Inks may 30

Inklings May 30, 2014 Founded in 1933 inklingsnews.com

Students debate wi-fi policy Claudia Chen ’16

PHOTO BY JUSTINE SELIGISON ’15

FACILITATED FRIENDSHIP A speech and language teacher, Christine Frederick, works with third grader Harrison Putnam, to help him navigate the computer system to communicate with Wyatt Davis ’14, during one of their mentoring sessions. Despite different communication software, Frederick has found a solution, and the two have become fast friends.

Friendship flourishes in mentoring program Adam Kaplan ’16

A

n awkward silence looms in the air between Wyatt Davis ’14 and Harrison Putman during one of their first meetings.

Suddenly Davis breaks the silence: “What’s your favorite baseball team?”

“I like the Yankees,” Harrison replies.

A snicker sounds. “Eww Yuck!”

The two of them break out in laughter, and a friendship stronger than stone is formed.

Both Davis’ and Putman’s lives have been affected by cerebral palsy (CP), which, according to KidsHealth, is a disorder that

affects muscle tone, movement, and motor skills.

For Davis, it means that cerebral palsy has completely shut down most of his ability to move.

Despite his physical shortcomings, Davis has had his own radio show, taken photos for Inklings and won student of the month.

Davis’s accolades caught the attention of Putman, an eightyear-old at Greens Farms Elementary School. The Special Ed departments at GFS and Staples met up and agreed to have a once a week “hang-out” between the two students.

The problem with the two meeting at first was communication software differences; as a result the pair could not have

full conversations. But Speech and Language teacher Christine Frederick solved that problem.

“Harrison got his new talker, and we knew that Wyatt used the same set of pictures, so we wanted to see if they could hang out with each other. At first Wyatt was hesitant, but they had so many similar interests they bonded immediately,” Frederick said.

Sharon Magera Gunther, the paraprofessional for Davis, also spoke of the sessions starting off strong. The bond, she said, “was instantaneous. They are both so alike, both such great people.”

The two boys make every second of their one-hour sessions count as they talk about topics from siblings to sports. They

Staples put under new lock and key Aileen Coyne ’16 & Bailey Ethier ’15 Almost 18 months ago, Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 elementary school students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. While the shootings have prompted a nationwide debate regarding school security, Staples hasn’t had a lockdown drill this school year. And the first physical and significant security changes, installing new locks on interior doors throughout the district’s eight schools, will be implemented this summer.

The system’s delays were prompted by a series of events.

spice up their activities from time to time, playing games like bingo.

Davis has taken on the responsibility of being Putman’s role model head-on as he continues to be an active influence.

“One day, Wyatt was playing his radio show, and he wanted to show Harrison what he can accomplish,” Megara Gunther added.

The day before Putman’s birthday, Davis made sure to give him a big surprise. The previous day, Davis threw the first pitch out to adoring fans during Staples’ 2-1 game against Greenwich. He returned to Greens Farms the next day with a game ball, along with a new Staples baseball hat.

Putman was thrilled.

INFOGRAPHIC BY MEGAN ROOT ’15

The Westport Board of Education (BOE) was scheduled to vote on a contract with a security auditing firm, Kroll Advisory Services, on March 5, 2013. However, the BOE withdrew the vote that day due to controversy surrounding the selection. Some town officials wanted to consider other companies; some were unsure how useful Kroll’s report would be.

So the approval for the $100,000 Kroll report wasn’t finalized until June. Kroll then spent three days conducting an audit in September, once school began again, and the report was released to Superintendent Elliott Continued on page 3

Inside the Issue

Scrolling through her Facebook news feed during lunch, Emily Flood ’16 came across a picture of Iggy Azalea and Rita Ora dressed in revealing clothing. Intrigued, Flood almost clicked on the link.

Almost.

The knowledge that the school could see what she was viewing stopped her.

Many students forget that when they signed the Westport Public Schools Acceptable Use Policy, they agreed to this loss of privacy. The policy reminds students that their use of the school system’s computers is not private: the district reserves the right to monitor use.

“When using school resources, [people] have no expectation of privacy,” Coleytown middle school librarian John Horrigan said. “It’s like a locker; the administration wouldn’t normally go in it, but they can, and we’re not supposed to put our private resources out using school resources anyway.”

The issue of internet privacy has come into play recently. Supreme Court cases have considered the constitutionality of police seizures of cell phones; the press has also reported that the government has sought and received permission to monitor its own citizens online.

Although students’ cell phones are not being physically searched, the school’s monitoring of mobile devices raises similar questions, some feel. And with the situation involving the notorious app Yik Yak still fresh in the minds of many, the question of whether the school should have the right to monitor devices is more relevant than ever, students said.

Emma Cataldo ’16 said that monitoring is only necessary in situations like Yik Yak; otherwise, students deserve privacy. “[Tracking] IP addresses is the right thing to do,” Cataldo said. “People shouldn’t get away with things like Yik Yak.” But, she added, “students are people too, and all people deserve privacy.”

According to social studies teacher Rob Rogers, the school usually only monitors use in serious situations, though he said he is unsure what type of situation the administration would consider serious enough for a deeper look at a person’s internet traffic.

“Considering there are thousands of devices on our network, they are not seeing much,” he said. “That would need a team of people to monitor that kind of traffic.”

How often is student internet usage monitored by Westport Continued on page 5

13

Staples, Yik Yak, and Rape

The Westport Memorial Day Parade

11

2 News

Inklings / May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

New options for water consumption wash over Staples ecently, Club Green has been leading the initiative towards getting more students to permanently switch from plastic to reusable water bottles by raising money to have a water bottle refilling station installed in the school.

In order to raise this money, the club decided to sell reusable water bottles with the Staples logo on them for $10 each. By selling around 40 water bottles, they were able to raise enough money for at least one station, and they are currently deciding where it will be installed.

They hope that the new station will inspire students to bring their own water bottles to school and ultimately decrease the amount of waste that the school produces.

“A lot of plastic waste is generated by all the water bottles that are purchased each day, so this seemed like a way to promote reusable bottles to cut down on that waste,” Environmental teacher and Club Green advisor, Michael Aitkenhead said.

Although some students believe that these stations are unnecessary, many support the addition. “Everyone I know always spends the time to walk all the way to the nurse to get water that’s not from the water fountains, so I think it would be a good idea to add another station,” Sophie Rosen ‘15 said.

Aitkenhead believes that the station would serve as inspiration for students to bring their own water bottles. “If people have an easy and convenient way to refill their water bottles, perhaps they will choose that option more,” he said.

Along with cutting down on waste, the quality of the water coming from the new stations will most likely be better than that of the water fountains. According to Aitkenhead, these stations usually come with filters that will produce better tasting, cleaner water.

The intentions of Club Green are to have a positive effect on the Staples community by encouraging students to use reusable water bottles.

“We wanted to reduce the school's consumption of plastic water bottles and provide a clean, filtered source of water in the school. We hope to make people more conscious about being environmentally friendly and use reusable water bottles more often,” Emily Snow ’15, a member of Club Green, said.

INFOGRAPHIC BY MEGAN ROOT ‘15

R

Julie Bender ’15

Inklinations

Staples High School offers various locations for students and faculty to quench their thirst.

Where’s the best place in the school to get water?

“I like the water from the nurses’ office. It’s cold and tastes cleaner than the other water fountains.”

– Katherine Sommers ’15

GRAPHIC BY DEANNA HARTOG ’16

INKLINATIONS BY KATIE SETTOS ’15

“Near the 2060 area. It’s the coldest, nicest water in school. ” – Alec Bird ’16

“I know all of the water fountains in the school and the one near the Spanish hallway is the best. It’s so cold.”

– Jason Streider ’17

“The best-tasting water at Staples High School is in the Fitness Center. It’s cold and it tastes delicious. No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it unless you can get to a water bubbler.”

– Janet Zammery

News

Inklings / May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

Warrantless searches spark worry

Staples implements new safety measures Continued from page 1

Brandon Rakowski ’16

GRAPHIC BY OLIVIA CROSBY ’15

S

irens blare, each passing second a collision with your eardrum. A red light, then blue, then red again. You try to recall what TAG had taught you as you sat in health class; your hands tremble now. The police have arrived. While your brain’s probably crammed with a number of thoughts, one in particular should be considered - what will they do with my cell phone?

In the absence of a precedent governing phone searches and seizures, police officers in Connecticut do have the right to take your phone and search it, according to Officer Batlin of the Westport Police Department. The resounding response to this? “There’s no way that’s legal,” Nick Ribolla ‘16 said, shaking his head as he paused in the crowded hallway.

Yet phone searches have become an increasingly common tactic used by state police officers. Last year police in Weston confiscated and searched the phones of the high school soccer team while investigating a series of nude photos, Tyler Dyment ‘16, a student there, said.

“They took my phone and started searching around,” Dyment said. “It was pretty awkward, but I got through it.”

Police in Westport are searching phones, too, although, their policy is only to seize cell phones in cases where there is reason to believe that evidence resides on the phones, according to Officer Batlin. No warrant is required, however.

“Some examples of cases where phones have been seized were narcotics-related incidents, harassment, cyber bullying, child pornography and threatening,” Batlin said.

While Officer Batlin insists that students have nothing to worry about unless they are doing something illegal, Alex Uman ‘16 is not convinced.

Who’s to say what constitutes the type of cyber bullying or threats that are phone seizing worthy and which are not, Uman argues.

“I think it’s crazy that it’s basically an arbitrary process,” Uman said. “Discretion’s left

totally up to the police.”

Other students, like Isabel Perry ‘15, aren’t concerned with the current law. Perry argues that just because officers can search your phone, it doesn’t mean they will.

“Maybe I prefer to see the world through rose-colored glasses,” Perry said, “but I think that the police genuinely have the best interest of teens at heart.”

To Perry’s point, the number of times where police have overstepped their authority is currently unclear. Michael Corsello, a defense attorney based in Norwalk, said that while the topic is certainly hot, he hasn’t witnessed any real problems so far.

3

“If we do end up calling the department, their typical reaction is, ‘oops we’re sorry about that, sir’” Corsello said, chuckling slightly.

Things could change, though. Later this year, the Supreme Court will rule on two cases regarding cell phone searches, possibly establishing a precedent that alters the current framework.

For now, students will just have to live with the possibility of their phones, treasure troves of teenage texts, being looked through by the police.

This brings up an interesting question - if sirens do end up blaring, which will you clutch tighter? Your license or your iPhone?

Landon and the BOE in November. However, at a Dec. 18, 2013 BOE meeting, Landon said the report needed to be revised by January 2014. On April 29, the RTM approved the BOE’s request for the lock funding.

According to BOE Chair Elaine Whitney, the locks would cost $200,000 to install. However, Westport was awarded a 20.71% reimbursement through the competitive School Security Grant program from the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection/Emergency Management and Homeland Security. This brings the net cost to the district to around $160,000.

The decision to install new locks was based on Kroll’s report, which, in turn, was conducted in collaboration with the Westport police and fire departments, along with recommendations from the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, a 16-member state panel created by Conn. Governor Dannel Malloy to make public safety recommendations.

According to Whitney, the commission in particular said that the benefit of these new locks outweighed the cost because “precious seconds matter.”

Currently, the locks on interior doors in the district require physically having to enter the hallway to lock the door with a key. After these new locks are installed, doors would be locked any time they are closed. And in the case of an intruder, according to Whitney, designated administrators and first responders would have keys to unlock the doors from the outside once the situation was deemed safe.

Yet, some students weren’t as optimistic about these new locks.

“I think that if somebody entered the school looking to harm us and they had some sort of weapon, a lock [of any kind] won’t really prevent them from getting into the class,” Andrew Ingber ’16 said.

However, Principal John Dodig said there is not much more that can be done to reasonably increase safety and security.

“Very little if any other changes can be made to prevent someone from the outside with intentions to do harm unless we brick up all the windows and lock

all but the main door,” he said.

“You would have to put a fifteen foot fence around the place with armed guards.”

Other school districts in Fairfield County have already made concrete security improvements. Stamford public schools have installed more security cameras, and according to newstimes.com, Brookfield schools spent $110,000 on strengthening entrance doors and installing new glass.

The school district has increased communication between schools and the police and fire departments by creating school security and safety committees and bringing in a director of security and facilities. But students noted that the high school has not held a lockdown drill this year.

Students did undergo an emergency evacuation drill on Nov. 6, to Bedford Middle School.

Principal John Dodig said he considered evacuation drills to be “more important because they’re logistically more difficult.”

However, some students said they would prefer lockdown drills.

“I think it’s important to have them every year because while three-fourths of the school may already know what to do in a situation, the freshmen haven’t experienced a lockdown drill at Staples, and it’s important to understand how to handle it,” Sydney Sussman ’15 said. “There is a reason why we have fire drills so often: it is to be prepared, so why shouldn’t we have at least one lockdown drill a year?”

Ingber had similar concerns.

“It’s a bit concerning to me knowing that some school members are unaware of what to do in such circumstances, and to make matters worse, they aren’t even being taught how to act,” he said.

GRAPHIC BY DEANNA HARTOG ’16

Tennis This Summer!

New Summer Program Just For High School Students PTR Certified Tennis Pro and Westport Continuing Ed have teamed up to deliver a dynamite tennis program just for high school students.

Beginners and intermediate players. Three 2-week sessions, 10:00-11:30 am at the Staples courts.

More info: www.WestportTennis.com/highschool

Enjoy tennis! Stay fit! Have fun!

4 News

GRAPHIC BY DEANNA HARTOG ’16

Inklings / May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

Genius bar lands in library Caroline Cohen ’15

Y

Gabrielle Feinsmith ’15 The year is winding down, and Staples students and teachers are making up their minds on standards based grading. This year, five Staples math teachers used the system. What will happen next year is still up in the air.

“It’s a pilot,” math teacher Caroline James said. “Certain teachers volunteered to be the guinea pigs.”

According to Mathematics Department Chair Frank Corbo, the math department does not yet have the data to reveal whether or not standards based grading is a more effective method of teaching. After finals, the math department is going to compare the scores of students in order to INFOGRAPHIC BY SOPHIA HAMPTON ’15

ou know the feeling: your wifi is spazzing out; your computer won’t print to the proper location in the building; you don’t even know how to use iMovie, let alone create a video with it for your history class.

But these sources of anxiety are about to be resolved. Next school year, Staples is getting a little bit smarter.

A new feature will be joining the Library Learning Commons in the fall. Although the new tech help desk does not have a name yet, according to social studies teacher Mr. Rogers, it will act in many ways like an Apple Genius Bar. Rogers envisions that this new help desk will be open before and after school in addition to each period of the day.

“Staffed by one or two students, it will be a place that students and staff can go to with tech questions about their device,” Rogers said. The service will help students use many programs such as iMovie or the school wifi.”

Rogers and a group of teacher and administrators conceived the idea at a Google Apps for Education conference last year when they heard about a tech help desk at Burlington High School.

“We thought we would benefit from a similar idea here at Staples,” Rogers said.

Although only teachers have been doing the “back-end work” on the project, student involvement will start soon. In the coming weeks, sophomores, juniors and incoming freshman will be able to apply to work the desk. If chosen, these students will work the desk as an Independent Study course and also create tutorials and projects to benefit the rest of the school in need of tech help.

“I feel like a tech desk is a great idea in theory,” Olivia Jones ’15 said. “But it wouldn’t be used very much. Most high schoolers at this point are pretty tech savvy.”

However, she noted that the wifi in school is definitely the biggest technological problem for most students. Lulu Stracher ’17 agreed, noting that students still have problems with the wifi and a tech-help desk could be really helpful to solve those issues, and others.

“A tech help desk would definitely be successful because when teachers send out a tech request it usually doesn’t get checked out immediately, and if there was a tech help desk the common problems that arise could be fixed really quickly.”

Stracher said.

“I think our ultimate goal is to have a place where both students and teachers have easy access to someone who can help them when they need that tech help,” Rogers said. “With someone at the desk who has those skills, we have a place where people can get hands-on help with their tech problems.”

Students reflect on standards based grading decide if this new type of grading will return next year, math teachers said.

According to Active Grade, the website used by the department to track scores, standard based grading rates student learning on specific goals on a four-point scale. Four is the highest score. The idea is that by the end of the year, students have mastered the essential content in order to move on to the next level of math. The new grading system has received some harsh criticism – but also praise – from students.

“I personally do not like standards based grading because, aside from the benefits of the reassessments, it is unfair,” Sydney Sussman ’15 said. “We could have an A average among

all standards; however, if we have one 2 in one standard, it automatically brings down our whole grade to a B+.”

Other students, however, felt that the constant ability to reassess built up their skills.

“I hope standards based grading remains at Staples. The reassessments have helped me so much this year, and the system is extremely progressive,” Lauren Garcia ’15 said.

The teachers who have decided to try out standards based grading seem to be in favor of the system. “I like how the students are able at any point in the year to demonstrate that they have mastered any concept. If the first time around doesn’t go great, they can prove at a later date that they un-

derstand by retesting,” Maggie Gomez, a math teacher, said.

The grading system was introduced to the math department by a science teacher who has enjoyed success using standards based grading. The teacher came to a math department meeting and shared the benefits. As a result, five math teachers were eager to try standards based grading.

Those interviewed said students are confused as to why different classes have different grading systems. Caroline James has a response to this, reminding students that this year’s classes that used the system were a pilot. “It wasn’t something all of us were going to do at the same time to make the change,” she said.

With whom would you go skydiving?

In a previous Inklings article, standards based grading was compared to a skydiving class:

Skydiver C -Started the class with a lot of experience -Did not learn anything -Did not improve, got worse -Adequate skydiver, makes frequent mistakes

Skydiver A

-Started the class with no prior experience -Learned each new concept fully -Improved progressivly -Skydives flawlessly

Skydiver B -Started the class with some experience -Learned a few of the concepts -Improved sporatically -Skydives fine some days, makes some mistakes

In a class with regular grading, all of the “skydivers” could theoretically recieve the same average grade. In a class with standards based grading, only skydiver A would receive an A, and skydiver B and C would get lower grades.

Cheaters challenge learning centers Amina Abdul-kareem ’15 It doesn’t take a mastermind to successfully cheat.

With the quick turn of a teacher’s back, students say, good strategy comes into play, whether it’s writing the answers under your sleeve, or on the desk before taking the test, or peeking down at your phone during a test. And learning centers are the easiest places to successfully carry out such devious plans.

Wendy Winkler, a frequent monitor of the Math and Science Learning Center (MSLC), claims there was definitely cheating going on when she started at the MSLC four years ago. “I caught several students using their phones during tests,” Winkler said. The math and science departments jointly resolved that students’

phones would be collected before taking tests, which she said seems to have stopped the problem.

Principal John Dodig said he believes cheating is only a part of human nature, but the digital age has helped the rise of cheating.

“Cheating, in general, has been going on in schools since the first school was built.

When I was in school, it was restricted to a piece of paper or something written on your hand,” Dodig said.

The Academic Integrity Handbook states, “All students are expected to exhibit ethical behavior in meeting their academic responsibilities.

Cheating, plagiarism and other violations of the academic integrity policy carry serious consequences including grade

and course failure.”

However, some students choose to take the risk.

An anonymous student said she took advantage of the learning center’s reputation as an easy place to cheat and purposely skipped her chemistry test so she could cheat on it in the learning center. “I wrote notes about the test on papers,” she said.

Students said they take advantage of cheating while teachers on duty help other students. English teacher Amanda Parrish-Morgan is aware of this phenomenon and tries to design assessments that are not considered easy to cheat on.

“Some tests are open-book and others are not, and some students who have invested more energy in cheating than in learning have figured out

these cracks in the system,” Parrish-Morgan said.

English Teacher Alex Miller thinks the individual desks in the English and Social Studies Learning Center make it easier to cheat since teachers can’t clearly see what students are doing.

“I know that honest people have behaved less than honestly when presented with an opportunity to do so without fear of consequence,” Miller said. “So, to make a long story short, I think they should get rid of those desks.”

Dodig believes that the best thing the administration can do is inform students of the consequences of cheating.

“The academic integrity policy is only as effective as the integrity of each individual student,” Dodig said.

News

Inklings / May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

Westport warms to possibility of solar panels Justine Seligson ’15 magine a form of energy that is completely clean, renewable and inexpensive in the long run. It has none of the filth of fossil fuels. Using it on a large-scale basis would allow many people to enjoy the typical benefits of electricity, while at the same time live without the guilt of burning dirty, finite fuel.

Solar panel systems, can create this clean energy, and Board of Education [BOE] is considering installing them on the roofs of at least some of the Westport Public Schools. Because of government subsides, installing the panels immediately would cost little to nothing.

“We would be producing less carbon emission and would be saving more money in the long run,” Robby Gershowitz ’14, Club Green co-president and member of Green Task Force said.

But the solution raises questions, mainly about the indirect costs potentially incurred with installation.

Elaine Whitney, BOE Chair, said the Board worries that since most Westport school roofs are older, they will need to be replaced relatively soon. This would mean removing the solar panels. Leakage is another fear, she said.

“The ideal scenario would be putting in new roofs at the same time as the solar panels,” Whitney said. “Our goal is to ensure the integrity of our roofs.”

What makes the entire decision so difficult is the exceptionally low cost for installation of the panels.

Michael Aitkenhead, an AP environmental science teacher explained that if Westport schools were to proceed with solar panels, a power company would pay for all the necessary costs of implementation and management. This purchase power agreement would

I

D’Amico will move downtown to replace Lis Comm as the Director of Secondary Education.

Upstairs from social studies, Math Department Chair Frank Corbo will be retiring.

John Wetzel, a current mathematics teacher, will replace him. “The mathematics program and its teachers are phenomenal in Westport, and I look forward to being part of the leadership team,” Wetzel said.

May 29 – June 1 Staples Players presents “Infinite Black Suitcase,” written by EM Lewis. There are performances on May 29, 30, 31, and June 1. The performance will take place in the Black Box Theater and is directed by David Roth.

Auditions for Cabaret

June 3 and/or June 4 For students interested in performing in the Staples Players’ summer show, “Cabaret,” dance auditions will take place June 9. The first day of rehearsals is June 23 and the performances are July 24–26.

Senior Prom

June 7 The senior prom will take place at the Stamford Marriot on June 7. Students are required to attend the prom from 8 p.m. – 10 p.m., but can get there as early as 7 p.m. and leave as late as 11 p.m.

Yankee Doodle Fair

June 12 – June 15 The 2014 Yankee Doodle Fair will take place on Thursday, June 12 and Friday, June 13 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. On Saturday June 14, it will take place from 1p.m. to 10 p.m.

The last day, Sunday, will be June 15, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Finals Start

Wi-fi surveilance fuels debate Continued from page 1 schools’ technology department?

Director of Technology Natalie Carrignan did not respond to emails requesting this information.

Students believe that surveillance is very minimal; this perception leads to mixed opinions.

“The staff doesn’t just sit around all day constantly monitoring us,” Nick Ribolla ’16 said.

“Trust me, we aren’t that interesting.”

However, some students were still uncomfortable. Ian Blanchardon ’15 said that the notion that the school is able to see what students do on their computers is “creepy.”

Becky Hoving ’17 said that students would not want the school to see text or Facebook messages, comparing it to a teacher listening in at a lunch

table conversation.

“Even if the conversations were not inappropriate or degrading to anyone, it would just be uncomfortable for a teacher to hear your lunch table conversation,” she said. “I think that’s the same as a text or Facebook message.”

Flood agreed, saying that students would not want their browser histories to be monitored, even if they weren’t on bad website.

Others felt that the school had a right to monitor use.

Hoving pointed out that while it can be seen as a violation of privacy, all students signed the Code of Conduct, so the administration has the right to step in.

“There’s a devil and angel side. You’re taking away my rights, but there are certain things that school has the right to do,” Flood said. “It’s a gray area.”

GRAPHIC BY JULIA SCHORR ’16 PHOTOS BY CAROLINE O’KANE ’16

In Brief Infinite Black Suitcase

essentially turn the schools’ roofs into power plants, which is why schools would not be charged anything.

Aitkenhead said that if the schools want to go ahead with this project, the best time to do so is immediately.

“Right now the government subsidizes solar energy in Connecticut,” Aitkenhead explained.

“But these funds are highly limited. Once these funds run out, businesses won’t have the frame to do these large-scale installations in that it would still be profitable to them.”

Much of the benefit of solar panels stems from environmental sustainability.

Photovoltaic cells emit no pollutants and on a long-term scale can save people tens of thousands of dollars in lifetime energy costs. Some people feel that installation of a solar system on many of the Westport schools is worth the potential repair costs.

The main advocate for this new type of energy is the Green Task Force, which, since its 2006 inception, has aimed to bring renewable resource use up to 20 percent of local energy consumption. At the April 7 BOE meeting, the task force made a proposal to develop complete solar electricity on the roofs of at least some of the Westport Public Schools.

The immediate hope is to bring photovoltaic cells to Saugatuck Elementary School, which is in the best position in regards to efficiency and finances.

This idea is far from new.

According to Aitkenhead, the initial thought for large-scale utilization of photovoltaic cells dates back five to six years.

“The idea has been floating around for some time,” Aitkenhead said.

Note: at press time, Inklings learned that the school district approved installation of panels.

New department chairs are announced For the next school year, changes are occurring in various departments throughout Westport public schools.

Lauren Francese, a current social studies teacher, will be replacing James D’Amico as the social studies department chair. “I’m excited to take on a new professional journey and continue to work with colleagues that I’ve worked with and continue to support Westport students,” Francese said.

GRAPHIC BY SOPHIA HAMPTON ’15

5

June 13 On June 13, students will begin finals. On Friday, students will take finals for their period 8 and 5 classes.

On Monday, finals for period 7 and 6 will be administered.

On Tuesday, period 3 and 2 will give their finals. And on Wednesday students will finish their last day of the school year with their period 1 and 4 finals.

Graduation

June 20 The class of 2014 will be graduating at 2 p.m. on June 20. Graduation will take place in the field house…make sure to bring a fan!

Important Dates for Seniors

June 8 Scholar Athlete Dinner 5p.m. – 6p.m June 9 Senior Class Trip June 10 Awards Night, 7:30p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

June 13 Last day of internship For updates check www.inklingsnews.com

6

Opinions May 30, 2014

GRAPHIC BY AUDREY SEO ’16

Let’s face it

W

hen Yik-Yak shoved its way into Staples, students didn’t know where to turn. We needed someone

Inklings EDITORIAL

to tell us how to cope. We needed someone to tell us that it would be okay. We needed help.

That day, the day Yik Yak first appeared, the administration said there was nothing they could do. Just ignore the app, we were told. Don’t look at it.

Overnight, the administration somehow got the app blocked. They thought

that was enough. What they didn’t realize is that it wasn’t even the terrorizing posts on the app that were the problem; it was the kids behind the posts.

Yik Yak didn’t turn kids into bullies.

There have been bullies before Yik Yak, and there will be bullies after Yik Yak. Yik Yak only enabled the administration to see this spite close-up.

And unfortunately, the victims of Yik Yak didn’t magically forget what had been said about them after the app was blocked.

The emotional pain from being called “fat” or “fag” still remained.

Blocking the app didn’t make everything right Editors-in-Chief Zoe Brown Bailey Ethier

Silver Crown Award for Inklingsnews.com from Columbia Scholastic Press Association 2013 Silver Crown Award for Newspaper Columbia Scholastic Press Association 2013 Pacemaker from National Scholastic Press Association 2013

All the opinions, news, and features in this paper are those of Staples High School students. Inklings, a curricular and extracurricular publication, has a circulation of 1,800 and is uncensored. All letters to the editor must be signed. The editorial board reserves the right not to publish letters and to edit all submissions as it sees fit. The editorial board determines all editorial opinions, which are authored faithfully by the Editors-in-Chief. Inklings reserves the right to not publish advertisements that promote products that could be harmful to student health.

The paper is a member of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and the National Scholastic Press Association and supports the Student Press Law Center.

Managing Editors Alexandra Benjamin Caroline Cohen Web Managing Editors Nicole DeBlasi Cadence Neenan Breaking News Managing Editors Andrea Frost Taylor Harrington Directors of Social Media Mat Jacoleff Larissa Lieberson Associate Managing Editors Gabrielle Feinsmith Claire Lewin Photo Coordinator Justine Seligson Creative Directors Olivia Crosby Claudia Landowne Katie Settos

again. It was like slapping a band aid on a cut that needed stitches.

Did the attackers writing the posts change? Did the victims feel better?

Staples is not perfect.

Yes, we always hear about who won award after award on the announcements, but we’re not perfect. Staples is not a paradise. It’s high school.

As much as we enjoy being given the freedom of adults, we’re still only kids.

We need guidance. We need structure.

We need someone to tell us when and why and how our behavior is out of line.

We need more than to be told to ignore the problem.

News Editors Greta Bjornson Sophia Hampton Deanna Hartog Megan Root Opinions Editors Emma Berry Quinn Hughes Emma Lederer Izzy Ullman Features Editors Claudia Chen Jackie Cope Jane Levy Margaux MacColl A&E Editors Jessica Gross Sarah Sommer Renee Weisz Emily Wolfe Sports Editors Claire Dinshaw Dylan Donahue Adam Kaplan Fritz Schemel

Yes, Staples is an academically challenging school that successfully prepares students for the rest of their lives. We send kids to some of the best schools in the country. We’ve even won a Blue Ribbon award for our excellence.

Here, we are defined by more than our grades.

Along with learning how to integrate functions or analyze rhetorical strategies, we are taught to communicate with others and to be creative, critical and global thinkers.

But isn’t high school about more than learning material and skills? We need an environment, a community, that helps us develop good character traits.

Web News Editors Kaila Finn Daniela Karpenos Web Opinions Editors Julie Bender Michael Mathis Web Features Editors Rachel Treisman Jane Schutte Web A&E Editors Zach McCarthy Blake Rubin Web Sports Editors Talia Hendel Jimmy Ray Stagg Business Manager Kacey Hertan Assistant Business Managers Chase Gornbein Jacquelyn Sussman Web Multimedia Editor Adam Kaufman

The administration has tried to create that with communication time. But judging by the minimal structured discussion that followed the Yik Yak catastrophe, these 15 minutes just don’t suffice.

We have homeroom, but only, give or take, four times a year.

We need to be able to talk about issues like Yik Yak in an open yet stable environment, monitored by adults, led by students.

We need a place and a time to discuss – with other teens – the problems we face during high school.

We need a place and a time to talk through and solve our problems, rather than neglect or forget them.

Advisers Mary Elizabeth Fulco Rebecca Marsick Julia McNamee Lauren Francese 70 North Ave. Westport, CT 06880 Phone: (203) 341–1994 Inklingsnews@gmail.com Decisions of Inklings are made without regard to race, color, age, sex, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, disability or any other discriminating basis prohibited by local, state, or federal law.

Letters to the editor

7

May 30, 2014

Staples alum expresses disappointment regarding Yik Yak

DRAWING BY OLIVIA CROSBY ’15

D

ear Staples Yik Yak Users, You don’t know me (except for you, Will Haskell!

Well done, by the way. Your article has inspired much-needed conversation and participation from a Staples alumnus in the midst of writing her master’s thesis), but I only support the use of anonymity in service of sociopolitical hacktivism, so please allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Michelle Esteva, and, for the majority of my senior year at Staples, I was Editor-inChief of Inklings. Before that, I was bullied.

I started at Staples with a folder full of hand-drawn cartoons and zero social aspirations. Despite my predilection for library lunches and party-ofone weekends, I couldn’t evade high school’s insistent clichés.

Many of those came in the form of text messages—the original “thing”—typed on 19th-century keyboards with cushiony buttons. I can still picture my flipphone’s tiny green screen and the crude black font that warned: “Some older girls want to kick the shit out of you.”

The next day, one of them shoved me in the hallway. I don’t remember her name, but my present self thanks her for allowing me to appreciate Mean Girls on a more ironic level than most of my friends. Ah, memories.

Was it Maya Angelou who said, “People will forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel”? I think I read that on a random Instagram account and it’s half true.

A n y w a y, speaking of feelings, it’s rare that a 24 year-old feels old. But man, you’re appifying your school experience nowadays?

I bought my first iPhone as a freshman in college, when

the word “app” was a memetic murmur amongst techies. I’d be impressed by your aptitude (pun retroactively intended), if I wasn’t ashamed.

After you graduate and start to talk to different sorts of people

you have to answer Westport. For me, that response most often elicits a single eyebrow raise and the occasional chortle followed by a drawn-out ooh. Great education, you’ll sigh as you maneuver to another topic.

Well, not so much anymore. When you’re sitting in Central Park and you overhear an adjacent table of strangers blasting your high school for making suicide jokes on a public platform, you know you’re no longer getting away with a deflective response strategy. Thanks, guys. But, in all seriousness, nobody should be

Are you ready to code regret into the emotional DNA of your future selves? face-to-face, Where’d you grow up? is a bankable icebreaker. Even if you’re a native New Yorker who was relocated to the suburbs against her pre-adolescent will,

embarrassed to admit where they spent their formative years—especially Staples students.

With great privilege comes great expectation. Do I sound like Peter Parker’s uncle with a dash of Dickens? Good. I trust that the administration’s behavioral psychologist team is figuring out how to address whatever cocktail of sublimated insecurities led you to spew unwarranted hate vomit, but you don’t need that noise, do you? Nah. You’re smart humans. And that’s an understatement. You’re better educated and cared for than most of the people on this planet, let alone the next town over.

So why do you collectively insist that the place where you spend the majority of your time be a hellish zoo of built and virtual torture chambers? Before

Mr. Haskell’s piece, New York Magazine published its January 2013 cover story on the trauma that is the American high school experience. In it, Rutgers sociologist Keith Hampton suggests, “Before Facebook, there was a real discontinuity between our high-school selves and the rest of our lives…Social ties that would have gone dormant now remain accessible over time, and all the time.”

Are you ready to code regret into the emotional DNA of your future selves? One day, you’ll be using apps to order fair trade baby wipes and send money to hurricane victims, or something.

It gets better, but you won’t escape how bad it got.

With sympathy, Michelle Esteva ’08

Past editorial raises concerns about perceptions of diversity Although the attempt to approach the touchy subject of race in “Damaged by lack of diversity” is admirable, it stands as an article written for, effectively but solely, the Caucasian majority of Staples’ student body. The claim that Westport cannot provide diversity may be true on a larger scale, but it is a claim certainly not supported by the student body, which is 10 percent nonCaucasian. I am not willing to round this 10 percent to 0.

I agree that diversity pro-

vides perspective that a large majority of Staples students have not gained. And while escaping the Westport bubble will enable these students to do so, I believe that it is inappropriate to focus on this hardship of the white student body when the non-white minorities at Staples remain silently bullied.

I have been bullied for my Asian face. Yet beyond that, it is the simple action of being overlooked that hurts me the most.

“Damaged by lack of diversity”

places a value on non-white cultures found outside of Westport, yet fails to even mention, much less appreciate, all of the diversity that is present at Staples.

And this is not a stand-alone event. Staples keeps records of each and every student’s personal data. These records include names, genders, birthdays, and ethnicities. Yet the premade choices for ethnicity span a record low of four. This, of course, creates complications, and worse, compromises in how one cat-

egorizes him/herself. Our urge to categorize human beings is bad enough. Our tendency to stick them in pre-determined boxes is inhumane.

Then there’s me.

Categorizations like this lead me to call myself a mutt. I must be a dog, after all, since I am more than one race. Humans, of course, fit into one of four categories. There is no box for me.

I must choose a box, I am told. I must fit in. I must objectify myself.

This is why articles like “Damaged by lack of diversity” anger me. I agree with its overall message. I do. But it is plain offensive to be told, however accidentally, that the white student body is suffering from a lack of non-whites when non-whites continue to be overlooked and objectified, daily.

Perhaps you are being “damaged” by a lack of diversity. But I am being ripped apart by it.

Monique Medina ’15

8 Opinions

Inklings / May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

Spring allergies strike Staples Students have issues with tissues Aaron Hendel ’14

M

odern medicine has come pretty darn far in the last several decades.

There have been cures developed for formerly fatal diseases like influenza and leprosy, and treatments for, among others, HIV. So why are allergies still a thing?

I’m not talking about the classic lactose-intolerant, or the depressing peanut allergenic.

I’m talking about those spring allergies. Hay fever.

When a little pollination leads to, give or take, two months of

brutality.

And in my situation, as someone who has worn contact lenses since the start of middle school, the troubles only worsen.

Here’s my daily procedure: wake up, blow my nose, drown my pupils in eye drops, take around eight pills, dissolvers, and other forms of medication; blow my nose again, sneeze three times, rub my eyes, remember I’m not supposed to rub my eyes, reinsert the eye drops, try to find more tissues, give up on the search, and go to school.

And repeat.

All day.

Until I go to sleep.

For those who have dealt with chicken pox, I’d say allergies are the optical equivalent.

The more times eyes get rubbed, like the scratching of the red dots, the worse the pain and discomfort gets. But avoiding the rubbing is one of the many challenges of allergy season.

Some might say that allergies are actually a blessing in disguise, that when they’re over, everything seems so great: the nature of late spring into early summer, the New England atmosphere, an appreciation for life.

And to that I say: blasphemy.

INFOGRAPHIC BY EMMA BERRY ’15 AND QUINN HUGHES ’16 STARISTICS FROM THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF ALLERGY, ASTHMA & IMMUNOLOGY AND THE CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION

All About Our Allergies 30% of adults and 40% of children in America are affected by nasal allergies

17.6 million adults have been diagnosed with allergies in the last year.

7.8 million children have been diagnosed with allergies in the last year.

11.1 million visits to a physician’s office due to allergies have occurred in the last year.

Katie Cion ’14 The only point of being sick is getting out of school.

The silver lining–is this the pun?– of any gut-wrenching–no this is– stomach bug or bout of strep throat is getting to endure it under a pile of comforters watching Olivia Pope almost make out with the president in the Oval Office on Scandal, the distant prospect of make-up work clouded by a double dose of Dayquil.

So the worst kind of sick is sick-but-not-sick-enough-to-stayhome-and-get-out-of-Calculus.

It’s the sort of common cold or nausea that doesn’t quite necessitate a day in bed, skipping that math test worth half your quarter grade but will still make you miserable while you take it.

And what’s even worse than taking that lunch period test on Integration with a nose running like a leaky faucet is trying to plug said faucet with the sand paper/dryer sheet hybrid this school puts in a box and calls tissues.

As someone whose immune system is effectively shot from four years of stress, I know the pain that is swiping at your nose with what could double as a nail file.

Using the

school’s tissues for a week, or even just a few days, to combat seasonal allergies could have unintended side effects, such as a chafing red nose and disillusionment with the American public school system as a whole.

Seriously, I’m surprised I haven’t gotten a splinter from one of those bad boys. They make a shirtsleeve or the corner of a Hamlet worksheet seem ideal.

Once I even tried a Gov textbook.

Sorry about that.

Maybe the school system has ample reason to stick with these sandpapery tissue substitutes.

I’m sure the cumulative cost of upgrading to some Puff’s Plus, or even standard Kleenex, is some unbelievable amount of money.

And yet, I still dream of a school in which tissues are an ally, not the enemy.

DRAWING BY AMY PERELBERG ’15

Sophomores overwhelmed by academic developments Jimmy Ray Stagg ’16 Throughout high school, there’s a kind of stigma around complaints. The seniors reserve the right to refute any complaint, having “been there, done that.”

Juniors can brush the comments off due to their struggles with APs, SATs and ACTs. Underclassmen have no rights of complaint, for fear of being laughed at/shunned by upperclassmen.

This stigma aside, my class, the current sophomores, have reason to complain.

By no means am I saying that sophomore year is the hardest year of high school. I am referring to the class of 2016, who have been given the short end of every single stick possible.

A key example is the switch to the Smarter Balanced Assessment for juniors. This switch happens to come conveniently for our grade, the year after we took the CAPT, which is being abandoned. The CAPT required us to: 1) Take time out of normal school work to study for a test that has no impact on our grades, 2) Wake up earlier than the rest

of the school to take a test that has no impact on our grades, and 3) Take a test that has no impact on our grades.

Next year, we will be taking the SBAC, which will require us to: 1) Take time out of normal school work to study for a test that has no impact on our grades, 2) Wake up earlier than the rest of the school to take a test that has no impact on our grades and 3) Take a test that has no impact on our grades.

The change to the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter test also shifted the research paper from junior year to sophomore year.

This incited some teachers to limit/assign topics for the paper, in order to make it easier on the students.

So, instead of having free reign to choose any argument (like the impact of social media on journalism or why Nickelodeon in the 90s was the greatest era of television in history), I, along with the majority of English 2 Honors students, had to choose a topic pertaining to, of course, school (like why standardized tests that don’t count for grades are given yearly).

This change to the SBAC, shifting of the research paper, and convenient discontinuation of CAPT will also affect the current freshmen, as well as all incoming grades below them. However, another change is going into effect for all grades following the class of 2016: an overhaul of the SATs. According to an earlier Inklings article, the SATs will include “more everyday vocabulary, an optional analytical essay, and a more narrowly-focused math section,” and will be graded on a 1600 point scale, instead of 2400. Also, there will be no points lost for incorrect answers, while free test prep will be offered to everyone online.

These changes will be implemented in the spring of my senior year.

The year after I take my SATs. As well as the Smarter Balanced test.

I’m not saying that there is really anything that anyone can do about it. I’m simply asking that if you see sophomores, give them a hug. Tell them it’ll all be alright.

Then let them get back to writing their research papers.

DRAWING BY NOELLE ADLER ’15

Opinions

Westport lacks unique sneaks Emma Lederer ’16

W

alking around the school, or even around town, it’s impossible to ignore the seas of people clad in colorful variations of the same exact shoes. I don’t know what it is about Westport or high school students, but we all seem to love wearing the same exact things on our feet. It probably has something to do with the fact that these shoes are basically the only things sold downtown.

On Main Street, the footwear choices for spring include a ridiculously small selection: Supergas, Converse, or Vans.

Supergas, first of all, are never hard to spot. They can almost always be found in within a 50 foot radius, on the feet of freshmen girls clad entirely in clothes from Brandy Melville. These shoes have been very popular in Westport since two summers ago when girls learned about them

from friends at camp.

With colors that range from “Crystal Azul” to “Dark Bordeaux,” there are endless colors of the trendy shoes to purchase.

I can see how easy it is to get caught up in these shoes with all the different options to choose from.

However, I backed away from them after I noticed how weird the European sizing on them was. Size thirty-eight was meant for a small child’s foot, while the next size up, thirtynines, were without a doubt made for clowns.

Vans, I can say from personal experience, are not always the best choice either. When I first started blogging on Tumblr in the seventh grade, pictures of the shoes took up my whole dashboard, so I had to have them.

Of course, I went out and bought the most obnoxious pair I could have: a bright purple tiedye pair. After the first week, and

a dip into the ocean, my sneakers looked like a little kid had thrown up cotton candy all over them. That being said, they probably would’ve held up better if I hadn’t gotten them wet or in such an obnoxious color.

There are definitely a lot of cute Vans in white or black that go with everything. Personally, though, I can’t look at them without being reminded of what I thought was stylish in the seventh grade, such as galaxy print leggings and neon crop tops.

My personal favorite is definitely Converse. They’re classics, they’re super comfortable and they go with anything and everything. I’m definitely the kind of person who feels the need to match, and throw on my beat-up pair of white ones makes it super easy.

Yes, everyone has the white ones, but I can say that out of all the trendy shoes, these are the ones that are actually worth it.

SURVEY CONDUCTED BY MEGAN ROOT ’15 INVOLVING 100 RANDOMLY SELECTED STUDENTS INFOGRAPHIC BY MEGAN ROOT ’15

Inklings / May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

9

Flawed recycling system disorients students Abbey Fernandez ’14 Let me paint a scene for you: It’s Friday morning. I’m in Lang and my teacher prints out a New York Times op-ed that she thought the class might enjoy.

Right as she begins handing them out, a hand ferociously shoots up, “Will we be tested on this?!”

“No,” the teacher sighs.

Fast-forward forty minutes, and after a fascinating class discussion of healthcare, the bell sounds and it is time for period one. But first­– Remember how the teacher said we wouldn’t be tested on this article?

Naturally I decide there’s no use cramming it into my overflowing folder. That’s right, I’m tossing it. Better yet, I’m recycling it.

Or, at least, so I thought.

As I head out the door, I turn to toss the New York Times article in the recycling bin, only to find two disheveled bins of absolute chaos.

One blue bin has its bag misaligned and there’s a half-eaten cafeteria muffin and an empty Minute Maid bottle. There is also some chewed gum and what appears to be a nibbled blue pen cap. Horrified by this mess, I turn toward the other blue bin, only to find that it’s worse. Tons of loose leaf “fredges,” (my term for the frilly edges you rip off when the sheet is from a notebook), some magazine clippings, a coffee cup, and a broken pencil, which is not even a Ticonderoga one.

Suddenly, I start sweating bullets, and my eyes rapidly move from one messy bin to the other. Which bin do I use? It’s a matter of picking my poison at

this point. Or do I save the article and recycle it in another more suitable location?

I quickly glance up. Three minutes of passing time are gone.

Two to go. Students begin to enter the classroom. Oh no, now the teacher. Are they judging me? I swear, I know how to recycle…

Right?

So in a moment of sheer panic I toss the sheet into the normal trashcan.

It was a weak moment.

Now I’m sweating, running late, being judged and polluting all at the same time. How’s that for multitasking?

This unfortunate scene has happened to me almost every time I try to recycle something at Staples.

What is up with the inability to properly use recycling bins in this school?

When it comes to those relatively simple blue bins, peoples’ haphazardness causes aspiring environmentalists like me to be utterly perplexed every time I try to recycle.

What’s so hard to understand? Empty cans and bottles go in one, and plain paper goes in the other. Seems simple enough, right? If we just misuse those bins, what’s the point in even having them? You might as well just bury plastic water bottles right into the ground or sprinkle cans straight into the ocean.

PSA to anyone using the blue bins for trash disposal: please throw the proper item into the proper bin because those bins are there with the intention that they’ll be used appropriately; plus you can prevent people like me from sweating, running late, being judged and polluting all at the same time.

GRAPHIC BY OLIVIA CROSBY ’15

Rising juniors miss summer bliss Jennifer Gouchoe ’16 When I was little, summer was all about frolicking in the grass, packing up the sand-encrusted beach bags to splash in the murky Compo sound water, munching on the crispy French fries at Joey’s, and maybe attending a fashion design camp or a week of tennis camp through Continuing Ed. It was a time when sitting and staring at the clouds was perfectly acceptable.

This summer, however, the tables are turning.

We rising juniors will no longer be able to relax and forget about school; instead, we have to stress out and think about school more than ever. Summer has transformed into a competition of who can do the most volunteer hours, who can get the best internship, or who can do the Ivy League college program that will look best on college applications.

It’s as if the whole world of academia is pointing the lasers at us and prematurely forcing us to succumb to the pressure of the dog-eat-dog fight to get into college. Junior year is going to be stressful enough; it would be nice to have the summer to veg out before the hammer drops. But that’s not going to happen, now is it?

While finding a summer job or internship that will look good on college applications, I’ll also

have to suffer through lengthy AP Lang readings and grueling AP Gov assignments.

I almost forgot to mention the impending doom of the SATs. At some point, I might have to endure an SAT prep camp, or at least procrastinate flipping through some vocab flashcards until the end of the summer.

Funny, because I don’t know if I’ll be able to squeeze in any time for actual fun.

Transitioning into junior year isn’t going to be easy, but it’s going to be harder letting go of the summer. With so much focus on schoolwork and the stress that is to come, this big transition summer won’t feel much like summer. That said, I still hope to find time in between the camps, jobs, and summer work to frolick in the grass, pack up the beach bags for Compo, and maybe, just maybe, stare at the clouds.

10 Opinions

Inklings / May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

Gadgets are shrinking as efficiency expands Michael Mathis ’15

W

hen you’re a soulless human being like myself, you find yourself unable to resist the magazines lining the aisles of grocery-store checkout counters. Stories like Angelina Jolie’s dramatic weight loss and Jennifer Aniston being pregnant with quintuplets are too terrible to not catch the eye. But here I was, last Saturday, flipping through the pages, lusting after swimsuit bodies and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s cheekbones.

Then, the hottest centerspread of all. A sleek, sexy, 13’ Macbook Pro with retina display.

With a silver screen and a weight of 3.46 pounds, $1,499 never seemed so small.

For years we’ve been craving smaller. We devour wheat grass to whittle our waistlines, now the trend has spread to technology.

Sure, the 13” Macbook Pro with retina display is lighter than the 13” Macbook Pro without it, but only by a margin of 1.04 pounds. Yet, it costs $200 more and is currently the 11th best-

selling computer on Amazon. Is it worth spending your money to travel a little lighter?

Minimization also applies to appreciation. As we pack more data into our devices, there’s been no gratitude for the advancements we have. Even though designs like that Macbook Pro cause us to salivate, do we really give them enough credit?

And that’s where size matters.

The computers of the 1950’s were not the computers of today.

While today, you can slide the

information superhighway into a slot on a COW, the computers of yesteryear took up whole rooms.

They had holes and wires every which way, and boy did you want to know where they ended up.

You couldn’t fathom how much circuitry and brainpower went into building this marvel of science.

You felt inferior to the machine.

Today you look at a gadget like an iPod Shuffle, which barely stretches across three fingertips, and think, “Whatever.”

Smaller technology has made us not in awe of the future, but expectant of it. For every Kindle Fire screen cracked or iPhone left in the washing machine, there’s only the expectation that we can simply buy a new one. Because, like the women in those grocery-store magazines, we treat today’s machines as objects, when they are simply so much more.

So is it okay to go gaga over that 13” Macbook with retina display? Sure, but maybe take it out to dinner every so often.

GRAPHIC BY JULIA SCHORR ’16

Give me my cell phone, or give me death Bailey Ethier ’15 Before you press send on that text to your mom asking what’s for dinner or send that selfie on Snapchat to your camp friend, ask yourself – would I want a police officer to see this?

The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether police officers need a warrant to search an arrested suspect’s cell phone.

The Obama administration believes a warrant shouldn’t be required to search a cell phone because a cell phone is just like a notebook – which doesn’t need a warrant to be searched by a police officer.

I don’t know about you, but I text people with my English notebook and play 2048 with my math notebook all the time.

Sometimes I even go on my AP Gov notebook to scroll through Twitter.

But who cares about rights?

Supreme leader of North Korea Kim Jong Un doesn’t give North Koreans rights, and he still got 100 percent of the vote. And in March, almost 97 percent of voters in Crimea chose to join Russia. Why wouldn’t Crimeans want to join a country that has banned “homosexual propaganda” and limits the freedom of the Russian press?

No one actually cares about their right to privacy. If people did, Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t have gotten away with wiretapping the telegraph lines to monitor government officials and journalists.

Plus the Bill of Rights was written over 200 years ago, so does it even apply to modern day society? James Madison and friends didn’t have cell phones back in the 1700’s, so who am I to

say that they wouldn’t be in favor of going against everything they believed in so a police officer could see who an arrested suspect’s Snapchat best friends are?

Our founding fathers wanted to make the United States the best damn nation in the world. So they made Americans, not politicians or a king, in charge of our government. They gave us the right to say anything we want, when-

John Hancock and 55 other patriots put their own lives in danger by signing the Declaration of Independence, and yet some Americans couldn’t tell you what their own rights are.

A court-approved search warrant is needed if a police officer wants to look at the contents of my computer. And it would be, frankly, stupid to not require one for my phone. Because isn’t

If a police officer actually suspects that an arrested suspect’s phone contains valuable information, then it shouldn’t be hard for an officer to get a warrant. ever we want. And they made us innocent until we’re proven guilty. And because of actions like these, God blessed America.

George Washington didn’t kick some British ass so our government could take away our rights.

I’m not sure when the last time President Obama has read the masterful piece of literature that is our Bill of Rights, but the Fourth Amendment protects “people ... against unreasonable searches and seizures.” And handing over my iPhone, which contains the contents of my life – my text messages, my tweets and my Flappy Bird high score of 86 – is “unreasonable.”

a phone really just a mobile computer, not a notebook like the Obama administration actually suggested with a straight face?

If a police officer actually suspects that an arrested suspect’s phone contains valuable information, then it shouldn’t be hard for an officer to get a warrant. But there’s no need for a police officer to see anyone’s call history.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

In today’s age, the contents of one’s phone are an essential liberty.

DRAWING BY ALICE MCDONALD ’14

11

Features May 30, 2014

Annual Memorial Day Parade marches through Westport

S

Taylor Harrington ’15 PHOTOS BY TAYLOR HARRINGTON ’15 tarting at 9:00 in the mornAND CAROLINE O’KANE ’16 ing, the annual Memorial Day parade began downtown. Westporters lined the streets, anxious to see friends and family who were participating in the parade. Young children threw candy to their fans as they represented their sports teams while others rode on top of floats and received claps for their military service. Many groups stuck to a patriotic display of decorations on their automobiles, but others were a bit more extravagant. Out of all the floats in the parade, the float created by the YMCA’s Men of Westport Weston took home ALL AMERICAN SMILE Two young Boy Scouts giggle at the crowd while clutching American the title of best overall float for flags in their hands. This year, troops marched in honor of Scoutmaster Jack Berry, who passed away this February. the 10th year in a row.

A GRAND ENTRANCE Robert Satter, a World War II veteran and former radio operator with the 8th Air Force, is honored as the Grand Marshal in this years parade.

HEAR OUR PRIDE Terry Lust ’17 , a Staples trumpeter, walked alongside classmates in his school colors: navy and white.

HOME OF THE BRAVE Two citizens posed on the YMCA Men of Westport and Weston’s D-Day-inspired float, which won this year’s best overall float.

PUPPY PATRIOTISM These two spirited dogs accompanied a parade watcher while showing off their red, white and blue.

YOUNG BODY OLD SOUL A young boy shows his pride for his country, dressed in a traditional Revoluntionary War uniform.

Overlooking the river is home sweet home for Saugatuck Sweets PHOTO BY JUSTINE SELIGSON ’15

INDULGE YOUR SWEET TOOTH Saugatuck Sweets not only serves sugary lollipops, gummy worms, and delicious chocolates, but also dishes out some of the finest ice cream and pastries in town.

Emma Lederer ’16 Downtown Westport is always buzzing with the opening of a new store. At least once a month, you can spot yet another grand opening with pop music blaring and flocks of people strolling in and out, coupons in hand.

This summer has kicked off with the opening of a new ice cream and candy shop: Saugatuck Sweets.

Justine Shikowitz ’17 believes this new parlor will be successful because it appeals to a huge part of the community that is made of families. Saugatuck Sweets sits right on the banks of the Saugatuck River, a short block from Dunkin’ Donuts and two from the train station.

Furthermore, the shop brings something Westporters don’t have much of in this town: actual, old-fashioned ice cream. “I think

that it will have more success just because it’s different than all of the froyo stores,” Shikowitz says.

Others agree and share their excitement about having a new place for dessert that’s actually not frozen yogurt. Claire Smith ’15 says that she loves frozen yogurt as much as the next person, but admits that we do “have so many fro-yo places so close to each other.” Smith continues, “I think it’ll be successful, or at least I hope so.”

Saugatuck Sweets is just one of a number of new stores opening, and students said it’s hard to believe that all of them will survive the test of time. Sometimes trends fade out. Jeff Burns ‘14 explains that in order for these stores to be successful, they have to attract all different kinds of people. “A lot of small businesses around here tend to open and close in a blink of an eye,” he says.

12

Features

Inklings / May 30, 2014/ inklingsnews.com

An imperfect day Sexism exhibited through Yik Yak constantly worry about these dis- other verbal or physical harassKaila Finn ’16 hat started as a harm- respectful people surveying my ment of a sexual nature. Harassless app, Yik Yak, body and the way I look,” Klei- ment does not have to be of a sexual nature, however, and can the anonymous social man said.

For many, Yik Yak raised include offensive remarks about media, has challenged Staples students’ spirit, ethics, and en- questoins of an underlying mi- a person’s sex.”

Charlotte Steinberg ‘16 devironment. One particular part sogyny at Staples.

“Despite liberation, things scribed how while the comments of the Staples culture that is being questioned is sexism, which haven’t changed. Girls’ behaviors may not be direct sexual harasssome would say shined through and appearances have always ment, they impaired the learning been more unfairly scrutinized environment. “I think with the loud and clear in Yik Yak. Throughout the app’s news and judged than boys’. While sexual stuff, a lot of it was probfeed, readers could see mostly norms have changed, the fact that ably rumors, but it’s really emposts about girls at Staples and the word slut is still so popular barrassing, tough to deal with,” and is used for girls, not boys, said Steinberg. particularly their bodies.

Elizabeth Sila ’16 raised the It’s true that a number of says something,” guidance counissue of changed teachposts referred to boys relationships and Staples staff, usually “It’s not right that just because er-student changing. negatively and sometimes “One of my teachers sexually. But the majority I happen to be a girl, I have to said that some of the things of posts referenced girls, constantly worry about these she read about her students usually sexually, and often disrespectful people surveying made her feel uncomfortviolently. able to look them in the The posts ranged face” Sila said. from mild, like those that my body and the way I look.”

At Staples, videos, bashed other schools’ -Bonya Kleiman ’16 presentations, and everysports teams, to very vulday discussion highlight gar, like those that targeted the importance of acceptance. girls’ bodies, weight, and reputa- selor Deborah Slocum said.

While Yik Yak hurt many However, many students feel that tions. Some implied rape.

Students agreed that students and has been said to re- through Yik Yak, other issues most posts were offensive, flect a small handful of students surfaced, especially the way even without direct target- who are sexist, the population of girls are treated.

Describing the disaping. Bonya Kleiman ’16 ex- girls at Staples was targeted in a plained that she felt sorry different kind of way: possible pointment after seeing the sexist posts, Aaron Samuels for the people who were sexual harassment.

The US Equal Employ- ‘16 said, “It just reminds targeted, but the comments impacted her as ment Opportunity Commission us that there’s still hate in well. “It’s not right that defines sexual harassment as school and we have to stay just because I happen “unwelcome sexual advances, vigilant about promoting to be a girl, I have to requests for sexual favors, and respect.”

W

GRAPHIC BY JULIA SCHORR ’16

GRAPHIC BY JACKIE COPE ’15

Features

Inklings /May 30, 2014/ inklingsnews.com

13

calls for reflection

GRAPHIC BY MEGAN ROOT ’15

Attitudes towards rape persist in culture Jessica Gross ’15 There are certain words that carry weight. Words that make us cringe or wince, put knots in our stomachs and lumps in throats, words that make us wish we had eyelids for our ears.

Words that are thrown around casually.

Rape.

For example.

A Staples student who was raped last year by another student agreed to share her thoughts.

“If you can’t emphasize with a victim, or if you have a low sympathy towards others, it’ll create a more cavalier attitude to sexual violence as a whole,” she said.

Rape, often a taboo topic, has become high profile. President Obama recently criticized colleges for disregarding rape.

Closer to home, Staples students have noted a number of Yik Yak posts suggesting rape or sexual violence.

“Students at Staples have made me feel very uncomfortable regarding sexual assault,” said the anonymous girl. “They say jokes like ‘oh I’m gonna rape you haha,’ or talk about how people want to be raped and how they like it, or just fling the word around like it doesn’t mean anything.”

Rape is one of the many sexually violent terms used on Yik Yak several weeks ago.

In American society, it can be used even more casually. “You will often hear people say if a team loses badly to another that they ‘got raped,’” Social studies teacher Cathy Schager said.

Apps like Yik Yak and Gaggle remove the human element from communication, school psychologist Mary Bernhardt said, as do “TV, movies, internet ads that portray women as sexual objects” and “jokes that do the same.”

These media also contribute to an ever-growing problem -what some call “rape culture:” a culture that normalizes, excuses, and condones rape. The term is well-known in academia, where it has been a focus for decades.

And according to Schager, the history of the United States-

can be traced back centuries, including he rape of slaves by their owners, for instance. The owners’ behavior was largely unquestioned, because slaves in general were considered property.

Today the topic of rape appears throughout social media; how it’s dealt with, though, varies.

One example can be found in the popular television show “Game of Thrones.”

“Women are treated like objects,” Juliet Kimble ’15 said. Although Kimble said she loves the show, she also believes “women are often raped, and come across as sexual things rather than people.”

Kimble says she doesn’t always notice when media condones sexual violence, but “when it is brought to my attention, I feel almost embarrassed, because I don’t want someone looking at me or treating me like that – as if I’m a piece of meat.”

Katelyn DeAgro ’17 wonders about the emotional consequences.

“I personally feel that it’s scary that so much media shows such violent sexual encounters,” DeAgro said. “What does that do to girls’ expectations, when and

if they finally do want?”

Some wrongly argue that it is a girl’s obligation to avoid rape, and her own fault otherwise.

Even flirtation is sometimes blamed.

“I feel like too many people think if a girl even dresses in a certain way shes ‘asking for it’” Ronan May ’15 said. “And that is a huge flaw in our society.”

In Steubenville, Ohio last year, two males were charged with sexual assault of a female classmate; reactions were mixed.

Elizabeth Jordan ‘15 said the media “made the [rapists] seem like they were victims by saying they were high school football stars and could lose their scholarships; meanwhile they treated the girl like she was the one in the wrong because she was drinking.”

For rape survivors, this treatment by the media, and student attitudes, are difficult.

“I don’t believe students fully understand what happens afterwards to the people who are raped,” said the anonymous girl.

“It’s not easy. It’s not something that happens and the next day we’re over it. Time helps, but doesn’t patch up that pain from within.”

14 Features Textbooks trump tan lines S Inklings / May 30, 2014/ inklingsnews.com

Sarah Ellman ’15 ummer is quickly rounding the bend, so students are substituting Charles Dickens for a John Green beach read, boots for bare feet that sink into the sand, and Smartboards for foreign city scapes. However, not all students are parting with books and backpacks in favor of summertime adventures.

Students like Ally Hirsh ’15 have instead used their summers to get involved in academic programs at colleges and universities. With an interest in sports psychology and the desire for a pre-college experience on a campus, Hirsh signed up for a weeklong class at Brown University.

“We worked with some professionals in kinesiology and were able to do labs testing our own fitness levels the way our teacher did with her clients of her company, VO2max,” Hirsh said.

An alternative option that is similar to taking classes at a university is to enroll in a summer course right at Staples. Students like Eric Zurmuehle ’14 and Kana Higuchi ’15 took advantage of this and were able to lighten their course loads for the follow-

ing year.

Zurmuehle took a three week course on U.S. Politics and Government the summer before his senior year which allowed him to focus on the course without the stress of his numerous other classes. According to Zurmuehle, the class was very relaxed and the teachers gave plenty of time to complete the assignments.

“The best part was the breaks we got where we could go get food,” Zurmuehle said.

Higuchi, on the other hand, opted to take physical education the summer going into her sophomore year, which enabled her to fill her schedule with two languages, two math classes, and a free period for a quarter of her sophomore year. Having a free period was a major stress reliever for Higuchi and gave her extra time to catch up on homework and meet with teachers. “I was especially thankful I had a free before AP exams and SAT’s because I had time in school to prepare for them,” Higuchi said.

Whether it’s hitting the books or hitting the beach, students are working hard and playing hard in the summertime.

PHOTO BY RACHEL MORRISON ’16

Come May, AP students are crunched for time Daniela Karpenos ’15 It was the week of AP final exams.

Tension ran high. Blood pressures spiked. Confidence levels dwindled.

Pressure was on.

It is easy to feel unprepared when finals roll around—they have a not-so-funny way of creeping up on students.

In contrast to the high schools of neighboring towns, Staples is the only one whose AP classes require students to take finals in order to prepare for the upcoming AP exam.

However, students often feel unprepared for these finals.

To accommodate anxious students, Barnes and Nobles conveniently displays an assortment of AP practice books—“5 Steps to a 5,” “Princeton Review,” and “Barrons” among many of the popular ones—at the front of the store.

Noelle Adler ’15, for example, relied heavily on AP review books to prepare herself for the tests, and even for the classes themselves throughout the year.

“For AP Gov, I used ‘Princeton Review’ during the year because they have great summaries of individual units and practice problems that go along with each,” Adler said.

Michelle Beaudoin ’14, preferred the “Barrons” review book last year to help her prepare for her AP Biology and AP Economics finals.

“It was helpful because it was a way to quickly look

at a condensed version of all the material I needed to know for the test,” Beaudoin said.

Due to the extensive amount of material that must to be covered, AP courses follow a relatively rigid curriculum.

Abby Lustig ’15 takes four AP courses and finds that in the classroom, there is a balance be-

GRAPHIC BY CLAUDIA LANDOWNE ’15

tween leisurely class activities and structured, efficient lessons.

“We have some days where we have to be on-task the whole period, but there are a bunch of days when we get to relax and don’t study as seriously,” Lustig said.

An AP class’s workload tends to pick up the pace when introducing a new unit, as well as during the days leading up to the unit test. In these blocks of time, it’s easy for students to fall behind.

To grasp new material, Siobhan O’Loughlin ’15 suggested keeping up with each night’s readings and assignments.

O’Loughlin also noted that in comparison to her other classes, AP classes have been more focused and less flexible since the final exams are much earlier.

Because of the time pressure, it’s difficult to learn indepth about each and every topic that will be covered on the exams. As a result, students, like Lustig and Adler, resort to tutors or self-teaching to develop better understanding of material and to stay on top of their heavy course loads.

“There is a lot of material to be learned pretty in-depth and with not a lot of time to do it,” Adler said. “Mostly everything that was on the AP Chem test was covered in class, but I did some extra work outside of class to fill myself in on a few minor units we didn’t get to cover.”

I dub thee an easy AP Emily Wolfe ’15 Nowhere in writing do the words “easy” and “AP” appear in the same sentence; however among Staples students, these polar opposites often mesh into one common oxymoron: “easy AP.” While some classes are dubbed with this title for eternity, others tend to move up and down in supposed ranking.

James D’Amico, Social Studies Department Chair, said that the difficulty of an AP course “primarily depends on the student’s level of interest in the subject and on what the demands of the AP curriculum for a course are.”

While students and teachers agree that the difficulty of a class is always relative, certain courses seem to be continuously followed by a cloudy stigma of rank.

“Some classes have a heavier workload than others,” Rebecca Zlatkin ’15 said. “In some classes, if you keep up with the work and study, you can do well, whereas in others, it is very difficult to do well.”

D’Amico agreed that certain courses “demand” more outside work than others, making them

often interpreted as being harder classes. For example, AP World History consists of more out of class writing than other courses, such as AP Government.

However, AP World History, which is often mentioned as the hardest social studies AP, had one of the highest percentages of students getting A’s and B’s.

While there are certain disparities, when subjective titles of rank begin to flow through the halls of Staples and creep into the minds of students, the reality of the classes often come as a shock.

“I thought AP Government was going to be a lot easier than it turned out to be,” said Olivia Jones ’15, “It was a lot more challenging than I expected.”

Simply due to the culture of Staples, there are many students of varying skill levels taking AP classes, so there are always hundreds of different opinions floating through the school about each particular class.

“I think students all too often follow some bad advice about ‘needing’ AP courses and end up taking courses that they are not truly interested in,” said D’Amico.

“Don’t register for courses based on someone else’s opinion.”

PHOTO BY CLAUDIA LANDOWNE ’15

Features

Inklings /May 30, 2014/ inklingsnews.com

Campfire flames burn out Jordan Goodness ’16 s the winter chill fades into a warm breeze and students shed their drab jeans for colorful shorts, it’s almost time for them to return to their home away from home.

Sleepaway camp.

Heading off to the carefree environment of camp is the cornerstone of summer vacation for many students.

“After stress for ten months, the two months of camp is an escape from reality,” Daisy Laska ’16 said. As many campers say, “I live 10 months for two.”

Unfortunately, the activities, socials, and bonding that makes summer camp so special have come to an end for students too old to return, usually those entering their junior or senior year.

Now, they must cling to their memories and find new ways to fill the void that their cherished years at camp has left behind.

“It’s the worst feeling knowing I can’t go back,” Laska said.

After seven summers at Camp Vega in Maine, she struggles to stay motivated in school when she’s not returning to her beloved summer getaway.

“Usually by this time of year, the only thing getting me through school is looking at my camp countdown,” Laska said.

“Not having a camp to look forward to kills me.”

For Staples juniors, it’s goodbye cabins and hello dorms, as many spend their summer away from camp preparing for college life.

“Long Lake was like a second home to me, but I feel like there’s a lot more focus on college the summer going into senior year,” said Jacob Nadel ’15, an ex camper at Long Lake Camp for the Arts who will do a pre college program at Washing-

15

A

GRAPHIC BY JORDAN GOODNESS ’16

ton University this summer. “I’ll never forget playing the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. I’m devastated to not be going back.”

Juliet Kimble ’15, who will spend this summer at a pre-college program at Carnegie Mellon University, agrees that her summer involves more focus on the future than her fun-filled years at Long Lake Camp.

“Last summer, I did Rocky Horror and played Janet, and that went down as the best show in the history of camp,” Kimble said. “This summer is serious work; it’s more focused on what you want to do in life.”

Although she won’t be lugging her duffel bags back to the campground, Laska won’t let the end of her time as a camper stop

Students trade beaches for bosses Grant Sirlin ’16 Whether it’s taking a four week vacation in the Caribbean, conquering the Himalayas, or hopping across the country in pursuit of a college, the Staples student body utilizes its summer jailbreak in just about every way possible.

Although many students

Summer babysitter Maya Lawande ’16 believes that her job is the absolute best. “We play basketball, have epic water balloon fights, and they love to play on their dad’s drums,” she said. “It’s more of just hanging out with younger kids rather than being in charge of them like some people might think.”

Zac Polin ’14 appreciates his opportunity to work with “entertaining and outgoing people.”

However, he also feels that the job’s 9 am to 1 pm hours allow for the perfect balance of work and relaxation on the beach.

While being a camp counselor or a lifeguard may seem to be the most popular summer jobs, perfecting a froyo swirl and taking care of children have had increasing popularity at Staples.

But more than all other benefits that come from from summer work, Gilland feels that one’s future should be the biggest propellent.

“Having a summer job is something I feel most teenagers should have because it will help them in their transitions towards adulthood,” Gilland said. “Everyone will have a job one day, and it’s best to experience one while you’re young.”

GRAPHIC BY AMY PERELBERG ’15

sugar-addicted 9-year olds and feels that he can gain valuable work experience through his job.

“Plus, I need money for gas,” he said.

Besides earning some pocket cash, Staples students spend their summer working for more than a handful of reasons.

As an intern for a magazine,

erase the word “schoolwork” from their vocabulary as soon as they escape from Staples’s doors, the final bell marks the beginning of a different sort of work for many teenagers: summer jobs.

As a sun-lover, Evan Gilland ’16 plans to spend his summer working as a counselor at a Westport beach camp. He can’t wait to goof around with jumpy,

her from spending yet another unforgettable summer with her camp friends.

“I guess because I’ve been going to camp for so long, I’ve grown so close to everyone there.

This year I’m going on a teen tour with my camp friends. Mine’s in Italy,” Laska said excitedly.

Yet, while Kimble feels she is going to miss the grassy hills

of camp, she is confident to take on what’s ahead.

“I understand that it was time for me to leave, and I think I’m prepared for bigger, better things now because of camp,” Kimble said. “The point of camp is to be your safety blanket and prepare you for the world and I think it did that. That place literally made me the person I am today.”

16Features

Inklings / May 30, 2014/ inklingsnews.com

Reactions are mixed to changes in Kool 2 Be Kind Kacey Hertan ’16

A

fter the last Kool to be Kind lesson this year, a third grade student approached two year club member Sonia Klein ‘16 and thanked her for helping teach her class about kindness, specifically how to be an ally and stand up for the target. Aside from melting her heart, Klein said later, the comment made her realize that “there is nothing better than seeing what a difference [K2BK is] making in the schools.”

Given recent events with Yik Yak and Gaggle, the founders and members of the club said they find it more evident than ever that Westport students need to be taught that it’s kool to be kind. K2BK has been very successful in sharing the importance of kindness and empathy for the past four years with high schoolers who facilitate lessons, they said.

Recently, however, the Westport Public School System has begun to try to change the operation of the club. And there is some disagreement about whether the changes will improve what’s seen as already a highly effective program, for teens and younger children alike.

“We just had our last class with our third graders, and it was really sad that our year together was coming to an end. However, they were all talking about what they had learned from us and how they had understood all our lessons,” one year K2BK member Anna Eichhorn ’16 said.

Until now, the club founders, four adults, have created the curriculum and in turn then gave high school students the power to make the interactive lessons their own.

Now, Westport’s school system wants to adapt the club’s curriculum to the system’s already existing social skills program, already interwoven into classes.

“There are many positive components of the club that we have been able to capture and integrate into the revisions that are currently being developed. Effective teaching requires that we pay a lot of attention to our language, using carefully chosen words, tone and pacing, to help build a classroom where students

feel safe, respected, and excited about learning. We believe that sending a consistent message throughout a child’s elementary school experience is critical,” Director of Secondary Educa-

tion Cynthia Gilchrest said, explaining the school system’s position.

Gilchrest explained that the club will continue to run next

year with an advisor from the high school and assistance from Elaine Daignault from Westport Human Services. Elementary school teachers will also teach.

Students in the club will receive empathy-based and Westport Social Skills Curriculum training before working in the classrooms.

However, the founders of K2BK, Cindy Eigen, Lynne Goldstein, Sarah Green and Melissa Shein, value their ability to create their own skits to present to elementary school students, according to Green. They feel that they deliver the same message that the Social Skills curriculum delivers – promoting kindness. But giving the students freedom to make and deliver the lessons in their own ways helps the message sink in.

“It’s like the same memo using a different font that stands out,” Green said.

“I think that teaching elementary students in a ‘big brother/sister’ way is very effective,” Eichorn said.

Players connect with playwright Ellie Gavin ’14 This spring, the Staples Players had the rare opportunity to work with E.M Lewis, the playwright who wrote “The Infinite Black Suitcase,” the show Players is currently producing.

“The Infinite Black Suitcase” explores many complex themes, such as disease, suicide, and sexual orientation. In fact, the show has never been performed by a high school cast before. Throughout their journey producing this challenging show, the Players have been in communication with Lewis herself, who answers their questions as the Players bring the show to life.

“I’m very pleased that Staples High School has chosen to produce my play,” Lewis said.

“People shouldn’t underestimate high school students’ ability to explore and understand emotionally complicated questions of the human heart.”

Players had the opportunity to ask many questions ranging from the way in which the word “Aunt” is pronounced in the the state of Oregon (where the show takes place), to how Lewis feels about the stages of grief and acceptance of death that take place in the play.

After several deaths in her own family left her grieving, Lewis was inspired to write “The Infinite Black Suitcase.” Some of its characters are based on real people, including a character based on Lewis herself.

Lewis said she feels that it can be difficult for actors to portray characters who are older than they are and who have had experiences that they haven’t had, which is one reason that “The Infinite Black Suitcase” is a difficult show for young actors to take on.

Julia Greene ’15, who plays Liz Miller, finds Lewis’s in-

Photo by Brandon Rakowski ’16

Green said the founders fear that providing high school students with scripts will lessen the authenticity of the lessons and weaken the older-sibling-like relationships that the club now fosters and feels are vital to its success.

The administration has asked the founders to cease involvement in the club completely, and the founders are willing to oblige but would prefer for the Department of Human Services to oversee the program and continue to allow high school students to be actively involved in creating the lessons.

“Our fear is if [K2BK] becomes a part of social skills only, and if common language is rigid, that the high school students will lose the ability to make it their own because that is the part of the program that empowers the high school students and impacts the elementary students the most,” Green said.

While Klein values the ability to improve scripts as she sees fit, she recognizes that allowing the club to continue its work is most important. “If making this sacrifice means keeping the program running, then it’s something we can compromise with.”

Internship myths debunked Simon Stracher ’14

PLAYERS AT WORK Jack Bowman ’15 and Joe Badion ’15 rehearse in preparation for the May 29 opening.

sights to be helpful in developing her character. “Hearing her talk about the pain of losing others and giving a background on the real community the setting of this play emulates, helped me make my character more real,” Greene said. “For others, I think learning about the real people their characters are modeled after has helped them connect more with their characters as well.”

Fellow cast member Jack Bowan ’15 agrees with Greene,

mentioning that Lewis’s openness in discussing how she dealt with the death of her husband helped the cast better understand the grief of the characters in the show. “She has not only helped us understand the show more as a whole, but she has helped us understand how people, in general, deal with death,” Bowman said.

Despite the challenges the roles present, Lewis remains optimistic about the students’ ability to do her characters justice

despite their young ages.

“I hope that the young actors in the play haven’t experienced great losses themselves. But I believe they’ll be able to empathize with the characters that they’re playing, and portray both the precariousness of life and the preciousness of it,” Lewis said. “Almost all of us have someone in our lives who we love, and don’t want to lose. The play is about trying to hold on -- and about trying to figure out how to go on.”

T he St aples High School I nter nship Prog ram, which or igi nated i n 20 08 with 40 k ids, has been a resou ndi ng success. “ Nearly ever y st udent i n the class of 2014 par t icipates i n the prog ram,” Lee Saveliff, head of the pro g ram, said.

T he prog ram has become a st aple of ever y st udent’s fou r years at St aples and one that is eagerly ant icipated.

“I’ve been waiti ng to i nter n at the end of my sen ior year ever si nce my brother did it back i n 20 09,” Mi ke Mor itz ’14 said.

However, even though the i nter nship prog ram is i m mensely popular, there are many my ths and m isconcept ions about it. For example, Mor itz used to thi n k that the i nter nships paid.

“I was su r pr ised when my brother told me he was doi ng all of this work for f ree – I could n’t believe that,” he said.

A nother m isconcept ion about the i nter nship pro g ram is that no mat ter what, sen iors will get to par t icipate. T hat is not the case.

“It is possible to lose you r i nter nship, and it can happen up u nt il the last d ay that sen iors at tend class (this year, Fr i May 16), and i n some i nst ances, i nter ns may have to ret u r n to school du r i ng thei r i nter nship if they do somethi ng agai nst the r ules,” Saveliff said.

Major moments promise to shine bright in “The Fault in our Stars”

17

A&E May 30, 2014

Infinite love fills the big screen (and there’s no fault in that) Andrea Frost ’15

A

ugustus Waters has over 55,000 followers on Twitter. By January 2013, one million copies of “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green had been printed and sold. Time Magazine named it the number one fiction book of the year.

To say that this book has skyrocketed in popularity would be an understatement.

And with a trailer that has over 17 million views on Youtube, the movie will be no exception.

The heart-warming yet heart-wrenching story told in “The Fault in Our Stars” follows a 16-year-old cancer patient named Hazel as she falls in love with Augustus Waters, a boy she meets at support group.

“I remember the day I got the book. I sat and read it in one sitting,” Annabelle Porio ’15 said.

“I just loved the authenticity of the characters and how John

Green managed to make such a sad topic both heartwarming and still funny at times,” On June sixth, the words that fill the pages of “The Fault in Our Stars” will be turned into a motion picture. The hype for this movie is nothing but huge as eyes are eager to watch this love story unravel.

“I cannot wait to see how they portray the characters and the plot on the big screen,” Noa Wind ’15 said. “I really hope they don’t change a lot and they keep it consistent with the novel; it’s perfect as it is.”

With popular books in the past, such as “Harry Potter” and “The Hunger Games,” die-hard fans have been disappointed as the movies have not only strayed from the book, but also haven’t lived up to them.

Amanda Morgan, an English teacher, thinks that this movie will probably not do the book justice because part of what makes the novel so wonderful is Hazel’s

written voice.

“The book appealed to me because it’s emotionally engaging and funny without being dumbed down or superficial,” she said. “It’s littered with complex literary allusions and John Green’s cleverness [creates] the joy and raw emotion of the novel.”

However, Porio is not too worried about the movie skewing from the writing because John Green himself is screenwriting it.

She trusts Green to stay faithful to the book and his readers.

Like many others, Porio and Wind are restless for this movie to premiere: they are looking forward to smiling and laughing and crying at the infinite love on the movie screen.

“If there’s a midnight premier, you better believe I’m going to it,” Wind said. “But, I will need to go with someone who has a readily available shoulder to cry [okay?].”

Okay.

GRAPHIC BY AUDREY SEO ’16

Major moments promise to shine brightly in “The Fault in our Stars” Ale Benjamin ’15 Any fan of John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars” is familiar with anticipation. After waiting months for the book to be released, there was practically a flood of fans picking up pre-ordered, hand-signed copies at the nearest Barnes and Noble.

Now, another wait is nearly over. On June sixth, TFIOS fans everywhere will watch the love story they’ve long laughed and cried over come to life, posing the question: will the moments we’ve so cherished reading live up to our expectations on screen?

1.

Hazel and Augustus’ first meeting Hazel and Augustus’ first encounter, beginning with a set of exchanged glances at their cancer support group, is quirky and awkward but instantly unveils their chemistry.

Naturally, this moment will be a major test for the film’s actors.

“The music needs to be perfect as well as the acting and emotion brought by the actors,” Carolynn Van Arsdale ’16 concluded. She notes that the parts of the soundtrack she’s heard “aren’t too sappy, and are pretty unique,” and that her favorite is Boom Clap by Charli XCX. Like Van Arsdale, English teacher Kristin Schulz, who taught the book to her GRAPHIC BY AUDREY SEO ’16

sophomore classes, believes this scene’s impact and message will come down to the actors’ line delivery.

“I think [the book] is honest enough to translate well because it’s not necessarily completely realistic, but it’s just enough if you can capture the messy intimate moment between the characters,” she said.

2. Hazel and Augustus’s special phrase: “Okay? Okay.”

Two simple syllables have iconized an entire story in one brief but meaningful phrase exchanged between Hazel and Augustus as their alternate code for ‘I love you.’

Many readers catch their breath when they see it in print and hope the same will be true when it’s spoken aloud.

Amanda Book ’16 has actually seen the film already, at a public screening in New York City. She doesn’t want to give too much away but affirms that her own expectations were certainly fulfilled.

“All the lines that people love were there, word for word.

The ‘okays’ were really dramatic,” Book said.

3. The quote that pulled it all together: “I fell in love the way you fall asleep, slowly then

all at once.”

It’s one of those lines that’s so perfect it makes you stop and read it again to make sure it’s real.

Hazel’s narration of the phrase occurs on the plane to Amsterdam with Augustus, marking a profound moment of clarity in their relationship.

“It’s just one of those things that makes the story seem so real,” Dana Segal ’14 said. “The story is relatable to young adult readers, yet hopefully romantic in two people falling in love so perfectly.”

4.

The quote that broke our hearts: “I do Augustus, I do.”

For those who haven’t read the book, we won’t give too much away. Those who have understand TFIOS’s concluding phrase all too well.

Van Arsdale warns “Spoiler alert!” as she implores that her number one must-include for the movie is Hazel’s discovery of a special letter from Augustus.

For this heartbreakingly sincere and poetic ending, fans are planning to bring tissues, and lots of them.

18 A&E

Inklings / May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

“Cool” trends that beat the summer heat Jane Schutte ’16 his summer is adventure.

Some seniors are participating in internships abroad, sophomores and juniors get to put their new licenses to practice, and freshmen will relish in their first summer of high school.

“I'm really excited to hang out with friends and take a break from the busy school year,” said Samantha Sheppard ’16.

And Westport couldn’t be a better place to take a break from school and enjoy the long, long, long awaited hot weather. Java will be a great place to grab a seeded apple berry smoothie and a hickory ham sandwich before heading to new downtown stores like Sperry, Intermix, and of course South Moon Under. Sheppard foretells that “the biggest trend will be patterned shorts with pom-poms hanging off them.”

The shorts will be the perfect accent to your most fashionable summer movie outfits that you can wear to premiers like “22 Jump Street” and the “Fault in our Stars,” which will fill Crown Royale’s screen. But, the managers will be sad to hear they are losing business on snacks, as kids sneak in their stashed candy bags, filled with jaw-cracking

5

4

PHOTO BY RACHEL MORRISO N ’16

T

JUST CHILLING Middle school girls enjoy the first signs of summer atop the cannons at Compo candy rocks, Swedish fish, and the J. Gatsby ice cream from Saugatuck Sweets in the melted back pocket of their pom-pom shorts.

On the other side of town, the Polar Plunge will have melted away, and a free-for-all of high school students will be cooking up beach barbeques, lifeguarding around the cannons, and licking

3 2 1...

their fingers from the residual sodium of Joey’s by the Shore’s fries. Megan Nuzzo ’15 said, “It's my first summer with my license, so it'll be so nice to drive to the beach with my friends with the top off of my jeep!”

It goes without saying that, with all these new recreations the buzz for the dog days are just get-

ting started. “People are excited about this summer [for] new adventures…...especially, our seniors” said Jess Riniti ’14.

So, whether you are traveling away or staying in Westport, bear in mind the important motto that life is better in flip flops and remember not to remember what day it is.

SUMMER!

Concert craze crescendoes into summer Erin Munley ’16 It’s a hot summer night and you’re having the time of your life listening to your favorite band. Only you’re not listening to them on the radio; you’re witnessing their electrifying music up close and personal at their concert.

Summer concerts are notorious for their thrilling and exhilarating atmosphere, making them irresistible and a definite item on almost every teen’s summer bucket list.

Whether you’re into country, pop or rock n’ roll, there is at least one summer concert for you.

For all you country fans out there, you have a lot of options to choose from. For a more modern twist, look into Lady Antebellum performing at Nikon at Jones Beach Theatre on August 27th or Rascal Flatts performing at PNC

Bank Arts Center on June 22nd.

If you’re looking more for a country solo artist rather than a band, check out Jason Aldean playing on August 2nd at XFINITY Theatre, Luke Bryan who is performing at the PNC Bank Arts Center on June 1st, or Blake Shelton who will be at Madison Square Garden on August 1st.

“You get to see good-looking boys sing good music; what more could you want?”

-Camilla Broccolo ’14.

Gracyn Levenson ’16, a huge country fan, says, “Jason Aldean is my absolute favorite country artist. His voice is so unique and

smooth, and he’s not too bad to look at either.”

If you’re into pop music, one of the most frequently seen boy bands is the one and only One Direction. Putting their devastatingly good looks aside, their voices are irresistible and their lyrics will be sure to make your heart melt. Be sure to try to get tickets to their concert at MetLife Stadium on August 4th.

“Boy band concerts are always good. You get to see goodlooking boys sing good music; what more could you want?” says Camilla Broccolo ’14.

Some other boy band concerts that you should check out this summer include One Republic and The Script playing on June 29th at Nikon at Jones Beach Theatre.

Two more current pop artists that you should definitely think of

Inklinations

seeing are Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus. These two media super women will be sure to give you a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Be sure to look for tickets to see Katy Perry on July 7th at the Mohegan Sun Arena or Miley Cyrus, who’s performing at the Nassau Coliseum on August 1st.

“Miley’s concert was unforgettable. I’ve never experienced a concert so thrilling and entertaining,” Gabby Perry ’16.

Whether you’re going for the music, the good-looking artists or just to have a good time with your friends, definitely make sure to put going to a summer concert on your bucket list.

“Summer concerts are perfect for everyone. No matter which artists you see or who you go with, you’ll always, without fail, have a good time,” says Broccolo.

INKLINATIONS BY RACHEL TREISMAN ’16

What was your first concert?

“The first concert I ever went to was the band Rush.”

-Eric Spector ’17

“My first concert was Justin Bieber in eighth grade. We ate Dippin Dots and had a lot of fun.”

-Erica Hefnawy ’15

“My first concert was Hilary Duff in second grade. I [couldn’t] talk the next morning because I was screaming so loud.”

-Sydney Sussman ’15

Fans flock to theaters for these five flicks Zachary McCarthy ’16 The end of the school year may feel like a barrage of AP tests, SATs and the usual standardized suspects for many, but at least we can look forward to a smorgasbord of movies for this summer. This cinematic season has something for everyone, so let’s go over the top picks: 5. “The Fault in Our Stars” Are you in the mood for crying your eyes out for an hour or two? Of course you are!

John Green’s magnum opus follows the romance between two cancer survivors as they find different ways to emotionally overcome their disease.

The book swept Staples this year, and the film is sure to do the same. If you haven’t even heard of it yet, check it out.* *Tissues are a prerequisite 4. “X-Men Days of Futures Past” Maybe drama and all those pesky emotions just aren’t your thing. I get that. And as long as you have enough nerd in you, “X-Men’s” latest installment about our favorite mutants hopefully won’t disappoint.

“Days” will prove that the “XMen’s” exploits aren’t exactly second banana to the “Avengers” when it comes to superhero teams.

3. “Godzilla” This is a movie about a violent entity that collapses societies within a couple of minutes (Not Yik Yak, I promise). In fact, do I even have to explain this one? It’s Walter White (he also goes by Bryan Cranston occasionally) fighting a classic movie monster! After a series of “meh” remakes, it’s about time everyone’s favorite lizard come back to wreck a couple of cities and chew his way through Japan.

GRAPHIC FROM MCT CAMPUS

2. “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” My (somewhat) dark horse pick. Is Planet of the Apes relevant? No, not really. Are ambitious action films that are dark commentaries on humanity relevant? Always. Hollywood has to keep trying to fit messages in its films in an interesting way, and, this summer, it’s coming in the form of a bunch of CGI primates. Plus, I haven’t seen James Franco since, when again?

1. “22 Jump Street” Were you expecting something else? It was just two years ago that Schmidt and Jenko became everyone’s favorite cops.

This time around, though, they’ll be going to college.

Yes, I look forward to more awkward Jonah Hill (when is he not). Yes, I look forward to more of Ice Cube yelling.

Please, sign me up. Whatever explosions and car chases await our narcs is anyone’s guess.

But, no matter happens, at least we can be glad it’s not all going down at Staples.

A&E

Inklings /May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

Students delight in the sweeter things Cadence Neenan ’15

W

ith baking sun, frying heat, and a crisp sizzle every time you so much as brush against the sidewalk, summer months in Connecticut can be slightly overwhelming.

State residents resort to all avenues to escape the hot – be it pools, beaches, lakes, and the occasional venture out of state in an attempt to outrun the humidity. However, the sweetest solution can be found close to home: in your local farmer’s market.

As the songs of summer begin to chime in, so do the summer fruits. From the tangy splash of oranges to the mellow undertones of watermelon, Staples students have reached a consensus: summer fruits are nothing if not delicious.

“Pineapple and grapefruit have always been my favorite fruits for the summer because they both have a really sweet but kind of sour taste.” Caroline

O’Brien ’14 said. “It’s super refreshing and is perfect for hot days!”

Fruit seems to make the perfect summer snack.

While those

is strawberries and balsamic with brown sugar; it has become somewhat of a tradition,” Reni Forer ’14 said.

“I really like watermelon and oranges b e -

TO PHO

like O’Br ien enjoy it in its simplest form, other Staples students have gotten creative with how they munch on fruit in the summer.

“One of my favorite summer desserts that my family makes

BY J

ILLI

LEI AN K

NER

’16

cau se t hey’r e so sweet, and I like making juice out of them,” Hanna Refvik ’14 said.

Whether they’re sprinkled with sugar, jostled into juices, packed into pies, or even rejoiced in the raw, what form the

fruit may end up in doesn’t seem to matter as much as where it originated.

“Absolutely, 100 percent the Westport Farmer’s Market,” said Culinary teacher Cecily Gans. “Every single Thursday, from May 2nd through the beginning of November, on Imperial Avenue.”

Forer agrees with Gans, generally. “During the spring and summer months my family gets a lot of our food from Westport’s Farmers’ Market, but whatever we can’t find there we’ll buy organic from Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.”

Many Staples students prefer the farmers’ market, but when the best isn’t available, other options include Balducci’s, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or Organic Market.

All in all, summer is the season for fruit. While some of the purchasing preferences can get a little complex, there is a simple rule of thumb to follow to survive the summer months: “Whatever looks juicy and refreshing!” Refvik said.

Summer brings meaty, mouth-watering barbecue tradition Taylor Harrington ’15 As the air grows warmer and stickier, the nostalgic pleasure of ripping sweet meat off a rib with fingertips buttered in rich sauce is beginning to tease the taste buds of Staples students.

Although some students are more willing to grill than others, most students agree that there is nothing better than a hot barbecue dinner outdoors in the summertime.

Barbecue is an American classic. But it’s not the meal people want to eat on their first date. Nobody wants Bone Suckin’ Sauce hanging on the edge of their lips and then plummeting down onto white shirts, with sticky fingers and barbecue breath; but besides a first date, just about any other time is a good time to eat some meat bathed in that familiar sauce.

Phil Foisie ’15, a member of the Staples barbecue club, said there’s nothing better than cooking

up some food on the grill for a bunch of sweaty, hungry people chillin’ poolside or at Compo Beach. Foisie’s personal favorite is ribs. He can down a full ten rack.

Another member of the Staples barbecue club, Justin Cheng ’16, is more of a chicken kind of guy. “It’s a classic and works well with a lot of sauces,” Cheng said, partial to the Bobby Q’s bold traditional sauce.

The two barbecue club boys are itching to get their hands on a pair of tongs and find that perfect medium between raw and overcooked on top of a greasy grill.

Nick Ward ’14 however, would rather sit back in a lawn chair and

watch his mom grill his summer favorites.

“My mom makes amazing pulled pork,” Ward said. Then again, he said, “the pulled pork sandwich from Wilson’s is pretty damn good.”

Wilson’s is one of Ward’s favorite nearby restaurants; it’s located on the Post Road in Fairfield. He advises other Staples students to try it if they crave a good sandwich or a lip-smacking rack of ribs.

No matter if it’s grabbing Wilson’s to-go or grilling at home, there’s an understood, contagious pleasure attached to barbecue. It’s hard to put into words, according to some Staples students. However, John Miller, a Staples social studies teacher understands why he loves it so much. “It’s outside. It’s easy. There’s no mess and I’m really good at it.”

Megan Nuz-

zo ’15 argues it’s the inevitable atmosphere associated with barbecue that feeds her obsession.

“I love it when I’m surrounded by family and friends with country music blasting eating barbecue” Nuzzo said.

With the temperature rising, a sizzling plate of barbecue chicken, warm mac-and-cheese and seedless watermelon is more likely to weave its way into the diets of Staples students. As long as it’s a sunny day, and there’s a tall stack of napkins waiting to be dirtied, the grill is the best thing to turn up. A glass or two of sweet tea, Ward adds, helps students mellow out that smoky flavor.

Apparently just water doesn’t do the trick.

19

Teachers’ summers are rife with variety Taylor Burg ’14 During the school year, students come to learn and teachers come to teach. But where do teachers go when students are out hitting the beaches and vacationing?

To students’ surprises, teachers are real people too.

And some of them have even crazier and more exciting plans than students.

Daniel Palheiredo, an English teacher at Staples, is spending some of his summer weeks in Maine at Acadia Park and Freeport.

“I try to find a way up to Maine pretty much every summer. My girlfriend’s family has a cabin in Northern Maine on this beautiful crystal-clear lake out in the mountains, and that’s where we have previously gone for a few days during the summer. But his year we want to try something different. Acadia is a little bit more rural than we are used to, and it will definitely be more intense camping.” Palheiredo said.

Like Palheiredo, Italian teacher Enia Noonan plans a fun summer in the states.

Noonan will be spending some

“My novel isn’t going to write itself.”

-English teacher Daniel Palheiredo

GRAPHIC BY JULIA SCHORR ‘16

time in Vermont and tandem biking with her husband.

But it’s not all play and no work for the teachers. “I will be working on my four musical instruments: piano, accordion, saxophone and clarinet” Noonan said.

Palheiredo will also be spending a portion of his summer working: “My novel isn’t going to write itself, so that’s one thing I will definitely be spending a lot of time working on” he said.

Other teachers plan on going abroad for their summer.

History teacher Dana Gilland will be going to Morocco this summer on a Fulbright program, focusing on global cooperation. For her trip, Gilland will be studying Arab culture.

“We will be creating this digital ethnographic resource for anybody that is interested in Morocco or Arab Muslim culture,” Gilland said. Her group will also be taking photos, creating videos, and conducting recorded interviews to be put online for people to access so they can get an in-depth understanding of the country and the culture.

So while teachers may run a tight ship during the year, summer is their time to change things up and have fun.

“I’ve taken week long intensive institutes on the Middle East, but this is the first time going for a month someplace this intense; It’s exciting!” Gilland said.

20 Sports

Sports

Inklings / May 30, 2014/ inklingsnews.com

Inklings /May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

Girls’ golf tees off toward a potential FCIAC title Will McDonald ’14

D

espite not receiving the press of other FCIAC title contenders at Staples, this year’s talented girls’ golf squad has quietly emerged as one of the favorites to capture the conference title this year.

“Last season, we tied with Greenwich for second place in the state tournament and also finished second to them at FCIAC’s,” tri-captain Christie Cantor ’14 said. “This year we are hungry for the win in both tournaments.”

Not only did the Wreckers fall short to the Cardinals in the postseason, but Greenwich also handed Staples the two losses that served as the only blemishes on their 17-2 regular season record.

The path to both titles looks to be riddled once again with Greenwich as the speed bump to overcome, however, as the Wreckers’ only loss this season

was once again an extremely narrow defeat by the Cardinals.

Leading the charge for the Wrecker’s is tri-captain star Faith Garcia ’14, who has committed to play golf at Division 1 Monmouth University next year. This is Garcia’s second year on the team, after spending her first two years at Trinity Catholic, which did not have a girls’ golf team.

However, this did not stop her from competing, as she instead quickly emerged as one of the best golfer’s on the boys’ team.

But, as Garcia herself is first to say, she is not the only team member aiming for excellence.

“Everyone on the team is trying her best to beat or shoot the same scores as previous games, and I think helps make us such a strong team overall,” Garcia said.

This sentiment was echoed

by Garcia and Cantor’s fellow captain Mary Bennewitz ’15, who agreed that this season “everyone has stepped up and brought their A-game to every match.”

Photos by Julia Kaplowitz ’16

TEE-ING OFF Members of the girls’ golf team, Mary Bennewitz ’15 (right) and Faith Garcia ’14 (left) work on their swings during practice.

Photo by Megan Root ’15

BRINGING IT IN JV and varsity boys’ lacrosse teams, who have practiced together every day after school for months, huddle together with head coach Paul McNulty.

Athletes battle to attain JV and varsity chemistry Julia Greenspan ’16 It is the same spiel every year. The coaches stand in front of the players and parents boasting about the excellence of the program and how only one thing will make it stronger: unity.

When it comes to the junior varsity and varsity teams, it seems as though only one measly word separates the two: junior.

This, however, is not the case. To some this – degrading adjective “junior” that precedes the coveted term “varsity” can create a gap between the two teams that coaches endlessly try to close.

This separation is evident between the boys’ baseball teams.

Evan Gilland ‘16, a JV player, has

gotten used to the disunity.

“It’s not that we’re on bad terms with each other, it’s just that we don’t communicate,” he said. “Our difference in skill level has created two different cliques within the program.”

Some said they think that sports lacking program-wide chemistry should try to change.

An athlete on the JV girls’ tennis team believes that mutual JVvarsity support is essential. “It makes the JV team feel like we lack potential sometimes when we don’t have the motivation or support from our upperclassmen,” she said.

One JV girls’ lacrosse player said that the varsity team always pushes for a unified program, yet

there is zero connection between the two teams. “We both represent the same school and the same program,” she said. “The varsity girls will still have no decency to even acknowledge us if they see us in the halls.”

Some find that this lack of chemistry between teams varies with gender. Boys’ varsity lacrosse player Ethan Burger ‘17 believes that boys have less JV and varsity connection in sports because girls care more than guys about the social aspect of the sports programs.

Field hockey coach Kristin Schulz feels confident that her JV and varsity teams are connected.

It’s her personal belief that cohesiveness will push the program

further towards victory and that if the teams want to improve, they are both going to have to improve together.

She passes this idea on to her captains, who she expects to lead.

Field hockey Captain Elizabeth Coogan ‘14 said, “We tried to support each other by having rules regarding watching games.

For each game, the varsity had to watch at least a half an hour of the JV and vice versa. That way, both teams were always on the sidelines for every game, for at least an entire half, cheering each other on.”

For JV player Ruth Kissel ’16, this team support system had a lasting effect. She said that the support coming from the varsity

girls really helped motivate her during games. “Our varsity team was like our biggest fan,” she said.

Along with this, the girls all participate in program-wide activities together, such as Senior Day and Play for the Cure, which JV coach Jennifer Huettner thinks are excellent bonding experiences for the teams.

Many coaches aim to close this ever growing gap between the JV and varsity team. For those programs that are able to bond the two together, it is all fun and games for the season.

For those that are unable to build a relationship between the two teams, unity is nothing but a pipe dream.

21

Interest builds in alternative workouts P Greta Bjornson ’15

90X is perhaps most synonymous with former GOP V.P. candidate, Paul Ryan’s, name.

The politician and thenrunning mate of Mitt Romney was named runner-up for TIME Magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year and earned himself a photoshoot demonstrating his allegiance to the workout method.

However, P90X isn’t just for 44-year-old Republican congressmen any more. Staples students have lately been trying the method that, according to its website, will “get you in the best shape of your life.”

The home workout system, created in 2004 and notorious for its intense difficulty, has recently been integrated into the Staples Physical Education curriculum in an effort to offer alternative workouts to students.

Since the implementation of the updated program this year, activities like Zumba and Yoga have also been offered along with P90X and Crossfit.

These changes come at an opportune time. This past April, the Congressional Fitness Caucus issued the first “U.S. Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth” and gave American children a failing grade in their amount of overall physical activity in 2013 due to sedentary behavior.

P.E. Department Chair David Gusitsch explained that these alternatives have been offered to expose students to lifetime exer-

PHOTO BY DEANNA HARTOG ’16

SOMETHING DIFFERENT During a period six gym class, students exercise using unconventional methods, such as Kin-Ball, a game in which players try to keep the ball from touching the floor.

cises and more diverse options.

“We’re a general population program; we see every student at Staples High School...but we’re not a ‘one size fits all’ program, so we try and make sure that we have a little something for everybody,” he said.

Erica Hefnawy ’15 decided to try Zumba in her P.E. class as an alternative to soccer. “It’s something that anyone can do

and requires little to no equipment. I think it’s actually really cool and a great way to get in some exercise while having fun,” Hefnawy said.

Some students, such as Bailey Rizza ’17, have even tried the activities offered in P.E. classes outside of school. Rizza tested out P90X at home after her family began to do it.

“I wanted to see if it was as

hard as they were saying...you always get a good workout and it’s different every day. I’ve learned a lot of new exercises,” she said.

Physical education teacher C.J. Shamas also praised the new options, particularly those offered to his junior P.E. classes.

“Students want to be exposed to things like yoga, Zumba, and Pilates, specifically yoga and Zumba. Because they want

exposure and want to participate, it’s become much more personalized for them, and their motivation level is off the charts. So, it is a win-win as far as I’m concerned,” Shamas said.

Gusitsch explained that the activities will continue to be offered and that the P.E. Department will “try and stay on the cutting edge of different offerings that are available to us.”

22Sports Coach P lines up for 22nd year coaching Staples football

Sports

Inklings / May 30, 2014/ inklingsnews.com

Photo by Jimmy Ray Stagg ’16

Adam Kaufman ’15

E

LEADING FROM THE SIDELINES Coach Petroccio guides his team to victory at a Staples football game in the fall of 2013.

ach game the Staples Wreckers Football team puts 22 players on the field: 11 on offense and 11 on defense.

Legendary Coach Marce Petroccio gears up for his 22nd year on the gridiron already with an illustrious and championship-laden resume both on and off the field.

“We’ve come a long way in those 22 years,” Petroccio says, “and everywhere I go, I’m very proud to say I coach Staples Football.”

Before Petroccio was hired in 1993, the team had won just eleven games in the past seven seasons. Flash forward 22 years, and Petroccio has molded the Staples Football Program into a perennial FCIAC and state championship contender. Over Petroccio’s tenure as head coach, his teams have won five FCIAC titles and three State Championships with a combined record of 185-56.

Quarterback Jack Massie ’14 says, “Coach P will go down as one of the best coaches in high

school history. He took Staples High School from a losing team to the powerhouse it is now.”

While most of Petroccio’s recognition is due to the success that his teams have on the football field, Coach “P” has emphasized the development of long-lasting relationships with every player to come through the program.

Petroccio says, “It’s great seeing those kids when they come back from college as grown men and successful family guys.

They just enjoy coming back here and watching a football game and chewing the fat with me.”

While Petroccio trots out a

“Everywhere I go I’m very proud to say I coach Staples Football.”

-Marce Petroccio lineup of 22 players, he recognizes the importance of every player on the team. Petroccio

says, “With 22 [players], you’re really not just dealing with that group that is on the field because you have got to deal with [...] the offense, defense, and kids on the sidelines.”

Linebacker Lance Lonergan ’13 also says, “Anyone who gives up that much time away from his wife and kids shows the love he’s got for his guys.”

The fearless warriors of this 22-man lineup are the captains of the Staples Football program.

Petroccio says, “I have always had a great relationship with my captains. They are my eyes, ears, and my mouthpiece.”

Nick Ward ’14 says that Petroccio’s dedication to his team is demonstrated through his constant attendance at off-season weightlifting sessions for the offensive lineman.

Days away from the annual spring football game that marks the beginning of his 22nd year coaching Staples Football, Petroccio says that despite opportunities to coach at the college level, he envisions himself at Staples for many more years to come.

Students get riled up for the World Cup Jack Zeldes ’16 Reece Armstrong ’16 has been waiting four years.

He’s sat through four Super Bowls, four NBA championships and four World Series. He’s tired of watching Lebron James and the rest of the big three do their thing.

It’s time.

Every four years, soccer comes to the world stage as the FIFA World Cup is played. This

year’s edition will take place in Brazil and will start on June 12 with the championship taking place on July 13.

“It’s the best recurring sports event on the planet, and the talent in this year’s competition could make it the best ever,” Reece Armstrong ’16 said.

The talent on display this summer will be like none other.

“I can’t wait for Cristiano Ronaldo to show off his amazing skill and speed this summer as he

Graphic from MCT Campus

tries to prove himself as one of the best players of all time,” Andres Marmelo ’16 said. Ronaldo, a forward for the Spanish team Real Madrid, is the highest-paid soccer player in the world.

For Staples soccer players and avid fans alike, the games provide a month of nonstop action with the world’s best players.

The World Cup has always had a special place for soccer co-captain Patrick Beusse ‘15 since he attended the 2010 World

Cup in South Africa. This year’s games will be a bit different for him since he’ll be in the US this summer.

“Watching games live is awesome because you’re in the stands with people from all over who all love the same game.

Watching on TV is equally amazing but for different reasons. You get to watch with friends and family and share the excitement with people you know,” Beusse said.

Inklings /May 30, 2014 / inklingsnews.com

23

Sailing team races under the radar T

Connor Hardy ’14

he sailing team has always flown under the radar.

Many students assume that it’s simply a club and forget about it. “Not many kids know we even have a competitive sailing team,” Robert Gordon ’16 said.

Students compete mostly on C420s in a team race that features three boats in the water at a time. Since sailing starts the same time as all other spring sports, the water is cold – very cold.

In fact, in May, temperatures are no higher than the 50s. Each student has to buy or rent a wetsuit in order to avoid frostbite while out on the water.

High school sailing presents a big challenge to coaches and the team as a whole.

“Every year we have to work on the team dynamic because the sport depends so highly on our ability to work together and communicate,” senior captain Suki

Hyman ’14 said.

Losing five seniors in last year’s graduation, the team this year especially missed captain Henry Dumke ’13. Dumke moved on to sail at Boston College this spring after leading Staples to a second place finish in the Gold Cup last year.

The regatta featured 20 schools with eight coming out of Fairfield County.

This year’s team is made up of many underclassmen, which bodes well for the future but could prove costly in the shortrun.

According to their coach, however, the team has done well for itself despite its lack of experience.

“The team still has a lot of talent and is beating some of the best teams in our league,” head coach Dylan Abel said.

It’s Abel’s third year as coach, and he said he’s a firm believer in the current crew.

“This team has a lot of drive,” Abel said.

photo taken from a video by Grace Kosner ’14

Staples sports sprint towards post-season Photo by Caroline O’Kane ’16

Graphic by Chase Emilio ’16

OFF TO THE RACES (above) Staples girls’ track team shows off their vibrant personalities through their sneakers.

LEAPING TOWARDS VICTORY (right) Michelle Partner ’16 jumps over a hurdle during a meet in Darien.

Chase Gornbein ’16 As the April showers come to a close and the flowers blossom in May, there is one thing that is on the mind of every Staples High School athlete: championship season.

For Staples boys’ tennis, FCIACS began on May 23rd. The Wreckers had an undefeated regular season and are certainly one of the teams favored to win the FCIACS. Will Andrews ’16, a member of the boys’ tennis team, said he has high hopes.

“We are the last undefeated team, so we are definitely the favorites right now...Our goal is to win FCIACS and then states.

Both of those are tough goals, but we can accomplish them.”

Max Berger ’15 thinks the team can go all the way. “Considering that our team is number one in the state this year, we expect to win FCIACS and States.”

Staples track and field teams went to FCIACS on May 27th.

Ben Foster ’16 is optimistic about post-season play for the team. “The distance guys are getting much faster. Hope-

Photo by Caroline O’Kane ’16

fully ‘juicy J,’ our new sprinting coach can help lead the sprinters to victory” Foster said, referring to the boys’ track team’s new coach.

The boys’ volleyball team is the FCIAC and State defending champions.

They believe that they have the talent to repeat these feats again this year.

“So far we have had a terrific season with only one loss,” Co-Captain Lucas Grevers ’14 said. “I think if we continue to be aggressive through FCIAC and States, we definitely can win. Our team won both championships last year, and we want to make it happen again” Grevers said.

The girl’s track and field team, after coming off an undefeated regular season, and winning the FCIAC Western Division, is ready to tear up the track during the championship meets.

Led by Hannah Debalsi ’16, the team is determined to find victory.

“We want to win,” Debalsi said. “It will probably come down to us and Darien, but Darien is an extremely good team. We have a strong chance of winning if everyone has a good day.”

S

I

D

E

ports

I

N

The Wreckers

Girls’ golf team drives to success page 20

InBrief Boys’ Track and Field The Wrecker boys finished undefeated with an 11-0 record. The new coach, Joey Peppin, a Staples alumnus, who the players fondly call “Juicy J,” has been a great addition to the coaching staff.

The boys expect people to medal at every level in postseason meets, including State Class LL Championships on June 3, State Open Championships on June 9, New England Championships on June 14, and Nationals on June 13 - 15.

PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY BEN CASPARIUS ’17

The Staples girl’s lacrosse team has created a power team of younger and older players.

This mix has worked well for the team this year, and with a record of 9-5, they hope to continue to be a threat to opposing teams. Varsity player Kate Lesch ’16 said, “We want to go as far as we can in the post season tournaments, and if we show up and play to the best of our abilities, then I think our team is capable of putting up a fight against anyone.”

Photo by CAROLINE O’KANE ’16

HITTING A HOME RUN (Above) Though usually a shortstop, Ben Casparius ’17, has had to shift to playing third base this season. (Top right) Now a freshman, Casparius, started in Little League; he is seen here stepping up to bat as a 2nd grader. (Bottom left) Casparius encourages first baseman, Bryan Porter ’14, during practice.

Photo by CAROLINE O’KANE ’16

Freshman Casparius excels on varsity Jenna McNicholas ’15

A

t the age of four, he played driveway basketball and backyard baseball with his dad. Throughout elementary and middle school, he was that standout player on his rec and travel teams the parents gawked at from the sidelines whispering, “I can’t believe he’s only ten.

Wow.” Next came high school, and rec basketball pinnies and travel baseball jerseys were traded in for the widely coveted Staples Wreckers uniform.

Ben Casparius ’17, affection-

ately known to his teammates as “Benny the freshman,” is known throughout the varsity boys’ basketball and baseball teams.

As a third baseman for the baseball team and as a shooting guard for the basketball team, Casparius has executed important roles on both teams.

“Ben is a very reliable threepoint shooter,” basketball player Todd Goldstein ’14 said. “This skill allowed him to be a really good shooting-guard”.

Casparius’ baseball teammates, including pitcher Justin Gallanty ’14, commented on how

Girls’ Lacrosse

his hand-eye coordination and speed allows him to start on the varsity baseball team.

“Ben’s a great athlete,” teammate Jake Melnick ’15 said.

“Someone in his position could get a big head, but he was always humble and worked hard.”

Casparius described his experience on varsity teams as “really special,” but this experience doesn’t come without its issues.

“It’s very pressure-filled,” Casparius said. “People have always expected a lot out of me my entire life.”

Casparius has the pressure of

being not only an underclassmen on two varsity teams, but also having the responsibility of hitting the game-tying three-pointer with two seconds left, or hitting a double with the bases loaded.

Despite the stress of having a team of upperclassmen relying on him, Casparius looks forward to the many sports seasons to come, and claims that the pressure helps him concentrate.

“I like how my teammates push me.” Casparius said. “Not only because I’m a freshman, but because they expect big things from me.”

Boys’ Lacrosse With a final regular season record of 12-4, the boy’s lacrosse team is hoping to get back to the state championship, and this year come away with a win. Having beaten Wilton for the first time in school history, the boys are hoping to continue their strong play and keep the winning streak going in the upcoming state tournament.

Girls’ Tennis The girls’ tennis team wrapped up FCIAC postseason play with a loss in the semifinals. The team hopes that they will go far in the post-season and take home a title. These hopes are not out of reach, as the girls are playing for the top seed going into states this weekend. “We want to win big this year, and right now we are on track as long as we keep fighting hard and playing smart,” Beretta said.

Boys’ Tennis The boys’ tennis team is also the team to beat, as they finished the regular season undefeated with a 16-0 record.

Varsity player Will Andrews ‘16 said the team is hoping to bring the FCIAC and state titles back to Staples. He added, “The last time Staples won states was 2011 and the last time Staples won FCIACs was 2001.” The boys are hopeful that they will continue their winning streak and take home one or both of these titles.

Graphic by Sophia Hampton ’15

For continual updates on upcoming state tournament matchups, check ciacsports.com and inklingsnews.com