Tower The Masters School
49 Clinton Avenue Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. 10522
VOLUME 74, NUMBER 1
Editorial For years, unspoken rules have been a part of the Masters experience. Most important: the right of seniors to control the DSL. Without earned rights of seniority, being a senior loses its signifigance. Seniors don’t want to be feared, they just want the same respect they showed their upperclassmen. See page 3.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2017
tower.mastersny.org
Admissions looks for “powers for good” Masters
looks skyward
HEnry WiLLiams Tower Staff For the past few years, Masters has been growing and changing. In addition to the well-publicized creation of new facilities and programs, the school has had a declining acceptance rate. According to the Admissions Department, for the Upper School the current acceptance rate is 35 percent. “The number of applications we receive has gone up for the last five or six years,” Associate Director of Admissions Tim Custer said. “As a school, we’re able to be more selective because we have more applicants.” The likely sources for this increase are diverse, according to Custer, and might include the school’s new engineering curriculum, prominent new programs like the national-champion squash team, and new facilities like the Fonseca Center. The reasons applicants choose Masters are just as varied, but admissions has seen some patterns. “Parents tell us they like the school because they feel our values align with their values,” Andrea Fischer, the Director of Admissions for the Upper School, said. Another thing Masters has is the large and active Gold Key program. “Other schools do have student tours, but when applicants and parents tour [at Masters], they’re seeing one of our students front and center, and they get a chance to envision themselves as a student,” Fischer said. Masters also retains a large inter-
Emma Luis Tower Staff
GEORGE WEED/ TOWER
BEHIND THE PIE CHART are packets that are sent out each spring by the admissions department to accepted students. national base of applicants. “Every region is represented,” Fischer said. In addition, the Admissions Department goes out on the road to present the school. Despite outreach, “A lot of applicants come from word of mouth,” Custer said. Admission to Masters takes into account a variety of factors: written statements, recommendations, interviews, grades, test scores and more. “Our process is not drastically different from other schools,” Custer said, “but we do perhaps focus more on character. We hope to bring
in good people.” Believing in being a “power for good in the world” is also an aspect of getting in. “Our mission statement is right behind the front desk, and we talk about it in interviews,” Custer said. “It drives selection more than at other schools.” Test scores, while important, are often overemphasized and misunderstood by anxious applicants according to Fischer. Tests like the Secondary School Admissions Test (SSAT) are taken almost exclusively by students who are already looking to apply to
selective schools. As a result, students who expect to land in the top percentiles end up closer to the middle, largely due to the pool of test takers. In addition, scores for Masters applicants don’t need to meet rigid requirements. “Other schools have hard cutoffs for scores, Masters doesn’t,” Fischer said. As Masters shifts its academic environment with policies like switching to letter grades, the school’s focus in admissions may also shift. “It’ll be interesting to see how changes in academic philosophy will change admissions,” Fischer said.
David Oks running for Mayor of Ardsley micHaEL FitzgEraLd Editor-in-Chief Masters junior and 16-year-old David Oks is currently campaigning to be mayor of the Village of Ardsley. Oks will be running against Nancy Kaboolian, who served as deputy mayor under the retiring current mayor, Peter Porcino. Oks said he made the decision to run for mayor in early August, and will be running as an independent; Kaboolian is running as a Democrat. If elected, Oks’ goals are to be fiscally moderate and socially liberal, to commit Ardsley to the Paris Climate Agreement, and to turn Ardsley into a sanctuary city for immigrants. Additionally, Oks stated, “I would like to reduce the rate of growth in village taxes, and the people of Ardsley agree with me.” The position of Mayor of Ardsley has a two-year term, and Oks stated that he would likely take a gap year after graduating in order to fulfill his mayoral duties if he did in fact win. Oks
HENRY WILLIAMS/TOWER
SENIOR ANDERSON LIN AND junior Elijah Emery modify yard signs to reflect the campaign’s new write-in status. has assembled a campaign staff made up of current Masters students, as well as a few Masters alums. At the beginning of his campaign, Oks received a list of all Ardsley voters from the West-
chester Board of Elections, which has enabled him to meet various citizens of Ardsley. Oks’ campaign has generated media attention, so much so that he was
interviewed by The New York Times regarding his campaign. However, Oks discovered that New York State Law has a provision preventing people under the age of 18 from assuming local office if they are elected, meaning Oks would be unable to serve if elected. That being said, Oks claims the same provisions forbid non-residents from serving in local government, even though there is a non-resident currently serving as a member of Ardsley’s government. Additionally, many towns in New York have received carve-outs, which are exemptions from these provisions. Given this, Oks is confident he can overcome this legal challenge if it occurs. Oks’ campaign hit somewhat of a setback when his name was removed from the ballot do to a challenge of his petition signatures. The man who filed the suit claiming the signatures on the petition was invalid is Kaboolian’s husband. However, this has not stopped Oks from continuing his campaign, and he is pursuing election via write-in. Election Day will be Nov. 7.
With the installation of a weather station atop Morris Hall, Masters became a part of the world’s largest weather network. Joining the likes of Hastings High School, The NY School for the Deaf, companies like Con Edison and 12,000 others, the station is accessible to the public and provides a hyperlocal weather forecast, right on campus. The brand new weather station was installed in late August, and sits at the apex of Morris Hall, featuring a 360 degree view that includes Estherwood Mansion and the Hudson River. The project was spearheaded by Director of Innovation, Engineering and Computer Science John Chiodo, who came across Earth Networks in Oct. 2016. Having a direct connection with Weather Underground, the weather network provided by The Weather Channel, Earth Networks is a weather-analyzing company that has a community of 12,000 neighborhood level weather sensors. These stations are able to collect and analyze 27 different atmospheric conditions. Among the conditions are temperature, lightning detection, rainfall totals and wind speed. “This station can do just about anything. There’s obviously the academia side of it, but there’s also use for it in the Maintenance Department, as well as the Athletics Department,” Chiodo said. According to Chiodo, the station will be implemented in several different academic courses, such as
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CHARLIE LOIGMAN/TOWER
MASTERS’ NEW WEATHER STATION standing atop Morris Hall was gifted to the school via a corporate grant program for $20 K.
Letter grades draw mixed responses from students and faculty VincEnt aLban Tower Staff For a student, the difference between a 93 and a 95 on a report card can sometimes alter how that student feels about how they are doing academically. When using the number grades system, students are encouraged to keep their grades private and not to become competitive and stress over small number differences, but it is natural that students compare their grades with one another. The College Counseling Office and Administration teamed up over the past few of months to shift the school’s grading system to letter grades instead of percent grades according to Head of the Upper School Matthew Ives and Head of the College Counseling Office Adam Gimple, who both had prominent roles in the decision. Both these departments said they came to agreement to
make this decision, aligning the Middle School and Upper School at Masters as well as attempting to help students focus on the value of their learning, not just the grades. Ives said, “I think my main interest in changing it, after teaching for 20 years, is that there really is not much of a difference between an 83 and 85 or an 86.” Another main reason for the change is that when Masters sends students transcripts to colleges across the nation, grades are converted to a 4.0 scale which only goes up to a 95 in terms of a number grade. Gimple said “The Counseling Office sent out a survey to a list of the colleges Masters students most commonly apply to, and with about 70 responses, almost all the schools said they convert a student’s transcript grades to the 4.0 scale so therefore, the “A+” range is not that necessary in terms of grades because it cannot be reflected on that scale.”
Darren Wood, a 10th grade and 12th grade English teacher, said, “The letter grade system is more rational and fair because number grades made really marginal distinctions, like between an 87 and an 88 feel really significant. It made the number of comparisons that students could make between themselves and others students a lot more significant and available.” Senior Stephen Boe supports the change. “The new grading system will definitely help in terms of stress over grades. A major contributor to that is competitiveness which will be reduced because the letter grades will provide for a wider range so there will be less nitpicking over small number increments,” Boe said. Jacob Vietorisz, a junior and an advocate for the “A+” range, said, “This system underrepresents students who shoot for an “A+” in class because a student who has a 97 should receive more of a reward than a student with a 93.”
What percentage of students are opposed to the letter grade change?
Letter Grades Scale No "A+" A: 93% - 100% A-: 90% -92%
Number Grades Scale
57%
Opposed to the change
43%
A+: 97% - 100% A: 93% - 96% A-: 90% - 92%
Agree with the change
VINCENT ALBAN/TIMOTHY MATHAS/CHARLIE LOIGMAN/TOWER
THE LETTER GRADE CHANGE has brought mixed responses, according to a Tower survey. The survey was filled out by 100 randomly selected students (about 20% of UpperSchool students).