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Anniversary
Former student Aaron Schock is currently serving a court sentence requiring him to pay $1,500 and do 200 hours of community service for stealing paintings from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Sunday, July 28, 1985. Schock, 20, along with his accomplice friend, Mark Dienstag, both students at San Francisco State University, stole artwork by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Man Ray and Edward Steichen, totaling an estimated $470,000 in value. Schock, a member of the museum, claims the heist was the product of a drunken effort to see the works in a better light. He presently lives across the street from the museum and, in the past, went for unofficial visits at least once a week. He learned that the museum rented out a large room for public events and realized that “if you dressed decently you could get some free food and drink. A lot of people did it,” Schock said. That evening, the two friends went to the museum where a wedding reception was being held and started drinking. “They were saving the champagne for later, so they served hard liquor,” Schock said. In the meantime, they drank vodka and grapefruit juice. “We got fairly drunk,” he said. Intoxicated, the pair began to explore the building floor by floor. Due to poor security, several doors were easily opened, so Schock and Dienstag entered a room where some pieces were displayed. “I really wanted to see the Paul Klee’s, so we took some of the pictures into the hall to look at them,” Schock explained. They decided to take the works. On the way out of the museum, they noticed sketches by Picasso and photographs by Man Ray and Edward Steichen and took those as well. “It was the craziest thing, and it wasn’t planned; it just happened,” Schock said. By 3 a.m. the duo had sobered and realized that they needed to return the art pieces. According to Schock, the museum was closed the next morning, so they planned to leave the art in a locker of the Greyhound terminal and phone the police with the whereabouts. By then they had already been exposed. An anonymous call to the San Francisco press led to their arrest. Even though the aftermath was an unpleasant and trying one for Schock, he believes he learned a great deal from it. “Although I would not like to relive it,” Schock said, “at every adversity lies a seed to success. At some time or another, a person challenges the structures that be. This was my challenge.” Schock also said that he learned about how the legal system operates. Since the heist, he has received several calls from people in the city who thought the act was amusing. A party was given in his honor at a San Francisco bar, and he was offered the rights to a story commemorating the episode. He declined. “They made it more difficult for me; it created a real conflict. I had done something wrong that I wanted to get over, and they were celebrating it,” he said. In retrospect, Schock feels the worst result of the incident was the image he gained among people who knew him. “One day I’m a straight-A student, the next day, THIS,” Schock said, remorsefully. “I want people to know that I’m involved in more things than what I did. I mean I’m really a mellow guy; I usually just sit home reading or cooking lentil soup.”
October 31, 2017
The Octagon
Teenage marriage is a phenomenon more common than most people think. The only law restricting such a marriage in California is one stating that any person under 18 must have his or her parents’ consent. Two SCDS graduates were married as teenagers. Katina Meckley, formerly Katina Tsakopoulos (a 1981 SCDS graduate), got married at 19 in December, 1982, after knowing her husband for about eight years. “I have known him since I was 12. I love him a lot and we both decided to get married,” said Meckley. However, this decision produced some problems with family and friends. “Everybody said we were going to regret it,” said Meckley. “Actually, my parents had little to say in the matter. I just got married, and they had to accept.” Meckley realizes that marriage holds many responsibilities, like “doubling everything I do or want.” With her husband Kenny learning to manage a liquor store and Meckley studying to be an accountant, Meckley feels their financial outlook is bright. But at the moment, they are receiving financial support from the Tsakopouloses. “After my husband manages his own liquor store and I finish school, we’ll be totally independent,” said Meckley. Being a married couple has its difficult moments, Meckley said. The Meckleys are hesitant to be around friends who don’t have boy- or girlfriends for fear of embarrassing them or making them feel awkward. “It makes people feel bad because I talk about my husband all the time,” Meckley said.
By Shalini Chatterjee Arquelle Hamelin (formerly Arquelle Frasse), also an SCDS graduate, got married at 18 after knowing her husband for only five months. Like Meckley, Hamelin said she was “totally in love,” but gave other reasons for getting married also. “I realized I could have my husband and my job,” said Hamelin. “He understands my career and respects that fact.” Hamelin, now 22, said that being married has strengthened her friendship with her husband as well as her career. She said she also appreciates her husband’s help with their baby born last year. “My husband is wonderful about the baby!” exclaimed Hamelin. “I work eight hours a day and then go to night school. He takes care of everything while I am gone.” But Hamelin faced many obstacles when she decided to get married. She felt she had to prove herself to the people she knew. “It was tough. My mother would have preferred that I continued going to school,” explained Hamelin. “I also got a lot of pressure from the people at Country Day.” Hamelin, financially independent and completely happy with her marriage, said marriage has made her more mature than most people her age. Hamelin added, “I also trust and am trusted by my husband.” Both Meckley and Hamelin recommended early marriage only if the couple does not “rush into it.” Said one, “You have to be mature enough and sure enough to know what you are doing. Otherwise, it could be a big mistake.”
A
s freshman Mike Bush discovered during Christmas vacation, practical jokes are funny to everyone but the victim. Bush was falsely charged for blowing up an airport toilet in Pago Pago, located in American Samoa, a U.S. territory in the South Pacific. The explosion was apparently the result of a practical joke. During vacation, Bush and his family traveled to the Kingdom of Tonga, stopping in Hawaii for a day and Pago Pago for a 12hour layover stop. Said Bush, “We waited in the airport, and while we were waiting I needed to use the bathroom. I went in there, sat down, looked behind me, and noticed the toilet was smoking. “So I stood up, and the toilet exploded from from underneath
By Dalya Wardany
Stories transcribed by sophomore Jackson Margolis, juniors Jacqueline Chao, Jack Christian, Mehdi Lacombe, Chardonnay Needler, Mohini Rye and Allison Zhang and senior Sahej Claire. Any typos are original and serve to keep each story true to its published form.
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ter, but he said his ears “hurt pretty bad every once in a while.” He continued, “They had me empty my pockets and they frisked me. They didn’t find anything incriminating.” Bush was informed about three hours later on the plane home that the fishing bomb was probably planted by a prankster. The practical joker had apparently occupied the stall just before Bush, intending to scare the next person to use that stall. Said Bush jokingly, “I heard the governor of Pago Pago was in the airport at that time. Maybe he had something to do with it.” However, the incident’s effect on Bush was more frightening than funny. “It ruined the whole trip for me,” said Bush. “I hate every memory about the explosion. I was in shock the whole way home: I was scared to death.”
2 SCDS grads get married early
40 YEARS next year. Get used to the idea. It could be you.” That’s what my freshman class and I were told at the beginning of the Jesuit 1985-86 school year. We sat quietly on the bleachers inside the gym where we were told
Exploding toilet shocks Bush in Samoa
By Marc Paoletti
Alumnus apprehended for $470,000 art heist
“Some of you won’t be returning next year, be it for disciplinary reasons, grades, or for something else, but very realistically it could be that the fellow freshman sitting next to you may not be here
me! I fell down and couldn’t hear myself speak. I stood up, pulled my pants on and tried to get my hearing back. I heard knocking and opened the door. “The police grabbed me and threw me up against the wall. They dragged me to the airport police station. I didn’t know what was going on. He (a policeman) asked me if I did it and I said no. He said I better say yes, but I had the same answer and he said the same things several times. I asked for my father and they brought him in and asked me many more question - they even asked me if I was employed. “I started getting my hearing back but everyone sounded like they were on helium. I had a bad headache and earache.” Bush has not had any medical test to determine if his partially impaired hearing was a serious mat-
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the way it was. Together in one place at one time, over a hundred freshmen were grouped. We were greeted, told that we should be grateful for being able to attend Jesuit, and that the less desirable among us were going to be weeded out ...
Emphasis on popularity at Jesuit
By James Chapman
Fake ID’s purchase what only age can buy Imagine being able to get into any club or bar you wanted. To be able to buy liquor, vote, or even gamble, and all at the age of 16. Some high-school teenagers find these options so tempting that they obtain a false means of identification. That’s right! Fake I.D.’s: they aren’t just for the college crowd anymore. “I got mine so I could buy liquor,” said one Country Day student, who also said the card was used to get into dance clubs and gambling casinos. “One time a group of friends and I went up to Tahoe to gamble. We were denied at some of the bigger places, but most of the second-rate casinos didn’t care. “I would say about 10-20 of my close friends have fake I.D.’s,” the student continued. And they’re good fakes, he said. “It (the I.D.) is really authentic. The only thing it doesn’t have is the official seal (of California that appears on the lamination of California driver’s licenses and D.V.V identification cards). And it’s a little faded-looking, but other than that it looks real.” The student obtained the I.D. through a student at the University of the Pacific in Stockton.
“I gave my license to him; he scraped the lamination and typing off with a lead printer, retyped it, and relaminated it.” But what is considered by the law to be a federal offense is not confined only to U0P. “A lot of people I know get them from (UC) Santa Barbara and Cal (UC Berkeley).” The student is currently in the process of getting a new one from a student at American River College who “does it for twenty bucks.” For some collegiate entrepreneurs, fake I.D.’s are big business. “There’s also a guy in Santa Barbara that for a hundred bucks will steal you a birth certificate from city hall. Then you just take it into the D.M.V and tell them you lost your license or you need an I.D. card.” The I.D. scam is not foolproof however. “My old one got taken away at an Oak-
By Steve Lesher
land A’s game,” the student said. “They had this light they shined on it to see if it had the seal (on the lamination). And when I asked for it back, they threatened to press charges.” No matter how easy it seems to pull this off, however, the authorities aren’t taking fake I.D.’s lying down. Steps are being taken by the D.M.V. to prevent forgeries, the latest and most effective of which are the new types of California driver’s licenses and I.D. cards, which now are credit-card-style plastic and are supposedly impossible to fake. Although the penalties vary depending on the case, according to the public defender’s office, a minor in possession of a fake I.D. is charged with a misdemeanor and a fine. Additional consequences depend on what the I.D. was used for.