, and to teach students who share those interests.”

Slattery said the Kutler Cen ter represents the school’s pro gression into an institution that allows students to truly learn and grow, moving beyond a tra ditional form of education that emphasizes exam performance.

“The Kutler Center is one of the best examples of how we’ve evolved as an institution to become a better place for a wider variety of kids and actu ally think about how we sup port kids and help them grow,” Slattery said. “Sometimes, it used to feel like our definition of great was Advanced Place ment scores and test scores, but to me, that doesn’t mean nearly as much as having peo ple leave this place and feel like they grew intellectually and interpersonally.”

L. Wood Jim Patterson

New Clubs at the

By Eden Conner

The Human Rights Watch Student Task Force (HRW STF), founded by Nilufer Mistry Sheasby ’24, plans to raise awareness in the community about global issues.

Mistry Sheasby said she started HRWSTF because she wants students to look outside their own community to find ways to help those in need.

“We’re insulated in a bubble,” Mistry Sheasby said. “It is a bubble that we’re really lucky to be in, and I think we forget when we talk about things like voting rights or the right to free political speech or access to food and water that is not a reality for a lot of people everywhere.”

History Teacher Peter Sheehy, who advises the club, said he is excited to see the impact of HRWSTF on campus.

“The focus of [HRWSTF’s] work and the depth of their work will provide a valuable opportunity for our students to develop leadership skills around human rights issues,” Sheehy said. “Human Rights Watch has a terrific track re cord in training student advocates, and I’m sure our stu dents will embrace this opportunity to its fullest extent.”

Mistry Sheasby said her goal is to make large issues like climate change and hunger feel solvable.

“We were hoping to go through the International Dec laration of Human Rights as a club and see what students could do to facilitate strengthening those rights,” Mistry Sheasby said.

Sheasby said she hopes that with International Human Rights day, the club will be able to present multiple propos als to the community to join them in the projects.

“It’s not worth it to undersell the power of your own voice,” Mistry Sheasby said. “We are the future leaders of the nation and of the world,” Mistry Sheasby said. “If we can host three successful drives and raise a bunch of money, that’s awesome. If all we do is keep the stories of these people alive and relevant, and remind ourselves every day that not everyone gets to live with the privilege we do, that, in my mind, is just as much of a success.”

By Everett Lakey

Leyendo Libros Latinos (LLL), led by Arely Monteros so ’24 with Faculty Advisor Sephora Escarpeta-Garcia, is a club that focuses on reading literature written by Hispanic authors. Monterosso said that although most of the books will be in Spanish, some will be works written in English by Hispanic authors in order to accommodate students who want to participate in the club but are not fluent in Spanish.

Monterosso said that the club will read books by authors such as Julia Álvarez, Erika L Sánchez and Pablo Camacho this year.

“One of the many goals of the club is to have a diverse range of Hispanic authors in order to show that America Latina is more than just Mexico or Spain,” Monterosso said. “[The club] encompasses various cultures, experiences and stories that I hope to help spread onto the Harvard-Westlake campus.”

Escarpeta-Garcia said she hopes the club will serve as a space where the community can have conversations that are inclusive of everyone’s stories.

“We can only gain a deeper perspective of others when we open ourselves up to other people’s experiences,” Escar peta-Garcia said. “Many of us are invisible in the pages of literature and history books. The club will give us a voice and an opportunity for the community to see that we share some things in common. I think the community and our club can provide an opportunity for growth, growth in perspective, growth in exposure and growth in a deeper meaning of what community means collectively.”

With the waves of book bans happening across the coun try, Escarpeta-Garcia said that forming a club like LLL is more important than ever.

“These books are our voices and tell our stories,” Escarpe ta-Garcia said. “Many of the books I read growing up speak to me about my story and my struggles. Everyone has the right to a voice through the literature we are exposed to.”

FIGHTING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: Club leader Nilufer Mistry-Sheasby ’24 promotes her human rights-focused club.

CHLOE PARK/CHRONICLE

LAUDING LATINO LITERATURE: Club leaders Alex Aguirre ’23 and Arely Monterroso ’24 pose by Latino novels.

CHLOE PARK/CHRONICLE

Activities Fair

By Jayan Kandavel

Italian Immersion Club, founded by Makenna Dovel ’23 and Lou Zapata ’23, will create a place for students to im merse themselves in Italian culture and experience a variety of Italian cultural activities.

Zapata said she and Dovel started the club to explore Ital ian culture beyond the classroom. They both took the In termediate/Advanced Italian Language and Culture Directed Study, but felt that class time was too short to learn about culture to the extent they wanted to.

“Even though most of the people in the club take Di rected Study: Intermediate/Advanced Italian, the period is so short and doesn’t allow us much time to learn as much as we’d like,” Zapata said. “The Italian Club is a productive and fun space that allows us to keep our love for the culture and language, even if it’s for only one extra hour a week.”

Dovel said her inspiration for the club came from fond memories of her previous trip to Italy.

“I remember traveling to Rome when I was eight and thinking that this was the place I wanted to live when I was older,” Dovel said. “I loved how anywhere I walked, I could stumble upon beautiful architecture. I loved how everyone wanted a genuine conversation with you, and no one was in a rush. And to no surprise, I really loved the food. Ever since then, I’ve had a fascination with Italian culture.”

Dovel said the club has a diverse selection of activities planned for future meetings, including watching movies, trying Italian cuisine, playing games, listening to speakers and potentially attending a field trip.

“In the club, we will be watching Italian films, possibly trying Italian dishes and playing games in Italian,” Dovel said. “We are hoping to bring in a speaker at some point and do a field trip.”

Dovel said she is excited for the club’s first meeting and hopes to bond with club members.

“I’m looking forward to connecting with fellow students who also cherish Italy,” Dovel said.

By Alex Lee

Ukulele Club, led by Thea Pine ’23, Darcey O’Brien ’23 and Faculty Advisor and Performing Arts Teach er Chris Sullivan, aims to introduce the ukulele to the school community.

Sullivan said the club works to promote teamwork along with ukulele skills.

“Other than developing the skill set to play an instru ment, you must also learn to work with others as a team and multitask,” Sullivan said.

Pine said she is an avid ukulele player and that she and O’Brien started the club because of their shared passion for the instrument.

“The ukulele is pretty easy to pick up and fun to play,” Pine said. “We hope to spread this same love and joy for the instrument to all club participants by making the ukulele an enjoyable instrument for all students to have fun playing.”

Pine said research has proven that the ukulele and other musical hobbies can help to reduce students’ stress through artistic expression.

“Amid the chaos and stress of Harvard-Westlake, the ukulele has served as a creative outlet that has carried [O’Brien and me] through all the highs and lows in our life,” Pine said. “There’s a wealth of modern research to support the opinion that music helps relieve stress and im prove mood, and a ukelele can certainly help accomplish these things.”

Sullivan said he has experienced first-hand how music can serve as a bonding activity.

“The bonds and friendships formed when playing mu sic with others [are] second to none,” Sullivan said. “I am all for any club that encourages students to learn an instrument and play music with others.”

The Ukulele club will meet every Day 1 during lunch at Chalmers 104.

CRAZY FOR UKELELES: Club leader Darcey O’Brien ’23 and ukelele fan Owen Kim ’23 pose at the ukelele club booth.

ALEX LEE/CHRONICLE

ITALIAN IMMERSIONS: Club members Lauren LaPorta ’23 and Chloe Fribourg ’23 set up Italian snacks for their club booth.

WITH

FRIBOURG

Crossword

Craziness

Science teacher Nathan Cardin created this issue’s crossword. Can you navigate through the boxes and complete it?

DOWN:

1.Paternal parent 2.Seventh Greek letter 3.* ENTR, literally?

4.Opening remarks 5.Flat-topped hill

6.* TL, literally?

7.Campfire remnant 8.Earl Grey, for one 9.* MERS, literally?

10.Present-day Persia

11.Settles, like a debt

17.Winnie-___-Pooh

19.Pixar movie “___ Out” 21.Carve into glass with acid 22.Farewell, Italian-style 24.“Relax, soldier!”: 2 wds. 25.Small bit 29.Chart-topping songs 30.Vowel-heavy fencing sword

ACROSS:

1.Levi’s fabric

6.Kit __ bar

9.Mouth part used to kiss 12.Observe Yom Kippur

13.Take unfair advantage of 14.British pop star Rita __

15.Game with a bull’s-eye

16.Words spoken while pointing: 2 wds.

18.Hiker’s route 20.Barnyard egg layers

21.Reverberating canyon sound

23.More tidy

26.Neckwear worn with suits

27.Ms., in Mexico: Abbr 28.Revolutionary Guevara 31.Soup container

32.Chopped into small cubes 33.Said twice pre-“Hooray!” 34.Opposite of cold 35.Inventor’s starting point 36.“G’day, ___!” 37.Ages, like cheese 39.“So what ___ is new?” 40.Cry of dismay or regret 42.Time school starts on

late start days: 2 wds. 44.Author’s alias: 2 wds.

47.Adversary 50.Place to serve your own guacamole and salsa: 2 wds. 51.Broadcast on TV 52.“Lord of the Rings” director ___ Jackson 53.Takes it easy

32.Chips and ___ 36.Unkind person 38.“This ___ a drill!”: 2 wds. 40.Suitable to the occasion 41.“Look before you ___” 43.Opposite of far 45.“Honest” president 46.Month between Feb. and Apr. 48.Was introduced to 49.NFL gains: Abbr.•Answers on C4

Editors-in-Chief: Natalie Cosgrove, Will Sherwood

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Publication Information: Founded in 1990, The Chronicle is the Harvard-Westlake Upper School’s student-led newspaper. Now in its 32nd year, The Chronicle strives to report stories accurately and to uphold its legacy of jour nalistic integrity. The newspaper is published eight times per year and distributed to students, parents, fac ulty and staff. The paper is affiliated with two school magazines, Big Red and Panorama. We are members of the California Newspaper Pub lishers Association and the Private School Journalism Association.

Revitalizing Retreat

As upper school students—whether sophomores begin ning their journey on this campus or seniors nearing the end of their upper school experience—we often find ourselves reminiscing on our middle school days, in between the dai ly business of homework, extracurriculars and various social obligations. As we progress through our last three years here at the school, we fondly recall the enjoyable lunches, memorable quips from friends or tidbits learned in our favorite classes back at the Middle School.

Out of all of these cherished memories, perhaps our most favorite one is middle school retreats—the few days of the school year when we were able to get out of and escape our own comfort zones and bond with our fellow classmates over all-day activities, nighttime conversations and the occasion al naturalist joke. Class retreats provide us with a safe and controlled space to reflect on our time at the school while simultaneously making new friendships with our classmates and deepening our old ones. For many new ninth graders, for example, the four days ninth graders spend kayaking across the Colorado River with their peers were the first time they truly felt like they were a part of the class; they finally belonged here after having gone through a common, outside-of-school experience. The same is true of the seventh-grade and eighthgrade retreat trips to El Capitan, Catalina and Joshua Tree.

On an educational level, the daily lessons students received from guides about the specific location’s environment allowed us to put into practice what we learn every single day in the classroom setting. All of these combined factors make retreat an enjoyable, informative and oftentimes for many students a memorable experience.

When we become older and arrive at the Upper School as tenth graders, though, these annual class retreats suddenly

about us

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disappear. With the exception of specific athletic training and certain other upper school extracurriculars—Peer Support, Venture, Prefect Council and Community Council, for exam ple—the Upper School provides no yearly all-class, multi-day journey. In all of our three years at the Upper School, the closest we get is the seniors' Big Bear trip, which lasts only just two days and provides a final bonding experience only at the tail end of our time together.

The seniors deserve to spend time reflecting on their time at the school, but the value of our retreats should be spread out across all of our time at the Upper School, with outside bonding included at every grade level and in different ways. They do not have to be just as involved or lengthy as when we were at the Middle School—we understand the growing commitments of many students, and especially in junior and senior years, class rigor and eventually college applications make it nearly impossible for us to find time together—but the school should try to reserve at least a few for us each year. The fact that we are under more pressure in our later years makes retreats even more vital: we as students spend most of our lives thinking day-to-day and assignment-to-assignment, and being able to put these worries aside is an important part of creating a balanced mental health and lifestyle.

If our goal in these last three years is to grow both intel lectually and personally, then retreats a safe space to make memories with cherished friends. And if our goal as a class is to become closer, beyond the limits of friend groups and social status, then the communal element of retreat allows us to cut across these barriers. In both cases, they are an indispensable part of our school tradition—not gimmicks or frivolous events put on for show but an important platform with real potential to impact our lives.

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ILLUSTRATION BY AMELIA CHIARELLI

Circles of judgement

By Jackson Tanner

From an outside perspective, the school is most famous for one specific thing above all others: its staggering comparative wealth. With assets nearing almost $400 million and an endowment of almost nearly $148 million, it is the wealthiest preparatory school in the western U.S. by a very wide margin. While much of this money comes from tuition fees, one of the contributors is the school’s elaborate and expansive donation system, an invasive breakdown of which they always publish in detail every year in the HW Life Magazine.

The school received $49.2 million in contributions in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. Nearly the entire community partici pated in donations––100% of faculty members gave, along with 93% of families. These yearly donations to the school are seen by many families as a social requirement.

What the school does to “rec ognize” their major donors, goes beyond facilities and faculty chairs in the benefactors' honor for especially high donations, is publish a breakdown of donors by an estimate of how much they gave. The school categorizes these donations within different circles, each one with a higher financial barrier of entry. Circles are assigned to donations from under $1,500 on the lower end of giving to over $100,000 on the higher end. This incredibly detailed breakdown includes not only just the amounts but as well also names the donor.

Publishing information like this has serious flaws. Many donors belong to the families of students who are currently enrolled in the school. The said publication of the various circles based on donation amount and the naming of donors within the different circles allows any single member of the community to make comparisons about around how much expendable wealth

is possessed and given by each and every family. This is not a thing that can be simply and easily be avoided by any family who wants to and chooses to be anonymous on the list. With the overwhelming majority of fami lies donating, an absence from that list could be a potential per ceived indication that a certain family did not give to the school or potentially wanted to hide a presumably “low” amount.

This is an important ques tion of where the school’s morals lie. In publishing this data, the school subjects the community to an implicit competition. For students of such families who do not donate to the school and are not listed in the donor circle, possible judgement await. The school, contrary to its com mon and popular perception, is not just a “rich kids” school: of course, there are undoubtedly rich kids, but almost one fifth of all students receive some sort of financial aid. For many families, extreme donations as required to be included in some of the donor circles are impossible.

The school absolutely should publish a list of all the people and families who donated in order to recognize the contribu tions of an incredibly supportive school community. But what needs to be left behind is the classification of these donations depending on the amount given; the donor circles imply that do nors who give less are in fact less valued in the school community, disregarding the inevitably com plicated and individualized rea sons for the donation amount. Whether it is $100 or $100,000, the school should be able to take that money graciously and rec ognize that whoever the donor is likely giving amounts based on what makes sense for them, instead of creating a system of group judgement to guilt them.

Sophomores

Bring back the social contract

By Grace Coleman

have known

their place on campus for decades, but now, the Class of 2025 has been taking over designated upperclassmen-only areas: the lower cafeteria and the Quad. This year, lines at the lower cafeteria never seem to end, and Quad seating is nowhere to be found. Juniors and seniors have to wait in end less lines just to buy lunch, all because people who normally go somewhere else are holding up lines and refusing to use the upper cafeteria.

In addition to using the main cafeteria to get their lunch, sophomores are taking up tables on the lower Quad in stead of using their own tables at the Flag Court Cafe, an other area created to prioritize sophomores. Underclassmen are violating the upper school so cial and geographical structure, and their disrespect is causing easily avoidable problems for all three grades.

When sophomores first started breaking this social con tract on the first day of school, an email was sent by Prefect Council on Aug. 24 to inform sophomores that they should

past—it will destroy our nation’s future quickly and irreparably America’s democratic crisis is not abstract, and its solution cannot come from posturing or political vigor alone. We have far more to fear than fear itself.

use the Flag Court Cafe for food during lunch. However, this email did anything but solve the issue. Sophomores continued to choose to eat at a lower eleva tion; cafeteria lines have not gotten shorter, and Quad seating is still insufficient.

In addition to crowding in the cafeteria and on the Quad, sophomores are using the library improperly. During confer ence time, community time and any other designated break times during the day, the library is consistently packed with sophomores gathering on the floors of stairwells and hallways. They have made it impossible for us to get around campus by blocking walkways with their “Frankenstein” paperbacks and factoring worksheets.

Along with blocking spaces usually used for others, sopho mores have been making noise in the library, usually a quiet getaway where students can study and get started on their homework. Also, during class periods, students are trying to focus on classes that take place adjacent to the library, in the Kutler Center and Seaver, but the noise is seriously disruptive.

by their state’s popular vote unconditionally, so failure to do so would give campaigns a legal basis to sue.

Sophomores need to start following these unspoken rules of the Upper School. To ensure that they stop using our cafeteria during lunch, we need to offi cially designate the lower cafete ria for juniors and seniors only during this period. Sophomores should be obligated to use the cafeteria that was constructed specifically for their use.

No students should be al lowed to sit in the hallways of the library, and librarians should be enforcing rules and more forcefully urging people to keep their noise levels down.

All complaints aside, we're excited that the Class of 2025 is finally joining us at the Upper School this year. Their class, however disrespectful, messy and loud as they are, is going to be a good addition to our campus for the next few years to come. Although, if sophomores want us as upperclassmen to welcome them with open arms to our campus community, they need to follow our rules and climb up the ladder of seniority before they can finally ditch the Flag Court Cafe and sit on the Quad next year.

not support election reform.

By Claire Conner

Former president Franklin D.Roosevelt’s inaugural address was delivered dur ing one of the most tumultuous times in American history. The nation, rocked by the Great De pression and clinging to what ever optimism it could muster, listened as Roosevelt promised the beginning of a new era in our country: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

At the time, our troubles were the product of myths turned into reality, of imagined wealth and the market trends as sociated with it disappearing in

front of our eyes. As a nation, we had to prove ourselves. We had to prove that we could become confident in our economic systems and unending spirit, our ability to recover and prosper.

Today, our problems reach beyond speculation or economics. Far-right theories about stolen elections inundated social media sites, impacted mainstream political parties and crept into high-level conversations about election laws. This misinformation does not just threaten to demolish the foundation of our country and the legacy of its

False claims of election fraud, the horrifying Capitol insurrection they prompted, and a growing movement to allow legislatures to invalidate millions of votes and overturn elections cannot be attributed to fear. In fact, the opposite is true: right-wing candidates who believe they can lie to their base and sow political discord by propagating the idea of a “stolen election” have few consequences to be afraid of.

The possibility of these lies contributing to damaging policy actions could be significantly reduced this year with a bill that would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887. The bill would make subverting or overturning a presidential election extremely difficult by requiring that at least one-third of congressmembers sign any objection to certifying presidential electors, much more than the one congressmember minimum that is currently required. Governors would have to approve and submit the electors chosen

The bill would also specify what the basis of such an objec tion might entail, ensuring that only factually-based result disputes could carry weight in government. Lastly, in a pro vision that seems to directly address Jan. 6 rioters’ calls for former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the presi dential election, the bill would clarify that a vice president’s role in this certification process is completely ceremonial.

If the reform bill succeeds and passes through the senate and president, Americans will attain a much-needed peace of mind that, at least within the short term, the nation will continue to function as a representative democracy. In the long term, however, the context looming over such legislation remains concerning.

The bill passed 229-203 in the House of Representatives, and only nine Republicans voted for it. Even more troubling , though, is the fact that each one of them is either retiring next year or lost their primary to a right-wing challenger who does

Misinformation campaigns attempting to convince Ameri cans of nonsensical and danger ous claims of a fraudulent and insincere election still permeate our country’s media landscape, from social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit to Tucker Carlson’s tirades on Fox News. Our precious democracy is now experiencing an emergency crisis that will end up exposing its ugliest and most heinous faults and require immense widespread mobilization and action. We have very much be afraid of, but we also have much to be hope ful about. As the nation’s faults are incredibly deepened and exposed, we have the unique opportunity to reverse the tectonic shifts that created them. From withholding essential legal legitimacy from conspiracy theo rists to supporting media literacy and debate education projects, Americans can finally address the mistakes of both the past and present while securing a fair and peaceful future.

This movement, however, will not succeed with the absence of fear. It will succeed when we rec ognize that our fear is justified and that we must do everything in our power to resolve it.

Make campus more accessible

By Dylan Graff

As I strapped on my new Aircast and picked up my crutches, I felt sur prisingly calm. I am an athlete, which makes me no stranger to working through injuries. Whether it be a scraped knee, a bloody nose or even a chipped tooth, my time wrestling has taught me to persevere through it all. On my fifth-grade trip to Philadelphia, I was even able to climb the Rocky Steps in a walk ing boot, so the notorious stairs of the Upper School seemed like no big deal. However, on my first day on crutches after this partic ular wrestling injury, I quickly realized the school hasn't done enough to support members of its community with disabilities.

The Americans With Disabil ities Act (ADA), implemented in 1990, requires that public spac es like schools provide measures such as accessible parking spots, ramps and elevators in build ings to accommodate people of all physical abilities. While the

ADA certainly had a positive impact on the lives of many, it has not been completely success ful. Even thirty years after the original legislation was enacted, accessibility is still often treated as an afterthought rather than a priority. The school’s campus is a testament to this fact: while it technically meets all of the guidelines set by the ADA, its design is not making life easi er for people with disabilities.

For example, while most stu dents can simply take the stairs from the Quad up to their history classroom in Seaver, I found my self shuffling up the fire road and going into the library to take the elevator up through the Kutler Center to accomplish the same feat. To get down to my classes on the first story of Chalmers and Weiler, the process was even worse. Every day, I would lum ber through the narrow cafeteria kitchen and into a dingy sup ply elevator that smelled mildly of cabbage before emerging in the loading bay. These routes are incredibly time-consum ing and difficult to navigate for students who are able-bodied and even worse for those who are not. On multiple occasions, I grew so impatient that I tried to hop up flights of stairs on one leg in an effort to save time.

Perhaps the most tragic part of this problem, though, is that the school has the resources to

improve the situation. I am not saying that it would be easy, but the school certainly has what it takes to add a few more ramps or elevators around campus. The is sue is that nobody seems to care. The vast majority of students and faculty members will never have to think about how inaccessible the campus is until they them selves are affected. Sure, you will hear some complaints about the stairs or the distance between classes, but almost no one con siders what a day at school is like for someone who must use crutches or a wheelchair.

The ADA was created with the purpose of giving people with disabilities the same oppor tunities as everyone else. While people with disabilities may be different in the ways they move around, they still have much to contribute to society. Making the school more accessible would not only allow more applicants with disabilities to apply, but it would also give us the opportunity to learn and grow from an even more diverse range of perspectives. The school’s mission statement says it strives to be a diverse and in clusive community, but how can that be true when one of the largest minority groups in Amer ica is impeded by the school’s de sign? If the school truly believes in fostering inclusivity, we must change the way we understand accessibility on our campus.

STATS AND FACTS

13.7% 25% 66% 4.3%

The harms of teenage plastic surgery

By Jade Harris

13.7% of adults have mobility issues.

25% of adults have some type of disability in the United States.

66% of U.S. public school districts have steep ramps, inoperable door handles and other viola tions.

4.3% of American minors have a disability.

Being

both Asian and white meant that visiting family in China was always ac companied by unwanted stares and frequent remarks about my appearance. My fair skin and double eyelids led to people tell ing me how blessed I was for hav ing such features. Even though these remarks were meant as compliments, they were still very uncomfortable to receive. Whether I was browsing in the famous Shanghai street shops, visiting friends or checking into a hotel, reminders of the relentless beauty standards were everywhere — especially in the products and cosmetic surgery ads that prom ised immediate and cheap chang es to more Western features.

The exploding popularity of cosmetic surgery has left teen agers unaware of the serious emotional and physical compli cations that can arise. Cosmetic surgery is an ever-growing phe nomenon, with nearly 400,000 teens in the U.S. between the ages of 13 to 19 undergoing a procedure in 2020, according to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons . Teenagers seek out surgery as a response to the fear of not fitting in, and the growing popularity of teenage cosmetic operations only adds to this feeling of necessity.

Even though the U.S. has the highest number of cosmet ic surgery cases, South Korea is known for a myriad of profes sional surgeons. A BBC News poll said 50% percent of South

Korean women in their twenties have received a procedure, while other estimates by Gallup Korea said that 33% of all women have gone under the knife. The Wash ington Post noted that ads in South Korea are targeting young er women, specifically teenagers.

The industry is also boom ing in other East Asian coun tries, with China growing to an estimated $201 billion medical beauty industry by 2030, ac cording to the Global Times.

Teenagers are the main vic tim of this growth: Plastic surgery is increas ingly normalized by the world around them, with even the former President of South Korea going under the knife for double eyelid surgery. Many famous East Asian idols and ce lebrities have also gotten procedures to deal with the pressure to maintain their youthful beauty.

Beauty standards vary in East Asian countries but typically in clude pale skin, small nose, dou ble eyelids, a thin frame and big eyes. The goal is to blend Asian and Western features in both East Asian and the U.S. media. The desire for a simultaneously European and Asian appearance has led to massive insecurities among teenagers, leading to many seeking surgery. According to the New Yorker, many Kore an teenagers mention the pres sure they feel when all of their

friends get surgery. There is a massive fear of missing out and not being good enough, which is the result of comparison culture.

Growing up, I have always been compared to peers when it came to my appearance, grades and personality. While this is of ten because parents want to feel

shows how, even though many teenagers and adolescents claim to feel more confident after re ceiving surgery , there is no direct correlation between plastic sur gery and increased confidence. Rather, people are typically more confident as they age, regardless of whether or not they receive plastic surgery. Teenage plastic surgery is the result of a culture that pressures women and preys on their insecurities for econom ic gain, an incredibly dangerous sentiment in our society.

Despite there being many professional doctors in South Korea, many teen agers and those who travel for cosmetic surgery have incorrectly presumed cosmetic surgery proce dures to be safe because of how many celebrities have shared their success stories.

The devastating emotional and physical impacts of teenage plas tic surgery are bad enough, but according to the National Insti tute of Mental Health, our brains are not fully developed until our mid to late twenties. Teenagers are not capable of making life-al tering decisions without prop er reasoning, especially when it can compromise their emo tional and physical well-being.

a sense of pride in their children, the result is the fear of lagging behind and no longer being good enough to even be compared. Cosmetic surgery is viewed as an investment for a teenager’s future, as it determines their ability to get a job, be liked and find a partner.

A study by the Adolescent Plastic Surgical Research Group

According to a CNN report, a lack of laws in Korea results in patients be coming victims of ghost doctors when someone other than the hired surgeon performs the sur gery. The botched operations by these doctors can be permanent. Complications can also occur for procedures as simple as dou ble eyelid surgery including loss of vision, scarring and difficul ty closing eyes. The Institute of Medicine notes that for surgical implants, a third of women are likely to face a serious complica tion within the first three years, leading to repeated surgeries.

Additionally, teenage cosmetic surgery pushes patriarchal views. It has been placed under the guise of female empowerment in the U.S., as sexualization has been increasingly conflated with feminism . The Department of Psychology at the University of Westminster said couples and individuals considering cosmet ic surgery foster judgemental and even hostile attitudes to wards women. While the mo tives behind getting cosmetic surgery cannot be explained solely by sexism, it is perpetu ated and reinforced by a patri archal system that places pres sure on young women to look a certain way for the male gaze.

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons notes that out of all plastic surgery cases, 92% are women. Young girls have be come victims of plastic surgery at the hands of comparison culture and social media. Plastic surgery is on the rise, and societal beauty standards are increasingly tight ening women into an impossible mold, where their beauty defines their confidence and success.

STATISTICS BY CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE AND THE U.S. CENSUS

Chronicle Assistant Opinions Editor argues that the increasing popularity of teenage cosmetic surgery leads to devastating emotional and physical consequences.

SouthernCalifoniaconfrontedby globalwarminginducedheatwave

By Hannah Shahidi

Studio City residents experi enced continuous high tempera tures up to 110 degrees from Sept. 3 to Sept. 16.

The recent heatwave was caused by global warming, which is causing average tem peratures across the world to rise, according to NASA. Tem peratures have increased at an average rate of 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1880, said the National Oce anic and Atmospheric Adminis

tration’s (NOAA) 2021 Annual Climate Report. Climate change is also causing more weather fluc tuations between intense hot and cold weather, according to the En vironmental Protection Agency.

Latinx and Hispanic Student Organization (LAHSO) held an event in early September which had to be moved indoors due to the heat. Nathalie Paniagua ’23 said she was happy LAHSO was able to adapt to the changes.

“We decided to move the event indoors to protect everyone from the unexpected heat wave

occurring the past week,” Pan iagua said. “The heat had been unbearable in the days leading up, so we were glad Chalmers was available since it has AC.”

Several fall sports, such as field hockey, cross country, tennis and football,w still held practices during the heatwave. Some teams continued with normal practice schedules, but most teams had practices and games moved to times later in the day.

Varsity field hockey head coach Susan Hodgkins said the team altered practice schedules

LAUSD schools respond to fentanyl

By Davis Marks and Chloe Park

The Los Angeles Department of Public Health (LADPH) issued a health alert Sept. 15 after four teenagers overdosed on counter feit narcotic pills in Hollywood, including one stu dent who was found dead in a bathroom at Bernstein High School. The overdose was due to traces of fentanyl found in the pills. As a safety pre caution, ll LAUSD schools will be pro vided with Narcan, a treatment for nar cotic overdose in emergency situations, according to ABC News.

Following a number of teen age fentanyl overdoses in Los Angeles, the school’s counseling team sent an all-school email sharing the news. Head of Peer Support and ISIR teacher Tina McGraw said she sent the email to students to increase awareness and ensure students understand its risks.

“We forwarded the health

alert because we want [students] to be aware of the very real dan gers of fentanyl,” McGraw said. “We want students to have in formation so that they can make better decisions and can pass on this information to other young people in their lives.”

Fentanyl, a high poten cy synthetic opioid, can often be found in coun terfeit pills, stimulants and other substances sold outside of pharmacies. In 2021, fentanyl was identi fied as the cause of 77% of teenage overdose deaths in the country, according to the LADPH.

McGraw said that while teenagers are not intentionally consuming fentanyl, the lack of awareness among the community results in consumption of the substance via other drugs.

“This is a substance that is killing too many young people who are not aware that it is now everywhere in the illicit drug sup ply,” McGraw said. “Fentanyl is now found in every type of street drug, many of which are pressed to look like prescription drugs,

often confusing young people who may believe they are buying a pharmaceutically manufactured medication when in fact they are buying a fenta-pill.”

Juliet Katz ’23, who volunteers as a Teen Listener for Teen Line, said the school’s work to address the fentanyl epidemic will help prevent overdoses.

“The fentanyl problem is an epidemic, and I believe that the best way to take precaution is through education, [and] learn ing from friends and family how serious this drug is and how im possible it is to detect it,” Katz said. “This year and [last year], our school has made efforts to communicate the dangers of [fentanyl], both to parents and the student body.”

The email also urged com munity members to contact the school’s counselors if they have any questions or concerns about fentanyl, other substances or mental health. Those who know someone experiencing an overdose should immediately seek emergen cy care, the counselors said.

To reach the Teen Line ho tline, call (310) 855-4673 or text “TEEN” to 839863.

One of the coaches went a little easier on the drills, but the others coached the same. I wish they could’ve made practice a little easier or maybe shorter [to avoid the heat].”

— Clementine Harris ’24

depending on guidelines.

“The school has strict guide lines based on criteria from the National Athletic Trainers Asso ciation, as well as the National Weather Service,” Hodgkins said. “All our activities are based on what [Director of Sports Medicine Dunford Rodill] tells us is safe to do, and when everything indicates a no-go, we do not play at all.”

Tennis player Clementine Harris ’24 said the heat affected her playing ability.

“Because I got tired and dehy drated faster, I wasn’t playing my best,” Harris said. “One of the coaches went a little easier on the drills, but the others coached the same. I wish they could’ve made practice a little easier or maybe shorter [to avoid the heat].”

HYDRATE OR DIE-DRATE: Franklin Wimbish ’25 looks across Ted Slavin Field, sipping water from his bottle as he endures the afternoon heat. Wimbish is a member of the school’s cross country team, which postponed its after-school practice to 6 p.m. on Sept. 16 in order to escape the heat. In addtion to cross country, field hockey and girls tennis postponed their field practices.

TATE

January 31, 1942

September 8, 2022

Remembering Ted Walch

Students, faculty, staff and alumni reflect on the life and legacy of Performing Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies Teacher Ted Walch.

•Continued from A1, B1

After graduating from Kenyon in 1963, Walch taught at St. Albans School in Washington D.C. and The Branson School in Northern California until 1991, where he was hired by former Harvard-Westlake President Tom Hudnut to build a theater department for the newly merged Harvard-Westlake school.

Walch led the school’s theater program while serving as the Per forming Arts Department Chair and Cinema Studies teacher. In his time at the school, Walch directed Our Town four times, with his fi nal production held Feb. 1-3, 2018.

History and Independent Research Department Head Larry Klein said he remembers both Our Town and Walch fondly. Klein said his son, Ja cob Klein ’18, joined the theatre de partment his junior year per Walch’s invitation, giving Klein a new per spective of his coworker and friend.

“I only know this through my son, [but] when each show closed, he would write a personalized note to each of the actors,” Klein said. “[Upon reading it, I understood] just how meaningful and moving it was to get that note from Mr. Walch. That very personalized and direct connec tion with basically everyone that he encountered is truly noteworthy.”

Klein said that in their per sonal friendship, Walch’s authen ticity and curiosity about others made him uniquely easy to talk to.

“You feel like you knew him be cause he made such an effort, but was so at ease in knowing you,” Klein said. “The thing about him is he genuinely cared about knowing the people he interacted with and he took the time and effort where others wouldn’t. One of the biggest things about Ted was that sense of necessity to reach out and get to know others.”

Walch’s wide variety of involve ment with the school afforded many the opportunity to develop close friendships with him. In 2004,Walch, former Visual Arts Department Chair Cheri Gaulke and Elizabeth Yale ’04 founded WestFlix, a Cal ifornia student film festival Walch continued to advise until the most recent festival in 2022. In his hon

or, WestFlix has announced an in augural Ted Walch Award. WestFlix Director of Design Adison Gamradt ’23 said Walch’s mentorship de serves to be memorialized and paid forward to the award’s recipients.

“The Ted Walch Award will be given to a deserving film teacher of a selected filmmaker, donating funds to their school’s film program,” Gam radt said. “Mr. Walch exemplified what it means to be a true educator, and we are looking forward to hon oring his legacy with this award.”

Former WestFlix Leader, Cinema Studies student, Digital Managing Editor and Cinema Sundays regu lar Kyle Reims ’21 said that since Walch’s passing, he’s missed the op portunity to share things with him.

“There are going to be moments when one of my initial reactions will be, and has been, ‘I want to tell Walch about this,’” Reims said. “That’s going to be the weirdest tran sition. [My college] screened a mov ie that we watched in Cinema Studies and I went and saw it. The entire time, I was thinking, ‘Oh, I remember watching this with Walch’ and I remember everything he said about it. And I just really wished I could tell him.”

Reims said he felt an immense amount of pride as Walch’s stu dent, and hoped that he could repay Walch’s mentorship with work Walch would be proud of.

“There was nobody I wanted, other than my parents, to succeed more for,” Reims said. “There’s no body I wanted to see me be success ful more than him. Whether that was success through making mov ies or success through living my life and doing what I want, I wanted [Walch] to know that I made it.”

Reims said that his friendship with Walch strengthened after his grad uation, and that as both a student and former-student, he is in awe of the personalized attention Walch provided to each person he met.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met some one more genuinely caring than him,” Reims said. “Every single person that he had, whether it was as an actual student, someone just in the periph

would go out of his way for people, and especially with his students, he re ally tried to do all he could for them.”

After graduating, Reims emailed Walch regularly, reunited during 2022 WestFlix and visited Walch’s apartment for lunch on multiple oc casions. After receiving news of his diagnosis, Reims visited his apart ment one last time, and said he no ticed the contrast between Walch’s visibly weakened, wheelchair-bound state and his ever-present tenaci ty and energetic approach to life.

“[Walch] told me, ‘I’ve talked a big game for many years now, I’ve claimed to not be afraid of dying for a while, and it’s time to put my money where my mouth is,’” Reims said. “He was so content, and I know that being able to talk to all his students made everything so much easier. Seeing that made it so much easier, because if he’s at peace with it, I can be, too.”

Head of Upper School Beth Slat tery said she shared a similar sen timent: knowing Walch died the way he wanted to has given her peace.

“Everybody’s asking me how I’m doing, and it’s weird because I’m actually doing really okay,” Slattery said. “It was really hard, but perfect at the same time, because it was exactly how he wanted to go. He was surrounded by people that loved him and he had an opportunity to say goodbye to ev erybody, not afraid. Up until the last moment, he was teaching us all and it was literally a map on how to die with dignity, grace and without regret.”

Slattery, Walch and Upper School Dean Sharon Cuseo would meet for breakfast every morning in Walch’s office, nicknamed the “Vault of Dreams.” Head of External Rela tions Ed Hu said he would drop in on Thursdays, consistently impressed with how effectively Walch converted an office into a makeshift dining room.

“He had this breakfast table and a drawer with plates, utensils and everyone had a personalized napkin, and he had this whole setup for us,” Hu said. “Ted was so genuine; what you see is what you get. He imme diately brought [people] into his cir cle and was just someone you imme diately talk to. He made people feel good and he made people feel seen.”

morning. After being hired in Au gust 1997, he and Walch became fast friends at the opening faculty picnic.

“I’m going to miss being able to go see him every morning at 6:30 or 6:45 to just check in and chat,” Hilt said. “He was the kind of friend that I could tell anything [to], and those kinds of friends only come along two or three times in your life. [When I met him], I didn’t know then what kind of friendship we were going to have, but instantaneously, despite being total strangers, we shared a little bit of our selves and we had so much in com mon that it was like we were brothers.

Hilt said their bond was made particularly meaningful by Walch’s consistent support of him.

“He believed in me from the moment he met me,” Hilt said. “I always think of myself as kind of floundering and trying to make things happen, and not really know ing what I’m doing, [so] it was such a bright moment in my life.”

After Walch’s passing, Hilt said he wants to honor his friend through his teaching.

“My motto is ‘What Would Ted Do?’ because I think especially now, as I’m writing stuff about him just to keep memories of him fresh, we’re starting this year without Ted, so I imagine, ‘What would Ted do?’ I know he would listen to ev ery student and he would see them for who they are. [Being a] teen ager is hard, but Ted could see that.”

Former Walch Student and current Cinema Studies teacher Max Baril ’06 said that while he has big shoes to fill, he plans on utilizing what he has learned from Walch to enrich students’ lives the way Walch enriched his.

“As lucky as I was to have Mr. Walch as a teacher, I consider my self even luckier to have had him as a friend after I graduated,” Baril said. “He was the kind of teacher you were eager to keep in touch with, and be fore you knew it, you were friends with him. It wasn’t until college and graduate school that I gained a fuller appreciation of Mr. Walch’s teaching style. So many film professors take the subject so seriously that they lose sight of the joy that movies can bring people. Mr. Walch never lost sight of that. Mr. Walch was deeply insight ful and contagiously passionate, but he was always able to ground his teaching in the fun and joy of mov ies. I’ll always strive to do the same.”

“ There isn’t anybody I can think of who’s had a more impactful tenure than Ted Walch.

Rick Commons President L.Wood Beth Slattery

By Iona Lee

As Chris Weng ’24 sat at his desk, Zoom ing into his English class during quarantine, he was stunned: rather than discussing the assigned reading, his teacher had suddenly begun a rant about her personal life. Weng said it made him feel uncomfortable and created an unworkable class environment.

“It made a lot of kids in the class, myself included, feel like we were ostra cized,” Weng said. “We couldn’t open our mouths, we couldn’t say anything, be cause the views just seemed so extreme.”

Weng said that after the rant, he sus pected his teacher was experiencing poor mental health due to personal issues, and he and his classmates were experiencing the consequences of his teacher’s frustration.

“With the teacher having to deal with [personal problems], the kids will have to deal with them [too],” Weng said. “There might be some minor or even major in conveniences throughout the year. It was understandable, but objectively if you look at how it affects kids and the class, obvious ly [the class will] be a worse experience.”

A recent survey by Rand Corpora tion about occupational stress revealed that 78% of teachers experience frequent job-related stress in comparison with 40% of employed adults. Later, the sur vey also disclosed that one in four teach ers experience symptoms of depression.

Science Teacher Richard Vo said he often feels overwhelmed by his workload, which he said he feels it is comparable to that of his students.

“There’s just lots of demands on our time,” Vo said. “Student meetings, parent meetings and comments are big things. [Something] that con tributes to stress is being overloaded with work, which I think is true of students.”

During college ap plication season, Vo said many teachers experience heightened stress while writing college recommen dation letters on their students’ behalf.

“Depending on how many juniors [a teacher] has, some teachers have 30 let ters of rec to write,”

Vo said. “I don’t have that many, but I think I have five this year.”

Though pressures like recommenda tion requests are con stant, Vo said stress he felt peaked in the pandemic, when the social connection be tween teachers and students was hindered by online learning.

“I am the type of person that real ly benefits from stu

dent-teacher interaction; I really like it when I make a joke and hear students laugh,” Vo said. “When everyone’s mut ed and half the class doesn’t have their camera on, it’s just super awkward [to teach]. I paid a huge mental toll there. That was really bad. I wasn’t motivat ed to do work. I wasn’t motivated to think about lessons because I was just kind of depressed about that, which all piled up and made me more depressed.”

Vo said these feelings conflict with the duty he feels to act as a role mod el and support system for his students, a position that itself produces stress.

“All adults, when they’re working with kids, have a responsibility to be a stable rock that [students] can vent to, so that you can give life advice,” Vo said. “But that takes a toll on you, because you’re thinking about ‘what could you do better?’ You’re constantly worried about their well-being.”

In his first year at the school, Vo said he felt pressured to be present in all aspects of the community and had a hard time balancing his personal life.

“After that first year [of teaching], my husband sat me down and said, ‘I never see you anymore,’” Vo said. “‘This is not sustainable.’ He’s right; I wasn’t spending any time with him. I would do all these extracurricular things that were putting demands on my time. It was actually a vi cious cycle of just constantly being in work mode. My husband wasn’t getting what he needed. I wasn’t getting what I needed.”

Like Vo, History teacher Lilas Lane also said she struggles with balancing herpersonal and professional lives but sets boundaries to prevent work from in fringing significantly on her daily affairs.

“I’ve been here for 10 years, and I’m still working on how I prioritize some down time, some time with family or some time to exercise,” Lane said. “I have gotten bet ter as time goes on, as [my] systems of feed back start to get better. [I] have to be disci plined in the same way that students have to be and work from this time to this time and be productive, but then take a break.”

Lane said after her mother’s death, herrelationships with her co-workers pro vided a support network and a friend ly environment that reduced her stress.

“When my mom died, I took the first week away, and I came back after that,” Lane said. “My department chair [said I could] take longer if I need to. I felt support ed in that way, and my col leagues at the middle school sent me all this GrubHub money. That kind of support was really nice, with people reaching out. It is really im portant to have good relation ships with your colleagues.”

Lane said her connections with her students are crucial aspects of her teaching and well-being.

“The key for my mental and emo tional well-being is to have that endgame where kids have broken through to an other level [of learning],” Lane said. “I helped them do that as their brains are developing. That’s a very gratifying thing.”

Although student relationships are ex tremely rewarding, Lane said she hopes the school will prioritize managing small class sizes, typical of private schools to promote intimacy in the classroom.

“[The history department] hired a new person, so that we could all have classes of 16 [students],” said Lane. “All of my classes are over, and it makes a difference in the way that I can teach. It’s hours and hours more work for me because I need time to meet with students and time to grade their work. All of that is something that takes time, so every time I add a student on, that is hours and hours more work. This is an issue.”

Public elementary school teacher Lillian Delgadillo said big class sizes are draining. “Having a class of 24 plus students in the classroom is difficult to handle,” Del gadillo said. “Classroom management is very difficult as it is. Before when I was in the classroom, I actually ended the day crying be cause it is very exhausting.”

Delgadillo said she does not feel recognized for her work as a resource teach er in the Los Angeles Uni fied School District due to its lack of community.

“I don’t feel [appreciated],” Delgadil lo said. “It might be different for other teachers because they’re in the classroom. I’m a teacher that travels to different schools, so I’m not part of an actual school community, which makes it harder for teachers to make a connection with me, because they say, ‘resource teachers are there for a year and leave, so they don’t care,’ which is not true. It can be really hard. I wanted to feel appreciated because of work that seemed insurmountable.”

Delgadillo, who is on maternity leave with her second child, said she would not have time for both her work and childcare when she goes back to work.

“It’s hard right now when I’m not working, so you can imagine when I actu ally have that added stressor,” Delgadillo said. “You have to find time for every thing, and sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day.” Delgadillo said she has trouble balancing her outside of class demands from school and her family life.

“I’ve had so many fights with my part ner because of all the work I take home,” Delgadillo said. “It’s impossible because I have my biological children, but I also have my children at school, which are also like my kids.”

Faculty and students reflect on possible stressors for teacher mental health and their effects on class environment.

Chris Weng ’24

By Ella Yadegar

On a summer night in 1984, Judy and Norman Millar walked along manicured grass under beaming floodlights and a warm Studio City breeze. It was their first date in Nor man Millar’s hometown. Judy Mil lar said although they originally met in San Francisco, he had decided the first place he wanted to take her was somewhere he had spent much of his childhood: a golf course on the corner of Whitsett Avenue and Valley Spring Lane next to the Los Angeles River.

Judy Millar said visiting what is now Weddington Golf and Tennis for the first time gave her a complete picture of an institution that meant so much to her husband.

“My husband’s first job was at the golf course washing golf balls,” Judy Millar said. “He had played on that open space land near the [Los Angeles] River when he was a kid. Introducing me to golf and tennis was kind of intro ducing me to his family history.”

Judy Millar said when she, her hus band and their 10-year-old son moved to L.A., the golf course became an im portant part of their son’s childhood and a new family tradition.

“We used to go to that golf course every single night and hit golf balls,” Judy Millar said. “The little restaurant has gone through different hands in the many years that we’ve been here, but it hasn’t made a difference. It’s always been a destination place for us.”

In 1890, the Weddington family es tablished a farm on the land that the Weddington golf course now lies on. After Joe Kirkwood, the son of a profes sional golfer, finished a 51-year lease on the property in 2007, the Weddington family began to look for other parties to acquire the golf and tennis facility.

In 2017, Harvard-Westlake pur chased the 16-acre asset, a mile from the upper school campus, for over $40 million, with a plan to convert the land into a multi-sport complex. Offi cial renderings reveal plans to build an 52-meter swimming pool, two fields, a gym and an underground park ing structure. Although the cafe that neighbors like Millar frequent would remain open, the project would re duce the number of tennis courts from 16 to eight and remove the golf course, with the exception of the putting green. Once approved for construction by the city, construction is estimated to take

up to two years to complete.

The project, however, has faced pushback from the Studio City com munity. Hannah Carbunaru ’24 said she passes by houses with signs on their front lawns calling to “Stop Har vard-Westlake Sportszilla” on her way to school every morning.

“I don’t really understand the whole ‘Sportszilla’ thing,” Carbuna ru said. “I think people are mad that a private school is taking over all this land. All these different sides are cra zy. At the farmers market near my house, there are these people that are telling everyone about how horrible Harvard-Westlake is and about the stuff that they’re going to tear apart.”

Carbunaru said she believes a large part of the community’s opposition stems from residents’ belief that they will not have access to the new recre ational buildings. In fact, facilities such as the tennis courts, fields, pool and gym will remain open to the public from 7-3 p.m. and 6 p.m. until closing, when not in school use.

“It’s going to be open to the pub lic still, which is good,” Carbu naru said. “I don’t think that the public understands that they also will be able to use the facilities.”

Opposition groups including “Save Weddington” and “Save LA River Open Space” campaigns have emerged in response to the River Park project.

“Save Weddington” Board Member Teri Austin, who wrote an appeal to the city to designate Weddington as a his toric site, said her main problems with the school’s plan include noise, golf course demolition and the environ mental impacts of River Park.

“There’s a lot of reasons why the community is so brokenhearted at the thought that a school that’s as affluent as Harvard-Westlake, that has the 1% of the 1% attending, would want to get rid of the [golf] course and wouldn’t look for alternatives,” Austin said.

In its pledge to sustainability, the school proposed a stormwater capture system at River Park that would clean and reuse water. The system would prevent foreign objects from flowing into the Los Angeles River, eventually removing threats to ocean wildlife, ac cording to the official River Park website.

However, Austin said she believes the school’s plan to dig into the prop erty’s water basin is ultimately harmful to the environment.

“The underground parking garage is

The community discusses controversies surrounding the River Park Project and its effects on students and Studio City residents.

tennis courts. We need to get people in the community to utilize space like that for productive activities, especially for kids. I see kids hitting golf balls and playing tennis, which is really crucial to the environment. A tree isn’t just the environment, it’s also the people who

Head of Communications Ari En gelberg ’89 said many opponents to the River Park project have spread false information to encourage resistance.

“The River Park does not have twelve-foot walls around the perimeter with razor wire at the top,” Engelberg said. “The River Park will not be used for Olympic events in 2028. And the River Park will not be used for com mercial film production. Harvard-Westlake has made every effort to be ful ly transparent with the com munity since the moment the school purchased the property in 2017. We have held numerous public meetings to answer questions and address concerns, and we have made ourselves available for Zoom and in-person meetings with any member of the community who wishes to speak

Engelberg said the school has made compromises to ease concerns about

“HW has listened to community feedback about the project, making dozens of changes — big and small — to the project plan to address the reasonable concerns of community members,” Engelberg said. “Notably, the original plans called for three more lanes on the track, a third bay to the gymnasium and an additional 25 me ters of pool area, all of which the school

Even with certain alterations to the original plan for the property, Com mons said one longstanding goal of River Park is to relieve pressure on stu dent-athletes by providing an alternate place for earlier practices and matches.

“Our students are incredibly busy, and they don’t get enough sleep and they don’t get enough time with their families,” Commons said. “The initial motivation was, ‘Let’s put balance into our students’ lives so that we don’t have to have practices going deep into the evening or starting before dawn.’”

Commons said having extra field space will allow the school to grow its

“We can potentially offer some ad ditional opportunities, whether it’s girls lacrosse, or additional boys soc cer teams because there are kids who would like to play boys soccer that we don’t have field space for at this point,” Commons said.

Diver Charlotte Newman ’24 said the proposed athletic facilities would serve as a positive change for the stu dent population.

“As an athlete, I think River Park is a really good idea because it takes the stress off of certain athletes to stay at school for a really long period of time,” Newman said. “And it especially would help them manage the exceptional Har vard-Westlake level of stress.”

Though Newman thinks River Park would be beneficial to the school’s community, she does not believe that the project will actually be developed any time soon.

“Knowing how the neighborhood has reacted to Harvard-Westlake devel opments in the past, I just don’t think River Park is going to actually happen,” Newman said. “The fact that we have had multiple proposed projects for parking structures that have been taken down by the neighborhood because of the noise shows that. Even though Riv er Park would be a great place for the school, I just don’t see the neighbor hood council letting it happen, at least any time in the near future.”

Tennis player Mia Morgan ’25 said although she feels indifferent toward River Park because she will graduate before the development is scheduled to finish, she is excited about the potential the project holds for future students.

“I’m not going to be able to even use River Park, so it’s not really anything significant to me,” Morgan said. “It’s more that I’m excited for future gen erations of Harvard-Westlake. I think it’s going to be great for the other sports because they’re going to be able to not stay at school, solely because they’re not going to have to wait for one sport to finish practice.”

Another Studio City project, The Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge, opened after a $100 million dollar develop ment in December 2021. The shopping complex replaced the historic hotel that once stood there.

Carbunaru said her neighbors had talked about tearing Sportsmen’s Lodge down for many years.

“I think that it’s good that they tore it down because now they are giving

that area a new life,” Carbunaru said. “People are going to be utilizing that area more, rather than it being a hotel that no one has heard of or been to. I think that they could make a new hotel there and charge a lot of money which would revive the neighborhood.”

When Sportsmen’s Lodge was de veloped, some residents opposed the traffic that construction would bring. Giroux said she supports the new shops because they bring retail to the neigh borhood, as opposed to the River Park project constructing a building on top of what was once a golf course.

“There was traffic when Sportsmen’s Lodge was being developed,” Giroux said. “But that is not open space, so I wouldn’t even equate it to [the River Park]. There was disruption and the parking is terrible, so people protested the development of it. But in my view, it’s a completely different issue. If any thing, having a restaurant within walk ing distance is justified. Sportsman’s Lodge was a historical institution be cause it’s been in Studio City for so many years, but it wasn’t open green space.”

Aware of the potential to build a project that benefitted Studio City, Commons said the adminis tration quickly realized River Park presented an opportunity to for the school to collaborate with the broader Studio City community.

“This campus and the way we use this campus is not currently oriented to wards sharing it with the community,” Commons said. “The same is true with the Middle School. With River Park, we saw an opportunity to be commu nity citizens as an institution in a much bigger way than we’ve ever been before. That is a huge aspect now of the River Park project — to think about how we can share it and how we can make that resource available to the immediate community and to organizations like Angel City Sports, so that we can have adaptive athletes making use of those facilities and having opportunities that they wouldn’t otherwise have.”

Despite the school’s efforts to make River Park a community-based endeav or, Judy Millar said she still has con cerns about the destruction of a place so meaningful to her family.

“We’ve lived here for 28 years,” Judy Millar said. “I’m really concerned that the quality of life of our little neigh borhood is going to drastically change. Things change, but it’s just pretty sad on many levels.”

prefects holding signs with lobster puns like “I’d be a shell of a man if you said no” and “I’m cray(fish) for you”. He said he felt nervous and already embarrassed as a crowd of observers gathered around him. Austen was asking his girlfriend of almost one year to the Homecoming Formal. As the boyfriend of a Head Pre fect, he was participating in a tradition of public Homecoming asks for members of the Prefect Council, informally com mencing what is known as “ask season.”

Austen said he felt pressure to do an over the top ask for Kimura because of this tradition but regards it as an overall positive experience.

“I would have wanted to do a Homecoming ask anyway,” Austen said. “Rather, I wanted to ask Yoshi to Homecoming anyway. I was pressured to make it a big thing, but in the end, it was really fun.”

Austen said he wanted to make his ask entertaining and also personal to Kimura because it was in front of the whole school.

“Yoshi had mentioned that week that she really liked this giant stuffed lobster that was in Dr. [Tina] McGraw’s office, so I decided to do an ask about that lobster and crusta ceans in general,” Austen said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to do [a big ask] if I had done it in a very serious way, but I think by making it very light hearted and clear ly, intentionally corny, that was better.”

Izzy Kashper ’24 began dating her boyfriend of one year, Echo Caise ’24, after his Homecoming ask.

“I thought that they were really cheesy, corny and performative,” Kashper said. “I always had that opinion, and I’m very defiant, so I was sure that I would never be swooned by an ask. I didn’t under stand why people would want to show their affection or show their interest in someone publicly. I thought that that only made things less real and less inti mate and less sweet.

However, Kashper said when Caise surprised her with a personalized sign and candy, her opinion on asks changed.

“I had what HW people call a “strang er ask” because I didn’t know the person who asked me, which was kind of fan tastical, and it was sweet,” Kashper said. “When I was asked unexpectedly, he just showed up to me with a poster and I turned around on the stairs. I literally teared up. I was so excited. I squealed. I hugged this guy that I didn’t know at all, so it kind of does take over you, despite your better judgment.”

Kashper said that while she recognizes the pressure students feel about Home coming, she is also thankful for the big ask culture because of the way it forced her out of her comfort zone.

“There is a lot of unnecessary pressure for kids to find someone to go with,” Kashper said. “A lot of girls and guys probably relate to the desperation that Homecoming can cause, and I know a lot of my friends feel that way now. In some ways, I think it’s wonderful because it’s what forced me to get out there. I don’t know if I ever would have had feelings or get out there to talk to someone had it not been for the culture of Homecoming.”

Kashper said Homecoming stress is different for people in relationships.

“Being in a relationship lifts the pres sure off of Homecoming, and it also puts the pressure [on] an ask,” Kashper said.

“I am planning to do an ask for Echo, probably. He has coerced me into asking him. He refuses to ask me because he thinks we need to trade off, but I think that’s good.”

Jake Lancer ’24 said many guys feel pressure to ask someone to Homecoming, regardless of their re lationship to the person.

“From a guy’s perspective, if all their friends are asking people, they may ask some one and maybe don’t even like the person that they’re asking,” Lancer said. “They just don’t want to be left out.”

Lancer said he would only do a big ask under certain con ditions because of the judge ment he could face from others.

“I would only ask someone if I knew beforehand that there would be a ‘yes’ because I’m not trying to embarrass myself on a full stage like that,” Lancer said. “I might do a big ask if I was a senior, but I feel like in the school culture, it’s weird for a junior or sophomore to do something big.”

Lancer said he can feel the anx iety about asking someone in creasing in the school communi ty as it gets closer to Homecoming.

“It’s funny because I hadn’t really thought about [Homecoming] at all, and then two days ago someone brought it up, and five different people have now brought it up,” Lancer said. “I feel like it’s definitely amping up, and I am still sort of deciding what I want to do.”

Luke Madden ’24 and Natasha Clement ’24 have been together for nine months. Madden said that he has con sidered a big ask for Clement but said he wants to get her opinion first.

“I’ve been warned that [Clement] is not, at least when we first started dat ing, a super big fan of being a target of a major public Homecoming ask,” Mad den said. “I haven’t talked to her recently about it, so I don’t know her thoughts on it now. Some people have turned to me and said, ‘Luke, are you going to do a big public ask this year?’ I want to make sure I know where she stands on that before I do anything.”

Clement said she does not want a big ask for herself and appreci ates Madden’s communication.

“It’s not really something I’d want,” Clement said. “I’m just not a fan of the attention it brings. I’ve had conversations with Luke about it, and we’ve basically

compromised on something much more low-key or something in private. He’s the type of person that would want to do a big ask, and I can understand why, so I’m glad we’ve been in communication about it.”

Clement said she appreciates watch ing the elaborate formal asks because they come from a good place.

“To some degree, they are performa tive,” Clement said. “However, I also think the intention behind them is gen uine. I understand wanting to make the person you really like feel special, and that makes up for any performative as pect that does exist in my eyes.

Clement said when she was not in a relationship, she felt there were expecta tions for her to find someone to go to Homecoming with.

“Last year a majority of my friends paired off and went platonically,” Clement said. “I felt some of that pressure myself, so it was really dis appointing when I didn’t end up with a date, romantic or otherwise.”

According to a Chronicle survey, of 227 students polled, 47.1% said they feel pressure to go to Homecoming with a date. 64% of 220 students surveyed said they would not want a big Home coming ask.

Upper School History Teacher Peter Sheehy participated in a student’s Prom ask last year. Sheehy said he enjoyed helping in an ask because he likes carry ing on the tradition.

“I was honored to be asked to help in an ask,” Sheehy said. “I’d always just wit nessed it from afar, and I saw how much fun the students had. It seemed like a great, fun community-building tradition.”

Sheehy said he feels disconnected from the Homecoming culture of the school, but he said he recognizes the stress students feel about Homecoming as a usual part of adolescence.

“As much as I try to know about my students’ lives and even though I have kids that age, I just feel very re moved from that aspect of students’ social lives,” Sheehy said. “I just hope that [asks] continue to be inclusive and fun, and as [least] stress produc ing as possible. If it truly is sponta neous, yes, I guess things could go awry, and I suppose it does bring at tention to who’s being asked and who isn’t, but I think that’s just part of the normal stress and joys and learn ing experience of being a teenager.”

Sheehy said he appreciates students’ originality in pub lic asks but understands the rea soning behind private asks.

“Whether you do public or pri vate ask, I think it’s totally personal,” Sheehy said. “It’s fun for the com munity to see some of the creative and musical and dramatic ways that people get asked. That wouldn’t have been me. I would have been the pri vate ask, but it’s great that people feel comfortable and enjoy it.”

Math Teacher Catherine Camp bell said big asks could go sideways.

“It can be really cute to do a big ask, as long as it goes well,” Camp bell said. “Sometimes people are

pressured to say yes because everybody’s looking and they don’t want to. On the other hand, it just seems weird to me be cause if you do plan to like someone, I feel like you should just be a little more subtle about it, but that’s just me.”

Campbell said she has observed re lationship dynamics in her classes that reminded her of Homecoming asks.

“I have had students who like each other in my class before, and it hasn’t been reciprocated, which is kind of fun ny,” Campbell said. “A boy was obsessed with the girl, and the girl was like, ‘oh, my God,’ and everybody knew, but he just kept going. It was kind of cute that he kept persisting, and so I liked that.”

Students and faculty talk about pressures surrounding Homecoming formal and their opinions on the Homecoming “ask culture.”

L. Wood

Jake Lancer ’24

hwchronicle.com

By Dylan Graff

It’s 7 a.m. and Brady Dunlap ’23 is getting shots up in the gym. It’s morn ing now, but during Lunch, Conference Time or the Directed Study period, Dunlap said he can still be found in the gym trying to improve as a basketball player. Dunlap just committed to No tre Dame, which he said is an import ant step to fulfill his childhood dream of playing in the NBA. Last season, Dunlap was a leading scorer for the Wolverines and had multiple clutch shots during the team’s California Inter scholastic Federation (CIF) playoff run.

Dunlap said high-performing ath letes like himself often feel a sig nificant amount of pressure. Ex pected to perform at an elite level on the basketball court, Dunlap said that his mental health was often tied to his performance.

“[In] my sophomore and ju nior year, my self-worth was based entirely on how I played,” Dunlap said. “If I don’t play well, I’m less of a human being in my mind. I go into this obsession mode where I just play basket ball 24/7 , and I’m not really happy.”

To deal with his stress, Dunlap said that it was incredibly important for him to find an outlet to get away from basketball. Dunlap said he has enjoyed fishing since he was younger, but began meditating during his soph omore year, which helped him to stay grounded when things got difficult.

“I was struggling with confidence,” Dunlap said. “[My coach] told me that if I could be more mindful about every thing that’s going on and be more observant, be more ap preciative then my life would become more well rounded.”

As Dunlap became more consistent with his routine, he said that both his play and mindset began to improve.

“Basketball is my en tire life,” Dunlap said. “I’ve set a ton of goals, and if I don’t meet those goals, to be completely honest, I get de pressed, I get super sad, I get anti-social and I don’t talk to people. I become this little bubble that’s just me. I think the meditation aspect — just having a place you can go to and get away from the pres sures basketball and the pres sures of picking a school, it’s really good for everything.”

Dru Reed ’24, a member of the robotics team, said he experienced similar pressures when pursuing his passions. Reed said that he first took an interest in robots during a tour of his middle school. Though he started with almost no ex perience, Reed would eventu ally become a VEX Robotics World Champion, an achieve ment he said took many hours of hard work to realize.

“The one big thing about getting good at robotics, and everything else, is that I would have to do things so many times,” Reed said. “If I was building a drive base or some part of the ro

bot, I would do it fifteen times before I got it correct, and each time proba bly took about two hours to build. In the learning stages, it took more time to understand how to build and good techniques, but once I understood these concepts it was more about develop ing my problem-solving techniques.”

Like Dunlap, Reed said he also can sometimes become overwhelmed by robotics. To cope with this pres sure, Reed said he practices karate.

“When I’m doing robotics and some thing goes wrong, or I can’t figure one thing out, I can be almost devastated,” Reed said. “Having multiple [interests] allows you to stay sane. If I did robotics every single day, constant ly, I might lose my mind.”

Reed and Dunlap’s hab its mimic those of purpose ful activity, a psychological strategy that uses hobbies to briefly escape from routine, according to the American Occupational Therapy As sociation. Purposeful activ ity is known to have many health benefits, including decreasing stress and even helping to improve physical health. In addition to these effects, Reed said that practicing karate offers him skills that also improve his robotics.

“In karate, they give me a bunch of these tools, and then when I’m actually fighting, my job is to take all of these tools and figure out how to fit them all together so I can fight,” Reed said. “It’s kind of the same thing with robotics.”

For some students though, doing mul tiple activities under the added pressures of school can cause stress rather than re lieve it. Henry Brian ’23, who plays the piano, said that it has become increasing ly difficult to balance all of his interests.

Every day after school, Brian said he leaves at 3p.m., before driving nearly an hour to the Colburn School in Down town Los Angeles. Once there, Brian practices for about four hours, though he said the number increases when he is not in school. Because of his packed schedule, Brian said he often doesn’t get home until extremely late, which means he has very little time for homework.

“Most of my homework gets done during the school day at lunch,” Bri an said. “I’m just constantly having to meet with teach ers to say ‘I’m hav ing trouble getting this done on time, what do you think is the best studying strategy?’ because I have so little time.”

visual arts programs, also said it has been hard for her to balance her cre ative pursuits with normal schoolwork.

“I’ve been struggling a lot with de ciding what is important to me and my future and worrying about how much time I should be spending on class es,” Umekubo said. “A goal of mine is still to get good grades. Even though [art school] may not care about it as much, it’s still very important to me.”

Umekubo said art has always been a passion of hers, but it became far more serious when she realized she wanted to pursue it as a career.

“In ninth grade, my friend told me that she had a mentor who was a char acter designer for Rick and Morty,’’ Umekubo said. “She started mentoring me and talking to me about entertain ment design, and that’s when it really clicked. People have jobs [where] you can make a living off designing for film, games and [television] shows.”

“ Basketball is my entire life. I’ve set a ton of goals and if I don’t meet those goals, to be completely honest, I get super sad.”

Similarly, Brian said that it has been nearly impossible to pursue his other interests, such as fishing and sailing, especially during the school year.

“I’ve barely been able to get any fish ing done because I’ve just been so busy every second of every day,” Brian said. “Maybe I would be able to on a long weekend, but other than that I can’t.”

Chiara Umekubo ’23, who partic ipates extensively in the painting and

While Umekubo also plays the clarinet, she said she has taken art more se riously than any other ex tracurricular. In addition, Umekubo wants to attend art school, a path she said is considered different compared to the rest of the school community.

“Generalizations can be really harm ful,” Umekubo said. “Our school’s cul ture kind of encourages one view of the HW student, [so] people have one idea when you say you’re into art. Usu ally they assume you’re going to apply to [Rhode Island School of Design] or Yale or some really fancy fine arts school because that’s what Harvard-Westlake art kids have done in the past.

Parents will stop talking to my mom after they ask what school I want to go to cause they’ve never heard of it, so they just don’t bother making a connection. It kinda feels like what you’re doing is wrong.”

In one case, Umeku bo said a teacher asked her what she did outside of art, a question she didn’t have an answer to at the time.

“It was almost like I wasn’t living up to a standard,” Umekubo said. “Obvious ly I don’t think he meant to make me feel like that, but it reflects a sort of expecta tion that Harvard-Westlake students have to be really ac complished in many different things, and if you aren’t it’s odd—especially if your one thing isn’t looked at as what’s traditionally acceptable for someone who’s going here.”

Though Umekubo said the school’s environment occasionally creates doubts about the path she has cho sen, she hopes to improve her mindset in the future.

“Everyone [at the school], to a degree, is very hard on themselves,” Umekubo said. “They all want to impress everyone else and impress themselves, and it’s all about how you want to be seen and what you want to do. That’s a huge question here.

Brady Dunlap ’23

Brady Dunlap ’23

Students discuss the pressures of balancing their commitments to extra curricular activities with the demanding nature of the school

L. Wood

Homecoming Ask Templ ATe:

Arts & Entertainment

Representation Rebooted

By Kriste An

Scrolling through Instagram, Muskaan Schievink ’24 said she was drawn to a post in which Netflix announced the produc tion of an eight-part series ded icated to Wednesday Addams, a member of the Addams Fam ily, in a Netflix Original titled “Wednesday.” Schievink said she was elated to see its cast, includ ing Jenna Ortega, Luis Guzman, Catherina Zeta-Jones and Isaac Ordonez, many of whom were actors and actresses she enjoyed seeing on screen.

The Addams Family is a fic tional family created by car toonist Charles Addams. Over a 50-year period beginning in 1938, they have been featured in a series of 150 cartoons as well as television, film, video games, comic books and a musical. Its stories follow the adventures of the members of the family, all of whom are of Castilian extraction and Spanish ancestry.

Schievink said she is excited for the show’s release on Netflix, especially to see the twist that its director, Tim Burton, will bring to it.

“I have watched ‘The Add ams Family’ as a little kid, and Wednesday was my favorite character,” Schievink said. “I am excited to see the flavor that Tim Burton, this being his first TV directorial debut, will bring to the show as I am a fan of his work as well.”

Schievink said the announce ment caught her attention, not only because of the production of the show but also because of its decision to cast Jenna Ortega, an actress of Mexican-Puerto Ri

Rican descent, will be portraying her is exciting, and I am glad to see that actors and actresses of Latin American descent are gain ing recognition and that their characters are being represented in a fair, equitable manner.”

Like Schievink, Ortega said she is thrilled to highlight Wednesday’s Latino heritage in the series, according to an inter view with Remezcla.

“Wednesday is technically a Latina character and [that has] never been represented, so for me, any time that I have an op portunity to represent my com munity, I want that to be seen,” Ortega said.

Jaiden Mathews ’25 said he appreciates the show’s decision to cast Ortega, especially because Latino whitewashing—the prac tice of casting white actors in non-white roles—in the media has been widespread, notably in cartoon remakes.

“I have witnessed many exam ples of Latino whitewashing in the media, especially in cartoon remakes,” Mathews said. “In ‘The Magic School Bus,’ for example, Carlos, a Venezuelan-American kid, has significantly darker skin [than his peers]. But, in the re make, ‘The Magic School Bus Rides Again,’ [his skin] is light ened. There is an issue in the media with casting white actors as [Latino] characters as well. In ‘Stuck in the Middle,’ Ronni Hawk plays a Latino character despite being a white woman. This is taking away roles from people of color that are made specifically for them.”

Upper School Dean and Latin American and Hispanic Student Organization

sponsor Celso Cardenas, who said he is Mexican, shared a simi lar sentiment. Cardenas said Lati no whitewashing has been prev alent in the media for decades, beginning in the 1950s.

“There has been a long histo ry in Hollywood of casting white actors [for Latino characters],” Cardenas said. “In 1952, Mar lon Brando was nominated for an Oscar for playing Emiliano Zapata. In the Netflix series “On My Block,” a white actress, Ronni Hawk, played a Mexican-Ameri can character. Al Pacino has done it in ‘Carlito’s Way’ and ‘Scar face.’ Catherine Zeta-Jones has done it, and so has Madonna, just to name a few. This [contin ues] to this date.”

Upper School World Lan guages Teacher Sephora Escar peta-Garcia, who is as an Af ro-Latino from the Dominican Republic, said she was disap pointed with HBO’s portrayal of Latino culture in the comedy series “Gordita Chronicles” for the way it romanticized the strug gles of Latino immigrants in the United States.

“I was thrilled to see a Domin ican story on HBO, but I was disappointed after watching the first episode,” Escarpeta-Garcia said. “I understand [that] every one’s story is unique and differ ent, but this was way out there. No one in the U.S. gave a Do minican a job that could afford the entire family. Doctors and lawyers came to the country and struggled because they could not speak English. I wanted the raw truth and reality of our struggle to be depicted in the show. There are so many Dominican stories, and yet, [they chose] to

relate to except Dominicans.”

Natalie Ascorra ’24, who said she is Hispanic and Latino, said Latino whitewashing in the media is not limited to casting white actors and actresses to por tray Latino characters. She said white-passing Latino figures have an easier time finding success in the media as well.

“Latino figures that are white-passing have it much eas ier in the media,” Ascorra said. “Some examples are J. Balvin and Residente. There are different [identities within] being Latino, and even though representation is improving, it is still not as easy for non-white-passing Latinos.”

Ascorra said it is important to recognize that the term Latino re fers to a broad ethnicity, includ ing a variety of distinct cultures and traditions.

“Latino is not a race but an ethnicity,” Ascorra said. “Be ing Latino does not equal being Mexican. Each South American country has its own culture and traditions, and we need to cher ish and appreciate those as well.”

Cardenas said it is important to understand the difference be tween appreciating Latino cul ture and appropriating it as the media has done.

“Appreciation comes with a level of respect,” Cardenas said. “Appreciation is a matter of try ing to learn and understand things about another culture, whereas appropriation is taking something and using it without respect or understanding. The Mexican costume, for example, which consists of a Zarape and a Sombrero, is not a form of appre ciation [but] cultural appropria tion and racist.”

ception, self-esteem and beauty norms within the community.

“The community can feel in visible,” Cardenas said. “Without proper representation, people do not see themselves reflected in the media. This can lead to feelings that impact self-esteem, beauty norms or even role models. There is great power in seeing accurate depictions in the media, moving past stereotypical roles and nor malizing Latino as doctors, pol iticians and educators. There is power in visibility.”

Ben Perez ’23, who said he identifies as Mexican, said the inaccurate representation of Lati no figures in the media has per meated unhealthy and outdated stereotypes, treating the Latino community as a singular group.

“Whitewashing affects how people view ethnic groups,” Perez said. “Latino people have been saddled with stereotypes of gang violence and drugs. Because of poor representation, people as sume that people of [Latin Amer ican] descent are similar even though we are not homogenous.”

Cardenas said he has seen im provement in the way the media has approached Latino culture, particularly in streaming services, though he said he believes that there is more work to be done.

“Streaming services have been great about pushing the envelope [in regards] to representation and casting,” Cardenas said. “Howev er, more can be done. I loved see ing Netflix shows like ‘One Day at a Time,’ ‘On My Block’ and ‘Gentefied.’ But, with the can cellation of these shows, I [could not] help but wonder if they were being promoted and supported.”

Perez said representing Latino figures in the media does not have to be difficult, and it can be done spect the culture rather than rely

ture and are learning about it, I doubt most people will

reotypes [that are

Latin

Students and faculty members reflect on Latino whitewashing in the media, specifcally how it has impacted them and the community.

Staff Favorites

House of the Dragon

By Jackson Tanner

For millions of dedicated fans and for me, the last season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” was a complete and utter disaster . The quality of writing went out the window, char acter arcs were destroyed and the ending was ex tremely un satisfying. The show, which had been so dominant in pop culture for nearly a decade, fell entirely from public praise and relevance for the past three years.

But HBO is coming back to Westeros, the world of “Game of Thrones,” with “House of the Dragon.” Taking place some 200 years before the start of “Game of Thrones” and based on George R.R. Martin’s book “Fire and Blood”, “House of the Dragon” is a welcome development in the beloved franchise. It features an entirely new production staff, headed by writers Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Con dal, as well as a talented cast that is

well-suited to their roles. The show has also managed to preserve many of the best aspects of “Game of Thrones”: its music, composed by Ramin Djiwadi, is as epic and immersive as ever, and the special effects, scenery and com puter generated imagery are all on point, creating a world that feels as en gaging as the original series.

Additionally, Matt Smith’s performance as Daemon Targaryen has been the very backbone of this show. He steals every scene he is in.

The first five episodes of the show have been excellent, although per haps not on par with the first seasons of “Game of Thrones.” My one criticism is there just might be a bit too much incest for my liking.

But it is not just an addition to the original series ora way for the fandom to move on from the disappointment of the later seasons. “House of the Dragon” is a fascinating story in its own right, and it is one that has im mense power.

“BORN PINK” - BLACKPINK

By Fallon Dern

BLACKPINK is the revolution — they said so themselves. The K-pop quartet released their second studio album, “BORN PINK,” on Sept. 16, reaffirming their international pop-diva-status to fans and casual lis teners alike.

Like their first album, aptly named “The Album,” “BORN PINK” has a 25-minute runtime and eight tracks, including the prerelease single “Pink Venom” and the PlayerUn known’s Bat tlegrounds (PUBG) part nership song “Ready for Love.” The former, “Pink Venom,” is an electropop anthem punc tuated by a gayageum, the traditional Korean plucked instru ment, and modern hip-hop influences. However, the latter, “Ready for Love,” is a remarkably disappointing mem ber of BLACKPINK’s discography, given that the eerily offbeat produc tion does nothing for the girls’ vocal

strength and everything for the battle royale video game the song advertises.

With that being said, of the six new songs released on Sept. 16, two are in English, four are in Korean and all six are good. Title track “Shut Down” combines a sickening violin sample with a hard-hitting bassline to support killer rap verses from Lisa and Jennie.

“Typa Girl” is one of the album’s three explicit tracks, boasting the girls’ popular ity, beauty and wealth. These aren’t base less claims: between pro moting their music, the girls attend events as am bassadors for Celine, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Cartier, Bvl gari, Dior (you get the point).

The next three songs, “Yeah Yeah Yeah,” “Hard to Love” and “The Happiest Girl,” follow a new love, relationship problems and breakup. Of these three, “Yeah Yeah Yeah” is the most forgettable, which is a likely byproduct of being followed by two unique tracks.

“God Save the Animals” - Alex G

By Harry Tarses

I don’t trust Alex G. Not because he rarely speaks in public, or fre quently writes from the perspective of manipulative people, or at all because I dislike his music. On the contrary, I love his music - more than almost any other music in the world, in fact - but I don’t un derstand it, and gener ally I think we mistrust the things we don’t un derstand. Every time I queue up a new Alex G song, I clench up subcon sciously. The way I’ve come to view his music, and the things it makes me feel so intense ly –– loss, love, nostalgia for some un known past –– seem magical, other worldly. How, then, can I confidently believe that this decidedly earthly man is actually able to make this stuff, rather than just constantly stumble on it by accident? His chord changes are too precise, his vocal patterns too purposeful, his seeming connection

to my inner psyche too pure. I just can’t accept that one artist can actu ally hold all that power, so instead, I get this creeping feeling that my love for this man and the quality of his art is about to fall violently off the rails. Still, every time he releases new music, I’m proven wrong. His latest album, God Save the Ani mals (GTSA), is no exception. Since he was 17, Alex G has been writing and produc ing music at a shocking rate. His style is al most indescrib able to some one who’s never heard him be fore, but here’s an attempt: fairy-tale folk pop. Or at least that’s true for some of his songs. The truth is that Alex G is not a musician who can be easily relegated to one genre or style. Up until and including this album, his 9th, he has shifted frequently and effortlessly between tones and tech niques, all while remaining astonish ingly distinct in his sound and style; fanning out but never losing touch with that enchanted feeling.

•Continued on hwchronicle.com

The Great British Baking Show

By Claire Conner

A white tent rests on the perfect ly-manicured lawns of Welford Park in England’s Berkshire County. It is surrounded by trees that look like they were lifted out of a snow globe, and as sunlight skips across the dew drops on its peaked roof, 12 bakers stand at their workstations, ready for their first challenge of the season.

This is the magical land of “The Great British Bak ing Show,” which began its 13th — or rather, its baker’s doz en — season this month, kicking off the next part of one of the world’s most wholesome television shows. Gone are the days of “Cupcake Wars” and “Cutthroat Kitchen.” The expansive realm of competetive bak ing has finally recognized the need for episodes that are uplifting, calm ing and entertaining, and this Brit ish classic authentically captures that spirit. Whether it is bakers helping

each other carry a towering show stopper cake across the room or light banter exchanged between the hosts and judges, the bake-off rec ognizes that excellent entertainment can come from heartwarming unity within a cast rather than an passion ate, intense and fast-paced conflict.

As bakers move through the com petition, their relationships develop just as much as their kitchen skills; their genuine love and respect for each other establish the competition’s high stakes without de faulting to the often stressful cliché of arro gant rivalry that dominates the genre. Glossy entremets, cloud-like pav lovas and per fectly laminat ed puff pastry provide plenty of extraordi nary baking substance, but the true beauty of the show lies in its ability to showcase the ways baking can bring us together — that beyond icing and cherries on top, it’s the more univer sal, ordinary aspects of the kitchen that make our baking magical.

Contending with the Trending

By Iona Lee and Vasilia Yordanova

Looking in the mirror as he gets ready each morning, Jayden Huang ’23 said he tries to de cide what character he would like to embody with his outfit. Huang said his clothing choices are inspired by who he wants to be on a certain day rather than what is trending at the moment.

“I base my style more off of characters and less off of outfits themselves,” Huang said. “For today, [my outfit] is business but in my world. Some times I want to dress like a grandma, and sometimes I want to dress like a business person, so my outfits are based less on what’s trending and more on my preferences.”

Huang said trends help him explore different styles, propelling his fashion into new realms.

“Trends affect my style be cause that’s how I get exposed to new types of clothing or new ways to wear certain clothes,” Huang said. “When you’re still trying to figure out your style, it’s nice to look at past blue prints and recreate [them]. I found that many trends helped me expand my closet and go for certain types of clothing that I’d never thought I’d try. Not all styles made me feel the best, and so I stopped wearing them.”

Hyper-specific trends that

originate on apps such as Tik Tok, Pinterest and Depop are often popular for very short periods of time, sometimes just a week, according to Vogue. These short-lived trends, which usually gain popularity on social media platforms such as TikTok or in the collections of fast fash ion retailers, are often known as micro-trends, according to The Harvard Crimson. Huang said while he does not support the impact of micro-trends on fash ion, they have opened his eyes to new styles.

“While I absolute ly hate micro-trends, I will admit that cer tain micro-trends have helped me find my style, specifical ly the one with [the brand] Angel Blue,” Huang said. “Angel Blue helped open my eyes towards 2000s [Japanese] fash ion. I loved 2000s [Japanese] fashion because, on the one hand, the outfits were cute, but on the other, it allowed me to view fashion through an Asian lens. The white gaze was no longer that important.”

Fast fashion refers to the quick turnover of trends in the fashion industry and the mass production of low-quality clothing, which also contrib utes to climate change, accord ing to BBC. Eloise Stoddard ’23 said because micro-trends have a negative impact on the environment, specifically in

their use of natural resourc es, she tries to purchase her clothing at sustainable brands.

“I definitely make a conscious attempt not to [shop from fast fashion brands], just because I know that it’s really bad for the environment,” Stoddard said. “It’s not ethical. If you look at how fast fashion is produced, it’s really disturbing. I try not to support those brands, but that being said, if there’s a trend that I like, I’ll try to find it second hand. I’ll go vintage shopping or shop from sustainable brands.”

Stoddard said while she sometimes purchases trending clothing on a whim, she prefers to buy from brands that produce clothing in smaller quantities.

“I’m by nature very impul sive,” Stoddard said. “[My pur chases are] usually from smaller brands, though. I’m not going to go on Shein and buy something that I like. I feel like that’s bad, but if it’s a smaller brand, then I have a little less of a problem buying it because I feel like I’m supporting small businesses.”

As the most downloaded shopping app in the U.S. in 2021, Shein is a prominent fast fashion brand, notorious for the hazardous working conditions of its factories, and for stealing designs from smaller business es, according to The Guardian.

Keira Haley ’24 said while she took inspiration from micro-trends before the COVID-19 pandemic, she has begun purchasing most of her clothes from thrift stores.

“Before COVID, I [liked] fast fashion and cheaper brands like H&M and Urban Outfit ters, but coming back, I needed more clothes,” Haley said. “I got a ton of fast fashion stuff, but by the end of freshman year, I got into thrifting things. I went to Budapest and bought a lot of [secondhand clothing] from there. From then on, I got more into fashion and what I wanted to look like.”

Haley said the low quality of clothes she purchased from fast fashion brands led her to put more thought into her per sonal style.

“I start ed develop ing my own sense of style because when I bought fast fashion things, they wouldn’t last very long,” Haley said. “I would buy them and really like them and then [start to] hate them a couple of months later. I followed more fash ion [influencers] and design er brands because I like seeing and [thinking] ‘Oh, do I like this look not because it’s on trend, and do I want to emu late that?’ Then, I tried to be more sustainable and get [sec ondhand] items on Poshmark.”

History and Social Stud ies Teacher Katherine Holmes-Chuba, who teaches the Upper School’s Honors Art History class, said fashion in

the 21st century is much more personal than the rigid world of 20th-century fashion houses.

“Fashion, by the early 20th century, was dictated by fashion houses,” Holmes-Chuba said. “Rich women would go to Par is, and they had to keep up with the styles. What’s changed in the 21st century is that fashion is now a means of expression. There are still trends, but there is much more individualism.” Holmes-Chuba said while she appreciates the ac cessibility of fashion today, the fast turnover of trends can cause wastefulness.

“Fashion is something peo ple can use to express their personalities,” Holmes-Chu ba said. “The bad thing about fashion now is that there is too much. But more and more people are buying used cloth ing because they don’t want to contribute to the waste of fast fashion. There is an interesting moment in fashion history right now where people are becoming more ecologically conscious.”

Holmes-Chuba said fashion trends can reveal much about the world in relation to history.

“When you think of fash ion history, it’s really social history,” Holmes-Chuba said. “It tells you a lot about the society and perceptions of women and men at the time.”

Community members discuss the impact of micro-trends on fashion, the environment and the development of their personal styles.

L. Wood

Jayden Huang ’23

“ I started developing my own sense of style because when I bought fast fashion things, they wouldn’t last very long.”

— Keira Haley ’24

What is in, and what is out for this year’s Homecoming

By Lucas Cohen-d’Arbeloff

At this year’s Homecoming, we need to shake things up. The usual football game and carni valesque activities are starting to feel passé as my six years at the school come to a close. I propose we take to heart the wise words of “High School Musical 2” and declare, “It’s out with the old, and in with the new.” Here are my suggestions:

Out: The wolverine as our mascot. Wolverines are dull, uninspiring animals who live in the bleak wilderness of Canada. Why are these Canadians entitled to represent us, and why have we as students left them unchallenged and unquestioned as our mascot?

In: Replacing our mascot with Mary Star of the Sea, in honor of our homecoming rivals from last year. I’m honestly not sure what a Mary Star is, but it sounds intriguing.

Out: Our usual national anthem at the big game. Chamber Singers, I love you, but why don’t we let someone solo this year?

In: Fergie.

Out: Tackle football. We’re not even that good.

In: Flag football. Yes, it will give Homecoming a very elementary school vibe, but at least there are no concussions.

Out: People from other schools. Brentwood, if you really think you’re better than us, you need to stop leeching off our events.

In: Celebrity alumni! Beanie Feldstein ’11 needs to confirm whether or not Lea Michele can actually read.

Out: Confusing carnival activities. I’m tired of paying to throw a football, falling down while I fail at rock climbing, and feeling nauseous as a rickety Ferris wheel whirls.

In: Study hall! If the goal is “fun,”

then there is no better activity than the joyful pursuit of educa tional excellence.

Out: The Harvard-Westlake upper school campus.

In: Holding Homecoming at the soon-to-be River Park construc tion site, also known as Wed dington Golf & Tennis. Studio City residents will love it, and it’s the perfect way to convince the school community that the project is within 50 years of completion!

I may or may not be present at the Homecoming festivities on Oct. 1. After all, I have both my COVID-19 bivalent booster and flu vaccine scheduled for the day before, and I may be too feverish and under the weather to leave my bed and attend. But I want to see my school succeed! The school needs a Homecom ing celebration worthy of our SAT scores.

Although I understand these events are difficult to plan, I think my very reasonable and logical ideas are a good place for the school to start.

In case you missed the Activities Fair

By Georgia Goldberg

Speech Team: Benched debaters.

Science Bowl: Guarantees ad mission to Santa Monica Col lege.

Environmental Club: Teaching me to recycle everything, includ ing jokes.

Venture: Boy bosses and Sophia Rascoff ’23.

Community Council: [note to self: do not mention Madison Beer]

Human Rights Watch Student Taskforce: I swear I didn’t make this one up.

Italian Club: ItalianX appropri ation? Possibly…

KHWS: Oh my God, Alex G is sooooo underground.

Ethics Bowl: This year’s agenda: spit on morally sub par students — no one is safe.

Mock Trial: Because who doesn’t want to be a corporate lawyer?

Model UN: No losers allowed.

The Elbow: No cool people al lowed.

Westflix: A published list of applicants for NYU Tisch.

Car Club: Adeptly teaching the student body valuable park ing skills.

Harry Potter Club: Google “Draco Likes”; you will not regret it.

Aquarium Club: Petitioning Prefect Council to host Prom at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

A Cappella: Aca-awkward!

Theater Club: Like why?

Babel: 100% acceptance rate for Editor-in-Chief.

Stand-up Comedy Club: Forev er in Carter Staggs’ shadow.

Current Events Club: Might meet like once.

Sustainable Tech Club: Envi ronmental Club calls it, “Wait, that’s a thing?”

Sustainable Fashion Club: No way! It’s thrifted? Tell everyone.

Business with Ethics: Why not Sustainable Business Club?

HW Outreach Performers: Be cause all impoverished children need is amateur high school stu dent improv.

Ukelele Club: Do you guys know that song “Riptide”?

Sweets on the Streets: Premium users of rhymezone.com.

Rival Alert: Donda Academy

By Zoe Goor

According to Niche.com, our school ranks #1 in “Best Private High Schools in the Los Angeles Area.” Not for long. Ye—Kanye West—has just opened a new school called Donda Academy. Named for his mother, professor Donda West, the school is lo cated in the Simi Valley, a mere 35-minute drive away from our dear school.

According to the school’s website, “each day, Donda stu dents learn fundamentals, grow in their faith and experience two enrichment classes.” While the school is parochial, nearly 100 students pray to Ye in lieu of a more traditional God. Donda Academy is certainly our school’s newest rival, and a formidable one at that.

DaBaby attended a Donda Academy basketball game. I ha ven’t seen the featured performer —most commonly known from Dua Lipa’s 2020 pop sensation “Levitating”—on our school’s Coldwater campus. School with

out a celebrity presence just does not make sense. And in terms of the variety of classes, Donda seems to be ahead of us as well.

Donda offers “World Lan guage, Visual Art, Film, Choir and Parkour.” While our school does offer courses in the first four disciplines, all can agree that parkour is truly a subject at which this school’s students need to improve. Although our school’s students seem to have some extracurriculars, they all secretly hope to add parkour to their college applications.

And let’s not forget the obvi ous: Donda Academy was found ed by a Presidential candidate from the Birthday Party. First of all, one can only imagine that Donda’s administration mimics the ol’ US of A’s. Second of all, the Birthday Party? Is there any more fitting political party for the leader of a school? Ye clearly loves children. Harvard School for Boys was founded by Gren ville C. Emery, a mere educator. How many Twitter followers did old Emery have? 31 million less

than Ye, that’s for sure. And he wasn’t even verified.

The most telling aspect of the Donda Academy experience is the non-disclosure agreement that everyone affiliated with the institution has to sign. How is it possible that our school is so un eventful that not a single student or faculty member had had to sign non-disclosure agreements?

As for academic rigor, Ye claimed, according to The Cut, that teachers can “actually turn your kids into, like, geniuses.” Our school’s teachers merely make the school experience “spe cial” and “joyful,” according to the school’s website.

To the parents of our school: Please keep your children en rolled here. While all of the ev idence points towards a switch to Donda as being a good idea, and Donda’s sports Instagram account is followed by the of ficial YEEZY MAFIA account, rest assured knowing that doves, Donda’s mascot, are typically de feated by wolverines.

Sports

Foul Play

By Tate Sheehy

Adi Shokeen ’24 sighed with relief as he won a grueling point, giving himself and his teammate a 40-30 advantage over their op ponents in their doubles tennis match and inching closer to vic tory. But as he readied himself to deliver the finishing blow, the players on the other side of the court suddenly spoke up. They claimed that they were in the lead, not Shokeen. He said they were trying to cheat him of his victory.

Shokeen said cheat ing in cases like this is not unheard of. In fact, he said cheating is a common occurrence at the high school level in sports such as tennis and golf.

“[Cheating is] something that’s easy to pull off,” Shokeen said. “People are so competitive in high school sports that they are willing to do whatever it takes, even by means of cheating to try to win a point.”

Shokeen said that although the cheating he has witnessed is obvious and frustrating, it can be

difficult to combat in high school sports competitions.

“It was obvious to everyone watching [the match] that we were up in that game, but they fought hard with no stopping in sight,” Shokeen said. “I would say the only way to prevent cheating is an umpire or some technology like at the professional level that helps to determine the calls, but that is not realistic.”

Boys Tennis Pro gram Head Bo Hardt said the current honor system in place to pre vent cheating is not enough, but that the solutions are expensive and often implausible.

“Tennis and golf are the only sports where the players operate as their own officials and with an honor system for all calls and scoring,” Hardt said. “Making unfair line calls is an issue at every level of ten nis from kids under-10 tour naments to professional prize money events. The only way to prevent [cheating in these games] is to hire more officials or install electronic line calling, both of which will never happen

because of the cost.”

Hardt said he believes that though it is difficult to regulate cheating, coaches and parents can take steps to stop their athletes.

“It’s on the parents and coach es to make sure athletes don’t cheat,” Hardt said. “I tell my ath letes to never cheat in any area of life, and if we see an act of bla tant cheating on court, they will be disqualified immediately. I tell my athletes to stand up for them selves when they are cheated, call the person out on it and then get a referee. It is very easy to cheat when there is no referee.”

Hardt said that many high school athletes have developed reputations for their cheating and that there are multiple common reasons for players to cheat.

“Cheating happens pretty of ten,” Hardt said. “There is a lot of pressure for some of these [ath letes] to win [matches] for college aspirations, and there are notori ous cheaters in junior and high school tennis.”

Shokeen agrees that cheating has become a pervasive issue in high school tennis. He said that it can often seriously change the results of a competition.

“I believe cheating is a very

prevalent issue in tennis, especial ly in high school,” Shokeen said. “It has a very significant impact on the overall outcome of many games, since it can easily change the momentum of someone’s game and can lead to free points for the opposing team.”

Clarissa Brown ’24 said she has experienced cheating as a high school golfer. In a sport that is dependent on the honor of its athletes, Brown said players often begin to cheat as their scores rise.

“I’ve witnessed cheating before, in the form of lying about scores and bet tering lies,” Brown said. “I would say that cheating tends to happen when peo ple are approaching a high score during the round; however, there was one instance that was really new to me. I was playing in a school match, and I thought the round was going fine, but all of sudden one of the girls starts accusing another of cheating. She said the girl was putting down her ball mark in front of her ball. By doing this,

the girl was making each one of her putts shorter.”

Brown said she did not expect to experience such flagrant meth ods of cheating.

“This situation [shocked me],” Brown said. “I’ve never seen someone do something as risky as make the ball closer to the cup.”

Brown said that although it is greatly problematic to the fair ness of the sport, it is difficult to regulate dis honesty. She said that al though golf ers are often assertive in calling out cheating, the current honor sys tem in golf is unreliable.

“I think cheating in golf is a big issue,” Brown said. “The only solution to cheating at the high school level is the honor system, which often tends to prove inef fective in my experience. I’ve no ticed that golfers will typically say something because the cheating could affect them.”

Members of the tennis and golf programs reflect on the prevalence of cheating in their sports.

L.Wood Clarissa Brown ’24

“ People are so competitive in high school sports that they are willing to do whatever it takes, even by means of cheating.”

Adi Shokeen ’24

By Eden Conner

Defensive midfielder Dani Lynch ’23 announced her com mitment to attend and play Divi sion 1 soccer at Clemson Univer sity on Aug 23.

Lynch said she is looking for ward to her continued time as a student-athlete.

“I’m so excited to grow as a player and a person,” Lynch said. "It’s going to be a great life-building moment.”

Lynch said despite the com mitment being a challenging process, she was supported by her family, coach and teammates.

“The coaching staff did such a good job supporting my decisions and understanding the balance of club and high school soccer,” Lynch said. “The school, deans, coaches and teammates helped supporteachother.Goingthrough that together was amazing ”

Alex Astalos ’23 to play for Vassar College soccer team

By Mason Walline

Alex Astalos ’23 committed to Vassar College’s Division III soc cer program.

She said soccer has been an im mense commitment for most of her life.

“Soccer has just been in my life forever.” Astalos said. “It’s real ly great to be at a level where now everybody really does care.”

She said the recruitment process only added to the workload of standard college applications.

“I’d say that the recruiting pro cess is brutal,” Astalos said. “It’s a horrible process because the reg ular college application process is stressful enough.”

Astalos said Vassar College met all the characteristics she was looking for in a school.

“Once I started learning more about [Vassar College], it went onto our list,” Astolas said. “I’m just glad it worked out in the way that it did because it really checks all the boxes for me.”

Varsity football wins consecutive games following back-to-back losses ahead of league competition

By Jackson Mayer

After starting the season 2-2 against non-league opponents, the football team is preparing for Del Rey League play. The team’s first league game will be the school’s Homecoming game against St. Genevieve High School on Oct 1.

After starting the season with consecutive losses to Heritage Christian School and Venice High School the team won their games against Canyon High School and South Torrance High School. Defensive Back Daniel Hernandez ’24 said these victo ries helped the team’s morale.

“Coming off of two straight wins, the team has gained a sense of confidence in play,” Hernandez said. “We are also aware that there are some im provements to be made all around; however, we are step ping in the right direction.”

Hernandez said the team’s cohesion has improved since the start of the season.

“Following our first four games, the team has found its stride when it comes playing co hesively as a singular unit,” Her nandez said. “Being able to trust that your teammate will execute their assignment is very crucial when in a game.”

Running Back and Corner Back Terence Mathews ’23 said the team is using film to learn from past mistakes and get ready for the remainder of the season.

“We are using our previous game experiences to help course correct us for future games,” Mathews said. “We make sure to use film effectively from both games and practices to minimize our mistakes.”

Hernandez said league play will require an intense level of dedication, both in practice and during games.

“As we approach league play, the team knows that the oppo nents we are going to face will re

quire strong discipline, not only on game night but also in prac tice,” Hernandez said. “The team knows the potential that we can play at. It’s just a matter of dis cipline, and who wants it more.”

Running Back Aaron Milburn ’24 said the team feels prepared to take on league matches.

“We are excited about playing our league opponents,” Milburn said. “Since we played them last year, we [have become] more comfortable with their offensive and defensive play. Overall, we have a higher expectation for our selves to win these games. Only time will tell what we can accom plish as the season goes on.”

Field hockey secures repeated victories

By Alex Lee and Alex Dinh

The field hockey team, led by first-year Head Coach Susan Hodgkins, has won two games following their two losses at the start of the season.

Megan said after three Di vision I commits graduated last year, some players were not ex pecting to live up to the same success. Last year, the team’s suc cess led to to an overall 14-2 re cord. This year however, the team lost its first game to Huntington Beach 7-0, and to Marina 4-0. However, the team beat Fountain Valley 2-1 on Sept. 9 and Glen dora 1-0 on Sept. 13, bouncing back to even out their record at 2-2.

Assistant Coach Giles Andrew said the team struggled in the first two games of the season be cause some members of the team were unable to attend the sum mer practices.

“A lot of our players had other commitments during the sum mer and didn’t get a chance to [attend the summer practices],” Andrew said. “A lot of the other schools go back earlier than us. Our first two games were very much like the team had just met

and then we were forced to play games together, against teams that have been playing [together] for a month already.”

Andrew said that he and Hod gkins both promote communica tion and teamwork. He said the two values are essential for per formance during games, as well as for strength ening bonds be tween players.

“The more [the players] feel like they're part of a full team, the more that they'll socialize and get to know each other,” An drew said. “And then they start supporting each other, and we get less negativity on the field when things go wrong.”

On Sept. 19, the team tied Thousand Oaks High School 2-2 in its seventh game of the season. Andrew said it was the team’s best performance yet.

“Every game so far has been an improvement on the last,” Andrew said. “Even though it was only a tie, it was still the best game we’ve played as a team. We saw some really good hock

ey, some really nice moves [and] a couple of good goals. We were unlucky not to come away with the win, against what was a strong opposition.”

Kim said the first two losses served as motivation for the team.

“A lot of us knew that some of our star players were leaving and we weren't going to be as good as before,” Kim said. “But, those first two games were a wakeup call for the team.”

Hodgkins said the first win over Foun tain Valley was a turning point for the team. She said she is op timistic for the rest of the season, as she feels that the team is con stantly improving.

“Once we had our first win, that was a huge factor in realizing that we’re getting better, and we can win,” Hodgkins said. “I per sonally think we improve every day. Every day, I see everyone [on the team] get better. As long as we play as a team and keep prac ticing hard every day, it can only get better.”

UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT: Walking out from the team locker room, Quarterback Henry Wendorf ’23 and Wide Receiver Santiago Hernandez ’23 spark a conversation with a referee ahead of their 14-6 first season victory over Canyon High School on September 2.

MAKING PLAYS: Megan Kim ’24 runs across the field, retaining possession of the ball against Huntingon Beach on August 25.

Dani Lynch ’23 commits to Clemson for D1 soccer

“ And then they start supporting each other, and we get less negativity on the field when things go wrong.”

Andrew Giles Assistance Head Coach

SALC holds first meeting

By Christopher Mo

The Student Athletic Lead ership Council (SALC) began the 2022-2023 school year with a retreat on campus in August and had their first meeting Sept. 22.The council discussed their leadership initiatives for the year, and representatives conducted an AthleteDISC Profile Report to learn about individual behaviori al tendencies in the sports field. The report’s results determine how athletes behave in competi tions and correlate these behav iors to sports performance.

Each year, the council elects one student representative from each of the school’s 30 sports teams, who present updates and problems about their teams.

The SALC, led by Head of Ath letics Terry Barnum and Sports Psychology Program Head Kat Scardino, also addresses sports topics including school pride, student athlete experiences and growing relationships among athletics programs, according to an email from Scardino. Con flicts among specific sports teams are openly presented within the council, and measures to resolve the issues are discussed.

Girls Basketball Program Rep resentative Jordyn Call ’23 said SALC serves the school’s sports community by identifying and growing leaders.

“In the SALC, we take pride in our leadership and our ability to support our teammates, both on and off the court or field,” Call said. “The activities we have done so far have helped us deter mine what kind of leaders and teammates we are and how we support our teammates in differ

ent situations.”

Call said SALC helps students balance academics and sports.

“SALC hopes to make sure that all Harvard-Westlake’s stu dent-athletes maintain a bal anced and healthy lifestyle, along with a positive outlook and men tal health,” Call said. “We also hope to focus on each of our own teams and learn how to better both ourselves and the people around us.”

In addition to serving as a re

Water polo looks to begin another win streak after tournament defeat

By Eden Conner

Following a successful 20212022 season under Coach Brian Flacks, the water polo team be gan the 2022-2023 season with five consecutive wins under new coach Jack Grover. The squad finished third in the 2022 South Coast Tournament losing 8-7 to Mater Dei High School in the knockout stage, who went on to win the tournament.

Left side attacker Alex Heenan ’24 said that while the loss was

not ideal, the lessons learned from the game will help the team suc ceed later on in the season.

“The end wasn’t exactly what we wanted, but I think in terms of progress the loss pointed out a bunch of glaring issues that we have to deal with,” Heenan said.

“So I think although we may have lost the one game, ultimate ly the only thing that matters is [the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section (CIF-SS) championship].”

The team is playing its first

season under new head coach Jack Grover following the move of longtime head coach Brian Flacks to Stanford University last year. Sophomore guard Col lin Caras ’25 said the adjustment period has brought the group even closer together.

“This particular group has faced a lot of challenges together in terms of losing a coach we’ve had our whole careers,” Car as said. “When adversity was sprung upon us, I feel like we learned how to become stronger

source for sports teams, Scardino said members of the SALC rou tinely conduct assessments that are designed to measure one’s emotional and behavioral patterns to assess sports performance.

“The profile is used around the world by top athletes from professional sports teams, Olym pic teams and state, national and college teams,” Scardino said. “It will reveal significant insights into your preferred styles of behaving, strategies to capitalize on your per

sonal strengths and recommenda tions to address development op portunities. It is all about helping you take your sports performance to the next level.”

Results sort athletes into four different categories: dominant, inducement, submission or com pliance. The categories represent how athletes behave in their sports and suggest solutions to developmental opportunities.

“[The water polo team] has faced a lot of challenges together. When adversity was sprung upon us, we learned to become stronger as a team and work well with our new coach.”

— Collin Caras ‘25

as a team and work well with our new coach.”

Heenan said the group strengthened their bonds because most of the team stayed together through the coaching transition.

“I think since most of our players from the past few sea sons have stayed another year, it’s

kind of allowed us to know each other more as players and kind of what works for us and what doesn’t,” Heenan said. “I think just having played with each oth er for a longer time will make us a more successful team in future games and tournaments.”

Cross country wins big at Woodbridge

By Jackson Mayer

The cross country team is get ting ready to prepare for the re mainder of their season after the girls team won Mission League Cluster #1 on Sep. 22 and the boys team placed third.

Team member Franklin Wim bish ’25 said summer training was a vital part of the team’s pre-season preparation.

“Summer practices are cru cial, as they set up your season with summer base-building,” Wimbish said. “Summer is a way to get a leg up on other teams during the regular season.”

Runner Jackson Adams ’24 said the team’s retreat at Big Bear from Aug. 11-14 helped improve the team’s chemistry.

“To prepare for the cross coun try season, we started summer practices in July after individual training,” Adams said. “We also went to Big Bear in August to get altitude training, which was ben

eficial for us to bond as a team and choose captains.”

The team’s key workouts con sist of sprints, tempo training and long runs between six and 14 miles on weekends.

Captain Nuzzy Sykes ’24 said the level of commitment among the team is high in anticipation of the rest of the season.

“Throughout the summer we have been doing practice, show ing up almost every day, running every day and just making sure we were really attentive with our workouts, get ting what we need to do [done],” Sykes said. “[We are] putting forth that effort and staying committed to running every day, building on what we already have.”

At the Woodbridge Invita tional on Sep. 16, five girls earned times under 19:00, winning their heat. Franklin Wimbish ‘25 ran a

time of 15:54.4 and Nuzzy Sykes a time of 15:25.00. At Mission League Cluster #1, five girls ran top six times, with Captain Ken dra Ross ’23 in first.

Sykes said competing at the start of the season is very bene ficial to developing race strategy.

“There are certain races where your only goal is to latch onto someone and beat them in the end, or see when they fall off and make sure that you keep on fighting,” Sykes said.

“There are other races where you will be left behind, so you need to find a way to stay com mitted, stay on target, and continue to attack that goal, and some times it works out, but every time you learn what works and what doesn’t work, and you start to piece together your most ideal way of racing.”

PRESSING THE PACE: Nuzzy Sykes ’24 races to the finish line at the 2022 Guacho Invitational meet on Sept. 3 with a time of 16:21.9.

POSES OF POWER: The Student Athletic Leadership Council takes a group photo in front of Taper Gym on Aug. 23. The squad gathered for their annual retreat. The school chose a representative from each Varsity sports team to participate in discussions on leadership and responsibility.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF DARLENE BIBLE

WOLVERINESONLY

BY BAXTER CHELSOM

I started water polo when I was 11 years old. I had just started middle school, which offered no sports teams other than football, which my mom vetoed because of the concussion rate. Little did she know that I now have just as many con cussions from water polo as I probably would have gotten from football.

My first time playing was at the UCLA Spieker Aquatics Center, during a sum mer camp that my friend Max Shapiro '23 had told me I should try out for. Put ting on a speedo for the first time was definitely weird, but I fell in love with the sport almost instantly and joined the UCLA Development Club Team. My first practice with the team was nervewracking because all of the other kids had been playing since they were eight.

Almost right away, the coach came up to me and saw how tall I was and thought I should be a goalie. Later, when he watched me swim, he knew that goalie was definitely my ideal position. I was with the team for one year, and then Jeff Koretz ’23 told me about HarvardWestlake's development club team, LA Premier. They were much better than the team I started on, and I was so ex cited about the prospect of improving my playing at an even faster rate. Two years of practicing for three hours every week night followed by weekend-long tourna ments passed until one summer I decided

to try out for the National Team. I didn't even make the first round of selections.

I kept working and didn't let the re jection discourage me. That same year, I won a couple of “best goalkeeping of the tournament” awards, and when I tried out for the U.S. National Team again the following year, I got through all five selection rounds and made the team. I couldn't believe it.

For the first time, later in the year, we represented the U.S. in Budapest, Hun gary. We scrimmaged against the local club teams, which was really good for us because Hungary is better at water polo than the U.S., so it was a great learning experience and we all improved. The real water polo started after that. Freshman year at Harvard-Westlake and starting my first high school practice somehow felt more nerve-wracking than Buda pest. At the time, Brian Flacks was our head coach, and if you've ever met him, you know he is a very intimidating guy. I didn't get much playing time that first year because I was playing under the se nior Nolan Krutonog '19, who was the national team goalie for his age group as well. I became very competitive and really wanted to be the best.

I actually started getting varsity play ing time in high school during my junior year. It would've been sophomore year, but COVID-19 happened. We had a

great season but didn't quite make it to the finals. We lost by one to Huntington Beach in the semifinals. This year, I am a senior, and the rest of our starting varsity lineup are seniors. The whole team is do ing everything we can to win. My future goals are to play for a top 10 Division I college, and after that, I am going to try out for the Olympics. I've made the National Team every year since that first time, and there's no better feeling out there than representing the U.S. around the world.

People who know that water polo isn't horses in water also know it's one of the hardest sports in the world. Just like many other sports, water polo is a microcosm for the outside world. You need to be pre pared for each game, you need to put the group before yourself sometimes and you need to work hard in practices so you can feel confident in high-pressure situations like games or national team tryouts. I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who helped me get to the point I am now. Coaches, teammates, my mom and my friends have all been there for me when times were really rough, and I couldn’t be more thankful for that. During my time at Harvard-Westlake, I've definitely had a few bumps in the road both in and out of the pool. But what I have come to realize is that all the work I have put in has been completely worth it.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF BAXTER CHELSOM