Volume 106, Issue 9 by The Stuyvesant Spectator

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

Volume 106  No. 9

January 25, 2016

stuyspec.com

Theater’s Lighting and Sound System to Receive $300,000 Upgrade

NEWSBEAT

ormer Interim Acting Assistant Principal of Pupil Personal Services Casey Pedrick was officially appointed to her position on Wednesday, December 16.

unior Sharon Lin was named National Winner of the National Center for Women & Information Technology’s Aspirations in Computing Award for girls interested in computer science careers. Seniors Loren Maggiore, Yasmeen Roumie, and Nellie Spektor, and juniors Arpita Abrol, Jiaqi Gao, Sarah Yoon, and Stephanie Yoon were named National Runner-Ups.

Xin Italie / The Spectator

By Giselle Garcia

enior Rishika Jikaria placed sixth in the Round Robin and eighth overall at the Sunvitational Speech Tournament at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from Saturday, January 9 to Sunday, January 10.

eventeen students’ project proposals for biology teacher Jessica Quenzer’s Biology Lab Techniques class were accepted by the Urban Barcode program, which aims to use DNA barcoding to explore biodiversity in New York City.

Over winter break, renovations began on the Murray Kahn Theater’s sound system. This is one of many upgrades that are part of Stuyvesant’s plan to modernize the theater, which began in 2014 with the replacement of the flooring and upholstery in the seats. This undertaking is expected to cost well over $300,000, amassed from both donations from the Parents’ Association (PA) and a $300,000 grant, approved in 2014, from New York City Councilwoman Margaret Chin and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer. The decision to dedicate some of this money to the sound system came after parents noticed the faulty audio in the Stuyvesant Theater Community’s (STC) production of “Rent” in November

2014. “‘Rent’ was a great show, but we couldn’t hear it well,” PA co-president David Venderbush said. “There are a lot of things that don’t work at Stuyvesant, but the sound system wasn’t working at all. It was time to bring Stuyvesant into the 21st century.” David Venderbush, along with the administration and the rest of the PA, met to decide where to distribute the remainder of the money after the renovations of the seats and flooring. They decided to allot $275,000 to sound upgrades, and made plans to begin enhancing the lighting system as well, though work on this part of the plan has not begun yet. “In the initial stages [of acquiring and distributing the money], we had no say and it was up to the principal, the PA, and the contractors,” junior and STC

Programming Office Strives to Annualize Core Classes

By Tiffany Chen, Mai Rachlevsky, and Jan Wojcik

Starting with the Spring 2016 semester, the programming office will strive to annualize all core classes. Thus, students that take year-long classes in science, mathematics, English, social studies, and foreign language will have the same teacher in the second semester as they did for the first. Though it has never been completed in the past, the programming office believes they are up to the task and will try to follow through with their plans. This is not the first attempt at annualizing classes. Principal Jie Zhang had previously approached the former Assistant Principal (AP) of Technology Services Edward Wong in hopes of annualizing classes. While these attempts were successful for certain classes, like all Advanced Placement (AP) Social Studies and AP English classes, the former programming office staff told Zhang that they would be unable to effectively annualize classes for every student. The biggest hurdle in implementing the annualized system is scheduling classes that are different for a student each semester, like 5Tech classes and art appreciation classes. Other schools, like the Bronx High School of Science,

WHAT’S INSIDE? Features A&E

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

have their students pair their electives, so that their teachers for both the fall and spring term are the same for the two electives. In Stuyvesant, this is very difficult to achieve because most teachers that teach single-term electives can only teach that one class. This year, however, with the new programming office staff and the replacement of Daedalus with eSchoolData and the Student Transcripts Academic Record System (STARS), Zhang and the programming office are confident in their abilities. “The reason we’re going to try is that we have a brand new programming office. We completely have a different programming structure; even the software is different,” Zhang said. Zhang also mentioned that not all classes will be able to be annualized, but the programming office is trying their best to achieve annualization in as many classes as they can. The administration believes that this change will benefit the student body. “If a certain teacher doesn’t teach up to a certain point in the curriculum and a student changes teachers, parts of the curriculum might be omitted or repeated, and this is inefficient. When classes are annualized, students can pick up right where they left off with their teacher,” Zhang said. “The transition into the second semester of teaching

would be smooth for both the teacher and the student, as the student wouldn’t need to become accustomed to a new teaching style.” The administration also feels that learning is improved when the group of students is held relatively constant, a byproduct of annualization.“It is a lot easier to build and sustain a classroom community over the course of the year when classes are annualized. Students come to know each other and [the teacher] much, much better,” Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman said in an e-mail interview. Annualization is also believed to benefit teachers as they would not need to familiarize themselves with a new batch of students. “I like the idea that I’ll have most of my current students back next semester. I don’t have to learn a lot of new names and faces and I get to know my students better than in years past,” mathematics teacher Devon Butler said. “I also don’t have to spend a lot of time going over class routines and expectations because my students will be familiar with them from our time together first semester. That will be a huge timesaver and help me hit the ground running continued on page 3

Telly Leung: From the Murray Khan Theater to the Broadway Stage Read about award-winning actor and Stuyvesant alumnus Telly Leung’s journey from performing in SING! to starring in a Broadway musical.

Slate member Winston Venderbush said. “Now that the students are learning how to use [the new system], we are making some requests.” For example, junior and STC Technical Director Lela Ni has met with the technicians working on the lighting and sound system to discuss possible lighting upgrades. Final decisions have yet to be made in this aspect of the enhancements. “We’re aiming for a new lighting system that is low maintenance but flexible. There has been talk of replacing our conventional incandescent lighting fixtures with LED fixtures, which are more efficient, produce less heat, and offer a great range of color capabilities,” Ni said. According to Ni, work on the lighting system will likely not begin until the upgrades to the sound system are completed. The exact date for completion is unknown. However, visible changes have already been made. One of the first uses of the money was to clean the previously-cluttered sound booth, from which the Technical Crew controls the lighting and sound system. “Much of the stuff that littered the booth has been cleared out and the walls were painted baby blue,” Ni said. “A new desk has been constructed to hold the sound console and another one will be built for the lighting console.” Additionally, much progress has been made in improving the sound system, though there are

more plans in store. The theater now holds a new audio mixer and wireless intercom system that allows backstage crew members to communicate with each other from anywhere in the area, as opposed to being limited to where the previously-wired systems were located. Other backstage enhancements include video chat capabilities between the booth and the projection room, and the ability to live-stream video to the television in the first floor atrium. Another upgrade, which was already taken advantage of in the STC’s winter drama “The Great Gatsby,” is the new wireless microphone system. This allows actors to have individual microphones instead of only having hanging condenser microphones, which can only pick up signals within a limited range. “The sound quality of the wireless headset microphones is much better than the handheld microphones we had previously,” Ni said. “This, in addition to the fact that actors no longer need to play hot potato with the mics, will significantly improve the quality of our [shows].” The STC is thankful for the new upgrades, and is excited to see how they will further improve their future productions. “As a student body, we are very lucky to have this new system, and very fortunate that our parents and administration support our efforts as much as they do,” Winston Venderbush said.

Online Gradebook Engrade To Be Implemented Next Year By Julia Ingram Starting in the Spring 2016 semester, the Student Union (SU) and the administration will begin working towards implementing an instant online grade book for all students using the learning management system Engrade. The SU will strive to make students’ averages, their grades on individual assignments, and how those grades are factored into their averages available on Engrade for as many classes as possible by the Spring 2017 semester. The idea for using Engrade originated from Sophomore Caucus President Tahseen Chowdhury and Vice President Pallab Saha, who had positive experiences with the system in middle school. “[Saha and I] didn’t have [Engrade] in sixth grade, but our averages went up five to six points in the second and third year and we think that Engrade had a huge role in it,” Chowdhury said. Chowdhury further witnessed the correlation between his grade increase and an online

grade book in his freshman year at Stuyvesant. “I used JupiterGrades last year with [biology teacher Marissa] Maggio, and a ton of people had discrepancies, or mistakes that teachers would make, and these would have been otherwise overlooked,” he said. Beyond minimizing errors, the SU aims to increase grade transparency through Engrade, allowing students to improve their grades and approaches to studying throughout the semester. “This is an initiative we believe is most beneficial to the student body in terms of having all of your grades laid out for you and seeing them shift as you go along, instead of being blindsided marking period two and trying to get your grades up marking period three,” SU President Ares Aung said. “Instead of blind testtaking [and] getting grades back, you’re actually seeing your improvements, [and how] changing the way you approach a situation affects how you do in a class.” continued on page 2

Critics’ Picks: 2015 Film The Oscars and the Golden Globes are so passé. Hear what our very own A&E department has to say about 2015 in film!

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 2

News Online Gradebook Engrade To Be Implemented Next Year continued from page 1

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and NASA

WORLDBEAT

nder the nuclear pact, the US lifted sanctions on Iran on Saturday, January 16, and the US and Iran exchanged prisoners. However, the US Treasury announced new sanctions over Iran’s weapon program a day later, on January 17.

sai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected Taiwan’s first female president on Saturday, January 16. Mainland China threatened war if Taiwan declared independence, and Tsai has pledged not to provoke the island’s neighbor.

slamic State militants in Syria are said to have abducted 400 civilians on Sunday, January 17, during an assault on the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, where at least 135 people were killed.

he attack at a busy commercial center in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, on Thursday, January 15, left eight people dead and more than 20 others injured. Indonesian police found an Islamic State flag at the site, but it is unclear how the suspects are linked to ISIS.

tocks all over the world plunged Friday, January 16, as investors became anxious about China’s oil’s collapse. These worries triggered a stock sell-off and sent oil prices below $30 a barrel.

day after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared West Africa Ebola-free, Sierra Leone reported another death from Ebola. WHO believes there are still risks for more outbreaks and continues to watch for new cases.

he water in Flint, Michigan was found to be contaminated with dangerously high levels of lead. President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency on Saturday, January 16, and authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide assistance.

key piece of evidence in the sexual assault case against Bill Cosby has been called into question and his lawyers are now working to use an immunity claim to dismiss the case.

The SU aims to have teachers post students’ grades on individual assignments on Engrade, which will then be calculated into an overall average according to predetermined weights. When the SU released a survey to students to gauge their opinions on this system, they received mostly positive results, with 93.1 percent of 232 responses expressing support. Junior Michelle Efthimiou, who transferred into Stuyvesant from the Bronx High School of Science, where teachers used the online grade book PupilPath, found having her grades online beneficial. “I was able to experience [it] firsthand,” she said. “Since you can see all your grades, you know where you can improve.” Some students, however, are concerned that the exactness of Engrade may lower their averages. “Some teachers give you slightly above your test average, which can be nice, especially if they see you’re putting in work, so I think that would be taken away by Engrade,” junior Lowell Weisbord said. The SU acknowledges this, but does not have the intent of obligating teachers to give the student their exact average on Engrade as their report card grade. “I don’t believe that Engrade will deter teachers from giving the grade they believe the student earned. There’s still that leeway of how they grade and that’s up to them,” Aung said. Other students’ concerns stemmed from the increased

anxiety caused by having grades constantly available to them or their parents. “There were concerns it might add additional stress to the students,” SU Vice President Matthew So said. With the help of Principal Jie Zhang and the administration, the SU plans on educating

not doing it, a lot of them don’t want to do it,” Zhang said. Another obstacle is that some teachers will not have the capability to update grades digitally. “Some teachers don’t own laptops or aren’t as technologically inclined as we, the millennials, are,” Aung said.

When the SU released a survey to students to gauge their opinions on this system, they received mostly positive results, with 93.1 percent of 232 responses expressing support. teachers on how to use Engrade throughout the Spring 2016 semester by holding professional development sessions dedicated to it. Engrade will then be promoted as an optional system during the Fall 2016 semester. At the end of the Fall 2016 semester, the SU will survey both students and teachers, and depending on the results, will either continue Engrade as an option or push the system on all teachers. Engrade is a free system and thus can be implemented at no cost to the school or the SU. However, both the SU and the administration recognize the difficulty in implementing an online grade book in every class, as teachers may not all be agreement with the system. “My feeling is teachers who want to use the electronic grade book, many are doing it, and the ones who are

Additionally, it is impossible for Zhang to mandate that all teachers use Engrade, as it is not part of the teacher’s contract, but she agrees to promote the system if the majority of teachers support it. “If 80 percent of the [teachers] opt in, then from the school’s end, you can push for the 20 percent,” she said. “If we ask the teachers in the building and 50 percent say they’re not going to do it, I think it will be very difficult.” However, the SU is optimistic that with student support, they can eventually make Engrade available in most classes. “Getting teachers to use it and put it in their routine will be difficult, but I think that’s just something that needs to be tackled over time. It’s just something we have to work towards to make it normal for the teachers,” So said.

Your Questions About the New AP Policy, Answered

By Giselle Garcia and Namra Zulfiqar

In December 2015, Principal Jie Zhang announced that Advanced Placement (AP) exams would be offered free of cost. However, all students enrolled in AP courses would no longer have the choice to opt out of their exams as before. This decision raised many questions among the student body about the details of this new rule, some of which Zhang answered in a recent interview. Why was this new policy enacted? I don’t like to use the word “policy,” because we’re not coming down hard on every kid. This change is more of just a result of using APs as a part of teacher evaluations. In the past, we used the Regents for the MOSL [Measure of Student Learning, a component that makes up 40 percent of the Department of Education’s (DOE) teacher evaluation criteria]. Now that’s very safe. When I say safe, I mean that, nobody is hurt by this, but no one is benefitted. At a school like this, because of our students’ pretty good performance prior to high school, as well as our school’s performance on the Regents themselves, our MOSL has been capped at about a 30. So nobody is getting a 20, but nobody is getting a 40, either, because you guys have been defined as a group with very little room to grow. Students come in already doing well, so our expected goal [for the Regents] is around a 95 across the board. Even for subjects like chemistry, where grades are at a citywide low, the goal is still unreasonably high. So, most teachers get a 30/40 for the MOSL, already preventing them from receiving a rating of “highly effective” [a grade of 91 or higher]. In this big building of 160 teachers, maybe five people were rated as “highly effective” [a grade of 91 or higher]

because it’s based on how the students performed on their eighth grade exams.

planations of how everything is calculated.

What about the students who didn’t take state exams in eighth grade, such as private school students? Private schools have an equivalent. They created something similar to the state exams, so they, too, assigned an initial benchmark for each student.

How about the teachers who don’t teach AP classes? Previously, if you were a teacher who was teaching a Regents class, 20 percent of your MOSL would be based on the Regents scores of your own students, and the other 20 percent was based off of Regents performances of the students either in the entire department or the entire school. We got to choose. For the non-Regents teachers, it was a bit different. There are two options for their MOSL. The first is school-wide: the teacher’s entire 40 percent is based on the Regents performances of all the students in the school, although we have some discretion. The other is called the “linked MOSL,” which is based on the Regents scores of the teacher’s own students only, even if that teacher isn’t teaching a Regents course. We didn’t choose the linked MOSL because it doesn’t really make a difference, since our Regents scores have always been very consistent. The same system will be used now, except with AP scores instead of Regents scores, so teachers who only teach Regents courses will be evaluated like how the non-Regents teachers were in the previous system. Number-wise, there are probably about the same number of teachers who teach Regents classes versus the teachers who teach AP classes, especially since a lot of them overlap, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

How will the DOE track progress with APs that don’t have a corresponding eighth grade exam, like AP Music Theory? The DOE comes up with it, still based on the state exams. Like with the Regents, the DOE creates expected benchmarks for the AP exams, too, including those like AP Music Theory. At the school-level, we’re not given very scientific ex-

How do you plan on ensuring that students are present for the exams? To be frank, there are no real consequences of not taking the exams. The scores don’t even come out until the summer, and if you’re a senior, you’ve already gotten into college. I can’t hold them from going to college or graduation. Still, we’re not bitter about it. My hope

Can you elaborate on how the DOE uses eighth grade performance to measure progress? The state exam scores are used to create benchmarks for the Regents in their corresponding subjects. Let’s say you got a 780 on the math state exam in eighth grade. I got a 630, so the expectation for me for the math regents is lower for me than you. So if a teacher has a class full of students like you, they wouldn’t get as much credit as a teacher who had a class full of me, even if all those students got the same scores. It’s because of this that we’ve been capped with the Regents, especially since the difference between a 94 and a 98 on the Regents is very hard to control. Although a similar system of benchmarks is used for the AP exams, there is more control between a three and a four on the exam. Schools that chose APs to be the measure got better results because there is more room to make progress. So as a building, we may have more “highly effective” teachers with this system.

is that students will say, “I’m going to take it because of ‘a, b, and c,’ rather than because “the principal is forcing me to,” because it wasn’t meant to be like that.

Do you have any particular reasons why a student should still choose to take an exam, regardless of the credit it may provide them in college? I know the reasoning for some is that most schools don’t accept the credits, but from my experiences, they’re very helpful. My son went to Harvard, and they didn’t count them as college credits. But, they gave placement tests in certain subjects that he took AP courses in, and that got him advanced standing in those subjects. He was able to graduate in three years. Sometimes, children don’t know. You think the colleges won’t recognize it or that it won’t have any effect, but you don’t know. Also, I think, if you have taken a full year of work, it’s a way to draw some closure to that. I feel that it’s important to give yourself an assessment of what you’ve learned. And, in the preparation for that, you may gain a little more knowledge, which really may help you do well on another placement, bringing me back to my first point. The bottom line is, I think you guys are an academically-strong bunch, and while I understand the psychology of the “second-term seniors,” that shouldn’t be the end of your learning period. You’re preparing yourself for your next, more challenging [period], and I don’t feel like you guys [should] slow down. The momentum shouldn’t stop. You’re so young, you’re sponges, and you could gain so much knowledge. I know it’s a bigger picture than getting credits, but I think you guys are learners and you should take advantage of this, especially since it’s free. What effect will absences or underperformance have on teacher

evaluations? Let’s say, for a specific course, [the] expectation is that everyone will get a four, at least, on the AP exam. These are suggested goals set by the state, and they vary with each subject based on historical performance. Then, say only eighty percent of the people [get] a four or a five. That’s okay. It won’t hurt the teacher, so there is a lot of wiggle room in terms of evaluation. We don’t have to meet the goal 100 percent. For absences, I’m not sure, but in theory, I don’t think that they will be counted as zeroes. Say, in a class of 30 kids, only three took the exam. We’re not gonna punish the 27 kids, but we’re not gonna punish the teacher. But, considering the resources we’ve put in, we’re hoping that most of the kids will show up. And worse comes to worst, say a teacher gets [one or two points lower on their MOSL]. It’s not going to hurt anybody, since there is a wide range for what is considered “effective” according to the state’s evaluation system, compared to what is necessary to be evaluated as “highly effective.” And, for the most part, the grading should be more accurate. How do teachers benefit from being rated as “highly effective” over merely “effective?” They don’t, really. There’s no financial benefits or anything. It’s really more for their own recognition for self-satisfaction. Is there anything else you’d like students to know about this? I want to talk about the bigger picture. We administer thousands of APs, so most [of ] the kids and parents do pay. By removing the cost of APs, we are benefitting most of our students. A few kids are absent, or don’t do well, okay. What’s the consequence? Essentially, none, if we can have intelligent conversations and communications to make decisions based on the needs of our students.

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

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News

William Bui / The Spectator

Library Introduces Scanning Entrance System

By Shanjeed Ali and Jonathan Buhler The library has introduced a new scanning system in order to expedite the entrance process. Previously, one of the librarians had to manually check students’ schedules on their ID cards, but this became impractical with the

overhaul of the old system. Last year, a scanning system paid for by the Department of Education was set up in the cafeteria. “I was planning on using that system, but it’s really hard to work with,” Cheng said. “[It] only detects lunch codes, so that’s why I had to ask someone to build a system that detects frees.”

“They stopped making personalized stickers with a giant number on it so it was getting really hard to see which free you have.” —Jonathan Cheng, librarian reformatting of the program stickers on the backs of the cards. “The stickers on the ID cards have changed quite a bit. They stopped making personalized stickers with a giant number on it so it was getting really hard to see which free you have,” librarian Jonathan Cheng said. The new stickers are slowly being rolled out by the new programming department as a part of the ongoing

The librarians have generally only allowed students with a lunch period or a daily free period to enter because the library reaches its maximum capacity quickly. At this point, the librarians do not plan to expand the scanning system to allow students with irregular science-frees to enter due to the overcrowding issue.

Programming Office Strives to Annualize Core Classes continued from page 1

when the second semester begins.” When surveyed by the Sophomore Caucus in response to the policy change, students were split with regard to whether or not they favored annualization, with 51.4 percent of sophomores who wanted annualized classes

because it eliminates the diversity a student gets when he or she changes teachers,” junior Alex Serbanescu said. “It’s important for us to have different teachers so we could get a different perspective on the same topic.” However, other students agree with the annualization of core classes. “I’m supportive [of it] because it allows students and teachers to really get to know

“The reason we’re going to try is that we have a brand new programming office. We completely have a different programming structure; even the software is different.” —Jie Zhang, principal and 48.6 percent who did not. As a result of the split, the Student Union (SU) decided not to approach Zhang on the issue. “We talked about it at the previous SU meeting for about ten to fifteen minutes. In the end, we all agreed it wasn’t something that we should pursue,” Sophomore Caucus President Tahseen Chowdhury said. Students have voiced their concern for the faults of implementing an annualized schedule. “I’m against annualizing classes

each other and it helps students get used to the teacher’s teaching style,” sophomore Sophia Gunluk said. While the student body remains divided on the issue, the administration is certain that the change will benefit both students and teachers alike. “I want every student to have as positive and productive an experience [in class] as possible,” Grossman said.

Naviance Access Extended to Freshmen and Sophomores By Selina Zou Freshmen and sophomores received login information for their Naviance accounts on January 5, marking the first time that access to the college and career readiness software has been extended to the younger grades. With this change, freshmen and sophomores now have access to college admissions data as well as career exploration features. Naviance was first introduced to Stuyvesant in 2014 and has since been used primarily to help students and their families steer their way through the college process. Though the school has been paying for the accounts of all students, which is required by Naviance, only juniors and seniors were previously given access to their Naviance accounts. This delay in access for the younger grades was because the college office was unfamiliar with the system and needed to digitalize and upload necessary student information, including names, emails, and addresses. “It always takes time to get used to a new program like Naviance, and it made the most sense for us to roll it out in stages,” Assistant Principal of Guidance Casey Pedrick said. “However, the goal was always to open it to the younger grades.” The process was expedited by Director of College Counseling Jeffrey Makris, who started working at Stuyvesant in September of 2015. Makris was already familiar with using Naviance from his prior work experience at the Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology. Additionally, the loss of Student Tools, which featured extensive college admissions

data, created a new incentive for the college office to extend Naviance access to all students. However, some features have been disabled for underclassmen, including the feature allowing college applicants to link their Common Application to their Naviance account. “[Naviance is] definitely geared toward college, but there are many features that the younger grades can use,” Makris said. Underclassmen can still access Naviance’s database of the last two years’ college admissions data, its resume builder, as well as its career-matching personality quizzes. Likewise, Pedrick is optimistic about the changes, noting that Naviance will allow the school to more easily keep materials exclusive to Stuyvesant students. Previously, newsletters and job opportunities shared with students were available on the website. While Naviance’s document library allows the school to organize documents online, it offers the additional benefit of protecting the exclusivity of those documents. “We want to keep [Guidance Counselor Harvey] Blumm’s internships and opportunities available just to kids [at Stuyvesant]. Naviance gives us the ability to put that information into a password protected document library,” Pedrick said. However, both Makris and Pedrick acknowledge some structural flaws of Naviance, particularly in its notification system. “When students upload anything after a given due date, we have to run a periodic report to see if there is anything new on there,” Pedrick said. “We often have to look for things more than we like, rather than being automatically

notified by the system.” They believe that the inefficiency of this flaw is magnified at Stuyvesant because of the number of students. “If we had 50 seniors, it’s workable, but with 800 seniors, not so much,” Makris said. “Still, we haven’t been able to find any other system that has the capabilities [Naviance has].” However, some students have found that access to college admissions data is a beneficial tool. “I’m glad that I have access to Naviance now because with it, I have access to college admissions information early on. The information is also organized much better than [it was in] Student Tools,” sophomore Minseo Kim said. Others believe its features are heavily geared toward the college application process and places unnecessary pressure on underclassmen. “I think [Naviance] is too heavily focused on college for it to be very useful for younger grades. At [Stuyvesant], the thought of college is always looming, but we [should] at least try to let freshmen and sophomores enjoy high school a little before plunging them into the scary abyss of college applications,” junior Haley Zeng said in an e-mail interview. Despite its current flaws, Makris is hopeful for Naviance’s future improvements. “Yes, there are some glitches in the system, but [...] it is useful for ninth and tenth graders to start to think about the world of work and how [their] interests and abilities and values might fit into that. There is no other online system that is even close to the usefulness and effectiveness of Naviance,” he said.

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Features What Did You Want to Be When You Were Young? By The Features Department

Kristyn Pluchino, Chemistry

Svetlana Firdman, History

Mikaela Dunitz, English

“I wanted to be a teacher since I was eleven years old. I remember my teachers trying to explain something to my classmates and they weren’t getting it—it was really silly. But, I always had a desire to learn and teach. I’m living the dream!”

“I remember in kindergarten I had a very specific idea for my life. I wanted to be an archaeologist and have two Chihuahuas named M&Ms and Skittles.”

“When I was really little, maybe six or seven, I wanted to be an astronaut. When I got a little older, probably around 10 or so, I wanted to be a professional basketball player. In eighth grade I decided I wanted to be a chemist. I never wanted to be a teacher.”

Marianne Prabhu, Biology Fan Guan, Mandarin “I wanted to be a Chinese teacher because one, I love children. Two, in China, being a teacher is a very respectable position. Three, I wanted to go to the Mongolian grasslands, but that dream couldn’t come true.”

“I wanted to be a board game designer. I used to beg my parents for oak tag in order to make the cards and go around my house to find things to be game piece figurines. I wanted to make a board game because I had always lost when I played with family members since I was the youngest. So, I wanted to create a board game that only I would be able to win.”

Joy Hsiao, Math and Programming Office “I don’t remember, but I knew that I didn’t want to be a teacher. I always thought that teachers were unfair, and I didn’t want to be put in that position.”

Yulia Genkina, Computer Science “This is a difficult question. I don’t think I ever settled on one thing. I think the longest goal I maintained was to be in the entertainment industry as a singer/dancer and also work as a museum tour guide during the day.”

Peter Brooks, Computer Science “When I was in eighth grade going into high school, I wanted to be a mathematical nuclear physicist. I was good at math and I liked physics. I wanted to combine the two into something that sounded prestigious and cool.”

Dr. Hemal Pathak, Biology “I wanted to be Scrooge McDuck from DuckTales, but more generous.”

Leslie Bernstein, Drafting “Horse jockey, pediatrician, chef, set designer...”

Jerry Citron, Biology “When I was in elementary school and lived in an Upper West Side apartment building, my friend and I wanted to be astronauts or airline pilots. We would explore this potential profession by building model airplanes and then throwing them out the window, in some cases lighting them on fire and trying to learn about aeronautics. In eighth and ninth grades, I became very political, and I wanted to be a political organizer. I was not particularly interested in science. As I got older, I became very interested in the environment, so for a really long time I wanted to be a forest ranger. Then in college, I was interested in studying to become something in medicine. Ultimately, I became a teacher, and that wasn’t something I thought about once until I was an adult.”

Dr. David Mandler, English “A: I was never a kid. I sprang from my father’s head, fully formed. Even in the delivery room, everyone called me Dr. Mandler. B: When I was a kid, I mostly wanted to be a grown-up. Specifically, I wanted to be seventeen years old. In the intervening decades, nothing has changed. I still want to be a grown-up. C: I wanted to be a cellist at first, but I did not practice enough. Then, I wanted to be a composer, but I got sidetracked when my family moved to the United States. My new obsession became learning English. This obsession is still an ongoing one. D: I wanted to be a doctor who could fix illnesses. I have succeeded to the extent that I am a doctor now who fixes split infinitives.”

Brenda Garcia, History “There are teachers in both sides of my family, and I grew up close to an aunt who spent almost 30 years working with kindergartners. As a young girl, I loved playing the teacher with my sister and cousins. I even used my aunt’s leftover handouts and materials in my ‘pretend school.’ However, I thought I was going to be a doctor [...] But then I became involved with Model UN in my junior year in high school, and decided I wanted to pursue a career in international relations. I came to work in the city’s public schools so that I could attend graduate school in the city and later move on to some international agency. Once in the classroom, I guess I truly discovered that love my aunt had experienced for so many years.”

Xinhui Xu / The Spectator

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 7

Features The Ten Floor Building, and the Woman Who Brought it to Life

Courtesy of Renee Levine

the records of the kids who had gone to Stuyvesant, but they put them in boxes and labeled the boxes “books,” because bringing books to the building was not taboo. After Levine finished telling her tale of how the new Stuyvesant building had come into being, we followed her out of the principal’s office and headed over to the elevator to begin the tour, ready to learn out about our building through different eyes.

A Tall, Ten-Floored Building

Original blueprint drawing of the front of the Stuyvesant building.

By Julia Ingram and Elizabeth Lawrence

On a crisp day last December, Renee Levine strolled through the main entrance into the Stuyvesant building. It was a place she knew extremely well, because she had helped build it, and after it was built, had helped maintain it. She walked over to the security guards, who promptly asked her for her address, because they didn’t know who she was. After some discussion, the guards let her in, and she stood on the first floor waiting to give us a special Renee Levine-edition tour of the building. As she waited, she recalled all the time and effort she and the rest of the construction team had put into the making of the building. With $150 million and 400,000 square feet, they had gone all out. She finally saw us approaching, finished with our ninth period classes, and her face spread into a huge grin. She enthusiastically greeted us and we accompanied her into the principal’s office, where she began her story of the establishment of the new Stuyvesant High School building.

The Planning Begins

Levine said. “They’re just interesting things all over. You have to just stop and look at them. Everything is authentic.” With 400 cubes spread across ten floors, it seems impossible to locate any one specific cube, but Jones and Ginzel thought of that ahead of time and planned accordingly. In the conference room located in Principal Jie Zhang’s office, there is a glass pyramid, inside of which they stored a key that lists where each cube in the building is located. “They didn’t want people to just read about it, they wanted people to look at it, and so it’s a mystery,” Levine said. And a mystery it would remain—Levine didn’t show us the key, and she doesn’t intend for any other Stuyvesant students to see it either. With that, we continued on our way for Levine to show us some of the crown jewels of the building.

These Are a Few of Her Favorite Things

Levine’s face lit up while describing the dining hall. It’s a part of the building she especially loves. “I said, we’re not going to have a cafeteria; we’re going to have a dining room. We’re not gonna have the prison tables where the prisoners bang, with the steel tables and the chairs,” Levine said, referring to the traditional long, white, cafeteria tables and benches of the old Stuyvesant building. She wanted the students to eat in a room that was airy and beautiful, not in the typical greasy, confined cafeterias that many schools have. Levine proudly recalled how when people from other schools visited the dining hall, they were in awe. It’s a room not only fit for hungry students, but also for different festivities. Many of the construction team’s parties were held there. They had a ten-year anniversary of the building’s opening party with all of the people who had worked on the project. Levine thought the din-

Elizabeth Lawrence / The Spectator

Levine’s connection to Stuyvesant originated through her children. Her two daughters, Jennifer Levine (‘84) and Stephanie Levine (‘86), attended Stuyvesant, and in fact, Stephanie met her husband there. “He was a wrestler for a while and [Jennifer] managed the wrestling team [...] and if I say any more, they’re gonna kill me,” Levine said. Levine was the head of the Parents’ Association for three years from 1984 until 1986, when Stuyvesant was still in the old building. For years, members of the Stuyvesant community had talked about needing a new building. In 1986, the building was 81 years old, and it had odd malfunctions that people were getting tired of dealing with. “In the principal’s office if someone turned on an air conditioner, the lights would go out on that floor,” Levine recalled. It was time for a change. Finally, Levine and the rest of the Parents’ Association board decided they were going to make the new building project happen. They marched over to the mayor’s office and asked for a new building, and after some time, the request was approved and they were granted $150 million. The next task on the agenda was to find the perfect location. They drove around the city, trying to accomplish the impossible task of finding a place to build a structure for 3,000 students, and eventually came across a piece of unused government property in Battery Park City. It belonged to New York state, and at the time, Ma-

rio Cuomo was the governor of New York. One of the Stuyvesant parents was friendly with him, and so Stuyvesant was ultimately given the tiny piece of land it has now. Levine had been a teacher some years before, but she wasn’t working at the time. Roald Hoffman, a Stuyvesant alumnus (‘55) who had won the 1981 Nobel Prize in chemistry, had a chemistry foundation that gave Stuyvesant some money to help with the construction of the new building. Under this grant, the principal offered Levine a job as the spokesperson for the school while interacting with the architects and other people helping to build the building. She formed a group in Stuyvesant with members of the Parents’ Association, the Alumni Association, and the administrators, and called it the Stuyvesant Coalition. With Battery Park City as the construction manager, the money of the Board of Education (now called the Department of Education) and the City Fund, and the architecture firm (which included a Stuyvesant graduate), what had been a vague dream about the new Stuyvesant building became a reality. When we asked about what the process of construction was like, Levine laughed and said “a lot of fighting.” There were many people involved in the project, and occasionally, tensions ran high. “In general, architects and construction managers don’t get along very well. The architects make the pictures, the construction managers say it’s gonna cost too much,” Levine said. At first, she was intimidated by the discussions of the construction team at the big conference tables. She had never built a building before—she was a stranger to all the architectural terms everyone was using. “I’d never heard of structural steel before in my life,” Levine said. She shied away from asking questions, and rarely spoke. Then one day during one of the meetings, someone asked a question that no one on the architectural team could answer. Levine was relieved finding out that these people were not as all-knowing as she had thought. Now whenever she didn’t know something, she asked about it right away. When it came time to actually move into the new Stuyvesant, the school could take very little from the old building. They could take only what had been paid for by a private source (such as the Parents’ Association), or anything that was really unique to the building. They took a coiled banister ending to place in a Mnemonics cube in the new building, and, at Levine’s behest, they brought around 35 old desks in order to have a museum classroom, now room 229. They technically were not allowed to bring

We took the elevator all the way up to the tenth floor to work our way from the top down. Having ten floors is unusual for a school, so we asked Levine why the construction team had decided to build that many. “Because the footprint [of the building] was so small. Every other school would try to make the classes smaller and the population smaller, but they’re trying to shove more and more kids into Stuyvesant, even at that time,” Levine explained. One of the main issues with the tenth floor was figuring out how students would get up there. The team hired elevator and escalator consultants to work it all out, and they eventually came up with the solution that students would use the narrow staircase from the ninth floor to the tenth floor, or the elevator if necessary. While walking past the tenth floor classrooms, Levine explained that the teachers got to have some input on the design of their classrooms. Drafting teachers especially knew what they wanted to do with their rooms, since drafting has to do with architecture. “Richard Realmuto who was the teacher here— fabulous guy—he really literally designed this,” Levine said as we stopped in front of the woodshop classroom. Realmuto created the plans for the room, with two exposures and a terrace where students could do some composting and perform experiments. Levine remarked on the number of lockers in the building when we strolled past them on the tenth floor. “The school was built for no more than 3,000 kids. There are only 3,000 lockers now, because that’s what the school is supposed to be,” she said. This explains why the freshmen have locker buddies—otherwise some of them would be left without a locker. Finished with the tenth floor, we climbed down the narrow staircase to the lower floors, where Levine filled us in on the various pieces of art covering Stuyvesant’s walls.

languages department. As we moved on, Levine continued to explain the significance behind the small pieces of artwork that decorated the school. In the third floor atrium, she explained that the giant quilt hanging on the wall was a gift from the Academy of Panama following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This wasn’t the only shipment Stuyvesant received after 9/11—the glass mosaics on the wall opposite the two-to-three escalator were delivered from North Carolina from Fuquay-Varina High School. On the wall outside on the fourth floor stands a memorial of Richard Rothenberg, a Stuyvesant alumnus and former Assistant Principal of Mathematics at Stuyvesant from 1983-1997, the year he died. To many of us, however, the display simply looks like, as one student put it, “math.” “Do you know what this is?” Levine asked a student walking by, before being disappointed by his reply. The memorial consists of a number of large cubes showcasing unique mathematical concepts. “We commissioned somebody, and she came up with all these wonderful symbols that had to do with [Rothenberg’s] life and mathematics. It’s fabulous. But nobody knows about it,” Levine said. However, artwork that we, and most students do notice are the omnipresent cubes inside the walls of the Stuyvesant building. Levine watched the project, “Mnemonics,” come to fruition, the brainchild of artists Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel. The project came about as a result of the Percent for Art, a program by the Board of Education’s Department of Cultural Affairs, which requires that one percent of the budget for any city-funded construction project be spent on public artwork. Though one percent seems like a small amount, Levine described it as “a hefty sum,” given the total the budget for the building. At first, Jones and Ginzel had the idea of con-

The Secrets Within Stuy’s Walls

“You can actually literally play hide-and-seek with the school,” Levine said as we followed her through the building. At first we didn’t know what she meant, but it didn’t take long for us to realize that she was about to point out all the details in Stuy’s hallways we hadn’t managed to notice in our five-minute passing between periods. “Have you ever looked up above the elevator?” she said, pointing to a ceramic decoration featuring the number “10” above the elevator door. “Every floor is different,” she explained, adding that they were done as a project by students taking the Ceramics 10Tech class. We later noticed that each floor’s ceramic decoration corresponded to the department located on that floor: the fourth with a sine graph to represent the math department, the fifth with a globe to represent the

Glass pyramid in Principal Jie Zhang’s office that contains the key to that lists where each glass cube in the building is located.

structing a huge brass earth in the lobby, but Levine shot down this idea. Eventually, the idea for Mnemonics emerged, and over the course of four years, Jones and Ginsel used this money to create what would become a Stuyvesant tradition. Throughout the building, there exists one glass cube for every class from 1904 to 2080, cubes that hold artifacts from the old Stuyvesant building, and cubes dedicated to showcasing natural objects from around the world, spanning from water from the Nile River—the first one that came to Levine’s mind when she brought up Mnemonics on our tour—to fragments from the Taj Mahal and the Berlin Wall. “[Jones and Ginzel] wrote to every embassy in the world,”

ing hall would be an ideal place for an even bigger type of party. “The view is spectacular—you could get married here,” she said. Another aspect of Stuyvesant that resulted from Levine’s strong will is the TriBeCa Bridge. When we asked Levine to tell us about the bridge, she said, “We wanted to make an entrance, and it’s an entrance.” She then explained how she pushed for the bridge as a practical means of crossing the West Side Highway. “When they first showed us this piece of land here, that this is a possible site for Stuyvesant, we said, ‘Did you ever notice there’s an eightlane highway between the subcontinued on page 8

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The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Features The Ten Floor Building, and the Woman Who Brought it to Life continued from page 7

A Base With a Backstory

Now back down at the first floor of the building, Levine brought us to the pool, which she recalls swimming in herself. “I was friends with the construction workers and I would drive in the mornings, come in my bathing suit and hope I remembered my clothes and then swim at 7:30 in the morning,” she said. Levine also shared with us that the Olympian Michael Phelps swam in the pool. After the 2004 Summer Olympics, Disney wanted to involve him in a promotional video with a girls’ swim team, and they chose the Penguins. “He swam the length of the pool in one breath. Unbelievable. It was such fun,” she said. “Everyone thinks that pool is Olympic-size—it’s not. It’s high school-size.” Activity is not only going on inside the pool, but also underneath it—Levine told us the pool is five feet higher than it should be, in order to preserve the lives of microorganisms living underneath. As a result, they needed to construct an elevator, which ended up being costly. “That elevator cost $100,000 and no one ever uses it. It’s a small elevator that takes you up five feet to be up to the level of the pool,” she

explained. Levine then brought us to the most grandiose, and perhaps most expensive, part of the building—the theater. “This cost a fortune,” she said as we walked in. Levine immediately recalled the architectural features in the theater with pride. She pointed out the orchestra pit, an unusual feature for a high school theater. She also pointed out the convenience of the lecture halls, and the moveable walls that close them off. Similar to the dining hall, Levine insisted on classiness when referring to the theater. “We called it a theater and not an auditorium,” she said. In fact, Levine recounted to us how the first ever TriBeCa Film Festival took place in the Stuyvesant Theater, as well as across the street at Manhattan Community College. “Robert De Niro, who lives down here and has a restaurant, he decided that we have to do something; he started the TriBeCa film festival, and we were part of it,” she recalled. “They had screenings and they gave our kids jobs to help the technicians.”

The Mother of Stuyvesant

After the building was finished, Levine stayed around to help run and preserve it. She helped out significantly—in fact, there’s a display in the senior atrium dedicated to her. It was clear that she loves being in the building and interacting with passionate students and faculty. She marveled at the vivacity of Stuyvesant students hanging out on the second floor around the senior bar and atrium. She

Elizabeth Lawrence / The Spectator

way and this piece of land?’” she said. “First it got to be a whole big thing, well we can make a staircase, a ramp.” Levine was not a fan of the idea. “[We would have] seen an advertisement at the subway ‘skateboarding contest for Stuyvesant ramp,’” she said. Eventually, the construction team agreed to the bridge. Yet another part of the building Levine insisted on having was the museum room. “I was determined that we were going to have a museum room; we wanted everyone to know that this is not a new school. There’s a tradition here. And you’re part of the tradition,” Levine said. So from the old building they gathered a number of old desks, a blackboard, an old wooden teacher’s desk, and a wooden floor. The desks are covered in various doodles and initials of old students, showing the large number of students who graduated from Stuyvesant. In fact, a Stuyvesant student who became a celebrity, Tim Robbins (‘76), scratched his initials in one of the desks at Levine’s request. Robbins is a famous actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (“Mystic River”), and has worked in various other movies. Robbins visited Stuyvesant several times over the years to talk to the drama class, and during one of those visits, Levine asked him if he had scratched his initials into any of the old Stuyvesant desks. “I said, ‘Tim, did you ever put your initials on

the desk?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘Here are my keys, have fun,’” Levine recalled. The Tim Robbins story wasn’t the only story Levine had to offer about famous people, though. As we walked around the first floor, Levine shared her various stories, some including celebrities, about the pool and theater.

Museum room desk inscription of Tim Robbins (‘76), Stuyvesant alumnus and Academy Award winner.

smiled at the students practicing their Stuy Squad routines, and the other kids laughing and hanging out with their friends. “I could have brought them a collection of frisbees, and, what do you call them, hacky sacks!” she said. She was especially enamored with the painting of the senior bar. “Oh, I love it!” she told the students painting, who smiled gratefully and thanked her. Throughout her time at Stuyvesant, she became very well-known and from what we could tell throughout the tour, was quite the social butterfly. When walking around the building with her, we had to stop many a time when Levine ran into her

Tima Lim / The Spectator

Telly Leung: From The Murray Kahn Theater to the Broadway Stage

By KATE SHERWIN The year is 1996, and a sixteenyear-old Telly Leung (’98) sits in a bright red seat in the Nederlander Theater, staring wide-eyed at the Original Broadway Cast of “Rent” on the stage. He goes home and, now obsessed, learns every lyric to the soundtrack, later singing it in the hallways of Stuyvesant High School with his friends. Ten years later, he joins the final company of “Rent” in its last couple of years on Broadway. “It was a full circle moment for me, to stand on that stage and look at the seat I sat in […] as a high school stu-

dent,” he said. “I could see myself up there and it made me feel like it was possible for me to be on Broadway one day.” Stuyvesant alumnus Leung was eight years old when he saw his first Broadway show, “Into the Woods.” He wasn’t watching in the audience of a theater, but rather on PBS’s “Great Performances,” a TV show that broadcasted productions of plays, musicals, operas, and more. But Leung didn’t know he wanted to be an actor until he started performing at Stuyvesant. “At such a math and science environment, I didn’t think about [performing] at

all, but I kind of realized that all of the people around me at school were all so much more science oriented [than I was],” Leung said. He explained that though he felt a strong connection to all of his friends, many of whom he still keeps in touch with, he felt that he was different, in terms of the way his brain worked. “I thought everybody saw the world in, like, mathematical equation and physics, and chemical reactions, and I saw the world in people and stories and art and music,” he said. So, Leung joined the Stuyvesant Theater Community (STC), performing in the fall musicals, including “West Side Story” as Tony when he was a senior, as well as the plays in the spring, and he began performing in SING!. SING! is the biggest event of the year at Stuyvesant. It’s the moment of the year when people unlikely ever to speak to each other come together to put on an impressive performance. “High school is clique-y. There’s all these unsaid social rules about who you associate with — and all of a sudden, SING! happens, and it unites you as a grade,” Leung said. He recognized during SING! that the sense of community between creative individuals is incredibly important, and this recognition set him firmly on the path of becoming an actor. Most of Leung’s friends ended up in fields such as law or medicine. But those weren’t the places for him. “That was never something that I was good at, or something that I was passionate about. What I was passionate about was going to SING! rehearsal, and collaborating with writers, choreographers and music people and that thing I was doing […] for fun

I [decided I wanted to do] for life, for my profession,” he said. However, his Chinese immigrant parents were reluctant to let him pursue the risky dream of being a professional actor. “They wanted me to go and get a ‘real degree,’” Leung said. So when the time came for applying to colleges, he decided to apply to an even number of liberal arts schools and performing arts schools. Leung was accepted into Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) for theater, which gave him the biggest scholarship out of all the schools he had applied to. This made his hesitant parents less hesitant about sending him to a performing arts school, and with the encouragement of a voice teacher at CMU, they let Leung attend. In his senior thesis show at CMU, Leung was directed by Tony-Award-winning actor Billy Porter, a graduate of the school. Porter thought very highly of Leung, and called the dance captain of “Flower Drum Song,” someone he knew from working on Miss Saigon, to get Leung an audition for the 2002 Broadway revival, his first Broadway audition in NYC. “Billy basically sticks his neck out on the line for me […] I ended up getting the job and I told Billy, before my final callback, ‘no matter what happens, if I get this job, I only get 25 or 30 words in a playbill as ensemble person number four, but four of those 25 words will be ‘thank you Billy Porter.’” Leung says he still looks up to him as a mentor after all these years. In November 2015, after seven to eight years of production, “Allegiance,” a musical that takes place during the Japanese-American internment of World War II, opened on Broadway. The show

old friends. Huge smiles and pleasant chatter were exchanged each time—people were very excited to see her. And it was apparent right away what a huge role Levine had played in the maintenance of the building. “She WAS the building, she ran it. During the tours, she took all the people around the building [...] Nobody, NOBODY had food in that auditorium when Renee was around,” physical education teacher Philip Fisher said. Another woman Levine ran into called her “the momma of the building.” We were more confident than ever that there was no one more appropriate to give us a tour of our building than Renee Levine.

stars Leung, George Takei, whose life the play is loosely based on, and Lea Salonga, who Leung worked on “Flower Drum Song” with. His experiences working on “Allegiance” epitomize the family-like relationships that form in the creation of a musical. He explained that because of the big sister relationship Salonga had with him, he feels that the audience not only gets to see the relationship of their characters, Sammy and Kei, who are siblings, but also, they get to see the real-life sibling nature of the actors’ relationship. “It’s wonderful to share this experience with someone who I consider family to me, it’s really rewarding,” he said. Being an only child only added to the importance of this type of relationship, which Leung explained has occurred in many of the shows he has worked on. “Being somebody that’s in the Broadway community, […] there’s a sense of you not only having the family you’re given, but you also have the family that you make.” Last fall, Leung returned to the Murray Kahn Theater to watch the STC’s performance of his beloved musical, “Rent.” After the performance, the cast met with him and another Stuyvesant alumnus who pursued acting, Kelly Karbacz (’98), in the theater. They both spoke fondly of the STC’s production of “Rent” and their own experiences performing at Stuyvesant. Some of their best memories had been performing on that stage. In fact, he said that at the end of a particular performance he and Karbacz did on the Stuyvesant stage, they looked at each other and knew that some day, they would be on Broadway.

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

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Features

Vivian Lin / The Spectator

Stripping Away Our Naiveté

By ALICE CHENG and SUMAITA MAHMOOD One of the great privileges of going to Stuyvesant is the variety of classes it has to offer. These classes can range from standard ones like biology, world history, and geometry, to unique, specialized electives such as Western Political Thought, Wall Street, and Vertebrate Zoology. For students who want to pursue their passion beyond the high school level, Stuyvesant provides a wide array of Advanced Placement (AP) classes for almost every subject. It’s enough to immerse any eruditeness in a study bubble. But oftentimes, no matter how many AP classes a student takes, the real world is the ultimate classroom. And for some students, the realities they face during jobs provide truly invaluable lessons. For instance, when senior Kayla Sinoimeri first applied to be a brand representative/model for Hollister Co., she was merely looking for an opportunity to earn some extra cash. Her sister’s babysitter, who worked for Abercrombie and Fitch, recommended that Sinoimeri look for a job in retail. Sinoimeri then applied for the job online, where she said she had to answer questions like, “What does diversity mean?” When she passed the online application, Sinoimeri was invited for a pair interview, in which she was advised

by her sister’s babysitter to “outpep the other girl by laughing and smiling more,” she said. After Sinoimeri landed the job as a floor model, she quickly realized the heavy responsibilities that came with the work. Managers, for instance, held high demands and expected her to learn the merchandise quickly and quizzed the floor models before each shift. “The managers would roast us,” Sinoimeri said. While working, Sinoimeri had to handle all sorts of customers who tested her patience. The store’s location often attracted tourists, who could be irritable after a long day of sightseeing. Some would come into the store, pick up merchandise, and ask to take a picture of her. Then, there was the stress of fitting in shifts. Sinoimeri’s job at Hollister Co. was during the school year, so she had to work every day while juggling school and college applications. Her shift required her to be on her feet welcoming customers, folding clothes, and guiding tourists. But workers could get promoted to work at certain areas depending on their performance. “The work environment has a different type of drama from Stuy,” she said. Work environment drama, which revolved around rivalries and dislike of managers, included cutthroat competition to get to the main room in the front. Because of its hectic nature, this

room was staffed by only the best floor models. Furthermore, Sinoimeri’s coworkers’ ignorance of Stuyvesant’s prestige demonstrated to her the limited sphere that surrounds the high school. For her managers, it didn’t matter where she went to school or who she was, so long as she was doing her job. “There were many times where I was called out. It was an extremely stressful situation because there was always the chance of getting fired,” Sinoimeri said. Ultimately, she decided to change her availability, which allowed her to accept shifts as she pleased instead of needing to come in when her managers needed her. Though the stress subsided, she wasn’t making as much money. Junior Sydney Dlhopolsky decided to take a job during her sophomore year for similar reasons. While waiting outside the guidance office, Dlhopolsky saw a job advertisement on the bulletin board for an opening at a law firm called Downing & Peck P.C., and she applied for it for the sake of having extracurriculars and a steady pay. “It seemed like something I could do because I’ve worked at my mom’s office before and did similar things,” she said. For a month and a half, Dlhopolsky worked for two hours every Tuesday and Thursday after school, doing tedious tasks like filing, typing, and scanning papers, which left her feeling “pooped” at the end of the day, she said. “I wasn’t doing lawyer things,” she explained. “It was more of experience in the office.” Although Dlhopolsky never intended to go into law, the time she spent there dissuaded her from pursuing office jobs in the future. “It was hard to sit in the office all day doing pretty boring stuff,” Dlhopolsky said. For junior Emma Vukelj, her time spent over the summer as a spa receptionist in SoHo made her reflect upon her stress at Stuyvesant. Every week, Vukelj worked for four days, eight hours each, at Red and White Spa. Her responsibilities included cleaning bathrooms, making appointment calls, deal-

ing with clients, and creating “special weird citrus waters for them to drink,” she said. During this time she befriended several of the coworkers and listened to their eyeopening everyday struggles. “Two of them were in college,” Vukelj described. “One of them lived in New Jersey and she was married. And it was really interesting because at Stuy, you forget that all of your problems are really trivial at the end of the day, whereas their problems were like, ‘Hey, I need that advance on my paycheck to pay my rent’ or like, ‘Me and my husband are having lots of fights, and he just got bipolar medication and that’s scary.’ And [it’s not] nice that these problems exist, but it’s nice to have a reminder [that] Stuy isn’t everything, that these grades and these tests aren’t as significant as you make them.” Despite the time and energy required for the jobs, all three agreed that the experience was worth it. “I don’t regret it at all. I just didn’t like it,” explained Dlhopolsky, describing the feeling of working as “empowering.” “It’s cool getting an income. I like getting checks.” In addition, although Dlhopolsky found the work monotonous, she empathized with adults who may not have the education to serve them a higher-class job. “I guess that’s just what [in]experienced workers have to do,” she said, and this thought persuaded her to aspire for a higher education, to “go to college, get a degree, because [she doesn’t] want to do work like that again.” Vukelj valued the experience she gained from job, especially since it was meant for adults. Having found the opening on Craigslist, she was originally skeptical. “Before the interview my dad came and he talked to the existing receptionist and was like, ‘Is your boss creepy? Is your boss perverted?’” Vukelj relived the day of her interview. “When I went to the interview, it was pretty comical. He asked how old I was, and I said ‘Fifteen.’ And he was like, ‘Oh sorry, did you say eighteen? I think I misheard you.’ And I was like, ‘No.’ He didn’t know that fifteen-year-olds

could work.” Yet against the odds, Vukelj was given the job at the end of the interview, and was paid the same wages as a college student co-worker. “I feel like he definitely took a shot on me,” Vukelj said appreciatively. Little things like making phone calls for appointments greatly improved Vukelj’s people skills. Once slightly anxious about making phone calls to order food at restaurants or to contact the dentist, Vukelj became more confident in herself after her time as a spa receptionist. “When you’re behind a desk, and people make the same mistakes, you realize it doesn’t matter,” she said. Moreover, Vukelj bonded with her co-workers to an extent that taught her age was an insignificant factor in friendship. “One of them went to CUNY Macaulay Honors, and she would have these funny stories about her family and her going out and doing silly things, and we’d all laugh a bit,” Vukelj looked back. “And my other coworker who was married would tell us all she was only twenty and she’s living like a forty-year-old woman.” The conversations taught her how to talk about things outside of Stuyvesant-related topics like test grades and sleep deprivation. Similarly, Sinoimeri found friendship among her colleagues. Although they were from very different backgrounds, she found herself getting close to many of them, despite the occasional rivalry. “Even people I [haven’t] seen for a long time, I keep in touch with. Like this one guy, I actually text him all the time because I don’t see him anymore [...] and I’m going to his birthday brunch,” Sinoimeri said. The jobs these three girls took, though filled with menial tasks in fields unrelated to their interests, proved to have benefits besides advancing college applications and lending a source of income. Each job had its own experiences to offer and people to meet, giving the young women a glimpse of life outside of Stuyvesant.

Meet Stuyvesant’s Intel Semifinalists By Alice Cheng, Johnathan Rafailov, and Joshua Zhu Every year, a fraction of Stuyvesant’s senior class submits research projects, worked on during the summer, to the nation’s most prestigious research competition: the Intel Science Talent Search. This year, three seniors—Danyaal Ain, Maxwell Fishelson, and Carol Wang—were selected as three of 300 national semifinalists.

Danyaal Ain, Environmental Sciences

Pesticides—insect killers— are of growing importance in the United States. They are used to grow the foods we eat, to cultivate our land, and to use in our gardens. But, the treatments are also known to be toxic to organisms and the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires that pesticides be labeled with all their active ingredients and the highestconcentration “inert,” or “other,” ingredients: those responsible for eradicating insects and those known as the supposedly nontoxic ingredients of the product, respectively. Approximately 99.99 percent of commonly used pesticides is made of inert ingredients, whereas a minuscule 0.01 percent makes up the active ingredient. In his research project, senior Danyaal Ain focused on identifying whether the inert ingredients in various pesticides had highly toxic and carcinogenic effects on human nervous and immune tissue cells. These inert ingredients were used in such small concentrations in the pesticides that they did not appear on the ingredient

list of the product. “Because they weren’t listed, it was hard to actually catch them,” Ain said. “I had to develop my experiment in such a way that I was able to isolate the active ingredient, test [the ingredient’s] effect, and test the effect of the pesticide, so I would know that whatever difference between those two would mean that it was the effect of the active ingredients.” Working independently of the school (he opted out of the Intel class) at the Neurosciences Laboratory at SUNY Westbury, Ain ultimately discovered that the inert ingredients in three common pesticides had a more detrimental effect on cells than those of the active ingredients. “The biggest problem for me is that we use millions of tons of these pesticides every year, not just in our food supply, but in our gardens and all these different places, so one huge factor is groundwater contamination,” Ain said. When asked how this project has affected him personally, he said it has taught him valuable lessons in trial and error. “You have to keep on going, especially in research, even when it seems that you’re not gonna get too far. And I think that’s what made me finish because at times it was definitely like, ‘Oh, I don’t think this works,’ but, you know, eventually I got some nice results and I kept on going,” he said.

Maxwell Fishelson, Mathematics

Senior Maxwell Fishelson, unlike the other Stuyvesant semifinalists, did a math research project “for the sake of expanding the field of mathematics,” he said. As a captain of the math team, Fishelson

felt more comfortable doing math research than natural science research, because math is the field he has the most experience with. His paper, titled “SzemerédiTrotter: Applications and Limitations,” focused on proving “a series of bounds on different geometric and functional structures,” he said in an e-mail interview. In Fishelson’s project, he placed n points on a plane and drew triangles with sets of three points such that the perimeter of the triangles is one. He proved that as n goes to infinity, the maximum number of triangles doesn’t grow faster than c*n^(7/3), where c is a constant. When Fishelson first took a Math Intel class junior year spring term, he did not know what to research for his Intel paper. In fact, during the entire spring term of his class, Fishelson spent his time simply talking about math to get ideas for his report. Come the summer, however, Fishelson was inspired by Szemerédi-Trotter’s theorem thanks to a mentor who was a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology. “I went to a math camp once,” Fishelson said. “It was this math camp I went to to learn competitive math. But I also befriended one of the teachers there and we’ve been friends ever since.” Once he set his mind of the idea, all that was left for Fishelson to do was to think and write out his report. “That’s one of the nice things about math. You don’t need to have test subjects or like multiple trials,” Fishelson said. However, it did teach him important lessons about patience. “Half the time I didn’t know where to progress and I just had to keep think-

ing about it,” Fishelson explained. “There were a lot of dead ends that I had to turn around from. It’s much less open-ended. I mean, you know a contest problem, there’s always going to be some intended solution [...] and obviously in math research you don’t have that safety net.” Over the summer when he thought out the bulk of his report, Fishelson would think in his room for hours, sometimes four to five consecutively. And when the school year commenced, Fishelson had typed up the finishing touches of his report during his second term of math Intel class. By the end of November in his senior term, Fishelson had completed his ten-page submission. Looking into the future, Fishelson does not plan to research his Intel topic any further. “Saying no doesn’t mean I hated it. Saying no means I have new things to explore,” he said.

Carol Wang, Biology

What are the different ways to prevent the contraction of HIV? Ask this question to any student cramming for their health final, and you will get an immediate response: practice abstinence, know your partner’s HIV status, and use condoms. However, this brings up the common inquiry of why there are high HIV rates among African Americans, despite engaging in safe-sex practices. It is this predicament that inspired senior Carol Wang to research a possible genetic cause for her Intel Science Talent Search (STS) project. As an Intel semifinalist, Wang was chosen for her project “APOL1 Risk Variants Enhance HIV Repli-

cation in Peripheral Bone Mononuclear Cells Through Increasing Pro-inflammatory Cytokines Production.” While the title of her project may be a mouthful, the subject of her research is fortunately easier to process. Wang studied APOL1 gene variants, mutations of the protein Apolipoprotein L1, which have been shown to cause chronic kidney disease, and appear predominantly in African Americans. Her research delves into whether this mutation contributes to the high rates of HIV among African Americans. “Even though African Americans make up 11 percent of the US population, they accounted for over 50 percent of new HIV cases in 2011,” Wang said. “They’re just a higher risk group for HIV and I wanted to investigate why.” “African Americans’ high rate of HIV infection has been [credited] to socio-economic reasons […] but there have been a lot of studies showing that [that] might not be the case, [so] I wanted to research the variance because there might be some biological factor that no one knows about,” she said. Wang developed her project as an intern at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, located in Great Neck’s North Shore LIJ Hospital. There, she worked under Dr. Xiqian Lan in the institute’s nephrology lab. When asked about her favorite part of the project, Wang referred to when her mentor, Dr. Lan, gave her the independence to pursue her project in the direction she wished. “When my mentor started trusting me to do my own things and not just watch him [...] that was the most fulfilling part of the experience,” Wang said.

Page 10

The Spectator ● January 26, 2016

Editorials Staff Editorial

Our Love-Hate Relationship With Stuyvesant

We like to complain. This is a way of life for us at Stuyvesant: whether we’re griping about an overwhelming workload, protesting a teacher’s unfair policy, or just groaning at another broken escalator, our days are peppered by our very vocal grievances, petty or prodigious. As the end of the semester draws near, our stress levels, and thus our complaints, increase. And sure, while most of all this constant criticism is harmless— isn’t incessant angst an integral part of being a teenager—it can lead us to focus more on Stuyvesant’s imperfections than its genuine advantages. Part of the culture at Stuyvesant is embracing a love-hate mindset towards this school, but sometimes the see-saw leans a bit more towards “hate.” We’d like to give what we think is a more complete picture of Stuy: the good, the bad, and everything in between. No student at Stuyvesant is ever happy with all of the teachers on her program when schedules go out at the start of the semester, and as the year wears on, some teaching styles, grading policies, and workloads can have us tearing our hair out. Stuyvesant’s emphasis on tests can create tremendous levels of stress and places us in a gradeobsessed culture, which can breed competition and damage our mental health. Additionally, between our workload and our extracurricular, social, and familial obligations, time (and sleep) is limited, and it becomes natural to put in the bare minimum amount of work where we can. This sometimes, if not often, results in cramming for tests the night before and forgetting the information right afterward, stunting genuine learning. On the other hand, sometimes we feel our grades stem too much from our teacher’s opinion of us, which can be viewed as unfair—success at Stuy can be a combination of good scores and making sure we are liked by our teachers.

they take up large amounts of our time and may add to our stress levels, extracurricular activities make our experience at Stuyvesant a lot more enjoyable. Walking through the hallways after school, you can easily encounter artists painting the senior bar, dancers practicing a hip-hop routine, and classrooms filled with studentled club meetings. The fact that these activities are student-run is another thing

students can say they’ve taken a class in Western Political Thought or Vertebrate Zoology—even if getting into some of these classes might be difficult, high school students rarely have the option. If we can muster up the energy to pay attention and participate in every class, suddenly studying for tests and retaining information gets a lot easier; we just have to find the areas that engage us. We’re also lucky to be learn-

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but complaining about Stuyvesant becomes something that defines us as Stuyvesant students. Yet through all the work and stress our school gives us, it also gives us opportunities, and ultimately, our time here is what shapes us into adults. If we take a step back and appreciate what’s offered to us, we may be able to have a less pessimistic outlook next time we walk up a broken escalator.

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in Stuyvesant classrooms, from computer science to molecular genetics. This stems partly from our collection of talented teachers. Many of Stuyvesant’s teachers have won awards, earned doctorates, travelled the world, and have years of experience and knowledge; some even turned down professorships at Ivy League universities to share their passion with high school students. There’s also a uniquely wide selection of courses to choose from. Not many high school

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This may tip the scale toward certain personality types, and disadvantage others. However, as much as spending countless hours in our school building each day brings out the worst of it, it also shows us what we should appreciate about Stuyvesant. For one thing, the fact that we spend so much time at school reveals something special about it: the number of extracurricular activities available to us is incredible and not something many schools can boast of. Though

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ing what we do where we do; few students can say they go to school in a ten-floor building. We have a gorgeous theater, a pool, a one million-dollar library, and Hudson River views. The escalators may not always work, but at least we have them. When we exit school, we’re in a safe neighborhood with plenty of places to eat, and we get to relax around Battery Park during the day for some fresh air. An environment with everyone working so hard to do well creates a culture of simultaneous pride and prejudice—we brag about how few hours of sleep we get, how many lunch periods we’ve spent in the library, and how much homework we still have to do. In reality, we don’t truly want to be killing ourselves in this way,

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we should be grateful for; we are surrounded by a group of intelligent and talented peers who are able to run organizations as large as Red Cross and pull together things as complex as SING!. Moreover, our peers are passionate about what they do, and their diligence can be contagious. Though Stuyvesant’s demographics may be less than balanced, as a specialized, public high school, it is full of people from different backgrounds and boroughs, which gives us the chance to meet and interact with a number of interesting people. Even if we don’t end up liking all of our teachers, no student can say by the time he leaves Stuy that he hasn’t had positive experiences. Countless students discover their passions

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Page 11

Opinions Views on Executive Actions to Reduce Gun Violence By Julie Chan It isn’t hard to remember what it felt like in 2012 when the headlines broke: 20 elementary school children were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. What made the story especially jarring was the fact that so many of the victims were young children, and the shooting itself was a tragedy. But, it was by no means the first of its kind—in fact, at least six similarly publicized incidents had occurred since 2009—and it would not be the last. Sandy Hook was just one in a long line of horrific (and, more importantly, preventable) acts of violence. And yet, despite public outcry and political declarations, no significant policy changes were undertaken. Mass shootings continue to take place all over the country: a navy yard in Washington D.C., a community college in Oregon, an office party in San Bernardino. Whenever a mass shooting occurs in the United States, we hear politicians and other public figures say, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.” But while thoughts and prayers may offer temporary comfort to grieving families, they do nothing to prevent more innocent people from becoming victims. According to the CDC, more than 30,000 people were killed by guns in 2013, and that number is only increasing. It is time to take action. Every state in the U.S. has its own set of gun laws. In some states, such as Kentucky and Wyoming, firearm dis-

The United States has experienced 51 mass shootings, each involving four or more deaths, since 1997.

tributors are not required to conduct background checks before a transaction and people may carry firearms in public without a license. Other states, like Vermont, do not require individuals to report mental health information before purchasing these weapons. With gun regulations as lax as these, many states are allowing firearms and weapons to fall into the wrong hands. Early this January, President Obama issued an executive order regarding gun control. An executive order allows a president to pass a law without the approval of Congress. The order can still be challenged and repealed, thus limiting the power of the executive branch, but it allows the president to take meaningful action without dealing with political negotiations. Obama’s initiative will require more background checks in order for the FBI to maintain better control of gun possession, and increase funding for the development of safer firearm technology. Contrary to what many gun enthusiasts might assume, President Obama is not trying to infringe upon the individual rights and freedoms of U.S. citizens. Instead, his plan enforces stricter versions of existing laws in order to prevent dangerous people from having access to dangerous weapons—responsible, law-abiding American citizens should not be affected by the policy. Although the President showed initiative with this new plan, he cannot affect much change without the longterm approval of Congress. In a country where there are enough firearms to arm

over 270 million people, it is no surprise that gun lobbyists wield immense power over the government. In the past, Congress has rejected numerous proposals for increased gun control. If Obama’s proposal is to affect lasting change, it must be accompanied by a shift in congressional attitude toward gun reform. Such a change would not be without precedent. According to CNN, the United States has experienced 51 mass

More than 30,000 people were killed by guns in 2013, and that number is only increasing. shootings, each involving four or more deaths, since 1997. By contrast, Germany and the United Kingdom have seen three and one, respectively, in the same period of time. Furthermore, a United Nations study on homicide revealed that “countries with higher levels of firearm ownership also have higher firearm homicide rates.” Clearly, heightened regulation keeps people safe. But mass shootings and homicides are only part of the story. Two-thirds of gun-related deaths in America are selfinflicted. A 2001 study from the Harvard School of Health found that 85 percent of firearm suicides that year were fatal, whereas only two percent of drug overdoses resulted in death. Limiting access to guns may decrease the number of suicides per year. In Australia, for instance, the suicide rate dropped by 65 percent since introduction of gun control legislation in 1996. Australia’s gun-related homicide rate has also decreased significantly—by 59 percent— since 1996. Gun control is clearly effective in Australia and the U.S. has no excuse not to follow suit. The United States is the only developed country with such a pervasive gun problem. Our president should not have to resort to desperate measures in order to assure the safety of all Americans. Safety is a human right, one we are all e n titled to as U.S. citizens. If it

comes down to a decision between the “general welfare” and the “right to bear arms,” let us hope that legislators will choose the former.

By Asher Lasday Former Representative Thaddeus Stevens and a band of Radical Republicans began an attempt in 1867 to impeach former President Andrew Johnson, whom they felt had been ineffective in reconstructing the postbellum South. Johnson ultimately was not removed from office, setting a precedent that undermining executive power is only acceptable for criminal offenses. Despite this, Stevens and his ilk were still in the right

Obama’s ignorance of current laws sets a dangerous precedent wherein presidents are able to reverse previous parts of legislation written and approved by Congress.

in terms of their discontent. Not only did Presidential Reconstruction fail to minimize many issues in the South and leave the Southern economy ruined for close to a century, but also, Johnson misconstrued the role of the presidency. Just as Congress had to approve the Louisiana Purchase and vote on statehood, Congress ought to have had greater participation in planning the reconstruction of the postbellum South—Johnson had no right to do it himself. Like Johnson, President Barack Obama is receiving criticism for his abuse of executive power. It’s often easy to look only at the provisions of political decisions, but the way in which policies

are created often has as great an impact as the policies themselves. Despite President Obama’s frustration with congressional gridlock, the way he chose to strengthen gun regulations, like the way Johnson crafted Reconstruction, is a clear overstep of his powers and sets a troubling precedent. Obama has not passed specific laws about gun regulation, but rather has directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to crack down on background check requirements for those purchasing guns and license requirements for those selling guns. Though both of these things are already required, this increased scrutiny ostensibly abandons current exemptions for those who sell guns infrequently (like those who sell only at gun shows or on the Internet). Obama has not written any new laws, but he has ignored certain provisions in the Gun Control Act of 1968. This blatant disregard of current laws sets a dangerous precedent that presidents can and ought to reverse pieces of legislature written and approved by Congress. Obama’s dissolution of congressional laws is antithetical to the purported role of the executive branch, which is to implement these laws as the president deems fit (beyond the use of the veto). As Congress members become increasingly unwilling to pass further gun control legislation, Obama’s dis-

It’s often easy to simply look to decisions made by presidents and praise or fault them based only on their merit, but the way these decisions are carried out is worth similar consideration.

continuity with their consensus makes it clear that he is no longer prioritizing the execution of their beliefs. Worse, the President appears cognizant of this, saying in his order, “Until we have a Congress that’s in line with the majority of Americans, there are actions within my legal authority that we can take to help reduce gun violence.” Obama does not blame a lack of gun control on Congress’s inefficiency or laziness. Rather, he seems to believe they misunderstand what the American people want. However, the American people, time and time again, elect senators and representatives who are openly and adamantly against gun control, which suggests that the opposite is true. Congress exists to represent the American people better than the President can by using a larger number of elected representatives. Then, by adhering to congressional laws, the President is also adhering to the will of the people. Obama’s actions regarding gun control fly directly in the face of this system.

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Page 12

The Spectator ● January 26, 2016

Opinions Finding Financial Aid for the Middle

Jessica Wu/ The Spectator

ed based on income, family size, and academic background. Currently, the maximum Pell Grant

gage—a typical American household. When this family spends $9,000 to send one child to col-

This debt is detrimental to both middle and lower class families, but the Pell Grant program only focuses on the lower end of the income bracket. By Matteo Wong Each year, thousands of students apply to Stuyvesant High School. Many do so in order to have an edge over other college applicants. They hope that, as Stuyvesant students, they will one day gain admission to a prestigious university. However, even with this leg up, no high school has the ability to lower the steep cost of attending college in the United States. According to the College Board, yearly tuition for a public college is approximately $9,000, while private colleges cost well over $30,000. In recent decades, the price of college tuition in the United States has risen rapidly— six percent faster than inflation, per CNBC. The government, on the other hand, has the resources to provide disadvantaged students with financial aid. Every year since 1972, the government has given out Federal Pell Grants in order to help disadvantaged students pay for college. Recipients are select-

is $5,775, though most students receive less. Much of this aid goes to the lower end of America’s income bracket. The 2011-2012 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study reported that nearly 40 percent of Pell Grants are given to students whose families make below $20,000 a year, and another 36 percent go to families that make below $40,000 a year. This leaves very little funding for middle-income families. Education is an important tool for low-income people to improve their circumstances. However, middle class families, making between $35,000 and $75,000 a year, have to pay the same tuition as lower class families, while receiving almost no aid. Imagine a middle-income family with two kids and a mort-

lege, it becomes increasingly difficult for that family to support itself. After four years, the total cost of attending college becomes staggering, causing most students to take out large loans. In fact, The

Wall Street Journal reports that the average college graduate in 2015 had $35,000 in debt—the highest average debt in American history. Debt is detrimental to both middle and lower class families, but the Pell Grant program only focuses on the lower end of the income bracket. As a result, the middle-class is greatly weakened. A family that needs to pay off $35,000 in loans can’t spend as much, meaning that the family will put less money into circulation. In effect, a diminished middle class creates a diminished economy. Generally, the middle class buys the majority of a company’s goods and generates most of a company’s revenue. Thus, when the middle class spends less, businesses make fewer sales and less profit. In turn, employees are paid less, or, worse, laid off. Prices may even rise to offset losses, throwing people further into financial turmoil. In addition, five figures of debt means that graduates can’t experiment, can’t spend, and can’t

This would require the government to change the income requirements for Pell Grants, which would make them more widely available.

invest. Their futures become relatively limited, and innovation and risk-taking are discouraged in favor of playing it safe in more menial, often less meaningful jobs. A huge chunk of America’s next generation is being bogged down by the weight of debt, and it is the government’s duty to remedy this. A good first step would be to expand the Pell Grant program to cover more middle class families. This would require the government to change the income requirements for Pell Grants, which would make them more widely available. In order to ensure that this would not decrease funding for lower-income students, the government must also increase funding for Pell Grants. As recently as 2011, Congress administered a $5.7 billion cut to Pell Grant funding. Such drastic budget cuts only compound the problem, and this one should be reversed. While it may be expensive to provide thousands more students with assistance, it would ultimately be worth it. America’s future depends on an unbounded next generation, which will only be possible if the government improves the circumstances of the middle class. Each year, hundreds of Stuyvesant seniors apply to college knowing their school has done all it can to help them. But getting into college and paying for it are two very different ball games, and Stuyvesant can only help with the former. Changes to the Pell Grant program, on the other hand, would allow many of Stuyvesant’s middle class students to have more stability and a wider range of opportunity when considering their college options.

Nanct Cao/ The Spectator

The Campus You Don’t Want to Visit

By OLIVIA KUSIO First semester is ending, and with it, comes the transformation of once motivated Stuyvesant students into second-term seniors. Years of hard work have finally paid off, and now all there is left to do is to finish up high school and await the precious moment when you set foot onto your college campus. But what is often overlooked during the application process is that if you are a girl, there is a one-infive chance that you will become a victim of sexual assault during your college career. The Association of American Universities released a survey of 27 universities in 2015, which revealed that 23.1 percent of women had experienced nonconsensual sexual contact since they enrolled in college. Although overall victim reporting rates are already significantly depressed, colleges have, by and large, failed to report the rapes they are aware of. The American Association of University Women reported that 91 percent of college campuses did not disclose any reported incidents of rape in 2014. To maintain their reputations, colleges opt not to expose the deeper

flaws within their academic communities. Thanks to student activists like Emma Sulkowicz (who carried a 50-pound mattress onto the stage at her graduation from Columbia University as a work of “endurance performance art” to protest the lack of punishment assigned to her alleged rapist), the government has taken significant action against rape on college campuses. Following President Obama’s “It’s On Us” campaign, various colleges and universities have come under fire to amend their codes of conduct and rework their definitions of consent. Despite this, government efforts have failed to address the real issue: college rape is severely underreported. A White House Task Force found that only two percent of sexual assault victims were incapacitated by drugs or alcohol and just 13 percent of “physically forced” victims reported their sexual assault. The majority of students did not consider their sexual assaults “serious enough” to be reported or felt too ashamed to come forward. Fear of publicly revealing one’s sexual assault history stems from the social risk of being labeled a victim. The consequences of doing so include being alienated or bullied, especially if the perpetrator is of high social status, as is often the case. Stephen E. Humphrey, an expert in quantitative social research, reveals that a large number of college rapists belong to fraternities or sports teams, groups that not only have influence over their peers, but also tend to reject accusations against alleged offenders.

Perhaps more troubling is the implicit advocacy of rape by members of such organizations. At the University of Central Florida, members of the Sigma Nu fraternity recorded themselves chanting “Let’s rape some b*tches!” Across the nation, members of other fraternities have exhibited similar behavior. For instance, two chapters of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity—Texas Tech and Yale—were suspended for

employing the slogan “No Means Yes; Yes Means Anal.” It is true that the endorsement of sexual assault isn’t limited to “frat boys,” and that not all fraternities endorse sexual assault, but incidents like these reflect a widespread attitude toward rape that implicitly encourages its existence. College administrators need to be much more vigilant in dealing with reports of sexual assault, and assigning punishment to known offenders. If prospective rapists know that their actions will have serious repercussions, they may be less likely to engage in sexual assault. Although rules may prevent a potential rapist from actually committing an act of violence, they fail to change people’s views on rape. Only students can fix this cultural problem. Instead of making fun of rape and keeping quiet about attacks, students must pressure their peers to take a stand against the rape culture on campus. But to truly limit sexual violence on campus, we must address students’ mentalities even earlier. Students arrive on campus after living 18 years in communities and with families that teach them how to interact. The unfortunate prevalence of rape on col-

Christine Jegarl/ The Spectator

lege campuses is a mere reflection of how our society as a whole has normalized rape. As high school students, it might be hard to recognize the “rape culture” around us, but despite our society’s relative progress in terms of women’s rights, it still participates in cultural practices that excuse or tolerate sexual violence. Even at Stuyvesant, this form of sexism is still troublingly present, and it is perhaps most apparent in our encouragement of the concept of “bagging.” Although this can refer to both genders, it usually alludes to the idea that a boy has gotten a girl to go out with him or gotten her to “hook up” with him. According to the dictionary, “to bag” means “to successfully kill or catch an animal.” Bagging implies that women are objects to be possessed and conquered. And if that’s the message we’re teaching teenage boys, when they grow older and gain more independence, that’s how they’ll view the girls around them. College campuses are like a microcosm for society as a whole—rape culture exists, and is fostered, by our collective values; it is not unique to university life. But unlike society, campuses are also supposed to be secure and regulated environments. Students should feel protected by their administrators, the people ostensibly in charge of their well-being, and they should also be educated on respect and appropriate conduct by the people who are helping them transition to the real world. Currently, university policies across the country fall short of the standards necessary to maintain a safe environment for their female students. Not only do reporting mechanisms lack adequate discretion, leaving victims scared to speak out, but students accused of sexual assault rarely receive harsh punishment for their actions.

The Spectator ● January 26, 2016

Page 13

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The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 18 16

Arts and Entertainment Critics’ Picks: 2015 Film

FILM

By The A&E Department Who needs the Oscars anyway? Welcome to Arts and Entertainment’s Critics’ Picks for 2015 film. This past year, the industry turned our notions of animated movies inside out and amazed us with otherworldly acting. Our critics have shared their favorites from the 2015 cinema.

BEST MOVIE “Inside Out” “My tears, my feelings, and my appreciation for this movie made it the best of this year. It’s been a while since I saw an animated movie, and I’m glad it was this one.” –Jenny Jiang “Though the movie was animated and most people have the mindset that an animated film cannot reach the standards of live-action movies, ‘Inside Out’ proved to reach those standards and beyond. The unique plot and point of view of the movie gave inside perspective of the characters’ motives and actions, which you don’t see in other movies.” –Emily Xu “Brilliantly animated and an ingenious idea, ‘Inside Out’ captures the complexity of the mind and turns the animation into a learning experience for both children and adults.” – Karen Chen “The movie was not only a breath of fresh thematic air into the animation genre, but also has become a catalyst of the ever-relevant, yet once quieted, conversation of mental and emotional health, for children and adults alike.” –Justin Pacquing

“Spectre” “I liked the cinematography a lot, specifically the opening scene.” –TJ Westfall “The cinematography was excellent. The new additions to the cast were very well chosen, and the storyline was engaging and complicated.” –Sophie Feng

“The Peanuts Movie” “It was a really cute movie that reminded me a lot of my childhood when I used to sit in front of the TV watching Snoopy.” –Jongyoul Lee

BEST ACTRESS Saoirse Ronan in “Brooklyn” “I first watched Ronan in ‘The Lovely Bones,’ and I was taken aback by how effortlessly and skillfully she built up my emotions for an actress so young. The same can be said for her role in ‘Brooklyn.’ Ronan is mesmerizing in this film, dazzling the audience in every scene she is in.” – Emily Xu “I haven’t watched any other movies with Ronan, but I’m already a fan after watching ‘Brooklyn.’ I’m so glad they chose an actual Irish actress to play the role of an Irish girl. She’s also very into her character.” – Jasmine Tang

Amy Schumer in “Trainwreck” “Schumer was a captivating tour de force all by herself. She was hilarious and heartbreaking, and her eulogy for her father brought me to tears.” – Liam Elkind

Amy Poehler in “Inside Out” “Having already flaunted her unbounded potential for enthusiasm in her role as Leslie Knope in ‘Parks and Recreation,’ Poehler is the perfect fit for the movie’s literal manifestation of joy. She seamlessly transitions her optimistic troop-mom aesthetic from live-action to animation, from television to big screen.” – Justin Pacquing

Jennifer Jason Leigh in “The Hateful Eight” “There’s a lot of pressure on actresses to always look pretty and perfect in their movies, like when women in a zombie apocalypse film are wearing makeup and have shaved. Leigh, however, goes all out and lets herself be completely drenched in blood in playing a ruthless fugitive. Her portrayal left the audience always wondering if she was telling the truth or just being manipulative, and it was amazing.” – Samantha Han

“The Intern”

Blake Lively in “The Age of Adaline”

“‘The Intern’ was a fun, lighthearted comedy with many poignant moments. Robert de Niro was fantastic (what else is new?) at portraying a man totally out of his element. Anne Hathaway shined as the cool and calculated businesswoman with more depth than she originally lets on.” –Liam Elkind

“Lively brings character to the movie, and she proves herself to be more than a face from ‘Gossip Girl.’ With her natural poise and appeal, she is able to capture the essence of her character, Adaline, weary but wise, and thus captivates the audience.” – Karen Chen

Daisy Ridley in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

“The Hateful Eight” “‘The Hateful Eight’ is a long movie at three hours, but it’s such a slow burn that it’s completely worth the length. Pretty much the entire movie takes place in one cabin, with none of the characters able to trust each other because it’s revealed one of them is working with a fugitive to kill the rest. The ensemble cast plays off each other well as characters keep dying and new pieces of information are released, leaving the audience to constantly try to figure out what really happened.” –Samantha Han

“Ridley was fun to watch, and it was refreshing to see the film center around a new, previously unimportant character.” – TJ Westfall

Lily James in “Cinderella” “Starring in a rendition of the famous classic tale, James fulfilled the qualities of a perfect princess. She possesses the abilities to submerge herself into the soul of Cinderella and act as if she, herself, is a princess.” –Rachael Chen

“The Duff” “The emotions that ‘The Duff’ makes the audience feel are extremely relatable, and many of the scenes were definitely amusing. I love the way director Ari Sandel expressed the feelings and struggles of a normal high school girl, and how she doesn’t need to be perfect to be unique. Her transformation and realization of her status as a ‘DUFF’ (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) teaches people to accept who they are, and to love the people who accept them for their true self. Partially comedy, ‘The Duff’ teaches an important moral lesson to love one’s self completely. I definitely give credit to Mae Whitman and Robbie Amell for their incredible acting.” –Rachael Chen

Lea Seydoux in “Spectre” “Seydoux’s character was outside the realm of a normal ‘Bond Girl,’ and she exemplified that perfectly. Her excellent acting showed through especially in moments that required vulnerable and careful emotion, truly showcasing the character well.” – Sophie Feng

Cate Blanchett in “Carol” “‘Carol’ is a complex movie about two women who, despite having male partners, end up falling for each other. For such difficult acting scenes, Blanchett’s facial expressions and body language were so natural.” – Jongyoul Lee

“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” “I am definitely most impressed by the social value of the film. It is paragon of racial diversity in film. Rey is also especially bad-ass here!” –Jasmine Tang

Matt Damon in “The Martian”

Taron Egerton in “Kingsman: The Secret Service”

“Funny, charismatic, and resourceful, Damon shines as the relatable and easy to root for Mark Watney, who seems less astronaut and more everyday man in literally outer-world circumstances.” – Justin Pacquing

“Egerton plays the perfect Eggsy––an athletic and agile boy who is both blunt and caring. He never loses his ‘street’ look, yet gains the edge of classiness demanded of a secret service agent.” – Jenny Jiang Taylor Choi / The Spectator

BEST ACTOR

“Damon’s physicality and desperate humor juxtapose the harsh landscape of Mars well. His decreasing morale is subtly and beautifully played.” –Liam Elkind “‘The Martian’ is at the same time a comedy and a drama, and Damon manages to blend these two genres together well. It was strange that Damon would choose to portray another astronaut after being in ‘Interstellar’ a year prior, but his characters were so different that it stood out from the other recent space movies.” – Samantha Han “It was interesting to watch his performance of ‘the only man on the world.’ With more than two hours of just him talking to himself on Mars, he deserves an Oscar.” –TJ Westfall

Harrison Ford in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” “Ford was deeply absorbed in the essence of his role as Han Solo. The execution of his performance seemed natural and unforced.” –Emily Xu

Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Revenant”

“2016 shall be the end of the Leonardo DiCapri-no Oscar era! His previous roles (he’s always playing a dapper with a dark secret) are nothing compared to his role in ‘The Revenant.’” –Jasmine Tang

Daniel Craig in “Spectre” “Craig has always been, to me, the perfect James Bond. His emotion is withheld enough so as to be fitting to the somewhat reserved character, yet he still manages to charm and delight audiences and women onscreen.” –Sophie Feng

Robbie Amell in “The Duff” “Through his splendid acting, Amell has captivated the hearts of many theatergoers. He gives off an effortless vibe. He sinks himself into character when he interacts with Mae; it’s the chemistry between the two that really ignites the sparks of this movie.” – Rachael Chen

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 17

Arts and Entertainment Thinkpieces How Do Actors’ Previous Slowing Down New York Roles Follow Them? By Karen Chen

By Ben Shapiro There’s eleven of us, friends and family, taking up the prime seats at the seven-story IMAX theater in Lincoln Square, now playing the 3D-version of the much anticipated “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” And here comes a crucial, breathtaking moment: the film’s antagonist, spoilers ahead, known as Kylo Ren, the grandson of Darth Vader—the primary villain of the original three Star Wars movies—is about to take off his iconic black helmet. He reveals his face to the brave and defiant female lead, when... He reveals himself to be the dork from the HBO hit series “Girls,” which follows the lives of four New York women in their twenties trying to figure out life and how they can and should live it. What? Him? Not that self-absorbed loser! Actor Adam Driver played the lying, cheating, and scheming disgrace of a boyfriend on the show for more seasons than the show’s main character, Hannah (Lena Dunham), really should have endured. Not that I watch “Girls” willingly, mind you, but the women of my family seem inexplicably drawn to the show. So, why was Driver cast for this part? How could any respectable “Star Wars” fan, or even a misguided Trekkie, take the movie seriously from the moment whiney Driver shows his 3D face in IMAX splendor? The casting choice got so bad that one scene when Han Solo (Harrison Ford) was standing on a ridiculously narrow bridge—sans handrails, precariously poking out over a seemingly endless abyss—and trying to talk sense into the young villain, a lady behind me actually exclaimed, “Don’t trust him, Solo!

Remember how he dumped Hannah the nanosecond she went off to graduate school!“ In fact, the real life Driver has more of a right to play Kylo Ren than he does to portray Adam, Hannah’s lousy, text-ignoring boyfriend who has dumped and then hooked up with Hannah more times than I can remember. Believe it or not, in the real world, Driver was a marine who

It would seem that the audience never could get used to seeing the young, strong, futurist hero as a plain, struggling single mom, let alone an older American businesswoman.

served in the Middle East for several years. Action-adventure should be his thing—his role in “Star Wars” should make more sense than it does. Instead, we can’t shake the dweeb image from his role in “Girls.” The irony really struck me

a few days later when I was dragged again to another woman-oriented media event (a.k.a. “chick flick”)—a movie called “Joy.” This film stars Jennifer Lawrence, who is known for her role as Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist of “The Hunger Games.” She plays Joy Mangano, a downtrodden homemaker trying to sell a new kind of mop that she invented. She ages about 25 years during the course of the movie. It would seem that the audience never could get used to seeing the young, strong, futurist hero as a plain, struggling single mom, let alone an older American businesswoman. But I never thought of her for one minute during the movie as “Katniss.” I completely accepted her as the character “Joy” from start to finish. So, the question is: why don’t viewers give Driver the same break we give to Lawrence when he tackles his current big role? I personally believe that, deep down, the characters we feel strongly about in media trigger the same responses as real people do in our lives. So, when a “Girls” viewer experiences Driver as Adam, Hannah’s jerky boyfriend, he rubs us the wrong way. Just like with real people we don’t care for, we aren’t going to willingly support his next endeavor: a role as a strong character we are supposed to fear. Instead, it seems that we can’t shake off our old viewpoints of him and simply cannot see him as this new character in all his evil splendor. Alternatively, because we all admired Katniss and her bold adventures, if Lawrence wants to play a downon-her-luck homemaker, or an elderly American, or star in any role, we are more than happy to give her a chance anywhere she performs.

Latte, latte—oh, what a surprise!—yet another latte. This is all I see scrolling down my Instagram feed. So, seriously, what’s the big deal with lattes? And also, what’s the big deal with all these new Australian cafés my friend begs me to go with her for, of course, none other than, “a picture for the ‘gram”? New Yorkers are not known for having the time to sit down and drink coffee. Always on the go, we can barely wait on line for Starbucks. Unlike us, Australians see cafés as places to socialize, not just to grab a drink and go. And we, too, are starting to get in on the café action. This is due mostly to the long history of European cafés. In the nineteenth century, people attended cafés to get all their current events information. After the Second World War, Italian immigrants brought their espressos to Australia, along with their café culture. In Australia, cafés are the hubs of activity by beaches, as many Aussies spend their mornings surfing and then getting a latte and poached eggs. New York, about five years ago, didn’t have many of these places, and the Australians saw that, so they brought their businesses here, introducing new Italianinspired espresso drinks such as flat whites and long blacks, and quickly revolutionizing our café culture. Thinking about the buzzing atmosphere of New York as a whole, it’s hard to understand how these cafés could prosper. However, certain aspects of the city, which we generally regard with negativity, seem to help these cafés thrive. Renting space in the city is expensive, and as a result, many establishment owners need to have tiny cafés. But these cramped

spaces create an intentional feeling of intimacy, warmth, and invitation. Additionally, part of the success of this café invasion is due to the old New York stigma of not slowing down for anything; the cafés offer a unique place to stop and to socialize with friends or even complete strangers, as well as a place to just relax—something New Yorkers don’t do too often. As Alexander Hall, the owner of the Australian café, Brunswick, explains, “It’s breakfast. It’s not serious; it’s meant to be fun.” Social media has also played a huge part in the sudden rise of café culture. People pick out places to go based on whether or not a picture from there will be able to fit their “feed,” the collection of photos they’ve posted on Instagram. Once the meals are out, the cameras are out. This plays into human nature, as many use social media to appear a certain way, and there’s certainly an aspect of looking “hip” involved when people go to cafés and order an acai bowl, like how there’s a sense of elegance and class associated with having brunch. However, people mostly seem to love cafés because a picture of an avocado toast dish with coffee— bonus points if it’s in a mason jar—is simply aesthetically pleasing. In cafés, both the coffee and the experience must be considered, and a breakthrough of specialty cafés is changing coffee for New Yorkers. We’re starting to catch on to the idea of coffee as a socialization drink, a drink that is most enjoyed when sitting down in a cozy café. If you’re busy, get your coffee to go, but if you have time, be sure to check the café for seats beforehand—New Yorkers are taking their time, sipping iced chai lattes and scrolling through Instagram in these new trendy cafés.

Xin Italie / The Spectator

How the Paris Attacks Can Affect Performing Arts

By Eliana Kavouriadis The Paris attacks on November 13, 2015 and the following ISIS threats to New York City and several other cities spurred a sizable reaction on social media. Ranging from #prayforparis, a hashtag that trended worldwide, to invalid justifications of Islamophobia, these attacks evidently left people shaken. With tragedies such as these also comes the inevitable paranoia for future attacks. Since 89 of the 130 people dead died in the Bataclan theatre, this paranoia may spread to the performance industry, affecting venues around the world. It is difficult to know the full

extent of the attacks’ effects, both inside and outside of Paris. Soon after the attacks, ISIS released a video threatening many major cities, including New York. The video showed short clips of Times Square and footage of people hiding bombs under their jackets. In response to the video, New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton said, “In New York we understand that we are a terrorist target. It reflects the importance of this city.” Today, nearly two months later, New Yorkers are going about their daily lives unchanged, for the most part. However, no matter how many New Yorkers make speeches of bravery and patrio-

tism, there is still a fear instilled in many of us, a fear that can cause subtle changes in behavior that can affect people’s lives in the long run. For some, this means avoiding as many easy terrorist targets as they possibly can. Some of these targets, like urban subway systems, are necessary in people’s day-to-day lives, but others, like performance venues, are easily avoidable. As much as people love going to the theater to see a live performance, it is not something that is essential in the way that airports and subway systems are. If going to performances ever becomes a major safety concern, people might want to seek alternate, safer ways to spend their Friday evenings. Today, high-profile performance venues are still considered safe. However, they are more dangerous than ever, since they have lately been popular terrorist targets. Large theaters and cinemas are everything a terrorist organization looks for in a potential target. Theaters are designed so that they can fit a lot of people in a small space, and everyone’s attention is fixed on whatever is happening onstage or onscreen. Performances also tend to showcase the culture of a city or a nation, and are often connected to regional or national

pride. The more high-profile the performance is, the more press coverage will accumulate and the more impactful the terrorist attack will therefore be. It is no coincidence that out of all of the attacks Paris that night, the one in the theater was the one with the highest death toll. If theater security everywhere doesn’t improve significantly, powerful terrorist organizations can seriously hurt the entertainment business. Metropolitan Opera House regular Jordana Levi said that she was seeing fewer and fewer people at every performance since the attacks. The decrease in numbers wasn’t drastic, but if theater attendance continues to decrease, one of the best opera houses in the world could be in financial danger. If some of the crown jewels of performance are endangered in more ways than one, it could mean a lot in the larger scope of things. Large parts of our culture could be phased out and replaced with safer forms of entertainment (such as Netflix) in times of political conflict. Live entertainment has been a key aspect of almost every culture worldwide since prehistoric times, and even as technology has progressed, the love of going to a theater and seeing a captivating performance has never died down.

Fortunately, it is unlikely that a terrorist organization like ISIS could be enough of a threat that it could completely wash away something so ingrained in our society. Enough people would demand better security before they would stop going to performances altogether. Just as the airport security dramatically improved after 9/11, security in theaters could collectively do something similar. Several theaters have already made recent improvements in their security. At the Playstation Theater (formerly known as the Best Buy Theater) on a Sunday evening this past November, security guards scanned everyone at the door with metal detectors. Although it would take a toll on the budget of many smaller, lesser-known theaters, better security is definitely possible if it is first done with high-budget theaters, and then with lowerbudget theaters as the technology becomes more accessible. This year does not have to be a time when live performances or film showcases are negatively affected. Not even the most intimidating of terrorist attacks should seriously affect the performing arts, especially in New York, one of the most artistically thriving cities in the world.

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 18

Arts and Entertainment Coffee and Chill

Xin Italie / The Spectator

Kaia Waxenberg / The Spectator

Take a break after the stress of finals by having a good cup of coffee–or tea–at these handpicked cafés. We recommend them for their taste, quality, and comfort. To have the fullest café experience, bring a friend or talk to a stranger about the weather, the news, or, most likely, your life struggles.

Irving Farm Coffee Roaster 224 W 79th St, New York, NY 10024

Hungarian Pastry Shop

1030 Amsterdam Ave New York, NY 10025 Bathroom? Yes Wi-Fi? No Budget: $10

Bathroom? Yes Wi-Fi? Yes Budget? $11

Blank Slate Coffee + Kitchen 121 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Coffeed LIC

Bathroom? Yes Wi-Fi? Yes Budget: $15

37-18 Northern Blvd, Long Island City, NY 11101 Bathroom? Yes Wi-Fi? Yes Budget: $8

Café Hanamizuki

143 W 29th St New York, NY 10001 Bathroom? Yes Wi-Fi? Yes Budget: $10

The Uncommons

230 Thompson St New York, NY 10012 Bathroom? Yes Wi-Fi? No Budget: $5 for board games, $6 for food

Two Hands Café

Yaya Tea Garden

164 Mott St, New York, NY 10013

51 Chrystie St, New York, NY 10002

Bathroom? Yes Wi-Fi? No Budget: $11

Bathroom? Yes Wi-Fi? No Budget: $6

Silk Road Café

30 Mott St, New York, NY Bathroom? Yes Wi-Fi? Yes Budget: $7

Audrey’s Concerto

2379 86th St Brooklyn, NY 11214

Xin Italie / The Spectator

Bathroom? No Wi-Fi? Yes Budget: Under $10

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 19

Arts and Entertainment Remembering David Bowie

playlist Compiled by DANIELLE EISENMAN On Sunday, January 10, musi- would always stare at her, simulcian and actor David Bowie died taneously overwrought with jealat the age of 69, only two days ousy and awesome respect. “Unafter the release of his album, der Pressure” reminded me of my “Blackstar.” first week living in Hong Kong I’ll be honest with you now after my mom took a job there. and say that I didn’t feel much of I was so upset with her that I reanything at all when I heard the fused to leave my room, where all news of his death. I had I did was watch each never really gotten of the into his music— “Cheapsomething about er By the his voice didn’t D o z e n” appeal to me— movies and I didn’t three exactly feel “into four finite” when times “Heroes” came a day on the radio, like (“Under Charlie does Pre s s u re” in “The Perks played over my of Being a favorite montage Wallflower” in the second film). (a slightly Even though I annoying wasn’t alive to coming-of-age experience novel meant B o w i e’s to be our h e y d a y, generation’s his music, “Catcher in for me, is the Rye”). wrapped It wasn’t in nostalgia. And I until I Yujie Fu / The Spectator think that’s true for everyencounone—people who listened tered the media’s collec- to Bowie records in the ‘70s as tive Bowie mourning that I teenagers, and people who listen gave his death a second to the same songs with fresh ears. t h o u g h t . I sat in my room His music isn’t great because he and listened to all of the songs I uses particularly interesting time knew by him and, instead of be- signatures or drum beats, but being blown away by his voice or his cause it has the power to evoke words or his skill, I mostly just sat colorful feelings of reminiscence there and remembered. I remem- from everyone. That’s why I bered how my middle school best asked people of all ages from our friend would play “Space Oddity” community to listen to songs by on her ukulele every day in the Bowie and talk about what these cafeteria at lunchtime, and how I songs reminded them of.

ARt By Shruthi Venkata Upon exiting the elevator on the fifth floor of the Whitney Museum of American Art, to the right, one sees looming multicolored structures illuminated in the sunlight. The structures resemble chunks of metal debris welded together in a spherical shape, pierced with enlarged pins. Directly ahead is an expansive wall with the exhibit title: “Frank Stella: A Retrospective.” Frank Stella, born in 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts, is one of the most celebrated American artists alive today. Unlike many other artists, who discover and perfect their styles later in their careers, Stella had his pinnacle when he was in his twenties and thirties, not long after he studied at Phillips Academy and graduated from Princeton University. He moved to New York City shortly after finishing his formal education, having found inspiration for his art in earlier visits to the city. His early works were quick to receive applause for their innovation in abstraction and were soon featured in the art museums around New York. His most recent works, while less recognizable, continue to be featured in retrospectives across the world, like the Whitney’s current show. Whitney Museum director Adam Weinberg defines Stella as a great artist because he is “somebody who is not scared to reinvent themselves and to start all over again […] He’s done it probably a dozen times or more.” His earliest series, “Black Paintings” (1958–60), is perhaps the best series he has done. Each painting can be dismissed as just an uninteresting black canvas,

1.“Moonage Daydream” “For some reason, this song made me think about sixth grade. I was crushing on this girl—I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s the first time I really crushed on a girl. [...] We were at, like, a sixth grade dance. And I was so naïve at the time that I didn’t know you could go to a dance with a girl as friends. So, I was just there, dancing with this girl, and we were both very good—better than, you know, fifth-grade ballroom— and, after that I started liking her. This song just reminds me of any time I’ve ever danced, but that time came to mind.” —William Khan, junior 2.Space Oddity “That song definitely reminds me of college. I went to school at [the University of Texas at Austin], and one of the things I now have nostalgia for is just, like, those endless nights. You feel like you just have endless time when you’re in college. I remember going to people’s houses—you know, you have, like, four dudes living in a house, and some girls will come over, and you play music like this at three o’clock in the morning. You’re just hanging out and talking and getting exposed [to new music]. A lot of people have never heard [of ] David Bowie, Pink Floyd, or Led Zeppelin before. Sitting around at three in the morning is my memory, because I never stay up until three in the morning unless my kids wake me up and I’m a little, you know, annoyed. But, back then, that was what you did. You’re, like, 19 years old and you stay up until three in the morning talking to some girl that you like, and you’re listening to cool music. I still listen to it now, but, if you ask me to think back, like nostalgically, this is definitely what I think of. This is the song that you listen to when the party’s done, and everyone’s left, and there are, like, three other people. This is not

what you listen to when the party’s crowded and “bomping.” That’s, just, what I remember.” —Robert Sandler, history teacher 3.Fashion “[The song] has an anthem feeling to it, and that reminds me of all of the rallies I’ve attended in my life. [...] There was this one time, when I was at City Hall with my mom and my aunt—this was when [...] Bloomberg was still the mayor. He was firmly against having a school holiday for Eid, the Muslim holiday, you know. And we were at that rally advocating, like, ‘We should have a holiday!’ [...] And [Bloomberg] just shut us down. I felt very invigorated and pumped up attending, and I was just so psyched because that was my first rally, and that’s what this song reminds me of.” —Nadean Alnajjar, sophomore 4.Ziggy Stardust “My son, Zachary Isaac Greez, was born March, 2009. I was hoping that he would want to take the nickname, ‘Ziggy’ for the song, ‘Ziggy Stardust,’ this character created by David Bowie. Every year—at the time, I was at Bronx Science—I would bring a giant pumpkin to school. That was something I did for Halloween, and I named him, ‘Ziggy.’ No one at school knew that [my wife was] pregnant, so, what happened that year was that some students kidnapped the pumpkin— as a joke, but that really upset me, because it was named after my unborn child. [...] A group of students [from the environmental club I created] took it upon themselves to save Ziggy. We had this one faction that was hiding the pumpkin, and this other faction that was trying to bring the pumpkin back. [...] There was a giant fight going on over the pumpkin, and the pumpkin, because it was named ‘Ziggy,’ was very important to me. So, when David Bowie died, I came into school and

played ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and showed the different faces of David Bowie and told my students about Ziggy.” —Victor Greez, history teacher Me

5.Somebody Up There Likes

“In freshman year, I had global with this girl, and I didn’t know her, and she sat, like, three seats away from me or something. Like I said, I didn’t know her, but I liked her a lot. When I looked at her, I had these explosions of feeling. I guess I could imagine this song playing in the background as I looked at her. Just like, the lyrics, like saying, ‘You are so divine.’ I think ‘divine’ is the best word to describe her.” —Kevin Zhou, junior 6.Heroes “I was in the Czech Republic— this was half a lifetime ago—and I was making a record there with this band called ‘The Dirty Pictures.’ My friend, James, who had been a college friend of mine—we’d played in college bands, we’d played in New York City bands together, and, a few years later, we found ourselves in Prague. [...] We spent weeks recording and mixing and we were out in a bar late at night, and, all of the sudden, ‘Heroes’ came on. For some reason, it felt very poignant and emotional and James and I, who’d known each other for the better part of a decade and, I think, had intimations that we were going to be friends for a long time, [...] hugged each other. [...] At that moment, being very far away from home, making an album—which had always been a fantasy—the song hit a lot of nerves. It’s not that I think about Eastern Europe every time the song comes on, but once you love something, the associations enrich it whether or not they’re consciously in your head each time you encounter it.” —Eric Grossman, Assistant Principal of English

Frank Stella: An Artist’s Evolution but the paintings are captivating when you see them up close. They contain slight variations in value and texture formed by black drips and streaks of paint; the way the light reflects off the reliefs allows you to identify irregular shapes and structures. Placing the paintings across a white wall further enhances the viewing experience, providing a stark contrast with the black-on-black works. The experience of viewing these paintings is analogous to cloud watching, an activity where you must let your imagination find familiar shapes. In the Black Painting, “Yugatan” (1958), my

goal from that point not to depict anything, unlike these inspirations. “Black Paintings” epitomize this goal as Stella embodies his famous quote, “What you see is what you see.” While other artists use abstraction to show the beholder an intended object depicted in the artist’s style, Stella allows you to use your idiosyncratic imagination to see whatever image you happen to see. The works he made only a little later in his career, in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, are those that most people think of upon hearing his name. They are the paintings fea-

He has made hundreds of artworks of incredibly varied styles.

friend saw a bull while I saw a bridge. It has a strange triangular shape on the left that seems to have horns. But I thought the same “horn” was the frame of a bridge. The stripes of paint down the canvas look like bridge supports. The painting’s graceful ambiguity is a testament to Stella’s artistic ability, as he is able to transform something seemingly bland into something special. Last year, he recollected in a public radio interview that in high school, when determining how he was to paint abstractly, he sought inspiration in the works of early abstract expressionists Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse—he made it his

tured in subway ads and the ones published alongside reviews of his work. The works from this time, like “Chodorow II,” are beautiful. “Chodorow II” is a composition of geometric blocks of red, blue, black, and off-white tones on an irregularly shaped canvas with a somewhat-square base and appendages jutting out on the top right. However, while Stella was unafraid of redefining his art, the changes weren’t always made for the better. Works he made as he neared the middle of his career, like “Gran Cairo” (1962), seem like art that belongs in the background of something more interesting. This piece is a square

canvas painted with overlapped squares, each about three inches in diameter. The squares, colored shades of blue, yellow, and red, get smaller and smaller towards the center of the painting. It is as though it were in one-point perspective with the vanishing point in the very center. Such canvases are ones I loved being photographed in front of, and they use patterns I would love to have on a shirt. On a museum wall, however, they offer me no reason to stop in front of and examine them. I would not buy a ticket to go to a museum full of Stella’s square canvases with squares upon outlined squares of different colors, many of which I could see any non-artist making. Nonetheless, the retrospective wouldn’t have been complete without them. Stella’s latest art is either wonderfully intricate or a stressful mess of things that do not go well together. The style lets him make masterpieces where the viewer can just see the time, complex thought that went into it, and talent that it takes to make such compositions, but it could just as easily go wrong. His sculpture, “La penna di hu” (1987–2009), feels like it would blend into a playground because of its vibrant primary colors; Stella layers hollow geometric cones, prisms, and cylinders with other curved-shape outlines, each in its own color, to make something really interesting. Even the shadows of the hollow shapes’ frames behind the sculpture were artful. On the other hand, “K.81 combo (K.37 and K.43) large size” (2009), which is pink, green, blue, and metallic gray, is confusing and almost annoying to look at. The approximately ten-foot-tall

sculpture has thick, flat bars of spray-painted stainless steel curling and weaving in and out of each other. Thick metallic needles pierce through the ground, giving the clump of interwoven tubing the appearance of a pincushion. Stella said that if “you put your finger on the edge and followed the edge of the forms, you’d keep moving, and you’d run into things and loop around.” Looking at it, one is supposed to feel the same motion. I personally looked at it for a long time, and I did not feel any of it. Nonetheless, like much of Stella’s art, the idea behind the work (and its title) makes it great. “K.81 Combo” belongs to the “Scarlatti Case Series,” inspired by the Baroque harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti. The sculpture is meant to flow and break in the same way that his music does. Just as Kandinsky and modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe modeled some of their works after music, Stella’s piece represents one Scarlatti’s performances. Stella is nothing short of a stellar artist—he has made hundreds of artworks of incredibly varied styles in his career. He made series that brought him to fame while only in his twenties; now nearly eighty, he is still going strong. What is most notable about Stella is the fact that his art has undergone many stylistic changes, some of which do not seem to be capable of coming from the hands of the same artist. But it also means that no matter what you like, it’s likely that Stella has made something that you’ll enjoy. “Frank Stella: A Retrospective” will remain open at the Whitney until February 7, and there is something in it for everyone.

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 20

Arts and Entertainment calendar

Get a Life! Get Cultured!

ONGOING Art Show: “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn” Brooklyn Museum

2/5/2016

Art Show: “Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934–1954” Museum of Modern Art until 2/7/2016

Monday

Friday

Sara Roosevelt Park Festival

Theater for the New City Performance Art

January February

Musical: “An American in Paris” Palace Theatre Dining: NYC Restaurant Week various restaurants until 2/5/2016

“New Year Firecracker Ceremony & Cultural Festival”

“American Indian Show”

Art Show: “Flatlands” Whitney Museum of American Art Illustrated Lecture: “The Executioner, Unhooded: An Illustrated Lecture with Alison Kinney” Morbid Anatomy Museum

2/8/2016

1/29/2016

2/7/2016

Sia’s “This is Acting”

“New York Wild Film Festival”

Friday

Sunday

iTunes Album Release

Art Show: “Martin Wong: Human Instamatic” Bronx Museum of the Arts

The Explorers Club Film Screening

Exhibit: “The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film” The Jewish Museum

Asian American Literature Students Turned Playwrights

By Jasmine Tang By attending the musical “Allegiance” and reading David Henry Hwang’s play “M. Butterfly,” English teacher Sophie Oberfield’s Asian American literature classes deeply delved into the world of theater during the course’s playwriting unit this semester. To conclude the unit, students wrote two-minute plays. Nine actors and actresses of Second Generation (2g) Productions performed thirty of these plays on January 9, at Stuyvesant’s Boaz R. Weinstein Library after school. The performance was a part of 2g’s Community Voices Program. The program (initiated last year by Oberfield, 2g’s Artistic Director Victor Maog, 2g’s President and Stuyvesant alumnus Gladys Chen, and 2g’s Director Soriya Chum) serves to engage students in playwriting and to have their works performed live by professional actors. The cast of performers, a group of actors of varying sexes and ethnicities from across the United States, proved themselves versatile as they undertook diverse roles and immersed themselves in their characters. The cast’s performance of junior Samantha Xing’s “Now, I’m a Rock” allows the actors to showcase their talents. The play begins with Isabel (Farah Bala), a sculptor, receiving an award in Carnegie Hall. In the next scene, her partner, Alan (Les Mau), decides to meet her family. The play escalates quickly. He learns that the basement’s realistic sculptures of his wife’s family are actually corpses, and he frantically tries to escape, when Isabel tells him that it is now his turn to be “part of her family ‘forever.’” In the end, the setting changes to an art gallery where an art enthusiast (Jo Mei) is stunned by the realism of Isabel’s newest sculpture of her husband. Although Xing had intended the play to be horrifying, the audience had some good laughs. Bala’s overly saccharine voice and Mau’s overdramatic pose for the sculpture––frozen midrun with his mouth wide open,

eyes bugged out, and one of his arms extended from attempting to escape his partner—were especially hilarious. The playwright did not anticipate such a reaction from the audience and the humorous enactment of the play. “I expected everyone to be shocked or scared, but no one was scared or shocked. Everyone was laughing,” Xing said. Still, she enjoyed the differences. “The actors’ actions were so dramatized and funny. I loved the part where Mau pretended to be a sculpture at the end,” she said. The actors’ high energy and creativity were present for all the plays. In junior Elisa Hung’s “The Greater of the Two Evils,” actors Vichet Chum, Imran Sheikh, and Alex Ubokudom transformed members of the notorious extremist group ISIS into a crew of selfie-obsessed, hashtag-using teens. The actors playing ISIS whip out their phones to take group selfies, extending their arms out for the ideal angle and holding up peace signs in front of

ing scene was innocent fun and an excellent rendition of a Mario game. Like the actors, the plays also exhibited diversity, ranging from humorous to poignant and broaching different themes. The variation in plays kept the audience interested and tested out the actors’ abilities. “Cheating,” by junior Andy Wang, involves a couple who are in a fight because one of them found the other cheating. Towards the end of the play, the audience learns that the dilemma is much more frivolous and laughable than the expected type of infidelity––instead, it is watching the final episode of “Lost” on Netflix without the other person. Meanwhile, junior Ricky Wu’s “Promise,” a twisted love story, shows a man who keeps his lover’s corpse because he promised that he would stay with her forever. Junior Richard Liang’s “It,” and junior Mashiyat Karim’s “The Diaper Dilemma,” were both hu-

The plays also exhibited diversity, ranging from humorous to poignant and broaching different themes. their faces. The actors also got creative with junior Danny Xia’s “Princess’ Peach.” There is a scene where video game characters Mario (Ubokudom) and Luigi (Sheikh) shoot villains all around them. The actors made guns with their fingers and loud gun sounds. They turned their bodies to do a full three-sixty degree shooting. The other actors joined in on the action. They leaped from their chairs and flailed their arms. They let out painful screams, pretending to get shot. The actors then sat back down and the process continued for another thirty seconds. The audience laughed in amusement. Rather than violent or inappropriate, the shoot-

morous plays about Stuyvesant’s Health class’s baby project, an assignment that many juniors receive to take care of a baby doll with a partner, and then create a scrapbook that reflects upon the experience. “It” is about a duo that forgets to bring its baby to school and later crafts one out of an apple and some findings in the school cafeteria. “The Diaper Dilemma” revolves around a partner who demands a mixedrace baby doll to better represent her Caucasian partner and Asian self. Karim’s play proves that inspiration from theater can come from anywhere. “I started [writing] the play and couldn’t think of an idea, and I was sad,” Karim

Nancy Cao / The Spectator

Play

said of the playwriting process. “And then I looked at my table and saw [the] scrapbook [for the baby project], and it hit me that I could write about a dialogue where two kids are doing the project and get into an argument about the race of the baby,” she said. The theme of race reached beyond the baby project. In contrast to the comical “The Diaper Dilemma,” “More than Color” by Junior Aronno Shafi demonstrates pressure on a person because of her race—a recurring topic in the literary works read in the Asian American Literature class. The play starts with a woman (Bala) with Alzheimer’s disease at a hospital. She is sitting quietly and very still with a solemn face, staring straight ahead. The doctor (Jo Mei) is concerned about her patient’s health, spitting questions at the woman, waiting for an answer. When asked what she wants, she replies, “Love. More than color.” She then has a flashback to a past incident that gives insight into the meaning of her words. The audience is taken to a scene showing the woman and her husband having an intense argument about race. Her husband (Vandit Bhatt), screams at his wife as he accuses her for still having feelings for her former lover, a white man (Bradley Anderson). The woman’s culture only allows her to be in a relationship with a man of the same culture. “You only married me because I’m brown, a doctor, and religious,” her husband yells. The audience was wide-eyed and

completely silent as it watched the exchange. The husband’s last words echo an issue Asian Americans are familiar with. “There’s a common pressure for Asian Americans to date or marry people of their culture and having relations with those of another race, particularly white, is highly discouraged. So in the play you see the aftermath of that racial pressure on relationships,” Shafi said. When Asian American Literature students worked on their plays in class, many of them admitted that this was their first time writing a play. For the students, being able to write their first plays, seeing them performed live by professional actors, and receiving applause for their work was remarkable. Junior Kevin Zhou, who attended the event, appreciated the opportunity to watch. “It felt really amazing to see my friends’ plays performed. I was absorbed in the entire performance and impressed by the skillful acting of the hired ensemble,” he said. After the success of Stuyvesant’s second time partnering with 2g, perhaps the student playwrights will be inspired to continue their newfound craft or venture into acting. After all, when asked how they each got involved in theater during the intermission’s “Q & A” session, a majority of the actors said that the inception of their interest in theater traces back to high school.

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 21

Arts and Entertainment Theater By Liam Elkind As the audience reclined in their seats and the curtain rose, there was fear in the actors’ faces. The night wore on, and characters entered dressed in the wrong outfits, came on with the wrong props, and completely forgot their lines. The sets fell down, the onstage phone broke, and the director had to take over for an inebriated actor. It was, simply put, flawless. There are comedies, and then there are shows so elaborately crafted, so precisely designed, that every comedic beat lands perfectly; and the audience leaves with their hearts on their sleeve and their cheeks hurting from smiling too much. Such was the Roundabout Theater Company’s latest production of “Noises Off!,” Michael Frayn’s slapstick farce about a troupe of actors trying to pull a show together for the performance of a lifetime. Boasting Broadway greats Andrea Martin and Megan Hilty, the production faced immense pressure to live up to its expectations. Suffering from extended delays, the show finally opened previews on December 22, and opened on January 14. And it fell apart so marvelously and precisely that I, doing my best to hold back tears of laughter, simultaneously suffered pangs of genuine concern for the characters as the characters tried to put on a show, going against immeasurable odds. I will admit, I have always been partial to Frayn’s comedy. The 1982 film version of the play, starring Michael Caine and Carol Burnett, is a personal favorite. But the live production was able to integrate so

Noises Off ! Returns To Broadway: Hilarity Ensues many new, brilliant aspects to its interpretation that it took on a life of its own. I was no longer simply watching a regurgitation of what I have seen thousands of times on screen (not an exaggeration; ask my family). I was watching new gags that brought slapstick back into the hearts of the audience. Part of the reason the show felt so fresh was the new direction taken by director Jeremy Herrin. Instead of including the actors’ desperate anger, like the film did, Herrin interpreted the script more as a source of determined optimism. All the actors, as they desperately scrambled to get their cues, were forced to accept their shortcomings, both on and off stage, and make do with that they had. Perhaps nobody captured this spirit better than Martin. Starring as Dotty Otley, the lead of the show-withina-show, Martin perfectly embodied the lasting hope that carries on through performative turmoil. With positive reinforcement, a humble thumbs-up, and an outgoing wink, Dotty was able to overcome the play collapsing around her. “Noises Off!” is one of those rare shows that has everything. It has humor and genuine human impact. There’s no real deep, heavy-hearted message to it, which

crossword

makes it refreshingly entertaining, but there is meaning to every choice made. The characters don’t have dark backstories. They do have backstories, but each one is hilarious and poignant in its own way. Dotty is struggling to get through to retirement, and eighty-something-yearold Selsdon is a drunken Shakespearean actor. The humor comes from the genuine belief that these characters, these actors, are truly trying to pull off this show that is collaps-

Yuxin Wu / The Spectator

ing around them. Rob McClure plays Tim, the company’s stagehand. Juxtaposing Dotty’s constant smile, Tim employs a different tactic of handling adverse situations: he runs around trying to fix everything at once. McClure captures this manic desperation with wit and heart, as he forces doors open

that are stuck shut and hammers down doors that keep flapping ajar. Sitting in the first row, I could see beads of sweat on his forehead as his eyes darted back and forth across the stage, checking in with each cast member to make sure they were all right. Unfortunately, the cast is anything but. In one of the three performances shown, we are given a look backstage. Each actor, as s/he “goes onstage,” is immediately inscene, in-character. When the actor comes back offstage, the feuds begin again. All across the stage is pandemonium. Plates of sardines fly here and there, different characters arguing and shushing each other, trying to keep the show— if not themselves— together. Brooke Ashton (played by Broadway great Megan Hilty) is a classically-trained but horrible actress. Hilty brought an ingenious interpretation to this character trait, making Brooke’s movements stiff and forced, her screams of anguish shrill and uncontrollable, and her lines rigid and consistent(ly awful). Hilty’s Brooke evoked more of a sense of a dancer rather than an actor: her movements are the same for each performance, no matter how off-the-rails the show has gone. During the climax of the company’s production, she runs offstage, stiffly flinging her arms

in the air (evoking the emotion of “scared,” of course). Backstage, we see her calmly crossing in front of the backdrop, immediately out of character. Regardless of what the rest of the company did, Hilty always maintained a consistently awkward face and a strained caricature of her character’s character. If that sounded confusing, that’s because it is. Frayn’s comedy has layers upon layers of nuance greater than any other farce I’ve ever come across. The show has to be hilariously sloppy and perfectly clean at the same time. If the actors make a single mistake, the whole production is thrown off. At the same time, the characters have to make every mistake in the book so that the whole production is thrown off. A play like this requires immense precision in the entrances and exits, the props, the costumes, and even the sound cues (which were ingeniously and meticulously crafted by Christopher Cronin). The actors have to be trained to bring on the wrong props, to forget their lines, and to knock down the set by accident. To pull off a show as complicated as this, the actors have to let go of their years of training, and at the same time, do it so convincingly and cleanly that there’s no question of perfection. Actors like Martin, Hilty, and Shamos are necessary to pull off a comedy of this scope. And pull it off they did. When the curtain finally came (crashing) down, the cast awkwardly sprawling underneath it, the audience was genuinely unsure if it was intentional or not. The honesty with which each character is portrayed allowed the production to be, put simply, perfectly horrendous.

Crosswars

Do you think you’re all that because you were able to identify the Star Wars tropes in “The Force Awakens”? Test your Star Wars knowledge with this crossword!

ACROSS

Emily Wu / The Spectator

DOWN 1. Obi-Wan refers to Anakin as his _____ in their last exchange on Mustafar. 3. Never tell Han the _____. 4. Part of the Millennium Falcon that was dysfunctional for the entirety of the “Empire Strikes Back.” 7. Luke calls his mentor _____ Kenobi. 8. Who did Han shoot first in the Mos Eisley Cantina? 10. Darth Vader’s flagship. 13. The original rebel base was hidden on a moon of this planet. 14. Han is frozen in _____ after stopping at Cloud City. 16. What X-Wings are to fighters, _____ are to bombers.

Answers 1. BROTHER 2. CORELLIA 3. ODDS 4. HYPERDRIVE 5. TAUNTAUN 6. SABE 7. BEN 8. GREEDO 9. NERFHERDER 10. EXECUTER 11. MACQUARIE 12. IKNOW 13. YAVIN 14. Across: CHEWBACCA Down: CARBONITE 15. LUMINOUS 16. YWINGS 17. WOOKIEEPEDIA 18. ALDERAAN

2. The Millennium Falcon was originally a freighter from this planet. 5. Creature native to the planet Hoth that smells even worse on the inside. 6. This handmaiden served as Padme’s decoy in the attack on Naboo. 9. Scruffy-looking _____. 11. Famed concept artist who designed much of the original trilogy. 12. Han’s response to Leia’s first confession of love. 14. Carried C3PO for a brief period. 15. “_____ beings are we, not this crude matter.” 17. Online Star Wars database. 18. The first planet to be destroyed by the Death Star.

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

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Arts and Entertainment By Jordan Hodder The silence is broken by a crackle, soon succeeded by a wavering hum. Out of the darkness, blades of light flicker on, illuminating the faces of a nine year-old boy and his father. They duel on a silent street, the boy grinning with pride over his growing skill, blissfully unaware that the man is letting him win. The man thinks back decades to when he and his brothers “played Star Wars” with wrapping paper rolls and flashlights, impressed yet somewhat alienated by the pace of technological advancement. Little does he realize that, despite the changes the years have brought, the tousle-haired youth of 1983 and the thin boy before him now have something in common, something that will never diminish with time, something ancient and hopeful. Such is the magic of Star Wars, defying the test of time and the rise and fall of fads. Countless children of Baby Boomers and Millennials alike have grown up with an appreciation for the exhilaration, adventure, and mysterious power that made it the cultural phenomenon it is. Star Wars is invigorated by its focus on melodramatic high adventure, elevated by a soaring, orchestral score, and brought to life by special effects that left a generation in shock. For years, fans were haunted by the controversy and disappointment of the prequel trilogy that George Lucas later released. They felt betrayed as the simple adventure and ancient mystery of Star Wars gave way to political intrigue and shiny CGI. Though my generation could take solace in the old majesty of the original movies, we were left with a vague sense of loss, living in the shadow of exciting glory days that we could never experience. That is, until “The Force Awakens” was announced. Directed by young hotshot J.J. Abrams and spearheaded by an untested cast,

An Awakening for Star Wars Fans “The Force Awakens” was a wildcard. It had the chance to inject the franchise with a long-dormant vigor, but it was viewed with justified trepidation and cynical pessimism. A huge swath of the population desperately needed it to be a great movie. It wasn’t. It was beyond great. It was a tour de force that brought the same raw excitement of 1977 back to a generation that beforehand could only look back on the past wistfully. Experimentation gave way to nostalgia, yet Abrams managed to focus the movie on establishing the new. Interestingly, the movie mirrors the real world in countless ways, perhaps most obviously in the dominant theme of passing the torch to a new generation. As a new line of heroes and villains take on the mantles of the Jedi and the Empire, so too do a group of charismatic actors rise to become the faces of an epic new saga. And, most importantly, so too do a generation of young fans who grew up in the shadow of their parents’ tales of excitement inherit an adventure of their own. The Force has lain dormant since the end of the original trilogy. Rather than evolving or changing while we were away, the galaxy has remained largely stagnant since the fall of the Empire. The events of the original trilogy, like the movies themselves, are a distant memory, legends whispered between young dreamers. There is no well-established Empire or Republic in the beginning of “The Force Awakens;” rather, the movie is built on next to nothing. Importantly, rather than spending his time establishing political dynamics, Abrams places Star Wars right where it left off, returning the series to middleof-nowhere planets and godforsaken wastes rather than the ornate capitals of the prequels. Many major elements of the movie’s plot are recycled from “A New Hope,” perhaps in an attempt to recapture the grand space op-

“You used to call me on my cellphone / Late night when you need my love,” Drake raps in “Hotline Bling,” one of the defining tracks of 2015. The song’s emotional lyrics and playful music video have inspired countless parodies and memes, and have resulted in it earning its place as number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. With the enormous press coverage surrounding it, as well as its deeply ingrained position in popular culture, “Hotline Bling” has been difficult to get out of our heads. The song has been applauded by many for showcasing Drake’s emotional side. However, anyone who looks deeper into the lyricism (or perhaps even looks at it at all) should realize that while Drake may portray himself as the victim, the real victim in this song is the girl he degrades, particularly through slut-shaming. Slut-shaming is an issue that is understood as the denouncement of a woman for her real or presumed promiscuous behaviors. It is important to note that this is a definition that applies strictly to women; men who partake in similar levels of sexual activity are rarely, if ever, stigmatized, and certainly not to the level women are. Although many have campaigned against this attitude and conduct, Drake’s encouragement of it through his

weak link in the movie, though. A female lead is a welcome change for the series, and Abrams commendably treats her no differently due to her gender than Lucas did Luke. Rey, like Finn, does not undergo a complete character arc in this film; rather, she’s set up to change as the trilogy progresses. The strongest character of the movie by far was Kylo Ren, portrayed by Adam Driver. Driver creates a character that is something we’ve never seen before in Star Wars: an uncertain villain desperate to carve out a name for himself and prone to bouts of almost childish anger. Whereas Vader exuded power and control above all, Kylo is almost the polar opposite, constantly questioning his role and destiny and barely keeping his head afloat. He ends the movie on an incredibly strong note, hinting at a fantastic character arc ahead and foreshadowing a new direction for the dark side. Despite focusing on the new, Abrams throws in more than enough fan service and nostalgia. Many main characters of the original trilogy return alongside the Millennium Falcon, helping create a sense of return to form. Rather than stealing the limelight, these old faces return mainly to guide the new from the back seat.

This return to form is a recurring theme. For example, take the Force: it leaves the realm of rationality and science and returns to the spiritual network of energy that it originally was. “The Force Awakens,” all in all, did a fantastic job setting up a new world, and with the strong foundation Abrams has created, the next two movies will be free to rely far less on the foundations of the original trilogy and travel in new directions. In an act of real-world heroism, John Boyega walked into the theater I was in on the opening day to urge us to enjoy the film that he had poured so much heart into. He left us with a poignant message: “Star Wars belongs to you now.” He was referring to passing the movie from its creators to its viewers, but to me it struck a different chord entirely. The torch has been passed to a new generation of young actors. For my whole life, the huge adventure of Star Wars had belonged to the generations before ours. I was merely freeloading off of their grand saga. Until now. As the opening credits rolled I could feel myself getting choked up at the sight of those familiar yellow letters. Star Wars belonged to me now.

1-800-SEXIST-BLING

THINKPIECE By Sophie Feng

era of the past. However, this has led many critics to call “The Force Awakens” derivative and to criticize what they perceive as a lack of originality. These detractors have a point: both the central premise and the third act of the movie are almost the exact same as that of “A New Hope.” However, the focal point of the original trilogy was the simple goal of saving the galaxy against overwhelming odds. “The Force Awakens” is a different beast than its predecessors, instead focused primarily on its characters. The rising action and climax bear striking resemblances to those of the original Star Wars, but the difference lies in the weight given to the plot. In “The Force Awakens,” it serves as a mere backdrop for the main event: the interactions that take place on an equally dramatic but far smaller scale between the protagonists and Kylo Ren, the film’s villain. Those characters are certainly worth focusing on; they are realistic, funny, human, and, above all, original. John Boyega portrays Finn, a defecting stormtrooper who only wants to flee from responsibility and danger. When the time comes, he displays an odd sort of heroism as the man who wants to run but stands his ground for those that have stood by him. Meanwhile, the suave Oscar Isaac plays the dashing, defiant Poe Dameron. His bravado is reminiscent of Han Solo, but where Han acted in self-interest, Dameron acts out of loyalty and courage. The quintessential heroic soldier was conspicuously absent in the original trilogy, and its inclusion in this film is a breath of fresh air The weaker of the three leads is Daisy Ridley’s Rey. She is characterized somewhat uncertainly, as Ridley portrays Rey as too much of a serious, confident heroine to convincingly sell her as the unwilling but yearning teenage girl that the writing seemed to color her as. That’s not to say that Rey was the

Rina Lubit / The Spectator

FILM

music certainly sets back the cause. Furthermore, he is not the only artist who uses sexism as a tactic in song production. In “Hotline Bling,” Drake raps, “Why you never alone / Why you always touching road / Used to always stay at home, be a good girl.” He implies his ex-girlfriend is a “bad girl” for being with men besides him, even though they have broken up, a clear example of shaming a women for her sexual behaviors. He also criticizes his ex-girlfriend for her other actions, accusing her for what she

Jarett Lee / The Spectator

does despite their separation. “Ever since I left the city, you, you, you […] Going places where you don’t belong,” he raps. Drake is not the only artist who spreads harmful messages through music. Maroon 5’s 2014 single “Animals” was criti-

cized mainly for its music video, which dramatizes the stalking of a woman. In the video, Adam Levine follows a woman around while secretly photographing her, complemented by scenes of him surrounded by raw meat and dripping with blood. The video ends with Levine and the woman he has been stalking seemingly happy in love. While this scenario seems to be mostly for adding shock value to the video, it romanticizes stalking, an activity that can be incredibly traumatizing to the victim. The lyrics further include lines such as, “Baby I’m preying on you tonight / Hunt you down eat you alive.” These lyrics are cringeworthy, for sure, but they also add an unnecessary undertone of violence to the simple concept of being in love with a woman. The underlying messages in the music of extremely successful artists like Drake and Maroon 5 are more harmful than one might think. Music has become one of the biggest foundations of popular culture, and the availability of free music-sharing services such as Spotify and YouTube have made it easily accessible to any individual. This means that music in general is being listened to by more and more people, and while it is amazing that music is gaining such prominence, its influence raises a huge number of issues. Due to the concept of free speech, one might argue that artists should be able to say what they want in their songs. Howev-

er, this is not a logical argument down women and Drake slutwhen music such as Drake’s and shames in his rap to the 330 milMaroon 5’s potentially promotes lion people who have watched detrimental feelings and his music video, their actions toward women. words are not falling When some of the on deaf ears. Though most popular musome may be able to sic in our society ignore these lyrics, is sexist, the there will always lyrics be people who of such hear what they music say and take may be the artists’ subconsexist opinsciously ions as their absorbed and own. acknowledged For a by the greater problem numbers of that could people who are encourage hearing them, in such danshort serving as gerous propaganda. Muattitudes, sic that is overtly a possexist, such as that sible soby Eminem, is lution for generally easy to it does not seem too ignore, because it is obvious Amber Yang / The Spectator complicated. that the abuse of women is While it may frowned upon. But can the same be beyond our power to remove be said about music of artists music of this kind altogether, the such as Drake? more educated people are about There has been much con- issues such as slut-shaming, the cern over the past couple of years more they are able to recognize about violent video games caus- the problems in the mainstream ing adolescent players to become music that they listen to. So more aggressive, and a similar while it may not be plausible (or statement can be said about sex- even desirable) to stop listening ist music. Music is more acces- to your favorite artist (who hapsible to most children than vid- pens to be sexist), you don’t have eo games are and can similarly to. You just have to recognize spread potentially harmful ideas. that the message they promote is This is especially detrimental be- ultimately one that you shouldn’t cause young people are vulner- agree with. able and impressionable. When Maroon 5 sings about hunting

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

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Arts and Entertainment

Kaia Waxenberg / The Spectator

The Stuyvesant Theater Community (STC) is known for making race-blind, gender-blind casting choices—in last year’s production of “12 Angry Men,” students of all genders and all races played the typically white and male jurors. This year’s winter drama, “The Great Gatsby,” was no exception to this rule, with the casting of senior Ares Aung as white supremacist Tom Buchanan. The decision was a good one, as Aung proved himself capable of capturing Buchanan’s intimidating strength, but it did lead to some comedic moments, like when a fellow actor declared, “We’re all white here,” in response to Tom’s sermon about why the Nordic race is superior to all others. Aung’s spin on Tom Buchanan was emblematic of the entire show, which was an

ultimately successful, and at times humorous, take on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s landmark novel, “The Great Gatsby.” “The Great Gatsby” takes place in Roaring Twenties New York, a fact utilized by cast directors senior Aparna Nair-Kanneganti and sophomore Kenny Lin in the opening number, in which cast members dipped and swayed to swing music characteristic of that age. The show begins when young hopeful Nick Carraway (junior Liam Elkind) comes to Long Island to make a life for himself, moving in next door to millionaire and title character Jay Gatsby (senior Henry Rosenbloom). Nick soon finds out that Gatsby has been infatuated with Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchanan (senior Antonia Stefanescu) for the past five years—five years next November, as Gatsby so awkwardly professes when he finally

Kaia Waxenberg / The Spectator

all of the transitions were flawless, none were especially long, and the lighting was consistently good. One scene, especially, was aided by two spotlights: one on a conversation between Nick and Jordan, and another on the flashback being reenacted by Daisy. The backdrop was a picture of a pink house, and different elements of the set—a couch and table, or a cute, old-school car—were used to

differentiate between scenes. The Great Gatsby is a difficult show to pull off on stage, as the novel is better known for its lyrical descriptions than for its dialogue, but the STC overcame this to put on a great production. Aided greatly by impeccable casting choices, “The Great Gatsby,” though imperfect, was very enjoyable to watch.

Danielle Eisenman / The Spectator

By Zora Arum and Ariella Kahan

sees her again—a fact that is much to her husband Tom’s chagrin. Aung provided a strong, driving force in a play that is in part about life’s tendency toward stagnation. He delivered his lines with Tom’s infamous power and aggression, and used body language very effectively. However, his semi-British affectation, while interesting, was inconsistent, and his character’s intensity was ever-present and at times overwhelming. Elkind, on the other hand, used different levels of intensity very well, beginning the play very calm and collected, if somewhat disgruntled, but reaching heightened volumes by Nick’s character climax. This made his performance feel genuine, and his character arc natural. When Nick finally loses his patience with the world of the wealthy, and yells after Tom and Daisy as they exit the stage for the last time, Elkind’s raspy yell sounded full of legitimate anger and pain, as opposed to Aung’s shouts, which at times felt more forced. Elkind’s stellar performance was also emphasized by his actions, such as, when, in a final fit of frustration, he crushed a plastic cup in his hand and threw the shards offstage. Rosenbloom also added color to the performance, perfectly encapsulating Gatsby’s awkward yet gallant nature through jerky hand movements coupled with grand sweeps of his arms. Unfortunately, his performance was undermined by microphone difficulties and a tendency to mumble many of his lines, which, though appropriate for his character, was unsuited for the stage. His strong acting abilities were also diminished by the lack of chemistry between him and his romantic interest and co-lead, Stefanescu. Though Stefanescu was well-casted and individuallytalented, it was difficult to suspend disbelief while watching her and Rosenbloom together, as they often seemed almost at odds with each other onstage. However, perhaps this was an acting choice, as, in an earlier, well-orchestrated flashback scene, Gatsby and Daisy dance together to the quiet lull of parlor music and seem very much in love. Senior Nicole Rosengurt’s portrayal of Jordan Baker, Daisy’s friend and a golf champion, was one of the highlights of the show, in part due to the fact that Rosengurt was a perfect fit for Jordan. Rosengurt embodied Jordan’s straightforwardness and cynicism, and worked well with Elkind, as the duo’s scenes portraying the doomed-from-the-start relationship between Nick and Jordan were appropriately but not overwhelmingly awkward. In an onstage kiss, the pair stumbled over each other’s feet but managed to catch themselves before completely falling over, provoking a mix of “aww’s” and laughs from the audience. Other minor characters similarly brought moments of light to the show. George Wilson (sophomore Garrett Hall), a mechanic whose spouse, Myrtle Wilson (sophomore Eliana Kavouriadis), is Tom’s mistress, shows excellent character development in the show. Mr. Wilson starts off as a meek old man, yet by the end of the show, he finds a loud voice for a moment in the spotlight. Kavouriadis adeptly portrayed Myrtle’s oblivious flamboyance in a bright red dress—at one point, she attempted to sit on Nick Carraway’s lap and was completely unaware of Nick’s attempt to scoot away—yet at times her boldness seemed unnatural. While oftentimes STC shows are plagued by long transitions, faulty lighting, or an absence of props, “The Great Gatsby” excelled in this regard. Though not

Danielle Eisenman / The Spectator

A Jazz-ey Drama

STC

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

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

Science-Free Crisis Worsens

By Jason Mohabir Increased border security at the library doors has caused a backlash among many within the science-free community. The library monitors champion the recognition by the Zhang administration as the dawn of a new organized age. Only a few weeks ago, the conflict on the border theater seemed to be a losing effort for the monitors. More and more science teachers were letting out their students for a free period. “The change was unprecedented. The library could handle the few dozen science-frees, albeit with some crowding. But now, there simply is not enough space. They are taking our books, our seats, our printer paper, our computer time, and our silence!” explained junior Stiven Peter, a veteran member of the library monitor forces. “Only ‘bout a week ago, [science teacher Dr. Jeffrey] Horenstein let out another wave

of rabid procrastinating freshmen our way, the third time in a month! We could barely close the doors in time, and even with that we could not fully stop them from entering. These people are savages. They are not afraid to attack our barricades and certainly without me, they are sure to take down the entire library with them.” Science-frees have never been officially allowed into the library in the past, but many simply walked through the doors after the initial lines that formed at the beginning of periods dissipated. Librarian Jonathan Cheng explained, “Formerly, I was the only defense for the good people of the library, and it worked for some time, but my intimidation and fear tactics can only go so far. I can no longer threaten to give people bad schedules—I don’t even know how programming works anymore.” Thanks to a new deal with the computer science department, an ID-scanning software has been provided to help identify science-

frees from the entering crowds. Junior Kathy Lau, creator of the scanner software, in an exclusive interview said, “The purpose of

With no place to do their prelabs, many students have resorted to forming hordes around the library’s entrance, establishing

“When you have a science free, you aren’t actually free.” —Atikur Rana, junior the software is to identify, ostracize, and potentially ban sciencefrees from entering the library. Coded in TrumpScript, a Python variation based on future President Donald Trump, the software is able to non-discriminately discriminate. This is our great big fat wall.” Indeed the new scanning software has made tremendous impact on the war on sciencefrees—science itself may have killed the science-free.

ad-hoc communities unified by the desire to enter the library. Junior Sebastian Wozniak, a current science-free and former bordercrosser, explained his situation: “Before these reforms, overrunning the security was relatively easy. You just had to distract Mr. Cheng with some white van candy, open the glass door, and bam! You were home free. But now, the scanning system makes entering a suicide mission.”

Interesting ideologies have come out of the intensifying situations. The anti-laissez-faire monitors have rallied support for the new border measures, and they have been working with an almost one percent decrease in the amount of noise in the notalking sections. On the other side, however, some science-frees have come to terms with the fatalist attitudes of administration towards them. Junior Atikur Rana, a current science-free, lamented, “Ironic isn’t it? It is in the name, a ‘free period.’ But yet you can’t leave Stuy. You can’t enter the library. You can’t do anything. When you have a science-free, you aren’t actually free.” The transience of the sciencefree and the apparent randomness of its existence makes solidarity among the science-free refugees difficult to organize and execute. As more and more support is garnered to protect the rightful users of the library, the future of the science-free is left unknown.

Boodram’s Teacher Complaint System “Life Changing” Club Rejected by SU for Fear of Holding Gives Students New Hope Teachers Accountable for Their Actions By Kevin Mitchell

By Laszlo Sandler

The Student Union (SU) rejected a proposal brought forth by senior Ryan Boodram at last week’s School Leadership Team (SLT) meeting to introduce an online platform for students to submit complaints about their teachers. According to sources who may or may not have attended the meeting, the plan was rejected on the grounds that it would make teachers accountable for their actions, which would violate the longstanding school policy of letting teachers abuse homework and grade policies as long as parents don’t complain. Critics of Boodram’s proposal say they fear the online platform would become rife with abuse, and that comments such as, “My gym teacher smells,” and “My English teacher is too hot for my liking,” would flood the system. Despite these criticisms, physics teacher Thomas Strasser thinks the system would be a good thing. “I mean, I’m not that fearful of the potential abusive comments that could come through,” Strasser said. “Whether the complaint is because of my teaching style or blatant favoritism, it’d still be a good thing to know.” Algebra teacher Melissa Protass agreed with Strasser, saying that the system would allow for recognition that has not previously been available to teachers. “It’s like when you’re a kid and you do something you’re not supposed to do because secretly you want to get caught,” said Protass, who, according to reports, gives 31

minutes of homework each night, violating Stuyvesant’s homework policy by a full one minute. Unlike Protass and Strasser, other teachers are thankful the plan was struck down. “If students were allowed to anonymously complain, I would have to start grading students based on merit instead of how much I like them,”

easier. “Sending in my complaints one at a time throughout the semester would certainly lighten my burden when I go talk to all the [Assistant Principals (APs)] about how bad my teachers were at the end of each semester,” Weisbord said. In spite of all this, many APs fear that having a teacher com-

“If we started to receive additional complaints about teachers besides the ones from the students who actually have [the testicles] to come forward and talk about it in person, we’d actually have to start enforcing policy.” —Arlene Ubieta, AP of World Languages

Spanish teacher Roma Flores said. “And who knows the horrors that could stem from grades reflecting a student’s knowledge of the subject?” While teachers had mixed reactions, many students have come forward to back the idea, despite the SU’s opposition. Junior Lowell Weisbord, a self-proclaimed complainer-extraordinaire, says the system would make her life much

plaint system would make their jobs a lot more strenuous. “It’d be tough,” Assistant Principal of Languages Arlene Ubieta said. “If we started to receive additional complaints about teachers besides the ones from the students who actually have the [courage] to come forward and talk about it in person, we’d actually have to start enforcing policy.”

The “I Created This Club to Look Good For College” club held its first meeting on December 10. A beautiful ceremony commemorated the occasion: members celebrated with orange cones on their heads. Attending members were urged to invite more friends so that the club would run out of cones and be able to request more funding from the Student Union. The lack of cones contributed to a number of sad individuals exiting the meeting, cursing the Student Union under their breaths. The meeting changed some people’s outlooks on life as Stuyvesant students. “For the first time since entering Stuyvesant, I was truly happy,” freshman Jeffrey Shen said. “I feel like the club gave me a place where I belonged, where I could be myself, where I live. At home, I just don’t get the opportunity to wear cones on my head.” Fellow freshman Feras Roumie also commented, saying, “This was the first time I laughed for real in a long time. The last time I laughed was because of Pizza Rat. I am an avid supporter of the club and will be attending every meeting from this point onward.” Junior Laszlo Sandler, who has never been to a meeting for a real club, runs the club. “I had never been to a club meeting before. I don’t even know what people do in meetings, but I really do like how meetings smell, so I thought, ‘Why not run a club?’” Sandler said. The meeting lasted five minutes before Sandler got bored. After the official meeting was over, the after-meeting began, in which members stole unsalted latkes

from the Jewish Club’s Hanukkah celebration. This led to some brief brawls. An anonymous member of the club was asked to throw up his latke back after eating it and was not upset at all. He stated, “Finally putting the cones to good use!” A member of the Jewish Club was found stuck in a safety cone two hours after the brawl. A security guard described, “He was like

“I feel like the club gave me a place where I belonged, where I could be myself, where I live. At home, I just don’t get the opportunity to wear cones on my head.” —Jeffrey Shen, freshman a poor little turtle stuck in one of those plastic soda-can-thingies— poor baby.” “It was like a wedding afterparty,” said Sandler. “Except without the wedding, the cake, or any of the joy. Anyways, it capped off an educational experience for all underachievers like myself to enjoy. I hope that, with my incompetent leadership skills, we can continue to underachieve.”

School-wide Salinity Level Drastically Rises By Karen Chen and Kerwin Chen A recent survey from the Biology Department has shed light on the salinity levels of the school. “Normally, the salt levels of students are very high, seeing that they are Stuy[vesant] students,” biology teacher Dr. Jeffrey Hornstein said. “But we have enough to flavor all the cafeteria food for a month with this salt.” Not surprisingly, juniors and seniors have the highest salinity levels, and research points to the

College Board website and series of college rejection letters as the main cause. “I’ve been on that site,” biology teacher Dr. Meng Ping Tu said, “and they deal out numbers of failure and rejection, and they lower self esteem more efficiently than any of my tests do.” The blame of the increase in salinity level was also put on the new finals policy, which states that students with finals scheduled for the same time slot must finish both tests in a single hour. Students who feel their salinity levels

rising as a result should report to guidance. Some students are in denial about their saltiness. “My salinity level is not high,” junior Celine Yan denied. She then proceeded to launch into an hour-long rant that the Humor Department was too lazy to transcribe about rejection, math tests, and maybe some other stuff. Freshman William Wang, on the other hand, seemed genuinely interested in the phenomena of salty Stuyvesant students. “I’m not a salty person by nature, but I have

been on the listening end of many salt-fueled rants,” Wang commented. “My theory is that students just naturally secrete salt from their pores when they see their grades slowing dying in front of them, shriveling up like their happiness. It explains why the locker rooms reek of old dying men, instead of the sweat of healthy teenagers.” This drastic increase has already impacted the online world of the students. Just this month, the number of visits to the “Stuy Confessions” Facebook page, also known as “the salt mine,” has

been multiplied by 10. Instead of nauseatingly passionate stories about Oedipus crises, there has been a revival of salty, bitter posts concerning rejections and love (or the lack thereof ). Reactions to this revival have ranged from empathy, to ridicule, to regret. What will happen next? Research seems to point to nowhere, but there’s one thing biology teacher and SophFrosh SING! Advisor Marissa Maggio is sure about. “The salt will keep coming,” she laughs, “Just wait until SING! auditions start.”

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 25

Humor

Courtesy of MidtownLunch.com

A Comprehensive Review of Halal Carts by Stuyvesant

By Shaikat Islam The growing number of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia at Stuyvesant has enabled halal carts to establish themselves as the predominant form of food service for young scholars. Though they are the saviors of students, they don’t get much rep from major Stuyvesant organizations. The Big Sibs guide praises Whole Foods, Zuckers, and other pricier establishments, but presents a mere two-liner for all the halal carts on Chambers Street. That’s a problem because not everyone can afford to pay ten bucks for a small cardboard box of lettuce. Whether you’re frugal, indecisive, or a Muslim, halal carts are always there for you in the form of savory, succulent chunks of lamb or chicken over that beautiful mountain-esque bed of rice. As a Stuyvesant student and a Muslim myself, I find that the halal options near the school are pretty great, but there’s a growing problem: the halal cart to student ratio is too high. Fighting among students over the best halal cart is extremely petty and should be avoided at all costs. Adam Smith, the great Scottish philosopher, points out in “The Wealth of Nations” that an “invisible hand” prevents wasteful resource allocation in a competitive environment. In layman’s terms, competition creates equal opportunity for earnings and reduces waste. Applying this to the halal cart situation in combination with the variables of customer service and customer preference, the presence of so many halal carts is justified. However, as a self-proclaimed connoisseur of halal carts, I am oligarchical in my biased opinion that two—and

only two—halal carts should exist near Stuyvesant. Here’s my research for the decision: 1. Shady’s: Colloquially known as “Shady’s” by Stuy students, this halal cart is at the absolute top of my list. The aesthetic conforms to an atmosphere of American grit and hard labor. Two middle-aged South Asian men, trying their best to provide students with the best food a limited

shake your hand if they recognize you. I started eating here as a freshman, and will continue to eat here until I graduate. You will have no regrets when you eat here, and I recommend this location above the others. The two men manning the cart are like family to some Stuyvesant students, so be on the lookout for this cart. Once, I even witnessed them performing an altruistic act: a student dropped his food on the ground (it was bought at Rafiqi’s) and Shady’s replaced it, even though it wasn’t purchased at their cart. If that’s not good customer service, then I don’t know what is. 2. Rafiqi’s: Rafiqi’s is at the bottom of my list because of the workers’ unruly conduct and behavior, so please don’t go here. They are the genesis of the conflict among halal carts, and I have two pieces of evidence. As a freshman, I was in the nascence of determining my lunch providers, so I was more open to different choices. The first time

The Big Sibs guide praises Whole Foods, Zuckers, and other pricier establishments, but saves merely a two-liner for all the halal carts near Stuy. That’s a problem because not everyone can afford to pay ten bucks for a small cardboard box of lettuce.

budget can buy, operate the cart. The food itself is absolutely tantalizing: the chicken mixes savory and spicy quite poignantly. The lamb is cubic in nature and is also quite tasty, but is as generic as that of any other halal cart. The prices are stunning. Since the running price is just five bucks for a combination plate (of lamb and chicken) with a free soda, it beats most other carts by a landslide. If you become a regular, you’ll see a proportionate increase in the portions offered to you. The two men actively manning the station are polite and will greet you and

I went to Rafiqi’s, I admired their practice of using brown paper bags to serve food, because it reminded me of old-time, nostalgic delis. As I became more mature, however, I figured that the practice was inefficient (how do you hold halal food in a paper bag with one hand?). I digress. When I went there a second time, the workers put me in an uncomfortable situation by showing me a video of a scandal. I had no clue what their point was, but the video was an apparent leak of inappropriate behavior performed by Shady’s. According to Rafiqi’s, Shady’s doesn’t wash their rice,

but I figured that was nonsense because to boil rice, you need water, so Rafiqi’s argument made no sense. It was a clear attempt to skew favor toward their cart, and to me, that’s just bad business. My second piece of evidence was essentially extortion: a Rafiqi’s worker took a 20-ounce soda can from the front of Shady’s cart without asking nicely, and the Shady’s worker was clearly hurt and proclaimed the wrongdoing of Rafiqi’s employee. Perhaps their behavior has changed, or perhaps it’s only limited to a few bad apples, but I maintain my position of not going to Rafiqi’s. I also maintain my position that the three dollar-deal at Rafiqi’s was a front for selling less food at a lower price. When orders weren’t high enough, the price was bumped back up. 3. Green Cart: Located near Whole Foods, that unholy place of juice cleanses and non-GMO, organic, “authentic,” grass-fed, organic-fed, healthy, “ethical,” whole, mom-and-pop, environmental, humane, non-toxic, safeto-eat, Fortune 500, and corporate produce, Green Cart offers more food, more choices, more spices, more options of rice, more meats, and more sauces. Combine all of that and a pretty good six dollarprice for more expensive dishes, Green Cart is pretty chill. I haven’t eaten enough here to figure out how friendly the employees are, but the food is pretty good, so this is my second choice for halal carts near Stuy. 4. The One that Sells Breakfast and Halal, Two Blocks from Stuy: Unmarked territory. I don’t know enough about the owners to make a balanced decision. Go here if you’re an adventurer. 5. The Halal Carts near City Hall: Tourist traps. Only go here if you’re looking for mediocre food and mediocre prices.

This article is by no means all-encompassing, but serves as a rudimentary guide to those who want to enjoy the benefits of eating delicious halal food every day and also wish to gain 20 pounds before the start of winter. I beg future customers of the halal carts to make a more informed decision with their dollars. Buy from Shady’s or the Green Cart. Everything else is trash. Or, you know, you could go to Whole Foods or Zuckers or Checkers or something. To expe-

rience the hard-working ethic of American immigrants, however, go above the corporate-operated, extravagantly priced food items and experience what hundreds of Stuyvesant students call “delicious” and “homey.” In the end of all of this, you’re essentially limiting yourselves to my criticism of the halal cart industry, but if you want to step it

This article is by no means allencompassing, but serves as a rudimentary guide to those who want to enjoy the benefits of eating delicious halal food every day and also gain 20 pounds before the start of winter.

up a notch, you can scientifically perform an analysis of food quality and customer service for every halal cart within walking distance from Stuyvesant and make a wellinformed decision. If you do this, however, you’ll essentially be wasting your time, because like I’ve said, everything besides Green Cart and Shady’s is trash, so follow my bias and believe me because I said it in a Humor article. Eat well. If you find that all the food establishments near Stuyvesant are reminders of a capitalist society, and you think that’s bad, and you use the terms, “bourgeois,” “Williamsburg,” and “paleo” on a regular basis, I’ll be more than happy to give you a fishing rod and a survivalist kit to consume the natural flora and fauna surrounding Stuyvesant.

Ms. Maggio Shuts Off School’s Lights By Kenny Lin and Michael Xu Stuyvesant experienced a miniblackout on Wednesday, December 23, in which the lights of the threeto-five escalator suddenly went out, causing fear and pandemonium amongst escalator riders. The situation further degraded when freshman Chloe Doumar, who could not be chased down to be interviewed, panicked and brought the escalator to a screeching halt with her 100-pound wheelie backpack. As a result, many students found themselves trapped on the escalator. “We were stuck there for hours,” junior Alice Chai said. “I was desperate to the point where I almost considered walking up the escalator.” However, others weren’t nearly as distraught. “I spent the time being productive and reading ‘The Odyssey,’ which, for once, was vaguely interesting—since it was too dark to actually read,” sophomore Jihui Xue said. The situation was then worsened by the Assistant Principal of Safety, Security, and Student Affairs, Brian Moran. After

fixing the escalator, he promptly confiscated phones that were being used by students for light. Following an investigation conducted by the Student Union (SU) and a few students taking

she explained in an interview with The Spectator. “By shutting off the lights,” Maggio said, “we saved enough money to feed at least a quarter of a kid.” That day, Stuyvesant left a 1.2 percent smaller car-

extra credit to those who would “make Stuyvesant sustainable again.” Sophomore Vivien Lee, a student in Maggio’s Urban Ecology class, said, “[Maggio] told us that turning off the lights would count

“I am very excited about the potential TerraCycling has with me in charge. I have plans for creating a secret police force to man the cafeteria trash cans to make sure everything goes where it should go. Students who do not properly recycle will be either have their parents called or thrown off the cafeteria balcony, depending on my mood.” —Marissa Maggio, biology teacher Forensics, it was discovered that biology teacher Marissa Maggio was ultimately guilty of tampering with school property. Maggio’s stated reason for shutting off the lights was to “solve world hunger,”

bon footprint, and as the 11,328th largest user of energy in the city, that is a dramatic difference. In order to provide the manpower needed to shut down all of Stuyvesant’s lights, Maggio offered

as a test score, so we went to the utility closet next to the 11th floor pool and cut the wires. Some kid accidentally shut off the internet too.” In Maggio’s defense, sophomore

Kevin Boodram said, “I believe that the Student Union is deliberately pinning the blame on Maggio. Just because she failed them all freshman year doesn’t give them the right to incriminate her unjustly, and in fact, this goes against the SU Constitution.” Many are still reeling in shock from Maggio’s actions. According to Principal Jie Zhang, Maggio will be stripped of her teaching license, and instead head the janitorial department. However, Maggio says she is actually looking forward to the opportunity. “I am very excited about the potential TerraCycling has with me in charge. I have plans for creating a secret police force to man the cafeteria trash cans to make sure everything goes where it should go. Students who do not properly recycle will either have their parents called or be thrown off of the cafeteria balcony, depending on my mood.” When asked whether students would be able to survive a five story drop into the Hudson, Maggio simply replied by advising students to take swim gym.

Page 26

The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

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The Spectator ● January 25, 2016

Page 27

Sports Girls’ Volleyball

With a Strong Bond, Vixens Close Successful Season By Andrew Qu Teamwork is crucial in sports, and there was no shortage of it on the Vixens, Stuyvesant’s girls’ volleyball team, who bonded over the course of the 2015 season to form a formidable team. After dominating the regular season with an 11-1 record, their playoff run was finally ended by the McKee/Staten Island Tech (MSIT) Seagulls, who came back from a weak first set. The loss of senior players is usually a setback for sports teams as they enter a new season. However, it proved to be no problem for the Vixens. With four seniors in the starting lineup, each with multiple seasons under their belts, there was no lack of talent or experience. “Initially, I was worried because we had lost three major players in our lineup. But I think because of that, everyone, including myself, really stepped up and worked harder,” senior and co-captain Tammy Liang said. “Everyone got better and developed individually as the season progressed, and certainly this made us stronger as a team,” senior and co-captain Mariya Kulyk said. Players and coaches alike agree that “chemistry” is crucial for volleyball teams. The Vixens had a

lot of specialized players who excelled at their positions, like junior Madeleine Ostergaard who started as setter and averaged over 12 assists a game. Kulyk was an effective scorer, totaling over a hundred kills in the regular and playoff games combined. It was a slightly different story

for senior Ashley Lin, who started as outside hitter alongside Kulyk. “I was put in a position I had never played before,” Lin said. “I think I definitely did improve in that position as the season progressed.” Liang led their defense as libero, a defensive player that “digs” the ball, or prevents it from touching the ground after an opponent attacks. However, anybody in position to dig would go for it, and

The Jets Crash Once Again precisely what he did. Fitzpatrick completed passes to Quincy Enunwa and Marshall, capping off the drive with a 6-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Eric Decker. At the sight of this, my dad and I jumped up and screamed like little girls at a Justin Bieber concert. We had knocked off the New England Patriots, and were only one win away from the playoffs. For the next week, people were talking about the Jets like they were Super Bowl contenders. It had been a long time since “Jets” and “Super Bowl” had been used in the same sentence. Sunday came, the last breath of fresh air before returning from break the next day. All I needed was a Jets win to satisfy me, and the four quarters of football that they played certainly did not do the trick. It was the embodiment of every cartoon character ever saying, “well at least it couldn’t get any worse,” because the Jets faltered in nearly every facet of the game. The Bills came out firing, going up 13-0 in the first half. They had the ball for 22 out of those 30 minutes, and the defense couldn’t stop the Bills on third down at all, making for a completely dominating first

several plays afterwards. Nonetheless, they moved into the second round, facing the Metropolitan Campus Lady Knights at home. “More than I’ve ever seen from our team, we were mentally strong,” Ostergaard said. “Not just by making smart plays, but by persevering through long rallies […]

“It feels great to start bringing the team back to the top of our division. Of course [we] want to go all the way to the finals, and I have that expectation of us next year because we had the capability of doing it this year.” —Madeleine Ostergaard, junior

“What made this season stand out to me against all my other previous seasons with the team was how close we had gotten.” —Mariya Kulyk, senior and co-captain

continued from page 28

rarely did the team’s communication falter and allow an attack to go uncontested. The Vixens emerged as a dominant force in their league, and won ten straight games before losing their rematch to Lab Museum United in three very close sets. Against other teams, the Vix-

half for Buffalo. The Bills led going into the fourth quarter, but Fitzpatrick had worked the Jets into field-goal range down by only two. With the lead in sight, Fitzpatrick threw deep to Decker in the end zone, and the pass was caught… by Leodis McKelvin, who was playing cornerback for the Bills. The Jets got the ball back with only three minutes left, and started to drive again, until Fitzpatrick threw another interception, killing the drive. They were left with one final shot, and it quickly faded after yet another interception ended the game, the Jets playoff hopes, and the happiness of Jets fans around the world. After winning the supposedly impossible game against the Patriots, the Bills were supposed to be a walk in the park, and the Jets had blown it yet again. In part I blame myself. I should’ve seen it coming. Some franchises just can’t turn it around, and the Jets are one of those franchises. I’m in too deep at this point, so I can’t switch and start rooting for another team, but if you’re not, I suggest finding at least one other team to root for. Unless, of course, you enjoy sadness and letdown, in which case you’ve come to the right place.

ens won a majority of their games in two sets by large margins. They also took advantage of the weak teams in their league. After crushing the first set, once by as much as 25-2, coach Vasken Choubaralian would take rookies off the bench to give them valuable game-time experience. The Vixens finished the regular season with a stellar 11-1 record, an improvement over their 9-3 record last season, during which two of the nine wins came from forfeits. “We have the skill and the drive to sweep our pool next year. We’ve gotten too close for too long for that to not happen,” Ostergaard said. The Vixens entered the playoffs as the sixth seed in the A division. In their first game, they won the first set against New Utrecht by a wide margin, but gave up many more points in the second. “Our biggest weakness was a lack of consistency,” Lin said. Coach Choubaralian had also observed in the past how a bad play could affect the Vixens for

and through huge point deficits.” Although the game was held at Stuyvesant, the stands were packed with supporters of the Lady Knights. “Huge crowds for the other team can shake you up,” Ostergaard continued. “We kept our cool even when the pressure was on.” The Lady Knights also had an exceptional defense, finishing with 12 more digs than the Vixens. They did win the first set 25-23, but it was one of their closest sets all season. The second set was a different story; with the Vixens cleaning up their play while the Lady Knights continued to make errors, Stuyvesant finished with a 25-8 win. The season finally came to an end at McKee/Staten Island Tech (MSIT). Although the Vixens had a first set of 25-14, MSIT’s Seagulls took the second, and later the third by just four points. “Of course we had high hopes for getting into semifinals, especially in our last game of the season after we won the first set,” sophomore Kristina

Kim said. Losing their bid for the semifinals was definitely hard for the Vixens, but Liang is not ashamed of their performance. “Obviously, it didn’t feel good to be eliminated, especially after winning the first set by a wide margin. However, we all agreed that it was a great three sets. Everyone did what they had to do and we worked in sync,” she said. The Seagulls had a terrific season of their own, with an undefeated 14-0 regular season record, and placing as the fourth seed. “Honestly, they deserved that win, and even though we lost, we gave it our all and I couldn’t be any more proud of our team,” Kim said. This has been one of the Vixens’ best runs in recent history, with 2013 being the last time Choubaralian led the Vixens to the quarterfinals, in which they lost in two sets. “It feels great to start bringing the team back to the top of our division. Of course [we] want to go all the way to the finals, and I have that expectation of us next year because we had the capability of doing it this year,” Ostergaard said. The team will be saying goodbye to four seniors: Liang, Kulyk, Lin, and Georgia Kamm. Despite losing several starters, the Vixens are still optimistic for next year, which they owe to their close relationship. “What made this season stand out to me against all my other previous seasons with the team was how close we had gotten,” Kulyk said. Liang is sure the team will continue to impress. “I, along with the other seniors, have been able to watch the rookies grow and develop as volleyball players and teammates [and] I’m confident in their ability to take the team just as far or maybe even further than we have this year,” she said.

Track

Greyducks Confident After Hispanic Games By Max Onderdonk The Greyducks, Stuyvesant’s boys’ track team, came into the Hispanic Games at the Armory with high expectations after a strong start to the indoor season. In one of their biggest meets so far this season, the Greyducks looked to carry their momentum from their first few meets of the indoor season, and continue to perform well, which is exactly what they did. The team was led by senior and captain Sam Greenberg, senior Jacob Faber-Rico, and junior Kiyan Tavangar, who are consistent strong runners. “The three of us did better than anyone expected,” Greenberg said. “I ran a 9:45 [in the two-mile race], which was a personal record. Tavangar finished ahead of a big competitor at Brooklyn Tech, and Faber-Rico set a big personal record by running under 2:05 in the 800meter race.” Greenberg was very impressed with his teammates, and was happy about his own performance as well. Overall, Greenberg finished second in his race, while Tavangar finished 21st in the one-mile race, and Faber Rico finished 38th in a field of 225 in the 800-meter race. The strong performance from these three runners al-

lowed the Greyducks to finish ninth overall out of 20 teams. Senior Elias Saric also contributed to a respectable day for the Greyducks, finishing 68th in the 800-meter race.

“I am confident in my team that we will [continue to perform well] [...] Of course beside skills we have a strong mindset to be better. And from meets after meets we made improvement gradually.” —Ziqi Guo, sophomore Faber-Rico sees this meet as a good sign going forward. “Between myself, Elias Saric, and Kiyan Tavangar, we have three

good 4x800 legs, so we should be competitive in that relay. The 4x400 and 4x200 already put in some strong performances, so all of our relays look good,” Faber-Rico said. “We also have several individual athletes who can score points in their events so we’re aiming to put in a good performance at cities.” The girls also had a strong performance, especially from the freshman and sophomore racewalkers. Sophomore Ziqi Guo finished first in the 1500meter racewalk, Sophomore Joyce Wu finished fourth, and sophomore August Murphy finished fifth. “I am confident in my team that we will [continue to perform well],” Guo said. “Of course beside skills we have a strong mindset to be better. And from meets after meets we made improvement gradually.” The Greyducks were also strong was in the one-mile race. Junior Zovinar Khrimian and freshman Clara Morhi finished ninth and 17th, respectively, out of 225. Overall, this was a strong performance from both the male and female Greyducks. Their expectations are high as the season is getting into full swing, and they look to continue to improve and overcome the challenges ahead in order to meet their ultimate goals.

January 25, 2016

Page 28

The Spectator SpoRts Boys’ Swimming

CALENDAR

Brandon Lee / Spectator

Pirates Cruise to 6-0

Junior Ricardo Lee diving into the pool

By islam Elsaid and Dean Steinman

Brandon Lee / Spectator

The undefeated Pirates, Stuyvesant’s boys swimming and diving team, faced off against the formidable Bronx High School of Science Wolverines, previously undefeated, on January 11, taking home a 59-34 win. The triumph followed a 51-25 rout of the Dewitt Clinton Governors in a divisional matchup on January 7. Having defeated their opponents by an average of 27 points thus far, the Pirates asserted their dominance yet again in these meets. The Pirates have experienced

this same success already in the season, but they have not been resting on their laurels, as the losses in three consecutive finals still loom over their heads. Instead, the Pirates are zealous at the prospect of bringing Stuyvesant the City Championship banner. “I believe that if we keep practicing the way we’ve been, five times a week for an hour and a half a day, there’s no way we won’t win City Championships,” sophomore Leon Lai said. Because of the sport’s nature as a race against the clock, the swimmers are able to focus on improving their own times. “We do not just see [it as] competition

Seniors posing, excited for their final season. From left to right, Brandon Frank, James Park, Beck Zhu, Daniel Gutman, Aaron Glas, Justin Lin, Leo Wang, Jonathan Liu and Peter Strubik.

against other teams, but competition amongst our own teammates and ourselves,” senior and co-captain Justin Lin said. The team’s underclassmen have continually improved from meet to meet, proving to be an integral part of this year’s squad. At the meet against the Governors, freshman Nicholas Wen boasted a time of 0:24.98, the highest of the team for his leg of the 200yard Individual Medley Relay. Fellow freshman Ethan Park swam a 0:24:83 in the 50-yard Freestyle, narrowly edging out Lin (0:25:25). Lai sported Stuyvesant’s best 200yard Freestyle time (1:55:72) and Freshman Andrew Chopey finished second in the same event with a time of 1:58:73. Entering the final stretch of the season, the Pirates will likely not dominate as they have been for the past few meets. They will have to face two other formidable teams: Hunter College High School, and fourth place Roosevelt Educational Campus (4-1). Only three days separate the Pirates’ final two meets, which could make it difficult for the athletes to get enough rest in between. However, senior and co-captain Aaron Glas does not believe it will affect Stuyvesant at all. “Swimming is different from other sports. There are multipleday competitions where you have to get up and swim fast every day […] sometimes four days in a row,” Glas said. “Championships has a format [where] we race preliminaries on Saturday [and] finals on Sunday, so three days is an eternity to recover from a meet.” The future meets against these division rivals could prove to be vital for the Pirates, as playoff seeding is determined based on team record. With a combination of strong upperclassmen and a young, talented core, the Pirates enter the final stretch at full throttle. Having already defeated Bronx Science, they hope to carry forward their momentum to the competitions against Hunter College High School and Roosevelt Educational Campus.

January

Boys’ Table Tennis vs. Flushing Friday High School Stuyvesant H.S. (Playoffs)

Girls’ Gymnastics vs. Bronx High School of Science and Friday John F. Kennedy Campus Stuyvesant H.S.

February Girls’ Basketball vs. High School of Tuesday Economics and Finance Stuyvesant H.S.

Boys’ Basketball vs. Bayard Rustin Educational Thursday Complex

Bayard Rustin Educational Complex Gym

WRAPUP n January 12, the Stuyvesant Runnin’ Rebels got their first win O of the season, beating the High School of Art and Design 7043. Stuyvesant Phoenix lost 38-56 Thurgood Marshall Academy, Thedropping to 9-2 on January 13. Stuyvesant Lemurs beat Long Island City 129.400 to 101.800, Thewinning their first match of the season on January 13. January 11, the Stuyvesant Pirates won their sixth straight Ongame when they beat Bronx Science 59 to 34.

The Jets Crash Once Again By Max Schneider Jack letting go as the Titanic sinks and kills hundreds, Sophie choosing between her children, and King Joffrey murdering Ned Stark is short list of movie and television moments that have brought me to tears. You couldn’t imagine more tragic and depressing moments on screen, unless you watched the New York Jets lose miserably to the Buffalo Bills and miss out on the playoffs. That game took the cake. Of course, being a Jets fan all my life, I’ve grown accustomed to the letdowns, the losses, and the terrible ineptitude that is this organization. It’s a pain that is unmatched, and can only be understood by a true Jets fan. The Jets haven’t won the Super Bowl since 1969, and it’s verging on 50 years without getting to another one. It’s seemingly never going to happen, but if the Jets excel at one thing, it’s giving their fans hope and excitement. It’s the year

2000, and the Jets are searching for a new head coach. It looks like we’ve finally got one in Bill Belicheck. We’re ready to introduce him, eager as he comes up to the podium to accept the Jets head-coaching job and talk about how he’s going to lead us to the promise land. He walks up on stage, opens up a napkin that he had written on, and promptly reads his letter of resignation. That’s right. This coaching mastermind who was about to be ours was resigning before he even had the job, and where does he go? None other than the New England Patriots, the Jets division rivals, and the rest is history: 13 division titles, four Super Bowls, and Tom Brady, the greatest player our generation has ever seen. Fast forward to 2009. The Jets are coming off a disappointing season, ending with the firing of head coach Eric Mangini. However, despite missing out on the playoffs yet again, there was hope in New York. The Jets hired head coach Rex Ryan, who guaranteed a

Super Bowl win, and after trading up to draft would-be star quarterback Mark Sanchez, it was looking like we were going to be seeing a new and improved Jets team. And in fact, we did. Two straight runs to the AFC championship solidified the Jets as one of the best teams in football. Think of it as Ross and Rachel’s relationship in Season 3 of Friends. They were a perfect match and we’re loving every minute of it, until they went on a “break,” Ross slept with another woman, and all hell broke loose. Well, that was like the Jets after 2010. Rex Ryan continued to fail to live up to his promises, Mark Sanchez started completing pass after pass to the Patriots secondary, and then the Butt Fumble happened. If you’re not familiar with the Butt Fumble I strongly urge you to search it on YouTube. All you have to do is type in “Mark S” and “Mark Sanchez Butt Fumble” will show up even before just “Mark Sanchez” does. If you happen to be a Jets fan, or plan to be one

(which I strongly discourage), I don’t recommend watching it at all. The next few years were a total disaster. Mark Sanchez is replaced by an equally terrible Geno Smith, star cornerback Darrelle Revis leaves for the Patriots, and the Jets finish with a record of 26-38 over that span, missing out on the playoffs all four years. That was until this past off-season, where the Jets signed new head coach Todd Bowles, re-signed Revis and Antonio Cromartie, and acquired star wide receiver Brandon Marshall. Things were looking up, until Geno Smith got punched in the face in a locker room altercation, leading to a broken jaw. He was replaced by journeyman quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, most known for his Zach Galifianakis beard, and lack of a playoff résumé. After a mediocre 5-5 start to the season, including a devastating loss to the Bills, coached by Rex Ryan of course, it was clear that the Jets needed to

win the rest of their games to make the playoffs, a tall task for any team, let alone a franchise known for snatching defeat right out of the jaws of victory. The Jets opened up with a blowout win against the Dolphins, then an overtime win against their cross-town rival Giants, and two more victories against the Titans and Cowboys, leading to a huge game with the Patriots. Fitzpatrick looked sharp early against New England, with two touchdown passes to Marshall, but fumbled late, and the Patriots were able to tie up the game, aided by a couple fourth down pass from Brady to tight end Rob Gronkowski. The Patriots had all the momentum going into overtime, having seen this story over and over again through the years. The Patriots won the coin toss, and elected to kick off, daring Fitzpatrick to lead the Jets down the field and score a touchdown. But that’s continued on page 27