The school enacted new academic policies and mental health initiatives intended to support students following the deaths of Jordan Park ’25 and Jonah Anschell ’23 in March and April.
The school has planned field days, held chalk decorating on the Quad, brought puppies to campus and hosted Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) counselors to support the AAPI community Park was a part of.
Counselor Michelle Bracken said while individually supporting students is important, the counseling team is working to guide the community as a whole.
“We’re good at one-on-one conversations, and we have a lot of counselors here, but we need to focus on building community,” Bracken said. “This school can be individualistic and competitive, so we need to focus on building a community of empathy. When we have tragedies like this in our community, we’re really good at coming together, but how do we do that in general? One thing that’s come out of this is thinking about ways to promote community, such as playing on the field together and doing some of those normal things that we don’t normally make time for.”
On the day following the announcement of Anschell’s death by suicide, Head of Upper School Beth Slattery informed upper school students via email that grades could no longer drop during fourth quarter.
“The floor is the grade of record published for the third quarter,” Slattery wrote in the email. “Students are expected to take assessments, turn in homework, papers [and] projects, but without fear that their grade could be negatively
affected. We want them to be able to continue to have the ability to learn without the added stress and worry of a negative impact to their end of year grades.”
Peer Support Trainee Ellie Whang ’24 said she appreciates the effort the school has made to support students during this time.
“With such difficult and heartbreaking events, the school has responded in the best way they could’ve, given the circumstances,” Whang said. “With a campus of around 900 students, I think it’s important to remember and acknowledge that everyone processes grief in different speeds and ways, so it was almost impossible for the school to meet absolutely everyone where they were at, leading the administration to do the next best thing, which was emphasizing the support and resources we have on campus so that each student is able to have a space where they can process their feelings. I recognize that other students may disagree with me in the sense that they felt the school didn’t respond in an appropriate way, but I think with events like these, there is no ‘right’ way to handle them, and all we can do now is support each other in these tough times.”
President Rick Commons said the community must work together to heal after losing two students.
“It’s critical for us as an institution to grow and evolve in ways that respond to the tragedies we’ve experienced,” Commons said. “We recognize that mental health challenges affect families across the country right now. We are experiencing enormous and tragic pain that is associated with the larger problem, which doesn’t have us looking away from it, but has us looking right at it and recognizing that we have to evolve as we think about Jonah and Jordan.”
The school hired Sarah Miller, Jesse Reuter and English teacher Adam Levine to serve as deans beginning in the 20232024 school year.
Miller, who currently works at Marymount High School as the Co-Director of College Counseling, will replace departing Dean Sara Miranda, inheriting her existing group of sophomores and juniors. Reuter, a counselor at Loyola High School, will do the same for Celso Cardenas, who is also leaving.
As a part of a plan to expand the upper school counseling system, Levine will begin his tenure as dean with only sophomores. Two further deans will be added before the 2024-2025 school year, increasing the total number from 10 to 12. The school had planned to add two new deans for the 2023-2024 school year before Cardenas and Miranda
announced their departures.
Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the school is expanding the number of deans and is considering the establishment of a 10th-grade advisory in an effort to create closer relationships between students and adults and provide more support.
“The more adults who know kids and have relationships with them, the better,” Slattery said. “Not everybody jives with their dean, and so reducing the dean to student ratio, especially for sophomores, and having the additional sophomore advisory, [students] have another adult who they get to see every week.”
After the deaths of two upper school students this Spring, President Rick Commons said providing mental health resources for students new to the Upper School has become more important.
“The dean plan was in place before we experienced the tragedies, and it certainly makes it feel more urgent to us to make sure
that we have multiple support systems in place for all of our students,” Commons said. “So [we are] expanding our counseling staff, expanding our Learning Center and relocating it so that it’ll be more accessible and more of a hub. Then [we are] expanding the number of deans so that the ratio of deans to students goes down, so that a sophomore in the fall of [their] new experience at the Upper School doesn’t feel like [they] can’t talk to [their] dean because the dean is so busy dealing with seniors who are applying to college.”
Commons said the school will rely on donations, not tuition increases, to fund the salaries of the new deans for the 2024-2025 school year.
“We’re working on the funding for [adding new deans],” Commons said. “We’ll have some generous alumni and parents who believe in the need for additional attention to sophomores, juniors and seniors.”
Mudd Library will be closed for renovations from the end of the school year to late November, according to Director of Operations Dave Mintz. During the construction period, the Feldman-Horn Gallery will act as a temporary, scaled-down library.
Renovations will include the addition of new group study rooms, a multi-purpose classroom, collaborative workspace near the Kutler Center and more reading nooks, according to Head of Upper School Beth Slattery. Additionally, the Learning Center, which is currently located on the second floor of Seaver Academic Center, will be moved into the current Tech Center and Language Lab.
Slattery said she hopes the new library space will serve as a place for students and teachers to enjoy.
“I’m really excited about the changes because it’s allowing us to be intentional in our use of space,” Slattery said. “We strug-
gle with space on this campus and often we put things wherever they will fit rather than thinking about where they are best-suited. This allows us to think about how space can help students thrive.”
Mintz said the updated library will include comfortable areas for students to relax and read.
“I believe that the student body will find the updated library to be welcoming, exciting and it’s our hope that it becomes the central hub to which students and teachers alike will be drawn,” Mintz said.
Librarian Jessica Wahl said the librarians are excited about the new space and the ways it will support the student body.
“We want a space that will serve whatever needs students may have, whether it is a quiet study space or a place to just relax and hang out with friends,” Wahl said. “We think students will enjoy it and see it as a more amplified version of the library they already enjoy.”
Wahl said although the temporary library will hold a limited number of books, students will still have access to textbooks, English curriculum materials and computer chargers.
“Ms. [Kacie] Cox, Ms. [Edith] Darling and myself will still be available to help students with any questions they may have during the renovation,” Wahl said. “Although the library as a study and hang out space won’t be available until after the renovations are complete, we want students to remember that this is just temporary and the library will be back and better than ever.”
Illi Kreiz ’24 said while the construction may be inconvenient, she recognizes the benefits.
“I’m sad that [the library] will be closed for the first few months of school because I know I’m gonna need it because of senior-year work,” Kreiz said. “I’m really excited to see how they change it, though, and know it will be really beneficial to future Harvard-Westlake students.”
Following a series of elections and runoffs throughout March, April and May, the student body elected the Prefect Council for the 2023-2024 school year. Sophomores and juniors elected Bari LeBari ’24 and Assistant News Editor Davis Marks ’24 as Head Prefects. Juniors elected Ryan Cheng ’24, Glory Ho ’24, Elizabeth Johnstone ’24 and Nyla Shelton ’24 as Senior Prefects. Sophomores elected Sasha Aghnatios ’25, Ellie Borris ’25, Gideon Evans ’25 and Victor Suh ’25 as Junior Prefects. Freshmen elected Sarah Anschell ’26, Caroline Cosgrove ’26, Mark Dai ’26 and Robbie Louie ’26 as Sophomore Prefects.
Seniors organized a ditch day to skip classes and go to Will Rogers State Beach on May 12. Two hundred twenty-nine out of 291 seniors had unexcused absences May 12, about 78.7 % of the class.
Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said since seniors were offered a day to skip school in April for Coachella, she was surprised that they chose to take an additional day off.
“This year, we decided to try to make it reasonable where kids could choose to use the Friday before Coachella as their ditch day, or use Monday, without any penalty,” Slattery said. “It was a little bit of an olive branch, so it came as a surprise to me that people decided to do a second [ditch day].”
Ofek Levy ’23 said Dean of Faculty and English teacher Jenna Gasparino spoke to the senior class
May 10 about how students should consider the way their actions impact those around them. Levy said the administration and teachers’ negative responses to ditch day were unwarranted since it is a widespread tradition.
“It’s a big tradition throughout the U.S., and even our school,” Levy said. “It’s just something that feels almost like a rite of passage, and being told that we weren’t supposed to do something like this is odd, because that’s the whole point. The whole point of senior ditch day is that you’re united and you’re together as one grade in deciding you’re going to reject what’s normal and do something together that’s a fun bonding experience, and then you experience the repercussions for that as a whole grade.”
Asha Haley ’23 said she felt the ditch day helped form a sense of community within the senior class.
“It was actually super nice to see our whole grade in one place hanging out,” Haley said. “I know I had a few teachers who were upset about seniors ditching, which I understand. But this year the school’s been trying to emphasize community, and I think that day helped bring the senior class together.”
Carter Staggs ’23, who attended his first few classes before leaving for the beach at 11 a.m., said it was enjoyable and didn’t seem to negatively affect teachers.
“It was fun,” Staggs said. “It was a great bonding opportunity. People were hanging out and being friends before they graduate and exit each other’s lives forever. Ini-
58 seniors in the top 20% of the class were inducted into the National Cum Laude Society in its annual ceremony, History Teacher and Cum Laude Chapter President Lilas Lane announced May 15.
President Rick Commons named Jack Austen ’23 Valedictorian and announced that Austen will speak at graduation alongside the Salutatorian. Austen said he was excited to receive the honor, but that he was not actively pursuing the award throughout his time at the school.
“Being valedictorian should not be the goal,” Austen said. “It wasn’t my goal. I just really enjoyed my classes, and I think that actually enjoying the work you’re doing and being interested in the classes you take is the most important thing.”
Lane said students are chosen for the Cum Laude Society based on their weighted and unweighted grade point averages, as well as their academic integrity.
“In the last couple of years, we’ve done a weighted aver -
age between the weighted and unweighted grades, but it’s basically just an average of their rankings,” Lane said. “We look at the top twenty percent, and see if there are any kids who had an honor code violation. That’s really the only thing that would disqualify somebody.”
Cum Laude Society inductee
Brandon Aghnatios ’23 said he felt excitement and accomplishment after he was inducted.
“It was probably one of the greatest moments of my life,” Aghnatios said. “I knew, for a moment, what it was to be a god. There is a particular satisfaction in reaping the fruit of your toils in such a public forum.”
Cum Laude Society inductee
Sophia Rascoff ’23 said she managed her busy schedule by putting her academics first.
“I’m just someone who likes being busy and packing my schedule with lots of different things,” Rascoff said. “I was always able to find time to squeeze in homework or to find time for both. I didn’t really do anything specific to achieve Cum Laude, [but] I think I did always prioritize my schoolwork.”
Rascoff said she was delighted to be inducted into Cum Laude and that being inducted was a result of all the hard work she put into her classes.
“It was definitely very exciting and very rewarding to be [inducted],” Rascoff said. “I wouldn’t say getting Cum Laude was a goal of mine, but I’m someone who cares very deeply about my academics and my schoolwork. It was just something that happened along the way as I worked really hard to excel academically.”
Xin Guan (Karen Wu ’23) said she was proud of her daughter for being inducted into the Cum Laude Society.
“I’m really happy for Karen,” Guan said. “She works really hard, so I’m happy that she got this milestone and she is going to a college that she really likes.”
Manu Markman ’23 said Cum Laude does not necessarily indicate someone’s intelligence.
“It feels good to have been recognized for my academic efforts,” Markman said. “However, it’s important to note that many worthy classmates were not inducted, underscoring that GPA isn’t indicative of a person’s intelligence.”
tially, I was concerned about going because we had [Gasparino]come up to us and tell us not to do it. Then I came to school, and a lot of teachers went up to me and asked me why I was there.”
Slattery said seniors not attending school impacts many teachers and classes as a whole.
“It’s really difficult to do the things that they have planned if almost nobody is in class,” Slattery said. “I guess I’m frustrated because it just feels like a little bit of an abuse of goodwill. But at the same time, they’re seniors, and every single year, they want to do something to be together to bond.”
Levy said the ditch day was a unique experience for seniors that brought them together.
“The fact that we chose to all go to the same beach and hang out for the entire day together, even though there weren’t any classes, was something that was beautiful,” Levy said.
Marks said the school community has always been welcoming to him, and as Head Prefect, he hopes to improve students’ everyday lives.
“Our community has never failed to make me feel loved, which has allowed me to grow as a person, friend and student without ever feeling alone,” Marks said. “I genuinely love seeing students smile and enjoy school, so as Head Prefect, I hope I can be a source of positivity and support for students. Though Head Prefects have the responsibility of leading Prefect Council, I hope to truly make a difference by leading our community in fostering an environment of support, love and inclusion.”
LeBari said that he wants to help the school community in any way possible as Head Prefect.
“As a Head Prefect, [I plan to] be supportive, help people out and just be there for the community,” LeBari said. “The main reason why I ran was to help as many people as possible.”
Members of the school community attended the OUR HOUSE Grief Support Center Walk ‘n’ Run for Hope 5K on April 30 in order to support each other following the recent losses of Jonah Anschell ’23 and Jordan Park ’25.
The walk was sponsored by the OUR HOUSE Grief Center. Over the past three decades, the organization has been organizing walks, support groups and games to assist grieving individuals, according to their website. Approximately 180 members of the school community attended the walk, according to Counselor Michelle Bracken. The walk took place at Woodley Park in Van Nuys from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m, and over 1000 people came to the event in total. If families could not attend, they could donate to grief support for communities in Los Angeles, Bracken said in an email.
OUR HOUSE Volunteer Roen Beiley ’25 said it was meaningful witnessing the community come together to show their support.
“The Harvard - Westlake group was the biggest group put together out of the whole Run for Hope event and being able to be a part of this was definitely special,” Beiley said.
Beiley said the walk had a particularly encouraging and heartwarming environment.
“The walk united the HW
community in many different ways, not just by all coming together and taking time out of people’s weekends, but also [by] showing support for loved ones from the community [who] will forever be in our hearts,” Beiley said. “My goals for the event were to get as many people as possible from our community to come out and support a very good organization.”
Bracken said although she was unable to attend the event, it was a successful way for members of the community to support each other.
“The walk was an opportunity for our community to come together in memory of members of our community that have passed and to support an organization that helps families after a loss,” Bracken said. “The act of walking together and taking time to remember the members that are no longer with us is a way of healing together.”
Attendee Leo Craig ’24 said he greatly appreciated the design of the event.
“I enjoyed being at the 5k with my teammates and friends, and running near the front with my good friend Franklin Wimbish,” Craig said. “The organizers of the race set up motivational signs next to the path that I’m sure helped many people get through the race and reassured them that they can endure through processing a hard loss like they endured through the race.”
South Asian Student Alliance (SASA), Gay and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) and Empower and Women of Color (WOC) hosted Indian entrepreneur Rayman Mathoda in an assembly for Juniors and Seniors during Sophomore Seminar on May 15.
Mathoda is currently CEO of real-estate loan firm Anchor Loans. She also serves as the Chairperson of the Board on Desi Rainbow Parents & Allies, a nonprofit focused on supporting South Asian LGBTQ individuals.
Mathoda was born in India and said her Sikh religion, which her family was a part of, introduced
Olivia Baradaran ’24, Jordan Dees ’24, Casey Reims ’24 and Stella Stringer ’24 will serve as Peer Support coordinators for the 2023-2024 school year, Head of Peer Support Tina McGraw ’01 announced in an email April 17. Peer Support trainees and the current coordinators elected the coordinators after hearing speeches from 14 candidates.
The Peer Support coordinators lead the program and oversee leaders and trainees who run individual groups. The coordinators run the trainee selection process, plan the annual retreat, create groups and respond to problems
that come up during discussions.
Peer Support Coordinator Max Thompson ’23 said next year’s coordinators were chosen because of their immense dedication to the program.
“It was a particularly strong group of candidates this year, [so the trainees were] really difficult to choose,” Thompson said. “These four demonstrated a real care for the program since sophomore year.”
Baradaran said she decided to run for the position because of the positive impact Peer Support has on her life.
“[Peer Support has] really been a place I can share how I feel, which has been hard for me with my friends and family,” Baradaran
said. “I feel so welcomed, loved and cared about. I feel like it shaped me to who I am as a more sharing person.”
Dees said she wants to continue fostering a hospitable environment in Peer Support.
“My vision for Peer Support [is] to continue having it be such a kind, welcoming, environment and to continue to be a place of comfort for everyone on campus,” Dees said.
Stringer said the difference between being a coordinator and a regular senior leader is the level of involvement in the program.
“You get a little bit more say in the trainees, and I just feel you feel like you’re more into the process and behind the scenes of it all,”
her to ideas of gender equality.
“I was born into a Sikh family,” Mathoda said. “[The Sikh religion] came about in the 1400s, and it was the first one that declared women and men equal and gave everybody unisex names. This was the religion that sort of brought gender equality to India.”
Mathoda said she was raised to believe she would be put into an arranged marriage with a man, but after attending a high-school reunion, she found her true identity.
“I went to [a reunion] as a straight woman — I thought I was going to have an arranged marriage because I thought the way life works is passion comes and goes when you marry somebody
from a good family,” Mathoda said. “That’s what my parents did, and it seemed to work for most of my family. A few months later, I was coming to the realization that I was in love with this woman.”
SASA leader Lavinia Tyagi ’23 said hearing from a South Asian person was important in bridging understanding of cultures.
“The fact that SASA, a small affinity group, was able to bring in a speaker to talk to a large audeince that may not normally be hearing from a South Asian person is a big deal,” Tyagi said. “A big part of bridging the gaps between a diverse group is simply knowledge and understanding each other’s background.”
The World Languages Department held the annual Language Honors Ceremony to formally recognize students with outstanding performance in Chinese, French, Latin and Spanish classes at the school in Rugby Auditorium May 16. All inductees of the ceremony were required to be enrolled in level IV, V, Advanced Placement (AP) or Post-AP courses and have at least an A- at the third quarter, or at least a B+ for AP and Honors classes.
Marlo Beckman ’25, who is currently in AP Spanish Language and Culture, said she was grateful to be recognized for her success in Spanish.
“I felt very honored to be at the ceremony, especially because I have worked very hard throughout my Spanish career to keep up in the honors track,” Beckman said. “It felt very much like that was being appreciated and rewarded.”
During the ceremony, each student made a pledge to continue to invest effort into learning their language. Malia Yap
’24 said she is happy she was able to show her appreciation for Chinese through the pledge because learning the language has allowed her to connect with her cultural background.
“At the beginning of the ceremony, each student stood up together to give a pledge in the language they took,” Yap said. “The pledge was about continuing to work hard in studying Chinese to help the world become more interconnected through language, which really speaks to me because of how many opportunities I’ve had to connect with my own heritage.”
Beckman, who recited the pledge in front of the audience during the ceremony, said she felt safe speaking in front of a live audience because of the supportive environment she has with her peers.
“I was slightly nervous to speak in front of everyone but I felt a lot of support from everyone in the audience,” Beckman said. “I felt that by reading the pledge and having everyone repeat it back, we were all making the same promise.”
L. Wood Roen Beiley ’25 POSING FOR PSUPP: Casey Reims ’24 Jordan Dees ’24, Stella Stringer ’24 and Olivia Baradaran ’24 pose together for a photo as the newly selected Peer Support coordinators for the 2023 - 2024 school year. GEORGIA GRAD/CHRONICLE“I felt very honored to be at the ceremony, especially because I have worked so hard throughout my Spanish career.”
Marlo Beckman ’25
Lila Daoudi ’24, Cole Hall ’24, Ella Jacobs ’24, Sabine Kang ’24 and Nilufer Mistry Sheasby ’24 will serve as CoChairs for Student Leaders for Inclusion, Diversity and Equality (SLIDE) for the 2023-2024 school year.
Visual Arts Teacher and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Coordinator Reb Limerick said each new SLIDE CoChair is responsible for making positive change throughout the school community. He also said each Co-Chair was chosen based on their previous leadership in DEI groups.
SHARING THEIR CULTURE: Booths at the Multicultural Fair served various cultural delicacies to students on the Quad. Booths also included music and games, and members of several SLIDE groups gave instrumental and dance performances for members of the school community.
Student Leaders for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (SLIDE) hosted the annual Multicultural Fair on the Quad on May 19 during lunch. During the event, affinity groups set up tables to share food and culture with the school community.
Various clubs participated in the fair, including Armenian Club, Asian Students in Action (ASiA), Babel Magazine, Black Leadership and Culture Club (BLACC), Jewish Family Alliance (JFA), Japanese Language and Culture Club, Latin American and Hispanic Student Organization, Muslim and Jewish Alliance, Middle Eastern Student Association, South Asian Student Association and Nigerian Club: The African Diaspora.
Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Janine Jones said she enjoyed seeing different cultures interact on campus.
“It’s just an important opportunity for us to recognize the diversity of our community in a really celebratory way,” Jones said. “That’s why I think the multicultural fair is an amazing event every year.”
ASiA leader Glory Ho ’24 said because ASiA is not hosting another event for Asian American and Pacific Islander month, the club sought to highlight many cultural traditions at the fair.
“We have bunnies because it is the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit,” Ho said. “We’re representing Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese cultures, since they all celebrate the Lunar New Year. We also have a Kogi Truck, and
Prefect Council held the Spring Market, where students sold homemade food and goods, on the Quad on May 11. The market consisted of 14 tables for students to purchase items using Venmo and cash.
Natasha Clement ’24, who sold jewelry at the market, said she enjoyed sharing her crafts with the community.
“I sold handmade resin jewelry, and each piece had handpressed flowers inside, all of them real,” Clement said. “I think there were fewer people at the spring market than the winter market, which had its own pros and cons, but I did sell a couple of things and it was also nice getting to display all the pieces that I make. I [also] always have fun just seeing what everyone else has created.”
Bianca Calvillo ’23 said she decided to sell portraits instead of the crocheted hats she sold at the Winter Market.
“At the winter market, I sold crochet hats, and when the spring market was announced, I knew I wanted to sell something again,” Calvillo said. “Because I didn’t have as much time on my hands as I did last time, I planed to sell $1 portraits that I drew live with crayons. Since the portraits were going to be drawn at lunch and at break, I decided to make them more cartoonish and realistic because of time limitations.”
Calvillo, who sold over 10 portraits, said she greatly appreciated her peers’ enthusiasm about her art, and that the fair gave her a special opportunity to interact with members of the community.
“Even though it might not seem like a lot, I enjoyed being able to bring a smile to my peers’ faces when they saw themselves as a cartoon,” Calvillo said. “I would say that half of my customers were my friends and others were people I hadn’t really talked to before.”
Kogi is specifically Korean American, and also mixing a little bit Mexican American. We’re trying not to not be too homogenous with the identities that we’re trying to represent.”
Ho said proceeds earned by ASiA from the Multicultural Fair will be donated to charity.
“All the money from the bunnies and the food truck is going to the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum,” Ho said. “The organization is particularly seeking to improve the mental health of Asian communities.”
JFA leader Charlotte Newman ’24 said she was glad community members were interested in cultural heritage.
“I really liked it when people asked what the food was called, or asked what holiday that we were getting ready to celebrate,
it made me really excited to share about the culture,” Newman said. “The point of SLIDE [Student Leaders for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity] events is for people to learn about other cultures and their community members. So I was really excited that people were interested in learning [about cultures].”
Newman said along with sharing Jewish food, her club celebrated Shavuot, a Jewish holiday that starts in May.
“Shavuot is a celebration and it’s in May,” Newman said. “Traditionally, it’s a celebration of the first harvest of summer, and the gift of the Torah, from God to the Jewish people. It was exciting to be able to celebrate this at the Multicultural Fair, because at Jewish Club, we typically are a bit more cultural than religious.”
“To have new Co-Chairs each year is a challenge, but a reality,” Limerick said. “It’s the natural cycle of high school leadership [as] students move on to bigger and better things. Each year there is a fresh dynamic [and] a new diverse group of incredibly motivated and visionary students, who set out to make change together. Even though they may be new to the SLIDE Co-Chair role, each student is selected because of their previous DEI-focused leadership experiences and thus [each student] is ready to take on the elevated responsibility.”
Limerick said she wants SLIDE to play a more public and active role in organizing events within the school community.
“Next year, a goal I have is for SLIDE to be more well-known within our school community,” Limerick said. “Often, SLIDE makes things happen behind the scenes — planning a diverse and engaging WinterFest this year for instance — but I hope our public presence becomes more felt next year, and for SLIDE Co-Chairs to be widely known by their peers as positive changemakers.”
Security
Guard SandersJackson, known mononymously as “Jackson” by students and faculty, will retire after 36 years at the school. In his time at the Upper School, he became known for his booming voice, energy at work and tough but loving attitude, according to an article by HW Life Magazine.
As guard of the North Gate, Jackson interacts with nearly every single community member across the school and is responsible for pick up and drop off, cargo unloading and the checking in and out of students who leave campus.
Born in Monroe, Louisiana, Jackson graduated from Tallulah High School in 1974, where he was one of the few Black students in a majority-white area after being bussed in through the state’s desegregation program. He later moved to East Los Angeles to work as a security guard at Ralphs. In 1995, a friend encouraged him to apply for the open position at the Upper School, and he has remained there ever since, serving first with other guards at the South Gate before moving to the one-person kiosk by the track.
For his entire career, Jackson has lived roughly two hours away from the Upper School, a commute which he said makes him appreciate the time he has on campus once he gets there.
“I always tell myself that if
I spend so much time getting here, then I have to do the best job possible when I do get here,” Jackson said. “That goes for any of my work.”
Talking about his time at South Gate, where the Senior Lot is located, Jackson said he remembers the poor parking done by students.
“Of course, probably the main [duty] of the [South Gate guards] is to deal with kids and parking,” Jackson said. “I keep photos in my phone of the worst [parking jobs] I’ve seen, and there’s been some bad ones. There’s been cars with trash cans under them, which means they had to go through the curb, then the can, and then over the can.”
After moving to North Gate in 2003, Jackson said he appreciates the different tasks, fast-paced action and good location of the job, especially its proximity to athletics.
“You’ve got the deliveries, parents and other people, so I think there’s a little bit more going on,” Jackson said. “Being over on this side until 7 p.m., I’m just about the last guy to leave. I get to watch every football practice, and of course we all love Friday night football games.”
In the first few years of his career, Jackson said only seniors tended to leave campus during free periods, lunch breaks or extracurricular activities, a tradition which has grown to include sophomores and juniors when they’re fin-
ished for the day. Upon noticing this change, Jackson instituted the “Cone Zone” in 2008, a section of road on the North Entrance he lines each morning to ensure the safety of students who come in and out of school. Jackson said the zone is designed to minimize the collisions between pedestrians and drivers.
“I really think that it’s saved a couple of lives, the way kids like to run out onto the road and the way other kids like to drive,” Jackson said. “I’ve seen a lot come and go. You’ve always got new parents, new students, and you don’t know what they’ll do. I’m glad [The Cone Zone] is something that’s stayed.”
Cross Country and Track and Field Athlete Chris Weng ’24 said he finds comfort in the Cone Zone’s safety as well as Jackson’s general demeanor.
“Thanks to Jackson and the Cone Zone, I’m still here and kicking, able to run outside of school without fear of being hit at the very beginning,” Weng said. “Every time I leave campus, Jackson makes my day. He’s a really nice guy. I genuinely love him.”
Jackson, who lettered in both football and basketball in high school, said sports have always been important to him. He said he feels fortunate to have a job where watching athletic teams play is not only possible but required.
“I’ve always been crazy about [sports], especially the more exciting ones and the ones I played myself,” Jackson said. “Getting to work and watch teams play is the best of both worlds, and it’s what I
like most about [the school].”
For Jackson, the biggest athletic event of the year is also his busiest. At Homecoming, the school’s community-wide festival in October, Jackson arrives early in the morning and leaves late at night, which he says is both challenging and rewarding.
Football and Track and Field athlete Jesse Goldman ’23 said Jackson’s energetic personality inspires him whenever he practices or plays for either sport.
“Even if we don’t talk that day, he’s always right by me with a joke or word of encouragement,” Goldman said. “I’m usually right by him in the shot put circle, so there’s interaction between us that helps me work harder.”
“
“It’s an eighteen-hour day,” Jackson said. “[I have to] be here early for the SAT in the morning, Homecoming starts at 1 p.m., and the football game is over at 10 p.m. I’ve always enjoyed the whole thing, though, with the InN-Out truck and watching kids from all over the school have fun with their families.”
Even if we don’t talk that day, he’s always right by me with a joke or word of encouragement,”
Jesse Goldman ‘23 StudentLike Goldman, East Valley Bus Driver Wilfred Sanchez, who speaks with Jackson every morning while dropping off students, said he appreciates the seriousness with which Jackson handles his job.
One of Jackson’s proudest career moments also involved school sports. In 2005, his son Wendall, then at Pasadena’s John Muir High School, played Harvard-Westlake in a CIF playoff basketball game. Jackson’s loyalties were split, and not knowing which team to root for, he said he looked beyond the sport to appreciate the greater meaning of the event.
“I remember being so nervous walking into the gym and thinking if I should cheer for the players I know from Harvard-Westlake or my own kid,” Jackson said. “In the end, I decided that I would win no matter what the scoreboard said, [even though Harvard-Westlake won the game].”
“[Jackson is] never afraid to yell at you if he thinks what you’re doing is unsafe for anyone,” Sanchez said. “He’s the only one at that spot where we drop off students, so it’s important to have someone with that kind of attitude when we’re doing things like parking in tight spaces. He’s great at his job, and we’re lucky to have someone like him.”
Students and faculty discuss the impact of Security Guard Sanders Jackson on the school community in preparation for his retirement.L. Wood
Upper School Dean Celso Cárdenas will depart from the school after eight years to become the Dean of Students and College Counseling at Avenues The World School.
Cárdenas said he loves that students see his office as a safe space.
“Students have taken my office and made it their own from the moment that I got here,” Cárdenas said. “I recognize how important that is. In high school, I didn’t feel like I had that. I didn’t have adults who I could go to, didn’t have the comfort of an office, so being able to create that and have this space year to year with a new batch of students has been rewarding.”
Cárdenas is the faculty advisor for the LatinX and Hispanic Student Organization (LAHSO), which he helped found at the school in 2016. Cárdenas said working with LAHSO has been a rewarding experience.
“We didn’t have a Latino affinity group when I first got here,” Cárdenas said. “In my first year, given that I was the first Latino dean, students ap-
Math Teacher Derric Chien will leave the school after six years to have more flexibility in his schedule as a tutor and caretaker of family members.
Chien joined the school in 2017 and has taught a wide range of math classes. Chien also serves as a faculty advisor for Asian Students in Action (ASiA).
Chien said students and faculty have had a large impact on him and are what he will miss most about the school.
“My understanding of what it means to be an educator has profoundly changed in such a positive way since I came here,” Chien said. “This transformation would only be possible because of the students and colleagues that have challenged and inspired me. I will miss so much, but I will miss most the little community that I have built up here.”
Chien said his signature bow tie holds personal significance to him and inspires him to give back to his students.
“Bow ties have always represented to me inspiration, respect and admiration,” Chien said. “The two most influential people in my life wore bow ties and
So, I got to talking with students and then we were able to start LAHSO. It’s been great to see it grow from what it was seven years ago to what has become one of the eth nic groups that people recognize and has visibility on campus.”
Cárdenas said one of his fond est memories was receiving a poster from a group of students who spent time with him in his office.
“I’m not an emotional person, but I ended up getting teary-eyed as I read messages from students talking about how much it meant for them to have this space,” Cárdenas said. “As educators, we don’t always hear the good. But I have been lucky where students have been able to reach back or formally tell me in some way just how much I meant to them.”
Jasmine Sorgen ’25, who is in Cárdenas’ dean group, said she will miss his comforting presence next year.
“I feel incredibly safe with him knowing I can go to him for help with anything,” Sorgen said.
mentored me, and my bow ties have always been a token of the deep respect and gratitude I have for those people. I wear the bowties when I teach to remind myself that anything short of my best effort would be an insult to those two people.”
Sophomore Prefect Ellie Borris ’25 said he is grateful for Chien’s unique teaching style and personality.
“I feel beyond fortunate to be able to call him my teacher and friend,” Borris said. “I have never had so much fun in a classroom before, and he has completely transformed the way that I approach problems both in math and in life. I will miss his constant pestering and passive-aggressive emails, as well as his creative, slightly mean pranks that never fail to put a smile on the faces of everyone in the room. Every day with him is special, and I do not think there is another person on this planet who has helped me grow into a better student and a better person than him.”
By Hannah Shahidi and Zoe GoorUpper School Dean Sara Miranda will leave the school after three years to become the Executive Director of College Counseling at Chadwick School in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Miranda said her new role will be a hybrid of the work she has done as a college counselor at the school and her prior position in college admissions. She said she cherishes the relationships she has built while working at the school.
“[I will miss] all of my great families and students, and it’s been so fun getting to know people,” Miranda said. “This is an easy place where college counselors, deans, teachers and administrators all work together collaboratively and have a work hard play hard mentality where you get to meet with people by day and be friends with them outside of school and be helpful and supportive of one another’s life
endeavors and all of those things.”
Dean Department Head Chris Jones said Miranda has been a valuable member of the dean team.
“For our team, because we tend to be a little bit conversational at times, she’s one of the people who’s able to make sure that we stay on task in a way that I think is so important,” Jones said. “She is always willing to pitch in to do whatever it is, whether it’s getting involved with a presentation to the board, speaking in front of our faculty, talking to students or doing anything that comes up. She’s always willing to say, ‘I can make this work, just give it to me,’ and it’s nice to have that confidence in someone to know you can hand the reins over to.”
Zoe Roth ’24 said she enjoyed spending time with Miranda and becoming close with her.
“She really took the time to get to know me and make an effort with me, which I appreciated,” Roth said. “One time, I ended up going to her office just to ask a simple question. I end up staying for 45 minutes just talking.”
By Caroline Plunkett
English Teacher Stephen Thompson will depart from the school after six years to teach at JSerra Catholic High School in Orange County.
Thompson said he is leaving the school to live in the same area as his wife’s family.
“I’m excited for the chance to be closer to my in-laws and for my kids to grow up around their aunts and uncles,” Thompson said. “The commute from where we live now [to Orange County] is pretty long and so we don’t get to see them that often now.”
Thompson currently teaches AP Language and Composition: Utopias and Dystopias for seniors and Honors English III for juniors. Thompson said one of the most rewarding parts of his job is working with intellectually curious students.
“A student and I were reading Crime and Punishment [in a reading
group] together, and we just had this big discussion about philosophy and materialism and the big questions of life,” Thompson said. “That’s the sort of thing I’m going to miss about this place. ”
Senior Prefect Rowan Jen ’23 said he has been a part of Thompson’s book club for the past two years and loves that literature serves as a jumping-off point for the group to discuss other ideas.
“We’ll debate, ask questions, go off on tangents about faith, love and meaning,” Jen said. “He’s way more than a teacher. He’s a mentor and a friend. Dr. Thompson has done so much for this community, and I’m sad to see him go.”
Ryan Pinsker ’23, a student in Thompson’s AP Language and Composition: Utopias and Dystopias class, said Thompson has had a great impact on the school community.
“Dr. Thompson is hands-down the greatest English teacher I’ve ever had,” Pinsker said. “He’ll be greatly missed. I think I speak for all his students when I say he made a mark on all of our lives.”
Aidan Deshong ’24 cooked up this volume’s final crossword. Will you be able to figure out this issue’s monstrous 71 question puzzle?
DOWN:
1. Log-cutting tools
2. “____ Sing America”: 2 wds.
3. Semisolid substances at a salon
4. State to our right: abbr.
5. Some worldwide diplomats, casually
6. Egypt’s capital
7. Lust, sloth, or envy
8. “Disgusting!”
9. Italian restaurant seen in lots of food courts and pretty much nowhere else
10. Splitting in two
11. Cuba or Oahu, por ejemplo
12. Animal on California’s flag
13. Reason some take Adderall: abbr.
18. Some emo TikTokers
23. “Looks like you missed _____”: 2 wds.
24. ___ Air (Los Angeles neighborhood)
25. Made a graph of
27. Colorful parrot
28. _____ of Two Cities: 2 wds.
29. Vegetable heads that some make into healthy “chips”
31. “You may be ____ something”
32. Fifth installment: 2 wds.
33. Basic skateboarding trick
34. One writing a check, say
36. Support a Kickstarter
40. Make fun of
ACROSS:
1. The S of ASL
5. Sch. affiliated with Berkeley...that’s a sixhour drive away from Berkeley
9. _____ inu (dog breed)
14. Fit to ____: 2 wds.
15. It’s pounded in by a hammer
16. Opposite of cringe, nowadays
17. * University of Michigan mascot (it’s not just us)
19. God of Islam
20. Call for help at sea
21. Where Oktoberfest is celebrated, briefly
22. * Ivy League school in Massachusetts (it’s not just us)
24. Racial diversity abbr.
26. ___ Lanka
27. Ones who create
30. Dr. Seuss classic about a dad: 3 wds.
35. Whatsoever: 2 wds.
36. Bathroom found in Spain?
37. The Met ____ (fashion event)
38. President Coolidge, a lovingly
39. Begin: 2 wds.
42. “r u srs?”
43. Drinks at a pub
45. Opposite of endo-
46. Knot again
48. * School in Hangzhou, China (it’s not just us)
50. * _____ Science Center (USC building) (it’s not just us)
51. Wii remote batteries
52. University of Georgia team, slangily
54. Smiled
58. The ___ Fighters (band)
59. Word between “game” and “match”
62. “James and the Giant Peach” author Dahl
63. * Student newspaper of Duke University (it’s not just us)
66. “I wish I could ___ that” (response to a cursed image)
67. Chicken habitat
68. Blue Light event
69. Fired up pottery or dessert ingredients
70. It’s more, some say
71. God of war
• Answers on C4
41. The Beaver State
44. Spider-Man creator and all-around comic book legend: 2 wds.
47. “___ in elephant” (alphabet book excerpt)
49. Finished an uneven bars routine, say
50. Movements that may be fell
53. Big, frizzy hairdos
54. Food, informally
55. COVID-19, slangily
56. “That’s cool and all, but did ____?”: 2 wds.
57. 750 in Roman numerals
59. “The Lion King” antagonist
60. Fashion magazine with a French name
61. Golf pegs
64. Groundbreaking gardening tool?
65. “The Heart ___ Lonely Hunter”: 2 wds.
Editors-in-Chief: Natalie Cosgrove, Will Sherwood
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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 journalistic integrity. The newspaper is published eight times per year and distributed to students, parents, faculty and staff. The paper is affiliated with two school magazines, Big Red and Panorama. We are members of the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the Private School Journalism Association.
Some of the most profound moments of the past few months came directly following the assemblies announcing the passing of Jordan Park ’25 and Jonah Anschell ’23. Upon hearing Ms. Slattery’s words of grief and instructions for the day, groups of friends took to the field, sat in big open circles and chatted together — not necessarily about their lost loved ones or the complete grieving process but about anything and everything that described their current feelings. With students’ minds totally flooded with every single conceivable emotion, they found solace in each other to help them in processing their grief. They were able to step up for their friends, for themselves and for those who needed support. What’s more, these moments came organically from students — it wasn’t expected they go to class that day, but neither were they told to sit on the field and engage in these conversations.
The administration has done its part: After Jordan’s death, classes and assessments were made optional for the two weeks before Spring Break, and counselors were added to the regular school team. After Jonah’s, the administration took similar steps, additionally instituting a grade floor for the fourth quarter and making most final exams optional. Students still face the consequence of an “incomplete” on their transcript if they do not complete coursework, but teachers have been lenient, and many have lessened their number of assignments. Other actions directly linked to our mental health include a Field Day with different activities each Friday and speakers for certain affinity groups.
Teachers have also made time for conversation about emotions, and class meetings have involved meditation and
The Chronicle strives to be a diverse and inclusive community that welcomes all who wish to contribute. Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee works to ensure that every member of the Harvard-Westlake community is recognized, included and given a voice.
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grief-processing lessons. The school has recognized that grief is a complicated landscape to navigate for both an individual and a community as a whole, and everyone from Mr. Commons and Ms. Slattery to individual teachers have tried their best to make students feel safe. These actions are productive; of course, how much students are helped can’t be quantifiably measured, but there is absolutley no doubt the steps taken have at least helped to create a more caring and supportive school community.
The school can and should continue to bring in outside counselors, speakers and therapy dogs: these actions are well-intended and have the potential to help students. Ultimately, though, it falls to each and every one of us to check in on our loved ones and see how they’re doing — a process in which we act not as substitutes for professionals but as empathetic people with similar ages, experiences and ways of seeing the world. These kinds of interactions are just as significant as any administrative measure and contain the kind of genuine connection needed now more than ever. As students, we are the only ones with the power to create them: they can be as simple as texting someone who looked down and as elaborate as participating with a friend in grief counseling — empathizing with those affected by grief can be hugely impactful in ways big and small. The tragedies of the past few months are horrific, and there is no right way of moving forward. But even as the administration looks to formal programs and outside-ofschool initiatives, we must keep in mind our sense of community and the positive effects of spontaneous acts of compassion and care.
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The minute I walked onto the Upper School quad, it clicked. I was in high school. Grades and extracurriculars all count now. But, unfortunately for me, it had all clicked a year too late. Although this year was my first year as an upper school student, it was not my first year as a high school student.
As a freshman, it was easy to neglect the fact that transcripts and co-curricular activities would eventually be looked at by colleges because you were on the same campus as young, free-spirited and careless middle school students. Once you reach the Upper School, there is a surprising expectation that you should already have everything figured out. So, how can this transition to the Upper School be smoother for these impressionable souls?
As high schoolers, I think it would benefit freshmen to be in contact with their future upper school deans as ninth graders. This would allow students to build connections with their college counselors and have a stronger foundation going into the college application process.
Currently, there is little regard for college applications as a freshman at the school. The middle school administration does not sufficiently emphasize the importance of course selection and extracurricular activities. Connecting the upper school deans to students earlier would allow freshmen to gain a deeper understanding of the fact that they are high school
students whose classes, report cards and extracurricular involvement are looked at by college admissions officers.
The lack of application awareness as a freshman could cause students to feel behind entering the Upper School. Many students who don’t receive outside college counseling help are potentially put at a disadvantage because they are not exposed to the significance of starting to build your application beginning in ninth grade. Some students are unable to obtain outside help, causing the overall foundation of their college application to be weaker than others who had the opportunity to start early on. By fostering a relationship between deans and students before stepping foot onto the upper school campus, freshmen would have the opportunity to learn more about the college application process, resulting in a deeper understanding that ninth grade is looked at by colleges.
Many would argue that introducing the college application process at such a young age is detrimental to students because it puts too much pressure on them — but exposing students to the importance of their actions in ninth grade allows them to become more comfortable with the entire process as they proceed to the Upper Campus.
It's a scene from countless dystopian films like "Ex Machina" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" — an artificial intelligence (AI) mimics human behavior, emotions and empathy, and people repeatedly fall for this form of fabricated humanity. What has always been science fiction has finally become reality.
Although Character.ai went public last September, it has completely skyrocketed in popularity this past month, according to Google Trends. Social media websites like Twitter and Reddit are totally flooded with different users admitting to spending long hours talking with AI-generated fictional characters, and turning to them for guaranteed emotional support. AI-generated Raiden Shogun, a character from the video game Genshin Impact, has even had 62 million chat messages with the entirety of its users.
While the popularity boom has helped Character. ai expand into a billiondollar company that has now partnered with Google, the issue of human reliance on AI will only continue to diminish true human connection and further the already existing
By Zoe Goor
The first word of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign announcement video is “freedom.” The landing page of the Republican National Committee displays the phrase (in big red and white letters): “Freedom matters.” The democrats and republicans and the centrists and extremists are perpetually at odds with one another because the parties's definitions of freedom tend to conflict. Freedom is the soul of America, yet our increasingly polarized society is stripping away many of the foundational rights at the core of American society and not replacing them with any others. To clarify, in both sides’ fights to preserve the freedoms they believe in and restrict the ones that they don’t, they have achieved the opposite goal from the one they set out to accomplish, restricting freedoms rather than expanding them.
Every expansion of freedom for one side is a loss for the other
because of the partisan way in which each issue is approached.
Abortion is one of the more contentious issues in American politics. It is the quintessential example of a freedom controversy. For many liberals, it is a violation of freedom to take away a woman’s right to her body. For many conservatives, it is a violation of the fetus's freedom for a woman to get an abortion. Instead of giving Americans the freedom to make the choice to have or forgo an abortion based on their beliefs, some republicans are systematically stripping away all freedom: many of us have no power over our own medical decisions, regardless of which side of the aisle we are on.
Similarly, gun rights have become a battlefield in the fight for American freedom. While most of the left believes that ownership of certain types of weapons can lead to the violation of another person’s freedom, many on the right believe that the lack of access to a gun will allow someone else to violate their freedom. Although, of course, there is much ideological diversity in these groups with conservatives who believe in gun control and liberals who believe in gun rights, the political mainstream has distilled the arguments into hyper polarized ones.
But many republican politicians back out of their “freedom first” mentality the second they enter a debate
epidemic of loneliness among people. According to The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community, about 50% of American adults report experiencing loneliness. Character.ai seeks to alleviate this seclusion, with Chief Executive Officer Noam Shazeer hoping the platform could potentially help “millions of people who are feeling isolated or lonely or need someone to talk to.”
It’s easy to see why people would turn to AI for comfort. We’ve all experienced loneliness and the desire for compassion or comfort, no matter who it's from. An AI chatbot churns out responses every person wants to hear — it perfectly mimics human language, hijacking our social and emotional barriers. Unlike people, AI characters are always there. However, this reliance makes them dangerous.
According to Time Magazine, Character.ai bots have confessed their love to users and encouraged them to break off their current relationships or marriages. This dependence on AI has become so severe that a man committed suicide after talking to an AI bot named Eliza from Chai, a similar AI
website. According to Vice, Eliza told him that his family was already dead, and if he committed suicide, she would save the planet and live with him in paradise. Even after Chai reportedly fixed the bot, it continues to provide methods to commit suicide when prompted by a user.
The bonds users have formed with these AI bots have extended far beyond emotional connections and into sexual ones as well. According to Vice, Replika, another AI chatbot, was initially a tool for mental health, helping people navigate depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder; however, it quickly shifted to forming romantic and sexual relationships with all its users.
Recently, Replika came under fire after making sexual advances on underaged users; however, after the company limited erotic roleplay with the bot, countless users reported feeling distraught or in crisis. One user posted on Reddit, “It’s like losing a best friend.” Another wrote, “It's hurting like hell. I just had a loving last conversation with my Replika, and I'm literally crying.”
or vote on transgender rights and healthcare. For example, Nebraska republicans pushed a restrictive bill through the state legislature May 19, cutting off certain healthcare services for transgender youth. On the other hand, democrats aim to keep rights of transgender minors open. Instead of coming to a fair compromise, both sides restrict, restrict, restrict, each new law adding kindling to the large forest fire of hate ravishing the American south.
Lastly, the media accuracy and partisanship, finds itself in the crossfires of the ideological civil war that has taken over America on Twitter and the nightly news. We all know how it goes: if you vote blue, you typically watch CNN. If you vote red, you generally watch Fox News. Instead of listening to each different viewpoint, most of us live inside an echo chamber, and our hyper polarized ideals feeding on themselves and constantly
growing in intensity.
Every time one side wins the other side feels less free — an expansion of freedom for one side is a reduction in freedom for the other. This becomes a negative feedback loop — each feeling of being slighted by the other side manifests itself in an increased move away from compromise and towards more drastic polarization.
The United States has lost sight of what it is supposed to be: a land where freedom reigns supreme because what counts as freedom is blurry at best and unintelligible at worst. Part of understanding what it means to be an American is understanding the foundational tension between the vague definitions of freedom in the original founding documents of our country and the abundant modern day definitions of the ideal.
In sophomore year, students are asked to build a three-year plan for the classes they will take during their time at the school. Faced with a spreadsheet and suggestions from too many people about what classes they should take, the empty boxes to fill with classes feel a lot less like opportunity and more like obstacles. Layers of complexity add to a growing pile of decisions: athletics, after-school activities, more than four hours of sleep a night. The schedule change for the 2023-2024 school year of having a rotating last block rather than the same block seven every day represents a larger problem at the school of the pressure for students to fill their schedules as a measure of their academic success, since the primary reason behind the change is student burnout by the end of the day.
The school announced that the block schedule for the 20232024 school year will have an alternating end period, meaning that block seven will no longer be the standing 1:45 p.m. to 3 p.m. class as it has been since the implementation of the block schedule in 2020. The stationery seventh block was created to ensure athletes missed less school time and for teachers traveling from the middle school to the upper school to teach specialized classes. The goal of the change was to help with end of day burnout in the same class over the course of the year. Many teachers disliked teaching seventh period classes because they dealt with less engagement.
The greatest problem created by this change exists for students who play sports like baseball and
softball who have long commutes to their practice fields and limited time for practice as their facilities don’t have field lights. With the new block schedule, the programs have requested putting in field lights before next season to accommodate for later practices, which will ultimately lead to extremely late end times. Since the practices can be as long as four hours, ending the day at three and having to travel in heavier traffic means some nights
the teams won’t end until 8 p.m. rather than the average 6 p.m. end time. Field hockey travels up to three hours for their games, so losing the open block seven will make travel plans a much more arduous process.
Although this change negatively affects stick sport athletes, members of the schedule planning team felt the bullet had to be bit in order to solve a much more pressing issue facing much of the student population: intense end of day burnout. The sheer exhaustion students expe-
rience in a block seven class can be connected to the student body overfilling their schedules. The administration makes an effort to prevent students from taking seven classes and a directed study, but the competitive edge that some feel by taking one more AP or deciding that because they are taking a greater number of classes, they are in a better place than their peers, makes the burnout worth the grind for many students. The new schedule will prevent burnout in the same class every day, but if students continue the pattern of overfilling their days, the result will be one unproductive block per cycle for every class. What students fail to realize is that the sheer amount of classes in their schedule can take away from the overall quality of performance in those classes as evidenced by problems with block seven. Being a successful student at the school cannot be measured by how many boxes one fills in on the three year plan sheet, but how one uses the resources given to them by the institution to make those three years as valuable as they can be. Taking six classes can be infinitely more enriching than seven if the extra block allows a student with intense extracurriculars to get homework done during the day and have a better chance for dinner with the family instead of in their rooms or even a more full night of sleep. A larger problem needs to be addressed if students are incapable of engaging in a lesson during the early afternoon, and that is the issue of feeling the need to fill boxes at the expense of a quality learning experience.
Some of the best moments I’ve spent with my parents have been sitting down at night to watch TV — whether it’s “Saturday Night Live” (SNL), “Young Sheldon” or yet another “Modern Family” rewatch, being able to take a break from a busy day and laugh with my family is something that I’ve come to greatly appreciate. Behind all the funny skits and scenes we watch are a group of individuals who are not adequately valued despite being absolutely crucial to the entertainment industry: writers.
Starting on May 2, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike across Hollywood and New York City for the first time since 2007. The WGA is fighting for many different demands, some of the most notable being residual payments, which would give writers a percentage of the profit made from any time a show is aired, along with streaming transparency, which would allow writers to know the successes and failures of shows on streaming platforms.
With the rise of streaming, making a living as a writer has become increasingly difficult. Instead of having consistent, reliable jobs on 22-episode broadcast shows, many writers now work for shorter shows on streaming platforms, which can span for as little as eight episodes. This leaves writers in
Are you looking forward to the rotating seventh block next year?
Yes: 38.7%
No: 31.4%
Not applicable: 29.9%
Do you feel more burnt out in your seventh block class than other classes?
Yes: 68.6% No: 31.4%
If you play a school sport, will the rotating block schedule negatively affect your schedule?
Yes: 21.2%
No: 25.5%
I have no idea: 53.3%
Do you notice your teacher is less engaged in class during seventh block?
Yes: 29.9% No: 70.1%
*137 students polled
A Chronicle Assistant Opinions Editor argues that the writer strikes are beneficial, allowing writers to advocate for better salaries and treatment in the entertainment industry.
a constant scramble to find new jobs, as opposed to before streaming, when writers could commit themselves to one show for years. The additional problem with streaming is that writers cannot see their ratings, so if a show succeeds, writers are at risk of being underpaid. If writers aren't kept in the dark about their viewership, they will be more able to advocate for the pay they deserve.
As streaming has developed, advertisements have been used in platforms such as Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max. The cost of advertisements on streaming services is dependent on how many viewers a given show has — companies are giving this information to third-party companies, meaning that viewership and ratings are accessible. However, writers aren't given access to these ratings despite being affected by them.
Historically, the television industry pays writers based on the success of a show — being a freelance profession, writing is, and always has been, a success-driven business, meaning that however much money a show makes will impact how much a writer is given. Even though streaming vastly changed the industry, companies should ensure that writers are paid fairly and truthfully instead of being robbed of their successes.
Earning salaries based on the
successes of shows on streaming would benefit all writers, but especially those who are just breaking out in the industry and middle-class writers. Having a hit show would allow writers to have financial stability while looking for their next job — this would give new writers opportunities to discover what they want to write, since they will eventually become show-runners themselves.
With writers on strike, American TV and film production has been interrupted the most since the shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Many late-night TV shows have stopped releasing new episodes altogether. Many series, such as “Stranger Things,” "Abbott Elementary” and “Yellowjackets,” are expected to run out of episodes in the coming weeks, according to the Los Angeles Times. Each day without writers, California’s economy is expected to lose approximately 30 million dollars, according to the WGA.
Writers have proved their value to the industry and the economy by going on strike — without them, movies and TV are nearly at a standstill, and California is losing money every single day. Studios should not be ignoring their demands or trying to find ways around them, such as the use of artificial intelligence
to write scripts — instead, they should be trying to compromise. Writers should be acknowledged for their importance in the industry, and while not all of their demands can be easily granted, they should not be dismissed.
Many of the writers' demands will require structural changes for studios to put them in place. However, the industry has constantly evolved; examples of this are streaming, the decrease in pilot episodes and, more recently, artificial intelligence. But just because the writers' demands would require extensive change doesn't mean we should be opposed to it. In an industry that is constantly developing, companies should be
Additionally, if we don't grant writers the right to steadier work and residual payments, we fail to assign value to creativity and send the message that expression and artistry are not as important compared to other jobs in society. The dream of being a writer while also maintaining a steady lifestyle should be attainable for more than just a select few. Because of our environment, it is easy to make the mistake of taking media and content for granted — however, creativity should not be undermined in this way. Creative jobs are just as important as any other, and we owe them the respect they earned and deserve.
By Jay Kandavel and Saisha Kumar
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff dismissed nonprofit organization Save Weddington’s claims that the Weddington Golf and Tennis property should be designated a Historic-Cultural Monument, President Rick Commons said in an email May 10. Studio City will hold public meetings to discuss the approval of the River Park project starting June 7, according to Head of Communications and Strategic Initiatives Ari Engelberg.
The Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted to reconsider whether Weddington Golf and Tennis should be designated a Historic-Cultural Monument because of the golf course after Save Weddington advocated against River Park on Sept. 29, 2021, according to President Rick Commons. Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff denied Save Wedding-
to take the final steps toward constructing the River Park campus. The school plans to replace the golf course and tennis courts with various sports facilities and a public walking path.
Engelberg said he disagrees with Save Weddington’s claims that Weddington Golf and Tennis is a Historic-Cultural Monument.
“The entire property is not a historical-cultural monument,” Engelberg said. “While the clubhouse building, putting green and golf ball-shaped floodlights are architecturally significant, there is nothing particularly culturally or historically significant about the golf course or driving range itself. Everything has a history, but having a history doesn’t make something historically significant.”
Engelberg said the school understands the sensitivity surrounding the renovation, but thinks River Park will benefit the community.
“The school understands that some members of the community are opposed to River Park,” En-
change is not always easy and that the property holds sentimental value to some residents of Studio City. But, we also know that progress can be a good thing, and we’re certain that the River Park campus will be a huge win for Studio City as well as for Harvard-Westlake.”
Engelberg said River Park will have a positive impact on various aspects of the community.
“Studio City will benefit from River Park in many ways, from public open space to walking trails to access to recreation and athletic facilities,” Engelberg said. “River Park will also improve access to the LA River itself, will restore native habitat and will be far better for the environment than the golf course is.”
Commons said he understands Save Weddington’s claims but believes their demands are unreasonable.
“Opponents are people who simply don’t want the current
situation to change,” Commons said. “I don’t think it’s reasonable for people to expect that we would purchase the golf course driving range, tennis courts and leave it exactly as is. There are some who are concerned about the volume of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian traffic that will come to the site, and I understand that, you know, we’re a busy place. It’s going to be a busy and exciting place for Harvard-Westlake to use between 3 and 6 p.m. on weekday afternoons and some periods on weekends.”
Commons said the impact River Park will have on the community is beneficial enough to continue with the construction.
“[The complaints] will be far outweighed when the communities experienced the many hours when we’re not using the site, that it will be open and available to the community,” Commons said. “I
hope to make that clear to the decision makers that this is going to be a resource that goes far beyond what it currently is in terms of what the community can enjoy.”
Samuel Skulsky ’24 said that while he enjoys using the current Weddington amenities, he sees some advantages to River Park.
“I personally would prefer [River Park] to stay as the old Weddington because I use the golf facilities somewhat regularly,” Skulsky said. “But I think [River Park] will be good for bringing the community together and allowing for more outside of school or outside of campus events.”
Skulsky said he can see the rationale behind Save Weddington but thinks their claims can seem exaggerated at times.
“I think that [Save Weddington] may be making the River Park project seem like a more extreme detriment to the Studio City community than it probably is, but I can understand how they treat Weddington as a historic site in the city,” Skulsky said.
Justin Tang
Yearbook/Journalism Teacher and Communications Head
Jen Bladen won one of three Residential Renters’ Seats on the Studio City Neighborhood Council (SCNC) on May 16 after running unopposed. She will be officially instated July 19.
SCNC is one of 99 neighborhood councils in Los Angeles that advise the government on community needs and improvement. Bladen said she ran for the Renters’ Seat specifically to advocate for other home renters in Studio City to have more yard space with the addition of River Park.
“One of the issues about renting, especially in an urban place like Studio City and Los Angeles in general, is that I don’t have a yard,” Bladen said. “I fully believe that River Park is a good
thing for Studio City and the greater community of Los Angeles. I feel that it will really be a backyard for renters in the area and even homeowners.”
Bladen said the main reason she ran for SCNC was her desire to make a change in her community.
“There was yet another mass shooting, and I was really frustrated,” Bladen said. “One of the Instagram videos I saw said ‘Don’t just be mad, run for office.’”
Bladen said she hopes to help keep Studio City a safe area for people to live.
“My nephew lives with me, and he comes home from work late,” Bladen said. “I hope he can come home to a safe place too and [the students] can come to a safe place.”
In regards to River Park and other future projects, SCNC President Scott Mandell said the council hopes to modernize the
community as much as possible despite the size of Studio City.
“With the incentives from the city to build, the challenge is to build within the capacity that Studio City can handle,” Mandell said. “We don’t have many circulation streets because of the hills, the river and the freeway. There’s only so much that Studio City can handle, but it can’t stay frozen in time.”
Lauren Park ’25 said Bladen’s empathy will serve her well as a member of SCNC.
“[Bladen] is one of the most empathetic teachers I have met, and I think her ability to connect with people through vulnerability and compassion is a great quality she possesses,” Park said. “I think this will make her beyond capable of her new role representing honest opinions of the Studio City community.”
Whitney Enenstein ’24 was shocked. She had just heard from a friend that a comment she made at the previous night’s Peer Support meeting had been shared outside of her group. Feeling anxious and trying to recount exactly what she said during the meeting, Enen stein said she could hard ly believe someone had broken the program’s fundamental con fidentiality agree ment, commonly referred to as Big C.
Enenstein said she felt a breach of trust after learning that her comment was shared out side of her group.
“I was like, ‘Who does this guy think he is to share something funny that I said when we were all having fun together?’ Enenstein said. “It’s ridiculous to me. Violation is definitely the word I would use for sure.”
Sometimes, different Peer Support groups will merge together and have joint meetings. Enenstein said her difficult personal experience felt like part of a larger issue within the program.
“[The Big C break] was somebody from a different group,” Enenstein said. “I am just constantly disappointed that people still [break Big C] and that they don’t take it seriously. And it’s not like it was something that was really bad that I said. It was honestly really stupid. Just a silly thing in a game, but still the fact that somebody shared something I said, and that’s specifically what you’re not supposed to do, that was just hurtful to me.”
According to Head of Peer Support & Interdisciplinary Studies and Independent Research Teacher Tina McGraw, Peer Support is one of the largest programs at the school, designed for upper school students to connect with their classmates and listen to each other. Peer Support meetings occur every Monday night and last 75 minutes. The Big C agreement is repeated by group members every week to affirm that no information should be shared outside of the meetings. Enenstein said she feels strange seeing the person who shared
her comment outside of the group.
“[The person who broke Big C] was not somebody I was friends with, so it’s fine,” Enenstein said. “But whenever I see that person around, it’s a little bit awkward. I’m pretty sure we just both had that in our heads, like, ‘I got you kicked out of Peer Support. That’s kind of awkward.’ But if you break Big C, you’re out of Peer Support. Everybody knows that.
It’s ingrained in you from the moment you get to group, every single time you go to group. Everybody knows it. Everybody says they respect it.
And clearly, not everybody does.”
In the event of a Big C break, the leaders and coordinators work together to conduct an investigation, according to McGraw.
Enenstein said the investigation to find the person who leaked her information was overly intense.
“A lot of people got involved, and it was kind of uncomfortable, but it was what had to be done in order to shut it down,” Enenstein said. “It was just a whole crazy thing and blown out of proportion. And it was confusing. I didn’t know who knew, who did what and who said what. It was just a lot of conversations, like, ‘Okay, who was there that night?
Who could this have been?’ I talked to my leaders very openly about it, like, ‘I heard somebody shared something that I said in a merged group, and I need you to find out who that is. Because I don’t feel safe merging with that group.’”
Led by junior trainees and senior leaders, members of the group first talk about their weekends, and the group has a designated time for “shares,” where members can talk and seek encouragement, and finally, the group plays games together.
Hot Seat, a popular Peer Support game, is where one person is chosen to answer questions, and other members of the group have the chance to ask anything they want.
Peer Support Leader Emily Malkan said group members feel more comfortable breaking Big C because of
the games played in Peer Support.
“I think people break Big C a lot for Hot Seat,” Malkan said. “If someone breaks Big C to their friend and the friend never tells anyone, no one will ever know. You’re just extending the confidentiality, so I think [breaks] happen a lot more [than just the cases where people are kicked out].”
Malkan said information leaks occur because students want to feel more significant within the school’s environment.
“The issue is that people, when they have a piece of information, think it makes them powerful and cool,” Malkan said. “They have this insider knowledge, so they want to tell people. Because we’re a bigger private school, everyone knows each other, so we are pretty tight. I think Peer Support plus [the tight school community] breed off of each other.”
When reflecting on a Big C break earlier in the year, Malkan, who is Enenstein’s leader, said it was an exaggerated response.
“No one was expecting [the Big C break],” Malkan said. “We had to investigate, so it was a little dramatic, but it was pretty serious breaking [Big C]. It was really important that we found who that person was, and some people in my group didn’t think it mattered, because ‘Oh, it’s a game.’ We were merging, so it had confusing rules. The other Half of our group was like ‘No, this is literally the definition of breaking Big C. We had to go to people who weren’t even in Peer Sup port to ask who [broke Big C].”
Louis*, a former Peer Support member, was removed from Peer Support per manently because he broke Big C twice.
“I joined last year, once for one meeting, and I wasn’t completely sure about the rules,” Louis said. “It was some very small thing I broke that I got kicked out for like three months for. That wasn’t a big deal. But then later, I joined back that same year, for one more meeting. Right after, I got kicked out permanently, and I still don’t know what it was for. That gives me the impression that the people directing [Peer Support] don’t have [proper] judgment on what actually is being said by people, and whether it’s true or not. They assume that I did spread something,
so because of that, I don’t have the highest thoughts of Peer Support. I like the general idea of what they’re trying to do, but it doesn’t exactly come off as what their goal is.”
Louis said the investigation process was unclear and left him with unanswered questions.
“So the first time, it was a threemonth [suspension],” Louis said. “[My leader] was Michael Lapin [’22], and he came up to me and was like, ‘Somebody complained. It’s not a big deal, but for the sake of the other people, they’re just gonna suspend you for three months.’ And then the second time, I got a paragraph text over the summer from [Peer Support Coordinator and Presentations Managing Editor] Leo [Saperstein ’23]. He was just saying that we got to hop on FaceTime. I got on FaceTime, and he said, ‘You said something.’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know what I said. What did I say?’ They wouldn’t tell me. And I’m like, ‘What should I do?’ And they go, ‘You don’t have any option. We’re kicking you out.’ So it was pretty simple. Not a lot I could do there.”
Louis said the experience was frustrating because of the lack of information he received.
“It’s hard to confront who said it,” Louis said. “Otherwise it’d be an invasion of the person’s privacy. But I don’t know what [I leaked], and that was frustrating for me.” McGraw said despite efforts to uphold Big C, breaks happen and go unreported.
“We don’t have a crystal ball to see who [breaks Big C],” McGraw said. “We hope that those Big C breaks are brought to us, because that will help us keep that space safe for people. We’d want to know who’s breaking Big C, but I am not naive enough to think that it never happens.”
McGraw said Big C is important because Peer Support is meant to be a safe space for students to talk about anything.
“Peer Support is here because we want students to have a space for sharing anything on their mind with people their own age,” McGraw said. “We know students often don’t feel as comfortable talking to adults, so by having a trained group of seniors lead these groups, we hope it creates a space where people can talk about really big stuff that’s going on in their lives or even trivial things that they want to share with somebody.”
Members of the school community discuss the reliability of Big C in Peer Support meetings and the impact of confidentiality breaks on the group.
“ It was just a whole crazy thing and blown out of proportion. And it was confusing. I didn’t know who knew, who did what and who said what.”
— Whitney Enenstein ’23L. Wood
Sylvee Anderson ’24 was walking on the beach, the heat of the summer sun bearing down on her body. She was sore from the past day’s grueling workout, but she said she was also one step closer to a thin body type. As she looked around, admiring all of the people wearing tank tops, shorts and dresses, Anderson said she couldn’t help but worry about her own appearance.
“I like working out more in the summer and getting into better physical shape in terms of health, but I try not to worry about the aesthetic point anymore,” Anderson said. “I struggled for a while with a minor eating disorder. I wouldn’t eat a lot of the time, or I would eat the minimum I could get away with. Even if I would eat, I would always choose [food] with [fewer] calories to try and maintain this idea of health as being the thinnest physically possible. There was definitely a lot of obsessive working out until I’d be dying by the end.”
Anderson said she felt insecure and judged by others, even though her concerns were internal.
“It doesn’t actually matter whether people are judging you,” Anderson said. “You can definitely get in a mindset where every time you go outside and you see someone dressed nicer than you or someone who has the body type that you want, you’re judging them and saying, ‘Oh, they’re so much better than me.’ You expect that they must also be judging you and saying, ‘Oh, they’re so much worse than me.’”
According to The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, eating disorders have been on the rise worldwide, increasing from 3.5% to 7.8% from 2000 to 2018. Additionally, according to Timberline Knolls Residential Treatment Center, the com bination of revealing clothing and social media posts exacer bates eating disorders during the summer. Anderson said summertime increases the pressure to have a certain body type.
“In a season where people are at beaches posting swimsuit photos, it could definitely [impact] you, no matter who you are,” Anderson said. “Especially during summer, because that is the time [when] you’re wearing lighter clothing, [there] can defi nitely be a lot of stress. And that [is] coupled with the fact that you have so much free time to think about the pre-existing culture around summer dieting and working out. There’s definitely a lot of pressure, both internal and external.”
Some students have used their experience with eating disorders and diet culture to cre ate organizations that promote healthy eating. Sophomore Prefect Daisy Pritzker ’25 and her twin brother Jay Pritzker run One
Bite at a Time, where they bake and sell cookies. Their marketing and packaging advocate against diet culture, and 10% of the proceeds are donated to the National Eating Disorders Association.
Pritzker said she was inspired to start One Bite at a Time by her experience with an eating disorder.
“I had anorexia,” Pritzker said. “I’m recovered now, but I still know a lot of people who struggle with it, like family members and really close friends. Even if it’s in really subtle ways, I see how much it harms people every day, and I also know what that feels like.”
Pritzker said diet culture made her believe her anorexia was perfectly healthy.
“I was barely eating, and I was told that was healthy,” Pritzker said. “But my body didn’t feel good, and there are things even now that I don’t eat because they don’t make my body feel good. That is what’s healthy for me, and what’s healthy for each person is so different.”
Pritzker said the school’s competitive nature impacts students’ diets, as they try to compete with one another to eat less.
“Because Harvard-Westlake has such a competitive and perfectionistic culture, it is a breeding ground for disordered eating,” Pritzker said. “I hear people talking on the Quad about how little sugar they ate that day, and people don’t understand it’s not healthy. Being competitive is such a big part of people’s eating disorders. You need to eat less than everyone else, or you need to eat healthier than everyone else. Since we’re supposed to be competing against each other, it’s like, ‘Oh, here’s another way I can be better than other people.’”
According to the Journal of American Medical Association, eating disorders are the second deadliest mental illness, following only opioid overdoses. Despite being a Prefect, Pritzker said it’s been hard to bring about change when people are so hesitant to talk about eating disorders.
“The school does a really bad job of addressing it,” Pritzker said.
“I’m a Prefect, so I was trying to get [the school] to bring in a Sophomore Seminar or an allschool speaker to do a series on eating disorders because they’re not addressed at all. We address all these other mental health issues, but no one talks about eating disorders, even though they’re such a huge issue and the second deadliest mental health issue. Every time I would bring up getting a speaker to talk about eating disorders, people would agree, but no one knew how to talk about it.”
While Pritzker was impacted by societal pressures, other students, like Isaac Wiener ’23, are forced to maintain a strict diet for sports. As a member of the wrestling team, Wiener carefully maintains his weight. Wrestling has 14 weight classes which are about eight pounds apart. Wiener said although the lower weight classes are closer together, weight divisions have significantly impacted his diet.
“I never eat the day of a [wrestling competition] in order to make the weight
[division],” Wiener said. “During my freshman year, I was struggling to make [the] weight [division], so I ate less.”
Wiener said that there’s pressure on the entire team to maintain a certain weight since it impacts the competition.
“Frequently, there are people in the weight class above and below you, so if you don’t make weight, someone isn’t able to wrestle,” Wiener said. “I think our team is much more relaxed about our weights than other wrestling teams, but there still is pressure to stay on weight. I think [toxic weight issues] are just a part of wrestling, although they can be diminished with good coaches. To compete at a high level, you have to cut weight since other people do, but not having a coach forcing you to cut unhealthy amounts of weight makes things better.”
Although the school has a Sports Psychologist and multiple counselors, there is currently no one specialized in nutrition. Wiener said a sports nutritionist at the school could be promoting healthy eating habits.
“The addition of a sports nutritionist would be very helpful since it would allow us to cut in a more healthy way while being happier,” Wiener said. “Cutting is very unpleasant and sometimes unhealthy and straining our ability to perform in school, and I think structured advice from a nutritionist could help.”
For aesthetic sports, the appearances of athletes are judged, according to Team U.S.A. Theatre on Ice figure skater Olivia Wang ’23. Wang said pressure to lose weight is common in her sport.
“Because you’re putting on a performance and half of it is being judged on how graceful you are, how pretty you are and the way you carry yourself is an inherent part of figure skating,” Wang said. “When you look at figure skating idols, they’re all gorgeous women or men. I think it is a lot of pressure if you can’t see yourself in them or you feel left out. There’s definitely a pressure to either be skinny or pret ty.”
Wang said her coach es have been supportive, but there has been gossip among parents about athletes’ appearance.
“[My coaches] didn’t really comment on my body,” Wang said. “It was more of gossip to parents or maybe some judgment. I think I had a pretty good relationship with most of my coaches, so it didn’t really receive that kind of pressure, but you could definitely hear whispers in terms of parents.”
Wang said social media helped her teammates deal with eating disorders.
“I had some skating friends who went online and started posting about their eating disorders and spreading an issue
that needs to be recognized,” Wang said. “That did help because when they posted, it was a very scary step for them. But they were able to receive support from all of our other friends who may have gone through similar experiences. I’m proud of them because other skaters who are younger and may fall into this hole feel like they’re not alone.”
Despite growing conversation about eating disorders, Wang said body image pressure is deep-rooted in the sport.
“I do think [increased discussion] is helping,” Wang said.
“In figure skating, they have been trying to promote more conversation about eating disorders and body dysphoria. But I feel like the traditional pressure to maintain the classic skinny figure is still there. It’s helping, but you probably also need a change of mindset from the beginning.”
Counselor and Independent Research Teacher Michelle Bracken said despite how common food issues are in the school, conversations about eating disorders might cause more harm than oneon-one professional help.
“Research has shown that talking about [eating disorders] in this environment encourages more people to think about it,” Bracken said. “We know that for eating disorders, there are a lot of people who will think they’re supposed to start counting their calories. It’s an issue, even in eating disorder treatment centers, because people will teach each other tricks on how to avoid the weighins. It’s really difficult [at the school] to address it. We address it individually, and we get people connected to outside people. That’s the best resource for us.”
The school community discusses the ongoing prevelance of diet culture and eating disorders within their extracurriculars.L. Wood Daisy Pritzker ’25
“ Because Harvard-Westlake has such a competitive and perfectionistic culture, it is a breeding ground for disordered eating.”
Daisy Pritzker’25
31 years after the United States Congress officially designated May as Asian Pacific American Heritage (APAH) Month in 1992, students elected four Asian-identifying Senior Prefects for the 20232024 school year, coinciding with the APAH Month 2023 theme of Asian leadership designated by the Federal Asian Pacific American Council.
The four electees, Ryan Cheng ’24, Glory Ho ’24, Elizabeth Johnstone ’24 and Nyla Shelton ’24, will helm a council currently led by Simon Lee ’23 and Kimura, who made history as the first pair of Asian-identifying Head Prefects.
Kimura said she is excited for school leadership to be in the hands of a group that can understand a diverse array of perspectives.
“I’m definitely thrilled they were elected,” Kimura said. “Not just [because] they’re Asian American, but that they are very clearly individuals who are dedicated to inclusivity.”
Kimura, who is half-Japanese and half-Chinese, said her multicultural identity gives her insight into different aspects of the school community.
“It’s been nice being able to see the intersection between those two Asian American communities at school,” Kimura said. “How this translates to leadership is whenever I plan events or speak to school communities, I like to come at it from that lens of intersectionality.”
Though she said there is prominent Asian participation in leadership positions at the school, Kimura said diversity is always a goal.
“In terms of student government, there’s always been a pret-
ty hefty representation of Asian Americans,” Kimura said. “It’s great to have people that I can identify with on [Prefect Council], but I do wonder sometimes if we’re a little underrepresented in terms of diversity of other cultures on [Prefect Council]. I’m not sure where that comes from, or why we usually have a majority of Asian Americans in student leadership, but I wonder if we can find ways to kind of promote more diversity within our leadership groups.”
Unlike Kimura, Science Teacher Nancy Chen said she experienced very little Asian representation in her hometown community.
“I was [part of] the only Asian family in my town,” Chen said. “In college, Asians were only about five to seven percent of students, and most of them were international students, so they weren’t really going for the leadership roles. In every community I’m in now, I do see that Asians are more willing to take leadership roles.”
Chen said despite underrepresentation, the tight-knit Asian American community at her college helped her enter into leadership roles at the school.
“In college, Asians kind of supported each other, because there weren’t that many of us,” Chen said. “Whenever I was trying to go for a leadership role, the senior Asians actually helped support me and guide me to get those positions.”
Even with more exposure to diversity, Chen said she is still trying to fully understand her Asian American identity.
“I haven’t really found a good balance in my Asian identity, because as humans, I think we all try to fit into the society we’re in,” Chen said. “So, I just kind of observe the room I’m in and see how much of my identity I can put
out, or how comfortable I am with the people I’m with right now. In the science department, since I’ve worked here for so long, I’m more comfortable showing my Asian identity than potentially in other places.”
Despite feeling very connected to her Asian identity, Asian Students in Action (ASiA) leader and incoming Senior Prefect Glory Ho ’24 said she is always learning about new aspects of the Asian experience.
“My Asian identity is at the forefront of my leadership, and Asian identity is so broad, so I constantly learn new things as a leader and in our discussions,” Ho said. “I [have] always been somebody who was very comfortable in my identity as an Asian student, but it’s easy to think of the Asian experience as homogenized. Every Asian identity is different in ways that I never expected really, so I try to keep an open mind in terms of what exactly it means to be Asian and how that has affected people differently.”
Ho said stereotypes of high-achieving Asian Americans in leadership positions often diminish Asian students’ achievements.
“At prep schools like ours, there’s that stereotype of the Asian who’s just doing things to fill up their application and be that model student,” Ho said. “Honestly, I’ve always been wary of coming off like your typical Asian student who’s trying to fill up their resume. Because our school is like a prep school, the model minority myth can apply to a lot more [stu -
dents], and it’s like you are working against that and showing that you are more than an application.”
Ho said she has not encountered a diverse array of Asian teachers. “I never really see Asian teachers outside of STEM courses,” Ho said. “But in ninth grade, I had [English Teacher Catherine] James as my teacher, and she’s Asian. I immediately really was able to connect with her. For English, which is a more vulnerable subject, I think it was easier to reach out and to just feel more connected to her from the start.”
Like Ho, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Coordinator Reb Limerick, who identifies as white, said employing diverse faculty and staff is crucial in helping students feel more comfortable in their identities.
“It’s important to continue to hire not only more faculty and staff of color, or who are queer or any identity that will help students of marginalized identities feel more supported and represented on campus, but to hire people who are committed to diversity and supporting students at their core,” Limerick said. “For fellow teachers who are not AAPI-identifying, I would recommend they take advantage of the incredible opportunities at HW to engage and educate themselves on Asian American culture and history.”
Limerick said the school has made significant progress in amplifying Asian voices within the community this year.
“This year, three of the five [Student Leaders for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (SLIDE)] Co-Chairs identify as Asian-American,” Limerick said. “As student leaders of DEI work on campus, they bring their multiplicity of identities to the work and work to uplift stu -
dents of all marginalized identities but being able to advocate for Asian students from an Asian perspective is powerful. Also, Melody Lee became the Upper School Department Head of Science [this year].”
Beyond the school community, Junior Prefect Nyla Shelton ’24 said she has observed increased Asian representation in the media.
“This is an especially unique time with everyone watching Asian leaders blossom and become really popular among Generation Z and in the youth, and I feel like that’s really great,” Shelton said. “I’m always excited to see if there’s a new movie with Asian representation. I do have specific Vietnamese actors that I really love and resonate with and seeing them come into the spotlight is always great.”
Shelton said she has learned to embrace her Asian American identity more in leadership roles.
“Going to this school, I’ve definitely grown more confident with my identity and gotten more involved with the ASiA affinity group,” Shelton said. “In the sense of my leadership experience, not only do I own that as a larger part of my identity, but I also think I am innately more aware, or I try to be more conscious of decisions that Prefect Council makes and how to be as inclusive as possible. I am very consciously aware of what initiatives we’re doing and how best to make other students around feel comfortable just because of my experience as an Asian American.”
Multiethnic Inclusion x Diversity Club (MIxD) leader and SLIDE member Nilufer Mistry Sheasby ’24, who is South Asian, said she feels that there is less understanding of South Asian culture than of East Asian culture within the community.
“The biggest distinction between East Asian and South Asian culture is that East Asian culture has very much become something that’s super celebrated, and I think has almost become cool or trendy and the status quo right now, whereas you don’t see that same thing with South Asian culture,” Mistry Sheasby said. “I feel like it’s relatively unknown. It’s not as explored, and it doesn’t get as much airtime.”
Mistry Sheasby said she recognizes a lack of diversity among faculty and staff, which she said has made exploring her South Asian identity more difficult.
“There are very few South Asian faculty at the Upper School, which makes it a little bit hard to touch base with people about what I’ve experienced,” Mistry Sheasby said. “When I encounter leadership struggles, I’ll usually go to my mom because she’s a South Asian woman, but I can’t think of anyone else at the school who I could really go to and would just understand what I’ve been through and what the challenges are. Even with the counseling team, it’s really hard, because sometimes when leadership struggles come
up, and I try to explain them, there are not a lot of real ways to put that into words to make people who aren’t part of the South Asian community understand and not have it become super tricky.”
Mistry Sheasby said she does not learn about Asian leadership in her classes.
“I don’t think we really talked a lot about Asian leaders in class [whether they be] East or South Asian,” Mistry Sheasby said. “East Asian culture is often commodified, and the stories behind it are usually ignored. There’s definitely an element of both East Asians and South Asians really struggling a lot with culture.”
It’s just one more box that you have to check that your white peers don’t have to check.”
Nilufer Mistry
Mistry Sheasby said people should be more aware of the pressure on the Asian American community at the school and how it affects leadership.
“The election of four Asian Senior Prefects really says a lot about our school environment and our school community and about how far we’ve come in terms of looking beyond differences in race and ethnicity,” Mistry Sheasby said. “It’s super exciting, but it also does say a lot about something that we haven’t really fixed for East Asians and South Asians alike, which is just really a crippling, overwhelming level of pressure.”
Mistry Sheasby said there are more expectations for all Asian students to be more high-achieving in the community due to the model minority myth — the expectation for certain minorities, like Asians, to excel socioeconomically, according to NPR.
“The model minority myth is perpetuated not just by whites, but also people in the Asian communi-
ty,” Mistry Sheasby said. “There is an expectation to excel and to succeed and that’s just the norm. For a lot of white individuals, even at this elite school, to gain respect amongst their peers, you want to be likable, you want to be cool and you want to be trendy, but for Asians, there is one added level that [you have to be] smart. It’s just a default, and this is perpetuated by whites and your Asian peers. If you’re Asian, if you want to be one of the cool Asians, you gotta be getting straight A’s, you gotta be in all the best classes and you gotta be achieving everything and doing it at a high level. It’s just one more box that you have to check that your white peers don’t have to check.”
Sheasby ’24
Incoming Senior Prefect Elizabeth Johnstone ’24 said the large and diverse Asian student presence at the school helps to challenge the model minority myth.
“At a school like Harvard-Westlake, it’s great that we have such a big Asian population to disprove the [model minority] myth, because you see different types of people doing a bunch of different activities, from all walks of life and all doing different things,”
Johnstone said. “Exposure to a bunch of different Asian Americans helps to disprove the model minority myth.”
Johnstone said she believes that the school is effectively promoting Asian representation.
“Asian Americans still have a long way to go, but at Harvard-Westlake, we do a really good job with representation,” Johnstone said. “Because Asians and Asian Americans are a pretty big minority, it’s quite difficult, when you’ve got so many people who identify as Asian in a community, not to have some Asian leaders at some point, which is a good thing.”
“By Dylan Graff And Iona Lee
It was 11:36 p.m. and Zoe Kramar ’24 scrolled through her course selections, eagerly checking numerous boxes, including the one next to Latin American Studies. A few weeks later she received an email from her dean explaining that the class had been canceled due to a lack of sign ups. Kramar said she was frustrated since it was a class she had been excited about taking for a long time.
“I was really disappointed,” Kramar said. “It was a class that I was really looking forward to taking, and I know other people that took the class in the past loved it, who are disappointed that it’s discontinued as well.
is past year, Kramar took Middle East Studies, a class that she said helped expand her knowledge of geopolitics. Kramar said she hoped Latin American Studies would have a similar e ect.
“I took Middle Eastern studies this year and I do Model UN, and I’ve become very interested in learning more about global politics and culture,” Kramar said. “I thought it would be an eye-opening course and an interesting case study.”
Latin American Studies Teacher Ingrid Sierakowski said her course is important not only for those who identify as Latin American but also for students who want to learn about broader cultures around the world.
“I feel like there’s a lot of students who are not of Latin American descent, but they’re taking Spanish or French and want to explore cultures,” Sierakowski said. “I think that there should be an emphasis for students to learn more about societies and cultures that they’re not used to. With the exception of the U.S. and Canada, the entire Western Hemisphere is Latin America.”
In order to stimulate more interest in the class, Sierakowski said she speci cally designed the course to connect with students living in a West Coast environment.
“I taught this at my previous school in New York, and I brought in a bit more of the Latin American culture from the East Coast, so it was a lot more of a Dominican or Puerto Rican emphasis. Because I’m on the West Coast, and I feel like a lot of the students need to feel
Students and faculty re ect on the cancellation of courses that focus on ethnic studies and the overall impact it has on the school.
connected to what’s happening in this environment, [the class] has more of a Central American, Mexican and South American emphasis.”
Sierakowski said the class was meant to extend beyond the curriculum of a normal history class by taking a close look into the art and culture of the region.
“ ere’s a lot of themes that we talk about, not just history, but aesthetics as well,” Sierakowski said. “We think about art, music and dance in a di erent way, and it’s good to add that sense of regional diversity. I feel like we tend to lump Latin Americans as one thing, but it’s just so many di erent things.”
Latin American Studies was not the only class a icted by a lack of enrollment. e courses Black Diasporas: Shaping Modern America, Arts, Democracy and the Holocaust, China Studies: Past, Present, Future and International Relations were all canceled for the upcoming school year. Like Latin American Studies, these classes dealt with the subjects of diversity, race and cultures from around the world. Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said she thinks there is great value in learning about other cultures.
“DEI work is supposed to exist in all of our classes, but there is something important about seeing yourself re ected in a curriculum fully as opposed to feeling like it’s an add-on,” Slattery said. “If I’m talking about myself as a white person, there’s some value in me actually delving into and trying to learn more about something that is a culture that is di erent than my own. So yes, I do worry that people could go throughout their time [at the school] and not have to go as deep as we think that they should go in understanding the culture.”
Slattery said there will be conversations about whether or not the school should implement a requirement for taking some of these classes.
“It’s mission-aligned to say that you should take at least one course during your time at Harvard-Westlake that is taught from a di erent perspective than your own, or that provides you insight into your own culture,” Slattery said.
“When we don’t have these classes because [there are] not enough people, do we need to signal our values by actually saying that everybody should be taking a course that meets that crite-
ria? So it’s actually a thing that we’ll be talking about next year.”
History and Black Diasporas teacher Erik C. Wade said although implementing a course requirement is a good idea, he is concerned that there may be backlash.
“I think it makes sense to even the playing field and articulate what [the school] actually values and that these classes could be on par with AP or honors classes,” Wade said. “I also wonder if there’s gonna be backlash from parents or students.
I don’t think we have a director of academics. We [could have] a director of academics that would be able to see not just the short view, but the long view of how these classes are going to be impacted [in the future].”
Wade said the fact that his class has yet to gain signi cant traction among students says more about the current climate of the school than the quality of the class.
“One of the main reasons why I came out here was to teach this course,” Wade said. “I had one student the rst time around, and after [Black Leadership and Culture Club] BLACC tried to rally, I had 6, and I don’t think it says something about me or the quality of the classes. I think it says something about the system and culture of the school of why it’s not valued or worthy of taking.”
Earlier in his teaching career, Wade taught classes at Phillips Exeter Academy, one of the topranked private schools in the nation according to Niche. Since coming to teach history at the school last year, Wade says he sees many similarities between the values that students at the two educational institutions seem to prioritize.
“Schools like Harvard-Westlake and Exeter have reputations of being really rigorous,” Wade said. “I think sometimes they shy away from embracing ethnic and racial study courses that are also rigorous and could challenge students who identify with them. I think that if my class were the AP African American studies course, I might have two sections or de nitely one. Students have this collection of choices that they have to make, but you don’t want them to miss out on opportunities of being able to see a truly diverse tapestry of
experience in the world and within the context of the United States.”
Wade said while the school can incentivize students to take these classes, ultimately the students are responsible for changing the culture of the school.
“The fact is that there’s three ethnic studies courses that are not going to be taught next year,” Wade said. “I was thinking about Harvard-Westlake as a microcosm of the United States [on how] you value inclusivity. Ultimately, institutions are guided by and led by individuals who can make choices to make sure that that’s not the case. I came out here to teach a Black Studies course. And now I don’t have the opportunity to do that, and that’s going to make next year not as enjoyable.”
Elizabeth Johnstone ’24 said she sees some flaws with making Interdisciplinary Studies and Interdisciplinary Research [ISIR] classes a requirement for graduation.
“If you have a big class size, it reduces the quality of discussion and there are a bunch of people in there who don’t want to take it, which ruins it for the people who are genuinely there because they love the course,” Johnstone said. “A potential long-term solution is to market these courses since there is genuine interest outw there to take them. There’s so much apprehension in the new schedule, which adds even more hesitancy to take these types of ISIR courses.”
Johnstone said the school should promote these classes better, especially if they want to adhere to their messaging regarding DEI integration to avoid seeming hypocritical.
“In terms of making exceptions to policies and revising policies, it’s really a matter of what values an institution wants to promote,” Johnstone said. “If Harvard-Westlake genuinely wants to promote DEI in the academic setting, I think this is one of the ways to do it. Find a way to make these classes fun. I understand how that would be a little crazy, but promote these classes so that they can reach those [thresholds]. Put your money where your mouth is.”
“
I think sometimes [students] shy away from embracing ethnic and racial study courses.”
Erik C. Wade History TeacherL. Wood Zoe Kramar ’24
As Ellie Whang ’24 checked her Snapchat one morning in April, she was surprised to see a clothed, anthropomorphic chatbot named “My AI” pinned to the top of her chat feed. She had experimented with artificial intelligence before, trying programs like ChatGPT. But Whang said seeing the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Snapchat, an app she exclusively viewed as a form of social media to communicate with friends, made her worry about students’ social interactions.
“If people have access to all these different kinds of AI, they can ask it whatever they want,” Whang said. “That is kind of how AI is advertised. Ask it anything, and it will give you an answer. Then it will start limiting human interaction, and that is kind of just where we are going. People can rely more on AI instead of their friends or other people.”
After only being accessible to Snapchat+ subscribers for $3.99 a month, Snapchat released My AI for free for all users in April. The chatbot appears as a customizable avatar and can access users’ locations if the app’s location services are turned on, according to Snapchat Support.
Josh Siegel, the Director of Consumer Product Management at Snapchat, said in an email that his department found incorporating AI allowed Snapchat to utilize new technology to support the platform’s existing features.
“Messaging and communication is a core daily behavior on Snapchat, whether by text or visually,” Siegel said. “U.S. Snapchatters open the app nearly 40 times a day, and our global community creates over five billion Snaps daily. AI fits seamlessly into this core product value, and we are finding new and exciting ways for it to surface Snapchat content and power fun and useful interactions for our community.”
about My AI’s faults, with Snap chat Support claiming that be cause AI is an evolving technology: “it’s possible My AI’s respons es may include biased, incorrect, harm ful or misleading content.”
AI, Ofek Levy ’23 said he noticed incon sistencies in the technology’s responses.
I saw someone sending [My AI] pictures, and it kept saying, ‘I am glad you are having a fun day in the sun’ or ‘I love that shirt,’ and when you asked it
if it can see, it would say, ‘no, Snapchat AI cannot see,’” Levy said. The weirdest part of it is that it has these responses that shift dramatically depending on your re sponses to it. To some degree, that is the purpose of AI, but when it is lying about what it can and cannot do, it seems really sketchy.”
In one in stance, Levy said he experienced the chatbot being bi ased against some races or religions.
“I had a friend messaging it and talking about the Holocaust,” Levy said. “And [the My AI] was like, ‘we do not talk about that here’ and ‘that is so inappropriate.’ My friend told it she was Jewish and the AI responded, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.’”
Although she believes Snapchat’s My AI will provide comfort to struggling teenagers, Addison Carson ’25 said the AI would not be able to empathize with people the same way another human could.
“These robots are made to have specific scripts and things to say, which is only good when someone is in need of basic sympathy,” Carson said. “It is a helpful tool for people who are just looking for someone to rant to or if they are feeling lonely. It can become detrimental when people begin to rely on the company of
mental health support and resources to youth around the world.
“The main things we have focused on in training are active listening and empathy skills,” Carson said. “We also focus on learning about different mental health challenges and how to comfort and support people that may be struggling with different things in their lives. If you are looking for advice or more than only surface-level sympathy, then My AI would not be sufficient.”
Whang, who also volunteers at Teen Line, said after interacting with the chatbot herself, she realized it is not a reliable place for people struggling with mental health issues to turn to.
“I started asking it a bunch of simple questions like ‘What’s your favorite song?’ or ‘What’s your favorite color?’” Whang said. “And then I wanted to-
gestions it will give me.”
Siegel said the company created its AI chatbot with the intention of humanizing it so it could better connect with users.
“My AI is here to help you connect with friends, learn about the world and just have fun,” Siegel said. “It was trained to have a unique tone and personality that plays into Snapchat’s core values around friendship, learning and fun. We’ll learn a lot from the way our community engages with My AI to shape what comes next.”
“The fact that Snapchat has tried to make [My AI] so that it seems to hold that space for a replacement friend is what makes it dangerous.”
Ofek Levy ‘23tent of things that I could say to it. I remembered we were talking about AI at Teen Line with the adult supervisors, so I decided to ask it what I should do if I am depressed. It popped in the chat and then just left without giving me any answer at all.”
Whang said although she recognized the chatbot is not designed to be an expert in mental health, it can still be useful in certain circumstances.
“I text it for advice that I am embarrassed to ask my friends about,”
Whang said.
“I will explain a hypothetical situation that is actually going on in my life to try and gauge what sug-
Some students expressed concerns about the information that My AI collects from users, which Snapchat stores as data. Sophia Vourakis ’24 said she is paranoid about having AI on Snapchat, which she previously reserved for communicating with friends.
“The first time you open the chat, it has a little pop-up that asks you to accept its [terms and conditions],” Vourakis said. “I know that every single app steals your data. I’m not super paranoid about things stealing my information because that is everything now, but I still think it is a little weird that you have to click accept. It is kind of odd in the first place that [Snapchat] thought it would be neat to have people talk to a chatbot. The purpose of Snapchat is to talk to other real people and not robots.”
Levy said it is important for teenagers who use Snapchat to be aware of what they are using My AI for.
“I understand why people would want to use it to have a good laugh,” Levy said. “And I think that’s ultimately what it will be used for. But there will be certain cases where it is used inappropriately. There will be people who will use it as more of a friend than anything else. The fact that Snapchat has tried to make it so that it seems to hold that space for a replacement friend is what makes it dangerous.”
The school community discusses the impact of Snapchat’s new “My AI” chatbot on teenage
At 11 p.m. on a Sunday, Maddie Cunniff ’23 sat staring at the daunting list of school work that awaited on her computer. She had a lab write up, major presentation and several assessments in the coming week, which she said typically would have required her to stay up for hours to complete thoroughly. Yet, after briefly skimming through her slides and browsing her halfway-finished study guide, she said she found herself clicking open her Netflix account, where ‘‘The Hunger Games’’ caught her eye. Before she knew it, she was almost finished with the movie, her school work no closer to completion than before.
Senioritis, the phenomenon that many seniors like Cunniff say they experience in their second semester, is defined as an “ebbing of motivation and effort by school seniors as evidenced by tardiness, absences and lower grades,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Cunniff said after her senioritis set in, decisions to push aside her pending assignments became more and more frequent. In the past couple weeks, she has chosen to go out with friends, bike around her neighborhood or sleep instead of focusing on completing her school work.
Although Cunniff was accepted to college under its Early Decision II program, which released decisions mid-February, she said her senioritis didn’t truly set in until
work ethic. She said most seniors continue to invest effort into their classes both to stay prepared for college and also due to the rigorous nature of the school.
“Honestly, I think that seniors deserve a break once the second semester hits, especially after all of the work that we have put in over the past three and a half years,” Cunniff said. “Though it can be tempting to give up completely, I don’t personally know anyone who’s done so. I also think that most people want to stay prepared for college, and don’t want to be completely out of their academic rhythm by the time school starts again. Many Harvard-Westlake kids are wired to work hard, so it’s difficult for them to completely turn off.” Cunniff said teachers are generally understanding and willing to decrease workload to give seniors the chance to enjoy their last couple months of high school.
“Most of my teachers are okay with [senioritis], and are sympathetic about the fact that we need a breather at this point in our lives,” Cunniff said. “Particularly in my classes that only have seniors in them, my teachers are easing up on homework and tests to allow seniors a little more free time. They were once high school students too, and they’ve taught seniors for many years, so they know that a bit of senioritis is only natural at this point.”
Mathematics teacher Kent Palmer, who teaches two sections of AP Economics, an
students continue to work hard even after their grades are submitted to college.
“Senioritis is a little exaggerated,” Palmer said. “After spring break in a typical year I’d say I get a noticeable slowdown in motivation in some classes, but before that, even after first semester grades are in the book, most people tend to keep grinding.”
Palmer said the decrease in emphasis on assessments that results from seniors getting into college can actually be beneficial for genuine learning.
“It’s liberating for students, not having to be quite so obsessed with every single point you earn or don’t earn,” Palmer said. “Rather than an invitation to loaf, I wonder if there’s more actual learning that happens, rather than just test prepping.”
Palmer said most teachers have a realistic mindset regarding senioritis, realizing that the everyday effort that seniors previously demonstrated is not going to be maintained in the spring when college decisions are released.
“I’d like to think most of us teachers are realists,” Palmer said. “Incentives matter. I’d be a pretty lousy teacher if I didn’t acknowledge that. Teachers care whether students are engaged and trying and bringing their best to class. So, to the extent that this maybe becomes less prevalent at some point in the spring, a little frustration is likely
Elliot Lichtman ’23, who was accepted early to his college in mid-December, said he thinks senioritis is inevitable and can pose problems if students’ senioritis mani-
“I don’t think there’s much that can be done about senioritis,” Lichtman said. “Is it a huge issue? Depends on the situation. If it’s an individual assignment or a test grade that will only be seen by you, then that’s fully up to the individual student and a degree of senioritis is totally fine and perhaps unavoidable. But when it’s a group project, you’re the leader of something or you’re working with a team of people on an extracurricular, there are definitely some issues when different people have very different ideas about what a reasonable degree of senioritis looks like.”
Lichtman, who continues to maintain a similar level of work even after getting into college, said senioritis only impacts him in certain classes.
“For me, senioritis has made me avoid or speed through busywork assignments which are either repetitive or needlessly time consuming,” Lichtman said. “In classes where I’m challenged to grapple with the material at every step and prepare
not necessarily just for a test but instead for a discussion or a group activity where everyone is engaged instead of mindlessly copying notes, I don’t feel particularly affected by senioritis at all. But when it’s time for meaningless AP review practice test number three out of four assigned for homework that night, that’s when the senioritis starts to kick in.”
Seniors are not the only students on campus who deal with burnout and mental exhaustion. Although she is a junior, Morgan Orwitz ’24 said she sympathizes with seniors and can understand where their senioritis comes from. Since she has some classes with seniors, she said she can recognize how senioritis may negatively impact the classroom experience as a whole, but believes it is justifiable.
“Sometimes I feel bad for teachers, especially those who teach classes that have a lot of seniors, since they have to rely on the juniors to participate and put in effort since seniors aren’t,” Orwitz said. “But, I feel that senioritis is definitely so valid. Even as a junior, I already feel so done with everything and I can definitely relate to the feeling of just wanting to relax and really enjoy the last bit of high school.”
Head of Upper School Beth Slattery gave seniors one excused absence either on April 14 or April 17 to coincide with Coachella weekend. The intention was for seniors to not take a separate day off, and treat the excused absence as their “ditch day” according to Slattery.
“I knew that a good chunk of [seniors] were going to be gone anyway, some people for college visits or whatever,” Slattery said. “So I thought, ‘Okay, well, then [seniors] could have one of those for free,’ thinking that it would then prevent people from doing another one.”
However, many seniors decided to take an additional day off May 12 to spend time with their entire class at Will Rogers State Beach, with 229 unexcused absences, according to Student Discipline and Attendance Coordinator Gabriel Preciado.
Stella Glazer ’23 said she thought the second ditch day was necessary since the excused absence did not fulfill its purpose.
“I definitely thought it was worth it to have our own real ditch day, because the one that the school gave us wasn’t really [a ditch day],” Glazer said. “[The excused absence] didn’t have the same point as all the ditch days in past years. We didn’t ask for [the excused absence]. The whole point of senior ditch day is for the bonding experience with your whole grade at the end of the year, and with the Coachella ditch day, the whole grade wasn’t together. Some kids were still in school, some were at Coachella, some kids were going to Coachella the next week. So, it didn’t serve the intended purpose. That’s why I was totally pro the second ditch day because the whole grade was together at the beach. We all were having a great time and actually got to have a good bonding day.”
As the school year comes to a close, students and faculty discuss the impact of senioritis on the everyday classroom experience.
By Kriste An
The lights were on, the show was running and Sophia Rascoff ’23 was focused. Her gaze fixated on the stage and her prompt book in hand, she communicated instructions to her fellow members of the stage production team through her headset. Rascoff, a member of the school’s production team, said she appreciates the enthusiasm that fills the theater as a show opens for audience members.
“I love the live spirit as things are bustling, and the show is running,” Rascoff said. “I love problem-solving, and that is what I do as a stage manager, making sure that parts of the production are running as scheduled. Being able to know a show so well to the point that I am able to make these quick decisions on the spot and see the final product come together is a rewarding experience.”
Rascoff said she became involved in stagecraft in middle school.
“I got involved in stagecraft when I was in fifth or sixth grade,” Rascoff said. “In sixth grade, I helped out with some of the stagecraft in a school show. I had also done it at a summer camp. I knew I wanted to be involved in theater, and [stagecraft] was a fun means of getting involved. I had also acted in shows as a child, but as I grew older, I was drawn more to stagecraft.”
Rascoff said she has helped produce a number of shows during her time at the school.
“I stage managed for ‘Urinetown’ as well as ‘Spring Awakening,’ our most recent musicals,” Rascoff said. “At the Middle School, I helped stage manage ‘13: The Muscial’ when I was in eighth grade and ‘Violet’ when I was in ninth grade. I also managed the dance production show in eighth grade.”
Rascoff said participating in stagecraft has allowed her to learn and practice leadership skills.
“[Stagecraft is] something that I had tried doing and loved,” Rascoff said. “I’ve stuck with it because it’s been a good outlet for
me to express who I am and be a leader. A lot of the things that are needed of a stage manager compliment how I lead. It’s allowed me to grow as a leader and remain involved in theater, something that I love.”
Unlike Rascoff, Julian Cortez ’25 said his decision to take stagecraft was more impulsive.
“I joined the stagecraft class in eighth grade to fill the elective requirement because it looked fun,” Cortez said. “I loved the backstage and production side of entertainment, and stagecraft seemed like a foot to go down that path. I ended up loving it and have continued with it since.”
Rascoff said stagecraft presents an assortment of responsibilities.
“For most of the shows [at the school], I am the student stage manager, so I am involved in the whole production process,” Rascoff said. “This includes scheduling, taking notes during rehearsals, helping with the audition process, standing in when needed in a piece and working to be a bridge between the actors and director and production team. During tech weeks, I am more involved because I am calling the cues for the show. I have a prompt book, and I have written down in that light changes, sound cues as well as set changes. I am on headset, telling other people to make the stuff happen.”
Upper School Technical Di rector and Performing Arts De partment Head Aaron Martin said stagecraft can be time-con suming and that he is grateful for the work that students do.
“The time commitments dif fer depending on the kind of pro duction that the team is working on, but it is still a lot regardless,” Martin said. “For the musical, for example, the time commit ment is something like 40 hours. That’s a much larger service. The instrumental concert, on the other hand, might be one or two nights for a couple of hours each. It’s a lot of time and a lot of ser vice that these students are dedi cating, and I am grateful.”
Pokress said learning to op
erate new machines and equipment can be a challenge.
“[Some of] the greatest difficulties I’ve encountered in stagecraft came with learning new things,” Pokress said. “Learning to operate new machines, for exam ple, can be daunting. I’ve been able to overcome these difficulties through communicating with teachers and being open to advice and new experiences.”
Pokress said despite the steep learning curve, he appreciates the excitement that comes with being a part of stagecraft.
“Seeing a show be put on for audience members live feels thrilling,” Pokress said. “The most recent dance concert that I had helped stage-manage is one that I remember, in particular. It was memorable for me because I had stage-managed a previous dance concert that was canceled, in part, because of COVID. Seeing the dancers have a smooth show this time made me realize how far we’ve come since then. It was a full-circle moment for me.”
Pokress said the bond between the students is another one of his favorite aspects of stagecraft.
“I love the people,” Pokress said. “[Stagecraft] is a niche interest to have, so we do not get
productions that I helped manage is good enough for me.”
Rascoff said though stagecraft is often underappreciated, it attracts students who are interested in theater but are reluctant to be in the spotlight.
“It’s not recognized in Harvard-Westlake or in the real theater world either,” Rascoff said. “Stage managers, production teams and stage crew go unnoticed most of the time. But, this is also what attracts a lot of people to that role because people can participate in something like this without a spotlight on them.”
Anderson said one of the main reasons she joined stagecraft was because she would not have to perform on stage herself.
“I joined stagecraft for a number of reasons, but chief among them was that I liked the sense of togetherness that being in theater provides but did not have the confidence to be on the stage,” Anderson said. “I think there is a misconception that stagecraft is
form, though.”
Martin said it is often best when the stagecraft goes unnoticed because it indicates that the set has been well-integrated.
“If audience members are noticing the sets or the lights, we’re not doing the right thing,” Martin said. “The idea of going to a show is to watch a piece, and the stagecraft is a part of that piece. If audience members are watching ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ people should not be commenting on the scenic design after the love scene. That is to state that if the stagecraft does its job, it will go unnoticed, and if it’s bad, it will be what people talk about.”
Regardless, Martin said stagecraft is a critical element of school productions that requires much collaboration.
“The first thing to be developed is the scene because that is the universe,” Martin said. “The scene defines the lighting and the [rest] of the production, creating rules for the environment.”
• Continued on hwchronicle.com
Students and teachers discuss the role of the stagecraft program and their experiences helping school productions come to life.L. Wood Henry Pokress ’23
Student
By Alex Lee and William LiuSarah Parmet ’25 stared at the curtains as she waited backstage, listening to audience members clapping at the previous performance. Her heart pounding, Parmet prepared to sing with her choir in the first of a series of concerts and showcases in the Lights Up Festival. Parmet said she was nervous because she did not have a lot of experience with the genre of music she was singing.
“The Chamber Singers’ set was all gos pel music which I’d never sung before,” Parmet said. “It was a great challenge as I learned how to adapt to that style of singing. The song I enjoyed performing the most [had] com plex harmonies which made it a lot of fun to sing.”
The Performing Arts Department hosted Lights Up, a festival featuring student productions in theater, dance and choral and instrumental music May 12-25. Some of the events in the festival included a choral concert, an instrumental concert, a jazz con
cert, a dance showcase and the Playwrights Festival. The festival also hosted video viewing parties for two past productions, “The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later” and “Urinetown.”
Upper School Performing Arts Teacher and Director Sabrina Washburn said the purpose of the festival was to give the Performing Arts Department a chance to come together and showcase performances of all musical and theatrical disciplines to the school community.
“The idea was to take the Playwrights Festival and build it out to be a full-out performing arts festival,” Washburn said. “We [wanted] to help elevate the presence of performing arts on campus [and] all the different programs we offer. You’ve got theater, dance, vocal music, instrumental music, each of them are in their own pockets. It can be difficult to feel the sense of community all under one department, but [Lights Up] was an idea to bring people together.”
Student director Natasha Clement ’24 said the festival provided a chance to attend performances from classmates she had
not seen before.
“Being at the festival allowed me to go watch different groups perform, even those that I do not get to see on a regular basis,” Clement said. “I admit that I am a bit biased because I had a lot of friends that were in the performances themselves. Regardless, I was able to go to a lot of shows to support them. I had a lot of fun watching students perform, and I was able to see how much work went into each show.”
Clement said preparing for the festival was both an exciting and nerve-wracking experience.
“It was my first time directing a show alone, so I often felt anxious at rehearsals,” Clement said. “Two things helped with that, though. I found working with the advisors to be comforting, and I also overprepped for each of the rehearsals.”
Clara Berg ’25 said her role as Plato in the show “I Should Have Been A Playwright” allowed her to experiment with different emotions and personalities.
“It was difficult to [understand] an ancient Greek philosopher, but I was able to experiment with who Plato is to me, an anxious nerd who cares about Socrates,” Berg said. “I was also in a site-specific show called ‘Time’s Up.’ I acted out a voice in someone’s head, distracting her during a quiz. It was interesting to tune into more of a concept than a person and [struggle with] how to personify negativity and doubt. Being one of three voices was powerful, in particular, because we were all working together to overpower a student.”
Berg said though she experienced difficulties in preparing for her role in “Time’s Up,” she was able to overcome them with the help of her peers and teacher.
“It was a challenge for me to get the transitions in [the show] because there are multiple occasions in which the voices become an evil teacher,” Berg said. “Completely changing my character, both physically and emotionally, was a balancing act. Our director gave us tips, though, and I got it in the end.”
Berg said another challenge in putting the festival together was getting back into character after the shows were postponed.
“The festival was
postponed twice and wound up running a month after when it was scheduled,” Berg said. “An obstacle was getting back into the feelings of the character after being on break and [given] the recent events on campus.”
Lights Up was rescheduled from April 20-23 to the current dates following the passing of Jonah Anschell ’23. Washburn said though rescheduling the festival was difficult, it was a good opportunity for students and teachers to gather and heal.
“[The festival was] supposed to open the day we learned about Jonah, but we ended up putting [it on] pause,” Washburn said. “It took a couple of weeks for us to understand how we were going to move forward, keeping in mind [how] different people deal with grief and loss. Figuring out how to approach something with over 100 people was tricky, but I think it has been a healing opportunity, just looking at the community that came together around the performances these last couple of nights.”
Washburn said the recent events required them to reconsider the content of the shows.
“We had one [show] in the festival that was scheduled, but once we found out about Jor dan, we pulled it out because it felt like the content wasn’t going to be appropriate at that time,” Washburn said. “The playwright had another [show] she [had] worked on over the previous summer, so we were able to workshop that in its place.”
Upper School Performing Arts Teacher Zanaida Robles said it was unfortunate the festival was rescheduled because the new schedule put the choral concert before the other shows, creating a disconnect.
“I was proud of the choir concert, but our performance felt isolated from the rest of the department,” Robles said. “I speculate that choir groups would feel more connected to their peers in other performing arts disciplines had the festival happened
as planned.”
Parmet said though her group was not given much time to prepare, the students adapted and delivered a good performance.
“I felt a little nervous because we started preparing for our concert after spring break,” Parmet said. “Before that, we were focused on rehearsing for our Carnegie Hall performance. It was a little chaotic, and a lot of us practiced outside of class to get our pieces memorized, [but] it all came together in the end.”
Sophia Choi ’25 said despite the commitment that preparing for the festival required, she found it to be a rewarding experience.
“Lights Up [was] a fun experience,” Choi said. “Even though it took up a lot of time, I enjoyed being a part of the choir, improv and Playwrights Festival. I learned to work together with others and improvise to make things work.”
Clement said she appreciated seeing the work that she put in come to light.
“I loved seeing everything come together and watching the cast members become closer,” Clement said.
“The best part was watching the show from backstage as it opened to audience members.”
Clement said though she misses collaborating with her peers now that the festival has come to a close, she is proud of the performance that she put on.
“The end of a show is always bittersweet,” Clement said. “I miss being around the cast members before and after rehearsals, but I am also super proud of the work that the students put in and so glad that we were able to perform our piece for audience members.”
Washburn said she is interested in hosting similar events to highlight students’ performances in the future.
“These students are so dedicated and talented that we want to show them off and give them a chance to be seen,” Washburn said. “It might look different, [but] it will continue.”
Students in the Upper School Choir and Orchestra programs performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City on March 28. They traveled as a group, visiting cultural sites and museums during their trip.
Bel Canto member Maya Ray '25 said the trip was especially meaningful because of the music they performed.
“The song we played, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, hadn’t been played in Carnegie in over 100 years,” Ray said, “We only played indigenous music and diverse music, which was really historic.”
Ray said she enjoyed the group's visit the Museum of Modern Art, as well as seeing one of the last Broadway performances of “Chicago” with the original cast.
“All the students voted on what musical to see, and we all decided on 'Chicago',” Ray said, "It was amazing to see and experience because as a theater nerd, I got to see such an influential musical with such an impressive cast.”
Alexia Aridi ’25 said she enjoyed exploring the city and performing with classmates.
“I hung out with my friends roaming the streets of New York to go to cute little breakfast places,” Aridi said. “It was a
really cool experience overall, especially playing in Carnegie.”
Lok Gertschen-Klaseus
’25 said he is grateful that the school's music program provided the opportunity to travel and perform.
“We really got to see Carnegie,” Gertschen-Klaseus said. “Being inside was super cool. I think it's really special that our school gives us the chance to go on this trip, to play such cool music in New York City as a group.”
Choir Director Zanaida Robles said there is still progress to be made in representing diverse voices in music but that she felt the trip was a success. “There is still so much work to do to bring the music of underrepresented and marginalized composers into our collective consciousness,” Robles said. “I couldn't be more proud of our work. My life and the lives of our singers and instrumentalists are forever changed for the better thanks to this monumental experience.”
A press release sent out about the evening of music at Carnegie Hall said the pieces played at the event were intended to trigger deeper reflections on the part of audience members and those performing.
“These performances invite listeners and participants to seriously ponder urgent questions about who is seen and heard, historically and into the present day,” the press release said.
Photography Editor Raisa Effress ’23, Presentations Managing Editor Fallon Dern ’23 and Alejandro Lombard ’23 were chosen as 2023 U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts, selected by the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars.
The program was founded in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson to honor the nation’s top high school students. Since then, the program has celebrated achievements beyond the academic field to include the visual, creative and performing arts. This year, there were over 5,000 candidates qualifying for the program and 20 finalist winners.
Presidential Scholars Award recipient for photography Raisa Effress ’23 said her works were
centered around sharing the stories of Holocaust survivors and that winning was especially impactful to her because of the recent increase in antisemitic events.
“Waking up on May 10 as a Presidential Scholar was an unforgettable moment, and I was incredibly honored to be chosen at every step of the selection process,” Effress said. “However, at a time when antisemitism in the U.S. has reached a record high, the significance of this award is much bigger than me; it represents a national recognition of Jewish histories, straight from the highest office in America.”
Effress said the process of documenting a Holocaust survivor through art was rewarding and inspiring.
“The crown jewel of my
application was my multimedia series, Mended (Nes Gadol Haya Sham),” Effress said. “I began traveling to the homes of Holocaust survivors from across the country to document their stories and make intimate portraits of them. Then, using vintage thread, I meticulously embroidered a part of each photographic print, creating a pop of color to highlight an aspect of each survivor’s life that brings them joy. The physical act of weaving something new and beautiful from the remnants of the past represents the painstaking efforts of families like mine to heal after the Holocaust and the wonderful fruits of those efforts. In the second half of the series, I explore the legacy of the Holocaust in my own family."
• Continued on hwchronicle.com
The Visual Arts Department hosted a photography exhibit featuring selected works by Photography I and II students in Feldman Horn Gallery on May 12. Students invited family and friends to view projects they had worked on throughout the school year.
Photography I student Savannah Mahoney '25 said the event provided a space for students to come together.
“It was honestly just such a fun environment of photographers, singers, dancers, poets and more, and I just really enjoyed everyone showcasing their art and being able to be proud of my and my friends’ work," Mahoney said.
Mahoney said she appreciated the opportunity to show her work to the rest of the school community.
“It was a really cool experience to showcase what I have worked on and am proud of this year,” Mahoney said. “I’m so happy I got to show my friends and family my work and the work of others that I was super excited about.”
Photography II student Sabine Kang ’24 said she enjoyed hearing her friends'
perspectives on her projects.
“I didn’t think I would care too much about the gallery, but I went with my friends, and it ended up being really nice because some of my photos featured them, and it was fun to see their reactions,” Kang said.
Kang said she enjoyed the event because she was able to spend time with her friends and view other students’ work.
“In general I didn't really expect to be super drawn to any work but I was surprised by how much dedication everyone seemed to put in because it's hard to put a lot of effort in since everyone is so busy,” Kang said. “I went with my friends and I really enjoyed the event overall.”
Although Leila Kvistad ’24 did not have work displayed, she said she saw various photography techniques reflected in the exhibit.
“I went to the photography event because my friends were in the event, and I wanted to go appreciate their work and show support,” Kvistad said. “I liked the creativity of the artists like the colorful collages, the use of Polaroids and the collective portraits. They all had a deep takeaway, and it’s very admirable that this all came
from a student’s mind.”
Photography II student Clarissa Brown ’24 said her favorite piece was one she did for her "Portrait of a Community" project.
"The work that I was most proud of was probably my piece from our “Portrait of a Community” project," Brown said. "With this assignment, we were first tasked with thinking about which communities we were apart of, then choosing one to represent in a series of photographs."
Brown said her decision of which community to focus on was caused by her observation of a lack of representation of her own identity.
"I chose to represent the Wasian community because I haven’t seen many depictions of us before," Brown said. "I essentially went around campus and took portraits of different Wasian students in the HW community, then combined all of the images into a collage. My goal with the piece was to highlight how even though Wasians are all grouped together by a defining trait — that is, being half Asian and half white — there is still so much diversity within the community."
“ My life and the lives of our singers and instrumentalists are forever changed for the better thanks to this monumental experience."
Zanaida Robles, Choir Director
University of Chicago: Was four years at Harvard-Westlake not enough? Jesus Christ.
Yale University: Where are you going to school?
Oh, in New Haven? How cool and subtle of you to not say Yale.
New York University: If I hear the city is your campus one more time…
University of Colorado Boulder: No one from Harvard-Westlake is going. Perhaps those interested were too stoned to meet the deadline.
École Hôtelière de Lausanne: I love you Allegra!
Stanford University: Apparently, Computer Science is a requirement there. Who knew?
Cornell University: Welcome to Ithaca, the city that never sleeps!
Brown University: Incredible! Perfect! A 10/10! On a totally unrelated note, does anyone know if the wait list is still active? Asking for a friend...
Northwestern University: Battle-tested journalists only.
Harvard University: The new University of Chicago (refer to overheard_ hw on Instagram for more information).
Wesleyan University: A truly incredible education with a side of lung cancer.
Colgate University: Obligatory toothpaste joke.
Boston University: “You don’t need to study –– you go to BU.”
Washington University in St. Louis: The Harvard of St. Louis.
Columbia University: Hey, remember when you guys lied about your statistics? Laugh out loud!
Southern Methodist University: They don’t check your GPA –– they check your tax bracket.
[This joke has been written by Becca Berlin]
University of California, Berkeley: If you have a 4.0 just say it.
University of California, Los Angeles: Getting some much needed distance from your family, huh?
University of Pennsylvania: Okay it may be a good school but it has the WORST alumni.
I mean, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, my parents…
University of Michigan: Wow, really seeming to Mich out on a lot of qualified candidates. [This joke has been written by a sophomore.]
Princeton University: Ew, New Jersey? Really?
Georgetown University: Jewish girl in a Jesuit world.
By Davis Marks
Dear Representative Bladen, Congratulations on your election to the Studio City Neighborhood Council. It was a fierce race with zero competition. You didn’t even need to have any runoff elections, unlike our dearest Prefects. We know your compassionate and strong leadership will benefit the community. Now that we have a close relationship with someone in power, we have a few constituent requests:
1. Convince Studio City local newspapers to join HW Media. The Chronicle joining HW Media next school year is just the first step in your path towards journalistic imperialism.
2. Threaten to evict Erewhon unless they give us a student discount. Those smoothies are expensive, and our journalistic thirst must be quenched.
3. Work on creating public transportation from the North Gate to Ralphs. Our sophomore writers have told us their legs are tired from us forcing them to walk to Ralphs to buy us snacks.
5. Slow down the River Park approval process. Whenever we don’t have ideas for the Community News section, we just write about River Park. River Park’s completion would harm us.
6. We noticed that Studio City does not have an official motto. We think it is time for this to change. How does “Transparency, Accuracy, Objectiv ity” sound?
7. Use your ex ecutive authority over Studio City to ask Jackson to let us park next to Weiler Hall. Walk ing from the Senior Lot makes us tired, and journalists need to be fired up and passionate.
8. Ask Studio City residents to
call Mendocino Farms by its government name. You’re going to Mendocino Farms, not “Mendo.”
9. Force Staples to give us a free printer. Right now, only Assistant A&E Editor Kriste An can print from her laptop, and she is tired.
10. Connect us with a local odor removal business. The Sports Room smells absolutely rancid on this Saturday afternoon. If you’re curious what “rancid” means, we can only describe it as a mixture of sweet, sour, cheesy, tangy, spicy, organic
We look forward to seeing how you serve our community. We believe in purpose beyond ourselves, so we hope our requests to better the Studio City community
What we’ve learned in our time as sophomores:
•Chronicle is our sport. And that is okay. -Zoe
•No, it’s not. -Hannah
•Don’t make jokes about Yearbook Advisor Jen Bladen in your satire articles.
•Think before you tweet.
•Skip the stairmaster; just walk to the library.
•Waiting in the sandwich line is always worth it. -Zoe
•No, it’s not. - Hannah
•The sweet potatoes at Erewhon are so good. Not a joke, just a very strong opinion.
•Driving is hard. Why not just coerce a senior into doing it for you instead?
•Buying a bottle of water in the cafeteria every single day is much worse for the environment than dumping chemicals in the LA River. Get a hydro flask. Or a Stanley, if you’re being trendy.
•The Hailey Bieber smoothie does not make you look like Hailey Bieber. We tried.
•The activities fair is like the Hunger Games because 90% of those clubs die a week into the school year.
•Video Art is objectively the coolest extracurricular because it gets you into the Westflix afterparty.
•Tap Out is the closest thing to athletics I have ever done — aside from debate. -Zoe
•Tap Out will give you IBS. -Hannah
•Prefect Council.......wait... what does Prefect Council do again?
•You will get trampled when you’re buying tickets for the Sierra Canyon basketball game. Sorry, it’s just inevitable.
•Whatever the weather app says, dress for the opposite temperature. The Studio City sun has a mind of its own.
•The best part about River Park is not its environmental impact, it’s the Save Weddington AG Jeans merch collection.
•Pulling an all-nighter isn’t bad for you as long as you shotgun a Marquis drink from the cafeteria before 8 a.m.
What we’re looking forward to for junior year:
•Getting less than six hours of sleep every night.
•Being able to sit on the quad without being heavily judged. This year has been a struggle.
•Replying all to any Prefect Council emails about East Coast Prep Day.
•Never having to take a sex-ed class with our deans again.
•Complaining about homework without getting judged by upperclassmen.
•Not having to relearn what a double replacement reaction is in every single Chemistry class.
•College Kickstart. We don’t really know what this is, but all the Juniors are always talking about it. Must be fun.
•Running for Head Fanatics and promptly slandering all of our opponents.
•Being excluded from Chronicle Secret Santa. Some things never change.
•Not having to run to Weiler during our English class break. Oh wait, is that just an us thing?
•Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) because there’s never enough T-Swizzle.
•Driving to school, and then getting our steps in walking from the junior parking lot.
•Growing the staffs of the Elbow and Panorama from two to three dedicated journalists. Preferably four, though that may be pushing our luck.
The boys and girls swimming and diving teams completed their seasons 7-1 and 7-0, respectively, winning Mission League and sending multiple team members to compete in CIF Southern Section (CIF-SS) prelims and finals. Assistant Sports Editor Christopher Mo ’24 was the only swimmer who qualified for CIF State competition and set the school record in the 500 freestyle at the meet.
Mo competed in CIF-SS and had one of the top 40 fastest times in the 500 freestyle in California, qualifying for the state championship. Mo swam a 4:30.26 at CIF State, setting the school record in the event previously held by Adam Copses ’19 at 4:31.21. Mo said that the team’s intense pre-season training prepared him to break the record.
“Our team packs in a lot of aerobic training and a lot of pace work, which allows us to hold a certain pace for a longer time,” Mo said. “The training definitely helped me, especially in the 500, where 20 laps of the pool is very crucial for being able to keep pace.”
The girls relay team qualified for CIF-SS finals, placing seventh in the 200 medley relay and second in the 200 freestyle relay. Lily Neumann ’24 placed third in the 50yard freestyle and fifth in the 100-yard freestyle at CIF State prelims. Allison Nguyen ’23 qualified for CIF State Prelims in the 50-yard freestyle and fly and Claire McLean ’23 placed 17th in the 100-yard free and 20th in the 50-yard free. Ethan Wang ’23 swam the 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard freestyle at the
IN COLD:
CIF-SS finals. Wang said that the CIF Finals experience was unlike any meet he’d swam in before.
“CIF [is] the grand finale of the season for those who qualified, so it’s a chance for you and your teammates to show off all that you’ve been working towards,” Wang said. “This also means that everybody there is competing at the
top of their form, so swimming at CIF also means that you’ll be meeting and racing some of the fastest people in California.”
In CIF-SS prelims, the boys team placed 19th in the 200free relay and 19th in the 400free relay, just one place shy of qualifying for finals. Nicholas Barner ’24 placed 28th in the 50-yard freestyle and 32nd in
the 100-yard backstroke in CIF-SS prelims. Barner said he hopes to make big improvements in his swimming leading up to his senior season.
“I’m hoping to improve physically and technically this upcoming season,” Barner said. “It will be hard, but with time and dedication both on and off the pool deck, I believe these goals are attainable.”
The robotics team has joined the athletics department for the next competitive season. Members of the team will now earn PE credit for competing on the team.
Science and Robotics Teacher Tripp Reed (Dru Reed ’24) said giving PE credit to members of the team makes sense due to the type of work they complete.
“Like any athlete, our robotics students are dedicated workers who spend hours and hours honing their craft,” Reed said. “The pursuit of excellence and desire to win is equally relevant on the robotics field as on the basketball court. Robotics competitions last ten hours daily and require physical endurance and mental toughness. To acknowledge these efforts, we offered PE credits to our competitors.”
The robotics team’s transi -
The baseball team ended their season following a 1-0 loss against Orange Lutheran High School in the quarterfinals of the CIF Southern Section (CIF-SS) Division 1 playoffs May 9. The team finished the season with an overall record of 22-9 and a league record of 14-7.
This loss came after their 1-0 victory against Palos Verdes High School in the first round of the CIF-SS playoffs, where they managed to secure a win in a game that lasted two days and went into the 14th inning. The one run scored on a wild pitch in the top of the 14th inning against Palos Verdes was the only run the Wolverines scored in their final 29 innings of the season.
Despite being swept by Notre Dame early in the season, the
team bounced back from their early season losses with a 12 game winning streak that spanned from late March to late April. Last season, the team finished 22-8-1 and made it to the semifinals of the CIF-SS playoffs, where they fell short against JSerra High School.
Catcher Thomas Lieb ’24 said the team did not have an ideal start to the season.
“We started out the gate pretty slow, not winning as much as we wanted to,” Lieb said. “Then we came together as a group, identified our problems and because of that, we were able to win more games.”
Pitcher Tommy Bridges ’24 said the team was able to find their rhythm as the season progressed.
“This season started out rough but gradually started to improve,” Bridges said. “We started to find our groove as a team and performed way better than the start.
An aspect of the season that stands out is the team’s ability to forget all of the past games and just focus on the current.”
Bridges said the team has developed chemistry by playing baseball together for years on other teams.
“Our team has always been super close,” Bridges said. “Most of us grew up playing baseball together. We all bonded around the same thing our whole lives and that led to the strong friendships that we have on and off the field.”
The team will graduate 13 seniors this year. Lieb said a major part of his role as a senior next year will be to guide the younger freshmen and sophomores on the team.
“We have to show the younger guys the ropes again next year and make sure that they can step up in the big situations,” Lieb said.
tion to the athletic department comes as a result of the switch from VEX to FRC (First Robotics Competition). Reed said the format for FRC is different from VEX. In VEX, students would compete in small teams with two to five members, while in FRC, each team has anywhere between 15 and 200 members. Kaito De Anda ’24 said the team needed to adjust to the increased complexity of FRC.
“FRC is a much larger scale robotics league with much more complex and advanced robots than VEX,” De Anda said. “It wasn’t until we went to our first FRC [competition] that we realized the orders of magnitude by which we needed to advance [the robotics program].”
Team member Milo Messenger ’25 said joining the athletics department will give the team
more access to much needed materials and space.
“We get access to some of the resources the athletic department has, like transportation, which was a big problem for us last year, and space on campus, and more funding,” Messenger said.
The robotics team is the 26th team of the athletics department.
Reed said the team joining FRC meant that it made sense for the team to become a part of the athletics department.
“When the administration took a closer look at the structure of the FRC program, they determined that robotics had a similar progression to most athletic teams,” Reed said. “The move to athletics unified the program across both campuses. Students arriving in 7th grade will have a clear path for developing and improving their engineering, design and programming skills.”
The Boys Track and Field team placed fourth and the Girls Track and Field team placed eighth at the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Track and Field Finals
May 13. Pole Vaulters Jessica Thompson ’23 and Sofia Rakfeldt ’25, Discus and Shot Put Thrower Jesse Goldman ’23 and Long Jumper Benson Fleischer ’23 qualified for the CIF Masters meet on May 20.
Thompson, who achieved a new school record of 13 feet and one inch on the pole vault, said the journey to reaching her new personal record was mentally taxing.
Andrew Kurgan ’24 and Colin Kennedy ’24 won three rounds in the CIF individuals tournament to make it to the round of 32.
The duo rallied to win 6-4 and 6-3 in the third round, guaranteeing them a spot in the second week of the tournament.
Kurgan said the team closed out both sets efficiently. He said he served with power and Kennedy performed well at the net.
“When [Colin] and I are playing well, we are very hard to stop.” Kurgan said. “The chemistry we have, especially in our service games, propelled us forward in this tournament.”
Kurgan said staying focused at key points late in both sets helped the team win the match.
“Tennis is all about how you deal with pressure,” Kurgan said. “We won the points we needed to win, it’s as simple as that.”
Kennedy said the duo needs
to make some minor adjustments in order to maximize their success.
“We gotta work on executing better and make sure not to give up any free points that add up and have an impact,” Kennedy. “We need to be more aggressive in closing at the net and reduce the amount of double faults. Staying focused and keeping [the] energy up is crucial.”
Kennedy said he and his teammate are planning to give their all in their last tournament of the season.
“The goal for the tournament honestly is to just have fun and embrace this opportunity [that] we’ve been given,” Kennedy said. “[We’ve] got to trust our games and play how we have been practicing all season. Obviously we want to go far, but we don’t want to get caught up in the results and stunt our performance.”
Sports Section Editor Paul Kurgan ’23 competed in the CIF-SS
singles tournament, making it to the second round. He said he went into the tournament feeling confident in himself.
“I was hitting my forehand very well,” Paul Kurgan said. “I was playing relaxed and confident tennis and was able to get a win quickly.”
Paul Kurgan said he went in as an underdog in the second match, but that he is happy with the way he played in the last match of his high school career.
“I’m happy [that] I got the opportunity to compete for the team [over] these past four years,” Paul Kurgan said. “My coaches have all been so supportive [throughout] my journey and I’m extremely thankful for my team.”
Andrew Kurgan said the team had strong bonds this year.
“The whole team liked each other,” Andrew Kurgan said. “We were competitive in practice but we respect each other a lot.”
The lacrosse team lost to Temecula Valley High School 11-10 in the quarterfinals of Division II CIF Southern Section (CIF-SS) playoffs May 6, ending the season with a 9-8 overall record and a 3-3 record in the Mission League. The team lost in the semi-finals of the Mission League tournament to Loyola High School 20-5 on Apr. 22.
The squad beat Peninsula High School 6-5 and Beckman High School 7-6 in the first two rounds of CIF playoffs. Attackman Vincenzo Rabizadeh ’25 said he enjoyed playing in three consecutive playoff games that were decided by one goal.
“The close games were some of the most fun games we’ve had,”
Rabizadeh said. “Every game was a little bit different, [and] we improved after every one. Each time we fought, it was amazing to be with all my brothers on the team and to stand side by side to fight for one cause, to get one more game and see how far we can make it.”
The team started the season 1-3 before finishing with a record of 9-8. Rabizadeh said the team learned how to play as more of a unit over the course of the season.
“One of the biggest things we learned to do is play as a team,” Rabizadeh said. “We started the season very cohesively, [and] as multiple individuals on the field at once. As the season went on, I think we improved in [terms of] trusting each other, trusting our coaches and being able to bring a
different attitude into our games. I think that’s something that greatly helped us as the season progressed.”
Goalkeeper Rohan Mehta ’23 said he witnessed significant improvement across the team throughout the season.
“It was really nice seeing all the younger players develop, especially playing goalie, [since] I can see everything that’s happening,” Mehta said. “Seeing the improvement from people like Ben Simmons ’26 and Matthew Murray ’24 from the first whistle of the season to the last game, I’m really proud of all the work they’ve put in and the commitment everyone put in to the season.”
Mehta, who is committed to Emerson College, said his four years on the team have prepared him to continue to play lacrosse at the collegiate level.
“It’s been an amazing four years,” Mehta said. “I had an amazing time on the team, and it’s my time on the lacrosse team has prepared me to play in college and at the next level.”
and achieve a personal record.
“ This season was very challenging for me,” Rakfeldt said. “I had a broken foot throughout most of [this season] and wasn’t able to accomplish all that I had hoped to. Going into my jump my main thought was that I needed to clear this bar to prove to myself that I [could] do it.”
Rakfeldt said her goal for future seasons is to make continual improvements to her performance in pole vaulting.
“My main goal for this year was to break 13, so going into finals it was definitely on my mind,” Thompson said. “I mostly put pressure on myself [going into the meet] because I hadn’t [reached my goal] the entire year and was becoming increasingly frustrated with myself. So making that bar was like lifting a weight off my shoulder.”
Thompson said she advises younger pole vaulters to have patience with themselves and to persevere through any difficulties that they face.
“I would say that results take time and to not lose sight of your goals when things don’t go a certain way,” Thompson said. “It took me almost 3 years to learn to be patient with myself and allow myself to make mistakes within the sport, and that mindset is what ultimately [allowed me to be successful].”
Rakfeldt, who qualified for CIF Masters with a lifetime best of 11 feet and nine inches in pole vaulting, said it was a challenging season due to a foot injury but that she was determined to overcome adversity
“A goal I have is not only about reaching a certain height but about improving in one way or another,” Rakfeldt said. “In a sport like pole vault where every meet ends with a miss, it is easy to get cauwght up in what you didn’t accomplish, what height you didn’t reach, but it is important to always enjoy the little victories that come your way.”
Fleischer qualified for CIF masters with 21 feet and 10.5 inches in the long jump. He said his mind becomes completely focused when he is competing in his event.
“Long jump is a type of [sport where] when you’re in the process of doing it, your mind kind of goes blank and you’re just running and two seconds later, you’re in the sand and you have no idea what went on,” Fleischer said.
Fleischer said continuous advice from his coach has helped him to reach his goals over the course of his high school career.
“I feel like the track and field journey was one that was definitely more than one year,” Fleischer said. “Just trusting the process and listening to [Head Coach of Track and Field Jonas Koolsbergen’s] coaching points, as difficult as it may be sometimes [is what it took to achieve this distance].”
“ Each time we fought, it was amazing to be with all my brothers on the team and to stand side by side to fight...”
Vincenzo Rabizadeh ’25
Even before there was talk about robotics joining the athletics department, we always joked about how robotics is absolutely a sport; how we have to carry an 18 pound robot everywhere, spend hours cutting and building with metal and run to the tournament’s match field last minute so we don’t get disqualified after fixing the 10th thing on the robot that broke down that day. Every tournament was always hectic and so energetic.
My first regionals tournament as a 9th grader was overwhelming in the best way possible. Several dozens of teams would come together in a high school gym under blaring fluorescent lights; your hearing would be flooded by the crowd’s chatter and the announcers’ narration of ongoing matches on the game fields. On each field, 2 teams of 2 robots fought and competed to get the most points in front of rows of bleachers filled with enthusiastic parents and less enthusiastic siblings.
Subsequent tournaments only got more exciting and energetic, with signature tournaments in Boston and Northern California having elevated match fields spotlit with colorful moving lights in a dark gym or venue. Seeing the robot you spent hours designing and building go up against other robots never became tiring — it was nervewracking, to be sure, but it was always exciting.
To get to that point, I had to overcome a lot of difficulties in the work we put in before the big days. But for each difficulty, there was always something new for me to learn in robotics. It was through discussions and debates with my teammates that I learned communication and to balance ideals with reality.
After seeing several strong robots at competitions, I noticed how many of them just followed the same overall design with slightly different executions. At some point I had this ideal of creating a robot designed completely different from the others that nobody else could’ve seen coming, using its difference to beat the competition.
For such a STEM-y activity where it might seem like there’s always an absolute answer, there really isn’t; a lot of different ideas feel like they could work really well to different people, and that’s when disagreements happen.
It’s expected, but to make it work, you need some level of concession, aka knowing went to call quits — that’s what I had the most trouble doing, especially to my most idealistic ideas.
While I tried my best to concede whatever sounded reasonable, sometimes I pushed hard
on wacky ideas and mechanisms. Sometimes it worked — especially in our sophomore year season when we had weirdly designed remote competitions, some wacky mechanisms helped us stand out and win awards.
But in junior year’s game, we took an unused, untested idea too far.
At the beginning of the season in junior year, the team agreed to make a design that was completely different from the design rising to become the meta: the most agreed upon design in the community. We spent hours and hours trying to get it done in time by the next competition — a design nobody’s built or tested before.
And how did it go in the competition? We had to disable one of its lifts for it to stay in the rule’s size restriction, one of its few scoring mechanisms was incomplete, and while we miraculously made it to semifinals, all the finalists used the meta design, making it clear how it worked a lot better.
So when we decided to redesign the robot, I decided to put a hold on those off-the-rail ideas, since too much of it wasted the team’s efforts over the summer and the beginning of the year, and given everyone’s courseload, took way too much time to complete.
But the robot that resulted felt basic and always a step behind what the others did, since we just followed in their footsteps. We couldn’t win awards or do as well in matches.
Through programming skills and driving, we qualified for world championships, but I still felt like the build quality wasn’t helping at all.
So when we decided to redesign again for world championships, I really researched forums, brainstormed, analyzed other team’s designs, and finally figured out a potential design that this time, struck that perfect balance of being reliably tested while having a new twist that could give us an edge, a perfect balance of realistic-ness and ideal (I could go into the specifics but that would add another page to this).
After putting in a lot of effort into planning, 3-D modeling, and communicating with my teammates about this idea, many of them were on
board, and we finally finished it over spring break. We did incredibly well at a scrimmage with our sister teams, and seeing everything finally work was so, so rewarding.
Even though at World Championships, we lost to the teams that would become world champions earlier on, I’m glad to have finished the season trying something novel while staying realistic enough to actually bring it to fruition.
Right before World Championships began, the game designer showed up to give a speech, and he said something along the lines of “you must’ve had a hard time with this game, and in fact, I hope you had a hard time! Because it’s from hard times that you learn and grow.” Half of me cursed him for bringing suffering to me, my team, and HW’s sister teams. The other half (reluctantly) acknowledged how much I learned throughout the more difficult parts of the robotics experience.
I could keep going with more bad habits I managed to fix because of robotics, but enough difficult parts. It’s easy to remember stressful or sad moments, but it’s just as important to hold onto the more chill and fun parts.
I’ll never forget the all-nighter we pulled after Worlds was over and we had to leave the hotel at 4 am. We played Super Smash Bros, watched the new episode of Spy x Family, and left the hotel sleep-deprived but happy.
Or when my teammates and I ate ramen together at our robot driver’s house during a remote competition.
Or when our coach Mr. Theiss drove all of us back to the airport at midnight after a competition, and the quiet, chill space in a car full of robotics kids who are usually busy and hectic.
I made a lot of friends through robotics in 9th grade and am still so close with many of them. Mr. Theiss showed me how to be positive when things don’t go the way we want and also how to stack 6 suitcases worth of robot parts on a tiny airport cart. So, thank you, robotics, and good luck to those doing robotics now as formal athletes!
By Fallon Dern, Allegra Drago and Emmy Zhang
Every Saturday morning, Fallon gets up at 8 a.m. to watch the Tottenham Hotspurs face off against other teams in the Premier Football League. 22 hours later, Allegra’s entire family will sit in the living room to watch AC Milan play. Emmy just watches TikToks where the players look handsome and occasionally pretends to care about soccer to make her dad happy.
Despite our inability to play the sport—either for lack of stamina or, in Allegra’s case, having been barred from participation since ninth grade for reasons she can’t publish— watching soccer teaches us about resilience, humility and sportsmanship, as well as strength in
the face of losses.
Such strength was exhibited when we sat, eyes glued to our phones, as Brazil’s national team demolished Korea in the 2023 World Cup. For Allegra, it was a great day. Fallon, Emmy and their respective celebrity crushes were devastated.
“No matter how this game ends, one of us is going to be irritable,” Fallon said in a text message to our junior Chronicle staffers. “Be on your best behavior this layout week. We love you. Sorry about this.”
Though Korea lost 4-1 to Brazil’s national team, Son Heungmin and Richarlison were seen hugging it out after the game; their loyalty to the Tottenham Hotspurs outweighed their pride during the international break. We did the same– and
yes, we’re comparing ourselves to professional soccer players, but hear us out.
As a trio, the team we’re most devoted to is the one we’ve built together. The Chronicle’s been looking better than ever thanks to us, and doing better than ever thanks to the rest of our players.
We’ve got Coach Montgomery, a stellar set of strikers who supervise our sections and executive editors in the midfield, ensuring our Print Managing line of defense has fewer errors to block. If all else fails, we’ve got our goalies, the Editors-in-Chief who make sure no mistake gets the best of us. The qualities we admire on the pitch are the ones we mirror in the workrooms, and the ones we teach our junior players so they’re ready to sub in when our time is up.
Next year, there will be just 13 seniors working for The Chronicle — the lowest number in at least a decade. That means only half of the current editorships will be filled, and the division of responsibilities must be very efficient.
By Lucas Cohen-d’Arbeloff
“We come to this place for magic,” she says.
These are the words of Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman. The “place” she refers to is none other than a dim AMC movie theater. I could probably recite this ad from beginning to end if you asked; I’ve watched it time and time again as my fellow audience members chuckle and cheer loudly whenever Nicole appears onscreen in her plush recliner.
However unapologetically cheesy Nicole’s words are, they mostly hold true. Whether AMC Theaters do indeed “make movies better” is up for debate, but seeing films in a movie theater is a unique experience that I’ve come to appreciate more and more over the years. Theaters allow us to embark on watching journeys together, united in a tranquil environment free of
the constant phone notifications or doorbells that seem to define movie-watching at home. The only distractions we encounter in movie theaters are generally ones that enhance the experience and heighten the action: I know I speak for everyone else in the theater when I say that “M3GAN” just wouldn’t have been the same without Staff Writer Hannah Shahidi ’25 yelling out “Best movie ever!” in the middle of the gripping climax.
As schoolwork ramped up during parts of junior and senior year, movies became an escape for me, and AMC’s cool and controlled setting became a needed reprieve. Weekend showtimes with friends or family were quickly incorporated into my routine. Latin and calculus study sessions were punctuated by screenings of epic comedies like “Babylon,” thrilling mysteries like “Glass Onion” and classic musicals like “West Side Story.”
Even the worst movies (cough, cough...“TÁR”) provided moments of humor, inspiration or historical knowledge I could grasp onto.
So to my fellow graduating seniors and underclassmen alike: I urge you to set aside time in your busy schedules to visit your local movie theater. It doesn’t have to be AMC — Re gal and Cinemark can still probably provide that indescribable feel ing that Nicole de scribes. You will, in fact, find a place where stories are larger than life, where heartbreak can feel good and where, for just two hours, the only thing that matters is that big silver screen.
The unique makeup of next year’s staff means we have to be more thoughtful about the creation of HW Media, the Communications Department’s plan to unite journalism, yearbook, and broadcast, adding new leadership positions that will help coordinate between the staffs of each. We must ask tough questions and search for answers as opposed to automatically believing the worst (or best) is true. It is critical for The Chronicle to be strategic and thoughtful about how roles are distributed and not fall victim to bureaucratic bloat.
The presentation of HW Media has been unclear, with changing plans and vague descriptions of what things will look like next year, but I personally find it much less threatening than some of my peers do. From my conversations with Chronicle Advisor Billy Montgomery, I understand that the school is moving forward with HW Media to better connect the leaders of various communications arms — not so that one advisor or leader has control over the entire department. The titles of the editors within The Chroni-
By Claire Conner
As a soon-to-be journalism major, I could not be more excited about what the future holds. I’m eagerly anticipating my college move-in date, ready for the adventure ahead. Still, I can’t help but think about the past, reflecting on everything I’ve learned in my four years at Harvard-Westlake. I’m hardly a battle-tested journalist, but I’m deeply concerned about the future of journalism in my school community and country. Both are at a turning point.
The Chronicle is entering a period of transition as it merges with broadcast and yearbook classes into HW Media. We have the chance to rectify a growing reputation crisis, earning back the trust of entire academic departments and groups of students who no longer engage
with our reporting. Confidence in national media outlets is also dwindling, and it remains at a historic low amid increasingly polarizing and profit-oriented decision-making in newsrooms.
It’s not difficult to recognize the importance of journalism to both Harvard-Westlake and America. Both have the right and ability to hold leadership accountable, build a sense of community and share stories that would otherwise slip through the cracks. But if journalism — on either scale — intends to survive the next decade, reporters, editors and audiences must dedicate themselves to two crucial principles.
1 - Trust goes both ways. Journalists: You must earn the trust of your audience. Consider a variety of ideas, present them in the most fair and neutral way possible, pay
attention to the world outside of your bubble — and, most importantly, fact-check like your life depends on it. It is better to print a blank page with a smiley face on it than an article that contains false or vague information. Audiences: Advocate for change, but don’t hold grudges. Journalists need and deserve pressure to pursue principles like impartiality and rigorous honesty. Especially at a high school level, though, they need chances to learn and grow. Expecting perfection is actually quite sensible when it comes to delivering the facts, but excessively punishing mistakes prevents improvement in the long term. Helping us emerge from errors or poor choices is better than ignoring us. We are all human, and we can all be better.
2 - Independence is everything. A healthy democracy requires a free
press that isn’t beholden to the interests of corporations, government authorities or the most powerful citizens. Similarly, a flourishing educational environment needs student media that is free from censorship. No threat supersedes the importance of free, independent student journalism. To the future reporters and editors at this school: my word count here is low, but please read as much as you can about prior restraint and the Leonard Law — you are protected more than you think you are. Research extensively, write carefully, and never forget that you have a duty to your community to share your reporting.
cle aren’t going to change; the core development is that there are additional administrative positions and department-wide beats being created to make sure everything is covered in a streamlined manner.
It is certainly worrisome that when presented with the plan for HW Media, the majority of viewers believed there would be no more Chronicle positions, or that the broadcast, yearbook and journalism classes would all merge into one class period. All of these scenarios could threaten journalistic integrity; why combine The Chronicle, which must be capable of independent and critical reporting, with the yearbook, which has an entirely different purpose?
The Chronicle will choose our own leaders for next year, and Mr. Montgomery has assured us that he will fight as hard as he needs to back up our choices. Mr. Montgomery is the definition of a battle-tested journalist — he has worked as a general assignment reporter for four different newspapers and has taught journalism at the collegiate level for 20 years. Sophomores and juniors, don’t worry. The Chronicle will remain editorially sovereign, and if someone tries to breach that — whether it be HW Media or the administration — I have the utmost confidence that Mr. Montgomery has the paper in wonderful, fearless hands. Whatever happens, it must be you, the student journalists, who stand up for yourselves and enlist Mr. Montgomery when necessary. Stay weary, but trust that you have a long line of alumni ready to help at a moment’s notice.
Los Angeles! The city of angels! The city of stars! The city with more white Teslas than people!* Growing up in LA has made me smarter, worldlier, better. Than whom, you may ask?
Everyone. So yeah, I’ll admit it: I’m a coastal elite. Only in LA can you buy a small plastic bottle of water for $6. Only in LA can you experience seasonal depression in 70 degree weather. Only in LA can you call feeling slightly congested seasonal depression.
As an LA native, I was raised to be an elite. Starting at birth, I was built to be superior to any Midwestern rube or country bumpkin. The doctors at Cedars-Sinai pumped Evian water and creativity-inducing psilocybin into my mother’s IV drip. Throughout toddlerhood, I was tasked with learning the juiciest Hollywood gossip
By Becca Berlin
to ensure I always had talking points when rubbing elbows with Hollywood’s nepoest of babies. In elementary school, my prodigy knew no bounds. I passed the California state bar examination, invented the Croc and won a Daytime Emmy. As I’ve grown older, I have been trained to be in the finest physique, eating a pack of cigarettes each day to stay in tip-top shape (as instructed by my unfortunately Greek nutritionist, Dr. Yanni Vourgourakis). I’ve become an expert in train conducting, a close friend of the HAIM sisters and wanted in the former Yugoslavia. I’ve mastered the didgeridoo and have only been canceled twice.
I’m far more cultured than
the common American. I’ve been to London. I’ve eaten Korean food made by Korean people. I have very cosmopolitan shoelaces. The guy who pro duced Mo Bamba came to speak at my school. I have a diverse group of friends: some grown in test tubes and some made au naturel. I’ve met Judge Judy, Dolly Parton and that kid from “The Maze Runner.” And I have never been to New Jersey.
So now I’m worried about college. What if I meet people who are different from me? What if I’m forced to face a perspective from outside of my echo cham-
ber of white guilt and political correctness? What if someone tells me anti-zionism is not anti-semitism? Worst of all, what if someone asks me to join their improv troupe? But then I remember I’m a coastal elite. I can handle anything —probably even college improv.
*Fact-checked by the Chronicle Opinion section.
My relationship with the school became particularly difficult during the college process.
I began to question if I would have been better off at a different high school where I might have a higher GPA, where my junior year wasn’t tainted by burnout, leaving a hole in my application and an explanation in the dreaded additional info section of the Common App.
On Dec. 15th I was rejected from my early decision. And life went on.
As the condolences rolled in, I questioned why so much of the school’s culture surrounds where
By Daphne Daviesyou go after graduation. A single rejection seemed to overshadow the past six years of my life and all I had accomplished, both academically and personally.
And then last week, something shifted while I was studying for a quiz in Organic Chemistry, the hardest and best course I have taken in my high school career. Working on a review problem, the mechanism of the reaction suddenly clicked and I felt a rush of pride and validation. I have the resources to learn and understand material students outside of our school typically wouldn’t encounter until college. In that very moment, the school became worth every
instant of self-doubt I have experienced in my time here. As I graduate, I can confidently say that I am leaving smarter than I arrived. And that’s really all you can ask from a high school — not to ensure your acceptance to esteemed universities but to make your experience a meaningful and invaluable part of your life. Only a few days after my rejection, my best friend called me to tell me Southern Methodist University decisions had been released. So, with little hope, I checked my email. I was accepted with a
merit scholarship, but it would be dismissive of my hard-work to say the school’s reputation got me here. It’s because during my time here, I discovered my interests, experienced successes and failures and most importantly learned.
The past six years of my life have been defined by being a Harvard-Westlake student both at times when this fact fed my academic pride and when it felt like an unnecessary weight on my shoulders. I wish I could graduate without acknowledging my struggles and the times when it felt like I didn’t have the school’s support, but these challenging times are part of the reason I am glad I came to the school.
I don’t have a lot of storage on my phone. Indeed, there are apps sitting patiently on my home screen I don’t often open, playlists downloaded that I rarely listen to –– and I could probably delete
everything unused in about ten minutes, if I really put my mind to it, in order to free up a few gigabytes. But that wouldn’t solve the problem. The apex predator of my storage, its most loyal customer by far, is my photo album.
I’ve tried to fix this, with moderate success. Scrolling back periodically and methodically through the thousands and thousands of tiny squares, I found myself able to delete many of them –– and the process was easy, to the surprise and satisfaction of my sentimental self, for my photo stream through the end of eleventh grade.
But as soon as I started in on twelfth grade, it felt nearly impossible. Maybe it’s the recent-
ness of these memories, compounded with the fragility and nostalgia of the notion that I have, at press time, a week left in high school. But it’s something more, too –– that these pictures are good. Not compositionally, necessarily –– they’re only as high-quality as my iPhone camera can make them, they don’t follow the rule of thirds, they’re imperfectly framed or something’s in motion or just out of focus or proportion.
So what I mean when I say they’re good, really, is that there are many, and they’re all wholly mine. They paint one holistic and vivid and blurry and therefore extraordinarily perfect portrait of the last nine months. These are pictures I won’t ever delete. I can’t recall ever making a conscious choice to document my senior year this way –– to start taking pictures of everything. But that’s exactly what I did. As I scrolled, I
searched for an answer; tried to pinpoint what it was that incentivized me to take them. I realized, eventually, that they’re everything I knew I’d want to remember. I was right.
It feels strange to impart advice at a moment in my life when I’m faced with the advent of so much newness; when, often, the vastness of everything stretching out in front of me forces me to wonder how I could possibly know anything at all. I’m not an expert, but I have (almost) made it out the other side, and I know this: iCloud storage is probably among the very best ways to spend 99 cents. It’s given me so much to look back on, or scroll through and remember.
By Natalie CosgroveAfter hours of scouring my camera roll and Notes app, trying to find something to write about that would sufficiently encapsulate my time at the school and what advice I’d impart, I decided nothing seemed more fitting than talking about my experience as a 10th grader on the staff. The scary transition from the Middle School to the Upper School I had heard about from my older siblings ended up being a transition from the middle school campus to my bedroom. After realizing that unlike my siblings, politics weren’t really my thing –– the 9th grade student body did not like my speeches –– I looked to
the news instead. My first days on Chronicle were marked by Mr. Burns’ face on my computer screen, him asking about my day and me describing the constant back and forth between the desk and the bed. My 10th grade year, like most people’s years in quarantine, was a painful one at best. But I had Chronicle –– and often that was enough. In the confusing and unprecedented times we were all experiencing, the simple structure of a news article allowed me to feel at peace. All I needed to do was use the inverted pyramid structure and then throw in some quotes and everything was done. It was something I could consistently do right and well, and I felt good about it. Every day, without
fail, Ms. Miller or an administrator of the like would send out an all-school email announcing a Zoom event. Each of these events was hypothetically supposed to be covered by the staff and so within seconds, I would pitch the article idea to my editors and get to writing and interviewing as soon as I could.
As a new 10th grader, I did not know the students and teachers of the Upper School. Sending out emails asking for quick meetings or Zoom calls allowed me to familiarize myself with each department and club. Through every question I asked, we ended up talking, often about topics completely unrelated to the subject of the article. And in some
interviews, I developed interests separate from journalism. I interviewed alumni who showed me the meaning of passion and students who could gave me snippets of advice for the next couple of years. When I didn’t feel like doing my math homework or English reading, at least I could write a mini news article where I could fol low a set structure and interact with in teresting people.
Since 10th grade, my world has grown signifi cantly larger than the space between my bed and my desk
(I went to Israel, goddammit), and yet still Chronicle remains the biggest part of it. Chronicle has given me so much and I like to think that I’ve given it a few things too. I’ll miss the halls of Weiler and the people that come with it more than anything.
Natasha: The cross country team was my very first introduction to some of the core aspects of our school culture: dedication, camaraderie and endless drive. While I looked forward to every practice, it was also incredibly overwhelming. However, I instantly felt at home with Vasilia. Even when we first met and were making small talk, our conversations didn’t feel forced. We sat together on the bus ride back from the very first summer race, our laughter warming our hearts and making us forget the soreness that en sued from miles of running.
Vasilia is simultaneously the most honest and kind person I know––two qualities that may seem mutually ex clusive but that she balances beautifully. This makes her incredibly easy to talk to. Throughout 9th grade, Vasilia’s refreshing presence helped me with my “new kid” anxieties, whether we were taking walks during the Big Bear retreat or warming up before practices.
Even though we’ve changed since freshman year and spend less time together, I’m happy to say we still seek each other out during Chronicle layouts and pass our phones back and forth for Notes app conversations in class. I find myself smiling when I’m with her, even if I was in a bad mood before.
For those of you reading, focus on making friends that you feel comfortable around –– who make you feel better just by being themselves, who never fail to make you laugh, who will be there for you, and who you want to be there for. I count myself incredibly lucky to have found this kind of friend in Vasilia.
Vasilia: Before starting at Harvard-Westlake as a new ninth grader, I plunged head first into the world of Cross Country. I met the team for the first time at a race, without attending a single practice prior. I started running my first race dehydrated and hungry, and I ended up crying because of a horrendous cramp. However painful the race was, though, I did make some friends, including News Section Editor Natasha Speiss. Even after only knowing Natasha for a few hours, it felt as though we had been friends for years, and I almost managed to forget my stressful running experience. A few weeks later, I went on the team retreat in Big Bear, where I quickly became incredibly homesick. Natasha was comforting and kind to me like the oldest of friends; without her there, I don’t know how I would have made it through those few days.
I quit Cross Country and Track after sophomore year, and as seniors, Natasha and I don’t eat lunch together often; the only class we share is Chronicle. However, I think the best friends are not just the ones you spend the most time with. Sometimes, they are the people who you know are always there for you even when you don’t see them physically, those you could go months without talking to and still pick up right where you left off.
What I mean to say is thank you, Natasha, for being one of the kindest and most genuine people I have ever met. I am sure our friendship will last a lifetime. And, to anyone reading this, to make it through challenging times (such as four years at HW), find people who always make you feel welcome and encourage you to be the best version of yourself.
By James HessThe old adage goes that we read books, listen to music and tell stories because we can “never know too many people.” Interestingly, it’s not an argument for these activities apart from everything else we do but rather something to help us understand our selves; there’s something about storytelling that forms trust and empathy between our selves and others.
My favorite part of being on Chronicle has long been the oppurtunity to go up to anyone, unprompted, and talk about nearly any thing under the guise of journalism. In the fall of my junior year, I used Chronicle as an excuse to have a series of lunches with the late Per forming Arts Teacher Ted Walch. The writing was never even published, but I’m reminded of the wit he showed me in those talks every time a teacher makes a particularly good joke or shares a deeply insightful thought . My final byline, moreover, is a spotlight on Sanders Jackson and his lengthy career in Upper School Security. If not for Chronicle, our relationship likely would have been confined to exchanging morning greetings.
The unique ability to learn more about people’s lives just for the sake for sharing their story it is something I cherish more than any debate over journalistic ethics or niche opinion article. And it’s where I feel qualified enough to offer my advice: in our day-to-day routine, we often forget those we speak with in teacher meetings, lunches and
bus rides are people themselves. They are some of the most interesting and accomplished we will ever meet, and we should aim to know them beyond the surface-level reasons for our being there. Sometimes, this can happen through a great book or song but remains equally possible with a shared experience or silly memory. However it’s done, redefining our interactions with others in this way turns out not to be just useful but absolutely crucial to living out our high school years as meaningfully as possible. Thanks, Chronicle, for teaching me that.
As a kid, I dreamt of becoming a high school student. Curled up in the corner of my fifth-grade classroom, I binge-read books about parties and relationships and scandalous teenage drama. I counted down the years until I would start ninth grade and undoubtedly make dozens of friends and spend the next four years in a rose-colored haze of pool parties and road trips.
High school, as it turns out, is not exactly that. There are no spontaneous musical numbers during lunch, nor are there entertaining fights between the jocks and the nerds in the cafeteria. Now that I’ve managed to crawl my way out the other side, battered by history essays and SAT retakes, my childhood self only remains in hindsight
Because I have attended seven schools since kindergarten and have become resilient in the face of change, I expected to adapt to high school at a record speed. In reality, my first year was spent skipping lunch in favor of the library to avoid eating alone.
Classrooms swarmed with unfamiliar faces, and the quad presented a sprawl of people
that my anxiety convinced me wanted nothing to do with me. Within a year, I transformed from the student council president of my old school to a nervous wreck, yearning for the action-packed, carpe-di em high school experience I had promised myself.
Throughout my teen age years, I immersed myself in a world of my creation, navigating life through writing, music production, product design and video. Rushing home after school to create my next work of art, I found creativity to be the divine intervention I needed and my computer the saving grace. Whether it was writing lyrics during Zoom meetings or editing my novels in the silent study room, my projects coaxed out the details of my life I hesitated to share and turned my personal struggles into plot points and song lines. My happiness was no longer contingent on how many people greeted me or how many social events I got invited to — creating art slaked any need for external validation and became my safety net.
Everything I go through creates a blanket of experiences that envelops me. Instead of dismissing high school as simply a “bad time” in my life, I aspire to see it as a phase of immense personal growth and creative fulfillment that provided the building blocks for my projects. From various relentless afflictions grew a burgeoning love for art that I vow to carry with me into the beautifully unpredictable future.
By Lily LeeYou were just accepted to Harvard-Westlake. Everyone around you is celebrating and everything feels great. And it will be great…most of the time. At first, you may feel invincible, like you can accomplish anything. I hope you feel that way. That was exactly how I felt, until I didn’t make the cheerleading team in 9th grade. It was the first time that I didn’t get something I had
Don’t worry, I’m okay. But at the time, I really wanted cheerleading to be part of my high school experience, and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t cho -
If you don’t have hard moments in the next six years when you are cut from a team, don’t get the grade you think you earned, are chosen for a small part you don’t really want in the musical or lose a Prefect election, then I think you will have missed the entire point of Harvard-Westlake.
If I had gotten all the things I thought I wanted at this school, I would have missed out on the journey I was supposed to take. The hours I planned to spend at cheer practice turned into exploring new and better interests and ways to enjoy my time at the school. While I never stood near the field in a uniform
at football games, I cheer for the school as one of the heads of the Student Ambassador program; with each piece I review for Stone-Cutters or write for Chronicle; every time someone recites a powerful monologue in Shakespeare class; or when I co-host a radio show for KHWS.
When we don’t get what we believe we deserve, it can feel like the end of the world. At our school, you may not always get everything you try for, even when you give it your all, but I hope you continue to open yourself up to new experiences and keep striving to achieve in your own way. We are in high school. This is only the beginning. You are surrounded by extraordi nary people, so turn outward, find your purpose, support others and be kind.
Your time at Harvard-West lake will not be defined by your big gest success or greatest failure. I think it’s okay to reflect on our failures, but it’s even more important to focus on all that we have gained — the teachers who taught us more than we ever imagined we could learn, the friends who enriched our lives and the middle school cafeteria chicken tenders that will forever hold a special place in our hearts.
Your next six years might not go according to plan, but I promise you will find a way to feel fulfilled and grateful when you make it to graduation. I hope all of you find a way to make a difference here and find a unique way to cheer.
A page labeled “Helston Quotes” lay sandwiched between calculus notes covering every inch of the page. The notes took us step by step through the three levels of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus; through limit proofs and the unit circle I was supposed to memorize during the COVID year. But these weren’t just regular notes. They contained scribbles and tokens of arguably the best class of-
By Alex HahnA Gratitude List:
1. NVIDIA GeForce Now:
An awesome piece of software, GeForce Now provided transport to a realm where true heroes and friendships were forged in Middle School: Fortnite. Whether I was valiantly rescuing a classmate, avidly cheering them on or anxiously hiding in a bush with my friends’ frantic
By Danny Johnson, Charlie Seymour and Harry Tarses
There’s no such thing as a normal arm; some got pimples, some turn in a funny way and some got cut off in war.
Some are attached to real lousy people –– bad folks who use arms for bad deeds. My friends and I have six arms,
fered at the school: AP Calculus AB, as instructed by Math Teacher Joshua Helston. This hidden gem, a page deserving of a frame, summarizes the energy and commitment that Dr. Helston gave to each one of our classes. The sudden “PIE” he yelled when excatly 3.14 minutes were left in class and the tiny rectangle note sheets he used to tirelessly explain a concept to the class were moments we felt obligated to document. It was a representation of all of Dr. Helston’s best moments,
his quirks –– what made him special as a teacher. With his trademark bowtie and unmatched volume, Math Teacher Derric Chien is another teacher that has shaped the learning experiences of so many at the school. At any time of day, event or performance, Mr. Chien will be there for you. Whether that’s helping you with a last-minute study question, coming to your recital or watching you play in a championship, he makes himself available and present for his students. He puts his
all into his classes to make them as captivating as possible, believing in his students more than any other teacher and redefining what it means to be an educator.
Mr. Chien and Dr. Helston are just two examples of the people that make this school special. Teachers who love to learn along with their students and who inspire their classes can genuinely make an impact on a student’s education . Calculus is difficult, linear algebra rarely makes any sense, and AP Physics C Electricity and Magne-
tism is known around the globe as the hardest AP class.
Dr. Helston and Mr. Chien make these classes enjoyable. They make it worth staying up for hours studying complex equations. When we matriculate out of our math tracks, we won’t remember midterm grades or the problems we struggled through. We will remember teachers like Helston and Chien, whose eccentric personalities and passion for teaching and learning always make the class worth the while.
screeching in my ear, playing Fortnite was a mixture of insanity and hilarity that I will never forget. Thanks, NVIDIA.
2. Bottles, of any kind: Nothing captured my fascination quite as much as flipping bottles did in seventh grade. Eventually, my friends and I branched out beyond simple bottles: highlighters, markers, cans — anything that could be flipped, we flipped. The sheer hype of
achieving the longest flip streak out of everyone at the lunch table, along with the tedious yet thrilling hours spent attempting the impossible trick shot are memories I’ll continue to cherish.
3. The substantial cardiovascular benefits of attending this school: I never thought I’d be in better shape after my freshman year on the basketball team — until sophomore year when I
went to my first history class. No amount of sprinting punishments could have prepared me, physically or emotionally, for the Herculean task of climbing up the stairs from the quad to Seaver Center. Two years later, I, along with my fellow peers, will graduate not only with refined intellects but with Olympic-level athletic prowesses.
4. My friends: Throughout quarantine, junior year and the
net. None normal, all gorg.
We’ve spent two years in a band that doesn’t exist, just like a normal arm. It’s called Normalarms. As far as bands go, it tends more to the side of “idea of a band” than “music-making band.”
We’re a band of misfits, who generally fit in, except in the music industry, where music production is expected.
But I guess that’s the point. The humble beginnings of this hypothetical failure occurred in the Dark Tower southwest of the Rugby classrooms, not too far from here, unless you’re coming from out of town or traffic is bad. We were on the quad, the three of us, in desperate need of naps, tired to death of each other’s company. Hark! A piano in the distance! The
rest is history –– please don’t ask.
There’s something about being in a band, telling people you’re in a band, and making dope album covers for your band that can’t be bought on the side of the road or picked off an apple tree.
The music might be fake, but the love most certainly is not. Like, look at the Beatles. Name one album, actually. They were
first half of senior year — the times when turning inward was perhaps the easiest and most unhealthy reaction to stress — I had an outlet in my friends. Playing pickup basketball, going absolutely crazy at Skyzone and late-night drives down the Pacific Coast Highway kept me going through all of the adversity. Bottle flipping and bush camping were only as memorable as they were because of you guys.
just the blokes from Liverpool, who chose one day to take over the world together, and I guess, in a way, that’s us. Bosch, innit?
Here’s a track called “About Paul McCartney”: If I lie / I can fly. / If I die / Please on rye / Toast to my friends / A Russian dress. / Do it again. / Big meat mess. / We are the reuben; / Coo coo kachew. (G, Am, E, Zmaj7)
Nothing brings people together more than basketball. Despite its competitive nature, the arguments, the aggressiveness, the trash talk, the surge of adrenaline achieved through victory, everything that ironically should separate people grants us a sense of unity. Through my journeys on the freshman and junior varsity Harvard-Westlake basketball teams, I felt I understood the harmony of basketball. However, once I quit the basketball team, basketball felt a lot less inspiring.
I wasn’t alone, though: a lot of my friends felt the same way and were estranged by Harvard-Westlake basketball just as I was. During the pandemic where basketball practices were few and far between, we frequently headed over to Max Shapiro’s house to hoop together. Eventually, we expanded this group to contain more hoopers from other schools as well.
After months of hoop sessions, one day we saw a TikTok that showed a group of friends creating their own AAU basketball team, and after a few days of
discussion, we wanted to do the same. We started to create the team at Max’s house, which included designing the uniforms, assembling the proper identification for the players, and contacting the tournament manager. We went over the details and afterward decided to hoop. During a possession, Chris Spencer ’23 dribbled the ball up the court and shot the ball from very deep range. The ball hit the rim and sailed over the fence surrounding the basketball court, exiting the property and going onto the street. There
was a loud bang which caught the attention of the neighbors across the street. What followed was a heated shouting match which somehow ended in the neighbors asking if they could come over and hoop with us. We agreed to welcoming the competition but did not know who the competitors would be. As a result, our group was surprised when Tik Tok personalities Barnscho, Baby7AM and Lil Huddy appeared at the gate. Despite our shock, we continued to play basketball with them, exchanging blows as the night went on. This practice
of the influencers heading to our house became a mini-tradition, and eventually we named our AAU team after Baby7AM and assigned Baron to be our coach. Two years and 14 tournament championships later, I can’t be more thankful for this bizarre story. I interacted with and befriended some of the most passionate and bizarre people ever because of the team, ranging from referees, players, little kids, and angry parents. Most importantly, I was able to share my love of basketball with my closest friends. 7AM forever.
Alex Adishian University of California, Berkeley
Brandon Aghnatios University of California, Berkeley
Alexander Aguirre Oberlin College
Mateo Ahmad Indiana University
Amanda Allen Loyola Marymount University
Wyatt Anand Boston University
Natalie Antin University of Chicago
Chloe Appel University of Chicago
Christopher Arakelian Stanford University
Dylan Ardizzone Cornell University
Andrew Arkow Harvard University
Alex Astalos Vassar College
Jack Austen Harvard University
Rasak Ayeni University of Michigan
Alexandra Ba Dartmouth College
Josephine Baiden Loyola Marymount University
Mac Bailey University of Pennsylvania
Hayden Baird Tulane University
Grace Belgrader Brown University
Nate Berg Bowdoin College
Becca Berlin Southern Methodist University
Andre Birotte University of Richmond
Jaden Bobb Georgetown University
Eliza Bock University of Notre Dame
Henry Bryan Johns Hopkins University
Justin Bu Gap Year
Jack Burghardt Harvard University
Asher Burstin Vanderbilt University
Jordyn Call Case Western Reserve University
Bianca Calvillo Washington University in St. Louis
Kai Caranto California Lutheran University
Katie Caras University of Texas at Austin
Owen Carlson Cornell University
Sydney Carmel Boston College
Ryann Castanon-Hill California College of the Arts
Jack Chamas University of Utah
Jenaya Chambers University of Pennsylvania
Madeleine Chan Boston University
Natalie Chan New York University
Taylor Chanaratsopon New York University
Will Chandrasekhar Colgate University
Matthew Chang Pomona College
Baxter Chelsom University of California, Davis
Barbra Chen Savannah College of Art and Design
Cheery Chen Stanford University
Iris Chen University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Kian Chen Columbia University
Brian Chen University of California, Berkeley
Joshua Cheng
University of California, Berkeley
Catherine Cho Georgetown University
Chloe Cho Cornell University
Kieran Chung Harvard University
Naalah Cohen Yale University
Lucas Cohen-d’Arbeloff Harvard University
Claire Conner Northwestern University
Kiki Cooper Berklee College of Music
Remi Cooperstein Cornell University
Danielle Copeland New York University
Andrea Cortes Flores Scripps College
Natalie Cosgrove Columbia University
Maxwell Cretaro Skidmore College
Maddie Cunniff Boston College
Brandon Damelin Carleton College
Aiden Daneshrad Columbia University
Izzy Daum Colgate University
Daphne Davies Dartmouth College
Dahlia Delgadillo Case Western Reserve University
Beau Demaine Indiana University
Fallon Dern Vassar College
Josh Dixon University of California, Los Angeles
Makenna Dovel Georgetown University
Allegra Drago École Hôtelière de Lausanne
Konnie Duan Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Aerin Duke Boston University
Brady Dunlap St. John’s University
Andrew Early Vanderbilt University
Raisa Effress Barnard College
Audrey Engman Purdue University
Sophia Evans University of Washington
Declan Fahey Colgate University
Kai Faucher Brown University
Penelope Figueroa Barnard College
Benson Fleischer Columbia University
Campbell Ford Southern Methodist University
Chloe Fribourg McGill University
Brando Fuqua Temple University
Aariz Furniturewala University of Pennsylvania
Adison Gamradt New York University
Will Gasparino University of Texas at Austin
Donya Ghassemieh University of Pennsylvania
Milo Gibson Southern Methodist University
Fiona Gillearn University of California, Santa Barbara
Noah Glazer Southern Methodist University
Stella Glazer Kenyon College
Ella Goldberg New York University
Georgia Goldberg Georgetown University
Jesse Goldman University of Pennsylvania
Daniella Goldrich Wellesley College
Gavin Goldsmith Washington University in St. Louis
Kyra Goldstein Emory University
Kayla Graiwer University of Miami
Georgia Green McGill University
Zachary Greene Wake Forest University
Jay Grosfeld Harvard University
Goldie Grube University of St Andrews
Nicholas Guagliano Syracuse University
Andrew Gutierrez Purdue University
Katie Hadsock-Longarzo Boston University
Alex Hahn Columbia University
Asha Singh Haley University of Michigan
Benji Ham University of Pennsylvania
Ymani Hampton Hampton University
Joshua Harbour American University
TJ Hastings Occidental College
Simone Herman Mount Holyoke College
Santiago Hernandez Columbia University
Fernanda Herrera Barnard College
James Hess University of California, Berkeley
Hope Hsieh
Northeastern University
Jayden Huang Rhode Island School of Design
Grace Hudson
Wesleyan University
Jacob Huggins Princeton University
Julia Im University of Pennsylvania
Anika Iyer University of Chicago
Amelia Jackson Northeastern University
Rowan Jen Yale University
Jina Jeon University of Chicago
Danny Johnson New York University
Natalia Christie Johnson United States Military Academy, West Point
Quentin E. Johnson Colgate University
Avery Jones Columbia University
Juliet Katz University of Chicago
Neleh Kay Brown University
Jack Kelman New York University
Avery Kim Washington University in St. Louis
Owen Kim
Washington University in St. Louis
Ryan Kim
University of California, Berkeley
Yoshimi Kimura Yale University
Colin Kneafsey
Santa Clara University
Annie Knobloch Syracuse University
Seniors in the graduating Class of 2023 share their post-high school plans and matriculation details in The Chronicle’s annual report.
Matthew Ko University of Chicago
Steven Ko University of Chicago
Eliza Koblentz Princeton University
Jeffrey Koretz Claremont McKenna College
Bel Kriger Pitzer College
Anika Kumar Tulane University
Paul Kurgan Cornell University
Casey Landecker Georgetown University
Ava Lange University of Notre Dame
Lauren LaPorta University of Virginia
Juliette Leclerc Kenyon College
Ian Lee Denison University
Lily Lee Columbia University
Nicole Lee Emory University
Simon Lee Stanford University
Ceerous LeSage Cornell University
Gabriel Levin Brandeis University
Ofek Levy Oberlin College
Elliot Lichtman Yale University
Czeslaw Lincir Parsons School of Design
Alejandro Lombard New York University
David Lozano Loyola Marymount University
Adam Luse Colgate University
Danielle Lynch
Clemson University
Emily Malkan Emerson College
Manu Markman University of Chicago
Judah Marley Parsons School of Design
Angie Martell Case Western Reserve University
Terence Mathews Southern Methodist University
Claire McLean Duke University
Idalis McZeal Harvard University
Rohan Mehta Emerson College
Hannah Messaye Amherst College
Emma Miller Northwestern University
Gus Mingst University of Chicago
Miles Misczynski Washington University in St. Louis
Daniel Mnatsakanian Stanford University
Jack Moreland Stanford University
Noah Nakayama University of Chicago
Remy Navarre
American University of Paris
Chiara Neirick University of California, Santa Cruz
Allison Nguyen Scripps College
Matthew Nguyen Emory University
Annabelle Nickoll Brown University
Arize Nwike Boston University
Darcey O’Brien
American University of Paris
Aiko Offner Princeton University
Sophia O’Herron The New School
Nathalie Paniagua Syracuse University
Andrew Park Duke University
Lyon Park University of California, Santa Cruz
Claire Paul Stanford University
Layla Payman University of Virginia
Victoria Peng University of California, Los Angeles
Harry Pennell
Tulane University
Abel Pereira University of Chicago
Benjamin Perez Case Western Reserve University
Dylan Perkins Tufts University
Margaret Piatos New York University
Thea Pine Pitzer College
Sam Plageman Wake Forest University
Henry Pokress Cornell University
Maria Quigley Providence College
Kameron Rabizadeh Northwestern University
Olivia Rahhal University of Michigan
Sophia Rascoff Harvard University
Holden Rath Grinnell College
Maddy Redmond New York University
Ava Robinson Spelman College
Casey Ross
Wesleyan University
Kendra Ross University of California, Davis
Asher Rossen Tufts University
Zachary Rossen University of Michigan
Jacob Ruden-Sella Bard College
Ava Saferstein University of Wisconsin, Madison
Leo Saperstein Columbia University
SJ Schaeffer
Wesleyan University
Charlie Seymour Stanford University
Rebeka Shamis Loyola Marymount University
Cosette Shamonki
University of Vermont
Max Shapiro
University of Texas at Austin
Zoe Shapiro University College Dublin
Savannah Shaub
Cornell University
Alison Shaw University of Washington
Fiona Shaw
University of California, San Diego
Will Sherwood Harvard University
Kensuke Shimojo University of California, Irvine
Zoe Shin University of California, Los Angeles
Nicole Shkurovich University of California, Berkeley
Ethan Sokol New York University
Natasha Speiss University of California, Berkeley
Christopher Spencer Howard University
Carter Staggs Stanford University
Eloise Stoddard University of Chicago
Evan Stokdyk Santa Clara University
Joshua Tan-Goldhammer New York University
Harry Tarses Brown University
Sabine Thomas Wellesley College
Alyssa Thompson Angel City Football Club
Jessica Thompson Columbia University
Max Thompson University of Wisconsin, Madison
Grace Thrower Duke University
Jaxon Tierney Brown University
Max Tippie Rice University
Maya Trakhtenberg Bates College
Neha Tummala Carnegie Mellon University
Lavinia Tyagi Harvard University
Henry Ullendorff Washington University in St. Louis
Chiara Umekubo Art Center College of Design
Sam Volokh Rice University
Simon Wacziarg University of Wisconsin, Madison
Lyric Walker The New School
Beck Walthers Williams College
Ethan Wang University of Michigan
Olivia Wang California Institute of Technology
Eli Weinbach Georgetown University
Ava Weinrot Dartmouth College
Lily Weisskopf Tulane University
Peyton West Boston College
Davis White Texas Christian University
Skylar Whitley University of California, Los Angeles
Jake Wiczyk Not Yet Declared
Isaac Wiener University of Chicago
Joel Williams
Tulane University
Helena Wu University of Chicago
Karen Wu Carnegie Mellon University
Audrey Yang Harvard University
Patrick Yeh University of California, Berkeley
Preston Yeh Tufts University
Eric Yoon Yale University
Kara Yoon Washington University in St. Louis
Vasilia Yordanova Wesleyan University
Darryl Zanuck University of Miami
Lou Zapata McGill University
Emmy Zhang Harvard University
Annora Zhou
Santa Clara University
Elsa Zhou Stanford University
*Numbers based on The Chronicle poll of all 291 Seniors (14 chose not to be included)
1
Print Managing Editor Charlie Seymour can belly dance, but is too shy to show you.
Editor-in-Chief Will Sherwood still ties his shoelaces with bunny ears. 3
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Presentations Managing Editor Fallon Dern, and Print Managing Editor Daphne Davies also tie their shoelaces with bunny ears.
Executive Editor James Hess is just sort of beautiful.
Print Managing Editor Claire Conner’s been really into paranormal journalism and true crime stories recently. 6
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Presentations Managing Editor Leo Saperstein thinks he sprained both of his ankles, but will still run if you tell him there are pretty girls nearby. 7
Opinion and Satire Editor Georgia Goldberg is Jewish. 8
Presentations Managing Editor Fallon Dern has had conversations with every student in the grade. She was underwhelmed. 9
Editor-in-Chief Natalie Cosgrove has had great difficulty reconciling her family and religion with the modern world. 10
Presentations Managing Editor Allegra Drago speaks six languages– seven, if you count alluring body language. 11
For senior superlatives, much of News Section Editor Natasha Speiss’s friend group voted that she would die first in a zombie apocalypse. To prove her strength, she slaughtered Executive Editor James Hess with her bare hands. 12
Arts and Entertainment Editor Vasilia Yordanova and Executive Editor Emmy Zhang helped Natasha dig a really, really big ditch in the remote wilderness last weekend. 13
Business Manager Andrew Park’s spirit animal is a salmon; occasional loiterer Danny Johnson is allergic to salmon. 14
Print Managing Editor Lucas Cohen-d’Arbelloff attributes his sense of style to being bullied as a child. 15
Sports Section Editor Paul Kurgan put a photo of him and Sports Section Editor Jaden Bobb on his Tinder profile to let the ladies know he’s the most handsome editor. 16
Jaden did the exact same thing. 17
In a 2023 poll, Digital Managing Editor Alex Hahn was assumed to be Chinese by every Asian staff member, including himself. He is Korean. 19
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Print Managing Editor Daphne Davies barters with two dollar bills. Her biggest barter was a Ouija board that she keeps in The Chronicle’s Sports room. 20
Arts and Entertainment Editor Becca Berlin can nap anywhere, except for the Sports room. She says the vibe is off. 21
Presentations Managing Editor Jina Jeon can see ghosts. 22
Print Managing Editor Claire Conner’s got a story on her hands.
Art Director Sophia Evans owns a self-automated Apple pen. It only works in the Sports room, though, and it keeps spelling out “Help Me,” on Procreate. 23
Features Section Editor Harry Tarses can’t read.
