June 2021 by The Tattler

IHS TATTLER JUNE 2021 | VOL. 128 | NO. 10

ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO TATTLE.

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EDITORIAL

Dear IHS, Release Schedules a Week Earlier By THE TATTLER EDITORIAL BOARD

very year on a Thursday in early September, IHS comes back to life after a long summer as students, new and returning, clamour into the cafeteria, excited to see friends and eager to learn. Tables sit at the entrance with papers taped to the front, marking initials. Counselors flip through stacks of printer paper as lines of students form behind each table where they push and shove, anxious to get to the front. This is the messy, stress-filled ordeal that is the process of handing out schedules on the first day of school. These papers hold the prized information that will define the school year, for better or for worse. Which period is my lunch? Which teachers will I have? Will I have friends in my classes? These questions that students frequently ask can be answered only by their schedules. This process comes at a substantial cost to students’ experience and wellbeing. Why is such crucial information only accessible on the first day of school, or at most, a few days before school for those who check SchoolTool? There has to be a better way, one that provides students with clarity about the upcoming year further in advance. The current process for releasing schedules fails students in several ways. First, many would benefit from additional time to plan for their upcoming school year. IHS students juggle a variety of responsibilities and activities. These commitments include jobs, sports, clubs, and family obligations and almost always require an understanding of what their school schedules are going to look like. Furthermore, academic success rests, among other things, upon the development of clear and effective study routines. Providing students with their schedules earlier in the summer would allow them to better develop a time management plan. In essence, by providing schedules earlier, the IHS administration would be more sensitive to student efforts to balance their lives both inside and outside the classroom. Second, the transition from one grade to another, let alone from one school to another, should not be underestimated. A smooth transition from summer to classes is key to a successful year, and falling behind early in the academic year can derail a student’s progress. Students’

ability to have more information in the form of their schedules is crucial. Schedules may also contain errors that could be addressed prior to the start of classes with sufficient time. This would allow students to sort out errors in their schedule before the school year starts, preventing them from missing valuable class time. It should be noted that freshmen and other students new to IHS participate in an orientation the day before classes begin where they receive their schedules and explore the school. However, this additional time does not do enough to set these students up for a successful year. Third, the beginning of the school year, with all that it entails, is a naturally stressful period and can take a toll on the mental wellness of students at this critical juncture. This stress is amplified by the lack of prior knowledge about what their school year will look like and how it will unfold. The simple act of sharing schedules with students earlier can go a long way to alleviate anxiety. Having a mental model of the school day, week, semester, and year can serve to calm or reduce the natural nerves that come with being thrust back into the pressures of school. Given the increased attention to students’ mental health over the last several years, the minimal investment in designing a new system that would provide students with knowledge of their schedule in advance would have obvious benefits. Fourth, the connection between peer interactions and student well-being is firmly established. Students would greatly benefit from the ability to discuss their schedules with friends. This would help to develop a sense of community that would strengthen students’ support structures and help them cope with their stress and anxiety. Finally, while advance knowledge of one’s schedule would be advantageous under normal circumstances, it is absolutely essential this coming fall, after a year and a half of schooling impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. While some students have participated in hybrid learning, many have not walked the halls of IHS since the middle of March 2020, or set foot in the building for that matter. The transition back to school in a post-pandemic reality is going to be especially challenging, and giving students their schedules

Old Staff 2020 – 2021 Editor-in-Chief

Anna Westwig ’21 editor@ihstattler.com News Editor Katie Lin ’22 news@ihstattler.com Opinion Editor Jinho Park ’22 opinion@ihstattler.com Features Editor Frances Klemm ’23 features@ihstattler.com Arts Editor Louisa Miller-Out ’22 arts@ihstattler.com Sports Editor Rohit Lal ’22 sports@ihstattler.com Literary Editor Adowyn Ernste ’22 literary@ihstattler.com Back Page Editor Ethan Carlson ’21 backpage@ihstattler.com Center Spread Editor Dorothy Hamilton ’21 centerspread@ihstattler.com Copy Editor Heewon Ahn ’21 copy@ihstattler.com Photography Editor Hannah Shvets ’23 photo@ihstattler.com Graphics Editor Aidan Hayward Toland ’22 graphics@ihstattler.com Layout Editor Jacob Yoon ’21 layout@ihstattler.com Business and Advertising Adam Saar ’22 business@ihstattler.com Webmaster Alexander Yoo ’21 web@ihstattler.com Distribution Manager Mollie Abelson ’21 distribution@ihstattler.com Archivist Raia Gutman ’22 archivist@ihstattler.com Faculty Advisor Deborah Lynn advisor@ihstattler.com

EDITORIAL | NEWS

New Staff 2021 – 2022 Editor-in-Chief

Jinho Park ’22

editor@ihstattler.com News Editor Mukund Gaur ’24 news@ihstattler.com Opinion Editor Louisa Miller-Out ’22 opinion@ihstattler.com Features Editor Ruby LaRocca ’24 features@ihstattler.com Arts Editor Katie Lin ’22 arts@ihstattler.com Sports Editor Aitan Avgar ’22 sports@ihstattler.com Literary Editor Raia Gutman ’22 literary@ihstattler.com Back Page Editor Adowyn Ernste ’22 backpage@ihstattler.com Center Spread Editor Frances Klemm ’23 centerspread@ihstattler.com Copy Editor Adam Saar ’22 copy@ihstattler.com Photography Editor Hannah Shvets ’23 photo@ihstattler.com Graphics Editor Yasmeen Alass ’24 graphics@ihstattler.com Layout Editor Ella Keen Allee ’22 layout@ihstattler.com Business and Advertising Sammy Deol ’22 business@ihstattler.com

earlier could be the catalyst for a successful transition. The IHS administration should work with guidance counselors, teachers, and students to develop a plan to release schedules at least one week prior to the beginning of classes. While the construction of the master schedule is complex and affected by multiple different factors such as teacher availability, student class demand, and other logistics, the benefits of an earlier schedule release outweigh the additional work that will be required to address these challenges. Students are asked to make any final changes to their class selections by early May and are extremely limited in their ability to make any changes thereafter. In a normal year, this leaves close to four months to construct the master schedule. It should be noted that this year has added a host of complexities due to the pandemic and that the IHS administration has yet to decide on the overarching structure. One of the possible

3 drawbacks of this proposed system is the potential for increased requests by students to change their schedules due to teacher and classmate preferences. If faced with this challenge, guidance counselors would have to hold firm on their policy of not allowing schedule changes unless an error was made. This coming September, when the halls of IHS are bustling once again, let’s hope that we can do away with an outdated schedule release ritual. With this proposed new model in place, students will arrive at school knowing where they need to go and what classes, teachers, and friends await them. We imagine the enhanced confidence that our peers will bring with them as they cross the threshold into a new academic year, full of promise and possibilities. Given the clear gains of an early schedule release and the absence of a convincing argument for delay, the IHS administration should welcome this proposal and implement it this coming fall.

Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L: The Next Precedent For Students’ Speech? By JINHO PARK

he last day of tryouts is always emotional. On that day, coaches announce who’ll be coming to the first practice and who’ll be staying home. Some have known for months that they were guaranteed a spot on the team. Others have been anxious throughout tryouts, petrified of a potential rejection, only to feel elated when they get chosen. And some, despite their hard work, must be sent home. Getting cut from a sports team is heartbreaking—dreams are broken, tears are shed, curses are howled.

Brandi Levy, a freshman at Mahanoy Area High School in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, desperately wanted to be on the Varsity Cheerleading squad after being on JV Cheerleading the year before. Tragically, on the last day of tryouts, she was cut from Varsity. Levy, furious with what she saw as an injustice, posted on her Snapchat story: Levy and her friend brandished their middle fingers in a picture captioned, “Fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything.” While the Snapchat story was only up temporar-

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The Tattler is the monthly student-run newspaper of Ithaca High School. All currently-enrolled students at Ithaca High School are welcome to submit writing and photographs. As an open forum, The Tattler invites opinion submissions and letters to the editor from all community members. Email submissions to editor@ ihstattler.com or mail letters to: The Tattler 1401 North Cayuga Street Ithaca, NY 14850 Send submissions by August 20 to be included in the September issue. The Tattler reserves the right to edit all submissions. All articles, columns, and advertisements do not necessarily reflect the views of editorial staff. To read The Tattler online, visit our website at www.ihstattler.com.

NEWS Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.: The Next Precedent for Students’ Speech? Continued from page 3 Courtesy of INSIDER

Brandi Levy, Cheerleader involved in recent Supreme Court Case

ily (stories usually delete after 24 hours), one of Levy’s teammates took a screenshot of the outburst, and soon after, Levy was banned from cheerleading for the year. As an athlete, Levy had signed a code of conduct which forbade profanity and required athletes to be respectful towards their teammates and coaches. After receiving the suspension, Levy filed a lawsuit, claiming that her outburst was protected under her First Amendment rights. Levy’s claims were upheld by a few circuit courts, and her case is currently being evaluated by the Supreme Court. Freedom of speech for students has always been hazily defined. In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Supreme Court established that students do not relinquish their freedom of speech at school, provided their speech passes the Tinker test—or in simpler terms, whether the speech of the student significantly disrupts the operation of the school. Further, in Tinker, the Supreme Court ruled that schools cannot regulate the speech of their students outside of school. Using the Tinker precedent, Levy’s case is particularly difficult to evaluate. While Levy’s Snapchat post was related to a school activity, did it significantly disrupt the school? Further, are social media posts under the school’s jurisdiction? Levy’s case was examined by two courts (the Middle District of Pennsylvania and the Third Circuit), which both ruled that Levy’s Snapchat outburst was outside of her school’s jurisdiction,

and thus Levy’s freedom of speech was violated by her school district. However, the two courts could not agree upon whether schools could regulate any speech made outside of school. Levy’s case is now headed to the Supreme Court, which will attempt to clarify the dispute over the regulation of student speech outside of school. The Supreme Court’s decision will have to be carefully written because the decision will have lasting ramifications for future students. For example, if the Supreme Court rules that students’ speech should not be regulated outside of school, the results would be disastrous. By allowing such free-speech liberties, schools would not be able to reprimand students for cyberbullying their peers. In contrast, if the Supreme Court rules that social media posts (as well as other speech outside of school) are under the jurisdiction of the school, students’ right to free speech would be severely limited. Further, any Supreme Court ruling could set the standard for decades, or even possibly centuries. Tinker v. Des Moines, the case which set the current precedent, has remained in place for 50 years. Stephen Breyer, one of the nine justices, recognizes the danger of writing a poor precedent, saying, “I’m frightened to death of writing a standard.” Even so, with the Tinker precedent seeming antiquated in the modern, Snapchat era, a new precedent seems necessary.

NEWS

Meet the Contenders: Six Republicans Who Could Make a Strong Presidential Run in 2024 By SAMMY DEOL

Courtesy of The Florida Phoenix

Left to right: Governor Ron DeSantis, former president Donald Trump, Governor Kristi Noem

t feels like a recent memory, but seven months have already passed since the turbulent 2020 election, in which former Vice President Joe Biden narrowly defeated the incumbent President Donald Trump. President Biden’s approval rating—51%, according to a recent poll from The Economist and YouGov—has remained historically consistent thus far, likely a product of the nation’s steady progress toward post-pandemic normalcy. Although there is plenty of time for conditions to go south for the Biden administration, Republicans will need to assemble a strong presidential ticket to be able to compete in 2024. Here are six Republicans that we will likely see on the campaign trail in the upcoming election. Having previously served in the United States Navy and the House of Representatives, Ron DeSantis was elected as Florida’s governor in 2018. Republicans have praised—and Democrats rebuked—DeSantis for his lenient policies regarding COVID-19, including his statewide ban on vaccine passports and his vow to pardon all Floridians previously punished for breaking pandemic guidelines. His harsh rhetoric on the Black Lives Matter movement has been similarly controversial. In April, he

passed what he called the “strongest anti-rioting legislation in the country,” a measure that appeals to many conservatives. At 42 years old, his relatively young age may give him an advantage over Biden, who, despite turning 82 in 2024, has stated his intentions to pursue reelection. DeSantis clearly is a polarizing figure, so only time will determine how the nation responds to his campaign. Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, has also become a popular figure within the GOP. Her friendly relationship with Trump, illustrated by his visit to Mount Rushmore on Independence Day last year, even led some to believe that she would replace former Vice President Mike Pence on the 2020 Republican ticket. Like DeSantis, Noem has stood firmly against enforcing COVID-19 restrictions: she refused to cancel the 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) eventually determined had led to a regional coronavirus outbreak, and spent millions of dollars on television advertisements that boasted, “South Dakota is open for adventure.” Although her policies have kept unemployment rates low in her state, South Dakota has among the highest COVID-19 Continued on page 6

NEWS

Meet the Contenders: Six Republicans Who Could Make a Strong Presidential Run in 2024 Continued from page 5

cases and deaths per-capita in the nation. A few Republicans at the state level have criticized her tendency to get distracted from politics, as seen in her recent argument with rapper Lil’ Nas X over his new music video. Then again, Twitter certainly did not stop Trump from getting elected, and her reputation as a “country woman” may help boost her popularity in rural areas. Former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley stated in April that she will not run if Donald Trump seeks the presidency in 2024. Still, her comparatively moderate stances on key issues could make her competitive if she enters the campaign trail. Haley, whose Indian background made her the target of racist comments during her first gubernatorial bid, condemned Trump’s 2017 travel ban on Muslim nations. She would go on to voluntarily leave her position in the Trump administration in 2018 and, unlike most of her Republican colleagues, reprimand the former president’s role in encouraging the January 6th Capitol riot. Yet, Haley’s track record is not perfect. Despite her expressed desire to appeal to traditionally-Democratic minorities, Haley alienated such voters during last year’s Republican National Convention, where she confidently asserted that “America is not a racist country” minutes before discussing the discrimination she has faced as a Sikh woman. She was also hesitant to denounce the Confederate flag following the 2015 Charleston church shooting, in which 9 African Americans were killed by a white supremacist attacker. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has a reputable record when it comes to race relations, especially in comparison to his potential competitors. Following the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which a white supremacist ran over a group of counter-protestors, Scott stated that President Trump’s “moral authority [was] compromised” following Trump’s notorious comment that there were “some very fine people on both sides.” However, Scott is no moderate. Just this April, Scott delivered the GOP’s response to President Biden’s first address to Congress, a performance that led Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to call him the future of the Republican Party. Virtually all of Scott’s other stances, including those on abortion, the economy, and immigration, are staunchly conservative, meaning he does not stray too far from the ideals

of his party. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas could also make a viable run for the 2024 GOP nomination. For the most part, Cotton backed the conservative policies pushed by the Trump administration, even speaking for the former president at political rallies and in TV advertisements. In the event that Trump does not run next election, Cotton’s overall voting record may net him an advantage amongst core conservative populations. At the same time, he strongly criticized Trump following the Capitol riot, a decision that may come back to haunt his bid for the Republican nomination. Regardless of any emerging opponents, the race for the Republican nomination will effectively be over if Donald Trump chooses to run again. One Politico-Morning Consult poll from February found that 54% of Republican voters would support Trump in the upcoming GOP primary, easily enough to put him on the national ticket. Since the end of his tenure, the former president has continued to accuse the Biden administration for cheating in last year’s election, a message that Republican voters seem to be buying—a separate Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted in April determined that close to 60% of registered Republican voters attributed Trump’s loss to widespread voter fraud, despite a lack of evidence corroborating such fraud. Even with his apparent popularity, Trump will inevitably face a set of challenges on his mission for redemption. Like Biden in 2020, he will be 78 when the 2024 election rolls around, so we truly do not know how healthy he will remain down the road. Trump must alter his rhetoric, too, if he wants to keep his base engaged. Repeating disproven claims about the election being “stolen” will get old quickly, since it objectively fails to solve the issues being faced by the nation. Perhaps most significantly, he needs to find a way to campaign with minimal reliance on social media, from which he is mostly banned, and to connect with a younger generation of voters. Trump’s ability to surpass these obstacles will determine the course for the foreseeable future of the GOP—does the party stick to its elderly representatives, or should it push younger candidates that are more familiar with modern society?

OPINION

Is the Book Always Better Than The Movie? An Unusual Take From An Avid Reader By HANNAH SHVETS

nybody who’s spent more than five minutes on “BookTok” has probably witnessed an immense amount of snobbery, gatekeeping, and egotism. Us book readers like to think we’re better than others because while some teenagers spend their time on Netflix or browsing the never-ending chasm of social media, we sit in our rooms and flip through the pages of a good (or often not-so-good) book. This isn’t to say we aren’t better than non-book readers; I’m not shy to admit that my reading has given me a bit of an inflated ego. This is me simply calling out just how pretentious we book readers can be. One hot debate in the book reader community is whether or not the movie adaptation can be as good or better than the book. Numerous readers, including 95 percent of “BookTokkers,” scoff at those who watch popular movies like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter without reading the books. For many years, I was part of that 95 percent. However, I had a recent revelation that I began sharing in a series of videos on my Close Friends Instagram story and eventually decided to take to an article, as I needed an outlet for this topic which can’t seem to leave my head. I will admit, if I catch someone watching the Harry Potter movies without having read all of the books, I will most likely make a snide comment about it. However, through my last eleven years as a self-certified book nerd, my opinion on the acceptability of this has shifted. There are certainly movies based on books which would be preposterous to watch without reading the book, such as Harry Potter. Come on, what was your childhood if you didn’t spend long car rides glued to those books, full of magic and endless possibilities? There are movies that are absolutely horrible compared to the books, and watching them made me quite angry (cough cough, Percy Jackson). Acknowledging that, there are definitely books I have come across that I felt very little passion for and was only able to really enjoy after building a deeper connection with the characters, setting, and plot. Let’s take Pride and Prejudice as an example. I won’t lie, the book took me weeks to read (compared to my usual average of about three hours per book). I wanted to enjoy the book so much, and although I adore Austen’s wit and writing style, reading dense books like that can get tiring very quickly. When I did finish it, I watched the 2005 version of the movie, and only then did I truly appreciate the characters Austen had created. I’m sure I would have suffered much less through those 408 pages if I had already seen Keira Knightley’s perfect portrayal of an already amazing character, Lizzy Bennet. As much as we don’t like to admit this, there are lots of books people read simply to say they have read them. I can’t say I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice all that much; I think I enjoyed the feeling of pretentiousness I was allowed to have after reading the last word in the book. I’d say that’s the case for many so-called “classics.” We want to enjoy them, but often they’re quite miserable to finish. Let’s return to my central focus: the book vs. movie debate, one that has most likely lasted since the beginning of cinema adaptations of novels. What I was trying to really get across during my little tangent about Pride and Prejudice is that some books

aren’t exceptional and need the boost of some good filmmaking to really make an imprint. For people like me who struggle with visualization, movies are a helpful way for me to form a connection with the characters before beginning the book. It’s pretty hard to read hundreds of pages about a character you can’t even picture or hear in your head. Movies bring characters to life in a way books have never been able to do for a person like myself. Let’s examine another example: The Perks of Being a Wallflower. This is one of my all-time favorite reads, but I don’t think the book measures up to the movie. I watched the movie on my mother’s bed one summer a few years back, and read the book in Ms. Deverin’s 9th grade English class. Although books can and do leave a profound impact on a person, sometimes seeing the scenes play out in front of your eyes can do so much more. The famous “Tunnel Scene” in Perks is one I enjoyed in both the book and movie, but is it even possible to argue that those few paragraphs in the book can compare to Emma Watson’s performance, her hair blowing and the look of love in Charlie’s (Logan Lerman’s) eyes as Heroes by David Bowie blasts in the background? That scene was a cinematic masterpiece. Of course, that’s not to detract from the book—it was so well-written and pulled me in every time I sat down to read. However, there are cases in which the movie is better, and I’m sick of pretending this isn’t true (because if I said it was, I would have hundreds of 15-year-olds screeching at me in comment sections and DMs). Movie adaptations often stray from the plot of the book and receive endless criticism for it, but I’m here to challenge the idea that the rating of a movie should be based on how well it copies the plot of the book it’s based on. For me, the most important part of a movie/show adaptation is capturing the dynamics and personalities of the characters. It can be incredibly mind-numbing to watch a word-for-word replay of the book. One example that always comes to mind is Little Women (2019) and the radically different ending in the movie versus the book. At first, watching that ending annoyed me because it hadn’t stayed true to the plot of the book. However, I would argue the movie is no worse (perhaps even better) than the book because of how wonderfully Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet portrayed the characters of Jo and Laurie. Although the director took some creative freedom and changed parts of the plot, the characters were exactly how I had pictured them in my head. The constant hate on movie adaptations by pretentious teenagers online is irritating, and I resent the idea that “the book is always better.” That’s simply not true, and you aren’t any less of a book reader if you enjoy a movie more than its corresponding book. Well, you heard it here first, folks: a movie can be better than the book it was based on. It’s okay to watch a movie without reading the book, or to watch the movie first to form a genuine connection with the characters before jumping into hundreds of pages that may not even be interesting. You can appreciate literature and simultaneously appreciate how movies can portray ideas that were once just words on a page.

OPINION

Sleep Procrastination: The Best And Most Questionable Thing I Do By KATIE LIN

hen I wake up at 8:09 a.m. (one minute before my zero period class), the layout of my day is already decided. I’ll sit at the same desk through seemingly never-ending class periods, watch TV and finally brush my hair during my brief lunch break, and thankfully hit the red-andwhite hang-up button at 3:30 p.m. Next comes hours of club meetings, sports, and planning for the rest of the night. What follows is no surprise—I return to the same desk, and tackle the day’s mountain of assignments while reminiscing about the memories tied to the songs I have set on repeat in the background. This, of course, continues long into the night. After the homework, stressing, and note-taking, I usually see two possible options: go to sleep (arguably the healthier, smarter option), or take back some of the freedom I lost during the day, and do what I want—whether this is finally listening to music properly and tuning into the hidden background vocals, reorganizing my entire room, watching more TV, or simply thinking. Throughout my high school years, I have found myself consistently choosing the latter option, the only issue being this usually occurs well after two a.m., thus throwing a considerable wrench into my sleep schedule. A few months ago, I stumbled upon the concept of “revenge bedtime procrastination,” a term that provided new clarity and understanding to my questionable routine, and one that many stressed-out adults and high school students alike can relate to. According to the Sleep Foundation, such procrastination “describes the decision to sacrifice sleep for leisure time that is driven by a daily schedule lacking in free time.” It is often the result of packed routines, lack of control, and a desire to get revenge on daytime hours. Existing in different forms, bedtime procrastination refers to delaying the physical act of getting into bed, whereas while-in-bed procrastination specifically refers to delaying sleep once in bed. To be considered bedtime procrastination, three conditions must be met: putting off going to sleep, the absence of a valid reason for staying up late, and an awareness of the possible consequences. The second factor struck a guilty chord when I read it. I vividly remember the first time I stayed up “late.” It was for freshman biology, and I sat at the kitchen table in the dark for hours, filling out in great detail an organizational sheet about cells, bonds, and forces. Homework is most certainly a valid reason for staying up much later than is considered healthy, but as students all around the world experienced, the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic eliminated that excuse and brought with it a new loss of control. As I suddenly found myself with relatively limited homework in April and May of 2020, I no longer had a valid reason for staying up late enough to see the sunrise—it was simply something I wanted to do. This is where I believe the problem deepened, and a cycle developed that I can’t—and don’t necessarily want to—break out of. While I struggle to stay awake during the day and curse myself for staying up so late the previous night, I continue to

choose the same pattern again and again, as I have come to enjoy this rather unhealthy habit. In the middle of the night, nothing is expected of me: the 11:59 p.m. deadline has passed, and I have firmly decided I can’t stand to look at Times New Roman 12-point font anymore, so I close my computer. In the dead of night, music sounds clearer, TV shows seem more emotional, and everything is far more peaceful. Cereal tastes better, books are more enjoyable, and thoughts have more clarity. In my eyes, this cycle has given me more than it has taken, offering me control and enjoyment, and if I have enough energy to stay awake, I’ll choose it over a few more hours of sleep every time. However, as always, considerable drawbacks accompany sleep procrastination. I often find myself wondering if it’s worth it to feel like a zombie during the day after watching that one extra episode of Shameless the night before. This cycle is firmly in the top three of bad habits I’ve formed, but at least I have something to look forward to at the end of a fully-scheduled day—a designated time of rest and leisure waiting for me after I conquer the Canvas to-do list. While it is a pattern that would be in my best interest to break, and one with which I have a love-hate relationship, it ultimately helps maintain my balance between work and play.

Submission by Perrin Woods

Steaming cup

OPINION

Why Scandinavian TV Is So Good By MANU BOSTEELS Courtesy of Vox.com

Borgen cast members

ver the past fourteen (nearly fifteen) months of pandemic lockdown, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video have become my three most important sources of entertainment. For me, curiously, that entertainment has come time and time again in the form of Scandinavian TV productions such as Rita, Borgen, Home Ground, and The Rain. Nor am I in the minority—a New York Times article on Danish TV quotes Tesha Crawford, Netflix’s international TV director, as saying that the first season of The Rain was “one of the most successful non-English series to date.” Note that The Rain was also Netflix’s first-ever Danish TV show. In fact, streaming services are so eager to get new content from Denmark that the tiny country, with a population of 5.8 million people (just over half the population of NYC) and only one dedicated film school, cannot make new shows fast enough. That same New York Times article describes how “Both TV2, a public station, and the [government-sponsored Danish Film Institute] recently called on the Danish Film School—the country’s only training center of its kind—to double its enrollment to meet the demand. Currently, only 42 students are admitted every two years.” And it’s not only Danish TV. Released in 2020, Norwegian TV show Ragnarok has already been renewed for a second season and was marked by television tracker TV Time as the second most anticipated new season for May of 2021. Aside from being made in Scandinavia, these shows have little in common. Consider their plots: The Rain follows a brother-sister duo in a post-apocalyptic world where rainfall carries a deadly disease; Ragnarok is a fantasy show based on Norse mythology; Home Ground is about the new female coach of a smalltown men’s football club; and Rita follows the life of a teacher

at a Danish school. Nevertheless, all these shows manage to be incredibly entertaining and worthwhile watches. They maintain an unconventional lightheartedness. The shows are easy to watch and understand without lacking depth, and there is a particular realism that they all share. The characters don’t always have perfect makeup, perfect hairstyles, or smooth and clear skin. None of the characters have perfect lives, and the production maintains the delicate balance of exhibiting character and societal flaws without making the series emotionally draining. These factors make Scandi series uniquely relatable and realistic. Most of all, these shows can take a seemingly simple idea and weave it into a complex plot that can be serious without being heavy or take an off-putting and challenging core idea and create a compelling story out of it. Borgen falls into the latter category. First released in 2012, it was well received and is now licensed to Netflix, which is currently working on the fourth season. The Guardian sums up its appeal beautifully:

“It is hard enough to get excited about our own politics, never mind others’ that require subtitles. Borgen is more than intricate political drama, though: it is intimate drama, politics made human. It is about democracy and people: relationships between people, the relationship between work and home (especially interesting at the moment). It is about journalism, women, values, having children, not having children. It is about you and me.” Continued on page 10

OPINION

Why Scandanavian TV is So Good Continued from page 9

Yes, Borgen is about politics. It follows Birgitte Nyborg, a newly elected Danish Prime Minister, and her efforts to lead her country well. Frankly, I never thought a show about politics would ever be worth watching or recommending, but now I can confidently say that Borgen is among the best series I have ever watched. One other common factor that makes these shows intriguing to me is the different way of life that these shows exhibit. I’m not Danish or Norwegian or from any Scandinavian country, so I love a show like Borgen, which provides details into how the media works in Denmark, how socialized healthcare works, the intricacies of Danish parliamentary politics, and what the heck a coalition government is. The ability to explore an entirely different society through a form of entertainment that is also relaxing and fun is fantastic. Another curious aspect of Scandinavian television is how it challenges stereotypes, held by many Americans, of what Scandinavian culture is like. The “Q Shaman,” one of the many insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol building on January 6, wore a Viking-like helmet. Moreover, according to the Washington Post, in May of 2017, “the white supremacist Jeremy Christian — who is accused of killing two men in Portland, Ore., on Friday [May 26] — posted on Facebook, ‘Hail Vinland!!! Hail Victory!!!’” For context, Vinland was the name given to a region of the coast of North America by Leif Erikson and other Vikings when it is be-

lieved that they landed there, sometime in the tenth century. As the Washington Post puts it, “For white supremacists, the concept of Vinland asserts a historical claim over North America, stretching especially from the Northeast coast to the Pacific Northwest. They use the myth of Vinland to position themselves as righteous defenders in the wars of race and religion they believe are coming.” However, the shows coming out of Scandinavia don’t have these racist, aggressively masculine undertones that American white supremacists project upon Scandinavia. A substantial part of Rita focuses on the main character’s fight to dismantle sexist double-standards that govern her life as a schoolteacher. A major plot point of Borgen is how Birgitte Nyborg’s campaign was obstructed by sexism and another how the only Muslim politician, Amir Dwian, is tokenized by other characters. All this contradicts how many Americans perceive Scandinavia and adds more depth to an already profound collection of TV shows. I recognize that the language barrier can be intense. For me, it’s not a problem. I really like subtitles (see my February 2021 opinion article), but I’m aware that this is not true for everyone. These shows are all in languages that are incomprehensible to an English speaker, but if you’re like me and have exhausted much of the streaming catalog at this point in the pandemic, take a look at a Scandinavian TV show. Trust me, you’re in for a real treat.

Why We Still Need NASA By MUKUND GAUR

uly 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong has just become the first man to step on the moon, and NASA has made history yet again. August, 1975. Viking I has landed on Mars. It has become the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars. These are just some snapshots from the long history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), among the most wellknown names in the field of space. Their list of achievements, combined with the allure of exploring the unknown, has made NASA a household name. Even today, NASA continues its long history of innovation, most notably with the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter currently on Mars. Meanwhile, however, the space industry has become more and more crowded. As names such as SpaceX have risen to prominence, many ask, do we still need NASA? The answer is yes, for reasons stretching from small technicalities to the foundation of the United States’

space program. To begin understanding what space innovation looks like today in the United States, we must first consider the rise of commercial space companies. On May 30, 2020, the commercial space industry made what was arguably its most public debut. SpaceX, the poster child of the private space sector, launched two astronauts into space, marking the first time that humans reached space through a non-governmental organization. But did SpaceX really do it on their own? Not quite, which brings us to our first reason for maintaining NASA: budgets. While SpaceX (and other space companies in the U.S.) are all respectable, multi-billion-dollar enterprises, they pale in comparison to NASA’s budget and resources. NASA spends tens of billions of dollars on hundreds of projects every year, while SpaceX only spends a few million.

OPINION

Courtesy of Inc. Magazine

Space Coast, Florida headquarters

This has not been a secret—NASA covered nearly half the development costs of the Falcon 9 rocket, and helped pull the company out of bankruptcy with a multi-billion dollar contract to carry cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). Even today, much of SpaceX’s budget comes from the U.S. government in return for the company launching NASA spacecrafts and flying payloads. This means that while private space companies do have ways of making money, they are still financially reliable on larger organizations such as NASA. Our second reason for maintaining NASA is that while private companies are for-profit corporations, NASA is a government-funded agency. This means that although companies such as SpaceX must try to return a profit, NASA can make discoveries simply for the sake of scientific research. These goals may seem similar at the surface level, especially since the two have worked closely together on similar projects, but they are not. There is no for-profit aspect of sending a spacecraft out of the solar system carrying some records of human civilization (Voyager I and II). Nor is there a profit motive for putting a lander on Pluto or for photographing Saturn. These are all projects that only a non-profit organization such as NASA can execute. For instance, while half of NASA’s budget deals with human spaceflight, almost a third of it goes to scientific research, such as planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics, and heliophysics. These branches of science are essential to today’s world but often neglected by for-profit companies. Lastly, investment in space requires long-term, reliable de-

velopment. SpaceX answers only to Elon Musk and its board of directors and has its own goals that don’t necessarily match the public’s interests. Meanwhile, as a government agency, NASA is subject to oversight and can pursue scientific discoveries for the sake of the public rather than furthering its own interests. Consider NASA’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) project. GRACE helps inform us on how Earth’s gravity changes over time. And while this may not sound useful, GRACE is critical for use in our national infrastructure system. In addition, it measures sea level rise and supports agriculture by assessing groundwater levels. To conclude, although the commercial space age may have arrived, it is still necessary to maintain NASA. Not only does NASA support private companies such as SpaceX, it also conducts research that fundamentally impacts and supports our infrastructure and agriculture systems. NASA is also free to develop projects that would not necessarily turn a profit. However, this is not to say that private companies should have no place in America’s space industry. In fact, NASA still relies on SpaceX to transport payload to the International Space Station, and without SpaceX, NASA would still be buying seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get to space. Therefore, the future of space should include both private and government organizations co-existing and serving their requisite roles to further human understanding of the vast unknown beyond our planet.

OPINION

Caffeine: Harmful Yet Normalized By FIONA HINRICHSEN

any high schoolers struggle to function without their coffee, caffeinated tea, or energy drinks. We see this as young children, when our parents say in the morning, “I can’t talk yet; I haven’t had my coffee.” Caffeine dependency and its normalcy is embedded in us as children, and it has become a stepping stone into adulthood. However, whether caffeinated drinks are harmful rather than helpful is constantly overlooked. Caffeine causes nervousness, an upset stomach, difficulty concentrating, and increased blood pressure. Nevertheless, almost 75% of teens consume caffeine daily. Although caffeine gives us a burst of energy, why should we need to rely on it? Could we be getting that energy in a healthier way? Caffeine can disrupt your sleep schedule, something many teens already struggle with. It is a constant cycle: you drink a caffeinated beverage to stay awake, then the next morning you drink a caffeinated beverage because you did not sleep well, and then the caffeine interferes with your sleep. However, many students stay up late because they are studying or doing homework, so they need that boost of energy, despite the consequences that negatively affect their attentiveness during the school day. Although caffeine is fine in moderation, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a 100mg daily caffeine limit for teens, which is equivalent to one cup of coffee or one to two cups of tea. For reference, energy drinks can contain 80 to 500mg (or more) of caffeine. Many students become dependent on caffeine because of the timing of school and the amount of homework they receive. If students had more time during the day, they could rely less on caffeine and more on proper sleep to keep them awake. The CDC recommends teenagers aged 12 to 18 get eight to ten hours of sleep per night, but our school schedules make this very difficult. Most students do not go to bed until 11-12 p.m. (or later), and even if they were to go to bed then, they would have to wake up early for school, often barely getting five to six hours of sleep. Caffeine thus becomes a trusted and needed companion for many adolescents. Caffeine consumption can lead teens into a vicious cycle of sleep deprivation which greatly impacts their mental well-being, increasing their risk for depression, anxiety, and low-self esteem. Firstly, in the early morning, students are expected to go to school fully awake and ready to learn, so they rely on caffeine to ensure they are alert. If school were to begin at a later time, 9:30 for example, they would have more time to sleep in and to wake up. Secondly, due to sports and other extracurricular activities, students often have little time to complete the copious amounts

of homework they receive. Many students are trapped in the cycle of doing homework late into the night and then resorting to caffeine to stay awake. If the workload was lighter, students could get to bed at a reasonable time and feel refreshed in the morning. Caffeine dependency is seen as a normal and harmless part of young adulthood and life in general, but in reality, it is a serious issue that we should devote more energy to solving. Changing the timing of school and the amount of homework assigned would allow students to sleep more and rely less on caffeine to keep them awake.

Submission by Perrin Woods

Photo of an iced coffee

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Support Refugees in Ithaca By MUKUND GAUR

thaca is home to many refugees from countries across the world. These include Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, and many more countries. For many of these refugees, life in a new and unfamiliar community can be difficult. There are many ways that you can help support these refugees in Ithaca. One such way is through Ithaca Welcomes Refugees (IWR). Ithaca Welcomes Refugees helps both newly arrived refugees and immigrants who have lived in the Ithaca area for a longer time. Ithaca Welcomes Refugees is an initiative founded in 2015. Their mission is to create a more welcoming environment

for refugees and immigrants in Ithaca. Some of their services include setting up apartments and providing basic needs, orienting refugees and immigrants with Ithaca, and providing financial assistance to these refugees. Their overarching goal is to reduce barriers preventing immigrants and refugees from integrating into the local community. In addition, IWR is a member of Welcoming America, a nonprofit organization that aims to make communities more inclusive. Some of IWR’s most important projects include the Global Roots Play School, which provides affordable and accessible childcare to parents wishing to learn English. It has served 24 chil-

dren in the Ithaca area. IWR also has response projects, which target specialized needs of refugees and immigrants. So how can you help? Through the IWR website (ithacawelcomesrefugees. org), you can volunteer to participate in their initiatives. Ithaca Welcomes Refugees is entirely volunteer-run and relies on community organization and funding for their projects. They are also currently looking for a Treasurer, Community Welcoming Team Leader, a Development Leader, and a Response Team Coordinator. Furthermore, you can visit their Amazon Wish List, accessible through their website, to help pay for items that families are in need of.

Ithaca Welcomes Refugees, a well known local organization Courtesy of sustainabletompkins.org

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Courage, Virtue, and Intellectual Emancipation: What an Education in Classics Provides By RUBY LAROCCA

Editor’s Note: This article was written in response to a previous opinion article, “Distance Learning at IHS: Taking The Right Step Forward,” featured in the May issue of The Tattler.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast

n late April, philosopher Cornel West and educator Jeremy Tate published an open letter in The Washington Post expressing their alarm at the dissolution of the Classics department at Howard University, a prominent historically Black university. By early May, The New York Times published a rebuttal written by two Howard professors: Brandon Hogan and Jacoby Carter. Their exchange is a microcosm of the ongoing debate about the relevance of Classics departments today. The incremental destruction or outright abolition of Classics departments in the US and abroad might be the natural consequence of what Hogan and Carter, in bureaucratic-speak, call “an intensive effort to determine how to best allocate university resources.” Or rather, it might be the sign of a pernicious trend in education—a trend that is now infiltrating K-12 education in our own school district. When Howard got rid of its Classics department it helped to silence what West characterizes as a “conversation among great thinkers over generations that grows richer the more we add our own voices and the excellence of voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America and everywhere else in the world.” What’s more, Howard is setting the tone for the kind of education it plans to offer its students, embracing what West calls “utilitarian schooling” and further abandoning a “soul-forming education.” In other words, Howard is choosing to promote the acquisition of knowledge and skills, often following trends in the employment market, but denying their students the chance to become courageous, virtuous, discerning, and intellectually independent. For West, a classical education involves reading texts and studying cultures that help students reorient themselves, challenge their preconceptions, acknowledge the complexity of existence, and, as he says, become “human beings of courage, vision, and civic virtue.” The genuine education West envisions is one that is intimately tied to reading (and rereading) the dynamic, radical works of philosophical education that are found in the classical tradition. West centers his argument about Howard’s loss on the important fact that America’s greatest civil rights activists and leaders were profoundly transformed by their hardwon classical education. He recalls that, while enslaved, Frederick Douglass “risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to study the likes of Socrates, Cato, and Cicero.” Douglass began

Howard University dismantles its Classics department

his intellectual emancipation by secretly reading these tranformative, emboldening texts in defiance of the wrongful laws that forbade his freedom. He was “empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man.” One hundred years later, Martin Luther King Jr. was “galvanized by his reading in the classics as a young seminarian—he mentions Socrates three times in his 1963 ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’” As West helps us to see, learning to read in a way that calls for careful attention coupled with self-examination—an explicit feature of a classical education—“is united to the Black experience. It recognizes that the end and aim of education is really the anthem of Black people, which is to lift every voice. That means to find your voice, not an echo or imitation of others. But you can’t find your voice without being grounded in tradition, grounded in legacies, grounded in heritages.” In an attempt to support and encourage students’ voices, Howard is actually depriving them of the rich conversation that makes those voices audible and worth hearing. In their acerbic reply to West, Professors Hogan and Carter assert that the move to dissolve Howard’s Classics department was precipitated by an assessment of “student interest, cost, benefit, and overall fit with the university’s mission.” Although “the university recognizes the value of humanistic inquiry,” they believe getting rid of the department was a “necessary” change. They present West’s argument as a “pronouncement from the ivory towers of predominantly white institutions” designed to “draw public attention” and “score political points.” They declare that “only those of us who research and teach at historically Black colleges and universities—unlike Dr. West, who has primarily worked at institutions with huge endowments—have

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the kind of understanding that comes from experience.” Here, readers should note that the authors talk about the financial constraints of their own institution in order to cast aspersions on the legitimacy of West’s argument because he taught at well-endowed Harvard and Princeton. In fact, West has famously twice now left his Ivy League positions to teach at Union Theological Seminary, an establishment with an endowment of about 112 million, roughly one seventh of Howard’s endowment. In sum, the piece is less focused on what students may lose or gain and more focused on targeting West and disqualifying him as a speaker. A third voice is relevant here: that of Anika Prather. Prather is a Howard professor in the Classics department. In a recent interview with NPR, she points out that the people who are making arguments against the Classics often don’t have a clear sense of what work is done inside those departments. For example, Howard and Carter “lumped in Shakespeare and other works” with classical texts. The difference between Shakespeare and classical literature is the difference of thousands of years. It’s hard to grasp how much time we’re talking about in the gap between the classical world and our own—just the difference between two pillars in the field of Classics, Homer and Plato, is a period of about 400 years. Consider how much our own world has changed in the 15 years since the invention of the iPhone. This should give you a visceral sense of how much can change over time and how much the advance of time matters to changes in culture. Hogan and Carter’s reference to Shakespeare as part of the classical tradition illuminates the problems that arise when we don’t understand the traditions we are working within and against. Both Prather and West are attempting to help their readers understand what is at stake, what kind of work goes on in Classics departments, why reading texts from other ages is quite different from speaking with people in your own time. They want us to know what a genuine education looks, sounds, and feels like. In sharp contrast, Carter and Hogan’s target is West—the thrust of their argument is to disqualify West, to characterize him as ill-suited to speak to the importance of Classics for Howard University students. The very different approach adopted by West and Prather as opposed to Hogan and Carter emphasizes the real difference between people who are promoting understanding and people who are trying to silence and undermine the logic of individual authors through a denouncement of their personal character or right to speak. In short, the real intention of the Hogan and Carter essay is to disqualify the author rather than illuminate the problem and contribute to its solution. It is also worth thinking about these very different approaches in regard to their effect on students. West and Prather want students to think about the works they encounter in school in the context the works emerged from, an approach which makes the texts we read even richer and more engaging. If students more and more often ask why they should be expected to study the established classics of literature and philosophy,

it is likely because when these works (and the modern masterpieces they inspire) are taught, they are taught out of context and approached with a deep skepticism about their aims and assumptions. For any philosophical work to impact a reader, it must shine a light on matters of still-lively interest—matters of moral, social, and political concern. But in order to understand why a work is relevant to our lives now, we must see how the texts we’re studying also emerged out of their authors’ attempts to grapple with other provocative thinkers. For students to engage in an active way with demanding texts, they need a sense of how the authors of the texts were themselves engaged. As an example of this loss of intertextuality, students at IHS only get to read and examine Martin Luther King Jr.’s astonishing, profound “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in AP Language and Composition and U.S. History, both of which are courses taken in 11th grade that require a large number of prerequisites. Presumably very few IHS students read this masterpiece in the context of the classical works that MLK himself was engaging. I mean only to point out that Howard and Carter’s approach allies school curriculums with current market trends and what students think they want to learn about, further eroding the kind of layered, contextualized program of studies that can inspire teachers and students and make education pleasurable. The more disjointed and cobbled together, while being expedient and governed by current social trends our school work becomes, the less anything will feel worth studying. .... In late March, I co-wrote a piece for The Tattler expressing alarm at the online environment fostered by the policies implemented by the school this year. By early May, The Tattler published a rebuttal from another IHS student. Our exchange reflects the same trend in education I’ve outlined above—one that has students arguing against their own right to be educated in the genuine and absorbing way that will allow them to be fulfilled in any line of work or study they choose to pursue. Let’s start by investigating the core of the rebuttal’s criticism of the original distance learning piece (which I’ll refer to as “A Clear-Eyed Assessment”). The rebuttal, which I’ll refer to as “Taking the Right Step Forward,” feels like a perfect illustration of the newly formed allegiance between students and administrators—a worrisome alliance that displaces the traditional teacher-student relationship. “Taking the Right Step Forward” is emphatically loyal to ICSD’s “Culture of Love” and the policies the current administration is instituting to try to eliminate inequities, even though—some of us are arguing—these policies infantilize students and perpetuate inequities by making public education in the humanities so flat and toothless that it can hardly be expected to empower anyone to do anything. “Taking the Right Step Forward” makes the academic side of school life—especially reading literature, or reading the kinds of texts that can’t be easily reduced to main points and key messages—look harmful to students:

Continued on page 16

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Courage, Virtue, and Intellectual Emancipation: What an Education in Classics Provides Continued from page 15

As fun as reading books is for those of us who engage in it as a hobby, it can feel labored, extraneous, and hopeless. The words swim before one’s eyes, all blending together, forming a whirlpool of boredom. It is not ICSD’s job to force this upon students in hopes of transferring to them a valuable skill simply by exposure. Assigning long readings in print books does not teach students to enjoy reading. Short articles are much more likely to be engaging in topic and style, and they give students the satisfaction of focusing long enough to absorb the takeaways of the reading, a feeling that is hard to come by as of late. In addition to thinking of books only in terms of the facts, lessons, and useful generalities students can mine from them (an approach to reading certain to turn students into glassy-eyed automatons), the arguments in “Taking the Right Step Forward” seem to spring from an assumption that “traditional” schoolwork hurts students mentally and emotionally, and that what is really needed in K-12 education is a greater awareness and accommodation of student suffering and vulnerability. Furthermore, the authors of “A Clear-Eyed Assessment” are faulted for equating academic achievement with soul-crushing metrics, money-making, and other narrow-minded versions of success: “Distance Learning at IHS: A Clear-Eyed Assessment and a Call to Action” presents a particular type of standpoint on education. It is one that emphasizes a traditional definition of success— one that encompasses numerical grades, advanced classes, familiarity with classic literature, and preparedness to enter the workforce as a well-educated person. Even in a normal year, these are not values that should take priority over physical and mental well-being. Certainly, the authors of the “A Clear-Eyed Assessment” would agree that a surplus of taxing, ill-conceived assignments and busy-work (assignments that are at once shallow and endless, that consume students’ precious late-night and weekend hours but accomplish very little in the way of real understanding) do not serve students well. However, this sad view of school isn’t the one championed in “A Clear-Eyed Assessment,” nor do its authors equate student accomplishment with high standardized test scores or high-powered, well-paying jobs. Instead, what is held out as the primary goal is intellectual emancipation and the ability to pursue your goals because you have the kind of education that allows you to be interested and interesting, to go on learning well after school is over, and to speak to others on your own behalf, clearly and convincingly. One of the strangest moments in “Taking the Right Step Forward” is the author’s decision to denounce the hope, as expressed in “A Clear-Eyed Assessment,” that the IHS administra-

tion meets the challenge of “providing an online (or in person) education that is energizing, varied, and aimed directly at the goal of preparing students for fulfilling future employment.” The phrase “fulfilling future employment” seems to have caused offense: “To hear the authors define the goal of secondary education in general as “preparing students for fulfilling future employment” is frankly disappointing.” Since fulfilling employment—of whatever kind—is work that makes people satisfied or happy, what exactly is the problem? Why would students argue against the full development of their own characters and abilities and thus of their future happiness and satisfaction? One reason might be that they have little familiarity with classical philosophers’ sense (evident in the teachings of the Buddha and Confucius and Plato) that everyone is helped by having a philosophy of life or a philosophy for living. The Roman Stoics, for example, (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus) had wonderful, specific techniques for managing negative emotions and achieving a deep sense of well-being, especially during times of hardship and turmoil. The constructive, health and happiness-promoting lessons of the Stoics offer just one example of how if we read good works, in the right spirit, together, accounting for the inevitable differences in students’ experiences and interests, we can in fact improve our mental health by way of our school studies.

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To Our Departing Editors: Thank You! By ADOWYN ERNSTE, RAIA GUTMAN, FRANCES KLEMM, KATIE LIN, LOUISA MILLER-OUT, JINHO PARK, and ADAM SAAR As we, the non-graduating editors on The Tattler Editorial Board, reflected on the past year, we realized that it would be remiss not to express our gratitude for the graduating members on the Board. These departing seniors have been good leaders, inspiring role-models, and kind friends. Collectively, we are sad to see them leave and thankful for what they have done. The following messages are our attempts at expressing our feelings toward our wonderful departing editors. Dear Jacob, I’ll miss you next year. I’ll miss passing the ball with you during warm-ups, I’ll miss discussing chemistry or physics problems with you, I’ll miss admiring the covers that you make for The Tattler. Do you remember the animation event we did together? You carried me in that event—you made that beautiful animation, and all I did was write that mediocre essay. Even then, when we were all in middle school, you worked so much harder than anybody else in TSA; you were the example that everybody wanted to follow. For The Tattler, too, you’ve really been an unsung hero. All of us on the Board know how much you’ve done for this newspaper, and it’s a crazy amount. Your layouts have really transformed The Tattler into the beautiful newspaper it is today. You’ve been such a fantastic Layout Editor that it’s hard for me to imagine someone else being Layout. I wish you all the best. ~ Jinho ‘22 Dear Heewon, I truly can’t believe how you do so much and still manage to do everything well. You constantly impress me in pretty much every setting, whether it’s Latin or Brain Team or Korean class. You spent a ton of time doing extracurriculars and serving your community and still found time to copy edit the entire Tattler every month! You clearly make a great leader, yet you work well as an integral part of every team you’re on. As a fellow polymathof-sorts, I admire you so much, and I’ll miss you at a ton of future club meetings. I’m sure you’ll do amazing things wherever you go. Ascende superius! ~ Louisa ‘22 Dear Ethan, Ever since I was a freshman, your comic Surrealio has been a highlight of my month, and one of my favorite parts of The Tattler. Last year, when school was in person, at each proofs meeting I would always go to the table that had Surrealio laid out on it first, and I enjoyed the innovation and creativity every time. I also highly appreciate your attention to detail. When we read

over editorials as a board, you always make sure to pay attention to even the smallest of details, and always have suggestions on how to improve the quality of writing. You have a lot of drive and focus, and we’ll miss you very much! ~ Katie ‘22 Dear Anna, I remember I first met you at that creative writing workshop at the library, back when neither of us went to Ithaca High School. Since then, I have had the honor of reading snippets of your work and observing the stunning changes your writing has undergone. I’ve always been astounded by the touch you bring to every piece of writing, from poetry to news articles to April Fools’ satire. I am confident that you will go on to produce so much more brilliant work, and I hope you will also find more opportunities as a leader, given how well you’ve performed your duties as Editor-in-Chief this year. Above all, and somewhat selfishly, I hope I can continue to learn from you and witness your genius. ~ Raia ‘22 Dear Alex, This year, you’ve set an amazing example of being an outstanding student and person for me. This year, as a rookie Student Representative to the Board of Education, you took all of us under your wing and showed us the ropes, helping us become the formidable team we are today. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to have worked with you in that position and on The Tattler this year. You astound me with your high level of commitment to everything you do. Between The Tattler, being a Student Representative to the Board, Math Team, Latin, and your countless other endeavors, you have served as an inspiration and role model to many. You will be greatly missed. ~ Adam ‘22 Dear Dot, Each month, your centerspreads have been fun, consistent, and always with a touch of humor. Although I never got to talk with you very much because of virtual school, your hard work for The Tattler (and Student Council!) this year has been clear from each weekly Board Meeting and every month’s issue. Whether or not you decide to create a new persona in the Alaskan Wilderness, I wish you good luck with whatever you decide to pursue after graduation! ~ Adowyn ‘22 Dear Mollie, I always appreciate your humor and comments in our meetings. I think everyone appreciates how you inject humor, and I wish you all the best at Edinburgh in the future. The Tattler has only improved and grown under your watch. I hope you have a fantastic time in Scotland! Sending lots of good wishes! ~ Frances ‘23

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IHS Music Students Reflect on the Weirdest Year Ever By LOUISA MILLER-OUT

interviewed a group of IHS students across different grade levels and ensembles to gain some insight into their experience this year with music instruction, both virtual and in-person. Louisa Miller-Out ‘22: What are some things you have been doing in band/orchestra that you wouldn’t do in a normal school year? Are there positive aspects to this? Kaia Moore ‘22: This year in band, we’ve been using a digital audio workspace called Soundtrap where you record your instrument and you can add effects to it. That’s been a positive experience, I think, because I’ve never worked with something like that before, so it’s bringing me into new areas of music. Daniel Zawel ‘22: With these digital audio workstations, having access to ones like Soundtrap or GarageBand makes it easy to make recordings with just yourself. So you can do everything on your own time and you don’t need to tell others what to play—you can just do whatever you want, and I’ve had a lot of fun with that. Elliott Salpekar ‘23: I was able to reconnect with a teacher from across the country that I was with before I moved up here, and virtual lessons have been pretty effective so far. Luke Newton ‘22: Being virtual this year has really opened me up to personal performance. In the past, when we were playing pieces, I could sort of rely on the ensemble to support me if I make any mistakes, but when I’m recording something in a closed room and it’s just me with a reference track, if I make a mistake I’m going to hear it and it feels like a much bigger deal than if I had made it with 60 other people around me. So you really start focusing on individual performance and technique and getting your music down to a T.

DZ: I agree. LMO: What does your teacher do to make virtual instruction more engaging? KM: Mrs. Zawel does a really great job with breaking up class into different parts so we don’t get fatigued. We’ll start off with a warm-up, but then we’ll go watch a video or listen to a piece of music and then we’ll try and play it, and then we might go back to listening to a recording. So it’s really interesting because she mixes it up and not every class is the same.

Jerry Qian ‘21: I personally don’t turn my camera on when I’m remote. DZ: At the peak, around 70 percent of band people had their cameras on. It was like a Renaissance. But now…(trails off sadly). The band director (Mrs. Zawel) works very hard and seeing more of her students’ faces makes it a little easier for her. Anonymous: Sometimes, I do not play the orchestra music when I am at home. This better be anonymous.

Kieran Lucio-Belbase ‘22: Five minute breaks.

LMO: What do you miss the most about pre-COVID band/orchestra class?

KLB: (Mr. Fleischman) is a good teacher that teaches us things well.

KLB: Having a significant number of people in class.

Adam Saar ‘22: (Mr. Fleischman) uses different tools like Padlet and stuff like that to do check-ins and other little activities, usually at the beginning of class.

AS: Being immersed in a big ensemble.

LMO: Has the pandemic impacted the quality of your practice habits/playing? And if so, how? Anonymous: I’d say I practice roughly one tenth of what I used to, and that’s a very generous estimate, because I think it’s difficult to stay motivated when you don’t play the pieces you’re working on with other people. KM: In general, the pandemic, especially when it started last year in March, has given me a lot of opportunity to experiment more with my music and spend more time on it, even if I do not always take advantage of that time. Anonymous: I don’t practice. LMO: Is it more nerve-racking to play on camera remotely than it would be to play in person?

KM: One thing that is severely diminished during these times is that when you don’t have the entire ensemble there playing, it sounds very different and it’s hard to learn other people’s parts and learn to play as an ensemble more. So I imagine it’s probably really difficult for freshmen and people who are newer to playing in larger ensembles to learn others’ parts and feel like they’re part of a band. LMO: What three words best describe your experience in band/orchestra this year? KLB: No. KLB: Can I do four words? KLB: Sometimes kinda okay. JQ: Given circumstances, good. Anonymous: I didn’t practice. KM: Diminished, but productive. The band kids: Shoutout to Mrs. Zawel!

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The Off-Season Review: J. Cole Putting In The Work By ADAM SAAR

“P

ride is the devil/I think it’s gotta hold on me,” J. Cole croons in a slightly autotuned voice over a T-Minus beat heavy on reverbed guitar and trap drums in “Pride is the Devil,” the seventh track of his newest album. The Off-Season is the North Carolina rapper’s sixth studio album overall and the first studio album in Cole’s planned “The Fall Off Era,” in which he strives for ever-higher heights to fulfill his potential as an artist. In the opening track, “95 South,” Cole opens with “This s*** too easy for me now.../...I’m bettin’ on myself, then I’ll completely double down,” a lyric that encapsulates The Off-Season’s mission statement—to escape complacency and keep improving, regardless of how much success Cole has already attained. “The Fall Off Era” began after the release of Cole’s last album, KOD, in 2018. In a post from December 2020, Cole outlined “The Fall Off Era” as consisting of features (in which J. Cole appeared as a featured artist on countless songs by other artists), Revenge Of The Dreamers III (a full-length compilation/ collaboration album made by members of J. Cole’s imprint, Dreamville, and others), The Off-Season, It’s A Boy (a presumed upcoming mixtape or album), and The Fall Off, an album Cole has been teasing since the release of KOD and will close the era and perhaps J. Cole’s career. In The Off-Season, Cole attempts to reassume the mindset of an up-and-coming rapper who hasn’t yet broken through; in his ascension to the top of hip-hop, he feels he was losing that drive to prove himself and attempts to draw himself back into that hungry mindset. He is determined to reach the pinnacle of his personal musical ability and to constantly pursue improving his game. He draws many comparisons between rap and basketball, name-dropping a number of NBA players, including Russell Westbrook (“Amari”) and Ja Morant (“My Life”). He also samples quotes from the Portland TrailBlazers’ Damian Lillard on “Punching the Clock,” drawing parallels between the work Cole does to improve himself in the rap game and the work that basketball players such as Lillard put in to improve themselves during the off-season, inspiring the title of the album. Cole is known for reaching platinum certification on three separate albums without any features, yet as he transitions into this next stage of his career, he has said he wants to not regret passing up the chance to collaborate with other artists to bring out the best in himself and them. So, for the first time since 2013, Cole hosts a wide array of features in The Off-Season: 21 Savage and Lil’ Baby go off in perfectly suited verses on “My Life” and “Pride is the Devil” respectively, and Dreamville signee Bas contributes vocals on a number of tracks throughout the project, most prominently on “Let Go My Hand.” Cole forms incredible chemistry with every artist who he shared the mic with on the project, further showcasing his incredible skills and standing in the rap game. In addition to diversifying the voices appearing on his album, Cole collaborates with a whopping 13 other producers on the

Album cover of The Off-Season by J. Cole

project, such as rap hit machines T-Minus, Boi 1da, and DJ Dahi. This is another change of lane for Cole, who is known for having produced much of his own discography. The result is an album featuring masterful production with sounds and styles ranging from relaxed and soulful (such as “Let Go My Hand”), hard-hitting and trappy (“Amari,” “Interlude,” and “Pride is the Devil”), grand and cinematic (“95 South” and “Hunger on Hillside”), and of course, Cole’s signature vocal chop and percussion-heavy beats (“Applying Pressure,” “Close,” and “The Climb Back”). Along with branching out of production, in The Off-Season Cole continues on his trajectory towards a croony-er, more singsongy and R&B trap-like sound that he began on his 2016 album 4 Your Eyez Only, which featured a relatively large amount of singing, and continued in KOD, where Cole introduced autotune and vocal modulations to his repertoire of sounds. In The Off-Season, J. Cole uses even more auto tune and vocal effects than before, with mixed results. On songs like “Amari” and “Pride is the Devil” (one of my personal favorites), Cole uses autotune to great effect to modulate his voice and accentuate the emotions he pours into the songs. However, in “100 Mil’” the autotune is simply jarring, making the already lyrically obnoxious song the only highly skippable song on the album. The Off-Season is also a departure from his previous few projects in its lack of overarching concept. 4 Your Eyez Only focused on the death of a lifelong friend, and KOD focused on the perils of addiction. With The Off-Season, however, J. Cole loosens the reins, and attempts to relieve some of the seriousness that has dominated his discography over the years. On “Amari” Cole lets Continued on page 22

The Off Season Review: J. Cole Putting in the Work Continued from page 19

himself rap braggadociously on his success with his music and imprint, rapping “Dreamville the Army, not a Navy/How could you ever try to play me? Kill ‘em on a song, walk up out the booth, do the Westbrook rock-ababy,” in a style reminiscent of his mixtape days. On “100 Mil,’” unfortunately, it feels as though Cole has loosened the reins on his standard of lyricism slightly too far, as he repeatedly raps in broken autotune “100 mil’ and I’m still on the grind,” betraying his high standard of lyricism that he has made himself known and respected for. Nevertheless, Cole doesn’t entirely depart from the insightful, introspective lyrics that make him my favorite artist. On “Pride is the Devil,” Cole raps masterfully on the destructive nature of pride, and his struggle in fighting his inner pride from taking over him. The song also features an impeccably set up and executed feature from Lil’ Baby, making the song a notable highlight and a turning point in the album as it kicks off the incredible second half of the project. On the next track, “Let Go My Hand,” Cole opens up on fatherhood for only the second time in his career (the first being in my all-time favorite J. Cole verse: “Sacrifices” from Revenge of the Dreamers III). With vulnerable lyrics, brilliant anecdotes such as “Ignorance is bliss and innocence is just ignorance before it’s introduced to currency and clips,” an intimate flow, and a magnificent sung verse from Bas, “Let Go My Hand” is the standout song of the album. With The Off-Season, J. Cole seems to be getting back into his groove as a solo artist, building up his confidence, and sharpening his skills—doing drills, per se—in preparation for what is anticipated—and seemingly intended—to be his career-defining project, The Fall Off. While the project can feel somewhat disjointed at times, it is certainly a strong effort. Containing notable highlights (“Let Go My Hand,” “Pride is the Devil,” “The Climb Back,” and “Close”), The Off-Season certainly does not disappoint and will not be soon forgotten. However, it does contain an uncharacteristically notable lowlight—“100 Mil’”—that holds it back from contending for being Cole’s best album. Nevertheless, The Off-Season only makes me more excited for the rest of “The Fall Off Era” as I eagerly wait for It’s A Boy and The Fall Off.

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The Ultimate Coming-of-Age Romance Reading List for Summer 2021 By RAIA GUTMAN

f it’s anything like this school year, summer 2021 will necessitate a wide range of entertainment to pass the time and imagine a different world. For some, coming-of-age romance would be the last genre to appear on that list, but for the sake of branching out and reconnecting with a deeper emotional truth, I implore you to consider adding these titles to your reading list this summer. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz A vivid book set in El Paso, Texas, Aristotle and Dante features a developing friendship and romance between two Mexican-American teenagers. It deals with themes of family relationships, ethnic identity, and sexuality in a touching, nuanced manner. (Content warnings: homophobia, transphobia, and drug and alcohol use) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky This novel deserves its notoriety. It is the story of a freshman in high school who forms an unlikely and impactful relationship with two seniors at his high school, who teach him valuable lessons about how to live and encourage him to confront the trauma in his past. The Perks of Being a Wallflower was made into a movie in 2012, written and directed by author Stephen Chbosky. (Content warnings: homophobia, sexual abuse, drug and alcohol use, and suicidal ideation) The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon Natasha, a Jamaican immigrant facing deportation, happens to meet Charles, a Korean teenager preparing for an interview at Dartmouth to study medicine despite his passion for poetry. In one day in New York City, they fall in love and confront their respective families’ realities. (Content warnings: anti-Black racism and suicidal ideation) A People’s History of Heaven by Mathangi Subramanian Romance is not the focus of this novel. Rather, it is about the challenges and triumphs of the female residents of a slum in India, from friendships to education to the struggle against a government that wants to bulldoze their homes. It is a beautiful coming-of-age story that focuses on the love shared by a community.

ARTS Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian Set in 1980s New York City, this novel follows three teenagers: a Persian immigrant, a plus-sized fashion designer, and a gay activist fighting the AIDS crisis. All three are affected by the climate of fear and rage, and they are brought together by the love of one character’s uncle, Stephen. (Content warnings: AIDS crisis, alcoholism, Islamophobia, and suicidal ideation) Meet Cute by various authors This book is a collection of short stories spanning genres and featuring a diverse range of characters, all starring a love story of some kind. Some are uplifting and joyful, and others deal with goodbyes as abrupt as the meet-cutes themselves. It’s an easy read to pick up one day and finish another. (Content warning: transphobia) Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram This novel is the story of a Persian-American teenager who embarks on a sudden trip to Iran to visit his extended family. This proves even more daunting than his isolating day-to-day life, but he meets a friend who guides him through Persian culture and defends him against bullies. While not explicitly romantic, Darius the Great is Not Okay is certainly a love story. A sequel was published in 2020. (Content warnings: homophobia, Islamophobia, mental illness, and bullying) We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra A Walt Whitman fanboy is paired with a jock to exchange letters for their English class. At first, their conversation is awkward, as they have little in common, but as the story progresses, their connection runs deeper and deeper. If you find yourself missing English class, this is the book to read—and after that, Leaves of Grass by Whitman. (Content warnings: bullying, drug and alcohol use, abuse, and homophobia) Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon The end of senior year marks the conclusion of the years-long rivalry between Rowan and Neil, academic equals and candidates for valedictorian. As the senior game, a scavenger hunt across Seattle, begins, it becomes clear that the only option is to team up and confront their rivalry at the last moment. In the process, Rowan and Neil discover more about each other than they bargained for. (Content warnings: antisemitism, drug use, and sex) The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid Evelyn Hugo, an old-time Hollywood star, chooses an unknown magazine reporter to reveal the truth about her life. She recounts her unrelenting ambition, unexpected friendships, and great forbidden love story. While learning all of this, the journalist recording Evelyn’s story begins to discover that their lives are deeply intertwined. (Content warnings: abuse, sexual assault, homophobia, and suicide) The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli A companion to the famed LGBTQ romance novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, this book follows Molly and her twin sister, Cassie. Molly has counted twenty-six unrequited crushes throughout her life, and she’s painfully used to falling for people she will never approach. When Cassie starts dating Mina, however, she’s introduced to a boy who’s just her type and even seems to like her. (Content warnings: racist microaggressions, fatphobia, and alcohol consumption)

All of the Broadway Scandals: Let’s Do a Run Through By FRANCES KLEMM Content Warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.

he Broadway industry has always been slightly problematic. Most people know Broadway as an industry that largely appeals to upper middle class, rich, white, and Democratic audiences. This is also largely reflective of the people who make the shows, the creators, a group which includes the producers, writers, lyricists, and more. Since Broadway first opened in the late 1800s, theater has been largely an exclusively white, cis space, and it hasn’t strayed too far from its origins. Some would say only the softcore liberal message and recent increases in cast diversity have carried the industry through to the 21st century because in the end, from the people who are presented in the shows to those who make them, Broadway hasn’t really changed. This problematic side has slowly been leaking into the mainstream, and in the past months, more scandals have been hitting the infamous theater industry than ever before, some exposing deeper systemic problems Broadway has never addressed. From the last couple of weeks, here are the scandals that have had Broadway talking. Earlier this year, in April, The Hollywood Reporter wrote a scathing report on Scott Rubin—an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony-winning producer—interviewing former assistants of his who detailed violent abuse that occurred under his supervision, leading to lasting psychological and physical harm. The famous producer of shows like To Kill a Mockingbird and the upcoming The Music Man has allegedly sent assistants to the hospital from violent outlashes and caused trauma that resulted in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the hostile environment he cultivated. Assistants characterized his alleged behavior as an open secret, saying, “Everyone just knows he’s an absolute monster.” One assistant died by suicide, and family members believe that PTSD from working under Rubin was the primary cause. However, much to the dismay of many Broadway advocates, the article from The Hollywood Reporter and a followup from Variety failed to inspire any significant action by industry leaders after Rubin denied all allegations without apologizing. On April 14, 2021, Karen Olivo, a Tony-winning Best Actress from their role in the revival of West Side Story and widely known for originating the role of Vanessa in In The Heights in 2009, made Broadway headlines by stepping down from a huge role: Satine in Moulin Rouge. They publicly resigned in protest

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All of the Broadway Scandals: Let’s Do a Run Through Continued from page 23

of silence surrounding Rubin and the industry’s standards. Olivo stated in an Instagram video, “The silence about Scott Rubin is unacceptable… that should be a no-brainer.” Olivo also commented that “building a better industry is more important than putting money in my pockets.” On April 22, performers and fans alike marched down Broadway in support of broader equality and transparency in the industry. Not only did they want Rubin removed from his position on the Broadway League, but they also presented six demands, including a full report of how the 2020 equity dues were spent, greater diversity and visibility from the national council, knowledge of what organizations the Actor’s Equity Association was supporting, and greater inclusion for transgender and non-binary actors and actors with disabilites. Though most of their demands haven’t been addressed, two days after the March on Broadway, Rubin officially stepped down from his position in the Broadway League and committed to stepping back from his current projects. Jagged Little Pill: The Musical (JLP)—the Alanis Morissette jukebox musical exploring themes of transracial adoption, opioid addiction, sexuality, assault, and more—has also been marred in scandal. The production advertises itself as an activist musical, and many fans are drawn to it because of its exploration of complicated topics with the iconic Jagged Little Pill album as its musical backdrop. The issue fans have found with Jagged Little Pill: The Musical lies not with the musical’s script, nor with Boston’s A.R.T. theater (where the musical first debuted), but rather in the show’s transition to Broadway. In the original production of JLP at the A.R.T. theater, the show features a non-binary character, Jo, who goes by they/them pronouns. The show at the time was clear about Jo’s gender identity. The cisgender actress, Lauren Patten, who filled the role tweeted, “Thank you for seeing what I deeply hoped to do with Jo and ‘You Oughta Know’” in response to a thread criticizing the press for not referring to Jo with they/them pronouns. At the time, the show was promoting the non-binary storyline and the importance of representation, so, when the production moved to Broadway, it was a huge deal for LGBTQIA+ communities. Broadway has only had one other non-binary character, so Jo was set to make history. However, this all came to a halt when JLP was nearing its transition to Broadway. Fans of the show became weary of the portrayal of a non-binary character by a self-identifying cisgender actress, and many expected Patten to be replaced by her non-binary understudy, Ezra Menas, or another non-binary actor. JLP recognized the criticism, and suddenly all of the tweets and promotion of this historic character were taken down, and Jo continued to be played by Patten. The musical debuted on Broadway on December 9, 2019, receiving glowing reviews and gathering a huge fan base. The

non-binary erasure was recognized, but largly swept under the rug by fans and critiques alike. Only a year later, the show published a webisode featuring a panel of the people involved in creating Jo’s character in which they denied Jo ever being non-binary, inspiring the Broadway community to once again call on JLP to recognize the issue and make changes. On April 13, 2021, a year and a half since the show’s Broadway debut, the show released an official statement that mentioned, “Though Jo wasn’t written as non-binary…” and continued to express their regret that the character was perceived as such. This came as a disappointment to many who had hoped the show would fix their mistakes and recast Jo with a non-binary actor during the long period of leave due to the pandemic. Fans commented statements such as, “This apology is not an attempt to right a wrong. This is an attempt to remove yourselves from any wrongdoing,” “no, what y’all did was non-binary ERASURE,” and, “I love JLP, but this was a punch to the gut.” Fans also called for donations to be made to transgender and non-binary-supporting organizations. Menas, Patten’s understudy, has been outspoken on the subject, and took to Instagram after JLP ’s social media statement, stating, “Do not let cis people (especially those in power) dupe you into thinking THEY are the ones who can tell gender expansive stories with cis actors.” Menas later tweeted, “True growth is admitting harm with action, not gaslighting entire communities and slapping a fake apology on top.” Preston Allen, a member of the Dr. Drama panel “Trans Representation On Broadway: A Response To Trans Erasure In JLP,” tweeted, “A Broadway stage is not the place for a creative team’s misinformed learning experience to play out. If a show can’t handle the actual gravity of the topics it thought it would be exciting to take on, then the team was not prepared to tell this story in the first place.” Today, JLP has not made any changes to their original stance. With the real issues of homophobia and transphobia existing at large in the theater industry, the show that initially centered itself around social justice playing a part in erasing an underrepresented community felt like a huge loss for the performance community and yet another step back in the fight for representation. Amid the upheaval felt on Broadway in the last year, Broadway and the wider theater industry must come to terms with the deeply systemic issues inside the industry, many of which are far from a clean break. Broadway recently announced its intended return in May 2021, with shows predicted to reopen throughout September and October of this year. This news has only led to more actors speaking out on what they need from the Broadway community. Only time will tell if Broadway is ready for change.

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3.8

There is no way but forward for the solitary traveler,

Good grief. It’s just the end of the school year!

from the first, lonely steps till the bitter end… By ADOWYN ERNSTE Anyone else want some?

Hehe

Hey r! ou Seym

And thus, the lonely traveler

ought We thht come ig you m o sulk all re t we —healonceid, esdoto de u! o y r bothe

montage

First, I promised my parents I’d pay them back for the trip by getting a part-time job… Thanks for today, guys. This wouldn’t have been much fun by myself. I’m glad we’re all still friends —

And what’s that supposed to mean?!

Especially you, Norma Jean!

…Then I had to catch up on everything that I missed while I was away…

Oh no. that’s not it. You see…

… know ou , you n yyou Well ber whe r e ft a m …? Reme hated meGermany f kind o back from came

…And then there were the allergies…

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Shmoop’s Scoop Continued from page 25

The Best of Surrealio By ETHAN CARLSON

I have been making comics for over six years now and have made hundreds of them at this point. I have won state-level awards, such as the Racker Center Special Friend Award, for my dedication to this medium and making so many people smile with the humor I have visualized. I could have not gotten this far with my work without the generosity and open arms of The Tattler during my high school career. It was the perfect place to express my humor to the world. I hope other high school students do not look at my departure as a sad goodbye, but instead as an example of what great things Ithaca’s youth can do for this community. We are not just people who need fostering; we can prosper too. Find your passion. Stay surreal. You’re the best… ~ Ethan A. Carlson ~

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Continued on page 28

28 The Best of Surrealio Continued from page 27

ARTS

SPORTS By AITAN AVGAR

June Sports Update By AITAN AVGAR

• Unified Bowling won their first ever Unified Sports Championship earlier this year!

• Ithaca High School NYSPHSAA Scholar-Athlete Teams - 75% of athletes on the team have a 90% GPA or higher - Girls Soccer - Boys Soccer - Cheer - Swim and Dive - Girls Cross Country - Boys Cross Country - Volleyball

Spring Sports Records • • • • • • • • • • •

Varsity Boys Lacrosse (5–2) Junior Varsity Boys Lacrosse (2–4) Varsity Girls Lacrosse (6–1) Junior Varsity Girls Lacrosse (1–1) Varsity Softball (1–4) Varsity Baseball (0–3) Junior Varsity Baseball (1–3) Varsity Boys Tennis (3–1) Varsity Girls Tennis (4–0) Unified Basketball (2–0) The Golf and Track and Field teams are having outstanding seasons despite access to facilities

Unified Bowling wins their first ever Championship

Student Highlights Jenna Plue ‘22, Varsity Softball Last 4 games, 7-14 at the plate: batting 2 singles, 2 doubles, 1 triple, 2 home runs, and 10 RBIs. As a pitcher, 41 strikeouts in 3 games. Two consecutive games with 15 or more strikeouts. Kailee Payne ‘21 is a six time Varsity diving team member, five time Section IV diving champion, 4x NYS qualifier, 6x STAC all-conference award winner, 6x NYS Scholar-Athlete, 4x AAU National Qualifier, Section IV record holder for six dives, home school pool record holder for 6 and 11 dives. She broke 7 pool records in Section IV, ESPN Athlete of the Week in 2019 and 2020, 5x NYSSMA participant, and member of our National Honor Society, Habitat for Humanity Club, Key Club, and Acapella Choir. Kailee was also chosen as an ICSD Little Red Reader (a literacy and mentorship program to connect our athletes to our elementary students).

Spring NLI Signing Celebration - These student-athletes are taking their talents to college! NAME

SPORT

COLLEGE

William Ruth

Baseball

Bard College

Paige Tomberelli

Diving

Marist College

Brett Wilcox

Lacrosse

Westminster College

Stephen Dietl

Baseball

Wells College

Ember Dengler

Track & Field

University of Albany

Elinor Kops Kuveke

Track & Field

Vassar College

Anona Pattington

Track & Field

Vassar College

Madeline Hall

Lacrosse

Ithaca College

Cade Eells

XC/Track & Field

Nazareth College

Willa Royce-Roll

Swimming

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Sawyer Tierney

Track & Field

Cornell University

SPORTS

The Not So “Super” League By ELLA AVGAR

n Sunday, April 18, twelve of the world’s largest soccer teams released a joint statement, looking to change soccer forever. The proposed idea: the Super League. The Super League would consist of the twenty best or most storied teams in Europe, competing against each other, governed by the clubs themselves. The announcement left the world soccer community in shock and dismay. For those not following the world of soccer carefully, the consequences of this proposal may seem insignificant. “What’s the harm in that?” they might ask. Before diving into the intricacies of the proposed Super League and answering this question, however, it is important to review the current structure of the European soccer system and the beautiful game. The European soccer system is based on individual domestic “pyramids,” where teams compete for promotion to, and ultimately the championship of, the national first division. The most competitive and successful leagues in Europe are the English league (widely known as the Premier League), the German Bundesliga, the Italian Serie A, and the Spanish La Liga (home to historical powerhouses Barcelona and Real Madrid). Alongside these national leagues is the Champions League, a tournament run by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the governing body of soccer in Europe. The Champions League consists of the best teams from each national league competing to win the overall title as the champions of Europe. It is important to note that in order to qualify for the Champions League, a team must place in the top few spots in their national league, the exact number of which depending on the strength of the league. For example, out of the twenty soccer teams in the Premier League, commonly considered Europe’s best league, the teams finishing first through fourth are given the opportunity to play in the Champions League the next year. In this way, the best clubs around Europe earn their spot in the Champions League to compete at the highest level of European soccer. Starting in the early 2000s, extremely wealthy individuals, previously not part of the soccer world, began purchasing soccer clubs in England and elsewhere, infusing new money into the world of European soccer. This extended wealth expanded soccer’s reach, transforming the vastly popular sport into something that could be more easily monetized. Cut back to April 18. Twelve teams, including the “big six” of the Premier Leagues and elite teams from Spain and Italy, announced they were forming a new multi-national league, the Super League. It became clear that many owners of these big-market teams had been strategizing. They had been secretly developing a plan that would dramatically increase their already sizable wealth and, in doing so, ensure their status as elite teams while marginalizing smaller teams. Within the current soccer system, it is already difficult for smaller teams to compete with the big-market teams who have greater capital to spend on players and coaches. However, these smaller teams benefit hugely from competing in the same system, as the elite teams draw big TV deals and other sources of capital to the league. The Super League was going to take those wealthy, renowned, successful teams and place them in their own league, where they would

Courtesy of The Guardian

Chelsea fans protest against the club’s involvement in the European Super League

have a permanent and guaranteed place in the new, elite soccer competition. When the Super League was announced, the reaction from fans worldwide was outrage. The owners of clubs were trying to take from soccer what makes it so unique, the need to fight for your place in top competitions, regardless of your team wealth. As stated by the coach of Manchester City, Pep Guardiola, in response to the proposal, “It is not a sport if it doesn’t matter if you lose.” Where is the integrity in a league where you don’t have to earn your place? What would this do to the smaller clubs left behind who would no longer benefit from the revenue and attention that the bigger teams bring to their national league? Fans saw straight through the façade of “making soccer better for everyone” to the money that would go directly to the owners. The Super League would be owned by the clubs themselves, meaning more money would be funneled into the owners—billions and billions of dollars all going to this select handful of clubs. If it is currently difficult for smaller teams to rise to the top, the Super League would make it impossible. In the wake of the news on Sunday, April 18, fans held protests. On the following Tuesday, Chelsea fans surrounded Chelsea’s stadium before a match, demanding for the club to put an end to the Super League madness. On May 2, fans of Manchester United invaded their stadium, Old Trafford, ahead of their match with historic rivals Liverpool to protest against the owners’ handling of the club. Here were fans, with a deep loyalty to the soccer teams they support, publicly protesting the decisions their beloved teams were making. Spurred on by the fans, players began speaking out, sharing that they had no idea of this plan and were not in favor of it. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Prince William also expressed their disappointment in the plan. UEFA and FIFA, the governing body of global soccer, were extremely angry as they tried to fathom what the proposal would mean for the Champions League, which had served as the pinnacle of the European soccer world for so many years. There were even threats by FIFA that players who participated in the Super League might not be allowed to play for their country in the World Cup. The teams who had pledged their involvement quickly realized their miscalculation. In a flurry of announcements, six Premier League teams dropped out of the Super League, a devastating blow that the Super League would never recover from. Subsequently, the whole project was

SPORTS

“suspended,” leaving the future of the Super League uncertain. What we do know is that a project that had been secretly planned for years, pledging to reshape the world of soccer as we know it, spectacularly crumbled in forty-eight hours. This whole endeavor leaves the soccer community with many unanswered questions. How will the colluding teams be held accountable for

their actions? What’s to prevent club owners from pulling such a stunt again? What do we need to reexamine about the current soccer system? There is one truth that has been clearly revealed from the entire ordeal—despite the billionaires who believe that money can get them anywhere, the fans are the heart of soccer, and they have the power to shape their beloved sport.

Running: Hills and Waterfalls By JINHO PARK Hills My soccer team used to have “hill-days”, which always seemed to coincide with auspicious weather. On these days, our team—all fifteen of us—gathered at the bottom of a daunting hill. Our dirty running shoes were on our feet, and our clean water bottles were tossed to the side. At the sound of a whistle, we ran up the hill, small clouds of dust following our tracks. At the top, we turned around and let gravity take us down. The flat soles of our shoes nearly slipped on the dry dirt. On hill-days, we ran up and down a lot. We were accompanied by the soft chirps of the songbirds, who were blissfully unaware of our heels striking the ground. Our coach bellowed at us, admonishing us for our apparent indolence. The sun was also there—initially to warm our souls but eventually to suffocate our existence. On the first hill-day, we learned we were quitters. We learned that our legs could shriek and our chests could heave and our souls could panic—that we could only ignore pain for so long. After a few more hill-days, we learned which of us quit before the others, and we envied the ones who quit first. The rest of us ran while they drank—or actually, guzzled—cool water from their bottles. We all took pride in outlasting our teammates. As a teammate quit after the shrill note of a whistle, we secretly swelled with pride. In those moments, we were separated into the quitters and the prideful—the quitters gorged themselves on mouthfuls of water while the prideful indulged themselves on the knowledge that they had not quit. Eventually though, we all quit. As we collapsed from exhaustion, we all realized how much we despised hill-days. We were divided by the number of laps we each ran, but we were united in our unbounded hate for hill-days. Waterfalls Have you ever run on a waterfall? Not right on the rapids, of course, but on a bridge overlooking the waterfall. The thunderous sounds of water envelop you. You feel so tiny watching the water cascade into huge foam bubbles. The bubbles remind you of the ones your shampoo makes when it meets the water in your shower. The air around you is rising because the mist from the waterfall keeps on floating. You run across the bridge over and over because you’re trying to understand this immense force of nature below you. Even after the tenth time you run back and forth with your eyes affixed on the water, you feel like you don’t understand a thing—a sensory overload. You keep on running because a force compels you. For some reason, it would be wrong to not be in motion when even the air itself is rising upwards. You keep on running.

You go faster. Crescendo. By the thirtieth time, your calves are starting to buckle from underneath you because you’re sprinting now. It’s nonsensical, but for some reason, it feels like you and the crashing water are existing at some common tempo. The sounds of crashing water have become a thrum, like the chord of a guitar. The sounds of your heels striking the bridge have become a rain-like patter synchronized to the thrum of the water. Even though you don’t want to stop, you don’t have a choice. Like a wind-up monkey slowing down gradually, your legs move slower and slower until you lose the common tempo. Your sneakers now muffle the sounds of your heels striking the bridge. The mist no longer embraces you totally. The thrum simply becomes crashing water. Decrescendo. Soon, you’re almost motionless. You reach the end of the bridge, the side closer to your home. You’re about to collapse because you’ve been running back and forth over a bridge for what felt like hours. You could stop. It sounds really tempting. You don’t stop. Instead, you sprint home. You think you’re sprinting, but in reality, the best you can manage is a misshapen jog, where your body is struggling to keep up with your mind’s ambition. Every time you yearn to stop, you stifle the temptation and replace it by focusing on the rhythmic way your feet meet the concrete. Right, left, right, left, right, left. Eventually, you find yourself collapsed on the moss of your backyard. Your cotton shirt, once dry and scented only by detergent, is now pleasantly damp and smells strangely earthy. For some reason, you expected the shirt to smell like transcendent mist. As you sit up, cushioned by the springy moss, you feel wonderful. You’re tempted to dance or sing. It’s as if the thrum of the waterfall, now muted by the normal scenery around you, is carrying you to one last smile.

LITERARY

A Visit to Madame Boucher By Louisa Miller-Out

bell chimed neatly, signaling the beginning of Valerie’s appointment. She leapt to her feet, eager as a Pavlovian dog. The tweed of her trousers brushed her ankles as she trotted to the door and twisted the multifaceted crystal knob. Valerie admired the lavish office as her footfalls landed soundlessly on thick alabaster carpet. Heavy yellow drapes dominated the powder-blue walls, and candles in elaborate wall sconces provided a buttery glow. It felt like walking through a Rococo daydream as she approached a mahogany chair with chartreuse silk upholstery. She seated herself in front of a glossy table topped with an ornate glass bowl of multicolored pastilles. Madame Boucher emerged from between the lush curtains, immaculate in her rose-colored suit. Her white-blond hair was pulled back into an elegant chignon, adorned with a pillbox hat. She had paired the ensemble with pumps made from some kind of reddish suede. Valerie felt a tad underdressed, but she reassured herself that Madame Boucher would know her intimately by the end of the process. There was no need to maintain a perfect façade. “Bonjour, Valerie,” said Madame Boucher in her lilting French accent. “You are so pretty it will be difficult to capture you in wax.” “Thank you, Madame, it’s an honor to be here,” replied Valerie, shocked at being complimented by such a polished woman. “We only cater to the upper echelon of celebrities, as you know. Our clientele are always satisfied with their results. Many say we are the best at what we do, and I credit our proprietary method,” said Madame with an air of self-assurance. “The pictures I saw online of your wax figures were incredibly accurate, so I’m not worried about getting butchered,” Valerie agreed. Madame Boucher laughed lightly, flashing wolf-white teeth. “Of course not. Please, help yourself to a sweet from the dish,” she offered, noticing Valerie’s glances at the cut-glass bowl of sugary confections. “There are several delectable fruit flavors, and they provide a mild anesthetic effect to ease the procedure.” Valerie selected a pink candy. “Pomegranate,” said Madame Boucher. “If I may ask, what kind of procedure requires numbing me?” wondered Valerie. “Do not worry. You can trust the process completely and when we are done, you will have a perfect wax replica,” Madame reassured. Valerie began to dissolve the pomegranate candy under her tongue. It was a strange texture—like a gummy, but harder. “The process is effortless on your part, really—I know you are busy with touring, interviews, and appearances, not to mention producing new music. The world adores you; that’s why your likeness deserves a spot in our Paris museum. We have your photographs. All we need from you now are a few samples—for reference, shall we say,” continued Madame, beckoning subtly towards the concealed doorway she had emerged from earlier. An equally composed woman in a white lab coat came out, holding a leathery medical bag that matched Madame’s heels.

Valerie swallowed the last of the candy. “Samples of what, exactly?” “Just a bit of skin and hair.” “Skin?” gulped Valerie, alarmed. “Yes—it is crucial to create a lifelike skin texture with wax, otherwise the figures look… disconcerting. Same with hair.” “Will it hurt?” “No, the candy should take effect shortly and it is nothing more than a pinch.” As Madame Boucher spoke, the woman in the lab coat had taken out a small tool resembling a hole punch. Valerie felt an icy surge of fear, but she allowed the technician to remove a minuscule circle of skin from her forearm. It was scarcely visible, would heal in a few weeks, and seemed like a small price to pay for her place in the most famed wax museum in Europe. Once the samples had been sealed in sterile containers and the technician in her spotless lab coat had retreated behind the saffron drapes, Madame handed Valerie an embossed invitation to the unveiling of her wax figure and politely waved her out. Two months later The unveiling at the Paris museum was a lovely affair, with champagne and exquisite hors d’oeuvres. The long-awaited wax figure was perfectly proportionate and accurate, down to the plum satin dress that Valerie herself was wearing. But towards the end of the night, a curious child of one of the staffers slipped past the velvet rope that cordoned off the statue from the small crowd of music producers and socialites. Valerie’s fans watched in horror from the windows of the gallery as the errant child toyed with the figure’s hand. Before anyone could intervene, a finger detached from the wax girl with a sickening snap. The kid glanced at the finger in their hand for a second, then started screaming and dropped it as if it were a hot coal. Instead of running away to avoid responsibility, they curled into the fetal position on the floor and started shaking. The guests crowded around, trying to ascertain the cause of the commotion. Valerie made her way to the front and peered at the severed finger. Something was wrong, something beyond just the damage to the statue. A stain was spreading around it, soiling the smooth concrete floor. Bloody marrow leaked from the core of a splintered bone that looked disturbingly human, too human. Why would the waxworks waste time and material molding an anatomically correct skeleton to go inside a statue? They wouldn’t. Disconcerting thoughts spun dizzily around Valerie’s brain. Her arm stung where the silent technician had sampled her flesh. A sickening rush of vertigo brought her to her knees as she remembered those strange reddish shoes and that handbag, made of a material she couldn’t quite identify. Maybe even the innocent-looking candles that added a warm glow to Madame Boucher’s luxurious office, and oh god, oh no. Her stomach dropped as she remembered gnawing at that strange, gelatinous gummy. Valerie blacked out. When she woke up, she didn’t remember anything.

LITERARY

A Tryptych of False Dreams By Anna Westwig I. I had a false dream of the Odyssey. It was in a sleep dark as carrion birds; I was in a cradle of flames, suckled by imminent death. The wheel of stars had burned out, drowned out by a city’s pyre, to dim, dark-eyed myths, and I was on the peak of a wave, close enough to see cataracts in the eyes of the sky. My sailors, dying, yelled to me, across spume and desolation; they all called me Odysseus, but the name was a dull whine, leaking across my brain. I knew so little. Why was I on the sea? I knew There was a wife, ahead/behind/beside me, and I was walking towards her, backwards. And there was a son and his head was knitted with flames, and there was a son, and he was in a great house full of men and bows they could not string, and there was a son and he was doomed and his name was Achilles, no Turnus, no Teland then there was the crash of lightning—of time—and the dreamscape screamed like steel on steel, and there was a false dream, and I was on my knees, and I was begging: Enough of the serpent and the flame; enough of the golden bough; enough of ruined cities; and Rumor; and Fate; and prophecy; enough of huntresses; enough of mothers; enough of dewy clouds; enough It was a fugue of misery I could never allow in my waking. Even so, I was ashamed. I woke, alone there, with the severed tongues of cities who could tell my story writhing still. I did not understand why we were sailing; I had nothing to return to, not even my name. I, notOdysseus, see two gates: one of horn, one of ivory.

I knew I was not him, even if I felt our blood rhyme. I felt his blood in my mouth, pinking roping, rabid saliva. Then he was beneath me, and his name was Achilles, no Turnus, but he was not my son. And he called me Achilles. I look to the parapet, to the serpent and the flame: there was no wife, no son. No mercy from the Iliad, lurching like a zombie through my life. But I see a sister, a river, playing with the light. I paused, hypnotized. But, in the false dream, my arm raised itself. He begged for mercy, from Achilles; but I was no Achilles. No glory, only its shambling pantomime. There were two gates. I, notHector notAchilles, pass through the ivory. III. I woke. He was there, even though I had known his burial in my dream. Like suncattle, mooing on the spit; he spoke now to me, dead (dead in the future, and so dead now). “Hector,” I asked, “are you made of horn or ivory?” And his blood-dappled cheek was bright with sorrow “Aeneas,” my name was butchered like a stag in all the soft bramble mouths of places that were not my home, but never in his, never by him, “I am made of flesh, alone.”

Submission by Hannah Shvets

II. I had a false dream of the Iliad and the world was cloaked in steam of doused coals; and the rage was an undead, rotting heart. Its arterial veins were sludging, clotted with the blankness of grief. I had not even the hope to burn. And Achates was falling from the city walls, but his face was all wrong, in Greek arms. And my wife was at the parapet and her name was a notHelen, and her hair was white as ash, and I did not know who I was, except that I was meant for the earth, and the earth would not take me—they would not let the earth take me. My mother was cooing at my ear, lovely as a slap. They all called me Hector, but

Flowers on the side of a road

LITERARY

For a Friend I’ll Miss Dearly By Jinho Park

Do you remember how we first met? We were near the walnut tree that grew on the meadows of our elementary school field. The fruits of the walnut tree were rotting. They had these gaping holes on their rotting flesh, maggots inside devouring the bitter treat. Do you remember how I hurled that rotting walnut-fruit at you? You might not. It was so long ago. I think my throw barely missed. The long lecture I got from Ms. DeLucia about kindness certainly didn’t miss. That hurt a bit. At the time, I wasn’t mature enough to be sorry I threw the fruit, but I was selfish enough that I felt sorry I was getting yelled at. I’ve been trying to remember why I threw that walnut-fruit at you or why I really didn’t like you in elementary school. I don’t know why. Even then, you were very kind. Do you remember how you called me arrogant on the bus? We were on the bus back from the high school. There were five of us—four kids and that kind driver. I thought solving geometry problems really fast made me really cool. You knew my arrogance made me a jerk. Do you remember how you sat with me for all of algebra? I remember the first day. I got lost in some corridor of upstairs G. I walked in just as the bell was about to ring. As I swiveled my head, desperately searching for a partner, you put your backpack down next to mine. I didn’t expect it. You had other close friends in the class, and I was just the irritating, arrogant middle-schooler. Do you remember all the classes, concerts, projects, labs, we’ve been through together? I sat next to you for years—you and your meticulous notes on extra-bright-white paper and your freshly opened bottle of water flavored with a hint of something. You showed me how to be a good student. I still take my notes on white (sadly, not extra-bright-white) paper just like I saw you take them. When I do projects now, I try to be the first one with my work done—just like you. Do you remember how you made a whole freaking website for that one project? I couldn’t believe it. I tried to compliment the beautiful graphics you’d made, but you just said your code was messy. It wouldn’t hurt to take a little credit sometimes. The work you do is incredible. Now that you’re leaving next year, I’ve been trying to remember everything. I’ve been trying to unearth the special moments from this entropic heap of memory that’s becoming more disordered with each passing day. I wish I could remember more than I do now. I feel like all I have now is a collection of fleeting moments that just barely glimpse the surface of the person you really are. I hope I remember the important things. I’ll remember how kind you were, how you forgave the kid who assaulted you with rotting walnut-fruits and sat with him in algebra. I’ll remember how diligent you were, how you always finished your homework before I did. I’ll remember how funny you were, how I could easily spend hours talking to you. But all these superlatives aside, I hope—actually, I know—I’ll always remember how lucky I was to know you.

LITERARY

The Course of Empire By Louisa Miller-Out

You called it savage I called it paradise Lilac clouds reached For the tips of the pines We sheltered in their branches And foraged for wild delicacies Prometheus came and went and then Red-gold fires blazed in stone theaters And the land still gave forth what it could But we tried to coax out more and more and more We docked our canoes on the shores of the channel And soon they were starting to look more like triremes We paraded over lofty bridges and decked ourselves in silk and gold We built aqueducts and cordoned off little circles of wildness in terracotta cradles So they wouldn’t be ousted by the tide of marble sweeping over the bustling hills We raised our temples to the sky, we pushed away the clouds And one day they came down and beheaded all our statues We killed each other for sport, but we condemned the storm When she ripped people’s lives from their chests And we took out our blinding rage on each other Because we couldn’t lash out at the odious sky When it was all over not a human soul was left Pillars left to crumble in a mossy embrace Lands left to heal from the rape of their fruit Clouds hang low over tranquil waters The world is back at equilibrium You call it desolation I call it freedom

A five painting series by Thomas Cole, “The Course of Empire”

LITERARY

Friendship Works and Ends in Funny Ways By Hannah Shvets

Dear you, It’s been 5 years since the last day I saw you, The last time we fell asleep watching a movie, Our fingers intertwined. I remember hearing the word soulmate and thinking of you. When I read Plato’s concept of love, How all of us are born to wander this lonely earth alone Until we find our other half. I thought for sure, you must be mine. At the ripe age of five We were always told We’re here to find Prince Charming. I never really understood Why you took the shape of him. While waiting for a man, The world gave me a friend. I’d walk through any waters with Her hand fit perfectly in mine. I remember too the last time I saw your face. You told me what we had would last forever. I thought for sure our love could outlast the stars, And only when the galaxy had gone completely dark, Would your fingertips wash off me. We didn’t last like footprints in the sand; The waves have long washed you off my shore. The birthday messages that always go unread, Attempts to stitch two people back together failed. I’ve never been good at letting people leave. When it’s time for the ones I love to go, I hold on to their limbs until we’re pulled apart

By time or distance or just a breeze that finally snaps a frayed Red string. I can throw away the best friend necklace, Delete the photos from my phone Remove the letters on my bookshelf You used to write to me about the dolphins, They’re still rocking on my desk I can’t throw away the memories, Or delete the remnants of you in every Studio Ghibli movie; I can’t remove the years we spent together, Eating cheesecake and that mochi ice cream. Please leave my soul to live in peace Please never leave my rocky shores I want you gone, I want you by my side Romantic love will never reach the bounds of ours Years of giggling in my room The way you always shared your lunch with me Bonding over books we read Entering the rabbit holes, your hand in mine The words Best Friend don’t seem appropriate To truly describe the bond we had But years have passed, I can no longer keep your footprints safe from waves And though your fingertips have long been washed away, Your imprint never truly leaves Even as new feet have replaced yours I can still see where your footsteps helped shape my shores. Sincerely, Just Me

LITERARY

The Dollhouse By Raia Gutman i’ve set my room up like a dollhouse: rotary telephone atop the wood desk in the corner, teacup atop the wood shelf against the wall opposite the window. knobs on the drawers, one missing, sat atop the dresser, retired from the scene. the shade is bestowed on the window each night and lifted each morning; this used to be my mother’s job, and now, with my hands, the doll’s, near the dirty window sill, i fear she has forgotten to love me. i fear she is dead or dying, and i fear the dollhouse will go out of use or worse, be disassembled and turned into an ornament. (this is why i have left the posters i plan to hang on the desk) the doll sits upright in his bed, he sits hunched over with noise in his ears, wishing he were frivolous and unaware as he was when he wrote in the pink, orange, purple diary. he wishes he were frivolous like he never was, wishes he had no use for guilt like he always has.

Submission by Hannah Shvets

who will remind him that those brown pants hung up are his favorites, and that dollhouses have no electricity, and that dolls are made of porcelain with cheeks pinker than his?

Confused Cat

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Surrealio, continued

Trophic Pyramid By Louisa Miller-Out

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The Zodiacs’ Defining Moments of Summer 2021 By Raia Gutman

The Coolness Spectrum Cool :) The New Tattler Board

Pisces (Feb 19 - Mar 20): Finding a new hiking spot with dazzling proximity to your favorite waterfall and passing cute dogs on the trail. Aries (Mar 21 - Apr 19): Going on a spontaneous road trip with the express purpose of visiting every thrift store in the region and buying the best garment at each one. Taurus (Apr 20 - May 20): Having an insect-free picnic with your best friends at Sunset Park, remembering to bring bug spray this time thanks to your memory of getting swarmed by mosquitoes last year. Gemini (May 21 - June 20): Showing up to a potluck with a bottle of San Pellegrino, knowing the guests will be all over you. Cancer (June 21 - Jul 22): Spending a weekend doing nothing but listening to your favorite artist’s newest album while nostalgically going through holiday cards from elementary school. Leo (Jul 23 - Aug 22): Hosting a flamboyant murder mystery birthday party that spans an entire neighborhood with an escape room component.

Virgo (Aug 23 - Sep 22): Baking the absolute best strawberry muffins from a recipe you memorized. Libra (Sep 23 - Oct 22): Running into your childhood best friend at the lake, where you instantly regain your years-old connection and spend the rest of the summer inseparable. Scorpio (Oct 23 - Nov 21): Visiting the antique store in the East Hill Plaza, where everything is overpriced, and finding a print of a favorite painting you’ve always wanted to hang in your bedroom for only 50 cents. Sagittarius (Nov 22 - Dec 21): Not one moment but many adventures: going camping, having a grand time at the State Fair, building a perfect reading list, and hosting outdoor screenings of iconic movies. Capricorn (Dec 22 - Jan 19): Submitting your writing/research/ artwork to a contest and being gloriously triumphant, getting your name in bold on a reputable magazine’s cover. Aquarius (Jan 20 - Feb 18): Having your original ice cream flavor chosen in a contest by your favorite ice cream shop and getting to order it the next time you buy ice cream.

Outdoor Music Festivals Starting Up Again Goodbye Pandemic School High Local Vaccination Rates June 11 Graduation Cayuga Lake Still Cold :( The Filibuster Senior Mixer Sleeping Through Exams Waiting for AP scores

Uncool :( An “Advisory” Period