Volume 113 Issue 6

The Spectator “The Pulse of the Student

Body”

SCIENCE

Musical Notes in Cognition

Listening to music can either be a distraction or a tool for concentration when studying. The contrast between these two responses to music is due to factors such as individual prefer ences and environmental conditions.

see page 12

Stuyvesant High School

HUMOR

It Is Not Me, It Is You

When your partner Stuyvesant High School is not the partner you thought they would be, you dump them with a breakup letter.

see page 18

Stuyvesant Alters After-School Rule Due to Safety Concerns

By BILL CHAN, MARY LEE, EVAN LIN, FIONA SHI, and ALLISON ZHAO

Stuyvesant’s administration recently implemented an addition to a rule on students returning for after-school clubs. This modi fied rule now requires students to scan their ID upon their return to the school building before 4:00 p.m. and strictly prohibits students from returning after 4:00 p.m.

The rule was enacted due to rising safety concerns after a series of threats followed by a two-peri od-long shelter-in on October 26. “We are responsible for supervis ing students during after-school activities, and for safety reasons, want to limit the coming and going from the building, which is why we require students return for clubs before 4:00 p.m.,” Assistant Prin cipal of Safety and Security and Physical Education Brian Moran said in an e-mail interview.

The rule was first introduced through e-mail as a part of a weekly update newsletter and has been posted at the entrance of the school since, as well as on the transit board near the entrance throughout the school day. Despite

the popular belief that this rule is new, it is only an amendment to an existing rule that was previ ously not commonly enforced.

“The procedure for returning for after-school clubs is not new. The new addition is requiring students

claiming that the implementation was unclear. “I understand that the shelter-in and the incidents along with that were sudden and we didn’t really have any of those last year, but at the same time, it was a super sudden change,” junior

Many students learned about the rule from being blocked from re-entering first-hand. “I walk into the building at literally 4:01 p.m. and get stopped by the security guard,” senior Claire Duguet said. “He goes, ‘If you have an issue, take it up with Mr. Moran, bye now.’ So there was nothing left for me to do but turn around and go home despite having a club to di rect.” Stuyvesant security guards declined to comment on the situ ation.

Similarly, sophomore Brandon Waworuntu was denied entry as he was unaware of the new rule. “I found out about it because I went out of the building to do a proj ect for [Global History] and I was gonna go to an Animal Associa tion meeting and when I went in, they said to me, ‘Look at the sign.’ It said that I can’t be let in after 4 p.m.,” Waworuntu said.

NEWSBEAT

Senior Melia Moore got first place in Dramatic Interpretation at the In terleague Invitational de bate tournament on No vember 19.

Parent-Teacher Confer ences were held on No vember 17-18, with a halfday on November 18.

Freshman Caucus Elec tions were held of Novem ber 23 from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Seniors Nicole Rodriguez and Tanzina Sumona were selected as recipients for the Dream Big Scholarship

to scan their ID upon their return. Students must have their ID or temporary ID that was issued that day to enter the school,” Moran said.

Since its creation, many stu dents have criticized this rule,

Eugene Guo said. “If they sent an e-mail—and I don’t know if they did—they probably sent it in a weekly update that no one has the time to read. I feel like it would’ve been better if they sent a largescale e-mail to everyone.”

While the policy has gained notoriety among the student body, the majority of students recognize that its implementation as a safety precaution is well-intentioned.

The Stuyvesant Art De partment hosted their first in-person exhibit of student works in the first floor lobby beginning on November 15.

Stricter Compliance with DOE Fundraising Guidelines Enforced

By SARAH HUYNH, MAGGIE SANSONE, SAKURA YAMANAKA, and KARA YIP

With the retirement of Stuyvesant’s previous Business Manager, Director of Family Engagement Dina Ingram has taken over the role. In an ef fort to streamline compliance with the Department of Educa tion (DOE) regulations, stricter guidelines have been placed on club fundraising. In collabora tion with Principal Yu and Dr. Haber, Ingram updated the Treasury Memo to Staff this past September and formed fundraising guidelines for clubs, pubs, teams, and their faculty advisors and coaches.

Efforts to comply with the DOE’s Standard Operating Pro cedures Manual, DOE policies, and the Chancellor’s Regulations may lead to changes in the way some clubs fundraise. Changes require clubs to obtain autho rization for the collection of funds, obey fundraising require ments such as ensuring a faculty advisor or parent volunteer is present, count collected funds, and submit required documen tation. Fundraisers outside but near school grounds have also been limited because of safety concerns.

Ingram recognizes the role

of the administration in help ing clubs maximize fundraising and ensuring that they act in ac cordance with the rules. “The greatest impact on clubs is the planning and documentation they are required to submit; but we are here to support them in planning, provide detailed instructions, col laborate with the [Parents’ Association (PA)] to arrange for parent volunteers, and are striving to provide as many opportunities for clubs to fundraise as possible within the confines of the rules,” Ingram said in an e-mail interview.

According to Stuyvesant Student Union President Ryan Lee, these guidelines are not new but are now be ing more strictly en forced. Efforts for greater compliance started in the 20212022 school year when administra tion met with fac ulty advisors, clubs, and student leaders. “In terms of fundraising, these have been the rules for the past couple of years. Due to the previous audits to Stuy and the way the admin istration is looking to compact everything, it’s just a matter of

them being reinforced, and you can see that with a lot of ‘new’ policies,” Lee said. available to supervise), our Par ents’ Association and Alumni Association [have] been gen erously supporting efforts to supplement extracurricular ac

tivities as much as possible,” she said. “There are also opportuni ties each semester to apply for appropriations from the PA for projects or events that clubs

Some organizations remain flexible and have adjusted to these new guidelines and rules. “Specifically with fundraising and tracking, we’ve been pretty adaptable. It hasn’t impacted us in a substantial way because we’ve found our ways in getting around it and also developed our own systems to be able to track such sales,” Lee said. Other clubs, such as Stuyves ant Girl Up, will not see a direct im pact on their money raised through fundraising is used pri marily for donations outside of the school. “Stuyvesant Girl Up’s fundraisers are all for charity. We donate any money we make to the larger Girl Up Foundation or other social justice organiza tions, like the National Network of Abortion Funds,” senior and club president Lianne Ohayon said in an e-mail interview.

However, many clubs, teams, and activities rely on fundraisers as a source of income in addi tion to their budget. “Indicator

does the annual flower sale. This year, we’ve had the breakfast sale during the senior sunrise, a bake sale during homecoming, and a bake sale during Stuy Open House. Fundraisers are crucial for the Indicator because these are funds that help reduce the cost of the yearbook per per son,” senior and Indicator Busi ness Editor Melody Lew said. The limitations of these rules have affected these clubs, including the Indicator. “Every sale being recorded is sort of in convenient because it can get a bit chaotic when doing the sales. Sometimes we even get a few confused looks when we ask a non-Stuy customer for their name and e-mail,” Lew said. “It is upsetting that we can’t have outside fundraisers because that limits some of our fun ideas for fundraisers and we lose out on potential profits.”

Recognizing the frustrations of clubs, the administration hopes to resolve such issues by providing additional funds to offset potentially smaller bud gets. “We’re working to ensure that there is still funding for extracurriculars by collaborat ing with the Student Union, the Alumni Association, and the Parents’ Association and review ing how best we can use [school] funds to supplement them as much as possible,” Ingram said.

Reya Miller / The Spectator

Mirei Ueyama / The Spectator

Stuyvesant Alters Afterschool Rule Due to Safety Concerns

“After the large shelter-in for the whole day, Moran decided to pro pose this rule where you can’t go out after 4:00 p.m. [...] I understand it’s for safety,” Guo said.

Some students even agree with the rule, claiming that re-entry is unnecessary. “There is no reason for anyone to be coming back to the school after four. [The rule] has not affected me, probably be cause our practice ends before four anyway,” senior and captain of the boys’ table tennis team Max Yenlee said.

However, other students still question the necessity of the rule in reducing safety concerns. “You already have security guards wait ing at the front desk, you already have people sitting at the scan ners checking students,” senior Fu Chen said. “Why do you need ex cessive [measures]?”

In addition, students who par ticipate in after-school activities

that end later are disproportion ately impacted by the rule. These students have expressed that the policy impacted their performance and productivity. “Especially when you have clubs that last a long time like robotics or sports teams, you leave really late and you can’t leave the school or anything. So you’re just gonna starve if you have [an] early lunch,” Guo said. “In Science Olympiad, we stay rather late, until eight on nights that are really im portant. We don’t get fed because we don’t pay as much for dues as robotics, and as a result of that, a lot of us just sit there and [get] hungry. I stay at school really late, I’m hungry, I can’t leave school, and I want coffee. It’s something that negatively impacts me.”

Many students also express dis content with the short time frame between the end of the school day and the cutoff to re-entering the building. “I’m not the biggest fan of the cutoff being 4:00 p.m. That gives me less than 30 minutes to go get something to eat before all my

after-school activities,” senior Jon athan Feng said. “It’s more reason able to have kept [the cutoff for re-entry] at 5:00 p.m. when clubs end, but even 4:30 p.m. would’ve been more reasonable,”

Duguet echoes this sentiment. “Between 3:35 and 4:00, students really don’t have time to get food or anything outside the building, so they’d pretty much be forced to stay inside,” she said.

While many students disagree with the rule, they have been forced to adapt. “I’ll just work around it. I used to sometimes get a quick snack before a meeting but now I don’t do that because I don’t wanna miss it. [...] It’s not that big [of an impact],” Waworuntu said.

Ultimately, there is a consensus that there should have been clearer communication with staff and stu dents regarding the specifics of the rule. “Students had no warning that this would be implemented, so they could’ve explained it better before it was implemented,” junior Melody Huang said.

Streaming Service Now Available for Select Stuyvesant Sports

By MATTHEW HUANG, DAVID LIN, and RAVEN (RUIWEN) TANG

Stuyvesant offers more than 40 sports teams, yet many ex perience low spectator turn out. Families and students cite commute times, other commit ments, and scheduling conflicts as hindrances to attending. To increase accessibility, Stuyves ant athletics recently partnered with the National Federation of State High School (NFHS) As sociations to live-stream games played in the third- and sixthfloor gyms. Stuyvesant is joining the NFHS’s current partnership of more than 9,000 schools that are supported by the network’s software and hardware supplies, maintenance, and even revenue from advertising.

The idea of a streaming ser vice was inspired by efforts to ease the impact of attendance restrictions during the pandem ic. “During COVID, when peo ple could not make the games, we knew other private teams that definitely used a stream ing service so that their parents could watch their kids play the sports,” athletics director Peter Bologna said.

Beyond providing a means for parents to stay connected to their children’s sports, the services that come along with the streaming platform open up many opportunities for coach ing. “[The service] would also help our coaches go over film, go over games, and reassess the team. Part of their coaching strategies now is to go over the mistakes and the goods and the bads of all the happenings of the game,” Bologna said.

Student athletes look for ward to having the opportunity to replay and rewatch their per formances as well. “As athletes, especially in public schools, you don’t really have this op portunity as much, but if you can replay your games and you

can see what you’re doing in the games, [...] you can’t put a number to that,” junior and triseason athlete (in soccer, track and field, and tennis) Frederik Schutz said.

Stuyvesant was provided with two free Pixellot cameras as a part of the deal. Current ly mounted to the wall above the bleachers in the third- and sixth-floor gyms, these cameras are capable of motion-tracking and staff-free operation, which have become useful for coaches.

“The camera somehow intui tively just follows the ball, and it knows when to shift over, espe cially in a volleyball game when the ball’s on one side,” girls’

ball, volleyball, and badminton, as well as access to games from other schools that are part of the NFHS Network.

Currently, the limited avail ability of sports on the plat form means that athletes like Schutz will not be able to see their sports streamed on the platform. However, students and coaches alike feel that there is still a sizable potential audi ence. “If I were playing in a game, my family would definite ly want to watch. Otherwise, I don’t think they’d want to watch other sports,” Schutz said. “But obviously, I think, other fami lies here are really devoted to their kids, so I’m sure they’d be

Former president Donald Trump announced his campaign for the 2024 presidential election on November 16.

A gunman shot and killed five people in an LGBTQ night club in Colorado Springs, while injuring more than 25, on No vember 19. A suspect has since been taken into custody.

A shooter shot and killed three football players at the Uni versity of Virginia and injured two others on November 13. A suspect has been taken into custody.

Midterm results were projected by media networks, with Dem ocrats keeping control of the Senate and Republicans gain ing control of the House of Representatives on November 12 and 16, respectively.

Two explosions at bus stops in Israel on November 3 killed one person and injured 22 others.

For the first time in his presidency, President Biden met Presi dent Xi Jinping of China on November 14 in Bali, Indonesia.

CORRECTIONS BOX

- In the Opinions article “Antisemitism: A Case That Shouldn’t Be Made” by Leora Gallai published in Issue 3, the teacher mentioned in the first paragraph was one the student had during the previous school year, not this year.

- The photo attached to the Opinions article “Why Single-Sex Schools Shouldn’t Exist” by Astrid Har rington featured in Issue 5 was not taken by Rain Shao. It is courtesy of Bellarmine College Preparatory.

have suggested can be allevi ated by incorporating adver tisers and utilizing the NFHS Network’s offering of revenue shares for schools. “I think that it’s a good opportunity as well, if Stuy wanted to make some extra money, to try to bring in some advertising if enough people watched it and advertis ers were willing to advertise and give money for that,” Schutz said.

varsity volleyball coach Vasken Choubaralian said. “It’s a really good coaching tool at the same time, because we can quickly and easily access games that we’ve played, and we can assess and get feedback on the way we play the game as a coach.”

Subscription plans are avail able for $11.99 per month or $79.99 per year. Standard across the network, these prices in clude the ability to watch games played in the third- or sixthfloor gyms, including basket

willing to pay a subscription for that.”

Though current viewing options are limited, the service will still support several teams. “We have girls’ and boys’ and JV teams, so we have three bas ketball teams: boys’ team, girls’ team, boys’ JV team. So yeah, there may be only three sports, but [...] it’ll benefit a lot of teams,” Choubaralian said.

The cost of the subscrip tion poses a potential financial barrier for families, which some

However, some feel that a live-streamed game cannot replicate the in-person experi ence or justify the price of the service. “If [my parents] have time, they might as well watch [the games] in person. Watch ing the game live-streamed isn’t always as clear or as exciting as it is in person,” junior Yonna Yeung said. “They wouldn’t really stream sports except for those that me and my sister are in, so spending $11.99 a month or $79.99 isn’t worth it. […] My mom and I would rather buy and watch Netflix.”

The parents who are able to attend in-person games echo this sentiment. “Personally, pay ing for a subscription to watch online isn’t worth it for me when I can easily go in person and support my daughter’s team that way,” Mandy Dong, junior Niki Chen’s mother, said.

Nonetheless, the NFHS Network stands as an alterna

tive for parents who are un able to attend games. Overall, student-athletes, coaches, and administrators hope that this streaming service is just one of many steps to improve school spirit and support for student athletics at Stuyvesant. “A streaming service where people don’t actually have to go to the games—commutes are really long in the city—so if you can just watch from your computer, from your phone, you can feel more connected and invested in a sport, and so that’ll just, as a whole, bring the community of Stuy closer together and also bring up the athletic culture,” Schutz said. “I think that we need to invest more money into our sports teams, such as ser vices like this, but also, for ex ample, finding more space for us to play and getting permits at Pier 40 on a regular basis.”

Stuyvesant’s administra tion looks forward to using the new service and is open to the possibility of using other tech nologies to benefit the school community. “We are always up to trying new things and look ing to improve on the student’s athletic experience. Anytime we can incorporate technology for the community and our stu dents, we are open to doing so,” Assistant Principal of Safety, Security, and Physical Educa tion Brian Moran said.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and NASA

Zifei

Stuyvesant Students Reach Semifinals in Yale Latin Certamen

By PRAPTI BISWAS, OLIVIA HAVEN, and SHARON ZHOU

Stuyvesant Latin students ad vanced to the semifinals in the Yale Latin Certamen on November 12 despite not having participated in almost a decade. A Certamen is a competition focused on Greco-Ro man elements. The competition at Yale centered around Latin gram mar, translation, and vocabulary, as well as Greco-Roman and Egyptian history and mythology. Yale invited public and private schools from the East Coast to participate in the Certamen and introduced students to their Classics Department.

The layout of the competition consisted of A and B teams, which were equal in level. The teams com peted in the preliminary round be fore ascending to the semifinals. The preliminary round presented 20 questions about different sub jects of Latin and two bonus ques tions for every correct answer. The top eight A teams advanced to the semifinals along with the top B teams. In the semifinals, three groups of three teams competed, and the winning three teams were able to move on to the finals.

Latin teacher and faculty advi sor of the Stuyvesant Latin club Lance Tomas supervised the trip of 20 Stuyvesant participants. Many participants were members of the Latin club, which prepares its members with practice Certa mens. However, participation in the Certamen was open to all students who take Latin or are interested in Latin. Because Stuyvesant has not participated in Certamens in recent years, Tomas wanted to reintroduce the competitions to students. “I did Certamen in high school, so I want ed to bring it here because I think it’s fun and I think the kids are good enough to do well,” he said.

This competition was the first Certamen that Stuyvesant had par

ticipated in the past few years, and Stuyvesant lacked resources com pared to other schools that par ticipated. “Some of the schools we were up against have actual Certa men classes and training programs, and we don’t do that,” Tomas said. Similarly, some students expressed frustration over the lack of re

but specialization allowed students to become more knowledgeable in a specific area in the short prepara tion time. “There’s one topic that you specialize in, so for mine, I did Latin grammar and vocabulary, and my other teammates did mythology or history,” sophomore Jada Kim said.

“The [group] we were in was [with] Dominican Academy, Stuyvesant, and Roxbury Latin. Roxbury Latin won with 115 points,” freshmen Ian Savino said, who was in the novice B team. “We came in second place with 85 points and the Dominican Academy at 60 points.”

Students were proud of their

gonna help prepare me for the NLE [...] since we have to take that every year,” Choi said.

Others enjoyed being able to apply their studies in a real-life set ting as well as gain more knowledge about Latin. “It’s fun to see that what we learn actually pays off and that we’re able to understand and get questions correct,” Kim said. “We actually learn new derivatives for certain [Latin] words.”

Besides testing their Latin knowledge, students enjoyed bond ing with fellow team members. “I got to know the people on my team better. [...] We got more time to talk to the team that I was working with, and it was super nice. The experi ence was definitely [something that let me] branch out and try some thing new,” freshman Stella Ander son said.

Anderson also expressed her eagerness to compete in an event like this and how this experience cemented her passion for Latin cul ture and club. “This is actually the first time I traveled for a club or for school, so it was really interesting as a new experience, while also solidi fying that yes, I want to keep doing this for a while,” Anderson said.

sources provided for the competi tion. “I just wished we had a little more preparation for it because I think we only started preparing for it two weeks in advance for the competition,” sophomore Hannah Choi said.

In preparation for the compe tition, students were divided into groups with each member respon sible for a specific area of special ization based on their interests.

Questions were posed to the entire team, regardless of specialization,

Since there is no dedicated Cer tamen program, preparation was done mostly independently. “[We had] two tryouts where we tried to answer questions, [but] otherwise we just worked online on a study guide,” junior Chloe Dong said.

Despite having only a few weeks to prepare, the novice B team advanced to the semifinals as the leading team in the novice B di vision at 430 points. At the semifi nals, Stuyvesant placed second and was unable to advance to the finals.

unexpectedly successful perfor mance. “It’s been a decade since Stuy has participated so we weren’t expecting much, [but] we actually did pretty well. Even our teacher was surprised,” junior Chloe Dong said.

Though Stuyvesant participants did not make it to the finals, they were able to benefit from the ex perience and view it as preparation for the National Latin Exam (NLE) at the end of the year. “The struc ture of the questions, I think that’s

It is likely that Stuyvesant will be participating in future Latin competitions, as attendees enjoyed this year’s event. “They seemed to have fun [...] and I’m hoping we can build this up,” Tomas said. “There’s [another competition] in New York City, usually that’s run by Townsend Harris, that if they do it we’ll prob ably compete there, and we’ll do a lot better than we did.”

To some Latin students, par ticipating in the Yale Certamen is only the beginning. “We’re trying to get into Princeton’s [Certamen] this year, and possibly also a Townsend Harris one. If we do well at these, we probably have a higher chance of being able to attend the Harvard one next year,” Anderson said.

By ELAINE HUANG and PRAPTI BISWAS

Students gathered in Lecture Hall A on November 8 to listen to American author James Kirchick discuss his book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, on invitation from history teacher Da vid Hanna. The talk was organized with assistance from the Alumni Association and the Stuyvesant Book Club and was moderated by presidents of Stuyvesant’s GayStraight Alliance, and Spectrum.

Secret City explores the history of homosexuality in the Ameri can government and the effect of government policy on closeted in dividuals. “[Kirchick’s book] was mostly centered around the Cold War era and mainly highlighted the effects that the Cold War and mass paranoia had on gay people in the government. Even if [politicians] weren’t necessarily homosexual, they would still be stigmatized just from being accused of being gay,” junior Violeta Zani, who attended the event, said.

Kirchick was inspired to write his book because of a college bi ography project on Larry Kramer, an AIDS activist from the 1980s, and his interest in American his tory. “Living in Washington and being very interested in American history, 20th-century history, and the history of the Cold War, [...] I began to realize that homosexual ity played a very important role in American national politics. [...] Ev ery president has had to deal with it in some way, whether there was a scandal, a gay scandal, or they had a

LGBTQ+

Influence On American

Politics: Book Talk on James Kirchick’s Secret City

gay friend, or there was some kind of policy related to it,” Kirchick said. “It just seemed like a really big topic that no one had really treated in the form of a large narrative his tory book.”

To plan the event, Hanna first reached out to Kirchick after at tending an event at which Kirchick spoke. “I was at a book fair, [...] and was doing a presentation on my book. Hanna was in the audi ence. He approached me afterward and asked me to come to [Stuyves ant],” Kirchick said. “I come up to New York pretty frequently; I was giving a talk the next day at Hunter College, so I just figured, why not come up a day earlier?” Kirchick was familiar with Stuyvesant due to a close friendship with alumnus Elina Tetelbaum (‘03), president of the Alumni Association. Kirch ick was not paid an honorarium to speak but was compensated for his train ticket from DC.

Hanna reached out to school counselor and Spectrum faculty advisor Angel Colon through As sistant Principal for Social Studies and Research Jennifer Suri in order to find moderators. “It was a way to engage directly with the students. [The moderators] coming at it, be ing in Spectrum, [with] their under standing about how people are seen in society, and how to understand the way history has, in many ways, marginalized people, and how they’re trying to empower people.”

Hanna said. “I think having them speak was important because it made it more relevant to our com munity.” Seniors and Spectrum presidents Ruby Friedman and

Michelle Zhang served as modera tors for this event. They introduced Kirchick, ushered in students, and led the Q&A at the end of the talk.

The event was met with an un precedented turnout. About 130 attendees filled up the lecture hall, leaving students to sit in the aisles between seats. “A lot of students were sitting on the floor. [...] Teach ers posted [about] the [event] with out letting any of us know so a lot of extra students came. I felt bad saying no,” junior and Book Club Internal Outreach Director Faiza Mia, who helped plan the RSVP and set up the lecture hall, said. “Eventually Mr. Hanna stopped people from coming in.”

One likely contributor to the turnout was the extra credit offered by Hanna and history teachers Robert Sandler, Ellen Siegel, and Lisa Greenwald. However, organiz ers hoped that students came for more than just extra credit. “I really hope that people actually listened to James Kirchick’s ideas because I think his book was really good. He had really astute ideas and he’s been writing it for 10 years,” Mia said.

In concordance with Mia’s hopes, many students attended the event because of a genuine inter est in the topic. “Sandler did of fer us an extra credit opportunity. However, I thought this would be a very interesting opportunity for me to take up because I love history, I love learning about the American government, and knowing this is a hidden history,” Zani said. “You don’t see our textbooks talking about this. We [don’t] really see it in the media [either].”

Similarly, the fascination that students developed toward this silenced topic was highlighted by the reactions and takeaways that they outlined in their extra credit responses. “I had students write re sponses for extra credit and many of them were fascinated by the Lavender Scare, where gay men were targeted by the federal gov ernment during the Red Scare in the 1950s,” Sandler said.

While Kirchick has done many speaker events before, he hopes to expand his talks to more high schools to educate the young on queer history. “I’ve talked to a lot of audiences but they’re almost all adults. [...] Your school was the first high school that I spoke to, which I was very eager to do because I think that this sort of history peo ple in high school should be learn ing,” Kirchick said.

In accordance with Kirchick, Sandler also pointed out the im portance of teenagers learning about the queer side of American history, especially since it tends to be an often ignored aspect of his tory. “Many of my students seemed to be unaware about [the] Lawrence v. Texas (2003) case in which the Court ruled that criminal punish ment for consensual, adult nonprocreative sexual activity was unconstitutional. They also were surprised by the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on gays in the military that was repealed in 2011,” Sandler said, “I forget sometimes how quickly the political culture of America has changed with Oberge fell v. Hodges (2015) and Pete Butti gieg winning the Iowa presidential

[caucus]. So [the event] was a good review of the past 20 year struggle for LGBT rights.”

Through his book, Kirchick wants people to learn about the dark side of American history in its handling of queer people, while also recognizing the im mense progress that American so ciety has made. “[Homosexuality] is something that the leaders of our country were very obsessed with, they were extremely afraid of it, and went to great lengths to root it out, to eliminate it from Ameri can politics,” Kirchick said, “For tunately, our government does not treat gay people as it used to, and I think that [the] story of how it hap pened, how gay people went from being the most despised group of people in this country to now serv ing in the president’s cabinet, in the military, openly in all aspects of our life and our culture, [is] really an en dorsement to the American demo cratic system.”

Ultimately, many attendees found the event impactful as it turned important attention to queer history, especially to those that are not members of the LG BTQ+ community. “Gay history is commonly overlooked because it’s a type of history that America tries to hide. This event is trying to [...] say [LGBTQ+] history coincides with American history and it’s im portant that you tell it as American history,” Friedman said. “I think this talk is just another example of us making sure we have our place in the community and everyone else knows that we belong and this is our history.”

Ty Anant / The Spectator

By CATHLEEN XI and JOHNNY LIN

Most students turn their noses up at the idea of the Sophomore Bar. The Bar, its paint chipped and marked with the word “SOPHO MORES!” in all its glory, consists of a four-foot-tall island arcing around a corner of lockers on the sixth floor. Often seen with students sitting on the island or crowding around it, the popular hangout spot is notorious for its constant activity, spilled drinks, colliding bodies, and disruptive noise. With the Sophomore Bar’s chaotic reputation comes a myriad of opinions on one of the most iconic parts of the school.

Many students stop by the Bar to chat with their friends between classes, while others find a not-soquiet spot nearby to do their home work or find amusement in watch ing the chaos unfold. “It depends on the perspective. If you’re part of it, it’s very overwhelming. But if you’re on the sidelines, it’s quite fun to watch,” sophomore Sasha Murokh, who hangs out by the Bar for a period or two each day, said. “I’m usually there third [period], and there’s a group of kids who all decided to play kazoo together and it’s quite a chaotic scenario most of the time.”

While this energy may be the intrigue of the Sophomore Bar for some, many students choose to actively avoid the area due to the constant disorder. “It’s mostly stupid [EXPLETIVE]. There’s just people on top of each other, wrestling,” sophomore Brandon Waworuntu said. Those who hang out at the Sophomore Bar are of ten subject to these antics, and so choosing to be nearby comes with an acceptance of that.

With the anarchy comes a big

Sweet and Sour: The Sophomore Bar

mess. Janitor Dawn Howe, who clears the area every day after school, shares the aftermath she has to deal with. “They leave food, they leave crumbs, they leave stuff in their lockers,” she said. Unsur prisingly, the sanitation situation means the dangers of the Sopho more Bar aren’t restricted to outof-control children. “The mice. I’ve seen the mice. They go in and out.”

makeouts, blatant cheating, bor derline violent play—and I know teachers can be bothered by the hazy boundaries,” English teacher Lauren Stuzin said.

On the other hand, the activity of the Bar may be taken as just an other example of kids being kids. “I don’t think it deters from the learning environment,” said Stuz in. “But I do sometimes wonder if we should still have recess for high

from one of the quietest places: the library. While this might seem like a problem at first glance, the li brarians working just a few meters away from the bar have a neutral stance on the disruptions and sym pathize with the sophomores. “I usually see kids hanging out, even playing soccer by the escalators. But overall, it’s just a place to hang out,” librarian Christina Kennedy said.

you’re a sophomore and senior,” she said. Chang’s grade, however, was entirely remote for their soph omore year, and never actually got a chance to use the Sophomore Bar.

The issue of the COVID-19 pandemic also plays a role in stu dents’ attachment to things like the Sophomore or Senior Bars. Librar ian Mary McGregor brought up that it hasn’t been so long since the end of remote learning, and students are still adjusting to inperson life at Stuy. “Around the be ginnings of COVID, students were not allowed to be in the hallways, and now that things have started up again, I guess students are try ing to find a place to belong and hang out together,” she said.

Howe also understands the sophomores’ situation, whether it be their endless appetite or long after-school activities, but wishes students would take better care of their surroundings and make all of their lives easier. “I don’t want to leave the kids without their snacks after school either,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s not that much of an effort to just put your stuff in the garbage, to make your school environment cleaner.”

By OLIVIA WOO and SOPHIE ZHOU

The experience of furiously scrawling formulas, dates, and definitions on paper while trying to keep up with a lecture or out race a PowerPoint is something that every Stuyvesant student is familiar with. This traditional method of note-taking with pen and paper may often be too messy, tiring, and wasteful. As a result, some Stuyvesant students have branched out into the world of digital note-taking.

Junior Natalie Keung began taking notes on an iPad two years ago, noting both improved practi cality and visuals. “I saw on Tik Tok the pretty, aesthetic notes, but I also thought it [would be] more convenient to have everything in one place instead of separate notebooks,” she said.

Other students have turned to digital note-taking solely for its functionality. “It’s a lot easier to type [on a computer]. I’m really a slow writer, so it’s hard for me to keep up with what teachers are saying while also writing it down,” junior Angeline Song said.

Whether or not students have permission to use technology in class depends on the preferences of an individual teacher. “Sopho more year, all my teachers were fine with it, but this year, two teachers specifically didn’t really want me to use my iPad,” Keung said. “My English teacher just pre fers [that we use] a more special notebook for writing.”

Some teachers strongly prefer a device-free classroom. Though digital art is an extremely popu

Outsiders, including non-soph omores and staff members, have mixed opinions on the Sophomore Bar. On one hand, the noise roar ing from the Bar can disturb classes on the sixth floor, and reports of teachers chastising rowdy students are not unheard of. “Sometimes, as a teacher, you see too much—

schoolers.” In this sense, the stu dents who give in to the din and disorderly behavior of the Sopho more Bar find it to be a muchneeded escape from the clutches of academics.

Though the Sophomore Bar is one of the loudest places in the building, it is just a few yards away

Taking Note of Technology

lar medium among student artists at Stuyvesant, from those who are members of The Spectator’s Art Department to designers of school merchandise, art teacher Jane Karp exclusively teaches physical art. “I am very traditional. We use traditional art mediums: charcoal, graphite, watercolors, color pastels. I have zero back ground in digital art, and I don’t encourage it in my class,” she said.

The traditional methods of art that Karp uses offer hands-on experiences, which come with a wealth of benefits. “Having that physical experience, tactile experi ence of art material [...] helps you understand the challenges that, let’s say, an artist from the past faced with simple, basic material. You appreciate what they achieved more if you had to struggle with it yourself,” Karp explained. The availability of both digital and physical mediums allows students to obtain the best of both worlds as their artistic journeys progress.

Social studies teacher David Hanna also prefers that students take notes on class lectures in their notebooks, arguing that the process of handwriting forces stu dents to slow down and focus on the material. “Students retain in formation better when they write it down than if they type it. [...] When people type, they tend to just type mindlessly. They’re just trying to, basically, keep up with the notes. Something about the process of writing […] forces you to be more selective. You have to think,” he said.

Evidently, some of the limi tations of physical notes can be beneficial to the learning process.

Hanna referenced a university study published in Psychological Science, in which scientists Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Op penheimer analyzed the relation ship between thinking and doing in note-taking. The slower pace of handwriting compared to typ ing limits the amount of notes that can be taken, but the sub conscious act of choosing which words to write allows for a deeper understanding of course material. Further, the inability to press the “delete” button when writing in a notebook means that each word can land a place in a student’s long-term memory.

Sophomore Cindy Zhong echoed this sentiment. “Making errors when note-taking tradi tionally and having to white it out makes me remember the informa tion that I replaced the error with better,” she said in an e-mail inter view.

However, Song believes that the process of note-taking itself doesn’t matter, as long as the nec essary information is successfully organized for future use. “I don’t think you learn in class. You gath er the information that you need on paper and then you learn when you study later for a test,” Song said. “I’m the type of person who will mindlessly write things down and then study them later, and it’s been a system that’s been working. It doesn’t really change, whether I’m writing the information down or I’m typing it down.”

This perception of learn ing has not been shared by all of Song’s teachers. “In my sopho more year, a teacher insisted that [taking] paper [notes] would prob

ably be better, but using a com puter was allowed. I was getting all 100s, until this one test I com pletely flunked, and I was forced to see the teacher after class. She blamed it on the fact that I was us ing a computer instead of notes, and then banned my computer,” Song said.

Despite differing attitudes around note-taking methods, most students and teachers agree that technology has become an inexorable element of academics. This is partly due to how the pan demic forced both students and teachers to transition to remote learning and adjust to new learn ing tools. Even before remote learning, teachers were dependent on certain technologies that were simply unreplicable with tradition al methods.

For example, Karp has found that museum websites have al lowed her AP Art History classes to view famous artworks, espe cially those that are three-dimen sional, more intimately. “Since you can’t travel to these places, a vir tual tour, where you can wander through the space, can be incred ibly helpful,” she explained.

Technology is also an essential aspect of social studies teacher Josina Dunkel’s class. Homework and classwork are often assigned on platforms such as Pear Deck, Perusall, and Google Classroom. “What I like about using digi tal assignments is that I can give feedback without interrupting the students’ work. In the old days, collecting and returning work took time out of class, but also meant that the students wouldn’t have it for a few days,” Dunkel

Perhaps the Sophomore Bar harbors so much noise and chaos because it serves as a place of comfort, a place that sophomores can call their own and feel they be long in. Undeniably a hive of ac tivity, the Sophomore Bar remains a popular location for students to gather. Despite, and perhaps be cause of, its raucous atmosphere, the Bar provides relief for tired students who spend long hours doing schoolwork. So even as a new cohort of students uses it each year, the Sophomore Bar has always remained a place of endless commotion.

wrote in an e-mail interview.

The customizability of these digital options allows teachers and students to adjust assign ments to every student’s needs. “I can hyperlink vocabulary or other extensions which can expand un derstanding of the text. Students can more easily work at their own pace and boxes on worksheets can expand if students want to write more, or if they need the text to be bigger,” Dunkel explained. She did, however, note the controversy around digital note-taking. “I have read research that says that handwriting is better for memory and I do worry about that a bit but the other benefits seem to outweigh the drawbacks.”

For Zhong, technology is most valuable when it is used in conjunction with more traditional methods. She is self-studying AP Biology and notes how she incor porates digital resources into her studying. “Albert.io and Crash Course are amazing for science APs. […] Technology is a great way to reinforce understanding of something, but ultimately if you have a niche question that the Internet can’t answer, it’s best to consult the teacher of a traditional class,” she explained.

Opinions may shift in favor of digital note-taking in the future as students become more and more reliant on technology to organize and complete their schoolwork. “When you [consider] millenni als and Gen Z, you’re getting to a point where people are so com fortable with these [digital] ways of doing things, [issues concern ing digitalization] wouldn’t even occur to them,” Hanna said.

Senior Cynthia Chang re members thinking fondly of the Sophomore Bar as a fun hangout spot even in her freshman year. “My friends and I always thought the Sophomore Bar was the place to go. It was one of the things we looked forward to in freshman year because you only have a Bar when

Mirei Ueyama / The Spectator

Overheard at the Thanksgiving Table

By THE FEATURES DEPARTMENT Wackiest, out of pocket things heard over

“The end of the world is coming, and we all need to get two extra passports.” —Bella Rosen, junior

“Dawg, I am Chinese. I don’t do Thanksgiving.” —Shiqi Chen, junior

“I

“My

“Deep

“My aunts were talking about where they would add a bathroom in the house, and each direction my aunt pointed to wouldn’t work. So the final direction she pointed to was toward the sunroom. And she was like, ‘Oh, then I guess the only place where you can put it is—’ and my other aunt shouted, ‘THE SUN ROOM’ and everyone laughed.” —Joline Huang, senior

“I originally got the guy to get me a 16-pound

exactly as heavy as I wanted. Then, he switched it for a lighter one. I didn’t know how to tell him that I wanted the one from before, so I suffered for several minutes before remembering that [my cousin] Jason speaks English and was home. So I called him [and put him on speaker] and I finally got my turkey back.” —Jenny Tan, sophomore

By ANKITA SAHA

Internship

From Parent Coordinating to Internship Coordinating: Harvey Blumm

was important for the school to provide quicker access to out side opportunities. “I started putting a section in my weekly newsletter about different op portunities, and over time, that grew and grew and grew until it was bigger than the rest of the news.”

After speaking with the principal, Blumm soon transi tioned from his role as Parent Coordinator to his current role as Internship Coordinator, spe cializing in connecting students to opportunities through his weekly Student Opportunity Bulletin. Though this switch marked yet another career change, Blumm thoroughly en joyed all aspects of it. “I really get a lot of pleasure and satis faction [from] helping connect students to good opportunities that help them grow,” he said.

one’s life to avoid burning out. “I know how tough it can be, so the ideal thing is to get a good balance. You have your home work, your schoolwork, things to do in Stuyvesant, social life, and getting enough sleep,” he said. “If you could fit in doing an internship or an outside op portunity, do it. But don’t put too much on yourself, because then you can end up crashing and burning.”

Coordinator

Harvey Blumm has been a vital part of the Stuyvesant commu nity for many years. He started out as a Parent Coordinator, but his role has evolved into an In ternship Coordinator who spe cializes in connecting students to different internship oppor tunities.

Blumm was just retir ing from his previous job as a mailman when a new Parent Coordinator position opened up at Stuyvesant. “I started in the summer of 2003. Leading into the 2003-2004 school year, Mayor Bloomberg created this new position, which was called Parent Coordinator,” he shared. “I thought it was a great idea that parents who didn’t know who to talk to, didn’t know who to send that question to, didn’t know how to handle a problem, [would] hear in meetings on line and e-mails, letters home, ‘Hey, there’s this new person at Stuyvesant. [...] His only job is to help you help your student and help you with any problems

or questions you had.’”

With all three of his children having graduated from Stuyves ant, Blumm’s experience as a parent and active member of the parent association was valu able for the position. “I thought I saw Stuyvesant from a lot of different perspectives. I knew it well, and I loved it. So I thought this would be a great job.”

As Parent Coordinator, Blumm sent out weekly news letters to help answer any ques tions parents had regarding their child’s education, extra curricular activities, and more. “The focus of the newslet ter was, if a student won an award, a Stuyvesant team went to championships, there was a new program coming along, or whatever good information that we wanted to get out to the cyberspace community, we would use my newsletter to do this,” he shared.

Though the newsletter was general at first, it began to morph into something more similar to the opportunity bul letin many students are familiar with today, because he felt it

Blumm believes that in ternship opportunities allow for what he calls a “three-fold benefit.” One benefit is that regardless of whether students enjoyed the internship, they can have a better understanding of the career path they are current ly interested in and if it could be something they truly want to pursue. “They’re getting experi ence learning about a field and deciding whether they want to continue,” he explained.

The second benefit is that these opportunities allow stu dents to expand their network ing skills. “They are building a network of adults and potential mentors when they do some thing in the real world and get this real-world experience, who can help them down the road, provide recommendations, help them with internships, and be sort of an advisor to them,” he shared.

The last of this three-fold aspect is to show colleges that students have a large variety of experiences and initiatives out side of the classroom. “It could be at Stuyvesant, or it could be outside Stuyvesant, but they can’t just be a great student— they have to have other things outside the classroom,” said Blumm.

At the same time, he empha sizes maintaining a balance in

One of the biggest chal lenges that come with Blumm’s job is reaching as many students as possible. “There’s the news letter, individual meetings with students, class visits, and pre sentations to parents,” he said. Blumm also shares information about different opportunities in PTA meetings. “Every De cember, I give a presentation to the parents about what I do [with] different opportunities,” Blumm explained.

Blumm considers the most rewarding experience of his job to be when students pursue the

opportunities he shares with them and make a great social impact. One opportunity, the Innocence Project, is a non profit organization where peo ple volunteer and analyze DNA to exonerate those who have been wrongly convicted of a crime. “A number of Stuyves ant students who were interest ed in law are [also] interested in biology and DNA. I’ve referred them to that organization, and they would work [during] the summer. That was gratifying to me because that was a very good cause,” he explained.

Throughout the past several years, Blumm has been an inte gral part of Stuyvesant’s com munity. Blumm looks forward to seeing Stuyvesant students grow and being a part of their journeys. “Bottom line is, I re ally like you guys. Stuy kids are great and they’re very nice and focused. Of course, the teenag ers drive adults crazy, a lot like my kids did to me, but they’re

the Thanksgiving dinner table:

very, very hardworking.”

“The cat burned his tail on the candle.” —Abigail Rees, senior

“My dad said this after talk ing about an Asian actress: ‘Well, I mean, if you went into acting, the only roles you’d get are Pocahontas and Mulan because when you braid your hair you look Native American.’” —anony mous, senior

“I heard a story about how my aunt cut my cousin’s hair while she was asleep and [my cousin] refused to leave her room for two weeks.” —Raaita Anwar, sophomore

“My uncle said that my cousin should drown because he didn’t know how to swim.” —anonymous, junior

tur key and it was

“Mom spilled root beer on my $5,000 jersey! Can I punish her?” —Terrence Liao, sophomore

grandma got a new boy friend.” —anonymous, sophomore

think the wackiest thing was either ‘I don’t like seafood’ or when my friend told me he had a cat.” —Yoonha Shim, sophomore

frying a frozen turkey makes it explode.” — Aiden Tan, junior

What The Editorial Board is Thankful For

“I’m

“I am thankful for the “unsubmit” button on Google Classroom, for unprompted, spontaneous song rec ommendations from friends, and for unrequited, em barrassing crushes. These experiences have built my English essays, my Spotify playlists, and my character, respectively.” —Ruiwen Tang, senior

The Spectator

SPORTS EDITORS

Taee Chi

Shafiul Haque* Ava Quarles Khush Wadhwa

“I’m

freshman year Zoom classes and Google Hangouts. Even if I’ve lost touch with them since then, I’ll always remember how they made such a daunting year more exciting and inclusive.” —Gulam Monawarah, junior

“I’m thankful for StuySquad, SING!, and SOS for making life at Stuyves ant more fun!” Amber Shen, junior

“I’m thankful for all the instant ramen from Terry’s and the ti ramisu and free Wi-Fi from WholeFoods.” —Shreya Roy, senior

“I am thankful for the cafeteria lunch ladies for making the best chicken dishes to exist in school lunches.” —Jovanna Wu, junior

I’m thankful for the record player on the first floor, the vinyls the music office purchases instead of new instruments, the musi cians practicing (or showing off), the guitars from woodworking, and the unmatched talent of my peers.” —Christina Pan, senior

“I’m thankful to Ms. Weissman for looking away as I pull out my sixcourse breakfast in her class every morning. No one in period two goes hungry in her class.” —Janna Wang, senior

I am thankful for the quiet study and work space in the library, I don’t know what I would do without it.

—Fiona Huang, junior

“I am thankful for Principal Yu’s welcoming presence at the second floor entrance every morning.” —Danny Xiong, senior

“I’m thankful to Ms. Chan for being so understanding and making Psychology class so engaging, with dressing up as Among Us on Halloween, (trying to) hypnotize us, and so much more.”

“I’m thankful for my period four Great Books class where my classmates make mouthwatering, professionally baked goods I would buy myself for minutes gifts each day. Thank you for keeping me awake.”

—Isabella Jia, senior

—Erica Chen, junior

“I’m thankful for the teachers who reluctantly wave back at me when my over-caffeinated self waves at them with way too much energy at 7:30 a.m. in the morning.”

—Lauren Lee, senior

“I’m thankful for my free periods throughout the school day, when I have the option to socialize with oth ers, take a much needed nap, or finish up studying for a test.” —Shafiul Haque, senior

“I’m thankful for the janitors for always maintain ing and cleaning the school (I apologize for drop ping crumbs during lunch)!” —Vivian Teo, senior

“I am thankful for all of the teachers I have had in the past four years and all their unique, charismatic teaching styles that have truly made my Stuyvesant experience all I could have asked for, and of course all my friends who were always there for me through my ups and downs.”

—David Chen, senior

“I am thankful for the sardonic wit of the math department, the endless compassion of the English department, the engaging mastery of social studies, the wholesome modesty of physics, and the charismatic banter of French.” —Levi Simon, senior

“I am thankful for the positivity and well wishes that Ms. Morel brings to every yoga class among Stuyvesant’s stressful, high-pressure environment.”

—Allison Zhao, junior

“I’m thankful for the people who fix the escalators when they break. Bless them for never giving me a leg day.”

—Zifei Zhao, senior

By ASTRID HARRINGTON

Before Election Day, it looked like Republicans were going to easily win the mid terms, taking both the House and Senate. The New York Times suggested on October 17 that the Republican party was going into the midterms with a distinct advantage. Inflation and low presidential approval ratings were hurting Demo crats’ prospects, and it seemed as though there was no hope. Then, on Tuesday, November 8, people all over America flocked to ballot boxes and poll sites to cast their ballots. The results de fied everyone’s expectations.

The predicted red wave never came, and Democrats fared surprisingly well. They maintained control of the Sen ate, and if they win the runoff in Georgia, they may even make gains. Though the Republicans took the House, Democratic representatives did far better than anticipated. The Republi can majority will be very slim, and it’s possible that they won’t be able to completely block Joe Biden’s agenda.

A significant number of los ing Republican candidates were promoted by former president Donald Trump. Many people

have taken this connection as a sign that voters are rejecting Trumpism, which is true to an extent. However, even with the decline of Trumpism, the trend of election denial started by Trump continues to pervade politics. When Trump lost re election in 2020, he began his “Stop the Steal” campaign. He baselessly claimed that the election was “stolen” and that he was the rightful president. Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election failed, but he managed to cre ate a massive amount of doubt in American elec tions and democracy. He continues to promote his “Stop the Steal” narrative and anti-democracy candidates.

The fact that many Trumpbacked Republicans lost their elections is comforting, but it’s important to be aware of the mindset of election deniers. It doesn’t matter if election deniers lose their elec tions. They will claim victory anyway, and they will end up with more legiti macy than the actual winners in the eyes of many voters.

Though there hasn’t yet been an extremely high pro file case of election denial this year, it’s still important to focus on the smaller examples. Wide

spread election denialism on the local level is just as harmful as election denialism on a na tional scale, because it is harder

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

Don’t Take the Midterms for Granted

paragraph about how “Penn sylvania is in great need of election reform,” and Arizona Republican gubernatorial candi date Kari Lake’s first response to her projected loss was a tweet that said, “Arizo nans know BS when they see it.” Since then, she has refused to concede the election, and she is gathering a legal team to challenge the results. The uncertainty invoked by statements and actions like these creates an atmo sphere of sus picion and makes it harder for elections to be carried out smoothly.

PHOTOGRAPHY

EDITORS 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

didate Doug Mastriano’s con cession was accompanied by a

of 2021, 19 states enacted 33 restrictive voting laws, a trend that continued into 2022. This legislation has a detrimental ef fect on voter turnout, and it especially hurts marginalized groups of people. In extreme cases, election denial results in senseless violence, as in the case of the January 6 riot.

The fact that voters are re jecting election deniers is a positive sign, but the issues fac ing American democracy will not vanish until election denial no longer has a platform. The votes and attention that election deniers have drawn are harmful on their own, even without elec tion victories. Democracy can not function if people are con stantly debating what is true and who really won. Winning elec tions is important, but it’s not enough. In order for Trumpism to really be defeated, America’s culture of election denial needs to end.

DanielHe/TheSpectator

The effects of elec tion denial are exten sive, regard less of whether election deniers win. Often, further infringe ments on voters’ rights are justified through unsubstanti ated claims of election fraud.

During the first nine months

There’s no immediate solu tion to this problem, and it can’t ever be fully eradicated. It’s im possible to completely erase the effects of the past few years. However, if everyone does their part by voting, promoting the truth, and taking election deniers out of the spotlight, it could change America for the better.

thankful for the janitorial staff who make sure the hallways I spend all my free periods sit ting in and make the STC shows painting sets on are clean.”

—Fareha Islam, junior

“I’m thankful for Coach Barbin’s Stuyvesant sports enthusiasm!”

—Ava Quarles, junior

“I’m thankful for Frau Lindemulder and Ms. Dwyer for always going above and beyond to be kind.” —Phoebe Buckwalter, junior

thankful to every friend I had made over

To All the Boys I’ve Consoled Before: It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

By ASHLEY LIN

Bzzzzzzz. An electrifying pulse from the back pocket of my jeans jolted me awake. Instinc tively, I reached behind me to re trieve my phone, and to my shock, the notification was coming from Apple Pay. A familiar name had sent me $10. The buzz was fol lowed just a few seconds later by a text message: “for my over worked, underpaid 24/7 therapist sry about that.”

Once, one of my guy friends was told, “Man up, don’t be a crybaby,” even though he was grieving the loss of his grandpar ent. Another time, I was told by a friend that he really didn’t want to cry because he was “really, really embarrassed.”

These examples are what toxic masculinity cultivates: a set of be haviors that arise when we teach boys that they should suppress their emotions, that they should be “tough and stoic” all the time, and that anything else is “femi nine and weak.”

When we encourage young boys to embrace this incredibly narrow set of beliefs and behav iors, we restrict their capacity to embrace the full extent of the hu man experience. The characteris tics many view as “weak” or “too feminine” are the best of what humanity has to offer: empathy, compassion, and sensitivity. Our society teaches boys that in order to fully encompass what it means to be a man, they must wear a fa cade of emotional repression. In today’s culture, young boys, teen

age guys, and adult men feel the need to live up to a hyper-mascu line ideal that is unsustainable and unhealthy. We’ve also cultivated a toxic culture that vilifies emo tions.

Much of the social pressure to aspire to be a hyper-masculine figure comes from the strict so cial norms that have become en trenched within our society. These norms tell us that men must be the breadwinners and money makers, while women must be the housewives and child rearers. These social norms are a two-way street, contributing to the sexism and misogyny women face and the standard of hyper-masculinity men must live up to. Those who critique the current wave of feminism tend to want to meet these unreachable stan dards of what be ing a man entails while struggling with insecurities that result from these unattainable standards. Mod ern-day feminism addresses and dis mantles the unrealistic expectations of what it means to be a manly man. This facet tends to be overlooked but should be noted in critiques of the femi nist movement. Contrary to what many claim, feminism does not seek to emasculate men or make men weak. It encourages them to embrace emotional complex ity instead of using facades of hypermasculinity, stoicism, and

aggression.

On social media, content about being an “alpha male” has become increasingly prevalent. Figures like Andrew Tate, who embody hyper-masculine ideas and revel in misogyny, have be come more and more popular. Tate’s content is specifically fo cused on leading an “alpha male” lifestyle, encouraging misogynis tic behavior, and using hateful speech. Exposing young, impres sionable boys

gling in education, the workplace, and even their homes. It starts when they’re young: across eco nomically developed countries, boys are 50 percent more likely than girls to fail at key school sub jects such as science, reading, and math. As they grow older, we only see more and more issues mani fest. Men are three times more likely to die from drug overdose, alcohol abuse, or suicide than women. Additionally, 27 percent of children in the

dangerous. Instead of stepping away from the ideal of aggres sion and hypermasculinity, young boys only become more and more captivated by it, and the goal of attaining it becomes further in grained in their minds.

The reality is that this issue presents itself in other areas as well. There’s currently a crisis in which boys and men are strug

men in the workforce has fallen dramatically—ten million primeage American men are out of the labor market. The statistics are staggering, but they only suggest that for a man who can’t “be a man” and meet the ideal our cul ture encourages, ambition disap pears, and demoralization and isolation rise.

Our passivity and inaction in addressing toxic masculinity make us complicit in its existence and perpetuation. We can and we must do more and do better. If we truly want to see our society progress, we need a shift in our culture and social values. Without this change, no amount of legislation, speech es, or policy proposals will solve the issue. There is no quick fix to a problem we’ve spent years, if not decades, having conversations over. The solution is simple in its terminology, but its execution is more difficult: we need adult men who are more openly vulnerable as role models to cultivate the same moral character in boys. When men can embrace their human ity and unshackle themselves from such a limited definition of mas culinity, boys have those examples to look up to. The same applies to parents. It’s time to stop limiting young boys from express ing the full scope of their emotions and to start teaching them about being human. Only when we start em bracing all of masculinity—which includes sadness, tears, and sensi tivity—will we see a change in the next generation.

Dear boys, especially those I’ve consoled before: we’re com plex, we’re emotional, and we’re vulnerable. We’re human, and it’s okay to not be okay.

Elon Musk Is Hopelessly Incompetent

By CHARLOTTE PETERSON

After sending mixed messag es about the subject for months, Elon Musk finally purchased Twitter for $44 billion on Oc tober 28, 2022. Within his first month of ownership, Musk has made many controversial execu tive decisions, almost all of which have led to an objective decline in the site’s popularity and func tionality. Musk’s first decision to lay off over half of Twitter’s em ployees led to extreme disarray within the company, while his lat er implementation of a new blue checkmark policy, designed to raise fast cash rather than provide user verification, caused panic and confusion among Twitter us ers. All Musk has contributed to Twitter so far is chaos and medio cre memes. Despite how his fans laud his intellect, it’s apparent that Musk lacks talent for almost ev erything he’s involved in.

Musk was never seriously de termined to buy Twitter in the first place. Despite his tweets implying that he might do so for a ridiculous $44 billion, he was never truly sure he wanted to go through with this plan, first offer ing to on April 14 and then trying to back out of the purchase in July. Perhaps Musk did not know that he had formed a legal agree ment for the purchase of a major company. Twitter did not toler ate Musk’s manipulation of the masses and its own investors with this ongoing speculation, and fi nally sued Musk, demanding that he follow through with the pur chase. When the court weighed in, Musk was forced to severely

overpay.

After making this blun der, Musk has been desperately searching for ways to pay for it. His ideas are desperate, and Musk is running Twitter into the ground. First, Musk fired 50 per cent of Twitter’s staff in a mis guided attempt to cut company expenditures, a ham-fisted action

ity seen by users and widespread fears of worse to come.

In another attempt to raise money, Musk revisited the Twit ter check mark verification policy. Previously, Twitter users could become verified if they were well-known public figures. Musk implemented a system allow ing Twitter users to pay $8 for a

ing deals with Twitter, and Musk lost a valuable source of revenue without gaining any significant profits. The new check mark system was quickly dropped. At this point, Twitter appears to be financially doomed under Musk’s mismanagement.

too, believes in the flattering techgenius image of himself. His warped image of self-confidence and bold action is in reality arro gance, ignorance, and impatient flailing. Tesla’s success, in this sense, might be not because of Musk, but in spite of him.

that The New York Times po litely referred to as “rapidly trans forming the social media compa ny.” Unfortunately, many senior members were among those laid off, leading to potentially fatal weaknesses in Twitter’s manage ment. Ironically, Musk also fired Twitter employees who criticized him. Despite Musk’s adamancy on improving freedom of speech on the website, he clearly does not abide by this ideal when des potically censoring criticism. Fol lowing this display of hypocrisy, Musk sent out a message demand ing that his remaining employees devote themselves to the new, “hardcore” Twitter, leading to an additional halving of the already low employee count on Thursday, November 17. Twitter now has about one-quarter of its former employees left, which has led to a great decrease in the functional

blue check mark. However, this new blue check mark was avail able to all Twitter users, not ex clusively those deemed reputable by Twitter staff. This change en sured the loss of the blue check mark’s significance. Legitimate sources like local boards of elec tion and actual journalists could have been impersonated by us ers buying blue check marks to spread misinformation about elections and other matters of public importance. Some were using the feature to impersonate brand accounts, with one activist posing as the insulin company Eli Lilly and claiming that the usually exorbitant insulin would now be free of cost. Chaos ensued im mediately after Eli Lilly share holders grew wary and the stock plummeted. The company’s frus tration with this predicament led to its withdrawal from advertis

This situation isn’t the first time that Musk has unintention ally sabotaged his own business enterprise. As the former Chair man of the Board and CEO of Tesla, Musk was considered a reliable source on the status of Tesla stock. However, Musk falla ciously publicly tweeted that Tes la stock would be going private in 2018, causing mass stock shifts and speculation. Because this an nouncement was an incorrect and misleading claim, he was found guilty of violating securities laws and sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was then removed from his position as chairman and given less re sponsibility for Tesla’s financial dealings, which was a more mas sive decrease in power than he’d like the world to see.

In the media and among his fans, Musk has been hailed as a visionary, a tech-savvy genius, and someone who built a ground breaking company through his own ability and merit. His quirks are treated as part of his bril liance, and he plays them up. His tweets, which often consist of images with little or no text, are difficult to interpret and are care fully pored over by his fans: if they are hard to understand, sure ly it must be because they are so deep and nuanced, not because they are random attempts to gain attention. It is obvious that Musk,

Musk had early success and luck: he began life extremely wealthy, with profits from his family’s emerald mine, and was able to invest this fortune into an Internet start-up that was later ac quired for a lot of money. These factors allowed him to become an early investor in the already es tablished Tesla company. Musk’s education consists of a bachelor’s degree in economics and phys ics. He has no post-graduate or engineering degrees. Nonethe less, Musk wants to believe in the delusion that his roles as CEO and Chief Engineer at SpaceX, and CEO and Product Architect at Tesla, are all self-accomplish ments and not benefits from a rigged system.

Musk is a billionaire who did well during the early Internet boom and invested in a company with a lucrative future. Instead of being humbled by his good fortune and recognizing both his strengths and his limitations, he seems to have fallen for his own mythos and now believes he brings a golden touch to any project he takes on, encouraged by legions of online fanboys who cheer his every move. The harsh truth is that he has no clue what he’s doing. This kind of hubris can have dangerous consequenc es and lead to great societal harm that extends beyond the scope of Twitter’s destruction.

Twitter appears to be financially doomed under Musk’s mismanagement.

Jaden Bae / The Spectator

Are You Reading This?

By KHANDAKER MUSHFIKUZZAMAN

To read or not to read is the question when it comes to The Spectator. Many choose the lat ter option. Though the newsrack, full of the latest issue, clears out pretty quickly, the newspaper of ten gets skimmed, and most ar ticles are not fully read. Once, I saw someone pick up a copy, only to throw it away a block later, and I’ve heard students discussing the pointlessness of the newspaper several times. While varied reader ship is expected of any publica tion, we must look at the flipside of the coin: the writers. Publishing has always been centered around the consumers, yet most articles don’t reveal the story of how they were written and the writers who wrote them.

Beneath the making of the ar ticles is an underlying, uncomfort able question: who reads my writ ing? Who picks up the copies of the newspaper from the rack by the scanners: the students who are featured in it or those who need an umbrella substitute? What im pact do my articles have on read ers, if any? I’ve asked myself these questions when going through the time-consuming process that’s necessary for each article, trying

to figure out whether I’m writing them for myself or for an audi ence.

Stuyvesant students are pre occupied with enough Plato and Shakespeare for English assign ments, so it is understandable that

not be something one can find in The New York Times. Though we aim for our articles to be relevant and relatable to the student body, there’s still the sinking feeling that no one cares to read the articles I write. The Spectator’s writers

forming ideas that would captivate the public, but I ended up writing about things I didn’t particularly enjoy. I wrote better when the subject was something I was in terested in, not just for The Spec tator, but for my classes as well. Once I relaxed those expectations of writing something revolution ary, it came more naturally. Im provement should not be for the sake of others but for yourself, and the success that comes with improving should be celebrated. Writers are pressured to improve for external achievements, such as a better grade or popularity of a piece, when the true reward lies internally.

many clicks you receive or the worldwide gross revenue.

many would not spend their free time reading even more. That’s where the pressure of coming up with something eye-catching comes from. Like my editors have told me, Opinions articles should

Stop Smoking in Public

By SUYEON RYU

As I entered the train station, I wrinkled my nose in familiar disgust. Amid the crowded bundle of people, there was a man smoking marijuana. As the smoke rose from his cigarette, it headed straight to the people wait ing for the train to arrive. I looked at the man proudly holding his cigarette and waving smoke away from him. I began to realize how America’s smok ing culture revolves only around the individual and disregards how smok ing impacts communities.

Recently, individual freedom has been extended to decriminalizing mar ijuana, and as a result, the increasing social precedent is that smoking mari

those arguing for the decriminaliza tion of marijuana have also created an increase in social media jokes and memes about smoking marijuana. This increase, along with the social ac ceptance of smoking marijuana, rep resents a harmful trend in diminishing the problem of smoking in America.

Public smoking also violates pub lic etiquette. When we are in a public space, being mindful of others and accommodating them should be the norm. Publicly smoking tells nonsmokers that their personal choice to not smoke isn’t being respected and robs them of their freedom to choose not to be impacted by marijuana.

Outside of moral reasons, sec ond-hand smoking also has serious consequences. People who never

don’t receive much feedback from the assumed consumers of our articles, which feeds into doubt about the purpose of writing.

Coming into the Opinions Department, I was obsessed with

Ideally, published writing should amount to a meaningful personal journey while simultane ously reaching the targeted audi ence and having an impact. That balance is usually not achieved. Different types of writing tend to determine the journey the writer takes. It’s an ESPN journalist’s job to report about the World Cup, while it’s a fiction novelist’s job to create something that reso nates close to them. Yet the genre or given time shouldn’t take away from the priceless value you can attain from any medium of writ ing. It shouldn’t be all about how

Writing is a constant learning experience. The art of being able to form an infinite amount of ideas, statements, and questions with words is a spectacle itself. Though they are correlated, that aspect should not be overshad owed by the attractiveness of sharing and displaying the writing created. Articles and most publi cations are too often produced as a quick transfer of furiously typed paragraphs to meet a deadline. There’s nothing wrong with want ing to have an impact with pub lications, and it’s admirable when they do so, but worrying about who reads the articles should not be prioritized over enjoying the writing itself.

Zooming back into Stuyvesant and The Spectator, if we attain the core benefits of writership, reaping the merits of readership and college application points will come easily. Even though writing for the sake of writing is easier said than done in the world of publishing, being able to use writ ing as a tool for expression is such a freeing experience. The idea of someone caring to read your ar ticle merely becomes an added bonus.

The Bias of Google Translate

By STEFANIE CHEN

All you want to do is translate a message. Maybe it’s your fault you’ve never learned how to read Turkish, but you’re pretty sure that it’s not your mom congratulating a random guy on becoming a doctor. Many languages don’t have a clear gender distinction between pronouns like English does. For example, Turkish uses the “o” as a pronoun for both genders. So when you input your mom’s message, why does Google Translate spit out, “He has finally become a doctor!?”

It is common knowledge that Google Translate always returns a single translation, so for languages in which one pronoun is used for both genders, instead of returning “he/ she,” Google Translate will choose one of the pronouns. The selection that Google Translate makes is heav ily dependent on the context of the sentence. This translation process, however, is rooted in gender bias.

“she” who is beautiful and “he” who is clever. An experiment conducted by Nikhil Sonnad in 2017 inserted a Turkish poem of jobs and adjectives most commonly associated with a certain gender in Google Translate. Unsurprisingly, the gender-neutral Turkish “o” turned to the English “he” when associated with words such as “entrepreneur,” “hardwork ing,” and “president.” On the other hand, Google Translate ascribed “she” to words such as “nanny,” “lazy,” and “teacher.” Words with primarily negative connotations were assigned to women, while those that are used positively were for men.

provements through Google’s NMT. In line with its AI Principles, Google has developed an approach that in volves detecting gender-neutral sub missions, generating gender-specific translations, and checking for accu racy. Even though this implementa tion has led to a 90 percent decrease in biased English translations of Hungarian, Finnish, and Persian, it still has not completely alleviated the issue due to low detection rates, with up to 40 percent of eligible gendered cases being glossed over. So while Google does have methods to coun ter biased translation, they aren’t reli able enough to trust that it will pro duce unbiased translations each time.

juana should be an individual choice that doesn’t involve others. This pic ture is not complete, because to argue for the right of smokers to smoke re gardless of any health consequences means that the right of non-smokers to stay away from the harmful chemi cals of a cigarette should be guaran teed as well. This is not the case.

The decriminalization of mari juana has good intentions. However, destigmatizing smoking shouldn’t in volve glorifying smoking. At the end of the day, smoking is still harmful to the human body. Social acceptance of public smoking can disfigure our perception of smoking to be a social activity. Once people, especially ado lescents, regularly see smoking being socially accepted, they can internalize a positive public image of a smoker and thus be encouraged to adopt smoking themselves. It is the same logic behind why we regulate smok ing in children’s shows. Merely regu larly exposing younger people to the concept of smoking perpetuates the idea that smoking is “cool.” Indeed,

touch a cigarette in their lives are 20 to 30 percent more likely to develop dis eases and health conditions like heart disease, lung cancer, and stroke from repeated secondhand smoke exposure.

Since 1964, over 2.5 million people have died of secondhand smoke ex posure. The health risks increase for children and infants, as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and undeveloped lungs are more prevalent in young children who were exposed to second hand smoke. Thus, refusing to publicly smoke not only respects non-smokers’ choices and freedom, but also respects their health and well-being. Smokers must acknowledge that by smoking within close vicinity of a non-smoker, they are both being rude and unfairly endangering the non-smoker’s health.

Smoking should be done in a pri vate setting, as isolated from people as possible. Not doing so is immoral and disrespectful to non-smokers. As much as we value individuality, we must also value civility and the com promises that individuals need to make for their communities.

Google Translate uses a Neural Machine Translation (NMT) sys tem that utilizes an artificial neural network capable of deep learning, accumulating knowledge through the imitation of human behavior from millions of example situations. While gender bias is not specifically programmed into the translation system, the existing translations that the neural network has received and relies on are not always representa tive of both genders for specific contexts. Many times, political, so cial, and cultural biases are embed ded within the examples provided to Google’s NMT, resulting in transla tions that reflect these viewpoints.

The most famous example of this bias is with the translation of gender-neutral pronouns from Turk ish to English when translating the phrase “he/she is a doctor.” Google Translate interprets it as “he is a doctor,” while the phrase “he/she is a nurse,” is translated as “she is a nurse.” According to a study by Cor nell University in 2016, the occupa tions of female historians and male nurses do not exist to Google Trans late. For the same reason, descriptive phrases such as “he/she is beautiful” and “he/she is clever” are also trans lated based on stereotypes, leading to

This idea applies to our society, where men are typically viewed as more hardworking and ambitious, going out to work nine-to-five jobs to support their families. In contrast, women tend to be viewed in a nega tive light as lazy and incompetent. Google Translate seems to reflect these stereotypes as its deep learning technology emulates human biases and reaffirms the realities of our prejudice-laden society.

Despite the lack of gendered nouns in English, many other lan guages have gendered nouns that, when translated from English, may be translated into either gender de pending on the gender-biased al gorithm of Google Translate. One study done by Marcus Tomalin and other researchers in 2021 randomly selected 17.2 million pairs (half Eng lish and half German) of sentences from an existing selection of Eng lish-German text. The study found vast gender-specific imbalances with how the word “engineer” was trans lated by humans. It was translated into the German masculine version, “der Ingenieur,” 75 times more of ten than its female counterpart. A similar pattern is apparent with the word “doctor,” which was translated into the masculine form 853 times and only translated into the feminine form 35 times. Overall, occupations that were considered masculine or feminine by human translators in the training dataset were then translated into those masculine or feminine forms by Google Translate without additional context.

In recent years, however, the biased neural algorithm of Google Translate seems to be making im

Google has also only imple mented its approach with a hand ful of languages, including Turkish, Spanish, Finnish, Hungarian, and Persian. While the rate of biased translations has decreased with their new method, this limited set still leaves great traces of gender bias in the many other languages on Google Translate. Therefore, it is necessary for Google Translate to implement this new approach in other lan guages that have issues translating gender-neutral pronouns. Another resolution that has been commonly suggested is the usage of “they” as the default translation when translat ing from gender-neutral languages. While this idea could work, one of its main downsides is that it reduces the clarity of a translation. While “he/she” is clearly singular, to indi viduals who are not familiar with the language, it may be unclear whether “they” is singular or plural. However, as this drawback is not an incredibly serious issue, users who use the ser vice for casual reasons may find val ue in translations using “they” rather than gender-specific pronouns.

While it may seem as simple as a wrong translation, these biased pro noun translations reflect the roles and connotations our society asso ciates with gender. If this bias isn’t resolved, or at least reduced, it will continue to reaffirm the normaliza tion of gender inequality. With the effectiveness of Google Translate’s new approach in a handful of lan guages, the best next step is to apply this approach to a wider scope of languages.

I began to realize how America’s smoking culture revolves only around the individual and disregards how smoking impacts communities.

Rachel Wang / The Spectator

The Pioneering of Pinterest

By AMARYLLIS SUN

Pinterest’s logo, the letter “P” enclosed in a bright red circle, stands out on the screen, demon strating simplicity while also at tracting attention. The same can be said for the platform itself, simple in purpose but drawing millions of users globally. Pinter est defies the common stereo type that social media platforms do more harm than good, as it sparks inspiration and originality in a way that others have not yet accomplished.

Pinterest is one of the topearning social media apps, with its 2021 revenue equal to $2.578 billion. Over the past few years, Pinterest’s popularity has sky rocketed as the number of users increased 236 percent from 2016 to 2021. Since Pinterest adver tises its site as a personalized app experience meant for the user to find creativity, its user demo graphic varies widely. Thirtyeight percent of Pinterest’s users are between 50 and 64 years old, and 32 percent are young adults, 18- to 29-year-olds. Pinterest is designed for the discovery of information on the Internet by allowing users to save or “pin” images.

Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are among the top five most popular social media plat forms. All three serve as sites for users to post about their lives and

connect with other users through messaging. However, social me dia has also gained a reputation for sparking self-consciousness in individuals, as people often com pare their social media feeds to others’. This effect often reduces the creativity and connection of ideas that were once present. On the other hand, Pinterest allows users to post their own images in the form of pins and then save these pins to their own boards, promoting a bond in communi ties. Instead of individuals com paring their posts to others’, Pin terest creates a community where

The Masquerade of Foreign Aid

By KIKYO MAKINO-SILLER

Foreign aid has been a long-contested part of American politics. Aid programs have been described as both insidious and life-saving. Foreign aid has consistently taken up less than one percent of the US national budget, but this small percentage has had nu merous negative effects. Though American foreign aid produces short-term humani tarian effects that make it look like the US government genuinely cares about countries in need, the long-term harms often reflect a different reality.

America has conducted various foreign aid programs throughout history. The United States Agency for International Develop ment, the $60.4 billion per year American foreign aid agency, claims to have saved the lives of 4.6 million children and 200 thou sand women since 2008. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the largest health initiative ever undertaken worldwide, provided 17 million people in Africa with HIV treatment since its launch in 2003. In addition, aid has been a critical part of Amer ican soft power for decades, and many see it as key to the development of American trade. However, foreign aid has been criticized by many politicians, economists, and re searchers as detrimental to the development of emerging countries. The money given to developing countries tends to end up in the hands of corrupt governments that don’t dis perse aid to the people. Some studies estimate that 76 percent of American aid is supplied to governments that are deemed “corrupt.”

As much as one-sixth of foreign aid can end up in the pockets of the already wealthy elite. This flow further funds their politics, creating a never-ending cycle of deceit and ensuring that the voices of their fellow citizens will never be heard.

When the effects of foreign aid stunt the long-term development of emerging coun tries, they remain unable to diversify their economies or stabilize their societies. Money from foreign aid makes developing coun tries believe that they don’t need to be selfsufficient and develop manufacturing sectors. American investment in a country’s profitable markets, such as oil, can cause those countries to focus on solely exporting those goods. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, mainly ex ports oil and minerals because they receive massive amounts of aid. However, this focus

they build off of each others’ pins to spark their own creativity.

Pinterest has a variety of uses, from creating boards for recipe ideas to fashion mood boards. Viewing a diverse collection of

such as coily, wavy, and straight. Pinterest caters to everyone’s needs, which is why 98 percent of its users end up trying ideas they find on Pinterest, in contrast to the average across social media platforms, where only 71 percent of users try ideas they encounter.

which is why Pinterest is a unique tool that scholars can utilize to motivate their studying.

Iris Lin / The Spectator

pins on a feed encourages the user to engage in those activities, especially due to Pinterest’s us age of images that can be used as creative examples. Furthermore, Pinterest promotes inclusivity. When searching for “hairstyles” on the platform, categories to refine the search results appear, such as protective hairstyles and hairstyles for various hair types

Furthermore, Pinterest works to uphold diversity in their com pany by diversifying their staff, asking about their employees’ encounters with racial prejudice, and ensuring that the media on their platform represents a vari ety of racial backgrounds. Pin terest Newsroom has a section that transparently addresses the company’s activism, a feature that other top platforms often lack. Pinterest’s inclusivity and diver sity further attract its audience by supporting its purpose of a per sonalized user experience.

Pinterest can also serve an ac ademic purpose, making it an es pecially helpful tool for students. Creating boards centered around a specific topic can be more ef fective than a regular study guide, as certain people prefer visual learning. Furthermore, Pinterest has a feature called “More Ideas,” which analyzes the content of a board and displays pins with sim ilar topics, simplifying the pro cess of creating an educational board. Pinterest also allows users to collaborate, enabling peers to effectively create boards together. Inspiration can be educational,

Though Pinterest has its ad vantages, it also contains flaws, just like every other platform. With Pinterest being a public platform, pins can be plagiarized for unwanted purposes, a conse quence the original uploader has no control over. Furthermore, Pinterest has received criticism for how easy it is to take credit for other users’ work due to the ability to save a pin as an im age without a watermark. Wide spread plagiarism counters Pin terest’s pursuit of originality and harms creators. Pinterest must work to solve these problems by thorough communication with its users and developers, upholding the platform’s motive.

Pinterest is more complex than just pinning images to a board. The platform helps users discover their preferences and connect with others who share similar interests, creating com munities within the app. Spend ing more time on Pinterest can prove to be beneficial, especially to students looking for motiva tion to study. As Pinterest gains popularity, it is important to see that there are more in-depth in fluences behind the aesthetically pleasing boards than just visual appeal, such as the bonding of strangers through wordless com munication.

Should Self-Driving Cars Make Life or Death Situations for Us?

has led to American economic interest in the region, which comes mainly in the form of investment in oil and mineral fields. The dependence of certain African countries on oil and minerals is troubling because they are such volatile goods. When the international price of oil and minerals is low (like during the pandemic), exports become unprofit able, and those countries struggle. Data from multiple developing countries shows that on average, a one percent increase in foreign aid decreased long term growth in the country by 0.18 percent. Long term growth is incred ibly important in reducing poverty rates and improving living conditions.

Foreign aid can be in the form of loans, which cripple countries because of high in terest rates. Since the early 2000s, Western governments such as America’s have bor rowed money from developing countries at low rates by setting up aid programs that lend to said countries with high interest rates and exploiting the global poor. Thankfully, American programs have largely shifted from loans to less predatory grants in recent years. However, many countries still struggle with debt and hindered economies.

The process of providing foreign aid has not been reformed because of American in centives. Because America gains geopolitical and trade benefits from providing aid, disrep utable practices likely won’t stop in the near future. Many countries look up to America as a great power and a symbol of Western democracy. No matter how dysfunctional, it is important to recognize that American foreign aid has been an important part of maintaining the image of a country apt at soft power. Thus, it is more realistic to fix the institution of American aid than to remove it.

To better the system, America must re evaluate its relationship with foreign neigh bors and adopt a no-strings-attached ap proach to foreign aid. To avoid corruption, America should partner with local non-gov ernmental organizations to distribute funds, provide services, and build infrastructure. The government should increase communi cations with recipient countries to promote transparency about where the money is go ing and provide resources specifically for certain projects. A wide-scale reevaluation of American foreign aid is necessary to prevent future harm to developing countries. Ameri can economic benefit should not be at the expense of stability in disadvantaged foreign countries.

By SOPHIA DASSER

Pull the lever, and kill one. Stay on your origi nal path, and kill five. The trolley dilemma is one of the most fundamental yet complex questions within ethics. Both sides are extensively debated, but when applied to driving, the problem sparks even more questions. Imagine you’re driving down a road and your brakes are jammed. You have two choices: swerve to the right and put yourself at risk, or continue straight and hit pedestrians. At first, swerving is the obvious decision. How could you ever hit innocent pedestrians? But what if there are passengers in the car with you? As for the pedestri ans, does it matter if they’re young, old, pregnant, athletic, a doctor, or a thief? How many pedestrians are you willing to sacrifice? Our decisions change from circumstance to circumstance and person to person. However, with the increase of self-driving cars, autonomous vehicles are expected to make these moral tradeoffs for us.

Our ethical decisions are supposedly unrepli catable within computers. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the increasing popularity of self-driving cars, people must consider how AI will react to trolley dilemma-like situations and how we expect said AI to react. Researcher Edmond Awad of the University of Exeter, the leader of MIT’s Moral Machine, realized that a viable way to devel op a solution to this problem is crowdsourcing in formation from populations and applying this data to the self-driving car’s algorithm. However, quantifying ethical decisions is easier said than done. Deep learning is meant to mimic the way our brain works by imposing a neural net work, allowing AI to connect decisions from past precedence and “learn” from them. Using deep learning technologies, we can develop self-driving cars to learn and grow from the decisions of their owners and improve with every new input. Surpris ingly, the decisions of owners that deep learning relies on can vary vastly from country to country. The researchers at MIT proved this distinction by comparing the responses from 166 countries’ par ticipants, and the differences were drastic in some cases. For example, Brazilians were 66 percent less likely to spare humans than to spare animals, but they chose to save lawful pedestrians two times as much as Americans.

The behavioral expectations of self-driving cars are unique not only from country to country, but also within communities due to cultural and politi cal differences. I decided to focus on this distinction by administering a poll within Stuyvesant, created thanks to the help of researcher Sohan Dsouza, to see the most striking differences between the

student body and the average American. The ques tions focused on the gender, age, and legality of the pedestrians. For instance, when Stuyvesant stu dents were asked to choose between a normal man crossing the sidewalk legally and a runner crossing the sidewalk illegally, only 25 percent would sac rifice the pedestrian, and most chose to sacrifice the jaywalker. The distinction between Stuyvesant students and the average American is surprising: a whopping 70 percent of Americans chose to sacri fice the legal pedestrian over the jaywalker.

However, the questions in the poll were not easy, and the question that took the most time dealt with sacrificing two pregnant women or four chil dren. Stuyvesant students are 10 percent more likely to save the children than the average American. By these distinctions alone, it’s clear that the ethical de cisions we expect self-driving cars to make cannot be generalized. These kinds of decisions rely on not just geographical location, but also education and moral upbringing.

This dependency brings up the question: to what extent should we prioritize the morals of the consumer over the morals of the general popula tion? The AI of a self-driving car should be cus tomized based on the owner’s morals. We should mimic the behavior of the self-driving car to result in the same outcome as if the owner was driving the car himself. The MIT Moral Machine was a deeper look into Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, which state that a robot cannot injure a human being and must obey the order given to it by humans except for when the order is to injure human beings. While Asimov’s laws are originally seen within a science fiction frame of reference, we can utilize our own discussion of morals to decide the extent to which we allow the AI of self-driving cars to kill someone and whether or not this is a direct attack on ethics.

The owner of the car should have total control of the car’s moral decisions, despite the breach of Asimov’s laws. This arrangement can be accom plished a number of ways, namely by surveying the owner of the car when they first purchase the ve hicle and programming the AI of the car to abide by the owner’s preferences. While critics would rather adopt the morality of the general consensus through polls such as the one the Moral Machine conducted, it’s clear that because morality differs so vastly, it’s unfair to force the drivers to make deci sions that they wouldn’t have made, just because of a population preference. However, before we put our morality in the hands of AI, we must deter mine where our morality lies and whether or not we’re confident with our own decisions. Self-driving cars should not make judgments of the value of people’s lives beyond what is objectively true.

iGEM: How Stuyvesant Students Are Changing Stroke Therapy

By SOPHIA WAN-BRODSKY

Every year, starting in 2004, high school teams from around the world compete in the iGEM competition, which centers around the develop ment of synthetic biology projects across many different fields that are then presented in an exposition. This exposition, called “The iGEM Jamboree,” was held in Paris for the first time. EmpireGene, a team of students from Stuyvesant and other high schools in New York, placed in the top ten of this year’s iGEM com petition. Seniors Hailey Seltzer, Yeju Moon, Ryan Lee, Joseph Jeon, and Brigid Allen, and juniors Matthew Huang, Andrew Park, and Vanessa Chen helped create the NeuroTrojan project.

EmpireGene started develop ing its project in the winter of 2022. They decided on stroke recovery as the topic of their research because several of the team members had family members who had suffered strokes. Strokes occur when blood vessels are unable to deliver oxygen to the brain. Ischemic strokes—the most common type—are caused by blood clots, while hemorrhagic strokes happen if an artery in the brain leaks or bursts. This depriva tion of oxygen in the brain leads to neural damage, which in turn causes a wide range of long-term effects such as aphasia, numbness or pa ralysis, and memory loss. Recovery varies from person to person, with some quickly returning to full func tioning and others being left with a lifelong disability. Because of this, EmpireGene wanted to develop a method of post-stroke neural repair.

The team looked to introduce two neurotrophins: Neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) and Fibroblast Growth Fac tor 2 (FGF-2). Neurotrophins regu late the development and function of the nervous system, and the two that EmpireGene used in their experi ment are proven to stimulate tissue repair and neural growth. However, there was a major challenge in getting these neurotrophins into the brain— the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The

BBB restricts the flow of molecules into the brain, preventing toxic sub stances from entering but allowing for the simple diffusion of mol

ferred to as a “biological Trojan horse.” HIRMAb binds to insulin re ceptors on the cells that line the BBB. After binding, HIRMAb undergoes

Ab’s two subunits as well as one of the two neurotrophins. Many gel electrophoresis tests were performed to ensure that the gene editing was successful. The next test was to see if this genetic code led to the produc tion of the correct proteins. Thus, the plasmids were added to a dish of E. coli bacteria. The bacteria uptook the plasmids and were then found to produce and secrete the fused pro teins that EmpireGene had intended them to. Next, these plasmids were transfected into the mammalian cell line known as CHO-K1 to avoid the use of animal testing in the lab.

The next step was to test if CHO-K1 cells could produce the in tended proteins, and that these pro teins would pass through the BBB. They added the media that the trans fected CHO-K1 cells were grown in to the upper compartment of a tran swell. In theory, the cells should have secreted the “Trojan horse” fused proteins into this media. This was separated from the lower compart ment by a model of the BBB. If the Trojan horse approach to transport ing the neurotrophins was effective, then the fused proteins should have been found in the lower compart ment, having successfully passed across the membrane.

However, the presence of NT-3 and FGF-2 was not detected in the lower compartment. Further study allowed the EmpireGene team to conclude that the problem likely lay in a mutation that caused the gen eration of the fused proteins in the CHO-K1 cells to terminate early.

SCIENCEBEAT

ecules such as oxygen and glucose. Some substances cross, thanks to transport systems on the membrane, but this requires the molecules to be compatible with receptors. Neither NT-3 nor FGF-2 would be able to cross the blood-brain barrier on their own. The EmpireGene team looked to develop a way to make this deliv ery of neurotrophins possible.

To do this, they used Human Insulin Receptor Monoclonal An tibody (HIRMAb), which they re

receptor-mediated transcytosis, the process in which a molecule bound to a receptor is transferred through the cell and across the BBB. Empire Gene’s idea was that if NT-3 and FGF-2 were bound to HIRMAb, they could hitch a ride across the barrier and then be released for the neurons to uptake.

To create these fused proteins, EmpireGene designed plasmids, circular pieces of DNA, which con tained the genetic code for HIRM

Gel electrophoresis alone was used to confirm that plasmids appeared the way they should. This would not necessarily detect a small mutation creating an early stop codon in the DNA sequence, as this would only be made clear through genetic se quencing.

Due to the timeline of the com petition, the experiment could not be redone in time for the presenta tion in Paris. Experimentation lasted the entire summer and well into Oc tober. Even though this was not the desired result, it did not disprove the team’s hypothesis that the fused Tro

In Nebraska, 1.8 million chickens are slated to be killed as a precaution against the spread of avian influ enza, which has already killed more than 50 million birds in the United States in 2022

NASA’s Orion spacecraft entered a lunar orbit, break ing Apollo 13’s record for the farthest distance from Earth traveled by a “space craft designed to carry hu mans to deep space and back to Earth.”

jan horse protein would be able to pass through the BBB. The results from the E. coli bacteria’s produc tion of the intended proteins along with the ability of these proteins to bind to the insulin receptor indicate that the potential for this new ther apy remains, though further testing is required.

EmpireGene is confident that their results are a major step for ward in the scientific research field of stroke recovery. “With research comes complications and trial and error, so I was a bit upset that the experiment didn’t fully work out, but overall really happy because that’s a huge part [of the process],” said team member Hailey Seltzer. Selt zer’s passion for science began as a freshman taking Modern Biology, and says that participating in iGEM allowed her to find her love of re search. She encourages other stu dents to explore opportunities in the lab: “Find a professor that conducts research or a competition similar to [iGEM] and just go for it. If you end up liking research, there’s a whole host of opportunities waiting for you.”

What is the Feynman Technique and Why Does It Work So Well?

By JAMES LI

Coming home from school, you stop to think—something’s off. There is a nagging feeling in the back of your head, almost as if you forgot something. There is a biology exam tomorrow! You sprint to your room, nearly tearing the zipper open as you unpack along the way. Once you are at your desk, you slide everything over and throw down your textbook. You flip to chapter three and your eyes are already drooping. Despite reading the pages, again and again, the informa tion just won’t stick. Frustrated, you sit there sulking before remembering a new study method you heard of: the Feynman Technique. Out of op tions, you decide to try it out.

The Feynman Technique, created by Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, has many varia tions but generally follows the same pattern: review, teach, organize, and repeat. These three steps, while sim ple in nature, prove to make a suc cessful studying method as it solves the root issue of studying: the inabili ty to grasp the fundamental concepts of the topic. The method’s final goal is to create a narrative or story that allows for the internalization of in formation. As a result, the Feynman Technique is highly efficient, acting as a much more productive medium of preparation and learning.

The first step of the Feynman Technique is to compile information that is relevant to the topic of choice. It begins with reviewing the material, which can be done in various ways. In most cases, it starts with rewriting the information that is remembered to formulate a basis of knowledge that will be relied upon and added

onto. Once finished, the next step requires a more verbal approach that enforces an active form of studying. Using the information previously compiled, make an attempt to teach the subject to verbally elaborate fur ther details. This could be teaching family, friends, or even inanimate objects. The incorporation of sim plified language prevents knowledge gaps from being formed through the use of complicated jargon, words that are esoteric to a field of study. Simplicity also creates clarity, dem onstrating a deeper understanding of knowledge extracted from surfacelevel explanations. Similar to the first review, the final step includes iden tifying areas of improvement in the explanation. Update the teaching ap proach by noting complicated jargon, structuring the explanation so that the ideas flow into one another, and adding analogies to clarify concepts. Remember to cross out irrelevant in formation and organize your knowl edge to be crystal clear. From here, the steps are repeated.

But why is this particular method so acclaimed? Well, for starters, we need to understand what memory actually is. When a person learns something, that information is stored as electrical and chemical signals, which activate a series of neurons, or nerve cells. This activation occurs as the signals pass through a set of syn apses, which are the areas between neurons. As this pattern of neurons is activated more, a specific memory gradually becomes more familiar. The inverse is also true—the less that sequence is visited, the harder the memory becomes to recall. This phe nomenon is demonstrated through the forgetting curve, which psycholo

gist Hermann Ebbinghaus proposed in 1855. The forgetting curve mod els information retention over time, suggesting that people quickly forget

retaining a small percentage. As a re sult, just reviewing the information is insufficient. The Feynman Tech nique “bends” the curve, shortening

formation and increasing the amount retained. It effectively transforms short-term memory into long-term memory through the repeated orga nization of meaningful insights.

More importantly, the main as pect of the Feynman Technique emphasizes being able to teach this information and to teach it well. This concept of learning through teaching is not a unique idea, however. In fact, it dates back to a quote by the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca: “While we teach, we learn.” In the 1980s, a German author by the name Jean-Pol Martin gave this concept a name: the protégé effect. The rea soning behind this is simple: when a person learns in order to teach, there is more engagement with the mate rial compared to learning for the sake of learning. By incorporating a teaching mentality, there are clear benefits, such as increased motiva tion, a deeper awareness of what is being taught, and applying superior learning strategies in organizing data. When it comes to the act of teach ing, all of these factors play a role in consolidating that information, achieving the end goal of the Feyn man Technique.

“Thank you for attending my TedTalk! Goodnight.” As you fin ish your presentation of macromol ecules to the array of stuffed animals on your bed, you let out a sigh of relief. Glancing at your heavily an notated paper filled with notes on proteins, you feel a sense of pride. The information that was so difficult to recall an hour ago is now imme diately accessible. You put away your textbook happily, knowing you will ace this test.

most of what was learned while only

the time it takes to understand the in

The European Space Agency recruited its first parastronaut, or disabled astronaut: British paralym pian John McFall

Hepzibah Srithas / The Spectator

By SETH FENTON

Resilience in Flood-Prone Lower Manhattan

New York was hit by an enor mous flood in 2021 that damaged its infrastructure and caused it to declare its first flash flood emer gency. Much of this damage was concentrated in Lower Manhattan, a uniquely vulnerable area that is spending more and more money recovering from such disasters. If this trend continues and we are un able to adapt Lower Manhattan to climate change, it will flood almost daily by the year 2080.

In the long term, these inten sifying floods will render the vast majority of Lower Manhattan un inhabitable. This is mostly due to climate change, which has made hurricanes and other large storms significantly more common. Storms lead to storm surges, which increase flooding and stress our anti-flood infrastructure. Warmer tempera tures have also thermally expanded the water, raising the height of the tides and making flooding a more

common occurrence. Lower Man hattan is uniquely vulnerable to spikes in flooding due to its lowlying shoreline and urban environ ment.

Hurricane Sandy in 2012 knocked out power in Lower Man hattan, necessitating mass evacu ations from downtown. In Lower Manhattan alone, this amounted to $19 billion in property damage, but it is only the beginning of the dev astation we will suffer if we con tinue down our current trajectory. Within the next 40 years, Hurricane Sandy-level storms may flood over 25 percent of New York City.

If Lower Manhattan becomes even remotely close to uninhabit able in the coming century, the impacts on wider New York would be catastrophic. To start, it would displace 382,654 people and effec tively eliminate the entirety of the United States’ fourth-largest finan cial district, destroying New York’s economy. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost almost imme

diately as workplaces would simply vanish and people would sink into poverty, their livelihoods complete ly destroyed.

Luckily, Sandy served as a wakeup call for the New York govern ment to improve flood defenses. These efforts are all centralized under one plan called The Financial District and Seaport Climate Re silience Master Plan. The program includes miles-long floodgates that close when hurricanes draw near, significantly reducing flooding. However, these gates—like most structures built underwater—make it very difficult for fish popula tions to migrate and remain healthy. They are also incredibly expensive to maintain and only serve as a tem porary solution to this ever-grow ing problem. We can build as much anti-flood infrastructure as we want, but so long as we continue to pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, floods will continue to jeopardize our city. The only way to permanently solve this problem is

to halt the increases in temperatures caused by global warming.

The city has taken significant steps in reducing its own carbon pollution. It’s recently passed a climate package that regulates the carbon emissions of existing large buildings, phases out fossil fuel plants, covers the roofs of build ings with plants to cool the areas surrounding them, slightly offsets carbon dioxide emissions, and eases the construction of wind turbines. These are all great steps that will no doubt help reduce New York’s car bon emissions in the future.

However, climate change is a global issue, and the actions of a single city—even one as big as New York—won’t significantly change Lower Manhattan’s flooding trajec tory. Global warming was never an issue solvable by any single govern ment, whether it be at a city, state, or national level.

This doesn’t undermine our ef forts, though. After all, if every city in the world chose to do nothing

Musical Notes in Cognition

By SUBAAH SYED

According to The New York Times, teenagers listen to an aver age of approximately 2.5 hours of music per day. Listening to music is very common while completing tasks like exercising, completing household chores, or passing time on the train. It is also common for students to listen to music while doing their schoolwork. With re cent advancements in technology allowing for the convenience of music at our fingertips, the concept of listening to music while study ing is new and unique to the stu dents of this generation. Thus, the cognitive effects of music are not entirely known. To evaluate wheth er music is the right study habit for you, it can be useful to compile the available research on this topic to come up with a conclusion about what works best for you.

In a study conducted by John son and Wales University on teen agers’ reasons for listening to mu sic, the efficacy of music while studying was explored. The study reported conflicting responses where some students reported that listening to music helped them concentrate on their schoolwork, while others viewed it as a distrac tion. The differences in these re

sponses can be explained by the many underlying factors regarding individual preferences and the type of task they are trying to complete.

Furthermore, the genre and type of music can have different

motivation. On the other hand, a study by the University of Ten nessee proved that there are disad vantages of upbeat music in cog nition. The researchers compared the effect of students’ memories

sic.

This leads to the phenomenon called the Mozart effect, which describes the increase in cognitive abilities of individuals who listen to music by Mozart. Research pub lished by the University of Ten nessee showed that listening to classical music helps enhance con centration and listening skills as participants in that group received higher scores in concentration and memory.

about climate change because their individual actions would have little impact, no action would ever be taken. New York is an economically and politically influential city; we can serve as a model by improving New York’s sustainability and slash ing our carbon emissions until we achieve net zero.

Flooding in Lower Manhattan is a critical issue—one that threat ens millions of lives, creates billions of dollars in property damage, and causes irreversible harm at a nation al level. It’s a problem New York can delay and mitigate, but not solve on its own. However, there is hope: New York has begun con structing flood defenses that will significantly improve the city’s re silience to climate change. The only thing we can do as a community is hold our governments to their anticlimate change promises and push them to make more radical climate reforms. Otherwise, there will be far more places just as threatened as Lower Manhattan.

A significant reason why some students may listen to music is that it helps them boost their confi dence in themselves. In this man ner, they feel that they have the ability to fulfill their goal success fully, and their self-efficacy increas es. This confidence in themselves then positively affects their behav ior and performance.

By ALEX ZHENG

“If you can speak, then you can sing” is the motto of Stuyvesant’s beloved chorus teacher, Liliya Sham azov. Widely known as a stress re liever, music has various benefits for physical and mental health. In partic ular, singing’s accessibility has made it a popular form of music for all people. While levels of singing range from the enchanting voice of Taylor Swift to your average person belting out notes in the shower, it has be come a universally enjoyed pastime for all. Why is singing so beneficial and why should one partake in the activity?

Imagine the following scenar io: you are hanging out with your friends and hear your favorite song come up. Everyone knows the lyrics, so a singing chorus quickly fills the air. Though this may seem like a sim ple action, many things are occurring behind the scenes.

Socially, you are aware of your surroundings. You hear the sound of the song playing in the back ground and your friends’ melodious voices in the mix. There is a moment when you adjust your own pitch to match the notes of the song or your friends’ pitch. Musicologist Allison Pawley stated that the act of singing in unison promotes a sense of empa thy, social connection, and coordina tion. It increases feelings of trust and

beats per minute (bpm) increases arousal, which can help boost cre ativity. In particular, music that makes someone happy helps boost creative cognition through the re lease of dopamine, an important neurotransmitter in memory and

bpm. Participants in the classical group scored significantly better on the memory task than those in the rap group, suggesting that the rap genre may be more of a distracting form of music when studying compared to classical mu

The type of task you are completing is also important to consider when deciding whether listening to music is the best op tion. In the same study by John son and Wales, students decided it was best to not listen to music when completing a math or read ing assignment. Furthermore, in light of upbeat music’s effect on performance, studies have shown that this increases divergent think ing but not convergent thinking. In other words, listening to music is most effective when completing work for art or freewriting, work that involves creative thinking and thinking up original ideas. On the other hand, completing tasks such as arithmetic and other work that involves following a certain set of established rules and logical rea soning are better done in silence.

Singing and Health

strengthens bonds between people. She explained that because singing is a means of opening up to others, it is a team-bonding experience. Addi tionally, singing, especially in public, boosts one’s self-esteem and confi dence. Admittedly, there is a hurdle to get over, but once the mindset of “I suck at singing, I shouldn’t per form” is abolished, singing becomes a liberating experience and form of self-expression.

In a study with elderly choir singers and a non-singer control group, people who sang were asso ciated with greater verbal flexibility and ability to speak, which reflects an improved overall cognitive abil ity. Choir singing is an activity that requires a variety of information processing, including memorizing pitches and lyrics, vocal intonation, and other motor functions related to making sounds. In addition, singing is a means of releasing endorphins, such as oxytocin, to grant us that dopamine hit. The release of these “feel-good” chemicals is linked to stress reduction and the improve ment of emotional well-being. Fur thermore, there is evidence that in choir singing, music synchronizes the heartbeats of the singers, al lowing for an even more profound sense of connection between them.

Studies comparing the brain scans of singers versus non-singers showed that singers have a more developed

singing network in their brains that completely lights up during a per formance. The results of the study indicated that non-singers received the same dopamine hit as singers but whether because of anxiety or nervousness, do not get the same oppor tunities to perform, which impacts the development of the singing network de scribed.

Physically, singing could also turn into an exhilarating workout since it employs the entire upper body— muscles in the thoracic cavity, abdominal mus cles, lungs, vocal cords, and facial muscles—to work in unison. Sing ing also requires both deep and quick inspi rations and expirations of air, which helps improve the uptake of new oxygen within the lungs to benefit bodily respiration as a whole.

As singing is a cardiovascular activity, the average person burns around 136 calories by singing for an hour while standing. This is incredible, especial ly considering how accessible singing is for all genders and ages.

Historically, singing predates the spoken language as people sang out their feelings to communicate. Though this form of singing was

Overall, many of the research articles stress the idea of achieving the right amount of arousal to ac quire better study habits. The right amount of arousal differs from person to person. Measuring the optimal state of arousal and op timal performance can be shown in the Yerkes-Dodson Law, a phe nomenon that proposes that there is an ideal level of arousal that will produce the best results. Difficult tasks would not be completed in the best manner with the presence of strong stimulation, or high lev els of arousal.

As students, we acquire and polish our own study habits and experiment with different strate gies to find the best ones that work for us. Looking at the science be hind our behaviors and preferenc es can help us further refine our techniques and better understand ourselves.

another. Whether to entertain, to be used in hymns and prayers, or to recount history through ballads and epics, singing is the original musical instrument and is ubiquitous to all cultures. Over time, singing became more complex and well-explained through the invention of scales and talented composers who understood chords and harmony. Now, singing remains the most common form of music thanks to thousands of artists and the internet. Lyrics are easily ac cessible through online websites and music has become a universal and omnipresent part of society.

primitive and most likely monotone or a cacophony of sound, it was an effective form of expression.

As civilizations progressed through their stages of development, each developed singing in one way or

During the pandemic, the sense of connection brought upon by sing ing was especially desirable. Many sang on their balconies as a cry for freedom but also developed a sense of connection amongst their neigh bors who also sang. The benefits that were brought by singing should be used as a motivator for everyone to sing more. Just like speech, singing should be even further normalized and part of a required curriculum at school, especially considering the stress and anxiety associated with Stuyvesant along with the need for a break from the humdrum of educa tion. Essentially, it is a form of ther apy that everyone can and should partake in for the sake of their own health. Thankfully, singing is easily accessible to us and can be used to develop the potential of our voices.

Aryana Singh / The Spectator

Whose Loss Music

By MANLIO SINGH

Drake and 21 Savage are no rookies in the rap game, both having deep discographies going back years. With their chemistry apparent on past songs such as “Sneakin” (2016) and the recent “Jimmy Cooks” (2022), the two collaborating on an album seems like a no-brainer. Ex pectations were high, with the bat ting average of Drake/21 Savage songs near perfect and playing to the strengths of each rapper. The newly released Her Loss follows Drake’s dance album Honestly Nevermind (2022), which received mixed re views and was called generic by critics. However, this album is ap proached with a bit more fire and something to prove.

The opening track, “Rich Flex,” is perhaps the strongest one on the album. Drake sets the stage for 21 Savage, telling him to “Do your thing,” as 21 Savage delivers an un surprisingly energetic verse. Drake then segues into a brief harmony before jumping back into an inter polation of T.I.’s “24” (2003) over hard-hitting drums. The track sees two seamless beat switches which remain prominent throughout the rest of the album. Though the song establishes a playful environment that allows both of them to shine, Drake takes up most of the track’s runtime.

Drake’s primary role is con sistent throughout the rest of the album. He has four solo tracks compared to one from 21 Savage,

and Drake also dominates in every song, contributing to most of the hooks. One prime example of this is on track seven, “Hours in Si lence,” where 21 briefly steps into Drake’s lane, emulating him with soft crooning to create an engaging change of pace. This is followed by five minutes of Drake’s patented, starry-eyed singing as he muses about a distant lover with his typi cal corny lines like, “You were lost until me.” Most Drake cuts on the album drag on with the same bor ing content about his partners. One exception is “Middle of the Ocean,” in which Drake raps with intention, discussing his lavish lifestyle. The smooth O’Jays sample is a perfect opportunity for Drake to mention, “Robert Kraft sent the jet for us, that [EXPLETIVE] was patriotic.” Drake gives an update on his state of mind, rapping straight through without any hooks. Other tracks fail to do the same, with “BackOutside Boyz” and the F1LTHY-produced “Jumbotron [EXPLETIVE] Pop pin” sounding like Certified Lover Boy (2021) rejects. Drake fails to do anything interesting on these songs, slapping boring flows over generic production.

While the album is bloated, the duo does deliver some entertaining cuts. The album is at its best when 21 Savage and Drake work together on tracks. “On BS” has nocturnal production, with ear-grabbing melo dies and inescapable 808s. 21 de livers a simple hook while the two trade lines and finish each other’s

sentences. Drake’s rhythmic flow as the beat pulls back leads to a cap tivating conclusion. The song feels like they were both in the studio, not just Drake asking 21 for a fea ture. “Broke Boys” also features the back-and-forth, as Drake assists 21 with adlibs behind his consistent delivery and dark production. 21’s clever line, “Halloween come and he want to dress up / But he don’t need no costume, I’m turnin’ him ghost,” makes it clear that he is not some one to mess with. The song pivots as the beat switches into the fast-paced piano that has Drake flowing effort lessly. Their subject matter through out the album is more of the same as they rap about their bachelor life styles surrounded by women. On “[EXPLETIVE] & Millions,” Drake and 21 brag about their money and supermodel companions. The lay ered production, containing uplift ing melodies, transitions cleanly into a perfect backdrop of loud horns for Travis Scott’s feature, and his autotune injects new energy into the track.

21 Savage raps about his usual content of checks, women, and vio lence throughout the album. Drake does the same, but generates some controversy with sneak disses at specific people and misogynistic jibes. On “Circo Loco,” Drake says, “Linking with the opps, [EXPLE TIVE], I did that [EXPLETIVE] for J Prince.” Drake refers to the con cert he did with Kanye West, whom he was previously beefing with. While they supposedly reconciled,

he implies that there is still some tension between them. In the same song, he says, “That [EXPLETIVE] lie ’bout gettin’ shots, but she still a stallion,” throwing shade at Megan Thee Stallion, who Tory Lanez shot, and hints that he thinks she is lying. Even if it was not directed toward Megan, it is still a disrespectful line criticizing women who receive plas tic surgery. Drake is at a stage in his career where he does not need to stir up hype like this, yet his content still contains these aspects. There is no nuance or evolution. He has been talking about the same thing for his last few albums, yet he is still one of the biggest rap stars in the world. There is no incentive for Drake to mature. If he wants, he can continue producing uninspired music for the rest of his career.

Taking everything into account, this album fails as a collaboration. Her Loss lacks cohesion and rarely brings either individual out of their comfort zone. It is a Drake album with 21 Savage features, where Drake fails at carrying the load. 21 and Drake should be creating some thing they could not do alone, but that is not the case on this album. Most songs lack any originality, bringing more of the same from the two artists. Her Loss has a few great songs, which is expected from a Drake album, but it does not come together as a whole. While Her Loss is better than more recent Drake projects like Certified Lover Boy and Honestly Nevermind, it pales in comparison to his best.

Film Comedic Destruction in “The Banshees of Inisherin”

By LUCIEN CLOUGH

These seemingly insignifi cant lines jumpstart Martin Mc Donaugh’s latest film, The Banshees of Inisherin, and are the backbone of a conflict that escalates to Shake spearean heights.

Set on an island off the coast of Ireland in 1923, The Banshees of Inisherin explores preconceived notions of masculinity through an ever-escalating conflict between two former friends, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and Padraic (Colin Far rell). The film follows the fallout of a friendship that abruptly ends when Colm decides to cut ties with his lifelong drinking buddy Padraic because he’s “a bit too dull.” Padra ic, a friendly and admittedly simpleminded fellow whose daily activities consist simply of herding sheep and drinking beer, is dumbfounded by this move and seeks further expla nation from a frustrated Colm. This conflict bewilderingly escalates as both parties make increasingly ir rational and violent decisions that end up having widespread negative consequences.

Despite the violence and gro tesqueness of some of the events portrayed in the film, The Banshees of Inisherin is filled with plenty of humor that makes it a true delight to watch. This humor is built into the improbable, shocking plot, but is found as much in the characters as it is in the premise. The dialogue be tween the characters utilizes fragile tempers in service of humor to ex tremely effective results: everyone is filled with dry, Irish wit that sponta neously explodes into an entertain ing series of “fecks” and “shites.”

Even with the abundance of co medic characters and moments, the

ratio of comedy to tragedy achieved in the film strikes a careful balance, as the two components are interwo ven while never diminishing the ef fect of the other. The plot may seem fundamentally outlandish due to its improbability, but (once accepted,) reveals itself to be a true tragedy.

The Banshees of Inisherin displays a heartless collapse of friendship and explores the line between pettiness and legitimate, hateful revenge, as Colm and Padraic go from distanc ing themselves at the pub to com mitting acts of arson. The unusual pacing of this conflict mitigates the sense of absurdity, but the strange ness of these violent escalations is intentional and builds a conflict that reads as almost Shakespearean.

When viewed through this lens, The Banshees of Inisherin is a portrayal of the destructive nature of masculinity. When confronting Colm about his sudden coldness, Padraic’s sister Siobhan (Kerry Con don) exclaims, “Oh great, another silent man on Inisherin.” Siobhan’s lines reveal a key message of the film: these battling men are selfabsorbed, completely unaware of the destruction they’re causing each other and themselves. This message becomes obvious as the violence develops and the film ends unre solved, with both men still at odds with each other. This lack of resolu tion displays both the unending na ture of the violent characteristics of masculinity and the cycles caused by the lack of proper communication.

The focus on these pitfalls of mas culinity is what gives The Banshees of Inisherin its timelessness, despite its isolated setting and time period; its unresolved ending and poignant themes reflect the characteristics of a nearly Shakespearean tragedy.

Despite the seemingly minimal setup of the film (as it only centers on a few key characters and places),

the fictional island of Inisherin feels incredibly well-developed and grounded. The island has dynamic scenery conveyed in an aesthetically pleasing manner: small stone walls wind through the island, dividing plots of land, while massive waves pound against steep cliffs that mark Inisherin’s borders and heavy fog hangs over the island.

These pictorial decisions con vey Inisherin’s sense of confine ment, clearly displaying its barriers and rarely veering away from them, but the surrounding Inisherinites breathe life into the island and pro vide insight into the dynamic of the small community. Siobhan, played with the brilliant control of Kerry Condon, feels like the only true adult on the island, often mediat ing the two men’s arguments before leaving the isolation of the island for a job on the mainland. In ad dition, there is the local cop (Gary Lydon), who serves as the closest thing to a true antagonist, and his character provides insight into the island’s blind loyalty and general attitude toward the Irish Civil War. His troubled son, Dominic (Barry Keoghan), tries to replace Colm’s friendship, yet is unsuccessful as his childish perverseness constantly lands him in trouble. A witch-like widow prowls the island (Sheila Flitton), foretelling death and de struction. Pub-goers and towns people populate the island. Animals run wild throughout the town, like Jenny, Padraic’s mini donkey, whom Siobhan demands to stay out of the house. Inisherin is painted as a small community—but not necessarily a close-knit one—spoiled by confine ment, age, and mundanity.

The leads are the most thrilling performances to watch, as the actors ground their characters, imbuing them with a sense of humanity. Far rell delivers one of his most endear

ing performances as Padraic, deliv ering a dullness that exists narrowly outside of Padriac’s awareness, and then flawlessly transitioning into a vengeful flare that accompanies the upending of Padraic’s internal world as he begins to realize what every one truly thinks of him. Gleeson plays Colm as a furious storm wait ing to break, brooding from within a massive overcoat and donning a mask removed only because of the excitement of playing his fiddle at the pub. Colm cites prioritizing his art as a reason for the ending of his friendship with Padraic, but the viewer gets the sense of massive weariness from Colm; it isn’t really about his music or poetry; it’s about the idea that he can ‘make it,’ that he can entirely devote his energy to that pursuit. This idea leads him to a state of blind anger, as he ends up destroying his own chances of creating music by slowly cutting off his fingers in an effort to get Padraic to leave him alone. The incredible performances and incredible execu tion of their shifts in character both garner the viewers’ sympathies and frustrations, creating layers of emo tion to nuance and complicate the viewers’ perceptions of the charac ters’ actions.

The Banshees of Inisherin truly succeeds on all fronts, creating a world out of a handful of charac ters and locations and unleashing a conflict both comedic in its original insignificance and tragic in its unfor tunate poignance. The violent nature of masculinity and the consequenc es of silence are addressed and de liberated upon, thanks to incredible performances from the film’s leads and powerful storytelling. Because of this, The Banshees of Inisherin is one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking films of the year, and a definite must-watch for any fan of dark comedy.

Playlist Charred Remains of Past Actions

By THE ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT DEPARTMENT

Everyone has done some unfor givable act in their past. A skeleton that ought to stay in the closet. Well, there may come a time when it is necessary to… dispose of the evidence. The fol lowing soundtrack will ensure that any arson committed is at least aestheti cally non-criminal.

Toxic Britney Spears Pop

Partner in Crime Slant 6 Riot grrrl

Big Steppa Rome Streetz Boom bap Queen Perfume Genius Art pop

no body, no crime Taylor Swift & HAIM Country pop

Army of Me Björk Art pop

Piss on Your Grave Travis Scott Trap

The Mercy Seat Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Gothic rock

Holy is the Name (Of My Ruthless Axe) Lingua Ignota Post-industrial

Heel on the Shovel 16 Horsepower Gothic country

Arcarsenal At the Drive-In Post-hardcore

The Blue Acid Bath Sludge metal

“I just don’t like you anymore.” “But that’s not true! You do like me!”

Airports Abuse Musicians and Damage Their Instruments Thinkpiece

some bows there. It’s very ex pensive and somebody that is very educated about antiques, paintings, and musical instru ments should be the one to do it. Otherwise, it should be me, because you’re risking being sued. It’s very dangerous and the instrument may get dam aged,” Zori said.

By BRANDON PHILLIPS

We’ve all stood in line at airport security, waiting for our bags to safely pass through the X-ray machine. It’s a long, te dious process, but at least we come out of it without any harm done. The same could not be said for world-renowned violinist Carmit Zori, who was returning home after playing a concert series in Raleigh when an overzealous TSA agent caused over $6000 worth of damage to her instrument. The Spectator reached out to Zori

and got her full account of the story.

Upon reaching security at Raleigh Airport, Zori was in formed that the X-ray conveyor was too narrow to fit her violin. A member of the TSA grabbed her violin and brought it to the other side of the machine to in spect it for possible drugs and weapons. Concerned, Zori sug gested that she open it for them; however, she was not allowed to do so. “I talked to the first lady there; ‘I have a really expensive instrument. It’s old. It’s from a few hundred years ago. It’s got

After putting up a brief fuss, the woman ceded and had a co worker take the case. The TSA worker first tried to open the case upside down. Had Zori not convinced him to open it correctly, the violin could have been severely damaged. The worker took the instrument out carelessly, waving it around and looking at it. Zori said, “so far he was careful and then he was all done as far as he was con cerned, but then he looked into all the little spots in my violin [case], all the little containers. There was a container of resin there.” Resin, which is used on violin bows, is kept in a small container away from the vio lin so as not to damage either. However, after taking the resin out of its container to inspect it, the worker left it on top of the violin’s face. “Who needs to put anything in a container when there’s just space on top of the violin?” Zori joked.

When he proceeded to zip the case with the resin sitting on top of the face, he couldn’t close it entirely. “He tried push ing and pushing on the lid and I screamed, ‘Let me close it!’” Zori said. The worker quickly told her to “go ahead, lady,” and quickly left. “I think he heard something. Why did he all of a sudden say that I was allowed in that area? It was because there was something he knew he was

guilty of. It wasn’t on purpose, but it’s ignorance. When you don’t know something, you can do bad things, that’s what it is,” Zori said. Zori inspected her violin, removing the resin from it, and saw a crack in the face. After consulting with the violin repair shop, she discovered that the repair would cost $6000. Though the violin will be fixed about six weeks after the inci dent, the emotional stress and damage are still everpresent. “Have the gun ready to shoot me if I’m really a criminal,” Zori said. “There’s nothing dan gerous about this little violin.”

This is not an isolated in cident, as aggressions toward musicians have occurred for de cades. For many years, it was un clear whether musicians were al lowed to bring their instruments into an airplane cabin. Though small stringed instruments like violins and violas can be stored in overhead compartments, air plane crews often deny musi cians the right to do so under the claim that musicians need to check their instruments in the hold. Storing extremely delicate works of art in an airplane hold is simply not feasible, as they would be smashed to bits in the crowded space. Often, musi cians leave their planes to switch flights in the hopes of finding a more educated captain. Most cellists and double bassists buy an extra seat for their instru ments just to avoid placing them in the airplane hold, yet they are still sometimes not allowed on the plane, despite paying for both tickets.

Fortunately, the Federal Avi ation Administration Modern ization and Reform Act of 2012 declared that violins and other small instruments must be al

Is Heroin Chic Back? Fashion

By ROXY PERAZZO

Ah, the ‘90s, a decade filled with iconic pop-culture: grunge, the early Internet, “Friends,” and, of course, fashion. The era’s strappy heels and slip dresses have made a comeback in recent years, but to praise these bygone trends is to ignore the massive el ephant in the room: heroin chic. While the ‘90s were a time of memorable style, styling heroin chic encompassed more than just an outfit—it included the body of the person wearing it.

The body in question was comprised of pale skin, dark, hollow cheeks and eyes, and a skinny physique, features resem bling those of a heroin addict. The look was first associated with early ‘80s supermodel Gia Caran gi, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1986 after spending the last six years of her life struggling with heroin addiction. Carangi’s drug use in combination with her natural features resulted in her signature tomboyish face and thin figure, which were soon idolized.

With the spread of the grunge movement in the early ‘90s, her oin addiction was brought into the spotlight. Musicians like Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, both of whom struggled with heroin addictions, were leaders of the

grunge movement, but with their fame came a cultural awareness of heroin’s prevalence in the Seattle scene. The popularity of grunge music and fashion revived the Gia Carangi look, making heroin chic en vogue once again. At the fore front of this revival were models Jaime King and Kate Moss. When Moss was featured in a 1993 adcampaign for Calvin Klein, the shadowy, black-and-white ads highlighted Moss’s hollow, thin features, boosting heroin chic’s appeal and promoting being ultrathin and pale.

Eventually, heroin chic fell out of fashion following photog rapher Davide Sorrenti’s heroin overdose in 1997. Sorrenti’s death refuted any claims that heroin chic was nothing more than a style; instead, it was a prevalent and dangerous glamourization of addiction that caused real harm to people. Its dangers were criticized even by President Bill Clinton the same year. Consequently, the death of heroin chic ushered in the 2000s’ emphasis on a healthy, fit look. But, 20 and some odd years later since its demise, the world of fashion is seeing a re surgence of heroin chic following the revival of broader ‘90s and Y2K trends, and its allure is leak ing into the fashion and physique ideals of today’s youth. In the past few years, low-rise jeans and mi

cro mini skirts have made their way back into mainstream fash ion, evoking an era that idolized a certain build. Model Bella Hadid, whose hollow cheekbones and slim figure are at the core of her appeal, has become the new itgirl. Kim and Khloé Kardashian, famous for their curves, recently flaunted their weight loss, which was significant enough to spark online speculation that they may have had previous plastic surgery implants removed.

Not only is the revival of a dangerous “thin” ideal shocking in and of itself, but its following of the 2010s’ emphasis on in clusivity and body positivity also compounds the strangeness of this resurgence. And, as much as that inclusive fervor remains, the fashion world and certain en claves of the internet have fully adopted a “thin is in” attitude, actively promoting ultra-thin phy siques and even eating disorders. Studies conducted by The Ameri can Journal of Clinical Nutrition and The International Journal of Eating Disorders show that eating disorders are on the rise and that the severity of existing eating dis orders has worsened during the pandemic.

Though pro-eating disorder communities existed on the in ternet throughout the 2000s and 2010s, the advent of Tik Tok has

rapidly increased the dissemina tion of harmful body-checking videos—TikToks with the sole purpose of showing off the cre ator’s figure—due to its algo rithm. While a video may not ex plicitly impose a beauty standard on its viewers, comments praising the video can subconsciously in fluence viewers to internalize the notion of an ideal body. In main stream media, outright promo tion of these ideals is uncommon, rarely mentioning heroin chic by name or explicitly encouraging eating disorders, but we are still vulnerable to the implicit ideal ization of heroin chic because of our perpetual issues with body image as a society.

While the recent resurgence of heroin chic does represent a cultural shift, “thin is in” was nev er really “out.” The early 2000s healthy look developed as a re action to the dangers of heroin chic, but this turn-of-the-century health meant skinniness too. Paris Hilton was tan and donned light eyeshadow, but she was also ex tremely thin. The 2010s’ empha sis on curves did not abandon the thin ideal either—“slim thick” includes “slim” for a reason—as women were expected to have curves, a flat stomach, and a small waist simultaneously. “Thin is in” never left; it only disguised itself, as attempts made to do away with

lowed into airplane cabins when carry-on rules applied. Despite this law, many airport staff and captains still deny musicians the right to bring their instruments into the cabin. For example, Ra chel Barton Pine, Cecilia Ber nardini, Zach de Pue, and Nick Kendall were all declined this right in Chicago, Amsterdam, and Charlotte for the latter two, respectively. Some musicians have started carrying a physical copy of the law, but it is not a common precaution.

Another particularly upset ting case is that of Itzhak Perl man, who is widely considered to be the greatest living violin ist. The 70-year-old Israeli vio linist contracted polio in his youth and requires the use of a wheelchair or crutches to walk. While in Toronto, Perlman was abandoned by airport staff with his crutches, his violin, and two bags. The worker assigned to help him told Perlman that he wasn’t his personal assistant and left him entirely alone.

While the TSA and air port staff’s abuse isn’t limited to musicians, their treatment is a prime example of cruelty against ordinary, non-threaten ing members of society. Wom en with underwire bras being brutally searched and people of color being stopped and inter rogated are other examples on a much larger scale. The TSA and airport staff are in a position of power and abuse their author ity at times. If people were less arrogant and instead communi cated with compassion and re spect, we could avoid these un necessary grievances and focus on issues that truly matter.

“I’m willing to give you re spect, please give me respect,” said Zori. “It’s so easy to do.”

it once and for all were met with criticism. Pop singer Lizzo, who has been a consistent champion of body acceptance, comes to mind, as her Instagram and Tik Tok posts are consistently met with hate comments, as does ac tress Jameela Jamil, who has been outspoken about her struggle with an eating disorder and is constantly torn down and criti cized for her advocacy.

So, maybe we cannot blame anyone or anything for a heroin chic revival; maybe it is just a more extreme version of a pre existing ideal body. Regardless, heroin chic is dangerous in both its glamorization of addiction and its promotion of diet-culture and eating disorders. A revival of heroin chic within the celebrity and fashion worlds is not only reminiscent of a time in which the people within those worlds strug gled with this ideal and with drug addiction, but also of a time in which those ideals made their way into the mainstream, with young women seeking to emulate their fashion inspirations. Whether it falls under the name heroin chic or healthy, the body standards that we impose on women, espe cially young women, are harmful no matter their era, and the resur gence of these ideals in the main stream needs to be viewed as the threat to our health that it is.

Zihe Huang / The Spectator

Arts and Entertainment

Falling For Sad Girl Autumn Culture

By PHOEBE BUCKWALTER

It is that time of year. The leaves turn vibrant shades of red, orange, yellow, and brown, only to soon wither away, drifting helplessly to ward the unforgiving pavement. Café windows cloud with frost and framed chalkboards advertise pumpkin spice lattes and steamy hot chocolate. The sky darkens in the early evening, bringing chilly nights with the set ting sun. Cable knit sweaters, Uggs, beanies, and turtlenecks replace gauzy sundresses, and the effortless fun of Hot Girl Summer fades to a hazy memory as hibernation season descends. Heartbreak ballads rule the radio; “Sad Girl Autumn” has arrived.

“Sad Girl Autumn” is a rela tively new phrase for the indescrib able melancholy associated with fall and the mass cultural phenomena it inspires. The trend has been pro moted largely by social media plat forms like TikTok, with #sadgir lautumn and #sadgirlfall becoming increasingly popular throughout the season. However, this fad is rooted in science: fall signals the onset of seasonal affective disorder—depres sion and fatigue in response to the decreased sunlight during the fall and winter months—in 0.5 to three per cent of the general population. The Environmental Security Hypothesis proposes that the looming threat of winter causes people to seek material meaning in their external environ ment and find consistency as they mourn the changing seasons.

During this transition, music serves as a comfort for many, inexpli cably linking it to Sad Girl Autumn. A psychological study investigating the relationship between the Envi ronmental Security Hypothesis and seasonal music preferences found that in the fall and winter, people prefer to listen to “reflexive and complex” music such as classical, blues, folk, and jazz. The researchers then speculated that slow, romantic ballads may be consumed more read ily in the fall and winter months as

Music

By ALEXANDER HINCHLIFFE

Quadeca was dying to make an al bum. Benjamin Lasky, known online as Quadeca (formerly QuadecaX8), grew up as a well-off white kid in the Californian suburbs. He played soc cer and made a YouTube channel to post FIFA highlights and football commentary for a small fanbase. Quadeca comfortably fell in line with other FIFA YouTubers at the time, posting booster pack reactions with a copy-and-pasted PNG of his shocked face on each thumbnail. He mastered all-caps clickbait titles like “SUPER SPECIAL Q&A - 500 BILLION COINS, RAPPING, AM I GAY?” (a vital question that remains unan swered). However, Quadeca stuck out from the sea of oversaturated, monotonous FIFA content—be tween pack reactions and mediocre soccer edits, Quadeca rapped. His career justifiably started as a juvenile supplement to his usual program ming—rap battles between soccer players—but there was a glimmer of talent within the poorly recorded parody songs and awful bars.

After a slew of mixtapes and col laborations, Quadeca released Voice Memos in 2019, his first concept album that saw a shift from his lyr ical-spiritual-miracle style to a more singer-songwriter format. While many tracks still conformed to the signature fast-rap flexing tradition, certain songs tackled more mature topics like addiction and depression. By Voice Memos, Quadeca had one foot out the door to his own art istry, but was stuck in the awkward, predominantly white subculture of YouTube meme rap. After a twoyear hiatus from music, he released his first self-produced album From

opposed to dance pop, which thrives in the summertime.

Perhaps the most famous ex ample of Sad Girl Autumn mu sic is Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” (2021). Its nostalgic, acoustic back ing is punctuated by sorrowful elec tric guitar plucking as Swift sings grievously about young heartbreak: “Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place / And I can pic ture it after all these days.” The pensive remembrance that defines the song is ever-present in autumn, the season characterized by yearn ing, sunshine-seeking, and reminisc ing. Taylor Swift thinks so too—she even released an alternate version of the heartbreaking hit in 2021 titled “All Too Well (Sad Girl Autumn Version).” Other artists who have notably captured the melancholy of Sad Girl Autumn include Adele (“Easy On Me” (2021)), Lana Del Rey (“How to disappear” (2019)), Birdy (“Skinny Love” (2011)), and Gracie Abrams (“Rockland” (2021)).

Though Sad Girl Autumn is largely a 21st century phenomenon, it is also embodied by older artists like Joni Mitchell (“River” (1971)), Carole King (“So Far Away” (1971)), and Alanis Morissette (“Ironic” (1995)).

However, unlike Taylor Swift, not all artists embrace the “sad girl” label. Indie rock superstar Phoebe Bridgers, known for deeply mean ingful ballads like “Motion Sickness” (2017), finds the label restrictive. In a 2018 interview with Exclaim! Magazine, Bridgers explained, “I don’t think of myself as a sad person necessarily.” While she understands why people find her music sad, she also rejects the “sad girl” trend be cause “it’s so romanticized and so kitschy.” She has a point—the pres ence of “girl” in the phrase “Sad Girl Autumn” is indicative of society’s tendency to minimize and invalidate female emotional expression. The word “girl” insinuates that there is an unfounded, hormonal teenage angst to “Sad Girl Autumn,” when it is ac tually the healthy release of a year’s worth of pent-up dejection, disap

pointment, and anger before the fresh slate of the new year.

Larger questions are posed by the seasonal relevance of “Sad Girl Pop.” The genre has been scruti nized in the past for its glamoriza tion of darker themes, such as de pression and abuse, with much of the criticism being directed towards iconic sad girl Lana Del Rey. Del Rey claimed she was being “crucified” by critics in 2020, who accused her of glamorizing abusive relationships. The controversy was largely sparked

by Gen-Z, from Billie Eilish’s “listen before i go” (2019)—a song that es sentially serves as a suicide note—to Grace VanderWaal’s “Moonlight” (2017), in which she watches her friend slip away due to depression. This has massive implications for a generation whose depression rates have roughly doubled in young adults. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about 20 percent of children with mental, emotional, or behav ioral disorders are treated by a men

own experiences, but also to take on the role of mental health advocates, normalizing mental health issues while also encouraging their fans to seek professional help if themes of suicidality, depression, or abuse deeply resonate with them.

On the flip side, movies and tele vision are used as a source of escap ism during the period of unsureness ushered in by autumn. The Twilight Saga (2008-2012), centered around the forbidden romance of mortal Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pat tinson), is a popular fall watch that is known for having a particularly au tumnal energy. The TV show Gilm ore Girls (2000-2007), which follows the lives of young single mother Lorelei Gilmore and her teenage daughter Rory, is also another per fect “Sad Girl Autumn” watch, as ap proximately half of the drama’s 153 episodes take place during the fall. And, if you are looking to curl up with a good book in true Rory Gilm ore fashion, the “Sad Girl Autumn” library has quite the catalog. From Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1963) to Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), popular fall reads deal with themes of self-isola tion, depression, and pivotal change.

by a lyrical reference to The Crys tals’s “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)” (1962) in Del Rey’s song “Ultraviolence” (2014). Throughout her music, romantic descriptions of possessive boyfriends, rock-bottom depression, and Hollywood suicides are passed off as the great American love story. Del Rey’s and the sad girl pop genre’s influence are extremely evident in the music being produced

tal health provider. The issue with the music industry’s glamorization of being sad is not that it romanti cizes depression, but that it does not provide the necessary context and resources for people who are actually suffering from mental illness. The mainstream success of “Sad Girl Pop” necessitates that the artists at the forefront of this movement use their platforms not just to share their

Though the phrase “Sad Girl Autumn” itself symbolizes women’s internalization of emotional invali dation, Sad Girl Autumn as an aes thetic and lifestyle represents the op posite. It is about mourning endings and contemplating new beginnings and being vulnerable to the winds of change. It is a reminder that women have no obligation to constantly jus tify their feelings; they have the right to wallow. Though this aspect of Sad Girl Autumn is particularly empow ering for women due its underlying feminist message, Sad Girl Autumn is for everyone who has ever nursed a broken heart. So play Taylor Swift’s crestfallen crooning on repeat and grab a tall mug of spiced apple ci der. As the cinnamon stings your lips like a last kiss, fantasize about what should have been.

Quadeca Tells A Modern Ghost Story

Me To You (FMTY) in 2021, which showed a world of difference from his previous work. Quad especially showed improvement as a producer, crafting a cold, ambient soundscape. The project still suffered from the

I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You (ID MTHY). On the album, Quadeca raps as the ghost of a man who com mits suicide and watches the world he once knew move on from his death. In this new album, Quad keeps

ing into the piano intro of “sorry4dy ing.” The vocals are mixed with a hint of crushed distortion, adding to the ghostly theme. As is common with many of the tracks, “sorry4dying” undergoes transformations within each verse, effortlessly spacing out and coming back into focus. The lead single, “born yesterday,” serves as a microcosm for the entire proj ect—light plucked guitar arpeggios and oscillating synths back Quad’s morose vocals about watching his family move on from his death. The refrain “I think you’re goddamn ly ing” evolves beautifully as the song progresses, with distortion and line delivery shifting on each subsequent take. The track is also representative of IDMTHY’s sheer sonic diversity: granular, transient production fades in and out, with Quadeca’s voice go ing from booming to soft between lines. “fantasyworld” is another great example of mature production, with a delicate piano track, grand percus sion and rising effects, and tender vocals scoring an epic seven-minute runtime.

ing baseline. Lyrics on different songs often reference each other, with callbacks to the character’s marriage (tying the knot), items in his former house, and suicide itself.

The features fit seamlessly into the story, too. Acclaimed rapper Danny Brown delivers a creative verse from the perspective of carbon monoxide on “house settling,” where Quadeca’s ghost tries to kill his fam ily by turning on the stove in his for mer home. The Sunday Service Choir (founded by Kanye West) serves to drive home Quadeca’s final accep tance of his death on the fan favorite closer “fractions of infinity” with a beautiful chorus, repeating the mant ric refrain “those words don’t do you justice” in the glorious climax of the project.

usual drawbacks—Quadeca’s sing ing left much to be desired; the pac ing was awkward at times, and some rap sections relied too much on oneliners and fast flows, but the record as a whole demonstrated admirable maturity as an artist.

Quadeca returned with yet an other self-produced project in 2022,

what worked from FMTY. He taste fully deploys his wintry, harsh sonic palette, refraining from the amateur ish structural melodrama of his last project, and adds percussive texture with static and white noise. The al bum begins ambitiously with a flute motif, which gives way to strings and rubbery synth bass glides, transition

IDMTHY also sees Quadeca honing his craft as a songwriter. Where FMTY treated the concept of mountain climbing as a vague meta phor for overcoming hardships, ID MTHY uses purgatory to tell a story. Quad’s penmanship is far more selfcontained in this album, with lyrics alluding to his suicide and former wife’s grief. The gritty “knots” is one of the most lyrically dense songs, with the title of the track referring to the guilt relatives of the ghost feel and the ties they had with Quadeca’s charac ter. “Knots on my neck, try to speak, but I’m tongue-tied / That knot’s the strongest yet, I don’t think it’s com ing untied,” Quadeca raps, accented by sputtering synth leads and a growl

Despite the triumphs of ID MTHY, Quadeca still has much room for improvement. The singing, while certainly his best yet, is still weak. While tracks like “picking up hands” showcase impressive range, his deliv ery on “don’t mind me” and “house settling” is still underwhelming and flat. The vocal effects Quad chooses tend to drown him in the mix, turn ing the ghost theme into an exces sive gimmick. While the instrumental interludes within songs (such as the track “the memories we lost in trans lation”) are pretty, they distract from the meat of the album. Some of the instrumental passages, such as the three-minute static outro to the al bum on “cassini’s division,” shoot for atmospheric and land as boring dead space. Despite its shortcomings, I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You displays another show of musical growth for Quadeca. His artistry has consistently improved over the years, and there is no doubt he will surpass this record’s craftsmanship on his next project.

Chuer Zhong / The Spectator

Gabriel Gutierrez / The Spectator

Arts and Entertainment

Blurring the Lines Between Real and Surreal: Review of Atlanta Season Four Television

By LUCIEN CLOUGH and SIMONE RALEIGH

Therapy. Broken Families. Washed-Up Celebrities. Solution: Get It. Fix It. Buy a Safe Farm.

Atlanta is not just a place— it’s an idea. Such is the guiding force of Donald Glover’s aptly ti tled, genre-defying TV show At lanta (2016-2022), which recently reached a masterful conclusion in its final season. Over the course of its three preceding seasons, Atlanta became defined by its malleability, proving that the show could be anything it want ed by exploring everything from horror to the intricacies of the rap world, and making a poignant social commentary in the process. Season four centers around the main crew of rapper Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry): his manager and cousin Earn (Donald Glover) and his friends Van (Zazie Beetz) and Darius (Lakeith Stanfield). It picks up with the characters re turning to Atlanta, Georgia from a European tour. Season four is tonally reminiscent of prior sea sons, but with characters who have truly grown. Leaving behind a legacy that is both profound and absurd, Atlanta raises the bar with its conclusive season.

Atlanta utilizes its physi cal setting—the greater Atlanta area—as an omniscient charac ter in its own right, highlighting its contributions to Black culture.

As a result, the show feels entire ly surreal, establishing an artistic landscape as it introduces plot points grounded by cultural key stones. Nothing is off the table; everything is unpredictable. Mun dane events suddenly slip into the bizarre with no logical explana tion, and unlikely “coincidences” are stacked to impossible ends.

Donald Glover and Hiko

Murai, the show’s main directors, contribute to this surrealism with their creative choices, often por traying the show’s environment in muted, dream-like color pal ettes through a grainy lens. This aesthetic is represented in Earn’s quest to acquire mega R&B star D’Angelo as a client for his tal ent agency. Earn tracks him down to a gas station backroom with a bank vault door, which is guarded by a silent man with a stack of magazines. After waiting weeks, he eventually finds D’Angelo— except it is not actually D’Angelo, but a man posing as him, eating a fried chicken skin sandwich while playing FIFA. He responds to Earn’s confusion by smearing peanut butter on his forehead and vaguely saying “We’re all D’Angelo.” It is confusing, ab surd, and hilarious while still act ing as a moment of insight into Earn’s newfound career drive.

Paper Boi’s near-death encoun ter with the “Crank Dat Killer,” whose intent is to kill everyone who made a Soulja Boy YouTube dance video, has a similarly sur real and hilarious effect.

It is in moments like these when surrealism is used to ex plore the intersectionality of Black culture with Atlanta, delv ing into a school of art often cat egorized as Afro-Surrealism. Af ro-Surrealism takes the everyday experience of people of African descent and twists it, magnifying certain aspects and creating an alternate reality. Atlanta success fully embodies Afro-Surrealism, and the show further elevates the contorted sense of reality in sea son four, using its creative versa tility to convey some of its most pressing topics.

Ever since its creation, Atlan ta has been the masthead of ab stract storytelling. It focuses less

on creating a cohesive narrative in favor of exploring Atlanta’s culture and the way the characters navigate it. Each episode delves into a facet of this world, wheth er through social commentary or by poking fun at cultural phe nomena. For example, the show makes fun of sneaker culture when Earn and Darius kiss to get a pair of shoes. Atlanta does this throughout the course of the sea son, and as a result, many of its particularly unhurried core story lines develop in the background of the series, naturally flowing into the foreground when rel evant and catching characters in small breaths between the de fining moments in their lives. Character arcs follow a pointil list narrative, outlined with broad strokes and developed only when necessary, usually within the con text of a specific episode’s artistic intent. This is notably shown in Earn’s increasing financial stabil ity as he finds more and more success in his career. While never explicitly addressed, it is subtly shown through his increasingly clean-cut appearance and more content disposition. Sometimes, episodes completely ignore the arcs of their main characters, fo cusing instead on a specific idea. While this occurs much less in season four than in previous sea sons, standout episodes do come to mind, such as “The Goof Who Sat By the Door,” an episode structured as a spoof docuseries centered around an imaginary Black Disney CEO. The focus on artistic and topical intent has been fundamental to the show over its four seasons, and the way the characters weave through it has defied traditional methods of long form storytelling.

Season four addresses many of the series’ core themes

through a new, emotionally vul nerable lens, giving them a sense of agency and explicit awareness. The most prevalent example of this is found in the relationship between Earn and Van, who be gin the show struggling to main tain a stable romantic partnership while raising their child together. In the latest season, they give each other recognition for their past attempts at reconciliation, working together to build a stron ger family despite their compli cated history. Season four also disproves the misconception that masculinity and vulnerability are incompatible by portraying the environment of Earn’s therapy sessions as one of comfort and normalcy while addressing racial trauma, thereby attempting to remove the impossible societal standards of Black masculinity. Throughout the series, the con fines of institutionalized racism are explored as the characters persevere and work to break free of its restrictive definitions.

It is through the shattering of these glass ceilings that many of Atlanta’s beloved characters find their own conclusions—a diffi cult task considering their com plex, multifaceted natures. The care that the writers demonstrate in giving these characters a prop er ending without drowning them in clichés is immediately clear. As the series draws to a close, there is a sense that the characters are on a path to a sustainable resolu tion. Gaining new confidence as a talent agent and becoming emo tionally introspective with the help of therapy, Earn reaches the emotional bandwidth required to start a family with Van. Finally coming to terms with the fact that his rap stardom has peaked, Paper Boi discovers how to vali date himself and break free of

Senior Spotlight Music

By ZOE BUFF

Come for Tchaikovsky. Stay for Rococo. Be blown away by Saint-Saëns! It is the golden era of Stuyvesant’s student musicians, and for the first time ever, the win ter concert is a triple threat.

Since the 1980s, it has been a Stuyvesant tradition for seniors in orchestra, band, or chorus to per form a solo piece with the fifth period Symphonic Orchestra. If a senior asks to perform and there is space in the concert, orchestra teacher Joseph Tamosaitis adds them to the program. Students who receive this honor have dis tinguished themselves as advanced musicians, and, more often than not, they are also section leaders. “It’s a great thing to be able to present talented students in chal lenging repertoire and show them off,” said Tamosaitis. In the past, there has only been one soloist per concert.

This time, there are three so loists: violinist Isaac Lageschulte, cellist Felix Harkness, and pianist Gitae Park. The challenging reper toire includes the first movement of the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto in G minor, the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky Variations on a Roco co Theme for cello, and, as a small feature for the orchestra, the Pas De Deux from Tchaikovsky’s Nut

cracker Suite. The winter concert, which will be held on December 16 in the Murray Kahn Theater, is the first Senior Spotlight concert that Stuyvesant has ever seen.

Isaac Lageschulte fell in love with the violin at three years old. “I walked into school at nine o’clock and I saw musicians playing, and I told my parents I wanted to do that,” he said. At six years old, Lag eschulte began taking lessons with Anna Faynberg Basis at the exclu sive Special Music School (SMS) and eventually studied under Vik tor Basis. As a violinist, violist, and composer, Lageschulte has de voted much of his life to classical music. “It’s kind of a little reprieve and it’s a whole different world,” he said.

Lageschulte became the coconcertmaster of the Stuyvesant Symphonic Orchestra in his ju nior year, but this is his first time playing a solo with an orchestra. After seeing Stuyvesant alum Lu cas Amory (‘20) perform the first movement of the Mozart Piano Concerto no. 25 as a solo with the orchestra, Lageschulte made it his goal to do the same. When the time came to choose which piece to play, there was only one op tion: the violin concerto of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Lageschulte’s favorite composer. “I’ve listened to it since I was eight,” he said. He would dance to the first movement

in his living room, and when Basis agreed to teach it to him, he was ecstatic. The piece reflects char acteristics of a ballet orchestral accompaniment with “beautiful melodies that work themselves up in a frenzy, only to calm again,” as Lageschulte described.

Felix Harkness also started out on violin. His parents wanted him to study music, and he even con sidered the piano. “I liked the idea of pressing a lot of buttons,” he joked. He started learning the cello at age four, and when he moved from Chicago to New York, he began studying at the reputable School for Strings with Alex Crox ton. Harkness says classical music grew on him once he started taking music lessons in theory, chamber music, and orchestra.

When Harkness came to Stuyvesant, he had been playing cello for 10 years, so the Symphon ic Orchestra was a natural path for him. By his junior year, he was the principal cellist, the highest seat in the section. Like Lageschulte, he had not played as a soloist with an orchestra before, and his first impression of the senior solo tra dition was also Amory’s piano concerto. “It looked like it would be a cool experience,” he said. For his solo, he wanted to pick a standalone piece, rather than a first movement of a cello concerto, which, unlike the 20-30 minute

first movements of violin concer tos, are usually short. His favorite part of the “Variations on a Roco co Theme” is the seventh and last variation, which he described as “a rush of excitement.” The rapid dialogue of fast notes between the soloist and orchestra, coupled with the soloist’s octaves, creates a dramatic yet rambunctious ending.

As Tchaikovsky himself said, “Ro coco” means “a carefree feeling of well-being,” and Harkness likes that the piece embraces its name.

The final soloist, Gitae Park, started learning piano at the age of four, taking lessons at the Blair School of Music in Nashville. His musical journey continued at Shanghai Conservatory, one of the most advanced music programs in China, before he moved to New York and began studying at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music (MSM) Precollege under Jeffrey Cohen. “I have always en joyed piano and listening to classi cal music,” he said.

Park first became involved with the Stuy music community when he joined Liliya Shamazov’s Ora torio Chorus as an accompanist. “I wanted to find a way to be able to contribute to the Stuy commu nity,” he said. He too was inspired by Amory’s performance.

In selecting his piece, Park fig ured it would be most meaningful to perform the first movement of

his consumerist habits, going so far as to buying a “safe” farm. Darius’s conclusion is possibly the most abstract, bookending the series and giving his character an unexpected importance to the show as a whole. Darius has al ways been one of the most fasci nating characters in Atlanta, as he exists as an enigma and operates with monklike thoughtfulness, which is conveyed by Stanfield through his quiet intensity. He is spiritually in tune with the ab surdity of his environment, and the show effectively embraces his persona as a bridge between cul ture and spirituality, recognizing it as a reflection of the world he lives in.

The full breadth and nuance of these characters are the si multaneous result of an invested writers’ room and an incredible cast. The actors and writers shape their characters with intent and responsibility, reflected through incredibly unique and shockingly realistic moments of dialogue and demeanor. The wholesome friendship between Paper Boi and Darius, two very ideologi cally different people, is the best example of this, as their obvious conflicting perspectives on life (consumerism vs. Buddhism) is portrayed with grace and respect.

Atlanta upholds an air of au thenticity even when the some times fantastical direction of the plot seems dreamlike, never re sorting to easy clichés. Instead, it constantly challenges itself to tread unknown territory, push ing the limits of what modern television can look like and what contemporary Afro-Surrealism can be. Atlanta is fearless, but not reckless, keeping itself grounded in realistic characters and com mentary while reveling in the sur real.

the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto in G minor—the piece he won the MSM Philharmonic Piano Concer to Competition with. “There’s a lot of beautiful parts to the piece, like the cadenza,” Park said. A cadenza is the virtuosic “show-off” portion of the piece, when the soloist plays without orchestra accompaniment. For Park’s piece, that includes cas cading chords, impressively fast notes, and a heart-wrenching mi nor tune. “I also love the octave parts when the orchestra comes rushing in with the melody,” he said. “It’s really dramatic.” With its tension and anticipation, the piece has the characteristics of an opera, which makes it a nice complement to the more ballet-like Tchaikovsky solos.

Featuring three soloists in the winter concert does not come without its challenges. Since the Symphonic Orchestra lacks the full set of wind and brass instru ments that these pieces call for, Lageschulte has had to practice with them after school hours, but the process of preparing for the concert has been a rewarding ex perience for all three seniors. “It’s really fun playing with an orchestra and getting the full experience of the original music,” Lageschulte said. He hopes that anyone with a classical music tooth—especially for Tchaikovsky—will “come to the concert!”

Henry Bansbach / The Spectator

By MADELYN LI NUNEZ

Dear Stuyvesant,

My mother used to tell me that everyone has one person who they will love forever, no matter what happens. For me, that person was you.

We first met each other through my grandmother. It was a day that I will never forget. My grandmother walked into my bedroom and told me that an old friend had just started dating Bronx Science. She demanded that I date someone more successful than Bronx Science so that she could brag to all of her Asian friends on Mahjong night. Then she started telling me about you. To say the least, I was impressed. You seemed knowledgeable, in telligent, and hot. Like, really hot. The photos she showed me of you made me wonder what our children would look like.

Your family motto, “Pro Scientia Atque Sapientia,” was the most seductive thing I had ever heard. Nothing is sexier than a phrase that was created 118 years ago in a dead language. Your aver age SAT score of 1510 made me drool. Before I knew it, I was falling harder for you than when I fell down the Tribeca Bridge stairs.

Over time, we became bet ter acquainted and eventually started dating. Everything was perfect. I thought you were per fect. We stayed up until at least 1:00 a.m. every morning study

It Is Not Me, It Is You

ing and doing work together. We fell asleep on FaceTime nearly every night after giving up on our homework. We ridiculed the Fulton train stop together because of its awful, constant stench of Brooklyn Tech stu dents. We spent our free periods and lunch breaks studying and working in the library together every day like philomaths ad dicted to 100s, but it was okay because we were philomath addicts together. We stole toilet paper from the janitor’s closet together so we could have toilet paper during the later parts of the school day. We were couple. The cou ple that made others want to stab out their eyes and puke out their guts because they were the defi nition of PDA. I loved it. We loved each other. Your only turnoff was that your mascot is Pegleg Pete, but I allowed my self to ignore this red flag. Then the novelty of our relationship began to wear off, and I started to see you for who you truly are. However, it was too late. I was already lost in the maze of hall

ways and classrooms that you are composed of.

After three months, the re alization of who I was actually dating finally hit me in the face. It hit me in the same way some one feels when they log into Ju piter Ed and see that they failed their latest exam. I thought I was dating an academic weapon. In stead, you are knowledgeable about how to torture children with homework. Intelligent about how to steal hours of sleep right from un der helpless little nerds’ noses. Wise about how to grow more white hairs on 3,344 Stuy kids in parallel with all of the white hairs growing in the elderly house across the street. All red flags that I missed because my love made

Your true self start ed to shine brighter than Mr. Moran’s face when he realizes that a stu dent is re fusing to scan their ID so he can tackle them. You stopped prioritizing me and began to divert all of your time and energy into tortur ing high schoolers. “How can I make the football team as bad as possible?” “How can I cram so many finals into one week?”

“How many escalators can I shut down at once?” Instead of thinking about how smoldering hot your partner is, these were the thoughts that swarmed your hollow skull. All you could con centrate on was what you could do to build your name. What you could do to make 3,344 students despise you. We stopped study ing and working until 1:00 a.m. together. We stopped FaceTi ming and stopped spending all of our free and lunch periods together. People began gagging whenever they saw a “stuycon fessions” page post about some one’s mother rather than when they saw us.

Our relationship became de structive. Our patience for each other grew thinner than zero point five lead in a mechanical pencil and now we argue every time we speak. We argue over whether Terry’s or Ferry’s is better. We argue about whether there are more doors or wheels in the world. We argue if the red, green, or blue milk carton is the correct milk to drink. You con stantly make me feel like a mo ron and compare me to everyone else, telling me that I am a class A imbecile. You make me feel so [REDACTED] that not even the candy in the counselor’s of fice can help me. Yet, you are the one who let Bronx Science sur pass you in the best specialized high school rankings. How did you even manage to let Queens High School for the Sciences at York College be ranked above

NEWSBEET

Mr. Sterr adopts a guinea pig named HamSterr

An intrusion of cockroach es has been petitioning for a cleaner school environment: namely, rat extermination

Inflation has caused every one’s favorite snack, Tide PODS, to become more ex pensive.

May the odds be ever in your favor. For what? You’ll see…

you on the list of “Top Ranked New York Schools?” Now that is just pathetic. If I am a class A imbecile, then you are in honors.

The issue is not me, it is you. And I think it is time to break up. You managed to lower my expectations so low to the point where they are almost non-ex istent. Our relationship deterio rated faster than my GPA, and boy, do we both know how fast my GPA is falling. You are an ex tremely toxic person to date, and it is not working out for either of us. This relationship makes me feel like [REDACTED] and I would rather take AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, and AP Psychology all at once than continue being with you. I would even rather take Swim Gym. We are done, so go [REDACTED] yourself in the Hudson Staircase.

Never reach out to me again, Your ex-lover

Kentucky Jones and the Trials to Fix the 7-9 Escalator

By MICHELLE HUANG

For weeks, the 7-9 escalator at Stuyvesant High School had been broken. Students were dropping dead from the up stairs hike, teachers kept taking the elevator, and the school was in a state of emergency. The only glimmer of hope was a box of magical escalator parts sup posedly inhabited by the souls of escalator repairmen past. According to ancient scrolls found in the Manga section of the library, these parts could be found on the 11th floor, a realm only accessible by passing three trials to test the merit of a true Stuyvesant student. Only a hero could make the journey: Ken tucky Jones, student and ama teur escalator repairman.

Jones made the climb to the 10th floor, a treacherous task even for the most athletic Art Appreciation attendee. After taking a 30-minute water break, Jones channeled his insecurities and anxieties and cried so hard that his tears eroded the chains holding together the 11th-floor gates in a matter of minutes. Gathering his composure, he opened the door and ventured forth to meet the trials that awaited him.

He nearly walked into a wide chasm but stumbled backward just in time. He looked down to see the pool, stretching on infinitely, filled with freshmen

struggling to swim across. Swim gym! Disgusting. There was no bridge across the chasm. How could he cross? While he was thinking, he tripped over his own feet and fell into the pit. However, rather than hitting the water at terminal velocity and scattering his organs all over the innocent children, Jones slammed into what felt like solid ground. Luckily for him, there was an invisible bridge stretching across the span. He crawled forward, and after an eternity, he made it across.

Next, he encountered a brightly lit room with a water cooler of black coffee and hun dreds of cups on shelves lining the wall, stretching high toward the ceiling. A note was written on the cooler: You will need cof fee to get through the third trial, but you can only take one cup. Jones searched for the biggest cup, but none were of reasonable size. How was he supposed to work with these mere 60-ounce cups? That’s only two Starbucks trentas? Ventis? (Sorry, I don’t speak Italian.) He reached for a cup, but at his touch, it magical ly combusted and disintegrated. How could he drink when he couldn’t pick up the cups? An idea sprung to his mind. Jones seized the cooler and drank from it. All the other cups van ished as Jones chugged. For good measure, he mixed in a few bottles of Five Hour En

ergy and a splash of his own tears. Once the last dregs of this unholy cocktail vanished, Jones collapsed to the ground as the floor opened up beneath him, dropping him into the fi

lightbulb, Jones saw a pencil and paper on the floor. Jones crawled toward them and found a simple test. He answered the questions quickly and flipped it over to find more pages had

page, with harder questions. Jones completed the questions, but every time he thought he had finished, new pages would materialize. What was needed to finish it? He was scouring the packet when something caught his eye on the cover page: Name. Jones scrawled his name, and finally the paper disappeared. In front of him, a door appeared. He had made it to the 11th floor.

Elizabeth Chao / The Spectator

nal trial.

By the glow of a single

been added on. He flipped the page again to find another new

After taking a dip in the 11th-floor pool, finding a rare AP Chemistry test on which someone had managed to get an A, and tripping over Peter Stuyvesant’s bones, Jones found a cardboard box in the corner, filled with machinery. When he touched the box, he felt the ache in his bones go away and his back straightened, un burdened from the pains of a 30-pound backpack. He prac tically floated down to the 7-9 escalator, which lay disembow eled. Jones watched the pieces float into place on their own. The escalator magically put it self back together, and with the chorus of angels, the 7-9 was fixed. Satisfied with his work, Jones walked away into the wild, escalator-filled yon der. Would his skills be needed again? He didn’t care, because now he could finally get to that ill-sought reading quiz in Fresh man Composition.

These articles are works of fiction. All quotes are libel and slander.

Carmen Gomez-Villalva / The Spectator

By VIRGENYA ZHU

The unmistakable thunder ing applause created an electric ity that could not be mistak en—these were the sounds of a boxing match. Thousands were in the crowd, all donning colors and flags for the fight of the cen tury. The competitors stepped into the ring, and silence washed over the stadium.

It all started the previous Monday. Two freshmen acci dentally walked into the Hudson staircase, where they stumbled across a “party” with people dressed in bowler hats strewn all across the dimly lit floor. Af ter apologizing profusely and stumbling out, one muttered to the other, “I gotta submit this to Stuy Confessions.” But they pulled out their phones and opened… Facebook?

“Wait, isn’t Stuy Confessions on Instagram?”

“Oh yeah, what’s the user name again, @stuyvesantconfes sions?”

“No, I mean @stuy._confes sions.”

“Like @stuy.freshie.confes sions?”

“Wait what, I thought it was @stuyspicyconfessions?”

The list went on, and on, and

The Stuy Confessions Pages Are Beefing

on. The whole student body was in shambles trying to figure out where their loyalties lay. Which was the true Stuyvesant High School drama page? And why were half the posts on all the ac counts about not having a girl friend? So many mysteries yet so little time. Friendships were end ed over which account people pledged allegiance to. The school was divided into sides. Brawls, vandalism, and boycotts ensued, until our beloved school mascot Peter Stuyvesant’s ghost took to Twitter to address the situation.

“Boooo… Stop fighting guys <3 This isn’t you OwO.”

- Tweeted From My iPhone 8 or Whatever They Had in the 1600s

Now back to the day of the boxing match. The students eliminated any fake pages until only the best two were left. The fight began. As we waited im patiently for the reveal, a figure stepped into the ring… Princi pal Yu? He runs one of the Stuy Confessions pages? Dressed in one of his signature catboy maid outfits, he waited for his op ponent to appear (he was also floating in the air and glowing bright blue, but that’s just a thing Principal Yu does sometimes). On the other side of the ring,

a hooded figure stepped up to the stage. Nobody could recog nize him at first. He towered at an impressive five feet and seven inches, which is way taller than the average Stuy kid. Could this be an imposter? Whispers rum bled throughout the crowd until the challenger whipped his mask

The crowd surged forward, trying to get a glimpse of the internet microcelebrity. Principal Yu started cackling, a dangerous light glinting in his eyes.

“Haha… my nemesis. We have been at odds for centu ries. And if this is how it ends, then so be it,” Yu said. They

full-on brawl, both rapidly took out school Chromebooks and logged into their respective Stuy Confessions accounts. The pres sure was on.

principal yu (@stuyconfes sions369) posted: dream is stinky and lives with his parents. His jawline is also so stupid like it’s so sexy I would just love to frame his jawline and have it on my bedside it’s so sexy I mean stupid haha.

dreaf (@realtribecabridge) posted: you’re just mad mr mo ran stood you up on your weekly date to hot topic this week

Joanna Meng / The Spectator

principal yu (@stuyconfes sions369) posted: don’t you dare bring mr moran into this… you look like one of the chambers street mcdonalds employees and i got that button up shirt gray sweater vest drip

dreaf (@realtribecabridge) posted: you don’t stand a chance against me and my twitter stans. you’re going down.

principal yu (@stuyconfes sions369) posted: ur mom

off. “DREAM?” The crowd col lectively shouted.

“Yes, it is I. I am here to face the one who dares challenge my place as supreme leader of the student body,” Dream exclaimed.

By ANJALI KARUNADASA

It’s another dismal school day at the agonizing Stuyvesant High School. Chorus on the first floor is about to end and your next class is—wait—Art History??

On the 10th floor??? You’ll never make it in time! May God have mercy on your soul. But what if I told you things could be another way?

I propose a simple solution to those horrific seven-plus floor transitions: Simply get rid of the

By ESHAAL UBAID

Hey everyone! 2022 has been such a GREAT year! I really, truly enjoyed every part of it, from the uh…. movies? And the… uhh hh… hmmm… OH! The 2/2/22 date earlier this year? Haha.

Yeah, okay, this is not a com edy bit. I am genuinely blanking right now. There is nothing to be thankful for on this Earth. Our crumbling democracy? Picking up the pieces of our fragmented social culture after the pandemic? Marvel’s dollar store excuse for a new superhero phase? HOW DOES EVERY MOVIE FEEL LIKE FANFICTION? AND THEY DO SHOWS NOW?

THE HULK HAS A COUSIN?!

Ahem. With turkey season in full swing, it feels like a task and a half to shut up and be grate ful, especially since I am a person with a multitude of opinions.

A poet, if you will. One of the greatest. Therefore, I think that it is crucial to express how you truly feel. This is absolutely not a fragile justification for me to complain about things I’d oth erwise feel petty for bringing up!

Dear audience, this is for YOU! Let me do the honors of starting you off with things you should definitely not be grateful for this

both walked onto the center of the platform, all eyes on them. The audience waited with bated breath, for only one of them was to make it out alive.

Instead of turning it into a

Let’s Say Goodbye to Floors Five to 10

top five floors of the building. Not convinced? Hear me out!

The top five floors of our wonderful institution cause many problems. For example, everyone remembers walking up the broken 7-9 escalator for a good month. Not to mention all the trouble I get from my nonStuy friends about it. I’m tired of people being like, “EXCUSE ME, YOUR SCHOOL HAS 10 FLOORS? HOW DO YOU STILL HAVE LEGS?” Also, don’t even get me started on how

many injuries there have been from people slipping and falling around the 11th-floor pool. We should just get rid of that level too.

“But Anjali,” you might be asking, “what about all that classroom space? We need it, don’t we?” Fear not, for I have a few simple solutions to this as well. Option A: using TARDIS tech to create infinite space at the senior bar (requires at least a 9000 percent increase in annual funding for TARDIS research).

Option B: just kicking out all the teachers and staff. It’s not like we need them, right? Option C: halving the number of students in the school on a given day by separating everyone into two groups and having them come in on alternating days. Nah, just kidding—let’s just all not come to school. That would work even better!

As for the method required to remove the floors physically, I will need five cranes, 27 sticks of dynamite, one tugboat, and eight

The audience gasped. The umpire blew the whistle.

Principal Yu reigned victori ous.

Long live @stuyconfes sions369.

police cars. Send those items to me via the second-floor dona tion box, and I’ll take care of the rest.

Of course, there is the mat ter of what we should do with the top five floors once they’re removed. I propose to sell them on eBay to increase school fund ing. We could also mail them to Staten Island Tech and watch as their puny three floors are crushed under the weight of our majestic former top half.

year.

1.

The Godforsaken Weather

The sky is foolish right now. The climate is positively ob tuse. The temperature has gone through so many different num bers this week alone that the SAT decided to use them as an example of scattered data on its next godforsaken test (more on that soon). November, you are not girlbossing with the #au tumn aesthetic anymore. You are playing with my EMOTIONS.

A couple bajillion truckloads of greenhouse gasses in the atmo sphere are no reason to be 76 de grees one day and 30 degrees the next. My wardrobe is sobbing. What is there to wear that would be appropriate for the weather? There is a choice between a light sweater, a thick hoodie, a jacket, a ski suit, my Pikachu onesie, and clinging onto a friend like they are a personal space heater; yet somehow, my calculation is al ways wrong.

Stuyvesant classrooms, you are NOT helping. The walk from physics to English is akin to that of a hike from Antarctica to the Amazon rainforest.

2. The Underclassman Cou ples Goin’ at It in Broad Day

light

CHILDREN. YOU ARE CHILDREN. There is nothing romantic about the dim light ing of the locker hallways. You will not find true love in the same building where somewhere, somehow, someone is sobbing over their last AP Calculus test. At the very least, move it to the Hudson like the rest of civilized society. Please. I AM JUST TRY ING TO GET TO THE GOOD WATER FOUNTAIN ON THE SIXTH FLOOR. Do your acidsbases homework before trying to make chemistry in the hallways.

3. The Fake Sewn-In Pockets in Women’s Jeans No further comment.

4. Endless Notifications From the Spec Humor Chat

Now, do not get me terribly mistaken: Spec Humor is the best and should be worshipped. But the way these children abuse the group chat has taken my on-lifesupport Android phone’s CPU. And yet, I cannot unmute. That is where I get the juicy reminders to do this article and finish first drafts before midnight (current timestamp: 11:24 p.m.). Thus, I leave it unmuted for lord Erica Chen.

And do not believe for a sec ond that these conversations are not bangers. For a periodic lurker like me, each conversation is like a movie with a deep-seated con flict (staging a revolution against the editors) and heroic ending (editors say “lol” and move on). However, the endless Messenger ping! ricocheting off of my brain is worse than the plague of Nyan Cat back in the thousands. Y’all can continue to be funny, but maybe in fewer text messages. I am in purgatory.

5. The Economy

Inflation is soaring and the Federal Reserve is quite awfully raising interest rates at a selfdestructive rate. We will plunge into a recession with these com pound effects. Halal carts have the same price tags as five-star Michelin restaurants. The vend ing machines are scams. Gong Cha boba tea is now $8 for a large and my rewards program is prov ing defenseless. We are screwed, people.

There is always more to com plain about, but alas, I must end off with a final wailing: There is a large particle stuck in my shift key and Sticky Keys activates every 30 seconds or so. I am thankless for the Sticky Keys sound. I hope

it crashes and burns.

6.

The SAT

Now, I am #notlikeothergirls and actually do not have much of a problem with the woes of how standardized this thing is or whatever. No, no. I solely wish to spare the battery life of my TI84, because this is the only test that makes me question whether 9 + 9 + 10 really is 21 (trust me, it is, and do not search through any dead memes whatsoever), and my poor little legs as they fall asleep. I stood up after those four hours with legs that had aged years. One was numb. The other was disori ented. My head was pounding after hearing the kid behind me sniffle all throughout the Reading Comprehension section. Sudden ly, reading a five-word sentence became a laborious task requiring the full command of my singular brain cell. Overall, we were not girlbossing in this establishment.

Also, THERE’S A FIFTH SECTION THAT DOESN’T COUNT TOWARD MY JUICY SCORE TO VALIDATE ME? What an utter scam.

But, hey, these are just firstworld problems. You know who I REALLY hate the most? People who complain all the time. Yeesh.

Laundry is for Losers

By DANIELLA SOLOMON

The Stuyvesant Environmental Club has recently forced yet anoth er Earth-saving change on the stu dent body. Last week, they scattered a few classrooms with soil and fer tilizer so we can “grow” as students and “branch out” (as if we need to have social lives!). This week, Stuy’s tree-huggers decided that they wanted to be even closer to nature. This meant the inevitable—they were cutting off their use of “un necessary” water altogether.

When asked what they count ed as unnecessary, a member of the Environmental Club named Fertee Lizer answered enthusiasti cally, “Oh, you know, just stuff like showering, doing laundry, you get the gist. Who needs all that when you can just wash yourself with rain? It’s nature’s tears!” Upon news of this change, the Student Union (SU) frantically searched the Stuy ble (The Stuy Bible. You haven’t heard of it?) for a verse that could guide them through this impending pain but found nothing.

After praying amply to no avail,

they decided to alert Principal Yu, who fell to his knees, sobbing, “Bbut they don’t even wear deodorant to begin with!” The Environmental Club, oblivious to the scanner ladies who had just fainted as they walked by, came to thank Principal Yu for funding their swanky new recycling bins. However, as soon as their sick scent reached his nostrils, he tum bled to the floor, unresponsive.

“Principal Yu! I’m sorry that we didn’t give you that compost bin we promised, but are you really that upset about it?” a member asked, panic-stricken.

“We promise we’ll buy you one for Christmas!” piped up another, but there was no response.

“It’ll have Jimin on it! Come on, Principal Yu!” they chorused. But their efforts were in vain—even the mention of his favorite BTS mem ber couldn’t awaken him. Someone finally had the sense to call a team of odor removal specialists, who ar rived prepared in full hazmat suits with oxygen tanks. They worked for hours, spraying enough Febreze to make even the seventh-floor bathrooms smell acceptable, but it

wasn’t enough.

The odor removal manager quickly scheduled a meeting with the SU in order to discuss how to rid Principal Yu’s office of its repul sive aroma. Together, they reasoned that the Environmental Club itself was not the problem—this was not your average haven’t-showeredor-changed-for-three-days kind of scent. This could only have come from a gym uniform. And who wears a gym uniform 24/7? You guessed it: a freshman. As it turned out, they were the only students who were submissive enough to adopt the Environmental Club’s new system. When asked to com ment on why they made this choice, freshman Vanessa Reesykle re sponded, “They told me that they’d teach me how to avoid freshie hunt ing traps in return! They even of fered to send a mediator to talk to my Art App teacher for me because my Met project has been ‘lost’ for three weeks now!”

One thing was clear: To resolve the smell and awaken Principal Yu from his stench-induced trance, we had to force the Environmen

tal Club to lift their policy and stop bribing freshmen. However, upon being confronted by the SU, they threw their reusable water bottles in retaliation before they could get in a word. Next, even as their en emies were retreating, they began to sock a week’s worth of compost at them until the poor SU was covered head-to-toe in bean burritos, weird watery pasta, and misshapen corn kernels.

At this point, the students of the SU were willing to surrender their cause, even if it meant faint ing every time a freshman walked by and making nearby students think that they were swooning out of pure adoration. But the Envi ronmental Club had to drive their point home and ensure that no body would try to get in the way of their plans again. A separate battle squadron of club members invaded the seventh floor, shaking out the dirt from the potted plants and spreading it all across the ground.

“Mwhaha!” they cackled. “We’re turning the whole seventh floor into a garden! Bring out the seed pods!”

“DID I HEAR THE WORD AIRPODS?” Mr. Moran’s head popped out from behind a wall.

“Just seed pods, Mr. Moran,” they chorused submissively.

“Oh, sorry.” He disappeared back into his corner with a look of intense disappointment on his face.

“Bring out the SU!” exclaimed Environmental Club leader Ima Leaf.

Out the SU came, frog-marched in by Environmental Club mem bers and still covered in a magnifi cent layer of compost.

“We were thinking of scrap ing the compost off you before we used it, but we figured it was too much work. So, you all now have the honor of fertilizing our first full-floor garden! Try to sit very still, or the food won’t decompose properly,” Leaf snapped.

So, when you see a beautiful garden of tulips or some *air-qual ity enhancing* trees on the seventh floor, thank your dear SU for sit ting there while last Friday’s “veggie surprise” dripped off of them in clumps of varied size. According to Ms. Leaf, “It’s definitely worth it.”

A Catalog of Friends (and Other Associates)

The Matchmaker

By ISAAC HO

Stuy has some interesting char acters, but how many are in your friend group? Find out who you know and who you are here.

The Ringleader

Plans leave the group chat through this person only, and they dictate every last detail. From the activities to the food to the color of everyone’s underwear, no detail is beyond their control. Their cha risma ensures total cooperation as the rest of the group falls over each other to follow the Ringleader’s or ders.

The Grandparent

If you’re totally confused by the sentence “The food was bussin no cap,” you’re probably a Grandpar ent. In that case, you need to learn the meaning of every slang term you can possibly hear. Do this by browsing your meme source of choice for at least eight hours a day. You’re already procrastinating by reading this article, so why not add a mountain of memes?

Some people simply aren’t ready for love. This Cupid-like figure is determined to change that. They will pair up anyone they see as cute together just for the sake of it. To them, freshie-senior relationships aren’t weird; if it works, it’s destiny.

The Schemer

After being raised by ocelots, Dr. Doofenshmirtz attempted to take over the Tri-State Area. Your local Schemer might not have such a tragic backstory, but any spark could have pushed someone down this path, even the death of a pet rock. Regardless of their reasons, they definitely have big plans. May be they’re looking to steal nuclear codes for leverage to take over the government. Perhaps they’re plot ting to steal Elon Musk’s wealth. Regardless, a Schemer cannot be stopped once set on reaching a goal. Except by a fedora-wearing platy pus. The Observer

They know everything about everyone. The deepest traumas. The

darkest secrets. And yet, no one knows anything about them. Are they just a crazy therapist giving away free counseling in a capitalist society? No, surely not. They must be collecting dirt to use for extor tion. Maybe you should reconsider how trustworthy your own confi dant is.

The Infectious Laugher

There are many kinds of laughs. Some have hearty chuckles. Oth ers have demonic wheezes. But the best are from those who simply can’t stop laughing once they start and force others to join in. Collec tive, sustained laughter brings people together, but it can be weapon ized. Keep it going for long enough, and some will pass out from asphyxia tion. Once that hap pens, they’re ripe for organ harvesting. It may not be ethical, but they definitely die happy.

The Necromancer

It’s widely known that all Stuy kids are dead inside, but what about outside? Well, death won’t be a prob lem anymore. Even if your body gives out, you can still graduate with a little help from a friendly Necro mancer. As long as the reanimation is done before the brain decays, mental abilities will be intact! Some teachers and students have com plained about sharing classrooms with dozens of corpses, especially be

locker rooms are rumored to have killed four people already), but this provides equal opportunities for liv ing and undead students alike. How great is that?

The Cultist

This friend is less in the group and more in a cult. The largest one at Stuy is the Japanese Media Club. Its members are infiltrating other clubs, including the Student Union and The Spectator. Their recent at tempts to turn more students into weebs using the OwOnaviwus were unsuccessful, but there is no telling what dangerous method they will turn to next. Perhaps a weeb-turkey alliance. What are you—AAAAAH HHHHuuuwwwuuu **Cowwec tion: the JMC is totawwy hawmless and has no pwans to take owver Stuy.

The Wegular Pewson

This individuwal does not exist. If a Stuy kid cwaims to be nowmal, they are wying and instead fall into one of the other categorwies wisted here. That incwudes you. The Spec Weader.

How to Spice up Your “Drill” Experience

Revolution

By ASTRID HARRINGTON and SARA HELLER

The last few weeks have been hectic, in more than a few ways. Of course, normal Stuyvesant life is hectic in itself, but a surprising number of emergency protocols have disrupted the daily routine. A few weeks ago, the entire school was put on hold. Everyone sat list lessly in their second-period class es, eating up any absurd explana tion for the circumstances, like Moran body slamming a Techie who tried to sneak into Stuyves ant. A week later, there was an evacuation “drill.” For almost two full periods, students huddled to gether by the Hudson River, trying (and failing) to ignore the gnaw ing cold and the prospect of los ing their lunch periods. Tears fell, gym uniforms froze, and bacon avocado chipotles were left un eaten. Clearly, these protocols will become a more permanent part of the Stuyvesant lifestyle, and it is critical that students have a game plan for such events in the future. As such, the Humor Department has compiled a comprehensive list of various activities that might make their new “life on the edge”

slightly more entertaining.

In the event of an evacuation:

1. Conga Line!

Last evacuation, some ge nius decided to make a conga line and will now forever be im mortalized in the Humor Hall of Fame. For the next evacu ation, we suggest a challenge: see how long the conga line can last. Given the fact that the evacuation will probably last forever, you should prepare to be in that line for a while. Keep calm and conga on!

2. Swimming Race I know what you’re think ing: how on Earth would you start a swimming race while standing outside of Stuyves ant? Well, you’ll be next to the Hudson for a few hours. May as well take advantage of it! You’ll be freezing either way, so take a dip and see what hap pens.

3. Bend the Rules

There’s a decent chance that you just came from a test. You remember question 21, the one you were really struggling with? Well, it couldn’t hurt to just ask your friends about it… or maybe look up some clarifying details…

4. Start a Revolution

You’re finally free! Are you really going to go back into the building when you’ve been given this incredible chance to rebel? Follow the example of the French

Or, in this case, the Stuyvesant staff. All these tips and tricks giv en to you so far will probably save your sorry lives. However, there’s a chance you’ve found yourself in a hold, not an evac uation. In that case, you can’t make a conga line, and you certainly can’t host a swimming competition. Instead, you’ll need to take one of these sug gestions:

1. Do Your Homework

Now, we do not normally condone this sort of sensibility, but given that it’s a special situ ation, we’ll allow it. Take out the homework that you forgot to do last night and make the most of your new free period. This is what Opinions writers call being Responsible and Hu mor writers call being Boring.

2. Spread Rumors A “drill” wouldn’t be a “drill” if it weren’t accompa nied by a torrent of baseless ru mors. Do your part and help them multiply! You can tell your friend that one of the chemistry labs ex ploded, or that a mysterious gas leak from the office building next

door caused the teachers to be come fish. Take out your phone, text your friend the latest news, and watch it spread like COVID.

3. Demand Immediate Grading

Since you’ll be hanging out with your math teacher for who knows how long, you should make them grade that test they gave you a month ago. They can’t escape it now!

4. Blackboard Art

Whether you’re in science, math, or English, there’s a black board in your classroom. Black boards are all-purpose tools—you can write on them, draw on them, and even play tic-tac-toe on them! Feel free to use those blackboards to express your deepest hopes and desires, and make sure your art will distract the classes to come. You shall become Michelangelo and the blackboard your Sistine Cha pel. [sponsored by the Stuyvesant blackboards]

Hopefully, you’ve found these suggestions eye-opening and in sightful. It’s impossible to know when the next “drill” will come, but whenever it does, you’ll be ready with your bathing suits, axes, and chalk.

Hey, it’s not cheating if the test is over!

and take down the monarchy, Les Mis style.

Veronika Duvanova / The Spectator

Wonderkids in the 2022 FIFA World Cup Soccer

By VEDANT KOTHARI

Thirty-two teams. Eight hun dred thirty-two players. Twentynine days. It’s finally time for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. It’s the moment players have waited for their whole lives. In each World Cup, there are certain young stars who break out and perform at a high level for their nations. Oftentimes, these players can make the difference in advanc ing through rounds of the tour nament. Each team has its fair share of wonderkids, who dazzle the fans with their creativity and ingenuity. Here are some talented young players to look out for in this edition of the tournament:

Jude Bellingham (19 years old, England)

It’s no surprise that Borussia Dortmund’s young star Jude Bell ingham makes the list. As soon as he earned a move from Birming ham City to Borussia Dortmund in 2020, his development has been off the charts. The Eng lish midfielder is the definition of balanced and has been stellar throughout this season. At just 19 years old, he has contributed to nine goals and three assists this season in a box-to-box mid field role. Bellingham is going to be pivotal for England’s midfield this tournament, with an average of 1.4 interceptions, 3.2 tackles, and 0.3 dribbles past him per game.

It’s been known for some time now that English manager Gareth Southgate prefers to play a double pivot in midfield with a slightly attacking midfielder and a defensive anchorman. Usually, a pivot of Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips would be in Southgate’s

Basketball

setup. However, due to Phillips’s lack of match fitness, it is unlikely that we will see the duo feature together in midfield. This situ ation leaves Jordan Henderson and Bellingham as the only two options to fit that role in South gate’s team, but with Liverpool’s shaky form and Bellingham’s stellar performances, it’s obvious that Southgate would choose the latter. On paper, a midfield pivot of Rice and Bellingham looks ex quisite. With Rice playing a deep

19-year-old has delivered 12 goals and 10 assists across 22 matches this season. In addition, as at tacker Thomas Müller gets older, Germany may look to ease Mu siala into that CAM spot, just as Bayern is doing. This season, Mu siala has been averaging 1.6 drib bles per game, which is almost a 50 percent conversion rate. Fur thermore, out of his nine goals, six came with his right foot, while three came with his left foot. Not only does this split prove his at

siala is going to do just that. He provides a different sort of outlet for the team, so don’t be shocked with his stellar performances in this World Cup.

Rodrygo Silva de Goes (21 years old, Brazil)

For many, Brazil is a favorite for this World Cup. In attack, it has the likes of Neymar da Silva Santos Jr., Vinícius José Paixão de Oliveira Jr., Gabriel Martinelli, Antony Matheus dos Santos, and

and make an impact on the match is an excellent quality to have for such a young player, and it is un derstated how important it can be for Brazil during this World Cup.

By JOHN JAY WANG

The 2022-2023 NBA season is in full swing. The competitive ness of the league is at an all-time high, and almost every team has been bringing their A-game—all but the superteams. Stephen Cur ry and the reigning champion, the Golden State Warriors, have started their season 6-9, and have lost all seven games played on the road. Former NBA champions LeBron James and Anthony Da vis have started their season even worse, with a 3-10 record, good enough (or bad enough) for the third-worst team in the league. Following the controversial sus pension of Brooklyn Nets player Kyrie Irving, forward Kevin Du rant has managed to hold the team up—but not enough, with a bottom-10 record in the league.

If the “superteams” aren’t thriving, then who is? Enter the new generation of the NBA, where young talent has started to outplay aging superstar veterans. Despite the dominance of these players, they’ve gone unnoticed by fans and the media alike in favor of NBA legends. As young players start their seasons off in fashion, some should be garner ing more attention in the Most Valuable Player (MVP) and Most Improved Player (MIP) award races.

er role and providing cover for the defense, Bellingham has the freedom to attack when needed, which is exactly the type of role he thrives in. The young star is going to flourish this World Cup, so don’t be surprised if he is a crucial part of England’s success.

Jamal Musiala (19 years old, Germany)

In many people’s eyes, Ger many is a dark horse for this year’s World Cup, despite their defeat to Japan. Regardless of what happens, Bayern Munich’s Jamal Musiala is destined for success in that team. Since he became Bayern’s youngest ever Bundesliga debutant at 17 years of age, he has been absolutely incredible for them. Deemed by many as a “saucy” player, the

tacking impetus, but it also proves that he is able to use both feet to dribble out of tricky situations and create magic.

Musiala faces quite a lot of competition within the squad, but based on his current form, he is one of the first names in that team sheet. İlkay Gündoğan, Julian Brandt, and Kai Havertz are notable names who might provide competition for Musi ala. However, as we’ve seen with manager Hansi Flick’s previous team selection, he prefers to de ploy Gündoğan in a deeper role and Havertz as a number nine in attack for Germany, leaving the attacking midfield spot for Musi ala. With Germany looking to go far in this tournament, it is vital that they break their opponents down in various ways, and Mu

Raphinha Dias Belloli. How ever, a wonderkid who is often underlooked in the Brazil squad is Rodrygo Silva de Goes. At 21 years of age, he has produced magic during moments that will go down in Real Madrid history, and he brings consistency to the table. Take, for example, his brace in Madrid’s second leg against Manchester City in the Champi ons League semifinals last season, or his performance in Madrid’s second leg against Paris SaintGermain in the Round of 16. Since he started his career in San tos in Brazil, his development has increased exponentially. This sea son, he has notched seven goals and five assists in 19 appearances for Madrid, many games of which he came on from the bench. The ability to come on as a substitute

The New Generation of the NBA

Donovan Mitchell

After a long summer of trade rumors regarding Donovan Mitchell, with some speculation that he would end up with the New York Knicks, the Cleveland Cavaliers ultimately pulled the trigger on a trade. The decision has done wonders for the Cavs, as they are now 9-6 and are sit ting in fourth place in the East ern Division. Though Mitchell has proven in prior seasons that he has what it takes to lead a team and to put up high numbers, the season that he is having has been unexpected by many. Averaging a career-high 30.9 points, six as sists, and one steal per game this season, the 26-year-old is making a serious case for his first MVP award.

Lauri Markkanen

Throughout his first five years in the NBA, Lauri Markkanen showed promise with statistical production. However, the linger ing concern with the 25-year-old was his consistency on the court. Five seasons of 50-60 healthy games from the forward pushed the Bulls to trade the forward to the Cavaliers. After a year, he was packaged in the blockbuster Mitchell trade over the sum mer offseason. Sure enough, the move has been a win-win trade.

Markkanen, who is averaging a career-high in points, assists, and

steals, has led a Utah Jazz team that most fans and analysts wrote off at the start of the season. They’re off to a 10-6 start, good enough to place third in the West ern Conference. If Markkanen can manage to stay healthy for the entirety of the season, then Jazz is a team to watch out for.

Dejounte Murray

The last of the players on this list acquired via trade this offsea son, Dejounte Murray is one of the most underrated players in the league. Last season, he was extremely close to averaging a triple-double, a feat that has not been accomplished since Russell Westbrook did it in the 20162017 season. As Murray was playing on the Spurs, a team with a low chance of a deep playoff run, the 26-year-old guard re ceived little recognition for his outstanding performances. Over the offseason, the Atlanta Hawks made a huge trade for the young superstar. By doing so, they’ve paired Murray up with superstar point guard Trae Young, creating one of the best backcourts in the league. Some fans questioned the ability of the two ball-dominant guards to fit into the lineup to gether, but a 9-6 start has certain ly proved them wrong.

Tyrese Haliburton Rounding off the teams with

surprising starts to the season, Tyrese Haliburton has carried the Indiana Pacers to an 8-6 start— the fourth-best record in the Eastern Conference. The 22-yearold point guard has found a new home for himself in Indiana. Of fensive-minded players like guard Buddy Hield and rookie forward Bennedict Mathurin have greatly contributed to Halliburton’s 10.4 assists per game, a league-high. Alongside his offensive pro duction, he remains a defensive threat, recording about two steals per game.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

Though Shai Gilgeous-Alex ander finds himself on a particu larly weak Oklahoma City Thun der team with a mediocre start to the season, his improvements cannot go unnoticed. In 14 games, the 24-year-old has aver aged 32.3 points, 5.9 assists, two steals, and 1.5 blocks—career highs in virtually every statistical category. Not only has he been one of the most dominant play ers in the NBA, but he has also been one of the most efficient.

If Gilgeous-Alexander can keep shooting at his current pace—55 percent from the field, 40 percent from three, and 91 percent from the free-throw line—he could join the 50/40/90 club, a feat only achieved by nine players in NBA history. However, thanks

For Tite’s Brazil, selecting a starting 11 comes down to trust at the end of the day. However, player form will also be taken into consideration, since Brazil is such a strong contender and fosters a strong squad. Rodrygo has creat ed 1.8 successful dribbles a game (putting his success rate at 50 per cent), six big chances total, and 1.6 key passes per game this cam paign. It’s clear for many fans that his decisiveness and quality in the final third are his best trait. Teams playing against Brazil will most likely look to hit the team on the counter attack, which means that it might be hard to stop the op position’s fast breaks. This situ ation would be the perfect time to bring on a tricky winger to de fend like Rodrygo, who pounces on any opportunity he is given through his pivotal quality in at tack. Eventually, he may even be a starter for Tite over Antony and Raphinha. Look out for Rodrygo this tournament, as he will thrive in intense games that need the deadlock to be broken.

With the World Cup already in action, be sure to closely look at the performances of these three individuals. In the end, these players could be the difference between qualifying for the knock out rounds, advancing from the quarterfinals, and even winning the World Cup. The opportunity is there for them to take, and it’s clear that each one of them will flourish under his current setup in their respective national teams.

to the Thunder’s 7-11 start, the MVP award might be out of the question, but the MIP award seems within grasp.

Paolo Banchero

Is it too early to put rookie Paolo Banchero in this conver sation? Though the Magic have started the season in the bottom end of the standings, the 20-yearold has proved his talent on the court, frontrunning the race for the Rookie of the Year award.

His high basketball IQ as well as his maturity for a rookie have im pressed analysts and scouts alike. He can read plays and defenses and take advantage of the oppo sition when necessary. It has been a huge reason why he is averag ing 24 points and eight rebounds per game. The only regard now is whether he can stay fit, as he is currently sidelined with an ankle injury.

With the rising youth move ment competing against wellknown and respected veteran stars, we look ahead to five more months of intense basketball. It will be interesting to see how the NBA standings turn out as the season unfolds. With players such as those mentioned above, it’s evident that new, young su perstars are quickly taking over the league right in front of our eyes.

The Knicks: Big Hopes on the Biggest Stage

By ARSHAN PERVEZ and SAYEB KHAN

After missing the playoffs last year, the New York Knicks are desperate to rekindle the spark that shaped their 2020-2021 sea son. With multiple key changes to their roster, including the addi tion of former Dallas point guard Jalen Brunson and the develop ment of young players such as RJ Barrett, the team hopes to scratch the eighth seed once again. How ever, currently standing with a me diocre record of 9-10, the Knicks have yet to make an impact in their conference. While it is still early to worry about the state of the team, the Knicks will need to fix several key issues if they hope to improve their record.

Despite having the third-best defensive rating in the league just two seasons ago, the Knicks have now regressed to the 20th-best defensive rating with just over 113 points allowed per game. While head coach Tom Thibodeau has been praised in the past for his teams’ defense, the Knicks currently struggle to guard the perimeter, a crucial aspect of modern basketball defense. In a 118-133 loss to the Boston Celt ics in early November, the Knicks conceded 27 three-point shots, which is currently the fourth most made “threes” by a team this sea son. Throughout the game, the Knicks often looked confused on defense, with players miscom municating switches and double

teams on star duo Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. “I want to take a look at the film, but there were some that I felt we could have challenged better […] Obviously

players are spaced out at certain positions around the court, lead ing to better communications for help defense. This is especially crucial when guarding teams that

the Phoenix Suns, Randle had just nine points, six rebounds, and two assists on 36.4 percent from the field and 25 percent from the pe rimeter. In a majority of the of fensive possessions of the game, Randle handled the ball, perform ing isolation plays to create his own shots. However, these were to no avail, as his poor and pre dictable handles led him to settle for heavily contested jump shots or commit turnovers.

rebounds or rushing to contest shots.

By KAEDEN RUPAREL

No strategy in sports manage ment has come under more scruti ny in recent years than tanking, the process by which teams purposely lose to gain a higher selection in the next year’s draft and therefore a more talented prospect. The merits and drawbacks of tanking have been greatly contested, with proponents of the strategy citing its success throughout sports his tory, while critics claim that tank ing ruins the competitiveness of sports and perpetuates an unfair draft system. The system already skews the balance of power too far into the hands of teams, leav ing draftees with little to no choice for their place in the league during the beginning of their careers.

Admittedly, many teams have tanked successfully. For example, the 1983-1984 Houston Rock ets and Pittsburgh Penguins each purposely lost a sizable portion of their games, and in return for their abysmal seasons, they were rewarded with franchise-altering players. The Rockets selected Ha keem Olajuwon with their first overall pick, who went on to de liver 17 phenomenal seasons, be coming one of the best centers in NBA history. Meanwhile, center Mario Lemieux, the Penguins’ first overall selection, spurred a de cades-long dynasty in Pittsburgh and amassed a career that trailed only Wayne Gretzky in grandeur.

Many teams in recent his tory have pursued the success the Penguins and Rockets enjoyed by tanking. The process became more prevalent as scouting be came more prominent and vigor

our defense wasn’t at its best, and against a team like that, it has to be,” Thibodeau said in the postgame interview.

Thibodeau’s famous high-in tensity, man-on-man defense has not translated into the best results with teams that utilize pass-heavy offenses. Rather than having each player put their entire effort into guarding a specific opponent, the Knicks should use more of a zone defense, where switching between players requires less ef fort, especially in pick-and-roll situations. With zone defenses,

rely more on off-ball movement to create open shots, like the Celt ics.

Knicks fans should certainly be worried about their team’s subpar defense—but the me diocre performance of forward Julius Randle has been equally concerning. After winning the Most Improved Player award and earning an All-NBA second-team selection just two seasons ago, Randle has been unable to show consistent quality in his play. In a particularly abysmal perfor mance earlier this month against

Randle’s defensive efforts have been criticized as well. On transition defense, Randle is of ten one of the last players down the court, leading to open shots for opposing teams. In crucial battles for rebounds in the paint, Randle often becomes frustrated and gives up entirely, leading to new possessions for other teams. In one play against the Suns, a de fensive miscommunication led to an open shot in the corner for a Suns player. Rather than rushing to contest the shot, Randle criti cized his teammates for allowing the player to get an open shot.

As a leader of the team, Ran dle must improve his attitude. On offense, he needs to facilitate more to give his teammates great er opportunities to get open shots. With shooters such as guard Evan Fournier and lob threats like for ward Obi Toppin, there are a vari ety of options Randle can rely on to put the ball in the basket. With less energy expended on offense, Randle can start putting more ef fort into defense, like fighting for

Taking Down Tanking

ous, at least for the high-end talent in most drafts. Through tanking, the San Antonio Spurs drafted Tim Duncan, the Cleveland Cava liers acquired hometown franchise cornerstone LeBron James, and the Penguins obtained Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby. More recently, the NHL’s two best play ers, Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews, and one of the NBA’s top centers, Joel Embiid, each went to their respective teams as a result of tanking. The strategy clearly has its merits: these gen erational players have the ability to completely alter the outlook of a franchise.

Arguably the most dramatic tank in history was the four-year project the Astros underwent.

After snagging outfielder George Springer in 2011, the Astros draft ed touted shortstop Carlos Correa at first overall in 2012 and third baseman Alex Bregman at second overall in 2015. Both selections evolved into impactful players for the Astros, but the tank was not spotless. The team only hit on one of their three first overall picks from 2012-2014, highlighting one of the many faults of tanking: the uncertainty of the draft.

Scouts do not have an enviable job. Predicting the outcomes of players’ entire careers when they are teenagers is virtually impos sible. A host of different factors could contribute to a top draft selection not meeting their projec tion: career-derailing injuries, poor team development, and, most prominently, post-draft pressure.

The expectation that a team and its fanbase place on a player to carry them from the abyss to the

promised land is, understandably, too much for an 18-year-old or 20-year-old to handle. Certain players thrive while having what feels like the weight of the world on their shoulders, but the rank and file don’t, failing to meet un attainable expectations placed on them by their teams. Their failure is compounded by discussions about being a “bust” and follows them for much of their careers, preventing them from reaching their potential. Trajectories like this one are, sadly, all too com mon, making drafting a risky and imperfect process, especially for players with a quality scouting re port.

Judging an entire career based on high school or college perfor mance is simply not feasible. In addition to the many game-related factors that influence how impact ful a player becomes, many highend picks simply don’t pan out as they were projected to. Alterna tively, by either sheer luck or phe nomenal scouting, the draft’s top player emerges in a later pick. In the Olajuwon draft, for example, Michael Jordan was picked third. No one is complaining about the career Olajuwon strung together for the Rockets, but Jordan was Jordan.

With this unpredictability in mind, putting on a deliberately abysmal season to get a high pick feels far too risky to be so popular. Teams place the fate of their fran chise in the hands of teenagers and, in order to do so, remove the competitiveness of sports. Tank ing adds a level of predictability, making highly contested games before playoffs boring and formu

laic. If two teams competing for a playoff spot are separated by a game, and one has to face a tank ing team while the other has to face a playoff team, the decision is essentially predetermined: the team facing the tanking team has a practically guaranteed win and playoff seed.

Additionally, tanking hurts the players on both sides of the team. In professional sports, players are inherently driven to win. Being told to lose is a complicated real ity for professionals to navigate and effaces the adrenaline rush of sports. Players stop having fun playing their sport and can even lose their love for the game. John Wall’s 2021-2022 season is the most extreme example of this conflict. The rebuilding Rockets decided to significantly reduce his playing time en route to a high draft pick. Amid these disagree ments, Wall refused to play in the beginning of the season and was then shut down entirely by the team. Essentially, Wall lost an en tire year of his career because the Rockets insisted on being bad.

Tanking doesn’t just hurt players in professional leagues, though. Players being drafted by these teams don’t enter the league set up for success. Draftees have been training for their entire lives to have a shot at going profes sional, only to join a team that has no title aspirations. It’s unfair to expect them to perform with little to no support from the rest of the team, especially when that team is characterized by a culture compla cent with defeat. All in all, tanking fails to develop players and main tain an adequate team culture.

Fourth-year guard Barrett has also been facing struggles on the offensive end this season. Averag ing 18.3 points per game, 5.1 re bounds per game, and 2.9 assists per game, Barrett’s statistics are all down from his previous season. He has also been inefficient, with only a 40.4 field goal percentage and a 27.3 three-point percentage. While Knicks fans have had high hopes for the fourth-year player to blossom into a franchise cor nerstone, Barrett seems to strug gle to find his role on the team.

In a similar fashion to Randle, Barrett needs to avoid forcing shots. While fans have had high expectations for Barrett to be a primary scoring option, it may be best for Barrett to act as a sec ondary scorer. Barrett would be able to improve his efficiency by moving off-ball and taking shots created by the playmakers around him, such as Brunson. Off the court, Barrett could also improve his three-point shooting, as his slow jump-shot form has led to easy contests by defenders.

In order for the Knicks to reach the “promised land” of the playoffs once again, it is vital to ensure better defensive schemes, as well as improvement from key starters. In a conference head lined by teams such as the Bos ton Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, and Philadelphia 76ers, the Knicks will need to step up or step aside.

Team culture also manifests itself within and outside of an organization. While fans tend to support their team through re builds, they lose interest when their team is intentionally losing, as a New York Post poll conclud ed. Because fan attendance makes up a sizable portion of organiza tional income, losing fans simply means losing revenue for man agement. Rebuilding is inevitable and part of a team’s life cycle, but deliberate tanking is not, and the player-related risks are only com pounded by the financial risks for organizations.

Major leagues have imple mented different solutions to dis courage tanking––with the NBA, NHL, and MLB utilizing draft lotteries––but the vast majority are riddled with flaws. Instead of the draft lottery, leagues should incorporate a strategy whereby high-end prospects select their team. As opposed to earning the highest draft slot, the best pros pects earn the right to choose their team. The best-ranked pros pect has their pick of every team, the second-best selects from every team but the first chosen, continu ing until each of the top 30 or so players have chosen. From there, a standard, standing-based draft en sues. This idea places players’ fu tures into their hands, rather than a team’s, and rewards talent with opportunity.

One thing is clear: tanking benefits no one. The strategy spoils competition, plummets rev enues and fan interest, and further eliminates players’ early career freedom. It’s time for tanking to tank.

Carmen Gomez-Villalva / The Spectator

By YASHNA PATEL and FREDERIK SCHUTZ

sophomore year, and junior year, which was last year, I also was first singles for them, as well as this year.

2. Do you participate on an outside team? If so, how does your experience on the Stuyvesant team differ?

The Smasher

when you have multiple shuttle cocks and they feed you at the same time.

3. Do you prefer singles or doubles, and why?

I prefer doubles, because I’m more nimble than raw strength on the court, and doubles really takes advantage of speed. Not only are there multiple people, but the ro tation and the quick thinking that you need for doubles [are also] what I am strong at.

4. What is your most memo rable/proud moment with the team?

Definitely when we won championships not so long ago. We lost in the finals two years in a row, so that was kind of a bum mer, but this year, to finally win that championship was kind of amazing.

5. How has being a captain changed your outlook on bad minton? What lessons have you learned from this position that you can apply to life?

just the responsibility of man aging a team is something that I believe I can take further into the future, especially in college or when I’m in a friend group and assessing that. But that’s re ally different, and I’ve never done that before.

6. Do you have any plans to continue badminton in the fu ture or in college?

Yes, I plan to join college bad minton teams as well as after col lege. I want to keep it as a lifelong hobby of mine.

7. Do you have any pre-match superstitions or rituals?

My doubles partner and I won my first major title (fifth in nationals) back in 2017, and we both accidentally had money in our pockets from purchasing bubble tea, so from that point on, we always played with money in our pockets.

8. What are the best and worst parts of badminton?

to play against each other and the remaining court for the rest of the team to have fun. Usu ally, our practices last one or two hours, but on the rare occasions when we get the whole three hours, we will have some form of conditioning before we pick up a racket.

10. How did you adapt after losing a year of badminton playing due to the COVID lockdowns?

It was really heartbreaking to spend so much time away from the sport I loved, especially since there was little I could do to keep the feeling of my shots. After around two months of sitting in my chair playing games all day, my parents allowed me to use the small gym at my apartment, as well as the stairs, to get myself moving. If I couldn’t do anything to improve my skill, I could at least maintain physical fitness at home before I went back on court.

1. When and how did you start playing badminton? How long have you been on Stuyvesant’s badminton team?

I started playing badminton when I was eight years old, and that’s because my dad was a very [frequent] player. He actually got me into training when I was eight, but I didn’t take it seriously until I was 10. I started on this Stuyves ant team in freshman year. In freshman year, I was already first singles. Then quarantine hap pened, so there was no season

Football

It’s not necessarily a team. I go to a club that trains and represent that club when I go to tournaments. The major dif ference is honestly just the skill level. Everything else is normally the same. I train on the week ends for around four hours a day. That’s just private training for an hour and group training for three hours. Private training is one-onone between you and the coach, and group training is you with a bunch of teammates. That’s the only difference. Training is often sparring and feeding. Feeding is

Before being captain, I’d nev er really had the responsibility of managing other badminton play ers, assessing their skill levels, and helping them basically with train ing. Before, I was just a player, so I would focus on myself, and my teammates were mostly my friends. Once I became captain, I became responsible for selecting the team members and looking at their strengths and weaknesses, especially for doubles, since we have two doubles, seeing who could pair with whom depending on if they’re compatible, like if they’re both really fast or both re ally strong. That was something I never really had to look at before. I guess I haven’t really gotten to apply that to everyday life, but

The best part is actually play ing against strong opponents/ people you’ve never played be fore, since everyone has a differ ent style and you have to figure out what works against them. The worst part is training for badmin ton, especially physically. All the running, jump-roping, and gen eral stamina training feel terrible.

9. What does a typical practice look like?

Before we get on the court, we always start out with 15 to 20 laps around the gym, followed by a quick stretch. This ensures all our players are warm and re duces the risk of injury when your muscles/tendons are warm instead of rigid/cold. Then, we set two courts aside for starters

Lost in the Sauce

world that he is able to make quick reads and prevent catches through his in-game awareness.

Sauce’s claim to fame, his swag ger, is arguably the most important part of his game. He has the confi dence to do what he believes is the right play. He never doubts his abil

Bowling

ity, and he is always sure of what he needs to do to win. His swagger started when Gardner received the nickname “Sauce” as a six-year-old after his little league football coach called him “A1 Sauce Sweet Feet Gardner,” which was shortened to “Sauce.” “My personal meaning is a level of confidence. When I’m on and off the field, I make sure I’ve got the sauce,” Gardner said. He shows his sauce off the field as

well, wearing a cheesehead at Lam beau Field to taunt Packers fans after the Jets won the 27-10 upset off the back of the Jets defense. This moment shows how Sauce is confident and not scared of any thing, not even a stadium full of angry Packers fans, nor the bright lights and big moments.

Sauce has combined these three attributes to become one of the best in the league. He has be

come a top candidate for Defen sive Rookie of the Year and even Defensive Player of the Year.

Before Sauce was drafted, the Jets’ defense was going nowhere. They were ranked worst in the NFL, and the only upside was a top pick in the draft. But now, with key additions of Jordan White head, D.J. Reed, and their first pick of Gardner, their defense is a force to be reckoned with, ranking as top

The Spartans Have Captured Lightning, and the League’s Been Struck

Funniest Teammate: Giridhar Bonu

Favorite Professional Badmin ton Player: Viktor Axelsen

Playing on Full or Light Stom ach: Singles: Light Stomach; Doubles: Full Stomach

Favorite Sports Drink: Alienergy

Favorite Post-Match Snack: Bananas

Favorite Hobby: PC Building If You Could Play One Other Sport: Fencing Motto to Live By: Life is like getting pregnant. Everyone says congratulations, but they don’t know how many times you got screwed.

Fun Fact: I hate ketchup. Racket Brand: Astrox Favorite Shoe Brand: Yonex

playoff game. However, the Spar tans were able to defy the odds and unite to fill the gaps left by these crucial absences. “Our first game was against Hunter, the only school we lost to last season, and without Shafiel and Akram, our top bowl ers, for this game, our chances of winning were really slim. The games came out to be super close. When we won the tie-breaker C

game, I realized we didn’t need our best bowlers for us to win,” Zheng said. Since a majority of the team is comprised of seniors who have been bowling together for years, the Spartans have cultivated a tangible community, allowing for any given member to pick up the slack. They’ve put in many hours of practice over the past few years, becoming a cohesive machine of a team. “It has become routine for me to wake up every Saturday and head to the lanes where the rest of the team will usually show up and

continue to work on our skills. I believe the bowling team has be come a close-knitted friend group that each of us can rely upon,” Zheng said.

The Spartans’ vigilance and optimism through the season’s tur bulence is commendable. A team that has to travel for over an hour and is expected to arrive ready to play is not often a team that plays well. However, not only did the Spartans play well, they crafted an untouchable season in the compet itive Manhattan I league. “Every

one chipped in so much effort to tip the season into our favor. The passion we had to win playoffs this season was unrivaled; I don’t think a team wanted it more than us,” Khalifa said.

This bowling fervor pervaded every moment of the Spartans’ performance this season. They completed impressive comeback victories over second-place Hunt er College and a dominant sweep of Graphics Campus three games to zero in the first round of the playoffs. “Going undefeated is a

six in the league. Though quarter back struggles have held back the Jets’ offense, their defense has more often than not made up the difference, winning games that would have been out of reach the previous year. The Jets will be the team to look out for, with Gardner commanding the secondary and a chance to make the playoffs for the first time in over a decade.

testament to the dedication of the bowlers. Our only loss of the sea son was in the playoffs against a much higher ranked team. We had to travel deep into Brooklyn […] and lost by a total of six pins, all in the final frame. I can’t be prouder with how this team performed this year,” Tomas said. The Spartans managed to consistently overcome unfavorable conditions and go far beyond their own expectations, a monument to the commitment and community of their team.

Ellen Wright / The Spectator

By TEJAS SIDDARAMAIAH

If you have been watching the New York Jets this season, you

THESPECTATORSPORTS

Lost in the Sauce

Year, Consensus All-American, and three-time first team All-AAC. However, his most notable success, which helped him get drafted, was

touchdown in his three-year col lege career through over 1,000 snaps.

Sauce is continuing this trend in the NFL and has allowed only one touchdown with two intercep tions and 14 pass deflections. PFF Player Grades ranked Gardner top three in all categories for corner backs and first overall out of all cornerbacks in the league.

His dominance with the pros is not surprising, considering his physical attributes, football IQ, and swagger. At 6’3”, Gardner is the sixth tallest corner in the league. His length has made him a nui sance to opposing wide receivers. With his size, Gardner can control where his targets can run and pre vent quarterbacks from getting open throws to their receivers, proven by the fact that he is lead ing the NFL in pass deflections. Gardner’s ability to stop receptions has earned him a strong reputa tion. “When you add that to the field with his natural instincts, his length, his play speed, it has come together to be a really outstanding start to an NFL career,” Jets general manager Joe Douglas said about Gardner’s abilities.

Douglas is re ferring to Gard ner’s football IQ

when he describes Gardner’s “nat ural instincts.” He is able to make adjustments on the fly to combat a receiver’s routes. “The biggest thing, in order to play fast, is film study and having a high IQ for football. It seems like he’s a student of the game, and he’s ready to take

any challenge on when it comes to playing at a high level,” former seven-time Pro Bowl cornerback Darrelle Revis said about Gardner. Gardner has clearly shown to the

FRIDAY

Boys’ Varsity Basketball vs. Seward Park HS Seward Park Campus 5:00 p.m.

MONDAY

Boys’ Table Tennis vs. Graphics Campus Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis HS for International Careers 4:30 p.m.

CALENDAR 2 DECEMBER 4 5 6

SUNDAY

Girls’ Indoor TrackPSAL Jim McKay Games Armory Track 12:00 p.m.

The Spartans Have Captured Lightning, and the League’s Been Struck

By TY ANANT

The fall season was highly suc cessful for Stuyvesant sports teams, producing four undefeated teams. Of these, the boys’ bowling team, the Spartans, managed to stand out

mances.

The Spartans’ undefeated season was by no means easy to achieve. They switched coaches this year to Lance Tomas, a teacher in his second year at Stuyvesant. At first, there was considerable doubt

the name suggests, is in Astoria, Queens. “Even if students missed a 10th period class, we were almost always in danger of forfeiting a match due to lateness,” Tomas said. The Spartans were thankful for their coach, however, who was

WEDNESDAY Wrestling vs. Eagle Academy Eagle Academy Gym 5:00 p.m.

FRIDAY

Girls’ Varsity Basketball vs. Beacon HS HOME 4:30 p.m.

Bowling SPORTSBEAT

TUESDAY

Girls’ Table Tennis vs. Susan E. Wagner HS HOME 4:30 p.m.

THURSDAY

Boys’ Swimming vs. Hunter College HS Hunter College Pool 4:30 p.m.

with their electric season. Consid ering the team changed coaches, faced logistical issues that hindered some players, and commuted over an hour for every game, expecting a perfect run from the Spartans seemed outlandish. However, the Spartans used these shortcomings as fuel, creating a season charac terized by incredible camaraderie, hours of dedication, and power ful bowling. They turned these qualities into an impressive season capped by an unblemished record and two valiant playoff perfor

surrounding the change, but To mas was crucial to the Spartans’ success this year. “Mr. Tomas is an experienced bowler and I believe our success this season is accred ited to him,” senior and co-captain Gil Zheng said. “Tomas knows the needs of the team and is able to provide us with those necessities.”

Tomas’s ability to support the team was definitely needed, as the Spartans had to commute over an hour from Stuyvesant for every game and practice. Their home al ley is 360Bowl Astoria, which as

a responsible and proud leader of the team.

Furthermore, the Spartans had to deal with the loss of some of their best bowlers. Senior Shafiel Towhid, who has been on the team for the past three years, was un able to play this season. On top of that, senior and co-captain Akram Khalifa was logistically unable to play in a few of the Spartans’ crucial games, including the final

The winter PSAL season is underway at Stuyvesant, with 11 teams competing, including the likes of basketball, indoor track, and gymnastics.

The Saudi Arabia national team defeated Lionel Messi’s Argentina 2-1 in their opening game of the World Cup, with consecutive goals from Saleh Al-Shehri and Salem Al-Dawsari

The NBA has suspended guard Patrick Beverley for three games after he shoved Phoenix Suns player Deandre Ayton in the back during a game.

Attacking forward Richarlison de Andrade scored a rebound goal and an outrageous scissor-kick goal against Serbia to help Brazil top its World Cup group.

Wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. is ready to make free-agent visits to the New York Giants, the Buffalo Bills, and the Dallas Cowboys.