May 2016 • Estd. 1892 • Vol. 123 #14 • Published Monthly • www.ihstattler.com Ithaca High School, 1401 North Cayuga Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 • FREE
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
ENDORSING TRUMP TETRISBOOKS SUMMER FASHION TOM REED’S EMBARRASSING MISTAKE
INSPIRING STUDENTS AT IHS
A PRETENTIOUS PONDERING
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The Future of Education
Trends in Educational Policy in Ithaca and Beyond By JOHN YOON
Departments are tackling de facto tracking and equity gaps.
De facto tracking and its harmful effects are a reality—and they exist across all grade levels. Efforts to eliminate the inequalities of tracking are therefore being led at the district level. “Sometimes, what kids do all the way through high school is really set by what they take in sixth grade,” ICSD Chief Academic Officer Liddy Coyle said. During the transition between fifth grade and sixth grade, teachers from both grade levels determine what level of classes the student takes in middle school, and by extension, throughout high school. “Who is getting put in what classes and for what reason? ... Do fifth-grade teachers really understand the sixth [and] seventh-grade tracks that really happen? We’re working on answering those questions and on making it clear how all stu-
gap, there will not be any changes in the math curriculum and course catalog for the next school year, Coyle said. IMAGE PROVIDED
What will the future hold for some of the most controversial new developments in education policy? A number of issues are poised to shape K–12 education over the coming years—ranging from the Common Core to achievement gaps.
dents can access different courses.” Coyle said that the district is looking into what kinds of choices students can make after sixth grade and in the middle of each grade level. “Right now it’s really hard to shift once you’re not in that accelerated row of classes,” she said. Stark differences in academic preparedness and achievement exist among racial and economic groups under the current system. “There’s disproportionality in achievement for black, Hispanic, and special-ed students across the board in both ELA and math in all grade levels,” district evaluation officer Lynn VanDeWeert said. “That is absolutely something that we’re looking at.” Administrators and teachers agree that the gap exists between accelerated and non-accelerated students and that race and class imbalances are reinforced in the acceleration process. These gaps received closer attention in math classes because of the dynamic created by the existence of separate accelerated levels that are not present in other subjects. “Fewer students who are considered economically disadvantaged and African-American students are enrolled in Honors Algebra,” VanDeWeert said of the enrollment gap between accelerated and non-accelerated students in Algebra 1. Although the administration recognizes problems in the achievement
Chief Academic Officer Coyle said she is examining the de facto tracking perpetuated by the rigidity of the fifthto-sixth-grade transition. However, significant changes in policy and curriculum would likely not occur until 2017.
Analyses of state assessment data on racial and economic subgroups clearly show the enrollment gap. According to the New York State Education Department database, 13 percent of the 205 non-accelerated IHS students who took the Algebra 1 Common Core in 2015 as ninth graders were African Americans, while among the 124 accelerated CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
OPINION
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
Editorial
The Problem with American Sex Educatuion IHS is fortunate to have multiple speakers, such as Planned Parenthood representatives, come into health classrooms and present about a wide range of topics. One topic in particular has been a source of strong debate around the country: sex education. Due to strongly varying opinions, finding a curriculum that educates but does not offend has been a struggle that differs from state to state, and even district to district. With abstinence-based sex education dominating thousands of classrooms around the country, messages on safety, consent and contraception are being pushed back and ignored. When Planned Parenthood sent someone to talk to IHS about contraception, we were one of a few groups getting a “comprehensive” health education as described by the president of Advocates for Youth: information on both abstinence and contraception. According to a report by the Guttmacher Institute, a not-for-profit organization that promotes reproductive health through birth control, abstinence is taught about 30 percent more than contraception. A report by the same group, completed March 1, 2016, has yielded similar, alarming results. New York State is one of a few states that don’t require sex education, and one of 13 that don’t require medical accuracy. In addition to that, some of the states that do have sex education have strict and limiting guidelines on what can and cannot be taught or discussed. Nineteen states mandate instruction on the importance of sexual activity only within marriage, and only 13 states require the discussion of sexual orientation. While this lack of important laws is definitely unacceptable, that doesn’t mean, for example, that many New York State schools don’t teach sex ed, or don’t teach it accurately. However, it does mean there is no legal incentive to educate properly, and without bias or religious overtones. The sex education guidelines in the United States are so inconsistent and opinionated that the disparity in well-rounded sex education highschool students receive is appalling. Why does non-presumptive sex education matter? When curriculum is designed based solely on the narrow-sighted idea that every individual in the classroom will wait until marriage, they are making two as-
sumptions: that students will abstain until marriage, and that they will get married at all. When states decide that abstinence is the only option that can be promoted, they are forgetting one, simple fact: according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average age for the loss of virginity is 17 (the age of an average high school junior). If, by that point, teenagers haven’t learned what responsible sexual activity is, the results can be disastrous, including STDs, unwanted pregnancy, and rape. As John Oliver pointed out on his Last Week Tonight segment on sex education, when schools spend that much time teaching children and teens how to say “no,” they’re forgetting about what it means to say “yes.” Because adults are ignoring sex as an option, consent and other safety measures are not taught in the depth they should be. In a poll conducted by the Washington Post in 2015, 18 percent of college students think it’s consent as long as no one has said “no.” Even more disheartening, a massive 47 percent believed that someone is giving consent to further sexual activity if they remove their clothes. Education is an effective way to dispel biases and misconceptions based on lack of knowledge or understanding. Consent, according to Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, is a freely given agreement by a competent individual. A statement this ambiguous needs formal clarification in the classroom, before it becomes a real-life, consequential issue. Sexual health is becoming less and less of a taboo topic thanks to an unprecedented access to media, but what we say about sex is still incomplete. Every teenager in the country deserves to know that he or she has options and personal choices to make. Schools should not help make those decisions for teens, but tell them what those options are and how to go about them safely. Too often health classes focus on what’s unhealthy and what warning signs are, but there are benefits in understanding what healthy relationships look like. Abstinence is not the choice most teenagers are making, but safety and consent could be, and those are the kinds of topics that should be mandatory.
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Deborah Lynn advisor@ihstattler.com The Tattler is the student-run newspaper of Ithaca High School. It was founded in 1892 and is published monthly. As an open forum, The Tattler invites opinion piece submissions and letters to the editor from all community members. Drop off submissions in E25, email them to editor@ihstattler.com, or mail letters to: The Tattler 1401 North Cayuga Street Ithaca, NY 14850 The Tattler reserves the right to edit all submissions. Submissions do not necessarily reflect the views of editorial staff.
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
NEWS
Chain Works District to Succeed Emerson Power Plant By EMMA KARNES
An ambitious plan to wake a “sleeping giant” is well underway on the 95-acre site once occupied by the Emerson Power Transmission Plant. The plant, which once employed about 10 percent of Ithaca’s population, has suffered environmental ills since the 1980s and ceased operations by 2009. Since then, the area has been left largely untouched and is unprofitable for the city and its residents. Horseheads-based Unchained Properties, LLC, is now joining forces with the city of Ithaca to repurpose the land into a “live, work, and play” district that could provide housing and a business hub to South Hill at the cost of $100 million. The plan casts off the site’s industrial history and replaces it with a vision of a sustainable community village dubbed the “Chain Works District.” Upon completion, in around 7 to 10 years, this neighborhood would be home to restaurants, bookstores, a small grocery store, all open to the public, and 915 new housing units—far greater than the 749 new housing units Ithaca has seen in the past decade. But the road to the reality of Chain Works District is not without obstacles, the largest of which is the extensive contamination from almost a century of heavy industrial use. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) classifies the site as a Class 2 Superfund, meaning it poses a “significant threat to the public health or environment” and requires some kind of action. Tests have thus far detected barium, cyanide, free-petroleum products, metals in soil, and chlorinated volatile organic compounds, which include TCE, a contaminant that South Hill has already experienced issues with. Whatever remediation strategies are necessary to make the site safe, Emerson has assumed full responsibility. Aside from the remediation of hazardous waste, the Chain Works District projCONTINUED ON PAGE 7
Music Dept. Eyes Drastic Changes By JOHN YOON
The Band just can’t fit in the room, with its 114 players nearing the room’s maximum capacity under the fire code. There are literally 15 people who don’t get to sit down. So plans are being made to create another band class, called the Wind Ensemble, to reduce the problematic class size to two much more manageable and instructionally appropriate classes. Meanwhile, the String Orchestra and Concert Choir are jumping on the bandwagon, each adding new ensembles—Chamber Orchestra and Chorale. Although the Orchestra and Choir do not have as big of a size problem as the Band, the entire department faculty believes the additional classes are necessary for better differentiate instruction. Consistency across the department would also make the transition less of a logistical nightmare, except, even as it stands now, the plan’s logistics still aren’t all that simple. Trying to stay budget-neutral—meaning that the spending would not increase at the department level—while adding three classes is a challenging feat, according to Interim Director of Fine and Performing Arts Stephen Beamish. While the current IHS teachers would conduct all ensembles, some sectionals may be led by others from elsewhere within the district. As summarized by Beamish, “It may very well be the case that current elementary- and middle-school teachers will teach the lower-level high-school ensembles.” The district has been eyeing this comprehensive change for years prior to Beamish assuming his position. While the split ensembles were offered in the 2014–15 program of studies, the plan fell through when the administration failed to fit these additional courses in the eight-period school day. Beamish said he will have no idea whether the plan will work until late May or June. Band director Nicki Zawel, who has seen the band grow from 63 to over a hundred during her eight years here, has especially been eager for this change. “We don’t fit on the stage in a way that’s best for posture,” Zawel said. “We are cramped to the point that we sometimes do not have the ability to play the way that we should be playing.” Not only is space a major concern, differentiated instruction is difficult to achieve in
such a mega-sized ensemble. “If you look at other successful programs across the nation, their concert bands peak out at 80,” she said, adding that conductors can only have oneon-one contact with so many students. With fewer students in each class—about 46 in the Wind Ensemble and the rest in the Concert Band—Zawel would be better able to help with fingering and embouchure specific to each student’s instrument and provide each student with repertoire that is appropriately challenging for them. In Band, Orchestra, and Choir, the teacher of each ensemble gave current students recommendations on their placements in either division based on seniority, ability and level of playing, and balance of each group’s instrumentation. The added ensembles—Wind Ensemble, String Orchestra, and Chorale—would demand higher technical proficiency and musical commitment. “We foresee those upper-level ensembles as being level five or level six from the NYSSMA manual,” Beamish said, adding that the Chamber Orchestra would be performing professional-level literature. All incoming freshmen would be placed in the base ensemble, but they could audition to be placed in the upper level. For the Choir, adding Chorale will mean that choir students who have already reached a certain proficiency level can now be a group themselves, choir director Kristin Zaryski said. “So, the kids who are new to choir also have a place where they can learn.” Beamish said the students’ placement in either of the two levels would be determined by an evaluation based on a standard rubric. Ideally, all students ready to perform the literature would be placed in the upper-level ensemble regardless of the size of each ensemble. Meanwhile, Zawel said the Wind Ensemble will have a fixed instrumentation with 40 to 50 players, as it will be performing repertoire specifically written for its type of ensemble. Orchestra director Samantha Hecht said the Chamber Orchestra would be slightly smaller than the String Orchestra, with about 10 to 15 fewer students. For Choir, Zaryski said the upper-level class will consist of about 60 students, while the Concert Choir will be slightly smaller at around 40. CONTINUED ON PAGE 7
NEWS
PAGE 4 “EDUCATIONAL POLICY” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3
IHS science department chair Gray has helped drastically shrink the number of tracks offered to freshmen through heterogeneous Regents-honors classes.
IHS English department chair Amodeo has helped create heterogeneous English classes to lessen the perceived divisions between Regents, honors, and AP students.
The English department is offering a new Honors English 11–AP Language and
Amodeo praised the “tremendous successes” of Living Environment Biology and Regents-Honors Global History—both heterogeneous classes—in increasing performance among both the lower- and upper-level students. However, she said that the perception of an achievement gap between tracks and a feeling of separation within the student body still exists.
ICSD is trying to make honorscredit requirements consistent between accelerated and nonaccelerated classes. There currently is not an honors-credit policy in place in the district. That means that each class and each department in ICSD has different standards on which to determine whether students are eligible to receive honors credit or take an honors class as opposed to a Regents class. Recently, discrepancies in course expectations between Algebra 1 classes in the middle schools and the high school have stirred impassioned debate. For accelerated eighth graders enrolled in Honors Algebra 1, students qualify for honors credit if they maintain an average of 65 or above. In comparison, non-accelerated students face tougher standards—once they take RH Algebra 1 in ninth grade, they must get an 80 or above to receive honors credit. IMAGE PROVIDED
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IMAGE BY JOHN YOON
eighth-grade students at DeWitt and Boynton, the number was 7 percent. About 44 percent of those who took Algebra 1 and didn’t accelerate in math were economically disadvantaged; among accelerated eighthgrade students, 10 percent were economically disadvantaged at both middle schools. The public data reports for individual schools, districts, counties, and the state are available at the State Education Department website (www.data.nysed.gov). Non-accelerated eighth-graders have been shown to be underprepared for state math assessments. At Boynton and DeWitt, 25 percent of non-accelerated eighth graders passed the New York State math assessment last spring. While an improvement from 2014’s 14 percent, it is not clear whether the increase in score indicates an improvement of overall student achievement, as a far smaller number of students—166, compared to the preceding year’s 261—chose to take the exam. To address the achievement gaps reinforced by de facto tracking, departments at IHS are leading the way with the push towards allowing students to move freely between different levels of instruction. These courses, called “heterogeneous” classes, help remove the rigidity of the divisions between Regents, Honors, and AP-level classes and reduce the risk and difficulty associated with moving between these levels. “The high school is so divided academically,” English department chair Jean Amodeo said, referring to the divisions of the student body perpetuated by de facto tracking. “More effort needs to be put into closing gaps, encouraging lower- or middle-level students to try out more difficult classes. Heterogeneous classes are extremely successful in addressing this.”
Composition course for juniors next year. In that class, students get 10 weeks to decide whether to take the class for honors or for AP credit. Either way, all students will prepare for and take the New York State English Regents Exams, and students who elect to take the course for AP credit will complete additional coursework and be required to take the AP exam. Citing that AP Language students at IHS scored an average of 4.5 last year, far higher than the global average of 3, Amodeo said that more medium-level students should be encouraged to take this class. The English department is adding a new English 10 Humanities class to replace the multidisciplinary Combined curriculum, making it possible for students interested in the humanities to choose between Honors Global 10 and AP European History instead of forcing them to take the latter. These classes, Amodeo said, will encourage students who were previously unsure about taking the upper-level class just as other heterogeneous classes like AVID have in past years. The science department has shrunk the number of classes offered to freshmen from five—Environmental Science, Earth Science, Living Environment Biology, Honors Molecular Biology, and Honors Ecological Biology—to Living Environment Biology and Honors Biology. Instead of effectively segregating students into five different tracks in science classes, the classes have become heterogeneous, science department chair Carlan Gray said. “The situation is infinitely better now,” Gray said.
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
Middle school Algebra classes should only award honors credit to students who have an average of 80 or above, not those who merely pass the class, said Noyes, who teaches Algebra 1 at IHS.
These inconsistencies in honors-credit policies between non-accelerated and accelerated classes are tightly interwoven with concerns about achievement gaps and tracking. IHS math teacher Steve Weissburg said that of the 205 students who took RH Algebra 1 as ninth graders in 2015, 10 percent received honors credit. In comparison, 100 percent of the 124 accelerated eighth graders taking Honors Algebra 1 received honors credit, Weissburg said, adding that 74 percent of the ninth graders would have received honors credit under the middle school’s policy. “If you’re teaching an honors class, students should be excelling to that level,” said IHS math teacher Todd Noyes, who has taught Algebra for four years. “You shouldn’t give them credit just for maintaining.” Discussions about how to achieve consistency between the three buildings started when IHS introduced the RH Algebra 1 course in 2012. The heterogeneous class warranted the creation of different course expectations for Regents and Honors students. Chief Academic Officer Liddy Coyle said that she began CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
NEWS
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com “EDUCATIONAL POLICY” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
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her involvement in the negotiations last summer. “I’m [...] saying we need to be consistent,” Coyle said. But discussions with teachers from all three departments failed to yield any consistency that all parties at the middle schools and high school could agree upon, she said.
er Todd Noyes said. “There are a lot of things in them that are unnecessary.” The Common Core’s sudden implementation also made it difficult for many teachers to learn those new standards in time for the assessments.. Meanwhile, in some departments, such as the English department, teachers had a chance to look over multiple versions of the test, prepare students for new standards, and carefully design curricula to fit the exam, IHS English department chair Jean Amodeo said. This year’s juniors were the first ones at IHS to take the new Common Core assessment. “We had excellent performance in English Common Core this year,” she said.
State testing will change, but won’t go away.
Concerns over the inconsistencies in honors-credit requirements between middle- and high-school math classes are closely related to those regarding de facto tracking and the achievement gap, IHS math teacher Weissburg said.
Chief Academic Officer Liddy Coyle said, “The Common Core standards are pretty strong.” A set of standards mandated by New York State, the Common Core tells teachers what the state demands they need to teach. Separate from the standards are the more problematic assessments that are made based on the standards (see next section). After implementing these standards, the state put out a statewide survey and invited the public to respond to each standard, district evaluation officer Lynn VanDeWeert said. The responses to the survey are available to the public on www.engageny.org. “Overwhelmingly, the feedback was in support of those standards,” VanDeWeert said. Based on the feedback from the survey, the state is gathering educators, administrators, and parents in PTAs to look at the standards that were seen as needing some revision. “There might be some revision in New York for some of the Common Core standards, but that’s going to be over the next year,” VanDeWeert said. In some subject areas, however, sets of more challenging standards that the Common Core introduced took a toll on assessment scores. Some teachers in the IHS math department said the use of “modules,” a set of optional lesson plans provided by the state, was part of the problem. “Modules were overwhelming to students,” IHS math teach-
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Common Core standards are great, but the implementation was coordinated awfully.
In the last several years, states tried to develop Common Core–aligned tests. They then took a popularity nosedive as a number of states and districts nationwide bailed on the assessments. With the Common Core examinations fading in 2016, Americans are moving towards a situation where states will struggle to develop the best test possible, because these tests are going to determine the quality of the schools whether they like the tests or not.
State testing has evolved in the last few years after the public outcry over them, District Evaluation Officer VanDeWeert said.
As in several other states, New York’s state tests are under public scrutiny for several reasons—state tests are tied to teacher evaluations, they were extremely long and poorly designed, and students did not do very well on them. And Chief Academic Officer Liddy Coyle is not a huge fan of them. “We’ve been giving state tests since the early 2000s, but they’ve never been very helpful for instruction,” she said, citing that students and teachers get the results after the school year is over. For Coyle, the tests mainly serve a purpose for the state, except in the district, results from these tests are used, among multiple other measures, to determine whether certain students need special assistance. But other than that, the tests
PAGE 5 are just one piece of data for the district. “I personally don’t think they should be tied to teacher evaluations,” she said, saying student performance on state tests should have no bearing on whether teachers get tenure or not. District Evaluation Officer Lynn VanDeWeert added that the difficulty of the Common Core exams have also led families to opt out from exams. Especially in the ELA exam administered to students in grades 3–8, there was a focus on close reading that required the tests to get longer, but not enough time was allotted for students to complete the task. “There was a perception that there were too many passages to read and too many questions associated with that,” she said. “Families just felt the tests weren’t appropriate for the students.” VanDeWeert said that for the 2016 state assessments, the state included a reduced number of questions, eliminated the time limit, and gathered a team of 22 teachers to review all questions before they were placed in the test. She added that over the next three years, all of the assessment questions will be written by NYS educators rather than by Pearson or Questar. Nevertheless, VanDeWeert said, “these assessments aren’t going to go anywhere.”
Teacher evaluations are in limbo.
According to VanDeWeert, we are in the middle of a transition period as a result of the emergency action made by the New York State Board of Regents with regard to teacher evaluations and the APPR, or the Annual Professional Performance Review—the process by which teachers and principals are evaluated in New York State. In response to public outcry over the state assessments, the Board of Regents temporarily eliminated some requirements of the APPR through the 2019 school year for those teaching ELA and math to students in grades 3–8. So during this transition period, any measures that are in any way tied to the ELA or math exams are to be excluded from the rating used in teacher employment decisions. Currently, part of those teachers’ ratings is based on student performance on state tests. As far as high-school teachers go, for any teacher of a Regents class, their student performance metric includes the Regents exam as a summative measure of student performance. That metric remains untouched in this transition period, which only complicates the tangle of problems discussed throughout this article. As teachers, administrators, and representatives begin to remediate these complexities, take good notes. It will have great effect on students, the school, and the system as a whole.
NEWS
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com IMAGE PROVIDED
Landmark Legislation on Climate Change Passed, Then Possibly Ignored A super smog hits north China city Harbin.
By MAGDA KOSSOWSKA
Last December, the United Nations held its 21st annual conference on climate change in Paris: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The conference of 195 parties aimed to legally bind countries in reducing emissions, with an emphasis on developed nations helping reduce the emissions of developing nations. The goal was to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius past the pre-industrial average global temperature. Although the conference has been widely viewed as the most successful action in recent years devoted to combating climate change, it has yet to be seen whether the parties involved will fully commit to the agreement. Part of this issue is that while the treaty is under international law, not every aspect of it is legally binding—specifically, the emission targets for each nation and financial commitments. Determining which parts of the treaty should be legally binding was an issue for several countries, especially the United States. In the U.S.’s case, any legally binding treaty would have to be reviewed and ratified by the Senate, which is largely Republican, and would be unlikely to be approved. In fact, the U.S. Republican Party could have a detrimental role in America’s involvement in the fight against climate change. That the U.S., the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has a major political party that has been predominantly denying the existence of climate change and is hostile to measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions, bodes poorly for the future of the treaty. Many senior Republican members of Congress have consistently dismissed climate change as an elaborate hoax concocted by scientists and politicians alike. This denial throughout the majority of the Republican Party poses a terrifying issue
While El Niño has given global temperatures a boost, the main reason for the intensely warm months of 2016 is the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, scientists found. We’re screwed.
with the 2016 presidential elections: since all current Republican candidates share this attitude towards climate change, if one is elected president, then any attempts by the U.S. to cull emissions at a federal level would be met with even more resistance. This returns us to the fact that the Paris Agreement is not entirely legally binding. In summary, if the world is not able to slow the escalation of global warming, it at least knows of one scapegoat to blame. Nevertheless, the Republican Party is not the only conservative group reluctant to take action against climate change. Poland’s new conservative government, elected last October, is more concerned about the Polish economy than the global environment. Poland’s economy is dependent on its coal industry, which will be affected by the actions that are currently being put in place to curb emissions. The European Union (EU) has a goal to reduce emissions by 40 percent, to have 27 percent of energy to come from renewable sources, and to increase efficiency by 27 percent, all by 2030. Poland’s Law and Justice Party sees these goals as too ambitious and will likely resist them in favor
of the coal industry. However, with Europe’s strong dedication to the reversing climate change, and many of the EU’s countries in favor of making these emission targets even stricter, Poland was hard-pressed to loosen the limits of European emissions. Poland did end up signing the climate deal. It still remains to be seen how far the Law and Justice party will go to protect against any change in Poland’s economy. Another obstacle in the fight against warming global climates is economies that cannot handle a major shift to lower emissions. The main focus of the Paris Agreement on climate change was financing developing nations so they can afford to use more efficient technologies. The effects of climate change impact developing countries more heavily due to their limited ability to endure the conditions brought on by climate change, especially rising sea levels and extreme weather. As these countries develop, they contribute to more emissions because they cannot afford cleaner technologies. In particular, reducing deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil is a crucial point in the country’s plan to reduce emissions due to the forest’s important job as a carbon sink. With Brazil’s more recent economic difficulties, however, as well as the economic status of other developing nations, financial help from developed countries may be needed in order to meet target emissions. The Paris Agreement can only take the world so far. Each of the 195 participating parties must draw up its own plan for domestic actions to curb emissions. Global climate change has been called the most critical and imminent current issue, as it is already affecting not just humans, but every organism on Earth. To correctly tackle the issue, many suggest that nations must put aside their concerns for economies, employment rates, industries, and other such political interests.
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
NEWS
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“CHAIN WORKS” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
“MUSIC DEPT.” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
ect will have many environmental impacts on the surrounding area and the site itself, according to the Project Team’s Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. The Lead Agency deemed this statement adequate early April. The forum is now open to the public for comments and concerns about the project, which can be submitted at the Chain Works District project website (www.chainworksdistrict.com/geis). Completed for approval by the City of Ithaca Planning Board and the State Environmental Quality Review, this document outlines all possible environmental effects of the project and how the harmful ones may be mitigated, such as the upheaval of contaminants and increased traffic downtown and on state route 96B. In response to traffic, only one specific concern, Unchained Properties has hired traffic engineers to develop strategies to keep traffic as low as feasible. The routes of public buses will be modified to strategically serve the influx of travelers in and out of the area, and a bike-sharing system will be put in place. According to the final statement on the subject, the Chain Works District will generate less traffic than the Emerson Power Plant did at the peak of its activity. Besides these manageable concerns about harmful effects, the leaders of the project have cited sustainability as one of their highest priorities. Already equipped with 800,000 square feet of usable building space, the designers of the infrastructure will refurbish and reuse as much of the existing building material as possible. Additionally, sights have been set on adhering to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, which would earn the district a third-party certification based on safe materials, energy efficiency, and other measures of environmental sustainability.
Still, some students seemed to react negatively to the plan. Despite some perceived differences in quality and level of each ensemble, Zawel said both the Concert Band and Wind Ensemble would have the same amount of priority, level of instruction, and quality of literature. In the Band, Zawel said there were two discussions last year and once this year with the Band and its 23-member leadership team regarding the issue. Students were unsure what the split would look and feel like. “You can’t erase everybody’s fears of the unknown, but I think that we trust each other enough and that they trust me enough to know that they will have a positive outcome,” she said. According to Hecht, in an informal survey conducted last year, she found that most underclassmen in Orchestra opposed the split while most upperclassmen favored it. Whether the plan will have unintended negative consequences, such as a loss of sense of community in each ensemble or a new sense of unfairness between the two levels of each ensemble, remains to be seen.
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
OPINION
The Importance of Being Politically Aware Even If You Cannot Vote By CHLOE WRAY
On April 12, instead of going to school, I went with my dad and sister to a Bernie Sanders rally. Despite this not being an excused absence, my dad declared that he would rather tell the truth than pretend we were sick to appease the school’s rules on absences, which resulted in something along the lines of “Please excuse my daughters. They spent the day in Syracuse participating in democracy and experiencing history firsthand.” While I could have gone to school, I was able to hear Bernie speak on a number of things that made me question my status, become angry, and realize the truth about our economy. Overall, the experience served to further educate me on the complexities of our country’s political process and the influence the people can have in a campaign. Whether one is attending the rally of a candidate, listening to a speech, or watching the news, there are endless resources for educating oneself on the current political situation and how our country is run. Even though I cannot vote in the upcoming election, I see learning about the presidential campaign as invaluable. The youngest of voters are often seen as apathetic and uneducated; however, voter turnout for this season of primaries has been incredibly high. While history class can teach us what not to repeat, taking the time to educate yourself on how our democracy functions will lead to a highly active voting demographic in the near future. Prior to this election, I had never heard of a superdelegate, and while I could just be out of the loop, I would wager to guess that most of my peers, and probably most adults, have little idea of what superdelegates are and their potential impact. Superdelegates result in an establishment in which high-ranking Democrats get to toss their vote to whichever candidate they would like, a system unrepresentative of the people. It is personal views and alliances that
determine who is endorsed by the vote of a superdelegate; this vote is worth the same as a delegate a candidate wins in any state. Superdelegates are outdated, irrelevant, and undemocratic, and until more people realize the power they have in the primaries, they will continue to play an enormous role in deciding the democratic candidate. While Bernie is anti-superdelegates, no matter one’s political affiliation, superdelegates do not promote a fair election and allow money to continue to affect politics. It is things like the issue of superdelegates that give me an appreciation for being aware, as I know the policy could be changed if enough people develop an opinion on the issue. As Bernie spoke, it dawned on me that his speech was so wonderful because so many of the issues he discussed are highly interconnected. Thinking about it further, though, I considered how such an entangled mess of issues could be pulled apart and wondered where the root of all these problems lay. Bernie himself admitted he could not hope to end all the problems he preaches solutions to, but he said he would acknowledge them and do his best to face them head-on. As with the issue of superdelegates, acknowledging that there is a problem is the first step. Bernie’s biggest appeal for many is his honesty, and as with any candidate, it’s what they acknowledge as true that earns them most of their supporters. Change is not something that can be hoped for if issues are pushed aside to be faced at a more convenient time. They will never become convenient, a truth young and seasoned voters alike must accept. Research, listen, and learn about what is the truth, and it will be easier to determine a candidate whom you see as speaking the truth. It is up to young people to decide what they want to see changed in order for it to happen. As Bernie’s slogan, “a future to believe in,” goes, children are the future.
The Importance of Video Games By DANIEL XU
At heart, I have always been a gamer. I don’t play during the weekdays, when my repository is backlogged with homework, studying, and other tasks that occupy my attention. Friday through Sunday has traditionally been the time when I am free to do as I like, and after years of sticking to the same schedule, I have clocked in thousands of hours in a wide variety of video games. In retrospect, some would contend that those are thousands of wasted hours in my life, or worse, thousands of hours of regression and stagnation; I have heard such staid opinions countless times from parents and other adults in their circles. And over time, it has come to be a great annoyance for me that something I have invested so much time and effort in—and that has summarily rewarded me for doing so—is never looked at for its benefits, always its shortcomings. This is not to say that I believe video games cannot be a poor use of time: in some circumstances, notably times of testing, they can be an ill-placed distraction. My problem with the familiar viewpoint taken by most authority figures in the lives of adolescents is that the cognitive, social, and motivational benefits video games provide are completely ignored. The older generation tends to heavily stereotype and stigmatize video games and their consumers. Some argue that various genres of video games promote violence, laziness, and an overall worsening of the psychological state of youth. There exists an equally exorbitant number of studies, many of them questionable in nature, that show connections between gaming and whatever problem you may wish to find, be it one that reflects popular opinion or not. The only truly valid argument I have heard against video games is that their very existence in the purview of a student’s attention can easily disrupt that student’s focus while in school or studying—and looking at the introduction of Chromebooks to IHS, for example, it’s a difficult argument to refute. Yet that’s the extent to which video games can inflict actual harm on adolescents, and it’s no more of a problem than phones, social media, or, in the absence of those, even books would cause. When looking at the problem of video-game addiction, games should be treated as any other paradigm would, not singled out in their potential for harm. It is mostly the ubiquity of video games in modern-day America that has fomented such backlash from adults, who see the new type of play as useless and needCONTINUED ON PAGE 9
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com “VIDEO GAMES” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8
lessly addictive when neither is necessarily true. With 97 percent of adolescents in the U.S. playing some sort of video game for at least one hour a day, a figure that encompasses 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls, video games are easily the primary outlet for the “play” form of entertainment available to teenagers. Viewed in isolation, the benefits of play are numerous. It replicates situations that exist in different social contexts, encourages the development of reactions to an assortment of “pretend” stimuli, and generally focuses cognitive awareness at a higher rate; to sum it up, play is the underlying starting point behind all future social relations. I argue that video games can be viewed as the apotheosis of all past forms of play. When looking at different levels of play, we can start from the basic physical forms such as Tag and move up to traditional games whose enduring variants include the celebrated Go and Chess (the latter of which is often used as an educational tool and is required in all schools in Armenia); video games as a whole display a range and depth that can equal or exceed any of these in the context of cognitive development. Although this may have been debatable a decade ago, with the advent of enormously successful multiplayer games in recent years alongside the longtime standbys, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft, the social integration video games cause has become undeniable. The conception of your average gamer as a friendless, nerdy kid shut up in a basement gives way to a new world where the vast majority of teens play, communicate, and celebrate their interests in online communities that include their real-life friend group. Meeting people through forums or circles dedicated to a favorite game is a tangible and common event, and entirely new friend groups can be built through game-related interaction alone. Contrary to the stereotype that video games damage one’s intelligence and athleticism, the improvement of problem solving and strategic decisions in tandem with spatial awareness are some of the most obvious cognitive benefits of gaming. This is not a blanket generalization that applies to all video games and its effects should not be exaggerated; the aforementioned aspects however, have been shown to be consequences of the first-person shooter (FPS) and real-time
OPINION strategy (RTS) genres of gaming. A gamer who regularly plays FPSs such as Halo or Team Fortress 2 will adjust to the pace of gameplay and dramatically enhance their cognitive ability to evaluate situations and react to them in real time. RTSs are as intense as FPSs, but have in place of speed and reflex a sterner focus on background knowledge, resource management, and the long game. It goes without saying that such games are the most obvious candidates to be named for their cognitive benefits, although that very fact has led to an overshadowing of other games with just-as-valid benefits, notably the aforementioned FPSs. The so-called South Korean national sport, Starcraft II, is the single most infamous RTS for its professional community and fanbase, as well as its steep skill requirements and strategic elements. Over 100,000 viewers tuned in to the Starcraft championship series last year. That a professional scene not only exists, but is also prolific (although Starcraft is not even the most prolific among e-sports, as professional gaming is commonly known; that honor goes to League of Legends) speaks to the influence of well-designed games and their reward. Many retired e-sports professionals go on to have healthy careers in other fields, benefiting indirectly from their experience with video games all the while (mentioning this does not mean I recommend or commend becoming a professional e-sports player). Examples of other RTS-like games popular with today’s youth include League of Legends and Dota 2, the two most acclaimed titles that ascribe to a slightly different genre known as the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). Hearthstone, another game that is enjoying popularity in both IHS and the world at large, is a digital collectible card game (CCG) that pits players against each other in matches that pair the strategic decision trees of chess with the luck of the draw. The spatial skills provided by such games—both RTSs and FPSs—have real educational merit. The pace of cognitive improvement evident in people who play them is something that can only be drawn from a video game because of their highly involved control mechanisms, and more important, their standalone appeal. No one looks at someone playing Call of Duty and thinks, “I should buy that game and consistently play it to improve my spatial awareness and thus my success in STEM subjects and future career.” People game, if not for their personal entertainment, for the social reasons explained above, and that such a beneficial rider tags along-
PAGE 9 side the most popular genres of modern video games suggests a lot about the talents of Engineering students—go to Code Red Robotics and ask the club how many members play a MOBA or FPS regularly. Video games are never mentioned in the context of study habits or educationally relevant interests, but the merits they exhibit mean that maybe gaming is something that’s okay to flaunt on a resume. Emotional investment and motivation are two other huge factors: the case of younger children is where we can truly look to video games as a source of inspiration and motivation. For pre-adolescent children, the social aspect in the building of relationships comes again as an omnipresent rider, but in the case of solo games, the motivation built up towards completing a game is just as fundamental. Persevering through a tough segment of a game like Metroid Prime or trying to truly catch ’em all in Pokemon sets up important bases in the conscious that remain steady through shifts to different contexts and media, such as high school. The uniqueness of content of video games, as well as all the aforementioned factors, set them apart from sports and the like when it comes to teaching children dedication and how it feels to invest time and effort. The payoff for completing a solo game can be a powerful formative experience after working for weeks, or even months, to get the hang of it. My purpose in writing this article is not to praise every aspect of gaming or to defame those who would speak ill of video games. I recognize fully that in many cases, video games can and will have a negative influence on adolescents in the standard addiction-withdrawal cycle that has plagued so many outlets of entertainment past and present. My goal is only to have people recognize and understand the role of video games in society and the myriad benefits they provide to children young and maturing; that their aid in emotional development, social relations, intellectual and spatial frames, and motivation not go unsung. Instead of always playing the villain, video games should have a chance to be publically praised and to shine. For all the good that they do, games are not even thought of by gamers themselves as something fundamental to their own development and character. It’s a shame that a paradigm of such critical importance is eternally undermined. And even if none of that concerns you, we could all live a little more, couldn’t we?
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
The BEST Distraction:
Adventuring
Article and images by PEARSE ANDERSON
There are some things in your life you get tired of repeating to people whom you’ve just met: how you spell your name, what you do for a living, your town of origin. For me, I’ve repeated one moment in my life for more people than I can count. I have yet to tire of it. The moment starts with the hiss of a botanical lemonade’s cap being twisted off. I was sitting on a lichen-covered picnic table beside some family’s pond. A rock, engraved with the name of the pond, was lumped beside the table, and next to that was a ladder. I think there was also a rope attached to a tree for the express purpose of swinging into the pond on a good warm day. It wasn’t warm that day. But it was good. Armed with one of the last remaining CD players, I was
listening to Stephen King narrate his epic The Gunslinger. I sat. I watched the trees reach themselves upward, arms from the body of earth, curious to touch the howling wind, but cowardly enough to bend when the crying picked up. I downed half the bottle of the juniper and lemon drink before I had to stop the CD. I heard something close to me scream. I listened. It screamed. It sounded like a ghost. It was just the wind running through the neck of the lemonade bottle. An accidental windchime. I started up the Gunslinger chapter again. I think I ate a bagel. I left. My hands were getting cold. I think it happened two years ago, around Passover. I can say without a doubt that that one moment, those brief minutes, was one of the most beautiful and rewarding experiences of my life. I don’t remember what homework I had that day—heck, that quarter.
Adventuring, however you want to do so for however long you want, is the best distraction against school, life; everything. I don’t want to leave this high school without more people heading out with their backpacks and hiking boots than when I came in. Whatever you want out of life, there is some way that adventuring can give it to you. I like to use my time efficiently and try to be a jack-of-all-trades. In four hours, I can get great exercise, take both documentarian and artistic photographs, explore off-trail/road areas, get a better internal compass or mental map, listen to high-quality podcasts (possibly learn how to impersonate Ira Glass?), meet strangers, go to exciting events (yard sales?! Barbecues and pancake breakfasts, strip malls and craft shops), figure out how to pack and eat efficiently, birdwatch, cloudspot, people-watch, and live a life worthy of a story. Wow. Nearly twenty brilliant activities and I could keep going. Additionally, once I bring a friend, mentor, or significant other, more
options open up. Classy picnics in the deep woods? Swimming (responsibly) in a lake for your second date? Botanical research with your future boss? I mean, c’mon! Want to scare yourself and practice your endurance (again, responsibly)? I know no better activity than adventuring, during the course of which I may have had to run away from a motorcyclist wielding a chainsaw, hidden in a bee-infested pipe from a toddler,
and walked through a courtyard full of animal skeletons. Want time to think about the problems in your life, or perhaps time to forget about them? The meditative combination of asphalt, pine trees, roadkill, and granola will get you somewhere. It’s like being in a world all unto itself. Pair that with deep thought, good conversation, books on tape, or just silence, and poof, you’ve entered another reality. Want to gain skill in a craft of your choosing? I’ve adventured into forests and gathered vines for basket-weaving. I’ve brought a sketchbook and drawn whatever I see. One time, I brought a poetry anthology and let stanzas reverberate from the top of a hill. Please do tick checks. Please do tick checks. Please go only where you’re allowed. Please pack well, especially with lots of water, money, and a charged cell phone. Beyond those pleas, there aren’t really many rules to adventuring. It is what you make of it. On my first adventure, I walked to a gas station, bought some honey-roasted cashews, and walked back. The next day I went a bit further, to a graveyard, and returned. The next day, the same thing. Years later, I’ll go hours out—counties out, even—and I’ll still have a fantastic time. Remember those Calvin and Hobbes stories where they’d try to walk to the Yukon, or sled seemingly forever, or walk over a babbling brook on a downed tree? This mix of wanderlust, nostalgia, and shinrin-yoku, it’s gorgeous. It’s timeless. It’s right at your fingertips.
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
OPINION
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Bernie vs. Hillary: What’s in it for Me By VEDA CHICKERMANE, Staff Writer
As a high-school student, I can’t help but wonder what will happen to me once I graduate. Whoever becomes president in January 2017 will influence many people’s lives, including mine. President Obama will be soon leaving the Oval Office, and the United States will be led by one of the current Presidential candidates. Right now, the candidates on the Republican side are Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich, and the candidates on the Democratic side are Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The Republican candidates are so radical that their own party leaders seem to be wary of them. There is clearly very limited support for them in a liberal town such as Ithaca. There is a huge amount of debate on the Democratic side about who will win because there are just two people left, so it’s one or the other. Both candidates have great ideas, but as high-school students, how do we evaluate their positions and policies, as well as what’s in it for us? Sanders appeals to our hearts while Hillary appeals to our brains, and it’s clear that the heart is just more likable. Although most of us cannot vote, the next president will make policy decisions that will have a profound impact on us. Most Ithacans are “feeling the Bern” because Bernie Sanders represents a very liberal point of view that is in synch with a university town such as Ithaca. Sanders started his political career as a socialist and a civil-rights activist, believing that the government should play a key role in every aspect of the economy and that businesses have to be tightly monitored and regulated. He became the mayor of Burlington, the largest city in Vermont, where he championed many civil-rights issues such as low-cost community-trust housing, LGBT rights, and immigrant rights, which was considered very radical in those days. His ideas and policies at that time were considered too far left of the mainstream by many. As a mayor, Sanders’ catchy slogan was “Burlington is not for sale.” Sanders served the state of Vermont first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate. He served as an Independent in Congress, though he supports the Democratic Party for the most part. Sanders supports social programs for the disadvantaged, campaign reform, and strict regulations on big banks. He’s a vocal critic of the U.S.’s foreign policy of intervention in the Middle East and Central America. At the same time, he has opposed gun control, since he represents a state with a lot of gun owners. He also opposes the favors and bailouts received by the big investment banks on Wall Street. Hillary Clinton started her career as a pioneering lawyer advocating for impoverished families and children at the Children’s Defense Fund. After marrying Bill Clinton, she moved to Arkansas and helped her husband’s budding political career while becoming a partner at a reputed law firm, teaching law and continuing her advocacy of women’s and children’s rights. As her husband became Governor of Arkansas and then the President of the U.S., she became his trusted advisor, especially on the subject of health-care reform and women’s rights. As First Lady, Hillary became famous for her advocacy for women’s and children’s rights in the developing world. She was later elected to two terms as U.S. Senator from New York, where she demonstrated expertise on national security and foreign affairs. When she lost the 2008 Democratic Party nomination to Barack Obama, he selected her as his Secretary of State after becoming president. Hillary helped restructure U.S. foreign policy to ensure that disputes were addressed by diplomacy rather than just military solutions and that human rights returned to its central position in U.S. foreign policy. The two Democratic contenders are clearly very similar on many points and way more progressive than their Republican counterparts. From a high schooler’s perspective, there are three main differences
that seem to matter. The first is that Bernie Sanders’ main idea—one that he repeats before every speech—is that big businesses (i.e., Wall Street) have been buying influence in Washington D.C. and getting away with bad behavior that is wrecking our economy. Consequently, job opportunities for high-school graduates are limited. Sanders is saying that by streamlining the economy, high-school students will be able to get jobs and the economy will improve overall. Hillary has a much less aggressive stance with regards to business and prefers to negotiate with businesses rather than pass very restrictive laws that could potentially slow down the economy. Sanders wants to make public college education free and lower high college bills, which is very attractive to all high schoolers worried about college loans and debts. Sanders wants to radically change the current healthcare system to a single-payer system, which would lead to universal healthcare. On the other hand, Hillary wants to continue improving President Obama’s education and health policies and points out that Sanders’ policies would require taxes to rise steeply to pay for all the free benefits—a proposal Congress would likely reject. Hillary’s approach seems too cautious to lead to easy and reliable healthcare for all. Sanders is also more concerned about the global climate, while Hillary has barely touched on the subject. Sanders’ advocacy for our planet is extremely attractive to those of us who will be around for another 70 years. Bernie Sanders’ positions on education, health care, economy, and the environment are definitely very progressive and attractive to any high schoolers who are looking to college and beyond, so he is clearly appealing to our hearts with his passionate advocacy. Hillary Clinton, with her vast experience in Congress and the Executive Branch, is very practical; she also claims that Sanders’ huge promises will fail badly and disappoint a lot of people who will get stuck with large college and medical bills. She wants to improve what we already have rather than go for a high-risk revolution, so she is definitely aiming for our heads. Though Hillary’s sangfroid is admirable, high schoolers, who tend to be socially liberal and interested in progressive policies, appreciate Sanders more than Hillary. It’s fair to say that high schoolers truly “feel the Bern’’ in their hearts.
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OPINION
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com IMAGE PROVIDED
Savchenko at her trial.
Nadiya Savchenko and Saying It Like It Is By TRISTAN ENGST
Newspapers’ headlines have lately been graced with the sordid topic of the latest words to fly from Donald Trump’s mouth. But he is not the only person who can use fiery language: All I can do is show, by my example, that Russia, with its “statehood” and its totalitarian regime can be made to knuckle under if you are fearless and unbowed. You wanted my last word? Here is my final word! Can everyone see well? [points her middle finger at the court] Now, interpreter, please include my gesture in your translation.
So said former Ukrainian soldier Nadiya Savchenko in the middle of a hunger strike to a Russian court. Savchenko was charged with illegally crossing the Russian border and directing artillery fire towards Russian journalists. The previous story was that she was captured by pro-Russian separatists and handed over to Russia to face punishment for the journalists’ murder, which agrees more with the evidence provided by her mobile phone—except it is still unable to explain how she managed to direct artillery fire an hour after being captured. All of this happened in July 2014. Savchenko gave the court the finger at her trial in March, nearly two years after her capture, when it found her guilty. Savchenko intends to be a returning hero or a martyr: either she
is returned to Ukraine or she dies of thirst in a dry hunger strike. Either way, she does not intend to serve the 23-year sentence given to her by the court days after the trial. The Russian media’s treatment of Savchenko has been, simply put, awful. To be fair, Savchenko had joined a volunteer unit called the Aidar battalion, which Amnesty International has accused of depriving civilians of food aid. The Aidar says the food wouldn’t have reached civilians anyways, though Amnesty International’s evidence of other ill-doing is solid. Nevertheless, the extent of Savchenko’s participation in such activities is unknown, the charges against her are unrelated, and her critics often go too far. “Judging by the bloody trail left by Ukrainian gunner Savchenko, she may well face other charges,” a pro-Kremlin newspaper wrote. “Shoot this bitch like a dog,” a vulgar pro-Russian tweeted. But outside of Russia, Savchenko’s popularity skyrocketed. “Nadiya Savchenko is a symbol of struggle for Ukraine. While in captivity, she demonstrated [the] true, strong, martial Ukrainian spirit of a serviceman who doesn’t betray [the] Motherland,” said Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. Since Savchenko’s capture, she was elected to the both the Ukrainian parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Russia refused to recognize the diplomatic immunity granted by the latter appointment. Later, Savchenko was recognized as a “Hero of Ukraine,” the country’s most
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
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“SAVCHENKO” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12
IMAGE PROVIDED
prestigious award, roughly analogous to America’s Presidential Medal of Freedom. In an article covering her trial, British newspaper The Economist even went so far as to wonder if she could rally Ukraine’s people against the nation’s corrupt government. American Secretary of State John Kerry echoed the international community’s response: In the 20 months since she was captured in eastern Ukraine and taken to Russia, Ms. Savchenko has reportedly endured interrogations, solitary confinement, and forced ‘psychiatric evaluation.’ Her trial and continuing imprisonment demonstrate disregard for international standards, as well as for Russia’s commitments under the Minsk agreements. The United States once again calls on Russia to immediately release Ms. Savchenko and return her to Ukraine. Not to say anything bad about Kerry’s words, but Savchenko’s added vitriol is far more satisfying to read. In addition, Savchenko has turned her unfair imprisonment into an enormous opportunity, attracting attention to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine after it became old news. Many Western media outlets have strongly hinted that there is something off about Russia’s actions in Ukraine, as well as its human-rights record in general. Many Western governments have more explicitly said the same thing. However, the feeling I got when I read the full text of Savchenko’s speech was that she says it like it is. First, I’m ashamed to draw a connection between Trump and Savchenko. Second, there is a parallel and it can illuminate a great deal. Many racist xenophobes support Trump, who has rhetorically given a number of non-white groups the finger. If Savchenko can say it like it is to Ukraine (and if a lot of Western media is to be believed, she’s right), then her burgeoning popularity is likely due to the same rhetorical strategy that has made Trump a serious contender for the American presidency: saying what an aggrieved group wants to say,
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but can’t make publically known. While remaining civil and avoiding polarization is important for bipartisan cooperation, there is a wonderful feeling to hearing someone say it like it is—if we believe it to be true. Surely the dangers of the phenomenon are great, as they reek of the technique of demagogues. Rhetoric as fiery as Savchenko’s or as xenophobic as Trump’s turns off anyone who initially disagrees. Its power derives from existing prejudices and offense, less so ideas and clear argument. So it limits debate, giving preference to what is little more than a shouting match or presidential debates about the length of candidates’ penises. However, such rhetoric is much more enjoyable. There is always the immature hope that the whole thing will devolve into a fistfight. Political cartoons sometimes depict politicians as boxers in a ring to make their point. Canadian politician Justin Trudeau has actually played to this, engaging a conservative politician and karate black belt in a boxing match in 2012. Trudeau won both the boxing match, and later, the position of prime minister. Despite her years of military experience, it is doubtful that Nadiya Savchenko would stand much of a chance against Vladimir Putin, who was a top-ranked judo champion in Russia. Thrilling as it might be to see them duke it out, Savchenko need not use force. When spoken by someone who is passionate and fearless, words have power—especially when you can say it like it is without being too offensive, as Savchenko did during her rousing speech at her trial: As a politician, I will not shake hands with Russia in the political arena. It is out of hand to shake hands with those who held you in handcuffs and your people in chains. Whenever I make a political decision, I will always think about its effect on the common people, of Ukraine as well as Russia. For in Russia, in spite of everything, there are nevertheless many honest, decent, kind, and unfortunate people. She said some closing remarks, and then sang Ukraine’s national anthem. Many in the audience joined her.
Savchenko in prison.
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
On Tom Reed’s Trump Endorsement It is an understatement to say that U.S. Representative Tom Reed’s relationship with his constituents in Ithaca is a strained one. His successful reelection campaign in 2014 relied heavily upon chastising Ithacan liberalism and criticizing his opponent Martha Robertson for exemplifying the “Ithaca liberal” to gain support in the vast rural expanses of our Congressional district. His voting record is not one that reflects the will of most Ithacans, and he seeks to distance himself from our town and what it stands for. Reed’s absence from Congress when it was voting on the Affordable Care Act was once his most heavily criticized action, but that has now been vastly overshadowed by a more recent decision: on March 16, Reed endorsed Donald J. Trump in his bid for President of the United States of America. Reed’s endorsement of Trump was, sadly, not too surprising. The Republican race had been whittled down to three candidates the day prior to his endorsement, and the oddball slate was one that left many Republican politicians in a tight position. There was, firstly, the underdog Cruz, a conservative firebrand who hides incredible shrewdness and unwaveringly orthodox rhetoric behind his syrupy Texas drawl. Moderate New England Republicans like Reed are more ideologically similar to the Blue-Dog Democrats of the South than to extreme Southern Tea-Partyists like Cruz, so no endorsement was expected, as it would have only decreased Reed’s support amongst the overwhelming majority of New York Republicans. There was also John Kasich, seemingly more appealing than the other candidates until Ohio’s incredible luck in simultaneously discovering natural gas reserves and gaining access to billions in ObamaCare funds are factored in to his governorship. To many, these factors almost deem his leadership not commendable enough to make him particularly more deserving of the Oval Office than others. More importantly, Kasich was made mathematically unable to actually win the Republican nomination the night prior to Reed’s endorsement after having picked up a mere 81 delegates on a night where experts thought he needed more than 260. Trump realistically has none of the flaws plaguing these other two candidates. His few non-border policies are actually extremely moderate, and are certainly more representative of New York’s proportionally small Republican faction. He’s also a business leader with a big name, well-known for his extravagance and wealth and evidence of success
By VAYNU KADIYALI, Staff Writer
in the business realm, however marginal. He’s also not in any way mathematically challenged to reach delegate totals, having an almost insurmountable lead and having already picked up more than half of all needed delegates even before Reed’s March 16 endorsement. Reed was evidently in a pickle here, stuck between an unlikable choice and an unviable choice, and under pressure from a Buffalo-area Trump lobby, he hastily and somewhat warily endorsed Trump. As U.S. Senator (and recent Ted Cruz endorser) Lindsey Graham put it, “I have literally run out of adjectives to describe Trump.” He evidently stands for none of the same values as Ithaca or most constituents of Reed. However, there are aspects of Trump and our district that may help explain Congressman Reed’s decision. Trump’s extremely populist ideology evidently fares best amongst poorer, less educated Caucasians. Our district perfectly matches this demographic description, with only about 10 percent of our district being nonwhite and about 80 percent of our district not holding a college degree. It only takes a short drive outside of Ithaca, to Newfield and Schuyler County to the west or the acutely poor regions to the east and south, to find oneself “surrounded by reality.” Manufacturing jobs, of which there were few to start, are now truly nonexistent, and the overall population of our district and state has shown a pattern of decline. There must be a sense of desperation for those living in communities stricken by poverty, and the negative sentiments of these constituents essentially makes scapegoats of politicians and illegal immigrants. Trump is the candidate who everyone knows has been vocal about such populist and relevant issues, and even if he hasn’t posed real solutions, bringing light to the issues plaguing rural America and offering to solve them if elected is a big plus for voters. The conditions in our district are exactly the same as that of the districts Trump has won so far; in South Carolina, where Trump won all but two counties, even the sense of being overshadowed by larger communities is the same. Reed got it all wrong. He is likely not only making a selfish decision based on the general voting trends of this year’s primary, but is probably representing the concerns and wills of the New York 23rd District. While we may be a rural, sprawling district, we are by no means a homogenous or traditionally struggling one. Our surprisingly growing and robust economy is the result of higher education like Cornell University and SUNY
Cortland and of high-tech manufacturing like that of Corning Glass. These industries rely heavily on skilled immigrant workers, and Trump’s restrictive and careless immigration policies and rhetoric would prove immensely destructive to the lifeblood of our community. Reed has acknowledged that he doesn’t necessarily agree with this notion, but an endorsement in its purest form is giving approval to a candidate and what they stand for, and Reed needs to take more meaningful action. Reed’s endorsement of Trump is also shocking, as Trump’s fiscal policy would obliterate economic prosperity in the NY 23rd. Anybody with a calculator can tell that nearly halving taxes would either need to be followed by a near-elimination of the federal government, or that the average per-capita debt would exponentially increase from the already striking $50,000 per person and cripple the residents of our district, where the average wage is only $45,000. We can only hope that Trump is vacillating on foreign policy. The alternative is that he’s completely malicious, intending to convince Americans that friendly nations like Japan and Taiwan are out to get us economically and that we must counter this “aggression” with massive 35 to 45 percent tariffs. Obviously, it would be consumers paying for most of these prices, or at best the American companies controlling production, and these increases would hammer the working and middle classes that constitute an overwhelming majority of our district. Absolutely none of the cost would be met by the governments of Japan, Mexico or China. Bankrupting the residents of the Southern Tier isn’t a particularly attractive prospect, and it’s definitely one that should make Reed reconsider his support of Trump. Overall, Reed’s endorsement will definitely hurt his political career. In his 2016 re-election campaign, he will face for the first time a Democratic candidate who is not from Ithaca: a Jamestown, NY resident by the name of John Plumb who served a distinct naval officer career and is said to be better poised than either of Reed’s previous opponents. While two sides can be argued on this topic, the overwhelming consensus is that Reed made a reckless, inconsiderate, and likely opportunist choice by endorsing Trump. Ithaca residents’ sentiments about the endorsement can be perfectly encapsulated in an Abraham Lincoln statement: “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
OPINION
PAGE 15 IMAGE PROVIDED
The EU: A Union without Unity By EDVIN DRIBE
Since its formation in 1993, the European Union (EU) has tried both to gain more power on the world stage and to move power from the 28 EU member-nations’ capitals to the city of Brussels, where the EU Parliament is. Some have had the vision to make the EU a union like the United States of America, whereas some have had the vision of a trade alliance that would decrease the amount of paperwork for shipping goods over the borders between the small Western European countries. Today, these two factions still exist, even though neither of their goals has been met after 23 years in action.The EU remains a loosely connected group of countries. In reality, the EU is too diverse to be a union; without considering diplomatic relations in every move, cooperative bonds wouldn’t exist. The official motto of the EU, “Union in Diversity,” as well as the fact that the EU has 24 official languages, both evince that it is too diverse to become the second United States. Thus, America will never have to face the United States of Europe, which might be seen as a relief. The languages, cultures, and heritages of the people are simply too different, and the people of Europe themselves have fundamentally different natures; a central government where Scandinavian liberal and social-democratic ideas are met by British conservatives would never function, nor would one where Spanish statesmen argue against Finnish ones. Secondly, European values differ too much for people to support them collectively without distinguishing themselves as their own demonym and citizens of their own countries. In the United
States, very few New Yorkers would say that people in Pennsylvania have such a different history and heritage that it clearly affects how native Pennsylvanians think and act in comparison to a New Yorker. Yet if one is to cross the border from France to Germany, they will very soon see, hear, feel, and taste the difference. Another language will be spoken, other food will be eaten, the people will have a different history behind themselves and the people will have fought in two different alliances through both World Wars. All these diverse elements not only create different values among the people who actually would become the citizens of a prospective United States of Europe, but also cause distinctions on the floor in the European Parliament. The European Parliament creates several issues for government, one of them being underrepresentation. For example, many small sovereign nations that act well and are famous for the well-being of their citizens— such as Denmark, Sweden and Belgium—get too little representation in the European Parliament for it to be beneficial for such countries to vest power in it. The countries listed above get 13, 20, and 21 representatives, respectively, in the EU Parliament, whereas countries that are faring poorly but have a larger population—such as Romania, Poland, and Italy—get 32, 51, and 73 representatives, respectively. This leads to mistrust within parliament. Sweden, which has been led by governments pursuing high standards of living and low corruption, doesn’t want to have CONTINUED ON PAGE 18
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 ihstattler.com Tompkins County is lucky to have many programs dedicated to prevention, sexual• education,and youth empowerment. There are also programs designed to support adolescent mothers.
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The Teen Pregnancy/Parenting Program (TP3), a branch that assists pregnant teens, provides education to support healthy pregnancies and give the best growing environments for children. TP3 also provides assistance with transportation, housing, healthcare, and employment. 609 West Clinton Street, Ithaca, NY; (607) 273-0259
The Advocacy Center
The Advocacy Center has for decades provided support, advocacy, and education for survivors of child abuse and sexual assault. Its goal is to help reduce the trauma that results from abusive incidents and guide victims in the right direction in life. Its services give emotional support, shelter, crisis intervention, legal advocacy, sexual-assault nurse examinations, and therapy, for free. Office (Monday–Friday, 9-5): (607) 277-3203 24-Hour Hotline: (607) 277-5000
750,000 Planned Parenthood American Many question the viability of the sexual-education programs of Planned Parentteenagers hood and its affiliates, insisting that there is a lack of real evidence that the presence become pregof Planned Parenthood reduces teen pregnancy rates. nant each year, However, Planned Parenthood is a leading provider of affordable health with 82 percent of care and the largest provider of sexual education. Its services reach over 5 the pregnancies being million Americans and prevent over half a million unintended pregnanunintended. Many claim cies a year. Also, Planned Parenthood provides educational programs that the problems of teen and outreach to 1.5 million young people and adults every year. (14) pregnancy are exaggerated and Sexual education has proven to be effective in addressing teen pregthat social attitudes toward adonancy. Comprehensive, science-based sex education has been found to lescent mothers are the real issue. delay sexual intercourse, increase the use of condoms and contraceptives, However, the consequences of and reduce the frequency of sex (7). In fact, these programs are much more teen pregnancy are as frighteneffective than abstinence-only programs. A study done by Centers for Disease ing as they are true: teen mothControl & Prevention has shown that teenage sexual activity declined quickly ers are twice as likely as mothers from 1991 to 1997, when there was a lack of significant funding for abstinence-only educational programs. The rate increased in the few years that over 20 to experience miscarriage and followed, when those programs received heavy funding (3). neonatal death and are far more likely to The teen birth rate has declined consistently in the past 20 live in poverty and rely on welfare. (9) years. In 1991, the U.S. teen birth rate was 61.8 births for every To reduce the rate of teen pregnancy and 1,000 adolescent females, while it was 24.2 births for every prevent some of its repercussions, it is import1,000 adolescent females in 2014. However, the teen birth ant to push programs that help youth make safe rate in the U.S. is higher than that in many other dedecisions about sex. Research has shown that veloped countries, including Canada and the United science-based sexuality education, access to conKingdom (13). traception, and youth development help prevent un620 W Seneca St, Ithaca, NY 14850 intended teen pregnancy. For more on the Tattler’s (607) 273-1513 stance on today’s sexual education, go to page 2. Bibliography 1. “Defending Our Children: How to Respond to Demands for Planned Parenthood Classroom Sex Education.” STOPP. American Life League, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016. 2. “Department of Health.” Teen Pregnancy Rate per 1,000 Females Aged 15-19 Years. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016. 3. Feijoo AN, Grayton C. Trends in Sexual Risk Behaviors among High School Students— United States, 1991 to 1997 and 1999 to 2003. [The Facts] Washington, DC: Advocates for Youth, 2004. 4. Finer, Lawrence B. & Mia R. Zolna. (2011). “Unintended pregnancy in the United States: incidence and disparities, 2006.” Contraception, 84(5), 478-485. 5. Frost, Jennifer J., et al. (2008). In Brief: Improving contraceptive use in the United States. New York: Guttmacher Institute. [Online]. http://www.guttmacher.org/
6.
7. 8.
9.
pubs/2008/05/09/ImprovingContraceptiveUse.pdf, accessed June 25, 2013. Hamilton, B.E., Martin, J.A., Osterman, M.J.K., & Curtin, S. C. (2015). Births: Final Data for 2014. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from Kirby D. Emerging Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy. Washington, DC: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2001. Kost, Kathryn, and Stanley Henshaw. (2012). U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions, 2008: National Trends by Age, Race and Ethnicity. New York: Guttmacher Institute. [Online]. http://www.guttmacher.org/ pubs/USTPtrends08. pdf, accessed February 8, 2012. Luker, Kristin. (1996). Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10. SIECUS — Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. (n.d.). State Profiles 2010: A Portrait Of Sexuality Education And Abstinence Only-Until-Marriage Programs In The States. Fiscal Year 2010 Edition. New York: SIECUS. [Online]. http:// www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page. ViewPage&PageID=487, accessed June 25, 2013. 11. “Teen Pregnancy in the United States”. CDC. Retrieved February 24, 2016. 12. “Teen Pregnancy/Parenting Program (TP3).” Child Development Council Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016. 13. United Nations Statistics Division. (2015). Demographic Yearbook 2013. New York, NY: United Nations. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2013/Table10.pdf 14. “Who We Are.” Who We Are. Planned Parenthood, n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.
No program succeed an understanding of the common THE TATTLER •can MAY 2016 • without ihstattler.com attitudes about adolescent sexuality. As of now, a quixotic emphasis is placed on abstinence, while the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (10) claims that 63 percent of Americans consider sexual exploration a common part of growing up. It is important to push programs that believe in helping teens decide on abstinence, but with the underData sources standing that teenagers still Birthrates: CDC.gov engage in sexual Sex Ed.: SIECUS.org activity. Median Income: Census.gov
Teen Birthrate Associated with Abstinence-only Education and Low Income (as of 2012)
Map by Kate Prengaman
Birthrate, girls 15-19 (per 1000) 19.8-31.4 31.5-40.1 40.1-50.1 50.2-65.7
How does Tompkins County shape up to neighboring counties and the state? Based on data from the New York State Department of Health, there were an average of 14 pregnancies per 1000 adolescent females from 2011 to 2013. (2) This is well under the state average of 41.3 pregnancies per 1000. However, the national average in 2013 was lower than that of New York’s, at 26.5 per 1000. (9) A lot of this can be attributed to the lack of attention rural and developing communities get. Putnam County, which has a median household income of about $94,400 (as opposed to about $67,000 in Tompkins County), had the lowest rate of teen pregnancy at 8.3 per 1000 as of 2015, while Bronx, which has a median household income of about $34,000, had the highest rate of teen pregnancy at 86.6 per 1000. (2)
Abstinence-only Education YES NO
Median Household Income <$46,000 >$46,000
In 2009, the U.S. government acknowledged the effectiveness of evidence-based sex-education programs by budgeting $114.5 million to push those programs across the country. $75 million of that money was devoted to reducing teen pregnancy. This was the first time the government earmarked funds for sexual education. (10)
PAGE 17
The underlying causes of teen pregnancy Meager public funding for family planning is associated with unintended pregnancy among poor teenagers. In fact, the rate of unintended pregnancy among poor teens is fivefold greater than that of higher-income teens (4). Between 1980 and 2006, there was an 18 percent increase in federal funding for family planning, but when inflation is taken into account, funding decreased or stagnated in 18 states and Washington D.C. between 1994 and 2006. This poses a great threat to poor teens, who are unable to afford the full cost of contraception and are likely to turn to cheaper yet impotent birth control methods (5). The Rural Outreach Program provides advocacy, case management, and recreation opportunities to children in Tompkins County who are struggling with health challenges. This program still has a long way to go, but could serve as an example for future programs to follow.
Teen Pregnancy Rate Per 1000 Females Aged 15-19
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OPINION
“EU” CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15
fewer representatives than Romania, which was admitted to the EU on disputed grounds and has an almost undemocratic government that handles some minorities so badly they chose to flee to other nations as beggars. This same principle applies to countries such as Denmark and Belgium as well. Neither would gain anything by entrusting power to the EU when that power would be better off in their own hands than in the Romanian government’s, as the Danish and Belgian governments clearly have worked and functioned better than the Romanian government has. To compare all this to the United States would imply the conclusion that some U.S. states also are underrepresented. Delaware has only one representative in the House and two in the Senate, whereas California has 53 in the House and two in the Senate. In total, California is represented 1833 percent more than Delaware, yet Delaware is neither revolting nor complaining about its representation. Some would argue this silly, and in some sense it is. Delaware wouldn’t be able to exist as a sovereign nation, whereas California most likely would. A contrafactual study examining what would happen if the United States had become more like the EU would probably show Delaware either merging into another state or functioning as a weak state, but not become a nation like the many within the EU. This correlates to the contempt that many Americans have for the federal government in Washington, as very few Europeans entrust Brussels with anything that directly affects them. Spain, England, Sweden, Romania, and France all think differently about health care and Greece, Germany, Denmark, and Italy have different opinions about social security; thus, none of those countries would even consider allowing Brussels to take legislative or executive action in the aforementioned areas. Yet some are quick to point out the many benefits the EU has provided for Europe, among them the introduction of the Euro as a universal currency. This is not quite true—the Eurozone ended up being a disaster simply because well-managed economies, such as those in Finland and Germany, were mixed in with poorly-managed economies, such as those of Italy and Greece, and the Euro is now seen as more of a mixed blessing. To manage an economy properly, the country’s legislative agenda and the nature of the people have to be taken into account when planning actions to stabilize it. One example is if people have to pay for their children's college tuition. In countries where people have to pay for college, such as England, the parents will save money for a long time and thus not spend it as it is obtained, which leads to less economic growth. In countries where people don’t have to pay tuition fees, such as Sweden and Germany, more money will be spent in the meantime and thus add to economic growth. Now, you cannot conclude from this that England has a poor economy and Germany a perfect one, but you can say that their different political views and agendas affect how their economies are handled. To manage a currency for several sovereign nations with entirely different governments and political agendas, the countries either have to adapt or live with a broken, poorly functioning currency. Some would argue that when the United States declared independence in the late 18th century, the states were in the same position as the member states in Europe today, a “fact” that is entirely false. It’s to be noted that many of the American states had different views, but they all had several things in common. They were all derived from the British crown, they all shared the same language, they had all taken similar paths through history, and they were all newly formed, weak and small “countries” that were incapable of fighting alone. Many of the European countries date back to the turn of the mil-
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
lennium and all of them have had rather remarkable histories since they were formed. The different peoples of Europe would simply not be able to identify themselves as Europeans instead of the nation from which they originate. It is evident that the EU’s existence is a toll on some countries, such as Sweden and Germany, whereas other countries, such as Greece and Portugal, benefit enormously from it. The EU simply redistributes wealth without the important element that exists in welfare states: equality. To compare redistributing wealth as the EU does with how wealth is redistributed in a welfare state is extremely misguided, as a welfare state creates equality among the people whereas the EU doesn’t at all make different countries more equal; rather, it makes some countries more easily run than others. Neither the money Germany gave Greece nor the refugees taken by Sweden from Italy improve quality of life for citizens of other European countries. These things just make Italy easier to run without the 160,000 refugees taken by Sweden and keep Greece afloat with a loan to decrease the deficit from Germany. To conclude, the EU is currently two dozen countries that are only tied together in a union because of legally binding documents and a fear of more paperwork regarding customs and trading administration. The European Union is a union without unity.
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
WHERE
SPORTS
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Ithaca High School Student Council Election Event MAY 24 th 2016 AFtER SChOOL
ELECTION 2016
An Event where Candidates for Student Offices can Interact and Campaign with Students FOOD, INTERACTION and SPEECHES will be provided
05/24/2016 3:40 PM BLISS GYMNASIUM
DATE
SPONSORED AND ORGANIZED BY:
The Ithaca High School Student Council strives for the increased participation of students in TIMEThrough our work, we the democratic process. represent all students of Ithaca High School and involve them further in the democratic process; by meetings, committees, events and polls. Participate to ensure that our officers will be the absolutely best ones!
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OPINION
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
Feminism For All Feminism: the belief that all genders should have equal rights and opportunities. By definition, feminism is for both men and women. Gender equality is necessary for an individual of any gender to be able to achieve full potential, so why is it that feminist movements throughout history have been majority women? Even IHS’s gender equality club, SWIS, is mostly female. It makes sense for men to be as much a part of the movement for equality as women are, but the truth is that they aren’t. This fact became especially obvious in the wake of Social Justice Week and SWIS-led events aimed at increasing male involvement in feminism. It seems that this lack of activism on the part of men is largely because men feel that feminism does not apply to them. After all, the movement is called feminism. For a long time, the movement for gender equality has been associated only with “women’s issues,” but this is no longer the case. All genders are disadvantaged by our current patriarchal system, as men face toxic masculinity, women face career disadvantages, and non-binary people face discrimination and violence. Everyone’s participation is necessary for any change to be successful. It is important to recognize that the differences between men and women in our current society result in men receiving benefits in many pervasive ways that women don’t. For example, the average pay gap between white men and women is 78 cents for a women to every man’s dollar, and the gap is greater for women of color. The wage gap is only one instance of institutional sexism. Men also appear in the media three times as often as women, and women hold only 20 percent of seats in Congress while making up half of the U.S. population. One out of five women and one in 70 men in the U.S. has been victim to rape or attempted rape in their lifetime (National Sexual Violence Resource Center). The disparity in these statistics makes it clear that women are disadvantaged by the current patriarchal system. While gender inequality does pose problems for men, women tend to bear the brunt of the disadvantage. It is difficult to see the need to change a system, or even to see inequality at all, when one does not feel the larger negative effects of inequality. This may be one reason men are less likely to identify as feminists. Yet isn’t it reasonable to hope that men would want to stand up for their family and friends who are female and offer support for them? After reflecting on the lack of male membership in SWIS Club, we worked to create a presentation to educate men about feminism and encourage them to participate in the movement for
By ABBY COOPER and MOLLY SWARTWOUT
gender equality. We hoped to show that feminism is important to men not only in the support of women and people they care about, but also because the movement works to change the gender inequalities that disadvantage men. The presentation, dubbed “Men and Feminism,” was given on February 29 after school, and again during Social Justice Week on March 25. There were three main points in the presentation:
1. All genders benefit from feminism, as feminism seeks to eliminate gender roles and stereotypes that prevent any gender from being able to fully pursue and achieve their greatest potential socially, economically, or politically. This is due to the discrimination and social pressures that affect men as well as women. 2. Feminism tends to focus on women because women are largely more oppressed than men, and have been throughout history. Men face disadvantages due to gender inequality as well, but because there is more that must be done to give women equal opportunity, there is more focus placed on women. 3. Raising the status of women is beneficial to both men and women because it improves the economy, supports relationships and the development of healthy men, and increases the development of helpful technologies, medicines, and inventions that improve the lives of everyone through greater female involvement in STEM fields. Furthermore, women bring new insights into the workplace and gender diversity in the workplace can lead to higher productivity. The true gender equality that SWIS tried to emphasize is not about eliminating or ignoring the differences between genders. Gender equality is about creating equal opportunity and comfort for all genders, breaking down barriers, and encouraging everyone to fulfill their own individualized hopes and potential. It is essential that the feminist movement include men and that men express their support for gender equality. The current gender stereotypes, roles, and expectations that exist in our culture impair the development of all people, regardless of race, gender, or sexuality. Just as women should not be expected to be soft-spoken and submissive caregivers, men should not be expected to be strong, unemotional providers. These are socially constructed pressures that limit us all. Feminism works to create equal opportunity for all genders, improving prospects for us all, men and women alike. No gender can achieve equality alone.
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
FEATURES IMAGE PROVIDED
Tetrisbooks By DANIEL XU With a Chromebook in the hands of each student at IHS, you can bet that schoolwork isn’t the only thing the shiny new devices are used for. The administration and IT department have made valiant efforts to prevent students from playing games or visiting websites related to games during the school day with a series of fairly comprehensive blocks—which nevertheless fail to prevent the age-old strategy of googling “unblocked games.” This has resulted in a sort of cat-and-mouse between students and IT, where high traffic on certain gaming websites led to blocks and subsequent migrations to different websites, and so on. Curiously, one game in particular has remained a constant attraction for students over almost the entire school year: Tetris. One specific Tetris website that is used by most students playing the game has been unblocked all year, and a variety of other Tetris websites are frequented as well. As a result, one mostly unintended side
effect of the introduction of Chromebooks has been a sweeping increase in the Tetris skill of the average IHS student. “When I was born, they say I was born with a Chromebook in my hands playing Tetris,” joked an anonymous junior, one of the top Tetris players of his grade. “With the great financial help of ICSD, I was able to continue playing Tetris throughout the school day. Because of this, I improved my time in Tetris Sprint [clearing 40 lines] from 2:30 to 1:00.” The junior had his Chromebook in front of him and was navigating his way through a round of Tetris as we spoke at the end of class. It does seem that most Tetris players, like the junior, tend to avoid gaming during class, which should be a relief for concerned teachers. Another anonymous junior, who is currently the top Tetris player of the grade, was actually introduced to the game by his Chromebook. “I used to play Team Fortress 2, but now I only play Tetris,” he said. Since
October, this junior dropped his Tetris Sprint time from around 3:00 to less than a minute—all from playing on his Chromebook during school hours. When I asked him what else he used his Chromebook for, he declined to comment. There are several lessons to be learned from this, chiefly regarding the nature of blocked websites and the actual utility of the Chromebooks. IHS has already had discussions at length about the effectiveness of the blocks, but anecdotal evidence may be the strongest indicator in that regard. When the teacher stops talking perhaps five minutes before the bell, leaving the class to its own devices, and over half the class pulls out their Chromebooks only to boot up Tetris, something is clearly off. At the very least, the Chromebooks may help jumpstart the professional career of some aspiring Tetris players.
FEATURES
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
A Pretentious Pondering on Fashions of the Summer By MAX FINK
As spring and prom approach, now is the time to refresh your knowledge on the finer points of suiting and sartorial prowess. To allow those with little experience in fashion to appreciate this article, I will attempt to provide a general overview while lightly touching upon more detail. Firstly, when in warm weather, one must wear appropriate fabrics. There is nothing I detest more than a man wearing a flannel jacket or a heavy wool tuxedo jacket in the summer or springtime (even if indoors and heavily air-conditioned). One must cultivate a wardrobe centered around cotton, linen, fine silks, and expertly woven wool blended with silk. Each fabric has its own merits and faults; for instance, linen folds and creases easily, yet is incredibly cool, while cotton creases less but retains far more warmth. Silks and blended wools will cost a fair penny more than any cotton or linen, but they have more variability and comfort. Additionally, they can take a great amount of stress and creasing, making them perfect for travel. Suits and tailoring should match the occasion. For junior prom and similar out-
ings, I suggest a black or dark blue formal suit, preferably with waistcoat and suitably dark tie. Tuxedos are, of course, more appropriate, but I have been told that most people find the whole process of dressing up ridiculous and that tuxedos should be saved for senior prom. Casual daily-wear suits should also fit the occasion. For warm weather, regular two-button suits with patch pockets and lighter shades are ideal. Feel free to be open with your color choices. Pastels of all shades are great choices for shirts as well as pants. Blues, greens, whites, and khakis are all fine shades for summer sport coats or suits. The true man, when properly attired, looks like a fruit basket in terms of shade and texture (I am serious). Speaking of which, don’t be afraid of texture. Many summer fabrics already have extensive natural texture. For example, seersucker is an American staple that is woven in a manner that both allows for comfort and is naturally quite textured. The same goes for linen suits, but the latter are quite hard to clean. Should your linen shirt get wrinkled, accept it as a natural
function of your outfit. As for ties, grenadine ties are a supreme choice for texture, although they are quite expensive. Shoes can be far more casual in the summer, and I find slip-ons and loafers to be excellent choices. Boat shoes are suitable, yet often underutilized in outfits today. Additionally, be aware of the fit of your suit. When leaning against a wall and wearing a jacket, your shoulder should touch the wall before the padding of your jacket shoulder does. Overall, one must not fear expanding on fashion facets and attributes. It is key to explore—don’t be afraid to branch out and wear a bowtie. Hopefully, this article can galvanize more research of sartorialism and a stronger sense of fashion among its readers. Below you will find some analysis and ponderings on several men’s summer outfits. Regrettably, it is hard to find the color scheme evoked by the roaring twenties or the memories of such a time, so attempt it at your own risk.
Note the patch-pocket blazer with a glen-check pattern (a type of squarish weaving that allows for more air to penetrate the fabric). Additionally note the lighter, more pastel shirt color and blazer color contrasted with bright white—only after Labor Day, of course.
Gatsby sporting an appropriate summer white suit, most likely of a silk blend. The shirt color is somewhat unusual and lacks any hue of gaiety (but perhaps reflects the deep despondent death of the American Dream). The tie is an excellent example of brighter summer fare, out of silk.
Refined, classic summer elegance. A three-piece suit is quite formal but highlights the contrast created by the pairing of the collar shirt with a darker tie. The pocket square provides subtle accentuation of the ensemble and reflects a playful summer air.
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
FEATURES
PAGE 23
Restaurant Review
Mia
IMAGE PROVIDED
BY CASEY WETHERBEE
When I told my dad that I was going to Mia with a bunch of friends, he crinkled his nose and told me that I live a lavish, sophisticated lifestyle (or something like that). Indeed, the general view of the restaurant, which is situated on the Commons between Petrune and Waffle Frolic, is that it is both fancy and expensive. To most, Mia appears to be the perfect place to “treat yo self.” However, these perceptions beg the question: does Mia actually live up to expectations? And if it is expensive, like everyone says it is, is it worth it? As I scrutinized the menu, took in the ambience, and fraternized with my buds, I kept these questions in the back of my mind. The first thing that I noticed upon entering—something that I consider very highly when evaluating any dining experience—was the atmosphere exuded by the dim lighting, low ceilings, and smooth, unassuming music in the background. One thing that Mia definitely has going for it is its environment; it is comfortingly easy to fall into a calm mood while being surrounded by warm yellows and oranges and the low murmurs of the people inside. We arrived at 6:00, which was early for dinner, but even as people began to fill up the establishment, the noise level was always refreshingly tolerable. The music selection was tasteful, featuring jazzy tunes and rock classics at low enough volume for the songs to fade into the background, allowing for conversation while simultaneously maintaining a presence. Ambience: check. When considering a restaurant like Mia, it is important to know what tapas are. Invented in Spain, tapas are essentially a series of appetizers that make up a meal. When you plan on ordering tapas, you should probably choose about two dishes per person, though the size depends on the food. For example, one member of our party ordered a $7 tapa—a warm tofu salad with peanut dressing—that was dismally small for the price. Really good tapas, in my opinion, should be presented in an elegant manner (which Mia does very well), but more important, be compact. By compact, I mean that each bite should be a small slice of heaven and that your goal there should not be to eat until you’re full; rather, you should experience a variety of sensory stimulations along the way. People should be able to eat until they are no longer hungry, and even a small dish should be
worth it based on its taste. Because of this, tapas are a risky endeavor—a lot more rides on each individual bite. Despite my high standards, I was neither disappointed nor hungry upon finishing the tapas that I shared with five friends. The first dish to be brought out contained sautéed Brussels sprouts with a miso glaze. Personally, I thought that each sprout was magnificent, if slightly undercooked. Next was vegetable samosas with mango-tamarind chutney. Those were delicious, and our group ended up polishing off the sauce after the samosas were all gone. The lotus root fritters did not disappoint either, their initial crunch giving way to an irresistible, starchy savoriness that blended well with chili tamarind sauce. The dahl—an Indian lentil dish with spinach—was bland and unobtrusive by itself, but it went well with the naan bread that we had ordered separately. Finally, the portabella mushroom satay with peanut sauce was probably my favorite dish of the night. The portion was the most substantial for the price (a mere $6), and after we finished the mushrooms, there was sweet cabbage left that, as a pleasant surprise, cleared my palate and left me with a feeling of general satisfaction. If you would prefer one large plate over many small ones, Mia has the option of regular entrees, many of which involve sustainably harvested seafood with an Asian theme. At my table, the general response regarding these dishes was positive. The Tofu Gra Praw with snow peas and onion in a chili sauce was very tasty, and the lobster and seafood bouillabaisse was not too salty. One thing that was noted was that there seemed to be an overabundance of jalapeños in dishes where they were not welcome. However, the dishes remained innocuous for the most part, and the overall experience was a good one. Was Mia a step into the life of an aristocrat? Well, not quite. Assuming that two tapas equals an entree, most of the entrees were around $16, which is not absurdly expensive for quality food. Certainly, the food was quality, and the environment in which we were eating was comfortable. The service was very quick and helpful. In the grand scheme of things, everyone who’s interested in taking a step out of their comfort zone should give Mia a try.
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FEATURES
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
Hall Monitor By CHLOE WRAY and BEN SALOMON
Which celebrities would you like to see in a battle to the death?
Spike Jonze (director) vs. Spike Jones (musician) “Because at the end, no one would know who won.” — Mr. Eckley (with Ben Salomon ’17)
Amber Rose vs. Kim Kardashian “Because of Amber’s tweet to Kanye, and Kim probably thinks she and Amber are about equal, but I’d say Amber thinks quite the opposite.” — Maddie Crooker ’16 and Abby Cooper ’16
Putin vs. Stalin “Putin has a fifth or sixth level black belt and Stalin was an evil dictator, so I think it would be interesting.” — Maddie Turner ’18
Hamilton vs. Jefferson “Because Hamilton (the musical).” — Cady Habicht ’19
Henry Kissinger vs. Leonid Brezhnev “I just want to see them slug it out, capitalism vs. communism, but they’re both really fat, tubby guys and it would just be amusing to see that fight.” — Max Fink ’17
Zayn vs. the World “Zayn is impenetrable and could beat anyone” — Jason Wang ’17
Gandhi vs. Obama vs. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Just some old, peaceful people duking it out.” — Ethan Yang ’19 and Kush Garg ’19
Albert Einstein vs. John von Neumann “It would be a battle of the brains.” — Ronan Perry ’16
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ARTS
Venus of Urbino : A Domestic Deity By JULIA LUNA
“There are pictures of nude women that suggest no impure thoughts—I am well aware of that. ... What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort.” What could elicit such a reaction from the great Mark Twain himself? Only the Venus of Urbino, one of the most beautiful and provocative women in the history of art. Painted by Titian in 1538, the Venus of Urbino owes its name to a commission by the Duke of Urbino, who became its first owner. Titian’s masterpiece soon became well-known as one of the most iconic pieces of the High Renaissance. Through the use of more lifelike human qualities and a domestic setting, Titian allows the viewer to fully indulge in the eroticism and beauty embedded in his Venus, making the Venus of Urbino not only a timelessly beautiful piece but also one of the most influential pieces in art history. The Renaissance saw a revival of all things Classical, including the depiction of the human nude. Whether sculpted or painted, such subject matter had been largely ignored during the Middle Ages. However, through color and composition, Titian created more lifelike qualities in his nude than had ever been seen in Classical eras, thus taking his piece to a previously unknown level of eroticism. Unlike Classical sculpture, which traps the soft and sensuous curves of the body in cold, hard, marble, Titian’s use of oil painting gave an entirely different effect to the nude. Painting in the Venetian tradition, Titian used rich color to create a very authentic and appealing depiction of the human body. The Venus is painted in a very soft, peachy pink color with subtle white highlights outlining the curves of her plump body. What was once milky, opaque marble became luminous, fleshy, and alive. The beautiful tresses of the Venus were no longer grooves in rock, but became malleable, wheat-like tresses, filled with color. Along with the medium, Titian also used masterful composition to create the sensualism in Venus of Urbino. The composition’s particular use of line is one of its most defining features. The diagonal angle at which Venus is drawn allows her to be displayed in such a way that the viewer can visually experience every inch of her body. She isn’t shying away or curled up as if her personal privacy is being invaded. In fact, her eyes are alert, fixated on the viewer as if she is trying to lure someone into the canvas; she takes on a truly lustful attitude. Furthermore, in contrast to the pure white sheets and crimson couch, the salience of Venus’s body becomes even more evident. The fully clothed servants provide yet more contrast to the nakedness of Venus. Compositionally speaking, Venus of Urbino shows Titian’s incredible skill. However, the setting rather than the composition is what allows us to see how innovative Titian’s piece truly was. Titian’s Venus is placed in a room: simply a lady in her boudoir. Contrary to
what it may seem, the casualty of her domestic setting does not diminish the sensualism and lust in the piece, but rather elevates and enhances such feelings. This was a considerable break with the previous tradition of having a nude or a Venus being placed in a dreamlike or fantastic setting. The Venus’s intense accessibility comes from the fact that she is very plainly in her room. Unlike Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, you don’t have to find her sprouting in the middle of the ocean atop a shell, nor do you have to travel to grandiose temples to find the beautiful woman, as was the case with many Classical Greek sculptures—the Aphrodite of Cnidus and the Nike of Paionios, for example. The settings of Greek sculptures emphasize that the beautiful nude is not a woman, but a goddess, a celestial being, belonging to dreams and fantasies but not reality. The familiar, ordinary setting of Venus of Urbino removes the mysticism associated with a goddess, allowing the piece to become more personal and perhaps more universal. The lust this piece evokes is felt by everyone. And because she isn’t somewhere holy or far-fetched, the “goddess” is obtainable to anyone who has an imagination. Such room for imagination and personal fantasies is what allows Titian’s Venus, despite being idealized, to become personalized. At first, the viewer sees exactly what Titian painted. However, soon this “domestic deity” becomes anything the viewer may imagine: a lover, a wife, or perhaps even a courtesan. This feeling goes beyond just her pose, which is why the Venus of Urbino is so captivating, and consequently, so influential. The Venus of Urbino isn’t a rediscovery of the modern age, nor was it shunned after the Renaissance. Its influence can be seen throughout the history of art, in several styles and time periods. One of the most famous pieces directly influenced by the Venus of Urbino is Manet’s Olympia. In fact, Manet painted a rendition of Titian’s piece before creating Olympia in 1865 (in his rendition, though, Manet caused a scandal by using a prostitute as a model). Additionally, Henri Rousseau’s The Dream, painted in 1910, takes the reclining nude, a form and pose reminiscent of Titian’s Venus, to a surreal dream in the luscious tropics. Other artists such as Ingres and Velasquez studied Venus of Urbino at great lengths in order to create their masterpieces La Grande Odalisque and Rokeby Venus, respectively. As one can see, the Venus of Urbino was painted in the 16th century, but her legacy can be seen throughout art history. Venus of Urbino is timeless and universal. Titian’s artistic genius created a piece that, nearly 500 years after being painted, still leaves people with wide eyes and gaping mouths, wanting to enter the canvas. The Venus of Urbino is still as seductive and enigmatic as she was in the 16th century.
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
On Feminism and Futurism: Dissecting Orphan Black Warning: Heavy spoilers for Season 1.
By ABBY KATZ
The camera centers in on the sleeping face of Sarah Manning, our streetwise antihero, who lies slumped over in the seat of a subway car. Sarah jolts awake as the train enters the station to a dimly lit platform. As the crowd thins, she catches sight of a woman pacing back and forth, visibly distressed. Sarah approaches the woman, who turns to face her. The two are completely identical. Without so much as a word, the second woman turns back and walks calmly into the path of an oncoming train. She dies instantly, and the scene explodes into disjointed chaos. Thus begins BBC America’s critically acclaimed Orphan Black, hooking its viewers with a thunderous shock that it has managed to sustain throughout its first three seasons. The gritty sci-fi thriller follows the lives of a group of uncannily similar-looking women, including Sarah, who are eventually revealed to be genetic identicals, the products of illegal medical experiments. Through the eyes of these women and the bonds that they eventually form with each other, the show wrestles with complex questions of personal identity, agency, and utopian ideology. In an early scene in Orphan Black’s first season, Sarah reveals her “clone status” to another character, informing him that she is aware of eight other women genetically identical to herself. Understandably perplexed, her companion asks: “So, there’s nine of you?” “No,” Sarah snaps in response, “there’s only one of me.” There is no idea more integral to the show than this simple assertion of individuality. Despite all being played by the same actress (the incredibly talented Tatiana Maslany), these characters could not be more different. The clones are as nuanced and complex as they are numerous, and despite the fact that each occupies her own niche (the suburban housewife, the geeky grad student, the working-class hustler, etc.), each also manages to avoid falling into the same-old overused archetypes. In fact, the show actively resists perpetuating these archetypes. Many of the clones’ identities are based on very typical, often one-dimensional female tropes—such as the suburb-dwelling soccer mom—but are also developed well beyond the parameters of these tropes. This reminds viewers that the “typical” woman does not exist, and seems to imply that the way much of the television and film industry handles female characterization is fundamentally flawed. Despite the fact that science fiction is an historically male-dominated genre, the feminist elements of the show tie into the more technological side of its premise quite nicely. The constant reassertions that the clones have to make in their fight for autonomy from their creators, for things like individuality and ownership of their own bodies, is inherently feminist, but also digs deeply into scientific questions. Darwin’s essential nature vs. nurture question is grappled with heavily throughout the show’s arc, as are eugenic and utopian themes such as the morality of self-directed evolution. One of the most
prominent examples of this are the subtle allusions and explicit references to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a popular novel depicting a “utopian” society devised through strict control, brainwashing, and the genetic engineering of its population. Scattered throughout the first and second seasons, these references clearly indicate the influence that such ideas and, by extension, classic science fiction as a whole, have had on the show’s development. In the show’s third season, many of the aforementioned themes are tossed to the side as the writers seek to provide their audience with a bigger picture of the universe they’ve created. This season digs deeper into the inner workings of the corporation responsible for developing human clones and introduces a whole new roster of male clones. While this does add some degree of depth to the Orphan Black universe, it doesn’t make up for what’s lost. Many of these new elements do nothing but add a layer of confusion to an already very complex plotline, and with a few exceptions the male clones are disappointingly similar characters, lacking the individuality that makes the female clones so alluring. At the time of writing, Orphan Black’s fourth season is scheduled to begin in just under a week. Taking my qualms with the third season into account and considering that—unlike a fine wine—television shows rarely improve with age, its return makes me slightly apprehensive. That being said, I haven’t given up hope just yet. Thinning plots and increasingly confusing storylines aside, Orphan Black is still, in my view, one of the most well-orchestrated shows on television. Furthermore, Maslany’s performances are just as compelling and mind-boggling as ever, making the show still very much worth watching. Ideally, we’ll see a shift back towards the show’s initial, narrower lens in Season Four. By centering back in on the individual issues the female clones face in their ongoing fight for survival, Orphan Black can revisit and expand upon the questions it first set out to explore before it got lost in a sea of conspiracies and one-dimensional boy clones. If the show fails to do this, however, I won’t be too broken up about it. Despite the harsher elements of my critique, Orphan Black remains an excellent show, and it has a decent amount of screwing up left to do before I’ll be able to consider it anything less.
ARTS
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
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Confronting Nostalgia When I look back on this past fall, the memories I have are chock-full of moments that I can only describe as angst-ridden, indie-film quality: scenes that could easily be put to music or scoured for motifs. Think about sitting in a high-school parking lot, looking at the stars as a football game surges in the background. Think about the customary “I can’t wait to get out of this town” dialogue that goes along with that. Imagine wandering through a graveyard, crying for someone who is very much alive. Those kinds of sentimental excerpts; I
By ABBY KATZ
drowned in them. More often than not, these memories aren’t happy. They reflect a time in my life rife with uncertainty and anxiety. Snapshots like those I’ve described above are cliche beyond belief, some laughably so. Rationally speaking, this isn’t a place in my life that I’d want to return to if I had the choice. And yet, there’s something there that never fails to draw me in. That something is nostalgia, the driving force behind Buzzfeed’s endless stream of articles about “90s kids”
Your Spring To-Do List, Narrated in Song By CORINNE HILL-JAMES and AMALIA WALKER
“Mood Indigo” (1958): Nina Simone Get spring fever. Be overwhelmed. Be sad. Be moody. Be Mood Indigo.
“I Think I’ll Call It Morning” (1971): Gil Scott Heron Wake up in the morning feelin’ like P Diddy, got my glasses I’m out the door I’m gonna hit the city. Before I leave check my watch to see what time it is, it’s 12 o’clock noon so I Think I’ll Call it Morning. “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)” (1975): Bob Marley and the Wailers Forget your troubles, and dance. A hungry mob is a hungry mob. Be the change you wish to see in the world. “Dancing in the Street” (1985): David Bowie and Mick Jagger Summer’s (basically) here, and the time is right for Dancing in the Street.
“The Promised Land” (1978): Bruce Springsteen Go for a scenic ride on an old country road, in your blue jeans, to where? To the Promised Land (New Jersey, Jerusalem, the like!). Then you run over a squirrel. Sufferin’ succotash ... “Black Coffee in Bed” (1982): Squeeze Write to tell her that your feelings tonight are a stain on your notebook that rings her goodbye.
“You’re So Vain” (1988): Carly Simon Realize this: the seasons do not turn for you. It’s spring, yes, but because the Earth moved a bit. You’re So Vain. “The Best” (1989): Tina Turner Feel like a star. Because you’re the best. Better than all the rest.
“Chocolate Cake” (1991): Crowded House Yes, of course, you certainly can have another piece of Chocolate Cake—if you really saw Elvis Presley walk out of a 7/11!
and the allure that triggers us to long for experiences we’ve never had, in decades we’ve never lived. The widely known “I-was-bornin-the-wrong-century” phenomenon falls into the same category as many of my own memories, that of what I call “disjointed nostalgia,” or the idea that we’re wistful for the “wrong things”—things that perhaps we don’t entirely understand. Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus often pairs nostalgia with ignorance in his writings, perhaps implying that to be nostalgic is to lack clarity; to not see the full picture when looking back on memories. Although I’ve certainly found this to be true, it seems to me that this view itself is missing something. People who seek solace in the past often do so to remind themselves of the feeling, not the moment itself, that they wish to relive. And that feeling is, overwhelmingly, naivety. I don’t mean that dismissively. We’re all naive in some way or another. As people moving through life, we’re constantly learning and changing, absorbing new information and embracing new experiences. Positive, negative, or somewhere in between, everything we encounter teaches us something that can’t be unlearned. Even if the experience itself is thrown aside and becomes forgotten, its impact remains. No one can be the same person that they were ten years, a year, or even a few months before. Whether we’ve changed for better or for worse, there is always a part of us that misses the old version of ourselves and wants to hold onto those simpler times. We want to reimagine that naivety—that’s what we see in these “incomplete” memories. Nostalgia is an inherently ignorant phenomenon, and that’s okay. If The Great Gatsby (okay, fine, SparkNotes) taught me anything, it’s that you cannot repeat the past. To entertain the idea that you can is to momentarily step away from reality. But every once in awhile, it’s necessary to take that step. No, you shouldn’t try to rebuild the past when imagining the future, but yes, it is okay to remind yourself of your past in a way that speaks to you.
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
Minimalist Playlist Minimalism (n). Music: a reductive style or school of modern music utilizing only simple sonorities, rhythms, and patterns, with minimal embellishment or orchestrational complexity, and characterized by protracted repetition of figurations, obsessive structural rigor, and often a pulsing, hypnotic effect. Minimalism is very much a modern school of music despite it falling under the vast domain of what we consider to be classical. Like the popular music many people listen to today, its appeal lies in underlying rhythms and beats rather than any melody in particular, but the simplicity on the surface belies deeply complex juxtapositions of harmony and thought. Above all, minimalist music is pure. Like a Rothko painting, the “minimal” elements that make up each composition are meant to represent something much larger and more profound, but one would never be able to tell from any sort of traditional analysis. Here, what you think it means does become what it means. Minimalist does not necessarily mean abstract, however. Most of the following compositions are still clearly identifiable as music, and pleasant to listen to (that’s the point of these playlists, after all!); Adams and Glass tend more musical while Reich and Riley lean more towards abstraction, so a wide range still exists. Close your eyes and try to focus on some sort of image while listening to each piece in this playlist. Maybe it will help you clear your mind; maybe you won’t feel a thing; maybe minimalism will end up just being another interesting genre of music that you listen to without strings attached. Whichever way you choose to appreciate minimalist music, it undeniably has its perks in every area. We think there’s something for everyone in this playlist, and we hope you enjoy.
By DAVID SHENG and DANIEL XU
QR Code to playlist on Spotify:
QR Code to app:
Short Ride on a Fast Machine (1986): John Adams (Michael Tilson Thomas/San Francisco Symphony Orchestra) Daniel Xu ’17: With a driven, pulsing beat and charming flights of sound, Short Ride on a Fast Machine is a very accessible piece. It manages to be at once exciting, catchy, and incredibly simple due to all the repeated notes: just take a look at the sheet music. As an introduction to minimalist music, it’s hard to do better than to listen to Short Ride; if it appeals to you in any way, bring on the rest.
The Hours (2002): Philip Glass (Film recording) DS: After a quick Google search, a film bearing the same title may come out as the top result. As a matter of fact, this very piece is the first soundtrack to the film ... surprise! The Hours is a signature Philip Glass piece, opening with chords softly played by the strings. The melody is then passed on to the piano, and as it plays arpeggios like an overlapping layer of silk, the strings continue their march-like accompaniment. In the vast catalog of Philip Glass’s music, this piece stands out for the beauty and contrasting characters that emerge in just 10 minutes.
Clapping Music (1972): Steven Reich David Sheng ’18: Badada— bada—ba—bada: this simple rhythm opens Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, a piece performed with only two pairs of human hands. It may seem ridiculous at first, but a listening through may well change this opinion. The idea behind it is rather simple. Clapping Music starts with both players playing the aforementioned rhythm in unison, but after every seven iterations, the second player shifts by a single sixteenth note. This continues until both players are back in unison. If you are interested in learning it with a friend, a free iOS app is available for download on the Apple App Store that helps you with learning the piece.
The Protecting Veil (1989): John Tavener (Steven Isserlis; London Symphony Orchestra/Gennadi Rozhdestvensky) DS: Tavener has been a key figure in the British musical scene, although his focus on his Russian Orthodox faith has made his something of an outcast. This piece is scored for a large string orchestra with solo cello and is very much in the style of a Russian chant (free meter and the use of modes). As the title suggests, the piece itself is inspired by the Intercession of the Theotokos, where the protecting veil is the veil of the Virgin Mary that protects all people of the church. Whether you hold faith in the Orthodoxy or not, this piece will definitely be a treat of beauty and dramaticism.
In C (1964): Terry Riley DX: This piece stretches a little towards luminaries such as John Cage (known mostly for 4’33”, which is pretty much not even music) by pushing the bounds of the serialism that originated from Schoenberg’s Second Viennese School. Due to this, many musicologists consider it the first true minimalist composition, although the school has quite clearly diverged since then. Not only does In C have no specified tempo, it also has no specified instruments or number of performers. Recordings range from 30 to 90 minutes in length, with between 11 and 124 musicians playing.
Glassworks (1982): Philip Glass (Philip Glass) DS: As mentioned in the introduction to this playlist, the awkwardly coined term “classical music” can hardly describe the vast amount of music that still continues to live on and reproduce. This collection of chamber works was written specifically for the recording studio, and in a way, for the Walkman (perhaps hardly any of you know what it is anymore). Glass intended to introduce his music to a younger generation. Each of Glassworks’ six movements is less than eight minutes long, and all of them can stand alone as individual pieces. If you have long held prejudices against “classical music,” this postmodern album may be able to change your mind. Absolute Jest (2012): John Adams (Saint Lawrence Quartet; Michael Tilson Thomas/San Francisco Symphony Orchestra) DS: Absolute Jest was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony for its 100th anniversary, and the piece itself is full of both obvious and secret quotations of Beethoven. The most obvious ones are from the C-sharp minor quartet, the Große Fugue, and CONTINUED ON PAGE 29
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the Ninth Symphony; as Adams puts it, “such materials are being put through a John Adams machine,” outputting what seems to be Beethoven but deep down is pure John Adams. For those Beethoven fans (Bernie Sanders among them), finding the Beethoven quotes can be like solving a mystery puzzle, and those who aren’t can still appreciate the joy and fun this piece embodies.
Mad Rush (1989): Philip Glass (Philip Glass) DX: I’m a sucker for solo piano, but I’m usually more of a Chopin and Ravel kind of guy. For people like me, Glass’s Mad Rush is a needed reminder that complexity is not always necessary for solo piano. Pretty much the same melodic line repeats, reforms itself, and changes ever so slightly over the course of 15 minutes, but it never becomes dull or even seems repetitive. It’s one of those pieces that remains beautiful no matter how long you listen to it: quite the accomplishment for something so minimal. There’s something cinematic about it, too. Perhaps it is a cold winter day in the streets of Manhattan, and someone has just started for home ... On the Transmigration of Souls (2002): John Adams DX: There aren’t many composers who can claim to have created a masterful classical composition that begins by playing pre-recorded tape, but that is what Adams has done in On the Transmigration of Souls. The piece was commissioned as a memorial for the victims of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and is scored for orchestra, SATB choir, and children’s choir in addition to the aforementioned tape. The tape plays sound effects and voices that repeat the names of victims as well as the word “missing” in the piece’s exposition, creating a vividly eerie effect when juxtaposed with the wordless chorus. It gets pretty intense later on, so be sure to stay for all 25 minutes.
Wim Hof
Who is Wim Hof? By ABE MESSING
There exists a special breed of athletes whose impressive accomplishments have been tremendously overshadowed by those of the most well-known athletes of today. This breed of athletes does not play with a ball or compete in the way that others do; instead, they literally test the limits of their bodies in the rawest form—genuinely putting mind over body in a way that most big-name pros could only hope to imagine. Just as there are people who have developed abnormally high IQs, there are people who have mastered control over their bodies. These unsung heroes are the freaks, the mutants, the seemingly fantastical people who inspire wild fiction. Among them is Wim Hof. Cold is not a word that Wim Hof is familiar with. Aside from holding 20 world records involving enduring extreme cold, including being immersed in an ice bath for over 98 minutes, Hof has also climbed Mt. Everest and Mt. Kilimanjaro in nothing but shorts and shoes (temperatures were as low as -4 degrees Fahrenheit). Hof also went more than the extra mile when he completed a full marathon above the Arctic Circle in a little over five hours. Hof is, to say the least, a freak of nature. The impressive resume that Hof has garnered for himself over the years does not go without question. How does he do it? Can I do it too? Does he worry about hypothermia? All of these questions have answers, but not all of them are simple. Hof explains his mysterious method of resisting the cold as an ability to “turn his own thermostat up.” Hof believes
in the power of yogic breathing, which is called Tummo. Tummo, which means inner heat, is a special type of yoga that (unsurprisingly) is intended to allow you to control your inner heat. In his six-step exercise, when done correctly, the student will be able to take control of and regulate their bodily temperature. Hof has written a book entitled Becoming the Iceman, which guides people along the way to invulnerability from the cold. Interestingly enough, hypothermia does not affect him, seeing as his blood flow remains at a healthy level. Currently, Hof is being studied by Maria Hopman of the UMC St. Radboud Nijmegen Institute in order to get a good understanding of his phenomenal ability. Although Hof is still somewhat of a mystery to science, Hopman has concluded that he has control over his autonomic nervous system. This control allows him to regulate his breathing rate, heart rate, and body temperature. Hof does not shiver, nor does his heart rate increase as his metabolism doubles. There are still many unanswered questions regarding Hof, but the way to an enormous scientific breakthrough is slowly being uncovered. Without a doubt, Hof has disproved the impossible. Unlike any other professional athlete, Wim Hof has truly overcome any mental blockades. His form of athleticism transcends the traditional definition of the word itself and makes a category of its own. Athletes of this caliber are few and far between but are equally as notable as any conventional athlete.
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Pretty Soon, Being a Knicks Fan Might Not be so Bad By THEO COWETT 1. Kristaps Porzingis’s Improvement In Porzingis’ first year, he provided Knicks fans some much needed hope and proved that he was worthy of the fourth overall draft pick. There was talk before the season began that he wouldn’t even play this time around, instead taking time to gain muscle and work on other aspects of his game. Porzingis decided to forgo the weight training, however, and in spite of his thin, lanky build, he was able to hang with the stronger and heavier players at the center position and seemed more than comfortable against fellow power forwards. Throughout the season, he noticeably improved his post game and defense. Following the all-star break, though, Porzingis began to encounter difficulties. He hit something of a “rookie wall,” struggling to shoot, and appeared more and more fatigued as the season wore on. To add to his troubles, he battled recurring shoulder injuries that took him out of six of the Knicks’ last eight games. There is still much from Porzingis to look forward to next year in spite of all this. Look out for Porzingis to add more muscle and gain a little weight to be able to battle with NBA bigs. With some training, Porzingis will be able to utilize his post moves to a higher degree and become a nightmare for defenders. Knicks fans should also expect less injuries and less fatigue from the Latvian, as he now knows the rigour and brutality of a full 82-game NBA season.
2. A New Coach Following the firing of Derek Fisher, assistant coach Kurt Rambis was appointed as interim head coach. Rambis, one of general manager Phil Jackson’s best friends, struggled mightily in his first stint as head coach: the Knicks were consistently abysmal throughout this season. And despite his interim position, Rambis seemed to be given much more leeway than Fisher ever received. There has been talk that the Knicks are thinking about Rambis as full-time head coach, which seems a little ridiculous considering the team has been much worse under him than it ever was with Fisher. Most likely, a new head coach will be appointed this summer. With Phil Jackson still in charge of all basketball operations in New York, the headcoach-to-be-hired will most likely be one of
his former colleagues who will run the famous triangle offense effectively. Some names to consider are Brian Shaw, Luke Walton, and possibly even former Knicks great Patrick Ewing. As this season concludes and the offseason begins, look for the Knicks to take some time to survey their options and hire a new coach.
3. New and Improved Roster As seems to be the case every season, the Knicks roster simply lacks talent. The addition of players signed in as free agents doesn’t seem to be doing the job. Yes, Robin Lopez and Derrick Williams were solid pickups, but players such as Arron Afflalo, Kevin Seraphin, and Jose Calderon never played up to expectations. Afflalo has been undoubtedly the most disappointing. Signed from the Trail Blazers, Knicks fans thought Afflalo was going to be the franchise shooting guard for years to come. However, a mixture of poor defense and horrific shooting have led this former perennial all-star to fall out of the starting lineup and onto the bench. Afflalo has had back and forth arguments with Coach Rambis and appears to be unhappy in New York. Luckily for the Knicks, they will have the cap room and players to make trades and sign some quality players this summer. Their major goal would have to be luring either Russell Westbrook or Kevin Durant to the Big Apple. Also look for the Knicks to pursue Kent Bazemore, a hard-nosed player who has gained the respect of Lebron James for his play on the defensive end. The biggest need the Knicks have is for a true point guard. There aren’t many great options available this summer, but a few names to consider are Brandon Jennings, Rajon Rondo, and Mike Conley. These players would all be significant upgrades from Jose Calderon. The Knicks roster next season will be full of young faces, and hopefully, more talent.
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
Sports in Space By MAGDA KOSSOWSKA
As the human race continues and expands its exploration of space, along for the ride is something besides millions of dollars worth of spacecraft and equipment: sports. In their small amount of free time, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), as well as other spacecrafts, have been slowly developing sports and competitive activities to keep morale high. American astronaut Peggy Whitson organized fun, albeit slightly risky, relay races across the ISS during her second mission in 2007. That same year, American astronaut Sunita Williams became the first person to run the Boston Marathon from the ISS. Garrett Reisman, then on a mission for NASA, mentioned the accidental discovery of a sport while filling water bottles in 2008: “We realized how massive these bags were and we started tossing them, kind of like a medicine ball. Then you realize you could toss and catch and go for a ride on this big thing as it takes you away.” In zero gravity, some sports take on new dimensions. In 2006, Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang threw a Frisbee in outer space, breaking the record for time spent aloft by a Frisbee. After throwing the ceremonial first pitch for a Yankees–Red Sox baseball game from the ISS in 2008, Reisman mentioned having to learn to throw in a straight line, since a traditional parabolic toss there would not be able to return the ball to the ground in the absence of gravity. In the future, administering sports in outer space could be a potential aspect of space tourism. Several startup groups in recreational space travel are expected to eventually construct zero-gravity stadiums for sports. Evidently, this will begin on a small scale, but even then the expenses of space travel make it questionable that space tourism will become widely available anytime soon. With this developing futuristic notion of playing sports without gravity, there is a possibility of ever more fantastical activities. As people become more innovative with this concept, even sports such as Quidditch could become a realistic possibility. Depending on growth rates in the industry, a zero-gravity Olympics held in outer space may not be too farfetched either.
THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
SPORTS
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Athlete Feature: Sylvie Studier IMAGE PROVIDED
By MARLO ZORMAN
Sylvie Studier ’16
Sylvie Studier ’16 has been running varsity track for IHS longer than anyone currently on the team—in fact, she has been on the team since the time most kids were only playing modified sports at Boynton and DeWitt. After a successful six years of varsity track, Sylvie is heading into her final season. Having done track for some years myself I was curious to hear Sylvie’s take on the team this year, and her plans for the future. Marlo Zorman ’16: You’ve been running varsity track for years now. How is this season different from your first? Sylvie Studier ’16: I’ve been on the team for 6 years now. The team that I was with my first year is completely different from the one now; there isn’t one person who was on it who's still there [they’ve all graduated]. MZ: I know that track has lost a lot of people. Now that you’re gearing up for invitationals, what spots do you think the team will need to fill? And how do you think the team can do that? SS: We have definitely lost some valuable teammates in the past few years in both
sprinting and distance, but I feel like we can come back strong as ever. Our team is really dedicated this year and I think people will be very willing to jump into different events. Most of our runners do at least three events per meet. MZ: What are your goals for the season? How do you plan on achieving them before the year is over? SS: I want to have my best season yet. Ideally, that would include PRing (setting a new personal record) and getting to States. Hopefully, with my preseason prep and our rigorous practices, I’ll be able to do that before the season is up. MZ: Where are you going to college, and do you plan on vaulting? If not, do you have anything else planned? SS: I’m committed to George Washington University, and although I’d love to continue vaulting in college, they do not have a track team and I got recruited to row there instead. I’m really excited to be joining their great program next year!
MZ: If you had to pick one favorite memory from your time running track, what would it be? SS: I think Ithaca Relays is easily my favorite day of every season. Running under the lights in such a competitive atmosphere on the home track is amazing. I couldn’t ever choose just one year that would be my favorite. MZ: What is the biggest impact that running track has had on you (a change, a source of motivation, etc.)? SS: [Track] has been such a big part of my life for so long that I think there’s little it hasn’t impacted. I think it has made me more motivated for sure, and I think it really shaped how I work as an athlete.
MZ: What will you miss the most about track? The least? SS: I definitely will miss the family atmosphere that the team has always fostered for me and the coaches. Ah, it’s so hard to decide what I’ll miss the most. I’ll miss it all. Except maybe running hills. I think I can live without that.
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THE TATTLER • MAY 2016 • ihstattler.com
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The Great Sudoku Challenge By CLAIRE SALOFF-COSTE
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UNCOOL