The ReMarker | March 2023

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DAVID DINI Headmaster

Focus Magazine Editor

Our coarse, brutal world has fostered some horribly corrupt people. But there are some special souls out there. Souls so untainted by the follies of mankind that they can wake up, crack their knuckles, log on to Twitter and post the dumbest things I have ever read in my life.

That day’s offenders were multiple Blue Checks of the elephant side of the bird website who were so outraged by the fact that Joe Biden was continuing aid for Ukraine and Turkish earthquake relief not only while there was a train chemical leak in Ohio but also on President’s Day that — unprompted by anyone — they decided to open up their computers and share their sentiments with the world. This situation was confusing for me too, until I realized the federal government of the United States of America could do two things at the same time, or maybe even three things if we’re feeling really adventurous!

Sending money to those mooching earthquake and war victims on President’s day? The audacity! Don’t these freedom-hating liberals remember when Abe Lincoln told real Americans they were strictly forbidden from maintaining military or humanitarian aid on a date vaguely near his birthday?

My point here is that no matter the merits of your actual point, the outraged tone of these tweets are just bad optics. It’s simply a bad look for an American tweeting on the toilet to be competing with Ukrainians in carpet-bombed cities or Turks trapped under rubble in the Victimhood Olympics, even if we really are just spoiling those earthquake survivors rotten.

It’s very hard to gain — much less wield — political power on a platform of victimhood. Pro tip: if your movement starts with “anti-'' just go out and frolic in a grassy field, because you will be unable to govern under that banner.

It’s why the power of the “anti-woke” movement over the past few years was barely enough to change one unit on an AP course that doesn’t even exist yet, and the only dents it made on popular culture were coopted by moderate liberals.

It’s why Donald Trump, on a platform of “anti-elitism,” made his only legislative achievement tax cuts for, well, the elites. A movement whose central idea is one of subtraction is doomed to end up being exiled to the swamps of South Florida.

Closed for CONSTRUCTION

The federal government pledged $1 trillion toward infrastructure improvements throughout the country. How is this money being used?

See coverage, pages 6-7

NEWS IN BRIEF

ALCOHOL AWARENESS Ryan

Travia, Associate Vice President for Student Success at Babson College, gave presentations on alcohol and its effects on the brain to Upper School students on the afternoons of Feb. 6-7 in the Science Lecture Hall. He informed students about measures they should take if they see someone who has had too much to drink or is exhibiting symptoms of alcohol poisoning and emphasized the importance of seeking help from an adult if someone’s health is at risk. For the last few years, Travia has given a similar presentation to the Upper School to remind students about the dangers of alcohol and how to stay safe around it.

EIGHTH GRADE CAMPOUT The annual eighth-grade campout took place at the Cross Timbers Trail on the south shore of Lake Texoma from Feb. 22-24. Students were split into groups and backpacked 6-8 miles to a campsite where they

HEADLINES

spent the night. Boys learned how to cook food, build a shelter and care for their equipment without the accommodations of utilities like running water and electricity. This camping trip was the grade's final preparation before the iconic Pecos trip this summer.

ISAS FESTIVAL This year’s Independent School’s Association of the Southwest (ISAS) festival will take place from April 13 to April 15 at All Saints’ Episcopal School in Fort Worth, Texas. ISAS is a fine arts festival for private schools in the region where students get the chance to showcase their talents, and hundreds of students are expected to attend this year. The festival will happen at full scale compared to last year when COVID restricitions were still in place.

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY All five Habitat for Humanity building opportunities have ended, with the

Breaking down this month’s hot topics.

What happened: The one-year anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine

When: Feb. 24

INSIDE

last build taking place on Feb. 18. Every Saturday, volunteers from St. Mark’s and Hockaday worked on the construction of a home. Volunteers installed windows and started on the exterior walls. All the interior walls and framing have been completed. Volunteers worked as much as possible on the roof, and private contractors will be hired to complete the roofing professionally.

ASH WEDNESDAY A service was held for Ash Wednesday on the morning of Feb. 22. The service, led by school chaplain Rev. Stephen Arbogast, was open to all students and faculty. Those who attended the service wore ash crosses on their foreheads throughout the day. These crosses symbolize mortality in the Christian faith. In the Christian calendar, Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent, which lasts 40 days and ends in April with the celebration of Easter.

Importance and relevance: There is no immediate end in sight to this conflict that has quickly turned to a war of attrition.

What happened: Florida bans genderaffirming care for transgender youth

When: Feb. 20

Importance and relevance: Governor Ron DeSantis and the Board of Medicine passed legislation to bar new patients under 18 from these treatments.

What happened: Five former police officers plead not guilty in the death of Tyre Nichols

When: Feb. 17

Importance and relevance: The officers, all fired on Jan. 20, will be facing many charges including second-degree murder. Their next court date is May 1.

A look at the AEDs and CPR training designed to save lives.

Examining this additional safety measure as fears of fentanyl grow.

05

Guardian angels Naloxone installation Drivers education

Is the modern drivers-ed system sufficient for the next generation?

What happened: An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 struck southern Turkey and northern and western Syria.

When: Feb. 6

Importance and relevance: With more than 51,000 deaths confirmed, the earthquake was the strongest to hit Turkey since 1939 and the second strongest to ever occur there. Additionally, the quake collapsed hundreds of thousands of buildings and left more than 2 million people homeless.

PHOTO / DAWSON YAO

PHOTOS / CREATIVE COMMONS

How to not be a whiny whiner, politically MYLES LOWENBERG

CLOSED ROADS Extensive construction on roads throughout downtown Dallas make it nearly impossible to travel through the city without seeing at least a couple of bright orange cones or sidewalk closure signs.

Training to save lives

In the event of an emergency, faculty and staff have been training countless hours to perform effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and correctly administer automated external defibrillators (AED) to ensure the safety of students and visitors here. As they run through various simulated scenarios of cardiovascular afflictions, they are working to become fully prepared to save lives.

Aman collapses, clutching his heart. His breathing is quick, his heartbeat irregular. Like a lawn chair, he’s folded up and on the floor, writhing in pain. Onlookers stare in distress. And even though they’ve called 9-1-1 a dozen times already, they know it won't help. At best, the ambulance will be here in 2 minutes, and the paramedics will watch him take his dying breaths. Even at best, the situation will turn out for the worst.

But the man doesn’t die. In 30 seconds, his knight in shining armor carrying an AED kit will be on the scene. In 30 seconds, he’ll receive the proper treatment, enough to keep him breathing. In 30 seconds, everything will be fine.

These situations happen daily. And even in such dire circumstances, nearly 70 percent of all victims are saved, resuscitated and rescued.

And it’s all because of the training those around them received.

The school first implemented life-saving instruction for teachers after chool nurse Julie Doerge proposed it.

“Sixteen years ago, when I arrived, there were probably 10 people on campus who had CPR training,” Doerge said. “I suggested that it would be wise to have the whole school get trained. The following year, we paid a company to come in to teach CPR and AED training to all the faculty and staff.”

After around a decade of successful instruction, however, COVID struck, and the school had to find new ways to teach.

“During COVID, the faculty used a website called Safe School,” Doerge said. “There’s a CPR program on that website that faculty could access online so that they didn’t completely forget everything they had learned.”

In the past month, the process has changed yet again,

Entrance of Decherd Hall

Next to the school nurse’s office

Entrance of Chapel

Entrance of Green Library

Hallway between Winn Science Center and McDermott-Green Science Center

Back of Centennial Hall

Next to the Journalism Suite

Between Spencer Gymnasium and Rogers Natatorium

Behind Hunt Stadium

Entrance of The Great Hall

Next to the trainers’ offices

Entrance of Nearburg Hall

due to an exit from COVID protocols.

“This month, we’re switching to a new company where we can get all the coaches and security staff up to date with their AED training,” Doerge said. “We’ve always felt that this was an important issue for the school, and that’s why we’ve begun training students on CPR in their classes.”

AED training is essential as it makes sure a patient doesn’t die from immediate heart failure.

“When you go down, your heart will start to beat irregularly within three minutes,” Doerge said. “For this, we could do all the CPR in the world and it wouldn’t save someone, because all it does is keep blood oxygenated. This is why we have AED training — to get your heart back into a normal rhythm.”

Without the presence of a defibrillator, a patient has a much higher chance of death compared to someone who receives assistance.

“In sudden cardiac arrest that happens outside of hospitals, the general percent of people who survive is a meager 10 percent,” Doerge said. “In schools where CPR and AED programs are in place, they found that the number shoots up to 71 percent. This makes it essential that everybody knows where defibrillators are at all times.”

The school’s dedication to awareness is evident. For example, all Middle Schoolers are required to attend a health and wellness class, in which they are taught the locations of every AED around the school.

“Right now, we have around 12 [AEDs] on campus,” Doerge said. “In Middle School, the health and wellness instructor sets up a scavenger hunt, where they make [students] go find every AED. We also ask the faculty to be aware of where the closest one is to their office.”

AEDs are designed for anybody to use. Cross country head coach Ryan Hershner has worked with patients' heart for years and has been CPR and AED certified for several years.

“I worked at the Cooper Clinic in exercise physiology

where we would hook patients up to a treadmill and put a 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) on them,” Hershner said. “It would analyze their heart rhythms for how it looked under stress and decide if there was anything that was indicating for cardiovascular disease.”

Hershner operated with the clinic’s code team, or mobile emergency response team, before the paramedics arrived in an emergency. At the clinic, it was not rare for a patient to pass out from stress and go into cardiac arrest.

“We had a guy who was running on the track at the clinic, and it was during a summer day,” Hershner said. “He went down, and somebody was screaming for help. They called Code 99 [ a medical emergency], and our team went into action. We gave CPR and shocked him twice. He fortunately came back and everything was fine, but heart attacks happen more often than we’d like to think.”

While Hershner has only needed to use CPR and AEDs once, he believes the countless hours spent learning how to perform CPR and use AEDs were crucial.

“I’ve gone through hundreds of scenarios in training, but having only performed CPR one time, I think those reps and being prepared for those events is so valuable,” Hershner said. “We’ve had people on our code team freeze when in a real scenario because it can be disturbing when you see a person like that.”

For many, no amount of training can prepare personnel for a real emergency.

“Real people feel different than the mannequin,” Hershner said. “With them, we don’t get to undo mistakes, and we just have to adjust. In practice, we could rewatch the film and decide what we could have done differently. But if it’s an actual human, we just have to minimize errors and work with what we have. However, I think that everybody should be CPR certified. It’s super easy, and it doesn’t take a lot of resources. I think it’s a usable tool no matter where you are.”

STORY Dawson Yao, Joseph Sun

RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER Located around campus, automated external defibrillators (AED) deliver an electric shock to victims of cardiac arrest to restore normal heart rhythm.

PHOTO / JOSEPH SUN

LIFE-SAVING RESOURCES

As deaths caused by fentanyl penetrate schools, Narcan will be available at various points around campus.

The hardest pill to swallow

Recently, more cases of drug overdoses due to fentanyl have been reported than ever before. These cases are not isolated incidents far away, either; some even involve other high schools in our own backyard. A new era of dangerous drugs has begun, one where the threat often lies behind the veil of a legitimate medical product.

Exit the St. Mark’s parking lot, head west on Royal Lane, turn right onto North Webb Chapel Road and travel northwest on Josey Lane, and after about 17 minutes, you’ll reach a foreign but strikingly familiar destination.

You’ll find the same organized chaos of the afterschool carpool line, the same congregations of students moving molasses-like across campus and the same intermittent sessions of basketball and popular mobile video games. As spring approaches, the same giddy expectancy of the impending graduation festivities fills the senior class as the freshmen settle into their high school responsibilities and expectations.

Roughly 10 miles from campus, shades of 10600 Preston Road can be seen in Carrollton’s R.L. Turner High School. Like St. Mark’s, Turner High School, a tightknit community, is a place of learning, growth and camaraderie. So, when students started disappearing out of nowhere, their classmates and teachers took notice.

To deal fentanyl is to knowingly imperil lives. To deal fentanyl to minors — naive middle and high school students — is to shatter futures.

LEIGHA SIMONTON

U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas

Since September, over ten students in the Carrollton area have overdosed on fentanyl-laced pills linked to dealers near R.L. Turner High School.

The implications? No proms. No graduation diplomas. No children or grandchildren. An entire lifetime of possibilities erased in an instant.

On Feb. 3, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton announced suspects, Luis Eduardo Navarrete and Magaly Mejia Cano, were arrested and charged with a conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, namely fentanyl.

“To deal fentanyl is to knowingly imperil lives,” Simonton said in a news release. “To deal fentanyl to minors — naive middle and high school students — is to shatter futures. These defendants’ alleged actions are simply despicable. We can never replace the three teenagers whose lives were lost, nor can we heal the psychological scars of those who survived their overdoses. But we can take action to ensure these defendants are never allowed to hand a pill to a child again.”

As the justice system takes care of these harmful drug dealers, the news coverage recedes and fentanyl fades into only being considered in the context of the southern border, yet substance abuse remains present in the community surrounding the school. For many, it doesn’t start with pills. It can start with a small sip of alcohol.

For a student here, his experience with a variety of substances began in a relatively mundane place: his friend’s father’s alcohol cabinet.

“It was midway through sophomore year and I would go over to my friend’s house on the weekends, and we

would go out and just do high-schooler activities for most of the night,” the student said. “Then, whenever we would retire to that friend’s house, we’d usually end up drinking, so it started with alcohol. Then, that friend got heavily into marijuana because he was hanging out with a different friend group that I didn’t associate with. As he started smoking more, he would mainly hang out with them, so my friends and I wouldn’t see him as much. But, in the beginning, there were a few times when he had some on him and asked me, ‘Hey, do you want to smoke?’ I was reserved because another friend told me it was not a pleasant experience.”

Eventually, though, the student did end up trying marijuana, only to find that his friend was correct, as the event was anything but pleasant.

“I did it the first time and it was absolutely the worst experience I have ever had,” the student said. “It was also weird because it wasn’t actual marijuana, it was THC extract, a ‘cart.’ I spent the first 45 minutes convincing myself that my throat wasn’t on fire because it was the first time I’d ever inhaled anything other than air, and my body reacted pretty negatively to that. After that, I was completely dissociated, and I was convinced that I was seeing my body through a different medium; I was in the third person dictating my actions.”

Marijuana’s prevalence among high school-aged students is at all-time high. According to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), 35 percent of high school students reported using marijuana in 2020.

This figure is the highest reported in the Monitoring the Future study (funded by NIDA), which has been conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research since 1980.

The ante on the dangers of marijuana was upped in 2022, when the substance was laced with fentanyl and made its appearance in Collin and Dallas Counties, according to multiple media and government reports.

Since then, the prevalence of fentanyl has increased, often mixed with or mistaken for other opioids.

Those drugs, while not as common as marijuana, are also accessible to some teenagers. According to the CDC, a reported 15 percent of high school students used illicit or injection drugs, such as cocaine and heroin. Fourteen percent of high school students reported misusing prescription opioids.

In the recent case from Carrollton that received national attention and kept fentanyl concerns in the spotlight in the DFW area, fentanyl-laced M30 pills, which investigators described as “fake percocet and Oxycontin,” were distributed to students, who then sold them at school.

Hays Consolidated ISD, near Austin, also lost four students to fentanyl overdoses last year.

Tim Savoy, Chief Communications Officer for Hays CISD, told NPR that the district has started to put more time and resources into educating students about the danger of the drug.

Students in the district worked with officials to create a series of informational posters and videos and distributed them to schools of all grade levels. The posters show what a lethal dose of fentanyl looks like and how to spot a

thousand Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021

thousand deaths from synthetic opoids in 2021, a 750% increase since 2015 more fentanyl overdoses in children under 14

counterfeit pill from a real one.

DRUG INFO

The district even went as far as to post footage of a fentanyl overdose that took place behind a Hays CISD school. The surveillance video shows a student overdosing in his car, when a friend drags him out and calls for help. The student survived.

“We made all the high school students watch that,” Savoy told NPR. “It’s kids seeing two of their peers in an emergency situation. It’s real. It’s not reenacted or anything.”

Other schools and districts across the state are working on various ways to spread information about fentanyl and the dangers of it.

The student who tried drugs for the first time more than a year ago had no idea about fentanyl or that he was using a substance that had the potential to be laced with it.

“It was before the whole fentanyl scare had hit the media and everybody was talking about it,” the student said. “So I’m not gonna lie: when I did it, I didn’t even know about fentanyl and fentanyl overdoses. It was not something that went through my mind. But today, any drug could be loaded with fentanyl, and you wouldn’t even know until you’re dead.”

If people are not educated on the dangers of fentanyl, they will be much less likely to be proactive against consuming it, according to the student.

The school agrees on the importance of proactivity, as it has elected to add naloxone, commonly known by the brand name Narcan, to first-aid kits around campus by the start of next school year.

“In school, we’re taught that drugs are bad because you can get addicted, and then they’ll destroy your life,” the student said. “You’re not taught that drugs are bad because they will kill you immediately, but that’s what fentanyl does. There’s no getting severely addicted to fentanyl and your body slowly shutting down because of it; you just die. That’s a big problem because, when looking at a substance and thinking of doing it for the first time, most high schoolers, myself included, are more concerned with the negatives being addiction and how it will alter your brain and your body rather than the much scarier thing: that you won’t wake up.”

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series on substance use and overdose prevention. Part two will appear in the April issue of The ReMarker.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE

STORY Keshav Krishna, Grayson Redmond

PHOTOILLUSTRATION / KESHAV KRISHNA

A student learns the driving process from an online course. These programs are commonplace now, but some posit they are not as useful as they seem.

Learning the rules of the road

The previous generations have all learned to drive the same way: through some form of an in-person class. However, over the years, drivers education has slowly been replaced by online courses. However, many of these courses are ineffective, and their usefulness is being called into question. Does it work? Should the process continue?

Marksmen have plenty of activities available to fill their limited time, like spending time with friends, practicing sports or studying for an upcoming math test. But at some point, every student must master a skill necessary for survival in the adult world: driving a car.

So instead of these other activities, Upper School students set aside time year after year in a classroom or in front of their computer, soaking up hours of content over safe driving and the laws of the road.

Throughout those hours of sitting and listening, it’s not always easy to pay attention, and, to many, it can often feel like much of the information covered is extremely basic or not particularly applicable.

So, is the current state of driving a tedious mess of government bureaucracy, an efficient and practical way of ensuring road safety, or something in between?

For sophomore Daniel Sun, a lack of focus sometimes posed an issue during driver's education. Despite this, Sun says that he generally paid attention to the videos.

“I didn’t pay full attention, to some videos and I did to others,” Sun said. “I would say that I paid full attention to 60 to 70% of the videos. During the other 30%, I was zoning out. Even though I could zone out while learning online, my parents and I all thought that online was the best option. It was cheaper than an in-person class, and I didn’t have to go to one specific place to do it.”

From a parent’s perspective, Sun’s mother Ling Chen is satisfied with Sun’s proficiency on the rules of the road, and credits his online driving course for this.

“When I’m teaching him to drive,” Chen said, “I can ask him questions like ‘What does that light mean?’ or ‘What does that signal mean?’ He tends to know, so I suppose Aceable taught him quite well.”

Sun says that, although he may have zoned out a couple of times, he still found online classes to be very helpful for learning the material.

“It's helped me with the actual rules of driving,” Sun said. “Watching someone drive isn't the same as a class where you learn things like how long before your turn you have to signal. It‘s helped me a lot in terms of understanding the rules.”

Still, while the online class has helped him learn the laws and general rules of thumb for stopping distances and turn signals, Sun says that it is more important for him to drive with his parents. According to Sun, learning from them and picking up on their habits is just as helpful.

“When they ride with me, my parents also correct what I’m doing wrong and teach me from their experience,” Sun said. “They want me to be safe on the road, and I think it‘s more helpful if my parents teach me since they are more protective. They know me better, so they can teach me better.”

Chen, who grew up in China, immigrated to the United States as a young adult and learned to drive from her sister. Though Chen is currently teaching her son Daniel to drive with the parent-taught format, she plans on sending her other son, sophomore Joseph Sun, to a local driving school in order to cover her knowledge gaps from never having done conventional driving training.

“I have some trouble doing parallel parking, and that’s one reason I want to send Joseph to driving school,” Chen said. “Then, after he finishes driving school, I hope he can teach Daniel, and then both of them can do the test.”

Daniel Sun says that, ultimately, while he thinks that parents work just fine as driving educators, an online course has helped him to learn some intricacies of driving.

“I don't think an in-person instructor is necessary because you can have your parents teach you.” Daniel Sun said. “Using the online websites can help to teach you the rules, and parents can correct your driving and teach you what you should or should not do outside of a class.”

DRIVER EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS

1. Age

Any person between the ages of 14 and 25 is required to take a driver education course.

2. Driver education options

Anyone interested in driver education can enroll in a driver education school.

Parents are allowed to teach an approved driver education course.

Education centers such as public schools, education service centers or colleges can teach a driver education course.

3. Course length

In order to complete a full driver education course, the student must complete 32 hours of education, but it must be over a period of time longer than 16 days.

4. In-car driving length

After completing the classroom phase of driver education, students must then move onto the in-car phase. This consists of seven hours behind-the-wheel driving.

5. In-car obeservation length

The final step is seven more hours of incar observation.

SOURCE / Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation

Community service hours documentation to switch platforms for the foreseeable future

BY Vikram Singh

Logging community service hours through x2VOL’s online service has been a longtime practice at the school. The process of entering, verifying and approving hours is something students have known for quite some time. But now, for the first time in over a decade, this simple process is changing and moving platforms.

The Community Service Board decided to switch platforms from x2VOL to MobileServe for a few key reasons.

“The main reason the switch was made was simply because times are changing and tech is progressing fast, and we feel x2VOL has not kept up with those changes,” Community Service Director Jorge Correa said. “X2VOL has served us well for over a decade, but we must also change with the times.”

One of the key reasons for changing platforms is to make it easier for students to verify hours.

“In the past there was only one way to verify your

hours, you would supply a verification email when you enter your hours, and then that person linked to the email you entered would approve the hours,” Correa said.

MobileServe now allows for multiple different ways for students to verify hours, speeding up the process between entering them and getting them approved.

“There are a few different ways to verify your hours once you have entered them.” Correa said. “First, you can use the simple email verification we have used in the past. Second, you can take a photo of you at the location and upload it to MobileServe as verification.

Third, you can use geo-location on your phone to have MobileServe recognize you are at the location of the event.”

Along with having more ways to verify hours, Correa believes that the new platform will help students find out about more opportunities.

“We also like this new platform because of how easy the mobile app is to use,” Correa said. “We understand

that most teenagers take their phone wherever they go, so now that there is a comprehensive mobile app, students will be notified of new opportunities on their phone, increasing the number of opportunities students know about.”

Lastly, the new platform stores data of previous opportunities so that it becomes easier to input information for a recurring event.

“When you enter the information for an opportunity you have not done before, the app stores the information for that opportunity, so when you search it up the next time, it pops up almost like a google search,” Correa said.

This switch has come after over a decade and according to Correa is a big step forward for community service here at 10600 Preston Road.

“When I first came here, we were using paper and pencils to submit hours, and then we switched to x2VOL, and now we’re switching from x2VOL to MobileServe, and it is just as big a step,” Correa said.

STORY Will Spencer, Ian Dalrymple

DANIEL SUN Sophomore

PHOTO / HAYWARD METCALF

FROM THE

In 2021, an infrastructure bill yielding more than one trillion dollars was passed, promising improved roads, parks and public facilities. Since then, the federal government has begun the tedious task of distributing the funding, splitting it up between cities and organizations based on necessity. How has the City of Dallas approached this process? A fund manager from Dallas City Hall shares her insight.

and divots. I just have to watch out.”

Summer permeated every aspect of his neighborhood. The sun cast its rays through a cloudless sky. Everywhere, sprinklers popped out of the turf. And sophomore Jack Tholking was hungry.

One hand on the handlebar, the other by his side, he pedaled towards the intersection on the familiar, cracked road.

As he biked towards his lunch spot, a car turned onto the road and headed straight towards him. It did not seem like it would stop.

With both hands on the handlebar, he turned towards the curb. The car rushed past. His front tire rolled into a pothole.

And when his second wheel hit the pothole, he braked and lost control. Soon, he hit the ground, having flipped over his handlebars.

These cuts and bruises could have been avoided. The pothole could have been filled. Sidewalks and bike paths could have been built.

But now, billions have been pledged towards infrastructure.

And soon, it all might change.

Almost a year and a half ago, President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a $1 trillion dollar investment toward various public services, including roads, electricity, and ensuring internet for all.

Tholking feels that an upgrade to the roads in Dallas would be extremely beneficial, especially because he bikes to school with 30 pounds of books on his back.

“Having a flat road without potholes and a specific bike lane would not only make it safer for bikers, who wouldn’t have to focus on oncoming cars and could instead focus on staying in the lane, but it would also make it easier and safer for drivers as well,” Tholking said. “Instead of drivers having look out to the side all the time for bikers, they can just recognize the bike lane and stay out of it, and just go about the rest of their driving.”

Even though Tholking only has a little more than a mile to bike to school, there’s a lot of potential hazards on his way to school.

“One section just has a chunk of road that’s missing,” Tholking said. “The road is flat for the most part, but then suddenly, there will just be a lump of asphalt sticking out. There’s also a good amount of cracks and drops throughout the road. So I have to be careful when I’m biking — especially when it’s dark — but at this point, I know to avoid most of the cracks

Even though he had flipped over his front wheel once because of a pothole, Tholking feels that the danger of biking in Dallas really depends on the attitude of the drivers that pass him.

“If they are good drivers, then they would only pass you when it’s safe to pass you,” Tholking said.

“They shouldn’t be brushing past you and trying to get around you. But the thing is, the road doesn’t only have good drivers, so there’s been a lot of times on my ride home where there will be someone who will just pass me right away without even slowing down and without making sure I was on the curb.”

And Tholking has had several close calls with drivers.

“I had one time where a person flew right by me and their windshield hit the back of my bag,” Tholking said. “I’ve also had times at intersections where some cars will get to a stop sign before you, but they have to make a judgment whether or not to wait and let you go. And there’s been a few times where I thought cars had stopped, and I kept biking ahead. But all of a sudden they gunned it right in front of me and I had to break real quick to not hit them.”

A lot of these close calls happen at lunchtime, when drivers are supposed to see bikes better.

“Once I was biking along behind the truck at a far enough distance, and the truck started to slow down,” Tholking said. “So I started to slow down, but then all of a sudden, it stops and starts going in reverse — just really quickly. And this was a big 18-wheeler. I put on my brakes and started to move out of the way, but my front tire hit the back of the truck and my front wheel’s tire frame bent. It wasn’t badly enough twisted that like I couldn’t ride it. But it was still noticeable enough that I could see it as I was riding.”

But before any infrastructure project to fix the roads that would utilize money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law can begin, grant applications must first be approved by the federal government for city use. These grant applications secure the money needed to fund projects.

“Every application that’s out there is going to have at least two components,” said Dallas’ Grants Manager Dina Colarossi, who has held the position since 2014. “You need to have a narrative where you talk about what your community needs. You also

STORY Dawson Yao, Linyang Lee

JACK THOLKING Sophomore

CITY OF DALLAS A trailer truck pulls valuable resources (left). The materials transported will be used to help repair and build various aspects of the infrastructure around Dallas. White arches stand in the middle of a bustling city (right). Klyde Warren Park is perhaps the best park in the greater Dallas area, and it's what the City of Dallas is trying to add to Dallas City infrastructure (right).

REBUILDING A lane in downtown Dallas remains closed. These road closures are extremely common throughout the Dallas area (top). A fountain accompanied by a sculpture sprays out water (bottom). These pieces of art are part of a citywide effort to improve Dallas' landscape.

PHOTOS / DAWSON YAO

PHOTOS / DAWSON YAO

GROUND UP

need to state how you’re going to meet that need if given the funding by the government.”

Each application must also include a component about how the project is going to unfold. In addition, they need to showcase their plans for allocating resources.

“Each application includes a budget, showing how the money is going to be distributed,” Colarossi said. “For example, an application could say, ’We’re going to spend a certain amount on personnel to hire someone to do this work, and we’re going to spend another amount on equipment to accomplish the needs.’”

Naturally, the process is different for each application, as different cities and organizations have different needs.

“It really depends on the program,” Colarossi said. “Some cities and organizations need to put a lot more time and information in their proposals than others.”

The strength of the application directly correlates with application success.

“It’s a lot like applying to college,” Colarossi said. “ You’ve got to make sure all your grades are in line and that your grades match the brands of the school you’re applying to. You have to be as persuasive as you can. In the end, some people get in, and some people don’t. Our process is very similar, except for us, you’re dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars.”

In the end, having a competitive mindset is key.

“We work closely with everybody else involved in the project so that we get of the information that we need to write the most competitive grant applications that we can,” Colarossi said. “We’ve got to be competitive.”

Regardless, having a failing application is not necessarily a bad thing. Most of the time, failure yields positive things, like advice and valuable insight.

“Even if you have one out of three applications succeed, that means you’re doing a really good job,” Colarossi said. “In cases where we get denied,

we’ll reach out to the funder, and we’ll ask them for feedback on our application, so we can see how we need to strengthen it.”

After getting the money through the application process, the next step is to manage where the money goes. However, instead of spending money making new organizations to put money towards, the city tries to allocate the money into pre-existing projects.

“A big part of our plans for the infrastructure bill is actually a reauthorization of the surface transportation funding,” Colarossi said. “That’s exactly what it sounds like, and it includes roads, bridges, and highways.”

Other groups revitalized with the introduction of the infrastructure bill include organizations that manage other public services and essential infrastructure.

“All of our money is targeted towards keeping up with transportation and public services,” Colarossi said.

“We have organizations that deal with everything from freight trains to airports. We cover everything from DFW airport to the DART [Dallas Area Rapid Transit] system in our grants.”

To determine what the funding will go towards, the City of Dallas works in collaboration with Congress to determine the best way to spend the money.

“Our priorities here [at the City of Dallas] line up pretty well with the federal priorities,” Colarossi said. “One of the ways we align ourselves with public interest is just by observing at the local level. We’re the closest to our resident, so we know what the people need most.

This approach not only factors what the city needs as a whole, but also which areas of Dallas are especially important to take care of.

“We also put money towards neighborhoods that haven’t been kept up with very well over the decades,” Colarossi said. “For example, areas that have tons and tons of potholes, and just

no good infrastructure in general.”

This allocation is primarily due to the Justice40 Initiative, which makes sure that 40 percent of infrastructure bills goes toward disadvantaged areas.

“To meet the goal of the initiative, the administration is transforming hundreds of Federal programs across the government to ensure that disadvantaged communities receive the benefits of new and existing Federal investments,” The White House wrote in their description of the Initiative. “This investment will help confront decades of underinvestment in disadvantaged communities, and bring critical resources to communities that have been overburdened by legacy pollution and environmental hazards.”

Sophomore Daniel Sun feels that infrastructure in Dallas could be a lot better. Sun, who now lives in Dallas, had lived in Allen for over a decade.

“The roads in Allen are a lot wider and they have like a lot more space,” Sun said. “The lanes are in Dallas are very skinny.”

Sometimes, Sun wishes the roads in Dallas would be just as good as the roads in Allen.

“The roads in Dallas are a lot less flat,” Sun said. “And then when I’m walking my dog, sometimes they don’t feel safe when I’m like on a road in our neighborhoods. And there’s a lot more roadwork in Dallas, and it’s very slow. I can tell like the roads are a little bit better, but the problem is like it takes like a long time. "

In the process of dividing funds, looking into the future is also a big priority. Comprehensiveness reigns supreme.

“Our most recent plan for the city is looking ahead into 2045,” Colarossi siad. “We have to plan for population growth, and we have to make sure we’re accounting for those trends so that we can be ready for it.”

Ultimately, government workers just like Colarossi live here too. Just like us, they see the potholes, cracks, and disfiguration on the roads. And when the problems are fixed, the work shows.

"One of the great things about working for local government, we see where the money goes. Every day when you walk down the street, the results of your work are really tangible.”

PROJECTS AND THEIR COSTS

50

“ We can see the our work show up all around the city. The fruits of our labor really do shine.

DINA COLAROSSI Fund Development Manager - City of Dallas

wooden bridge connects

sides of a stream (left). The crossing is one of many throughout the Allen area, which provides its residents with a plethora

SOURCE / Memorandum sent to Dallas City Council June 24

ENGAGING

The “ideal” daycare preference for many parents is one that will enrich children every step of the way.

The biggest dilemma for new families

With Dallas‘ child care services continuing to pose a variety of problems — expensive cost and limited availablity, to name a few — for working parents, many people struggle to find solutions.

The sound of wailing infants rings through the house.

For the third month in a row, Malcom K. and Minda Brachman Master Teaching Chair Dr. Martin Stegemoeller awakes to his two young twin girls sick with fevers in their cribs.

Unable to take the two to their daycare, Stegemoeller and his wife both scramble to prepare for work while finding a babysitter for their children.

This chaos has become the norm in the Stegemoeller household.

Since last fall, either one of or both of Stegemoeller children have been sick almost every week, making the cost of at-home care almost rival that of daycare.

Yet both Stegemoeller parents are willing to face this challenge head-on because they believe that early childhood education and interaction is instrumental to their girls’ development.

But for many American families, the cost of daycare is an issue alomost impossible to address.

Two years ago, Stegemoeller and his wife began sending his two girls to the Spanish World School, an East Dallas child care center serving as a Spanish immersion environment.

His children have struggled with sickness throughout their time at the school, which Stegemoeller partly attributes to the COVID pandemic.

“We keep waiting for the payout,” Stegemoeller said. “COVID has made it all so weird. For our girls, during the first year of their

lives, they built up almost no immunity to any disease because we were home.”

Now that his kids are back in an open school environment, Stegemoeller is hopeful that his girls will overcome this stage of childhood illness. In the meantime, however, Stegemoeller will have to pay even more than the price of the school to keep his kids attended to, even when they are sick. “Just finding a really great person to stay with them is expensive,” Stegemoeller said. “It’s hard. And its nerve racking.”

Many Dallas families rely on the city’s universal, free pre-kindergarten available to most residents with kids who are 3 years or older. Before that, parents have to find their own childcare, but many wait until their children turn 3 before enrolling them in school due to high costs and other factors, taking away crucial social and physical development that comes with interaction with other infants.

Stegemoeller, however, is willing to pay the price.

“Every hour our kids are awake, we want someone fresh, attentive and loving with them, whether it’s us or somebody else, and we are willing to pay for that,” Stegemoeller said. “We see the results of having really happy, active and buzzing kids. To us, it’s worth it. But it’s crushingly expensive at the same time.”

Sophomore Matthew Freeman, who worked with 2-year-olds over the summer at Temple Emanu-El‘s preschool camp, has seen many of the aspects of daycare that drive the expensive price.

“I don’t know exactly how much this camp cost, but I think if it was expensive, it was probably justified.” Freeman said. “There’s a lot of work that goes in for the teachers who watch the kids and complete tasks like keeping diapers changed. I didn’t have to do that because you had to be 18, but the adults were doing a

ton of work.”

Despite the financial burden daycare places on families, child care work is still a low-paid job. The Bureau of Labor Statistics places the median hourly wage of a child care worker at $13.22 per hour. Child care centers, due to the low pay and job stability that comes with the work, face the same challenge as many other service industry businesses: a struggle to find workers.

“There’s just a lot of American people who don’t want to work for that wage, “Stegemoeller said. “They’re some of the most important people in the world, teaching kids really basic things.”

Another challenge is the long waiting times that come with trying to find a spot at a daycare. Sophomore Jack Tholking, who has worked many smaller jobs like dog walking, pressure washing and babysitting around his neighborhood to make extra money, stepped in for one family near him as a substitute for daycare.

“One particular neighbor couldn’t really send the kids to daycare because there were four cousins, two pairs of two,” Tholking said. “I think in that kind of instance, I was sort of like the daycare, having to take care of them and make sure they’re enjoying themselves.”

With such high costs, families who struggle to afford daycare, especially with several children at home, consider a nanny as an alternative.

“Depending on how much service they provide,” Tholking said, “maybe staying longer or cooking meals, I think that it can be more justifiable than the actual daycare.”

With soaring prices, low wages for workers and long waits, many of the issues plaguing the people responsible for the earliest years of a child’s life are still unresolved. But for the working parents who are in need of child care, daycare remains the primary option.

“Dallas just keeps growing,” Stegemoeller said. “Almost every daycare we considered had a long waiting list, so we were just thrilled that we got the two spots.”

Leadership Loop program introduces personality test for Middle Schoolers

In an effort to cover a broader set of topics in the Middle School Leadership Loops program, members of the Middle School faculty and Counseling Office considered new topics to be introduced in upcoming cycles.

Of these, the Leadership Loops design team decided to introduce an experimental loop for Middle School students in the spring — taking a personality test, which, according to Middle School Head Dean Clayman, allows teachers to gain a more accurate understanding of the students they work with.

“Leadership Loops are designed to explore the myriad of topics related to leadership,” Clayman said. “Each year, new loops are designed to investigate different concepts.

We created this loop to develop greater awareness and understanding of implications of personality styles in the work of collaborative groups, teams and communities.”

Although personality tests have been used in many settings, Clayman says the idea to implement them in Leadership Loops actually came from a member of the faculty.

“The initial idea for this loop was envisioned by [Spanish instructor Anna] Gill,” Clayman said. “She shared her thoughts with [Director of Counseling Dr. Gabby] Reed, [Assistant Middle School Head Jason] Lange and me. Together, we created the loop. Prior to implementation, feedback was solicited from the other class sponsors, [Computer Science instructor Kendall] Murphy, [Humanities instructor Reilly] Walker and [Humanities instructor John] Hunter.”

The team behind the introduction of personality tests to the Leadership Loop program shared the loop with students during an assembly, later sharing follow-up activities with advisors.

“In our Monday Middle School Assembly, the loop design team presented information about personality types and its relevance to the lives of Middle School boys,” Clayman said. “Ms. Gill, Dr. Gabby, Mr. Lange and I each contributed to the panel discussion.”

Though ideas may be introduced by individual members of the faculty, Clayman says the Leadership Loop program is truly a team effort.

“Leadership Loops are a collaborative endeavor involving interested faculty, the Counseling Office, class sponsors, Mr. Lange and me,” Clayman said. “The work of Leadership Loops is founded on the concepts, beliefs, and skills outlined in the St. Mark‘s Character and Leadership Handbook."

STORY Hilton Sampson, Myles Lowenberg

DR. MARTIN STEGEMOELLER

Malcom K. and Minda Brachman

Master Teaching Chair

PHOTO / COURTESY CREATIVE COMMONS

BY Nikhil Dattatreya

DEAN CLAYMAN Head of Middle School

“ We see the results of having really happy, active and buzzing kids. To us, it‘s worth it. But it‘s crushingly expensive at the same time.

DR. MARTIN STEGEMOELLER Malcom K. and Minda Brachman Master Teaching Chair

Breaking BORDERS

Alan Rosenthal ’13 recently completed a thru-hike from the top of Mexico to the frosty borders of Canada. See coverage, pages 10-11

PERSONAL COLUMN

Timber troubles

SHREYAN DAULAT Editor-in-Chief

Mass timber — a ‘special’ type of wood, like cross laminated timber, laminated veneer lumber and glue laminated timber — is projected to revolutionize the construction of office buildings, other Dallas infrastructure and global construction. I’ve read many articles over the past few years detailing the advantages of mass timber construction and projecting its expanded use, yet mass timber buildings represent only the tiniest fraction of the country’s commercial buildings — begging the question: Why the delay?

Mass timber is seen as environmentally beneficial for two reasons: it negates the need to produce a larger quantity of emissions from the formation of steel and concrete, and the wood used in mass timber buildings sequesters carbon dioxide. Its strength-to-weight ratio also allows it to endure seismic activity, and its fire resistance properties meet most code requirements.

STEM IN BRIEF

SCHOOL CANCELLATION

Due to numerous natural disasters in recent years, the process of cancelling school in case of emergency has become quite streamlined. In the case of natural disasters such as tornadoes or the ice storm that occurred a month ago, the administration must decide if school will be canceled. This decision lies in the hands of Headmaster David Dini. In Dini’s absence, Assistant Headmaster and Interim Head of Upper School John Ashton chooses whether or not to cancel school.

PHYSICS OLYMPIAD

Senior Alex Wang, junior Henry Baxter and sophomore Surya Dinesh qualified for the USAPHO because of their performance in the Physics Olympiad on Feb. 9, Upper School Marksmen took a test that covered topics such as mechanics, fluids, and error propagation. Many of the students who took

the test are AP Physics students. Around 6,000 students around the country took this exam, which is the preliminary stage in the Olympiad competition. Only 400 students are invited to participate in the next level of the competition, which is a more difficult calculus-based test. Doing well on that test could qualify students for participating on the United States national Physics team.

AIME MATH COMPETITION

For this year's American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), twenty-three students took the test, nearly double last year’s count and there were several nice scores. Only around 2.5% of the students who took the AMC 8 or 10 qualified for AIME nationwide. High-scoring AIME tests can qualify for the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO), a highly selective high school mathematics competition held annually in the United States. The cutoff will be

WEATHER REPORT

The ReMarker metereologist Akash Munshi breaks down the upcoming forecasts in Dallas.

THIS WEEK THIS MONTH

Friday There will be a high of 62 degrees, low of 45 degrees, Anticipate heavy thunderstorms for most of the day.

Saturday Saturday's high will be 61, and it will have a low of 42. The weather that day will be sunny, with some scattered clouds in the morning.

Sunday Sunday will be cooler, with a high of 49 degrees and a low of 35. It will be mostly sunny, with some lingering clouds.

This month will have a lot of temperatures that are below average. We had such warm temperatures in February, so the polar vortex was able to build with well below average temperatures around the Arctic. Now, it’s going to be plunging and creating well below average temperatures for the last few weeks of March. If we’re lucky, we could even see a spot of snow during those days.

Overall, it should be pretty interesting weather wise.

announced in mid-March..

ANIMAL ESCAPE

In late January, two Emperor Tamarin Monkeys, Bella and Finn, were stolen from the Dallas Zoo and later found in the closet of an abandoned home about 15 miles away. Other animals such as cats and pigeons were found in the closet along with the missing monkeys. The suspect was identified as 24-year-old Davion Irvin and arrested on Feb. 2 after being sighted on the DART train with a backpack containing the monkeys.

WINTER ILLNESS UPDATE Illness has risen sharply around the United States, but illness cases on campus have fallen drastically. This uptick in illness is partly due to the cold weather, which forces people indoors and to keep in close contact with each other. In addition seasonal allergies are likely to increase due to the Cedar trees in Austin getting ready to bloom.

INSIDE 10 12

However, the indisputable drawback to the majority of environmentally-friendly alternatives is — you guessed it — money.

Through nature STEM Conference

Alan Rosenthal ’13 hiked across the country from the northern Mexican border to the southern Canadian border.

A recap of the attendees and activities at this year’s annual STEM Conference.

Chemical containment

Gallons of Chemicals Leaked

Size of Train

Size of Town

Number of houses affected

Number of chemicals

Chemical Leak in River

Skeptics say mass timber is no different. However, per structural engineer Ryan Ganey, who’s employed by HKS — an American international architecture firm headquartered in Dallas — many contractors price mass timber higher because they don’t have extensive experience with it. Selecting consultants with experience in mass timber can help alleviate cost concerns. Not to mention, citing several studies analyzed by HKS, mass timber can be as much as five percent cheaper than steel or concrete if used correctly.

100,000 gallons

149 cars

4,700 people

550 homes

five hazardous chemicals

Zero contamination has been detected

Critics also point to the very source of mass timber: deforestation. According to a 2014 study published in the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, using wood as a building-material substitute could save 14%-31% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 12%-19% of global fossil fuel consumption. These numbers are conclusive in proving there’d be a net positive impact.

Yet, mass timber’s use remains nominal compared to conventional steel and concrete construction. The explanation for this is simply that there’s not enough incentives to change old construction practices.

The federal government needs to incentivize mass timber construction by ensuring trees nationwide are grown methodically and harvested sustainably, and by updating building codes and regulations to allow for mass timber.

THE GREAT TREK

PHOTO / COURTESY ALAN ROSENTHAL ’13

PREPARED Alan Rosenthal ’13 poses at the Southern Ternimus of the Pacific Crest trail in Campo California, ready to begin his journey that would take him all the way to the border of Canada.

SOURCE / NBC News

CLIMBING Rosenthal pulls himself up a rock to sit on top of it. Mountains surround much of the Pacific Crest Trail, especially the further north it goes.

SELFIE

Rosenthal takes a selfie as he walks through the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The Pacific Crest Trail has many more rocky portions like this.

ON THE ROAD

After walking over 1,800 miles, Rosenthal reached Crater Lake in Oregon. Even though he’s had to change his pairs of Altra Lone Peaks multiple times, he wore his orange sun hoodie almost all the way through the hike.

THE

REMARKER MARCH 10, 2023

ONE STEP AT A TIME

Starting

Graffitied trains crawl through the desert. Pink flowers grow through cracks in the rock. Deer cross the narrow path and scurry into the trees. Mountains stretch miles into the horizon. Lakes hide between each mountain peak, each cloud reflected in the glassy water.

Everywhere, 50-foot pine trees stand in the sandy earth, their pine cones nestled in the needles.

There’s lizards and wind farms. Open plains and glaciers. Fallen redwoods and cacti.

Each sunrise and sunset sets the clouds ablaze, painting the sky a brilliant orange.

It’s like this every step of the 2,650 mile long Pacific Crest Trail.

And in 105 days, Alan Rosenthal ’13 hiked it all. For many hikers, the Pacific Crest Trail is a lifelong ambition. But Rosenthal chose to do it on a whim.

“I feel a little guilty because some people have it as a big dream,” Rosenthal said. “But I just thought of doing it less than a year before starting — literally that fall. I was just like, ’That’d be cool to do.’ So I got my permit for the trail, got lucky and it all just fell into place.”

Before he started the trail, Rosenthal had been working as a satellite conceptional designer at the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit consultant agency for various companies and government entities.

“It sounds cool, but it’s really just a lot of spreadsheets, PowerPoints, reviewing documentation and doing risk assessments,” Rosenthal said. “I’m not really designing anything, so that has worn on me a bit. And the pandemic itself made the job worse. We still don’t have to go into the office full time. So whenever I go in, barely anybody is in the office. There’s no sense of camaraderie, and there’s no real sense of community at work. It’s just a very isolating and alienating experience. I got fed up with it.”

Rosenthal’s dissatisfaction with his job made him think about quitting and leaving California altogether.

“I thought, ’I really love California, so if I leave, it would be cool to walk across the state as a last hurrah,’” Rosenthal said.

In the end, Rosenthal took a leave of absence. And May 7, with a pair of Altra Lone Peaks, a Sawyer squeeze and some other gear in his pack, he set out for the Pacific Crest Trail trailhead in Campo, a small California border town, and started his hike at the 15-foot metal barrier separating California from Mexico.

“I started out carrying a Bible,” Rosenthal said. “I’m not even religious, I just thought it would be somewhat interesting to carry a Bible — walking across the country is a bit of a spiritual experience — but I ditched that on mile 150.”

Soon, he started throwing away other items he wasn’t using.

“In the Sierra, I actually ditched some cooking gear because I wasn’t cooking my food,” Rosenthal said. “Not that there’s not much to cook, but I realized I was just exhausted at the end of every day that I really didn’t care to boil water to make hot ramen or hot mashed potatoes. I would just let it soak. Eating cold ramen and cold mashed potatoes didn’t really make a big difference to me at the end of the day.”

Rosenthal essentially walked the first 1,400 miles alone.

“I made a point to try to walk with somebody else at least once a day, and it really wasn’t hard to do that,” Rosenthal said. “There’s 4,500 people out there, and there wasn’t a single day on the trail that I didn’t see somebody else. It’s not a super remote experience. I was always around people.”

But he never really stuck together with anyone until he joined a group of people that he walked with for the last 1,200 miles.

“I got along with them really well,” Rosenthal said. “We had a similar sense of humor, a similar pace and a similar goal of when we wanted to finish. We just enjoyed walking together. And they were pretty interesting people. John is a 26-year-old California kid from Orange County who went to Officer Candidate School to become a Navy intelligence officer after the trail. And Martin used to be a forestry professor at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague and has a PhD in forestry.”

He met tons of other people on the trail as well.

“There’s a bunch of random people in their 20s like me,” Rosenthal said. “There’s some kids too. I met a

his 105-day trek at the Mexican border May 7, Alan Rosenthal ’13 hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile-long path through the West Coast that connects Mexico to Canada.

STORY Linyang Lee

AT HOME Rosenthal’s favorite part of his hike was the Sierra Nevada. Even though he lives in Los Angeles, he feels the Sierra Nevada is his home.

family that was walking the trail with their 10 year old kid, and I heard about a family of five, who didn’t finish, but they were walking with three kids and the youngest was a year old. It was just crazy. That’s how extreme the age ranges are.”

When he was walking alone, he would start his hike a few hours after sunrise and would go about 20 to 25 miles a day. But once he started walking with his group, he started to consistently average 30 miles.

“My routine was literally just walking, taking breaks here and there and then walking some more,” Rosenthal said. “You do that until the evening where you stop and have dinner and then sleep. And you do the same thing the next day.”

Every three to five days, Rosenthal would stop at one of the 91 towns along the trail to restock his food, wash his clothes, and take a shower. Since he had a Sawyer straw, a compact water filter, Rosenthal didn’t need to refill his water bottle in the towns.

“The use of the word ‘town’ is broad,” Rosenthal said. “Because at some of the places we stopped, there was just a little store on the side of the road and nothing else around that.”

At these towns, Rosenthal would also eat the occasional apple or avocado.

“Fruits and vegetables weren’t something I really missed when I was on the trail, because I always knew that I was a couple days away from the next town,” Rosenthal said. “I usually just ate a lot of oatmeal, protein bars and Snickers bars.”

Before hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, Rosenthal’s longest backpacking trip was Pecos. But going through all these towns essentially split Rosenthal’s over three month trek into a series of three to five day backpacking trips.

“You really don’t have to carry that much food or extra gear,” Rosenthal said. “So in that regard, it’s quite easy in terms of logistics. There’s a lot of other people out there, and there’s infrastructure for hikers too.”

Rosenthal felt there wasn’t any part of the trail that was particularly difficult because he was just enjoying himself so much.

“Even a bad day on the trail would be a good day in the office,” Rosenthal said. “I would get occasional blisters, but I never had a day that I was like, ‘I hate this walk. I want to go home.’ It literally never even entered my mind. It’s not something I even ever thought about.”

And Rosenthal says the views were breathtaking.

“There was this beautiful view of this glacial valley at sunset, and I just had it all to myself,” Rosenthal said. “Walking down into the sunset in this valley was just absolutely spectacular.”

Going through places he’s been to were some of his favorite parts of the hike.

“I live in Los Angeles, but I really feel like my home is the Sierra,” Rosenthal said. “So having started in from the Mexican border, walking through parts that I’ve been to just on normal weekend trips was really meaningful. And those were probably some of the happiest moments I’ve had if I had to choose.”

But when he got to the Canadian border, Rosenthal didn’t feel that much accomplishment.

“It was extremely anticlimactic,” Rosenthal said. “It’s the anti-accomplishment. I’ve run a couple marathons and done other races. That feeling of accomplishment

is actually much bigger. When you get to the Canadian border, it’s cold, misty and cloudy, and there’s just a bunch of mosquitoes everywhere. And it’s just you and your friend that you’ve been walking with for a thousand miles. I mean, we were happy, but I also didn’t feel that anything was different.”

Since the Canadian border was closed due to pandemic restrictions, Rosenthal still had a day’s worth of hiking to get to the nearest trailhead in the US. But this disappointing end to his journey taught him a crucial lesson.

“Walking the Pacific Crest Trail made me realize the importance of just enjoying the journey and that it’s not about the destination, because the destination itself was kind of meaningless,” Rosenthal said. “We just got to an arbitrary line on a map. In the end, it was all about the journey, seeing the places I saw and meeting the people I met.”

Rosenthal still keeps in touch with Martin and John.

“I saw John actually pretty recently because he was visiting his grandmother in LA,” Rosenthal said. “And then Martin, we talk via messages a couple of times a week. And then also, we’ve talked on the phone a few times since we finished the trail. So they’re two very good friends now, especially Martin. He’s probably one of my closest friends. It’s hard not to be close friends when you walk with somebody for a thousand miles.”

And Rosenthal’s biggest takeaway from his experience is that he wants to do it all again.

“I just absolutely loved it,” Rosenthal said. “The fact that I never had a bad day being out there just taught me that I was just absolutely in love with the mountains, the forest and just being outside and meeting new people every day. And so I want to do some more throughhiking. Who knows, I might even do the Pacific Crest Trail again. I’d really love to do that.”

TOGETHER Rosenthal would routinely walk with others on the trail.

CAMPING

After quickly setting up camp, Rosenthal would eat instant ramen and mashed potatoes without boiling water, opting to let it soak.

“

Even a bad day on the trail would be a good day in the office.

PHOTOS / COURTESY ALAN ROSENTHAL

Questioning morality: STEM Conference

The advancement of science has led to a whole plethora of ethical problems in various STEM fields. This year’s STEM conference invited researchers who attempt to investigate and answer those questions.

The 10th annual STEM conference was held March 3 with a theme of ethics in STEM. Senior Will Grable worked alongside senior Renil Gupta, junior Kevin Lu and junior Arnav Lahoti to help bring together the conference.

Grable believes that the hardest part of organizing the conference was choosing the theme.

“We could have just done a theme of AI or something,” Grable said, “but the STEM conference is tricky because you want to have a wide range of topics. The guests need to cover a lot of fields to reach everyone in the audience.”

While trying to promote a diverse discussion, Grable still focused on the quality of the conversations.

“The trick is getting enough experts over a large number of fields,” Grable said, “but then not having the panel be superficial. It can get dry if there’s no guiding point, and there’s no way to reach any significant depth in the conversation.”

While discussing with other members of the STEM Conference Committe, Grable decided the theme would be ethics in STEM.

“It’s important because we learn about the what of science, as opposed to the how,” Grable said. “We really wanted to begin evaluating scientific advancements on the basis of their ethical implications.”

Junior Arnav Lahoti says that the theme of the conference heavily influenced the fields from which their guests would be invited.

“We decided on guests based on different types of fields in STEM, and how ethics relate to them,” Lahoti said. “So in math, for example, there’s a little less that can be applied with ethics, so we didn’t lean too heavily on that.”

Physics instructor Fletcher Carron worked alongside Grable to help search for attendees.

“Our faculty sponsor [Carron] had some suggestions,” Grable said. “But beyond that, it’s really just looking at published articles we find interesting and inviting the authors to come.”

Each member reached out on their own, which allowed them to dive deeper into the research.

“Each of us on the committee invited our own guests,” Lahoti said, “and I invited Veljiko Dubljevic, who is involved with the ethics surrounding AI neural interfaces. I came across a paper that he wrote with Allen Coin, and it was really interesting.”

Of the people invited, one maintains a close connection to the school he once called home.

“We also invited someone involved with space, Andrew Gatherer [’14],” Lahoti said. “He’s actually the one who founded the STEM conference. It’s the 10th anniversary of

the conference, and he’s going to be back here talking about space. His focus on space ethics is more on privatization.”

Working at SpaceX, Gatherer has had multiple experiences with space and involved himself in ethics.

“Space congestion is a big issue,” Gatherer said. “Stuff in space flies at around seven kilometers per second, so if it crashes, it’s really bad. People also like to blow up stuff in space all the time. The Indian government did it a couple of years ago. And that’s not talking about all the times that the American and Russian governments have blown stuff up in space going from the 1960s to the 1980s, so there are big clouds of debris out there.”

The issue gets even harder to deal with when considering the orbit range of satellites — if satellite risks hitting an object on one pass, it will pass through that same point on every subsequent pass.

“If you picture the atmosphere as an onion, there are different bands that are more or less populated, most satellites in Starlink, an internet constellation by SpaceX, operate within a certain band. But the Kosmos 1408 debris cloud, for instance, was last year, and it was the Russians actively trying to pollute the atmosphere. It’s a real problem for us to try and dodge this debris, and it’s also a real consideration for governments and international regulatory agencies because we could get to a certain point where we just can’t launch satellites anymore.”

Gatherer says careful management of Starlink’s effect on the environment in space is one of the team’s highest priorities.

“[Starlink]’s the number one constellation in the game,” Gatherer said. “It’s really important to us to try and reduce our footprints and not leave any trash up there in the orbits of satellites.”

Lahoti was also excited to meet the two remaining guests, both of whom are involved in cutting-edge genome research.

“We have two people from biology-related

Marksmen plant a better future for the community

BY Joseph Sun

Seventh graders worked alongside their Hockaday peers and spent an afternoon at the WE/Me farm at Paul Quinn College.

Located in south Dallas, the WE/Me farm was originally a football field at Paul Quinn College created to combat food insecurity.

eternalized through Paul Quinn College.

“WE/Me is our institutional ethos: the needs of a community supersede the wants of an individual,” Sorrel said. “It is about what epitomizes the most effective brand of leadership. Leadership is really about valuing others and serving others. So what we do every day is to try to live lives that really focus on helping people have access to the goods, services and other items that they need.”

Intended to visit:

Veljko Dubljevic

Veljko Dubljevic, Ph.D., D.Phil. is a University Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor of Philosophy and Science, Technology & Society at NC State University. Dr. Dubljević leads the Neuro Computational Ethics Research Group at NC State, serves as a co-editor for the Springer Book Series “Advances in Neuroethics” and a member of the Board of Directors for the International Neuroethics Society. He is also the author of “Neuroethics and Justice: Public Reason in the Cognitive Enhancement Debate.” However, due to inclement weather, his flight was canceled.

backgrounds,” Lahoti said. “One of them is working on restoring the genomes of extinct species, kind of like Jurassic Park. And so there are questions that immediately come up: How ethical is it to revive a species if it affects new ones or something like that? Sub-gene editing also has lots of ethical concerns: With CRISPR, you can design children before they are born; if that’s what’s in store for the future, is that okay?”

The most enjoyable part of the conference for the organizers is the agency they are given.

“One reason I like the STEM conference is that it is 95 percent student-run,” Grable said. “Carron definitely helps us with communicating with science faculty, but for the most part it’s student-run.”

The WE/Me farm has made over 30,000 pounds of organic produce, with almost all of the produce going to the local community and charities.

“When someone grows up in an environment with food insecurity, it pretty much robs them of the ability to do simple things,” said President of Paul Quinn College and 7th-grade parent, Michael Sorrel.

Originally an old football field, the WE/Me farm hoped to bring awareness of food insecurity to a wider audience as well as help the south Dallas community in a time of need.

“We all have the ability to positively impact people,” Sorrel said. “We’re gonna continue to develop and expand the farm as well as open up campuses all over the country. The idea of the needs of the community superseding the rights of an individual is going to form the basis of our national extension for other sites around the country.”

MICHAEL SORREL

“About 40 million Americans live in poverty and food insecurity. It’s just one of the byproducts of poverty. We all have the ability to positively impact what people experience.”

Sorrel wished to end food insecurity and poverty. That dream created WE/Me, a mantra Sorrel

“The farm came about because the community surrounding the college, up until a few years ago, was in a food desert,” Sorrel said. “The community was closer to a garbage dump than a grocery store. And that’s just ridiculous. No community should live with that reality. So we turned a football field into a farm and we began to raise the profile. What we never expected was that it would become a national sensation.”

The community service project was a part of a wider push to get students more active in their local communities, and the project helped teach students the importance of caring for their environment and others.

“They planted some plants that we will harvest, and they got to tour the farm and work in the greenhouse,” Sorrel said. “For the students visiting us, it was to show them the idea of people fighting back and advocating for a better life and what leadership looks like, in a different part of the city in a different world.”

STORY Aaron Augustine, Nikhil Dattatreya

AROUND THE TABLE STEM Conference’s co-chairs sit across from the attendees during an Upper School Q&A. Questions covered various topics ranging from the ethics of Jurassic Park to the problem of the privatization of space.

PHOTO / NIKHIL DATTATREYA

PHOTO / COURTESY VELJKO DUBLJEVIC

Rowing through the WAKE

Accomplished author, rower and activist Arshay Cooper visited campus to speak and inspire Marksmen, sharing his struggles growing up in the West Side of Chicago and how the sport of rowing helped shape his life.

See coverage, page 20

The bricklayer

FEATURE Zack Goforth

His mom walks in as he lies motionless and bedridden.

Severe burns had ravaged his legs and ruined his day, trapping him in his room. Aware of her son’s misery, his mom gently pushes the door open and presents a gift: a LEGO Spaceship.

From this moment on, he was entranced. Entranced in the creativity. Entranced in the engineering. Entranced in the possibilities. How did they get this to fit here? How did they come up with this to make that?

As anyone who had a childhood knows, LEGOs are not a cheap hobby. It’s always been like this, so in the beginning most of his LEGOs were gifts, making them all the more sweet. When the sets were too expensive, he turned to his tub of scattered pieces — a hub of creative releases.

And that’s all there was to it, really. LEGOs weren’t some artificial happy place or stress reliever. It was just a kid being a kid.

UPPER SCHOOL PRESENTATION

ON CONSENT Sexual assault

activist Katie Koestner presented to current 11th and 12th graders in an assembly about consent March 6. The assembly aimed to ready older Marksmen for different things they might face surrounding consent as they prepare to head off to college. Koestner is founder of the Take Back The Night Foundation, a nonprofit organization that aims to combat sexual violence.

COMMUNITY SERVICE BLOOD DRIVE

The annual community service Blood Drive gathered around fifteen units of blood Feb. 15 in N114. The drive was available to students older than 16, and the donated blood went to Carter Bloodcare, a nonprofit organization. Carter Bloodcare is one of the largest blood centers in the United States, operating in over 50 Texas counties and supplying blood to

more than 200 medical facilities. Students received three service hours for the donation.

MODEL UN UPDATE Seniors

Roome Becker and Noah Asmerom took home the Best Delegation award for their work at the Harvard Model United Nations Session Jan. 26 to 29. The event in Boston is one of the most prestigious Model UN events in the country. The club resumed its local slate of conferences Feb. 18 in The Colony at TCCMUN and will soon organize its own Model UN event scheduled for April. In the meantime, members may sign up for a non-school sponsored conference in Coppell.

MOCK TRIAL UPDATE

The Upper School Mock Trial team has just begun its first year. Headed by sophomore Aidan Moran and

sponsored by history instructor David Fisher, the team competed at their first competition last week. They had a first round bye and then lost the next round, resulting in not being placed. This was the first competition the team has participated in, and they look forward to more in the future.

RALPH B. ROGERS AWARD

The three finalists for the 26th annual Ralph B. Rogers Award will be announced Friday, April 21 at the Spring Alumni Dinner, with the winner announced at Final Assembly on graduation day. The award recognizes a teacher that goes above what is expected of them – oftentimes mentoring students and being more than just a teacher to that person. This year, there were a record 55 nominations for the award. The winner is selected by the Ralph B. Rogers Alumni Award Committee.

Cafeteria leftovers

Marksman leads youth

Seniors and their buddies

But as he grew older, and life became more complicated than a set of bricks with instructions, LEGOs slowly lost their once colorful appeal. Just like every kid, he out grew a part of his childhood. But LEGOs would always be in the back of his mind, like the trailing end of a one-sided argument.

SHANE

Bro if England is five hours ahead, why can’t they just tell us the future?

RYLAND ELLIS Junior

THIS WEEK THIS MONTH

Friday Spring break begins Admissions decisions posted

Saturday SAT (off campus)

Sunday Daylight savings time begins

March 20 Classes resume Community Service Basket Drive begins

March 24 End of the third quarter

New student

Once he started accumulating savings from his professional career, they were welcomed back into his life with open arms, and he started collecting again.

And once he started a family of his own, instantly he knew he was going to instill the same love he had for these plastic bricks in his children.

Now, he’s collected hundreds of sets for him and his kids to build, displayed proudly in a portion of his house dedicated to this hobby — the “LEGO room.”

LEGOs have also found their way into his classroom shelves and as a teaching tool.

And it’s the seemingly infinite possibilities of these bricks, whether that’s cheering a boy up after an injury or building a student’s interest in space with a rocket, that set this toy apart.

And it’s why science instructor Dan Lipin loves LEGOs.

I showered and I flushed, what else do you want from me?

ROOME BECKER Senior

My favorite hobby is going to the playground and taking it all in.

PETER RUBY Freshman

FOR ALL TO SEE His LEGO Millennium Falcon is displayed in his classroom, just one of many.

PHOTO / DAVE CARDEN/DEVELOPMENT OFFICE

A culinary cause:

The Stewpot

Four hundred thousand.

Four hundred thousand people suffer from food insecurity in Dallas County. According to the United States Department of Agrigculture, food insecurity involves an inability to get healthy, safe foods. It often accompanies an inability to perform daily activities and responsibilities.

No individual or group can solve the problem of food insecurity in Dallas alone. But 250 pounds of donated food every week is a step in the right direction.

And that’s exactly what the school does by giving leftover food from lunch to a local food insecurity organization, The Stewpot, in a two-year partnership.

Spearheaded by The Stewpot’s Manager of Food Recovery Robert Guild and Director of Food Services Vinny Tellini, the partnership between both groups has always surrounded the goal of serving others.

According to Tellini, however, other schools have not always been so cognizant of food waste management.

“There are countless bakeries and restaurants that just throw food in the trash every day,” Tellini said. “And even in my career, I’ve witnessed it. It’s always a stab in the heart.”

When Tellini first joined the school in 2021, he quickly saw a way to address the school’s own food waste management.

“The culinary leadership team here

and myself, along with the help of our SAGE district manager, Erin Woods, were all aware that we could establish a food recovery system,” Tellini said.

With the idea and support in place, Tellini approached Community Service Director Jorge Correa, who recommended a partnership with The Stewpot.

Upon further investigation, Tellini determined that The Stewpot was the perfect type of organization they were looking for.

“Just knowing that we’re able to take the food that we overproduced and know that people aren’t having to pay for it is very comforting to me,” Tellini said. “The Stewpot makes it so people can just walk in and get a nutritious, hot meal, and that is awesome.”

In order to regularly support The Stewpot with food, Guild visits the school regularly.

“He literally comes here every day, unless I tell him not to,” Tellini said.

After picking up the food, The Stewpot incorporates the leftovers into new dishes or serves them as is.

“We are able to do a lot of things with the food St. Mark’s gives us,” Guild said. “It is already prepared foods that are already on pans. That saves time so that we can just warm it up and serve it directly. My cooks certainly don’t mind.”

The partnership is not only important to Tellini and the school but more importantly to the greater Dallas community.

“Our guests really liked the food that y’all give us,” Guild said. “They are

consistently impressed with it and are always very thankful to have very good, nutritious food. Even if it is a side, it may be something they haven’t seen in a while, so they are always thankful for the variety the school provides.”

Through their positive, day-to-day interactions, Guild and Tellini have built up a friendship.

“Rob [Guild] came to do his first pickup and the rest is history,” Tellini said. “He’s such a nice guy and we really just kind of clicked. He’s my go-to now.”

To document the influence The Stewpot has, each time Guild picks up or drops off food, he takes a short video and posts it to multiple social media platforms.

“I am Stewpot Rob on Facebook, and Stewpot_Rob on Instagram and TikTok,” Guild said.

For Tellini, Guild’s videos have left a lasting impact on his character.

“I’m never gonna forget seeing those videos and how I felt,” Tellini said. “My favorite memory is definitely seeing the benefit in real-time and what they’re able to do and how passionate they were about it. It really stuck with me and it always will.”

Tellini has a deep understanding of the nature and importance of community service.

“There are people out there that really need this,” Tellini said. “There are people out there that are suffering every day, and that have a really rough go in life. There’s still action that we can take on our end to make sure that food doesn’t go to waste.”

Library adds new databases

BY Hilton Sampson

Two historical databases and three scientific journals have been added to the Cecil and Ida Green Library Website for student research and exploration. One of the databases, America’s Historical Newspapers, consists of archived newspapers dating back to the 1600s.

“Access to early newspapers is always problematic,” Director of Libraries and Information Services Tinsley Silcox said.

“Do you go to the archives, for example, of the Des Moines Register? How do you get access to that? Whereas if you come to us, and we’re already authenticated to use this, you automatically have access.”

The second database, Digital Public Libraries of America, is a government project aiming to provide resources from various archives, museums and other American institutions for free to the public.

Now, these materials are easily accessible on the library website.

“Primary resources are usually very difficult to come by,” Silcox said, “and the fact that this free, government sponsored organization has put together a lot of these primary resources about American history is pretty phenomenal.”

Additionally, the library has collected three major science journals for student use under a new section on the website. The largest of the new cites, ScienceDirect, consists of over 1.4 million articles in 1,290 journals.

“Humanities use libraries a lot,” Silcox said. “Science and math can too, but they just typically don't use them as much because it’s not the first thing that they think about. But if you’re doing scientific research, if you’re a biologist, you can access the research that’s already been done on gene therapy or whatever it is that you’re looking at.”

But Silcox believes the most important aspect of the vast database collection goes beyond classrooms here.

It’s all about preparing you for that first college paper and that first college research project,” Silcox said. “When you walk into a 400,000 volume library with 500 databases, you want to feel comfortable knowing that you can find and drill down to where you need to go. That’s the whole point.”

To keep the library website up to date with all the resources he believes students here need, Silcox continuously seeks out new databases and journals.

“I get excited about this just because we’re able to provide all of this at a very reasonable cost,” Silcox said. “We were able to get a rate that worked for us. Colleges and universities pay substantially more for access to these kinds of materials. We have an amazing collection here, and it’s my job to keep it going. And keep it interesting.”

STORY Matthew Hofmann, Akash Manickam

The school’s culinary department is approaching its two year anniversary of its partnership with The Stewpot, a local charitable organization committed to donating leftover food to Dallas citizens who need it most and fighting Dallas’ food insecurity challenges.

PHOTO / DAVE CARDEN/DEVELOPMENT OFFICE

PHOTOS / DAVE CARDEN/DEVELOPMENT OFFICE

TINSLEY SILCOX Director of Libraries and Information Services

SOURCE / Rescuing Leftover Cuisine

Stepping up and showing out

Since getting involved with B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO), a worldwide Jewish youth group, during his freshman year, Jordan Feldman has been elected vice president of programming worldwide.

Junior Jordan Feldman became a member of the international board of B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO) Feb. 19.

BBYO is a global, teen-led Jewish youth group with around 75,000 active members. We talked to Feldman about his time in BBYO and his path to his new position.

The ReMarker: Can you tell us a little bit about BBYO?

Jordan Feldman: BBYO is a teen-led, Jewish pluralistic youth group. It emphasizes being a grassroots organization that builds up from the chapter level, with over 725 chapters across 61 countries worldwide. It emphasizes team leadership and creating experiences throughout the year that allows Jewish teens to have meaningful Jewish experiences. There are multiple levels of boards in BBYO: the chapter level is comprised of all of the local groups, the regional level is all of the chapters in certain areas and the International level is comprised of all of the regions in BBYO.

TR: What were you running for in this election?

JF: I was running for vice president of programming at the international level. The official title is Grand Aleph S'gan. Twelve people, six boys and six girls, are in the position. In that position, I'm in charge of overseeing all of the Regional Vice Presidents of programming and the chapter vice presidents of programming. I also manage programming efforts around the world for BBYO and facilitate next year's International Convention, which is the largest youth group convention and the secondlargest Jewish convention in the world.

TR: What did you do in order to get elected?

JF: I started the process back in December. I had to do self-evaluations about my knowledge of BBYO, how spiritual I am, my qualities and personal experiences, and what I would do in the position. Eventually, I got to the interview process, where I met with the person who

currently holds the job, as well as the president of the organization. They interviewed me about my character and more about my visions for BBYO. Once I got the green light to be an official candidate, I had about three weeks until the election. I had to prepare for a public forum with voters, create a four-minute speech and create a resume. About a week before the election, candidates released videos that illustrated their goals and values. Candidates are not allowed to campaign. We purely believe in giving everyone the same chance during elections. After that, it was up to the voters.

TR: How did the actual election go?

JF: I was running against two other candidates. After all of the speeches were done, we voted. It went to a runoff election because in order to win, a candidate needed over half the votes. The bottom candidate was eliminated, and we went into a second vote, which I won. My term doesn't officially start on June 1, but there will be a lot of work to do beforehand.

TR: How did you get involved with BBYO?

JF: I heard about BBYO because my older brother, dad and uncle all did it. My dad and my uncle also held some of the same leadership positions I have had within the organization. I got involved in eighth grade. When I went to my first chapter program, I felt a connection with the guys. I felt like they went out of their way to involve me in the brotherhood to create a bond with me. I was able to socialize and connect with others on a personal level.

TR: What made you want to take on larger responsibilities within the organization?

JF: Other members made me realize that I could have a large influence on people around the world. I led my chapter for a year as chapter president, and I started feeling like I wanted to have a bigger say in the organization. I really wanted to change people's lives for the better and provide meaningful Jewish experiences for Jews around the world.

TR: What is one of your favorite times when you bonded with the members?

JF: Early on, I was given the opportunity to lead a game night for my chapter. Some friends and I planned a Casino Night game night. At that point, I was not

even technically inducted as a member, yet I planned a program for 20 people. That event really influenced me to get even more involved with the organization.

TR: Have you done any community service work with BBYO?

JF: One of BBYO’s largest partners is a home in Dallas for adults with both mental and physical disabilities. We do multiple events throughout the year with them where we partner with them for Shabbat dinner, cook food with them and bring gifts to them. We also have an annual community service event called J Serve, where we serve the community in any way possible.

TR: What have you learned from BBYO from your time as a member?

JF: BBYO has taught me to always start an interaction with someone in a positive way because you never know the impact that it will have on people. Additionally, my work with BBYO has also made me realize that everyone has a voice. It’s important to not only work to get your voice heard but also to take action. Anyone can talk, but not anyone can take action and lead.

B’NAI B’RITH YOUTH ORGANIZATION (BBYO)

61 3 725

Countries across the globe levels of boards: chapter, regional, and international

Chapters worldwide

Participants worldwide 70,000+ Years since its creation 95+

FACTS & STATS

INTERVIEW Ian Dalrymple, Will Clifford

It’s important to not only get your voice heard but also to take action. Anyone can talk, but not anyone can take action and lead.

JORDAN FELDMAN Junior

OVER THE YEARS Feldman, far left, stands next to Holocaust survivor and educator Sami Steignmann after Steignmann spoke at a BBYO event.

Left, Feldman poses for a picture next to the Sydney Shanker, the female vice president of programming for BBYO.

PHOTOS / COURTESY JORDAN FELDMAN

BEYOND THE DEN

Asentiment pervades the school’s community — purported by students, faculty and administrators alike — that St. Mark’s is more than just a place one enters to receive an education and a diploma.

That to attend St. Mark’s is to become a Marksman.

And that to become a Marksman is a lifelong commitment.

The evidence is everywhere: school apparel, class flags, alumni reunions. The theme of last year’s Marksmen yearbook? You Never Really Leave. Graduation? Nobody graduates from St. Mark’s; they only Commence.

The regnant opinion of the school is that Marksmen are still Marksmen when they are off campus — that Marksmen are tasked with representing the school through any endeavor. It’s undeniable that students’ actions will inevitably have some effect on the school’s reputation, but the school does more than passively accept this reality; it embraces and cultivates it through a rhetoric of outward representation that relies on students projecting a positive and well-regarded image while outside the nest.

Usually, the stories of Marksmen spotted off campus — often told in chapel talks, assemblies and convocation speeches — ennoble the image of St. Mark’s in the public sphere.

But other times, the opposite can occur. In this sense, not all publicity is good publicity. Here, we explore what compels St. Mark’s to project its Marksmen forward — and what happens when Marksmen project an unwanted image back.

According to Headmaster David Dini, being a Marksman is not something that ends upon leaving campus, nor is it something you can opt out of while away.

“No matter where you go, you’re always a representative of this school — whether it’s formally or informally,” Dini said. “You’re carrying the values, principles and ideals of the school with you. You can take that seriously, or you can shrug that off.”

Most often, Marksmen do take that seriously. For example, typically three times a month, four to six students from a school community service organization, Teaching Technology Across Generations (TTAG), make the trip to Ventana by Buckner, a senior living community in Dallas. Ventana by Buckner Lifestyles Coordinator Frida Mendez often receives positive feedback about our students.

“The members really appreciate the St. Mark’s boys,” Mendez said. “The students that come to our environment are very polite. It’s always, ‘Good morning, sir.’ or ‘Hi, ma’am. How can I help you?’ They are extremely patient with our residents, and I’m continually impressed by the values the school teaches these students through my few experiences with them.”

News of these public deeds often travels back to campus, but this news is not always positive. A couple years ago, Dini received such news in a letter from an alumnus, who was visiting Dallas from his home in England.

“[The alumnus] saw two Marksmen wearing St. Mark’s gear spit on a car that had some decal on it from another school,” Dini said. “He took the time to write me a really long letter, saying he was shocked, dismayed and surprised. He said it was counter to everything he knew and expected from St. Mark’s.”

During an away basketball game at Greenhill Jan. 27, George Genender, senior captain of the team and Superfanman, recalls some Marksmen chanting “St. Mark’s reject” while a certain Greenhill player was at the free throw line.

“That experience not only changed who we were in that moment, but also how we were viewed as fans and people,” Genender said. “I didn’t feel pride in being a St. Mark’s Superfanman at that moment. It’s easy to say that’s just boys being boys, but that’s too far.”

Genender believes there’s a defined line between rooting for your team and putting others down.

“At the end of the day, our default always has to be sportsmanship,” Genender said. “Anything short of that hurts our reputation.”

Behavior anywhere — whether at a sporting event down the street or at a resort across the world — can affect the school’s reputation.

During spring break, while many head on international vacations all across the globe with family and even some friends, it’s become an unofficial Marksmen tradition for the oldest and most mature on campus, the senior class, to escape to paradise together.

But, in recent years, the trip has undergone criticism rooted in the conduct of not just Marksmen, but American high schoolers and college students as a collective in foreign nations.

Shaan Mehta ’22, who went on last

We’ve all heard it: “You’re a Marksman anywhere you go — even after you graduate.”

This philosophy of lifelong Marksmanship usually brings prestige to the name of the school, but what happens when the name of St. Mark’s becomes linked with undesireable assocations? How do we move forward?

year’s trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, recalled his senior spring break as one of the best times of his life.

“It was probably the most memorable experience of my senior year,” Mehta said. “I mean, it’s so rare to be in a foreign country with all your friends. It was an insane experience to bond with your classmates right before you graduate.”

While the trip provided Mehta with many good memories, not everything went smoothly. In a phone call with The ReMarker, a supervisor at Hard Rock Los Cabos — the resort Mehta and the large group of seniors stayed at — claimed they’ve now prohibited large groups from staying during spring break after receiving many complaints about guest behavior last year.

“[The trip] could get rowdy at times, to say the least,” Mehta said. “There were notable instances of unruly behavior in Mexico. The whole St. Mark’s group wasn’t a part of it, but there were certain outliers that created situations that weren’t ideal.”

Those unideal situations featured stealing, vandalism and property damage.

“Someone ended up throwing a couch into the pool,” Mehta said. “People moved furniture around the resort to places they shouldn’t have been. Someone somehow took a TV off the wall. People were stealing stuff from all around the resort — including whole bottles of alcohol from the bars — and taking them to their rooms.”

Dini asserts that even if one member of a class does something wrong, it takes away from the whole student body and the whole school.

“Every one of us carries a piece of this community,” Dini said. “The hope is that whether you’re on a spring break trip, away from school, in a competition or in class, and you see someone doing something they shouldn’t be doing, you say something, and you do something.”

Mehta and other classmates did just that. Nonetheless, Mehta believes the implications of the group’s actions were serious.

“It wasn’t a good situation, and many of us stepped up, saying that wasn’t right, and tried to fix things,” Mehta said. “Those who didn’t know us saw us as one unit, not as a bunch of separate people. We were the ‘St. Mark’s group,’ in a sense. A few people’s poor actions may have painted the school in a bad light.”

When similar actions have occurred on prior spring break trips, Dini has sometimes received messages from people at resorts or hotels who say they saw St. Mark’s boys, and were appalled at their behavior.

“[These messages] are not a frequent thing,” Dini said. “They’re exceptions. But they’re absolutely disappointing.”

According to Dini, even when students Commence and become members of the school’s alumni, their status as Marksmen remains.

“The school’s going to be with you for the rest of your life, which will create privileges for you,” Dini said. “Doors will open for you. People will welcome you into conversations. Responsibilities come with that.”

Victor Vescovo ’84, a private equity investor, retired naval officer, space tourist and undersea explorer, puts his connection to and identification with the school on full display — in the form of a St. Mark’s crest on the sleeve of his flight suit.

“It’s common for pilots, astronauts and aquanauts to wear patches on our flight suits,” Vescovo said. “In the case of my flight suit, I decided to have flags on my right shoulder — important flags for me like those of the United States and Texas. For my left sleeve, I thought that St. Mark’s was the best representative of who I am now.”

STORY Shreyan Daulat, Will Spencer, Morgan Chow

DAVID DINI Headmaster

GEORGE GENENDER Senior

“

Not even a pandemic could dull our sense of who we are and where we belong. Regardless of where our journey takes us — spearheading a small business in New York City, a Doctors Without Borders hospital in a village far from 10600 — we will always be Marksmen.

PREFACE St. Mark's School of Texas 2022 Yearbook

Much in the same light and for the same reason, Vescovo planted a St. Mark’s flag atop Mount Everest after finishing his ascent. Vescovo attributes the school as the foundation of everything he knows and thinks, and he wears the patch as a way to honor St. Mark’s.

“I knew that, given what I was doing in diving into all the oceans of the world, that I would be photographed in my flight suit coming in and out of the submersible,” Vescovo said. “I knew that I would certainly be visible on a worldwide stage, and it was a very conscious effort to advertise St. Mark’s and bring it to a wider, worldwide audience.”

VICTOR VESCOVO '84 Explorer and investor

Vescovo is among countless Marksmen who dignify the school’s reputation. But the actions of other graduates — such as Richard Spencer ’97, the president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think-tank — have publicly discolored the school’s image. Members of the St. Mark’s Class of 1997 and other community members were so bothered by Spencer’s infamy that they publicly disavowed his actions.

One member of Spencer’s class, Ben Kusin ’97, posted a Facebook message denouncing Spencer in November 2016.

“I, along with my fellow classmates, alumni and friends, have watched in horror as his radical ideologies and incitements of violence, racism and xenophobia have generated a tidal wave of global media attention,” Kusin wrote. “In this rapidly evolving process, he is managing to drag the good name of Dallas, its citizens and our schools through the mud.”

Kusin encouraged alumni to donate to a charity that aids humanitarian crises and refugee services.

“On behalf of all those offended by his actions, The St. Mark’s Class of 1997 has assembled a fundraiser to repudiate his actions and stand up against white supremacy,” he added.

GRAPHIC/WILLSPENCER

The effort has raised tens of thousands of dollars, and Kusin used the fundraiser as a way to call attention to the positive values St. Mark’s graduates believe in and exhibit.

To Dini, standing up for the values the school instills in its students — the very thing Kusin, Mehta and others have done — is crucial in reinforcing the school’s positive reputation.

“The extent to which you do things that chip away at this community’s reputation is the amount someone else is going to have to clean that mess up,” Dini said. “If you go to Cancún and do something really stupid, you’ve chipped away at who we are and what we stand for. Someone else is going to have to clean that mess up. We’ve had graduates bring discredit to this school. Someone else is going to have to clean that mess up. You have to step up and say, ‘That’s not who we are. I’ll show you who we are.’”

Staying safe and staying diplomatic — representing the U.S. abroad

BY Zack Goforth

When traveling outside the United States, Marksmen need to be especially wary of their actions, according to Assistant Head of Middle School and globetrotter Jason Lange. Venturing to a foreign nation comes with a whole host of new rules and restrictions.

“It’s important that Marksmen realize they are ambassadors of, not just the school, but also the United States of America,” Lange said. “Wherever they go, people are going to be judging them on their nationality and values.”

Scott Hunt, director of student travel programs, maintains that many people fail to realize the importance of following the rules when traveling abroad.

“There’s this notion, especially when you’re a teenager, that you’re bulletproof,” Hunt said. “But people lose sight of the fact that when you’re traveling to other countries, you’re operating under a different set of rules and a different set of consequences. You make a mistake in a foreign country, and you might end up in jail. That experience is going to be completely different than in America, because you don’t necessarily have the constitutional rights you do here.”

In order to avoid this, Lange recommends everyone do preliminary research before embarking on a trip across seas.

“I think people should know something about the place where they’re going,” Lange said, “and travelers should make an attempt to connect with people in a positive way.”

Hunt believes that disregarding the customs of other cultures can lead to a bad reputation.

“It makes me sad when people, Americans in particular, travel abroad and then don’t reflect our culture in a positive light,” Hunt said. “These people are poor ambassadors of our country and make it harder for everyone else, because we become

stereotyped in those places.”

Aside from representation, one issue many younger people have faced when traveling abroad is safety. For example, exiting a resort and entering unfamiliar territory has risks.

“The whole point of a resort is to keep everybody self-contained,” Hunt said. “By and large, everybody’s going to be relatively safe. But leaving the resort adds a whole new layer of risk, one of which is transportation. More students that are traveling abroad or even domestically are injured or killed in transportation than anything else. So let’s say a group of guys wants to leave the resort. How are they doing it? Are they hopping in a taxi? Are they hopping in an Uber? Who’s driving the Uber? All of these things need to be taken into consideration.”

For Hunt, it’s important to always employ certain measures in order to ensure a group’s safety.

Programs

“When I’m traveling, especially with my boys, my attitude has always been to have a battle buddy — someone that’s with you at all times to have your back wherever you go,” Hunt said. “Another thing I do is, every time we get to a hotel, I get a stack of business cards from the hotel and I make everyone I’m with, including myself, put them into our wallets, so that if anyone gets lost or turned around, they always have the address to the hotel and can hail a taxi or something.”

Lange admits to having made the mistake that befalls many high school students and encourages others to take a humble approach to travel.

“When I was younger,” Lange said, “I probably traveled the world as a young American with a superiority complex that we are the greatest country in the world, and people should respect the fact that I’m American. But, as I’ve met more people and experienced more cultures, I’ve realized there are many good ways to do things around the world. Ultimately, I encourage people to reverse their roles when they travel. If we’re living in Dallas, and you meet a group of young foreign exchange students who’ve come to Dallas to ‘have a good time,’ how are you going to treat that? And if you’re a group of young American students in a foreign country, how do you hope those citizens treat you? Those answers come with some expectations and forethought.”

“I’m never not headmaster of St. Mark’s Never. That same idea translates to everyone else in this community.

DAVID DINI Headmaster

SCOTT HUNT Director of Student Travel

JASON LANGE Assistant Head of Middle School

A STAY AWAY Hard Rock Los Cabos, the destination of choice for a group of last year’s seniors, was the site of reportedly unruly behavior that Dini believes reflected badly on the school’s reputation.

FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOPS When Victor Vescovo ’84 climbed Mount Everest, he planted a St. Mark’s flag on the top, epitomizing the school’s culture of lifelong Marksmanship.

PHOTO / COURTESY HARD ROCK LOS CABOS

The beginning and the end

Jack + Ellis Jack + Ashton

What’s something cool about having Jack as your buddy?

EA: He’s really fast. But I could still beat him in a race, haha.

Is there anything you still want to do with your buddy that you haven’t done yet?

JJ: I think I’d like to hang out with him through cookouts or playing some recreational soccer together.

EA: Probably go on a trip out of the state or try playing some VR games together.

What were your favorite memories of having a senior buddy as a first grader?

JJ: I really enjoyed McDonald’s week, and I remember going to the zoo as a first grader, and my senior buddy helping me get stuff at the zoo store.

What are your favorite memories with your little buddy so far?

JJ: I really liked when we got to make Mardi Gras masks during community time a few weeks ago. Ellis had a lot of fun decorating his mask, and we got to work on some crossword puzzles together. We also went to Marksmen Multicultural Night together and learned some dances. I also got to attend one of his basketball games earlier in the year.

What’s your favorite snack?

AE: I like spicy stuff.

JC: Nacho Cheese Bugles. You know what a cornucopia is? Imagine a ton of those, but they’re fried. And they taste like queso. And what I like about it the most is that it’s not like potato chips, where there’s a lot of air, but the bag is filled to the brim.

Where do you want to travel to?

AE: Atlantis. But it wasn’t that fun because I was too short to ride anything.

JC: I’m going exotic. Rwanda. My least favorite city is St. Louis. Don’t go to St. Louis.

What’s your favorite subject at school?

AE: P.E. I love P.E.

JC: This year it’s definitely Spec Ops. Super interesting class, and we bring all these cool visitors over.

Do you want a beard when you grow up?

AE: No.

Thomas + Paul

Senior Thomas Goglia and first grader Paul Kolostroubis

How would you describe your little buddy?

TG: He’s generally pretty quiet, and it’s interesting because I was that same way in Lower School, so I can see a bit of a relation there. But from the other perspective, when you get into a topic that he’s interested in, he can talk for days.

What’s your favorite experience with each other?

TG: Watching Black Panther with him was great, because we both like Marvel.

PK: I really like just talking to him.

What’s your favorite dinosaur and Avenger?

PK: My favorite dinosaur is Carnotaurus and my favorite Avenger is Spiderman.

What kind of senior buddy do you want to be?

PK: I want to be like Thomas.

Aadi + Jack

As a 12-year Marksman, what do you think of the senior buddy system?

AK: I think it’s really come full circle for me. I still remember my buddy when I was a first grader, so I think it’s really important. I think it’s cool that [the senior buddy system] connects the community.

Who is your favorite superhero and why?

AK: Hulk. He’s really strong and big.

JH: Iron man. The technology is super cool.

Who do you admire most?

AK: My mom and dad because their work ethic is insane.

JH: My friends because they’re really nice to me.

What are your hobbies?

AK: Music in all forms — listening, playing cello and guitar. And swimming and water polo.

JH: I collect rocks, play baseball and basketball with my brother and watch a lot of TV.

Senior Jack Jackson and first grader Ellis Allen

Senior Jack Cohen and first grader Ashton Ezell

Senior Aadi Khasgiwala and first grader Jack Haidenberg

PHOTO / COURTESY JACK JACKSON

PHOTO / COURTESY THOMAS GOGLIA

PHOTO / COURTESY JACK COHEN

PHOTO / COURTESY AADI KHASGIWALA

A home for the winter

Habitat for Humanity returned this year with another build to help a family in need.

Workers describe involvement in habitat build

INTERVIEW Neil Yepuri

How did you get into Habitat for Humanity?

Habitat for Humanity Co-President Casey Bajec: I came into St. Mark’s as a freshman and Habitat starts pretty early in the winter. And so I’ve heard about it as hyped up as not only like a community service activity, but big kind of almost social event. We all went as freshmen and got to meet people. Roome [Becker, his co-president] got me involved, specifically because I was friends with him at the time. I had pictures of, I think, 30 freshmen who were doing a bench build the first year. And then from that, I’ve just done it consistently every year.

Habitat for Humanity Co-President Roome Becker: My sister was somewhat involved and had a fun experience over at Hockaday. And so freshman year, I signed up to be part of the bench build. And so the way it works is, juniors and seniors are old enough to be able to actually construct a house which involves power tools and an actual construction site. But we’ve always tried to get freshmen involved with the bench build, which is a much less intense experience.

What is your favorite memory as part of Habitat for Humanity?

Junior Charlie Hill: I would just say on the first day, we would just carry a wall 30 feet, and then everyone would be

like “Way to go!” And then high fiving. Even when we didn’t do that much, it was good energy.

RB: I thought one of the cooler things was, if you were 18, you could go up on the roof. I climbed up 10 feet, and I was literally standing on the walls that we had all built. Which was an interesting experience because I thought “Hey, do I actually trust what we put together?” and it worked. We built a real foundation of the house. To be up there was almost like a jungle gym — I was climbing over all the different wood and going and hammering different places. And it was really, really fun. I wouldn’t really get an opportunity to like to be one of the guys working on the roof at other job.

WALLED IN The team sets up one of the walls for the house. The project raised over $60,000 dollars this year.

READY, SET, BUILD The team had six builds this year, all of which were on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon.

RISE AND SHINE Seniors and designated leaders for the project mount ladders and work on the future roof of the house, a privilege granted only to those 18 and older.

ON THE COUNT OF THREE The building team raises one of the walls of the house. This year, the team constructed a full house with another company working during the afternoons.

MAPPED OUT Bits and pieces of the house lay out, carefully placed by the dedicated team made up of Marksmen and Hockadaisies. The house now stands south of the Trinity River off of Inwood Road.

PHOTO / COURTESY ROOME BECKER

PHOTO / COURTESY ROOME BECKER

PHOTO / COURTESY CASEY BAJEC

PHOTO / COURTESY ROOME BECKER

PHOTO / COURTESY ROOME BECKER

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13

Looking back, MOVING FORWARD

After finding the sport of rowing during a rough upbringing on the West Side of Chicago, Visting Scholar Arshay Cooper learned several lessons that have influenced his purpose today. As an author, activist, motivational speaker and more, Cooper shares his past as a way to educate and motivate others, as well as create change in his community.

As a teenager, Arshay Cooper didn’t have the typical morning routine.

Each school day, exiting his house started a race for safety. Moving from block to block, he’d pass by the homes of different communities, different territories and different gangs.

He recalls skipping over pools of blood like it was yesterday. They showed no face, no name — only signs of where life once was. There was no telling if, one day, he too would be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What Arshay Cooper had always needed was a release. Something to take his mind off the sights, the sounds, the news, the everything. A way to see a life beyond what he’d known.

And little did he know a simple two-foot-wide boat would do just that. What started as an escape turned into a refuge, a passion, a movement.

Simply put, that one boat changed his life.

Cooper first discovered rowing while attending Manley High School, which he describes as the second most violent high school on the West Side of Chicago. The sport’s presence on campus brought students from various gangs onto one team — America’s first all-Black high school rowing team. While the dynamic was rough at first, Cooper and his teammates eventually found a way to harmonize.

“When you think about rowing, all you picture is young, rich white guys,” Cooper said. “The fact that we were a part of [an all-black] team in an all-white sport helped us connect. Being the only Blacks out there, we were like, ‘If we don’t pull for each other and look out for each other, no one will.’”

This connection soon turned into a brotherly bond — one that taught the team an important lesson about people.

“We began to learn that everyone was more alike than unalike, even though we were from different places,” Cooper said. “It’d be like, ‘Hey, I don’t know anyone here — you want to walk with me?’ And on our walk, we’d say, ‘Tell me about your mom. Tell me about your brother.’ And all the action in the neighborhood didn’t matter because [rowing brought us] away from that. Being isolated from all our other issues helped build that bond.”

Soon, as team captain, Cooper was tasked with leading his fellow rowers in all aspects of the sport.

But it wasn’t until a key interaction with his coach that he realized what true leadership looked like. One day, Cooper walked into the boathouse, mindlessly stepping over oars, towels and trash on his way to the other end. He thought nothing of it until his coach interjected.

“My coach said, ‘You leave the boathouse better than you found it, even if you didn’t make the mess. It makes it easier for the next group.’ That phrase started to become part of my life,” Cooper said. “I thought, ‘How can I leave my school, my classroom, my community better than I found it, even if I didn’t make the mess?’”

Looking back, Cooper considers this moment a turning point in his life. Henceforth, he changed his perception of what he could do for his community.

“Before, whenever a problem happened, I always told myself it had nothing to do with me,” he said. “It wasn’t my fault, so I stepped over it. But that was just causing more of a mess. I decided that if I could be a leader and leave problems better than I found them, even if they had nothing to do with me, it would make things easier for the next generation.”

Cooper was able to do just that through his sport. After uniting and finding common ground with his teammates, he saw other community members take note.

“It happened slowly,” Cooper said. “It was a marathon, not a sprint. But people respected that certain kids who used to be in gangs were starting to choose sports instead. They saw how that changed some kid’s life and thought, ‘His grades are better, he’s traveling for rowing, he knows how to swim now, he’s eating healthy, his body has changed… How do I get that?’”

Cooper believes opening up and actively working to improve others has and will continue bringing everyone closer together.

“If you’re doing all those great things, people want to know how to get to where you are,” Cooper said. “If we can just communicate and give them the answers, they will start to respect you. The more respect there is, the more you want to help and care for each other.”

Since his rowing days in high school, Cooper has written a book titled “A Most Beautiful Thing,” whose story became the basis for a domentary of the same name In his book’s final sentences, Cooper shares a metaphor that reflects his ongoing attitude toward life.

“ In rowing, you move forward by looking in the opposite direction,” he wrote. “I learned that it’s OK to look back, as long as you keep pushing forward.”

Arshay Cooper today — Visiting Scholar, Dallasite, community advocate

Past Visiting Scholars

2021-2022: Michelle “MACE” Curran, US Air Force Thunderbird pilot

Cooper first came in contact with the school through Brian Hargrove ’88, the head of school at Northfield Mount Hermon, a co-ed high school in Gill, Massachusetts. After learning Cooper was moving to Dallas, Hargrove contacted Headmaster David Dini to connect them. It just so happened that Dini had recently finished Cooper’s book. From there, the two began talking.

2019–2020: David Shoemaker, astronomer and astrophysicist Bryan Mealer, author and journalist

2018–2019: James Prosek, artist, writer and naturalist Ruta Sepetys, historical fiction author

“After connecting, I visited in the fall and met some of the young men on campus,” Cooper said. “I had also previously met some of them at my summer camp in Vermont. So I already felt connected to St. Mark’s when I got here. Then, I finally spoke to all the Upper School boys and the younger kids, and it was a blast.”

Now that Cooper has settled his family in Dallas, he hopes to continue making rowing more accessible for all kids, just as he did at his previous home in New York City.

“In Texas, I think there’s still a lot of work to do when it comes to diversity, inclusion and equity in rowing,” Cooper said. “It’s a chance to reach areas like South Dallas where no one really knows about the sport. As someone who knows what it’s like to not have certain resources or not know how to swim, I want to go there and give back to the same kind of community that gave so much to me.”

In fact, he has already begun making headway in the local community.

“I’m working with Dallas United Crew, a club team,” Cooper said. “Before I even moved here, I was helping them recruit kids of color because we wanted to make sure the boathouse reflects the diversity in the city. We’re working with different

city leaders to create more rowing opportunities for kids in South Dallas to connect with kids in Preston Hollow. We want to bring them together to have more conversations on how to be better citizens.”

As for his future plans, Cooper anticipates working on a TV series adaptation of his story, courtesy of Amazon Studios. While that project is still in its beginning phase, he has other involvements he looks foward to.

“I have a foundation called A Most Beautiful Thing Inclusion Fund,” Cooper said. “Basically, we find small boathouses that don’t have many resources and help them out. The problem isn’t that the kids aren’t strong or fast or energetic or resilient enough. They’ve just been given less and are still expected to perform in the same manner as everyone else. So, we identify those groups and give them all the tools they need to compete with the other schools. Every year we go into five different cities and accelerate those programs.”

“

In rowing, you move forward by looking in the opposite direction. I learned that it’s OK to look back, as long as you keep pushing forward.

ARSHAY COOPER Visiting Scholar

STORIES Arjun Khatti

Arshay Cooper ^

PHOTO / SAL HUSSAIN

ARTS CULTURE

Cultures around the WORLD

In the school’s annual International Week, cultures from diverse students on campus — even those not attributed to a school foreign language — were featured through Elevated Cooking Club's cuisine. See coverage, page 23

The gallery

Hear from a couple of sophomore creators of the latest art featured around campus.

What’s going on with this print?

Amar Kakkar: I think this piece of art, one of my favorites, really represents who I am and how I function as an artist. The piece has lots of bold, saturated and graphic colors and the composition is broken down into thirds, so the focus is not just on the middle, and that is something I really aimed to do in this piece.

CULTURAL CUISINE Students gather in the Great Hall for the International Week Potluck, which featured foods from a variety of cultures around the world.

CULTURE IN BRIEF

ATPI PHOTOGRAPHY EVENTS

In the ATPI Fall Photo Contest, photography students won almost every prize in the commercial category and took roughly 20 percent of all the awards. ATPI, the Association of Texas Photography Instructors, is an organization that sponsors and supports photography contests and scholarships. Photography students here compete in a number of contests, such as the Texas High School Shootout, which takes place in early March, and the ATPI Top Program competition, which takes place in late April.

YOUNG AMERICAN TALENT COMPETITION

Eight students from Drawing & Painting II and Advanced

Honors Drawing & Painting will compete in the North Texas Young American Talent competition, with

IN THE CITY

all submissions due Feb. 24. The competition, hosted by Booker T. Washington High School, has a panel of judges evaluate the art submissions, and will announce the winners May 5. The artwork will then be featured in the Booker T. Washington gallery until May 18.

FILM STUDIES UPDATES

The Upper School film studies class recently finished shooting both of their current films “Envy” and “Til’ Death.” They are currently in the editing process. New floodlights and better audio quality allowed for better film quality. The films are planned to be finished by the end of this month.

FEBRUARY COFFEEHOUSE

February Coffeehouse took place Feb. 25, and many Marksmen and Hockaday students gathered on

An upcoming event worth checking out.

The American Performance Horseman

WHEN Mar. 10 @ 6:45 P.M.

WHERE Globe Life Field

campus and displayed a variety of talents. The event started at 6:30 p.m. and was the second one this year. This coffeehouse's theme was America’s Got Talent.

POETRY OUT LOUD COMPETITION

Sophomore Lukas Palys was recently selected as one of ten state finalists for the Poetry Out Loud Competition this year after competing in the regional competition. Palys will travel to Austin March 11 to compete against the remaining contestants in the state competition. The winner will represent Texas at the Poetry Out Loud National Finals in Washington D.C. May 8-10. A total of $50,000 in awards will be given at the national competition, with $20,000 going to the winner.

Featuring senior José Jiménez’s musical career.

A look into the annual International Week Potluck.

Electronic musician Cuisine and culture Basketball leagues

Thoughts on the NBA versus March Madness.

Talk of the Town: DMA Pop-Up Exhibition

WHEN Starting Mar. 19

WHERE Dallas Museum of Art

What’s going on with this print?

Hale Peterson: This was one of my best pieces from last year. It was the piece from the end of year and so I had all the growth from the class, and I was able to put everything together that I had learned into one piece and really show what I had learned over the course of the year.

SZA – SOS Tour

WHEN Mar. 10 @ 8 p.m.

What’s going on with this print?

Benjamin Chen: This tri-color art piece brought together all the different elements of painting I learned over the course of the year. I loved how the painting came to life more and more with each step, and for this reason it is one of my favorites.

INTERVIEW Matthew Hofmann

Primary Triad by Hale Peterson Featured in the Winn Science Center

PHOTO / COURTESY BIJAAN NOORMOHAMED

Primary Triad by Amar Kakkar Featured in the Winn Science Center

WHERE American Airlines Center

Primary Triad by Benjamin Chen Featured in the Winn Science Center

Music through the screen of a computer

Senior José Jiménez, an avid fan of electronic music and Daft Punk, is now making his own music using mainly his computer and a few other gadgets, like his MIDI keyboard and Launchpad. With stage name “ThatGuyWithNoSoul,” he is releasing an album titled “Apotheosis” in April.

Senior José Jiménez was fighting a battle. A beat battle. He had a day to make a song, and at the end of the day, whoever made the best song between him and his friend would win.

As he worked on his song, a thought crossed his mind that would change his music career forever.

What if I uploaded this onto Spotify?

Today, Jiménez has released a six-track EP and is releasing a ten-track album next month.

The ReMarker: How did your music-making journey start?

José Jiménez: I started back in 2017, and when I started, I didn’t have a taste in music. At that point, it was all just video game music. I’d download youtube MP3s, and I’d use a free audio software called Audacity. A lot of my work was mashups, and they were pretty bad. My first mashup was the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” with songs I knew from video games. Then in 2019, I put more effort into making videos, and that’s when I started looking into FL Studio, a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) for music-making, and made small tracks. That’s where “Demo” came from. I would also sometimes make music for my friends and later, in 2020 and 2021, I started doing ‘beat battles’ with my friends where you have a day to make a beat and then show it off. Then I had the idea — ‘What if I uploaded this onto Spotify?’

TR: What is your creative process for making music?

JJ: I open a project and make a drum loop. Then I gradually add and change instruments out to see which one I like. From there, I just build the song. Sometimes I’ll have an idea already in my mind, and I’ll start to play a part on my tiny MIDI keyboard. Then I think, ‘How can I add more? What other layers can add to this?’

TR: Who influenced your music?

JJ: When I was making mash-ups, I would come across many forms of music where artists such as Justice really influenced my tastes in music, specifically the electronic genre. Their music sounds almost nostalgic and their melodies helped me form the music I make. Even though I’m inspired by artists such as Justice and Daft Punk, I want my music to have my own sound. Sometimes I try to replicate a song of theirs, but then eventually it’ll become my own thing.

TR: How would you classify your music?

JJ: That’s a hard question. It’s definitely electronic and downtempo. I don’t how to classify it.

TR: How did you decide on making electronic music?

JJ: Electronic music gives me the most freedom. I can do basically anything with electronic music. I can get a simple saw wave and turn it into any sound I want it to be. I can experiment a lot with it and form something that has my identity.

TR: Why do you make music?

JJ: Whenever I listen to music, I feel I can add something to make it better. With the genre of sound I deal with, there’s not enough good music out there. What I’m going for is nostalgic, rough-sounding music. I got really inspired by ‘Cross,’ an album

by Justice. I really like the epic-sounding chords and drums in an 80s movie. Electronic music kind of sounds the same now, so I’m trying to make this as different as I can to add a little variety. I feel the 2000s was when electronic music peaked. What I want to do is to bring back that almost amateurish type of music where people experimented.

TR: Why is your EP titled “DEMO”?

JJ: Demo was originally supposed to be a soundtrack or made-up movie that was centered around my character and my YouTube channel. All the songs I made for “Demo” was what I feel would be an epic soundtrack. It was one of my early works, so it is not fully polished and not complete, but “Demo” was what I had, and I wanted to publish it to see how people would like it. So in theory, my idea for it was that I was gonna make the soundtrack first and then the movie — something experimental. But, I never got around to making it, and that’s why I have these demo tracks.

TR: What have you learned from your experiences in making music?

JJ: I know more about music now. From all my terrible off-key, off-beat, off-sync mashups where the voices didn’t even match up with the beat of the song, I can now even make a lyrical song if I wanted to. I have uploaded myself onto basically every platform. I feel like I make good music with the EP and my upcoming album.

TR: What are your future plans?

JJ: Right now, I’m working on an album, and it’s been in the works since I released Demo. It’s called “Apotheosis,” and it comes out in April. It’s a 10-track album that’s a culmination of a lot of ideas. There’s an epic start that has a focus on the lead. Some songs go for eight or more minutes. I’m excited to show the new album to people — but I still have to do some tweaking. A lot of what I envisioned is turning out like I wanted it to.

Ceramics students win awards at NCECA regional competition

BY Will Clifford

Six ceramics students placed at a regional arts competitions, hosted by the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts.

The 11 prize-winning pieces will be displayed from March 15–18 at an exhibit in Cincinnati. Of the 1,317 entries nationwide, only 152 pieces were accepted for the showing.

Senior Henry Baxter and sophomore Hans Hesse received first-place Gold Key awards from the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.

“These Classic Arts and Writing competitions start with large regions that include multiple states,” Hesse said. “If you get first place in a regional, then

your piece goes to the national judging round later in March.”

Hesse and his classmates diligently prepared their award-winning pieces for the regional competition.

“First, I personally start out with a reference image,” Hesse said. “Usually, students will either find inspiration online or just have an idea that they think is cool, and then I’ll draw it out.”

The ceramics students go into every competition with the same open mindset.

“Some judges will examine different criteria than others, but there's no way to tell what they will specifically look at,” Hesse said. “We all put our best effort into every piece no matter what.”

When making pieces, Hesse has a specific creative process to find inspiration.

“First, I personally start out with a reference image,” Hesse said. “Usually, students will either find

COMPOSING DEMO In September 2021, Jiménez released a six-track EP titled "Demo." The main song in the EP is "Look Ahead."

THATGUYWITHNOSOUL

Found on Upcoming album name Music genre

Spotify Apple Music Amazon Music Bandcamp YouTube SoundCloud

“Apotheosis”

Electronic/ downtempo

inspiration online or just have an idea that they think is cool and then they’ll draw it out. I try to add aspects to the piece that draw the viewer in. For example, in my Tree of Wisdom piece, I added branches that led the viewer’s eyes to the center of the piece.”

Additionally, ceramics instructor Scott Zeigler helped the students throughout the process of creating award-winning pieces.

“Mr. Ziegler helps us make a piece more interesting and dynamic,” Hesse said. “He also helps us if there’s an idea we have for a piece but don't know how to execute it. If there’s a technique that he wants us to use, he’ll teach it to us.”

Zeigler also helps students improve their work during critiques.

“He won’t say any piece is completely finished,” Hesse said. "He will say that it is good, but you need to work on a specific aspect of it more,” Hesse said.

IN TUNE Jiménez’s Launchpad, the colorful 8x8 grid, is used to play loops. Each button plays a specific section of an instrument of a song. He uses his MIDI keyboard to play instruments live, and the knobs add effects and filters to the loops.

INTERVIEW Joseph Sun, Arjun Poi

PHOTO / ARJUN POI

HANS HESSE

Cultural cuisine

Of the many events throughout International Week each year, the potluck gives students a great chance to take part in a diverse cultural exchange through food. Students have been invited to share their dishes for almost as long as International Week has been celebrated on campus, but for the first time, the planning of the potluck has been handed off to the most culinarily-involved group on campus — The Elevated Cooking Club.

Students of all grades gathered for a wide variety of International Week activities Feb. 20-24, from musical performances to cultural games. In the midst of all the events planned for the week, Elevated Cooking Club President Stice Neuhoff led his team in representing one of the most recognizable aspects of culture — cuisine, through the International Week Potluck.

While it’s been a longstanding tradition between members of the Elevated Cooking Club and the International Week Committee, Neuhoff only recently began formally leading the planning of the potluck.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time,” Neuhoff said. “Originally, the International Week Committee would just ask volunteers and people from Elevated to bring dishes to the potluck. But a couple years ago, though, [Nancy] Marmion [J.J. Connolly Master Teaching Chair] asked me if I would just run it as part of International Week, and that’s when it became more of a formal partnership.”

Among club members, the only requirement was to represent a variety of dishes and corresponding cultures.

“We had a sign-up within the club to prepare a dish based on your nationality or your heritage,” Neuhoff said. “We were pretty open to any dish, as long as it could feed a reasonable amount of people, and as long as there were no repeated dishes. It usually works out where we don’t have to moderate that much, and everyone just prepares whatever they want.”

From there, cooking was left to the freedom of club members.

“Everyone cooked their dishes for a couple hours on Sunday,” Neuhoff said. “We had 15 guys arrange that by themselves in their own homes. Everyone started the cooking on Sunday so that all meals would be fresh. After that, we refrigerated and heated them up before the potluck on Monday [Feb. 20].”

The result was a total of 15 different dishes, including spaghetti, tikka masala, two types of

dumplings, latkes, samosas, crawfish étouffée and more. After preparing these dishes, all that was left was executing the event itself.

“We set up the potluck in the Great Hall every year,” Neuhoff said. “We usually just have a horseshoe of tables and arrange the dishes in a line, without much preference for dish order. We try to put Ms. Lin [Gene and Alice Oltrogge Master Teaching Chair] toward the end of the line where the smaller dishes are, and we have the bigger dishes toward the front so that the smaller dishes don’t run out instantly.”

For Neuhoff’s dish, he chose to cook his go-to potluck speciality.

“I’ve made spaghetti pretty much every year since freshman year,” Neuhoff said. “It’s based on my grandma’s spaghetti recipe, and I just doubled it, so it could feed around 40 people.”

The dish represents his family’s culture – with their family’s unique touch.

“My grandma’s from Italy, and she grew up making this dish,” Neuhoff said. “It’s a bit of an Americanized spaghetti recipe in our family.”

Of the many dishes featured, Neuhoff’s favorite was one made by a faculty member’s specialty.

“Ms. Lin’s dumplings and 100-ingredient sauce was really good,” Neuhoff said. “It’s awesome how she does that all on her own every year.”

In addition to representing cultures, the potluck includes a fundraiser.

“Everyone buys $5 tickets to get into the potluck,” Neuhoff said. “I was there to accept Venmo if people forgot to bring cash, and all of that money went to Doctors Without Borders. It’s a partnership we do every year now, and we raised $400 this year. It’s a nice way for International Week to do something fun while contributing to a cause.”

Overall, Neuhoff’s favorite highlight of the event was enjoying the fruits of everyone’s work.

“My favorite part was just getting try everyone’s food,” Neuhoff said. “I think it actually is pretty cool to have the whole potluck be a celebration of culture as well as everyone’s love for food and the club.”

Fresh fits and goofy garments

The Upper School Fashion Show took place during Upper School Assembly Feb. 17. Representatives from each grade — freshman Kazim Hussain, sophomore George Hoverman, junior Zach Olyan and senior Winston Lee — were joined by history instructor Harry Flaherty to compete in a series of fashion-themed challenges.

INTERNATIONAL WEEK POTLUCK MENU

Assorted Dumplings

Chinese and Korean

Samosas

Fried Indian pastries with savory fillings

Tortillas Espanolas

Spanish omelettes made with eggs and potatoes

Hashweh

An aromatic Lebanese rice dish served with meat and toasted nuts

Latkes

Traditional Jewish potato pancakes often served with a creamy dip

Meatballs

Ground meat rolled in marinara sauce

COMMUNAL EFFORT International Week co-sponsor Janet Lin poses in front of her annual Chinese dumpling platter (top). Students prepare their dishes as the potluck kicks off (bottom).

STORY Aaron Liu, Oliver Peck

STICE NEUHOFF Elevated Cooking Club President

PHOTOS / COURTESY BIJAAN NOORMOHAMED

DRESSING UP Senior Noah Asmerom dresses like a doctor to begin the annual Upper School Fashion Show (left). Senior Winston Lee bested Flaherty in a closely fought fashion battle (middle). The panel of judges consisted of teachers Wesley Irons, Shane May and Dr. Katherine Anson (bottom right).

FASHION SHOW

NBA vs. college basketball atmosphere

With March Madness just around the corner and the NBA playoffs ensuing shortly after, I recounted personal experience to determine which game provides the best experience for attending fans.

HILTON SAMPSON Ratings and Reviews Editor

The NBA: home to some of the greatest athletes in the world, competing at the highest level of basketball imaginable with superstars putting up mind boggling statlines night after night.

College basketball: a battleground for teams of any size, shape or stature, with memorable buzzer-beaters and comebacks, high stakes and emotions, intense fans and atmospheres.

With both leagues entertaining millions of viewers from across the country, displaying exciting matchups throughout the season, one must consider the question: which game is more enjoyable to attend?

I’ve always been a Baylor basketball fan. With several members of my family attending the Waco-based university and my grandparents being avid enthusiasts of Baylor athletics; I was bound to become a Bears fan.

Simultaneously, having lived my whole life in Dallas, watching the end of Dirk’s career lead into Luka’s rise into stardom, I was naturally inclined to root for the Mavericks.

I have been a fan of both teams since I was a kid, but my interest in the sport really began to grow during my seventh grade year.

For Baylor, this was the first time in recent program history that the team really started to mesh, putting on dominant performances week after week, raising the stakes and fan excitement with every win.

The biggest win of the season came in mid-January of 2020, playing away against the first-ranked Kansas Jayhawks in Allen Fieldhouse, arguably the most difficult environment in the country for opposing teams.

With a backcourt consisting of Jared Butler, Macio Teague, and Davion Mitchell, the Bears put on a show in a commanding win over the Jayhawks, proving that this team was the real deal.

The momentum continued to build, and I couldn’t help but feel ecstatic, yet anxious, about the rest of the season, hopeful that this would be the year that Baylor could win a national title.

Later in the season, the Bears took on the Jayhawks once again in Waco for arguably the biggest game ever for the program.

College basketball at its peak. Two top-ranked teams, two conference rivals going head-to-head. Kansas vs. Baylor. A win for the Bears would mean two back-to-back wins against the Jayhawks, a feat never accomplished in school history.

I attended this game and saw the best part of college basketball. A jam-packed arena full of Bears fans decked out in all-white attire, after each basket erupting into chants and cheers, every fan in the stands on their feet throughout the game, looking to watch the home team emerge victorious.

Even after a close loss, my excitement and expectations only grew for the team as all eyes turned to the chaos that would ensue in March Madness.

But it was not meant to be. After the outbreak of COVID-19, the NCAA decided to cancel the tournament, and the Bear’s 2020 title hopes were lost.

The NBA, however, launched an unprecedented response to the pandemic, hosting teams in playoff contention in a quarantine environment at Disney World known as the NBA Bubble. After a few short games to

Local

chess phenom

end the season, the first round of the playoffs began, and the Luka-led Mavs took on the Los Angeles Clippers, and despite heroic efforts by Luka, the heavily favored Clippers came out on top in a 4-2 series.

With playoff cancellations and eliminations, 2020 was not a great year for my basketball teams, but at that point I knew both teams had the potential to be great, and I would stick with them till victory was won.

For Baylor, I would not have to wait very long with the Bears playing their best season ever in the 2020-2021 season, going on to defeat the Gonzaga Bulldogs for the first National Championship in program history.

While the aftermath of the pandemic left stadiums and arenas without fans, following that team was one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had, watching a seemingly impossible dream become reality.

The Mavs, on the other hand, are still looking to make a deep playoff run, but with the recent acquisition of Kyrie Iriving, this might be the time Dallas has been waiting for.

I have thrilling memories attending the games of both teams, but between Baylor and the Mavs, there is one team I would rather see play live.

The Bears.

There is just something different about a college game atmosphere, something far more exhilarating than a professional game.

NBA arenas dominate college courts in size, yet with a fraction of the seats, tiny college gyms erupt with every made basket, steal or questionable call by the refs.

Mainly led by student involvement usually situated

drops gameplay advice

game. You don’t want to have your king exposed too early, that can lose you the game.

directly behind the opponents basket to stir up any and all kinds of chaos during the opposing teams’ free throw attempts, college basketball crowds are rowdy, loud and frankly fun to be around.

With high stakes throughout the season, especially during conference play in the Big 12, each game impacts conference title hopes and tournament aspirations.

While the NBA comes close to this feeling during the playoffs, throughout the course of an 82-game season, the top tier play to average fans such as myself can occasionally feel repetitive, with 30 points per game seemingly becoming an expectation.

Every time a college player suits up for a game, their future is on the line, whether or not they can make it to the big leagues. As a key player in a deep March Madness run, anything is possible.

Take Jeremy Sochan for example, a Baylor forward whose one gritty performance in a tournament loss to North Carolina cemented his place as an unexpected lottery pick in the NBA Draft.

For college players, there is always something on the table, every game is important, something NBA players might not always have to deal with.

In both leagues, it’s always exciting to get behind a team with momentum, to follow them into the playoffs and see what they can do, but a college team will always be more fun to follow than any professional team.

While game play won’t always be polished, shots won’t always fall and games won’t always be won, there is just something special about the environment of college basketball that will always outweigh the NBA.

A

ndrew Zhang is no amateur chess player. He is not only the World Open Blitz Chess champion, but also the campus expert on the sport.

With the nearly 1,500-year-old game experiencing a revival in schools across the country through online platforms such as Chess.com, I sat down with this chess wiz to learn how to improve my chess gameplay.

The ReMarker: What is the first thing that should go through my mind before I sit down for a game of chess?

Andrew Zhang: You want to choose an opening that you’re comfortable playing, something that fits your style and that you know how to play. It doesn’t have to be what everyone else plays. It just has to be something you know that you’re familiar with.

TR: How do I stay ahead of the game and not fall behind my opponent?

AZ: You want to develop your pieces. So that means getting them to optimal squares to prepare yourself for the middle

TR: What is one goal I should have each match to get ahead of my opponent?

AZ: The center is the most important part of the board because if you can control the center, then it is easy to attack to both sides. So if possible, if your opponent lets you, always take the center.

TR: How should I strategically use my queen?

AZ: You generally don’t want to move your queen too early. Usually what happens is, since the queen is the most important piece, if something attacks it, you always have to keep moving it. By attacking your queen, your opponent ends up developing while you have to keep moving your queen instead of making your own development.

TR: Is it better to follow a set opening or to choose my own moves on the fly?

AZ: If your opponent plays a move that you’ve never seen before or that you think is weird, it’s ok, even good to think about it for a second, to come up with your own plan

instead of just following what you’ve been told to do. You always have to be ready to find a move in any position that’s actually better than what the opening says you should do.

INTERVEW Hilton Sampson

PERSONAL

FINGER ROLL Baylor gaurd Adam Flagler pulls up from deep against the Texas Longhorns in a Bears home game in the Ferrel Center Feb. 25 this season.

PHOTO / COURTESY BAYLOR ATHLETICS

EDITORIALS OPINION

MAIN EDITORIAL

LINYANG LEE

AKASH MANICKAM

AKASH MUNSHI

OLIVER PECK

ARJUN POI

VIKRAM SINGH

JOSEPH SUN

NEIL YEPURI

ERIC YI

PHOTOGRAPHERS

ZACHARY BASHOUR

HUDSON BROWN

SAL HUSSAIN

AKASH MUNSHI

NEIL SONG

TIGER YANG

ADVISER

JENNY DIAL CREECH

HEADMASTER

DAVID W. DINI

AUDIENCE

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OPINIONS AND EDITORIALS

Editorials represent the views of the Editorial Board and are not necessarily those of the Board of Trustees, administration, faculty or staff. All personal opinion columns, bylined with the writer’s name and photo, represent the views of that writer only and not necessarily those of The ReMarker, Board of Trustees, administration, faculty or staff.

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UNCHARTERED TERRITORY

We live in the Wild West of social media, a relatively new innovation and one that legislators will further contend with. The Making Age-Verification Technology Uniform, Robust and Efficient Act is a start.

After the bell rings, there’s a marked difference on campus caused by the completion of the curricular day – the widespread presence of phones. Kids partake in the popular video game Clash Royale, scroll through Instagram or message friends on Snapchat. Today, we live in the social media age. Across the nation, our government, education and entertainment often play out on social media platforms controlled by private corporations and individuals. The ramifications of social media’s hold on people, and in particular youth, are significant and largely negative – especially on civil discourse and individual mental health. Rapid and robust action must be taken by individuals and elected officials to reverse the debasement of methods of communication and discourse in this nation and uphold the wellness of young people.

A possible starting point to the negative consequences of social media on young people is legislation that raises the minimum age to own a social media account. Recently, such efforts have begun to make headway at the state and national levels. Most significantly, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced the Making Age-Verification Technology Uniform, Robust and Effective (MATURE) Act, which would prohibit social media companies from allowing minors under 16 to engage with online content. In addition, the bill would create an auditing process to increase social media accountability, paving the way for legal action against tech companies.

The bill is well-intended and pragmatic. Sixteen is a logical for initial

access to social media as it coincides with the widespread availability of photo identification in the form of driver’s licenses, a prerequisite to establishing secure and credible social media accounts that ensure a person’s age and identity can be verified with government databases.

In an opinion piece published by The Washington Post, the bill's originators emphasized the correlation between social media usage and depression –particularly in girls – and growing partisanship and discord fomented by social media as justifications for the bill. They also touted the bill as a potentially unanimous bipartisan breakthrough for a Congress marked by gridlock.

The fact remains that social media is not a public forum for discussion where all aspects of freedom of speech and expression are paramount and protected by the Constitution; rather, it is an aggregation of various business ventures with profit as their primary motive.

Facebook’s leaked internal documents showing that employees knew Instagram increased suicidal thoughts in American and British teens and exacerbated body image issues in teen girls and only expanded their base of young consumers is a shocking – albeit characteristic – revelation that reflects this reality. It serves as a stark reminder that social media companies hold revenue maximization above all else, including the safety of children. Social media applications are ideal for making money but prove untenable for genuine, good-faith political discourse. As such, it is not only legal under the Commerce Clause for Congress to regulate the social media industry, it is imperative for the

LOOMING

As the topic of social media seemingly looms over Congress with recent events like the Twitter hearing, wider action on social media companies such as TikTok could be just overhead.

health and political climate of our future generations that elected leaders robustly address youth social media usage.

While the bill contains several useful courses of action, the blanket ban on all individuals below the age of 16 may be unnuanced. Different kids can be at various stages of maturity and responsibility at the same age, and the primary facilitator of any social media access should remain parents.

Additionally, stripping social media platforms from a generation of kids entrenched in the virtual world as their means of engagement with friends could negatively impact their social lives. A graduated ban, perhaps taking effect in five years, on social media usage for children 13 and under could be more actionable. Nevertheless, the bill rightly recognizes the need to take action on the social media industry and social media apps’ negative impact on young people.

Though the MATURE Act is admittedly flawed, it includes the necessary provisions for the Federal Trade Commission to confirm the compliance of social media companies, setting the stage for further regulations that must be enacted to safeguard our democracy, safety and well-being. Mark McCarthy, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, argues that transparency is the foundational step for more comprehensive regulation and reform of the social media industry. He concedes it is an unspectacular course of action but firmly asserts its paramount importance as “without transparency, due process for social media users is impossible.”

Increasing transparency will translate into the creation of a specific regulatory authority, which can then generate and enforce regulations on content moderation to eliminate hateful and explicit online posts, formulate data privacy and consumer protection laws to prevent the exploitation of the information of everyday people by large corporations, and enhance cybersecurity and user identification guidelines to shield our democracy from foreign disinformation. In due time, these reforms must take place for the betterment of our society, and a push for transparency will kickstart sweeping change.

Rapid and robust action must be taken by elected officials in this nation to uphold the wellness of young people.

PHOTOILLUSTRATION / KESHAV KRISHNA

Progress made, but further adjustments to senior exhibitions needed

Last year, the format of senior exhibitions was changed dramatically, both to cope with continuing uncertainty due to COVID-19 and to better align senior exhibitions with the school’s goals. Senior exhibitions, instead of being presented on any day, to any group of students, are now presented on four set Thursdays per year and to assigned Middle School advisories.

First, we recognize that seniors this year have shown up prepared and focused for their exhibitions, and we commend the senior class for its dedication to inspiring younger boys and teaching them about new hobbies and opportunities. However, after one year with the new format, it may be time to reevaluate what works, and what does not.

There are several aspects of the senior exhibition format that work. For instance, It is important for Middle School students to receive ample time for class meetings and other

MAIN

community time activities. Scheduling all 100 senior exes for any day of the year could infringe on this time, and it is best that there are predetermined days to give the Middle Schoolers enough community time.

The new form that all seniors fill out – designating their topic, who they would like to present to and when – is a great way to streamline the scheduling process and make preparation less difficult to manage.

Nevertheless, it would be better if more than four days were available for presenting. As it stands, many seniors cannot show support during friends’ senior exes since they are either presenting or having to choose between multiple exhibitions at the same time. Many senior exhibitions may also be more relevant at different times of the year, so more opportunities to present during the fall and early winter would give seniors a better opportunity to both make an impact with their own exhibitions and support their friends.

Additionally, some presentation topics, like summer jobs or hobbies with age requirements, are more suited to Upper Schoolers than Middle Schoolers. Seniors should also be able to present to underclassmen in the Upper School if their topic is more relevant to students of a certain age. Any senior ex can leave an impact on its audience, but the presentation is always more effective if its audience can act on what they’ve learned immediately.

Overall, the new format for senior exhibitions has done an excellent job at making senior exes more organized and efficient, but its shortcomings still risk negatively impacting some students’ experience. If students had more opportunities to present, and more grades to present to, senior exhibitions would continue to leave an even greater impression on younger students. We sincerely hope the administration takes our recommendations into account to continue enhancing the format of senior exhibitions.

Physical education or over-exertion?

In order to build complete student-athletes, the school has implemented physical education requirements for Upper School students. For students entering freshman year, they must complete the P.E. course in their freshman and sophomore years. Similarly, students entering sophomore year must complete the P.E. course in their sophomore and junior year.

Regardless of whether a student is a three-sport athlete or only focuses on one sport, they must complete the P.E. requirements in order to earn their five athletic credits. The administration feels this is a helpful way for all students to maintain a helpful balance of academics and exercise. In addition to exercise, students will learn about valuable health and wellness lessons.

Though this is a helpful way for students to become wellversed in athletics and health and wellness, the timing of the P.E. courses does cause some concern. Requiring an in-season athlete who is already maintaining a healthy and rigorous athletic schedule to attend a P.E. course causes risk for burnout. Many athletes have voiced concerns over having to exercise during the school day and then still being expected to compete at a high level during their 2-hour afternoon sports practices. Also, having athletes perform P.E. activities such as lifting weights could go so far as to directly oppose their sport’s ideal training schedule. Therefore, we believe the pure exercising component of P.E. hurts athletes more than it helps, and the school should seek to protect these athletes’ bodily health when requiring such courses.

QUOTE CORRECTION

On the contrary, if a student does not compete in a sport, they should be required to fulfill their P.E. course for both the exercise and the health and wellness components. Athletes competing in one or two sports, when not in season, should have the option to either complete the full P.E. course or enroll in a tutorial in which they train for their sport(s) on their own.

The second component of the P.E. course involves health and wellness. We agree that all students should have a quality education in this regard, but the current structure of the P.E. course makes it hard to balance that aspect with exercise, especially considering students’ varying involvement in school athletics. So, we recommend splitting up the requirements based on this involvement.

Many athletes have voiced concerns over having to exercise during the school day and then still being expected to compete at a high level during their 2-hour afternoon sports practices.

For in-season athletes and out-of-season athletes doing tutorials, there should be once or twice-a-week classes that focus solely on health and wellness. This demographic already has adequate exercise routines in place, so instead of requiring daily P.E. classes that combine both exercise and health and wellness, this model would require them to only focus on the latter during the school day.

For non-athletes and out-of-season athletes not doing tutorials, the requirements should look fairly similar to how they look now. Since this demographic does not have any other exercise routines in place, they should be required to attend the typical P.E. class that focuses on both exercise and health and wellness.

With this two-pronged approach, the completion of a student’s corresponding course model for his first two years of Upper School would count as his fulfilled P.E. requirement. Ultimately, the issue with having one regimented P.E. requirement is that we have such a diverse group of students

Correction from the February issue of The ReMarker

Dear reader:

In the February issue of The ReMarker, in the story “Long after they’re gone” on page 13, Director of Alumni Relations Alex Eshelbrenner was misquoted.

While discussing the diverse, unique and varied backgrounds of the members of the Alumni Board in the wider context of the Alumni Board’s actions and impact on our community, Eshelbrenner was erroneously quoted as saying, “there’s also going to be a female member this year” instead of, “that’s [the member from the Class of 1968] going to be the oldest member this year.”

We apologize for this error and are committed to the utmost accuracy and authenticity in our stories.

STEM Conference

on campus that have unique athletic schedules. Athletics are an integral part of what makes our school a prestigious institution. If athletes are forced to complete physical requirements on top of their commitment to their teams, it causes a conflict of interest that can hurt an athlete’s performance. Finding a fine line between exercise and health and wellness education will allow every student to get the best experience possible, enhancing student performance, time and workload management and athletic outcomes.

FACTS

& STATS

5 THE REMARKER MARCH 10, 2023 26 OPINION EDITORIALS

REPORT CARD

The robust mix of academics and practitioners at this year's STEM Conference proved invaluable for students, and the panel discussion was riveting.

International Week

While the events and food were all good, and we thank the committee for their work, there is still room to bring in increased perspectives and added events.

Multicultural Night

Marksmen enjoyed the various cuisines and cultures offered at Marksmen Multicultural Night, and we commend its organizers.

minutes of P.E. in an average day in class

Club Continuity

A few clubs that were chartered at the start of the year now exist solely in name. If you have a club, run it.

Baseball Crowds

The attendance for varsity spring sports, and baseball in particular, has been stellar. Keep it up, guys.

Parking Jobs

The parking lot demands change. Some of the parking, especially done by underclassmen, needs work.

athletic credits required to graduate hours of practice for in-season athletes

Swimming brings home the title

Continuing their historical domination in the SPC, the Varsity Swim team adds another win to their impressive entourage. See coverage, page 28

Blumenthals’ multi-year journey in baseball announcing

BY Nolan Marcus

Junior Lucas Blumenthal embarked on his baseball announcing career last school year, and what initially was a fun part-time job morphed into a major commitment.

However, Blumenthal’s baseball journey did not begin on the mic, it began as a child.

“I grew up playing baseball,” Blumenthal said. “I’ve loved baseball all my life but I stopped playing in middle school. When the chance presented itself to watch the games and be part of baseball again I had to take the opportunity.”

When Blumenthal began announcing games Alex Nadalini ‘22 was the full time announcer and Blumenthal was the next man up.

SPORTS IN BRIEF

GOING ON THE ROAD Lacrosse has consistently been one of the most successful programs at St. Mark’s, and this year is looking no different. With multiple Division 1 commits, the team is ready to dominate opponents all season long, and not just ones in Texas. For the first time, the lacrosse team will be traveling to Arizona to compete against two of the top programs in the country, Notre Dame Prep and Brophy Prep.

Trey Whitty, the new head lacrosse coach, will be planning competitive trips like this every other year. We are looking forward to an exciting season for the Lions.

THE NEXT LEVEL After a long recruiting process, Henry Boykin’23 has decided to take his lacrosse talents to Bucknell University, a top 30-ranked team. When deciding on where to commit, Bucknell’s coaching staff really put in the

effort to recruit him and offered him a large amount of scholarship money as well. Boykin knew this was his dream since the seventh grade, and he’s not backing down from the challenge. By getting in the weight room as much as possible and working out with other D1 athletes, he is preparing himself to compete strongly at the next level. Henry is expected to have an extremely successful spring season, and we are excited to see him do big things.

ALUMNI UPDATE With winter SPC now over, spring sports are starting with promising seasons from many alumni athletes. Ian Mize ‘22, a midfield for the Princeton Tigers, has started his collegiate lacrosse career strong with a 22-9 win over the Monmouth Hawks. Titus McGowan ‘20 and Henry Schechter ‘22 played each other in lacrosse on

Feb. 25 with Schechter’s Longhorns losing to McGowan’s Mustangs

16-7 Daniel Ardila ‘20 also started the tennis season strong with the John Hopkins Blue Jays, winning 6-2 in his singles match and 8-2 in his doubles matc against Salisbury Feb. 19.

NEW FACES ON THE TRACK

The track team is working with two newer coaches this upcoming spring season. Firstly, former Olympic-trial decathlete David Grzesiak returns for his second year as a coach of the team, having been a former all-American at the University of Wisconsin. As a coach, Grzesiak is focused on the high jump and pole vault. Next, a newer face in Judah Bell is being deployed as an all around coach, with sprinting and long jumping experience. Bell also worked with the basketball team earlier this year.

“Whenever the old announcer, Alex Nadalini, couldn’t make a game I would announce it,” Blumenthal said. “I was his backup announcer. This year, I got ahead and asked [assistant athletic director Josh] Friesen if I could do the job full time and he agreed.”

Athletic Director’s Cup

Exploring the history of this presigious SPC accolade.

Blumenthal’s attributes some of his success at announcing toward his predecessor.

29 30 31

Drugs and alcohol A lifelong friendship

Experts share their experiences with substances in sports.

Two colleagues have a shared story, intertwined by their love for lacrosse.

22

5 16

Goals allowed by the lacrosse team

goals scored by senior captain Jake Park

batters struck out by senior captain Silas Hosler

“He [Nadalini] showed me the ropes,” Blumenthal said. “He showed me what to say and when to say it. He also helped showed me that organization is key to being a good baseball announcer.”

Yet, there are times when organization can only do so much and for those times Blumenthal has to think on the fly and make sure he is putting out his best work.

“There was this one time when I was playing a walk up song, and it was a pretty catchy song,” Blumenthal said. “Everyone started dancing to it and the guy sitting next to me hit the sound machine system and turned it off. The whole system shut down mid game so I had to figure a way to quickly turn it back on before the next batter.”

To Blumenthal, a multi varisty sport athlete, adversity is nothing new. He carries on those skills as an announcer.

“Whenever I have a problem announcing, I have to identify the problem fast,” Blumenthal said. “Then figure out how I can solve that problem as quick as I can.”

But being the announcer has some perks too. Blumenthal has some liberty when it comes to choosing walk-up songs.

“I get to choose the sophomore songs sometimes,” Blumenthal said.

MOMENTS

The varsity team hears the announcement that they won SPC and takes to the pedastal, trophy on full display.

PHOTO / COURTESY JASON LENEAU

LUCAS BLUMENTHAL Junior

OR DIE

DO

The team nervously awaits their fate in the first-round penalty shootout vs. Awty, which the team won thanks to a clutch penalty from senior Akash Munshi (center)

SWIMMING SPC CHAMPIONS

Reclaiming the throne

After a disappointing fourth-place finish in the SPC tournament last year, the Lions swimming team took back the SPC championship, capping off a season where the team took major steps taken in and out of the pool to ensure their success.

The Lions swimming team brought home its third SPC championship in four years.

According to varsity head coach Trenton Calder, this season felt special from the team’s first meet.

“We started the season with Prestonwood and that was a great meet for us,” Calder said. “We had guys right off the get-go having times that were faster or at least close to where they finished last year. From there, we knew it was going to be good.”

From their initial success, the team compounded confidence through practice constructing a dominant and winning culture.

“We had great practices

through November into December,” Calder said. “Then came January. January was a short month because we had a meet every week so we knew it was going to be tough.”

Despite the constant competition, the team remained strong going into one of the biggest meets of the year at South Lake.

“When we hit Southlake, all of a sudden we saw guys dropping times drastically,” Calder said. “After that meet, we realized that we are dangerous.”

According to junior captain Ethan Gao, the team became even more dangerous due to their work ethic.

“You can’t shave 20 seconds off your hundred free by just eating better,” Gao said. “It is a holistic process. Every day in practice you show up on time,

you put in all your effort and you trust the process.”

In addition to physically demanding practices, the team’s intense, champion mentality was crucial to their success.

“It’s the mindset,” Gao said. “You promise to show up at a specific time and you have to be committed no matter what.”

Going into SPC, the team’s confidence was at a season-high as they were ready to compete for a championship.

“In the prelims, we immediately had some success from guys,” Calder said. “Everybody dropped times. We had two events where four swimmers qualified for the top eight. In addition, in every event, we had multiple guys score and there was nobody else who could contend with that. Everybody performed beautifully.”

Injury-stricken soccer team battles their way to 3rd place in SPC

Soccer rounded out a solid season with a third place finish in the SPC tournament on the whole, a respectable result, but a ways off from initial expectations.

“On paper when the season began, I had real high hopes,” varsity soccer head coach Corindo Martin said. “I knew it was going to be challenging, but I thought that a berth in the [SPC] final was possible.”

However, near the beginning of the season, injuries began to pile up for the team, with senior captain Murphy Paul as well as sophomore Alex Abel being key members of the first team that missed most or all of the season.

“From the onset of the season, it became clear that we were not going to have the full complement of players that

Basketball team gets 3rd after late-season surge

STORY Matthew Hoffman

Basketball capped off a successful season with a third-place finish in the SPC finals following a close loss to Episcopal Houston — a final-four placement unexpected by head coach Greg Guiler at the beginning of the season.

“We graduated some playmakers and really strong players in Corvin Oprea ’22, Tate Laczkowski ’22, and Caleb Vanzant ’22,” Guiler said, “but we are very fortunate to have a nextman-up mentality at St. Mark’s. I didn’t really think we were going to be a championship-contending team, but when the dust settled, we were as good as anybody.”

HOLDING ON

Senior captain Hayward Metcalf shows off his skills at the team's tournament in Shreveport.

Despite the projected odds, the players buckled down together, a testament to the cohesive team led by the four senior captains – Rapha MittererClaudet, Jake Bond, George Geneneder and Arjun Khatti.

“The tone for the season was set by the seniors,” Guiler said. “From beginning to end, they were so selfless in the roles that they embraced.”

According to Mitterer-Claudet, the season started slow, but the turning point was a tournament game versus iSchool.

“Last year and the beginning of this year, we were too concerned with who the opponent was,” he said. “However, that game against a really good team showed that we were capable of playing at a very high level.”

were expected because of all the injured guys we lost,” Martin said. “So that really changed the dynamic of our team — as the season went on, we just had bouts of inconsistency. We’d take two steps forward and one step back.”

And, that inconsistency reared its head multiple times throughout the season, as the team struggled to form.

“At the beginning of this counter season, we started off really hot. We beat two pretty easy opponents in Trinity Valley and Country Day,” Paul said. “Then we had a tough loss against Cistercian, one-nil, and that one hurt for sure.”

After a rocky season, the team found themselves seeded sixth and slated to face Awty in the first round of the SPC tournament.

Trusting each other to handle business is something Mitterer-Claudet took away from the season, along with fond memories of the team.

“My favorite on-court memory was our game versus Bishop Lynch,” Mitterer-Claudet said, “but the best ones were the small, daily interactions like the prepractice Chick-fil-a runs or team dinners or listening to music on the bus.”

And for Guiler, he was reminded of the school’s fight in the face of long odds.

“Never underestimate a Marksman,” Guiler said. “I’m grateful and proud of this group of guys. In decades to come, they’re going to be superstar leaders that make the world a better place. And for me to have gotten to be a part of that journey — it’s a privilege.”

Young wrestling team falls to 5th in SPC, despite state success

STORY Neil Yepuri

Wrestling finished 5th in the SPC tournament Feb. 18, after a rigorous season of tournaments.

“We were missing a couple guys –Teddy Fleiss was hurt, Luke [Noack] couldn’t come,” senior captain Heyward Metcalf said. “So if we had filled up those weight classes, the outcome in SPC would have been a little different.”

Despite falling short in SPC, the team had been peforming well going into the tournament, producing three champions in the prep state individual tournament.

“The guys did a great job, even

though we also wound up getting fifth at that tournament,” head coach Reyno Arredondo said. “It was a close fifth, and we had three state champions this year: Quina Perkison, Beau Bacon and Wyatt Loehr.”

However, the team was also able to grow together throughout the season, following their team motto and helping each other improve.

“Our motto this year was strength, courage, and honor,” Arredondo said.

“To me the work that the wrestlers put into the season shows their strength and

“In the first round, we went to seven rounds of penalty kicks,” Martin said. “But we won — it was a huge victory for us. I can’t tell you the level of excitement the boys felt and the level of elation that I saw in our players.”

Despite losing in the next round to Kinkaid 3-1, the Lions had done enough to secure a spot in the thirdplace game — against a Greenhill group who the soccer team had lost to earlier in the season one-nil. This time, the scoreline was completely reversed, as the Lions rode a second-half surge to a commanding 4-0 victory.

“Looking back on the season, and given the obstacles we had to overcome,” Martin said, “I think a third-place finish was certainly respectable, and I think the boys are to be commended for that.”

courage. It models what we’re looking to bring out of each of the wrestlers in the program.”

And, Arredondo is excited for the future, with the three state champions all returning next year as well as a strong crop of young talent rising through the ranks.

“This year, we have 11 freshmen on the team, eight sophomores, and a handful of juniors,” Arredondo said. “So it’s going to be pretty neat. I’m excited about what we’re going to do in the future.”

STORY Nolan Marcus

PHOTO / COURTESY MICHAEL GAO

STARTING STRONG Freshman swimmer Miller Martin gets ready, physically and metnally to push his body into the pool for his 500m freestyle race. Martin would eventually get fourth place helping propell the Lions to become SPC champions once again.

PHOTO / COURTESY JOHN MA

STORY Neil Yepuri

PHOTO / NOAH CATHEY

ALL TOGETHER NOW The team joins in a group huddle during their 3rd-place SPC game vs. St. John's, which they would go on to win, 57-48.

ATHLETIC DIRECTOR’S CUP

The ultimate TROPHY

Even as SPC makes major changes to its format, one thing remains the same; every school’s desire to attain the Athletic Director’s Cup, the trophy that recognizes an athletic program’ss greatness.

April 29, 2022. It was a humid afternoon at the Houston Christian tennis courts, and the St. Mark’s tennis team simply wanted to win their third-place match and start the long journey back to Dallas.

The team had heartbreakingly lost their semifinal to St. John’s, and the third-place match against Kinkaid seemingly meant nothing. In, then-sophomore Arnav Lahoti’s five-match series against Kinkaid, the rest of the team gathered to watch his match with the series tied 2-2.

Then, it happened. Lahoti hit the shot to win the grueling match, resulting in some half-hearted congratulations from his teammates. At that time, as far as the team was concerned, their win against Kinkaid was one for pride and nothing more.

But it was more than just that. Lahoti’s fateful shot resulted in the 13th Athletic Director’s Cup victory in 16 years for St. Mark’s, culminating all the hard work and thrilling competition the 2021-2022 athletic year had brought.

Lahoti, who had not even heard of the Athletic Director’s Cup before that day, did not realize the magnitude of his game-winning shot until the team was on the bus back to Dallas.

“We were pretty bummed because we lost to St. John’s and we were just trying to secure third place so we could go home feeling a little bit victorious,” Lahoti said. “So we didn’t actually know anything about the Athletic Director’s Cup. I figured it out on the bus ride back when someone just said ‘Oh, apparently we won the Athletic Director’s Cup because of that last game.’”

The competition started in 2007, and associate athletic director Josh Friesen appreciates the opportunity for the conference’s athletic programs to compete against each other as a whole.

“The Athletic Director’s Cup is the entire conference competing as one,” Friesen said. “Lowest score at the end of the year wins. If you don’t offer a sport, you get one place higher than the last-place finishing team. For instance, if there are 10 volleyball teams, and you don’t offer boys volleyball, you’ll get 11th place in that sport.”

This year, the SPC decided to change up its competition process by having 3A and 4A teams compete separately when contending for the championship.

“When we had a 12-team bracket, if you didn’t qualify for SPC, you were automatically getting 13th place,” Friesen said. “Now, the worst you can do is eighth, because

there are eight teams within 3A and eight teams in 4A, so this helps lower teams’ points for the cup.”

Though many had their doubts about the effectiveness of the new installment, Friesen feels the benefits outweigh the problems and that the competition for the Athletic Director’s Cup will become more fun and competitive.

“I believe that by shrinking the standings, it makes SPC more competitive,” Friesen said. “There’s also less of a penalty for the teams that aren’t strong in a certain sport.”

The SPC Board of Directors, the group that makes these decsions, is comprised of nineteen heads of school, one from each school that competes in the SPC. Five of those heads of school also are part of the Operations Committee along with the SPC director and one athletic director.

“The SPC Board of Directors has regular meetings at the start of each conference championship weekend, and we have an annual meeting in early June,” said Chris Gunnin ’90, chair of the SPC board of directors. “The purpose of the meetings is to manage, operate, direct and supervise the activities of the conference.”

While not every decision the SPC makes is agreed upon by everyone, Friesen supports the conference and recognizes there are many different types of schools within the conference.

“The conference is constantly trying to evolve,” Friesen said. “They have the goal of making a conference that’s best for all individuals involved, which is very hard to do in our conference. We have a wide variety of schools and it is really difficult to create a system that is perfect for everyone.”

2021-22 ST. MARK’S ATHLETIC DIRECTOR’S CUP SCORING

7

15 21

total fall points volleyball - 1st cross country - 1st football - 5th

total winter points wrestling - 3rd soccer - 4th basketball - 4th swimming - 4th

total spring points track & field - 1st golf - 2nd lacrosse - 2nd tennis - 3rd baseball - 13th

43 total cup points, enough to win our 13th cup title

SPC makes major change, beginning the 3A/4A format for all sports

BY Ben Adams

Every school in SPC is now divided into two different brackets, 4A and 3A, during SPC tournaments for the majority of sports, meaning every team will be able to compete in a tournament.

While football and lacrosse have had this format in the past, this is the first time that sports such as soccer, basketball and baseball have multiple champions each season.

Although the determination for which bracket each school falls into depends on the sport, size and program history are major factors in deciding which schools will compete in the “big school” 4A bracket or the “small school” 3A bracket.

According to St. Stephen’s Head of School Chris Gunnin ‘90, who serves as the chair of the SPC board of directors, the decision to make the switch was largely based on a competitive gap between the bigger and smaller schools.

“When you review the championship results across all sports over history, in recent history a handful of schools have won a disproportionate number of championships,

and a number of schools have not been as competitive in the conference,” Gunnin said. “A number of the smaller schools simply struggle with being competitive against the larger schools.”

Not only did several small schools deal with losing seasons in most sports, but the losing seasons also caused those schools to miss the opportunity to compete in SPC tournaments. Under this new format, every team in SPC will compete in the SPC tournament, albeit in two different divisions.

“We wanted to create competitive opportunities for more schools and we wanted to make sure that all of the competitions were as meaningful as they could be,” Gunnin said. “The 3A/4A format allows all teams to participate in the tournament weekend in a structure that positions the matches to be as competitive as possible.”

While the format for these tournaments is still very new, Gunnin and other leaders in SPC have appreciated the increased competition the new system offers after its use in the 2022 Fall Championships and the 2023 Spring Championships.

“I do feel that the new structure has been largely successful,” Gunnin said. “This is an idea that the SPC

has considered before over its history, and it has taken us two to three years to explore and study the data that led to this structure. I have not heard of any major concerns or complaints about the structure, and I have heard of a number of schools who are grateful for the competitive opportunities that the new structure has provided their schools.”

THE CUP This prized possession is awarded to one SPC school each year for both the boy’s champion and the girl’s champion.

LOPSIDED

A major reason for the 4A/3A change are games between two uneven schools that result in blowouts such as this one.

STORY Ben Adams, Lawrence Gardner

PHOTO / NEIL YEPURI

PHOTO / BEN ADAMS

BVU track meet canceled for third time in four years, returning next year

BY Eric Yi

Due to scheduling issues, the highly anticipated Bradley V. Urschel Track and Field Invitational has been canceled for this year.

Since 1997, the BVU Invitational has been hosted at the school with competitors from private schools across the nation, bringing anywhere from 1000 to 1400 competitors each year. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the meet was canceled in 2020 and 2021 but came back in 2022.

“In 2022, we had a much smaller meet,” track and field head coach John Turek said. “No Middle School, just varsity, and it went well.”

In normal years, there are a variety of events that range from the 100-meter dash to the steeplechase.

“We have all the normal events, which are 17 events in total, but also one of the unique things about [BVU] is we have the steeplechase,” Turek said. “We’re one of the few high schools in the state of Texas that even has a regulation steeplechase pit and so I know that a lot of schools would love to come here and run just steeplechase because it’s not offered everywhere.”

Historically, Lions have done well at BVU with the home-field advantage.

“We really gear up for it,” Turek said. “One of the big advantages of this meet is the fact that we’re hosting, so our entire team gets to compete. We’ve had teams as big as 60 kids. That’s a big opportunity since most kids don’t get to compete every weekend, but when you have your own home meet, you can set your own rules, and it’s a chance for everybody on the team to compete.”

The biggest athletic impediment

Drugs and alcohol appear to have unprecedented affects on athletic performance.

But if you are a chronic drinker, binge drink or drink a lot then it will impact your athletic performance.”

Opportunity is fragile. One mistake could take it all away. Falling into a trap could take it all away. Drugs and alcohol could take it all away.

For so many athletes, the temptation of substance abuse exists everywhere. A lot of athletes may not realize the detrimental effects substances can cause to their health or the amount of trouble it can leave them in.

Despite the consequences, several athletes still abuse drugs and alcohol.

Chris Dial, former college basketball player at Texas Lutheran University and head men’s basketball coach at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, recognizes that some young athletes feel they are above the law and do not follow the alcohol policies of their schools.

Due to bad weather during BVU last year, Turek tried moving the meet from March to April when the chances of the meet needing to be rescheduled again would be lower. Additionally, the warmer weather would be more favorable for athletes’ performances across the meet.

“I picked the weekend of April 7 and 8, not realizing that was Easter weekend because Easter moves around a lot,” Turek said. “When I checked with my athletic director, he said we could not host it then because the school would be closed on Good Friday and that following weekend, so I tried to find another day. I think it was March 24 and 25, and unfortunately, lacrosse already scheduled out-of-town teams to come in and compete against us on those dates.”

Without any available weekends to host the meet, there was no choice but to cancel it.

“A lot of schools really enjoy coming to it and we have both a Middle School section and a varsity section and I want to bring that back,” Turek said. “I’m not happy that we’ve had three years postponed, but it will return in full force next year.”

“I think it’s a fair kind of assessment or perception,” Dial said. “A lot of times, when a campus police officer addresses a violation, it looks different for a regular student than when they find out that they are a member of the men’s or women’s basketball team. It establishes this systemic impression that athletes have a wider range of error and there’s a little bit of a safety net.”

According to the head of counseling, Dr. Gabby Reed, alcohol’s impact on athletic performance all depends on quantity of consumption.

“It is all dose dependent,” Reed said. “If you have a beer with your parents the night before a game then you probably won’t have huge effects.

While most people know that drinking affects gameday performance, most do not know the true reasons why athletes are unable to perform at their normal level.

“It [alcohol] impacts your ability to sleep,” Reed said. “Lots of people think they get better sleep when they drink alcohol which is not true at all. We look at studies of people who have had not even a lot to drink their brainwaves are very different from the norm.”

However, poor rest and sleep is not the only way alcohol can make an impact on athletes: the presence of alcohol in an athlete’s body also affects recovery. “The other primary reason it directly impacts athletic performance is with oxidation and muscle recovery,” Reed said. “If you drink a lot than your muscles cannot oxidize or recover.”

In addition, alcohol can have longterm impacts affecting and possibly ending an athlete’s and an entire team’s season.

“Another way alcohol impacts

athletes is it messes with your immune system,” Reed said. “You are more likely to be sick more often. Even if you are not out sick it still impacts your performance and you won’t be playing your best.”

Dial has seen a shift in where athletes drink and how they obtain alcohol since his playing days, and he attributes the change mostly to social media.

“When I played, a lot of times the drinking was happening in the dorm room with your buddies, and there were some somewhat contained parameters,” Dial said. “Whereas now, I see more and more players going out and finding a different geographical location to partake in those activities. And I think the biggest shift probably is the the presence of social media.”

Not only has the rise of social media affected where players use these substances, it has also affected how the community views the players and gives coaches a much bigger window into a recruited high schooler’s life.

“Especially at the college level, athletes don’t always recognize that they are public figures in their own right and people will recognize them and capture the moments they can on their phones so I think there’s more risk now than there used to be,” Dial said. “An athlete’s social media doesn’t necessarily help you, but it will 100% hurt you every time. So if we see a lot of potential distractions being displayed, that can hurt you in recruiting.”

loss of balance and coordination

1. reduced reaction time

2. 3.

4. ALCOHOL PERFORMANCE RISKS worsened immune system

declined incognitive function

5. general feeling of fatigue

STORY Ben Adams, Nolan Marcus

“

If we see a lot of potential distractions being displayed, that can hurt you in recruiting.

CHRIS DIAL

Our Lady of the Lake head basketball coach

INSIDE THE BAG Drugs and alchohol could be seen side-by-side with athletic equipment. ADDICTION IN SPORTS

PHOTO / COURTESY RANDALL COLSON

EYES ON THE PRIZE Then-sophomore Temi Balogun competes in the 200-meter dash during last year’s BVU Invitational, the first since 2019.

A LIFELONG JOURNEY

Started as a rivalry; ended with a friendship

Assistant Head of Upper School Jason Leneau and head varsity lacrosse coach Trey Whitty share their story from high school rivals in football and lacrosse to teammates contributing to multiple Final Four lacrosse appearences at University of Virginia to now lifelong friends and collegues both living in the same city once again.

Since the two played in the same position group on the defensive side of the ball, they got to know each other even better.

Heartbreak. Dedication. Triumph.

These two men have been through it all. The highs, the lows, the ups, the downs.

From rivals and enemies to teammates and friends — and now colleagues.

Their journey began in neighboring counties in Baltimore; though they didn’t know it at the time, Assistant Head of Upper School Jason Leneau and varsity lacrosse head coach Trey Whitty’s lives were destined to be intertwined.

“Jason and I went to rival high schools in Baltimore — I went to St. Paul’s and he went to Boys' Latin,” Whitty said. “We competed against each other. Honestly, my biggest memories of competing against Jason were in football. That was always our last football game of the year.”

Leneau was a three-sport athlete, playing lacrosse, football and wrestling, excelling in all three.

“He was a very good high school football player,” Whitty said. “We both played on both sides of the ball.”

During their time in high school, the two were never close friends but their knowledge of each other began to grow as they continued to compete against each other.

“I wouldn’t say we were friends in high school,” Whitty said. “We just didn’t know each other that well and were separated a little bit by the city.”

Along with their knowledge of each other, their mutual respect and regard for the other began to grow as well.

“He is a great guy who works hard and played the same position as me – long stick midfielder,” Leneau said. “He was just a person that was going about his business in the right way.”

But when Leneau went to the University of Virginia, the budding relationship took a pause since Whitty was a year younger and only a senior in high school.

“Our friendship really began when we went to college,” Whitty said. “There were a handful of Baltimore guys that played on our Virginia team — Jason and I being two of them.”

“There was a brief period where we were playing the same position,” Whitty said. “I didn't play a ton as a freshman, he would have been a sophomore at that point. Jason certainly fit the mold and is just kind of a grinder. It was fun.”

However, after overtraining for two college sports — wrestling and lacrosse — Leneau decided to switch positions.

“I had to make that transition to the faceoff position,” Leneau said. “You're still on the defensive side of the ball, but you're not doing the same type of things.”

A lot changed for Leneau as he was still guarding the same people, but he worked on different techniques and had a shorter stick.

“You have a little bit more range and you can take a little bit more risk with that,” Leneau said. “With a short stick, you don't have that luxury.” However, Leneau never stopped working, a mindset echoed by Whitty during his time at UVA as well.

“Playing with him, you have somebody that’s gonna challenge you every single day and especially in the same position,” Leneau said. “You're taking notes from each other and trying to build kind of your bag of tricks, and I think that elevates everybody else around you.”

The payout of this hard work was a National Championship win for Leneau in his freshman year.

“I was fortunate enough to have won a National Championship before Whitty joined the program at UVA,” Leneau said. “We had a special group of guys.”

As a sophomore, Leneau joined forces with Whitty but the two were unable to clinch the Championship during the three years they were together.

“I was a part of three Final Fours,” Leneau said. “One year when we were together we missed a Final Four in a whirlwind of a game. We had an opportunity where we thought we had a game in the bag and took our foot off the gas pedal. That was my junior year and his sophomore year.”

Using this loss as motivation, Whitty and Leneau returned for their junior and senior years with a vengeance, making another Final Four appearance.

“We had a really good run,” Whitty said. “In our three years together, we were in two Final Fours.”

Using this momentum as fuel, Whitty would go on to win a National Championship the following year, finishing his collegiate lacrosse career on a high.

“He won the championship his freshman year and I won one my senior year,” Whitty said. “That was a good run for Virginia lacrosse that we got to experience. There was so much talent in our program and guys that worked hard and played tough.”

While he didn’t spend his last year with Leneau, Whitty learned valuable lessons that shape his work today.

“I think he’s always been very thorough and conscientious in his preparation and he takes things very seriously,” Whitty said. “You saw that as a player in his work ethic. He cares a lot about people and is willing to put in the time to get to know people.”

These lessons have translated to the professional realm and now his time at the school.

“I admire his professionalism and how he handles his job,” Whitty said. “He’s a good example of how you want to act as a professional and how to treat kids. My best friends in my life are the guys I played college lacrosse with, one of which is Leneau.”

And Leneau echoes these sentiments, also placing a value on this collegiate and now colleague friendship.

“You guys go through different experiences together of extreme joy or intense defeats, and you get a chance to build each other up and help each other out,” Leneau said. “Honestly, every day that I get to see a teammate means the world to me because they’re your friends for life.”

CHAMPION

After beating Syracuse 12-10 in the national championship game in 1999, assistant head of Upper School Jason Leneau celebrates University of Virginia's first championship since 1972 with his teammates.

STORY Nolan Marcus, Matthew Hofmann

“

My biggest memories of competing against Jason were in football.

TREY WHTTY Varsity lacrosse head coach

AT WORK Varsity lacrosse head coach Trey Whitty stands strong imposing his command to all of his players at a Saturday practice after the Lions beat Allen 12-7 March 3.

PHOTO / LAWRENCE GARDNER

PHOTO / COURTESY JASON LENEAU

Flags that represent over 200 countries line the Quad, welcoming guests to Marksmen Multiculural Night. Throughout the night, more than 15 different cultures were represented in various ways.

Community celebrates cultures

The biggest event hosted by the Inclusion and Diversity Leadership Council, the second annual Marksmen Multicultural Night, was held March 1. The community-wide event included interactive performances, culturally-inspired food and games.

In celebration of Indian culture, senior Hayward Metcalf shares a dessert with Hockaday senior

RECYCLE ME

The community gathers in the Great Hall for a celebration of students’ backgrounds. The festival included student tables displaying their various traditions, food from seven different cultures and a photo booth.

SHOWCASE

MARKSMEN MULTICULTURAL NIGHT

COMPILATION Noah Cathey PHOTOS Courtesy Dave Carden/Development Office

A SWEET TREAT

Jayna Dave.

STAMPED Junior Daniel Weinstein stamps the ‘passport’ of a lower schooler after he visted the Africa cultural display table.

FESTIVAL

HAND IN HAND Sophomore Andrew Jin leads a lower schooler through a Chinese calligraphy tutorial.