SCIENCE
Looking at both sides, from student to teacher, of learning the hard history of slavery: to what extent is too much too much? see page 10
This
Daydreaming is an activity that nearly everyone partakes in, but when it is taken too far as a way to escape reality, it can lead to hurting aspects of our real lives. see page 16
Every fall, the Stuyvesant The ater Community (STC) recreates a Broadway musical. This musical offers students the opportunity to engage in their artistic inter
already thinking of show names. We have to start licensing [early] because licensing takes about a month to get back to you. And we don’t have that type of time [dur ing the school year],” junior and STC executive producer Vanessa Chen said. Licensing is required
ests early in the school year, with roles both on stage and behind the scenes. The choice for this year’s production was Matilda.
Though Matilda was per formed in late October this year, planning for the show began far in advance, starting in June of the last school year. “[Planning started] at the end of last school semester. Once I found out, I was
Stuyvesant’s South Asian com munity was treated to the school’s first Diwali celebration, almost fully organized by students. Di wali, also known as the Festival of Lights, is a holiday celebrating the defeat of the demon Ravana by the Hindu god-hero Rama. It is one of the most important cel ebrations in the Indian subconti nent, celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains across the South Asian subcontinent and worldwide.
Over 200 Stuyvesant students, faculty, and staff gathered in the cafeteria after school on October 21 to celebrate.
Navaratri, another Hindu holiday celebrating the goddess Durga, was also celebrated at the event. The holiday is typically cel ebrated with a Garba, a type of circular dance originating in Guja rat and featured at the event. Both holidays are important to Hindus and celebrate their culture. “[Di wali represents] bringing light out of darkness, and Garba celebrates life. So they dance around in a circle, but in the center they have a goddess of reproduction and
they celebrate birth and light,” se nior and South Asian Media and Entertainment (SAME) Co-Presi dent Hepzibah Srithas said. Senior and SAME Co-Presi dent Angel Sharma proposed the
school before and [in] many other schools, it’s never been actually celebrated.”
SAME, South Asian Youth Association (SAYA), Hindu Stu dent Council (HSC), and school
into a schoolwide event.
By planning Diwali Garba, SAME, SAYA, and HSC aimed to expose the Stuyvesant community to this cultural holiday while uni fying South Asian clubs. “While planning it was a lot of effort, it was so rewarding to see the expe riences people had at the event,” senior and SAYA President Mari ya Siddiqui said. “We saw people of all places trying our cultural food; we saw people being intro duced to our cultural traditions like Henna.”
The organizers promoted the event through signage and morn ing announcements and also em phasized that the event was open to everyone, regardless of ethnic ity or religion. “I saw a well-placed sign for the event above the entry of the second floor escalator,” computer science teacher James Dillon said. “I remember there was an announcement during third period.”
when schools perform musicals that are not their original work due to copyright reasons.
As executive producer, Chen chose which musical STC would perform and took into consid eration how the pandemic had impacted turnout and student in
The annual Stuyvesant Open House for prospec tive students was held on No vember 2 and 3, and included presentations from several major clubs.
Stuyvesant’s annual Spirit Week was held from October 31 to November 10. It was spread out over the course of two weeks and featured themes such as Cultural Day and Pajama Day.
The Student Union’s annual homecoming pep rally was held on October 28, with pre sentations from Stuy Legacy, Stuy Cheer, and several music groups.
idea of mixing Diwali and Garba together to celebrate the festival schoolwide. “Diwali and Garba [are] like the two main festivals celebrated at this time of year,” Sharma said. “I came up with this idea of Diwali Garba be cause we’ve never done it at this
counselor Angel Colon began making arrangements just two weeks before the event date. SAME leaders originally planned for the event to be hosted by col laborating clubs, but after intro ducing the idea to Colon, they were given the resources to turn it
The event was open for stu dents and teachers alike to enjoy.
Dillon attended the celebration with his wife and son, Jaime. “When we arrived, the thing I
The Student Union hosted its annual Halloween cos tume contest with submis sions due on November 4. Winners of the Best Cos tume, 2nd Best Costume, Best Group Costume, and Most Creative Costume cat egories will all receive gift cards
Genderqueer activist, writer, and author of “Melissa,” the most banned book of 2020, Alex Gino (’95) was invited by English teach er Annie Thoms to participate in information sessions with her Writing to Make Change classes on October 25.
Thoms’s Writing to Make Change class focuses on teach ing students to reach an audience with words beyond the scope of the classroom. “Each semester in Writing to Make Change, I bring in five to six guest speakers, and many of them are student alumni, but they are all people who are us ing their writing in some ways to make change in the world and in a variety of genres,” Thoms said.
Though Thoms (’93) and Gino had two years of overlap during their Stuyvesant education, she officially met Gino at a Brook lyn Public Library event where they discussed having the same teacher back at Stuyvesant. “We recognized the connection, and I asked Gino if they were willing to come and speak for my classes and they were totally down for it,” Thoms said. “They were just a re ally good author and doing exactly the work that we’re talking about in this class, which is they write for a middle grade audience but they write about queer and progressive issues in a totally age-appropriate way.”
The event was divided into two parts, the first being Gino’s discussion of “Melissa” and the second for answering general stu dent questions. Attendees had the
opportunity to learn more about Gino’s efforts to raise awareness for the struggles LGBTQ+ com munities face as a minority group in America as well as to express their own opinions on certain cur rent topics.
Gino expressed that their in spiration to get “Melissa” pub lished stemmed from their de termination to make sure readers were well-informed and giving attention to the communities that they felt deserved it. “The fact is that a book with a trans character for kids didn’t exist. I think that if I had seen a reflection earlier, my life would have been a lot easier in some ways,” Gino said. “I was in Stuy in 1995, and so I didn’t have access to language and in formation that showed that there were gender-queer and nonbinary people in the world, and so I didn’t know who I was. So if I could make that difference for someone else, that was my goal.”
In addition, Gino explained that the media’s reasons for ban ning “Melissa” were all inconse quential, even though Gino knew the book was directly challenged due to the presence of a transgen der character. “The first year or two, a lot of the reasons were that there was a transgender character in it. Over time the complaints have gotten more deceptive be cause that complaint didn’t play as well as they might have thought it would,” Gino said. “When a book is challenged because may be there’s a sex scene in it, that’s a question about the action. But when a book is challenged because there’s a person like me in it, that’s challenging my existence. And that’s just awful.”
Through hearing about the opposition Gino faced in publi
cation, students recognized the severity of censorship in current environments. “This event made me realize how systems in power will try to censor your writing if they don’t like what is being talked about or the discussions your writ ing is creating,” senior Nora Lof tus said. “All you can do as a writer making change is to keep writing what you know and fighting the power.”
Students also noted that Gino highlighting the underrepresenta tion of genderqueer communities demonstrated the importance of recognizing marginalized perspec tives to more effectively incite change. “One of my main take aways is that despite people be ing in different backgrounds that could possibly shape their identity and perspectives, change is not [as] challenging as it seems,” ju nior Donghyun Kang said. “As a teenager, I will go through many changes in my life, yet in order to become truly mature and virtu ous, it is important to meet people with various viewpoints, like Alex Gino.”
Students were also inspired by Gino’s journey as an activist and planned to start making change in their own classrooms. “After listening to [Gino’s] lecture, I real ized that to make a social change, I myself have to change first,” Kang said. “Therefore, I am planning to write my two remaining pieces which would include my support of changes of both individuals go ing through hardships and minori ties being secluded in our society.”
Thoms also shared the same resonance with Gino’s work. “One of the things that stayed with me aside from the importance of hav ing more positive tilting narratives about the LGBTQ+ experience,
North
Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister of Israel on November 3, ousting incumbent Prime Minister Lapid, after form ing a coalition with 64 seats. Netanyahu will officially enter the position by the second half of November.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil on October 30, ousting incumbent President Bolsonaro with 50.9 per cent of the vote.
realistic but positive, is that [Gino] was talking about how they write their books for queer kids but also for kids that are straight and cis gendered and who may not have been exposed before to narratives of formative personal experience for a queer kid,” Thoms said.
Despite seeing societal prog ress, Gino believes the journey of
activism is not over. “We still live in a world in which trans women of color in particular are at risk of violence; we still live in a world in which the general expectation is heterosexuality. But the fact that there are bans and pushbacks [against] my book is itself a sign of progress,” Gino said. “We’re doing that zigzag arc toward justice.”
The Harvard Club recently held its annual National History Teacher of the Year award ceremo ny. Social studies teacher and 2014 National History Teacher of the Year Robert Sandler attended the event alongside several students.
Every year, state winners of the History Teacher of Year award receive recognition, in addition to classroom resources and a cash prize of $1000. The national win ner, chosen from state winners, will also receive $10 thousand during the ceremony.
The event was held by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which aims to advance American history educa tion through various programs and resources. One such program is their summer seminars. “I’m one of hundreds of teachers every summer that Gilder Lehrman pays for to attend these seminars of the best minds, the best academ ics of America on specific topics,” Sandler said. “It’s summer seminars where they get teachers to become experts on a topic, like really high level PD, [or] professional develop ment.”
In addition to the events and programs directed toward the ad vancement of history teachers, the Gilder Lehrman Institute has many other online and in-person re sources and events for scholars as well as students. “They also have a
Lincoln book prize and a Douglas book prize for academics, like who could write the best books on spe cific topics of Lincoln or on slav ery, and they give out $50 thousand book prizes,” Sandler said. “They also [sponsor thousands of kids from low-income schools] to go see Hamilton. [...] Gilder Lehrman also has an online website with an AP study guide, and they have his torical journals with essays.”
Sandler took his students to the event to help them gain new experiences while celebrating his tory teachers. “I thought it’d be a nice experience because it cel ebrates teachers, it celebrates his tory. I know the kids wanted to go to Harvard Club, and I thought it’d be fun for them as an experi ence,” Sandler said. “And they get to celebrate teachers. I think teach ers don’t get enough credit for how hard we all work trying to make our subject interesting.”
Student attendees described the Harvard Club event as a good op portunity to make connections and engage with other students. “I’d say it was very bougie and high status and prestigious, and it was over all pretty nice since we got to eat free food that was pretty fancy. It was also nice to meet people from different schools because a lot of schools like Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech came […] as well,” junior William Tang said. “It was nice to network and meet people.”
Student attendees shared that the event gave them access to vari
ous other opportunities. “I guess [the experience] overlaps [with] a lot of different opportunities in a sense because the Gilder Lehrman Institute has a lot of programs for high students, and so [I got] to learn more about that and the po tential opportunities I can take ad vantage of as a high school student in the city,” junior Sofia Hernandez said.
Attendees also described the event as inspirational. “It [was] very eye opening. I have never done anything like this before, so I mean I was very excited. I got ready and everything,” junior Violeta Zani said. “I feel like the ceremony re ally highlighted what importance teachers play in our lives, especially when looking at Ms. Matsumoto.” Ms. Misha Matsumoto Yee was the recipient of the national His tory Teacher of the Year award this year.
“Hearing about [Matsumoto’s] accomplishments in her school for girls, hearing about the influence her mother had on her life, and hearing about the women’s histo ries she highlighted in her lessons was inspiring for me,” Zani said.
Another reason Sandler in vited his students to the event was to support Sukanya Ferguson, a Stuyvesant senior who spoke at the event. “Another thing Gilder Leh rman does is they have a student advisory council. Over the past 10 years, I’ve had many students nom inated to be on that board. Sukanya Ferguson, or Suki, who is also the
President of the Black Student League, was speaking at this event [and] introducing the teacher who won the award out of 50 states,” Sandler said. “We wanted to show her support because it’s scary speaking in a room of like 200 people, including politicians and big donors and philanthropists.”
Ferguson described speaking at the event as intimidating but en joyable nonetheless. “That was my second time attending the Harvard Club and it’s just a surreal experi ence because of the entire area of intellectuals and historians. It was a different vibe, because I was a bit nervous because I was speaking, in comparison to my first time in which I was just attending, having dinner and stuff like that,” Fergu son said. “So there was a little bit of pressure there, but it was an enjoyable experience. They [Gild er Lehrman] had everything laid down for me. They had notecards, everything, I was sitting up at the front with everyone else and it was an enjoyable experience.”
Ferguson attributes Sandler’s support as a factor that contributed to her ability to speak at the event in the first place. “I remember hav ing conversations last year at the previous Harvard Club Event that I went to and there was another student speaker. I asked, ‘Has there been anyone from Stuy who spoke up there?’ and [Sandler was] like, ‘Yeah, and you could definitely be next,’ and then I was next. So he definitely opened up those oppor
tunities for me and has been beside me ever since I met him,” Fergu son said. “It was a way for me to articulate my skills and be able to push myself a bit more. It was an opportunity I didn’t expect I’d get but I was really grateful to have that opportunity.”
Fellow student attendees found it motivational to see student rep resentatives speak at the event. “I’d say I also learned a lot from the student speakers, specifically Su kanya. She is my Big Sib chair and I look up to her in so many ways, and seeing her give that speech and actually having that opportu nity was inspiring for me because when I see a fellow Stuy student doing something like that or even being given the opportunity to go to these events, it really motivates me because I’ve seen the potential to do [such things],” Zani said.
In the future, Sandler plans to maintain this tradition of bringing students to similar events. “I al ways try to take students [because] I know it’s fun for them. Especially after the pandemic with everything being remote, to get dressed up— some of the boys wore really nice suits—to go to this fancy Harvard Club, which a lot of the kids were excited by, and meet students from around NYC, and even some kids from around the nation […] was nice for me and the kids,” he said. “I realize in retrospect there are many kids I wish I also got to take […] and I’ll try to take them to fu ture events.”
noticed was how amazingly the dining hall was decorated,” Dil lon said. “There were colorful balloons, festive streamers, and a beautiful backdrop for picturetaking that said ‘Happy Diwali.’ Students were dancing up a storm. I recognized some of the Bolly wood songs I heard.”
The lunch staff’s assistance was instrumental in helping run the event smoothly and efficient ly. “The lunch staff really helped out because they provided their kitchen to heat up the food, and they also provided us food like plantains, pineapples, and bread,” senior and SAME Director of Events Megan Chowdhury said.
Teachers and students lined up
for plates of food served by club members and volunteers. “We had naan, butter chicken, [and] a lot of South Asian dishes like chicken biryani, samosas, [and] pani puri, and we also had Indian sweets,” Srithas said.
On such a tight schedule, the event organizers were concerned about the logistics surrounding the food as the funding they re ceived was only for decorations and lights. “We got funding, but we didn’t get it for the food, so it was like a pot-luck type [event] where all the leaders would bring in food to contribute,” Sharma said. “People had to RSVP to let us know how many people were coming. At the end, it was like a whole bunch of RSVPs and we were like ‘Oh my god, do we have enough food?’”
Many attendees enjoyed the meals and event even if they did not usually celebrate Diwali. “I was the first in line for food, and the smell was amazing, it went all through the cafeteria. I’m re ally glad they held this event, be cause I don’t celebrate Diwali, and I’m sure the organizers had those goals of cultural exposure in mind, but mostly, everyone just had fun,” junior Deyan Reza said. “It didn’t matter where you were from, but you could tell it was important and meaningful to the kids who I know did celebrate.”
Dillon was impressed with the organization and turnout of the event. “Jaime was hungry so we got in line for food, which was provided free of charge and paid for by the South Asian Student Association,” he said. “Mr. Colon
was expertly controlling the line. The food and drink was amazing! There was pani puri, biryani, and my wife’s favorite: chai.”
Some teachers also offered extra credit for students in atten dance, driving many students to attend the event. “Mariya e-mailed Dr. Berman, who teaches History of the Islamic World, for an extra credit opportunity and he offered it to his class, and it brought so many kids to our event,” Srithas said.
The organizers were pleased by the turnout of students from all cultures. “It was so amazing to see so many South Asian youth there. But it was also so amazing to see other types of ethnicities and people there,” Siddiqui said. “While it is a South Asian holiday, our club works to maximize in
volvement when making the de cision. “When I was coming up with the show, I really wanted to prioritize reviving STC. I think es pecially after COVID and online STC, [it] just did not feel the same. [STC] wasn’t the same communi ty,” Chen said. “I wanted a lot of young people to join, so I thought Matilda was the perfect show be cause Matilda [for] one is really well known.”
Once the musical was decided upon, further preparations began, which included holding auditions for the show. “We had so many people auditioning for this show. I think it’s actually the most com petitive one I’ve directed. We held three days of auditions and had over 50 people come in for audi tions,” junior and STC cast direc tor August Petry said.
The cast auditions were not the only sector of STC in which participation was high; the art crew also experienced a revival in dedicated members this year. “We had a lot of our crew actually come this time. They were really helpful. A lot of the time, half our crew is missing so it would be kind of stressful,” senior and art direc tor Bowen Fu said.
Underclassman involvement was particularly high this year, which was not the norm for some STC crews previously. “This was a really underclassman-heavy show - there were so many amazing underclassmen,” senior and band music director Katherine Zhao said. “Maybe it’s because this musical was going to ask for un derclassmen because it’s Matilda, [which] is very much geared to wards younger kids. But, usually for a lot of the STC shows, there wouldn’t be as many underclass men.”
Auditions began in September and spanned the course of three days. For the auditions, potential cast members were asked to pre pare a song and perform a mono logue that was handed out on the day of the audition. “I originally had planned to sing ‘Happy Birth day’ but then right before we went to the audition room, I decided to sing ‘Part of Your World’ from the Little Mermaid,” freshmen and Matilda lead actress Jane No said. “I don’t remember all of [the monologues], but the one that I did was about shrimp fried rice.”
After initial auditions, poten tial cast members participated in a day of callbacks in which they were split into groups to perform scenes from Matilda. From this,
the cast was formed and rehearsals began. “We’ve had rehearsals es sentially every [...] school day after school since we got the cast. Over the past few years, I have figured out how to make sure that the cast is prepared. Within the rehears als, the cast will learn their music, they’ll learn their dances with the music directors and dance direc tors,” Petry said.
ments of STC and schoolwork. However, members eventually be came better at managing the two and supporting each other along the way. “As we got closer to the show, rehearsals got longer, and I was getting home later, which did make managing schoolwork kind of difficult, but I think it went fine,” No said. “I love that everybody supports each other so
quarantine for a week which kind of set me back. But, I did do video calls with some of the directors during rehearsal and that helped me stay on track of [preparing for Matilda],” No said.
For the show, the band need ed to rework some of the official Broadway musical numbers to bet ter suit the instruments they had.
“The instruments that the musi cal’s originally written for included some instruments we don’t have, like trombone and bass clarinet.
That was what the pieces were orchestrated for. But the band we did have included saxophones, flutes, trumpet, drums, guitar, bass, a bunch of keyboards, [...] and cellos of course. So, we re wrote some of the instruments that were originally for clarinet or trumpet to fit [the] instruments that we do have,” Zhao said.
The band played 13 musi cal numbers live, while 11 of the numbers were performed with recorded tracks. “Numbers that were most feasible to play live [were less than] 10 minutes long, because the opening number is 10 minutes long and it took us two days just to get through the first two pages [...] so we just decided to cut that and instead spend our time focusing on smaller numbers that would definitely be more fea sible live because it simply wasn’t going to work,” Zhao said. “I would really have loved if we played more of our pieces live be cause our band has that capability to play these pieces, it’s just there simply wasn’t enough time.”
clusivity and wants to just educate others on our culture.”
Overall, attendees enjoyed the Diwali celebration. “This is my first year at the school so this was the first Stuyvesant event I have ever attended,” Dillon said. “It was clearly student-run and centered. I was really impressed by how organized and successful it was. I’ll be there next year for sure.”
The organizers’ goal was to highlight an idea of representa tion and respect. “Our message to the student body was all about celebrating each other’s cultures with respect and realizing that everyone’s cultures and traditions might look different, but we are all the same in that we just celebrate things that are important to us,” Siddiqui said.
Vanessa or whoever is producing the show doesn’t really have a clear idea of what that thing is or who it belongs to,” senior and technical coordinator Ziying Jian said.
Oftentimes, packages will move from crew to crew, eventu ally getting lost. “For lights and sound, I had to order some re chargeable batteries and some double A batteries for them, but one of the packages ended up be ing lost. [...] No one really knew who it was for, so they gave it to different crews and it ended up being lost,” Jian said. “For next shows, I would try to make sure all the packages are delivered to the right crews.”
Many of the miscommunica tion issues of last year’s perfor mances were nonetheless fixed for this year’s show. “[Theodore Yo chum and I] worked with mainly technical crews for the past three years in STC, and we noticed that there were some changes that could’ve been made,” Jian said.
“In the previous years there [were] always problems between tech and art, just having miscommunica tion issues and not being able to coordinate their work on time, so [...] when the sets were done, art wasn’t notified. So, it was small communication issues like that that just stopped the process from being as efficient as it could’ve been.”
During rehearsals, cast direc tors would work with the actors on character building and memo rization. “With us, we go over the scenes, do character work with their chemistry, and essentially make sure that they know exactly what they’re supposed to do in every single scene. And they’re comfortable in their characters, and just confident in what they’re doing so the cast is fully memo rized, fully prepared,” Petry said. “I do this fun little thing where I tell them that since I don’t have a curfew, I will stay after school until they’re memorized on memoriza tion day.”
The long rehearsals sometimes made it difficult for cast mem bers to balance the time commit
much, and even if we mess up no one’s like angry or anything. We all just care about each other, and being Stuy students as well we all know what we’re all going through with academics and stuff, and how that’s difficult.”
Upperclassmen generally found it easier to manage school work alongside preparations for the musical after having participat ed in STC for a number of years.
“At the beginning, it’s kind of hard to realize, ‘Oh my god, when I get out of here it’s going to be dark outside,’ but I think you get ad justed to it,” Zhao said.
Though no longer in the heat of the pandemic, the cast was able to adapt to occasional COVIDrelated absences. “I also was in
Overall, time constraints were a difficulty crews faced while pre paring for the musical. “It was re ally only, like, three full weeks of rehearsals, so it was pretty chal lenging because obviously it’s just time constraint, and it’s also pretty dance heavy too, and it’s pretty big too in terms of an ensemble be cause we had our own dance crew this year, which we didn’t have before. So, it was pretty difficult to get everything coordinated on time.” Zhao said.
However, the crews were able to stay on top of what needed to be done. “It was a very short amount of time to paint a lot, but I think we still managed to finish everything on time, and it was re ally fun as well,” Fu said.
Additionally, some challenges with communication arose be tween different crews. One main issue of miscommunication in volved packages that STC ordered. “[We] order most of our stuff from Amazon, but when it gets here, [since] different crews order different things, [...] Ms. Maggio or
The technical coordinators tackled the miscommunication is sues by creating spreadsheets for the crews to use. They express that this solution effectively stream lined coordination between crews. “This was the smoothest show by far. We had a spreadsheet with all the different set pieces, all the different props, and we had little checkmarks for every single crew. So, every time one crew finished something and needed it to be passed on, they would just check it off and then I would be able to see which set pieces needed to be finished, which set pieces were done, and what we needed to work on,” Fu said.
STC members have shared their anticipation for future shows. “I think STC is in great hands for next year. I am so genuinely ex cited to see all the underclassmen take on more stuff,” Zhao said.
All in all, despite a few road blocks along the way, STC ex pressed satisfaction with the work they were able to accomplish with Matilda, selling around 600 tickets for the musical. “The most excit ing part is seeing everything come to life because I chose Matilda. This was the show I knew I want ed to do,” Chen said.
With a focus on their core val ues of collaboration, representa tion, events, and welfare, the Bin yaminov-Gulko ticket boasts an ambitious platform and years of prior experience that make them distinguished candidates for this year’s Freshman Caucus co-presi dents.
The duo’s policies feature smaller-scale ideas, like a commute buddy system, as well as larger, sweeping changes, like modify ing the 4:00 p.m. policy regarding building re-entry and creating a freshman-specific hangout spot (similar to the Senior Bar or Junior Atrium). Though some of their policies lack feasibility, the diversi ty of the Binyaminov-Gulko plat form, paired with their fervor for development and implementation, assures that many of their ideas will find a place within the student body. Specifically, their ideas for events, e-mail updates/newslet ters, and a freshman database—a website or LinkTree to compile information and resources specific to freshmen—while not ground breaking, are a welcomed addition for many freshmen still trying to find their footing at Stuyvesant. The pair also emphasizes com munication and feedback with not only their constituents, but also teachers and other faculty mem bers, citing plans to work with the
By communicating with various upperclassmen and freshmen, the Lei-Chew ticket has made it a point to create unique and feasible policies; it is apparent that much prepara tion has gone into their plat form. Their connections and ability to communicate eas ily with others are important skillsets for navigating student government. Their close con nection speaks to how well the pair complements each other, as they are able to constantly bounce off of one another and make room for the other to speak.
With enjoyable events like locker decorating ses sions, bouquet-making com petitions, and a Pi Day event where students can throw pies at teachers, the duo has a fair share of engaging ideas. Be yond the fun and games lie useful freshman-centered pol icies, like installing hooks in the swim gym locker rooms; the floors are subject to grime and dirty water, so when stu dents drop their clothes or towels on the ground, there’s an incredible amount of in convenience. Other policies like creating a freshman office on the eighth or ninth floor, similar to spaces that sopho mores, juniors, and seniors have, would be beneficial for freshmen.
Lei and Chew have known each other since they at tended middle school at Bay Academy and have become close friends over the years.
Their chemistry and innate understanding of each other mean that they are often on the same page, but when they are not, they are respectful of each other’s ideas and com promise. Though neither has past experience with student government, both have a wide range of leadership experi ence. Chew managed and pro duced talent shows for three years, each with an audience of 500 people. She has also trained in taekwondo from a young age, which taught her the values of teamwork and learning from her peers. Lei has already become freshman captain of Stuy Cast, and she tutors children ranging in age from five to 14. Furthermore, she took a leadership course over the summer to prepare for her role in the Stuyvesant community.
Lei and Chew’s interests balance each other out, as Lei is STEM-oriented and Chew loves to nurture her artistic side. If elected, they plan to use their different strengths to connect with as many people as possible. Chew will focus on their social media presence and creative event planning, while Lei will manage funding and their website, which she coded entirely from scratch. Both are clear that they want to prioritize mental health through events that allow freshmen to destress and form lasting friendships. Thus, The Spectator endorses this ticket.
administration, the SLT, and the Student Union to make sure the freshman class and, more broadly, the entire student body are wellintegrated.
Having been friends for five years before entering Stuyvesant, the pair has good chemistry and an effective working relationship.
“I think we have compatible skill sets,” Gulko said, citing Binyami nov’s involvement with sports teams and speech & debate, as well as Gulko’s role as student body president at her middle school. As the student body president, Gulko ran a newsletter, helped plan/fun draise for their prom and gradua tion, and even worked alongside teachers on academic policies.
Alongside Binyaminov’s experi ence in many extracurriculars, the duo has a broad perspective on the student body and plans on using it to better inform their policies. Gulko and Binyaminov value com promise and the two sides they can bring to the discussion. The pair aims to establish transparency and open communication with both their policies and their style of leadership, which seeks to engage as many voices as possible. Given Binyaminov and Gulko’s wealth of experience, solid platform, and passion for student government, The Spectator endorses this ticket.
Though the Wang-Kelly tick et has the potential to grow into their roles, their greatest weak ness is that most of their poli cies are extremely infeasible and require extensive administration involvement. Examples of such policies include reforming the headphone policy, adding air conditioners to the locker room, increasing time during passing periods, and instituting monthly no-homework days. They have hefty prior experience, but their policies fail to address the unique needs of freshmen and instead propose larger changes that are difficult to implement. Further more, the ticket claims to value uniqueness, but many of their planned events have been ex ecuted in previous years. Despite their ambition and experience, the Wang-Kelly ticket possesses a sense of naivete that prevents them from understanding the re sponsibilities that running a cau cus at Stuyvesant entails.
Cheuk and Pisareva have known each other for years, as they both attended Mark Twain, where Pisareva graduated valedictorian. The two are involved in similar extracurriculars, such as debate and science olympiad. However, they only recently became friends, with Cheuk describing their relationship as “strictly professional.” In terms of responsibilities, Pisareva handles all social media and promotion, and Cheuk develops policies.
The Cheuk-Pisareva ticket focuses their policies on four base values: Ad vocacy, Collaboration, Growth, and Transparency. The policies themselves are categorized in three categories: Academics, Community, and Transparency. With a combination of community-building activities and more ambitious academic changes, the pair aims to quickly help the freshman class.
Overall, the Cheuk-Pisareva ticket is led by two ambitious individuals with unique ideas, including trivia bowls, multicul tural nights, and “Locker Let ters,” which aim to help the next incoming class. Despite their cre ative ideas, the plans to fund and organize these events are not as well thought-out, with monthly bake sales being the only fund raising idea so far. Regarding their academic policies, some of the ticket’s more determined ideas in
volve changing the testing policy to mandate a “review day” in class prior to an exam and creating an infractions website for students to report violations of the home work policy. The nature of these policies makes them nearly impos sible to implement, with teach ers unlikely to revise their entire curriculum and administration unlikely to alter the spiral of com munication. Their goals are unre alistic, as most rely on approval from administration.
The Wang-Kelly ticket has a friendly dynamic, often jumping off of each other’s ideas and points. They struck up an online friendship over the summer before meeting in-person at Stuyvesant and instantly forming a connec tion. Though their amiability is evident, there is also a clear thread of professionalism. Wang seems to hold a larger leadership role, resulting in a slight power imbal ance.
The Wang-Kelly ticket is mostly focused on creating policies that help students in their day-to-day lives, but these proposals are not at all realistic. Many of the issues that they raise are due to safety rules imposed by the school. For example, they hope to veto the headphone policy. Though it may be inconvenient for some, the rule serves to keep students alert enough to hear important safety announcements. Many of Wang and Kelly’s ideas make a fair attempt at helping the students but do not account for the infeasibility from the administration’s perspective. Certain policies, like their dividers policy (which proposes placing dividers in the boys’ bath rooms), are warranted. But the idealism attached to their other policies is too great to overlook.
Mehjabin and Dingwall are clearly stronger together, having met through the Discovery program over the summer. They aim to represent many of the underrepresented groups within Stuyvesant, giving voice to those who have previously been marginalized.
While the pair exhibits strong leadership skills and has previous experience in student government and event planning, their campaign is marred by a lack of realistic policies. They have ambition to bring about change, but their proposed policies are not clearly defined in how they will actually be carried out. Additionally, many of their ideas are beyond the scope of the Freshman Caucus.
Overall, the Mehjabin-Ding wall ticket is grounded in values that will elevate the freshman class. Their lived experiences positively shape their leadership and they appropriately aim for inclusivity and unity. They also
address specific and unique is sues through policies like ex panding student discounts to help local businesses and a bi weekly newsletter highlighting smaller clubs. However, many of their ambitions highlight a
lack of awareness, being purely idealistic. They are promising leaders, but their campaign is primarily composed of ideas for improvement and limited by a lack of coherent policies.
Vuong and Li first met in biology class this year, building a relationship as they tried to overcome one of Stuyves ant’s most difficult freshman classes together. Over time, the duo felt the need to address many of the issues freshmen are facing during their transition to Stuyvesant. Though they converse frequently outside of class, Li’s high commit ments put Vuong in the driver’s seat for the execution of most ideas. Both have experience in community service and student government, but Vuong leads the ticket’s discussions, while Li adds on from the backseat.
Through engagement, entertainment, and excellence, the Vuong-Li ticket features a variety of plans to improve the freshman experience at Stuyvesant. A long list of potential events, some centered around holidays and others on a monthly basis, look to always give students events to look forward to. With stress reduction at the forefront of their priority list, the ticket has ideas to address the homework policy and improve tutoring programs such as AIS, while also making study materials more accessible, like previous freshman caucuses. Finally, through planned weekly polls, Vuong and Li plan to ensure that all freshmen have the opportunity to share their perspectives on topics being ad dressed by the caucus.
Though featuring three pillars of community with a goal of “put ting the u in Stuy”, the Vuong-Li ticket lacks concrete directives in their policy documents, raising questions about the ticket’s com mitment to various projects. Their charter of events is nothing out of the ordinary, with no particular
plans for any large events, except a proposed carnival. However, the duo’s plans to increase com munity through smaller, more frequent events could greatly im prove connections between fresh men. Though the ticket is aware of many pre-existing initiatives such as ARISTA, much of their plans
involve raising awareness for those items rather than creating new ini tiatives to help the freshman body. Their plans to address the home work policy through data collec tion and strongarming appear overly ambitious and are their only currently planned major project.
Sinchi and Kissoon have known each other for many years, having not only attended the same middle school, but also competed together in policy debate. Despite this long-lasting relationship, the pair seems to have more of a profes sional than a friendly dynamic and does not appear to be entirely on the same page regarding policies.
Sinchi and Kissoon’s platform consists of several ambitious initiatives, such as altering grading policies to be less test-heavy, creating a prayer room for the Muslim community at Stuyvesant, and establishing regular field trips to help facilitate bonding. Despite these worthwhile endeavors, the vast majority of their policies either already exist or are entirely out of the scope of the Freshman Caucus to establish.
The Sinchi-Kissoon ticket con sists of two experienced, ambitious individuals with a great capacity for noticing where change is necessary. Their campaign acknowledges sev eral important issues, such as a lack
of inclusivity at Stuyvesant, unfair grading policies, and insufficient opportunities for student bond ing. However, the measures they propose to combat these issues are highly impractical and are in
sufficiently backed up with means of implementation. In particular, their proposal to change the grad ing policy at Stuyvesant overlooks the departmental measures that would have to be taken. They claim they will achieve this change solely by establishing student sup port, which also seems unlikely to effect change. In comparison, the ticket’s stronger policies are those that promote bonding specifically within the freshman class, such as a homecoming dance and fresh man seminars. While these events would still require extensive fund raising, a challenge for any caucus, they are far more feasible than oth er policies and are likely to serve their intended purpose, despite be ing slightly basic. However, due to the overwhelming lack of feasible policies, this ticket falls short.
Despite only meeting in Fresh man Composition, Yang and Guo have already developed good com munication skills when it comes to sharing ideas and campaign planning. This collaboration is bolstered by their prior relevant experience. Though Yang and Guo have not previously held formal positions in student government, both planned events at their re spective middle schools and are eager to work with others. YangGuo offers solid, if generic, ideas for aiding freshman transition and socialization. They plan to over come academic challenges faced by the freshman class through creating more study guides, spon soring study groups, and helping students with organization. The ticket centers student life opportu nities around homeroom bonding: scavenger hunts, holiday competi tions, dances, and cultural celebra tions. They hope to supplement their plans with feedback from the freshmen, collected in emotional
Haugh and Hwang met at Stuyvesant in English class and have characteristics that complement each other. While Haugh embodies a good work ethic and acumen for business, Hwang is a social but terfly and is skilled at connecting with others. The pair has extensive backgrounds in student leadership; Hwang was a part of the student council executive committee and co-led her middle school feminism committee, and Haugh was also a student council representative at his middle school. Both are well-spoken and able to reinforce each other’s policies seamlessly.
The Haugh-Hwang ticket revolves around four pillars: fun, unity, spirit, and transparency. Their focus is to improve transparency, help students overcome stress with fun events, and maintain an “integrated administration that allows all students to have a say in what they want to see.” In order to hold themselves accountable, they plan to send polls every month. They also endeavor to restructure how fund ing is organized through the school, which may be beyond the scope of the Freshman Caucus, given the current DOE funding limitations.
Overall, the Haugh-Hwang ticket has great potential for Freshman Caucus, as they are both well-spoken, ambitious, thoughtful, and charismatic. Their campaign focuses on making communication among classes easier, directly involving student input for events, and rooting out nepotism by finding qualified candidates for caucus positions. Unlike other campaigns, they introduced a unique cross-funding project, where various clubs raise funds for each other to create a more equal cash flow so all clubs can get sufficient funding. Even though this plan is cer tainly a creative idea, it may not be plausible due to DOE fund ing limitations. Their event plans are also similar to those of many other tickets, and their initiative to make class group chats has already been put in place. While this ticket is competent and charismatic, their policies are too general.
Guo and Yang are social butterflies looking to use their interpersonal strengths to ease the transition of other students to Stuyvesant. Coming from different schools and meeting each other in Freshman Composition, they formed a friendship grounded in daily communication. The pair has not defined a clear division of roles between the two of them yet, but Yang appears to be slightly more outspoken. Overall, the ticket demonstrates a friendly dynamic that is somewhat marred by an imbalance in leadership.
The Guo-Yang ticket has six core policies, encapsulated by the acronym LAURDE: learning opportunities, advancement of freshman quality of life, understanding of work-life balance, representation of the concerns of the student body, direct involvement in student life, and emotional check-ins.
check-in surveys. In addressing bigger concerns of the student body, like the cooling system and re-entry to school, the pair plans to meet with the SLT. However, many of the ticket’s initiatives lack origi nality and feasibility. For example, ideas for opportunities bulletins and platforms that compile bell schedules and A/B days signifi cantly overlap with already exist
ing resources, like Mr. Blumm’s Opportunities Bulletin and the Student Union’s Weekly Schedule e-mail. Proposals such as modified re-entry times during free periods and changes to the headphone pol icy are unlikely to come to fruition, given the historical difficulties that caucuses have faced in coordinat ing with the school administration on these systems.
The Alfred-Sen ticket is ambitious, and their plat form centers on inclusion and increased communica tion. However, most of their plans are either impracti cal or already exist. “B teams” are already present in the form of clubs that are accessible to everyone, and there are JV teams for several of the sports teams at Stuyves ant. Additionally, sending out relevant e-mails on the condition of the escalators is unlikely to succeed. The suggestion to increase the number of sitting spots throughout the hallways is also difficult to carry out and not entirely necessary. The ticket posed the possibility of bribing The Spectator for endorsement. Whether the statement was a joke or not, it was unprofessional and brings the honesty of the ticket into question.
PLATFORM:
The Alfred-Sen ticket’s
on the creation of “B
The Cisse ticket has an especially close relationship, being that the two are sisters who eat, sleep, and work together. As caucus leaders, communication would likely come easier than most due to their sisters status. In addition, they complement each other in a friendly rivalry, as Olivia Cisse represents the more sociable and extroverted side and Sonya Cisse represents the more “academic” and introverted side. However, this close relationship can also be their weakness, as it may be too close for professional comfort.
The Cisse ticket has many ambitious policies, accompanied with pragmatic sen sitivity. The Cisses both plan to increase awareness of various school events, and have ambition to shift the ‘Stuy student’ stereotype in a more positive direction. In addition to academic support in the form of study guides, sample schedules, the Cisse ticket also proposes a personalized system of support for freshmen, focusing on time management and organization. The Cisse ticket also looks towards raising the frequency and diversity of field trips, through both fundraising and communicating directly with the administra tion. Additionally they stress the importance of raising awareness of sexual harassment and supporting the LGBTQ community at Stuyvesant.
Overall, the Cisse ticket is a rea sonable choice for Freshman Cau cus. They have demonstrated not only articulation of their ideas, but also a balanced communication be tween the two sisters. Furthermore, they possess a clear grasp on their core values and overarching goals for the freshman class. The Cisses have ample prior experience: both sisters represented their classes in Student Council, co-captained the eighth grade soccer, and participat ed in their school’s peer mentoring program. The Cisse ticket presents a balanced and well thought out candidacy, despite the slightly over ambitious aspects of their platform.
At first glance, the Hevenstone-Woodcock ticket has a friendly, appreciative dynamic. They met each other at fencing tryouts and continued speaking to each other throughout Model UN meetings and over weekends. This constant contact is evident in the casual conversation they have with each other. They certainly profoundly respect each other’s capabilities. However, that dynamic is undermined by Woodcock’s overly passive role—rarely speaking or adding on to policies. While an introvert-extrovert dynamic is extremely common across Freshman Caucus can didates, Hevenstone and Woodcock do not contribute equally to the communication, outreach, and development of their campaign.
The Hevenstone-Woodcock ticket’s platform hinges on several different proposals which aim to resolve perceived long-standing issues. The first of the issues they target is work-life balance, which they believe may particularly affect freshmen arriving from middle schools that have not prepared them for the level of work given at Stuyvesant. To combat this challenge, they plan to create a committee inside the Student Union that conducts polls and surveys throughout the year and uses the data to pinpoint which teachers may be violating the Homework Policy. Another change they hope to implement is making the weekly Opportunities Bulletin more accessible, as they believe that it is often too long and difficult to parse through. They also plan to try adding more options to the school lunch as a long-term goal, since many students may not be able to eat it due to food restrictions. Finally, they would like to create an alternate working space, as well as implement changes that will allow Stuyvesant students to have more social interaction.
The Hevenstone-Woodcock ticket strives to make Stuyvesant an inclusive and supportive en vironment for freshmen. Their campaign places an emphasis on policies that will help students maintain a work-life balance and engage in so cial opportunities and extracurricular activities outside of the classroom. Unlike many other campaigns, Hevenstone-Woodcock focuses on attainable goals, such as distributing Google Forms surveys that track how much home work students are given each night and creat ing alternative work spaces for students to use
during their free periods. However, other pro posed ideas fall short. Their plan to create an SU committee centered around work-life balance struggles with long-term feasibility and lack of foundation. Additionally, their proposals to cre ate a website that would simplify Mr. Blumm’s Opportunities Bulletin and to implement more events in the hopes of improving social life are generally unnecessary. Already existing resources such as extracurricular activities and connections that students can create with staff provide easy solutions for these problems.
The Zhang-Lee ticket has a strong dynamic, as the two of them complement each other well. Zhang and Lee met through a tutoring program prior to their time at Stuyvesant and were able to develop a strong friendship. The two have already fallen into specific roles, with Lee tasked with creativity and Zhang the actual implementa tion of these ideas. Both claim to have prior leadership experience and express passion in contributing to their communities.
Zhang-Lee presents solutions to existing issues among the freshmen. Regarding the 30-minute homework policy, the ticket suggests the formation of a website that takes submissions and the implementation of a strike policy with teachers, through which teachers are contacted by the administration if five strikes are reached. ZhangLee also plans to contact administration with a petition for a two-week trial period of increasing the time interval when students can return to the building during free periods and lunch. The ticket also hopes to keep freshman homerooms connected by assigning each homeroom a delegate, who would collect the concerns and thoughts of their homeroom peers and then attend meetings held with all the delegates for discussion. The delegates would be switched every month to maximize student involvement.
The Zhang-Lee ticket has dem onstrated a balanced dynamic. One of Zhang-Lee’s major focuses in cludes increasing transparency and communication with the freshmen. While the ticket’s proposed poli cies are innovative and offer a new perspective to several student issues already highlighted at Stuyvesant, much of the platform relies heav
ily on the approval of administra tion and an attempt to change many of the current safety measures or school systems. Moreover, though the ticket acknowledged a goal of further engagement from the stu dent body, it failed to address spe cific methods in achieving this aim. Several of the ticket’s policies and methodology fall short.
Daga and Kori have the po tential to be good leaders, as they are both well-spoken and thought ful, and possess the charisma and confidence necessary to lead the student body. The ticket’s actual policies, however, do not reflect this potential. Their motto is “To gether We Stuy,” with five core “pillars” of cultural awareness, advisement, unity, support, and enforcement. Their advisement, support, and enforcement poli cies do not seem like they would serve new ideas to the freshman class. Instead, they would main tain the status quo by piggyback ing off of pre-existing organiza tions and programs. The ticket’s cultural awareness and enforce ment policies, while beneficial in theory, are one-dimensional. Two out of four cultural holidays listed on their policy document are not sufficiently planned out, and many of their vague and predictable
Daga and Kori have known each other since their middle school years at NEST+m, where Daga was the student body president and Kori was involved in student government as an event planner. The pair has an amicable dynamic, often supporting and building off of each other’s responses, but they also dem onstrate the professional capability to get work done.
The Daga-Kori ticket falters on substantial and creative initiatives for the freshman class. The ticket’s policies focus on centralizing existing systems by incorporating them into student government, such as ARISTA, the Alumni Mentoring Program, and Big Sibs, with claims that the aforementioned programs might not be well-known to the majority of the student body. These policies, though possible, do not address the needs of the freshman class. Rather, they add a superfluous layer of administrative tasks. Other policies, like cultural events and social activities such as field days or “Wednesday Night Live,” are well-intentioned but not well planned in their verbal explanations and written policy document.
policies attempt to enact changes (such as the headphone policy and feminine hygiene products) that have been promised but un fulfilled by numerous past student
governments. Though Daga and Kori are genuine in their desire to help the student body, their poli cies lack originality and specificity.
Two-of-a-kind Thompson and Battista met on the first day of freshman year and charismatically hope to bring the student government to the freshman body. They strive to maintain good working relations and go out of their way to talk to one another, though their relationship lacks direction as they share a very similar skillset.
The Thompson-Battista ticket aims to encourage direct democracy, remove the negative stigma around Stuyvesant, and connect with those who are struggling. They value pragmatic approaches to projects that have a lasting impact on the student body. However, many of their policies are not groundbreaking, and those that are ambitious are beyond the scope of the Freshman Caucus.
The Thompson-Battista ticket embodies a charismatic and ap proachable aurora, effectively connecting with the student body. With previous leadership experi ence in student government and
sympathy to ward the mental health of their peers, they hope to encourage a direct democ racy where the freshmen will feel supported and heard. By bringing initia tives directly to the student body, the duo hopes to find and el evate the needs of the average freshman to higher platforms where they can be addressed, whether by the Freshman Caucus or higher powers, such as teach ers and administrators. However, the ticket struggles to find the
balance between feasibility and impact. Though their goal is to create policies that address the en tire student body, Thompson and Battista have several policies that will barely improve quality of life for the freshmen, while requiring significant upfront investment. Such an example is their initiative to improve the quality of toilet pa per. Though idealistic, this ticket’s policies will require significant funding to fulfill, made difficult by the new funding limitations set by the 2021-2022 Stuyvesant financial audits. Additionally, the duo plans to address many of the freshman body’s problems by “raising aware ness,” which may not show any tangible results. Their ambitious freshman prom is also likely be yond the scope of their power but does emphasize the need for social events shown by many tickets.
“My favorite day of Spirit Week was Stuyloween because I found it super fun that so many people dressed up, including my math teacher Mr. Rubinstein. Everyone’s always so nice to each other and it’s really cool to see how creative some of these Stuy kids are because a lot of them made their costumes themselves and you can see how we’re more than just a STEM school.” —Alex DiLella, junior
“I think my favorite day of Spirit Week was [the football team’s] Uniform Swap on Thurs day. I felt like it was basically one of the days where you got to do something very noticeable and it was one of the only days I participated in. The cheer uniforms were also kind of fun to wear with everyone’s reactions when they see you. Even though the zippers didn’t quite fit, the majority of it worked out.” —Tay Cheong, sophomore
“My favorite day of Spirit Week was definitely Jersey/Sports Day. I’m on the golf team, and coincidentally, we had our semifinals that day, so I came to school all decked out in our team shirt and a black skort. I also had my cap on with my sunglasses, so I received lots of comments from my friends that I looked a bit different than usual. I was so happy to wear my golf clothes to school though, because they’re very comfy, and I felt the need to show off how much I love golf.” —Sienna Hwang, freshman
“My favorite day of Spirit Week was Twin Day because I got to hang out with my friends from freshman year and go shopping near Stuy for around two hours to dress up.” —Yoonha Shim, sophomore
“My favorite part of Spirit Week was Halloween because I wore a skirt and proved to every single person that my legs were better than 76 per cent of those of women.” —anonymous, junior
“My favorite was Stuyloween because it was fun to see everyone dress up.” —Alice Wang, junior
“I really liked Cultural Day! I think it was actually the day [when] people were able to express themselves the most, barring Hallow een. I know someone who dressed up as ‘pop culture’ and used merch from Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘SOUR’ album and it was pretty icon ic. I feel like Black Tie Day was exciting in its own way, but it got a bit old (and stuffy) as the day went on. I like how Cultural Day gave people the opportunity to partake in this sort of mutual apprecia tion day where people could feel really excited to wear something that might give them joy and pride, while also being just for fun.”
Adeline Sauberli, sophomore“My favorite day of Spirit Week was definitely Cultural Day because it was really fun to dress up. It was interesting to see everyone’s cultures and it helped everyone feel like they were represented and united.” —Ibtida Khurshed, sophomore
“My favorite day of Spirit Week is Dress as Your Type Day be cause it is the funniest and you can get very creative with it.”
Chloe Tom, junior
“It’s gotta be Cultural Day because basically every brown per son wore cultural clothes and everyone in general just looked super good. Also, I had an excuse to wear my cultural clothes to school.” —Kanjuda Shaika, junior
“I like Halloween because everyone went crazy.” —Andrew Piatetsky, senior
“I really enjoyed Halloween because I loved the cool and creative costumes.”
Trystan Woutersz, junior
“Stuyloween was my favorite spirit day because I liked preparing my costume and because other people’s were funny, and some teachers even dressed up.” —Eugene Park, junior
“My favorite day of Spirit Week was Cultural Day because I’m able to express my ethnic background freely around my friends. Cultural Day provides me with an excuse to be able to wear traditional clothing without feeling uncomfortable.” Md Rahman, sophomore
The vast majority of Stuyvesant students share a common experi ence: how they got here. In the fall of eighth grade, along with 30,000 other NYC students, most students took the notorious SHSAT exam to gain admission to Stuyvesant, then matriculated in their freshman year. However, there is a small group of students who did not begin their Stuyvesant high school career this way. Each year, approximately 10 ninth-grade students are admitted into the Stuyvesant sophomore class. Here are their stories.
Senior Daria Minhas (he/they) attended Staten Island Technical High School during their freshman year. “I started studying on my own for the SHSAT, using SAT books, actually. There’s not that much in formation on the Internet about retaking it, since only around 3,000 people do,” they said.
Senior Glen Cuccinello also selfstudied for the ninth grade SHSAT exam. “In eighth grade, I didn’t get into any school that I wanted, which really motivated me to do better and gave me something to work toward. It was definitely the biggest goal that I’d ever worked for in my life at the time,” he said.
Sophomore Michelle Ng, on the other hand, found out that she was taking the SHSAT just three days before the exam. “I just took it for fun and then I actually got in. I origi nally wasn’t gonna come here, but I decided whatever, YOLO, I might as well come and try the experience,” she said.
A major reason for students deciding to retake the SHSAT was their desire to experience Stuyves ant’s unique social environment. “At Staten Island Tech, the class sizes were extremely small, and I felt like I wasn’t building my network as much as I wanted to. Everybody was pretty cliquey, so if you didn’t have friends when you got there, then you were kind of screwed,” Minhas said. They were also deterred by their previous school’s political atmosphere. “Re spectfully, the only things that come to my mind whenever I talk about Staten Island are the anti-vaxxers and Republicans. Frankly, it’s not safe for a person like me to be there because I’m a gender-nonconform ing and queer person. I just don’t feel safe there. And I’m not going to
say that Stuy is perfect because I get misgendered every single day, con stantly, but it’s definitely much bet ter on the spectrum of having more respectful people.”
While some students were in search of a more welcoming social environment, the primary reason for sophomore Gary Huang’s decision to transfer to Stuyvesant from Hunt er College High School (HCHS) was the appeal of greater academ ic opportunities. “Stuyvesant is a much bigger facility. At HCHS, you weren’t able to take AP classes un til the 11th grade, while Stuyvesant offers AP courses for every grade,” he said. Huang was also interested in education experiences outside of the classroom. “At Stuy, there is this one program, CIEE, that allows you to travel to a foreign country. Hunter didn’t have that.”
Huang notes that Stuyvesant offers more support with advanced courses as well. “In Hunter, you’re allowed to accelerate grades if you take a special test, but there is no ac tual help to facilitate that kind of ac celeration, whereas with the Honors Algebra II program at Stuy, there’s a teacher helping you, guiding you through the course.”
studied some coding language. The classes here allow me to find out what I’m actually passionate about,” he said.
On the other hand, Ng initially had reservations about going to Stuyvesant. The major turning point in her decision was the open house she attended in the spring. “I went with my aunt and dad and we just walked around on every single floor. I really liked the labs, like the innova tion and robotics lab. I also saw Stuy Legacy perform, which was really cool,” she explained.
One factor that appealed to Minhas while deciding whether to transfer was Stuyvesant’s location. “I’m a city person. Staten Island is just so far, and traveling there was such a waste of time. You really couldn’t do anything except go to CVS or Chipotle,” they said. Their current proximity to signicant events in the city has allowed Minhas to build their mutual aid network, along with a plethora of other op portunities. “I do fundraisers with [senior] Lea Esipov, and a lot of the resources that we get are from Stuy alumni who are also in the city. I wouldn’t have been able to meet all these people and organize these events without being in Stuy, in this amazing location surrounded by so many great people.”
Stuyvesant’s location was im portant to Ng as well. “It’s just nice knowing that I go to school every day and I’m right next to the World Trade Center and the Oculus. That’s so cool because it’s an actual tourist spot. It’s like, ‘Wow, I go to school here every day.’”
When Huang left HCHS for Stuyvesant, he didn’t tell many of his friends that he was leaving. “It wasn’t until my first cross-country meet that a bunch of my Hunter friends found out. I had done cross-country at Hunter and now at Stuy, so when I saw my old team at the meet, it was kind of like a family reunion,” he said.
he would have to leave his friends from WESS behind. “I grew really close to the people I met at WESS; they’re probably going to be lifelong friends of mine. I still talk to them basically every day, and I go visit
a large school may provide many op portunities for academic enrichment, Minhas points out one of the down sides of matriculating in a graduat ing class of over 900 students. “I came here to take the classes that I wanted, but when I got here, it was like a ‘Hunger Games’ type-of-thing just to get an AP class. In Staten Is land Tech, if you apply for an AP, you get it. You can take whatever classes you want because it’s more individualized to each student. Stuy is too big of a school to be worrying about individual students. We are all just another OSIS number.”
Cuccinello also experienced more individualized attention at WESS. “Because it’s such a small student population, everything is basically one-on-one. I bet the prin cipal knows everybody’s names and has probably spoken with everyone at least once at WESS,” he said.
them every once in a while. When I told them that I got into Stuyves ant, I was still considering staying at WESS because I didn’t want to miss spending time with them. But they were all really supportive,” he said.
Cuccinello’s close friendships with his former peers also allow him to draw comparisons between the workloads of both schools. “At my old school, nobody studied for tests,” he said. “You could just show up for the test and if you went to class, you’d probably do well. [Now,] sometimes I’ll be studying at like one or two in the morning, and my friends from WESS are going to sleep around then. They finish their homework at like, six.”
Ng noticed another difference between the social environment at Stuyvesant and her former school. “I feel like Stuy is very online, like we have Facebook group chats for every single class and teacher, but at Staten Island Tech, we just kind of all knew each other because there’s a lot less people there,” she said.
Huang notes a particular chal lenge that transfer students face at such a large school. “It’s definitely weird making friends as a sopho more when you don’t really know anyone from last year,” he said. However, Huang acknowledged that making friends at HCHS was also not an easy task. “I didn’t really live near anyone at Hunter, so it was kind of hard for me to get to know other people.”
Cuccinello also transferred to Stuyvesant because of his interest in academic opportunities. “At West End Secondary School (WESS), there were maybe 30 classes in total that you could take throughout all of high school. They only had one computer science class, which was really just an elective where I self-
Minhas’s friends also found out about their transfer in an uncon ventional way: “I actually took the SHSAT at Staten Island Tech, which was really funny because when I showed up, the people monitoring the test were my classmates, and they were like, ‘What are you doing here?’”
One factor that made Cuccinello hesitant to transfer was the fact that
Minhas, Ng, and Huang agree that their current workloads are sig nificantly heavier than those of their former schools. “The difference be tween Stuy and other schools is that we are treated with a different level of maturity. There’s a lot expected of us, so we’re given lots of free dom. And I do really like Stuy for that,” Minhas said.
Another key difference between Stuyvesant and other high schools is the size of their respective student bodies. Staten Island Tech, HCHS, and WESS all had class sizes under 300 students, which is only a third of Stuyvesant’s average class size. While
Another consequence of Stuyvesant’s larger student body is the difficulty that students encoun ter while trying to sort out their course requirements after transfer ring. Minhas had trouble arranging their sophomore schedule. “I ended up taking both Art Appreciation and Music Appreciation in the same se mester sophomore year. And I had a 10-period schedule with no lunch period. It was very illegal,” they said.
Ng finds the humor in her atypi cal course load. “I’m taking physics right now and all the other sopho mores are taking chemistry. So it’s
“My favorite day of Spirit Week was Jersey Day because I got to rep my favorite sports with my friends.” —Margaux Scandura, junior
spirit week.
A black and white slide reads: “The Human Cost, and Mon etary Profits, (Late 1600s). A male slave cost 20 pounds, Produced 20 pounds worth of exportable sugar per year, how long must he stay alive to profit his owner?”
A plethora of reactions rippled through the student body, after the @blackatspecialized Instagram ac count uploaded an image of the slide from an anonymous submis sion. This slide came from a United States History classroom, taught by Social Studies teacher Eric Barry, where he paraphrased a quote from a plantation owner as a math prob lem.
In an e-mail interview, Barry clarified his original intentions. “I started by telling the class that when I was preparing this slide I was eat ing and I had to stop because it was so upsetting to see these numbers. I wanted to share my own vulner ability and model for the students that being upset at genocide is a normal reaction,” he wrote. “The second part of the slide [is] para phrased from the journal of such a planter (from Barbados) [...] I en visioned my students empowered with knowledge, able to explain to skeptics that this genocide was de liberate, that in fact slave owners on sugar plantations literally calculated as a math problem how much they could profit by genocide.”
Barry also noted that because it was the end of class, he didn’t give the slide the sensitivity it de served. “Unfortunately, I was rush ing because it was the end of the class period. Because I was hurry ing, I didn’t spend as much time as needed to frame what students were seeing.”
However, this context was not provided when the slide was up loaded to social media. Anonymous junior A, who took the photo of the slide, recounted the last moments of that class period. In their class, a non-Black student gave a numerical answer to the question on the slide, which Barry confirmed. “This is a humanities class and it felt more like, ‘there’s a set answer to this, and we’re just going to move on from it.’ I don’t think the point that he was trying to prove was proved in the way that it should have been. And it was the last slide so that was my last impression of the class for that day. I had taken a picture of it after the class ended, because the more I thought about it, the worse it got,” A said.
A did not expect the widespread
attention from other students and the Stuyvesant administration. “When I posted it, I did not expect the uproar that it brought. [...] I knew people would not agree with it, but I didn’t think that it would spread on a scale that it did because it reached specialized high schools that I wasn’t even attending. And it got to a point where everyone was talking about Stuyvesant, which they didn’t have enough context for, I’ll admit that. But it’s definitely a conversation we had to have,” A said.
nor of the specific objections or feelings of the students. Some BSL members at the meeting expressed that they were upset that I had not addressed their concerns in my first statement, but at that point no one had shared those concerns with me.”
Even though Barry was initially uninformed about the situation, ju nior Karl Watson, who knew about the situation from peers and the In stagram post, was frustrated by Bar ry’s lack of an apology after hearing the feelings of other BSL members.
the world outside of our classrooms in which large numbers of people actively deny the brutality of slavery and seek to ban its teaching.”
Despite this, however, in an e-mail to The Spectator, he apolo gized for any hurt and discomfort it caused students. “Unfortunately I miscalibrated my presentation of this upsetting material and some students were deeply hurt. I offer my sincerest apology. I have heard their voices and I understand much better the vulnerability they felt,” Barry wrote. “In the future, I will
students toward his slide, though it did not fully resolve the tension between the administration and students. “The main point of the meeting, for BSL students to share their reactions and thoughts, was accomplished. In hindsight I think the meeting could have been more successful at achieving understand ing and reconciliation if the stu dents had spoken first,” he wrote.
For multiple parents of stu dents in BSL, this was not the case, prompting a second meeting. “My mother, actually one of the people who spurred the second meeting with the principal, called Principal Yu. [...] I think he got a call from another parent, which spurred him to e-mail all the people who were at the meeting and say, ‘I just want to talk to you. It’s just gonna be me,’” Farrow said. “And then we had the second meeting, and it started with Principal Yu apologizing for how poorly the first meeting went, which was appreciated.”
Rather than fixating on defend ing the original catalyst behind the situation, the second meeting fo cused on students’ feelings and gave space for them to voice their experiences, and for the administra tion to listen. “We were just sharing our experiences with racism at Stuy. Mr. Yu was telling us about how he knows how we feel because he was also one of two East Asian kids at his school. [...] So he understands how it is,” Watson said. “[He] was trying to make us feel safe in the school.”
Senior Nya Masoni, who learned about the situation through Instagram, understood the discom fort that students felt from the slide. “From what I’ve seen, I think it’s pretty messed up—the slide. [...] I’m not saying that [Barry] was do ing it to be racist or anything. But I am saying that it was perfectly right, for, especially my Black peers, to call out his slide.”
The growing attention to the original @blackatspecialized post prompted a meeting between the faculty and administration, Black Students League (BSL), as well as Barry himself, intended to initiate understanding and reconciliation between students and teachers.
Prior to the meeting, Barry noted that he did not know about the extent of the reaction from stu dents. “I was invited to come ex plain my slide having only been told that there was a meme of my slide saying ‘It’s not a math problem.’ No one had informed me either of the breadth and depth of the reaction,
“We were questioning him, asking him for his reasoning, ‘Why would you do that?’ We were trying to tell him how insensitive it was.”
Senior and BSL Events Coor dinator Samantha Farrow was also disheartened at the reluctant apol ogy offered to BSL and the initial lack of understanding from both the administration and Barry. “So, he started talking about what he was thinking behind the slides, didn’t apologize, and then he opened it up for questions. We made a couple of statements talking about how it’s not necessarily about the intent of the slide, it’s the effect that it had on the students in his class. [...] He should have started with an apol ogy.”
Barry explained that his inten tion behind the slide was not mali cious, but rather to show the stark economic realities of slavery. “My hope in showing my students the horrifying statistics on slavery was to arm them with knowledge they can use to empower themselves in
take more steps to make everyone feel safe when we discuss historical atrocities. And my door is open to anyone with concerns about this in cident or other aspects of my teach ing.”
Perhaps what was most up setting for the students was not the content of the slide itself, but rather the degree to which students felt that they were pitted against adults who did not understand the emotional sensitivity needed in the meeting. “A lot of the members of BSL and people affected started getting emotional. And then I re member [the administrator] saying, ‘Oh, he doesn’t have to be here.’
What do you mean he doesn’t have to be here? This is surrounding him. He should be here. And he should hear what we have to say,” Farrow said.
The administrator, when con tacted, declined to comment.
Barry wrote that he believed that the meeting was helpful in fully understanding the sentiment of the
Though it is important to ex plore the potentially upsetting sides of history and sensitive subjects, many students agree that such dis cussions should be handled with more time and care. “[The situation] shows that you need to be sensitive when it comes to relaying informa tion and at least teaching students of color and students who aren’t of color. Just overall being inclusive in what you teach, and teaching it in a way that’s not censored, but also in a way that is effective and doesn’t make students uncomfortable,” se nior and BSL president Suki Fergu son said.
This sentiment is echoed by Barry in how teachers should ap proach teaching sensitive topics. “As teachers we need to be sensi tive to student voices and aware that feelings and standards shift,” he said. “What the BSL expressed to me is that it’s also important not to go so far in teaching slavery that it feels like an attack. So we have to adapt, and we will.”
just funny when they ask to see my schedule and they see things like physics and Mandarin I next to each other. I’m also in Junior PE because my lab has to sync with physics,” she said.
Despite their issues with pro gramming, Minhas, who is a former junior Olympic gymnast, deeply appreciates the athletic program at Stuyvesant. “After doing 20 hours of gymnastics per week, and then com ing to Stuy and being in that tiny half of the third floor gym, obviously I thought, how am I supposed to do anything here? But at the same time, it opened up my eyes to a whole new way of doing gymnastics that didn’t involve driving myself to exhaus tion. There’s so much more leeway at Stuy to be training the way I need to and to be taking care of my body the way I need to.”
Minhas also found new ath letic interests through their time at Stuy. “Last year, I joined out of no where to be a diver. I broke my arm, showed up, and said, ‘Yo, I want to be a diver.’ And the swim team was
like, ‘Cool.’ And then I showed up the next day, I said, ‘My arm is bro ken. I can’t do this for a little bit, but I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.’ And they just took me right under their wing,” they said. Minhas has also played softball for Stuyvesant, and is now applying to colleges with division three diving teams. “I would never have been able to do this at Staten Island Tech. Back then, I was literally doing pole vaulting, like run ning with a big stick. I’m just really grateful for PSAL and my athletic experiences at Stuy in general,” they said.
Cuccinello too marvels at the athletic opportunities at Stuyves ant. “Since WESS was founded so recently, in 2016, all of the sports teams were still being created. And there weren’t any clubs at all. Stuyvesant is definitely very differ ent in that sense.”
Most students agreed that the teachers at Stuyvesant and their for mer schools varied based on person ality. Minhas, however, appreciated the consistency of their teachers in their previous school. “You couldn’t get a bad class there in the sense that the teacher would always be qualified to teach the class—it would never
be some mumbo jumbo,” they said. “The difference between Staten Is land Tech and Stuy is that in Stuy, the teachers make or break the class, and I will stand by that until I die.”
Coincidently, Huang has seen some familiar faces this year at Stuyvesant. “A few teachers from Hunter recently transferred to Stuyvesant this year, like my AP world teacher, Ms. [Marissa] Shap
iro. My freshman English teacher, Ms. [Sarah] Lifson, also transferred here.”
An intriguing aspect of the trans fer student experience at Stuy is their specialized homeroom “JA.” Since transfer students enter Stuyvesant later than the rest of their peers, they are grouped together into JA homerooms each year. “Homeroom JA helped a lot. We had Big Sibs and they helped us sort out all our prob lems because there’s a lot of com plications regarding classes when you transfer. At least two or three of the Big Sibs we have are also trans fer students so they understand the struggle which is really helpful,” Ng said.
Cuccinello shares a similarly fond recollection. “There’s only around eight of us, so it’s definitely a lot smaller than a normal home room. But it’s interesting because all these people have the same event that happened in their life. They all tried to do the same thing that I did. They also were able to do it,” he said.
When looking back at their years at Stuyvesant, Minhas reflects on the significant lessons that they have learned. “Stuy has definitely taught me how to talk to adults really well.
That’s a really funny thing. Like at job interviews; I used to get so ner vous with any sort of public speak ing or anything like that. But now I run my own club and am the captain of a sports team. Stuy really taught me how to articulate myself.”
Ng, who is only two months into her Stuyvesant career, describes the lack of awareness of transfer stu dents at Stuyvesant. “When I tell people that I transferred, they are really surprised, because they can’t even tell.”
Whether it was the location, community, or academics that drove these resilient students to Styuves ant, they all agree that they have no regrets about transferring. Their experiences have introduced new friendships and passions into their lives that they did not have access to in their previous schools, broaden ing their potentials for exploration both in and out of the classroom. While not widely recognized, trans fer students play an important role in creating the Stuyvesant that future ninth-grade students will someday aspire to attend—the Stuyvesant that opens its doors to students re gardless of the path taken to get here.
This article was sent for printing on November 13, and some information may have changed or been updated since.
Stuyvesant sent the school into a roughly two-period-long shelterin on the morning of Wednesday, October 26. For the rest of the day, students were barred from exiting or entering the building with no expla nation, only later learning that the school had received an anonymous threat over the phone.
Two weeks later, an evacuation drill was announced over the PA and lasted for another two periods, on the afternoon of November 9. Some students who had just changed for gym class were left standing in the cold in their uniforms for more than an hour. Students were later informed that the school had been sent another anonymous e-mail threat.
The potential threats to school safety come stacked upon almost daily reports of violent crime in the city and subways, such as a man stab bing a subway passenger with a sam urai sword or people being pushed onto the tracks, and has led to an ef fort by Stuyvesant administration to revamp its security procedures.
One such effort to improve se curity is the recent 4:00 p.m. no-en try policy, which states that no stu dents may be allowed back into the building after 4:00 p.m. This policy aims to keep students safe during afterschool activities by having them accounted for at all times. However many students feel it is another bu reaucratic nuisance. The policy is controlling students rather than any potential threats, most of which oc cur during the school day rather than after school. Especially in a neigh borhood such as Tribeca, where most feel comfortable walking out side during that time of day, the new policy ultimately feels unnecessary. Though it is a valid attempt, it fails to make students feel safer.
Moreover, the 4:00 p.m. no-en try policy was not effectively com municated to students, especially as many weren’t notified through a formal e-mail addressing this new implementation. It was put in place on Friday, October 31, with no in dication other than a poster on the security desk. Though it was men tioned in one of Stuyvesant’s Weekly Updates and the morning announce ments the following week, there was a general lack of transparency, with little being said on why the new sys tem was in place. Students, staff, and clubs had to deal with the immediate and strict enforcement of the policy, leaving many unable to reenter the building despite having valid ID and clear obligations. Exceptions were made for certain clubs and events like the open house, but other than that, it has been a hard rule.
Additionally, there are more pressing issues that Stuyvesant could address to improve security for stu dents. One glaring example is the fire drill procedure, which many students and even some teachers do not take seriously. This indifference to safety procedures was seen during the anonymous e-mail threat, where students were evacuated under the pretense that they were participating in a drill. As a result, many students and teachers were slow to exit de spite the serious threat. Stuyvesant also releases a schedule of safety drills at the beginning of the year, which feels counterintuitive, consid ering that students are supposed to be training for an unprecedented and possibly life-threatening event. Dur ing lock-down drills, some teachers continue to teach as normal.
As law enforcement officers swarmed the building on October 26 and secured the school floor by floor, rumors swirled amongst the students. Some claimed that some one tried to enter with a fake ID, while others said that they saw a minor being tackled and arrested.
Suspicions ranged from bomb and shooting threats to a rabid raccoon break-in. Teachers and administra tion did little to address these ru mors, with many explaining that they did not have any more information than the students. However, it is also important that students themselves avoid fueling the rumor mill during possibly life-threatening situations, since spreading misinformation leads to either heightened apathy or panic. Even many weeks later, the school remains unforthcoming about the nature of the threat. A similar phenomenon occurred dur ing the November 9 evacuation, dur ing which rumors passed between students that there was either a gas leak in the building or a bomb threat, and teachers, who had no informa tion themselves, were unable to shed any light on the issue.
In the future, we hope that more action can be taken to increase transparency at Stuyvesant regard ing safety. For one, safety drills at Stuyvesant are typically taken very lightly, and times during which fire drills or lockdowns occur tend to be easily discovered by students. To make these safety drills a more seri ous matter, as they should be, staff can refrain from discussing the dates and times of these drills to avoid spreading unnecessary knowledge about them.
By explaining direct reasons be hind new safety updates and dedi cating certain times to give compre hensive reviews on safety protocols, teachers and staff can ensure that the student body has full awareness on how their safety might be at stake and ways to protect themselves in extreme situations. Students should be kept informed as to the true na ture of the drills in which they par ticipate, and more direct communi cation on the part of administrators can both reduce flippant attitudes among students and contribute to an overall sense of safety at Stuyvesant.
SPORTS EDITORS
Taee Chi
Shafiul Haque* Ava Quarles Khush Wadhwa**
PHOTOGRAPHY
EDITORS
EDITORS IN CHIEF Momoca Mairaj* Maya Nelson*
NEWS EDITORS
Rebecca Bao Isabella Jia* Janna Wang Sarah Diaz**
FEATURES EDITORS
Lauren Lee Shivani Manimaran Christina Pan
OPINIONS EDITORS Peter Goswami Ivy Huang** Gulam Monawarah** Anisha Singhal*
SCIENCE EDITORS Hellen Luo** Sathirtha Mondal Sonya Sasson Jovanna Wu**
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITORS Phoebe Buckwalter** Nicole Liu Kenisha Mahajan* Levi Simon
HUMOR EDITORS Erica Chen Oliver Hollmann
“The Pulse of the Student Body” Please address all letters to: 345 Chambers Street New York, NY 10282 (212) 312-4800 ext. 2601 eics@stuyspec.com
Alexander Lopez Lily Serry** Sophia Mueller** Zifei Zhao
ART DIRECTORS
Fareha Islam** Afra Mahmud* Nelli Rojas-Cessa Vivian Teo
LAYOUT EDITORS Fiona Huang Susie McKnight Shreya Roy Danny Xiong
COPY EDITORS
Kevin Chan** Nada Hameed Eman Sadiq Ruiwen Tang Raymond Yang Allison Zhao**
BUSINESS MANAGERS Inara Rabbani Amber Shen
WEB EDITORS David Chen* Samantha Hua Theodore Yochum
FACULTY ADVISER Kerry Garfinkel
As society and social media promote the understanding of how to accommodate people with trauma or mental illnesses, the topic of content warnings has become largely debated. Content warnings appear every where, from TV show intros to infographics on Instagram. But as a form of mainstream popu lar media, books must come with content warnings as well.
Reading shouldn’t be sacri ficed or avoided in fear of dis comforting themes. It’s impossi ble to know what an entire novel might reference, and even if it’s mentioned in just a paragraph, certain themes can trigger people with certain traumas. Expecting someone with mental illness to thoroughly research or avoid a book is unacceptable, especially when 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women have expe rienced trauma and six percent of people in the U.S. suffer from PTSD.
Lillian Zou / The SpectatorAs someone with mental ill ness and trauma symptoms, I know how hard it sometimes is to get through a day. The outside world is unforgiving, and trig ger warnings don’t exist in real life. Triggers are harmful and often can’t be avoided, but an advantage of the online world is that it is catered to you. As more people learn about the benefits of content warnings, these con ics or values or things that upset couldn’t safely digest the con not being able to read a work of
fiction safely and ignoring history. “If we never have conversations about these things, we’re essen tially inviting [them] to happen,” Francis said. This consequence is detrimental for topics like the Holocaust and rape.
As of now, there is no con crete policy at Stuyvesant in terms of trigger warnings in Eng lish class. Many teachers provide them, but some prefer not to due to the possibility of spoiling the rest of a book. To me, that’s not what a content warning does. It simply gives people a heads-up to be able to prepare physically and emotionally for challenging topics ahead. Content warnings only give a brief mention of a subject, not when, where, or how. If a book is spoiled by a trigger warning because the whole plot centers around that theme, then people should probably know about it anyway.
The school system has to become more comfortable with the concept of trigger warnings. It should be mandatory for pro fessors to give them before the beginning of a new unit or book. It’s important to communicate to students that being open with teachers about concerns and trauma is a welcome conversa tion. Students need to be assured that, after a feasible explanation, there will be an alternative lesson that will give them full credit and learning possibilities. Nobody should feel afraid at school.
Last summer, when I visited Korea, I saw shiny skyscrapers and food advertisements posted almost everywhere. I also noticed the surprisingly tall and attractive people walking the streets. It was odd to me that all these people looked seemingly identical in height. Almost all of the young men were six feet or taller, while the women looked just over five feet. Compared to other races in America, Asians are generally shorter, so I was shocked to see a generation of tall youth almost everywhere I went. I didn’t re ally give this observation much thought until about a week ago,
when my aunt told me about the extreme lengths Korean men take to grow taller. These measures even include growth hormone shots as early as middle school. Throughout history and to this day, women have been and are judged by toxic beauty stan dards. Especially in Korea, unre alistic expectations of fair skin and a slim physique permeate the beauty and music industries.
While the issue of beauty stan dards for women still pervades, the toxic standard for Asian men is not talked about nearly enough and should be acknowledged as well. As an Asian American teen age boy, I’ve personally experi enced the harm of these stan
dards.
Every one of us cares, to some extent, about our appearance. Changes in appearance, whether through plastic surgery, makeup, growth hormones, or clothing, can be harmful to people’s sense of self if taken too far. While they can be a way to express one self, some people feel pressured into going through those changes when they don’t truly want to.
Everyone has unique characteris tics, but recently, oppressive stan dards have put forth a conforma tive incentive in beauty, especially for Asian men.
Companies encourage people to change their appearances be cause of financial motives, not
because these corporations truly care about how people look. In a report from Dong-A ST, the market size of growth hormones in Korea is currently around $71 million, and the increase in mar ket size from 2017 to 2018 was $9.8 million, showing the extreme size of the market and its current growth. In addition to the large market, the price of the growth hormone treatment and add-ons, such as massage sessions, can be up to $21 thousand every six months, making it a difficult path for many families to take. Outside of Korea, the men’s beauty mar ket is expected to generate $166 billion by 2022. While there’s no issue with using makeup, it’s a sign that beauty standards have also affected how men view themselves and transform them selves to fit in.
The rise of social media and Asian culture in America is also a factor in this growing obsession with being six feet tall and dress ing “fashionably.” America has its own issues with Asian beauty standards. Even when Asian cul ture is presented, often through K-pop boybands and Asian TV stars, the people who are shown set forth a warped representation of near flawlessness. In recent years, the popularity of K-pop has skyrocketed alongside Kdramas, with an increase of 200 percent in viewership from 2019 to 2021 in the U.S. Because of
When America was founded, the schools that provided second ary and higher education were allboys schools. Some were religious, others secular, but all of them had one main purpose: to take young boys and turn them into well-edu cated male leaders. This structure made sense at the time. There was no point in fully educating girls, since women would not go into the workforce and were barred from holding positions of power. However, as time went on, gen der equality in schools increased.
Elementary and middle schools were already available to girls, but secondary and higher education was soon provided in the form of all-girls schools.
This history explains why single-sex education existed in the first place. All-boys schools reflected male supremacy, and allgirls schools were created to edu cate girls who were barred from these elite, male-only institutions. Co-ed schools couldn’t serve as a proper substitute, because even when girls were allowed to attend, many of their spots were still filled by boys.
However, as time has gone on, the number of all-boys schools has decreased dramatically. Allboys schools have no benefits that co-ed schools lack, instead bring ing a host of problems with them. They provide a breeding ground for toxic masculinity. Gender equality is rarely discussed in allboys schools, and when it is, the language is usually “girls must be protected,” and not “respect girls as fellow human beings.” This culture all comes down to one crucial concept: when people are segregated, they “tend to develop stereotypical views of their own group and the excluded group,” as
gender studies professor at the University of California, Los An geles Juliet Williams puts it.
Many people say that allboys schools are necessary be cause boys mature slower than girls. It is also commonly argued that boys and girls have different learning styles, making separate classrooms ideal for them. How ever, these points don’t take into account the fact that people have individual characteristics, and many of them would not benefit from the definition of teaching so rigidly around gender. The prob lem here lies not within the class but with the teacher. Any teacher needs to be able to engage a class
full of different students, regard less of their genders or learning styles. If a teacher can do so, the issue vanishes. All-boys schools are not necessary to give everyone a proper education.
As the number of all-boys schools has gone down, the num ber of all-girls schools has also decreased. All-girls schools were initially a response to exclusion ary all-boys schools, and now that all-boys schools are becom ing obsolete, the need for all-girls schools has vanished. Many claim that all-girls schools are still use ful for subject-specific bias. Some research suggests that girls from all-girls schools are more likely
to go into STEM fields and have higher aspirations. However, this research is disputed. It is very dif ficult to tell whether the beneficial results came because of the allgirls schools or because of other factors, since students at all-girls schools are often better off than those at co-ed schools.
At this point in time, girls are being educated at even higher rates than men. They don’t need all-girls schools any more than boys need all-boys schools. The issue is not whether they get an education. It is where they go from there. Very few women end up in leadership positions, and too many men hold on to power.
this media, there’s a certain stan dard for Asian men: six feet tall, clear skin, and fit: overall, a model man.
Growing up, I didn’t care too much about my appearance, since my parents never pressured me in that way. As I’ve matured, I’ve started to notice that I’m giving more thought to my appearance, especially if I’m seeing people I’m uncomfortable with. To this day, I receive constant comments on my appearance, whether it’s complimenting my height or criti cizing how I’m too skinny or how my style isn’t right. It’s hard to express my frustration with these comments since they have be come a norm built up over time. When I look at myself in the mir ror, there’s always something I find an issue with, whether it’s my skin, hair, or teeth. The standard is not as obvious in the media as it is with women, but it’s still present through TikToks about the perfect Asian man and guides on how to look like certain actors. This generation is idealizing peo ple, especially Asian men on so cial media who they deem “per fect,” and judging others based on that twisted model. We need to realize that this behavior stems from cultural appropriation and relies on white authority on Asian identity. No one is perfect, and the thing that makes us beautiful is our uniqueness, whether that is in appearance or personality.
This problem can’t be solved by single-sex schools. In fact, it is ex acerbated by their existence. The separation of boys and girls from a young age worsens pre-existing gender stereotypes and makes it harder for them to reach their full potential.
All-boys schools are a relic from a time when boys’ education was prioritized and girls’ educa tion was neglected. Similarly, allgirls schools are a holdover from a time when all-male education needed to be countered. In the current day, single-sex education no longer makes sense. Well-run co-education schools are the best option for everyone involved.
Stuyvesant students and staff have various commuting options when coming to and leaving from Stuyvesant. While many rely on various forms of public transpor tation, the option of taking a bike to school is often ignored. Biking to school improves physical and mental health, reduces pollution, and provides an alternative for people who do not want to ride the subway due to concerns of crime.
Though Stuyvesant students and staff are known to have long commutes, there are a significant number of students and staff who live within a comfortable dis tance, where they can ride a bike or scooter to school, but many choose not to. In addition to this situation, for the significant por tion of the Stuyvesant community who arrives at school by the sub way, they must walk to and from that subway station to Stuyvesant, often crowding the sidewalk and potentially making people late to school. There are also many stu dents and staff who commute by commuter rail to school and do not live within walking distance of their station. These individuals could rather easily ride a bike or scooter between the station and
school/home, but similarly, al most all do not.
The lack of safe and easily accessible storage of bikes and scooters acts as a hindrance to students and staff using bikes to commute to school. The cur rent storage racks outside of the school are of very low capacity and leave bikes vulnerable to theft and non-ideal weather conditions. Many staff who ride bikes or scooters to school store them in their classrooms or offices, which is not an option for students, who only have access to a hallway and gym locker for storage. Safe and convenient storage of bicycles and scooters is necessary in pro moting their use during a com mute, which is why we should install bike and scooter racks in school.
Possible options for installing bike racks would be on the first floor (with a new scanner, con veniently serving the disabled) by the pool or in the atrium, on the second floor at the back of the senior atrium, or a plan that combines the use of these spaces. All options would impact the el evator since bicycles would need to be brought up and down, un less a combination of options is used or a new scanner entrance is installed.
New bike racks would allow bikes and scooters to become a
Bikes and scooters would have negligible risk of being stolen.
raising concerns of an unneces sary investment. But the lack of use of this commute option may likely be due to the unavailability of bike storage facilities in the first place. Bike racks and mak ing space for them cost money. There are also peak periods when students and staff are entering or exiting the building, and bikes and scooters could clog the en trances, depending on the option chosen, but this situation can be controlled.
more realistic commute option for many and shorten commute times. People concerned about the safety of the subway would have a convenient alternative.
By KHANDAKER MUSHFIKUZZAMANI am a Muslim, nurtured by Islam. This sentence sounds like a wonderful proclamation of identity, but if I revise it to “I was born into Islam and have been raised a Muslim,” the phrase tells a different sto ry. The latter sounds forced, a surface-level truth hiding what’s beneath. I am the son of Muslim parents. I’ve been taught how to read the Quran and pray five times a day. I’ve fasted every Ramadan since fourth grade, and I celebrate every Eid. I am a Muslim to my parents, extended family, friends, and everyone but my self.
Along with the rules upon rules and customs upon cus toms that I’ve been taught, one thing that went without saying was unquestionable faith. That ideal is the ultimate goal of any religion: to have an unbreak able belief to the point where any sliver of doubt is absurd. Don’t get me wrong. Islam pro motes curiosity and question ing, but it’s difficult to question something that’s been a con stant throughout your entire life. It is deemed the parents’ fault if their children are raised without Islamic guidance, even if within Islamic rules. It is a sin to not raise your children as proper Muslims. While I understand my parents’ point of view during our many ar guments, I struggle to express that several concepts of Islam and religion in general frustrate me. Teenagers, who want to develop independent morals and thoughts, should be given the space and encouragement to question their religion.
However, there are several concerns with regard to the in stallation of bike racks. As it cur rently stands, there aren’t a signifi cant amount of bike commutes,
No religion is perfect, and no single religion can precisely match the ideals and beliefs of every person. We are bound to disagree with something. I can’t possibly cover all my dis agreements on the vast aspects of Islamic ideology in one ar ticle, but the main concept I’ve always struggled with is fate. Fate is what’s predetermined by God (Allah in Islam). It goes hand in hand with creation. Every human’s life, every event in history, the birth of the cos mos, and all that has happened and is destined to happen are precisely written out by Allah. I don’t believe in fate, though I wish I were as certain about that as I like to think I am.
Fate is certainly not unique to Islam, which is among the youngest of today’s major world religions. In fact, my inspiration to pen this article came from Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations.” The Roman emperor expresses his Stoic philosophy in these personal journals that were never meant to be published. He had an ironclad belief that one divin ity rules all of nature and our fate. Aurelius emphasizes ac cepting what happens to you, good or bad, and welcoming what has been planned for you with open arms. Fate and des tiny are popular beliefs because people find them comforting. These concepts allow them to live their lives however they want, whether by strictly fol lowing the rules of their reli gion or being reckless in their choices. They follow the blind belief that they’ll be guided to their telos (ultimate function), regardless of their decisions.
It’s comforting to think of a bad experience as part of your
written fate, rather than your own doing.
However, I think this per spective is delusional. While it’s true that no one can pos sibly control all the events and actions of others that contrib ute to your life and its direc tion, your choices still have the heaviest impact. Religion
ther. Every effect has a cause that can be traced. From the small scale of every event in your life to the unfathomable scale of the events in the world and universe, all are led by a chain of moments, not a divine providence. A counter-argu ment I’ve faced is that if all ef fects have a cause, then the be
Indoor bicycle racks in the school can be implemented through a well-planned installa tion plan. Bicycles and scooters could be brought in through a first floor entrance and scanner, with the scanner also assisting the disabled and injured when enter ing the school building, and be stored in racks near the pool and atrium. Minimal racks would be needed, and they would also cost very little, relative to other school expenses. Owners would provide locking mechanisms. Peak periods could have constraints if needed. The numerous advantages of bi cycle racks at Stuyvesant cannot be damaged by the few disad vantages that can be mitigated. It is clear that it is finally time for Stuyvesant to have bicycle racks available to its students and staff.
argues that even though you may think you control your choices, whom you associ ate with, and where you are, these things were already writ ten out for you. I believe that your achievements are caused by the steps you deliberately take. If you end up in heavy debt because of gambling, it can’t just be chalked up to fate. Religion says you were meant to perform good deeds or you were meant to be the evil in other people’s lives. But it’s preposterous to think that you were meant to become a neu rologist from the moment you were born or that your prewrit ten path is to be a dictator who kills millions.
Instead, I believe that every thing in the universe is part of an intricate wave of moments crashing and intertwining. It’s not fate, but it’s not chance ei
ginning of the universe has no scientific explanation. To this challenge I ask, weren’t phe nomena explained by religion until science eventually came in? Even though the specific causes of the Big Bang are not yet clear, we will eventually get there through reasoning that is backed by solid evidence rather than a comforting story. Reli gion has a tendency to provide an “explanation” for what we can’t fathom, when sometimes we have to accept that there are still unanswered questions.
If there is an almighty be ing orchestrating all these events and people and if our destinies are already written, there is no point in Heaven and Hell. If Islam and other religions proclaim all things are predetermined, aren’t your good and bad deeds already known? Consequently, isn’t
your spot in Heaven or Hell (Jannah and Jahannam in Is lam) already figured out? The argument against this point is that we have the “free will” to believe or not to believe in a religion, and that choice deter mines our sins in life. Aristotle says that we have the power to do or not to do, so our “fate” is not entirely reliant on a pre determined system—thus the agency of “free will.” I argue that then, it’s not really fate at all, because this statement— to say your life path is already made for you but it’s your “free will” to take or not to take it— contradicts. If two paths are provided to you, aren’t you fat ed to take a specific one? This illusion of “free will” is a way religions attempt to solidify the point of Heaven and Hell, when, in actuality, true free will exists without fate. Our choic es and wrongdoings are based on our own accord, making the afterlife nothing but a false in centive.
Religion is supposed to be freeing, something to rely on when there’s nothing else left. Instead, it feels like a cage I’ve been put into. Whether you’re a grounded atheist, firm believer, or something in between, reli gion will resurface throughout your life, and it’s good to con tinuously question one’s values. I will continue exploring my value of fate and sort through the messy harmony and clash I have with Islam. I strongly believe that fate is an illogical concept, but I have haunting doubts about the purpose of praying and frustration with the prospect of forbidden love. Fate isn’t real, but hopefully, I’m destined to figure these things out.
Everything in the universe is part of an intricate wave of moments crashing and intertwining. It’s not fate, but it’s not chance either.
to demonstrate their dominance and leads them to believe that they can express their opinions whenever they want and to whomever they choose.
Awareness concerning street ha rassment is quite prevalent, especially in the form of videos. In a famous YouTube video from 2014 titled “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Wom an” that garnered over 51 million views, a woman walks for 10 hours in New York City and films her journey. Throughout the video, men catcall her with comments such as “Some body’s acknowledging you for being beautiful. You should say ‘thank you’
growth, as future generations can discover the negative implications of catcalling and catcallers can begin to recognize the extent of their actions.
Though catcalls appear to be agreed on by the masses as inap propriate, there are still some who defend it. To them, catcalling is dis missed as just a friendly compliment, with the perpetrators often com plaining, “What, I can’t even compli ment a woman now?” Catcalling will never be a form of flattery, as women should not have to be objectified on the street and questioned about their appearance every time they leave the
the start of high school. This timing is far too late for a topic this serious to be taught, especially when surveys show that almost 70 percent of wom en had their first encounter with sex ual harassment before the age of 14. Sexual harassment should be defined and taught as seriously as bullying, as both are common experiences that can be reduced if enough individu als are properly educated. Initiating a basic understanding of what sex ual harassment is can be immensely beneficial for children. Staying silent about harassment can be detrimen tal. Therefore, proper education will
By AMARYLLIS SUNSitting on the “Alice in Wonder land” mural outside of Stuyvesant, my friend and I were eating lunch during our free period when a group of three adult men walked up to us and shouted, “Let me take you out! You look good!” We immediately fell into a shocked silence before laugh ing nervously and resuming our pre vious conversation. Yet we could not believe that in broad daylight, a group of men had approached the two of us, clearly students, to verbally harass us.
During one of my daily chats with my mother, when we catch each other up on our days, I explained the term “catcall” to her after the ex perience at the mural. I offered ex amples of catcalling that my friends and I had encountered. Demands for dates, requests for phone numbers, and seemingly kind compliments of my appearance were just a few of the examples I gave her. Normally, I re counted these experiences amusingly, laughing at the unawareness of others
to keep their opinions to themselves. However, as I received more aggres sive comments, I began to question the overwhelmingly common female experience of being catcalled.
The word “catcall,” meaning to make a whistle, shout, or comment of a sexual nature to a woman pass ing by, has been used since the 17th century. Within the last few decades, the use of the term has skyrocketed. Catcalling is a form of verbal sexual harassment. Based on Stop Street Harrassment’s survey, 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men have experienced sexual harassment, and 77 percent of women have experi enced specifically verbal sexual ha rassment. Sexual harassment is not limited to one sex and can happen to any individual, so education and awareness regarding it need to be im proved.
Sociology professors explain that catcalling is often a play for power. Women experience harassment al most twice as often as men. Fur thermore, the perpetrators tend to be male. This power play allows men
more,” as well as repeatedly shout at her to smile. Though some may use the excuse of an individual’s clothing and self-expression as justification for sexual harassment, the woman in the video wears a simple black Tshirt with jeans. This video went viral on YouTube, resulting in numerous other videos with the same concept of walking in a populated city and filming the experience. In some vid eos, the women walking responded to the catcalls, causing the men to fall silent and retreat. The women walk ing in these videos varied in race and appearance, but whistles and uncom fortable shouts were repeatedly heard in every video.
A modern example of awareness concerning street harassment is the Instagram account @catcallsofnyc. Its feed shows quotes in large, col orful chalked letters written on side walks. All of these quotes were taken from messages sent to the account concerning real-life catcalls that peo ple experienced around the city. These catcalls are then chalked in at the ex act location they occurred, often re sulting in passerby civilians stopping to read the comment. One of the chalked quotes says, “Take that mask off so that I can see how that mouth works.” Videos on the account’s page showcase the shocked reactions of pedestrians, especially parents who want to shield their children’s eyes from seeing the writing. Catcallers react defensively to the writing, claim ing their right to compliment a wom an based on her clothes. However, the fact that children are seeing the crude comments and that catcallers are becoming defensive demonstrates
house. The catcallers view the indi viduals walking along the street in a predator-prey dynamic, hence why they feel empowered to shout their comments toward the individuals and sometimes even follow them. Women have expressed their disdain for these comments for years, circulating the #NoWomanEver hashtag on Twit ter to raise awareness for the cat calls many women have encountered throughout their lives. Yet, street ha rassment is still an extensive issue.
The hashtag sparked controversy and resulted in the #NoManEver hashtag, which argued against the no tion that street harassment was wrong. Samson Boyle, one of the men who tweeted using this hashtag, stated that “to take away the ability for men to say to a woman, ‘Nice smile,’ ‘You’re beautiful,’ ‘I like your eyes,’ or even as little as saying ‘hi,’ is like trying to take away a man’s sexuality […] and iden tity.” The male perception of catcall ing centers around their right to com pliment a woman, whereas the female perception of catcalling involves a heightened sense of fear and anxiety. These clear differences in standpoint demonstrate the contrast in priorities between the catcallers and the cat called, and why education needs to be administered from a young age to teach future generations about sexual harassment and its impact.
Anti-bullying campaigns in schools become more prominent as children get older, with the school ad ministration constantly encouraging students to confide in a trusted adult if a situation arises. However, sexual harassment is not explicitly taught about until around eighth grade and
While I was taking the SAT in August, my proctor tried to lighten the mood by spending the entirety of our first break period complain ing about the College Board. He told us to look up the definition of a non-profit organization, to find out how much College Board CEO David Coleman was com pensated in a year, and to “draw our own conclusions.”
The College Board considers itself a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible non-profit organization and is le gally classified as such. That special status means that it does not have to pay any taxes, which is certain ly a nice situation to be in for an organization that generated a net income of almost $140 million in 2017. The United States Tax Code defines 501(c)(3) non-profit orga nizations as “charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur
sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals.” Ex amples of non-profits are the Girl Scouts, the Humane Society, and organizations that feed the hungry free of cost.
Though most non-profit edu cational organizations are schools, that aspect seems to be the only part of the definition that the Col lege Board is involved in. By defini tion, non-profits are not supposed to make profits, but rather have a purpose that serves the public good. They do not sell shares and make money for investors like forprofit companies do.
In contrast, the College Board constantly prioritizes its own rev enue over truly helping students.
Recently, a new AP Precalculus course was introduced, despite Precalculus being a primarily high school course and therefore not very useful as a college course for students trying to receive credits. It seems to be nothing more than a cheap cash grab by the College Board, yet it is a course students
will inevitably take to boost their resumes. “Easy” and relatively pointless courses like AP Precalcu lus are more profitable for the Col lege Board than more rigorous AP courses. For instance, the College Board used to offer a more acceler ated computer science course, AP Computer Science AB. However, not enough students took it for the College Board to see large income, so they scrapped the course entire ly and just kept the easier AP Com puter Science A course that made them more money. College Board CEO David Coleman (Stuyvesant ’87), received an annual compensa tion of $1,532,201 in 2018, around 30 times what the average teacher makes.
The College Board claims that its AP exams allow students to ac cumulate college credits early and skip beginner level courses, but it is not guaranteed that students will receive credit for the exams they take. Even upon receiving a perfect five for certain exams, many private universities do not
accept credits for anything further than a universal course placement exam. Students are promised that they will be saving money and re ceiving credits when they sign up and pay for these exams, but the reality is that they are often paying for nothing more than a sheet of paper with some course titles and numbers.
The College Board has a vicelike grip on college-related testing. Besides the SAT, it has continuous ly expanded its list of AP exams. As far as these all-important exams are concerned, the College Board is the only company in town. In other words, it is a monopoly. Al bert, using the College Board’s own AP Microeconomics course, provides this definition: “A mo nopoly is a market structure where one company or seller has com plete control over the market and has very limited to no competition, often resulting in high prices and low quality products.”
“Complete control” and “very limited to no competition” pre
hopefully allow future generations to better express their emotions and lessen that 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men.
Women are taught from genera tion to generation about protecting themselves in public. Whether they are tightly gripping keys when walking home in the dark or always bringing a sweater in order to cover up, meth ods have been shared and collected like precious stones. Experiencing verbal harassment on the street has become normalized among women. Incidents of catcalls are shared as if they are gossip stories. Throughout my life, catcalls directed at me have ranged from short compliments to direct aggression, with the increasing amount of catcalls correlating with my changed outlook on the serious ness of the situation.
Education needs to be instilled in schools for children to learn about the harms of sexual harassment and what to do in the case that it oc curs. Helping students classify what sexual harassment is, debunking the stereotypes regarding sexual harass ment, and teaching about consent and its importance can all play a ma jor role in broadening an individual’s understanding of harassment. Fur thermore, emphasizing that sexual harassment can happen to anyone is especially important, as restrict ing harassment to just one group can prevent others from speaking out. Setting a strong base early on can eventually grow into a deeper under standing of morals, one day reducing the overwhelmingly large percentage of individuals who have experienced sexual violence.
cisely describe the College Board’s power over standardized testing. In the early stages of the pandemic, the College Board continued to charge nearly $100 for each Ad vanced Placement exam, even though they had switched the ex ams’ format to a glitchy, ineffective virtual platform that did not allow students to fully demonstrate their knowledge of the course material. Additionally, in some cases, the College Board does not even gen erate new exams for each test-tak ing section. It was revealed in 2018 that the College Board reused a 2017 international exam from Chi na for an American exam the year later. If students are paying $90 for an exam, the least they can get is an original one.
Despite fitting into this defini tion perfectly, the College Board is somehow treated as a charitable, non-profit organization. In reality, the College Board is a corporation with a monopoly on standardized testing and should be viewed as such.
The male perception of catcalling centers around their right to compliment a woman, whereas the female perception of catcalling involves a heightened sense of fear and anxiety.Julia Shen / The Spectator
The universe has its fair share of Buzzfeed quizzes, ready to tell the test-taker what vegetable most resonates with them or when they will get married. Zo diac signs and Myers-Briggs personality types riddle dating profiles, daily life, and even job applications, with 13 percent of employers using personality tests during the hiring process. De spite the popularity of these per sonality tests, they have failed to garner the approval of psycholo gists, leading many to believe that science has yet to find an effec tive model—but this is not the case.
The Big Five model, also known more professionally as the Five Factor model, encompasses five basic personality traits: extra version, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroti cism. Each of these traits rep resents a spectrum that encom passes the characteristics that can be found in most individuals.
The Big Five was a saving grace after decades of research stretching back to the 1930s. The field contained a mystifying assortment of largely unrelated theories since each paper tended to design its traits independently of the other. The Big Five theory emerged slowly from the disar ray. In 1936, Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert first formed a list of 4,500 traits, which was nar rowed down to 16 by Raymond Cattell and his colleagues in the 1940s, and finally to the Big Five traits by Paul Costa and Robert McRae in the 1970s. The world’s most prominent psychologists gathered in Honolulu in 1981 to
assess the Big Five model, where they concluded that it was the most robust model of personal ity.
The first trait, extraversion, is familiar to experienced investiga tors of their own personality. Ex traversion is characterized by so ciability, assertiveness, emotional expressiveness, and, beyond the scientific community, breaking into song and dance.
Agreeableness contributes to attributes such as kindness, af fection, and empathy. Those high in this trait may engage in more prosocial behaviors, or voluntary behaviors intended to benefit others.
Openness is also referred to as openness to experience, for intuitive reasons. Highly “open” people tend to have an eclec tic range of interests or possess the eagerness to experience new things. Abstract or unconven tional thinking may be difficult for those low in this trait.
Conscientiousness is defined by goal-directed behaviors and good impulse control. Conscien tious people are mindful of dead lines, considerate of the impacts of their actions, and less prone to procrastination.
Finally, neuroticism is char acterized by sadness, moodiness, and emotional instability. Those high in neuroticism may experi ence significant stress, struggle to bounce back from stressful events, or, as some may have ob served, huddle in dark corners.
The Big Five traits are not a comprehensive list of differenc es among individuals, but rather categories within more specific differences, which are known as facets, which tend to vary. For
instance, those who are highly neurotic or introverted are more prone to social inhibition, or shy ness; those who are highly agree able tend to be more altruistic.
The Big Five can also have predictive power. Conscientious people may find themselves hav ing an easier time transitioning to college and keeping up their grades; highly neurotic people may have less social support or have more unhappy marriages. One study found that 22 percent of the variance in life satisfac tion among men and 17 percent among women was related to the Big Five traits. Surprisingly enough, one’s lifespan can also relate to personality, with consci entiousness in particular having a positive effect.
The traits that one possesses may change over the course of one’s lifetime. The exact patterns across age are unknown, though a 2017 study using data from 16 different studies found that agreeableness tends to remain stable while the other four traits decrease with time. The decline in conscientiousness and openness is linear, whereas the decline in neuroticism follows a U-shaped curve and the decline in extraver sion follows a hill-shaped curve. Personality change is also more rapid in earlier years, with people often settling into themselves, and perhaps steering away from openness-related experiences like cliff-diving, later on in life.
Men and women also tend to differ in levels of these traits, though conclusions are hazy. Most research has found that young women score higher than young men in neuroticism in a gap that narrows with age, though
the higher scores from women seen in extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness are less agreed upon. The reason for this variance is unknown, with selfperception, societal norms, evo lution, culture, and even social media playing a potential role.
While significant changes within an individual are rare, recent research suggests that such change can happen with consistent and deliberate effort.
Emotional stability was the trait domain that showed the most potential for change, followed by extraversion. According to one study, individuals must first wish to change their trait-related behavior; second, they must view such changes as feasible; lastly, this change needs to become ha bitual.
Still, an individual’s rank or der on any given trait compared to those of the same age remains surprisingly consistent with time. Some parts of our personality may have been granted at birth.
Twin studies over the past decade have shown about 40 to 60 per cent of trait variance is thought to be genetic, which, depending on the person and their family, may or may not be good news.
Those accustomed to the de tailed profiles of popular models may find themselves yearning for more than the causations and correlations above. It wouldn’t be hard to create personality types based on the Big Five, in which combinations of those high and low in a given trait are given profiles and predictions. However, such a model wouldn’t make waves in psychology. Popu lar models are often type-based, meaning they place people into
Astronomers recently dis covered Gaia BH1, a black hole 1560 light-years away It is the closest known black hole to Earth yet.
Italian researchers have ex tended the shelf life of fresh pasta from 90 to 120 days, by adding probiotic microorganisms to the dough and packaging it in modified atmosphere packaging.
The Food and Drug Administration grant ed Elranatamab with Breakthrough Therapy Designation for its dem onstrated effectiveness in treating myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells.
categories, as opposed to traitbased, which tend to be more ac curate, as they acknowledge the independent and flexible nature of traits.
It is important to remember that macro definitions of per sonality have their limits. People change, people stay stagnant, and people show resistance to labels of all kinds. That doesn’t mean that identifying one’s personal ity is useless—self-awareness has hefty psychological benefits, including higher job satisfac tion and happiness. Ultimately, whether you are a soul searcher or a researcher, you may reach a better understanding of yourself with a healthy dose of Big Fiveadjacent psychology. At the very least, you should find it more ac curate than that Buzzfeed quiz about the pizza slice that most resembles you.
With the constant growth of the population, the high demand for food and new medicine has be come a prominent issue. However, a relatively new biological technol ogy, gene editing, seems to hold the solutions to this ongoing prob lem. Genetically modified organ isms (GMOs) have increased our medical capabilities by allowing the mass production and development of a wide variety of proteins nec essary for different medicines. The unique engineering of genes has also drastically changed the food industry as our world of seven bil lion people has outgrown its ability to sustain itself. Gene editing has been proven to play an important role in a variety of industries and is a crucial technology in our con stantly evolving society.
As of right now, the modernday gene editing technologies gen erally utilized are clustered regu larly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and transcrip tion activator-like effector nucle ases (TALEN). The CRISPR tech nique utilizes a bacterial immune system protein called cas-9. In pro karyotes, this protein cleaves viral DNA, protecting bacteria from being killed by viruses. In a scien tific environment, this precise cut ting power can be utilized to snip individual or very small groups of nucleotides. TALEN also per forms incredibly precise cuts but in a different way. They are sequencecustomizable nucleases, and thus are able to destroy exact segments
of DNA. These cut strands of DNA can be replaced relatively easily by hijacking the cell repair practice. Despite their differences, both techniques are versatile, inex pensive, and can be easily utilized to perform very precise edits.
Genetic modification plays a vital part in assisting the mass production of certain medica tions. The major medication used to treat diabetes, insulin, exempli fies the medical uses of cell fac tories, as it can only be produced in large quantities with the help of genetic modification. Bacteria that have insulin-creating genetic machinery added can be carefully cultivated and provided with mas sive amounts of raw materials to produce large amounts of this pro tein quickly. Its capabilities have solved most of the technological problems with insulin production. For instance, the high price of in sulin due to the artificial scarcity and lack of production induced by aggressively defended big drug company patents was solved. In addition, a vast number of other medical substances can be pro duced using cell factories’ tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), which helps break up blood clots and cer tain vaccines.
Gene editing has become in creasingly important—it is esti mated that roughly 90 percent of corn, soybeans, and sugar beets grown for commercial sale are genetically modified. They are staple foods on our planet, and the increased productivity brought by genetic engineering can save millions from malnutrition. The
massive increase in agricultural production will put more food in circulation, thereby driving down food prices and feeding more people. Enhancing plant immune modifications also provides a level
rigorously tested by international agencies. No health issues have been observed to be caused by the consumption of GMOs in nations that have approved them for com mercial sale. The only health con
Any GMO marketed for human consumption has been rigorously tested by international agencies. No health issues have been observed to be caused by the consumption of GMOs in nations that have approved them for commercial sale.
of resiliency against crop blights, which will only increase in severity due to monocropping and climate change. Taking all of these benefits together, gene editing provides us with a resilient food supply chain and a significantly enhanced food production infrastructure.
Despite the clear benefits, there are many people who object to the use of genetically modified crops. These groups tend to have one of two overarching arguments. The first is health: a lot of detrac tors of GMOs believe that they either haven’t had enough testing or cause a variety of health issues. This pretty much always rings false though, since any GMO marketed for human consumption has been
cern that exists at all is from crosscontamination between GMOs created for animal feed and GMOs grown for human consumption, but that has only been observed in very small amounts and is relatively easy to prevent.
The second argument is cen tered around environmental dam age. GMOs risk a small amount of damage to the environment due to the proliferation of non-native genes. However, their environmen tal damage can be easily mitigated, and they do far less environmen tal damage than other products like pesticides. They are probably the least environmentally damag ing way to massively increase the health, safety, and amount of food
we have.
Despite the current benefits it already holds, gene modification is set to further expand in both fields. Vaccines developed for cer tain types of cancer and generated by edited bacteria and plants have long been tested but haven’t quite come into widespread use yet. The same goes for the new DNA vac cines, which have a vast variety of applications but are not as widely used. As bacterial manufacturing continues to spread, these tech niques will be used for a wider variety of medications. In fact, without a future significant boost in bacterial productivity, certain experimental medications will be nearly impossible to mass produce.
As we learn more about the genomes of common crops and continue to improve our genetic modification capabilities, these crops will continue to get more productive, more blight resis tant, and require fewer nutrients to grow. Gene editing has had a revolutionary impact on the phar maceutical and food industries. By giving us bacterial cell factories, it has provided us with new ways to mass produce and create medica tions. By providing our crops with better immune systems and more nutritional efficiency, it has in creased the resilience and produc tivity of our food infrastructure. This allows us to feed far more people in difficult environmental circumstances, addressing the issue of overpopulation. Though this technology is only in its infancy, its benefits will grow and diversify over time.
“Treat others the way you want to be treated.”
“Be kind, for everyone else is fighting a harder battle.”
“Your success is my suc cess.”
Widely known expressions such as these are taught as mot tos to live by when in reality they are quixotic. It’s one thing to feel happy for someone, but it’s another for their success to make you happy. Jealousy or envy doesn’t make you a bad person or friend—it is a natural psychological instinct that can be traced back to early human kind.
From an evolutionary stand point, emotions are adaptive re sponses to environmental stim uli that will increase the chances of survival. Since higher success is often associated with a great er chance of survival, it makes sense that humans are constant ly striving for a higher degree of accomplishment. Whether it is
and connotations, both feel ings are affiliated with reactions to someone else with desirable resources. Jealousy is about wanting to take someone else's resource for yourself and de priving them of it, such as tak ing someone’s doughnut out of their hand and eating it. Mean while, envy has a more positive connotation and is related to the desire of wanting to gain the same, or better, resources independently, which in this case will be going to Dunkin’ Donuts and buying your own doughnut.
this mindset, but in actuality, it is not constructive. By fixating and overhyping the successes of others, you tend to be ig norant of your own successes and areas to improve, constrict ing self-esteem and personal growth.
By SUBAAH SYEDAs a Stuyvesant student, catching yourself daydream ing during class, if not falling asleep, probably hits close to home. It is easy to succumb to the fantasies created by our minds. In complex terms, day dreaming is our mind taking elements from real life and con sciously manipulating them into vivid scenarios. Sometimes re ferred to as the state in between being awake and asleep, night dreaming and daydreaming are very similar, except that it takes the conscious effort from being awake to controlling our day dreams. Though we can enjoy where our mind takes us, there is more to daydreaming than a temporary escape from class.
Studies have shown that daydreaming is a sign of cre ativity and divergent thinking, which may be relieving news to frequent daydreamers. Di vergent thinking is a type of thinking that requires coming up with different possibilities to find a solution. A recent study in 2020 conducted by the Uni versity of California explored the relationship between day dreaming and creativity. Par ticipants were instructed to re port their thoughts in response to the events they experienced throughout the day and then reflect on how creative they felt
early hominids striving for more food or people today achiev ing higher levels of education, humans are always looking to move up. However, as opposed to what may seem logical, the trigger of envious emotions is not always correlated with the value of the reward. Rather, it seems that the obtainer of the reward and their relationship with you is more telling.
“Relevant social circle” is the idea that people tend to envy those who are most com parable to them. In this context, “comparable” can mean some one of similar age, background, education, or opportunities (say a classmate, sibling, or friend).
For instance, if you were asked whether you would be more en vious of a classmate who won a local competition or the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the answer would almost always be your classmate. However easy this question is to answer, it does not make much sense logi cally—a Nobel Peace Prize is so
much more of a greater accom plishment than winning some high school writing contest that the comparison is almost comi cal. This strange pattern then begs the question of why these emotions do not parallel the dis crepancies between the rewards.
If a person is comparable to you in relevant areas but perhaps slightly better, there is more mo tivation to move closer to their standing because it seems more attainable. This idea can also be supported from an evolutionary perspective: it is a waste of time and energy to get on the same level as someone much higher than you because fewer re sources are required to achieve a more realistic goal. Access to the achievements of someone comparable to you is something of a low-hanging fruit.
These emotions, which are triggered by the desire to gain resources, can be generally di vided into two categories: jeal ousy and envy. Though they have two different meanings
Envy can be further divided into three categories: depressive envy, hostile envy, and benign envy. In depressive envy, you may feel that someone else’s success represents your own failure. For example, if your friend has an internship over the summer, it may make you think that you are not doing enough. In contrast, trigger ing anger rather than sadness, hostile envy is where you may be rooting for another person’s failure. In this mindset, you would prefer to be failing to gether rather than failing alone. Hostile envy may seem very ag gressive, but it is entirely intrin sic in our minds. If you take an extremely difficult test, it feels better to know that everyone else had the same experience— it’s only natural. The final type is benign envy, which, as the name suggests, seems like the most positive type. In benign envy, people pay close attention to the accomplishments of those that they envy, with more of a “that’s so impressive” attitude.
On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with
at the end. While some of the participants’ minds wandered off to mundane thoughts, such as planning for future chores, other participants’ minds elicit ed what-if scenarios and fantas tical sequences from the events of their day. The latter group of people reported feeling more creative and inspired by the end of the day. The wandering mind creates connections between our thoughts and has the abil ity to boost our creative sense, a skill that individuals would need over a broad range of fields, from brainstorming characters of a story as an author to find ing cures to diseases as a re searcher.
Daydreaming is also shown to help cope with stress and anxiety. Especially when com pleting tasks we are not par ticularly fond of, daydreaming scenarios can help bring our mind to a better place and thus improve our mood. However, for the same reason, exces sive daydreaming can become harmful, potentially leading to a condition called maladaptive daydreaming.
Maladaptive daydreaming is when a person regularly ex periences daydreams that are intense and highly distracting. These daydreams can last from several minutes to hours. Fur thermore, the individual can develop an addiction by con
stantly wishing to return to the daydream, all in an effort to escape their responsibilities in reality. This condition can go far as being accompanied by physical movements or whis pers to match the events occur ring in their daydream. During the COVID-19 lockdown, there were heightened levels of mal adaptive daydreaming, showing how stress and external pres sures can trigger episodes of it.
demonstrate that in the effort to dissociate from the con straints of reality, people end up neglecting their responsibilities, thus damaging aspects of their real lives.
Since it is not considered an actual condition in the Di agnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the man ual which psychologists use to diagnose individuals, many people overlook maladap
These emotions are evo lutionary instincts and are al most inevitable, but there are many ways that you can channel them toward something more constructive. First of all, it is important to recognize, rather than block, any envy that you may feel. Identify the thoughts that you usually have after hear ing about someone’s success, and modify them. For instance, you could change “they are a success, and I am a failure” to “their success doesn’t under mine my own.” Thinking about what you want to achieve in life and starting to take the steps toward them may help you feel more fulfilled and less sensitive to envious emotions.
Contemporarily, survival tends to not be the main focus of life. Despite however much we and the world around us have evolved, one thing remains steadfast: the human will to suc ceed. No matter which area of life this holds true to you, we are always trying to improve ourselves, often for the better ment of others, too. This could not be more relevant than at Stuyvesant, a school filled to the brim with ambitious people with incredible accomplish ments. It’s important to recog nize that everyone is fighting for the same thing and that ev eryone is a product of the same evolutionary fight. And that, ul timately, your success is every body’s success.
people may categorize symp toms of maladaptive daydream ing as a trait of a careless and lazy worker. However, there have been many maladaptive daydreamers whose lives have been very difficult to endure because of their condition. In an article reviewed and pub lished on Psychology Today, a Bolivian woman who was a mal adaptive daydreamer compared maladaptive daydreaming to a drug that she can’t live without, and in the end, it feels like she’s wasting her life, hung up on the vivid and intense scenarios she make in their head.
Reya Miller / The SpectatorFurther studies have revealed that maladaptive daydreaming in students correlates with a decline in GPA. These findings
tive daydreaming as a serious disorder. In fact, maladaptive daydreaming is often confused with regular daydreaming, and
The lack of treatment for maladaptive daydreaming comes from the lack of seri ousness in the issue as well as a proper diagnostic label. A strategy to combat problems like these can be to look at the root of the problem in order to come up with solutions. In this case, a primary cause for indi viduals to relapse to maladaptive daydreaming is because they are not satisfied with the lives they have. To deal with this, having a strong support system and a drive to accomplish goals and confront life’s problems is cru cial in personal development. Sure, we can daydream from time to time and miss the last few sentences a teacher says, but we wouldn't want to be missing entire lessons repeatedly.
Movies require a certain amount of suspension or disbe lief to be interesting. In a few popular genres, such as action and horror, this suspension is particu larly important to enjoy the film. I asked Stuyvesant students to point out instances in movies and shows where reality was bent, so I could see if they might work in real life. From stabbings to shoot ings, I researched a few common tropes and crazy scenes. Let’s talk about them.
sec. From Wick’s, the bullets are slightly slower at around 1000 ft/sec. The speed of sound is 1125 ft/sec at standard tempera ture and pressure, so it will not be possible to hear the gun fire before being hit. On the other hand, if the gun in question isn’t such a serious one, there may still be a slight chance to avoid it.
In any case, avoiding the bul
2. How long would it take for a vampire to suck the blood out of a victim?
As I understand it, vampires bite their victims and proceed to suck their blood out. That’s pret ty inefficient, but we are already working with the supernatural, so some liberties can be taken. Bloodsucking is somewhat analo
vampire would only be a third of the way through a victim’s blood supply before death, making the rest of the blood much more dif ficult to reach.
From a health perspective, would an all-blood diet even be sustainable? Interestingly, blood has roughly 450 calories per 500mL. This means that the vampire is getting 4,090-5,110
even tiny wounds, but assuming no major arteries or veins are cut in the process, the best-case sce nario may be living with a colo noscopy bag. A stabbing in the upper body is harder to survive because of the amount of vas culature found there. Arms and thighs are small, so the wound could easily puncture crucial blood vessels. The neck and chest are easily the worst places to be stabbed and would require im mediate medical attention, and even then, nothing is guaranteed. Worse, the stabbing instrument may introduce bacteria that could kill you even if the wound was managed.
In “John Wick: Chapter 2” (2017), skilled assassin and titu lar character John Wick walks through a crowded subway sta tion as crime boss Cassian shoots at him from an upper level. Both pistols have silencers attached, presumably to mask their sound from civilians, and they continue to shoot at each other without success as the camera pans be tween each man.
First of all, silencers are not silent. With modern firearms, si lencers reduce sound only to the low 100-decibel range. That is still quite loud—about the sound of an indoor movie theater or fireworks. In Wick’s well-pop ulated station, it is possible that background noise may have ren dered the guns quieter, but it still doesn’t add up that nobody close to either shooter heard them at all.
When it comes to hearing the gunshot in time to react to it, it depends on what kind of gun is being used. The guns from the John Wick scene are the Arsenal Firearms USA AF-1 Strike One for Cassian and the Smith & Wes son SW1911SC E Series for Wick. Both of these are high-precision instruments and are engineered for accuracy and control, mean ing there is very little recoil, the backward push from the force of firing. The bullets from Cas sian’s gun will leave the muzzle at a velocity in the around 1200 ft/
lets comes down to seeing them in time. People’s reaction times are generally around 0.2 seconds, and someone highly trained like Wick or Cassian would have im proved times. The shooter would have to be at least 250 feet away for you to have any chance at all to rely on a quick reaction, assuming superhuman vision. Regardless, bullets are tiny, and when the gun has a silencer, the muzzle flash when fired is reduced. Spotting the flash, predicting the trajectory of the bullet, and having time to duck would not happen within 0.2 seconds. Essentially, John Wick should not have survived and you certainly would not have either, but nobody ever watched an action movie for realism!
gous to sipping from a straw; the world record for drinking 500mL of water through a straw is 7.3 seconds. Blood is roughly three times as viscous as water, so it might take closer to 22 seconds for the vampire to drink 500mL of blood. The average adult has 1.2-1.5 gallons of blood in their body. Thus, it’ll take between 3.5 and four minutes for a vampire to suck the blood out of someone at a high speed if that vampire had unobstructed access to that blood. In reality, the complex vasculature that contains human blood would make it more dif ficult to consume blood quickly. The pumping of the blood by the heart would help somewhat, but about half a gallon of blood loss is enough to kill a person. The
calories per person. Blood is also almost entirely protein, so the vampire is essentially on a protein shake diet. That’s good for bulk ing, but nothing else.
3. How many times can someone reasonably get stabbed and survive?
Most Halloween movies have at least one stabbing scene, and most of them are not inherently unsurvivable. Naturally, surviv ing a stabbing depends on where one is stabbed. There isn’t really a “safe” place, but there are cer tainly worse areas than others. In truth, survivability depends on proximity to a hospital. The stomach area is packed with in testines which will spill out of
Would a thick, serrated knife cause more damage than a thin and faster-moving one? It de pends: the damage is more about kinetic energy than what is sliced with the stabbing instrument. The velocity squared increases kinetic energy, so the faster the instrument, the more serious the transfer of energy to body tissue is. However, it is tricky to stab someone with enough speed to make use of that.
While waiting for medical attention, surviving a stabbing comes down to blood loss. If a person loses over half a gallon of blood, or about 40 percent, they will die. For a wound to the neck’s carotid artery, this is possible in five to 15 seconds. From a more slow-bleeding area not connected to major vasculature, or when the stabbing instrument is kept in the wound, blood loss is less extreme and would leave time for additional stabbings. Thus, a per son can get stabbed any number of times as long as the wounds are in less life-threatening areas, there isn’t too much blood loss, and robust medical attention is provided, though every wound decreases their chances of sur vival.
If you’re ever in a shootout, stabbing, or under attack by a vampire, knowledge of movie scenes isn’t going to offer much advice. What’s the best way to survive anything? Be in Hol lywood, preferably as the main character.
1. What are the chances of reacting to and avoiding a bullet in time?
Amid the drama in Warner Bros., ranging from mass firings to cancellations of movies already in post-production, the DC Ex tended Universe has attempted to restore its direction and reinstate its place in the current superherostuffed film industry with “Black Adam.”
“Black Adam” takes place in the fictional country of Kahndaq, a once self-governed civilization tarnished by greedy kings and im perialism. Black Adam (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) is a slaveturned-champion after being be stowed powers of Egyptian gods to combat a king who is obsessed with the Crown of Sabbac—a crown that gives the wearer unfathomable power. After seemingly defeating this king, Black Adam is put to rest for 5,000 years, until he is wo ken up by Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) in an attempt to locate the crown to save Kahndaq, which is being threatened by the imperialist group Intergang. The movie fol lows Black Adam as he attempts to adapt to the modern world while facing Intergang, his past conflicts, and the Justice Society, the firstever team of superheroes in comic book history.
The film continues to expand the DC Cinematic Universe with cameos from U.S. government of ficial Amanda Waller (Viola Da vis) who also appeared in “The Suicide Squad” (2021). Waller in troduces Black Adam to the Justice Society, which includes Dr. Fate
(Pierce Brosnan), Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Cyclone (Quintessa Swin dell), and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo). These are comic-book characters who many have antici pated seeing adapted on-screen. The four, albeit an odd group, bring charm and humor to the film. Notably, Centineo’s young, clumsy superhero and Swindell’s joyful, intelligent wind-bender have an entertaining dynamic. Similarly, Brosnan is a delight when play ing the wise, revered Dr. Fate, and Hodge has great chemistry with all of the cast by playing the stuck-up yet courageous leader of the group.
Unlike the four, Black Adam re mains dispassionate throughout the film to portray his total discon nect from reality. Still, the movie does a good job of balancing Black Adam’s broodiness with humorous gags, such as his misunderstanding of the concept of a door.
Adrianna and her son Amon (Bodhi Sabongui) also play impor tant roles in the film, acting as mor al compasses for Black Adam in his adjustment to the modern world.
Shahi’s performance as Adrianna adds heart to the film, as she stops at nothing to ensure the safety of her son and the protection and freedom of the people in her coun try. Shahi encapsulates the soul of Kahndaq and embodies the emo tions that the rest of the people in the country feel.
Though The Rock has been criticized for playing similar roles in his films, people overlook the fact that many of the movies in his catalog have stellar action se
quences. “Black Adam” proves no different. However, as the movie progresses, the enjoyment from these scenes declines. After an amazing battle between Hawkman and Black Adam, the movie’s CGI noticeably declines in quality, as choppy editing overwhelms view ers in certain fight scenes. More time should have been given to special effects artists and fight di rectors, as the film starts to look like a high-budget CW show at best. The final battle of the movie is also incredibly anti-climactic. Starting with obnoxious and un necessary zoom-ins of Brosnan’s face and ending with a generic and unoriginal CGI boss battle, the overall action in the movie lacks an “It” factor to set it apart from simi lar films.
Along with formulaic action sequences, the movie has been compared to the Marvel Cinemat ic Universe, with many dubbing its characters as imitations of popular live-action Marvel characters. Dr. Fate has been criticized by many for being a copy of Dr. Strange, despite debuting 23 years before the latter. Similarly, Atom-Smasher and AntMan are often compared, as they are both easy-going, humorous, and able to grow to humongous sizes. Though the writers and pro ducers are not entirely at fault for this issue, the movie could’ve made a much larger effort to uniquely in clude and establish the identities of the characters.
Though the movie takes place during the modern era, the main conflicts of the plot are rooted in
the past. The antagonizing threat in this movie is the Crown of Sabbac, as many tyrants are actively trying to acquire the crown and its power, a plot that was underwhelming at best. A larger focus on Kahndaq’s fight for freedom from not only the Imperialists, but also the Jus tice Society, would have made this movie infinitely better. Imperial ism in the Middle East is a very relevant topic with long-lasting ef fects persisting to this day. Though Amanda Waller, a high-powered U.S. government official, initially disregards all the conflict and tor ment Kahndaq suffers from impe rialism, the moment Kahndaq is seen as a threat to the United States because of Black Adam, she sends the Justice Society to take it out. These events allude to the United States and other Western forces sending “global peacekeepers” into Middle East conflicts, causing fur ther destruction, which is paral leled in multiple action sequences. This plotline provides commentary on modern society and is far more captivating than the primary story. The film hints multiple times at these anti-imperialist themes but fails to fully commit to them, re sulting in a lackluster script.
“Black Adam” contains the ac tion, comedic gags, and overpro duced CGI battles of a conven tional superhero movie. But with its many faults, from the script to filmmaking, the movie fails to prove why everyday movie-goers should entertain future Warner Bros. releases from the DC Ex tended Universe.
By LUCA ADEISHVILI
Australian psychedelic rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is most well-known for its genre variety, shifting from psych rock to thrash metal and even to hip-hop from album to album, and its uniquely quick release schedule, with waits between releases rarely exceeding six months. King Gizzard released five albums in 2017, each of which were unique in style and criti cally acclaimed. Now, King Gizzard has blitzed their fans with three new albums in October of 2022 alone, separated only days apart in releases. And just as the 2017 year of King Gizzard releases delivered delightful tunes for fans, these 2022 rapid re leases maintain that familiar quality, despite some setbacks.
King Gizzard would start the flurry of their “Gizztober” releases with their 21st album, “Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, and Lava.” Following suit from “Omni um Gatherum,” the band’s album re leased earlier in the year, “IDPLML” is a jam album with the added gim mick of each song centering around one of the seven Greek modes of mu sic. Before the album’s release, lead singer Stu Mackenzie would reveal that most of the recording process for “IDPLML” was completed in just over a week, with the band working off of no pre-existing material. The quick production time shows, both for better and for worse. The tracks are long, with no song under five minutes. The extensive instrumental sections take up sizeable chunks of “IDPLML,” and they mostly suffer from over-repetition and blandness. The lyrical quality also suffers on the album, often lacking the sophistica
tion characteristic of much of King Gizzard’s discography. Continuous reuse of lines as lyrics is not uncom mon on “IDPLML,” as shown on tracks such as “Ice V,” where the line “Will we survive Ice V?” is repeated for two minutes straight. Despite these drawbacks, “IDPLML” shows flashes of the creative, collaborative, and intricate music King Gizzard can make at full power. Each mem ber gives their all on the album’s instrumentals, interlacing gui tar, keys, drums and flute into dense, stimu lating com positions. The band’s jamming talents are dem onstrated on the lackadaisical tune of the brass, gui tar, and organs in “Mycelium,” and the jazzy guitar riffs on “Magma.” Frontman Stu Mackenzie’s enchanting vocals complement the tantalizing instru mentation, making “IDPLML” a delectable musical cocktail. Despite a some tracklist bloat and lackluster writing, King Gizzard continues to show their musical prowess with the mesmerizing jams they pump out on “Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mush room and Lava.”
“Laminated Denim,” the second of the Gizztober albums, would re lease only five days after “IDPLML.” The album acts as a spiritual succes sor to KGLW’s first 2022 album, “Made in Timeland,” with “Laminat ed Denim” retaining “Timeland”’s structure of two 15-minute long
songs and its title itself being an anagram for “Made in Timeland.”
Just like “IDPLML,” “Laminated Denim” is a jam album with a greater focus on psychedelic rock over the progressive rock, jazz, and funk of “IDPLML.” Long instrumental sec tions also take up major parts of the album’s two tracks, and though they are more consistent in their overall
never failing to enamor listeners with their dextrous chord progres sions. All in all, “Laminated Denim” is a superior dessert to a promising “Ice Death” main course, continuing the trend of complex and enthralling compositions of “IDPLML.”
Every morning, Stuyvesant stu dents cast their pride aside and try not to collapse in the subway while the overhead fluorescence stings our eyes open. These tracks are to dramatize that pilgrimage, so that Chambers Street feels like the Rock ies, or the Amazon, or the Sahara.
Road of the Lonely Ones Madlib Instrumental hip-hop
Desolation Row Bob Dylan Folk rock
Little Miss Strange Jimi Hendrix Psychedelic rock
visionary composi tions of “IDPLML.” “Laminated Denim”’s first track, “The Land Before Time land,” is a jovial tune with a vivacious arrangement of harmonica, drums, guitar, woodwinds and brass. On the other hand, the second track, “Hy pertension” is tense and foreboding, and mostly made up of minor guitar riffs and drums. Laminated Denim manages to pull off the jam concept far better than “IDPLML,” with the arrangements of both tracks feeling careful, elaborate and continuously catchy throughout. King Gizzard’s instrumental ability truly shines in “Laminated Denim”’s guitar riffs,
“Changes,” the final Gizztober album, stands out among the rest in terms of its sheer quality. It has been in production since 2017, so the ar rangements are multi-faceted and in tricately laid out, with throughline D major and F# major chords and scales lending a consistency to the project. As each song oscillates between the two, “Changes” spans an incredible mix of psych rock, jam music, and jazz-funk with its prominent synths and soothing, sublime vocals from Stu Macken zie. Highlights include the 11-minute dynamic, groovy ballad, “Change,” the rhythmic tunefulness of “Astroturf” teeming with hard-hitting woodwinds and brasses, and the energetic electronic grooves of “Gondii.” “Changes” stands out in its structure and polish, in contrast to the spontaneity and improvisational nature of “Laminat ed Denim” and “IDPLML.” It ends the Gizztober trilogy with a bang.
Despite unnecessary song length and unpolished instrumentals, King Gizzard remains innovative in their instrumental and vocal work. The quality of “IDPLML,” “Laminated Denim,” and “Changes” in spite of these issues continues to show that no matter how swift or spontaneous the creation process, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard always come out with something worth listening to.
Ascension:
Everlong Foo Fighters Alternative rock
What’s Important Beat Happening Twee pop Change Alex G Indie folk
I Shall Love 2 Julia Holter Baroque pop Poncho & Lefty Townes Van Zandt Country Opium Dead Can Dance Darkwave
Edition I / Pt. 1 John Coltrane Free jazz
Black Nasa Black Milk & Sam Austins Conscious hip-hop
Hang Me, Oh Hang Me Punch Brothers BluegrassOri Mermelstein / The Spectator
“I thought it might be a fun mo ment to tell you that my brand-new album comes out October 21.”
Taylor Swift teasing her 10th stu dio album at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards was all too fitting for the music industry’s queen of sur prises. When the clock struck 12:00 a.m. on October 21, 2022, Swift’s 10th studio album “Midnights” made its appearance. A compilation of “13 sleepless nights scattered throughout [her] life,” “Midnights” is a collage of the formative moments of Swift’s life.
Crafting a decemvirate of excep tional studio albums is no easy feat, and in the quest to do so, “Midnights” falls short.
Along with its numerous Spo tify and Billboard-breaking records, “Midnights” sports one of Swift’s most heavy pre-release promotion campaigns to date. The weeks leading up to the album’s release were filled with many sleepless nights for fans. In preparation for the album’s release, Swift took to TikTok to post track ti tle reveals, drumming up excitement (and thousands of fan theories). Yet
despite its unmatched anticipation, the album’s dull lyricism and the hy per-similarity of the tracks render it one of Swift’s weakest projects.
“Midnights” is somewhat of an experimental album. Almost all of the tracks feature techy synthesizers, up beat rhythms, and bright melodies—a sound Swift hadn’t delved into in her prior albums. Given Swift’s penchant for genre-hopping, especially in her most recent original projects “ever more” (2020) and “folklore” (2020), a continuation to the artist’s long history of pop hits makes the project feel less impactful. Despite this initial letdown, “Midnights” is sonically re freshing with an edgy sound through strong drumbeats and prominent bass lines, indicative of the evolution Swift has gone through in the music in dustry. Swift’s intentions with “Mid nights” are clear—it’s a culmination of her entire career, summed up in 13 tracks.
But the gripe that many fans have with “Midnights” is that it just does not feel as climactic as expected. It is reminiscent of Swift’s style on “Lover” (2019); some songs are too on-the-nose while others are under cut by their over-the-top production,
causing moments of sincerity to be few and far between. Swift writes selfdeprecatingly about herself in the al bum’s most-streamed track “Anti-He ro,” but the vulnerability of the song is obscured by banal lyrics like, “It’s me / Hi / I’m the problem, it’s me.” “Vigi lante [EXPLETIVE]” has a similar problem: it begins with an interesting beat, but the build-up ebbs and flows, leaving listeners unfulfilled.
“Midnights” does have some redeeming tracks, though. The first song, “Lavender Haze,” is a classic Taylor Swift pop ballad, down to its vibrant, uplifting chord progressions, synth usage, and not wholly original but inspired lyrics about new love. Unfortunately, “Lavender Haze,” along with the album’s second track, “Maroon,” are the only songs on the album that stand out and live up to the project’s high expectations. Most tracks sound so repetitive that the 13 sleepless nights, each record being emblematic of a “midnight,” blend into one excruciating nightmare.
Swift’s collaboration with co-pro ducer Jack Antonoff was highly antic ipated following their massive success with “folklore” and “evermore.” How ever, this partnership ultimately dis
appoints, as Antonoff and Swift’s at tempt to recreate their past sound in a somewhat formulaic manner resulted in monotony. Listeners get a reprieve from the techno-pop undercurrent in “Snow on the Beach,” which features alternative-pop superstar Lana Del Rey. Del Rey’s sparse vocals are lost in the background of Swift’s voice, leav ing Swifties underwhelmed by one of the most long-awaited collaborations of the decade.
However, the worst part of “Mid nights” is its poor lyricism. Swift is known for authentic, poetic, and thoughtful songwriting; her success comes from her ability to draw listen ers into her songs with her magnetic storytelling. However, with superfi cial lyrics such as saying she’d “draw a cat eye sharp enough to kill a man,” many find themselves far removed from the poignant lyricism and narra tive descriptions that characterize the rest of her discography. It doesn’t stop there; Swift has a tendency to sprin kle in disruptive profanity in places where expletives distract from her message, making songs like “Ques tion…?” almost repellent to the listen er. “Anti-Hero,” a track with a strong, deep message about the scrutiny
Twenty-five-year-old Noah Ka han was born in Strafford, Vermont, a tiny town of 1000. Kahan has been writing music since he was just eight years old, drawing influence from artists such as Paul Simon, Hozier, and The Lumineers, coining himself the “Jewish Ed Sheeran” along the way. When he was 17, Kahan be gan working with music producers at his school and uploaded some of his music on Soundcloud, catching the attention of his current manager, Drew Simmons, as well as notable songwriters such as Dan Wilson. Ka han deferred his acceptance to Tulane University to sign a record deal with Republic Records in 2016, where he would begin his professional music career.
In the past, Kahan has been more than open about his mental health and the significance of songwriting
in his life as a kind of therapy. With this, Kahan’s artistry emphasizes the importance of honesty and growth, hoping to evoke the same emotions in his audience. However, despite this emphasis on growth, Kahan remains close to his small town roots, authen tically highlighting the nuance of change and the idea of “home.”
On his most recent album “Stick Season,” Kahan draws heavy influence from his home state of Vermont, met aphorizing its seasonal imagery to tell his own story. The album’s lead single, “Stick Season,” sets a scene of Ver mont’s autumn foliage that turns into a yearly barron winter. “At its core, ‘Stick Season’ is a song about feeling left behind and feeling trapped. It’s about seeing the other side of a place you thought was only beautiful,” Ka han said in a press release interview with UMusic. However, the melan choly lyricism of the song is masked by its lively instrumental, which adds
to it a sense of optimism. “I like to look at the song as hopeful; winter will come, the snow will fall, melt, and eventually summer will be back in all its beauty. You will suffer, move on, and survive again,” said Kahan. Some of Kahan’s other songs, such as “Homesick” and “Northern Attitude,” touch on the influence that growing up in Vermont has had on his personality. In “Northern At titude,” the chorus ends with, “For give my northern attitude / Oh, I was raised out in the cold.” “Homesick” makes its listener question Kahan’s intended meaning of the term, as it criticizes his hometown for seques tering the ambitions of those who live there. The chorus of the song begins with “I would leave if only I could find a reason / I’m mean because I grew up in New England.” Similar to “Northern Attitude,” Kahan blames the Northeast for his disheartened spirit. He follows this with “I got
dreams but I can’t make myself be lieve them / Spend the rest of my life with what could have been / And I will die in the house that I grew up in / I’m homesick.” With the end of the chorus, the meaning of homesick changes to express a longing to escape rather than a longing to return.
The album ends with “The View Between Villages,” a song about es caping and the complexities of the challenges, freedoms, and joys that come with it. Kahan’s vocals crescen do to the climax of the song, in which he returns to his home town full of resent, saying “It’s all washin’ over me / I’m angry again.” After releasing his anger in the climax, Kahan’s instru mentals and vocals masterfully decre scendo to express his conflicting emo tions as he sits between his home and the world that he escaped his home to: “The cars in reverse / I’m grippin’ the wheel / I’m back between villages and everything’s still.”
A new era has arrived.
Ever since The 1975 made head lines with their debut release of “Chocolate” (2013), their promi nence in the U.K. music scene has only grown. Their 2016 album, “I Like It When You Sleep for You Are So Beau tiful yet So Unaware of It,” saw them launched into international fame and critical acclaim, topping the Billboard 200 and setting a record for the lon gest album title to ever do so. Over the past 10 years, the Manchester-based band has gained a reputation for their musical (and personal) eccentricity, dedicated fan base, and enthralling performances.
However, their defining element lies within frontman Matty Healy’s knack for writing particularly nuanced lyrics, littered with subtle metaphors and recurring motifs both among and within albums, enabling The 1975 to form an identity not around genre, but rather lyricism. Additionally, the band has allowed themselves to experiment considerably with their musical range, so much so that the band’s devoted fans have often described each album as a new “era” of The 1975’s music.
Fans have debated whether “Be ing Funny In A Foreign Language” (BFIAFL), their most recent project, represents an entirely different phase or is an evolution of their introduc tory era ushered in by “The 1975” (2013)—and understandably so. Both album covers are in black-and-white,
an aesthetic echoed in all of the corre sponding music videos, and critics and fans alike have argued that the musical styles the band employs resemble that of their debut album.
While BFIAFL does share many qualities with “The 1975,” the band has changed immensely since their debut, feeling like the harbinger of an entirely
contrast to their previous projects, The 1975 displayed a mastery of their cho sen genres in each song. The band jux taposes piano ballads with ‘80s-synthpop songs with an indie Christmas song. Specific songs showcase their musical growth exceptionally well, no tably the upbeat, aptly named “Happi ness.” The second track of “BFIAFL”
Annie Lam / The Spectatorhis upbringing. Directly following “Wintering,” the raw yet powerful “Human Too” flaunts Healy’s vocals, which often go unnoticed in favor of the band’s musical experimentation. It’s a simple take on the conventional slow pop song, as Healy’s lyrics are ac companied solely by a piano melody and a subdued, almost soothing, snare drum. Aptly, the lyrics are straightfor ward, but the emotion in Healy’s voice is incredibly powerful. It’s rare that the frontman allows his vulnerability to manifest itself in his vocals, but “Hu man Too” is brought to life by his emo tion and expression.
and brutality of the music industry, is soured by lyrics like “I disguise as altruism like some kind of congress man,” which rips listeners out of their listening experiences. Swift leaves little room for interpretation—her lyrics are so direct that they become cringey—a fault that plagues the en tirety of “Midnights.”
Taylor Swift has been in the mu sic industry for so long that she can afford to experiment with her musi cal style, with a loyal fanbase that will seemingly always support her mate rial. The 13 sleepless nights she shares are evidently valuable to her on a per sonal level. Swift is producing music for herself, not the charts, as she at tempts to express frustration and an ger with society, her inner conflicts, and their manifestation. It’s difficult to continually produce music that fulfills everyone’s expectations, espe cially to the standard that Swift’s pre vious works have set. As a result, Swift tends to fall back to old formulas, attempting to rejuvenate them with new production or lyricism. “Mid nights” is not a bad album; it’s just far from what we as an audience remem ber Swift’s music to be and what we stayed up all those midnights for.
“Stick Season” explores what it means to be simultaneously homesick and sick of home, painting both the anguish and the beauty of nostalgia with his reminiscent lyricism. Across the album, a brilliant balance of ener getic and tender guitar instrumentals fills the gaps that Kahan’s stories do not.
Kahan prides himself in writing honest music. In an interview with Atwood Magazine, Kahan said, “My ability to write songs from the heart is my greatest asset.” Through his songwriting, Kahan expresses his hopes and fears as a way of being cog nizant of both change and growth. “I get really scared of changing, and of losing a part of myself,” he said. From “Northern Attitude” to “The View Between Villages,” Kahan conveys this idea. “Stick Season”’s take on homesickness exquisitely depicts the inevitable dilemma of change and the nostalgia that comes with it.
substance abuse. “Part Of The Band,” a lyrical masterpiece, highlights this perfectly, as Healy closes the song off singing “Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke? / Or am I just some post-coke / average, skinny bloke / Calling his ego imagination?” These lyrics flow beautifully, but they’re also particularly self-reflective for Healy, talking about his addiction, his ego, and his own self-consciousness.
new identity for the band. Where “The 1975” seemed like the band was figur ing out their style, BFIAFL is an ode to their creativity and ability to defy musical norms.
Sonically, “BFIAFL” takes inspira tion from all of The 1975’s previous albums. The project features a ground breaking exploration of sound and genre––something that is not unheard of in the band’s history, but is done in exemplary fashion in “BFIAFL.” In
opens the album exquisitely, as Healy’s hopeless lyrics contrast the master fully crafted dance-pop atmosphere, producing musical and lyrical layering. While the first half of “BFIAFL” has its highlights, the second leg of the al bum is filled with musical gems.
“Wintering” is the band’s take on a simplistic, indie Christmas song, in which Healy illustrates his appre hension of his family reunion, while simultaneously paying homage to
The penultimate song, “About You,” is the pinnacle of The 1975. The song’s combination of stunning vocals, intricate melodies, and groundbreak ing experimentation encapsulates ev erything that is The 1975. Attempting to categorize “About You” into one binding genre would prove problemat ic, as the band masterfully synthesizes soft-rock with the underproduced vibe of indie songs, while also drawing in fluence from the upbeat songs from earlier in the album. Healy’s soft voice complements the track perfectly, and the feature from Carly Holt is impec cably chosen.
Beyond the music itself, the themes that Healy touches on throughout the album take The 1975 to new heights of vulnerability. Healy’s openness shines through far more than in previous projects, as he acknowledges his short comings under the public spotlight, as well as his history with addiction and
With that said, BFIAFL is not perfect. Each song stands alone well, but there is a connectedness lacking throughout the album as a whole. Where previous albums seemed to have a more intentional structure to them, “BFIAFL” felt more like a combination of 11 interesting but en tirely individual songs. The motifs that adorned Healy’s lyrics in previous proj ects were far less prevalent. BFIAFL touched on a wide range of interesting topics, but there seemed to be a central theme that was lacking —which would have provided the band with some thing to organize the album around. Instead, it felt rather sporadic at times, jumping between songs that had no re lation to each other.
Even with this flaw, “Being Funny In A Foreign Language” is by far The 1975’s best album yet. The band show cases great musical growth, while still allowing themselves to challenge the conventions of the genre. Healy’s lyri cal genius accompanies the exemplary musicality in an album that is the pin nacle of The 1975, giving fans much to look forward to in the coming eras.
Overgrown gardens, chunky argyle sweaters, and fungi info graphics converge in the earthy cesspool that is Goblincore. While scrolling through the fit pics and mood boards on Pinterest, you can find a few similarities between each image: green and brown color schemes, weathered textures, and motifs of nature like mushrooms and frogs. The further you scroll, the more these elements appear— every outfit either has a Doc Mar ten 1460 boot or a hi-top Chuck 70. This collection of pretty wild things makes up the Goblincore aesthetic, a fashion movement with an appreciation for the woods.
One way to examine the Goblincore aesthetic is through the lens of its more popular sibling, Cottagecore—a bright and ideal ized aesthetic that romanticizes country life and domestic roles. A slight removal from nature also characterizes Cottagecore—many inspiration pictures for the aes thetic feature manicured gardens or picnics in fields, unlike Goblin core’s wilder and overgrown style. If Goblincore is the forest, Cot tagecore is the clearing in the trees. This comparison continues in the clothing pieces and gender identities each aesthetic assumes. Cottagecore has a strong focus on femininity and delicacy, so skirts and dresses often dominate outfit inspiration boards, characterized by ditsy floral designs on white fabric, often with wispy ruffles and a cor set layered over the piece. Though there is some variation in the out fits associated with the aesthetic and certainly a sizable overlap with
Goblincore (overalls and corduroy pants tend to show up in both), Cottagecore is far more tradition ally feminine. Though sexuality de fines no aesthetic, Cottagecore has unofficially become the signature WLW (woman-loving-women) aesthetic. Interestingly, the aes thetic flips traditional gender roles from 19th century agrarian life by portraying women as independent figures who fall in love with other women rather than simply being servants of their husbands. Paint ings by the likes of Claude Monet and John Constable that once glo rified the quiet life of housewives in the countryside are recontextual ized and given new meaning under Cottagecore.
Though set in the same environ ment as Cottagecore, Goblincore has a far more fluid understanding of gender. Dresses are traded out for trousers and oversized sweat ers, lending a more androgynous silhouette to many outfits. The Goblincore lifestyle is incredibly popular in nonbinary and transgen der communities as the ugly wilder ness creates an escape from binary expression that is understandably needed. The forest as the heart of Goblincore is almost perfect—the wild is full of things both pretty and handsome, a hodgepodge of beauty and gunk without a com mon thread to the gender binary. The Goblincore aesthetic serves as a retreat of sorts from Cottagecore, breaking from the confines of femi ninity and into the thick swamp of gay panic that is androgynous fash ion.
The concepts of both aesthet ics are lovely, but their practice has raised controversy. Despite their shared focus on nature, the sustain
ability practices of these aesthetics are questionable. As is the case with many trends, Goblincore and Cot tagecore have been adopted into the meta of fast fashion. Brands like emmiol, SHEIN, Topshop, and ASOS noticed the rise of nature-
moil striped pullover sweater might be the true main character in the Goblincore aesthetic, sneaking its way into almost every mood board and outfit assembly manual. Fast fashion is problematic for many reasons, but it’s especially conten
nature as the true habitat human ity has abandoned. Goblincore especially glorifies the wild with its ethos of hoarding “shinies,” reminiscent of European folk lore about supposed goblins who steal coins and jewelry. For this, the aesthetic faces the accusation of promoting antisemitism as the term “goblins” has been historically used to negatively refer to Jewish people. Though Jewish members of Goblincore have attempted to refute this claim, certain members of the aesthetic prefer to be referred to as Gremlins to avoid using any possibly harmful terminology. On the other hand, Cottagecore leans into its agricultural roots with gardening and farming being sig nificant components of its lifestyle, but farmers criticize the aesthetic for diminishing their work and creating an unrealistic depiction of manual labor.
based aesthetics in the 2020s and incorporated key elements of the style into their pieces. The explo sion of Lirika Matoshi’s Strawberry dress on TikTok pushed every fast fashion brand out there to create their own dupe of the piece.
Goblincore does strongly pro mote thrifting and secondhand shopping as part of its environmen tal ethos, but followers of the aes thetic do often lean into fast fashion to buy standard pieces. This em
tious in these nature focused aes thetics, as fast fashion directly goes against everything it stands for— factories and mass-manufactured products are the antithesis of what being a Goblin is all about, and so the aesthetic carries fast fashion as a chink in its fuzzy, hand-knit armor.
People have also criticized both aesthetics for their reliance on fan tasy. Cottagecore and Goblincore both heavily indulge in escapism from modern society, painting
Music critics have announced the revival of pop punk, the genre that gained immense popularity in the 2000s and died in the 2010s as pop artists dominated the radio. But with artists like Machine Gun Kelly and YUNGBLUD climbing the charts, claims (and fears) of pop punk’s re surgence have surfaced. New artists flirting with the pop punk sound raise questions over the genre’s titular accuracy. What is pop punk, and how punk is it, really? To be able to an swer these questions in their entirety, one must first delve into the history of the genre.
The origins of pop punk date back to the ‘70s with The Ramones and The Buzzcocks, with their popu larity stemming from simple, catchy songwriting. The ‘80s rolled in with hardcore taking punk by storm, and the bands Bad Religion, The Descen dents, and The Misfits emerged with a more melodic approach than their fast-paced, unintelligible straightedge counterparts. Green Day formed in the late ‘80s, and, along with Bad Religion, grew to great heights in the ‘90s. They inspired bands like The Offspring, Blink-182, Sum 41, Rancid and many others to take the commercial route and break into the mainstream. During the 2000s, pop punk evolved into emo pop with more emotional lyrics, and bands like Panic! At The Disco, Para more, and My Chemical Romance took center stage. The fuss died down in the early 2010s, but reemerged as emo rap in the latter half of the de cade, headlined by Lil Peep, Juice WRLD and XXXTentacion.
It was at this point that the genre began to go haywire. 2019 was the year people noticed pop punk’s comeback, and immediately jumped on the bandwagon. In February, YUNGBLUD collaborated with
Halsey on “11 Minutes (feat. Tra vis Barker).” Barker used to be the drummer for Blink-182 and has since moved on to produce all types of music, including pop, rock, hip hop, and country. A few months later, Ma chine Gun Kelly, who was exclusively
and blasé attitude matter, it is absurd to lump modern pop punk in with its influences. The pop punk of the ‘80s deserves credit for sticking to the aggression of hardcore, especially present in the drumming’s intensity. However, commercial success altered
enough angst and social commentary to appeal to teenagers who wanted to feel rebellious. The artificiality of the genre only progressed as time went on. Recent music coming out of the pop punk revival reeks of un concealed autotune and bubblegum-
However, no Goblins or Cot tagecore enthusiasts seem to really mean any harm. Most aesthetic fol lowers live in metropolitan areas and simply use nature imagery as a fun escape. Without a forest to for age through, Goblins are very fond of geocaching and scavenger hunts through their local park—Cot tagecore followers work in commu nity gardens or grow small plants. At their worst, nature aesthetics are idealistic and capitalized on by fast fashion companies. But for the most part, each aesthetic is simply fun. Cottagecore is a lovely style for springtime with a positive lifestyle that promotes sustainability and subverts femininity. Goblincore’s ideals are admirable—the embrace of the wild and its imperfections is a wonderful concept—and its place in nonbinary fashion is undeniable.
anti-establishmentarianism sound fake and theatrical. At the core of punk is non-conformity. Whether it be in relation to music, politics, at titudes, or a combination of these, social norms are the constant target. Pop punk is the opposite. Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it uses the main stream under the guise of punk to get more attention and wealth. All of the pop punk stars today are so exag gerated in their appearance that they look like they were cast for the role of the 2000s’ teenage older brother and the costume department rap idly assembled their wardrobe from anything they could find at Spirit Halloween. Everything from their unoriginal clothing to their prepos terous behavior seems staged; the presentation of a character modeled after the idea of a pop punk celebrity from 20 years ago.
The fans of pop punk do not care about the authenticity of the art ists they are listening to. People do not listen to YUNGBLUD to get a taste of real punk music, nor to de fend the validity of his punk persona. They simply enjoy listening to catchy songs, and who can blame them? Pop songs are meant to be listened to and enjoyed by a large audience: that’s the entire point of the genre. They’re not listening to pop punk to flip the bird at the world and take a stand against systematic oppression, they listen simply because it is fun to be angsty.
a rapper for over a decade, released “I Think I’m OKAY,” a pop punk collaboration with YUNGBLUD and Barker. The trio has since been treated as the holy trinity of the pop punk revival, despite the fact that they abandoned their musical roots to craft these new personas as a su perficial attempt at imitating the pop punk hits and personalities of yore. Considering the plastic sheen
the essence of these bands and their successors; a boulder was dropped on the scales that kept the balance be tween pop and punk—and it is not hard to guess which side reaped the benefits. The ferocity of the electric guitar was replaced by limp, catchy choruses. Powerfully energetic drums sidestepped for smooth harmonies and melodies. Pop punk became pop music lightly dusted with just
like electronic beats that hammer in the algorithmic enjoyability of every song. It has strayed so far from its roots that the pop punk balance scale has been broken in half, and the punk side has been thrown off the edge of a cliff. Pop punk is punk the same way the MTA is always on time: it’s not.
Unlike punk, pop punk has never had a connection to any social move ment, which makes all the talk about
The major problem with pop punk is not with the fans, but with the word “punk” in the title. While it may have been inspired by the genre, the two have no strong ideo logical connection and the original chaotic aspect of punk was diluted to be more palatable for mainstream audiences. All the pop severely over powers the smidge of punk present in any song. In brief, pop punk is barely even punk, and Machine Gun Kelly should make better music.
“Imagine a world with no children. Close your eyes and just dream…”
So lies the heart of the drama in the fall musical “Matilda,” pre sented by the Stuyvesant Theater Community (STC), a revoltingly entertaining production of the Roald Dahl classic, adapted from Tim Minchin’s original stage mu sical. “Matilda” follows the epony mous protagonist (freshman Jane No), a precocious and highly in telligent six-year-old. In spite of the deplorable individuals who torment her home and school en vironments—her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood (juniors Bran don Phillips and Alex DiLella), her brother Michael Wormwood (junior Matthew Monge), and her school’s tyrannical headmistress, Trunchbull (junior Dinah-Luba Beylison)—Matilda develops mag ical powers and leads a rebellion against her oppressors, eventu ally finding a happy home with her teacher, Miss Honey (senior Emily Young-Squire).
“Matilda”’s intricate set design enhanced the story, with details including a cheeky “Among Us” cameo, the Wormwoods’s soap opera-style house, and Trunch bull’s austere office. The Worm woods’s russet sofa, paired with an equally enticing vintage telly, brought out the lounge-laziness of the family. The school’s repressive yet hysterical atmosphere utilized actual school desks and jumbo ABC blocks, which created a pic turesque tableau under the stage lights. The stunning set would not be complete without its luscious background, courtesy of the art crew, directed by seniors Bowen Fu and Vivian Teo. It consisted of a pink-blue ombré backdrop with cascading letter blocks spelling out “MATILDA,” forming an interest ing juxtaposition when paired with the various colors and costumes on
stage. Each cast member was authen tically dressed in character, thanks to the skills of the costume direc tors, senior Tiffany Liang and junior Petra Dijur. Trunchbull was perfectly fitted with a severeshouldered jacket, a heavy belt, and
da” were particularly refined, es pecially after the revampments to Stuyvesant’s Murray Kahn The ater. From neon classroom lights to severe shadows in Trunchbull’s office to the soft sunlight stream ing into Miss Honey’s cottage, lights and sound, directed by se
rangement could have demon strated a wider range of rhythmic diversity or more expressive play ing, though perhaps the simplicity of the arrangements enabled the ensemble’s consistent presence.
iniscent of a ‘90s soap opera.
a military bun. The children were clad in scholarly red ties, schoolgirl Mary Janes, and the occasional pair of rebellious Converse sneakers. In contrast with the school uniforms, Matilda wore a striking blue Peter Pan collared dress, clashing beauti fully against the stage background. As for the Wormwood family, Mr. Wormwood donned a flamboyant ombré sequined suit-jacket, paired with a dashing green wig and a velvet top hat; Mrs. Wormwood flaunted heavy silver jewelry and an equally ostentatious puff-sleeve dress; and Michael Wormwood sported a fedora protégé. Miss Honey’s intricately embroidered floral dress was perhaps unrealistic for a poor school teacher, but was eye-catching under the stage lights nonetheless.
The technical aspects of “Matil
niors Talia Hsia and Roy Nissan and junior Dorothy Ha, presented masterful techniques across ton ally contrasting scenes. The show’s audio quality was mostly clear and unadulterated, though the sound was occasionally muffled when ac tors sang too closely into the mic. Scene transitions were coordinated smoothly, though perhaps not qui etly; moments of extended chair dragging could have been masked by live music.
The band, directed by se niors Katherine Zhao and Hana Kaloudis, maintained a constant, malleable presence throughout the show, from the ominous bass staccato in Trunchbull’s hammerthrowing scenes to the smooth cello melody in the emotionally charged scenes between Matilda and Miss Honey. The musical ar
The levitating chalk from “The Smell of Rebellion” (made possible by magnets) was a clever choice from the props department, elic iting many gasps from the audi ence. During Matilda’s storytelling scenes, the escapologist (junior Kai Li) and acrobat (sophomore Andrea Wang and senior Pimada Phongsuriya) felt far away up stage, but the dreamlike quality of the flashbacks was still captured. Wang, who learned the acrobat role only one day before the show, demonstrated incredible flexibility and agility by dancing out Matil da’s imagination and perform ing dizzying somersaults. Certain technical difficulties, such as late scene changes and jammed desks, allowed the actors to show off their improvisation skills, leaving the au dience impressed and amused. The few seconds of silence after Bruce (freshman Lily Wagman) gave a long burp served as perhaps the most entertaining moment in the entire chocolate cake scene, and the audience burst out laughing.
As expected, there were numer ous standout musical performanc es. Young-Squire stole the show with her beautiful soprano voice in quiet, soliloquy-like moments in “Pathetic” and “My House.” Phil lips showcased his fantastic tenor voice and magnificent vibrato in “Telly.” No nailed “Naughty” and “Quiet” with her perfectly child like tone and vocal confidence. The singing numbers, from “The Chokey Chant” to “Revolting Children” rang with the students’ playful mischief and vocal empow erment. The frenetic energy that DiLella and Hollmann brought to their duo, “Loud,” between the flashy Mrs. Wormwood and her dance partner Rudolpho, was rem
In the acting category, several cast members shined, particularly by playing up the extremes of young vs. old and virtuous vs. wick ed with Matilda and Trunchbull. It was almost difficult to believe that Trunchbull was played by a student. Beylison’s intimidating stage presence, on-point manner isms, and booming voice provided a perfect rendition of the head mistress’ trademark comedic yet terrifying persona. No’s freshman confidence aided her portrayal of a convincing six-year-old and, to top it off, one with a posh, BBCsounding accent. Young-Squire brought tenderness and warmth to Miss Honey’s caring character, making her all the more likable and strengthening her onstage connection with Matilda. During the intermission, Mr. Wormwood and his son Michael performed a routine promoting the telly instead of reading books, even calling one audience member a “bookworm.” In the final scene, when the Rus sian mafia, led by Beatriz Ongan, hunted down Mr. Wormwood, they found themselves spellbound by Matilda’s ingenuity, and the im pressively accurate Russian accents by both Ongan and No were the cherry on top of an incredibly en tertaining production.
“Matilda” works better as a true comedy, deviating quite a bit from the original tone of Dahl’s novel, which focused more on the intimate struggles of Matilda and Miss Honey to rise up against their oppressors. STC’s produc tion missed a bit of the intimacy and conclusiveness of the original “found family” storyline, but au thenticity is not the main function of a theater show. Rather, its pri mary objective should be to bring an audience together to laugh, cry, cry from laughter, and, at the cur tain call, clap so passionately that both palms turn red. We know that ours did.
“We’re just getting started,” said Cameron Crowe, the writer and di rector of the classic 2000s film “Al most Famous” (2000), when I spoke to him before the show began. The new musical adaptation of the film just began previews on October 3, but I say it’s already “all happening…”
“Almost Famous,” set in 1973, follows William Miller (Casey Likes), an aspiring journalist tasked with writing a feature for Rolling Stone Magazine on a new band, Stillwater. Journalist and de facto conscience Lester Bangs (Rob Col letti) guides William in his adven ture on the road. Despite Lester’s warning to avoid becoming friends with rockstars, the awe-struck Wil liam still gets drawn into the gritty lifestyle. William—or “The Enemy,” as the band dubs him—struggles with the reality of the band’s way of life. The tour is not glamorous or all about the music and is instead a desperate struggle to keep the band together while still maintaining a good image. Like the guitarist Rus sell Hammond (Chris Wood), Wil liam begins to long for something more real, more music-centric, than what he experiences. Committed to being honest but also bonded with the band, William finds himself in a bind: Stillwater wants him to portray them well in his article, but the truth is more complex than that. Despite
the schism forming in the band and William’s struggle, the play man ages to find humor in their situations without making their issues feel like a joke, through elements like the lead singer, Jeff’s (Drew Gehling) often exaggerated reactions to band drama and Lester’s high expectations for “real music.” The humor gives the play a sense of lightheartedness, without distracting from its central message.
At the start of his journey, Wil liam is pseudo-adopted by Stillwa ter’s groupies, the “band aids,” led by the illustrious Penny Lane (Solea Pfeiffer). She and the other group ies were dressed in perfectly eclectic costumes, clad in platform heels, patterned crop tops, and, of course, the iconic shearling coat worn only by Penny Lane. Penny is beautiful, intriguing, and mysterious, but her mantra “no attachments, no bound aries” leads William into a struggle for her affection. Their real con nection, though, comes from their shared love for music. In a way, she describes his experience as a whole: he is searching for a personal connec tion but seems to be looking in all the wrong places.
With reboots becoming increas ingly commonplace in entertain ment, I didn’t know whether to be excited for a Broadway rendition of “Almost Famous” or dread that it wouldn’t live up to expectation. Could a play illustrate the movement
of life on the road with the limita tions of theater? Would the nostalgia of the ‘70s on top of the memory of the original film feel kitschy? Pes simistic, sure, but I didn’t want my beloved movie to meet a sour end—I didn’t buy my own Penny Lane coat just for her legacy to be ruined.
“Almost Famous” is not kitschy. It is not static. Rather, it is refresh ing and aspirational. Nostalgia for the era is not used as a crutch, but maintains a stronghold in the play. The cast speaks in the jargon of the era, and the script doesn’t feel rigid, conveying the laid-back feel of the group and the ‘70s in general. Wil liam’s bedroom was decorated with posters and a shelf of records—Led Zeppelin, The Velvet Underground, Black Sabbath—and John Bonham and Ozzy Osbourne even make brief appearances. The set design was ex pertly done, decorated with memen tos from the ‘70s. Of course, there were complex sets, like the kitchen in William’s home, but the simplicity of the stage allowed for a moment that was truly unique to the play. Stillwa ter’s hit single “Fever Dog” is central to their tour, but when they perform in the movie, the feeling of live mu sic doesn’t come across as well. Being in a theater, though, the live perfor mance of the song was like a real con cert, transporting the crowd not only to a venue, but back in time. Throw backs like “Simple Man” (1973) by Lynyrd Skynyrd and “Tiny Dancer”
(1971) by Elton John also appear in the performance, but aren’t used as mere filler or background music, instead taking command of the show when performed.
This is further enhanced by the play’s original score by Tom Kitt which is fully integrated into the story, highlighting the skillful inclu sion of songs from the era and setting them apart from the other music. “Almost Famous” doesn’t include “Tiny Dancer” just to include “Tiny Dancer”; the song is a scene in and of itself and serves to drive the story forward. Sung on the road by the di vided band, the performance creates a sense of unity, evoking memories of road trips and the feeling of to getherness. It is a unique, memorable moment in the musical: it captures a balance of both nostalgia and origi nal storytelling. The combination of the two allows for a feeling of relat ability, an opportunity for a mod ern audience to connect with a play about the past. It was clear that this is not a play about just longing for the ‘70s: it is equally about being a teen ager and chasing your dreams.
Being a teenager, though, means having certain restrictions. William’s home life is the polar opposite of his time on the road. Raised by his mother, a high-strung professor, William faces constant pressure to be excellent—his mother even en rolled him in school two years early. When William is introduced to the
“dangerous and promiscuous” music of Simon & Garfunkel by his older sister, he begins to dream of being a rock journalist. William’s zeal and his commitment to his writing is in spiring—he never becomes jaded or gives up his love for music. No mat ter how many times his mother de mands he come home, William stays with Stillwater; no matter how many times Russell avoids an interview, William persists. In a time when so many Broadway shows are explora tions of pain and struggle, it felt re freshing to see a story about a teen ager whose struggle is simply trying to make his dream come true.
Despite the dreamy atmosphere the costumes, music, and almost fan tastical personalities of the Stillwater members create, there is still some thing so real about “Almost Famous.” Not everyone will tour with a band and fall in love with a groupie, but everyone can relate to wanting some thing and the joy and effort that goes into pursuing that something. William Miller’s story is unique, but his innocence, passion, and vibrancy are a poignant portrayal of chasing a dream.
“Almost Famous” has the best of every world imaginable: it is nostal gic, like a love letter to an era, but still contemporary. It’s refreshingly inno cent and heartfelt, but still funny. It’s wild, yet relatable. William Miller’s story is unique, but we can all find a bit of ourselves in him.
Ducks.
Commonly seen as a cute and harmless species of water fowl, Ducks are widely favored. But what most people don’t know is that Ducks are the #1 threat to humanity.
The physiology and nature of a Duck are specially built for conquering humanity. For example, Ducks are capable of flight, which makes it eas ier for them to infiltrate sky scrapers with highly classified documents. Also, Ducks fly in a V-shaped pattern. V is the first letter in the word video, and video is the first part of the word videotaping. Ducks are also never surprised. They keep at least one eye open at all times to record human ity through miniature cameras in their beady little eyes. The curvature of a Duck’s neck is also suspiciously shaped like a banana. Since bananas are yel low, and poison dart frogs can also be yellow, it can be safely concluded that the Ducks are trying to poison the entirety of humanity.
In order to prevent the further destruction of society as we know it, reporters from the Humor Department initi ated an interview with a Duck taken from the Hudson River.
Below is a transcript of the talk (the Duck’s dialogue has been translated for easier reading).
[Set in a dark room with three chairs and a single candle.]
REPORTER 1: This is Op eration Duckgate* from The Stuyvesant Spectator’s Humor Department, and we are now joined by Duck from the Hud son River.
REPORTER 2: Yes, thank you for joining us today, Duck.
DUCK: Where am I?
REPORTER 1: Let’s get started. First, why are you and your breth ren taking over the world?
DUCK: Please let me go home. I have a wife and two children eagerly awaiting my return.
REPORT
By ASTRID HARRINGTONEvery child has heard of Bring Your Kid to Work Day. At some point in time, many of us have watched our parents at work, marveling at the nov elty of their routine. We’ve seen the strange touch of pride in their expressions as they show us their life’s profession. Ever since Stuyvesant was founded, we’ve longed for the equivalent of Bring Your Kid to Work Day, but unfortunately, few students have their own children. Anoth er option had to be found. After years of extensive planning, the school admin istration found the answer. Stuyvesant will now have two Bring Your Pet to School Days every year: one in October and one in April. The purpose of the new plan is to reduce stu dents’ stress by giving them emotional comfort in the form of animals. The administration placed almost no restrictions on the pets’ freedom—dogs didn’t have to be leashed and birds didn't have to be caged. The only requirement was that the students and pets had to promote an atmosphere condu cive to learning. Unfortunately, given the fact that animals don’t understand English, this mes sage was very difficult to pass along.
The first trial of Bring Your Pet to School Day happened two Thursdays ago. Pets be gan to enter the school with their owners at 7:45 a.m. By 7:55 a.m., the halls were full
ER 2: That makes sense, actu ally. Are the Ducks aware of how many lives their takeover of the world could change, or rather, ruin? It’s only been a week since the mayor was un fortunately overthrown by a Duck impostor, and I find it rather distressing that there is no longer someone much less eloquent than me left in the world.
DUCK: This is scaring me.
DUCK: Bark bark. Bark.
REPORTER 2: That is a very noble line of thought. If I may ask—
[At this moment, Principal Yu walks into the room and turns on the light to reveal a math classroom.]
PRINCIPAL YU: … Is this what The Spectator has been using their funds for?
*Operation Duckgate is a Duck-spying brigade operation created by the Spectator Hu mor Department. Its goals are to infiltrate the Ducks’ ranks using Duck cos tumes and play Duck sounds on the loud speakers to let down the Ducks’ guard. By infiltrating Duck so ciety, we can figure out the Ducks’ plans and save the world from the upcoming Duck invasion. –––––––––
The Ducks may be try ing to hide their inten tions, but we all know the
of various creatures slithering, bolting, and flapping alongside their owners. The cafeteria was especially chaotic because no one could decide whether the pets were entitled to their own school breakfast. The pets ig nored this raging de bate since they didn’t care what anyone said—they were get ting food one way or another.
When first period began, the animals in the classrooms made such a ruckus that onethird of all the teach ers in the school went home crying. Several classes were taking tests on the fourth floor, but no one could concentrate through all the noise. Fifty stu dents failed their tests in that period alone.
“It was really diffi cult,” said junior Mike Kwyet. “I was taking a calculus test, but this stupid bird wouldn’t leave me alone, and it pooped on my paper.
There were at least seven dogs barking their heads off, and at one point, a snake came in the door hissing at everyone. There was no way any of us could’ve passed.” Simultaneously, on the ninth floor, some chemistry students were doing an acids and bases lab with a multitude of pets in the room. The pets made it extremely difficult to
work; they were jumping onto the tables in the lab and spill ing various solutions. Though no one ended up dead, several people found themselves in dire need of the safety shower, and one unfortunate student spent
ditorium. They had effectively blockaded all the entrances, and they ignored the pitiful cries of students pounding on the doors in search of refuge. Many years of giving painful tests had de sensitized them to students’
Fitness levels fell by 90 per cent after the 7-9 escalator was finally fixed.
Freshman Caucus candidates were revealed to be four mid dle schoolers in two trench coats.
Survey says overwhelming majority of supplemental es says were started November 1 at 11:58 p.m.
Third floor renamed to ”:3rd flowor”
Why are you reading this? Work on that essay.
truth. The next time you see a Duck, be sure to loudly express that you will not fall for their schemes and assert how much you would like to eat a bananashaped Earth. This method has been proven to deter Ducks from possessing you for a pe riod of 15 seconds.
Heed my advice, for soon we just might be living in a world of feathers where we do not throw breadcrumbs—we become the breadcrumbs.
**Disclaimer: Only a few Ducks were harmed in the cre ation of this article.
could find at the rampaging pets. Only the science teachers paid the students any attention, setting up two temporary hos pitals in the third- and sixthfloor gyms.
Halfway through seventh period, Principal Yu used the school’s announcement system to inform everyone that the school day was officially over. He told everyone to leave with their pets and declared that school would be held remotely the next day.
In the end, upward of 100 pets were lost in the school building, including but not lim ited to dogs, cats, snakes, par rots, bunnies, and chameleons. They are still being recovered.
30 minutes using the eye wash. By the end of the first period, the teachers had given up on teaching and were just trying to keep their students alive.
By the time sixth period ar rived, all the math teachers had abandoned the fourth floor and were sheltering in the au
suffering. The English teachers collectively went on strike and abandoned the building, leav ing the sixth floor empty and covered in bird droppings. The social studies teachers touched base in Ms. Suri’s office and went on the offensive, throwing the heaviest textbooks that they
In fact, a boa constrictor was recently found when it bit a stu dent on the seventh floor. Dur ing the next few hours, several bunnies and birds were found dead, also on the seventh floor. More than 200 students were hospitalized for various rea sons, including snake bites, acid burns, and severe allergic reac tions. The school is now facing a copious number of lawsuits, and on top of all of this, stu dents reported a massive in crease in their stress level be cause of failed tests, increased workload, and disruption of their routine. This was not ex actly the intended outcome.
Clearly, this was a flawed but excellent first test run. Once the school smooths out a few issues, we should be completely ready for trial number two in April!
By MICHELLE HUANG
Richard Rifleman, a proud turkey hunter and a stereotypical American, hunts for his Thanks giving meal every year. It’s a tradi tion, and this year is no exception. He has packed everything one would need for this job: weap ons, traps, bait, and a chihuahua named Coco that has a biting problem. He is no stranger to this game. In the past, he’s done what ever it takes to acquire a turkey. From dressing up as a turkey and infiltrating their ranks to hiring hitmen and taking out birds (and subsequently getting in trouble with the Italian mafia), he’s seen everything—or at least he thinks he has.
He follows the same path ev ery year. The journey is serene; the only sounds are those of the rustling of leaves in the trees, the soft padding of wildlife running across the forest floor, and Coco barking, because he also has a barking problem. Richard enjoys the forest’s ambient noises. It’s calming and quiet. He notices that Coco has quieted, but ignores it—he has probably tired himself out. Richard continues on, but is startled by a squawk. To his right are two marvelously round tur keys. Richard and his family will eat well this year. Grinning from ear to ear, he takes aim, watching
the crosshairs line up.
“We need to stay vigilant.”
Confused, Richard puts his gun down. Who said that? There’s no one around him, but the voice continues. “No one else will get hurt, so long as we do our job.” Richard turns around once, twice, three times, searching for the voice’s source. It seems to be coming from the direction of the turkeys. But why aren’t they scared away by the noise? They’re just standing there, opening and closing their beaks…
Are the turkeys talking? But turkeys can’t talk? And yet, right before him are two turkeys deep in conversation.
“Are you sure about this? Doesn’t the idea of attacking a person scare you, just even a little bit?”
Richard freezes. The turkeys are attacking people?
“Of course it does. But they deserve it! They’ve been massa cring our people for centuries, all for their feast. It’s time we put a stop to it.”
“You’re right. I’ve never been inclined toward violence, but this is something I need to do. I will not be afraid to fight back if the time calls for it.”
“That’s the spirit, Tim. Look what we’ve accomplished already! With the help of our comrade the Duolingo owl, we’ve learned how
to speak!”
Richard thinks of that one strange green owl he saw a few years ago while hunting. He should’ve gotten rid of it while he had the chance!
Timmy the turkey continues. “We could do so much more. We’ll expand out of this forest and into the human world. We already have the necessary army;
white. He slowly begins to walk away, conscious of how every step echoes on the ground. He just needs to get away from the turkeys, and he’ll be home free. And then Coco barks. Startled by the sound, the turkeys turn to ward him.
For a second, it is as if the world freezes. There is terrifying silence as the gravity of the situa
And then Richard runs, scooping up the traitorous dog and dashing through the woods. Behind him, the turkeys pursue. As he runs through the woods, more and more turkeys emerge, catching on to the predicament of their compatriots. These aren’t just any turkeys, either; in short glimpses in his periphery, Richard can see turkeys wearing little cam ouflage shirts and hats, holding knives and axes with impressively strong beaks. Richard would find it almost comedic if he were not running for his life. He is pursued by a bird army, hearing nothing but the squawks of approaching enemies. To make things worse, his menace of a dog is bark ing and hissing at the army, only furthering their homicidal rage. There seems to be no escape for him.
we just need to take action. We’ll brainwash them with turkey pro paganda, invade their cities, and TAKE OVER THE WORLD! When Thanksgiving comes, it will be US who feast on THEM!”
Richard feels all of the blood pool to his toes, and his face turns
tion sinks in.
Richard quickly turns around, looking for his weapon. Wait, where is it? Desperately, he looks around and sees a third turkey, holding his gun in its mouth. Armed and angry, the turkey starts charging.
Kermit the Frog may be one of the most unproblematic ce lebrities of all time. Beloved by all, he is known for his kindheart ed nature, banjo skills, and, of course, his relationship with his co-star Miss Piggy. That is, be fore it was officially announced on Saturday Night Live’s “Week end Update” that the iconic duo had broken up. The news sparked outrage and confusion across the country. One anony mous citizen remarked, “This is the worst thing to happen to America since the Shrek 4D ride in Universal closed. Kermit and Miss Piggy were many people’s only reference for what a semifunctioning couple is supposed to look like, and now that they’re
gone, I truly fear for the future of humanity.”
While the cause of the break up is still unclear, there is specu lation that Kermit may have been caught cheating on Piggy with Gonzo. Nonetheless, our froggy friend has not been handling the situation well. Following his breakup, Kermit began making questionable posts on Twitter, including the following:
“My ex is a lying skank and attention hog and none of you should believe a word she says— Gonzo and I have a very profes sional relationship.”
“Starting to think that we’ll never find the rainbow connec tion.”
“I wish I had what Bert and Ernie have :/”
“@Kanye West down for a
collab??”
“I’m just saying that I think Gonzo has a really nice… nose.”
Kermit’s account got taken down after he tagged Miss Piggy in a photo of him eating bacon, and he hasn’t spoken to the pub lic since. Furthermore, he failed to show up for his performance at an orphanage, canceling at the last minute because he “needed to finish season six of ‘Dance Moms.’” The orphans instead had to watch a dress rehearsal of “Mamma Mia” at their local community theater.
The following day, Kermit was spotted at Walmart shoving packages of Scooby Doo fruit snacks into his jacket. When the store clerk told him to stop, he squirted them in the face with a water gun before screaming
“Love isn’t real!” and jumping out the window. The event was recorded and posted in a You Tube video titled “kermit the frog has a mental breakdown” (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=z_SvFP8Hed0).
Due to his recent controversy, Kermit was cut from several of his upcoming projects, including “The Muppets Go Bankrupt,” “Dancing With the Stars,” “Fast and Furious X,” “The Late Late Show With James Corden,” and Disney’s live-action remake of “The Princess and the Frog.” Kanye also denied his request for a collaboration.
Miss Piggy, who is currently on a retreat to Switzerland for a “journey of self-discovery,” shared her input on her exboyfriend’s mental breakdown.
Finally, just as it feels like his lungs are going to give out from running, just as he’s about to give up, he sees his truck. Practi cally crying with joy, Richard pats his pockets for his car keys, but they’re not there. He sees a blur of fur and watches helplessly as Coco, that selfish rat, zooms away from him, keys in his mouth. He abandoned Richard as bait to save his own miserable life!
Richard screams out in an guish as the turkeys overwhelm him.
“I understand how difficult it must be to get over me,” she said, “but that frog needs to get a grip. Honestly, I never would have dated him if I knew he was so unstable. And me? I’ve been doing just wonderful—I haven’t thought about Kermit once since we broke up.” The interview ended there as Miss Piggy pro ceeded to burst into tears.
It’s been truly heartbreaking to watch such a beloved figure go downhill. Kermit the Frog, once a wholesome entertainer who brought joy to everyone, can now be found on Buzzfeed’s “Top 10 Celebrity Meltdowns” list. While we have no way of knowing what will happen to the little frog next, all we can do is hope things work out between him and Gonzo.
By RYAN PENG and FREDA DONGTwo weeks ago, Stuyvesant students were in for a shock when they got their report cards for the first marking period. Swaths of students were found crying hysterically on the floor of the junior atrium, with a heap of crumpled report cards thrown in a corner. Naturally, we sent our serfs—I mean, new bie writers—to investigate. “We were thinking, ‘How bad could it really be?’ until our newest writer, Mead Eocre, opened one of the report cards and imme diately fainted from a massive dose of Emotional Damage,” one Humor writer recalled. “We had to steal safety goggles from some poor AP Chem students to safely view the report cards.”
What they saw was terrify
ing. A string of grades covered the report cards, but instead of numbers and letters, the grades ranged from phrases like “Maidenless,” “Severe Case of Senioritis,” and “Classic Fresh man,” to entire short stories such as “Your weak physics joke has been left on read by all 27 people in the group chat,” and “You sent BooGrams to your 12 friends, but received only two in return.”
“It’s time for grades to actu ally reflect students’ progress, both inside and outside of aca demics,” Principal Yu confi dently stated when asked why he changed the system. “That’s why we, the amazing adminis tration, have generated person alized grades for every student’s report card. We believe that the feedback these grades provide will truly help the students focus
on what they need to improve, which is a lot.” When asked about the scene in the atrium, Yu was quick to downplay it, claiming that the students “are all just weak, introverted chil dren who play too much Gen shin Impact. That sample size is not representative of the Stuyvesant student body!”
A senior was stunned by the grade she received for AP English Literature. “Apparently, my essays are messier than the hellhole known as the sopho more bar,” she raged. “THE [REDACTED] SOPHOMORE BAR! If they were going to tell me that my writing was a hot mess, they could have just com pared it to the cafeteria-sourced vegetarian chicken nuggets in stead!”
Meanwhile, a junior was crying from laughter af
ter seeing his physics grade. “LMAOOOOOO, MY HOMEWORK IS SUSSI ER THAN THE HUDSON STAIRCASE! Totally not be cause I copied it off someone.” The junior gave us a wink be fore shooting his mouth off even more. “My physics teacher is probably trying to forget that he saw sussy stuff in the Hud son, but that’s a whole load of copium he’s drinking. He’ll NEVER forget, mwahaha. YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS SUS? UR MOM!”
Worst of all were the PE grades. Seeming to know ev erything about students’ lives, the PE teachers did everything in their power to embarrass the children, assigning grades like “POV: It’s been two months since you’ve washed your Physi cal Education uniform” (given
automatically to all freshmen) and “Stop trying to bump up your push-up test score! We all know you got negative one because you collapsed dead on the floor before we even start ed.” The horribly embarrass ing grades were even enough to spark a riot inside the locker rooms, but the revolt ended af ter the PE teachers locked the doors at the late bell, trapping the students inside.
Eventually, the students de cided they’d had enough of the degrading commentary. Last week, a mob of angry freshmen marched straight to Principal Yu’s office. Or, at least, they thought it was his office. We’re still not quite sure how fresh men managed to mistake the
“F” Stands For “Freshman”!Jason Lei / The Spectator By NIAMH WERNER
Principal Yu is everywhere. He haunts students day and night, seemingly without rest. I’ve seen him on the train, in my kitchen at 1:00 a.m. during a dream se quence, and, worst of all, in my drafting class. Prompted by pure curiosity (and funding from the National Security Agency), I de cided to take matters into my own hands and feet. I swore to track down the reason for our principal’s omnipresence.
I started bright and early at 5:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning after I forgot I had a chemistry lab due. After scurrying off the train and looking around franti cally, I spotted him. His tradition al zip-up with a bright red “S” was a dead giveaway. Despite my best efforts, I quickly lost track of Principal Yu, as he veered off into McDonald’s while I was stuck behind the many tall kings of the boys’ basketball team. In stead of digging into the deep mystery behind the odd appear ances of the principal, I was stuck listening to them discuss the latest “Cocomelon” video.
“They should add more ka zoo noises to the theme song,”
one of them said. “It would re ally help make it more sophisti cated.”
“I can’t believe you just said that!” replied the other, running away in tears.
As I walked up the steps to the bridge and pretended not to be winded, I opened my eyes in horror at the sight that beheld me: Principal Yu was holding the door open for students, po litely saying “Good morning.” That phony! He had transported himself from the McDonald’s to the school entrance in a matter of seconds. I HAD to get to the bottom of this.
After suffering through a long day of school, during which I openly wept eight times (a new record), I anxiously awaited the end of my club meetings to try and dig up more information. A hunch led me directly to the Hudson Staircase.
All of a sudden, I heard a high-pitched voice echoing through the stairwell.
“Everything is going to plan,” said the indiscernible voice.
“The students don’t suspect a thing, and the Principal Yu XModel Three is slowly spreading through Tribeca. I can’t believe
we pulled this off!”
I opened and closed the door of the stairwell loudly and began stomping down the stairs, hoping to make the person aware of my arrival. I made it to the first floor faster than the freshmen running to Music Appreciation and was about to exit the building when someone opened the door to aid my escape.
“Good luck with your home work!” blurted Principal Yu.
Taken aback by his reappear ance, I jumped up, nervous about this confrontation. I replied with an attempted casual, “You too!”
“Have a good night!” he exclaimed with a smile, not ac knowledging my homework re buff.
I returned to school the next day, but shockingly, big man Yu wasn’t there to open the door. Something had gone drasti cally wrong. At the cusp of my worry, shadowed hands sud denly gripped my denim blend jacket—where were they taking me? They hustled me down the stairs and into Moran’s office. It was quiet—too quiet. Walking through the office door, I was quickly surrounded by thousands of TV monitors showing secu
rity camera footage, and on ev ery screen was a picture of me. I could see myself in the stairwell, on the train, and at lunch eating my spicy sausage and jam sand wich (don’t knock it ‘til you try it). But sitting in an office chair in the center of the room was Mr. Moran.
He dramatically swiveled to face me before saying, “We all know why you’re here.”
I rolled onto my side to look at the wall and the cabinet, which stood with its doors ajar, shiny metal peeping through. There were 10 different Yu heads, arms, and other assorted body parts on the cabinet shelves: dismantled robots ready for activation as soon as possible.
Suddenly, the shrill noise stopped. “Stupid fire alarm,” muttered Moran. “It’s so difficult to plot world domination in these conditions.”
I didn’t reply. I knew I had to get out of the building ASAP, otherwise I might feel tempted to join the Yu robots myself. I mean, thinking of becoming a piece of metal on a daily basis is healthy, right?
I did the most logical thing and imagined I was a freshman
words “Oh, the place2 w3’ll go” for “Principal Yu’s Office.” The mob ended up wandering to the sophomore bar, the 11th-floor pool, and even the ninth-floor AP Chemistry classrooms be fore finally realizing where the principal’s office was.
When they finally did reach Principal Yu’s office, they de manded reform, chanting na
ïve phrases like, “We demand equal rights! Stop bullying the freshmen with these nonsense grades!” and “My parents will kill me if they see that my report card says ‘The jokes you crack in class are so cringe that I didn’t even want to write anything here!’” But Mr. Yu seemed un fazed by the sounds of squeak ing mice outside, calmly typing away on his computer while the students banged on the door. Without even looking up, he
pulled a rope hanging next to his desk, triggering the bells to sound and scattering the mob with frightening speed as they all scurried off to their 10thfloor Mandarin class in classic freshman style.
Given the nonexistent suc cess of the angry mob, it was certainly a surprise when it was announced yesterday that the grading system for mark ing period one would never be used again. In an e-mail sent
out by Principal Yu, he wrote, “Regrettably, the new grading system that we had worked so hard on must be repealed. It seems that the system caused more emotional damage than expected, which is frankly kind of sad. I expected the student body to have more resistance to such damage, given that they suffer constant emotional damage from their abysmal test grades.” The entire student body breathed a sigh of relief;
late to gym class. My legs started pumping faster than they ever had before as I double-crossed the security guards and sprinted to the first floor exit, trying to make it out of the school to get some decent internet.
After hiding in the hedges near Rockefeller Park for about three hours while studying for my French quiz, I successfully rid myself of Mr. Moran and the Yus. But I knew I had to keep go ing. I ran all the way home in my Converse (and ended up fractur ing both of my feet), and wrote up this analytical report of my investigation that you have just read.
I would like to conclude by saying that I have since been ex pelled from Stuyvesant due to “disorderly conduct,” and my parents have sent me to a Ca nadian boarding school. Due to my absence, I am leaving the removal of the Yus to my good friend Robert Mitchell, the lo cal cockroach living in the boys’ locker room. I wish him all the best in finishing off my investi gation and hope that once he is done, he can help me sneak back across the border.
the embarrassment had come to an end.
Unfortunately, the relief may be short-lived. Rumors have already started circulat ing about the grading system that the administration plans to implement next marking period, which includes, but is not lim ited to, trigonometric functions, two-column statement-reason proofs, and acid-base titration problems.
The Stuyvesant administra tion announced that commute by bicycle is mandatory for all Stuyvesant students and staff starting November 14. As a re sult, all Student MetroCards, LIRR passes, and Commuter Benefits Program Commuter Cards have been canceled. Any form of transportation for the purposes of commuting between home and school other than bik ing is now prohibited.
Commuters must provide proof of their bike commute through a monitored Zoom livestream every morning and afternoon, along with daily no tarized affidavits. Failure to abide by such regulations will result in the newly-appointed Assistant Principal of Bicycle Commutes Scott Thomas (along with his numerous other roles) setting off the safety shower on you in a physics lab room—but the shower will instead contain dan gerous and flammable chemicals that will fatally injure you.
For students, this new bike commute will replace their Physi cal Education classes if the com mute exceeds 20 minutes, result ing in an additional free period. The commute is now scheduled on Talos as the course “Bike Commute” every day, to be mon
itored by Physical Education teacher Dr. Ava Monkrana for legal reasons, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. and from 3:35 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. All students must wear a Stuyvesant Physical Education Department uniform while com muting every day and pass occa sional tests in the form of biking competi tions in order to gradu ate.
Stu dents will not be al lowed to uti lize their phones or so cialize while
has been added to their contract stating that they must commute to school using a bicycle. Failure to do so will result in their im mediate termination and punish ment in a physics lab room, even if they are tenured. They will not receive pay during their commute (except for Monkrana, who will receive a significant bonus), nor will it count toward their teach ing hours (including Monkrana).
They will not be required to wear a uniform and will be permitted to use their phones but must pay a fee if they wish to store their bikes within Stuyvesant’s new first-floor bike garage or if they do not abide by these recommen
The idea to mandate com muting by bi cycle had been promot ed by the Stuyves ant Tran sit and Urban ism As sociation (STUA), as they predicted the enormous environmen tal benefits that would arise as a result. The numerous health benefits, along with the reputa tion of the subway as a crime cellar, convinced the adminis tration to mandate biking. The Physical Education and Health Departments would save enor mous sums from not needing to maintain their gymnasiums and be able to promote a healthy lifestyle on the cheap. STUA had also sought to install bike racks on the first floor, replacing the
entire pool with a massive bike garage, to accommodate the thousands of bikes that need to be stored within the school, paid for by significant government spending (for students and most staff). The final straw that led to this change was the news that Stuyvesant had failed the new Physical Education Regents, hin dering students’ progress toward graduation. Blame was put on teachers and students alike.
The response to this change has been mixed. Students who live near the Nassau County border in more suburban areas are very opposed to this change.
Junior Marie Byrne stated, “My commute to Stuy[vesant] is one and half hours with the Port Washington and 2/3 trains. Now, my commute is something like three to four hours. And how am I supposed to do that and take four AP classes? And get sleep? And have friends?”
Students who live closer to Stuyvesant were much more sup portive of the change. Sopho more Mimmi Cecelia stated, “I live in Brooklyn Heights. My commute is only 20 minutes, whether that be by bike or by train. I can’t believe the adminis tration is actually making an ef fort to improve our health!”
Staff were much more op posed to this change than stu
dents. The change also eliminat ed all of the Physical Education classes except Monkrana’s, re sulting in the Physical Educa tion teachers being laid off, given roles to enforce the new rules, or reassigned to another school. Staff also live, on average, much farther than students, with some staff having five-hour-long com mutes by bicycle or more, espe cially since the only bike path across the Hudson into New York City is the George Washing ton Bridge. The rare exceptions to this trend are math teacher Aziz Jumash, geosciences teacher Stephen McClellan, and Specta tor faculty advisor Kerry Gar finkel, who already rode a bike to school every day prior to the new rule.
What is inevitable is that Stuyvesant students and staff alike will lose something: time. They will no longer have the time to do their jobs and work prop erly. Sleep will entirely disappear from the vocabulary of Stuyves ant. Stuyvesant will crumble as its high expectations are tarnished. It shall lose its status as the privi leged school of intellectuals. It will come at the cost of saving the planet and the physical health of all. But that is completely fine, so long as those bike riders get those insane calves.
“F”
It’s only been a few issues and The Spectator is already facing massive internal con flicts after their switch to a daily publication. I can already see some of you whining in the imaginary comments: “But shouldn’t the masterminds be hind the paper, who have their own deadlines and everything, be able to fit the same sched ule in under a day?” Unfortu nately, this is not the case with Spec kids.
It all began when Principal Yu sent an inconspicuous email early Monday morning to seniors and Editors-in-Chief Maya Nelson and Momoca Mairaj, in which he hinted that a cult dedicated to him was forming in the Humor de partment, among other things (pertaining to us). He included the following note at the end: “Times are changing, and I’m getting too old to wait two weeks to read a newspaper. Therefore, starting today, The Spectator will have to publish daily to simulate a real one like The New York Times.”
Nelson immediately com plained that this order in fringed on their charter, but Yu responded by leaving her on voicemail and disappear ing for the rest of the day. When our reporters finally found him and demanded an swers for the sudden change, he was sitting in his office, shoes propped up on the ta ble. “They’re Stuy students, so surely this should be easy for
By RAVINDRA MANGAR and CHARLOTTE PETERSONElevated levels of super natural activity were found at the McDonald’s on Greenwich Street last week. Customers frantically ran out of the res taurant as glass shattered on the floor, bathed in sparkles of sanguine. It is rumored that the one behind this was Stuyves ant’s new headphone-stealing pet ghost Fifi, specially em ployed by Mr. Moran after he got too tired of chasing chil dren down the Hudson Stair case. The specter was desper ately trying to open their prized bottle of Kit Kats when they got bored wandering the Junior atrium. Nevertheless, Mayor Eric Adams had this to say dur ing his press release:
“Upon receiving numerous complaints from paranoid cus tomers in TriBeCa restaurants, but more importantly watching McDonald’s, Vivi’s Bubble Tea, and even Whole Foods’ stock prices take a massive fall after the incident, my administration has decided to permanently shut down all dining establish ments in the TriBeCa area.”
In the following days, famed Stuyvesant-adjacent restaurants closed one by one. Ferry’s: fin ished. Shake Shack: scrapped.
them,” he replied, waving his hand coolly. “Tell them that if they don’t, I will reveal their secret plans to write another blasphemous article on me in the next SING! (or was it SEUNG!?) issue.”
had broken out in room 615E, home to the top-secret Spec class, as the other editors heard of the news.
“Some of them were cry ing hyster ically, using ripped-up newspaper sheets as tis sues, while others were channeling their rage through fu rious scribbles on the whiteboard.
Thankfully, I got out of there un scathed,” freshman Gary McGibson, who had errantly ven tured into the room out of sheer boredom, said.
mental breakdowns, faculty advisor Kerry Garfinkel came to the rescue, suggesting that they could have more students help out with the paper. He held an emergency meeting with the English Department to discuss ways to increase student involvement. After an awkward moment of si lence in which teachers stared blankly at each other, Fresh man Composition teacher Lisa Fleevers quipped, “Since we
can’t threaten students physi cally if they don’t contribute, we should threaten them with a 10-point reduction to their English grades instead!”
matting of the paper itself (the editors were contractually obligated to handle the edit ing and publishing processes). The illustrations and pho tos sent in were, let’s just say, tragic—someone sent in their entire photo collection, which included a truly embarrassing selfie that is now endorsed by @stuyslumped. The layout crew wasn’t great either, submit ting a PDF with, ironi cally, no News section (editor: “What hap pened to our official slogan, ‘we put the NEWS in NEWSpa
low its writing standards had dropped since the last pub lished issue, Mairaj shared an excerpt from one of the drafts submitted at 11:59 p.m.:
“Today, mr Ruben stine, dr Nedwiked -Moore, and mr gross man came down with the dreaded disease known as covid. there infections were consistent with the current infection rates at stuy (obvi ously).
Terry’s: trashed. However, the Stuyvesant student body didn’t seem to care all too much, at least until Mayor Adams add ed the beloved halal carts to his ban list. A record-breaking number of petitions and offcolor memes were sent to the Department of Education’s (DOE) inbox, complaining about injustice and extreme stripping of basic humanitar ian rights following these de velopments. These petitions achieved the impossible—they actually made the DOE pay attention to the developing is sue, and strangely enough, re spond with meaningful change. Stuyvesant students rejoiced until the DOE proposed what would become an atrocious, heinous act: outsourcing food preparation and serving to the Stuyvesant cafeteria.
Even the lunch ladies had doubts about replacing actual, edible sustenance with hast ily cut carrots and the signa ture tasteless school breakfast muffins. Unfortunately, they couldn’t evade the magical DOE sorting hat that split them between the differing restaurants based on their mul tivariable calculus capabilities and least favorite seltzer water flavor. The DOE went as far as to make some of the restaurant names educational in some way,
out of hand. In one instance, a student admitted to filling half a page with a string of ‘L’s and calling it a day, before being hounded by the Humor police for his mischief.
When assigning roles for students, those who weren’t randomly assigned an article were tasked with the standard art/photo requests or the for
Aside from hav ing assembled an in competent team of student volunteers, the paper was also criticized for charg ing $2 a copy to cover its daily print ing expenses. “With prices rising drasti cally, I don’t see why making our readers pay is so unusual. Screw the fact that we used to distribute the pa per for free; now I enjoy pock eting the extr—I mean, saving up for future expenses,” Busi ness editor Amber Shen com mented.
However, the final nail in The Spectator’s coffin was its considerable decline in quality. With writers having home work to finish and meetings to attend, they just couldn’t find the time to write decent ar ticles. As an example of how
Aside from the fact that three teachers catching co vid at the same time may be strange, my investigation into covid policies has not gone well [note to the editor: tell them what an absolute noob i am at conducting interviews]. ‘pls stop asking me abt this. i have told u in the past 40 in terviews that they have not changed, now get the hell outta [my office],’ parent coor dinateur and director of fam ily engagement dina ingrain says.”
Mairaj later commented that she isn’t “cut out for this [EXPLETIVE].”
With The Spectator com ing under fire for the poor quality of its articles and dis organized internal structure, it has since suspended publi cation indefinitely. Almost al ways ending with a threatening note, negotiations with Princi pal Yu have also been fruitless. But one thing hasn’t changed. Yu still stands outside his of fice, waiting for his newspaper to arrive with his lovely face plastered onto a new, longawaited SEUNG! edition.
as exemplified by Downtown Dipoles (formerly Downtown Yogurt) and Little L’Hospital (formerly Little Italy).
When sophomore Fionah
about to fly into the Hudson,” she said. “When I looked to the sofa corner to try and relieve my taste buds, all I found were stacks upon stacks of boxed
Dashing Dividends, but to his surprise the usual delicious ice cream was replaced by some gooey spinach and cheese sub stance. “Just looking at it made me want to puke. There weren’t even any real donuts, just bagels so hard that they almost broke my teeth. And I’d rather spend 20 more hours drumming than take a bite of those new bread drumsticks.”
Stuyvesant students and staff had their final straw when AP Microeconomics teacher
Khen walked into McDonald’s (now renamed McDivide’s) hoping to buy a sandwich, she was instead rewarded with an overpriced slab of uncooked meat stashed between two slic es of bread. “The chicken was so raw that it looked like it was
frozen, chunky milk!”
Senior Abheek Lath had a similar experience. After a long eight hours of continuous band practice, he tried to regain feel ing in his fingers by buying a cup of ice cream from Dunkin’ Donuts, now rechristened
David Stock fainted during class after a student casually told him that the Los Tacos No. 1 (now Ludicrous Theorems) menu was revamped to serve bags of chips and canned corn to put on top, with the only available seasoning being rotten lettuce. Students proceeded to mass protest at City Hall for the re turn of corporate domination in TriBeCa in a desperate effort to end this terrible nightmare that had descended upon all the food lovers. Little Fifi, how ever, afraid of the wrath of the Lettuce Eating Club on their quest for better DOE quality lettuce, returned to hiding. If you happen to be on the third floor this Halloween, where the real terror is more outside the building than within, be sure to tell Fifi “hi”… if you can spot them.
Now that it’s the spooky season, I’m sure you’re won dering what our beloved prin cipal has been up to. We’re here to reveal our discoveries, from potential Halloween cos tumes to Principal Yu’s portal. Through extensive research, we have come up with a few theories. Do not inquire where we have obtained our sources.
One of the most iconic parts of Yu’s daily e-mails during quarantine was when he shared his love for the popular K-pop group BTS, also known as the “Bangtan Boys.” Students have also re ported hearing “Butter” and “Permission to Dance” on repeat when walking near his office. These findings have led us to conclude a multitude of proven facts.
Yu is going to be the new est addition to BTS. Even though this may seem like a stretch, he has the perfect formula for a K-pop idol. First of all, everyone knows that he’s an avid ARMY; it’s only right to assume that BTS themselves have also heard. With the copious amounts of motivation he e-mails us, how could our biases reject such a lovely person? He obviously has a talent for singing (how dare you assume that our prin cipal is tone-deaf?), and he has also shown his proficient dance skills when visiting some of the StuySquad crews. Of course BTS is going to in vite Yu to join the group! We suspect that Yu will announce the news on Halloween by dressing up in K-popper-
By ANIKET ROYAnime. We all know what it is and we all love it. Some more than others, some less than others, and others pre fer the OTHER side of the Japanese animation world. If you don’t know what that was in reference to, I’m guessing your rice purity score is still pretty high.
Anyway, today I felt the need to talk about my favor ite genre in the anime world: romance. You see, I’m a hope less romantic who has never felt the touch of a woman or man, which single-handedly makes me the best person to talk about romance in anime.
The story follows the main character, Kazuya, who is heartbroken after his girlfriend abruptly ends their relation ship. Kazuya spends his days dejected and buying surplus
showstopper attire and having a concert in the first-floor au ditorium.
Besides the stinky under classmen, a lot of you most definitely remember Princi pal Yu’s daily blessings during the peak of the spicy cough, a.k.a. COVID. For a lot of us, this was the brightest part of our mornings. Reading those paragraphs of well-thoughtout words and specially cho sen quotes from renowned individuals with the utmost sympathy touched our hearts. Our last motivational boost from Yu was delivered to our inboxes on September 9, 2022—recently, a majority of those e-mails have turned into endless case reports of the spicy cough. Our last daily occurring e-mail from the beloved Yu is from Septem ber 17, 2022. After exam ining our sourc es, we have found endless recommenda tions for how we can improve our lives from THE Seung Yu himself. Start waking up at 4:00 a.m. on the weekdays for motivation and outlook for the day (“thinking, writ ing, reflecting,” he says in one of his e-mails). I’m sure many of us agree that waking up before the crack of dawn has immensely improved our lives, allowing us to think, reflect,
and plan out our day.
But how exactly did he find that waking up at 4:00 a.m. was the golden ticket to life? Reports from Stuyvesant stu dents who have been waking up at 4:00 a.m. claim an over 100 percent improvement in the quality of their lives. They also reported some pretty funky things going on in the early hours of the day. One student reports feeling like someone’s yelling affirmations at them: “I heard a voice clear its throat and thunderously ex claim, ‘You are going to pass your AP Calculus BC test with a 66 and all the escalators are going to work today,’ and I
perer, and he’s been stealing his motivational quotes from ghosts. The BTS, also known as behind the scenes, of those e-mails were really just dead people that for some reason chose to stay in this cruel world to share their wisdom with Yu, thereby providing us great mental help resources (through some questionable means).
3. Are You Sure Your Princi pal Is Merely Saying “Good Morning” Every Day?
Ever since we’ve all re turned to in-person school, there’s been another method of encouragement: all those
Yu himself? How could that be possible, even with time management expert Princi pal Seung Yu? You see, there are some… what do we call them? Assistants. Assistants who help Yu as he puts forth his facade. Think about it: why waste time having your greet ings be ignored by half the stu dents late to their first-period class when you can be making behind-the-scenes progress on something aligned with your darkest desires?
We have a *very* reliable source who claims that there is a portal to Principal Yu’s REAL office—room 103 is NOT his true office. The por tal was found to be a gray filing cabinet drawer—what a clever hiding spot. Inside, Principal Yu has been spotted conspir ing with his gray-robed (why is everything gray?) e-mail writ ing assistants, drafting a long scroll titled, “Stuy Students: Fears.”
was like ‘Oh my god, slay.’”
You might be wonder ing, “Where exactly do these voices come from?” Since the reports don’t indicate any sightings, we can only con clude that some really motiva tional ghosts are making these sounds. This leads us to the theory that Yu is a ghost whis
“good morning” and “have a safe trip home” well-wishes. What does all this free time mean?
If our dear principal is out on the bridge saying “good morning” to everyone, then… who is inside his office? Don’t tell me you actually think it’s empty when not occupied by
amounts of Kleenex tissues and lotion, which must mean he’s in the mood to clean his house.
Anyway, like any normal human being, Kazuya soon discovers a girlfriend rental service, which allows him to rent a girlfriend for a period of time. The remainder of the show follows Kazuya’s hope less attempts to connect with Chizuru, the girl he chose to rent, but ultimately, all the show really manages to ac complish is prove just how much of a social reject Ka zuya is.
Although the anime was far from enjoyable, it did give me a business venture to look into. I was hoping to create my own Rent-A-Partner app. The app would function simi lar to Tinder, but you have to pay to date one another. Un fortunately, I’m still working through some of the legal red tape for that.
“Your Lie in April” Has Me
Crying in April
This anime truly brought me to tears. The synopsis of the anime basically goes like this: the protagonist, Arima Kousei, is unable to play his piano after the passing of his mother. However, after meet ing the eccentric Miyazono Kaori, Kousei is able to over come his trauma and not only rekindle his passion for music, but also find comfort in a new loved one.
After finishing this anime, I truly believed love was still in the cards for me. That is, until I remembered I hadn’t left my bedroom in three days and that I’ve eaten a pint of ice cream each day. But maybe there is still hope for you.
Yes, you. If you want a chance at not being buried alone, stop reading this article and delete that file containing a list of all your anime waifus. It will be hard, but it’s impor tant to go cold turkey. “Rascal Does Not Dream
The seemingly normal life of Sakuta Azusagawa, a high school student, changes dras tically when he encounters one of his senior classmates dressed up in a bunny girl cos tume. I’m not joking. Google it. The reasoning behind the costume is that some teen agers go through something known as puberty syndrome, which makes them appear in visible to others around them.
Mai Sakurajima, the afore mentioned bunny girl, made the sensible choice to see if she was truly invisible by wearing a bunny girl costume in public. Surprisingly, only Sakuta is able to notice her. The remainder of the show follows them trying to cure Mai’s puberty syndrome, and of course, they end up falling in love.
This anime gave me hope that, one day, I too would find one of my upperclass
The small lightbulb in the cold lab flickers on and off. There are many fears any given Stuyvesant student can harbor in their mind. Not get ting into an elite university. Getting below a 98 on a test. Failing gym. Being caught by one of three notorious deans with AirPods in. We regret to inform you that after telling you all this, we have not con firmed what the scroll is for. But be prepared to face those terrors—Yu and his gray assis tants plan on executing their plan. Totally did not mean to cause anyone distress at this revelation.
*Disclaimer. These are mere theories. We try to believe in the geniality of our dear prin cipal.
man companions in a bunny costume, and I would be the only person capable of saving them. Until that day, I’ll just continue being a social reject.
Sometimes, I find myself thinking that I will never find a significant other who is will ing to spend their Saturday evening going to furry con ventions with me. I just have to wake up to reality. Nothing ever goes as planned in this accursed world. The longer you live, the more you realize that the only things that truly exist in this reality are merely pain, suffering, and futility.
Listen, everywhere you look in this world, wherever there is light, there will al ways be shadows to be found as well. As long as there is a concept of victors, the van quished will also exist. The selfish intent of wanting to find love initiates loneliness and hatred is born in order to protect love. Anyway, back to watching anime.
Brittney Griner is a seventime WNBA All-Star and twotime Defensive Player of the Year. This February, she was detained in Russia after travel ing into the country with less than a gram of hash oil. Her appeal was denied on Tuesday, October 25, nearly nine months after her arrest. She has been sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison.
Brittney Griner, a center for the Phoenix Mercury, was traveling to Russia to play in an international league, as many WNBA players do in the offseason. Since 2014, Brittney Griner has been traveling to Russia, where she plays for UMMC Ekaterinburg. She was stopped at Moscow Interna tional Airport when found car rying hash oil and was accused of importing narcotics, break ing Russian law. In August, af ter pleading guilty to the drug charges in hope of a more mod erate sentence, she was con victed of criminally importing marijuana into the country and was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony, despite Russian law stating that the maximum detainment for the possession of fewer than two grams of hash is 15 days.
Brittney Griner’s detain ment has had an undulating impact on the sports world, causing waves of people,
whether they knew the star or not, to speak out in support.
USA Basketball and the WNBA publicized statements that ex pressed their “disappointment” at the “unjustified” outcome, and a commitment to her safe return. Though the court near
officials claim to be working aggressively to bring her home through prisoner trade discus sions with Russian authorities.
During her trial, Brittney Griner’s lawyers provided a doctor’s note that recommend ed the drug for chronic pain.
to Russian criminal justice pro ceedings, the trial carried on af ter she pleaded guilty. Now that the sentence remains upheld, it is likely that the only possibility of her return would be through negotiation with Russian au thorities. The prospect of this agreement, most likely through a prisoner swap, seems increas ingly dim.
By SOHAM MUKHERJEEAC Milan chants echoed through San Siro stadium on a chilly evening in 2005, as their team hosted relegation-threat ened side Reggina FC in a mid-autumn league game. The clock hit the fifth minute when Milan left-back Paolo Maldini received a pass outside of the box, shrugged off one defend er, and buried the ball in the back of the net with a sharp shot. It was just the start Milan needed, taking an early 1-0 lead courtesy of Paolo Maldini. Just 15 minutes later, Milan won a corner. Rui Costa whipped the ball into the box, and a tower ing header from Maldini made the score 2-0. The stadium was buzzing with excitement as the home team settled the match, ending 2-1. This would be Paolo Maldini’s only brace during his professional play ing career. His defensive prow ess, leadership, and consistent performances have impressed many across generations, and he is widely considered to be the greatest left-back of all time.
Born in Milan in 1968, Paolo Maldini had his heart set on following his passion for soccer from an early age. The Maldini heritage was always strongly centered around AC Milan, so his family’s history with the club laid the ground
Moscow declared her guilty of intentional smuggling, Presi dent Biden called the sentence “unacceptable” and stated that Brittney Griner was “wrong fully detained.” United States
Brittney Griner also said that she had “no intent” to break the law, and her possession of the drug was an oversight when packing, which she called an “honest mistake.” In adherence
Beyond the fact that Rus sia has a significantly different justice system from America’s, there are several factors that may have influenced Brittney Griner’s trial and sentence. Pri marily, war tension caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created cracks in the rela tionship between the U.S. and Russia, and the athlete could almost be categorized as a pris oner of war. To the Russian government, she is valued as a diplomatic bargaining chip. She is also a person of color, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and an outspoken activist for equality. In fact, she was wearing a “Black Lives For Peace” hoodie when initially de tained. Regardless of whether these distinctions played a role in her arrest and sentence, the claim of her wrongful detain ment has led the U.S. govern ment to step in with the goal of her release.
Amid negotiations for her release, Brittney Griner ex pressed fallen spirits as the likelihood of a timely return
work for Paolo Maldini’s love for the team. The most influen tial figure in the young Italian’s early life was his father, Cesare Maldini, an AC Milan icon who spent 12 seasons with the club during his professional career. This loyalty earned him the honor of being a one-club leg end, and his son would soon follow in his footsteps.
Paolo Maldini joined Mi lan’s youth team when he was just 16 and made his profes sional debut during the 19841985 season. At 17, he was promoted to the starting 11 and donned the number three, the same number his dad wore.
Paolo Maldini started off by playing as a right-back because he was right footed, but his two-footed versatility soon al lowed him to play on the left, where he was more comfort able. Under the mentorship of experienced, dependable Milan captain and center-back Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini became a staple in the Milan backline due to his fiery fight ing spirit, ball-winning abilities, and defensive awareness. The Italian was feared by opponent attackers for his iconic sliding tackle. Whenever an attacker dribbled at Paolo Maldini, he would jump in fearlessly, glid ing across the grass to whisk the ball away or clear it up the field, often leaving his oppo nents on the ground wonder
ing what just happened.
Though primarily a leftback, Paolo Maldini’s flexibil ity allowed him to be deployed anywhere across the defense. Out of the 193 total games where Paolo Maldini partnered Baresi in the center of the de fense, the two performed bril liantly together, conceding only 23 goals in all. The pair was part of what is often considered to be history’s greatest back four: Paolo Maldini, Baresi, Ales sandro Costacurta, and Mauro Tassotti. Baresi and Costacurta, the two disciplined and hardworking center-backs, were flanked by an experienced Tas sotti on the right and a young, dependable Paolo Maldini on the left. The backline played in the Catenaccio system, a unique Italian style of defend ing with a very strong emphasis on defensive shape and shut ting down threats. Together, the back four could coordinate incredibly well to nullify op ponent attackers and instilled fear in the minds of their op ponents. Milan’s defense be came so rigid and reliable that the team won the 1987-1988 league title with only two loss es. The next season, the squad secured their consecutive Serie A title, this time going unde feated the entire season and earning the nickname “The Invincibles.” The same four defenders played together for
the national team as well. One of their best performances was during the 1990 World Cup, where despite placing third in the tournament, the backline, having conceded just two goals throughout the competition, earned Italy the title of best defense. Later, after Baresi’s retirement, Paolo Maldini’s vo cal leadership and inspirational spirit earned him the mantle of captainship for both AC Milan and the national squad, with fans nicknaming him “Il Capi tano,” Italian for “The Cap tain.”
During his peak, two of the best clubs in the world, Man chester United and Real Ma drid, attempted to secure the left-back’s signature. However, Il Capitano refused both offers despite the glory and riches, standing by his undying love for Milan. His longevity al lowed him to play a total of 25 seasons with the Italian giants, winning 26 trophies, including seven league titles, five Euro pean Cups, and four UEFA Super Cups, until his eventual retirement at the astonishing age of 41 in 2009. Paolo Mal dini’s loyalty and breathtaking performances for Milan didn’t go unnoticed, attracting atten tion from the Italian National Team. He was called up on multiple occasions, and his ex ecution was equally impressive when he represented his coun
decreased. She rejected a bas ketball she was offered and said that it was too tough to play right now. Cherelle Griner, Brittney’s wife, has only been able to call her twice in the eight months since her detainment. “She’s very afraid about being left in Russia or just completely used to the point of her detri ment. She’s like… ‘I feel like my life doesn’t even matter,’” Cher elle Griner said. If no progress is made on her release, Brittney Griner will be transferred to a penal colony or labor camp, where conditions are known to be incredibly harsh. During the nine years that she is sentenced to serve, she may endure isola tion and psychological torture in a system that largely resem bles the notorious Russian gu lags. Cherelle Griner has said the athlete is at her “absolute weakest moment in life right now,” as Brittney Griner sits in a cell behind bars, unsure of her future.
The suffering of this WNBA star sitting alone in a Russian jail cell must be temporary. Her continued imprisonment, with limited contact with her family and an expected transferral to a penal colony, is intolerable. Nine years in Russia would be nearly a quarter of Brittney Griner’s life. The United States government has a responsibility to bring home the wrongfully detained prisoner and to bring her home now.
try on the big stage. Il Capita no and Italy certainly reached great heights together, making it all the way to the 1994 World Cup final, where they narrowly lost on penalties to Brazil. Un fortunately, Paolo Maldini re tired from international soccer at the age of 34, going trophyless during his tenure with the national squad. Still, his superb longevity made him Italy’s most capped player at the time, a record later broken by Fabio Cannavaro and Gianluigi Buf fon. To respect Paolo Maldini’s legacy at AC Milan, the club decided to retire the number three.
The epitome of a one-club legend, Paolo Maldini proved his undying devotion to Milan even after retirement, continu ing to serve the club as tech nical director. Speaking in an online interview a few years ago, Paolo Maldini branded himself as “the biggest loser in history,” regretting the 1994 World Cup final loss as well as three European Cup final losses during his career. Nev ertheless, his presence on the field revolutionized the role of the left-back with his intense aggression, physicality, leader ship, and accurate judgment on the field. He became the per fect example of a complete de fender and a figure who young, rising stars could look up to for generations to come.
Eager to improve their re cord from last year, Stuyves ant’s varsity football team, the Peglegs, have been working harder than ever. This season, the Peglegs have won all three of their away games. However, they suffered losses at both home games, making their re cord 3-2 after another win at a non-league scrimmage against Petrides. Last year, the Peg legs only achieved two wins, so the team has already improved their record.
This year, the team is led by senior co-captains Efe Kilic, Samuel Glusker, William Opi ch, and Anvar Kadirbekov, who play the positions of quarter back, running back, defensive end, and linebacker, respec tively. Part of what makes this team so special this season is its strong student leadership. “The team’s greatest strength is their resiliency and no-quit attitude,” said coach Eddie Seo. This is made possible because of the Peglegs’ excellent senior lead ership. “Many of the seniors came into this year with a lot of playing experience from last year, and that has turned into a solid foundation for the team this season. Our senior captains have really set a great example of how to show commitment to this team and the rest of the team has followed their lead.”
A team is only as good as its morals and integrity, both
of which the Peglegs certainly have. Stuyvesant hosted its an nual Homecoming game at Pier 40 on October 28. There was a large turnout, and many students were dressed in accor dance with the game’s “pinkout” theme. The theme was
chosen to promote breast can cer awareness month (the en tirety of October), and it gave the students an opportunity to show their school spirit. The game was a close call, with the Peglegs barely losing to the Governors of Dewitt Clinton High School, their long-time ri val. Last year, we were crushed 0-22 against Clinton. It was a tough defeat, which pushed the team to fight their hard est in this year’s game. It came down to an extremely close play in the last few seconds of the game, with the Peglegs only a few yards from scoring a game-tying two point conver sion. In the end, they lost 2628, but they were able to show incredible improvement from the previous year. ”The whole
team, coaches and players, are extremely hard workers and the past couple of years they’ve been doing very well in their division. This Homecoming game is one of the best I’ve seen in a while,” Stuyvesant athletic director Peter Bologna said.
Despite their current suc cess, there are many miscon ceptions and stereotypes about Stuyvesant’s football team.
“It seems like Stuyvesant kids will always assume we’re not good at football.” Opich said.
It seems to be somewhat of a running joke that the football team is one of Stuyvesant’s weaker teams; Coach Seo de scribed how they have a reputa tion for not being very nice and losing a lot of games. Despite this, the Peglegs consistently exceed the expectations of the majority of the student body at games, as seen through their track record this year. They are playing in the A Conference League, the most competitive league in PSAL, and currently
have a good chance at making the playoffs. “We have shown the entire PSAL that we can hang with the top teams, and now we just want the school to see that too,” Kilic said.
Only two games remain in the regular season, including
community, one of the clos est groups of players that the captains have seen during their time at Stuyvesant. “[I’ve] never seen seniors and sophomores get along as much as this sea son,” Opich said. Football is an effective way to get to know new people and build lasting friendships, especially since it’s a considerable time commit ment.
one against the undefeated Car dozo Judges, so the Peglegs de serve all the support that they can get. The players dedicate a large portion of their time to the sport, with daily prac tice and many weekend games. According to the captains, the Peglegs are underappreciated for their time and commitment to the team and should be seen more as a symbol of school pride as opposed to the weaklink of Stuyvesant sports. “The football team has been around for over 100 years at Stuy and that tradition should be some thing that you want to embrace and be a part of, and not avoid,” Seo said.
What sets the Peglegs apart is that they are more than just a team—they are a tight-knit
When asked what he’s look ing forward to about the team this year, Seo mentioned some talented up-and-coming play ers, including a few first-year varsity junior starters and pro spective sophomores. “It’s al ways exciting to see surprises like new players join the team and make a difference right away. I’m excited to see their development the rest of this season and how much better they’ll all be next year,” Seo said. He also hopes to work on technique and fundamentals such as blocking and tackling, though he said that the team already has a solid foundation in these skills. The team has ex perienced various setbacks this year, such as persistent injuries and having to figure out ways to effectively communicate with the new players. However, the team has persisted through these challenges, exhibiting ad mirable teamwork and deter mination. The team’s improve ments in the past year alone illustrate the magnitude of po tential that the Peglegs have in the years to come.
much slack as it continuously fails to stimulate representation and opportunities for players in underprivileged communi ties. Even in the aftermath of this staggering report, Bettman did not announce any concrete plan in this regard, opting to continuously praise the league’s marginal progress since its in ception in the 1910s.
The league’s shortcom ings don’t end with race. As was expected, the diversity of sexual orientation was nonex istent. The report showed that a stunning 93.14 percent of employees identify as straight. By contrast, 1.52 percent iden tify as bisexual, 1.12 percent as gay, and 0.81 percent as lesbian. Sports as a whole certainly tend to lag behind workforce stan dards in terms of LGBTQ+ diversity, but these figures are pathetic even relative to other sports. In the report, the NHL repeatedly mentioned its efforts to increase LGBTQ+ represen tation throughout the league with “Pride Nights” and “You Can Play” campaigns, but clear ly, these efforts have had no impact on increasing LGBTQ+ diversity. Not one current NHL player identifies as anything but heterosexual. Luke Prokop re
mains the sole LGBTQ+ player affiliated with any organization. As the NHL attempts to usher in a younger generation of fans and players, it’ll need to sub stantially increase its LGBTQ+ representation if it hopes to avoid intense backlash.
Arguably the most deceiv ing part of the report was the section regarding gender diver sity. At first glance, the data ap pears acceptable. Overall, 36.81 percent of NHL employees identify as women, while 1.34 percent identify as “other” or preferred not to answer, a cat egory for which further break down was not provided by the league. These numbers are by no means perfect, but the NHL isn’t inexplicably far off from the general workforce, which consists of 46.6 percent female employees. The 10 percent dif ference between the two num bers signifies there is room for improvement, but the NHL also displays positive metrics elsewhere: in its marketing divi sion, 46.2 percent of employees identify as female, practically identical to the general work force.
The issue becomes apparent, however, when the investiga tion turns to women in hockey operations, the executive suites of organizations. Each organi
zation boasts approximately 50 different opportunities in hock ey operations. As The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn found, on average, two of these roles are held by women, a statistic that was conveniently left off of the NHL’s report. The data high lights the lack of leadership op portunities for female employ ees. While the numbers on the surface may appear relatively positive at first glance, a deeper dive suggests that the NHL has work to do, even in an avenue it may have felt more comfortable and confident in.
Even with the work of the “Hockey Is For Everyone” pro gram, the NHL has a long way to go. While this report inspires very little confidence, it at least provides an opportunity for the league to reflect and identify the areas where it can improve. Now, the NHL needs to create and execute an impactful plan and see meaningful progress before it praises itself for work yet to be done. The league has begun to work with the Hockey Diversity Alliance to provide more opportunities for young BIPOC players, but these ef forts aren’t going far enough.
NHL teams need to make an active effort to scout out BI POC players in less prominent hockey towns. The league needs
to ensure that all organizations promote a diversity and inclu sion program, and enforce this program by mandating tangible results. We’re not going to see change happen overnight, espe
cially in a sport whose history has been entirely populated by straight, white men. But when the change does become ap parent, hockey will be infinitely better.
“It seems like Stuyvesant kids will always assume we’re not good at football.” —William Opich, senior and co-captain
The boys’ varsity fencing team, the Cobras, has quietly been one of Stuyvesant’s most successful sports teams in the past few years. They haven’t lost a game since their 2019 season, currently on a 19-0 run since the return of PSAL sporting. Last year, they took home the PSAL boys fencing champion ship banner, defeating Brook lyn Tech in the finals in dra matic fashion. This year, they’re hoping to be repeat champions.
The Cobras’ sport can seem complicated to the casual fan. There are two main blades used in fencing, the foil and the epee. With either weapon, points are scored in touches (hits made on the opponent with the tip of the blade) and foil fencers must hit the opponent in a smaller range to score. The first to score five touches wins a bout, and nine bouts constitute a game. Two games are usually played in a competition, one for foil and one for epee, so the winner of each game will have reached 45 touches total. Each player usu ally plays one bout at a time,
though they often play multiple bouts in a game.
As games are won by total score, the most important role in a fencing competition is the anchor, or the player who fenc es the last bout. Senior and cap tain Jacob Guo, the foil anchor, has certainly lived up to those expectations. During last year’s PSAL championship, the score was tied 44-44 in Guo’s bout,
on the position of foil captain as he tries to use his experi ence to bring the team back to the championship. “He’s a guy who practices a lot,” senior cap tain of girls’ fencing Carina Lee said. “This year he’s been kind of a role model for the new guys. He’s the one you watch if you want to learn.”
Most recently, the Cobras won a competition against Bea
foil bout of the season in top form, also keeping his oppo nent scoreless. Junior Carter Lim won double his opponents’ score in two bouts, and Guo closed the game with an em phatic 5-2 against Beacon’s an chor. In epee, Beacon put up a fight, playing three of their best fencers, but the Cobras were able to win the game by a large margin. Junior Louis-Philippe
bras hope to return to the cham pionship this season. While they are assured of their skill, noth ing is guaranteed. “Our biggest competitors are Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, and Hunter, but really everything is relative. You don’t know anything until the playoffs,” coach Joel Winston said.
The Cobras have adopted Winston’s “hope for the best, expect the worst,” mentality, practicing a lot and develop ing a strong kinship with one another. Guo said, “We have a really solid shot at winning the title this year, but there’s a lot of work that goes into it. We have to really start taking prac tice very seriously and working for it.”
and he managed to score a fi nal touch to seal the game. “It was a surreal experience [with] everyone swarming me, [and] trying to process what just hap pened,” Guo said.
This year, Guo has taken
con (45-21 in foil and 45-22 in epee) on November 1. They played like an undefeated team, with junior Israel Stahl open ing the competition with a 5-0 win in a foil bout. Junior Wil liam Tang then played his first
Jannsen held two of the epee ists to just three touches total over his bouts, and epee cap tain Gabriel Huang finished the match decisively against Bea con’s freshman anchor.
Looking forward, the Co
By FREDERIK SCHUTZ and SAYEB KHAN
It seems as though just yes terday Cristiano Ronaldo com pleted his return to Manchester United, a move that sent the soccer world into a frenzy like none before. The prodigal son had returned to the club where he had forged his name, and expectations were sky-high. Af ter leaving Manchester back in 2009, the Portuguese star went on to achieve legendary status, becoming a five-time Champi ons League winner, leading Por tugal to victory in the European Championships, and receiving both the Golden Boot and the Ballon d’Or—the most presti gious individual awards a soccer player can receive—five times each. After many long years and in the twilight of his career, the legend of the game would make one last statement with a fai rytale comeback, returning the struggling Red Devils to their former Premier League and Champions League glory.
Those were the headlines that were written. Those were the hopes. But things have not panned out according to the fairytale script. While Ronaldo performed well individually last season, finishing as United’s top scorer, the Red Devils as a whole were poor under both Ole Gun nar Solskjaer, who was sacked, and then Ralf Rangnick, finish ing sixth in the league, missing out on Champions League qual ification, and failing to perform in the Europa League. Follow ing that disappointing season, Ronaldo made it clear that he
wanted to leave the club to play Champions League soccer and to enjoy a more successful end to his career. However, because the United board was not keen on letting him go and other clubs were unwilling to make a move, a transfer never material ized. It was unlikely that any top clubs would be willing to cre ate a system around an aging, 37-year-old striker who was past the prime of his career and at an age by which most players are long retired or playing at lower levels.
And so, with the arrival of new manager Erik ten Hag for the 2022-2023 Premier League season, Ronaldo and Manches ter United have found them selves in a precarious position. From United’s point of view, they have an unhappy and aging player, to whom they are paying an eye-watering $518 thousand a week. From Ronaldo’s point of view, these are the last few years of his career, and as the overachiever that he is, he will be content with nothing less than ending his career with a bang and winning soccer’s big gest trophies. As the season pro gressed, the situation got worse, culminating when Ronaldo left Manchester United’s game against Tottenham Hotspur in the 89th minute out of frustra tion. This action is indicative of the idea that Ronaldo views himself as superior to the man ager and the club, a view heav ily criticized by the media. More importantly, however, these re cent events have shone a spot light on United’s problems: the Red Devils have a serious Ron
aldo headache on their hands. Their problem is rooted in several places, both professional and personal. The most glaring of these has to do with Ron aldo’s lack of regular playing time. Throughout his career, the Portuguese striker has been the player whom managers would build their team around. Wheth er it was for Real Madrid, Juven tus, the Portuguese National Team, or even Manchester Unit ed, everyone knew that Ronal do would be playing for most, if not all, of every game. But this year, things changed drasti cally. Ronaldo has rarely started games in the Premier League, being relegated to a few short cameos off the bench or just re maining as an unused substitute for the whole game. For some one who arguably has the stron gest determination and mindset of any athlete in the world, his lack of playing time has been a major source of frustration for him. In fact, Ten Hag has ad mitted that “he wants to play, and he is pissed off when he is not playing.” This attitude was clearly on Ronaldo’s mind when storming off the pitch against the Spurs, choosing to do so di rectly after the substitution of Anthony Elanga and Christian Eriksen in the 87th minute. Fas cinatingly, Ronaldo did the same thing during a preseason game against Rayo Vallecano this past summer, exiting the match early after being subbed off in the 45th minute, something that he was also heavily criticized for. It’s clear that a recurring theme is developing with Ronaldo at United: when Ronaldo doesn’t
play, he is not happy. There is also a human as pect to Ronaldo’s problems. In April, Ronaldo and his partner Georgina Rodriguez announced the tragic loss of their newborn son, emotionally writing on In stagram that “It is the greatest pain that any parents can feel.”
Regardless of their celebrity sta tus, for a parent, losing a child is one of the worst and most trau matic experiences of one’s life, and the sentiment of the couple since then has communicated just that. Ronaldo recently post ed a picture on Instagram with
After Thanksgiving, the Cobras will enter the playoffs whilst maintaining cautious confidence. As Coach Winston said, they don’t know much about their greatest opponents yet, but in their recent games and record, they’ve proved themselves to be a formidable team, and they will do their best to turn that reputation into an other banner.
on the other, a club and manager who do’’t have Ronaldo includ ed in their long term plans. In all likelihood, the two will part ways during the January trans fer window, giving Ronaldo the move he originally wanted. As a whole, what we are currently witnessing is likely the end of the long yet incredibly success ful journey that has been Ron aldo’s legendary career. Time comes for us all, even Ronaldo, and that is just the inevitabil ity which is now catching up to him. Keep an eye on the Portu guese National Team during the
“Our biggest competitors are Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science, and Hunter, but really everything is relative. You don’t know anything until the playoffs.” —Joel Winston, boys’ fencing coach
are off!
9. What are your individual goals for this season? What are the team’s goals for the rest of the season?
By FREDERIK SCHUTZ and YASHNA PATEL Name: Jacob GuoGrade: Senior Height: 6’0”
Hair Color: Black Eye Color: Black
Date of Birth: 8/19/2005
1. When and how did you start fencing? How long have you been on the Cobras, Stuyvesant’s fencing team?
It’s a funny story. Basically, I was in eighth grade, and my sis ter went to fencing because my dad wanted her to. So, I went to her practice one day, and I de cided to join in. And I thought it was really cool. You know, I got to hit people, and so I’ve been fencing ever since. I joined the team my freshman year, and now I’m the captain.
2. What inspired you to join the fencing team here at Stuyvesant?
I would say that I heard about them before. Especially going to Stuyvesant, I wanted to do something prestigious. So I was like, fencing? Stuyvesant? What a combo! And so yeah, that’s why I joined.
3. Do you participate on an outside team? If so, how does your experience on the Stuyvesant team differ?
I used to go to a club. I went from eighth grade until 11th, and then I stopped because it was too expensive. And it’s dif ferent. There, I’m subordinate to my coach, and I’m just an other member. I’m not special.
At Stuyvesant, I have to lead everyone, I have to control, and I have to teach. It’s not some thing I regularly do at the club level, because here it’s really hard for a coach to teach the sport.
4. Do you fence foil or epee, and what skills/strengths are involved in the discipline?
I do foil. I think foil is a lot more graceful in some aspects, and it takes more mental pow er, because there’s something called “right of way,” where there’s priority if you hit. It’s not just whoever hits first or if they both hit. There’s rules, so parries or attacks, counter-at tacks, and things like that. I just think it takes a lot more mental aptitude than epee. And I’d say we’re a lot quicker on our feet. [There’s] a lot more footwork for foilists too.
5. Do you have a most mem orable/proud moment with the Cobras?
That would definitely be last playoffs, on our run. For foil, we were in the semis, and it was 44-44, and last point is 45. Time ran out, so we went into over time. If I didn’t get the point in one minute, if no one touched, and time ran out, the other guy would have gotten the point. And then I got that last point off of a random lunge. I was like, “Damn, what am I doing?” and everyone just swarmed me. Then, we went to finals, and I kind of got my stuff rocked. I got bullied, but we won overall champions, so I’m happy with that.
6. How has being a captain changed your outlook on fencing? What lessons have you learned from this that you can apply to life?
I think as a captain of a team, especially fencing, you learn a lot more about patience and teaching people in general, because during things like try outs and no-cuts, I was the one leading and teaching, along with my co-captain. And it’s hard to teach newbies, because they re ally don’t understand. You have
to demonstrate, you have to help, you have to actively watch when they’re doing drills. In life, you have to be observant and
I want to win championships again and improve as a fencer, even though it might be my last time fencing. Also, I might want to figure out a way to leave the team in stable hands after [cocaptain] Gabriel [Huang] and I are gone. For the team, I want them to learn from each other and kind of get more team spir it. It’s been lacking lately, and as
giving up and getting mad, and it’s hard to control that. I’d say the best part of fencing is when you can finally take the mask off after the last point and just breathe. It’s nice to get fresh air.
11. What does a typical prac tice look like?
A practice usually starts off with a school run. Maybe six to 10, 10 to one, one to 10, if I’m feeling it, and then 10 to six with a sprint across the fi nal floor. Or, we play 20 to 30 mins of gloveball, basically Eu ropean handball, for fun. Then, we stretch and do footwork. Then, it’s conditioning or drills, depending on the day. Then, the rest of the time is actually fencing.
12. Is it hard to get into the sport of fencing for begin ners?
Yes, it’s a bit unfriendly for beginners. It’s both expensive and harder to pick up than most sports. Beginners can’t really watch some professional bouts to understand what’s going on, and it might be too complicated or fast for normal people to watch. Also, there’s this opinion that fencing isn’t a real sport, which I find dumb. I hear peo ple say, “Why are the beekeep ers fighting?” and it’s funny, but it sucks too. Also, there’s not that much of a fencing culture, unlike other sports.
careful if you want to be a men tor to people.
7. Do you have any plans to continue fencing in the fu ture or in college?
I would say at most, I go D2 or D3 (in college), not D1. That’s too hard. Probably, I would be a walk-on and try-out, not recruited. Either that or in tramural or club.
8. Do you have any prematch superstitions or rituals?
We do our own short warmup, and then we cheer. It is an old tradition. It goes like, “Clear eyes, full heart x two. One, two, three... Stuy,” and we
the playoffs approach, I want the team to get more fired up. I think as the season comes to an end, we just want to have some fun and enjoy ourselves.
10. What are the best and worst parts of fencing?
The worst parts of fencing are the mental battles we have. You go into bouts knowing how the opponent fences, and you try your best to exploit their weaknesses, but it’s never as simple as that. When you lose a point you know you could have gotten, especially if it’s been the same way consecutively, it re ally gets in your head. You start
Funniest Teammate: Aidan Nakajima-Wu Favorite Professional Fencer: Gerek Meinhardt or Nick Itkin Playing on Full or Light Stomach: Light stomach but lots of wa ter
Favorite Sports Drink: Yellow Gatorade Favorite Post-Game Snack: Mangoes and anything with potatoes Hobbies: Going on walks, playing video games, and read ing
If You Could Play One Oth er Sport: Volleyball or hockey Motto to Live By: “Get your money up, not your funny up.” Fun Fact: I did ballet in middle school.
continued from page 32
five matches and enjoyed their third 5-0 win of the season.
The next round featured an even better team—the fifthseeded Forest Hills Lady Rang ers. It would also create one of the 12th-seeded Lady Lob sters’ best wins of the season, as they were able to pull off a huge upset in a 4-1 win. Sopho more Sabrina Xu, who amassed
eight wins in the regular season, logged the first win against For est Hills, which was followed by identical 10-4 victories from both doubles teams and an 8-6 victory from sophomore Kara Yip in her singles match.
“Our favorite game from [the] season was probably our game against Forest Hills in Flush ing Meadows Park,” said Peker, when asked about her favorite win from the season. With this win, the Lady Lobsters reached the quarterfinals, and were now
matched up against the unde feated Staten Island Seagulls.
Defeating the fourth-seeded Seagulls would be no easy task, and the Lady Lobsters put up a strong fight against their sta tistically superior opponents. Despite their loss, the Lady Lobsters managed to win two matches, with a final score of 2-3. The match showcased many strong performances from the team that will likely carry onto the team’s next season. Second singles Xu had another impres
sive performance, winning her match without dropping a game in an 8-0 victory. Junior Tara Suri and freshman Sophie Shih, who collectively did not lose a match in their three playoff games, picked up the other win, defeating the Seagulls’ second doubles 8-2.
As the team prepares to say goodbye to both of their captains, seniors Alika Peker and Alexandra Tsarenkov, they are also looking ahead to next season. Though the exit in the
quarterfinal in an extremely close match was devastating, the deep playoff run from the Lady Lobsters this season has shown everyone their capabili ties as a team. “We expect the team to have another great season next year, and they can probably make it even farther in the playoffs,” said Peker, who was asked about the expecta tions for next year’s season. There is certainly no reason to believe that they won’t.
“I think as a captain of a team, especially fencing, you learn a lot more about patience and teaching people in general.”
—Jacob Guo, senior and Stuyvesant Cobras captainSophia Muller / The Spectator
The rain started to fall on the Flushing Meadows Tennis Courts, marking the finale of a dominant performance from the Lady Lobsters, Stuyvesant’s girls’ tennis team. After victo ries in both doubles matches and second singles, sophomore Kara Yip rallied to win the last match of the day, concluding a 4-1 victory over the fifth-
seeded Forest Hills. The upset punched the Lady Lobsters’ ticket into the quarterfinals, where they were slated to play the undefeated Staten Island
members this season, a smaller team allowed for closer connec tions between players, which was evident from the support of each teammate on and off
said. “After all our games near Columbia, we went to get boba and recreated our old TikToks and photos from when we did it the year before.”
Granted the 12th-seed and a bye in the playoffs, the Lady Lobsters faced the 13th-seeded Tottenville Pirates in the first round, who had just come off a 5-0 victory in the first round.
As the Pirates played in a dif ferent division, the girls entered the match with nerves and un certainty about the Tottenville team and their players, but ul timately, it did not affect the fi nal result. In a swift victory, the Lady Lobsters won all five of
Tech Seagulls. In a division with some of the best teams in the city, the Lady Lobsters put up a fight against every team, finishing with a record of 4-6. Along the way, they developed strong team chemistry. With three new
the court. “We were closer than ever. All of our long train rides to the Bronx were spent talking and laughing. Some of the best moments from the season were actually after games when we all went to get food together,” cap tain and first singles Alika Peker
The NHL’s diversity report was many things. A surprise was not one of them.
No sports fan would be shocked by the findings of the
something.
The report focused on league and team employees, which makes sense considering there is no diversity in gender or sexual identity among play ers, and even racial diversity is
general managers and coaches, San Jose Sharks GM Mike Grier is the sole person of color.
While gravely disappointing, there is a definite reason behind the data presented. Hockey is among the most expensive sports to play. In contrast to the more diverse sports of soccer and basketball, hockey is a sig nificant investment because of the sheer cost of equipment. It’s rare to see a player from an un derprivileged community make it into the big leagues, and un fortunately, the sheer expense of the game has stagnated the growth of BIPOC players.
league, no matter how many times commissioner Gary Bett man feigned surprise and prom ised improvement. It’s been the same story for more than a hundred years, and the league has continuously remained ig norant of the glaring diversity problem. With the release of the first ever diversity report, however, the league can no longer look away. For the sake of their future, the NHL must pay attention to the report’s staggering conclusions and do
practically nonexistent.
Even considering how his torically non-diverse the league is, the data is still astounding. A colossal 83.6 percent of league and team employees identify as white, while a mere 3.74 per cent identify as Black, 4.17 per cent as Asian, and 3.71 percent as Hispanic/Latinx––statistics that see the NHL trail behind every other major sporting league by a substantial margin. If these numbers look bad, consider that out of 64 NHL
This issue is only exacerbat ed by the prevalence of retired players in executive roles, prac tically all of whom are white men. It’s also compounded with the league’s inaction after count less racist incidents throughout its history. It took the NHL de cades to recognize the bravery that Willie O’Ree displayed in becoming the first ever Black hockey player. Coach Bill Pe ters has still not been banned from returning to hockey, even after he was accused of repeat edly assaulting former player Akim Aliu because he was Black. Countless incidents of this sort have gone completely unnoticed, and the league has stood by and allowed them to happen. While the expense of hockey is certainly a contribut ing factor to its whiteness, it has allowed the league to cut itself
