Volume 110, Issue 7

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

FEATURES

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Teachers’ Take on Facebook

A New Yorker’s Guide to Christmas

Teachers share their opinions on the widespread use of Facebook by Stuyvesant students.

From events, good eats, and gift-shopping, Arts & Entertainment writers Agatha Edwards and Zifei Zhao show you the ropes to Christmas in NYC.

see page 11

Volume 110 No. 7

NEWSBEAT The Music and Fine Art department hosted their Holiday Choral Concert on December 13, the Holiday Instrumental Concert on December 18, and the third annual Holiday Sing-along on December 19.

Seniors Ivan Galakhov and Ethan Morgan placed third at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fall PClassic Computer Programming competition.

At the Princeton Classic Speech and Debate Tournament, senior Christian Bae placed seventh, junior Rae Jeong placed ninth, and sophomore Zhaklene Sanders placed 16th for Congressional Debate. Senior Jeremy Lee and junior Justin Sword broke to Octafinals for Public Forum Debate, with Lee winning ninth speaker as well.

see page 20

December 20, 2019

stuyspec.com

From Advanced Placement to Advanced Physics

By SUBYETA CHOWDHURY, ERIN LEE, SHREYA PAUL, CHLOE TERESTCHENKO, and ZIJIA ZHANG In a decision announced last June, the administration made Advanced Placement (AP) Physics I mandatory for all juniors in an attempt to establish a uniform curriculum and provide students the opportunity to gain college credit for a course that was already at the college level. The administration also did not want Stuyvesant students to fall behind students at other specialized high schools—who were already taking AP Physics I— during the college application process. This decision, however, was met with backlash from teachers, who expressed dissatisfaction with the course’s execution.

Teachers had several issues with the previous AP Physics I course, one of them being the labs in the Stuyvesant AP Physics I curriculum. According to the College Board, classwork for the AP Physics I curricu-

Zoe Oppenheimer / The Spectator

The Science Olympiad team placed third at the Long Island Science Olympiad at Syosset High School.

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

lum is suggested to be 25 percent lab work/inquiry, but the AP Physics I course at Stuyvesant was not meeting that suggestion. As of now, the physics labs comprise 20 percent of classwork and are designed for

Regents-level physics courses.

Changing the course to Advanced Physics would relieve teachers from the constraints of the 25 percent lab requirement; however, it still leaves the quality of physics labs un-

changed.

Another major concern brought up by teachers was the curriculum of AP Physics I. “AP Physics is split into two continued on page 2

Read our coverage of the December 6 walkout on page 4

Stuyvesant Math Team Hosts Downtown Mathematics Invitational

By MADELYN MAO and THEO SCHIMINOVICH

time it turned in a previous question to the front panel. All the teams were situated in the auditorium, and scores were shown live so teams could see their scores and ranking.

Finally, all students who answered eight or nine questions correctly in the individual round competed in a tiebreaker round to determine the second to 10th place rankings. Chen, the only contestant to get all 10 questions right, did not have to compete in the tiebreakers.

This is Stuyvesant’s third year holding the DMI, which is run entirely by the Stuyvesant math team’s coaches and

“I’m happy—even though we made the questions too hard, people were still happy they came. I think that’s more important than doing any single question or any particular round,” —Kimi Sun, senior and math team captain

Anthony Sun / The Spectator

The Stuyvesant math team hosted its annual Downtown Mathematics Invitational (DMI) competition on December 7, with 34 high school math teams from across the city coming to Stuyvesant to compete in the day-long contest. The Dalton School’s Tigers came in first, the Spence School’s Gold team came in second, and the Trinity School’s A team came in third. Longzhen Chen, a senior from Francis Lewis High School, got the highest individual score with a perfect 10 on the individual contest.

The competition began with a 40-minute team round, where teams had to work together to answer 10 questions.

Then, there was a 70-minute power round, where teams had to learn a new math topic and solve eight related questions, most of which required proofs; this year’s DMI power round topic was Farey Sequences. After a one-hour

lunch break, students participated in an individual round, where they were confronted with five problem sets, each containing two questions to be answered in 10 minutes.

Afterward, teams participated in a 75-minute marathon round, inspired by math competitions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Princeton University, or the Harvard–MIT Mathematics Tournament and the Princeton University Mathematics Competition, respectively.

Each team started the round with two questions and received a new question every

students. The questions are written and submitted by students through an online form, while the competition itself is graded and proctored by math team members.

Seniors and math team captains Nancy Kuang and Kimi Sun played an integral role in organizing the event. Sun was in charge of organizing the graders, ensuring that contests were scored and correctly entered into the mass spreadsheet, and writing the power round.

Meanwhile, Kuang communicated with and organized

all the teams, which she found very rewarding. “My favorite part was actually helping out with organization, because there’s a huge difference between being a proctor and volunteering for the events and actually helping out with planning everything and submitting problems.

So to be able to work with [sophomore] Rishabh [Das] after school and stay after— that [was] nice,” Kuang said. continued on page 3

Page 2

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

News From Advanced Placement to Advanced Physics continued from page 1

parts: […] AP Physics I and AP Physics II. The course was AP Physics I, which is basically just half of all the topics in AP Physics. And the problem with that was that many of the topics in the Regents exam were not in the AP Physics I curriculum,” physics teacher Thomas Strasser said. “You only get to see half of physics, and you should see all of it.”

In addition, last year’s Honors Physics met for seven periods a week while this year’s physics classes only meet for five. This shortened class time was especially difficult for teachers to manage under the AP Physics I curriculum, which had more complex material. “[We were] given 28 percent less instructional time than last year with the expectation to teach higher-level content to students who didn’t choose to be in an AP class in the first place,” an anonymous physics teacher said in an e-mail interview. “The rigor and pace of the curriculum we were expected to deliver was too much for a large percentage of our students. Too many students were being left behind and it was only going to get worse once we got to the unit on Rotation.”

Moving forward with the AP Physics I course meant that teachers had to sign off to the College Board on teaching the class. “The course code [for AP Physics] requires that by a certain deadline, the teachers attest on the College Board website that they feel that they are teaching the course as delineated by the College Board,” Principal Eric Contreras said.

Because of factors like the lab issues and the curriculum, physics teachers could not sign the audit certifying that the AP Physics I course offered at Stuyvesant met the College Board’s requirements.

“We couldn’t sign it, we didn’t sign it, so therefore we had to change the name [of the course],” the anonymous physics teacher said.

United Federation of Teachers (UFT) Representative and chemistry teacher Samantha Daves e-mailed the College Board earlier in the school year explaining the issues with AP Physics I at Stuyvesant and detailing the class time and labs allocated for the course. The College Board confirmed that the course did not meet their standards and could not be trademarked as an AP course.

Daves, Assistant Principal of Organization Dr. Gary Haber, and four physics teachers—Ulugbek Akhmedov, Rebecca Gorla, Thomas Miner, and Thomas Strasser—met with Contreras on November 22 to discuss this issue and find an alternative to the course.

Daves was crucial in sparking the transition to Advanced Physics. “[Daves] was able to navigate a conversation where we all came to the table and said, ‘Okay, how can we get past the issues of conflict and

start talking about what we haven’t done in years?’” Contreras said. “I have to give her and the teachers she worked with the credit for moving forward.”

After thoroughly discussing the physics issue with teachers, the administration imple-

ready spent on the AP Physics I test.

Sophomore Henry Cen is in favor of the AP Physics I course and believes that the administration should have been more transparent and provided a greater transitional period. “The teachers don’t

“We couldn’t sign it, we didn’t sign it, so therefore we had to change the name [of the course].”

—Anonymous physics teacher mented the teachers’ requests to change the AP Physics I course and decided to rename the course “Advanced Physics with AP Physics I Topics.”

Advanced Physics, which does not have the College Board’s AP trademark, will still hold college-level distinction on Stuyvesant’s school profile sent out to colleges, along with other college-level courses like Artificial Intelligence and Organic Chemistry. Advanced Physics will cover a greater range of topics than AP Physics I did. Optics, Electromagnetic Induction, Nuclear Physics, and Magnetism were added to the Advanced Physics curriculum while the most difficult topic from AP Physics I, Rotational Kinematics, will not be taught.

Advanced Physics will closely resemble the Honors Physics classes of previous years, but with more emphasis on basic theory. “[The] course is somewhere in between APand SAT II-level,” the previously mentioned anonymous physics teacher said in an email interview. The pacing for Advanced Physics will also be slower than AP Physics I, giving students more class time to understand the fundamental principles of physics and practice complex, multi-step problems.

know anything, the students don’t know much, no one really knows much,” he said.

Senior Joseph Lee agreed.

“Regardless of what colleges think of it, students will not feel satisfied with Advanced Physics. ‘AP’ just sounds better. Even if they get the class credit for it, I think the students themselves would feel more rewarded if it was called an AP class and they [got] the distinction,” he said.

Sophomore Rachel Xiao also believes that more effective communication should be present, and that the school should have taken student input before making AP Physics I mandatory. Her suggestion for the following school year is to offer sections of AP Physics I and sections of Honors Physics at the Regents level, much like how the school offers AP Chemistry and Honors Chemistry at the Regents level. “[Students should] at least know what they’ve set themselves up [for] […] and [if] the school’s forcing too [many] APs, it’s not good,” Xiao said.

While creating two types of classes has worked well for chemistry and biology, this dichotomy, according to Contreras, could create problems for physics. “There would be far fewer beneficiaries under that dichotomy. Two to four sec-

“Regardless of what colleges think of it, students will not feel satisfied with Advanced Physics. ‘AP’ just sounds better. Even if they get the class credit for it, I think the students themselves would feel more rewarded if it was called an AP class and they [got] the distinction.” —Joseph Lee, senior

Despite the fact that the administration and the physics teachers support this change, the student body has expressed mixed feelings, with many students upset about the lack of student input, the lack of AP distinction, and the money al-

tions would say ‘we got AP’ and the others would say ‘I had Regents physics,’” he said.

“That’s when it becomes an issue for college. The question by colleges is, ‘Did you take the highest possible physics for your class at that grade?’”

Additionally, the dichotomy would also affect which students have the opportunity to pursue other AP Physics courses after junior year. “Because physics comes so late in the high school career, [...] if you only give [AP Physics I] to a very small percentage of students [in] junior year, then it’s that very small percentage that gets access to AP Physics C [in] senior year,” Contreras said. “I’m always willing to hear alternatives, [...] but I think that a high-quality, rich experience that prepares everyone for the AP I and supports SAT II physics and Regents physics and covers those interesting topics that are really important is better for the entire Stuyvesant community than just having a few sections.”

Some students approve of the Advanced Physics change, though. An anonymous junior is content with the change, since the physics teacher stated that there would be a uniform curriculum and an improved lab schedule. Their lab experience has been “really inef-

the SU has met with Contreras, Daves, and members of the physics department on multiple occasions to address student concerns. Through these discussions, the course name was updated from Advanced Physics to Advanced Physics with AP Physics I Topics, and a Town Hall was held to increase transparency and inform the student body.

Junior and SU Vice President Julian Giordano believes that a change should reflect the community as a whole. “My perspective when it comes to any change is that it needs to consult all of the people who are involved in the change. If a change is going to be made that is going to impact the students, teachers, and administration, then it should consult all of the groups,” he said.

Strasser and Daves proposed the idea of a Student Committee with student representatives from the SU, to be initiated in January. This committee will work toward a uniform physics curriculum that prepares students for the

“Simply changing the name takes pressure off of the students to take an exam in a topic in which they’re not interested, and it alleviates pressure on the teachers to ‘teach to the test,’ which is unfortunately too common at Stuyvesant.” —Julian Cunningham, junior ficient and time-wasting,” and their lab partner is “[a] month ahead in terms of material. [...]

I have no idea how to do it [because] we haven’t even done this yet in class,” they said.

Junior Julian Cunningham is also happy with the change, as it relieves the pressures associated with AP distinction. “In a lot of ways, the initial change to AP Physics felt like one largely in name only. However, due to the test-oriented nature of Stuyvesant, many students felt obligated to take the test simply because of the name of the course, even if they had no real interest in physics,” he said in an e-mail interview. “[Though] it was clarified that the AP exam was optional, the environment at Stuyvesant can make it feel otherwise for many students. Simply changing the name takes pressure off of the students to take an exam in a topic in which they’re not interested, and it alleviates pressure on the teachers to ‘teach to the test,’ which is unfortunately too common at Stuyvesant.”

Though the Student Union (SU) was not involved in the decision to change the course, it has played an active role in mediating between the administration and the student body.

Since the announcement of the Advanced Physics change,

Regents, the SAT II, and the AP exam. “The idea here is that there is an ongoing conversation between students and teachers,” senior and SU President Vishwaa Sofat said.

Prominent concerns among the junior class are the low grades students have been receiving in their physics classes. “Students were having less instructional time, less lab time, a faster paced curriculum, a heavier workload, and a pushback from teachers,” Giordano said. “It created a situation where it made it very difficult for students to do well in the course.”

However, student complaints and the grade breakdown of the junior class do not fully match up. “If you look at test scores and you talk to students about test grades, the test grades are very low.

And that is rather concerning.

However, if you look at the marking period grades, as reported to us by Principal Contreras at the Town Hall, the difference between the senior year and the current juniors, the class of 2020 and the class of 2021, [...] is very marginal,” Sofat said.

As of second marking period, 97.7 percent of juniors this year are passing physics, continued on page 3

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 3

News From Advanced Placement to Advanced Physics continued from page 2

in comparison to 96.9 percent of last year’s juniors. In addition, 70.6 percent of current juniors have an 85 or above in physics, while 71.9 percent of juniors last year had an 85 or above by second marking period. “There was a perception that a lot more students are failing. But physics is not an easy course, especially physics at Stuyvesant,” Contreras said.

“The issue really is, how can we make sure students are able to better perform on tests and that the tests are about things that they’re learning in class?”

Sofat said. “The administration has said that they will be talking to teachers and they’re going to be having a conversation about grades as well. And once they get back to us, we’ll be able to see what the next steps are.”

Despite these unresolved questions, the administration has attempted to accommodate student concerns regarding physics in other ways. The administration has provided an extra day of AIS and is also hoping to provide additional test prep for the AP on a few weekends to supplement the five to 15 percent of the AP test that Advanced Physics will not cover. Dr. Haber is also working to issue refunds for

students who no longer wish to take their AP Physics I test.

Though prominent controversies and concerns arose in response to the physics changes this year, issues surrounding the physics department have

gained an appreciation for the shift,” he said. “I feel that we’re now in a place where we’re actually mapping out what’s taught, how much of it gets taught, how to connect that to AP I very concretely, and then

“We need to give students a rich, engaging, exciting—if I can use that word—experience. They deserve that.

I think our teachers can make that happen if we work together. I think the talent is in the room.” —Eric Contreras, principal been present for years. “This challenge around physics has actually just made public what has been a long-standing challenge and concern at Stuyvesant around physics,” Contreras said.

Contreras believes that this conflict has allowed the school to start working toward an improved and uniform physics course. “Once I sat down with a few of the teachers and actually heard the compelling case to be able to craft the course that does both AP I and teaches topics that aren’t included, I

how to connect that to Regents and [...] SAT II and some topics in AP II concretely.”

The administration plans to continue working and building on Advanced Physics for future years. “I feel so strongly about [Advanced Physics] that I want it to be the course next year,” Contreras said. “It’s the core curriculum for the course, then it’s the labs, and then implement that, and then tweak it year to year, but have something we can keep coming back to [...] that’s concrete and tangible and aligned.”

For the upcoming years, Giordano wants to alleviate any confusion between the students and the administration regarding the curriculum.

“Students should know what is happening regarding the curriculum they’re going to be taking for the next year from the administration, so the administration needs to be really clear about the changes. So, we’re pushing to make sure that all of those details come out and that the changes are as transparent as possible,” he said.

The administration also hopes to resolve the issue of shortened class time this year, which was due to restrictions in budget and the allocation of periods for freshman AP Biology, History, and English classes. Contreras plans to have next year’s physics classes return to the seven period structure.

“What I’d like to do is go back to seven [periods a week]. And there may be some challenges with classroom space, but we’ll figure those out,” he said.

Contreras has other aspects of Stuyvesant physics that he hopes to improve. “I’d like to see more connections to real life. I’d like to move toward a less theoretical and more applied [physics] and a merging of the lab experience with the lecture experience,” he said.

For the administration, the physics labs are an especially important element to address in many aspects, not just the integration of lab work into the classroom experience.

“The two things that need to happen in lab are consistency [...] and then alignment to Regents topics or AP I topics,” Contreras said. “Consistency and alignment have been the long-standing challenges for physics lectures and labs going back years.”

While the administration believes that making this adjustment is a step in the right direction, it acknowledges that resolving the historic problems of the physics department will take time. “It’s not going to be a one-year fix, [as] this has been something that has been a challenge [for] physics going back years,” Contreras said. “It’s going to take at least a couple of years to address some of those issues.”

“I do believe that the shift we’re doing long-term is the right one,” Contreras said. “We need to give students a rich, engaging, exciting—if I can use that word—experience.

They deserve that. I think our teachers can make that happen if we work together. I think the talent is in the room.”

Stuyvesant Math Team Hosts Downtown Mathematics Invitational

the competition, attributes the inspiration for the DMI to the South Brooklyn Invitational Math Competition, a competition initiated by math teacher and coach Fred Galli from Franklin D. Roosevelt High School. “Mr. Galli wanted to start a competition in Brooklyn, and specifically wanted to start a competition for the local schools in the area, so they started their competition first, and then, they had been doing it for five or six years,” Sterr said.

Stuyvesant also hosts the DMI due to a lack of local high school level math competitions in NYC. “Unlike middle school, there aren’t many competitions in the city [for high school]. In middle school, everyone goes to MathCounts,

that at the high school level with a competition in Manhattan because there’s already one in Brooklyn,” Sterr said.

Sun agrees that the magnitude of student participation in the DMI shows how Stuyvesant is able to expand high schoolers’ opportunities to attend math competitions.

In fact, his favorite part of the DMI was the variety of schools represented on Saturday. “[My favorite part was] just how many people showed up. A lot of the schools [I had] never heard of [came], and I guess they aren’t that focused on math, but I’m happy they brought teams,” he said.

Bronx Science High School math team coach Kevin Cheung agrees that the DMI is crucial in allowing more stu-

Anthony Sun / The Spectator

dents the opportunity to compete and meet other students who are also passionate about math. “[The DMI] is based on a model that is used on the state and the national level, […] but [those competitions are open] for a very exclusive few. Not many people actually get to compete in those contests. The only way to [compete in these competitions is by being a part of] NYC math team,” he said. “Stuy[vesant] [holding DMI] is important because it exposes [math competitions] to more people. You don’t necessarily have to be a member of the NYC team to compete in the contest here.

This is open to everyone.”

By creating a high school level math competition accessible to students all across the city, the New York City Math Team (NYCMT) is also able to scout new talent. “It gives us the opportunity to find some students who are excelling in math team from other schools [who] might deserve an invitation to the NYCMT,” Sterr said.

As for next year, Kuang acknowledges that the questions need to be easier. “We don’t have a very good idea of how well others from others schools will do. We also don’t know which teams they will send, because [some] teams send their top teams, other schools send their second or third best teams, and there are also some schools who send freshman teams,” Kuang said.

Students who partook in

the competition agree, saying the competition was more difficult this year. Neil Shrotri, a student competing from Trinity School, a private school in Manhattan, said last year’s competition was “easier, [...] but in terms of problems, this year is probably better.”

Akash Kumar, another student from Trinity, said, “Their problems in comparison to last year [were] definitely harder, but last year, I think a lot of people were acing a ton of rounds, so it creates a better separation between teams.”

Nevertheless, students felt the competition was run

DMI was well executed; however, he hopes to see more students attend. “Overall, the contest [was] done very well, and the fact that it’s done by students and written by students—I think that fact is also quite nice,” Cheung said.

“Maybe the only thing that could be improved is a greater presence, as in more people should know about this. [...]

This is supposed to be an entry level contest to show what math contests are all about, and in order to do that we want to try to get this to everyone.”

Students, both from Stuyvesant and from com-

well. “I think logistically both [DMI and PUMaC] were run pretty well. Everything was organized well, [and] there were very few moments of confusion,” said Helena, a junior from Horace Mann, a private school in the Bronx.

Cheung agrees that the

peting teams, were content with the competition overall.

“I’m happy—even though we made the questions too hard, people were still happy they came. I think that’s more important than doing any single question or any particular round,” Sun said.

Anthony Sun / The Spectator

Math teacher Brian Sterr, who oversees and manages

or Pi5, or one of these things, where you can actually go and see people from other schools.

So we’re just trying to expand

continued from page 1

Page 4

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

News German Department Hosts Consul General David Gill

By JAKOB GORISEKGAZZE and NEIL SARKAR

Courtesy of Francesca McAuliffe / The Spectator

By ISABELLA JIA

were able to ask questions about the history was really nice, and they got to learn a lot from it,” German and French teacher Rebecca Lindemulder said. She looks forward to future events in partnership with the Goethe Institute but said that there are no specific events scheduled as of now.

Assistant Principal of World Languages Francesca McAuliffe was pleased with

with resources they could use to learn more about the history of the Berlin Wall online.

The question segment was one of the most rewarding elements of the event. “I think the highlight was the questions. The fact that students

When studying history, it is always great to hear a firstperson account, but to be able to interact and converse with someone who lived through the experience brings another level of connection and emotion to the topic,” junior Alex Porlein said.

Students were also inspired

by Gill’s story and his family struggles. “The visit deepened my understanding of the sepa-

“In language classes, history and culture of the language are often neglected. It is great that in German we have the ability to study recent German history and culture.” —Alex Porlein, junior

the number of students at the event. “I was very happy with the turnout. I hope more interested students can participate in another event,” she said.

The turnout mainly consisted of students who are taking German III or AP German classes, and she noted that all of the students were attentive and well-informed.

Student responses to the

Courtesy of Francesca McAuliffe / The Spectator

Stuyvesant commemorated the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a presentation titled, “30 years of the Peaceful Revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall— The Path to Freedom and German Unity,” from German Consul General David Gill on November 21. The presentation was a part of Stuyvesant’s ongoing partnership with the Goethe Institute, a nonprofit German cultural association that aims to encourage the study of the German language. Stuyvesant is a part of the Institute’s Schools: Partners for the Future program, which has helped Stuyvesant host past events like Germany Day and the Wincent Weiss concert.

During his presentation, Gill first talked about his childhood growing up in East Germany, giving a first-hand account of what the history and culture were like. Gill was the son of a religious figure, which meant that he was not allowed to attend many schools because all religions were rejected in the Soviet Union. He studied theology when he was younger and after the fall of the Soviet Union, he worked for the government, dealing with Stasi (secret police) records. He later pursued higher education and became further involved in the German government. Today, in his current role as Consul General, he is an official representative of the German government and works to assist German citizens living in the United States.

During the second half of the event, students were able to ask questions about both Gill’s life and East Germany.

To prepare for the event, German language classes watched videos of past interviews with Gill on YouTube that were produced by the Goethe Institute and prepared questions.

Students were given booklets from the Goethe Institute

“Momentum Behind Sentiment”: Students Strike Against Climate Change

event were very positive; many were especially grateful for the opportunity to learn more about both German history and culture. “The David Gill event was an interesting and eye-opening experience in modern German history.

ration of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall. When we’re taught about this historical event, we often don’t learn about the experiences of those living in East Germany during that time period, especially people like David Gill, whose families were persecuted and publicly humiliated for their beliefs,” junior Luca Bielski said. “The fact that someone who, while in East Germany, wasn’t even allowed to attend college became an ambassador for his country is awe-inspiring.”

The students hope for similar events in the future, as Gill’s presentation provided another facet to learning the language.

“In language classes, history and culture of the language are often neglected. It is great that in German we have the ability to study recent German history and culture; for example, we are now covering German Christmas songs and traditions in class,” Porlein said. “Getting somebody who actually experienced what we’re talking about in class is also a great way of getting students like me interested and engaged in history, as it provides a real story that I can connect and relate to on a human level.”

“Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time. It’s an all-encompassing problem that is affecting everyone all across the world,” senior Alex Nobert said. Nobert was one of approximately 50 Stuyvesant students who walked out on December 6 to participate in the New York City Climate Strike. Students marched from City Hall to Foley Square, holding posters and wearing red. Students attended a rally at Foley Square, which featured a variety of speakers, including representatives from climate activism organizations. An estimated total of 2000 people participated in the strike.

The strike was a followup to the September 20 New York City Climate Strike, during which 315,000 students walked out, including about 500 students from Stuyvesant.

Both strikes were organized

by Fridays For Future NYC, a local chapter of the larger Fridays For Future organization founded by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

Whereas the strike on September 20 occurred the day before the United Nations (UN) Climate Summit, the December 6 strike corresponded with the 2019 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 25th UN climate change conference, in Madrid, Spain.

Compared to the strike on September 20, this strike was significantly smaller. “It [was] a good size for a rally. It was smaller, but it was substantial,” Nobert said. While the September 20 strike was planned about two months in advance, the December 6 strike was only organized in the few weeks leading up to the event;

After the speeches at the rally, students had the opportunity to talk with members of climate activism organizations to get a better sense of how they could get involved and to ask questions about the organizations’ work.

Senator Chuck Schumer also spoke during the rally.

“Chuck Schumer came to speak, which was really important, especially since he hadn’t signed onto the Green New Deal, and so that was a really big deal to gain leverage to get him to sign and endorse that,” senior Camille Sadoff, a participant in the strike, said.

However, not everyone perceived the strike as a success; many wished the strike was more structured. “It wasn’t executed properly. Offering some people some sort of opportunity to cut class is not the same thing as organizing and changing the cost-benefit. If you have just a bunch of students, we are not changing anything for people who would be in charge of making any sort of policy that could fix such an issue,” freshman Jacob Kirmayer said.

Despite the decrease in planning compared to the September 20 strike and the smaller number of participants, organizers believe strikes are beneficial, as they help change public attitudes toward climate change. “If you can get people to see that there are solutions and that there are groups backing those solutions, they’re more likely to support them,” Nobert said. “At this point, any solution involves a lot of widespread change. You need the general public to support that change before you can really effectively get those things done.”

The consistency of such

“This problem isn’t going to go away, and people won’t stop caring. Any strike is important.” —Alex Nobert, senior

Nobert attributes the decrease in participants to this.

This strike also had a different goal than the September 20 strike; organizers aimed to connect already passionate students with climate activism organizations that spoke during the rally, instead of trying to inspire action within apathetic students. “The main goal was to recruit people [who] are already interested in doing specific things,” Nobert said. “It’s really just getting momentum behind sentiment.”

strikes is also essential in evoking change. “It’s just one of many strikes in the large scheme of things. Having multiple and not stopping is important because we are unrelenting,” Nobert said. “This problem isn’t going to go away, and people won’t stop caring.

Any strike is important.”

Sadoff agreed, saying, “Our education is meaningless if we don’t have a planet to live on. [...] The message that we’re not gonna stop is important and a success in itself.”

The Spectator â—? December 20, 2019

Page 5

Page 6

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

News Controversial Confiscations: Buying and Selling Lockers

By GRACE CANTARELLA, RUTH LEE, ALEC SHAFRAN, CHLOE TERESTCHENKO, and JULIE WEINER As the administration became aware of a Buying and Selling Lockers Facebook group earlier this fall, students who had bought or sold lockers through this group have had their lockers confiscated, their privilege to use a locker revoked, and their lunches voided.

In the beginning of this school year, a public Facebook group called “Buying and Sell-

or, more often than not, unintentionally violating the administration’s rule that the transferring and selling of lockers is prohibited. “I feel like the rules were never made clear, and I had never heard of students getting caught and punished before,” Anonymous Student A said. “It’s especially confusing since you are required to share lockers as freshmen, and after that, it was never made clear that after freshman year [sharing] is all of [a] sudden forbidden.”

The administration’s actions of removing locker access and issuing additional repercus-

“I feel like the rules were never made clear, and I had never heard of students getting caught and punished before.” —Anonymous Student A

sions have been met with frustration from the students, many of whom were not aware of the rules against the exchanging of lockers. “I personally did not know that [sharing lockers] wasn’t allowed, especially since everyone else was doing it,” Anonymous Student A said.

While several students did not know about the policy, Moran believes that there is no reason for students not to be aware of it. “The expectation is that especially for students who are so actively involved, like [Stuyvesant] students are, it is [the student’s] responsibility to be aware of what the policy is,” Moran said. “[School policy] is made very clear: it is on the website, it is in the student handbook. All the information is available in writing and online.”

Students who had their lockers revoked have faced several inconveniences. “Without a locker, students are forced to carry their coats, extra bags, and other stuff around, which limits mobility in the hallway and stairs and just worsens everyone’s experience,” Anonymous Student B said. “I understand [why the lockers were revoked] since we [were] violating the rules, but it’s not a very efficient system.”

Students who did not want to have their lunches voided

of things,” Moran said. “[The administration] is a small group of people [who are] managing a very large group of people.

They have to be consistent. If the administration says that [the rules are as such], they have to be enforced when someone

to continue with all of that.”

Some students believe that the way lockers are assigned should be changed. “The administration should be more understanding of the way lockers are assigned and the fact that it’s more convenient for

does not follow them. Otherwise, it would be chaos.”

While students admit that the regulation on lockers prevents students from selling school property for inflated prices and upholds safety in the building, they believe that voiding students’ lockers is more a matter of convenience and ease for the administration than of discipline. “In my opinion, [the

students to be able to have some choice in where their locker is or who they can share with,” Anonymous Student D said.

Students have offered several alternatives to handling the situation. One example was confronting and punishing students but not voiding their lunches, since it deters students from turning themselves in.

“There are other ways to fix the situation besides just revoking students’ lockers without any warning,” Anonymous Student D said.

The administration has acknowledged students’ proposals of a system of exchanging lockers and is open to hearing ideas should they provide convenience for the school. “[This new system] would have to be manageable. If [the students] could come up with something, and [the new system] makes [the administration’s] life a little bit easier, [we] would listen,” Moran said.

Megan Huang / The Spectator

ing Lockers for Stuyvesant 19-20” was created to provide a platform for students to exchange lockers based on factors such as locker location, or to acquire a second locker. When the administration discovered this, it changed the locks on these lockers. According to students, the administration has also started to check students at random, approaching students to ask for their Talos locker information, and checking whether or not it matches the lockers they are using.

The locker policy, written in various places such as the school planner and the school website’s “school policies” page, states that “all students must take their assigned locker, and only freshmen should be sharing lockers. Students found sharing or selling lockers will have their locker and lunch privileges revoked.”

“Lockers are the property of the school. [They] are a convenience for students. There are certain things that [the administration has] to do to maintain the integrity of the lockers as well as their safety and consistency [in order] to avoid the madness that would occur in the past,” Assistant Principal of Security, Health, and Physical Education Brian Moran said.

Many students participated in this exchange, intentionally

did not turn themselves in, and so could not re-obtain their belongings. “I had no access to my graphing calculator that I needed for three different classes. I had no access to my math textbook, and I had to replace notebooks that were left in the confiscated locker,” Anonymous Student C said.

While the administration understands the reasons that students provided for wanting to share and exchange lockers, the main issue that arises from this is the lack of record of this exchange, which creates a security issue. “If [a student] swaps [lockers] or they buy and sell, and they are not assigned to that locker, but they use that locker, there is no way for [the administration] to keep track of whose belongings are in that locker,” Moran said. “Sharing, buying, and selling can put a student at risk. [...] If there is any kind of reasonable suspicion that there is some kind of wrongdoing or there is something dangerous, [the administration] can open up lockers and search them if it is needed—only if it is reasonable.”

Additionally, the buying and selling of lockers infringes upon the intended randomness of locker assignments. “When all of the lockers are assigned randomly and students are either profiting or creating inequities based on this, it is disappointing. Not just the safety aspect, not just the fact that it is the breaking of school rules,” Moran said. “If [a student] has the means to be able to get the better locker and someone else doesn’t, that is an unfair advantage that [the administration] tries to avoid in the first place.”

Despite the administration’s hope that students would understand its disciplinary actions, the policy remains controver-

“It’s especially confusing since you are required to share lockers as freshmen, and after that, it was never made clear that after freshman year [sharing] is all of [a] sudden forbidden.” —Anonymous Student A sial and unpopular among the student body. “[There needs to be] an understanding as to why we do the things that we do. It is not to punish. It is not because we get any kind of enjoyment out of doing these kinds

deans] believe that it is easier to crack down on all buying, selling, sharing, and exchanging of lockers. They want to get rid of all that to make it easier for them,” senior Debi Saha said.

“In reality, [students] are going

Sara Stebbins and Allen Wang Host Stuyvesant’s First Tiny Desk Concert

By JENNY LIU, EVELYN MA, and CHLOE TERESTCHENKO Seniors Sara Stebbins and Allen Wang hosted Stuyvesant’s first National Public Radio (NPR)-inspired Tiny Desk Concert on Friday, December 6. The concert was held in the second-floor atrium and gave

students an opportunity to showcase their talents in front of a live audience of around 30 people.

A Tiny Desk Concert is an intimate concert performed up-close to a live audience, first thought of and hosted by NPR Music in 2008. The idea of holding a Tiny Desk Concert at Stuyvesant first struck

Wang and Stebbins during the summer. Both are fans of the NPR Tiny Desk Concerts and wanted to create a similar experience for Stuyvesant students. “The goal of the event was to bring more arts and culture to Stuyvesant High School,” Wang said.

Stebbins and Wang liked the personal feel of these per-

formances, which use no fancy stage equipment or sets but mere instruments. Because the audience is in such close proximity, this setup creates both a literal and emotional intimacy between the performer and the audience.

Stebbins coordinated with the performers, while Wang worked on the production.

Stebbins made most of the administrative decisions such as creating the set list, and Wang handled the logistics of the event, such as setting up the audio equipment. “We both trusted each other with what we were doing,” Wang said. continued on page 7

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 7

News Sara Stebbins and Allen Wang Host Stuyvesant’s First Tiny Desk Concert On the day of the concert, the concert area was set up in the second-floor atrium during the later periods of the day.

The setup consisted of a few guitars, pianos, microphones, a desk from a classroom, and drums. There was also audio and video equipment present, as Wang and Stebbins were video- and audio-recording the concert.

In total, there were seven acts. The first performance consisted of three songs performed by juniors Roland Blake, Damian Klokowski, and Oliver Jackson; the second one was performed by junior Chrisabella Javier; the third by junior Saarah Elsayed; the fourth by senior Christopher Brown and junior Isabella Lee; the fifth by seniors Victoria Wong and Cosmo Coen; the sixth by senior Cecilia Bachana; the seventh by junior Julian Cunningham and senior Max Mah; and the last one by senior Zeynep Bromberg.

“Some people performed original music, which was really amazing to see,” Lee said.

In particular, Elsayed and Bachana both performed original songs. Elsayed performed

Zoe Oppenheimer / The Spectator

continued from page 6

original songs “Safety Net” and “Perfect,” along with her cover of “Happiness is a Butterfly” by Lana Del Rey, while

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and NASA

WORLDBEAT The House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, which charge him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Congress plans to prohibit the sale of tobacco products to people under 21 years of age through a congressional spending bill expected to be passed.

Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won Britain’s general election by a landslide, winning the largest parlimentary majority since Margaret Thatcher in 1983.

Unrest has spread across India in response to the newly passed citizenship bill under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

ous technical difficulties that occurred. “We did a pretty good job, but there were a few things missing. We didn’t get a keyboard pedal, which messed up the keyboard acts a little bit. They were very good at adapting to that, though, I must say,” Stebbins said. “During the concert, we had a few

“With my coming-up on four years at Stuy[vesant], part of my mission has been able to share my peers’ talents and interests with the community, and my vision of Tiny Desk Concert is something that allows for that.”

—Sara Stebbins, senior and concert organizer things with sound malfunctions. But that wasn’t something we could have completely prevented, and that’s not what people remember. That’s not what people take away.”

In addition, the concert also had a relatively small audience. “I wish more people came, but I understand that there were [other conflicts],”

everyone is. Like, there’s so much talent even outside of what [this school] is known for. With my coming-up on four years at Stuy[vesant], part of my mission has been [...] to share my peers’ talents and interests with the community, and my vision of Tiny Desk Concert is something that allows for that,” Stebbins said.

Zoe Oppenheimer / The Spectator

Former Pakistani Military Dictator Pervez Musharraf, currently exiled in Dubai, has been sentenced to death for treason.

Bachana’s set was composed solely of original songs with “Lady Lou,” “New York Pizza,” and “Rise in Love.”

Other performers performed their own renditions of a varied genre of music.

Blake, Klokowski, and Jackson performed “I Can’t Handle Change” by Roar, and “Naruto Themed Sexting” and “I Killed Arbor Day For You,” by Panucci’s Pizza. Javier covered “As It Is” by Winter’s Weather, “Coffee Shop Soundtrack”

by All Time Low, and “Life In Pink” by The Ready Set. Brown and Lee performed “Passionfruit” by Drake and “Slow Dancing in the Dark”

by Joji ft. Rich Brian. Wong and Coen performed “Firewood” by Regina Spektor and “If I Ain’t Got You” by Alicia Keys. Cunningham, Bromberg, and Mah performed “La Bamba” by Ritchie Valens, “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure, “The Weight” by The Band, “Dancing Queen” by ABBA, and “At Last” by Etta James.

Though this concert is the first of its kind at Stuyvesant, Stebbins took steps to distinguish the Tiny Desk Concert from Open Mic, another type of musical event at Stuyvesant. “I feel like there are a lot of similarities in terms of showcasing student work. So, in order to distinguish it from Open Mic, we had a sound setup that we put in the atrium so people could walk by and stop to hear the concert even if they didn’t really know about it, which I thought was really cool,” Stebbins said. “We also had sign-ups beforehand and a set list, and Open Mic is a little more relaxed than that and more open-ended.”

One downside of the concert, however, was the vari-

Wang said.

Lee agreed that the turnout wasn’t huge, but added that it was still notable. “The turnout wasn’t a bunch of people, but it was friends [and] supporters.

I remember the gymnastics team came down to see some of the performance,” Lee said.

Despite the low turnout, those who attended enjoyed their experience at the concert. “[Having a Tiny Desk Concert] gives [the students] more creativity to do what they want. Throughout the concert, there was outward cursing which I’m not saying is amazing, but it shows that it gives [us] more freedom to express ourselves. You wouldn’t see that [at] a regular school concert,” junior Roshni Patel said.

In the future, Wang and Stebbins plan on hosting more Tiny Desk Concerts and would like to see more people come. “Overall, I think it was successful and would do it again,” Wang said. The date for the next Tiny Desk Concert is undecided as of now, but they are hoping to host another one after SING! season.

Stebbins and Wang are hopeful about the positive impact that future Tiny Desk Concerts will leave on the school culture as a medium for students to express themselves and share their talents with their peers. “I feel like we have to look around and appreciate how insanely talented

Page 8

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Features

By SUAH CHUNG, HAYEON OK, and SAMMI YANG Great Books is a well-known senior Advanced Placement (AP) English course currently taught by Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman and English teacher Katherine Fletcher. Grossman was encouraged to create the class by the previous head of the English department. At the time, Grossman was teaching the Existentialism class, but he and three other teachers began to teach Great Books in 2001. “It wasn’t yet what it is today,” said Grossman. “Everyone taught different books. It wasn’t one thing.”

Presently, Great Books is a yearlong AP course where students engage in a variety of writing assignments and literary discussions. Students are encouraged to take the AP Literature and Composition exam in May. The course involves the study of at least 15 major literary works over the course of the year, but each year, one or two books are added or removed from the curriculum. “It’s important that [the course] not be held static, that it changes and grows,” Grossman explained.

Fletcher added that, in recent years, she and Grossman have worked to diversify the curriculum and incorporate more female authors and writers of color.

On a typical day, students start the class with minutes and a question that leads them into discussions similar to Socratic seminars, where the students call on each other. The class is heavily discussion-based and centered around the students.

“The students do 95 percent of the talking in the class,” Flecther said. “I try to keep my mouth shut as much as possible and sort of let them get to the ideas that most interest them.”

Rather than dominating the direction of class discussion, the teachers blend in with the students to form a closer relationship with them. “Talking about books is a way of getting to know each other,” Grossman said. “Any friendship you have coalesces around something,

The Great Class of Great Books

some activity, a team, a hobby, or passion. Having shared books builds common language and [shared] jokes and a common body of experience. So teaching the class is also a way of building relationships with students and watching them

can read a sentence and you can read a sentence and it’ll be the same sentence, but we read different things about it.” Expressing and responding to other students’ opinions helped them form a close bond with each other through their engagement

done in a class before.”

Students undoubtedly experience difficulty when reading and analyzing challenging texts, but the density of the literature makes it worthwhile.

In comparison to the American Literary History class she took

Joseph Yu / The Spectator

build relationships with each other.”

The effects are wide-reaching. Senior Morgan Hessey, who is in Grossman’s class, explained, “[Grossman] guides us and helps us stay on the discussion points, but he raises his hand like a student, and it’s made it a really enjoyable experience. It makes us feel like we’re on a ‘real person level,’ instead of him being separate from us because he’s a teacher.” Senior Sara Stebbins added, “[Fletcher] is so good at making the class engaging and also is in love with the texts she’s teaching. She makes conveying wisdom about the book a priority.”

Discussions are, unsurprisingly, one of the most appealing aspects. They allow students to learn about each other’s unique personalities that emerge. “Stuy[vesant] students and their perspectives on life are so unique,” senior Alison Juray said. “They come from all different walks of life, so I

with the books they were reading. A special part of the class, according to Juray, is that the discussions continued beyond the classroom. “You get that in other classes but it’s about the grades or the tests,” she said.

“This is more book-based discussion, which is really special in an English class.”

The class is also unique because of the nature of its assignments. “The class has some traditional essays. I’d say one pretty straight forward literary essay a semester, but it’s true that many of the assignments are more elaborate and unconventional,” Grossman explained. An example of a creative writing assignment is a short story written in the style of the author. Juray said, “[We read] ‘American Pastoral.’ We had to choose quotes [and] different lines throughout the novel and incorporate it in the [narrative] like a story. We could’ve written anything as long as it had aspects of the quotes in it, which I’ve never

the year before, Juray admitted, “This class has very challenging perspectives that are hard for me to get through.” However, she explained, “Once I accomplish this class, I think I’ll appreciate a college-level course more because you already fostered these relationships that you feel comfortable giving your opinion so that by the time I reach college, I’ll already know how to articulate my opinion on a novel.” In addition, Stebbins believes that the difficulty of the readings and the process of deconstructing the text with the class makes the discussions appealing: “It’s really nice that when no one understands what the book means, we work through the problem as a group,” she said.

“Anyone can take an English class, but it takes a lot to just love reading,” Juray said.

“Even though you don’t have to like the books that we do, it’s just the discussion that takes place in the class.” Stebbins expressed a similar thought. She

Changing the Status Quo

By ISABELLE YARAMENKO Stuyvesant has over 150 student-led clubs ranging from those focused on community service, such as the Stuyvesant Key Club or Stuyvesant Red Cross, to those based around the performing arts, including Stuyvesant Theater Community and StuyStep. In addition to these well-known clubs, there are many lesser-known clubs.

However, many of these clubs are undiscovered by the student body and will often die out once the founder or current president graduates. An interesting subset of these lesser-known clubs to consider are those that have more humanities-oriented objectives. While Stuyvesant is traditionally considered to be focused more on math and science, many students here have

found an interest in humanitiesrelated subjects.

Most people who tend to express themselves through art often use traditional forms of art, such as painting, drawing, and writing, but a few other students discovered a different outlet to express their artistic abilities. Sophomore and Founder of Stuyvesant Papercrafts Gloria Lee wanted to share her love of papercrafting with her fellow students: “I find papercrafting to be extremely rewarding, and finished papercrafts always wow others as well,” Lee explained.

Stuyvesant Papercrafts is a club centered around “the art of cutting paper out and strategically gluing paper pieces into 3D models,” Lee said. While this may seem like a very niche topic, this club creates beautiful models based on different top-

ics such as avian anatomy or the Aachen Cathedral in Germany.

The club often displays their finished products on their Instagram page, and Lee is also looking to display the club’s projects through more platforms and throughout the school, such as in the library.

Another example of Stuyvesant students using a specific form of art to emulate themselves is the Improv Club. This club, unlike most, came to fruition through a teacher, biology teacher Dr. Jeffrey Horenstein.

Sophomore and President of the Improv Club Nora Archer explained that the club is a platform for students to both practice their performance art skills, as well as some life skills. To Archer, the club “primes us to let go of awkwardness and be expressive.”

Other students have also adopted art as a tool of expression.

Juniors Emma Donnelly and Kelly Guo cofounded Project Kaleidoscope at the beginning of this school year. Project Kaleidoscope is focused around the idea of using different mediums of art as a mode of social advocacy to help spread awareness about different issues around the world. “[We found that] our love of art with our passion for activism was an area that we wanted to broaden within the Stuyvesant community,” they explained. They also hope to sell their artwork and use their earnings to support charities of their choosing.

Some students took a more unique approach to creating the charter for their clubs by including aspects of both STEM and humanities and mixing differ-

explained, “I’ve always loved English class, and I took AP English last year, and I really fell in love with reading. I found myself obsessed with unfolding a great work of literature and finding a meaning. After all that, it seemed natural that I would want to take Great Books my senior year,” she shared.

The teachers attributed their enjoyment of teaching the class to the students’ love for English.

“It is a real pleasure to spend a period a day with students who are genuinely excited about reading and writing and talking about literature,” Fletcher said.

“My favorite moments in the class are when—and it happens every day, or almost every day— when someone says something that teaches you something new about the books. It’s just a real pleasure.”

Hessey added that her overall positive experience in the class also stemmed from its supportive atmosphere. She recalled, “I gave minutes one day, and I brought a ukulele with me. I tried to tune it but it wouldn’t tune, so I started singing a cappella. Everyone started clapping along, and they were so supportive. It was such an overwhelmingly positive experience for something I was really nervous to do going into it, since I don’t really sing in public.” This shared love for reading and supportive atmosphere bonds each class together.

Each year, the class welcomes and sends off groups of passionate students, continuing its legacy as one of the best English classes offered at school.

With its flexibility and the improvements made throughout each year, students who take the course can expect to leave Stuyvesant having learned great lessons from the endless discussions and challenges that the course offered. Ultimately, Grossman hopes that students can learn something beyond the basic lesson plan. “Our lesson has a handful of takeaways,” he said. “That’s what we want our students to get from this lesson, but those kind of get folded into the larger takeaways of the unit which get folded into the larger takeaways of the course.”

ent types of clubs, such as art and community service. Juniors Emily Chen and Brian Zhang cofounded Artasia, a club whose aim is to bring awareness to environmental issues through creative mediums, such as collages and 3D installations by reusing common items and materials that could otherwise end up in a landfill. Though their group is still very new, they have almost 50 students in their Facebook group and have begun working in collaboration with the Stuyvesant Environmental Club to create an art exhibition in Stuyvesant.

This variety of humanitiesoriented clubs display that though Stuyvesant is generally labeled as a STEM-oriented school, Stuyvesant students have diverse interests.

The Spectator ●December 20 2019

Page 9

Features “Oh, the Places You’ll Go:”

Where did Stuyvesant students live before coming to New York City?

Rui Zheng, sophomore

By RACHEL VILDMAN In the seventh grade, sophomore Rui Zheng traded her relaxed southern lifestyle for the fast-paced city life. Zheng originally lived with her parents, siblings and paternal grandmother in Conway, South Carolina, where her days mainly consisted of going to her local public school, returning home at the end of the day, and playing games on the internet.

Zheng followed the same routine most days, “listening to the radio on full blast riding shotgun while my dad cruised down the highway to go to Costco and Tanger Outlets,” she said.

Zheng was surprised when her parents announced that her family was moving to New York City. “My mom had been wanting to move to New York City for a

long time, but we never really had an opportunity to do so,” she said.

“Our actual move was kind of impulsive because a job opportunity opened for my dad, and he took it.”

When Zheng and her family officially arrived, she remembers thinking to herself that “New York City was this great, perfect city and anything was possible.”

However, moving to a different state came with a drastic lifestyle change: “Living in the South was a mostly sedentary lifestyle since people usually stayed at home and if they went out, they drove. New York City forced me to adopt a much more active lifestyle,” Zheng said. She also noted that the people in New York City are much more open-minded to different cultures and people, something she saw very little of in South Carolina.

In South Carolina, “People really thought of me as that Chinese girl, and not as Rui [Zheng],” she explained.

Since moving to New York, Zheng has come to greatly appreciate the mass transit system. “It is very nice to have public transportation that can take you anywhere you please. Student MetroCards are such a blessing, along with going to school in Manhattan because technically, I can go anywhere I want any time as long as I don’t stay out too late,” Zheng explained. Living in New York City has also given her the opportunity to experience more culture.

The biggest gain? “I learned to express myself more and have my own voice, which was something I lacked back then,” she said.

Emily Young-Squire, freshman

By RAVA FUNG Freshman Emily YoungSquire described crossing the Pacific Ocean from Tokyo, Japan to New York City as being transported to a different realm.

Born and raised in Tokyo, she still holds very fond memories of her birthplace, specifically that of the subway system. For her, thinking about subway systems in Japan brings back happy memories of ice cream vendors and pleasant shining floors. She quickly realized why New York City’s subway system is infamous.

Though the process of mov-

ing was not hard for YoungSquire, adapting to the differences between American and Japanese culture proved to be very difficult. In Japan, she might feel like the most outgoing girl, but in America, she felt as if she was the shyest person on Earth. “The one thing was back in Japan, I felt like I was very outgoing and very friendly; I felt like I was louder than everyone else but when I got here, everyone else was so much louder than I was, and I found myself becoming really shy and retreating into my own shell,” Young-Squire remembered. Furthermore, Young-Squire found herself taking advantage of the

performing arts programs at her school in America, something she would not have been able to do in Japan.

She misses the people in Japan the most. “I miss generally, just the people there, how pleasant it was, and I guess I just felt like I fit in there a lot,” she explained.

“I blended in with them.” However, Young-Squire has managed to find new friends in America as well. She concluded, “I got a feel of the community from Japan, and from there I sort of made my own community here in New York by exploring all the opportunities.”

Elizabeth Stansberry, sophomore

By CATHERINE CHING

Born in the outskirts of Dallas, sophomore Elizabeth Stansberry’s lifestyle was very laid back when she was young: “I lived in the suburbs, but it wasn’t like we [lived] in a farm or anything,” Stansberry recounted. “It [was also] hot, and there was lot of space. I had a big backyard and got to run around a lot [in Texas].” For Stransberry, the most striking difference between Texas and New York City was the means of transportation. “In Texas, we drive everywhere and there’s drivers in most high schools, whereas here, we take public transportation everywhere,” she said. These differences posed a stark contrast to the bright city lights and mammoth skyscrapers of New York.

Her first few days in New York City were like something out of a movie. “I was in awe of the grand city views. I was excited to move here because I’ve been here on vacation before, but it didn’t feel real,” Stansberry recalled. “Our first apartment was in Midtown, next to the empire state building, so it felt like I was on an extended vacation until school started.” However, Stansberry admitted that her transition to middle school was challenging

and hard to grasp. “I moved here after sixth grade, which was hard at first because sixth grade is the end of elementary school in Texas, but fifth grade is the end of elementary school here,” she explained. “So, everyone had already known each other for a year. It was like coming to a new middle school as this blonde girl from Texas.”

Stansberry’s transition to Stuyvesant was easy, however, because she was prepared for the academic course rigor and vast amount of extracurriculars at Stuyvesant. “My brother took the late SHSAT in ninth grade and got in. He’s a senior. I had information about the school and the opportunities,” she said.

Despite her two vastly different lifestyles, Stansberry continues to identify with both the suburban, southern life and the rich, city life. Stansberry reflected, “I’m glad I go to school here because as far as high school and the academics go, the opportunities are greater here. But Texas was a great place to grow up. You get to learn how to ride a mountain bike, venture out in local parks, and experience nature in your own lawn. BBQ and Tex Mex are the two big pillars of Texas food, and you can’t get those anywhere here.”

Larissa Yue, freshman

By CHRISTINA PAN To many individuals, the idea of change introduces a venture into the vast world of the mysterious and unknown. For freshman Larissa Yue, however, change has played a fundamental role in her life. Born in Pennsylvania, Yue spent the majority of her life in Bellevue, Washington, before moving to New York City the summer before eighth grade.

Stuyvesant is the sixth school Yue has attended throughout her academic career. Ever since her move across the coasts, she has relocated twice: once from Forest Hills, Queens to Tribeca, and again from Tribeca to Times Square.

It was mostly Yue’s decision to move to New York City. Back

in Bellevue, Yue often felt limited in the options presented to her.

Both of Yue’s parents work in the computer science industry. However, Yue’s main passion lies in the life sciences. In the schools Yue attended in Bellevue, most clubs and extracurriculars were particularly computer-focused, stressing specialized topics like coding or competitive problem-solving.

Yue often felt unmotivated and disinterested in the typical lessons presented at her school. She explained, “I often felt like I could be doing more, like I was letting school interfere with my learning, and that on my own, I could be doing so much more.”

In June 2018, Yue’s parents finally agreed to make the transition to New York City following an employment opportunity for

her father. “When we first came, I remember the explosive colors, the massive skyscrapers,” she said.

“It all felt sort of surreal. I’m finally here, I’m finally living life, almost just like in the movies.”

However, Yue’s family did not originally move to Manhattan.

For the first few months in New York, her family rented an Airbnb near Forest Hills, Queens, where she could easily commute to the testing company that she attended in preparation for the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). Because of this, Yue felt like a “tourist in [her] own home, from an extended vacation that [she] would never come back from.”

After the SHSAT, Yue’s family quickly relocated to Tribeca. It was a major transition from For-

est Hills to Tribeca, which borders the Financial District to the south and Chinatown and Little Italy to the east and is home to hundreds of sleek condominium towers and easily serves as a celebrity hotspot for famous stars.

For Yue, the move to Tribeca from Queens was almost “larger [than the] transition from Bellevue. [It is] just crazy how diverse things are here.”

Now at Stuyvesant, Yue is presented with a plethora of opportunities. “I could join clubs and events ranging from designing robotic models to creative writing clubs. New York provided me with opportunities for whatever I was interested in,” Yue said.

“Here, there is everything.”

She still finds herself reminiscing about her past life in Bel-

levue. She often wonders what life would have been like back in Bellevue—[what] an alternative story of her life would have been like— with different people, a different school, and a different home.

Throughout countless moves and different schools, Yue remains steadfast in her identity.

When faced with the difficult and often painstaking proposition of moving from place to place, most individuals face their predicament with a predetermined perspective of negativity. Yue sees these changes in quite a different light, stating “[Moving] really helps you discover more of yourself.

Kind of like unpeeling the layers within. Though I know I’ll probably move again someday, right now, right here, I’m a proud New Yorker.”

Aishwarjya Barua / The Spectator

Page 10

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Features

By MORRIS RASKIN

fingertips.

However, Stephan didn’t feel like working in a recording studio was his calling. Due to the artists’ busy schedules, he would often end up working all-night sessions.

Stephan ended up incredibly sleepdeprived during his time at this job. He reminisced that he “barely knew if [he] was coming or going after a night-time session.”

Eventually, Stephan left the studio and began to pursue a number of different music-related projects. He and his wife started a band called Amelia’s Dream, which has found a bit of success through film and television appearances.

He helped rapper MattyB pen and produce his breakout hit “Hooked On You” (2013) alongside the guitarist of the Spin Doctors, whom he worked closely with for many years. He also worked on songs for big brand commercials, including Burger King, Hasbro, and Chevrolet.

However, everything changed when Stephan and his wife had a child in 2007. The long hours of the hit-making business simply couldn’t fit his schedule. “A hit could take

King and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. After a number of jobs similar to these, Stephan got hired at a middle school. “I thought I could best continue in a path of pursuing songwriting and production if I started teaching,” Stephan explained. However, his first year of teaching was a trying one. He taught at a “difficult middle school, where the students took advantage,” he said. After his first year there, Stephan picked up a book.

This book, by Pulitzer Prize winner Frank McCourt called “Teacher Man,” finds the author reflecting on his experience teaching high school students. During his time reading the book, Stephan wrote and submitted an application to become a music teacher at Stuyvesant, and had yet to hear back. The same day he got to the last chapter of the book, he got a call from a representative at Stuyvesant, calling him in for an interview.

This final chapter of the book, titled “Coming Alive in Room 205,” discussed McCourt’s experience at Stuyvesant as a teacher. Stephan knew that this coincidence was too strong to not mean something. “I

“I started begging my parents when I was about 12 years old,” Stephan recalled. “One day, a piano ended up in my room, and the rest is history.”

gear everywhere.” In a time before computers were effective recording studios by themselves, synthesizers and instruments were stacked one on top of the other in a studio, so the artists could have thousands of sounds readily available at their

10 years of development, and I just didn’t have that kind of time anymore,” Stephan said. Luckily, this didn’t stop him from pursuing new opportunities with his career. He became a member of the orchestra for Broadway shows like The Lion

pretty much knew [I] was going to be hired by Stuyvesant. It just felt too synchronistic,” Stephan explained.

Four years later, Stephan considers his Stuyvesant career so far as overall, a very rewarding experi-

ence. He has taught hundreds of students how to play the guitar, read music, produce tracks, and countless other musical skills.

But what’s next for Stephan?

He has a number of projects coming up in the near future. Most notably, he is currently in the process of turning the music storage room into a multi-booth recording studio area, with around a dozen

individual studios. This project, in collaboration with AllMusic, will bring students from all over the city together to produce and write songs together, beginning in the fall of 2020.

Stephan’s story of coming to Stuyvesant is a wild journey full of twists and turns, but one thing’s for sure: he’s not stopping any time soon.

Walking Down a Winter Memory Lane

By THE FEATURES DEPARTMENT Stuyvesant students describe their most wholesome or funniest holiday moments.

“Here, I’ll tell the story of how I found out Santa wasn’t real. So, I was in Atlanta at my aunt’s house, where we usually spent Christmas. I’m a really spotty sleeper, [especially] when I’m really excited or stressed, like on Christmas morning. So I woke up at four or five in the morning on Christmas. My aunt wakes up at four every morning as well to [do] yoga or meditation or something. We woke up at the same time Christmas morning but obviously, instead of meditating, she had to go wrap and arrange the presents under the tree. She was getting everything ready, and I went downstairs to go get water.

I didn’t even realize it was Christmas morning yet, and I see her run across the living room with all of the presents in her arms. When she sees that I’ve seen her, she drops the gifts and tries to convince me that she was just ‘rearranging them,’ but it was too late.” —Shivali Korgaonkar, sophomore

“My grandpa accidentally ate dog food thinking it was some kind of cracker. He said it tasted like bacon.”

—Stacy Kim, Junior

“A few years ago on my best friend’s birthday, December 11, she, her friend group, and I were out celebrating her birthday, and it started to snow for the first time that year. My friends and I had just heard that the people you are with for the first snow of the year are the people you will spend the rest of your life with, so we all got emotional, and started crying.” —Sunny Bok, junior

“When I was still in elementary school, there was this spring festival during which I competed with my cousins on how many dumplings we could eat and ended up eating way too [many], like 20 to 30.”

—Mary Shang, Junior

“We bought one of those gingerbread house-making kits, with the pictures on the box looking all perfect. But then I realized making cookies stand and stick together was hard, even with icing. It all collapsed, but my family and I still ate it because it tasted good and was a bonding experience.” —Emily Chen, junior

“There’s this bear. We had this holiday closet thing where people put all the Halloween [and] Christmas stuff and Hanukkah candles. There’s this big polar bear that’s so soft and squishy. I don’t know where it is.

But when my sister and I were younger, we used to fight over it and play with it. It’s wholesome and also funny because we’d like, throw it around.”

—Ceci Bachana, senior “Basically ever since my brother got into Stuyvesant—that was when I was around ten— we’ve rented an apartment in Manhattan, because I live really east in Queens and it’s pretty far away. We still have the old house and we go back on weekends and holidays. The really funny thing last year was that we’d put up the Christmas tree in the old house and ever since then we’ve never taken it down. We’ve had Christmas in the spring, in the summer, and in the autumn. Now, time for the real thing.” —Sophie Jin, freshman

“So me and my sister woke up, and it was snowing the night before. There was like a foot and a half of snow, so we went out and started throwing snowballs but eventually ended up building a fort.” —Alisha Heng, junior “Every Christmas, it is a tradition that my sister, my uncle, and I all make a huge lasagna together. It is muy delicioso.”

—Zoya Bukhari, sophomore

Sandra Brandon / The Spectator

It all started with a piano.

After countless months of begging his parents to buy him the instrument, current music teacher Harold Stephan finally received the gift as a surprise in his room. “I started begging my parents when I was about 12 years old,” Stephan recalled. “One day, a piano ended up in my room, and the rest is history.” That ecstatic feeling that he felt that day all those years ago has carried him through a music career full of twists and turns—all the way to Stuyvesant.

After getting a degree in music from NYU back in the ‘90s, Stephan started his first job at Unique Recording Studio in NYC, working with artists like Phil Spector.

“I was lucky to get in there,” Stephan said. “Right away, they trusted me and began to throw me into these big sessions.” He would work long hours helping these musicians write, produce, and record their songs. Stephan remembered the studios as being “small and intimate, with racks and racks of

The Impact of a Piano

“I went ice skating with my friends. My friend is really clumsy: she was falling and she grabbed [onto the people around her] and almost knocked over the kid in front of her and behind her, but she still fell.”

—Megan Tan, sophomore

“My funniest holiday moment happened in middle school. My friend had recently bought me a survival minigame, and we finally reached winter in the game. We felt so pro until the exclusive holiday boss decided to barge into our basement [and] smash it into pieces. I started screeching so hard because I spent 30 minutes trying to align everything in the base. To this day I still remember how much I sucked at this game. My parents still think I’m crazy, by the way.”

—Vivien Li, sophomore “When I was still in elementary school, there was this spring festival during which I competed with my cousins on how many dumplings we could eat and ended up eating way too [many], like 20 to 30.”

—Mary Shang, Junior

“I was spending Christmas with some family friends and we were going back home [by] car. There were 12, nine maybe, of us and the car sat five people. I had to sit on the floor because one, I’m always the person they pick for this because I can fit, and two, no one else wants to sit on the floor […] So I sat on the floor, and I was falling asleep because I get drowsy on car rides…and I felt my phone fall out of my pocket, and I was like “eh, I’ll pick it up later,’ and I fell asleep. It was one of those ten-dollar phones you get off of eBay. That’s how I lost my phone. I was so ecstatic at that point. ‘Oh God it’s gone! Finally!’ So that’s how I lost my phone coming home from Christmas.” —Ethan Lam, sophomore

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 11

Features Teachers’ Take on Facebook

By SAMMI YANG, CHRISTINE CHANG, RAYMOND WU, AMANDA BRUCCULERI, and SUAH CHUNG

Katherine Fletcher, English teacher English teacher Katherine Fletcher was once a member of the Stuyvesant Facebook community. She joined her classes’ Facebook groups around six years ago when she first became aware of the group pages.

“I would ask to be a member of the group, mostly so that I could be tuned in to any difficulties my students were having,” Fletcher explained. “I could overhear concerns that they were expressing about their papers and know if there were any confusions that I was not aware of.” Though she was a member of the groups, she was not an active participant. The class groups were more of a supplemental teaching tool, one that was replaced by Google Classroom two years ago.

Though the class group pages were strictly about classwork, Fletcher is still aware of how students use Facebook outside of for their classes— and how odd their Facebook usage is. “My daughter attends another high school in NY, and she’s a senior, and she thinks it’s hilarious and really weird that Stuyvesant students use Facebook the way they do,” she said.

“No one she knows even has a Facebook account.” Fletcher is wary, however, of the heavy emphasis placed on Facebook.

This is especially pronounced during course selection time, when everybody is weighing in on certain classes and teachers.

“When one student weighs in, like let’s say one student says, ‘Ugh, I hated that class. It was totally horrible blah blah blah,’ it’s easy for students—[the] hundreds and hundreds of students are seeing that comment—to think that that’s the word on the street when in fact it’s just one student who didn’t like that class.” Fletcher said.

“That’s one person, who you probably don’t know, expressing an opinion about something really important, which is your educational choices.”

Instead, Fletcher hopes students will put less emphasis on those Facebook comments and more emphasis on the comments of people they actually know. “I would definitely recommend, instead, if you’re trying to figure out what class to take, talk to people you know who have taken the class, people whose opinion you trust and respect. So then the feedback that you get is much more meaningful than if it was just some random post on Facebook by someone you don’t even know,” she said.

Jerry Citron, biology teacher Biology teacher Jerry Citron has always been critical of Facebook, whether about the culture of Facebook or potential privacy infringements. “I think students notice that they are being tracked,” Citron said. “And they’re not being tracked because someone wants to benefit them. They are being tracked by companies to see what their behavior is like so that they [can] target products toward them.”

Despite these concerns, Citron believes that Facebook groups are a beneficial way for students to understand the content in their respective classes.

“It’s group learning. Some students really know the work, and other students benefit from that,” Citron said. The ease of communicating on Facebook helps the students connect, regardless of where they may live. “[Facebook] made studying user-friendly. Students can interact with each other while they are at home since they live far from each other, so it [makes]

sense.”

However, Citron believes that there is a line that needs to be drawn. The technological aspect of Facebook presents many challenges, including the problem of integrity. “People blurt out a fact and maybe another person blurts out a fact instead of discussing the details of that fact and how it fits into a mechanism,” Citron explained.

“Students do take advantage of [this] technological venue where they can share information back and forth. I question how deep it goes.”

Another problem faced is the anonymity of Facebook.

Because interacting through Facebook is an online experience, some discrepancies may occur while communicating. “But one of the problems with Facebook is that you are essentially anonymous. I think when you are in front of someone, you are more likely to temper your reactions,” Citron said. “When you don’t know how the person

is interpreting what you are saying because they can’t see the facial cues, you might say certain things and do certain things or express yourself in a way that might not be the most appropriate.”

Citron is not a stranger to the academic nature of Facebook. He explains his use of Facebook as a teacher as not so different from his students.

“I also use Facebook [when] I communicate with other teachers. It’s never in real-time, but we share ideas through Facebook. It has been something that I use quite frequently, in fact,” Citron said.

In the end, when asked whether he would have used Facebook if he were a Stuyvesant student, Citron responded with an immediate, “Oh yeah. I have two daughters and they’re online and they’re interacting with their friends on Facebook in a variety of the chatrooms. I can sort of see myself do that.”

“There is a sense of collective that is a powerful motivator for teenagers.”

––Michael Orlando, chemistry teacher

Lauren Stuzin, English teacher English teacher Lauren Stuzin is aware of the Facebook chat scandals that blew up last year, but she believes that the primary purpose and intention of these group chats now is teamwork. “Especially after a particular incident last year, the group chats are used primarily to clarify the homework that was assigned and to allow students who were absent to get caught up,” she said. She stresses that she doesn’t disapprove of group chats, because “[Stuyvesant] would be infinitely harder without collaboration and teamwork. Stuy[vesant] wants its students to collaborate and learn to be team players—

learning to work in groups is important regardless of your intended career path,” she said.

This holds when students help each other, but Stuzin draws the line between academic dishonesty and helping. “It’s important to be able to give and receive help when needed, but not in a way that undermines or corrupts anyone else’s learning experience,” she elaborated. Stuzin also raises the point of how this fine line varies for each class. “I like to hear that students peer-edit each other’s English papers on their own time—I don’t consider that cheating, I consider that teamwork. But if you were

to do something similar with a chem lab, that might change the story,” she explained.

Stuzin also mentioned that though Facebook chats have cultivated academic dishonesty in the past, Facebook itself is not the cause. “I think students are more inclined to use Facebook Messenger because it’s more private,” she said.

“Homework sharing or cheating will happen with or without group chats, and it also seems that after last year, everyone is more wary about sharing work virtually in general.”

After a number of jobs similar to these, Stephan got hired at a middle school. “I thought I could best continue in a path of pursuing songwriting and production if I started teaching,”

Michael Orlando, chemistry teacher Chemistry teacher Michael Orlando, like many other teachers, is aware that Stuyvesant students use Facebook frequently for both “official” and social business. In fact, students are so involved with the platform that they don’t even hide it from teachers. “Students regularly talk about ‘the class Facebook group’ in front of me, which I know I had nothing to do with,” he said.

Orlando is supportive of students using Facebook as a support platform for their stud-

ies. Enabling students to help one another allows for a more in-depth learning experience that teachers sometimes cannot provide due to the sheer number of students they have. “In the ideal, students should be learning from each other when it is possible. The act of teaching helps to solidify the knowledge one already possesses, and it helps the student with the question,” Orlando said. Orlando admitted that if he were a student at Stuy, he would probably use Facebook as well.

“There is a sense of collective that is a powerful motivator for teenagers,” he said. Facebook allows students not only to provide education support but moral support as well.

Though he encourages students to help one another, he knows that help could very easily turn into cheating when students are allowed to communicate away from a teacher’s presence. Students may not always be able to tell the difference between help and academic dishonesty when they are

taking advantage of Facebook.

He explained, “The difference comes with who is doing the work. If both of you are doing work, for example, [and] student A says I have no idea how to do this problem and student B says that it is a combined gas law problem, so use this formula, that’s great. If student B instead says, “Dude the answer is 36 kPa here’s my work,” then we have a problem.”

Despite his worries, he believes that students’ use of Facebook is not in his control.

“It doesn’t matter if I trust students to use Facebook, because it’s a tool that they already have at their disposal. Students will use Facebook to cheat, to bully each other, and generally waste time. I know this because Stuyvesant students are teenagers, and teenagers have, in some numbers, always cheated, bullied, and wasted time,” he said.

He believes that it is, therefore, the responsibility of the students themselves to learn how to use such tools responsibly.

Page 12

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Editorials Open Up In recent months, Stuyvesant’s administration, and particularly Assistant Principal of Security Brian Moran, has been confiscating lockers from students found to be engaged in buying or selling lockers, as a result of the administration’s gained access to a locker-trading Facebook group.

The several waves of confiscation are problematic, and highlight a number of issues with Stuyvesant’s locker policy.

Lockers are Department of Education (DOE) property, and lockers are often traded among students at prices that border on extortionary; it is both in the interest of the student body and sensible for the administration to interfere in this practice by confiscating lockers. However, is is neither particularly sensible nor in the interest of the student body for the administration to confiscate a locker from a student who is merely planning to sell it, a measure that is unnecessarily punitive when a simple explanation that lockers are DOE property would suffice.

It also isn’t reasonable to respond with confiscation to purchases of $14 or less, which arise not from student connivery but from the fact that the current system of allotting lockers is inefficient and does a poor job at matching people with lockers in

locations that are ideal for them. The administration gives out lockers entirely randomly, and provides no way for students to trade lockers freely among each other. The result is that a student who takes no classes above the 7th floor and is extensively involved in SING! can end up with a ninth floor locker while a student who never does anything on the first floor can end up with a locker in the hallway behind the theater.

In fact, such a provision should not be necessary in the first place, because the locker system should connect students with lockers that suit their needs from the outset. Not everyone’s needs can be satisfied— most people would be very well-served by a locker in the senior bar, but only a handful of such lockers exist—but the system could be a good deal more efficient. Under the status quo, students can pay $14 for a locker up front before learning that it is located on a high floor that they never frequent and find themselves without a useful locker and down $14.

That particular problem could be avoided not only by taking students’ needs into account when assigning lockers (or even letting students know which locker they’re getting before they pay) but by not charging students for lockers in the first place. Students

should not have to pay for lockers unless they damage them; it is particularly unfortunate that incoming freshmen are essentially obligated to buy lockers that some never use.

In addition to being able to acquire and trade lockers freely, students should be able to select them in accordance with their needs; a student heavily involved with Robotics, for instance, should be able to request a locker on the fourth floor. There should be limits on this—allowing students to request lockers in the Senior Bar, for instance, would open up the system to abuse—but with appropriate restrictions it would be a policy.

Making lockers free and using Talos to connect students with lockers that suit their needs would eliminate an unfair cost that Stuy students face, and it would diminish illicit locker trading by cutting down on the cause for its existence. Until it makes changes to those ends, the administration should not take a dramatic or punitive approach to locker regulation; lockers that have been confiscated this year for being traded for $14 or less should, to the extent possible, be restored, and until it has taken measures to make the locker system suit students’ needs, it should refrain from confiscating such lockers in the future.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Spectator TheStuyvesant StuyvesantHigh High The SchoolNewspaper Newspaper School

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

E D I TO R S

IN

N EWS E D I TO RS NMaddy E W S Andersen* E D I TO RS

Maddy Andersen* Erin Lee* Karen ErinZhang** Lee*

E D I TO RS E D I TO RS

Talia Kahan Kahan ZoeTalia Oppenheimer Zoe Oppenheimer Amanda Peng Amanda Peng

O PI N I O NS

Jacqueline Thom Thomas Chen Jiahe Wang Emma Linderman Jacqueline Thom P H OJiahe TO G RAPHY Wang E D I TO RS

PZoe H OOppenheimer TO GRAPHY E D I T O RYu S Catherine

C HIEF

Amy Huang* Huang* Amy Artem Ilyanok* Ilyanok* Artem

F EAT URE S F EAT URE S

ARTS & E NT E RTAI NM E NT E D I TO RS A R T SChen & Thomas E NEmma T E R TLinderman AI NM E NT E D I TO RS

Matt Melucci**

A Zoe R T Oppenheimer D I RE CTO RS

Catherine Yu Rebecca Collins Hu A R T Michael D I RE C TO RS Jade Collins Lo Rebecca Michael Hu L A YAndrea O U T Huang** E D I TO RS Jade Choi Lo Dahae

E D I TO RS

Michael Dekhtyar E D I TO RS Jonathan Schneiderman* Michael Dekhtyar Jonathan S P O R T Schneiderman* S E D I TO RS Ahmed Hussein Caroline S P OR T S E DJi** I TO RS Sam Levine** Ahmed Hussein Matt Melucci** Sunan Tajwar Sunan Tajwar Bernard Bernard Wang Wang

O PI NI O NS

H U M O R

E D I TO RS

Omar Ali Abdulla Elkhadrawy Elkhadrawy Abdulla Chrisabella Javier** Victor Victor Kuang Kuang Olly Olly Stewart Stewart Kelly Yip**

Please address all letters to: Please address all letters to: 345 Chambers Street New York, NY 10282 (212) 312-4800 ext. 2601 opinions@stuyspec.com We reserve the right to edit letters

AhmedESultan D I TO RS Christina Tan Dahae Choi Ahmed Sultan C O Christina P Y E D I Tan TO RS Tiffany Cao CO P Y EHalder D I TO RS Amy Tiffany Cao Brian Zhang Amy Halder Irene Hao** SI NE SS M ANAGE R Haley Huh** Rachel Joh Brian Zhang Yaru Luo

L AYO UT

BU

S

BUSI NE SS M ANAGE RS W E Rachel B E D IJoh TO RS

Yaru Luo Darius Jankauskas*

WE B E D I TO RS FAC U LT Y A DV I S E R

Darius Jankauskas* Kerry Garfinkel

FAC U LT Y

ADV I SE R

Kerry Garfinkel 345 Chambers Street New York, NY 10282

for clarity and length. © 2019 The Spectator All rights reserved by the creators. *Managing Board **Editor-in-Training

FOR THE RECORD

• In our previous issue, the article “The Math Team Breaks Records at PUMaC” should state that only Tovi Wen goes to Hunter College High School.

• In our previous issue, the article “Girls’ Cross Country Team Crosses New Frontiers” incorrectly states Agatha Edwards as a sophomore.

She is a junior.

• In our previous issue, the article “A Good Talk: Graphic Novelist Mira Jacob Speaks at Stuyvesant” names Mira Jacob as a Stuyvesant alumna. She, however, did not attend Stuyvesant.

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 13

Opinions

By ANNA LU As thousands of frenzied spectators awaited the second half of the highly anticipated annual Harvard-Yale football match, a crowd of climate activists burst onto the field and staged a protest calling for the Harvard and Yale administrations to divest from the fossil fuel industry and cancel their holdings in Puerto Rican debt.

Their message was clear: tackling on the field can wait, tackling the climate crisis cannot.

Divest Harvard and Fossil Free Yale, the groups of students and alumni that organized the protest, wrote their own Op-Ed in Buzzfeed News explaining the intentions that spurred the protest. The protest was meant to pressure Harvard and Yale to stop playing a part in the destruction of the environment and marginalized communities that take the brunt of the environmental consequences brought about by the fossil fuel industry.

They also demand that the managers of the massive endowments cease exploiting Puerto

Fueling a Different Movement

Rican debt so that Puerto Rico can use its revenue to recuperate from a succession of devastating hurricanes, no doubt exacerbated by climate change.

Both universities actively invest in fossil fuel companies and, considering that both universities manage enormous endowments of a collective $71 billion, where they choose to put their money matters. Neither university has been willing to confess exactly how much of their investments go toward companies that contribute directly to the devastation of our biosphere, but Yale has been found to have invested $122 million in an oil fracking company.

The protest’s bold call-out exposed the glibness of the promises of progression toward climate-friendly action made by both Harvard and Yale in previous years. Harvard specifically pledged to end its own fossil fuel use by 2050 in 2018; yet even in light of the divestment protest, the university continues to refuse to withdraw its investments in fossil fuel companies. Harvard and Yale claim that focusing their

research efforts, which are funded by billion-dollar fossil fuel endowments, in climate solutions will be more effective than simply divesting from the fossil fuel industry. This plan seems extremely counter-intuitive; why sustain the operations that are causing the environmental damage their research is trying to fix? There is a compelling alternative in ethical impact investment, described by the Global Impact investing Network as investments made with the intent of promoting positive social and environmental change in addition to financial return, that is not being considered. It is deeply concerning that these leaders in academia and climate research are thoroughly complicit in propping up the destructive industry that they claim to be heading the transition away from.

The divestment movement, where individuals and institutions choose to withdraw their investments and stocks from companies that profit from practices which harm the environment, has gained a lot of momentum as more people realize that they have the power to

choose what kind of world they want to support as consumers.

In our current world, fossil fuels have a seeming omnipresence in our lives; where we eat, how we commute, the clothes we wear, and all other facets of our lives have been made possible by fossil fuels in one way or another.

Harvard and Yale’s complicity in supporting the status quo is understandable; we are all complicit. This mentality of resignation to the thrall of fossil fuels, however, is the biggest impediment to a cleaner, better future.

If we want to effectively change our world for the better, we must not only divest from the fossil fuels industry, but also from our own climate pessimism.

The protest organizers described the traditional HarvardYale football rivalry as “antiquated” in the face of the current global climate crisis. When they made the game a platform for their climate advocacy, it was a call for a departure from the way we have always done things and a movement toward a different future, which seems more and more possible every day with the

rise of renewable energy technologies. It was a call to resist complacency and reclaim the power to shape our world by investing ethically. For most individuals, taking agency might look like starting a community garden, petitioning for a switch to electric heating and cooling systems in your building, or something as simple as walking the 10 blocks to the grocery store instead of ordering groceries online.

Nearly 500 crimson and navy blue shivering bodies had gathered on the green lawn before the protest was dissolved by local authorities. What had started as an intrusion of about 100 rowdy protesters grew into a demonstration of solidarity and an eagerness for change as hundreds of spectators, abandoning the tensions of the enduring Harvard-Yale rivalry, spilled onto the field in support of the protest. In an embrace of that same spirit, we can all make a stronger effort to question the institutions we participate in and choose to stand in solidarity with communities that suffer at the hands of the fossil fuel leviathan.

Trouble in Paradise: Costa Rica’s Ecotourism Problem

By YEWON CHANG

As capuchin monkeys scurried up palm trees and rainbowbilled toucans soared through the summer breeze, I walked down Manuel Antonio National Park’s coveted beach. During my first summer visit to Costa Rica, these were the only moments when I had the beach to myself, so I took a moment to look out at the gentle waves crashing on the beach, a mosaic of turquoise turning orange under the burning sunset.

As the poster child of ecotourism, Costa Rica is home not only to volcanoes, rainforests, beaches, and five percent of the world’s biodiversity, but also to a continuous stream of 2.7 million camera-wielding tourists every year. The ecotourism industry on the island is extremely profitable, having generated over 5.5 percent of Costa Rica’s gross domestic product (GDP) since 2010. Costa Rica’s economy has grown so quickly that, with a GDP of $60.464 billion, it now ranks as the second-largest economy in Central America. On the surface, Costa Rica seems to be a small, welcoming nation whose economic and environmentallyfriendly growth should serve as an example to all others.

Yet many experts, policymakers, and researchers often overlook Costa Rica’s long list of pressing problems stemming from the very market it depends on. Though the island’s ecotourism industry serves as the bedrock of its economy, it is also the cause of its many internal failures.

First, the ecotourism industry fails to fulfill the important goal of “sustain[ing] the well-being of the local people,” as mandated by the International Ecotourism Society. An example of this is the town of Quepos, home to the same Manuel Antonio National Park—an extremely popular tourist destination that receives roughly 150,000 visits every year.

The next day, when a local named Maria Jose Quinteros and I walked down the main streets of Quepos, dodging aggressive tour guides, she described to me how droves of tourists arrive, eager to experience untouched and exotic wonders of nature. Developers wishing to make an easy profit

off of foreigners and the land then construct numerous hotels and eco-resorts to cater to their basic needs, often at extravagant prices. The Costa Rican Chamber of Hotels now registers a total of 2,559 hotels throughout the country, with the touristpopular Central Valley and Guanacaste regions accommodating an overwhelming 68 percent of such construction. Most often, these developers happen to be wealthy foreign investors or large multinational corporations that waste no time acquiring, renovating, and exploiting swathes of land that would otherwise have provided food, shelter, energy, and recreational space for local communities. This competition between mega-resorts and local populations for essential resources almost always ends in the latter’s sound defeat, as foreign investors routinely push indigenous communities out to make room for luxury developments.

An increase in tourists also leads to a higher cost of living in the affected areas, which serves to push locals from their homes at unprecedented rates. According to Trading Economics, the overall cost of food in Costa Rica has increased by 1.84 percent since November 2018.

Food price inflation was measured at an average of 5.58 percent from 2007 to 2019. The prices of broccoli, strawberries, beef, cauliflower, and tuna, and medicine in Quepos are highly inflated to match the elevated price range of wealthy tourists. The cost of a basket of food products that met the demands of an average foreign tourist was “82 percent of the average per capita [annual] income of the poorest Costa Ricans” in 2013.

Furthermore, foreign companies often seize opportunities to monopolize the exploitation and manufacture of basic goods on the island. An example of this is Price Club—better known as PriceSmart in Costa Rica— whose operation and construction of exclusive, costly membership clubs largely targets the

wealthy elites of Central and South America. The company’s business model is to construct warehouse stores in tourist-popular areas, with its most recent construction being the eighth club in Liberia, Costa Rica. After PriceSmart enters a small town, local businesses are unable to compete with such a large corporation, especially when tourists tend to flock toward these familiar warehouse clubs. The locals, who cannot afford the pricey memberships and thus cannot afford to purchase such goods, go out of business due to falling demand and rising costs.

On a more positive note, the ecotourism industry does provide local jobs for Costa Ricans; the industry employs 19.9 percent of the national workforce. In tourist-popular cities such as Quepos, President Kim Jong Gwan of the Manuel Antonio Hotel San Bada Resort and Spa approximates that the industry is responsible f o r he Spectator

ele Mich

Yi/

T

around 85 percent of local jobs, including careers in reception and gardening. However, major drawbacks follow such job booms. The tourism industry and the jobs themselves are seasonal; the best season to visit Costa Rica is winter or summer. According to Quinteros, hotels and other tourist developments mainly hire locals during the busy seasons.

When the number of tourists dramatically declines between those times, hotels immediately fire their workers to save money.

The workers could be hired once again after the drought ends, but it is far from guaranteed; steady jobs and steady incomes are a rarity in Quepos. According to the International Monetary Fund, Costa Rica’s unemployment rate is forecasted to rise to 11.5 percent in December 2019, a number no doubt driven up by the hire-and-fire practices of the luxury resorts which populate the island.

What remains constant, however, is the great economic inequality driving a wedge between Costa Rican citizens.

While wealthy landowners and large tourist corporations become wealthier and wealthier, the locals become poorer and poorer. A glance at the country’s extremely high Gini coefficient, a measurement of national wealth inequality, of 0.49 compared to the global average of 0.32, reveals all. An OECD report in 2015 revealed that the average income of the wealthiest 10 percent of households in Costa Rica outranked that of the poorest 10 percent by a factor of 32.

The ecotourism industry plays a huge r o l e in encouraging such inequality, as wealthy developers and investors flock to the island to hoard their savings, protect their investments, and exploit the labor of the poorest citizens, all at the expense of Costa Rica’s population and economy.

Ironically, the ecotourism industry destroys the environment that it by definition must conserve to retain its profits. When Quinteros and I finally reached the local and public Espadilla beach, I couldn’t help but notice the clear differences between it and the protected Manuel Antonio Park. As young children splashed in the beach’s murky, greasy waves, I noticed a multitude of Coca-Cola cans, gum wrappers, and chip bags scattered across the sand. The harmful effects of constant over-visitation of such beaches and other natural sites are, in effect, uncontrollable. With many national parks receiving up to 200,000 visitors a year, the island government faces

real struggles in its attempts to control the rowdy tourists, who themselves are often unaware of their environmental impact on Costa Rica’s fragile biodiversity.

Finally, the rapid development of jungle habitats and the use of beaches as dumping grounds for waste products both account for untold destruction.

For example, the University of Costa Rica revealed that Costa Rica lost over half of its beloved monkey population from 1996 to 2008 due to large-scale habitat destruction. Tamarindo, a popular town in the Guanacaste province, experienced heavy rains that overflowed a popular resort’s septic tanks, causing tons of raw sewage to spill into the ocean in 2004. The problem continues to this present day, with poor water quality and extreme fecal contamination tainting the oncehealthy ocean water.

Though the consequences of the ecotourism industry’s grip on Costa Rica will undoubtedly haunt the nation for quite some time, immediate action can and must be taken to improve its desolate situation. The government should understand that the citizens have a right to the protection of their environment and well-being if the ecotourism industry refuses to step up and do its part in recognizing that right. This includes the passage of strict tourism-centered legislation, such as limits on how many tourists can visit the island at once and on further expansion of hotels and resorts. The end goal of such reform would be to return control of Costa Rica’s environment and economy back to its indigenous citizens.

The reality of picture-perfect Costa Rica is disappointing, to say the very least. The ecotourism industry’s contradiction of its own values, seen in its willingness to exchange the livelihood of the local people and the state of the environment for pure profit, is horrifying. Costa Rica must look past its facade of beauty and untouchable nature and acknowledge the truth.

A greedy industry is corrupting a tiny, vulnerable nation, and Costa Ricans must regain control of their island before it becomes nothing but a poor, polluted, and corrupt breeding ground for wealthy investors.

Page 14

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Opinions It’s That Time of Year

By AYA ALRYYES Picture this: you’re on the subway, stressing out because you’re already 10 minutes late to school. Maybe your mom made you help your little brother put on his shoes (which always takes forever), or maybe you were so tired from staying up all night studying that you took a few extra (read: dozen) minutes to wake up. In any case, you’re at risk of being called out in front of your entire first-period class for your tardiness, and your heart is beating increasingly faster as you obsessively check the clock, wishing you could turn it back.

The concept of time is largely intangible yet incredibly powerful.

It completely governs our lives, though we only really notice its existence when it causes us stress.

As New Yorkers, we’re used to this feeling. There’s a reason our city is known as “the city that never sleeps.” At all hours, people are rushing around trying to get to their destinations on time.

In America, time is a currency.

Our vocabulary includes phrases like “wasting time,” “spending time,” “losing time,” and the like.

It isn’t even subtle: think about the common saying that “time is money.” And because we’re used to this perception of time

as something to only be lost or saved, it’s difficult to imagine that other countries could treat time differently and not as a stressor.

Before this past summer, which I spent in Morocco, I never thought about how my own culture’s perception of time affected my life. I knew, of course, that I would find many aspects of Moroccan culture new or different, but I didn’t even think to imagine that perception of time could be part of that. But slowly, I started to notice. When I was walking with my host family, they would stop and exchange pleasantries with everyone they ran into, irrespective of whether or not they had somewhere to be. Yes, we were often a couple of minutes late to appointments or plans, but it didn’t seem to matter. Lateness seemed to be expected, and meeting times were more like suggestions than strict deadlines. After noticing this, I asked my teacher about it, and he told me a common Moroccan saying—an Arabic proverb—which goes, “One has all the necessary time to make it in life.”

I found this to be an excellent reflection of what I had observed over those past few weeks.

I liked the idea that human interaction was more important than arbitrarily set deadlines or

appointment times. The proverb also implies the uselessness of treating life like a race: time isn’t something to lose or waste, nor is it something that causes undue stress. As such, it should not be allowed to govern one’s life.

This view of time is called “multi-active time,” and its name comes from the linguist and world traveler Richard Lewis. He defined people who follow this concept as those who plan “their priorities not according to a time schedule but according to the relative thrill or importance that each appointment brings with it.”

Multi-active time is observed primarily in Arab, African, and Latin American countries.

Multi-active time is essentially the polar opposite of the strictly linear American view of time.

Lewis describes linear time as the belief in time as something that must be completely planned out lest it slip away forever. Time is not something to be trifled with in linear time cultures and must thus be meticulously planned out; timetables, schedules, and agendas are regarded as being of the utmost importance. For people who live in multi-active time systems, though, the idea of adhering to a strict schedule is strange and almost amusing.

Moroccan café culture is the

perfect embodiment of this idea of multi-active time. Cafés are sacred places for socializing with friends and strangers and watching the world go by. The tables are often placed outside or right by a window, and the seats always face the street. People will spend hours there, just enjoying life and being with friends. And you’ll seldom find a clock in a Moroccan café.

Now that I’m back from Morocco, I’m all too aware of the bustle of New York City, and I’ve stopped looking at the busy culture of the Big Apple as something favorable or desirable.

Sometimes I want nothing more than to scold all those people running around, worried above all else about wasting time. I want to tell them that there’s more to life than being on time and getting the most things done in the least amount of time. They may have checked everything off their checklists at the end of the day (or night), but if it’s at the expense of their happiness and human connections, what’s the point?

At the beginning of the school year, as I entered the subway station on my way to meet a friend, I saw the arrival time monitor by the turnstiles flashing the familiar “0 mins” warning.

Doing some quick calculations, I

In Defense of Required Courses

By BRIAN MOSES The scene is familiar to all of us. Trying to conceal a yawn, you peer at the incomprehensible gibberish on the SmartBoard, and then glance ruefully at your blank notebook. You think to yourself: What’s even the point of biology? Why do I have to take this class? When am I going to use any of this? Why am I even in this school?

We’ve all had the experience of suffering through a painfully boring class against our will. And given this experience, it’s tempting to want to do away with required classes altogether—after all, we are happier and more motivated learning what we actually want to learn. But required courses at Stuyvesant, and indeed schools in general, serve two incredibly important functions.

The first of these is compelled career exploration. At the start of high school, many of us have no idea what we want to study in

life; I certainly know that I didn’t.

And an even larger percentage of people might think that they know what they want to study, but will go on to change their minds.

The reason we’re forced to take a number of classes that we didn’t choose for ourselves is because just maybe we’ll find a new interest in life that we never would’ve found otherwise.

Sure, you might hate biology. Many people do, and I was certainly one of them. But you might love it, and that’s what matters. There are almost certainly dozens of people every year who have not considered a career in biology-related fields, but later find their life’s passion taking the course. And there are dozens of others who have the same experience in classes like Chemistry, Physics, and more. I found my calling through my Introduction to Computer Science (CS) class.

I’d resisted my older brother’s advice of joining the school’s robotics team (he had been a program-

ming lead at Staten Island Tech’s team), because CS seemed weird and alien. I wasn’t convinced at all that I would like it, let alone be any good at it.

But, as I little could have guessed, I absolutely loved it, and I decided that it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Now in my senior year, with the ability to finally select my own courses, I’ve decided to take numerous CS electives. I can absolutely say that I’ve enjoyed these electives far more than I enjoyed Freshman Biology. And I am sure that there are people who right now are taking Genetics or Human Diseases, which they enjoy far more than they did Introduction to CS. But it’s doubtful that I would have found these classes without being forced to take an Introduction to CS class first, just as Biology majors may not have found their calling if they had not been forced to take a Freshman biology class.

There’s another very differ-

ent reason why required classes are critical: they can help us become better and more informed citizens. Stuyvesant students are some of the smartest students in the country. Many of us will go on to become great engineers, doctors, physicists. But even if we’d rather take a class suiting our future major, or even if we’re not interested at all in classes like history, or government, or economics, it’s extremely important that we do take these courses.

When we grow up, we’re going to assume all the responsibilities of being good citizens, like serving on juries, paying our taxes, and casting informed votes. For some of us, that will happen as soon as next year. The strength and effectiveness of our democratic system rests on an informed citizenry casting an educated vote. When that doesn’t happen, elected officials are held unaccountable and free to make poor choices that can adversely affect the entire country.

realized that I’d be able to make it onto the train before the doors closed (despite the platform being several flights below the turnstile) if I sprinted. So I sighed and began racing toward the train, which I could already see pulling in. As I raced down the platform, bag banging against my back and the sole of my worn right sneaker flopping around, almost tripping me, I had a bit of an epiphany.

Why am I doing this? What’s the point of putting myself through this stress? So I simply stopped running. I waited for the next train and texted my friend that I’d be a couple of minutes late. And guess what? It wasn’t the end of the world. I alleviated a little of my own stress, and nothing bad came of it.

Now when I leave school, I don’t shove my earphones in and half run to the station. I take a second to just smell the winter air.

When I walk around the city, I’m more aware of everyone around me as well as their existence as human beings. I’ve stopped treating them just as obstacles to shove past while rushing off somewhere. My time in Morocco let me appreciate being alive in this incredible city. I believe we’d all be enjoying life a little more if we took a page out of the book of Moroccan café culture.

It shouldn’t be hard to see why a knowledge of government, or history, or economics is essential to that process. Without a knowledge of how the economy works, or of themes from our history, it’s impossible to truly cast an informed vote.

For you, it may be more fulfilling to take a course that you would want or have a free period, especially if you’re not interested in subjects like government. But if everyone holds a mindset that their personal enjoyment of their courses is more important than their being an informed citizen— and by extension the well-being of the country—we will all be worse off. And that’s why courses like government, history, and economics should be required. They might pique our interest in the same way that biology or chemistry might, but even more importantly, they provide a societal benefit far greater than the cost of those 41 minutes.

The Dark Truth Behind the Modeling Industry

By MAYA NELSON

When the word “model” comes to mind, many may think of the beautiful faces in magazines, on television, and even on social media. Most do not think of the daily struggles and harassment that the people to whom those faces belong experience.

The public only sees an image of perfection—an ideal face or body depicted in the media. They do not see the pain that goes on behind the scenes, a pain that results from constant pressure on models to live up to this ideal of perfection. When people see an image of a model, a common thought is “I wish I looked like that” or “I wish I could be them.”

If they only knew the hardships that these people have to face; the modeling industry is plagued with secrets and scandals that need to be brought to light in order for models to receive better treatment.

One of the main issues in the modeling industry is sexual assault.

Because models are independent contractors, agents and other staff

often think that workplace laws don’t apply to them. As a result, around 30 percent of models report experiencing inappropriate touching on the job, 60 percent cite a lack of privacy while changing clothes, and 28 percent have been pressured to have sex with someone at work, according to statistics from the Model Alliance. Besides sexual assault, the Model Alliance also describes major health issues that models face because of their jobs. 31 percent of models have had eating disorders; 68 percent suffer from anxiety, depression, or both; and 76 percent have been exposed to drugs for recreational purposes. These statistics are likely caused by the extreme pressure models face to look a certain way and the stress that they face from the standards that this industry holds them to. If you think that’s horrible, the Model Alliance also says that 93 percent of models start working before the age of 21, with 55 percent starting work at ages 13-16. The people developing these severe health issues and confronting assault are children and teenagers. From a young age, these

people have to deal with a variety of struggles that a person of this age should not have to face, some of these struggles staying with them for the rest of their lives.

Poor conditions and harassment are rampant inside the modeling industry; yet there is another issue that affects both those inside and outside of the industry. The modeling industry lacks a crucial component: diversity in race, body type, height, gender, and many more demographic groups. When people are constantly bombarded with the idea that perfection and beauty is a thin, tall white girl, their self-esteem and self-image can be severely affected. This ideal is unachievable for most, leading to the majority of people feeling excluded and not represented. When the only people being represented in advertising fit such a narrow cliché, others may go out of their way to fit it. And people trying to change their appearance to look like the standard of beauty represented in the media can lead to them developing eating disorders and other detrimental behavior.

In fact, according to an analysis

of a collection of different studies on the media, children, and eating disorders, “exposure to unrealistic and often unhealthy body images can influence young people’s perceptions of their own body shape and size as well as their own sense of body satisfaction. The effect of the media may also extend to the development of specific, and possibly harmful, weight losing behaviours.”

Though recent efforts have been made to diversify the modeling industry, there is still a long way to go. Recently, modeling companies have been more open to hiring models of different races and sizes. For example, companies like Lorde Inc. and JAG Models have been advocates for this movement and they themselves hire models of all different backgrounds. Even so, there is still so much more that needs to be done in terms of making the industry completely open and accepting of all different people. This would make many more people feel included and that they are beautiful too.

It is quite clear that the modeling industry needs reform. But how

do we make these changes? A start would be to make the minimum age for modeling 18. This would prevent a lot of young people from experiencing the hardships of the industry. In addition, it is up to us as the public to urge these companies to enact stricter regulations on preventing sexual assault and ensure that models have a voice when it comes to harrassment and mental health. We need to encourage models who have faced assault to speak out about their experiences, and having companies be more open to listening to models about these issues would help.

Companies need to strive toward increasing their inclusivity and diversity. Now, of course, we cannot force companies to hire more diverse models, but we can still push for these reforms to be made and encourage these companies to do so; for instance, we can make sure to buy more from companies that adopted more diverse hiring practices. If these changes were implemented, not only would the models in the industry thrive, but all those affected by the media models appear in would be happier too.

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 15

Opinions Bloomberg, New York, and Stop-and-Frisk: An Era of Hard Legacies

By JULIE HA New York City Mayors Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael R. Bloomberg have contributed greatly to the evolution of policing, presenting a unique era of aggressive tactics in New York City. Bloomberg, in particular, is notorious for his endorsement of the “Stop, Question, and Frisk” (SQF) strategy employed under his administration. SQF gave New York Police Department officers the authority to stop and search anyone under reasonable suspicion of being involved in criminal activity. The results of tactics like SQF are patterns of discrimination against people of color and damage to low-income communities and neighborhoods.

Over the years of Bloomberg’s support for SQF, people of color were subject to frequent racial profiling, intrusive and violent searches, and often unprompted questioning. Of the millions of “random” pat-downs conducted

by NYPD officers during Bloomberg’s 12-year tenure, a disproportionate 87 percent of people patted down were African-American or Latinx. Only 6 percent of those people gave officers a reasonable cause for arrest.

One notable instance of SQF is the 2011 stopping of a Black 17-year-old by the name of Alvin in Harlem. The NYPD officers present at the scene were incentivized to act because Alvin was “looking” at them suspiciously with his hood on. One officer threatened to arrest Alvin for “being a [EPLETIVE] mutt” while another threatened to break his arm and punch him in his face. In line with statistics from all over the city, the officers did not find that Alvin had broken the law in any way and eventually let him go.

Interactions with the police like this one continue to generate serious emotional, psychological, and physical trauma to both individuals and communities. The public, particularly shocked by Alvin’s

By RAE SEONG JEONG If you take the 2 or 3 train from Chambers Street to 14th Street, transfer to the M train, and ride 20 minutes to Rockefeller Center, you’ll find yourself at the largest art distribution center in the world: Christie’s Auction House. It was here where the only Leonardo da Vinci painting available for sale was bought for a whopping $450 million. It was also where the most valuable private collection of art—that of Peggy and David Rockefeller— was sold at an auction for over $835 million. As one of the five global auction houses responsible for over half of the world’s art sales (a market currently valued at over $67.4 billion), Christie’s remains accessible (and affordable) to only the wealthiest and most ambitious art collectors.

Yet obtaining seemingly rare and priceless artworks could also be as easy as placing an order on Amazon. In fact, you can purchase a wide variety of valuable antiques and artifacts on Amazon, eBay, Facebook, or WhatsApp with a simple click of your mouse. You might not even have to do any browsing at all; sellers may randomly message you offering to sell you rare, longlost artifacts at outrageously low prices. Several art collectors told The Wall Street Journal two years ago that they received Facebook messages from strangers offering them gold Roman coins, funerary figurines, and even an ancient

young age and the height of escalation, was outraged; yet it gave Bloomberg no reason to doubt his unwavering support for SQF, justifying the tactic and, sometimes unreasonable, police action with results. At the time, Bloomberg credited SQF for driving down crime rates in New York City, stating, “Every day, [Police] Commissioner [Ray] Kelly and I wake up determined to keep New Yorkers safe and save lives. And our crime strategies and tools, including stop, question, frisk, have made New York City the safest big city in America.”

If Bloomberg did indeed use proper rationale for attributing low crime rates to SQF, crime in New York should have risen dramatically in 2013 when newly elected mayor Bill de Blasio abandoned Bloomberg’s SQF policy. Under the de Blasio administration, however, NYPD street stops declined by roughly 98 percent and crime rates plummeted to new lows not seen since the 1950s.

At the United States Naval Academy’s 2019 Leadership Conference in January, Bloomberg continued to praise SQF as being responsible for the significant drop in homicides during his tenure. In response to a question about the targeting of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans under SQF, Bloomberg responded, “We focused on keeping kids from going through the correctional system. Kids who walked around looking like they might have a gun, remove the gun from their pockets and stop it.”

SQF, a pillar of Bloomberg’s political legacy, finally lost Bloomberg’s glowing accolades last month in the days just before the former mayor announced his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg apologized for SQF while speaking at the Christian Cultural Center, a majority Black church in Brooklyn. “I can’t change history. However, today, I want you to know that I realize back then I was wrong,” he said.

Yet even as he acknowledged the negative impacts which ignorant law enforcement had on such communities, it is unclear as to whether or not candidate Bloomberg actually cares about the effects of SQF policies on communities of color.

In stating that “The fact is, far too many innocent people were being stopped while we tried to do that.

And the overwhelming majority of them were Black and Latino,” Bloomberg overlooks the fact that police used racial profiling in their routine SQF’s by reducing statistics on the disproportonate number of people of color subjected to SQF as being a matter of coincidence and inevitability as opposed to being conflated with prejudice and intention. Regardless, Bloomberg’s apology comes six years too late: the damage, injustice, and longterm trauma to communities of color is already done.

Under Bill de Blasio’s administration, one would assume that policing practices in NYC have finally evolved to ensure a safe and equitable city. This could not be further from the truth. Since January 2014, a Black police officer and now-Sergeant in the NYPD, Edwin Raymond, has been recording his interactions with his partners and those in positions of authority.

The purpose of these recordings is to journal his attempts to change the NYPD’s “inherently racist” policies. These policies are ones that Raymond believes contrasted with the characteristics of a new era of policing.

Once his journey gained momentum, on behalf of other minority officers, in August 2015, Raymond and 11 other officers, all of whom are Black or Latino, joined together as the whistleblowing group NYPD 12 to file a classaction suit against the department for requiring that police officers meet quotas for arrests and court summons in whichever location they are stationed. If quotas are not met, officers often faced demotion or the threat of being dismissed. Despite the NYPD repeat-

edly claiming that quotas do not exist, the suit accuses the NYPD of violating minorities’ Fourteenth Amendment rights as well as a 2010 state ban on such quotas.

As risky as it was for the NYPD 12 to speak out, confirming the existence and active use of quotas was and is crucial in informing the public on law enforcement’s prioritization of the quantity of arrests and court summons over the severity of the crime(s) behind them.

Even more so, the quota system is meticulously designed to concentrate arrests and court summons in minority communities. In an interview with Jennifer Gonnerman from The New Yorker, Sergeant Raymond admits that the NYPD does not enforce quotas in predominantly White areas like Park Slope. Instead, they are enforced in areas already deemed high-crime like Flatbush, Crown Heights, Harlem, and Mott Haven. Not coincidentally, these neighborhoods are predominantly populated by people of color. Drawing a parallel from the way Bloomberg painted the disproportionate effects of policing of communities of color as a coincidence in his apology, racial profiling in the status quo is certainly not up to fate. By using people of color as a means to generate revenue, arrest quotas simply extend the impact of the SQF strategy that criminalized minority communities for minor offenses.

The NYPD 12’s courage in exposing and taking action against the quota system made it clear that racial profiling is not a thing of the past. It is alive and well in New

Regardless, Bloomberg’s apology comes six years too late: the damage, injustice, and long-term trauma to communities of color is already done.

A Picture Worth a Thousand Dinar

tomb—all for sale at suspiciously low cost.

The suspicion wasn’t unwarranted. After some investigation, United States Intelligence officials discovered the art’s true origins—and no, these products were not counterfeits or forgeries. The low-cost antiques often found online are in fact illegally excavated or stolen artifacts, sourced from dig sites all around the world.

Satellite images of historical cities and landmarks in the Middle East have revealed a shocking discovery: thousands of illegal excavations in Syria and Iraq, visible as pockmarks among some of the world’s most important ancient ruins like Mari and DuraEuropos in Syria. About 1,000 miles away in eastern Bulgaria, a police raid of four homes uncovered a gold mine of looted antiquities: 19 classical statues and fragments of marble or limestone, including a square tablet possibly dating back nearly 5,000 years. After extensive analysis of the artifacts, archaeologists and various experts managed to trace the art back to the Islamic State militant group, better known as ISIS. When the Islamic State was at the height of its power in 2014, the terror organization began the systematic destruction and excavation of various historical sites in Iraq and Syria to amass revenue for the caliphate. Islamic State militants robbed Iraq’s Mosul Museum, stealing antiquities

up to 8,000 years old. They even detonated bombs in temples in Palmyra, an ancient trading outpost in Syria, and destroyed the ancient Iraqi city of Hatra, a trading center on the Silk Road during Roman times.

Interestingly, the group’s persistent destruction of art seemed to contradict their goals, which were initially understood to be exclusively financial. Turns out, the Islamic State’s interest in art wasn’t only for revenue. The New York Times reported in 2016 that the historical objects and sites the Islamic State destroyed were heresy to the group’s radical fundamentalist ideology, which is rooted in Wahhabism. In Palmyra, for example, where IS militants blew up two historic tombs—one of a Shiite saint and another of a Sufi scholar—those responsible claimed it was because of the two figures’ status as heretical idols.

The Islamic State released videos in March of 2015 showing militants shooting at and bulldozing the historical sites of Hatra and Nimrud in Iraq. The footage went viral, allowing the group to dramatically enhance their public outreach and, by extension, boost recruitment.

Though ISIS later fell from power by December of 2017, experts still urge against releasing a sigh of relief. Indeed, the fall of the group left a huge power vacuum in the territories it once held. Governmental security is still largely absent in the region, and instability ravages the land

York City, and masking it through claims of fairer policing and intentional lack of transparency between communities of color and those with uniforms is equivalent to ignoring the fact that racism is systemic. Furthermore, the fact that the NYPD 12 are all people of color presents more gray areas on what compromises are necessary between minority communities and the NYPD. As it is justified for minority communities to protest the politics and morality of policing entirely due to past traumas, the NYPD 12’s choice to change the system from within complicates fairer policing to more than just a question of policy. It is a question of framework. The distrust that has built up over the beginning of the 21st century renders the fight for fairer policing something politicians like Bloomberg and de Blasio ignore: unlike the majority of what our political discourse has consisted of, issues of policing cannot be categorized into binary structures. Instead, we must have more nuanced discussions on how, amidst fear and fading optimism, our understanding of justice is not akin to law in our realities.

From Bloomberg’s SQF era and late apology to the quota system, the relationship between communities of color and the NYPD has been strained, and police legitimacy has not been easy to restore.

Nonetheless, SQF has created a legacy of racial inequality, distrust, and lack of transparency and a new era of policing New Yorkers under Bill de Blasio that may not be so new after all.

ISIS once occupied. Under these circumstances, the reality is that countless ISIS affiliates (like Al Qaede in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP) have the potential to coalesce into a threat far greater and capable than ISIS was at the height of their power, and the art trade that ISIS left behind is a treasure trove of revenue that any of the groups may easily access.

The persistent expansion of the illicit art trade has by no means gone unnoticed, but combatting it has been far from fruitful. Mainstream e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay have explicit policies against selling stolen assets, yet detecting illegal sales activities largely depends on reports by buyers who often don’t have enough knowledge to identify seller legitimacy in the first place. This is compounded with a lack of accountability inherent in online selling platforms; The Wall Street Journal estimates that upwards of 80 percent of antiquities for sale online have no legal documentation whatsoever.

Further, catching smugglers at international borders or retrieving stolen art that has already been sold is even more difficult: international law regarding art is weak and often contradictory. The United States and other countries do not have explicit jurisdiction over artifact sales from Syria. On top of that, customs can screen only a portion of what crosses international borders, and in countries like Germany, privacy laws protect both buyers and sellers

from suspicion. Finding little success, few countries have shown interest in fighting the illicit trade.

Right now, the United States is one of these reluctant bystanders.

But we haven’t always been that way—nor should we continue to be. In 1943, General Dwight D. Eisenhower facilitated the birth of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, which dedicated American military protection to cultural artifacts across the world; ever since the program was dissolved in 1946 and its functions were undertaken by the State Department, protecting art in foreign countries is hardly on the government’s agenda.

Indeed, even though the State Department’s diplomatic corps has capable Foreign Service Officers at every overseas mission assigned to liaise with leading cultural institutions and ministries, and despite the fact that it retains the international authority to broker agreements with countries to protect cultural artifacts, the State Department has rarely acted to secure, protect, and categorize valuable foreign artifacts in decades.

The market for art has grown exponentially since the 1960s both in our auction houses and in our black markets. While art flourishes in markets both on and off the books, the United States has yet to undertake the mission of protecting international art, even as threats to the integrity of the global art trade continue to expand in scale and number.

Page 16

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Science NASA’s Curiosity Rover Discovers Mysterious Oxygen Spikes on Mars After more than six years of roaming the red planet of our solar system, NASA’s Curiosity rover has granted scientists at home a new mystery: the bizarre discovery of oxygen spikes in the Martian atmosphere.

Curiosity uses its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) portable chemistry lab to determine not only the composition of the surface atmosphere but also how its gases change with the seasons.

The data generated by SAM revealed that carbon dioxide comprises 95 percent of the Martian atmosphere. The carbon dioxide freezes during the winter and sublimates back into a gas during the summer. Other gases in the Martian atmosphere, such as nitrogen and argon, follow predictable patterns according to this seasonal cycling of carbon dioxide.

Since oxygen molecules are relatively stable compounds, scientists expected oxygen levels to remain constant throughout the Martian atmosphere. However, Curiosity found that atmospheric oxygen levels rose by as much as 30 percent during the spring, which was far higher than what scientists had predicted. “This was a very unexpected result, an unexpected phenomenon. There’s

By KAITLYN LEE For years, scientists and engineers alike have been captivated by the idea of microscopic robots that could be utilized for medical purposes. However, an issue that consistently arises when discussing such technologies is fuel sources. Fuel sources need to power nanobots around the human body without damaging its vital tissues and organs.

According to a group of researchers from several universities and institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania and the Harbin Institute of Technology in Shenzhen, China, however, they may have overcome this obstacle. The team claims to have designed a microscale rocket that moves throughout the human body using an unexpected kind of fuel: sound waves.

The rocket itself was designed in the lab of Thomas Mallouk, a professor of the chemistry department at Penn State University. Mallouk and his team began their research by exploring the possibility of using chemicals to fuel microbots and nanobots to travel through the

By JENNA MACKENROTH Hallucinations are one of the best-known neurological phenomena, and their portrayal in culture and religion is undeniably influential on our perception of them.

The sheer diversity of hallucinations, their causes, and their effects has created a lack of understanding about them. Despite their important historical influence, the term “hallucination” itself can be seen as difficult to understand. This, coupled with the stigma which surrounds them, makes it difficult for patients to seek the necessary treatment and care. Understanding the causes, implications, and consequences of hallucinations allows for negative stereotypes about hallucinations to become easier to dispel. The best place to begin when understanding these phantasms is by defining them: so, what are hallucinations?

Hallucinations, formally described as “a profound distortion in a person’s perception of reality, typically accompanied by a powerful sense of reality,” are incredibly diverse. Hallucinations tend to manifest themselves as auditory (hearing sounds which aren’t present), visual (seeing characters or events which

a lot we don’t know about the oxygen cycle on Mars. That’s become apparent,” said Melissa Trainer, a planetary scientist at NASA. Researchers have been working toward finding the culprit for the mysterious oxygen spikes, but there is no clear explanation. A possible source of oxygen could be the chemicals in the Martian dirt, such as hydrogen peroxide and perchlorates. “It’s pretty clear you need a flux from the surface,” Sushil Atreya, a professor of climate and space sciences at the University of Michigan, said.

Hydrogen peroxide is produced as sunlight breaks up carbon dioxide and water vapor, and can stay in the ground for over 10 million years. However, this process would only account for one-tenth of the oxygen molecules needed to explain the rise in oxygen levels. Another possibility lies with perchlorates, which are toxic salts found in the soil. In theory, cosmic radiation could break down the perchlorates into compounds that would release oxygen, but this process is far too slow to adequately explain the oxygen spike.

The oxygen mystery is comparable to the erratic behavior of another gas found on the red planet: methane. Martian air contains a relatively low level of this gas, but for years groups of inde-

pendent scientists have reported dramatic spikes of methane levels in the atmosphere. In June, Curiosity measured a substantial amount of methane—21 parts per billion by volume (ppbv)—

ern,” SAM principal investigator Paul Mahaffy said.

Martian atmospheric methane spikes could be related to its oxygen levels: Curiosity’s SAM readings have shown that oxygen and

relative to the usual range of 0.24 ppbv to 0.65 ppbv. But a few days later, methane levels dropped to less than one ppbv, confusing NASA scientists even more.

“With our current measurements, we have no way of telling if the methane source is biology or geology, or even ancient or mod-

methane concentrations sometimes rise and fall at the same time. However, “it’s certainly not a perfect match,” Dr. Trainer said.

But if there is indeed a correlation between the two gases, then closely observing the behavior of one could help scientists better understand the other. “We’re be-

Ka Seng Soo / The Spectator

By ANGELINA CHANG

Blasting Off Into the Human Body

human body. Prior to their research, these machines had no means to power themselves. For example, a nanoscale “car” created by Professor James Tour and his colleagues at Rice University used Brownian motion: the process by which particles in a liquid move due to collisions of rapid molecules around them. After 15 years of extensive research, Mallouk and his team successfully created a motor that used hydrogen peroxide as an energy source. However, hydrogen peroxide-fueled bots are not suitable for medical use: the chemical is highly toxic to the human body and is incompatible with highly ionic solutions.

Mallouk and his team continued their research to find a compatible fuel source that could drive their microscale rockets through the human body. Through his experimentation with acoustic levitation—the use of sound waves to float objects—Mallouk made an accidental yet astonishing discovery. High-frequency ultrasonic waves, he found, could move these rockets around at extremely high speeds of about 200 nanometers per second. In addi-

tion, the rockets were able to move in both water and highly ionic solutions. Mallouk and his team shifted their efforts to research sound waves, and they were eventually able to design a microscale rocket that used sound waves to propel itself.

Contrary to its name, a microscale rocket is not shaped like a rocket; it is more akin to a roundbottomed cup. The rocket measures 10 microns long and five microns wide. Its inner layers consist of a 10-nanometer-thick layer of nickel and polymer, while the outer layer is made up of a 40-nanometerthick layer of gold. According to a schematic diagram of the rocket, the gold layer assists in steering it around its environment. The rocket is also coated with a hydrophobic chemical known as trichlorosilane, which allows an air bubble to form when the rocket is suspended in liquid. The bubble then gets trapped inside the rocket due to the rocket’s cup-like shape.

Through the use of ultrasound waves, the bubble becomes excited in part due to oscillation at the water-air interface. Afterward, the

entire bubble itself becomes a motor to power the microscale rocket’s movements. An external magnetic field can manipulate the rocket’s direction, while the number of sound waves can change the rocket’s speed.

The microscale rockets have several abilities due to their small size and capable design. Each rocket has its own resonance frequency, allowing it to be controlled independently from other rockets. The precision in steering them also allows the rockets to travel through cellular landscapes. In addition, special fins can assist the rockets to move in three dimensions.

Yet their most unique ability is to move around microscopic particles and cells. The rocket’s movements are so precise that they can move around specific particles without disrupting others present in its surroundings. Mallouk also added that this ability “wasn’t available on a larger scale” and that “there’s a lot of control you can do at this length scale.”

Mallouk and his team plan to continue their research on other potential nanobot fuel sources, as well

Hallucinations: What’s the Big Idea?

don’t physically exist), olfactory (smelling or tasting scents which aren’t present), or tactile (feeling a sensation which isn’t real).

The roots of these phantasms are both physical and chemical.

They can be directly associated with neurological disorders, drug use, and a lack of basic care. A study conducted by scientists Belinda R. Lennox, Bert G. Park, Ian Medley, Peter G. Morris, and Peter B. Jones indicated that schizophrenic hallucinations abnormally hyperactivate the temporal cortex and the prefrontal cortex in patients. The overactivation of neural pathways caused distortions and sudden creation of auditory illusions. Lysergic acid diethylamide acid (LSD acid), one of the best-known hallucinogens, is known to act on serotonin receptors of neurons. The results of serotonin stimulation on specific receptors can lead to cerebral hyperactivity. This causes the brain to create signals without external stimuli, consequently producing illusions.

Despite the extremity of neurological diseases and excessive drug/alcohol usage, hallucinations can also be caused by a lack of sleep and malnutrition. A mental health survey conducted by the World Health

Organization in 2015 revealed that one in 20 people have experienced hallucinations that weren’t connected to drugs, alcohol, or disorders/ diseases.

Owing to the sheer diversity of their causes, the impact of hallucinations on culture and history is undeniable. One of the best examples of their impact on religious culture is illustrated in the manuscript “Scivia,” completed by St. Hildegard of Bingen in 1151. St. Hildegard, formerly a Benedictine nun, reported seeing flashing lights, stars, and fortresses. As she interpreted her visions, she recorded them as the “voice of the Living Light” and compiled them into religious manuscripts, which detailed biblical events such as the creation and the fall of Adam and Eve. Once published, “Scivias” was widely admired throughout the Christian world for its portrayal of divinity. Skeptics of the modern world, however, point out that Hildegarde’s visions of light and stars are very similar to neurological auras, which can appear as intense flashes of light and color, and are known to precede neurological events, such as migraines, seizures, and strokes.

Joan of Arc, known best as the

young girl who led France to victory in the Hundred Years’ War, presents a similar example. Joan claimed to “hear the voice of God,” which guided her to lead the French army against the English. Though once regarded as a divine calling, modern skeptics doubt the validity of Joan of Arc’s “communication with God,” and instead point to auditory hallucinations, likely caused by a form of epilepsy. A study published

by Dr. Giuseppe d’Orsi and Paola Tinnuper states, “Joan of Arc may have had a type of epilepsy that affects the part of the brain responsible for hearing, or ‘idiopathic partial epilepsy with auditory features (IPEAF).’”

In contrast to the past interpretation of hallucinations, the modernday attitude toward them is strongly negative. Hallucinations and mental health are surrounded by a stigma that can be directly traced to their unflattering portrayal in popular culture. A study published in the Singapore Medical Journal indicated that patients who experienced hallucinations often saw the media’s portrayal of their conditions as offensive and unrealistic and stated that the mentally ill were stereotyped as violent, dangerous, and bizarre. Not only

ginning to see this tantalizing correlation between methane and oxygen for a good part of the Mars year,” Atreya said. “I think there’s something to it. I just don’t have the answers yet. Nobody does.”

In order to crack the oxygen mystery, Dr. Trainer plans to examine more of the air on Mars’s surface with SAM. But since Curiosity only collects gas from one single area, its data cannot confirm whether this oxygen problem occurs only in one area or on the rest of the planet as well.

While it is too early to draw any definitive conclusions about the mysterious oxygen levels, Dr. Trainer can confidently say that “we’re pulling on all the current understanding we have and saying, gosh, it just doesn’t add up.”

So why are scientists so intrigued by this phenomenon?

First of all, part of the fascination behind this discovery is the mystery surrounding it: there is no clear cause behind the fluctuations. The sudden changes in oxygen levels could even point to signs of life on Mars—a prospect scientists have tried and failed to find for decades. While this theory may be far-fetched today, observing these changes in oxygen levels will undoubtedly give scientists a better understanding of our planetary neighbor.

as improve their microscale rockets by making them smaller, faster, and stronger. They hope to work with engineers and roboticists at the University of Pennsylvania to implement computer chips and sensors and make the rockets autonomous.

Mallouk also looks forward to the rockets’ potential in medicine, stating, “We’d like to have controllable robots that can do tasks inside the body: [d]eliver medicine, rotor rooter arteries, diagnostic snooping.”

The innovative microscale rocket design shows promise for the application of nanotechnology in medicine. The rockets seem to be safe and effective for use in the human body. However, more research should be done to explore any limitations of the rockets or negative effects that sound waves may have on our bodies. In addition, other fuel sources that could potentially be even safer and more efficient should be studied closely. But for now, these microscale rockets give hope to a future in which nanotechnology will revolutionize the methods and approaches we use to solve the major health issues we face today.

did this portrayal further the already existing feeling of isolation in mentally ill patients, but it also caused many to avoid seeking treatment for their conditions, fearing social repercussions.

How do we lift the negative veil on hallucinations? One of the easiest ways to raise awareness about mental health is to open the discussion about symptoms and treatment. Basic education about the causes of hallucinations would greatly increase acceptance and understanding. Analysis of their cultural and historical implications, such as the hallucinations of St. Hildegard and Joan of Arc, would also allow the public to understand mental conditions beyond their negative context. An understanding of negative stereotypes would assist in undoing the stigma by allowing potential sufferers to feel more accepted. Research on the causes and effects of hallucinations should also become mainstream, furthering both the scientific and general community’s knowledge about hallucinations. By truly understanding the causes of hallucinations and their cultural impact, it becomes far easier to promote long-overdue universal acceptance for their victims.

Megan Huang / The Spectator

Francesca Nemati / The Spectator

Athena Lam / The Spectator

Zoe Oppenheimer / The Spectator

Megan Huang / The Spectator

Dorin Flocos / The Spectator

Matt Melucci / The Spectator

Zoe Oppenheimer / The Spectator

The Spectator â—? December 20, 2019

Pedro Ezquer / The Spectator

Page 17

Photo Essay

Winter

By SPECTATOR PHOTO DEPARTMENT

Jingwei Liu / The Spectator

Page 18

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Arts and Entertainment Music

By JENNIFER SUN Henry Lau, a Canadian Kpop artist, announced last year that he was leaving the K-pop boy band Super Junior due to the limited chances he was given to establish his career. From the beginning, he was neglected by the entertainment company he worked for (SM Entertainment) and was given fewer opportunities than the Korean members of the group. Henry and another Chinese member in Super Junior, Zhou Mi, were never given the same privileges as the Korean members and were consistently cast aside and inactive outside of special promotions in China.

This specific case is an indicator of the deeper root present in the K-pop industry: the mistreatment of non-Korean idols.

K-pop stands for Korean popular music. Its blend of addictive melodies, synchronized choreography, and multilingual idols makes the genre appealing to Korean and international fans alike. It’s also extremely versatile; even someone who doesn’t understand the lyrics can appreciate it, since a lot of it is very visual: K-pop music videos focus heavily on aesthetics, using costumes and expressive choreography to tell a story, which isn’t

Film

By IVY HALPERN

seen as much in Western music.

Though K-pop is a heavilyAsian music industry, K-pop idols don’t necessarily have to be Korean or even Asian. Kpop companies look for kids as young as 10 around the world to train into the next generation of idols. Foreigners that are chosen are trained in different languages, and often translate songs to reach international markets.

This inequality in the industry is not unprecedented. EXO, a group formed by SM Entertainment, debuted in 2012 with four Chinese and eight Korean members. They were split into two groups: EXO-K, made up by the Korean members, and EXO-M, made up of the Chinese members. EXO-K would sing their songs in Korean, and EXO-M in Chinese. This arrangement was successful at first, but in the next three years, three out of the original four Chinese members left the group, citing uneven pay distribution between the Chinese and Korean members, disregard for basic human rights, and the favoring of EXO-K over EXO-M. Luhan, one of the Chinese members that left, said in his lawsuit that “From the beginning of our debut, EXO-K received support from SM and actively did promotions,

Food

By SASHA BURSHTEYN Coffee is essential for my survival and well-being as a Stuyvesant student and I’m sure many others can relate. I’m also sure that you have a test that you need to study for but haven’t done so for whatever reason. So, here are a few café recommendations so you can be more productive and stop cramming the period before!

Urban Backyard 180 Mulberry Street Nestled between two buildings

but EXO-M had no promotions, received no financial backing, and endured a difficult time.”

Time after time, Korean entertainment companies have neglected non-Korean artists when it comes to promotion, line-distribution, and pay. Often times, foreigners are used as tools to promote diversity and extend audience reach, but nothing more.

Henry Lau, a Canadian artist with Taiwanese and Hong Kong parentage, and Zhou Mi, a Chinese artist, were recruited to be a part of Super Junior-M (SJ-M), a subunit of Super Junior that releases Chinese versions of Super Junior’s music. Outside of SJ-M promotions, they played a limited role in the group and were given few chances to build their reputation in Korea.

Lay, the only Chinese member left in EXO, has been successfully promoting his solo music career in China apart from the rest of the group. Though this can be seen as an effort on SM Entertainment’s behalf to prioritize their Chinese members more, the fact that EXO has basically moved on without their sole Chinese member and that Lay stayed behind so that SM Entertainment could profit from the Chinese music market shows that they haven’t changed their atti-

tude towards non-Korean artists.

Few and far between are non-East Asian K-pop idols.

EXP Edition, the first non-Korean K-pop group, was received extremely poorly for being allAmerican. Reasons for disliking the boy band include their lack of fluency in Korean, appropriation of Korean culture, and most interestingly, the white privilege of the band. This may be because a long, grueling process exists for trainees, and while aspiring K-pop idols in Korea have to train for years and years before they can even have a chance to debut, an all-white band EXP Edition tried to slide into the K-pop industry when they haven’t earned their place there.

It is undeniable that non-Korean K-pop idols are discriminated against. Time after time, fewer opportunities are given to equally talented foreigners.

But this discrimination doesn’t exist exclusively in the K-pop industry. At the Video Music Awards (VMAs) this year, BTS was unable to receive nominations in the major artist categories, despite the fact that their song “Boy With Luv” had over a million sales, and that its video smashed the record for most views in under 24 hours of all time. Instead, the VMAs created

a separate category for them, and awarded them with “Best Kpop.” (Separate categories were not created for Shawn Mendes, a Canadian artist, or 5 Seconds of Summer, an Australian group.)

Though creating a separate award for K-pop could have been intended as an act of respect for the genre, that only works if K-pop artists are also considered fairly for the major awards.

In the Korean music industry, this double standard when it comes to foreigners is mirrored.

Just as BTS has to work harder to achieve as much as American artists in the Western music industry, foreigners like EXP Edition have to earn their right to even exist in the Korean music industry. The difference between the two genres, however, is the audience. If K-pop fans were exclusively Korean, then entertainment groups like SM would be justified in giving Korean idols more opportunities than foreigners. But the irony is that while K-pop in the past decade has become an international phenomenon, Korean entertainment groups largely neglect non-Korean idols and use them as tools only when needed to appeal to international markets.

Frozen II: A Franchise Follows a Generation which included playing with the toys inspired by the movie, dressing up as the characters, and continuously listening to the soundtrack. Since the original was released, much has changed in our culture, and this movie is Disney’s way of wrestling with it.

Like its predecessor, “Frozen II” begins with a flashback from Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna’s (Kristen Bell) childhood, in which their parents tell them about the enchanted forest and the five senses in it: air, fire, water, earth, and one more, which is unknown. The sisters’ father

Sabrina Chen / The Spectator

The beloved Anna and Elsa have returned in “Frozen II,” which, like the original film, is about the sisters’ adventures to save Arendelle, the kingdom they rule over. The movie is directed

by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, who won an Oscar for directing the original “Frozen” (2013).

When “Frozen” came out, most of us were seven to 11, and now we are a part of the built-in audience that is helping this second film do so well. “Frozen” was part of many of our childhoods,

K-pop’s Superficial Attempt at Embracing Diversity

went to the enchanted forest when he was younger and ended up in a battle with the natives.

While everyone else he came with ended up getting killed or stuck inside, he was saved by their mother, who turned out to be a native of the forest. While it could have been interesting that Elsa and Anna were descendants of the Native people in the forest (through their mother), neither sister bears any resemblance, since they are white. Their mother, it seems, left her Native culture behind and also looked nothing like her people. This part seemed forced, as though the writers felt they needed to diversify the film in 2019. The cultural reckoning, which even if critiqued, should also be noted.

Elsa was born with powers to create and control ice; unsurprisingly, a few scenes later, Elsa opens the forest and Arendelle is in danger. Both the Native people and the senses of the forest want revenge on Arendelle.

No Disney movie is complete without the heroes going off to save the day. Elsa and Anna journey to find the forest along with Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), Sven, and Olaf (Josh Gad), whom the

sisters met during their last adventures to save Arendelle. In the end, they make peace between the forest and Arendelle when Elsa finds out that her grandfather is to blame for destroying the Natives’ lifestyle. In doing so, she saves Arendelle. In addition, the healing that takes place comes along with the admission of their grandfather’s crimes against the Natives, which is a reflection of our cultural moment. In truth, it is stunning for a Disney film to blame its patriarchal forbearers for their misdeeds.

Kristoff and Anna get married, and Anna becomes Queen of Arendelle. Even though their marriage was expected, no one expected it to be so awkward. Kristoff had so many failed proposals that weren’t needed to build character and certainly missed the mark in adding humor. Once, he had a whole proposal ready and then ended up proposing to one of the elders of the forest by accident. This was supposed to be funny but fell flat.

Elsa, who turns out to be the unknown fifth sense, stays in the forest while still keeping in touch with Anna. The movie, predictably, ends happily. Should there

be a “Frozen III,” I’m sure that the writers will be able to find another problem for Elsa and Anna to solve. Hopefully, in the next one, the writers will also step up their songwriting, since I couldn’t remember one of the songs or what they were even a mere few days after watching the movie. There was no “Let it Go” of “Frozen II,” or any song remotely close to it. Of all these forgettable songs, though, “Into the Unknown,” which Elsa sings while opening the forest, was the best.

Though the film isn’t perfect, I would still recommend it because ultimately, it was fun to watch these characters again after six years. Olaf was the highlight of the movie. As the scene-stealer, Olaf doesn’t always say the right thing, but it’s definitely the funniest. It’s also a treat to watch a movie with two female heroes who are not the princesses but the queens. Perhaps because I am no longer a preteen, I went in with low expectations, but I came out having enjoyed it. Maybe that is the magic.

A (Study) Guide to Manhattan Cafés on a cute street right by Little Italy, this might just be the coziest spot you’ll come across. It’s impossible to not want to stop and peer inside when you see the colorful plants, pumpkins, and flowers on the outside. In the corner where the wall of the café meets the gelato place next door is a place to sit: a bale of straw with a striped blanket over it. This is definitely different from your typical café seating, but it is a distinctive addition to the café’s “backyard” theme and definitely not any less comfortable. Fairy lights and plants hang from the

ceiling, art decorates the walls, and more plants sit on shelves and tabletops. There are truly a lot of plants here, hence its name; the café is known for being environmentally friendly. The wooden furniture goes perfectly with the nature theme and the faded white walls of the café. The tables are pretty wide, providing a lot of space to spread out your books and papers.

The menu boasts many types of coffee, ranging from regular drip coffee to specialty drinks like their lavender latte, rose latte, and

more, as well as a wide selection of teas if you’re more into that.

Though they may be a bit expensive, they are definitely worth it; the flavors are unique, rich, and delicious. The milk in the cup augments the coffee rather than overpowering it, and the thin, creamy layer of foam on top along with the drawn heart makes the latte taste just as amazing as it looks and smells. They’ve got lots of food options as well—croissants, macarons of various flavors, and cute cupcakes with frosting shaped like succulents.

Variety Coffee Roasters 261 7th Avenue Other locations The large lit-up letters of the words on the outside of the café are pretty hard to miss. This café’s location on the corner of the block allows for the word “Variety” to be written on a different face of the building from “Coffee Roasters.” This will catch your eye and differs from the more plain signs on the buildings around it.

Continued on page 19

The Spectator ●December 20, 2019

Page 19

Arts and Entertainment Food Continued from Page 18 All the noise from the busy Seventh Avenue fades when you walk into this coffee shop that is always full of people with their headphones in, typing away at their keyboards. And the good news is that you can be one of them! There are two rows of circular marble tables: one in front of a brown couch that goes along the entirety of the wall and another closer to the middle of the room. There are also a lot of outlets, which is always helpful. The large windows bring in a lot of natural light and add to the ambiance of the café.

The interior is pretty minimalistic, and the simplicity and neatness of everything are really refreshing.

The well-lit interior, abundance of

Film

By LIANNE OHAYON We’ve all had this lesson in elementary school: Harriet Tubman was a pioneer abolitionist who helped many slaves escape using the Underground Railroad. This synopsis is true, but I have recently learned that it doesn’t quite capture the full story. When “Harriet,” a biographical movie about Harriet Tubman, was released last month, I was intrigued to see what made this production so special. Little did I know that I would be flooded with emotion, captivated by the characters, and blown away by the overall production.

“Harriet” tells Tubman’s story from her beginnings as a slave in Maryland through the end of her life as an integral part of the movement that abolished slavery.

Originally Araminta “Minty” Ross, Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) lived in Maryland as a slave to Edward Brodess. During her childhood, a piece of metal was thrown at Tubman’s head, resulting in her having sporadic “spells” or visions. According to Tubman, these spells are messages from God that have guided her throughout her life.

Fed up with the slave system, Harriet travels to Philadelphia on foot in search of a better and free life with the support of her husband, John Tubman. Astonishingly, Tubman completes the 100-mile trek all by herself (and with the help of God through her spells), and meets William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.), an abolitionist and writer living in Philadelphia.

Greeting her in his office, Still asks Tubman about her previous life as a slave and records her injuries and experiences. “Would you like to pick a new name to mark your freedom?” Still asks. “Most ex-slaves do; any name you want.”

Thinking about her life back home in Maryland, Araminta Ross turns into Harriet Tubman, using her husband’s last name. Still, along with Marie Buchanon (Janelle Monaé), provides aid to Tubman after her arrival. Learning about Tubman’s escape, Brodess’ son, Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn), dedicates countless hours to trying to find the slave that they lost.

Yearning to help bring her family that is still enslaved in Maryland to Philadelphia, Harriet goes back to Maryland despite Still’s warnings and Gideon Brodess’ pursuits.

Because Tubman is successful in bringing all the slaves up north

A (Study) Guide to Manhattan Cafés seating, and overall calmness of the café create the perfect working environment. The service here is fast, and the coffee tastes great and is good quality. However, the food selection is not very large; there are just a couple of baked goods, but you can bring your own food and the workers will not say anything.

Stumptown Coffee Roasters 30 W 8th Street Other locations This coffee shop can be found on the corner of a West Village street, just a few blocks away from Washington Square Park. Your eye will be immediately drawn to the pride flag in the window and the café’s dark green exterior, contrasting greatly with the redbrown buildings around it. Right

in front of the doors is a fridge full of beverages and behind it is a wooden counter with a green marble top that spans almost the full length of the café, if you don’t include the glass case of pastries that splits it into two. The brick wall across from the counter is aligned with wooden benches with black tables and chairs in front of them. There is a good amount of seating inside, as well as a couple of tables outdoors and some standing room at the bar. They also provide a wide selection of books and magazines to feed your knowledge and culture interests.

Their coffee is definitely one of the best quality coffees that I’ve come across; it is strong and will definitely wake you up.

Irving Farm Coffee Roasters

1424 3rd Avenue Other locations With the sleek black exterior of the café somewhat blending in with its surroundings, the sign outside with their logo is probably the most noticeable thing. There are so many places to sit here; the café is larger than it looks from the outside. There are seats by the window, a long rectangular table, and a couple of square ones by the doors of the café, but if you walk forward you will see that there are even more tables. This café definitely has the biggest food selection out of the ones listed. There are breakfast and lunch foods with healthy options, as well as the necessary desserts and baked goods, and everything is reasonably priced.

Harriet: An Outstanding Film About One of the Most Notable Women in American History with no casualties, Still introduces Tubman to the group that he is part of called the Underground Railroad. Through the railroad, Tubman brought over 300 slaves to freedom over 10 years.

Director Kasi Lemmons thoughtfully crafted this biographical film, hiring the right cast members and behind-the-scenes crews, ensuring that their respective parts added another dimension to the film. “Harriet” is her highestgrossing film thus far, but Lemmons’ other productions, like “Eve’s Bayou” (1997) and “Black Nativity” (2013) have given her the right perspective on how “Harriet” should be made.

Lemmons directed this film with a creative viewpoint in mind and showed us what Harriet Tubman’s life was like. Lemmons’ star-studded cast also makes this biographical film an even larger feat.

For those who haven’t heard of Cynthia Erivo, the British actress previously won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Celie in the Broadway revival of “The Color Purple” and also acted on screen. But why cast Erivo? Lemmons commented that Erivo “was prepared in every way you could possibly be prepared to play this role. She was prepared physically, emotionally, spiritually to play Harriet Tubman.” Erivo’s groundbreaking performance speaks for itself. It is full of emotion and charisma and shows her devotion to play this complicated role. Watching this movie, I was entranced by the way Erivo connected not only to the other characters in the movie but with the audience. She nailed every miniscule detail, like Tubman’s reaction when she reaches Pennsylvania and the way she corrected Marie Buchanon about her time in slavery.

Leslie Odom Jr., who played William Still, is also not new to the spotlight. Known for his portrayal of Aaron Burr in the original cast of “Hamilton,” Odom received a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 2016. He, too, executed

his designated role well, giving a great performance that allowed him to give viewers a glimpse of William Still’s life and learn more about a lesser known abolitionist.

Janelle Monaé, who played Marie Buchanon, also gave a performance that helped lighten the mood of “Harriet,” which was a nice break from the heavier information that we get.

Daniel Berlinsky / The Spectator

The cinematographer of “Harriet,” John Toll, gives viewers an experience to really visualize what it looked like as Tubman was migrating from Maryland to Philadelphia with the immaculate clarity of her surroundings. For instance, when Tubman is cornered by Gideon Brodess on her journey and contemplates jumping off a bridge, the crashing waves in contrast with the calm manner of Brodess’ speech draws attention to this monumental moment. The varying color palette of this movie also adds another level of emotion to the plot. Once Tubman reaches the border between Delaware and Pennsylvania at sunrise, the camera faces Erivo, the golden rays and light making this moment more ethereal, emphasizing the way God helped Tubman face all of her obstacles. On the other hand, when Tubman is in slavery, everything is

less vibrant, which highlights the darker nature of Tubman’s situation.

Gregory Allen Howard, the screenwriter of “Harriet,” created a storyline that was easy to understand while still being fleshed out and rich. But this leads to more and more discrepancies between the actual history and the film’s storyline. For one thing, Marie Buchanon probably didn’t exist, and neither did Gideon Brodess, even though both of these characters were crucial in developing the plot. There is some evidence suggesting that they did exist, but we don’t know for sure.

Furthermore, the real historical timeline doesn’t exactly correlate to what happened in the film. According to the film, Tubman had already made many trips to the South by the time the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. In reality, Tubman only made one or two trips by that time, despite Lemmons giving us the sense that Tubman is already very experienced by this time. The film also shows Tubman finding Still upon her arrival and sitting down with him to change her name, but this monumental moment may not have happened.

In fact, Tubman and Still may have even met through the Underground Railroad. Would a more historically accurate storyline make “Harriet” more biographical? Yes, definitely. But did the inaccuracy detract from my overall experience watching the movie? No. “Harriet” is a movie that can make you cry, chuckle, and sit on the edge of your seat all at the same time. The combined forces of Kasi Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard, in addition to the incredible actors that made this movie so touching, created a meticulously crafted biographical film, despite the inconsistencies between the plot and the history.

Amidst the fight to get Tubman on the $20 bill, this biography is exactly what we needed, shedding more light on the pioneer that was Harriet Tubman.

playlist

“Christmas” Music

By THE ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT DEPARTMENT For an irrelevant Christian holiday.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays *NSYNC Pop Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence Ryuichi Sakamoto Instrumental Oh Ms Believer Twenty One Pilots Alternative Pop Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel John Ball Hymn Another Christmas Song Stephen Colbert Novelty Can I Interest You in Hanukkah?

Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert Novelty The Chanukah Song Adam Sandler Comedy Sleigh Ride The Ronettes Pop Santa Baby Eartha Kitt Jazz Driving Under Stars Marika Hackman Indie Pop Carol of the Bells Mykola Dmytrovych Leontovych Chorus A GHETTO CHRISTMAS CAROL XXXTENTACION Hip-hop Christmas in Hollis Run-D.M.C. Hip-hop Big Bag Tyler, The Creator Hip-hop Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree Brenda Lee Rockabilly Winter Khalid R&B Sister Winter Sufjan Stevens Folk White Christmas George Ezra Slow Pop It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year Andy Williams Swing Last Christmas Wham!

Pop

Page 20

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Arts and Entertainment Television

By JULIE GRANDCHAMP-DESRAUX Last year Netflix released “The End of the F***ing World,” a show about two teenagers who embark on a road trip and develop a relationship after a series of problems. The show received a lot of attention and had viewers desperately waiting for a second season after ending its first season on a cliffhanger. With only eight 20-minute episodes, people began waiting for the new season the same day they started watching it. The wait was over on November 5, when Netflix dropped the show’s second season, which brought answers to viewers’ long held anticipation.

Season One follows Alyssa (Jessica Barden), a rebellious, mouthy teenage girl who decides to run away with a classmate, James (Alex Lawther), who has murderous thoughts and believes he’s a psychopath.

Alyssa proposes to run away together and James agrees, with the intention to kill her. After embarking on their road trip, James and Alyssa are faced with problems that impede each other’s reasons for running away and slowly cause them to fall for one another.

The murder of Clive Koch (Jonathan Aris), a philosophy professor who seduces his female students before killing them, becomes the main focus of the plot. At one point, Koch attempts to rape Alyssa before James kills him. The murder forces the pair to spend the rest of the season running from the law as two investigators work their case. The season ends with James running from the police before the screen goes

Culture

By AGATHA EDWARDS and ZIFEI ZHAO

PLACES TO GO The most well-known holiday attraction around Christmastime is the huge, decorated tree in Rockefeller Center, a classic symbol of the holidays in NYC. The tradition was first started in 1931 and has not gone down in popularity. The tree is usually a Norway spruce, 70 to 100 feet tall, bedazzled with colorful ornaments and lights. It can be quite crowded at times, but if you’re in the area, be sure to check it out: it’ll be the coolest tree you ever see.

Another great way to feel one with winter is to go sledding or ice skating. There are plenty of hills around the city, especially in Central Park, to sled on. There are several ice skating rinks, including ones in Central Park, Bryant Park, and Prospect

black with only a gunshot to be heard, leaving viewers anxious for James’ life.

Season Two uses its first three episodes to remind the audience of what happened in the first season and to introduce a pivotal character: Bonnie (Naomi Ackie). To me this was extremely helpful and effective, considering the two year waiting period between both seasons. After learning about Koch’s death, Bonnie, his lover, seeks revenge.

The show then focuses on Alyssa’s current life and how she deals with what happened to her and James.

Alyssa’s profane language and nihilistic character keeps things humorous as she distracts herself from her traumas, specifically by getting into a relationship with the dumb, albeit sweet canoe instructor, Todd (Josh Dylan). Unfortunately, Alyssa’s relationship with Todd definitely could’ve been explored more. It was probably included to demonstrate Alyssa’s impulsivity but seems useless in her development. The show gets a lot of things right, but addressing Alyssa’s detrimental spontaneousness and recklessness was not one of them.

Alyssa’s distractions don’t last though, as she’s dragged back into her past affairs when she catches James, alive and well, stalking her from his car. Alyssa proposes to run away again, and James and Alyssa pick up Bonnie, who poses as an innocent hitchhiker.

A few parallels emerge between the two seasons, includ-

ing the pair running away to ignore their problems, getting into situations where they could die, and eventually having to deal with the aftermath of their decisions. This time though, by the time James and Alyssa have reached the climax of their story, there’s no way to repress the trauma that the past two years have given them.

Both seasons are structured similarly, but what really separates them is how the characters face the issues they are presented with. In Season O n e ,

Emily Chen / The Spectator

Alyssa is too busy despising her parents and running from the law to really care about being sexually assaulted. The trauma that came with this event is buried deep inside her and isn’t explored until the end of Season Two. Initially, James is so focused on killing Alyssa while also falling in love with her that he doesn’t understand the magnitude of the situation that he put himself and Alyssa in. Now that it has all cooled

down, James must deal with not only having caused Alyssa psychological pain but also his own familial issues, like the death of his father.

This season spends a lot of time building up to its climax before it focuses on the much darker issues that James and Alyssa face. When Bonnie finally confronts James and Alyssa for Koch’s murder, she’s incapable of facing the truth that James killed Koch to save Alyssa from being raped. Bonnie’s inability to process her emotions drives her to try to shoot herself before James and Alyssa jump to stop her.

In this scene, Bonnie’s innocence overshadows her sociopathic nature thanks to Naomi Ackie’s subtle perfor mance.

Her facial expressions and tears made me pity Bonnie as she struggles to understand why the “love” between her and Koch wasn’t actually love. Any relationship was better than the one between Bonnie and her cold mother, so she failed to see Koch’s manipulation. Everything about this scene felt perfectly executed: Bonnie’s struggle against Alyssa and James, her exhaustion overcoming her, muted police sirens in the background, and Alyssa’s narration all contributed to the sigh of relief I got after watching this scene.

Despite this, the show again

manages to end a relationship abruptly. There’s no information on what happens to Bonnie once she’s arrested, she simply disappears from the show.

After the main plot is resolved, the show spends its last episode addressing Alyssa’s PTSD. After going through all these traumatic events, Alyssa is left with flashbacks of sexual assault and near-death experiences. On this, she says, “You can think you’ve run away from something. But actually, you’ve been carrying it with you the whole time.”

The show does a great job of tackling PTSD and trauma by showing how it presents itself differently in different people. Alyssa acts out impulsively to subdue her thoughts. James, who’s more sensitive about his problems, carries the ashes of his father with him for the whole season and continuously asks Alyssa to talk to him about her issues while Bonnie acts out using the anger and emotions she suppressed during her childhood.

While it follows a dark and gloomy plotline, “The End of the F***ing World” uses its characters to touch upon subjects that all teenagers can relate to: rebelliousness, feelings of being misunderstood, impulsivity, familial problems, and so on.

It does a great job of balancing a dismal plotline with humor to keep things light and manages to incorporate important topics such as consent, rape, and mental health into the storyline.

Aside from the occasional convoluted plot, Season Two gives viewers an ending that neatly wraps up its hectic, violent, and suspenseful events.

A New Yorker’s Guide to Christmas Park. Some rinks, like LeFrak (Prospect Park), cost money to skate, but others like the Bryant Park Rink charge money to rent skates. These rinks turn on bright lights when the sun starts to set, making for a picturesque winter wonderland. Having fun in the snow or on the ice and not having to think about school is a great stress-reliever.

Another way to get in the holiday spirit is simply by walking around. Plenty of places around NYC have brilliant Christmas decorations. One of the most famous neighborhoods to display them is Dyker Heights, which even has bus tours during the holiday weeks due to the popularity. Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is another popular spot with magnificent window displays, ranging from dolls to snowmen to trees. Light shows around the city such as the Winter Lantern Festival in Staten Island or LuminoCity at Randalls Island also feature some beautiful dazzling structures. And, of course, your own block may have some pretty cool houses with decorations too (ours definitely do!).

If you want a warm, indoor place to visit during the winter season, New York’s many museums are great destinations. The MET and MoMA are great starters, but if you want to visit some lesser-known destinations, The Museum on Eldridge Street, The Transit Museum, and the Whitney Museum are great options.

These museums have a variety of arts from different time periods and special holiday exhibits. The Museum on Eldridge Street, for example, has a Chanukah exhibit filled with artsy menorahs, while the Transit Museum has a holiday train show. Learning about the past in a relaxed environment is a great way to jumpstart the holiday spirit and the new year.

PLACES TO EAT New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world.

We all know what that means… a great selection of food! From small bites to large meals, NYC will definitely have something to fill your tastebuds and get you feeling warm and excited for Christmas. Here are some of the top places we recommend: Industry City in Brooklyn is a creative hub that hosts a diverse selection of vendors. Besides art galleries and hip stores, there is a food court that serves savory and delicious food from all over the world. Around the holidays, a special holiday market is featured with special food, decor, and gifts! Industry City helps represent the diversity of the city while also offering the convenience to experience it all.

Rosemary’s in the West Village is decorated very festively for the holidays, with lit-up trees with large ornaments. With a rooftop garden and house-made pasta, it is guaranteed that these dishes will be fresh. They serve

breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so there is a great variety of food ranging from focaccia, pasta, to gelato. Prices here are usually $10-$20 per dish. This beautiful, farmhouse-inspired restaurant allows for a great get-together meal with friends and family.

The Asian cuisine of Flushing Main Street in Queens and Chinatown in Manhattan is definitely a highlight. Cheap, good eats line the streets of these areas and showcase the different types of foods you’ll find there. From huge meals of noodles, fried rice, and soups to lighter options of fish balls, cakes, and bubble tea, you are guaranteed to find something you’ll enjoy. Here, you can come to enjoy a great meal and celebrate your culture. Keep in mind that you can be part of any culture to celebrate the holidays.

PLACES TO BUY GIFTS Christmas is all about giving.

Whether you need to buy a lastminute gift for a friend or you just want to look around, NYC has plenty of shops that deliver in terms of holiday spirit. NYC holiday markets are popular around the holidays, especially for tourists. They are usually set out on the street and sell small goods like mugs, ornaments, other small essentials. They look like farmers’ markets if you’ve ever seen those.

The Bank of America Winter Village is located in Bryant Park, Manhattan. As mentioned be-

fore, there is an ice skating rink, as well as several shops and eateries. Another great place to buy last-minute gifts is the Columbus Circle Holiday Market, which is located at 59th Street and the entrance to Central Park. There are plenty of pop-up shops and places to get a quick bite. Lastly, The European Union Square Holiday Market is located in the middle of Union Square Park near 14th Street and Broadway.

There are a plethora of other holiday markets in New York City, and you will most likely find one near you.

It’s clear that you don’t have to celebrate Christmas to get into the holiday spirit. There are plenty of things you can do with friends or family in the city and still feel magical. Spend time outside, go look at some decorations, or eat a lovely meal. Enjoy yourselves over winter break!

Emma Donnelly / The Spectator

NYC goes big for the holidays.

And Christmas, one of the most significant holidays of the entire year, is just around the corner. You don’t have to celebrate Christmas to feel the holiday spirit, filled with wintery vibes, feeling good about giving and receiving gifts, and spending time with loved ones. Even if you’re not traveling anywhere, seeing any family, or doing anything special over winter break, there are plenty of ways to get out and feel magical in the city.

The End of the F***ing Trauma

The Spectator ●December 20, 2019

Page 21

Arts and Entertainment

From Anderson Paak. to ZUU: The Best Albums of 2019

Music

By MORRIS RASKIN AND SHIVALI KORGAONKAR 10: ZUU - Denzel Curry Best Songs: RICKY, SPEEDBOAT, SHAKE 88 After breaking into the mainstream Hip-hop scene back in 2015 with his hit anthem “Ultimate,” Denzel Curry has been an undeniable force driving the genre with every new project he releases.

Since then, fans have constantly been hungry to know where Curry will go next. This year’s answer: he’s gonna have some fun.

“ZUU,” Curry’s latest project, is an homage to his Miami roots. The 24-year-old rapper reminisces upon the city, warts and all, and presents it to the listener through a mix of high energy beats and an addictive flow that can get even the biggest skeptic’s foot tapping. Curry lets us in on his history, the lessons he learned from his parents, his rise to the top, and the Miami traditions that shaped him into the man he is today. The album perfectly encapsulates Curry’s essence and shows that he’s not afraid to take a step back from all the politics that filled his previous work and have a good time in Miami.

9: CASE STUDY 01 - Daniel Caesar Best Songs: SUPERPOSITION, OPEN UP Known for his love ballads and dreamy beats, Daniel Caesar steps out of his comfort zone with this album while still paying tribute to his original style. The album opens with “ENTROPY,” an accurate representation of the underlying theme: love is naturally chaotic.

Caesar introduces the album with slow, moody songs that showcase his incredible vocal skill and comforting lyrics. Alongside John Mayer’s airy guitar, Caesar sings “Isn’t it an irony? / The things that inspire me / They make me bleed,” displaying a sense of pain that resonates with listeners throughout the song. “ARE YOU OK?” is a clear example of Caesar’s increase in musical maturity. This outro unexpectedly transitions out of an R&B melody into a faded voice that raps over a modern synth beat. Each song guides listeners to unknown territory in their memories that only Caesar would be able to draw out through his wispy voice and soothing chimes.

8: Ventura - Anderson .Paak Best Songs: Come Home, King James Anderson .Paak’s funky throwback vibe makes him incomparable to any other modern artist.

His tone crosses into Hip-hop and R&B while his happy beats place him in the pop and funk genres.

One can’t help but smile when .Paak’s snappy grooves kick in. His

personality shines through each song. In “King James,” he discusses political events; in “Twilight,” he explains the pangs of growing up. .Paak’s words feel deeply personal and impactful because of the charm he displays while cradling each melody. The inability to place .Paak into a singular genre widens his fanbase to include listeners with any musical interest.

7: III - The Lumineers Best Songs: Jimmy Sparks, Donna On their 3rd album “III,” the Lumineers get back to what they’re best at: storytelling. Throughout the 10 song effort, the folk band tells the tale of a family ripping at the seams. Split into three parts, the album details the lives of Junior, Jimmy, and Donna Sparks, each from a different generation of t h e same fami l y.

about their money, Young Thug has found the perfect balance.

With numerous hits like “Hot,” “The London,” and “Bad Bad Bad,” Young Thug has found the sweet spot between modern “flex” culture and genuinely good music.

5: Norman F***ing Rockwell - Lana Del Rey Best Songs: Norman F***ing Rockwell, Happiness is a Butterfly, Bartender Unlike the work of the late painter for which the album was named, bustling with activity and exuberance, “Norman F***ing Rockwell” strips each song and moment down to its core. Through every rueful ballad, Rey lets a little bit of her

Navigating

Ismath Maksura / The Spectator

drug addiction, alcoholism, abuse, and depression with careful prose and wistful acoustic guitars, “III” relentlessly tugs at the listener’s heartstrings. Just when the world thought that folk music was dying, the Lumineers proved that it is not dying as much as it is evolving.

Paired with a corresponding music video for each song that’s meant to deepen the meaning behind each riveting tale, “III” is truly a oncein-a-generation folk album.

heart loose, gracing the listener with her soft voice and skillful cadence. The instrumentation is minimalistic, usually consisting of solely piano and voice so that Lana can cut through directly to the observer. There is no complicated production or pounding beats to draw the listener in; Lana Del Rey knows she doesn’t need that. For the most part, she’s just a girl with an aching heart, a piano, and a longing to be heard.

6: So Much Fun - Young Thug Best Songs: The London, Just How It Is, Hot “So Much Fun” is a prime example of the beauty that comes from integrating bright minds in the music industry. The numerous collaborations included on this album make every song an exciting and unique experience. Not knowing whether Machine Gun Kelly’s lyrical language or Travis Scott’s autotuned rap is next pulls you even closer. Young Thug’s ability to have fun is reflected in his music and, thus, forces listeners to move along to the beat. While many rappers are unable to draw the line between songwriting and boasting

4: Father of the Bride Vampire Weekend Best Songs: This Life, Married in a Gold Rush After six years of silence, Vampire Weekend is finally back.

On their newest project, “Father of the Bride,” the band uses its classic indie and alternative rock blend to expand upon its traditional sound and march fearlessly into new territory. Spanning a lengthy 18 songs, Vampire Weekend shows that they’re fully capable of making every minute of the near hour-long experience a fresh and purposeful take on how they see the world. Frontman Ezra Koenig guides us through ballads, anthems, and romps alike, display-

ADVERTISEMENT

ing his and the band’s ever-present versatility. Lyrically, this album covers numerous important topics from the fragility of race, the fading link between money and happiness, lost love, and everything in between. “Father of the Bride” is a ceaseless joyride that is a good time just waiting to be had.

3: When I Get Home - Solange Best Songs: My Skin My Logo, Dreams, Almeda Solange’s “When I Get Home” draws you into a spiritual journey.

As soon as you press play, the beginning and end of each song are ambiguous. By the end of the album, it’s hard to describe what you just listened to but easy to say you’d listen to it again. Every single song plays a crucial role in the storyline Solange builds within 39 minutes. With 19 songs, this piece diverts from your average radiogenerated album. Solange utilizes six tracks as inter-

ludes to connect her ideas while never shifting from the album’s themes.

In “My Skin My Logo,” listeners are taken on a journey guided by Solange’s laughter, jazzy drums, and Gucci Mane’s unique voice.

Her ability to combine R&B, jazz, and Hip-hop purposefully exemplifies the talent Solange has in music production that honors her melodic vocals and slow rhythm.

2: IGOR - Tyler, The Creator Best Songs: GONE, GONE / THANK YOU, A BOY IS A GUN Tyler, The Creator is nothing if not creative. However, the rapper pushed the boundaries of the Hip-hop genre to a new personal extreme with his latest effort, using his past albums as jumpingoff points to form entirely new ideas and concepts. In what could go down as one of the greatest breakup albums ever, Tyler finds acceptance and closure for a lost love over 12 eccentric tracks, using big synths and boisterous drum beats to propel his unique voice to new heights. On tracks like “NEW MAGIC WAND” and “I THINK,” Tyler, The Creator

achieves a powerful balance between his quirkiness, high profile collaborations (including a special appearance from Kanye West), distinctive arpeggiators, and as GQ puts it, “so much bass it could shake an elephant.” Tyler proudly boasts that all songs on the album were written, produced, and arranged by himself in a text block on the album cover itself. But who can blame him? If you proved a mass of critics and naysayers wrong and created an album of this caliber, wouldn’t you want to flaunt it?

1: When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? - Billie Eilish Best Songs: when the party’s over, xanny, all the good girls go to hell And finally, we arrive at our number one pick, Billie Eilish’s debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” Now, regardless of what we put at #1, there could never be unanimous agreement. However, it is likely that this choice for the top spot will likely raise even more eyebrows than usual. This begs the question: “Why would it not be this album?”

With “When We All Fall Asleep,” Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell crafted a dark and raw look into the mental state of a woman finding herself in the 21st century. Every element of this project, from the vocals, to the production, to the lyrics, burst at the seams with personality and lends Eilish a unique sound that differentiates her from Alternative contemporaries such as Lorde and Lana Del Rey. At no point in the project does Billie divert from her vision, displaying absolute focus throughout the album. Whether it be through muted pianos and light percussion, pumping bass and chopped up vocals, or ukulele and expert sampling, Billie and Finneas have created an album that can speak to people across generations and please even the hardest of music critics. Its unanimous appeal, complex vulnerability, masterful production, and absolute charisma are what truly earn this deserving album the #1 spot.

Honorable Mentions: Lover - Taylor Swift Bandana - Freddie Gibbs/ Madlib Neotheater - AJR Western Stars - Bruce Springsteen Magdalene - FKA Twigs JESUS IS KING - Kanye West thank you, next - Ariana Grande

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 22

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

By JAKE LIN and IVAN WANG If you think about it, winter break is just a facade, a dressed-up version of a weekend, but instead of just a few tests to study for, it’s all your finals. The beginning of the break ironically also means the end of a few other things, including your grades, the easy half of the year, and the end of all the occasional no-school days that make your week bearable. Just as you might begin to relax as the holidays draw nearer and nearer, you get hit with the snowball of rocks and snow, which barely even showed up this year. The rocks hit your soul like a hard slap across your cheeks, a good representation of what happened after you received your second marking period report cards.

By EMILY CHEN Recently, a number of valuable diary entries were discovered in the corner of the band room, hidden behind a pile of broken cellos and a squeaky music stand.

Here, we have compiled some of the entries in hopes of educating the Stuyvesant student body on the incredible oppression these instruments have faced.

September 5, 2019 It is that time of year again: the humans are back. I have survived the last few years of this torturous institution, though sadly many others have not been so lucky. My parents were taken last year, only to be returned months later with their strings loose, wood chipped, and voices lost. They say their pain is worth it because none of the humans take them anymore. It was only this morning when I felt the flesh of a human pick me up from my neck. It then plucked my strings vigorously. It took me out of the room into a different place.

I heard many of these humans call it “the hallway.” What is it? Is this where they torture us? Is this the terrible place where my parents were cruelly beaten and left for months? Has my fate arrived?

Very worried, Guitar #21 September 10, 2019

By JORDAN BARAKAT Junior Eddie Scrouge had a productive day. He spent his morning sabotaging his classmate’s AP Calculus paper, so he wouldn’t have the lowest grade in the class; spent his lunch period screaming at pigeons within 10 feet of him while he was studying in the park; and spent his afternoon in a very low-speed and embarrassing chase with one of his other classmates after Eddie had told one of his teachers that they were in a cheating ring. (In his defense, it was true, though he left out the part about how he was the leader of said cheating ring.)

It was all justified in his mind, though. That’s just how life was.

These underhanded tactics were the only way that he would ever go to MIT. Proud of himself, he propped himself in front of his desk and opened an SAT prep book about the size of a rolling backpack.

But for a second, Eddie could have sworn that the prep book was, in fact, a rolling backpack. He rubbed his eyes and saw that he was

The Curving Miracle

The only consolation is the fact that the third marking period hasn’t passed yet, but the pressure begins mounting, leaving only one option: studying during winter break. But good students always find another way for extra credit, especially with the arrival of Christmas.

Ah yes, Christmas, a time of festivity and most importantly, delays, both on your way to school and in school, where each period just feels like a 45-minute-long time sink obstructing the way to the last day before break. Like a runner at the final stretch of a race that began in September, each step is a challenge. Of course, at the beginning of the semester you probably convinced yourself it was just a slow start and fooled your selfesteem with a few Es during the first marking period. It’s only when

the cold, hard failing grades hit you during the second marking period that you start craving those grades.

Uh oh (stinky)! If you were to calculate the small number of assignments that could possibly be in the third marking period, you’d realize you’re quite screwed.

So what does that leave? Well, it is the season of giving, and you’re probably desperate for a bump from that 63 percent to a whopping 65 percent, right? Does your teacher love the seasonal Ferrero Rocher Chocolate, “the golden experience” (of pity curving)? How about some new Hagoromo chalk?

The larger the price tag, clearly, the more appreciation you have for your teacher (and the greater the need for a curve). Maybe if you pay enough, they’ll think about giving back (some points) to you!

According to our extensive research into this subject, many students have begun to invest in this profitable season, saving since September. Through the large number of Candy Grams sales every holiday, it has already been proven that how much you spend is equal to how much appreciation you give, so make sure you spend that extra dollar on your gifts for your teachers. Even though the only physical object you may get back might just be a thank you card, the few numbers written down in a book are what matter the most. Maybe that friendly relationship you’ve built up with your teacher from the beginning of the year might finally come into play and be the final push to a pass! You won’t be a super senior.

Not today.

It should be noted that there

is really absolutely nothing wrong with giving gifts to teachers. People who equate giving gifts for grades to bribery are completely wrong; it’s just a simple trade of sorts, a show of appreciation for both parties. Obviously, showing appreciation for your teachers will always cause your teachers to appreciate you more (or think you’re a suckup), leading you to appreciate their gradebooks more (just spreading the appreciation all around) with the higher grades.

Grades will always be like playing a gacha game: the money you put in doesn’t always equal the points recovered from it. In the end, the gifts don’t really matter at all because we all know that by the time you return, your teachers will have forgotten your names anyway.

Diary Entries From a Stuyvesant Guitar

I have learned a lot in the last five days from humans. My strings are nearly falling apart. I can still feel the sweat of the last human who tried to drum the melody of something I heard it refer to as “that meme song.” Can you believe THE NERVE of some people? You have all the songs you want to use my strings for, and instead you choose to hit my wooden body to some unworthy, simple melody? I have now been left on a cold and hard surface of high elevation. I fear that one day I will be pushed off. Will I ever be returned?

There are some highlights today, however: I met a rat named Playg, and he has informed me that we are on the sixth floor on a structure termed “the sophomore bar.” All day we have heard the humans screech and bang their lockers, in addition to the mobs of humans in uniforms moving past us. These humans are very peculiar; they disappear for around 30 minutes before swarming back out. Perhaps they are the cruel soldiers who will eventually cut me up and rip my strings out. They sure do smell like the type.

Until next time, Guitar #21 September 12, 2019 I am growing weak. Please send help. I’ve changed locations once again. I don’t know where I

am, but I have seen some horrific things in this place. I was taken by a human, who proceeded to drop me down something called “the Hudson staircase.” Three humans have walked by, none of whom have even touched me. I do not know if I should be grateful for that. I must be returned one day.

Playg the rat has betrayed me. I have not heard from him since I moved. A couple of days after I met him, he left claiming to scavenge for food, and he never returned. Perhaps he was tired of hearing people pluck my strings.

Maybe he died of food poisoning (I’ve heard the most atrocious things about the food in this place).

After Playg left, I grew very sad. The humans kept leaving me after plucking my strings a few times, realizing how out of tune I was. No one bothered to fix me. These humans… all they do is take. About two days ago, my status changed for the worse. A young human, part of the mob from previous days, grabbed me by my head and ran down “the hallway” while screaming “YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—” Was this his war cry? He was unable to complete his sentence as a bigger human came out of a room. I was dropped, like an irrelevant object of little importance, as the human ran away. I was quickly picked up by the bigger human and placed on what

seemed like a vent, and let me tell you, IT WAS COLD. I could not handle the cold air blowing out of these vents. These extensive observations led me to the conclusion that these humans were indeed crazy. There was no doubt.

Maybe they were holding my dear friend Playg hostage.

Soon enough, I was transported to my current location. After multiple hands grabbed my fingerboard, a few scratches, and an abundance of smells, I landed at the bottom of a gray staircase on what seems to be the fifth floor.

I think this is it. Not “the hall-

Junior Haunted By Their Ghosts

right. On his desk was now a rolling backpack, stuffed to the brim, and emerging from it a familiar spirit. It was short, outfitted in a physical education uniform, and it was staring at him with hopeful and arrogant eyes.

His freshman self.

“What’s going on?” Eddie backed away from the spirit.

“I am the ghost of your freshman year. Follow me.”

Eddie didn’t want to, of course, but he didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter. Screaming, he was sucked into a vortex and found himself back in Music Appreciation.

“Oh god, I hated this class. How the heck am I supposed to recognize what a castrati sounds like?”

The ghost just looked pissed.

“Look at you before.” Eddie turned to find a smaller version of himself, talking happily with the people around him. “You actually had friends back then and cared about something other than your college admission.”

“We were just from the same middle school. And besides, I was weak back then. I didn’t know how the world works.” Eddie found him-

self yelling at a void as he realized that the Freshman Ghost had disappeared.

Thinking it was all just some weird hallucination, he was startled by a nearly invisible force grabbing his shoulder. “I am the ghost of sophomore year. Follow me.”

“No,” Eddie said. “I’m gonna ignore you.” And ignore he did, singing “LALALALALA” and closing his eyes until the Sophomore Ghost realized that it wasn’t going to make an impact on Eddie and just disappeared..

Now very annoyed, and with his eyes still closed, Eddie walked into another being: a perfect clone of him right now, down to the exact shape of his eye bags. “Let me guess,” Eddie said. “You’re yet another one of those ghosts.”

“Yep. Ghost of junior year.”

“Let’s just get this over with.”

And with that, he was transported to earlier in the day, just after he had begun running from the classmate whom he had ratted out. He noticed the teacher was talking to her coworker about how he was a rude person who only cared about what

made him look good for college and not about his impact on the world, about how he was a liar and a brat who wasn’t even good at either of those things. One thing the teacher said about him really stuck in Eddie’s mind.

“He’s a heartless brat. Honestly, I couldn’t write a single good thing about him for a college rec.”

Eddie stood in silence for a bit.

Then a new figure, about his height, walked next to him. It was wearing a college hoodie and sweatpants.

“Who are you?” Eddie asked.

The figure sighed. “The ghost of your senior year.” And with that, Eddie found himself surrounded by rejection letters. Rejected from every school imaginable: MIT, UChicago, BMCC—even Harvard wouldn’t accept him.

“This is your future if you keep up your passionate quest to be accepted into a college,” the Senior Ghost said. “Rejected by your peers, your teachers, and most importantly, the colleges who want a person, not a fanatic.”

Eddie gulped. “What do I do to stop it?”

way,” not the cluster of humans in uniforms. Here in this dark and grimy staircase is where I’ll meet my doom like countless of guitars before me. I hope that when my strings snap, they make the human’s flesh bleed.

Sincerely, Guitar #21 October 5, 2019 My strings have snapped. My wood is chipped. I am.... useless.

Goodbye, Guitar #21

The spirit looked Eddie in the eye. “What you need to do,” it said, “is STOP CARING.” STOP CARING. STOP CARING. STOP CARING. Eddie woke up at his desk in a sweat.

From that day on, Eddie was a changed man. He joined clubs not to look good on college applications, but to be part of something.

For the first time since he was 12, he enjoyed other people’s company, and other people enjoyed his. He helped edit his peer’s essays. He was nice to birds. He still committed academic dishonesty, but instead of throwing his fellow cheaters under the bus, he was steadfast and loyal to them.

The next year, he got into an Ivy League during early decisions, but he didn’t care. Now, he was ready to do good in the world. Maybe he would make a version of Talos that didn’t blow up in your face. Maybe he would find ways to save the lives of kids who, just like him, were obsessed with their academia. Maybe he would just take a nap.

Either way, he was ready.

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 23

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

“Frozen 2” Reviews That’ll Thaw a Frozen Heart

By AARON WANG and KELLY YIP Since the debut of Disney’s latest movie and long-anticipated sequel, “Frozen 2,” theaters have been flooded by fanatics of all ages with a strong desire to see a lady with platinum-blonde hair shoot ice out of her hands, striking cold fear in the hearts of her enemies—all while singing, of course. Many mixed opinions have arisen since its debut, and if you’re concerned about whether this movie is worth precious time that you could be using to cram for that physics test, fret not! The Spectator has compiled several notable reviews that can help you gain an idea, more or less, about the gist of the movie, so even if you aren’t interested, it’ll be like you watched it anyway!

Before you read, here’s a recap of “Frozen 1,” in case you didn’t watch it or forgot about it: The movie takes place in a kingdom called Arendelle. Elsa (this lady with, like, platinum-blonde hair) is secretly an ice witch and not secretly the queen. Anyway, her lesser sister Anna falls in love with a man (Prince Hans) she’s met for, like, literally 20 seconds, and they sing a song together and then get engaged (basically every Disney plot). But then people find out Elsa’s an ice witch, and she escapes and becomes a recluse in the mountain, all while causing a blizzard to engulf Arendelle. She sings her signature song about having suffered from chronic constipation all her life (just “let it go,” am I right?).

Meanwhile, Anna needs to stop all the angry townsfolk from burning her sister for witchcraft, so she ventures into the mountain and meets this other dude, Kristoff, who’s in an oddly intimate relationship with a reindeer called Sven. Like, they share carrots, so Kristoff probably has brucellosis (but that’s unimportant). Anyway! They eventually meet the “coolest” character in the movie, the sentient snowman Olaf (a product of Elsa’s over-powered magic being able to turn ice into sentient beings). Once in the castle, Anna says some really heartfelt things, but Elsa shoots some ice at her because she’s a badass (and probably a bad sister), and now Anna’s heart gets frozen (if this isn’t the corniest dilemma ever made, we don’t know what is). And of course, only TRUE LOVE can thaw a frozen heart (wow, a classic Disney move).

At this point, Disney really needed to add in a villain since Elsa was basically their main selling point and the idol of five-year-old girls everywhere, so she couldn’t be the villain (how else would Disney milk the entire population of elementary school girls for money?). Also, everyone basically sees the romance insinuated between Kristoff and Anna, despite Anna already being engaged. So the only logical solution to please the five-year-olds and the fanfic shippers was to make Prince Hans a total jerk (even though this wasn’t hinted at at all previously).

But in the end, turns out that the TRUE LOVE that was missing was the sisterly bond between Elsa and Anna all along… awww. Heart-warming indeed!

Now, here are the reviews for “Frozen 2”:

UWU~DefNotKawaiiFurry~UWU 4/5 Can we just, like, appreciate how hot Sven looks? His antlers give me chills, and the graphics were on point with that smooth boney texture. Also, when all his clones showed up? Oh YES. And his fur? GORGEOUS. Oh, and can we talk about the texture of his hooves? They’re so smooth, so well polished. If only he had more screen time.

Kristoff should have proposed to him instead of Anna.

The movie was fine, I guess.

SamanthaIsBad_00 2/5 Spoiler alert: so the fifth element turned out to be Samantha, and she became Elsa’s lover. I was super disappointed in Samantha’s character development because she was such an obnoxious female dog, like when she licked Kristoff ’s neck with that long, abnormal tongue of hers and then proceeded to bite off Olaf ’s carrot.

Like girl, this ain’t your movie. You weren’t even in the first one. I don’t think Elsa and Samantha’s relationship is gonna be sustainable because in the end credits we see a scene of Samantha and Elsa in Anna’s bedroom, and Samantha is being such a toxic lover saying how she should’ve listened to her father when he said to “conceal it, don’t feel it” and then proceeds to show her how to really ride that ocean-water-spirit thing. GIRL, LET HER BE FREE. WASN’T THAT THE WHOLE POINT OF THE “SHOW YOURSELF” SEQUENCE I LITERALLY CAN’T-

Jim_Kong_ un_4evah 3/5 Ummm, this movie was literally just propaganda against absolutism and the monarchy. Of course, after Elsa became queen, she started hearing voices.

Was Disney trying to tell us that all monarchs are mentally unstable? And after Anna became queen, she died of pneumonia. If that wasn’t a clear display of throwing shade at the health problems of dynastic monarchies, then I don’t know what is. And why was Disney killing off the entire royal family?

Just to give more power to the people?

We all know that ain’t THAT effective (take a look at our country). I hope that Disney finally realizes the effectiveness of an absolutist rule in their next movie. I recommend they take a look at Kim Jong-un’s monarchy as an example of an effective and realistic kingdom in their next movie. He would make a lovely Disney princess!

NezukoIsBestGirl789 4/5

XxKristoff_Fan69xX 5/5

This is my favorite anime. I wish Disney could’ve added an opening, but nothing’s perfect.

I really like the Anna arc and her major character development. We really get to see her true potential manifest when she fights off, like, three of those Earth golems. We also get to learn a bit about her past, especially about her parents. I’m a little disappointed that the fan theories about Anna getting fire powers aren’t canon. On the other hand, I’m also super excited that Disney added such a well-developed love triangle between Anna, Kristoff, and Sven. We clearly see that Kristoff has feelings for Anna, but she’s so hopeless, being unable to recognize all the cues. Classic anime love scenario. That’s not all: Sven is clearly jealous that Anna is stealing his spotlight, but he’s far too timid to confess to Kristoff (he’s also a reindeer who can’t talk, so that might be why). But some fans have speculated that Anna has feelings for Sven because of the multiple times she attempts to mount him. I don’t really agree because I’m personally a Kristoff x Sven shipper myself (have you seen the way Kristoff mounts Sven? There’s, like, no tension at all. The bromance is to die for). Lastly, best anime waifu/husbando is Olaf, no doubt.

I cried three times. I really stepped INTO THE UNKNOOOWN (“Frozen 2” song reference if you don’t get it) when I walked into the theater, and my expectations were met! Honestly, Kristoff really needs to LET IT GO about that chick Anna; she clearly isn’t deserving of him. In fact, I’d really like for us to go INTO THE UNKNOWN together… alone… so I can prove that reindeers aren’t better than people (people like me, of course). The movie really inspired me to show myself (reference to “Show Yourself ”), and so I did the NEXT RIGHT THING (another song reference!) and bought myself the ultra-rare collectible Kristoff body pillow. I’m super excited to finish my reader x Kristoff Wattpad fanfic, which I’d been putting off until I watched this. Anna can back off. I hope she gets LOST IN THE WOODS (last one, I promise).

Never_IgNoured 4/5 Probably one of the darkest Disney movies ever created; I would not recommend it for the faint of heart, but I praise Disney’s venture into the more realistic and harsher aspects of life. Kristoff ’s death was pretty underwhelming; I mean, getting crushed by a boulder that one of the Earth golems hurled was a tragic yet pathetic way to go.

Sven was euthanized after he got food poisoning from Olaf ’s carrot, which I guess makes sense (how moldy and crusty was that carrot?!). As for Elsa, she froze to death, so I guess the cold did bother her anyway. But Olaf ’s death was just so devastating for me that I couldn’t see the rest of the movie through the waterfall of tears dripping from my eyes. I remember the scene vividly, though—Anna clutching him in her arms and weeping. But girl, you probably accelerated his death by melting him with those salty tears of yours. In the end, Anna became the new queen of Arendelle until she contracted pneumonia and died after the ending credits. I don’t expect a Frozen 3 any time soon.

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 24

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

“Frozen 2” Reviews That’ll Thaw a Frozen Heart SaltyPersonWhoCan’tAffordDis ney+ 1/5 Disney+ is a scam. Don’t fall for it. Gave one star for how adorable the baby Yoda memes are, though. Wait, this was a review for “Frozen 2”?

Bibi_Anne 5/5 Olaf is my snow DADDY. How can a snowman be so cold yet so HOT?!? His buttons are ON FLEEK in this movie. Came for Olaf and stayed for Olaf.

Real_Thanos 1/5 Terrible. A poor excuse for a Disney movie, and definitely wasn’t worth the hype. I finally got a spot in a Disney movie after working really damn hard so I could be a decent villain; I was able to snap Arendelle out of existence, but then Elsa and Anna saved it?? EXCUSE ME, DISNEY? DON’T CALL ME IF YOU’RE GOING TO JUST BRING BACK WHAT I DESTROYED. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PERFECTLY BALANCED, AS ALL SHOULD BE. I COULD’VE SNAPPED AWAY HALF OF THE MAGIC KINGDOM IF I WANTED TO. Well, at least they showed Arendelle’s destruction in the trailer. I gave one star for how epic the main lullaby theme was… it reminded me of the lullabies I used to sing to my daughter… before I- uh… snapped… and it cost me everything.... But we don’t talk about that.

Avatar_Aang 2/5 Earth, Water, Fire, and Air? I’m super flattered that Disney would make a movie about me! But first of all, I don’t have a sister, and the last time I checked, I was pretty sure I didn’t have that much hair (or any hair for the matter). And I’m definitely not a girl. Also, I’m really disappointed by how underwhelming they made the Fire Nation. It was pretty underrepresented, and when the Fire Nation attacked, nothing really changed in the storyline. I mean, can’t they try to be accurate? I liked the personification of Zuko as a tiny fire lizard and Katara as a beautiful mare made of water but Toph was sorta questionable. She really gained significant weight and height in this rendition. I guess they portrayed her blindness accurately because that rock golem couldn’t hit its target for its life.

How To Be A Whole Foods Brand In Five Steps

By HELENA WILLIAMS Whole Foods: the legendary land of unnecessary, overhyped organic food brands that only people in their 20s have any interest in purchasing. If you think you’ve got what it takes to join them in the Halls of Healthy, then you’ve come to the right place. Here’s what you need to do: Step 1: Take a normal product and make it fancy.

Have you ever looked at your bottled water and said, “This is too cheap and unoriginal”? No? Well, your target audience has. They want their water to come from a sacred aquifer on a distant fairytale island or from a waterfall at the base of a rainbow. You’ve got to be hip, you’ve got to be trendy, and most of all, you’ve got to be amazed at how much people are willing to pay for what amounts to

“flavored water.” Besides, nobody has the time to be original these days! Think about it: Whole Foods is a fancy supermarket. Amazon is a fancy bookstore. Capitalism is a fancy way of committing highway robbery. Nobody makes money by being creative anymore! (See: the roster of Disney live-action remakes.)

your clients will only be interested in your product if it comes from Brooklyn or from a secretive cult of almond-growers in Arabia. Or India. Also, misspelling your product’s name is a great overall rule of thumb. One graphic designer consultation later, and MIGGDOU Almond Flour will be selling out in Tribeca!

Step 2: Come up with a vague, inspirational name.

Why would you want to buy “Almond Flour”? It’s probably several times more expensive than regular flour and tastes like sawdust. Instead, take a word that people occasionally use to describe something related to your product, write it in all-caps, and slap it on your product. If that doesn’t work, you can also translate the name to a very foreign language, like Gujarati or Lithuanian, and change the spelling slightly. Why? Because

Step 3: Make it a rebellion.

We’ve established that nobody likes normal products anymore, but you can’t just produce VAPEUR medicinal tea without giving it a dramatic backstory involving some kind of rebellion against society. Whether you’re going back to mankind’s roots or bringing the future to today, you’ve got to do something unique. Maybe you’ll donate 0.1 percent of all profits to charity, because “by buying our product, you’ve chosen to stop being a puppet of the mainstream

and to become a woke influencer.”

Maybe you’ll mix a special “secret panacea mushroom” into your tea that “doctors don’t want you to know about.” Whatever it is, throw in a few buzz-words and people will buy far too much of it.

Step 4: Once you have a successful product, produce a lot of junky variants.

If you’ve got the podcast-binging, tea-chugging, streak-addicted millennials hooked on your “lifestyle brand,” there’s no reason not to branch out. After all, while some millennials will be happy to buy KHURN whole-milk cow butter, there are others who only like goat butter, or sheep butter, or even reindeer butter. So instead of going back to the drawing board and coming up with a new product, just pump out a whole line of variants! Somewhere, there’s got to be a portion of the population that

only eats garbanzo-flour toast with giraffe-milk butter for breakfast. If you can cater to them, they’ll snap up your product like crazy.

Step 5. Sell out to Amazon.

At this point, a 365 parody of your product line is probably in the making, and once it gets released, you’re going to lose a lot of money. So before this happens, offer to sell your super-fancy egg line to the Egghead himself, Jeff Bezos. After all, the ostrich-egg and lizard-egg buyers will be just as happy to get their eggs from the Whole Foods house brand, and Bezos might grant you clemency the next time you try to get a product from the Whole Foods aisles. This is, in fact, your final step: rinse and repeat, in order to keep the profits coming in. After all, when you can sell people a carton of eggs for $20, you can make money no matter how bad the actual product is!

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 25

Sports Sports Editoral

By THE SPECTATOR SPORTS DEPARTMENT Lebron James The I Promise School, established in 2018, provides a stimulating and safe environment for kids at risk living in and around Akron to learn in. Forget the championships, triple doubles, and crazy highlights. This school is why Lebron James is one of the most influential players of the decade. James has made countless efforts to help his own community and throughout his whole career, and has never wavered in his efforts to speak up for what he believes in. An example of this is when he successfully convinced Adam Silver to lengthen the All-Star break. And if you aren’t impressed by that, he’s also averaged at least 25 points, six rebounds, and six assists for 16 straight seasons. That’s ridiculous, and some might say he’s even getting better with age. This season, he leads the league with 11 assists per game, while still pouring in 25 points a game. Lebron James has not once wavered in his commitment to his family, to his teammates, to social justice, or to the NBA, and will continue to perform at a high level in all of these aspects for years to come.

Tom Brady After winning his sixth Super Bowl title earlier this year, Tom Brady has finally put the GOAT debate to rest. His sixth championship with the Patriots perfectly encapsulates a decade of sheer dominance over the rest of the NFL. In a league where the only guarantee is that nothing is guaranteed, now 42-year-old Brady has made the playoffs every year in the decade, and has taken his team to the AFC Championship game for eight years in a row. Brady holds numerous NFL records, including Most career wins by a starting quarterback, Most division titles by a starting quarterback, and of course, Most Super Bowl victories with six. He and coach Belichick have been the core of the unstoppable Patriots dynasty since 2001. While critics predict the Patriots’ decline year after year, Brady continues to prove them wrong. It’s a general consensus that Brady’s achievements not only put him as the best football player of the decade, but of all time.

Zion Williamson Though Zion Williamson only stayed at Duke for one year, he has had the most profound impact on College Basketball in recent history. Though Zion didn’t even make a final four, he was a unanimous Wooden Award winner and surefire number one draft pick in the NBA Draft in June. However, Williamson’s biggest impact in college basketball this decade has nothing to do with a basketball court, but rather a legislative room. In California, there are bills in legislation that are allowing college athletes to profit off their “name and likeliness” in large part to the outrage that Zion would never see a dime for bringing in millions of dollars of revenue for Duke. Additionally, the commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, said he would reconsider the “one and done” rule in large part to Zion’s astounding success.

Decade in Review

Lionel Messi When the young Argentine stepped onto the pitch in March of 2003, the 16-year-old made his presence known. Lionel Messi created several chances and displayed a prototype of a smart, technical player. But Messi became so much more than that.

Aggressive, determined, and deeply in love with the game, Messi’s pace, vision, and superb ball handling are what made him legendary and what gives him his charm. That, coupled with his 714 goals in 896 matches, makes him one of the greatest players of this decade, if not of all time. In his entire career with Barcelona, he has been the man behind their seven La Liga championships in only a span of nine years. Messi has been awarded with “La Liga’s Player of the Year” five times this decade and spearheaded Barcelona’s UEFA Cup victories in 2011 and 2015. Messi’s ability to tear through defenses made the squad appear to be a one-man show at times, and Messi’s individual talent is reflected in his six Ballon d’Or awards, the most any soccer player has ever received. Lionel Messi’s skill has also been visible in his home country’s performances in international competitions, as the forward has led Argentina to the Word Cup Finals in 2014 and to the quarterfinals last year. Despite being 32 years of age, Messi never stops moving, and he currently leads La Liga with 12 goals, and it doesn’t seem like he’ll be slowing down any time soon .

Abby Wambach Hitting her iconic header goal into the back of the net against Brazil in the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup at the 122nd minute, Abby Wambach not only helped her team advance to the finals against Japan, but also immortalized herself in soccer history.

This goal set the record for the most last-minute goal but she also broke Mia Hamm’s record for the most goals in international competition, ending her career with 184 goals: the most goals for both men and women’s soccer. She was the first American woman in 10 years to win the FIFA World Player of the Year in 2012 and she’s a two-time Olympic medalist and a six-time winner of the U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year. After years of astounding crowds with her headers and occasional bicycle kicks, she retired in 2015 cementing her legacy in soccer with a New York Times bestselling autobiography.

Mike Trout Mike Trout didn’t even start his first full MLB season until 2012. That means that there are two years that he didn’t do anything to boost his status for player of the decade. Even with that, Trout is the consensus number one player in baseball, and he has been the number one player of the decade. Just one month ago, Trout claimed his third MVP award in just eight seasons. These eight seasons consisted of eight Silver Slugger awards, seven top two finishes for MVP (he came in 4th in 2017), and a whopping 72.5 career WAR (wins above replacement), higher than the likes of 71.1 percent of Hall of Fame inductees in their entire careers!

Trout is on pace to be the best player of all time, and he has al-

ready locked up the current highest MLB contract ever, an outstanding $430 million deal for 12 years. No player has had the same impact on baseball in the last decade, and no player has acquired more hardware than the great Mike Trout. All that remains for Trout’s generational career is that elusive championship.

Floyd Mayweather Regardless of whatever sport you’re in, it’s hard to argue against a 50-0 record. “Pretty Boy” Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr.’s 100 percent win record will forever be regarded as one of the greatest feats in sports history. Mayweather has never been knocked down let alone knocked out, and far too often has made worldclass competition look like child’s play across his 21-year career.

Floyd holds the record for most consecutive wins in world title fights with 26, along with 23 wins in lineal title fights. Though Mayweather retired in 2017 after defeating Conor McGregor in one of the most highly anticipated boxing matches in history, many can agree that his legacy as the self-proclaimed “greatest ever” holds most stake in this decade.

With signature wins over alltime greats such as Miguel Cotto, Marcos Maidana, Shane Mosley, Manny Pacquiao, and Canelo Alvarez, Mayweather solidified himself as the greatest defensive technician and arguably the greatest counter-puncher of all time.

For as polarizing of character as Floyd Mayweather Jr. is, he has undoubtedly carried the torch for boxing while displaying his generational talent across multiple weight classes against champion

other than the Jamaican track and field icon, Usain Bolt. Raised from humble beginnings, sports has always been a pivotal aspect of Bolt’s life. After pursuing track and field at the insistence of one of his childhood mentors, Bolt quickly rose to prominence in the sport, becoming a household name. Bolt set world records in the 100-meter dash and 200-meter dash in 2009, as well as 4x100meter relay in 2012, a trifecta of events that he came to dominate and dubbed as his “sprint triple.”

Throughout his illustrious career, he has won 14 world championship medals (11 golds, two silvers, and one bronze), and eight Olympic medals (all gold), more so than any other athlete in the history of track and field, making him undoubtedly the greatest sprinter of all time. Though he officially retired after the 2016 Rio Olympics, he is still an active advocate of track and field, and stands as one of history’s most influential athletes.

Roger Federer Roger Federer started this decade off at 28 years old. He’s now 38 and has shown no signs of letting up. He became the oldest man to win a Grand Slam title (36 years and 173 days) in 2018, continuing the trend of record-breaking he’s enjoyed throughout this decade. He won his first singles Olympic medal (silver) in 2012. He has the most Grand Slam titles in history, with 21 wins out of the 31 finals he’s been to. While the statistics, Grand Slams, and records might not favor Federer, the fact that he’s played at such a high level despite his age deserves recogni-

There is no doubt that each of the players listed have changed their sport in and outside of the painted lines for decades to come. after champion.

Michael Phelps It’s no stretch to call Michael Phelps the greatest Olympian of all time, let alone the greatest swimmer. With a 79-inch wingspan, the giant has won a total of 28 Olympic medals in both individual and team events, making him the most decorated Olympian in history. He began his career in Olympic swimming when he qualified for the USA Men’s Swim Team at age 15. He quickly collected 23 gold, three silver, and two bronze medals in Olympic competitions throughout his career. Phelps also earned 82 medals in international long course competitions, 65 of which were gold. While winning medals, he set a new world record for the men’s 400-meter individual medley and former world records in the 200-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly, and 200-meter individual medley.

After a fantastic career, Phelps retired a second time in 2016 as a world-renowned champion.

Usain Bolt The man. The myth. The legend. Surely, this could be none

tion. Most importantly, he makes the game look easy by hitting incredible shots consistently. Yet, that clearly hasn’t gotten to his head. No matter how well he plays, his sportsmanship remains unparalleled. It’s also hard not to love Federer because he’s a real crowd-pleaser and he always seems to have fun when playing. It’s safe to say, Federer has changed tennis as we know it and we hope he plays for decades to come.

Serena Williams Serena Williams started off 2010 ranked #1 in women’s tennis. She won the Australian Open and Wimbledon to start off a decade in which Williams was clearly the best women’s tennis player.

Williams continued to achieve slam victories up to her most recent one in 2016 to tie Steffanie Graff for the most major championships (22) in the Open era of tennis. Though Williams had her first child in 2017 and took a six-month break due to medical complications, she came back and has made it to the finals of multiple major tournaments. Williams’s career will most likely end in the 2020s, but it was without a

doubt a spectacular one that saw a period of domination unlike no other this decade.

Best Sports Character : Lightning McQueen Dozens of sports related films graced the big screen this decade, but none of them have quite the same place in our hearts as the Cars franchise. While the original movie was released in 2006, both Cars 2 and Cars 3 came out this decade, as well as the spinoff Planes, making Lightning McQueen the clear winner of this category. There were many other outstanding movies based on real sports figures like Jackie Robinson in 42 and Tonya Harding in I, Tonya, but neither of these can hold a candle to the amazing storytelling of Cars. The Oscar nominated film sends an important message through the character arc of the protagonist, Lightning McQueen, as he learns important values that every good athlete should possess. While most other sports movies show the impact of one individual on their respective sport, Disney Pixar influences the next generation of young athletes, teaching them respect, sportsmanship, and humility through compelling storytelling and stunning animation, cementing Lightning McQueen’s position of sports character of the decade.

Best Play of the Decade: Malcom Butler’s Interception As the Seahawks set to snap the ball from the Patriots 1 yard line, it seemed to almost everyone watching that they would score here and win the game. They had already marched down the field on a magical drive with clutch third conversions and a spectacular 33-yard grab by Jermaine Kearse just two plays earlier. It was the defending champion Seahawks after all, and they had arguably the best running back in the league at the time, Marshawn Lynch, to punch it in. But in a decision still trying to be understood today, quarterback Russell Wilson dropped back threw a pass over the middle that was intercepted by Malcom Butler and sealed the Patriots 28-24 victory in Super Bowl XLIX. There would be no Seahawks dynasty and another title for Brady and Belichick.

Best College Play of the Decade: Kris Jenkins’ Game Winner When Kris Jenkins hit a deep three from the top of the key at the buzzer to bring home Villanova’s first national championship since 1985, it launched the basketball program into a whole different tier. Since the shot, Villanova has solidified itself as one of the blue bloods of the sport winning the Big East regular season championship or Big East tournament every year since.

Villanova has earned a one seed three out of the last four years and used a breakout game from Dante Divencenzio to hoist their second national championship in three years when they defeated a Mo Wagner lead Michigan team in 2018. Jay Wright has done an astounding job coaching his Villanova team from mediocrity to blue blood status. However, the Jenkins shot that broke Tarheel hearts played a pivotal role in the ascension.

Page 26

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Sports Sports Editorial

Athlete of the Issue

How These Ballers Be Dunkin On Everyone

By AKI YAMAGUCHI

Selene Kaehny Height: 5’9” Eye color: Hazel Hair color: Dark Blond Birthday: 3/16/2002 1. When did you start playing

Eve Wening Height: 5’7” Eye color: Orange Hair color: Orange Birthday: 7/24/2002 basketball?

EW: I started playing in middle school for like a year, but really freshman year. SK: I started basketball when I was like eight because my whole family is crazy tall and they forced me into it. I played Safe Haven which is where I met Ally [Archer, 19’], and then I played in middle school. I didn’t play in seventh grade though because we had a 500-year-old as a coach who couldn’t raise her arms above her head and it really put me off.

2. What are your team goals for this season?

SK: To win. EW: I want to win the division and have cool apparel but we need to work on layups under pressure, passing, and transitions.

All the normal things a team could improve on—we can get better at everything. SK: For the most part, layups and free throws is the thing we miss the most often.

3. Is there anything you want to improve on for your own skills?

EW: I want to be able to shoot in

really key players and the players we have, we haven’t played with them as much. Though they didn’t know the plays, they did pick them up really fast.

5. What is your respective position and what does that entail?

EW: I’m the mute captain and Selene is the speaking captain. I like to run five laps but Selene like to run four, so everytime I’m like it’s okay, so we always run four laps.

SK: I usually play high post on offense which means that I stand at the top of the key and make key passes to the opposite end of the court. EW: I”m a guard which means that I follow Alison [Chan, sophomore] and I’m the first to defend the other team’s player. I also help make the passing plays by passing the ball around.

6. How do you deal with schoolwork and basketball; any tips?

SK: Do your homework on the train and start your homework during free period. Take a nap because it’s worth it sometimes. Eat bananas and drink coffee. I drink coffee in the morning and then again when I get home from basketball, and then a little bit more coffee because it’s tasty, and then some caffeinated tea. That’s how I do my work. EW: For me, I love basketball so it doesn’t affect me.

Everyone has sports or extracurriculars to deal with so I don’t think I handle it any differently.

7. Favorite or funniest memory?

SK: Recently, I have been taking the train with Alison [Chan, sophomore] and Savana [Yeug, freshman], and Savana just talked about how many animal deaths there

“I was proud because even though it was really early in the season, everyone on the team wanted to take their Thursday or Saturday off and do some nice, wholesome team things.” —Eve Wening, senior and captain

games. SK: Me as well, I was able to do that for one game but now I can’t anymore. EW: I’ll play half a game and not even shoot once.

SK: I also want to be able to drive to the basket because it’s really not as scary as it sounds.

4. Are there any challenges the team faced this year?

SK: Yeah, we have a pretty short team and a young team. EW: A huge part of a talent is the new freshmen as well. We lost a lot of

have been in her life—how her grandparents used to murder bunnies and she would save these rabbits that they would try to drown.

One day when Miller wasn’t here for practice, Eve and I had to lead practice. EW: Oh my gosh, I got so annoyed and so stressed out.

No one would listen to me and I was just doing the weirdest things.

SK: It was a great thing seeing our leadership in action. EW: Actually the funniest moment was when we were going to the game at Bas-

ketball City and usually, teams go together. We couldn’t figure out whether we should walk or take the train. I’m a walking enthusiast but Selene really want to take the train. So I was like I’m going to walk and Selene can take the train, but then I felt bad making the whole team walk with me so we let people decide which way to go.

Two people went with Selene, and [Isabel] Leka, a junior, told me that that’s not a good captain move, but I was saying it was going to be fine.

SK: Trust, it’s all about trust. EW: The people behind us were walking and all of sudden, they text us that they are taking a shortcut, so now, we have two groups walking and the subway group. SK: And then Sammy [Furman, freshman] was running behind. EW: She wasn’t responding, and so we didn’t know where she was—now the group is in four parts And get this, the walking group splits off again and so we have five groups and I’m thinking no one is going to get there on time; this is my first away game as captain ever and the team is in different parts. But this is what happend, Selene and all the walking groups merged right at the same time except for Sammy on the same corner. It was just so cool.

8. Proudest memory so far?

SK: Probably freshman year when I fouled out of my first game. I also fouled out of my first playoff game. VM: But she played an awesome game against Thurgood Marshall above the Wendy’s or IHOP and she had a big three at the end. SK: Even though we lost, it was worth it. EW: I was proud when after the Millennium tournament, we got ramen and then went bowling except for Selene— literally everyone came and it was so cute. I was proud because even though it was really early in the season, everyone on the team wanted to take their Thursday or Saturday off and do some nice, wholesome team things. It was all super nice.

Drink of Choice: >SK - Coffee or Irish breakfast tea >EW - Coffee or water Favorite food: >SK - French fries >EW - Macintosh Apple Motto to live by: >SK - “Trust but verify”- Ronald Reagn >EW - “Everyone has oceans to fly, if they have the heart to do it.

Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?”— Amelia Earhart Fun fact: >SK - My cat’s name is Carmelo Anthony because my family’s favorite basketball team is the Denver Nuggets. >EW - I’m addicted to big red cinnamon gum.

Will the Giants Ever Be Good?

By ARI GUROVICH

For the third year in a row, the New York Giants are facing a season with less than six wins, currently sitting last in the NFC East with a 2-11 record. Since winning the Super Bowl in 2012, they have made the playoffs only once, when they lost in the 2016 NFC Wild Card game against the Packers. For years, the blame for the Giants’ lack of success has been placed on their aging quarterback Eli Manning. Yet the Giants starter for most of this season has been sixth overall pick Daniel Jones. Despite Jones proving himself to be a mobile and accurate quarterback with a strong arm, the Giants are heading toward their lowest record yet, even with a younger and, at the moment, better, quarterback under center.

Though there is no question that the Giants needed to move on from 38-year-old Manning, expecting the change to fix all the team’s struggles is a misdiagnosis of the team’s real issues. Neither Manning nor Jones are the kind of generational talents like the Texans’ Deshaun Watson, who was able to go 11-5 and win the AFC South in the 2018 season despite the Texans’ offensive line leading the league by a huge margin in both sacks given up and quarterback hits allowed, with 62 and 126, respectively. No, the key to success of for Giants quarterbacks has always, and continues to be, dependent on having a top-tier offensive line to keep the quarterback upright and a good defense to allow for more offensive playing time. That is not to say that Manning and Jones are bad quarterbacks, as Manning has won two Superbowls in his career; however, both of his Super Bowl wins were behind stellar offensive lines and top defenses. And yet, the highest the Giants have drafted an offensive lineman in the draft since 2012 has been in the third round with guard Will Hernandez, despite the offensive lines ranking 23rd and 21st in the past two seasons, respectively, according to NFL. com. Further, the Giants defense has ranked. With this in mind, it is not surprising that the Giants have been underperforming in recent years.

Despite the poor performance of their defense and offensive line, the Giants have used their high draft picks on skill position players like running back Saquan Barkley (second overall, 2018) and tight end Evan Engram (23rd overall, 2017).

Though the Giants have an abundance of skill-position talent, it has not translated to anything besides a few impressive highlight reels. This is because skill positional talent will rarely turn losses into wins. However, quarterback, defense, and offensive line excellency are almost necessities for a team to make the playoffs (which makes Deshaun Watson’s 2018 Texans season even more impressive).

However, all is not lost for the Giants. The upcoming draft and free agency period present a terrific opportunity to change the Giants around into a playoff contending team. The Giants are projected to receive the second overall draft pick again and will likely be able to get Ohio State pass rusher, Chase Young. Young has shattered the Ohio State record season sack total, despite missing two games on a suspension. “In college football, not many people dominated play the way Chase has played this year,” Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said. If drafted, Young would be a long term fix for the Giants’ lackluster pass rush.

Furthermore, the upcoming draft will be fairly offensive line heavy, with three offensive lineman project to be selected in the top ten per CBS sports analyst Ryan Wilson. This will give the Giants the opportunity to shore up their offensive line for the future in the second and third rounds. Furthermore, the Giants have a lot of valuable offensive assets that they would be able to trade to needing teams for more defensive and offensive line support. Some assets they could trade could include veteran wide receiver Golden Tate, Manning, and even Barkley.

However, the Giants’ lack of success cannot be blamed entirely on underperforming player personnel. Pat Shurmur, the Giants’ head coach, boasts a career record of 17-45, one of the worst in modern NFL history. Shurmur has consistently cost the team potential wins through perplexing playcalls. The Giants have blown numerous halftime leads because Shurmur has been unable to adjust his play calling to the opponent’s playing style while the other team adapts to the Giants. The Giants have the ability to move on from Shurmur this offseason and instead hire ex-Panthers head coach Ron Rivera. Rivera has a much more impressive record of 76-63-1, including a 2015 Super Bowl appearance following a 15-1 regular season. Another option for the Giants could be Super Bowl winning ex-Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, who possesses a 125–77–2 head coaching record.

Native New Yorker Matt Rhule, a college football coach, is also a viable option the Giants could pursue. In his two years as the head coach at Baylor, Rhule shifted the program from a 1-11 record to an 11-2 record. The Giants have many options at a new head coach next season, all of whom would likely present significant improvements over Shurmur.

Thus, if the Giants were to trade and draft well to develop a good defense and offensive line, help Daniel Jones continue his progression of development as a young quarterback, and hire a competent head coach, this team may well be in playoff contention this time next year.

Sports Editorial

By SHIVALI KORGAONKAR In basketball, being 5 v. 5, each player on the court serves a purpose: to help their team win. In the past, we’ve seen stand-out players carry a team, such as Lebron James with the Cleveland Cavaliers. On the other hand, the Golden State Warriors, a team with a Big Three (or sometimes Four) dominated

Ranking the Best Duos in the NBA

championship finals for the past five years—thanks to a group effort. The road to a championship title is one that every player dreams of and is thus highly competitive and rigorous. Triple threats, like the Miami Heat’s Big Three, for the last decade, brought entertainment and excitement to the court through teamwork. But times are changing, and with the numerous trades and

signings made this past summer, it seems as though dynamic duos will now carry the weight of winning a ring amongst an especially vying pool of teams.

Ranking these duos poses difficulty because of my inability as a judge to distinguish between what makes an individual good and what makes a duo good. Some argue that Lebron and Anthony Davis

aren’t the best duo, since they have each been game changers, without the assistance of the other. I based my rankings on chemistry, current records or statistics, and actual gameplay from this season. With that being said, injuries, which have plagued the Clippers, makes it hard to imagine what a duo could potentially be, due to their little to no games together.

With bias aside, here are my top five duos in the league, along with a few honorable mentions.

continued on page 27

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Page 27

Sports Sports Editoral

continued from page 24 They have proven to be solid complementary scorers to Butler, averaging 14.4 and 15.2 points per game respectively. Robinson, who also went undrafted in 2018, has emerged as a sniper, averaging 43 percent from three-point range on 6.6 attempts a game. He currently ranks 12th in the league in True Shooting percentage with 65.1 percent. This is especially impressive, considering that all 11 players currently playing in the NBA with a higher true shooting percentage are big men. The shooting and spacing of the Heat have improved considerably compared to last season, with Robinson, Herro, and Nunn each providing strong perimeter shooting. Bam Adebayo, a 2017 NBA draft sleeper, has also been performing extremely well.

He is averaging 14.5 points, 10.3 rebounds, and 4.1 assists. His assist numbers are very high for a center. As a third-year player, Adebayo has also shown his defensive prowess, ranking 13th in the league for Defensive Rating, with 100.3. With an All-Star small forward, three rookies who only have

Miami Heat: A New Blazing Fire

more room to grow, and solid big men, the Miami Heat are expected to place in the upper half of the East by the end of the season. It will be interesting to see how these young players develop through the season.

There is no doubt that the Miami Heat will perform very well in the playoffs. There is precedent for Jimmy Butler leading his team in the playoffs with his ability to create his shot, or get baskets from isolation or pick and roll. With almost seven seasons of experience in the playoffs, Jimmy Butler will lead the Miami Heat through the playoff pressure. They will be a legitimate contender for the Eastern Conference Finals.

One of the interesting possible matchups in the playoffs is the Miami Heat versus the Boston Celtics. The parallels between the Celtics and the Heat are numerous; both teams are extremely young, with one veteran All-Star providing leadership and ball-dominant scoring. The Celtics picked up Kemba Walker over the summer to fill the void left by Kyrie Irving, and he has proven to be a positive locker room influence and a

great leader for the Celtics. Other notable players on the Celtics are Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, two athletic, all-around scoring wings. Tatum especially has shown growth this season, averaging 21.2

The root of the Heat’s success goes further than just team dynamic and offensive systems. points in just his third season. Another key player for the Celtics is Marcus Smart. While Smart only averages 11.8 points and 4.6 assists on under-40 percent shooting from the field, he makes up for it completely with his defensive abilities. Smart averages 1.5 steals a game, but more importantly, rou-

Rebels Fall Behind Early, Drop Home Opener to Bayard

Julian Giordano/ The Spectator

As the players finally filled Stuyvesant’s home court for the first time this season, the crowd’s energy could hardly be contained.

The chants, taunts, and bleacher banging were in full force as the students and family in attendance did their best to get under the skin of the Bayard Titans, who were rolling into Thursday’s contest on the back of two straight wins.

Though much of that emotion was transferred to the floor during the game, it just wasn’t enough to propel the Runnin’ Rebels to their first league victory of the year, as the Titans cruised past them in the Rebels’ home

opener at 77-56.

Despite the 21-point separation, the game never felt like a complete rout. Coach Paul Goldsman, now in his second stint as bench general of the Rebels, emphasized the fire that his team played with despite battling through double-digit deficits throughout the second half.

“The effort was awesome. The energy that we came out with—it was evident throughout the game.

Yeah, the effort was there. I mean, as you saw, we were down by 10, 15, 20 points [in the second half], but we never quit, and that was a

Daniel Thies to handle, as both of them are neither great defenders nor exceptionally athletic. In addition, Miami’s bench of Dragic, Herro, Derrick Jones Jr., Justice Winslow, and Kelly Olynyk is superior to Boston’s bench of Brad Wanamaker, Smart, Grant Williams, Semi Ojeleye, and Kanter.

Depending on who Smart is guarding, either Dragic or Herro would be guarded by Wanamaker, and both are a mismatch for Wanamaker’s suspect defense. Winslow and Jones are both athletic slashers that would prove too much for Enes Kanter in the paint, and Olynyk’s ability to shoot and space the floor would only allow for an even clearer lane for those two to attack the rim. Thus, the bigs and bench points are both awarded to Miami.

Overall, if Miami and Boston were to match up some time in the playoffs, Miami would be the superior team, barring injury. Their shooting and depth, combined with their multiple scoring threats, would be too much for a shallow Boston team. Miami is looking to be the dark horse pick to win it all.

Sports Editorial

Boys’ Basketball

By JOSHUA SPEKTOR

tinely locks down the other team’s superstars with his stifling defense.

He is also among the league leaders in drawing offensive fouls with his knack to sell fouls well.

So how do these teams match up? Both Miami and Boston have great scorers from their guards and wings—Nunn, Herro, guard Goran Dragic, and Butler are all competent shooters, and similarly, Boston has some firepower on the perimeter. Boston’s Walker, Tatum, and Brown have each demonstrated their offensive prowess.

However, none of these players, besides Butler, have shown much defensive excellence. This is where Marcus Smart gives Boston the advantage. Smart’s lockdown defense can neutralize Herro, Nunn, or even Butler’s game, and force the Heat into modifying their offensive gameplan. Butler, though, is one of the best two-way wings in the league, and can make scoring and playmaking for Kemba and Tatum hell.

Moreover, Miami’s bigs and bench are both better than Boston’s. Bam Adebayo’s above-therim play and great defense will be too much for Enes Kanter and

great sign,” he said.

Part of the reason that the Rebels were able to keep the game competitive was the season debut of senior center Samson Badlia.

The 6’5” rebound machine shone in the paint when he was on, especially for stretches in the second quarter in which he appeared virtually unguardable. He ended up logging a team-high eight rebounds (six in the offensive half) in addition to nine points, matching his season-high from last year.

Junior guard Nicky Lin, who in his short time with the varsity team has been everything the Rebels could ask for in terms of offensive contributions, also quietly had himself a gem of a performance, knocking down seven field goals, tossing up a teamleading four assists, and going a perfect 4-4 from the foul line for a stellar 18-point game. Lin and Badlia, who were the team’s top two point-getters respectively, both received high praise from Coach Goldsman after the game.

“Nicky Lin was a beast, especially in the corner. Him driving baseline, him hitting his three-foot floaters—that was very good, very promising. Samson was a beast down low. They couldn’t stop him, [and] I was very impressed by that. I would say Samson and Nicky played excellent today,” he said.

Another notable performance was that of senior guard Brian Poon, who gave the Titans issues by beelining to the hole early and often. In addition to his two layups and one free throw, Poon contributed one shot from beyond the arc—one of only two made by the Rebels on Thursday.

The other was pitched in by junior guard-forward Mitchel Fogel, who finished the afternoon with five points.

The three-point line, however, is where this game might’ve been decided. The Rebels’ relaxed 1-3-1 defensive formation

opened up the perimeter for the Titans’ best shooters, who took no prisoners, knocking down seven of their eight total three-balls inside the first half. The presence and volume of the three-point shot allowed the Titans to open the game up early and never look back, despite the Rebels doing well to field opportunities under and in front of the basket.

Switching over to a man-to-man strategy helped restrict the Titans to only one three-pointer the rest of the game.

Senior co-captain Ben Zenker, who chipped in with four points and four rebounds, echoed some of these remarks after the game, but he is optimistic about what this group can achieve this season. “We were coming in fully expecting a win [but] ended up letting their best players take the game out of our hands. [We need to] come out with more intensity on the defensive end. We started off flat-footed, and they took advantage with seven 3’s in the first half. I feel like I personally have the potential to do better, and that when all our players finally feel like [they’re] firing on all cylinders, we’re a deadly team,” he said.

Though the Rebels are now winless in their first three league games, there is still a lot of basketball left to play, with plenty of time for the new roster to jell.

However, their most difficult test might be right on the doorstep, as they now embark on a challenging stretch of five games in 11 days right before winter break begins. They start their run on Tuesday against the undefeated Murry Bergtraum Blazers, who have put up at least 90 points in every game they’ve played this season, and will cap it off against the Hunter Hawks, who finished last season with the best record in the Manhattan A1 Division.

Ranking the Best Duos in the NBA

Lebron James and Anthony Davis; LA Lakers At number one, Lebron James and Anthony Davis (AD) have made themselves a massive presence on a small court. Leading the Western Conference with a 19-3 record, the LA Lakers have surpassed all expectations. The pick and roll offense has been, and will perceivably continue to be, unguardable. James and AD are able to coexist, rather than play as individually incredible athletes, something which was speculated about before the season began. The chemistry between these two has posed real difficulty for the opposing defense, allowing both players to have high field goal percentages.

As the top five players in the league right now, James and AD will easily take the Lakers to playoffs. With James’ cross-court vision, and AD’s unstoppable size, this combination has been invincible this season.

Paul George and Kawhi Leonard; LA Clippers In the same arena as our Number One duo, Paul George (PG-13) and Kawhi Leonard dominate the court as both elite defensive and offensive players. Having two reliable men on both sides of the court is vital for the LA Clippers as they seek a title. Considering their lethal defensive skills, it will be a great feat to get past these two players, so godspeed to those who try. PG13 has had a fantastic career, filled with many high scoring games and numerous steals. As defending finals MVP, Kawhi Leonard is the best player in the league, in my opinion. His ability to make shots in high risk situations and carry a team through finals will greatly benefit the Clippers against competitive teams this season. But with recent injuries, the two men have only played three games together.

So, while it’s difficult to imagine what they could be, it’s easy to say that they won’t be anything short of amazing. Assuming both players stay healthy, the LA Clippers are a clear contender in the finals championship.

Russell Westbrook and James Harden; Houston Rockets While many may be shocked by this ranking, the incredible improvement Russell Westbrook and James Harden have displayed after playing together speaks for itself. The biggest doubt people had about Harden and Westbrook stemmed from their “ball hog” styles. As two players who love to shoot, these hesitancies were definitely valid. However, based on the numerous games we’ve seen this duo play, it’s clear that they’ve adjusted to each other well. Harden plays off the ball more, and Westbrook has made his game about more than just shooting. While the Houston Rockets are fifth in the Western Conference, I believe that the duo holds a lot of potential, especially considering neither player is overwhelmingly dominant on the court. Westbrook and Harden’s ability to learn from each other this early in the season sheds some light on the prospective success for the Rockets this season.

Steph Curry and Klay Thompson; Golden State Warriors The Splash Brothers have completely changed the face of basketball. With their impeccable long range shots and long-lasting chemistry, it’s a shame that we haven’t been able to watch these players show off after the terrible loss of Kevin Durant. When healthy, it should be assumed that Curry and Thompson will make it known that the Warriors’ reign in the Western Conference is far from over. We know the capabilities of these two players in big games, and this alone holds a great advantage above the new duos in the league. I’m excited to see where these two veterans take their franchise next.

Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving; Brooklyn Nets Once again, injuries have deprived us of potential greatness on the court. continued on page 26

The Spectator ● December 20, 2019

Sports Editorial

Page 28

THE SPECTATOR SPORTS

Boys’ Wrestling

The Catastrophe Known as The Knicks

By RUDOLPH MERLIN

Holiday make the layup instead of risking a three point play. That is exactly what happened, and Holdiay’s free throw was the decider of the game, as the Knicks would go onto lose several minutes later 104103. These errors are seemingly made several times by the Knicks every night, and they have not stopped in their frequency.

Fizdale, throughout all of this, has claimed that his team was developing. He commented on how well his players were practicing and that there was a sense of camaraderie between the players, stating he has a group “that could fight for each other.” But the Knicks’ improvement has not been seen so far in the regular season. If anything, they are arguably on track to finish worse than they did last year (17-65).

There is only so much that can be blamed on Fizdale, though.

The problem also trickles down to the front office. The organization failed to acquire future Hall of Famers Kevin Durant and Kyrie Iriving. Instead, they signed Taj Gibson, Bobby Portis, and Julius Randle, wasting $42 out of the $70 million of cap space to sign three power forwards. And while Randle is a solid player, he, alongside the rest of the Knicks’ signings, are absolutely worthless in comparison to Durant and Irving. The thing is, the front office has nothing to offer to free agents. The Knicks have been in the sewer for the past 20 years, and while attendance at Madison Square Garden has always been high and New York is the hotbed of business deals and contracts, NBA players want to win a championship at the end of the day. The only way the Knicks will be able to fix their struggles would be to develop a young core of players. Get rid of the veterans and play the newcomers. Let them learn the sport through game experience. From that point, the front office should start hunting for free agents: talented players who will be able to take control of these newcomers and bring out the best in them. The fact that the Knicks have no above average players, are horrible on both sides of the field, and waste their money and draft picks on questionable players all serve to prove that the Knicks’ misery will continue for a long time.

Sports Editorial

Miami Heat: A New Blazing Fire

By ERIC KIM and JUSTIN LEE The Miami Heat defeated their Eastern Conference rivals, the Toronto Raptors in their first matchup of the 2019-2020 NBA season on Tuesday, December 3, and snapped Toronto’s ninegame win streak. As the buzzer sounded, the scoreboard looked like this: Jimmy Butler, yet again showing his prowess as a leader of the team, recorded a triple double with 22 points, 12 assists, and 13 rebounds; Duncan Robinson had 22 points, and Bam Adebayo had 18 points. Interestingly, however, every time Miami and Toronto met last season, the games ended in a Miami loss by an average margin of 10.3 points.

Similarly, compared to last season, when they finished 10th with a 39-43 record, the Miami Heat are now the third seed in their conference with a 17-6 record. Furthermore, they have had a franchise-best 9-0 start at

home for the season. How does a 10th seed team who missed the playoffs suddenly transition into a conference finals contender in one summer? The short answer is Jimmy Butler.

Headed by Pat Riley, the Heat’s front office has long been one of the best in the league.

This offseason, Miami was able to obtain All-Star forward Jimmy Butler as part of a fourteam deal involving players like Hassan Whiteside, Josh Richardson, Meyers Leonard, and more. The 30-year-old NBA star later signed with the Heat for a 4-year, $142 million deal. Coach Eric Spoelstra’s system allows for the team’s lone All-Star Butler, a ball dominant small forward, to showcase both his passing and scoring abilities. Butler, who is just reaching the end of his prime, has thrived in this system and has been playing arguably the best season of his 10-year career. In just 34.7 minutes per game, he has been averaging 20.6

points, 6.3 rebounds, 6.8 assists, and 2.2 steals. Butler ranks sixth in the league for Wins Shares, a player’s contribution to a team’s success, with +3.6, and seventh in the league for VORP, Value over Replacement Player, with +1.5. He is also averaging a 58.5 TS percent (True Shooting percent), which is the highest in his career.

However, the root of the Heat’s success goes further than just team dynamic and offensive systems. The addition of young talents Duncan Robinson, Tyler Herro, and Kendrick Nunn, along with Bam Adebayo’s progression as a rim-running big, has proven crucial to the Heat’s recent success.

Herro, the 13th pick of the 2019 NBA Draft, and Nunn, an undrafted prospect, are both front-runners for the Rookie of the Year award, far surpassing the media’s expectations. continued on page 27

By SAMIR HASSAN

Take a bicycle, change its wheels, and put it on a different track, because that’s how the Stuyvesant’s boys’ varsity wrestling team, the Spartans, are shaping up into the season. A new head coach, Daniel Waldeck, will look to train these young men and turn them into soldiers. Thrown into a new league, even the players aren’t very familiar with their surroundings. After finishing last season with a 3-4 record, the Spartans will aim for at least a .500 record this season.

“Last season, we didn’t do enough conditioning, and people were getting tired in matches too quick this year, so we have been doing a lot more conditioning,” senior and captain Jeffrey Zheng said.

They have clearly built on this idea with their rigorous two-hour-and45-minute practices before and after which they condition to maintain their stamina. He attributed the balance they achieve between drills, conditioning, and technique to Coach Waldeck’s new methods.

Interestingly enough, last year, they switched to less conditioning-oriented practice because the players were being mentally and physically exhausted. Will this problem haunt them again as the season goes on?

Only time will tell.

Looking at the previous season, Zheng implied they want to recover from blows to their confidence.

“Our morale definitely took a hit, but with a lot of new wrestling this year, we hope to bounce back from it,” Zheng said. Right after blowout losses to Brooklyn Technical High School and Grand Street, the Spartans seemed to have lost their mojo. They ended their optimistic season with a three-match losing streak.

“We have high hopes for all new additions to the team,” Coach Waldeck said. Zheng specified members such as junior Egor Vazgyrin and sophomores Sungsan (Justin) Kim and Xiaomin Liu. Vazgryn will be their new 160 lb-er, and his previous Judo experience can play a huge role in his acclimation to wrestling. Though the sophomores lack the experience Vazgryn has, their effort and potential can make them into future winners for the team.

The Spartans’ ultimate goal for this season? “We won Bor-

ough Championships two years ago, and we hope to regain that title,” Zheng said. However, the Spartans’ season isn’t sailing too smoothly. They forfeited their season opener against Susan Wagner High School. Could the Spartans would have won if they were able to play that match? That’s a question that will disturb them if they end up hovering around the playoff zone. The second match of the season against Tottenville resulted in a striking loss of 0-90 at home.

One can guess that the audience wasn’t too entertained during that match. The following day, the tired Spartans played against Baruch High School. Putting up only half the points Baruch did, they lost again at home.

The Spartans need to turn their season around. Here’s how: They need to win their next four matches.

A back-to-back next week against Petrides away and McKee/Staten Island Tech home will be the defining factor. Lose both matches, and they have as many losses as last season. Win both, and they are back on track. Resting during the winter break, they come back to play against Murry Bergtraum at home, a team that they easily beat last season. Afterwards, they play Angie Grzybowski/ The Spectator

The start to the 2019-2020 season has been one of the most entertaining starts in recent memory.

All-Stars and future Hall of Famers are all vying for control over the Eastern and Western Conferences while young players are beginning to develop names for themselves.

What is even more remarkable and what has been standard for the past several seasons is the performance of the New York Knicks. The Knicks, after their first 22 games, hold a 4-18 record.

At first glance, the team appears to be composed of second rate veterans, young players with lots of talent, and above-average forwards such as Julius Randle and Marcus Morris. The Knicks visibly lack a true star, and one could speculate that an all-star would put them over the top. But this is not the case. The Knicks recently fired David Fizdale after their horrendous start, obviously because of his poor performance as their coach. But in this particular instance, Fizdale did not fail because he was put in charge of a team that needed some polishing. Fizdale failed because he could not do anything to a team that fails to execute and understand the fundamentals of the game of basketball. Devoid of offense, a complete ineptness in protecting the basket, and worst of all, unacceptable careless errors are what have been plaguing the Knicks for the past three years.

The truth is, the New York Knicks will remain one of the worst teams in the NBA so long as they do not cure these problems. The Knicks’ abysmal 4-18 record is partly because of the fact that the Knicks, to put it simply, can’t shoot the basketball. They are last in the league in points per game (100.5) as well as in field goal percentage (42.1 percent). On every possession, the Knicks attempt a two-pointer 65.2 percent of the time, a percentage that is in the top six among all teams. However, they make only 45 percent of such two-point field goals, dead last amongst all NBA teams. While the team’s three-point percentage (35.8 percent) is mostly average, the Knicks simply do not have a go-to shooter during clutch situations. Speaking of clutch situations, the Knicks would have been able to send December 1’s game into overtime if forward Morris

had been able to sink his last free throw, another category the Knicks rank last in.

And the Knicks’ lack of offense is the reason why Knicks fans see some NBA oddities. You cannot have Morris bring up the basketball; that is the responsibility of a guard. And the Knicks do not have a guard to do that. Frank Ntilikina, who is supposed to be the team’s saving grace and their legend in the making, has been stuck averaging six points a game in his three years as an NBA player. Dennis Smith Jr, who was supposed to lead the team and fill the power vacuum left by Kristaps Porzingis, has been nonexistent all year. Point guards such as Alonzo Trier and Damyean Dotson, who have shown potential last year, are barely played (yet another oddity) in order the give Ntilikina room to grow. The Knicks are focused on making the face of the team a player who has shown no growth rather than players who have shown great promise, and soon, players like Trier and Dotson will be worthless benchwarmers whose contracts fill up the Knicks’ cap space.

The problems do not stop there. The recent 30-point blowouts have solidified the Knicks’ complete lack of ability to play any defense. As I watched their December 5 game against the Denver Nuggets, it was visible that the players did not know what they were doing. The team’s mistakes were really simple ones: losing their man, miscommunication during switches and screens, and support coming from the wrong areas of the court. These errors created space for the Nuggets to shoot the basketball, and when they did, their shots were largely uncontested. In a league that relies heavily on the three-ball, it is no surprise why the Knicks are second to last in threepoint defending. They have lost by more than 20 points six times in only 22 games. This is even worse than last season, when they lost this way only twice in the first 22 games.

It is also “the little mistakes” (as Knick Hall of Famer Walt Frazier puts it). Their game against the Pacers on Saturday, December 7 saw Morris fouling Holiday as he was going for a layup. With the Knicks in a nice rhythm and one point away from tying the game, Morris should have let Holiday

Spartans’ Scramble for a Spark

two games in two weeks to end off the season.

Currently in sixth place, their three-game losing streak doesn’t provide much for their championship hopes. The new coach emphasizes conditioning, which can tire out the players. The strong teams in the new league might not be kind to the Spartans. And their injured captain doesn’t have a return date in mind. With a mountain of challenges, they can’t miss a single margin to succeed. It’s refreshing to see that with all these obstacles, however, the team is still confident. Their namesake, the Spartans, doesn’t suggest “warriors” for nothing.

Sports Editorial

Ranking the Best Duos in the Honorable NBAMentions: continued from page 23

As the only duo in the Eastern Ced after his crushing achilles injury, which 85 percent of NBA players return to play no more than two seasons after. Irving has shown his impeccable driving skills and insane handles on offense. Durant and Irving are clearly both hungry to redeem themselves from their last season, and that will carry them a long way. Durant has to prove that he can cause damage without the help of his All-Star Warriors teammates, while Irving is looking for recognition as a shooter and playmaker. When these two finally make it on the court together, the Eastern Conference will definitely adopt the competitive nature we currently see in the West.

Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum; Portland Trail Blazers This OG duo could have a big year with their chemistry in offense, but they have to step up defensively to be seen as a real threat.

Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid; Philadelphia 76ers With Embiid’s MVP playing level, the only thing holding the 76ers back is Simmons’s three-pointers.

Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis: Dallas Mavericks This young duo has defied all skepticism this season. Luka has become an MVP candidate, and their chemistry can only go up from here, so I’d watch out for the damage the Mavericks create.