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Volume 17, Issue 7 www.facebook.com/sagehillschool
TEDx at Sage Shares Ideas on ‘Defying Society’ at Event By Trevor Klein & Daniel Fishman
Students, teachers and other members of the Sage Hill Community gathered in the Black Box March 3, for the Sage Hill TEDx event. The TEDx club on campus inspires innovation, creativity and pursuit of interests in the community, through short TED talks once a year. The talks were given by members of the community, who had inspiring stories to share. Senior Nelson Kim, who helped found the club in 2015 and is now co-president with senior Max Nanula, actively found guest and student speakers to motivate the audience through TED Talk style speeches. “The purpose of TEDx is to spread ideas worth sharing and we believe that each of our speakers have something interesting to contribute to our community addressing the event’s theme, ‘Defy Society’,” Kim said. The student-run club hoped to teach the community the importance of pursuing one’s passions and to defy societal norms. The club itself is unique because it is also a Service Learning group open to upperclassmen. “[We] are a service learning group and a club. We consider our service as educating the community,” said senior executive producer Aimee Rowe. She also came up with the ‘Defy Society’ theme. “Defying society can be in the form of protesting, but it can
also be in the form of reinventing a type of science, or breaking social norms,” Rowe said. Rowe said the club started recruiting speakers for the event nine months in advance. “With the assistance of Mr. McNeill and Ms. Merz, we reached out to the community and found people who actively defied society because their stories are inspiring.” Again, defying society does not necessarily mean protesting on the streets. It means finding the path that is right for you in life despite what society believes is acceptable. “Nobody would have thought that somebody with my credentials would leave law for Hollywood,” Ted Chervin, a T.V. agent, said. Chervin graduated from the Harvard School of Law, and then, he worked in Manhattan for the U.S. attorney’s office for five years and never lost a case. “I had accomplished a lot of my goals [in law] and was looking for a new challenge,” Chervin said in a 2006 interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I didn’t start as an agent; I looked over contracts, read scripts, got a feel for how the business was set up. Then, after a few months they said, ‘You’re an agent.’” Chevrin worked his way up to his current position in Hollywood. Other guest speakers were Debra Miller, a social advocate; Alex Dickinson, a pioneer in cloud computing; Kelly King, an actress and Shaheen Sadeghi, the
Amanda Duong
Anti-mall founder speaks at TedX event.. Shaheen Sadeghi, founder of the first anti-mall, shares his ideas on the decline of American consumption as a speaker representing the “Defy Society” theme of the second-annual campus evening. founder of the first anti-mall. Even senior Justin Sung participated in the event, sharing his passion for hip-hop dance and his journey to start a dance club at Sage. “I wanted to talk about my experience with dance, the hardships I had to face along the way, trying to find room in my schedule with my many priorities, and the rewarding results that came with following through with something I loved,” noted Sung on his TEDx speech. Similar to the arguments
many of the other speakers made, Sung highlighted the costs and benefits of pursuing his passion in his speech. His goal was to give people the courage to make the same self-satisfying decision he made. “I think that people should feel that no matter what field they pursue, they can still defy society in their own ways” and be successful doing so, Sung said. Not only did the speakers “defy society” in their stories, but the organization behind the event took months of planning and
organizing. “I have grown to love the complexity of the planning, fundraising, and execution of our event and it has helped me and my teammates grow as individuals and as a team,” Kim commented. One common theme from all of the TED talks was that being successful is hard. But the ground rules are pretty simple. Pursue your interests. Take risks. Know that if it does not challenge you, it will not change you.
Reaching ‘Beyond Ourselves’ on April 7 By Vale Lewis 17lewisv.publications@gmail.com
Following a successful event last year, the Multicultural Symposium planning committee is preparing for next month’s symposium with the theme “Beyond Ourselves.” The planning committee, seniors Maia Coffey, Toni Williams, Vale Lewis, Romina Klereby, Crystal Yu, Krystal Gallegos and junior Jack Bentler, has been working on creating a diverse
and interesting symposium as a part of their Service Learning project this year. Seventeen students, teachers and outside speakers are planning to lead discussions and workshops on various topics ranging from unsung women heroes in STEM to housing discrimination based on race. “As members of the Sage Hill community, it is our duty to learn about issues and topics we don’t necessarily learn about on a day to day basis. Symposium is a great op-
portunity to educate yourself on important issues related to race, gender and other topics,” Bentler said. Alex Tatusian, alumnus and graphic designer with ties to social justice, will be leading an all-school assembly to discuss his experience at Sage and how it has shaped his identity. As a Sage alumnus, Alex is very relatable. He can talk about how his experience at Sage has influenced his experience outside of Sage and how it led him to be interested in social justice,” Yu
said. Many nearby schools, including St. Margaret’s, Chadwick and Mater Dei, are invited to attend symposium, along with Sage parents and other members of the local community. “We are excited that other schools will be attending this event because we hope to educate other students and inspire schools to promote multiculturalism and lead similar events in their own communities,” Klereby said. Registration for symposium
sessions is open to students, faculty and the community now, and the symposium itself will occur April 7 during X Block. “It would be great if a lot of students would attend symposium. We believe people will be able to get a lot out of their workshops and we hope we can continue to create a space for the community to discuss important topics,” Williams said. If you are interested in attending workshops, sign up using the link sent to your email this week.