Issue 15, Volume 106

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

Volume 106 No. 15

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

May 16, 2016

NEWSBEAT

stuyspec.com

Student Union Endorsements

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eniors Nicholas Beasley, Maxwell Fishelson, Calvin Lee, and Matthew LernerBrecher have been invited to take the USA Mathematical Olympiad examination and sophomore Eric Zhang has been invited to take the USA Junior Mathematical Olympiad examination.

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he three NYC Math Teams placed first, fourth, and fifth at the New York State Math League state championship on Saturday, April 9 at Penfield High School in Rochester, New York. Twenty-two of the 45 students on the teams were from Stuyvesant. Seniors Nicholas Beasley, Jesse Elliott, Joseph Han, Dan Kim, Matthew Lerner-Brecher, Brandon Lin, and Yichen Wan were members of the first place team.

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unter College awarded the Roosevelt Scholarship to senior Munawar Rahman for his work on his NYC Science and Engineering research project on racial disparities in incarceration rates.

After analyzing each ticket's platform and interviewing each of the candidates, The Spectator's Editorial Board voted by secret ballot to endorse the Matthew So-Tahseen Chowdhury ticket. Campaign coverage can be found on pages 3 and 4.

Students Excel in National History Day Competition

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wenty Stuyvesant students comprising five teams were finalists in the “Dream It. Code It. Win It.” tournament.

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he Stuyvesant Science Bowl A Team competed at the National Competition in Washington D.C. from April 28 to May 2, taking home a $500 award for winning its division team challenge.

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ne hundred Stuyvesant students won awards in the National Latin Examinations.

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he Stuyvesant Investment Club placed first as a team in the NYC Stock Market Game Competition. The Wall Street class placed second.

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he Quiz Bowl team placed fourth at its regional tournament on Saturday, April 16 at Kings Park High School in Long Island, New York, and qualified to compete in the national tournament in Dallas, Texas.

WHAT’S INSIDE? Features A&E

By GRACE CUENCA and PAZIT SCHRECKER Advanced Placement U.S. History students from social studies teachers Robert Sandler’s and Eric Wisotsky’s classes participated in the National History Day (NHD) competition this past spring, with 23 students advancing from the city competition to the New York State competition.

NHD is not a typical historyrelated contest in which participants submit pieces of writing to showcase their research and analysis. Rather, it aims to encourage more in-depth studies of history by accepting different project styles, from classic poster board presentations and research papers to website and skit entries. Each year, a different theme for the entries is chosen, with the aim of encouraging students to look at history from different perspectives. The 2016 theme is “Exploration, Encounter, Exchange in History.”

The competition is held by various affiliates in the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and also other countries, with contestants progressing through the city, state, and countrywide events, only moving on if they have ranked highly enough in the previous round. Stuyvesant students made it to the statewide competition. However, none progressed to the national level.

This year was Sandler’s first

6

English Teachers Receive Summer Study Grants

By ELIJAH KARSHNER and SELINA ZOU

time being involved, and he required all of his students to participate as a term project. “I’m always trying to think of new things to do. For instance, I’ve had my students make videos in the past but I’d never thought about having them enter this contest,” Sandler said. “Mr. Wisotsky is the [NHD] coordinator for Stuyvesant, and hearing him talk about it made me think that I should do it too. I wanted my students to work together in groups and work for something that was challenging, instead of writing a paper that they stayed up until four doing.”

Six groups from Sandler’s classes, a total of 23 students, qualified for the statewide competition on April 18 at Cooperstown High School, upstate in Cooperstown, New York.

One of the qualifying projects was an exhibition style project about the treatment of Chinese immigrants on Angel Island. The group, consisting of juniors Han Oo, Sosonia Ma, Shan Choudhury and Trishant Chhetry, selected the topic because they “believed that it was a part of forgotten history and something that is barely mentioned in our textbooks,” Oo said in an e-mail interview.

Oo’s group won first place in their exhibit category, sending continued on page 2

Mental Health at Stuyvesant It’s time to get the conversation going.

English teachers Maura Dwyer and Sophie Oberfield have been selected to participate in free workshops this summer as part of a grant program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Dwyer will also be traveling to England on a fellowship from Fund for Teachers.

The NEH funds different summer programs that allow teachers to be exposed to new humanities topics, from ancient Roman daily life to the foundations of a modern economy.

These seminars are held in different locations across the country and teachers are welcome to apply to a maximum of three different seminars, with all costs covered if a grant is awarded.

Both Oberfield and Dwyer will be traveling to California, where Oberfield will study the immigrant experience in California through film and literature and Dwyer will study Japanese internment during World War II. During the course of her two-week workshop, Oberfield will visit historical locations and meet guest speakers along the way. “One thing I’m really excited about is that Maxine Hong Kingston, who wrote ‘The Woman Warrior,’ a book I’ve taught to hundreds of Stuyvesant students, will be presenting

17

a three-hour seminar during the program,” Oberfield said.

“We will also be learning about something called documentary theater, which is making theater pieces out of real [...] history. I’m excited to learn that and bring it back to my classes.”

Oberfield currently teaches the Asian American Literature elective, and chose the California immigration seminar in hopes of enhancing and diversifying her knowledge of Asian immigration to the United States. “I know something about New York immigration, but not as much about immigration in other places. A lot of Asian immigration was through California, and I feel like this program will fill out that knowledge for me,” she said.

She was motivated to apply for the grant because of her experience in a similar program during the summer of 2008, when she attended a poetry workshop at Harvard University. She notes that the 2008 program changed the way she thought about analyzing and teaching works of poetry, and hopes to gain the same kind of experience from the workshop this summer. “I loved the way the 2008 program talked about [and] approached poems,” Oberfield said. “I saw that with any type of poem, you can take it apart [and] chop in half to look for a turn and to see

“This Is Not For You”

continued on page 2

A&E writer Alicia Kwok discusses why “Hamilton’s” diverse cast is so important to her.

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 2

News Students Excel in National History Day continued from page 1

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and NASA

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he Syrian Army declared a 48-hour truce in the city of Aleppo on Wednesday, May 4, after days of fighting against rebel forces.

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he anonymous source behind the leak of the Panama Papers, which has shown how some wealthy people use offshore firms to evade tax and avoid sanctions, has spoken for the first time on Friday, May 6, offering to help law authorities make prosecutions in return for

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enya says it plans to shut down two refugee camps, including the world’s largest, due to security reasons. The announcement on Friday, May 6, was swiftly condemned by humans rights groups that say the move puts more than 600,000 people at the risk of being displaced.

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t North Korea’s first Workers’ Party Congress in 36 years on Friday, May 6, Kim Jong Un spoke about the recent successes in nuclear and missile tests. Un has shown greater willingness to speak publicly than his father.

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ens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Warsaw, Poland on Sunday, May 7, to protest the governing conservatives of Poland who run an undemocratic administration that violates the values of the European Union.

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.S. Army Captain Nathan Michael Smith, who is currently on active duty in Kuwait, has filed a lawsuit against President Barack Obama over the legality of the war against ISIS.

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he Food and Drug Administration has issued new rules that have tightened control over the sale of e-cigarettes, banning their sale to minors.

switching from narrator roles to the roles of immigrant workers and strikers, as well as a meatpacking overseer, Teddy Roosevelt, Edith Roosevelt, and, of course, Upton Sinclair.

Though none of the projects

by Stuyvesant students qualified

By RYAN KIM and ALEXIA LEONG

be going under other circumstances are busy studying for their own APs,” Grossman said.

The writing center is usually staffed by juniors and seniors, many of whom are taking AP exams and may not have the time to assist other students in the writing center. “We figure that it would just be a lot more confusing to not have it open consistently and to have people in a different place and have it sometimes open and sometimes not,” Grossman said.

The English department considered opening a modified version of the writing center in the English office while the library is closed. Here, student

Until the final Advanced Placement (AP) exam is administered, the writing center as well as the library will be closed for all students. As an alternative, students can ask their own English teachers for help or ask Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman to set up a meeting.

Grossman and other English teachers made the decision to close the writing center. “I talked with a few teachers in the department and the consensus was that that was the best way to handle things right now. A lot of the kids who ordinarily might

teachers would be able to help students during their lunch or free periods with their writing.

Though the idea has not been made official, students can still go and get help from teachers in the English office if they ask.

The writing center in the library closes down every year during AP exam season, but will reopen once after exam administration. “We’ve kind of just put the pause button while the library is closed while AP season is going on, just for a few weeks and then we should be back with business as usual afterwards,” Grossman said.

Lehengas, Diabolo, and Bob Dylan: Stuyvesant Hosts First World Culture Festival

continued from page 1

By NISHMI ABEYWEERA and GRACE TANG

Chloé Delfau/ The Spectator

English teachers Maura Dwyer (left) and Sophie Oberfield (right)

of that unit.”

Dwyer began studying the book “When the Emperor Was Divine” with her AP class this year, based on Oberfield’s recommendation. Fittingly, the book is about Japanese internment. “When I was looking at the list of different workshops and seminars that the NEH was offering this summer, I saw that they had one about the impact of World War II on the Bay Area, so I thought [...] that would be a perfect connection to that unit.”

Dwyer was also accepted into a separate program sponsored by Fund for Teachers.

This distinguished program allows teachers across America to design their own fellowships.

Dwyer has chosen to go to Oxford and London for two weeks to independently research and study the influence of English abolitionist writers on American

for the national competition, the students were satisfied with the experience. “It was rewarding to be in a unit with people who shared your passion and worked hard to move forward through research,” Ronel said.

Library Closed During AP Season

English Teachers Receive Summer Study Grants it differently.”

Based on her previous experience, Oberfield expects that the NEH seminar will change the way she looks at Asian-American literature, and allow her classes to be more connected to the history behind the books. “It’s hard to know how my teaching is going to change until I get there, but I look forward to learning new things [and] bringing them back to my students,” Oberfield said.

Dwyer was similarly motivated to apply because of past experience in a similar program, during which she spent five weeks in London studying Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” She was motivated to attend that program because of personal interest, and, having had a positive experience with it, decided to participate in another one.

Dwyer’s one-week workshop studying Japanese internment will similarly include visits to significant historical landmarks and feature guest speakers. She hopes to integrate what she learns into her Advanced Placement (AP) Defining American Voices curriculum. “I don’t know a lot about Japanese internment during World War II, and I think that it’s not something [...] covered extensively in history class,” Dwyer said. “The workshop will enhance my knowledge of the political and social climate in Berkeley during that time period, and enhance my teaching

Courtesy of Robert Sandler

WORLDBEAT

the project and its creators to the statewide competition. Despite not placing at the statewide competition, the group enjoyed the experience. “[We were able to] explore Cooperstown for two days and discover the rich history of this tiny town,” Oo wrote.

Another first place, statesqualifying project was the skit performed by juniors Dennis Ronel, Zoe Orlin, Kate Sherwin, and Sachal Malick. The piece, titled “Developments of a MeatPacked 20th Century,” dramatized Upton Sinclair’s investigation of the unsanitary conditions of the Chicago meat packing industry. The group chose to “[document] Sinclair in particular because of how his efforts greatly affect[ed] the sanitation of our food today,” Ronel said.

The skit, quite packed itself, required the group members to alternate their characters,

abolitionist writers in the 1800s.

“This research topic connects to a unit for my AP about social justice and rhetoric that begins with the narrative of Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave.”

Both Oberfield and Dwyer have high expectations for these programs and hope to bring what they learn back to their students. “I think I become a better teacher when I continue to learn new ways to teach well [and] how to make my teaching more interesting and effective for students. I am always grateful for opportunities to develop myself and learn more,” Oberfield said.

“We have a wonderful English department here, and we put our heads together to brainstorm and create assignments, but it’s great to learn from teachers from other places and from other student environments.”

The microphone was ready, the audience was quiet, and all eyes stared eagerly at her. Junior Kate Johnston opened her mouth and out came “Je Suis Malade” by Lara Fabian, a French song that tells the story of a woman who is sickened by her lover. The performance was just one of many that took place on Thursday, April 14 during Stuyvesant’s first World Cultural Festival, an event planned by the teachers of the World Language department.

Students filled the cafeteria with an excited energy, where they watched various performances exhibiting many different cultural backgrounds. An Advanced Placement Spanish class performed the pop song “Hips Don’t Lie” by the Colombian singer Shakira, while Stuyvesant’s Greek club presented a slideshow on Greek dance, followed by its own energetic interpretation. A crowd favorite was a performance by sophomore Graham Lo using a traditional Taiwanese toy called a diabolo, a juggling prop consisting of an hourglass-shaped disc spinning on a string.

Spanish teacher Anna Montserrat, Spanish teacher Rosa Silverio, Italian and Spanish teacher Pasqua Rocchio, and Spanish and German teacher Gabriele Dehn-Knight first had the idea to create the festival.

“The goal of the first Festival of

World Cultures was to create an event where students could express through art, poetry, dancing, [and] music […] something about their culture or about the culture of the language class that they are taking,” Montserrat said.

Mandarin teacher Jia Zhou’s class performed a Chinese dance called Little Apple. Principal Jie Zhang made a special appearance to present a very different aspect of world culture, singing “Blowing in the Wind” by Bob Dylan. “Everyone seemed to be having a really good time, so that energy was contagious,” said Johnston, after performing in front of the crowd of about 100.

Students who attended the event were also welcome to wear traditional garments to enrich the experience. Several students were seen wearing lehengas, a traditional Indian skirt and blouse.

Though it required extensive planning, with several parts needing to come together to produce the final product, the World Cultural Festival was widely regarded as a success. “I would love to come back and see it and I hope that there will be an even bigger performance next year,” freshman Tina Lin said.

Teachers also hope to establish the Cultural Festival as an annual event, looking to expand it in order to further cultural appreciation and acceptance. “[I hope] that we [can] give all students a voice to express their cultures,” Rocchio said.

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 3

SU Endorsements : General Elections

Victoria Huang / The Spectator

Matthew So and Tahseen Chowdhury

Tahseen Chowdhury (left) and Matthew So (right)

When The Spectator Managing Board interviewed junior Matthew So and sophomore Tahseen Chowdhury for Student Union (SU) President and Vice President, the candidates were poised and charismatic. In near-matching stone blue blazers, they responded to questions eloquently and succinctly, making clear not only that they had given their platform considerable thought, but that this wasn’t their first rodeo.

In fact, for both So and Chowdhury, this wasn’t even their second rodeo, because both candidates are experienced SU incumbents. So and Chowdhury have held the positions of SU Freshman and Sophomore Caucus President of their respective classes, while So is the current SU Vice President, serving under SU President Ares Aung. So also boasts the title of Borough Student Advisory Council of Manhattan (BSAC) President, a boroughwide position to which he was elected by student government leaders of various schools to lead a Department of Education (DOE) coalition for educational reform.

While So and Chowdhury’s experience alone does not mark them worthy of The Spectator’s endorsement, it speaks to both their electability and to their level of experience in dealing with the school’s bureaucracy. And, unlike previous years, this year, the incumbents have gone out of their way in their platform to acknowledge all that work-

ing within a bureaucratic system encompasses—including the fact that the success of their campaign goals is by no means guaranteed.

Yet, though the candidates’ reforms have faltered on their way up Stuyvesant’s administrative chain of command in the past, So and Chowdhury have set their sights high. According to So, their platform falls under two major themes: unity and stability. In the “unity” vein, So is working to establish a interborough, multi-school coalition, to be modeled after the BSAC. While So focuses on climbing the DOE’s ladder in an effort to effect change from the top down, Chowdhury hopes to promote unity within Stuyvesant by working more closely with Caucus representatives, which he has done effectively in the past, organizing Stuyvesant’s first Stuyloween Carnival along with So. So and Chowdhury’s clear vision for how they will divide responsibilities not only displays their equally matched competence, but places them in a position to work to their maximum efficiency, something The Spectator did not see in the Usvitsky-Boodram campaign.

Additionally, So and Chowdhury are aiming to unite the Stuyvesant student body through inviting students to take a more active role in the SU. They plan to create a “Task Force,” or a small group of selected students who will be assigned the responsibility of reaching

Anna Usvitsky and Kevin Boodram

out to the student body and listening to student concerns.

So and Chowdhury also claim that, under their administration, students will be encouraged to submit unaddressed issues to the SU. Then, if a submitted issue were deemed relevant to the student body, the SU would incorporate these concerned students into an additional task force whose aim would be to implement the approved student initiative using SU funds.

This, too, demonstrates So and Chowdhury’s commitment to improving the SU. Their willingness to open up the SU to input and, perhaps, criticism from the student body is laudable, and hints at the underlying maturity of their ticket. In fact, this plan may even be a nod to their opposition, Vice Presidential Candidate Kevin Boodram, for his continued barrage of the SU’s perceived inefficacy, as well as his attempts to take on schoolwide reforms from outside of an SU office. The Spectator also has faith that So and Chowdhury will delegate responsibilities to unelected representatives because Chowdhury has done so before, most notably by organizing Stuy Snow, the sophomore winter dance, through three student-run committees.

But in some ways, the “unity” section of their platform is nothing new.

Many of their proposed reforms—mass e-mailing the student body, getting students more involved in the SU and the School Leadership Team, increasing school spirit by promoting spirit days and organizing grade-wide events— echo those of the 2015 Aung-So platform, which makes The Spectator question why they have not already been accomplished under So’s vice presidency. Even So’s position as BSAC President is reminiscent of the Aung administration, since Aung was BSAC President before So. And yet, despite The Spectator’s hesitance to endorse a candidate who seems to represent more of the same, acknowledgement of what Aung and So have accomplished, such as opening the library at 7:30 a.m. and hosting a SING! spirit week, and of the significant thought So and Chowdury have put into the execution of their further improvements, convinced us of their capability.

Furthermore, the similarity of the

Aung-So and So-Chowdhury platforms does not make the two tickets identical.

Chowdhury’s success as a Sophomore Caucus and Freshman Caucus President alongside Vice President Pallab Saha—planning the first ever freshmanonly dance and sophomore-only dance, and securing sponsors for such dances, for instance—are just two examples of his success. Outside of Stuyvesant, Chowdhury holds several other impressive leadership positions: he is a the Vice President of Marketing at Options Strategy Network, a Web Developer for the Kahn Foundation, and an Operations Intern at Kahn’s Tutorial.

Chowdhury has a more impressive resume at this point of his political career than So did, but So has also matured since he ran for Vice President.

His recognition of what did and didn’t work during his term make So and Chowdhury a better pair than Aung and So. Perhaps one of the most significant indications of So and Chowdhury’s understanding of what has been unsuccessful within the SU and their determination to improve is their financial plan.

The duo explained that in the current model, the SU spends the majority of its money on clubs and pubs, and spends the rest of the year trying to gain it back by planning events and securing sponsorships. So and Chowdhury intend to completely restructure this, allocating a “base” fund solely to SING! and the grade Caucuses, and a revenue fund for clubs and pubs. They plan on maintaining that base by ensuring that 25 percent of the revenue goes back into the base, and 30 percent of the base will be returned as revenue at the end of each year. This sort of well-thought-out plan was not found in Aung and So’s platform last year, nor it is present in any of the other candidates for this year’s election, and increases The Spectator’s confidence that So and Chowdury will be able to maintain a financially stable SU. While Usvitsky and Boodram’s active role in trying to promote change within Stuyvesant even while unelected is compelling, The Spectator urges the student body to choose So and Chowdhury for their experience, executable ideas, and plans for a stable SU.

Austin Tong and Barnett Zhao

Julie Chan / The Spectator

Chloé Delfau/ The Spectator

Kevin Boodram (left) and Anna Usvitsky (right)

During the 2015 Student Union (SU) Elections, The Spectator chose to endorse the ticket of Krzystzof Hochlewicz and Kate Johnston for, as written in the endorsement, its rare “promise of real change.” Though Hochlewicz was not elected, he continued to advocate on behalf of the student body alongside senior Ryan Boodram and sophomore Kevin Boodram. Not surprisingly, Kevin Boodram is now running for SU Vice President, alongside junior Anna Usvitsky, with the same spirit Hochlewicz did: with a promise of a more democratic and transparent SU. But despite its ambition, The Spectator lacks confidence in the duo’s ability to execute its ideas in a manner as organized and thought-through as Matthew So and Tahseen Chowdhury will.

Like Hochlewicz, Boodram approaches his presidential campaign having al-

Austin Tong (left) and Barnett Zhao (right)

ready made a difference for the student body. Along with his brother and Usvitsky, he convinced the administration to install automatic paper towel dispensers in the bathrooms at no cost to the SU. Boodram also worked with his brother and Hochlewicz to write a petition to allow sophomores outside during their free periods when the three thought that the SU, which had gained the administration’s approval to allow sophomores outside a couple months earlier but never followed through with it, was taking too long to act.

In both of these endeavors, Boodram utilized the School Leadership Team (SLT) to voice concerns and work with the administration to bring about change.

While using the SLT has proved an effective method for voicing concerns, continued on page 4

During their interview with The Spectator’s Managing Board, junior Austin Tong and sophomore Barnett Zhao, running for SU President and Vice President, respectively, made a promise that, in an ideal world, all candidates would be able to make.

Tong and Zhao guaranteed to accomplish every single item on their platform.

They said they thought of many hypothetical policies that they wouldn’t have been able to accomplish, but got rid of those, and only kept what they knew they could get done. Any effective and truly passionate leader would do so, they asserted.

On the surface, a statement like this seems positively tantalizing. It’s a running joke that the SU is ineffectual, and that every proposal is far from becoming reality. A ticket that so adamantly pledges to change this is appealing, but

simply too good to be true.

In reality, while Tong and Zhao’s promise communicates the potential for great diligence and ambition, it says more about their uninformed idealism than anything else. The truth is that their platform is almost impossibly expensive, and their strategies for raising an adequate amount of money do not show promise.

Among Tong and Zhao’s expensive promises are increased funding for economically strained clubs, free school dances for all grades, and the transformation of the Student Lounge into a café that serves free coffee.

They said they would fund this in two main ways: first, by using the bulletin boards around Stuyvesant to advertise for local businesses, and by raising school continued on page 4

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 4

SU Endorsements : General Elections Anna Usvitsky and Kevin Boodram continued from page 3

Boodram and Usvitsky did not stress using any alternative strategies, nor did they present plans for working with the grade caucuses. On the other hand, the So-Chowdhury ticket promises close collaboration with each of the caucuses, and also has more experience in doing so.

Despite this, Usvitsky and Boodram’s plans to work directly with the student body—namely, their plan to form a convention of elected homeroom representatives to completely rewrite the SU constitution - are impressive, and indicate their genuine desire to reorient the SU toward more democracy. Usvitsky and Boodram also promise to make SU Cabinet meetings open to the public, to release minutes after each one, and to release SU budget information—all worthy endeavors that work towards making the SU accessible to students.

Regarding the SU budget, Usvitsky and Boodram focus heavily on reducing wasted funds rather than drafting a plan to increase revenue. This priority seems reasonable: Boodram cites instances where he feels funds for clubs and pubs were apportioned unfairly, and an instance during an SU meeting in which cabinet members discussed purchasing a snow machine.

But the ticket’s lack of plans for increasing revenue other than selling Stuyvesant crewnecks reduced our faith that it would be able to maintain a financially sound SU. A stronger part of Usvitsky and Boodram’s platform is their plans to improve Stuyvesant’s facilities. These plans appear feasible due to Boodram’s proven capability in his role in the installment of automatic paper towel dispensers in the bathrooms and the relationship he says he has established with Head Custodian John Brennan in doing so. However, some of these promises, such as an umbrella-rental system, an in-school bike rack, and an SU position dedicated to organizing the lost and found, seem

Austin Tong and Barnett Zhao

either far-fetched, unimportant, or both.

Another noteworthy aspect of the Usvitsky-Boodram campaign is its emphasis on making sure female voices are heard. In the past several years, there have been no women serving as SU presidents, and Usvitsky’s election would add much-needed female representation to the SU. Usvitsky and Boodram hope to to do simple things for females at Stuyvesant, like adding tampon and sanitary napkin dispensers to bathrooms as well as more bins for their disposal, while also working with the Stuyvesant Feminist Society to compensate for the lack of female voices within the SU. And yet, ironically, Boodram greatly overpowers Usvitsky, despite the fact that she is the one who would hold office as president. Usvitsky is less outspoken than Boodram and far less experienced in working with the administration than both her running mate and the So-Chowdhury ticket. In fact, Boodram was originally planning to run for SU President, but was unable to do so due to Board of Elections regulations which require the person running to be a current junior. The imbalance of the Usvitsky-Boodram ticket compares badly with the more well-rounded SoChowdhury ticket, but moreover, it is concerning because it prevents the duo from functioning with its maximum efficiency.

In his closing remarks of The Spectator’s interview, Boodram stated, “It’s time we have an SU that starts representing the people, as opposed to a small group of people that they need to get elected. There are more than just single concerns like dances and SING! [...] We fight for something greater than that. We fight for all the students.”

The vision Boodram and Usvitsky present of a democratic SU committed to enacting change is one The Spectator deeply endorses. But the realities of the situation—the ticket’s lopsidedness, its relative inexperience working within the SU, its lack of a vision for working with the caucuses and lack of foresight in managing the budget do not qualify it for The Spectator’s endorsement.

continued from page 3

store revenues by selling stationery and t-shirts designed by students. After being asked about the school store’s general lack of popularity, Tong and Zhao said they would raise awareness with a “glass showcase,” or a glass box with items on display for students to see and hopefully want to buy.

These methods of fundraising would most likely raise less money than the SU currently does, but Tong and Zhao’s lack of knowledge cannot be attributed to ignorance. Having had no experience in the SU, Tong and Zhao would know little of how important student dances are to the SU’s budget. They likely do not know that bulletin board advertising is not the most feasible way to raise money, or that it wouldn’t raise nearly enough money, because they have never been in situations where they had to figure out how much it would actually cost to serve free coffee to an entire school of exhausted students.

Tong and Zhao’s general lack of knowledge surrounding the way things work can be seen in two other parts of their platform.

In a good idea they brought up—to give the Parents’ Association (PA) more of a voice in school reform proposals to encourage productivity—they referred to the PA as the PTA. While this is a small error, it demonstrates their unfamiliarity with a fairly prominent organization in our school.

Additionally, they promised to “end nepotism and cronyism in student government” by appointing people based on their score on an exam. However, when The Spectator asked what kinds of questions such an exam would include, Tong and Zhao said they would ask things along the lines of, “What will you do as a student leader?” This does not sound like a test, as much as it does an application, not too different from the applications that exist now.

Tong also said the exams would be followed up with interviews, which is also how the SU currently selects cabinet members.

Ultimately, Tong and Zhao are point-

ing out a valid point about the SU. It is dominated by people from very similar social circles, and its process of appointing members, while including applications and interviews extremely similar to the ones Tong and Zhao had in mind, allows for nepotism to exist. While there is no saying whether or not this actually happens, it is possible for friends to read each other’s applications, and to interview one another.

Tong even applied to be a part of the SU, but wasn’t accepted. He attributes this to nepotism, which may or may not be true. However, what is clear is that the fact that he didn’t get this position—and therefore has no experience working in the SU—puts him at a large disadvantage. The experience of So, Chowdhury, and Boodram allowed them to make their platforms much more detailed and feasible. Without that same experience, Tong and Zhao didn’t have the tools to write as strong as a platform.

For better or for worse, the system of the SU inherently benefits the experienced.

That said, the flaws in Tong and Zhao’s platform cannot all be excused. Tong largely dominates Zhao, speaking for the majority of the interview. Additionally, Tong and Zhao’s platform made it evident that the two did not think much about how they could properly utilize social media. One of their only ideas that involved the internet was an idea to increase school spirit with Facebook groups. Considering the amount of time we spend on the internet, this feels like a very lackluster way to stay connected.

Tong and Zhao also most likely would have been able to increase their involvement in the SU by attending more Student Leadership Team meetings, and events of this nature. With a little more effort, they would have gained more of the knowledge that they currently lack.

Despite setbacks that are partially out of Tong and Zhao’s control, their platform ultimately is not tangible or thought-through enough for them to deserve The Spectator’s endorsement.

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The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

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Features Opening Up the Conversation: Mental Health at Stuyvesant

By Archi Das and Sophie Watwood Certain names in this article have been changed to preserve students’ anonymity.

“I’m young, but I’m already screwing up my life. I’m smart but not enough—just smart enough to have problems. Not smart enough to get good grades.

Not smart enough to have a girlfriend. Girls think I’m weird. I don’t like to spend money. Every time I spend it, I feel as if I’m being raped. I don’t like to smoke pot, but then I do smoke it and I get depressed. I haven’t done enough with my life. I don’t play sports. I quit Tae Bo. I’m not involved in any social causes. My one friend is a screwup. [...] When am I going to not be a nobody?”

This is an excerpt from “It’s Kind of a Funny Story,” a novel by bestselling Young Adult author Ned Vizzini. The story follows the life of a 16-year-old boy named Craig Gilner as he battles depression in an adult psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt.

It is an extremely personal story, for Vizzini himself battled depression during and after high school, ultimately committing suicide in 2013 at the young age of 32. But it is also a story about Stuyvesant: Vizzini, who was a Stuyvesant alumnus (’99), wrote the novel based on his own experiences. “I put quite a lot of myself in there,” he told The Spectator in a 2013 interview. But possibly the most tragic part of the story is the fact that it’s not unique, and it’s not outdated either.

“Be Happy. It’s No Big Deal.”

At a place like Stuyvesant, where students frequently suffer from the stress of grades and college, the phrase “I’m depressed” is often exchanged among peers to relieve their emotions in a concise catharsis. But to those who are actually diagnosed with depression, the feeling of being depressed goes beyond academic stress.

“I would describe it as an emptiness. You’re a shell of a person,” junior Hannah said.

Hannah always suspected that there was something wrong with her mindset, but in sophomore year, she started missing days of school, because she just couldn’t get herself to get out of bed. “Be happy. It’s no big deal,” she would tell herself constantly.

However, this mantra didn’t appear to be effective. In January of her sophomore year, she began to reach out to her parents and her guidance counselor, because she was failing classes and barely had any interest in coming to school. Eventually, she was placed with a therapist. “The therapist immediately went, ‘Yep, this kid is depressed,’” Hannah recalled. In March of her sophomore year, she was prescribed Prozac, an antidepressant that would help with her emotions.

Taking this drug was uplifting, though it made her feel as though she was bouncing off the walls.

Junior year kicked off with an optimistic start for Hannah.

But she started slipping in October when she began to take her medication inconsistently. She recollected feeling an intense self-hatred and an “Oh my god, I don’t want to be alive,” feeling, she said. Ultimately, she was admitted to a hospital where physicians helped her get back on her medication.

For Hannah, academic performance is heavily tied to her self-esteem. “When you go to a place like Stuy, where everyone’s just talking about grades and college, then that’s what becomes important to you, because that’s what others judge you on,” she

said. “If I got an 80 on a test I would be like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so stupid.’”

When asked how she dealt with her depression to get to where she is now, Hannah responded that it was the support of other people that helped her get through the tough times.

Hannah found a safe haven in the Computer Science Department. “They noticed I was cutting classes [...] and one of them [...] sat me down and just talked it out with me,” she said. “Teachers don’t necessarily have to care about you. But the fact that they chose to sit down with me and be nice to me while I cried gave off the impression that they cared about me.”

Luckily, Hannah also had friends who supported her. She recalled a moment when she walked up to her close friend’s locker, sobbing. Her friend proceeded to take her out and buy her pizza, because Hannah hadn’t eaten all day. “It may not have been a lot to her, but it was a lot to me,” she reflected. “She got me to calm down and put my life back into perspective.” As advice to students dealing with depression, Hannah wants people to know what their role is when someone they know is dealing with these sorts of feelings, “Being on your own sucks.

Stuy[vesant] is a very cutthroat environment. Ask your friends how they are and mean it genuinely,” she said. “It goes a long way”

the added pressure of attending Stuyvesant worsened the issue. “A [large] part of depression comes from [the] stress and feeling that you’re not going to be able to pick yourself back up. And you get into this cycle of never being able to catch up to yourself,” she said.

“Once you fall behind, especially in Stuy, it’s really difficult to get back up again, because the work just starts cascading.”

However, Jane did find refuge in what she thought was a positive school environment and would often stay late to avoid coming home. “Stuy itself makes me pretty happy. I enjoy coming to school every day, and I enjoy learning. I really like the community.”

“It’s not really about anything. It’s just depression.”

Junior Sarah’s mental health spiraled downhill due to a combination of freshman-year stress, academic pressure, medication, and parental pressure. When she was applying for high school, Stuyvesant hadn’t even been on her radar; she didn’t even want to take the SHSAT. In middle school,

“That’s Just the Way Chinese Parents Raise Their Kids.”

For Jane, a female senior, the problem started with her parents at home, long before she got into Stuyvesant.

“They were so disappointed in me, and they were constantly yelling at me about my grades, and also because I dated at the time.” A looming presence in all corners of her life, her parents would often resort to violence to discipline their daughter. “My parents get pretty physical with me,” Jane said. “It doesn’t happen anymore, which is good.

I’ve been hit ever since I was three or four. That’s just the way that Chinese parents raise their kids.”

Jane recalls a moment when the fights between her and her parents escalated to the point where she wrote about it in a school journal. Her teacher read the account and reported Jane’s parents. An official from the Department of Education conducted an investigation by coming into Jane’s home and searching for physical markers of abuse.

They didn’t find anything, but Jane says that that was beside the point.

“I swear to God,” Jane began.

“I’m not the only Asian kid that gets hit by their parents. But the thing is, if you tell authority figures about these problems that you’re having at home [...] the only way to resolve this problem is they’re going to take you away and you’re going to live with some other parents, which is not what I’m looking for. I’m just looking for them to stop. […] At the end of the day, I know they love me a lot,” she said.

Unlike Hannah, Jane felt that she couldn’t reach out to someone for help. “I’m a very independent [person] and I don’t like to rely on other people. Also, I feel like I’m burdening them in a sense.

I don’t want to put my feelings on other people and weigh them down with my troubles,” Jane explained. “There are other kids out there doing much worse.”

Even though most of Jane’s problems occurred at home,

she never admitted she was intelligent for fear of being judged. Instead, Sarah wanted to go to LaGuardia High School for drama, nothing like the hyper-academic environment of Stuyvesant. When she ultimately chose Stuyvesant, the transition was rough. “I didn’t handle it well,” she said.

At the same time, she had just started trying different medications (focalin, vyvanse, adderall, and daytrana patches) for her Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and was having bad side effects. There was even a three-week period where she only ate pudding, because she couldn’t stomach normal food.

There was tension at home too. During freshman year, Sarah lived alone with her mom in a small apartment. “There’s no privacy. We [were] always butting heads,” she said.

When she started high school, the issues at home began to spill over to school, negatively impacting of her academics. She slept all the time instead of going to school. When she did go to school, she would cut classes.

“I was really mean to authority figures. I didn’t respect anyone,” she said. This would later be diagnosed as Oppositional Defiant Disorder, “which just means I’m a

[b—],” said Sarah, laughing.

It was a vicious cycle. “I would miss work from not going, and then be so anxious about all the work I had to make up that I just couldn’t make myself go to class,” she explained. That year, she failed most of her classes and ended up having to go to summer school.

For her sophomore year, her mom transferred her into a school for “problem children,” she said. The school was drastically different from Stuyvesant, with small class sizes and a small course load, but she was still getting stressed and not doing homework. Despite its efforts, the environment did not help her with her depression.

Over the summer, she was sent to an outward-bound course for “troubled teens,” she said, canoeing and backpacking on the Appalachian Trail for a month.

“It was so physically strenuous [that] there was no time to be anxious or depressed,” Sarah described.

While she was there, she had to do a solo: a 72-hour period in which she was alone in a 30-by30-foot area in the woods. Despite the hype leading up to this period, once she was alone, she felt empty. “I ended up sleeping for approximately 36 hours […] I kind of [woke] up every morning for other people,” Sarah said.

This year, Sarah has returned to Stuyvesant, now a junior. “I thought it would be different, but very quickly, it became the same as freshman year,” she said. “I had better control of myself and my actions, and I went to classes more, but I was still failing.”

The stress is still there, but the workload and her ADHD aren’t the sole causes of it. “College is a big part of it.

My mom is a big part of it,” Sarah explained. Sarah recently moved into her uncle’s house, and says that she’s happy living there. She currently lives in Williamsburg and has been early to school every day since she’s moved.

Though things have calmed down, Sarah still feels the weight of depression. “It’s not really about anything. It’s just depression. It’s just the fact that it exists and you can feel depressed about anything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the source,” Sarah said.

Like Hannah and Jane, Sarah has experienced positive influences from being at Stuyvesant, feeling proud to attend the school. “It’s become sort of like a personal mission, and I love the opportunities academically and club-wise,” she said. “Mental illness affects everyone in different ways.” For Sarah, depression will always lurk, but feeling more incontrol at Stuyvesant has made her outlook a little brighter.

The Duck Syndrome

According to statistics by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, at least 20 percent of teenage students in the U.S. suffer from some sort of condition or disorder relating to their mental health. Even so, stigmas surrounding mental illness makes it difficult to open up. Teachers and counselors may try their best to be there, but it may not always feel as though they are helping. “I feel like you can’t really open up with teachers […] because, for most people, the teachers are like

‘Suck it up, you’re here, you have to deal with it,’” sophomore Nadeau Alnajjar said.

Hannah explained that a big reason why students find it difficult to open up about depression is that others will misunderstand them. “I feel like a lot of it has to do with teenage girls especially.

People will accuse teenage girls of doing something for attention, because, obviously,” she said sarcastically, “they have no other reason for living other than getting your attention and being dramatic.”

Hannah also noted that the severity of depression is often understated. “It’s because there’s nothing physically ailing you,” she said, “so [it seems like] there’s no reason why you should not be able to function the way that every other person functions. What they don’t understand is that your brain chemistry is fundamentally messed up. It’s not something you can control.”

The stigma regarding depression is widespread. At Stanford University, a name has been coined for it: the duck syndrome, which conjures the image of appearing to glide effortlessly across the water in academics and extracurricular activities, while paddling violently beneath the surface to stay afloat. At the University of Pennsylvania, students frequently call the concealment of anxiety and stress “Penn Face.”

But not everyone at Stuyvesant perceives this pressurecooker atmosphere as bad. “I came to Stuyvesant to be sleepdeprived, I came here to be pressured, I came here so that I would have enough work to keep me up throughout the night,” Jack and David Cahn (’14) wrote in “Don’t Take My Stress Away,” a Huffington Post article challenging the administration’s efforts to reduce stress by limiting students’ academic opportunities.

Because of its reputation for extreme academic pressure, this level of anxiety is perceived as almost the backbone of Stuyvesant itself. In that mindset, mental health victims are just the bottom tier in survival of the fittest.

“Some […] view it as a sign of weakness or the perception that a person may not be ‘Stuy-material’ […] or that he or she may be better off at another school,” SPARK Coordinator Angel Colon said in an e-mail interview.

Thus, an interesting dichotomy is present at Stuyvesant, where the conditions that some students yearn for, being pushed to their limits, are the conditions that cause others to sink. While the academic stress is evidently harmful, it is also, arguably, what defines Stuyvesant. So while it’s clear that there is a problem at Stuyvesant, the solution is unclear.

Numerous organizations like the guidance department, SPARK, and Project Love exist to help students. But as the stories of Hannah, Jane, and Sarah show, it’s not always easy to speak up about mental health.

Vizzini’s work is renowned for its raw, honest descriptions of what it is to be mentally ill. “People are screwed up in this world,” he wrote in “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.” “I’d rather be with someone screwed and open about it than somebody perfect and...you know...ready to explode.”

So then it’s time to get the conversation going.

If you or someone you know is suffering from mental illness, get help, either by reaching out to a professional or, in the event of a crisis, calling the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-(800) 273-8255.

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 7

Features The Teachers of Tomorrow

By Vincent Jiang, Anthony Liang, and Sachi Patel

You are sitting in class, listening to your new student teacher lead a discussion on Shakespeare, the Industrial Revolution, or perhaps the conjugation of verbs in the future tense.

Admittedly, it is a nice change from your old teacher, who is sitting in the back of the room, observing. Though they come from all around the globe, they have all embarked on life-long journeys to become teachers in the near future.

Zoe Schein, English

As a child, Heather Huhn, a current student at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, was obsessed with books. As an only child, the characters served as companions and proxy siblings with whom she could embark on adventures. What began as a way to escape the confines of her family’s home, however, turned into her strengths, as she went through school loving every English experience she had.

Despite this great passion, Huhn didn’t consider the idea of becoming an English teacher, or any career that focused on English, until her senior year in college. Instead, she had wanted to become a lawyer, a dream she had had since fourth grade. This goal was further propelled by her participation on the debate team. “I really enjoyed arguing so that also had something to do with it,” she admitted, laughing quietly.

However, an internship in Washington, D.C., changed her

outlook on what she wanted to do with her life. In the city, she worked with students in an impoverished community, and her experience there changed her future career goals. “I wanted to do something that would directly impact their lives,” she said, ultimately deciding to become a teacher.

As a result, she went back to school, and worked towards her goal. Initially, she had started her career with elementary school students. However, it was only when Columbia sent her to Stuyvesant for a semester of student teaching did she realize that teaching in a high school was meant for her.

As English teacher Rosa Mazzurco’s student teacher, Huhn runs two sophomore European Literature classes, doing everything that a regular teacher does.

She considers the final project for “Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov in her classes to be her favorite experience here because the project offered students the opportunities to analyze the book through a variety of media: rap, slam poetry, and mix tapes. “I think that’s been my favorite experience so far because everyone came out of their shell and did what they were passionate about for their final project,” she said.

“I could see their more personal side, as opposed to the side I see in the classroom every day.”

The amiable community she has found at Stuyvesant has left her with a sense of being at home.

In Huhn’s mind, there is no doubt that she will become a high school teacher, and she hopes to change students’ lives for the better by teaching English.

Courtesy of Zoe Schein

Courtesy of Heather Huhn

Heather Huhn, English

Zoe Schein’s childhood hobby of reading books whenever she could turned into an ambition to learn more about the English language. “It was clear to me that English was something I loved, and my parents told me that as long as what I did made me happy, I should follow my heart’s desire,” Schein said. However, despite her early aptitude and love for the English language, she never considered herself a good writer. “I am a better consumer of

Courtesy of Walker Wilson

Courtesy of Tingting Zheng

Born in China, Mandarin was Tingting Zheng’s native language growing up. She remembers spending hours in class having a very traditional, and at times uninteresting, learning experience. When she entered college, she majored in English.

But something else other than her knowledge of English grew while she was there: her curiosity towards foreign countries.

When Zheng made the decision to go study abroad in the United States to experience life outside of China, others recommended that she switch to majoring in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). It was only after she began studying at NYU that she had a second major in teaching Mandarin. “I did some tutoring when I was a student, so I decided I might want to become a teacher,” she said.

Zheng’s first teaching experience was last semester, at a primary school, where she taught ESL and English. However, this semester, she began student teaching at Stuyvesant with Mandarin teacher Julie Zhu. She remembers receiving her assignment almost two weeks after the rest of her class had found out where they were to student teach. “All the classmates around me got excited. They told me that Stuyvesant is the best high school in New York,” she said.

Her first day here was pri-

taught at two different schools, at one of which she taught alongside Huhn. From her early experiences of teaching, she learned that one of the most important things for a teacher to do is to communicate clearly and effectively. “Every teacher’s priority is that every student is learning.

Students come from different backgrounds [and] interests, and my job is to get everyone engaged in the learning,” Schein said.

Currently, Schein teaches in English teacher Maura Dwyer’s sixth and ninth period Freshman Composition classes. She does everything a normal teacher would do: grade papers and write lesson plans and assignments. Schein also participates in the Writing Center and spends her free time helping students improve their writing. “I love to work there because I get to talk to students informally and get to know about their lives. It helps us develop a closer relationship.”

Ultimately, Schein cherishes her time at Stuyvesant and reflects on the continuing growth of her passion for English. As an avid reader during her childhood, she has followed her aspirations in English literature and has found her place as a teacher.

Walker Wilson, Social Studies

Tingting Zheng, Mandarin marily an observance day. She watched Zhu teach the class, and got to know the environment. After that day, she took control of one Mandarin 2 class. Compared to her experience in her primary school, where she needed games to have the students’ attention, Zheng noted that in high school, she could focus more on the material and actually teaching the language. She also noticed that the students were more open with their discussions and more casual.

One of Zheng’s favorite experiences at Stuyvesant is the little songs she gets to hear occasionally. When a student arrives to class late, he or she is required to sing a Chinese song, or play something on a traditional Chinese instrument. Though many students may have been embarrassed doing so, Zheng is surprised and pleased to hear songs from when she was in high school, as well as listen to the talents her students have. “I was surprised that a girl could play Chinese zither really well,” she said.

Zheng hopes that her experience here will help her improve her future career experience. She feels more ready to take on a real job as a teacher. “In my classes, my teacher required us to write a lot of lesson plans. But when I was writing those lesson plans, [I didn’t] know whether the plans [were] okay or good or not […] I [didn’t] know how things would work out in a real classroom […]

But here at Stuyvesant, I practiced all those things, and now I’m more confident,” she said.

Like the student population of Stuyvesant, student teachers come from different cultures and countries all around the globe.

Some have moved across the nation, while others have immigrated to the U.S. from foreign countries. Regardless of where these people came from, however, they all share a common goal of learning how to become the teachers of tomorrow, under the guidance of Stuyvesant’s own faculty members.

literature than producer,” Schein said.

However, after being enrolled in Teacher’s College of Columbia University and a campus peer editor, Schein began to see her strengths in writing. This eventually led to her desire to become an English teacher. “I wanted to help others to love literature as much as I did, and I would be able to help more people this way than by writing.”

There was a period, however, when Schein experimented with different occupations to see if she still wanted to be a teacher after that time. “I needed to want it. I know that teaching will still be there even after I tried and failed at something else.” As a result, for two years, she took an office job, though she often felt wildly unhappy and unfulfilled.

After a brief period of reflection and reevaluation, she decided that she was committed to being a teacher.

To obtain her teaching job, Schein had to pass two placements, one at a middle school and a second at a high school.

She was observed as a teacher and evaluated to see if she met the requirements of being one.

Within a span of two years, Schein

History has been an integral part of Walker Wilson’s childhood in the form of his travels around the world to places such as the Philippines, Jordan, and Israel, as well as through his parents and grandparents, who are involved in journalism. Being exposed to journalism from a young age has influenced Wilson’s attitude towards history. Both journalism and history are interconnected, as the questions of how society functions is at the forefront of both topics.

Wilson eventually saw a pathway for his future career in teaching history and considered it a duty to do so. “I came from an

incredibly fortunate background.

My parents owned a house and a small business, and I don’t think there’s anything greater a person can do, especially one that loves education, than to give back to the people that need it,” he explained.

Wilson’s first teaching experience was back in his home state, Washington, where he worked as a special education teacher. “It was an incredibly difficult job, because the kids couldn’t be put into classrooms, since they were very disruptive,” Wilson said. “I got to work one on one with them and that made me appreciate not only teachers but everyone in the school system, like guidance counselors.”

After teaching in his home state, Wilson moved to New York to study at Teacher’s College at Columbia University. It was stressful at times, because there have been occasions where he has had to commute rather rapidly between Stuyvesant and Teacher’s College to attend his evening classes. Despite this difficulty, he is enjoying his experience here, noting the rich history behind the city. “History’s just all around us, all the time,” he said.

“When you’re in your hometown, you just see the same things and don’t question what was there beforehand. But when you go to a different place, you recognize

so many events that happened even before the United States became a country.”

As a student at Teacher’s College, Wilson is required to student teach at two different schools. During his first semester, he worked with students in a middle school at Williamsburg.

This semester, however, he has been working here at Stuyvesant with social studies teacher Josina Dunkel. “The amount of discussion [the students] do here is fantastic. But it also makes me realize that you guys are at the top, and I want to get as many people there as possible,” he said.

Many of these discussions Wilson has with his students are focused on the perspectives of minorities. “The history that is told is usually focused through the lens of men, but we can’t do that. That’s not giving the rest of society justice.” As a result, many of his lesson plans involves students to visualize history through the perspective of those who weren’t represented until recently, such as females.

Wilson believes that his time at Stuyvesant has helped him understand the level students can attain. He will push to help others reach the same brilliance and passion of Stuyvesant students on his path to becoming a teacher.

Lu Peng, Italian Born in Guangzhou, China, Lu Peng grew up in a family of teachers, which was one of the factors that influenced her decision to be a teacher. She listed off many family members who were either teachers or professors, including her mother, noting how they were significant in her career.

Her love for Italian developed when she was a student in high school. Taking Italian as a major in her undergraduate school in Beijing, Peng got a chance to visit Italy as an exchange student, where she fell in love with the city of Rome. “If Paris is a fascinating lady, I think Rome is really handsome, historically speaking.

Rome is so gorgeous and magnificent, especially in architecture and history, which makes me feel just wow,” she said.

When Peng started apply-

ing to graduate schools, she was planning to study in Italy or Switzerland. However, when she applied and was accepted to New York University (NYU), she decided to study there, a choice she is glad she made. “I think it’s a beautiful accident. I think coming into the States, it makes my life different from life in Europe,” she said.

Peng began her career as a student teacher in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class with kindergarteners. Though she enjoyed the experience, she noted that the students were very dependent on the teacher and were not mature enough to develop their own ideas and opinions. Furthermore, Peng had wanted to teach a class focused on the Italian language. As a result, for her second semester of observation, Peng was assigned

to Stuyvesant.

When Italian teacher Pasqua Rocchio, the teacher whose classes she would be observing, showed her around the building, Peng felt a connection to the place. She felt even more at home as she met the other teachers, and the students she would be observing. When asked about her favorite memory here so far, Peng brought up the Culture Festival, which was held by the foreign language department. It brought back nostalgic memories of culture festivals when she was an undergraduate student. While she loved her classes’ poetry reading, she was blown away by the other performances and the other cultures as well. “It was a ‘dear diary’ afternoon,” she reminisced in an e-mail interview.

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 8

Features “Make America Great Again”: A Contentious Opinion on the subway and stuff, but I guess that comes with the territory of wearing the Trump hat.

Julia Lee / The Spectator

SW: For a lot of students at Stuy, your position is perceived as radical, in terms of your Trump support.

TT: Right.

SW: So how does it feel being sort of isolated in your opinions?

TT: I think a lot of thinking of Trump as radical comes from being misinformed about his policies. Lots of people at the school support Bernie Sanders, and if you look at their end goals, not their ways of getting there, but their end goals, Sanders and Trump are very similar. So, I don’t think he’s really radical in any way. He’s right wing compared to the center, but he’s not radical by any means.

By Sophie Watwood

cally?

TT: Center-right? I don’t want to say a party, because I don’t really identify with either. I guess independent, party-wise, and then center-right.

At Stuyvesant, where those who don’t like “Bernie 2016” stickers splattered about the second floor hallways would rather see Hillary stickers, the cacophony of liberal opinions can make it difficult to hear the other side.

Senior Taiga Tase, the student responsible for the creation of the Stuyvesant for Donald Trump club, is one of the people making his dissenting opinions heard. You’ve probably seen him before with his bright red hat emblazoned with the words “Make America Great Again” bobbing through the hallways. He echoes his candidate of choice in the theatrical way he moves his hands while he talks. It’s not hard to imagine that he could be a politician one day, with his way of moving and his assertive mannerisms. While Tase won’t be able to vote in the upcoming election, his opinions are still causing a stir at Stuyvesant.

He smiles as he sits down with me, smoothing out his shortsleeve button-down shirt and extending his hand to shake mine.

SW: Are a lot of your friends of a similar political background?

TT: No, I guess not. This school is super blue. Lots of Bernie supporters, a few Hillary supporters here and there, and then almost no Republicans […] I do have a few friends who don’t go to this school who I was with back in middle school who do support Trump. My best friend lives in Connecticut and voted for Trump in the primaries last week, so I guess I do have a few friends who have similar views [as] me, but, for the most part, no.

SW: How do your friends feel about your views then?

TT: Most of them can generally look past politics and just be friends with people regardless of their beliefs. Most of them are curious on why I support Trump, and since Stuy tends to be a pretty reasonable school, they are generally pretty accepting.

Sophia Watwood: Hi! Taiga Tase: Hello.

SW: How do people usually react to you when they see your hat or when it comes up in conversation?

TT: At school, it’s pretty reasonable. They might ask why I support him and [...] are pretty accepting. Outside of school, it’s not quite as nice. A month or so ago, before the New York primary, there was a GOP gala [...] I was wearing my Trump shirt and my Trump hat, and on the way back from counter-protesting, I got called “repulsive,” which was fun.

At school, I’ve been shoulderchecked, once, but that’s the extent of it. I get some weird looks

SW: So tell me about yourself.

What do you like to do?

TT: I’m in Model [United Nations (UN)], which is […] why I follow current events more than most people do. I’m in the running club […] and I also tutor two days a week. So I tutor two days a week, I run two days a week, and I’m in Model UN three days a week, so it overlaps sometimes, plus, in my spare time I make the posters for the Trump club, which I find pretty fun.

SW: How do you identify politi-

SW: What is your attraction to Donald Trump, and what do you think would be the best decisions he would make if elected?

TT: My attraction would be that he [has] what I think is the best foreign policy and fiscal policy.

Social policies, I’m pretty neutral on. But, foreign policy, he is a noninterventionist. He wouldn’t send U.S. troops abroad, he wouldn’t support foreign regimes, he’s against regime change, and he wouldn’t support coups against foreign governments either. I think [that] is good, because regime change sounds good in theory, because you are getting rid of a dictator who could be hurting his own people, but then when you actually do it, it turns out a lot worse than you would imagine [...] So I support his noninterventionism. Regarding fiscal policy, he wants to slash taxes on working class and lower-middle class people [...] but the taxes that the super rich would really pay would either not change or might even go up.

SW: Do his financial policies relate to you personally?

TT: Personally, probably not, but I realize that there are lots of people who are hurt really badly by the taxes now and would be helped immensely by Trump’s policies, especially working class people and lower middle class people.

I don’t personally fall into either of those groups, but I realize that those groups are the most economically vulnerable and therefore should be the most protected by the government.

SW: So there is the slogan “Make America Great Again,” like on your hat. When do you think America was last great, and where do you think we’ve fallen short?

TT: There have been lots of peaks, looking at it in terms of economics, but also socially. Like, back in the ‘50s, the U.S. was great economically, but from a social standpoint, we were still fighting

segregation and Jim Crow laws, so it wasn’t socially great, but economically, America was the center of the world, since a lot of the rest of the world had been hurt significantly by the second World War [...] So it would be a mix between the ‘50s and ‘60s economically, and then socially, at least the ‘70s or ‘80s when you had civil rights not just on paper, but also in practice.

SW: Some of Donald Trump’s sentiments have been regarded as sexist or racist or homophobic.

How do you respond to that?

TT: I think the key word there is regarded. Lots of Donald Trump’s quotes have been taken out of context and aren’t actually racist or homophobic or sexist. I don’t think anyone’s accused him of being homophobic, but I suppose the GOP in general has that stigma [...] He’s said a lot of things that could be misconstrued or twisted, but I don’t think, if you look at the full context of those quotes, that they are sexist or racist, considering that his daughter is being trained to take over the company when he retires or passes away. A lot of the things that have been said as being sexist are times that he’s gone after specific, individual women, but I think that just because you don’t like a specific woman, it doesn’t mean you hate all women.

SW: What inspired you to start the Stuyvesant for Donald Trump club if none of the other GOP candidates have organized student support?

TT: Well, Bernie Sanders has a club here: the Stuyvesant for Bernie Sanders club. One of the people in my English class is the founder or the president of the club. So we have announcements every day at the start of class, and every so often they would announce a meeting for that club, and I thought, “If Bernie Sander’s has a club, then I guess Donald Trump should as well.”

SW: How do you come up with the posters, and is that all you?

TT: I wouldn’t say that they are 100 percent mine. I see good ideas on the internet [since] very creative people often make images that they spin around for fun.

I see some of those, and I adapt them. Some of them are mine, like I’ll take common phrases or phrases from pop culture and use them when they are applicable to Trump.

SW: So how is the club doing, and what do you actually do?

TT: Some people think that the point of the club is to have miniature Trump rallies at Stuy. That’s not the point of the club at all.

The point is actually to swing votes [...] towards Trump and get rid of misconceptions that people might have. It’s been doing well,

so far. I think I’ve had like three meetings. The first one I had like twenty-five people show up, the second one was the week before SING! [and] we had about fifteen people, and then the third one we had about ten to fifteen as well.

Before I formed the Trump club, I went to one of the meetings for the Bernie Sanders club, and maybe they just weren’t doing well that day, but I was like one of six people there. So I’d say we are doing fairly well.

SW: How do you aim to swing votes?

TT: When I hold the meetings, I try to invite as many Democrats as possible and invite them to the front [...] and they ask questions and bring up concerns about Trump, things that they’ve heard that they don’t agree with. If the things that they’ve heard aren’t true, I try to correct them. Since I’m now known as the guy who runs the Trump club, people ask questions about why I support him. People who actively dislike him, I try to find out why. If they are grounded in reality, that’s fine.

It’s a difference of opinion, but if they don’t like Trump because of something they’ve heard [...] that’s been exaggerated or straight-up isn’t true, I try to tell them that, and hopefully, they rethink their position. The main method is to act as a source of information.

SW: What motivated you to go to a Bernie Sanders meeting?

TT: I just went to see what they did and how they thought, because I was not a Bernie supporter, but I wanted to go to gatherings of people who don’t share my opinions and try to see why they think what they think or if there is some common ground I could try to swing votes.

SW: What kind of activities do you plan for your club members?

TT: I was working under the assumption that I didn’t have enough man-power to actively work for the campaign, because once you have enough supporters you can do things like give out fliers and stuff to have an impact on the actual campaign [...] so the activities of the club revolve mostly around putting up posters to try to get people to come to the meetings, ask questions, and bring up any concerns.

SW: What do you want in your future? What’s next?

TT: I’m going into college for economics. I might do a double major poly-sci, but maybe not, because I do want to go into politics. After I get a bachelors, I might go for a post-grad for a couple years, and then I guess would eventually run for office. I’d like to pass laws that would help people.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 9

Features

Victoria Huang / The Spectator

Stan Kats: Bringing Together Math and Movies

By Hasan TukhtamisheV On his first day teaching at Stuyvesant, mathematics teacher Stan Kats gave his students a memorable impression. Aside from the usual introduction, he quickly approached the subject of grades in an unorthodox matter.

“When we were writing our Delaney cards, [Kats] asked us, if we were comfortable, to write on the back our math grade for the first semester and our desired math grade for the second semester,” sophomore Danyal Khandakar said in an e-mail interview. “He even gave us an extra credit assignment on that same day.”

It was a beginning not many Stuvesant students were accustomed to, and it would herald the coming of other new experiences. “He was definitely funny.

I remember, because that’s one of the first things I look for in a teacher,” senior Shankha Chakra-

vorty said. Kats set a congenial and relaxed tone for his class.

Although his methods may seem unusual, Kats is not unfamiliar with specialized high schools. His experience goes back as far as attending one himself at Brooklyn Technical High School.

At Brooklyn Tech, Kats was not involved in many extracurricular activities, but if there was one school activity that he was deeply involved with, it was math. With humble origins on his school’s math team, he worked his way up to a position on the New York City Math Team. After receiving full tuition to Brooklyn College through a scholarship, he continued to pursue math. While earning credits for his mathematics major, he returned to New York City Math Team to coach high school students.

During his undergraduate and graduate years, many of Kats’s friends and family attempted to persuade him to follow law or medical career paths. Kats, however, knew what he wanted to do with his future before he even attended college. “I knew for a while that I liked teaching,” he said. “I had a high school teacher who, in my mind, [was] the best teacher that ever lived, and I remember thinking very early on [that] I wanted to be a teacher.”

But for a while, Kats wavered, shaken by their opinions and unsure of whether he would be satisfied with his personal choice.

It was not until he met mathematics teacher James Cocoros while coaching at the New York City Math Team that he was persuaded to follow his own path.

“He said to me, ‘You’ve got to ask yourself what is it you want to do, because everyone else is going to give you a different answer,’” recalled Kats. “That day I e-mailed the [graduate center] saying that I’m leaving.” Finding no need to pursue the college degree, he made it clear that he intended to become a teacher. Soon after, he found his first job as a math teacher at Hunter College High School.

Kats taught at Hunter for two years, gaining his first experience

would be hard for anyone to fill in Pascu’s shoes. “I didn’t expect anyone to be able to replace Ms. Pascu,” Chakravorty said. Pascu has been deemed by her students to be one-of-a-kind in terms of teaching, making her irreplaceable at Stuyvesant To Kats, the transition also brought its own set of challenges.

“It takes time. The students are different. The system is different,” he noted. “It’s just a matter of adjusting.” Because Hunter College High School is not bound by the

“Cocoros said to me, ‘You’ve got to ask yourself what is it you want to do because everyone else is going to give you a different answer.’ That day I e-mailed the [graduate center] saying that I’m leaving.”

—Stan Kats, mathematics teacher teaching at a school environment with academically advanced students. It was enjoyable while it lasted. However, when Kats was called upon by the Stuyvesant community to fill in the shoes of mathematics teacher Oana Pascu, he decided it best to move schools. “I’m not the type to hop from one position to another, [but] I didn’t have a tenure position at Hunter and [Stuyvesant] offered me a tenure track position here,” Kats said.

Many students thought it

same Department of Education rules that Stuyvesant is, it can allow teachers much more freedom in writing their own curricula. In addition, Stuyvesant’s average class size of thirty-four students is ten students more than that of Hunter’s. When teaching at Hunter, Kats needed to memorize only 120 names; now, he must memorize 170.

Through all this change, Kats has found comfort in being able to return to what he knows best: math. He makes connec-

tions with his students by sharing his passion and helping them find math in the real world. “My [students] don’t realize the math behind animated movies,” Kats said. “Any Pixar movie consists of complex numbers, and when you multiply complex numbers, you move [the characters of the movie]. I bore my [students] with that when I talk about complex numbers.”

“At first, I was kind of nervous about having a new teacher in the middle of the year,” junior Muhammad Ullah shared in an e-mail interview. “But slowly, that feeling started to go away. He’s a really nice guy who also interacts with his students outside of math class.”

“He occasionally refers to movies,” senior Jacob Hoffan added. “And then asks us if we know where [the references] are from.”

Kats recalled how devastated he was when the students did not get a Casablanca reference. “It breaks my heart,” he said. Aside from his strong passion in math, Kats also enjoys other hobbies such as playing video games, spending time with his dog named Sirius, and reading books, all of which he uses to color his teaching style.

Perhaps the only factors that strain this friendly connection are the many sleepers in Kats’s classes. “The students assume teachers don’t notice this stuff,” he pointed out. “It’s so obvious.”

In conclusion, Kats declared, “Stay awake in class or else I will start throwing chalk at you guys.”

Jane Katz: Returning to the Classroom

By Jeannie Au and Anthony Liang A student walks into second period math class and plops down his black book bag. He groans as he unzips it and takes out his notebook. After flipping to a new page, he sits down, waiting in silence with the rest of the class. Mathematics teacher Jane Katz enters the room with a huge smile on her face. She gives a worksheet with warm-up problems on the front to her students to get them going. Throughout the period, Katz has her students work in groups to complete exercises on the back of the warm-up sheet. The students gradually become livelier as they discuss the problems they’re stuck on. They leave Katz’s class energized and ready for the rest of the day.

Through much trial and error, this, perhaps, is the environment an experienced teacher hopes to create. Katz, however, has only started her first real teaching job at Stuyvesant this past September. For someone who is able to master this routine so smoothly, one might wonder what makes Katz so quick at adapting herself to the classroom.

Katz enjoyed a fulfilling childhood. As a kid, she was an upbeat and charismatic person who grew up in New Jersey with a love for books, dance, and bike riding.

When she was younger, she also liked to listen to the radio to stay current with popular music, especially Punk Rock and Hip-hop.

Her favorite musicians were the Sex Pistols. Though she isn’t as trendy with music as she used to be, Katz still enjoys Hip-hop, Soul, and Reggae.

Along with being a music lover, she was a huge basketball fan, though she enjoyed watching more than playing. When she attended high school, she passion-

ately supported her school basketball team, attending all of its games. “Our team won the state championships, and it was very exciting,” she said proudly. Even today, she has a National Basketball Association League pass and continues to follow each and every one of the Golden State Warriors’ games.

Meanwhile, throughout her childhood and adolescence, her passion for mathematics grew.

“I always liked math, even in elementary school. In high school, I especially enjoyed quadratic equations and trigonometry, because I liked the visual aspect— bringing together the equations and graphs and ‘seeing’ them as one thing,” Katz said.

But as she got older, she became more introverted. She kept to herself most of the time, even distancing herself from her family. As a result, she and her younger siblings had a less-than-personal relationship. “I did not understand that my little sister wanted me to pay attention to her,” she said. This continued through most of Katz’s adolescence.

All of this changed toward the end of her senior year of high school when her father passed away from a stroke. It was a devastating loss to the family. Her mother was left to support the children and faced tremendous pressure handling family finances. As the oldest child, Katz shouldered heavy responsibilities to help her mother.

Despite the tragedy, Katz was not one to leave an experience empty-handed. “Because of what happened with my family, I am able to deal with difficult situations and stay calm,” Katz said.

Additionally, the incident pulled the family closer together, closing the gap Katz initially had with her siblings. “The three of us are like a trio [now],” she said. “We go

shoe shopping together.”

The summer after her senior year, the family decided to move out of the house in an effort to start all over again with a new chapter of their lives. While her family moved from New Jersey to Washington, Katz attended the University of Chicago with a major in economics. “It’s supposedly where fun goes to die, but I had a lot of fun,” she said. She became best friends with her roommate—they still remain in touch to this day—and enjoyed exploring clubs on campus. “They had a great film society, so they would show really cheap movies,” she recalled.

“The most important thing I wanted was to laugh, and if you want to laugh, be around kids.”

—Jane Katz, mathematics teacher She also flourished academically. “I just really realized what statistics was for the first time. I had lots of light bulb moments. I had really great teachers in economics and in math,” Katz said.

However, Katz could not help but note that there were very few female professors teaching economics and STEM-related classes, so when she excelled in her classes, she attracted a lot of attention. “But I also [felt] like I stood out in a way that I didn’t

like all that much,” Katz said.

After going to Harvard Business School for graduate school and working there for two years as a research aid, Katz was hired at the Boston Federal Reserve in the research department, where she worked for 20 years.

Katz studied the historical roots of the gender imbalance at the same time as she was experiencing it in her own field. At the Boston Federal Reserve, she spent a lot of time looking at statistics and studying changes in money and jobs, especially regarding women in the labor force and income inequality.

On one particular project, she and her co-author discovered that educated women in the early 1900s participated less in the labor force than expected, contradicting the upward trend of women entering the workforce. “I don’t know whether we should care that women weren’t working as much, but she and I cared,” Katz said, noting with satisfaction the increasing number of women participating in STEMrelated careers today.

After working for the Boston Federal Reserve, she moved to New York to work for the city’s Federal Reserve. In New York, she gained some experience as a public school math teacher in Brooklyn while working at the Federal Reserve. “I interacted with some students and teachers,” Katz said.

“I know students don’t like math, and I like explaining things that are hard to people. That became [my] favorite part of my day and eventually [my] favorite part of my job.”

Eventually, Katz grew tired of working at the Federal Reserve.

“I am old enough [to be able to] see the end of my career,” Katz explained. Although she decided that it was time for her to retire from her job, she still wanted to

do something fulfilling. “I did not want the Federal Reserve to be my last job,” she said.

For six months, she went through some thoughtful contemplation, and then, she asked her friend for advice. Becoming a teacher had crossed her mind, but she wanted her friend’s approval. “[She] thought it was a really good idea,” Katz said. Katz decided to apply for state certification, feeling all the more like a student while becoming a teacher. Finally, she graduated once more from school.

Since landing herself a job at Stuyvesant as a math teacher, Katz has been teaching economics and pre-calculus, and it does not seem like she has any regrets about her choice. “The most important thing I wanted was to laugh, and if you want to laugh, be around kids,” she said. “I never looked back. Every step seemed like the right direction.”

Katz nevertheless holds herself to high standards. “I will be a good math teacher in three years,” she said. During first period, when Katz is not teaching, she often sits in on mathematics teacher Joy Hsiao’s class. By observing more experienced mathematics teachers like Hsiao and Oana Pascu, Katz hopes to emulate their teaching styles.

Each chapter of her life has presented Katz with a challenge, whether it was helping her family navigate difficult times or being an economist for the Federal Reserve in a gender-imbalanced workplace. As she takes on what may be her last job, she reflects on how grateful she is for the opportunities life has offered for her to grow as a human being. “I’m a happy person,” Katz concluded, “and not in a mindless way. I’m happy to be here. I’m happy the sun’s out. I’m happy I’m healthy.

I’m happy I’m talking to you.”

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 10

Editorials Staff Editorial

How Stressed Are We, Really?

You’ve been there. Stressed out of your mind on a Sunday night, you sit in your room, telling your parents that you can’t possibly go to sleep. You simply have too much work to do. Yet, sitting there, alone in your room, you find yourself unable to pick up a pencil and start your work. The sheer magnitude of the daunting task ahead is too great to fight with mere paper and pencil. So, eventually, you come to the realization that maybe a nap might actually help a little. You go to sleep, thinking maybe it’ll decrease your stress a little. And then you wake up the next morning to a whole pile of unfinished work.

Your alarm clock blaring, your parents screaming, you grab your backpack and dash out the door, an unfinished bagel half dangling from your mouth as you rush to catch the subway to school.

And then, you’ll tell your friends that when you reached the station, the train was just pulling away, and you had to wait another freakin’ eight minutes to get the next train, meaning you missed your first of four insanely difficult tests that day.

Now, while the story you just told may not be entirely factual, it feels true to you: regaling your friends with the story that proves that you are, in fact, the most stressed-out person in school right now. This school forces you to be constantly working in a way that your friends at other schools simply don’t have to. They’re the lucky ones. While you are forced to slave away at your desk from dawn to dusk, they are able to go out to the park, and enjoy a carefree day. And it’s all because of this darned school called Stuyvesant.

Right?

On the surface, it seems like the majority of our stress-related problems are school-induced. There are the obvious things that Stuyvesant is famous for: lots of homework, lots of tests to study for, and lots of pressure to perform well. Those of us who are expected to attend highly sought-after universities are expected to maintain high grades, get perfect or near-perfect scores on standardized tests, and find time to participate in extracurricular activities. And doing a good job isn’t enough: we have to take honors and AP classes, and we have to get 5s on the AP exams.

Many of us at Stuyvesant have parents who may have immigrated here from developing countries, or, at the very least, grown up in situations that made them less fortunate than we are now. They may have sacrificed a lot to come to this country, or to this city, and now look to us to improve their futures. We are meant to go farther than they ever could. And, if we have proved that we could land ourselves at Stuyvesant, one of the best schools in the country, there is no reason not to excel.

Even those of us with immensely successful parents have similarly weighty expectations: if they could do it, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to, too.

Another environment-induced problem is a pervasive, negative attitude toward school that manifests itself in our environment. (More people seem to be familiar with our unofficial motto, “F— Stuy,” scrawled on desks and tampon bins, than “Pro Scientia Atque Sapientia.”) This negativity spreads like wildfire, and it seems as though the entire school—or almost the entire school—is in a tired, upset mood all of the time.

You almost feel guilty on days when you’re happy and well-rested because of the collective negativity that surrounds you.

In addition, stress itself is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stuyvesant is infamous for being a pressure cooker. The first thing we all heard

after being accepted to Stuyvesant was probably something along the lines of, “Wow, the kids that go there are stressed out.” In our very first weeks of school, our parents ask us, “Is the stress getting to you yet?” Everyone expects us to be stressed. We even expect ourselves to be stressed. (Stress is practically a source of pride. If your hair hasn’t started falling out, you probably aren’t pushing yourself hard enough.) So, with all of these forces telling us we’re supposed to be stressed, or that we are stressed, we become stressed.

Also, at random points in time, you just don’t have much work to do, even though two days prior you had to stay up until three a.m., completing an endless number of assignments and studying for an endless number of tests. This is another sizable problem at Stuyvesant: inconsistency in the workload. One week, you’ll have four tests and three major projects due, and the next, you’ll have almost no work. While some of this work is assigned ahead of time, or some of the tests are announced a week in advance, this is not always the case.

And, besides, even when we are told about these projects well before their due dates, we are likely to spend our “light” weeks enjoying a break from the stress, knowing that we have projects and tests in a week or two, but mainly keeping in mind that we won’t have any freedom for a long while after.

This break, of course, ends up hurting us in the end: we must spend the next week working hard to study

Christine Jegarl / The Spectator

for all of the tests and to hastily throw together projects that we should have been working on the week before. And then, the week after that, we find, again, that everything is due the next week, and that there is very little work due immediately. And, while we tell ourselves that we will get started early on the following week’s pile of work, and that “things will be different,” we are much too burnt out from the previous week to get started on anything. And the cycle continues.

If you think about it, it should be possible for us to distribute our work evenly for both weeks, both to avoid burnout and to not spoil ourselves with a taste of temporary bliss. In a way, our inconsistent workloads are of our own making: they are self-induced, not schoolinduced.

But, then again, if school didn’t give us so much work in the first place, we wouldn’t have this problem. We would never procrastinate.

We would never develop a sense of learned helplessness (“I have so much work, why even bother trying?”).

Would we?

It’s difficult to say. There is a blurred line between schoolinduced stress and self-induced stress, or, in other words, stress that is inevitable and stress that we can consciously avoid. After all, we can always shrug off our parents’ expectations of us, make the decision to take on a less rigorous workload, and decide to stop comparing ourselves to others.

Sort of. Our environments (home, school, et cetera) make it difficult to “just shrug off our parents’ expectations.” It’s technically possible, but nearly impossible,

to “just chill out” when we are receiving so many conflicting messages at once: “Don’t worry about grades,” “You need to keep your GPA up so you can get into a highly ranked college,” and “College isn’t everything.”

We are told that we need prioritize sleep above all else. Yet we are also told that there is absolutely no excuse to be missing homework.

So if a we get home from school at six p.m. after, say, a practice for a sports team, have to eat dinner with our families until seven p.m., and then have half an hour of Spanish homework, an hour of English reading, 90 minutes of APUSH homework, 45 minutes of both physics and math homework, and miscellaneous tests that we need to spend 90 minutes studying for, the latest we can go to bed is 1:00 a.m. And, if we have to wake up for school the next day at six a.m., we can only get five hours of sleep.

Add in procrastination due to anxiety caused by this enormous workload, and you get an all-toocommon disaster.

Of course, anxiety usually comes from an exaggeration of this workload, which might not be as completely unmanageable as we might make it out to be. After all, if we do the English reading on the way home from school, or, at the very least, accept that we’ve been functioning decently on five hours of sleep all year, the workload doesn’t seem so “enormous.” If we put our problems into perspective, instead of fictionalizing the number of tests we have to study for (no, that practice Chemistry Regents that doesn’t count for a grade is not one of the “six tests” you have this week), for example, we just might feel a whole lot better. After all, it’s much less stressful to think, “I have six homework assignments that will each take me an average of 45 minutes to finish if I don’t waste time on Facebook,” than “I have a mountain of homework that is literally higher than Everest, and, for this reason, my life is literally unraveling.” The latter quote may sound farfetched, but it also may sound like something you say to your “supportive friend” during lunch.

When your friends in the hallway say, “Hey, how are you?” and you say, “I’m so stressed out,” it’s inevitable that the rest of your conversation will consist of you listing all of the things you have to do, giving you yet another opportunity to worry about how on earth you will find the time to do them.

However, if you say, “Pretty good.

‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ is mind blowing,” you will instead engage in a conversation that brings you joy, instead of one that contributes to racing thoughts of stress and anxiety that exhaust you and burn you out.

The ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus divided the world into the things you can control and the things you cannot. In our case, the “school-induced sources of stress” are the things we can’t control: heavy workloads, pressure to get into Ivy League schools, et cetera.

The things we can control are our “self-induced sources of stress”: how we respond to expectations, how we manage our time, and how we choose to think about the work we have to do.

Epictetus said that the only way to find happiness is to accept the things we can’t control (there is no use in constantly talking and thinking and freaking out about your workload: it will always be there and it will always be huge) and change the things we can. If we make the conscious decision not to dwell on our workload and to instead focus on how freaking good it feels to finish an induction proof, maybe we’ll be a little less stressed.

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F o r t he

Rec o r d

In Issue 15 of the The Spectator, we reported that 67.4 percent of students responded “Yes” and 32.6 percent responded “No” to the poll “Are You In Favor of the New AP Policy?” This was incorrect. 18.7 percent responded “Yes” and 80.8 percent responded “No.”

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 11

Opinions

By Matteo Wong At some point in any crime show, a cop will inevitably say, “You have the right to remain silent.” This is because it is a “Miranda right,” granted by the 1966 Supreme Court decision, Miranda v.

Arizona, in which a man thought he was legally obligated to confess.

After the decision, law enforcement was required to inform prisoners of their constitutional rights before making an arrest, such as “the right to remain silent.”

Miranda v. Arizona was a 5-4 decision, but it could easily have been a 4-4 deadlock, which would have allowed law enforcement agencies to manipulate thousands of cases. Now, the U.S. Senate is refusing to discuss a Supreme Court nominee, leaving the court with an even number of justices for another year and thereby threatening the rights and wellbeing of millions.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13 of this year. As per the Constitution, which says, “[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint […] Judges of the Supreme Court,” President Barack Obama is supposed to provide a candidate to fill Justice Scalia’s vacancy, and he has—his pick is Merrick Garland, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Now, the Senate needs to decide whether Garland is acceptable. If they approve President Obama’s nomination, Garland will become

the next Supreme Court Justice.

However, instead of approving or rejecting Garland, many Republican senators, led by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, are refusing to even consider President Obama’s nomination. Senator McConnell claims that the Senate has a duty to represent the will of the American people, and because the U.S. is currently in the midst of an election, allowing President Obama to select the next Justice would not represent public opinion.

Senator McConnell believes that because the majority of Congress is Republican, Americans want a Republican president, and therefore a Republican justice.

Hence, he is calling for the Senate to wait until elections are over, and to then consider a nominee chosen by the newly elected president.

In theory, this isn’t unprecedented: the Senate refused to consider nominations during an election year in 1828, 1844, and 1852.

However, Senator McConnell’s reasoning is far from convincing: President Obama was elected by a popular majority—twice. Moreover, his approval ratings are over 50 percent per the Gallup Poll—the highest they’ve been in three years.

To claim that President Obama doesn’t represent popular opinion is not only ludicrous, but an obvious attempt to conceal McConnell’s political agenda. As for the historical precedent, times have changed. A refusal like McConnell’s hasn’t happened for over 150 years, and, further, the Supreme Court has never been short a justice for an entire year, which would be an enormous length of time.

For years, the Supreme Court has held a five to four majority in favor of the Republicans. With the death of Justice Scalia, the court is at an ideological impasse, with four liberal justices and four conservatives. Garland, a moderate Democrat, would give the Democrats a five justice majority on the Court, which would mark a disastrous turn of events for the Republican Party and cause Senator McConnell’s popularity to plummet.

If McConnell and his supporters really disagreed with Garland’s nomination, they could simply refuse him and force President

Ruby Gary / The Spectator

Jessica Wu / The Spectator

Politics Reign Supreme

Obama to nominate someone else.

However, Garland isn’t particularly disagreeable to the Republican faction of the Senate—for starters, he’s 63, meaning his tenure on the Court wouldn’t be very long. Additionally, he is considerably more moderate than other candidates that President Obama was considering before the nomination. So, for Republican senators, refusing to hold a hearing until the presidential election is over is a win-win situation: either a Republican will win the election and nominate a conservative to the Court in Garland’s place, or a Democrat will win and the Republican senators will accept Garland’s nomination before the newly elected president can nominate a more liberal candidate.

Ignoring President Obama’s nomination may be a brilliant political move, but it also sets a dangerous precedent: that politics can be used to override, and take control of, the government. Since there is a Republican majority in the Senate, many Republican senators think they can manipulate the Supreme Court. In the future, there will be nothing to stop Democrats from doing the same thing, which would transform the government from representing the people’s voice into an elite power play.

Moreover, McConnell is depriving the United States federal government, specifically the Supreme Court, of the ability to function properly. The Supreme Court’s role is to interpret the Constitution and vote on important cases. Many

of the Court’s decisions are for the purpose of judicial review, or reviewing executive and legislative actions to ensure their constitutionality. Judicial review is an essential part of making sure no single branch of government abuses its power. But, since Justice Scalia’s death, the Supreme Court has only had eight members, so it is politically balanced, and will struggle to make important decisions.

The Supreme Court has already come to a split decision multiple times, including in instrumental cases such as Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case about whether unions should be legally permitted to collect compulsory fees. Conservatives brought the case forward to weaken the power of unions, so in this situation the tie was a liberal victory. But if the Supreme Court had to come to a concrete decision over an issue more pressing than unions, having an even number of justices would be disastrous.

Take the example of United States v. Texas, a case currently before the Supreme Court concerning President Obama’s 2014 executive orders on immigration.

President Obama’s executive actions allow immigrant children and parents to apply for work permits. The Supreme Court will decide, among other things, if immigration laws fall under the scope of executive authority, which could have broad-reaching implications for future presidential actions.

As it currently stands, the Supreme Court is headed for a stale-

mate, with four justices in support of President Obama’s executive orders and four against. The purpose of having an odd number of justices is to avoid situations like this one. Millions of immigrants’ futures should not be played with in a grand game of politics.

By undermining President Obama’s authority and the Supreme Court’s functionality, Senator McConnell’s political aims are impairing the government. The president is supposed to provide strong, decisive leadership, and the Supreme Court should be able to guarantee justice throughout the country. The senators refusing to consider the Garland nomination are not only neglecting their jobs, but also preventing the entire government from promoting the public’s welfare, as it is mandated to do in the Constitution. Impeding the United States federal government from doing this—its most fundamental job—is outright unconstitutional.

Senator McConnell and the other senators who have refused to consider the Garland nomination must either be forced to hold a hearing, or be punished for failing to do their jobs and hindering the entire government from fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities.

For a doctor, professor, or lawyer, not showing up for work would be grounds for dismissal; similarly, for a senator, not even considering a nominee for the next Supreme Court justice should be grounds for impeachment.

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any incumbent ever.

After these disastrous contests, the DNC rightly decided to make some changes to the nomination process: they ensured that an electable candidate would be backed. To do this, they created the superdelegates.

Since their inception, superdelegates have not played a crucial role in any nominating process: the candidate that won the most popular votes has always won the nomination.

In 2008, many superdelegates switched to support Obama once it was evident that he would win the nomination.

T h e purpose of superdelegates is not to subvert democracy, but rather to secure the future of the Democratic Party as a whole, so that an ultraliberal, unelectable figure is not chosen for the nomination, only for the democratic party to live with the consequences of undelivered promises and a tarnished reputation.

And if anyone is ultraliberal, it’s Bernie. Don’t get me rH ua n

On Facebook and at rallies, one common thread among Bernie supporters is their hatred for superdelegates: one group went so far as to create a “Superdelegate Hit List,” a list of all the superdelegates’ names, phone numbers, and, at one point, their home addresses. But superdelegates are not establishment demons hell-bent on stealing votes away from the common man; they are elected officials and prominent party members there to ensure that an unelectable candidate is not nominated and to protect the cohesion of the Democratic Party.

the election, an internal committee of the DNC advised that the DNC change its nomination procedure to be based solely on primary or caucus contests, without the direct influence of party heads.

Without establishment influence, the democratic nominee process failed miserably. In 1972, the Democratic voters chose George McG over n, described as “a champion of liberal causes” by The New York Times.

He then proceeded to lose every single state in the union except Massachusetts. In the 1976 election, Jimmy Carter won the election more off Nixon’s Watergate scandal than his own merits; he also only received 50.1 percent of the popular vote.

In 1980, when Carter faced Ronald Reagan, he also flopped: with just six states and D.C., it was the worst Electoral College defeat of

ife

By Stephen Nyarko

For those of you who are fuzzy on the details of electoral decision-making, the purpose of presidential primaries and caucuses is to allocate delegates to candidates based on the percent of the statewide vote; if you get 15 percent of the vote in any state, you get 15 percent of the delegates of that state. All the delegates elected by this process are called “pledged” delegates, as they must vote for the candidate to which they are assigned, and they make up 85 percent of the delegates attending the convention in July.

The other 15 percent are unpledged delegates, or superdelegates, who can vote for whichever candidate they would like.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has 715 elected superdelegates, including present and former presidents and vice presidents, current governors, and current Congressmen.

Superdelegates were introduced as a means to further extend voter enfranchisement within the Democratic party, and their history is crucial in evaluating their efficacy and necessity.

In 1968, democratic big wigs chose Herbert Humphrey as the Democratic nominee, even though he had not won a single primary in any of the 14 states that held primaries or Washington, D.C. After Humphrey lost

Je nn

Jensen Foerster / The Spectator

Superdelegates and Their Super Jobs wrong—I love Bernie Sanders.

I like what he stands for, I like his integrity, and I like his ambition. But as a rational human being who understands how this government works, it’s not impossible to imagine all his grand ideas simply stalling in the Republican-controlled Congress. And I’m almost certain he won’t win any general election.

As an independent, he lacks the political connections for meaningful endorsements and fundraising needed for a prolonged campaign, and, according to a Gallup poll, his self-proclaimed socialism has already eliminated him consideration of 50 percent of U.S. voters.

Superdelegates would most likely not support Bernie for all of these reasons, but if you actually look at the numbers, it doesn’t seem to matter. Hillary Clinton is up by almost 350 pledged delegate votes anyway, so it isn’t as if superdelegates are the only factor denying Sanders the vote. The truth is, Sanders isn’t as popular as Hillary Clinton in the Democratic voting base.

If Sanders is going to campaign without knowledge on foreign policy, without clear and attainable goals, and with a selfendowed political affiliation half the general electorate would not vote for, wouldn’t the superdelegates be doing their job by refusing him the nomination?

Page 12

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Opinions

Xin Italie / The Spectator

Retrieving Liberty

By Stiven Peter In light of recent debates about gender identity laws, The U.S. Commission of Civil Rights published a statement condemning state laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community, claiming that any law requiring men and women to use bathrooms that correspond to their biological sex, “jeopardizes not only the dignity, but also the actual physical safety, of transgender people whose appearances may not match societal expectations of the sex specified on their identification documents.”

The commission also spoke out against religious exemptions, saying, “[they] significantly infringe upon civil rights.”

Overall, it was clear that the commission supported sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination laws. While these laws, which add the inclusion of people despite their sexual orien-

tation and gender identity, might seem innocuous to their supporters, this is not the case. Rather, they would actually force people to abandon their religious beliefs and conform to a new morality, violating the US’s historic principles of affirming liberty of conscience and religious freedom.

Proponents of these new civil rights laws claim that they would end a history of unjust discrimination and oppression. Some states and cities have placed themselves at the forefront of this new movement by enacting these laws.

Looking at their effects will help us get a picture of their enforcement.

For one thing, it would be unlawful for bakers, photographers, florists, and any other business owner to refuse service to a same sex couple, even if such work would go against their conscience.

Such punishment has already been put in place through fines, like for a small family bakery in Oregon, which was fined 135,000 dollars after refusing to bake a wedding cake celebrating a samesex marriage.

They refused because they believed that marriage is an institution between one man and woman. This belief is common to traditional Evangelicals, Orthodox Christians, and Catholics, who affirmed in the Manhattan Declaration that, “Marriage is a covenantal union of husband and wife.” Thus, participating in something that goes against that vision of human life is disobeying a holy and just God. These laws would also prevent discrimination by adoption agencies based on the applicant’s sexual orientation. Catholic adop-

tion agencies like the Catholic Charities of Boston, because they believe that children should have the care of a married mother and father, discriminate based on sexual orientation. Enforcement of sexual orientation non-discrimination laws would force adoption agencies to act against their religious beliefs and place children in homes where they will not have the best experience possible.

With respect to transgender, gender fluid, and queer individuals, it would be unlawful to refuse to use a person’s preferred name or pronoun, or to not allow individuals to use single-sex facilities and programs consistent with their gender. Such a law is already in place in New York City, and is being considered in other cities.

It also renders serious privacy and

ful to discriminate based on sexual orientation and gender. Yet this comparison to race has several problems. Race is an objective and immutable attribute. Sexual orientation and gender identity are more subjective, ambiguous and changing.

The American Psychiatric Association states, “To date there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality.”

Moreover, sexual orientation is sometimes used in reference to actions, which are subject to moral evaluation. The APA also states, “Sexual orientation also refers to a person’s sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions.” Race implies nothing

[LGBTQ+ rights] laws endanger religious liberty and freedom of speech.

safety concerns of adults, who believe that they have a right to use facilities that only people of their biological sex use, irrelevant and bigoted.

Proponents of these laws would be fine with this consequences because they believe that if it is unlawful to discriminate based on race, it should be unlaw-

about a person’s actions whereas being gay connotes not just experiencing same-sex attraction, but also voluntarily engaging in intercourse with other men. Transgender is used not simply to describe someone who experiences distress at his biological sex, but a biological male or female who voluntarily presents himself to the world and

identifies as another sex or gender.

These laws endanger religious liberty and freedom of speech in the US. This treatment of religious liberty not as the first freedom of America, but as a problem to be overcome and conformed to, goes against the US’s founding principles. The Constitution, as espoused in the first amendment, envisions a constructive relationship between religion and state that balances a citizen’s dual allegiances to God and man, without forcing him to abandon his primarily allegiance to God. This view recognizes the right of individuals and institutions to believe and act in response toward transcendent ends. This bedrock birthright of every human being is the foundation of limited government, since liberty of conscience demands that government recognize it is unjust to coerce someone to do something that goes against his conscience. It is unjust coerce a Quaker to compulsory military service. Similarly, would it not be unjust to force people to abandon their sincerest religious beliefs?

The price of not protecting religious liberty is a repudiation of our Constitution’s founding principles and the essential buffers against the overweening authority of the state. The result is a road toward despotism, in which government is the sole arbitrator of morality.

The choice for politicians, policy makers, and even students of Stuyvesant is clear. Regardless of whether or not we agree on controversial issues of sexuality and gender identity, we should not marginalize competing beliefs.

By Eliza Spinna My great great grandfather, Angelo Anthony Spisto, founded the United Barbers Association of New York in 1925. Objecting to the 12+ hour workdays Spisto and his co-workers were forced to complete six days a week, the union required barbers be paid overtime for their extra work and improved the treatment of immigrants by setting a minimum wage for all barbers. The union coordinated prices so that no barber could charge too little for his services, and the workers’ quality of life dramatically increased. Similarly, my grandfather attempted to found a professors’ union at Manhattan College in the 1970s to combat nepotism.

Though my grandfather ultimately failed, I come from a long line of ancestors who have supported unions. In part because of this, I fully acknowledge the importance of labor unions in protecting workers’ rights.

However, a single union impacts my life as a public school student immensely and has far too much power: the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), a labor

union representing over 200,000 teachers in the New York City public school system.

Education is arguably the most influential industry; the UFT’s decisions impact hundreds of thousands of students and society as a whole. Thus, it is critical for the UFT to negotiate for fair and effective policies.

I do not deny that since the UFT’s foundation in 1960, it has done a lot of good for public schools. In 2011, the UFT prevented 4,000 layoffs, and in a lawsuit with the Board of Education, it stopped the improper closings of 22 schools, and it provides health benefits to improve countless teachers’ lives.

However, recently, it has taken the power it wields too far.

Teachers must be protected from unfair accusations; principals may have ulterior motives when attempting to get rid of teachers, so it makes sense that the UFT requires evidence of misconduct before a teacher faces punishment for an alleged crime.

Yet the UFT makes firing and disciplining incompetent teachers nearly impossible.

Even Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union in the United States, says, “no teacher—myself included— wants ineffective teachers in the classroom.” Meanwhile, the UFT requires court cases for the firing of ineffective teachers that last years and cost the state thousands of dollars. One such case in 2002 stretched on for five years and cost its district over $400,000.

Terry Moe, the author of “Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools,” found that 55 percent of teachers and 47 percent of union members answered yes when asked if they thought “tenure and teacher organizations make it too difficult to weed out incompetent teachers.”

So, rather than deal with exhausting court cases, some ad-

ministrators elect to simply tolerate incompetent teachers, even though removing these consistently low-performing teachers would be extremely beneficial to their students’ education. The Brookings Institution recently conducted an analysis of public schools and projected that dismissing the bottom quartile of teachers would result in a increase in student test scores gains of 1.2 percent annually, increasing achievement significantly over time.

But there are actions far worse than incompetence that cannot be ignored, including sexual harassment and violence. As per UFT regulations, when a teacher acts dangerously, he or she is often not immediately dismissed.

Rather, Jennifer Medina of The New York Times finds teachers are frequently sent to “rubber rooms.”

Also known as reassignment centers, these are facilities negotiated by the UFT where teachers accused of offenses sit and do nothing on full pay until their excessively lengthy court cases conclude.

While it’s important to ensure that accusations of violence are true, rubber rooms drain the school system of much-needed funds. Medina found that the 550 rubber rooms currently in use cost the city $30 million a year. Those millions of dollars wasted on idle teachers getting full pay—who read the newspaper, do crossword puzzles, and nap during their time in the rooms—could be spent in countless other ways.

An alternative to having lengthy and costly court cases would be to assemble a group of parents, school administrators, teachers, and union representatives to review cases and decide on proper courses of action, including if a specific offense merits suspension. Then, resources currently spent on court cases could be used in other, more productive

Daniel Tam / The Spectator

Elena Sapelyuk / The Spectator

UFT: The Union of Failing Teachers

ways, such as on purchasing new books for students.

Additionally, the UFT detriments education by eliminating monetary incentives. The UFT negotiates salaries based on how long a teacher has taught. This means that salary does not take into account a teacher’s skill in the classroom, motivation, or work ethic. There is no monetary incentive to work harder, longer, or more efficiently, which encourages teachers to slack off.

In addition, American Progress finds that the UFT’s stance against awarding outstanding teachers and punishing incompetent teachers “encourages principals to give all teachers satisfactory marks on their evaluations, rather than taking the evaluation process seriously.”

Deciding who deserves a pay raise fairly is tough, but there is a plethora of resources available to potentially aid a council of parents, teachers, administrators, and union representatives in the decision. Anonymous student evaluations of teachers, college

admissions statistics, standardized test scores, informal observations of work ethic, classroom observations by parents, administrators, and other teachers, and graduation rates can work together to paint an accurate picture of teacher achievement. Raises based on these factors should be given to high-achieving teachers to motivate all teachers to do better.

The UFT declares on its website that it “believe[s] in raising academic standards and strengthening instruction.” It has been able to do so by protecting teachers and fighting to keep schools open. However, its tight grasp on teachers must be loosened so that it can incentivize and reward exceptional teaching while eliminating costly court processes.

A middle ground would be to establish courts made up of union members and school administrators to make joint decisions on pay and punishment. That way, more voices would be heard and decisions would be made far more efficiently.

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 13

Opinions

Xin Italie / The Spectator

His Right to Choose

By Eli Economou This past winter, the youth wing of the Swedish Liberal Party proposed a plan that would allow men to abort their parental rights to a child within the first 18 weeks of pregnancy. The idea is to give men the same chance as women to leave a pregnancy, since women currently don’t need outside consent to get an abortion in Sweden, where as many as 25 percent of known pregnancies are aborted, according to the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare. If a father chooses this abortion route, he relinquishes all parental responsibilities and rights, including the ability to see his child at all once it is born.

Sweden is considered one of the most progressive countries in the world. In the past 10 years, it has consistently ranked

in the top 10 countries in terms of quality of life by the Economist Intelligence Unit, and has also topped the UN’s list of the best nations for gender equality. Further, contraceptives are partially subsidized by the government funded health care, which pays for up to 90 percent of the total cost of birth control, and condoms are given out for free at the regional and local level, as well as at hospitals.

Sweden also has relatively high abortion rates, especially compared to other countries that do not subsidize contraceptives.

Abortion in Sweden is a relatively easy and inexpensive procedure. Standard abortions cost anywhere from $30 to $100, depending on the regional health care plan, and can be carried out so long as the woman is under 18 weeks pregnant, either at home with a pill or surgically in a hospital.

The proposed male abortion plan gives men the same chance as women to escape an

tus he conceives. If he wishes to “abort,” he signs an irreversible contract to relinquish all paternal rights to the child, including seeing it if it is born.

Abortion is often seen as a women’s issue, and while reproductive rights generally pertain to women, the role of the man and his choice in the matter of fatherhood are also important to consider. Certainly, women put a lot more, physically, into the birth of a child, but men may also be required to pay child support or contribute to medical fees—all for a child they may never have wanted in the first place.

Some see the introduction of this policy as an “easy out” for men who simply don’t want to pay up, an opportunity to swiftly cut ties to an unborn fetus in a way that women cannot. Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish magazine, found that people perceived the plan as almost a mockery of the women who must go through the physical

If [a man] wishes to “abort,” he signs an irreversible contract to relinquish himself of all paternal rights to the child, including seeing it if it is born.

law is passed—would need only to sign a piece of paper.

Ultimately, however, feminism is about gender equality, and the rights of men and women must reflect this balance. If women are able to terminate a pregnancy on their own terms, then men—who play an equal

The idea that men would gladly and without remorse sign away their paternal rights to a child they helped to create is, at some level, deeply sexist.

unplanned pregnancy. Within the first 18 weeks after conception, a man can decide whether he wants to be a father to the fe-

and emotional pain of having an abortion, and risk both physical and emotional consequences, whereas men—if this

role in conception, at the very least—need to be able to do so as well.

Further, the idea that men

would gladly and without remorse sign away their paternal rights to a child they helped to create is, at some level, sexist.

Women and men each have their own reasons for wanting and not wanting to become parents, and the law should reflect everyone’s right to make those decisions individually.

Even in a country like Sweden, where contraception is subsidized by the government, there is no way to have completely safe, pregnancy-free sex. Condoms break; hormone treatment malfunctions. Unplanned pregnancies—whether or not they are ultimately wanted by either party—are still the product of two people, and they should both get a say in their child’s outcome and their parental future. True gender equality must accommodate that.

Art Caption Contest

Minseo Kim / The Spectator

Jarett Lee / The Spectator

Each issue, we provide an ambiguous cartoon or image in need of a caption. You, the reader, can submit your caption to the Stuyvesant Spectator website (www.stuyspec.com). We choose three finalists and their captions will appear in the following issue along with its respective image.

Page 14

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

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The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Arts and Entertainment ARTSBEAT

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D

avid Geffen Presents MoMA with $100 Million Philanthropist David Geffen recently donated $100 million to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to help with its upcoming renovation and expansion. The museum plans to honor his contribution by creating three new floors in the museum to be named in his honor.

Geffen, who has also donated money to Lincoln Center and the Academy of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, California, says that MoMA has always been an integral part of his life and that he is ecstatic in his support will contribute to the museum’s future.

K

urt Cobain’s Angry Letter to David Geffen to be Auctioned In 1992, Vanity Fair published an article that suggested that Nirvana lead singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain and his wife Courtney Love had gone on a heroin binge after learning Love was pregnant. At the time, Nirvana was signed to DGC Records, owned by David Geffen. Cobain wrote to Geffen that it was true he had his wife had gone on a drug binge, but she had stopped within the first month of the news of her pregnancy. He went to explain that he loved his wife and daughter and would do anything to protect them from the media.

In response to Cobain’s angry letter, Geffen advised, “You just have to let your life go on.”

Cobain’s letter will be auctioned by Julien’s Auctions of America at Hard Rock Cafe on May 21. It is expected to sell for around $30,000.

C

ourt Orders Italian Theater to Reinstate Dancer Italian dancer Mariafrancesca Garritano stated in a 2011 interview that anorexia and infertility were common among her peers and explained how the La Scala ballet school pressured the dancers to be thin.

At the time, a spokesman and school officials refuted Garritano’s assertions. She was dismissed from the school in 2012.

On April 15, Italy’s top court ordered La Scala to reinstate Garritano and pay back the wages from her firing four years ago.

B

eyoncé’s “Lemonade” Tops the Charts Beyoncé’s new visual album, “Lemonade,” released April 23, 2016, is aiming for Number 1 on the next Billboard 200 albums chart. On April 27, sources said “Lemonade” was on track to sell possibly 450,000 copies, with its equivalent unit total at 550,000 or more. Industry forecasters now suggest the set could debut at No. 1 on the May 14-dated list, with more than 500,000 copies sold and more than 700,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending April 28.

T

he Late Prince’s Unreleased Music Might Be Released After All Prince’s half-brother, Alfred Jackson, hopes to release the legendary singer’s unreleased tunes, which had previously been kept in a bank vault. Prince is said to have kept hundreds of unreleased songs and original recordings in the locked room inside his Paisley Park studio, in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

35

Living Relatives of Leonardo da Vinci, Including Franco Zeffirelli, Tracked Down After 43 years of research, Italian historians have announced that they have found the living relatives of Leonardo da Vinci. Since da Vinci’s remains have been missing since the 16th century, the researchers went through countless paper records in their search. They managed to find 35 indirect descendants of the Renaissance master. The most famous descendant is film director Franco Zeffirelli, who is an Academy Award nominee. The other descendants include an architect, a policeman, a pastry chef, an accountant, and a blacksmith.

Museum

The Met Breuer Opens, Throwing Small Contemporary Galleries Into an Uncertain Future

By Matthew Fairbanks

Of the 83 museums and hundreds of art galleries in New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest and most well known. It recently opened the Met Breuer, a brand new location on 75th and Madison Avenue, on March 18. The building, formerly the home of the Whitney Muse-

exhibit, “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible,” has many works, from paintings by Pablo Picasso to light installations by Tatsuo Miyajima, on loan from elite museums around the world, with a combined worth of around 150-200 million dollars. The Met specifically commissioned many pieces of art, and even a couple musical works, by esteemed con-

Mika Simoncelli / The Spectator

There is a fear that the Met Breuer will dramatically undercut these smaller venues’ sales.

um of Art before it moved to the Meatpacking District, now houses the modern and contemporary art division of the Met. This is the third location of the Met, after its Medieval collection, the Cloisters in Inwood Park, and its main location on Fifth Avenue.

The Met used its vast resources to create yet another world class museum. Even its opening weekend was a remarkably extravagant experience. Its current

temporary artists just for its new museum.

While all of the effort and funds poured into the Met Breuer will surely be great for tourists and connoisseurs of contemporary art, what will its effects be on smaller contemporary art museums and galleries? There is a fear that the Met Breuer will dramatically undercut these smaller venues’ sales. The name recognition and size of the new museum

might cause potential visitors, both locals but, more importantly, tourists, to only go to this new Met to view contemporary art, rather than other smaller galleries and museums. Even larger modern art museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, might a face similar predicament, as competition will be increased. Yet, because the larger galleries have more funds than the smaller ones, they can always take measures to improve their museums to compete with the Breuer. So the larger museums may be safe, but the smaller ones may not be.

On the other hand, the Met Breuer may actually bring more business to contemporary art museums and galleries of all sizes. Rather than the prestige and quality of the Breuer causing an unbearable amount of competition, it might bring much more public awareness and interest into the entire realm of contemporary art, thereby encouraging people to not just go to the Breuer but to all of the museums that display modern and postmodern art.

Hopefully, the latter is the case, because, with more museums and galleries, comes more art in both volume and diversity. And after all, the more art there is in our society, the healthier our society is.

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 17

Arts and Entertainment

Christine Jegarl / The Spectator

ThinkPiece

By Alicia Kwok By now, you’re probably tired of hearing about the award-winning, smash-hit musical “Hamilton.” I get that. After enduring the gushing and unintelligible noises of excitement (or exasperation) oozing out of everyone from your history teacher to me to my parents to the Starbucks barista who can’t even spell your name but can spell Okieriete Onaodowan’s backwards and forwards, I don’t blame you. But I’m afraid I’m going to ask you to humor me one last time.

Back in March, “Hamilton” came under fire after seeking specifically “non-white” actors in a casting call on its website. Technically, the initial complaint issued by Actors’ Equity, the union that represents actors in theatre, objected to the implication that white actors were not welcome to audition for the roles in question. The issue, being largely one of semantics, was quickly remedied with an additional sentence explaining that all were free to attend the auditions, but “Hamilton’s” producers made it clear that these roles were written for actors of color, and that their approach to casting the show had

not changed.

Despite this, some people just didn’t seem to be getting the message. In an exhausting encore of the Internet debates within the theatre community last year, the “Hamilton” casting call became the center of a hurricane of finger-pointing, accusations of “reverse racism,” and the polarizing question of the year: Should a white actor or actress be cast in a principal role in “Hamilton”?

And for the second, third, fourth time since I first fell in love with this show, I found myself once again flailing for the right words to illustrate the complex, sprawling, deeply personal ideas and feelings and hopes that “Hamilton” represents for me, one more Chinese-American teenage girl living gingerly and nervously in (according to one of my favorite numbers from the “Hamilton” cast recording) the greatest city in the world.

Because, of course, “Hamilton” is more than an award-winning, smash-hit hip-hop musical with a fabulously diverse cast. It’s a milestone in the history of the famously white industry of musical theatre, and a milestone in the history of how this famously white country tells its stories.

comedians I could think of were white men. “There’s Margaret Cho,” said my parents, when I asked about it. I didn’t mention that I was seriously afraid that I’d have to pursue a career in comedy, just to even things out, despite my persistent stage fright and other assorted anxieties. I didn’t mention that one name felt like nothing at all against every other joke-spewing mouth on television. In hindsight, the whim was short-lived and odd and fleeting. In the moment, it was everything.

Cut to me, culturally homeless rookie musical theatre aficionado, reading about this spunky young show and its effervescent cast. And wrapped up in that nest of words was Phillipa Soo’s name—he female lead, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, it said.

Chinese-American, it said, and my insides twisted a little bit, because she was beautiful and so was her voice and just a subway ride away from me, she was center stage and building a country.

She’s Chinese-American, not a sacrifice in a caricature of a

“The ‘Hamilton’ casting call became the center of a hurricane of finger-pointing, accusations of ‘reverse racism,’ and the polarizing question of the year: Should a white actor or actress be cast in a principal role in ‘Hamilton’?”

Cut to me, in middle school, back when I managed to keep up my grades while also sleeping regularly. I was working on one of those terrible family tree projects. Teachers always seem to think it’ll be fun and enlightening, and I had neither the heart nor the courage to point out that, in fact, these activities only ever filled me with dread. “Where did Gung-gung emigrate from?” I would ask my mother, as if her father would have told her. As if he himself could have remembered much about his origins as an adopted, four-year-old immigrant. Honestly, my family knows Walt Disney World better than we know anything or anybody in mainland China. In theory, we are Chinese. In practice, we are completely rootless, history-less.

It’s funny. This country is the only home I’ve ever had, and I’ll never belong here. A few habits and words and traditions and a smattering of genetics and color are all that tie me as an individual to a land mass on the other side of the globe, and that’s somehow the first thing anyone sees in me.

I’m too Chinese to be American, and too American to be Chinese.

I’m culturally homeless, so to speak.

dress but somebody who exists and matters. She’s part of the narrative, and the remains of my five-year-old self bounced and overflowed with pride because, Look, Mommy! She’s like me, and she belongs here. She’s like me!

And my sixteen-year-old self can’t help but wonder if this is what it’s like to feel American.

At the end of the day, of course, I am powerless. I can’t stop anyone from believing that “Hamilton” would be just as amazing or even more spectacular with more white cast members. I can’t stop a high school in Nebraska from putting on a production of the musical, complete with a pale, corn-haired Aaron Burr.

And at the end of the day, it still hurts. It still hurts to think that, in a business stuffed to the gills with roles written by and for white people, people of color can’t have this one thing. It still hurts to think that it’s more important to keep yet another door open to the demographic with every other advantage in the book than it is to reserve just one stage for the now-kindergartners and futurebitter teenage thinkpiece writers to finally see themselves as part of the narrative.

asks why she refuses to tell their doorman about their marriage, while she, ever the flirt, tries to distract him from asking such questions with her charm. The two shared great chemistry, and had no trouble overcoming the lack of actual set-pieces. As the scene progresses, it becomes clear that her reluctance stems not from romantic frustration, but from the rules for single occupancy in the apartment itself.

The two address this seemingly innocuous confrontation with a great deal of charm and sarcasm, playing with each other’s energy and seeming to have a lot of fun, which translated well to the high school audience.

After the short scene, Shenoy and Wu treated the audience to a talkback, which focused not on the plot of the story, but on the broader implications that the play posed. Shenoy discussed that, as an Indian-American, she wants to bring awareness to Asian characters. “I don’t ever see Asian women as romantic leads. And when they are, they’re kind of fetishized,” she said. Wu agreed, noting that this role was his first in a long acting career

as a romantic lead. He further addressed the problem AsianAmerican characters often face, the caricaturization of stereotypical features, the most pervasive of which is a penchant for nerdiness. He conceded that these stereotypes were less prevalent in large, diverse cities like New York, but held firm in his belief that they were especially damaging in rural areas.

Wu said that, growing up as an aspiring actor, he always wanted “to have a role that’s not the foreign nerdy kid, the CS nerd […] I almost failed APCS my junior year.”

On a more serious note, he addressed the importance storytelling has on young minds, saying that “If […] stories deem us invisible, then we’re invisible.”

Instead, he argues, we should focus on bringing stories of Asian-Americans front and center stage. And instead of making them the “typical Asian character,” we should make them more human. “Asian people do have sex,” added Shenoy. “It’s true. It’s been proven.”

In this vein, Shenoy has devoted her playwriting and acting

Courtesy of Sophie Oberfield

English teacher Sophie Oberfeld’s junior class of Asian-American literature students gathered in the library to watch a scripted reading of playwright Nandita Shenoy’s “Washer/Dryer,” a romantic comedy centered around a recently eloped Asian couple living on the Upper East Side on Tuesday, April 12. Sonia (played

by Shenoy herself ) is an aspiring actor, hot off her latest job in her first ever national commercial, and Michael, expertly played by Stuyvesant alumnus Johnny Wu (‘01) is a journalist struggling to make ends meet.

The scene opened on Sonia’s studio apartment, decorated conservatively with art deco paintings, and featuring a pullout couch in the middle. The apartment is messy and in disarray.

At least, this is what the library audience was told to imagine by the stage directions, read aloud

by Oberfeld.

The couple enters, amicably discussing their relationship. The dynamic between the two characters is easily decipherable: he, stressed throughout the scene,

Theatre being such a famously white industry, I can’t expect every assembly of aspiring actors or community of musical theatre fans to immediately understand how distressing and repulsive I find the idea of a white cast of “Hamilton.” I don’t expect you to.

I just ask that you listen.

“Hamilton” is a musical written and composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, a person of color, performed by an amazing cast in which all the principals are people of color. It employs styles and genres created by and long associated with people of color. It does not bill itself as the story of a successful Scottish politician, but that of an immigrant and a bastard. It is a story that, despite its famously white and problematic context, features a Puerto Rican man and a half-Jewish, half-African-American man high-fiving and declaring, “Immigrants: We get the job done.”

The historical figures being represented in this scene were, in reality, white transplants from overseas, but if you don’t think the visual double entendre is intentional, I really worry about you. Miranda is a thoughtful and brilliant writer, intentionally weaving references to hip-hop and showtunes alike throughout the show. His emphasis on his titular character’s identity as an immigrant, and thus as an outsider, is no accident.

And, well, I have something to lose, too. It’s not much, but I like to think I’m not the only one.

Cut to me, over ten years ago, back when I could still scrabble together basic sentences in Cantonese. “I’m not Chinese,” I told my parents. Chinese people speak Chinese. I speak English.

Ergo, I must be English. It was pretty cute. It was also kind of sad, because I really was (albeit adorably) trying to distance myself from being painfully, obviously Chinese. It was sad, because even kindergartners understand that things are easier without certain words attached to their skin. It was sad, because five-year-olds are still young enough to imagine they can become unicorns and princesses and white people.

Cut to me, a little bit older, back in my Catholic school days.

I had just realized that all of the

“Washer/Dryer” Comes to the Stuyvesant Library

Theatre

By Liam Elkind

This Is Not For You

career to making plays focused around the lives of immigrants and foreigners, where the focus is not on their race but instead on their day-to-day lives. She posited that bringing “Washer/Dryer” to New York is just one step on the road to racial equality.

The play is running at the Beckett Theater at Theater row, and features three Asian cast members, one actor of open race, and one white. Shenoy said that her reasoning for the diversity is that she “didn’t want it to be an

Asian play; [she] wanted it to be a New York story.” That said, she urged each member of the AsianAmerican literature students, who were beginning their latest assignment, a play, to consider the stereotypes often applied to characters in the genre, and fight it with their own creativity. Speaking to the students, Wu said, “we need more stories by people like you to elevate us beyond our minority status. To give us a voice.”

Page 18

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Arts and Entertainment Prince: In Memoriam

Prince the Prophet

Thinkpiece

By Ben Shapiro

erated drumbeats are some pretty dark, brooding lyrics.

“I guess I should’ve known / By the way you parked your car sideways / That it wouldn’t last” is the decidedly unhappy conclusion of “Little Red Corvette.”

“1999” starts out like a real buzz kill. Who knew one of the greatest pieces of party music has some of the most depressing lyrics? It starts, “But when I woke up this mornin’, could’ve sworn it was judgment day / The sky was all purple, there were people runnin’ everywhere / Tryin’ to run from the destruction, you know I didn’t even care/ Say say two thousand zero zero party over, oops, out of time.”

While Prince may not have been predicting events like those that took place at the World Trade Center on 9/11, his descriptions feel reminiscent of what happened, even 20 years later. Even though Prince may no longer be alive, his songs still are, and are as relevant as they were in the 1980s, and even 1999.

Tina Lim / The Spectator

“Life is just a party and parties aren’t meant to last / So if I’m gotta to die, I’m gonna listen to my body tonight.”

Those are lyrics from “1999,” one of the late singer Prince’s big hits. Written 34 years ago, in 1982, the words foreshadow his recent passing. He died on April 21, 2016 at the age of 57.

Prince was a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who sold almost 100 million records embracing a variety of genres including rock, funk, R&B. His hits include “When Doves Cry,” “Purple Rain,” and “1999.” He and his music were so flamboyant and eternally young-sounding that I didn’t realize how old he was until his death was announced. After all, “1999” was chosen to be part of an album called “Best 90’s FM Music.”

This is a common misconception with Prince’s music—that it was written much more recently than it actually was. In a video

of the MTV’s Greatest Hits 1992, another hit off the same album, “Little Red Corvette,” is tagged “Prince, 1999” even though the video screened is from 1983. That’s because the name of the album was “1999,” but this led many to think that Prince’s greatest hits, like “Little Red Corvette,” were written in 1999, and that Prince was a much younger artist than he actually was.

The reason the misconception carried on until his death was announced is that the music has a timeless quality. You can listen to it on your iPhone, taking the subway home from school, and have the same reaction as your parents did when they were clubbing in the eighties. The music is bright, it’s got a great beat, and makes it feel like it’s time to party. The heavy synth and downbeat might give its age away, but not completely.

Another big reveal, now that we are nationally re-examining his work in memoriam is that under the big, happy computer-gen-

Prince’s Greatest Hits

playlist

As we mourn the death of the legendary musician Prince, one thing we can do is take “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s poignant advice, posted on Twitter shortly after the world found out about the death: “Step away from your computer.

Walk around, blast some Prince.

It’s the only thing that has saved my day, it may save yours.”

Fusing rock, R&B, funk, pop, and more, Prince started his career as a teenager and became one of the best-selling musicians in history. His biggest Billboard hits, the top five of which hit number one, showcase his diversity of style and enormous popularity. As long as there are people listening to his passionate, protean voice, in a way, Prince is kept alive.

Karen Lai / The Spectator

ADVERTISEMENTS

TUTORING PHYSICS-REGENTS-AP-SAT by an 18 year Brooklyn Tech Teacher

WILLIAM AGHASSI 212-927-4290 917-881-5755 waghassi@hotmail.com

“When Doves Cry” 1984 “Kiss” 1986 “Let’s Go Crazy” 1984 “Cream” 1991 “Batdance” 1989 “Raspberry Beret” 1985 “U Got the Look” 1987 “Purple Rain” 1984

“The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” 1994 “Sign ‘O’ the Times” 1987 “Little Red Corvette” 1983 “Diamonds and Pearls” 1992 “Thieves in the Temple” 1990 “Pop Life” 1985 “Delirious” 1983

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 19

Arts and Entertainment Get a Life: The Cultured Edition

calendar ONGOING

20

Film Screening “Captain America: Civil War” @ Select Theaters

Friday

Art Show “Seoul” @ DOOSAN Gallery until 5/12

18

Album Release Ariana Grande’s “Dangerous Woman” @ iTunes

Concert “Beyoncé: Formation World Tour” @ Select Venues Musical “Cirque du Soleil: Paramour” @ Lyric Theatre Musical “Dear Evan Hansen” @ Tony Kiser Theatre until 5/29 Art Show “Lisa Lala: Ideograms” @ Anthony Philip Fine Art

22 Sunday

Wednesday

Musical “Dear Evan Hansen” @ Second Stage Theatre until 5/22

29

Festival “Passport to Taiwan” @ Union Square North

Book Event “Robert Herjavec Book Event” @ Tribeca Barnes and Noble

14

19

27

Saturday

Thursday

Friday

Festival “9th Ave. Food Festival NYC” @ 9th Avenue between 42nd and 57th Street

Art Show “LIGHTSCAPES 2016 Week 4” @ Van Cortlandt Manor

Film Release “X-Men Apocalypse” @ Select Theaters

21

Art Show “Art on Randall’s Island” @ Randall’s Island Park

Saturday

Performance Art “Made in New York Jazz Gala” @ Tribeca Performing Arts Center

It’s not every day you get to say that there’s a musical about one of your school’s alumni. Not to mention that it is an off-Broadway production and has received several award nominations. Luckily, today is one of those days, and I get to say just that. “Cagney” tells the story of Stuyvesant’s own James Cagney (Class of 1917), who rose to become one of the most prominent actors in Hollywood’s history. Then, while at the top, he battled for the morality of the cinema industry.

Cagney was born on the Lower East Side in Manhattan on July 17, 1899. Both of his parents were of Irish descent, and the family lived in poverty. Cagney attended Stuyvesant and graduated in 1917. A picture of him in his Stuyvesant baseball uniform can be found in the glass cube outside of Room 836.

He went on to attend Columbia University, where he planned on majoring in art, but dropped out after one semester when his father died from the flu pandemic that year. Cagney returned home and became the man of the house. He took on jobs as a junior architect, copy boy for a newspaper, book custodian at the New York Public Library, bellhop, draughtsman, and night doorkeeper. All of his earnings went to his family.

As a child, Cagney was sickly most of the time due to the family’s circumstances. That, however, did not stop him from engaging in athletics later on in life.

As a young boy, Cagney learned how to tap dance, something that would aid him later in his acting career. He was the runner-up in New York State’s lightweight boxing title and also played semiprofessional baseball for a local team. Most of Cagney’s time, however, was devoted to working at odd jobs in order to take care of his family. Then, one day while working at Wanamaker’s Depart-

Convention “Lower East Side Festival of the Arts” @ 155 First Avenue on 10th Street Film Release “Alice Through the Looking Glass” @ Select Theaters

Art Show “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology” @ The Metropolitan Museum of Art

By Sunny Zhao

Art Show “Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit” @ Washington Square Park

May

Play “Daphne’s Dive” @ Signature Theatre

ThEATre

Sunday

Cagney: From Stuyvesant to the Silver Screen to a Musical in His Memory

ment Store in 1919, he learned of a new job opportunity. That’s where “Cagney” the musical begins its story.

“James Cagney was forged on the streets of New York and it is perfect that we are telling his story [at Westside Theater],” wrote Robert Creighton, who conceived of, co-wrote, and stars in the musical, in an email interview.

Nestled between Hell’s Kitchen and the Garment District, Westside Theatre is an off-Broadway venue built out of an old historic church.

I traveled there on a cold Saturday night while the brisk air cut through my entire body. The floor was packed with people, including senior citizens who could have been fans of Cagney back in his prime. The stage itself was surprisingly smaller than I had expected, smaller than our own Murray Kahn Theater here at Stuyvesant.

A few minutes after I sat down, the lights dimmed and the musical began.

The curtain rises to show Cagney (Creighton) and Jack L. Warner (Bruce Sabath), the cofounder of and the driving force behind Warner Bros. After not having seen each other for years, they are now both at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Warner is there to introduce Cagney before he comes onstage to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for his services to the cinema industry. Before the ceremony begins, however, the two argue with each other.

Over the years, Cagney and Warner were engaged in multiple court battles with one another.

Cagney was the first actor to ever walk out on a major Hollywood studio (in this case, Warner Bros) and come back with a better contract than before. He set the precedent for the belief that no studio had the right to give unfair wages and break its word with actors.

Cagney and Warner then look back on their careers through a

series of flashback scenes.

The first flashback is set in 1919 at Wanamaker’s Department Store, as previously mentioned.

Cagney and his coworkers are receiving their wages when they discover that they’re being short changed.

Immediately, Cagney is furious and demands fair pay from the manager. A brawl ensues and Cagney wins the fight, but loses his job.

Afterwards, he learns about a job advertisement searching for a dancer to perform in a play.

Cagney decides to audition for the role, not expecting to actually get it. But when he performs a complicated dance step, he’s hired immediately. Each week he is paid $35, a mountain of cash that makes life easier for him and his family.

Fascinated by the work and grateful for the money earned, Cagney searches for more theater work and eventually takes the lead in a Broadway performance.

He’s overwhelmed by his success and then is surprised even more when Warner Bros offers him a job.

Cagney begins to be typecast into gangster films

because of his cool, strong, and aggressive demeanor on screen. This however, is something that he fights against constantly in his career despite his massive earnings. Although each of his films earns a lot at the box office, Cagney is underpaid for every role and never gets a raise from Warner Bros. This causes

him to walk out on the studio for several years.

When Cagney returns to Warner Bros, he gets a new, lucrative contract that pays him well, gives him the right to choose any film to star in, and total creative control over the script.

Back at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Warner asks Cagney why he ever went against the studio. Warner insists that they made a lot of money together and that they had a good system.

Bewildered, Cagney says to Warner, “Jack, you never did get it, did you? It was never about the money. It was about making sure that the studio never broke its promises and that the little guy wasn’t taken advantage of.”

Cagney donated much of what he earned to charities throughout his lifetime. He truly believed that, by walking out on his studio, he made clear his unwillingness to submit to the injustice caused by a big company. He believed that he was fighting for the little guy like he did back before he was famous.

“Cagney” features tap dancing prominently in almost every scene of the musical. Before that night, I had never found tap dancing to be even remotely interesting.

However, throughout the performance, I could not keep my eyes off of the cast members’ feet.

Their energetic movements and the continuous rhythm of their shoes drumming out a catchy beat on stage elevated the significance of tap dancing in my mind ten-fold. Tap dancing requires a lot of ener-

Yu Xin Zheng / The Spectator

gy, and each cast member kept it up for more than two hours.

The score in “Cagney” boasts an original, modern repertoire combined with some old fashioned classics. Songs like “Grand Old Flag” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy” are well matched to the musical’s older setting and really bring you back to Cagney’s era. Creighton’s tenor voice rings throughout the theatre and places a nice touch on many of his solos. He does justice to Cagney’s background as a song and dance man. While watching the musical, I even caught myself one time slipping to the belief that I was actually watching the real Cagney perform.

Over email, Creighton said he felt a certain similarity to Cagney.

“Creating this show has been a dream of mine since I was in acting school 23 years ago! A teacher told me I reminded them of Cagney,” Creighton explained.“I started watching his films and reading about who he was as a person and knew that I wanted to tell his story in a musical.”

He also expressed appreciation: “I am so excited to be getting to do it in such a great way. A lot of people have come into my path along the way to help make it happen and I’m very grateful,” he wrote.

“Cagney,” the musical about Hollywood’s tough guy in tap shoes, is a vibrant and captivating production. Cagney wanted fairness in Hollywood and that’s what he devoted his life to. The musical embodies this message and it reminds us of Cagney’s contributions not only to the silver screen, but to the little guy.

Cagney’s legacy and his journey to stardom will always be remembered––in an especially moving way for Stuyvesant students as we remember that his journey took him through the school we go to now.

Page 20

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Arts and Entertainment

content on pages 20 - 22

Shows That Have Transformed On-Screen Gender and Sexuality

By Winnie Kong and Cheyanne Lawrence Before the 1990s, there were very few representations of LGBTQ+ characters on television. This exemplified “symbolic annihilation,” a term coined by writer George Gerbner to explain the lack of media representation of minority groups and defined “as the way cultural production and media representations ignore, exclude, marginalize, or trivialize a particular group.” This lack of visibility reinforces the dominant culture and contributes to heterosexism within television.

Fortunately, over the past few decades, on-screen LGBTQ+ representation has changed a great deal, but at a slow pace. By the 2000s, lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals were represented in a variety of shows, but transgender individuals had virtually no representation on television and would not until 2006. Today LGBTQ+ characters have become pivotal points of film and primetime television.

Grey’s Anatomy (2005 - Present)

Amber Yang / The Spectator

This American television series follows the lives of the surgeons as they attempt to have both a successful career and a healthy relationship. For Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez), the head of orthopedic surgery, things are going well until her discovery about her sexual orientation. She has been straight her whole entire life and had even married a man. After her divorce, she starts hanging out with Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith); their friendship grows, as does their attraction for each other. When fellow colleague comments that they “seem like a couple,” Callie stops spending time with Hahn and starts having sexual relations with her male colleague, Mark Sloan (Eric Dane). However, her denial only makes her attraction to women stronger.

When her homophobic father condemns her for using words from the Bible, Callie says, “Jesus is my savior, daddy, not you! And Jesus would be ashamed of you for judging me! He would be ashamed of you for turning your back on me. He would be ashamed.” These words became an inspiration to the LGBTQ+ community, as it gave them a sense of hope in coming out to their families and friends, despite the possibility of rejection.

Tomboy (2011)

Scandal (2012 - Present)

The Way He Looks (2014)

In this French film, the director Cèline Sciamma explores the significance of gender identity in social interaction from an early age, the divide between sex and gender, the difficulties of being transgender and young, and how Mikhael (Zoé Héran) navigates these with sunshine, innocence, and love in the background. As his family moves into a Parisian suburb, and 10-year-old Laure, who was born female, deliberately presents as a boy named Mikhael to the neighborhood children. Mikhael is an closeted transgender boy and this film follows his experiences with his newfound friends, Lisa––his potential love interest, his younger sister, and his complicated relationship with both his parents and society.

Shonda Rhimes’s dramas are known for having plenty of complex relationships that drive the storylines, and the one between Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) and James Novak (Dan Bucatinsky) is no exception. Cyrus is a dynamic gay character, presented as an antagonist of sorts as the White House Chief of Staff and the President’s right-hand man.

Unlike many of primetime’s previous gay characters, Cyrus isn’t reduced to nothing more than a gay character and is absent of offensive stereotypes. He’s a political animal, a monster even, he’s terrifying and brutal, and he’s totally in love with his husband. But because James is a correspondent for the White House––and constantly looking for the very same truths that his husband is constantly trying to cover up––their relationship is beyond complicated and one of the most well written on TV. This representation is part of a larger movement: according to the Glaad “Where We Are on TV” report, in 2012 there was a record high (4.4 percent) of regularly scripted LGBTQ+ characters on primetime TV.

This Brazilian film features Leonardo (Ghilherme Lobo), a blind teenager, and his journey of struggles for independence and love. While talking with his best friend, Giovana (Tess Amorim), about “first kisses,” he speaks about how he considers such an event an impossible occurrence for him because of his disability. Everything changes when Gabriel (Fabio Audi), a new student, comes into the scene; he not only becomes Giovana’s new love interest, but Leonardo’s as well. At this point, everything is confusing. Struggling with the notion of being gay and having a disability, Leonardo starts making reckless decisions. The moments exchanged between Leonardo and Gabriel become bittersweet. This film stresses the hardship of not only having a disability, but also discovering one’s sexuality at the same time. “It’s hard not to be moved by such a light and true story, which nullifies any kind of prejudice,” Raisa Rossi of Almanaque Virtual said. Despite the main character being homosexual, this film portrays the universal idea of (falling in) love.

Orange is the New Black (2013- Present)

How to Get Away with Murder (2014 - Present)

The series is praised for its female characters that represent a variety of sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, social classes, and gender identities as it follows the story of Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) adjusting to life in prison and interacting with other women during her incarceration. At a time when up to 73 percent of LGBTQ+ characters on TV are white, “Orange is the New Black” allows non-white members of the LGBTQ+ community to shine and tell their stories. However, the show has been criticized for its omission of explicitly bisexual characters. When discussing the show, Bisexual Resource Center President Ellyn Ruthstrom said, “I enjoyed the show a lot and thought it was a shame that for a show that is trying to push the boundaries on several levels, that it still resorts to the old binary of gay/ straight.”

Defying all odds in this particular drama, Shonda Rhimes depicts the reality of being queer. Since the very beginning of this series, Connor Walsh (Jack Falahee) and Oliver Hampton (Conrad Ricamora) have been openly gay. They have highlighted the reality of the relationship of two homosexual males, from broadcasting their sex life to learning that Hampton is HIV-positive. Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) is a black woman, as well as a brilliant criminal defense attorney––she projects confidence every step of the way. Based on flashbacks, an interesting twist about Keating is her bisexuality. When she reunites with her past lover, Eve Rothlo (Famke Janssen), their old love rekindles. Depicting Annalise Keating as a queer black woman of power conveys the message that the minorities of the LGBTQ+ community are capable of doing anything; they are not limited to certain ideals just because of their ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. “I’m normalizing TV. I am making TV look like the world looks. Women, people of color, LGBTQ people, equal way more than 50 percent of the population. Which means it ain’t out of the ordinary,” Rhimes said.

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 21

Arts and Entertainment The Controversy Surrounding LGBTQ+ Character Deaths

Amber Yang / The Spectator

Thinkpiece

By Eliana Kavouriadis SPOILER ALERT: This article references to the deaths of LGBTQ+ characters from popular films and TV shows.

Lexa, a recurring character on The CW’s popular TV drama, “The 100,” was killed on March 3 of this year. It is not at all unusual for characters to be killed off of popular television series, and Lexa is certainly not the first “The 100” character to die, but her death sparked a much different fan reaction than most television character deaths. Throughout the week following the release of the episode in which she died, “The 100” showrunner Jason Rothenberg lost 16,000 of his 121,000 Twitter followers. In that same week, hashtags like #LexaDeservedBetter, #ForeverLexa, and #LexaIsOurs trended on Twitter. There was even a fundraiser that raised nearly $121,000 in Lexa’s name, but why? What was it about Lexa’s death that caused such a fierce backlash?

A particular, seemingly minute facet of Lexa’s character caused the backlash: her lesbian identity. Because Lexa was an LGBTQ+ character, her death was part of a disturbing trend where LGBTQ+ characters are killed at a rate disproportionate to the rate at which their cisgender, straight counterparts are killed. According

to Autostraddle, a website with content targeted toward queer women, out of all the lesbian and bisexual characters on TV shows that are no longer on the air, 153 have died, whereas only 29 have had happy endings. Although there are no statistics on the lesbian and bisexual characters in shows that are currently airing, there is little hope for them, for the majority of the aforementioned deaths are recent. There have already been 12 lesbian and bisexual character TV deaths in 2016 alone. These deaths are so common that they are considered to be a part of a TV trope known as “Bury Your Gays.”

While the LGBTQ+ representation in popular culture has improved tremendously over the past decade, it is still scarce, and much of it is in the form of onedimensional “gay best friend” side characters. Thus, positive representation through well-developed characters is especially cherished within the LGBTQ+ community. It not only helps queer and trans people struggling with self-acceptance, but it also normalizes queer and trans identities in a heteronormative and cisnormative society. If a queer or trans person can see a character that they identify with on TV, that person can go from feeling isolated to feeling validated, normal, and cool. Moreover, other people who aren’t necessarily queer or trans can also start seeing queer and trans people as normal and cool.

Thousands of LGBTQ+-identifying fans latched onto Lexa, for she was widely regarded as one of the most well-developed lesbian characters the community has had in awhile. In “The 100,” Lexa was the commander of the 12 clans in a post-apocalyptic world. She was portrayed as a strong, powerful political leader, yet she was susceptible to emotional vulnerability. Additionally, her strength and power were expressed in a feminine way. Strength is a stereotypically

TELEVISION

By Chelsea Cheung From an iconic Olympic champion to a commercial marketer to a reality television dad, 66-year-old Caitlyn Jenner is now an icon in the LGBTQ+ community. A symbol of momentous breakthroughs in the long battle for transgender issues, the powerful surge of support from various social media platforms during her transition last year is a testimony to this hallmark. Along with her sex reassignment, Jenner chooses to diverge from the path of her family’s well-known voyeuristic reality show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” to starring in her more quiet and serious miniseries.

“I am Cait” documents Caitlyn’s transition, as she demonstrates the daily drama of being a celebrity transgender advocating for trans rights. Yet, her appearances on the less purposeful “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” seems to be able to draw in a larger audience than what is supposedly a groundbreaking documentary.

While the first episode of “I am Cait” was watched by a whopping 2.7 million viewers, thanks to an interview with Diane Sawyer and an infamous “Vanity Fair” cover story, each subsequent episode had less than half as many viewers. The second season fared even worse, with about 0.55 to 0.86 million viewers for every show. The lack of viewership can

masculine trait, and it is rare for a character to be portrayed as strong and not masculine in nature.

Lexa was also given a main character love interest, Clarke, who was an equally well-written female character with both strengths and weaknesses. They had a slow-build relationship that picked up the show’s large queer fan base throughout the latter half of season 2 up until episode 7 of season 3, where Lexa was killed by a stray bullet minutes after her first and only sex scene with Clarke. More so than the fact that she was killed, people found fault in the lazy, careless way in which she was written off of the show.

These deaths are so common that they are considered to be a part of a TV trope known as “Bury Your Gays.”

Fans wondered why she was killed by a stray bullet just like Tara from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” another positively portrayed lesbian character, or why Dr. Denise Cloyd from “The Walking Dead” was shot by a crossbow bolt a couple of weeks after Lexa’s death. It vaguely reminded “The Walking Dead” fans of when Alisha, another queer character on the show, died back in 2013. The trend isn’t limited to queer women: “Degrassi” fans were devastated when Adam, the only trans-

gender character on the show, died in a car accident.

All of these unlikely, tragic deaths lead to the bigger question: Why is it so commonplace for LGBTQ+ characters to be killed in such ways, but the majority of characters on television are not killed off in similar manners? At the end of every television show, you don’t see the majority of the show’s characters perish in a sudden, violent bloodbath. It’d be considered awkward, unnecessary, and bad writing— everything a show would want to avoid.

It’s no coincidence that the LGBTQ+ characters are the ones that die more frequently, yet these deaths are often defended by showrunners with a plethora of excuses.

In the case of “The 100,” the actress portraying Lexa, Alycia Debnam Carey, was on another show, “Fear the Walking Dead,” and according to Rothenberg, Lexa’s death was necessary to the season 3 plot. However, fans presume that the overall negative opinions of LGBTQ+ people tarnish show ratings, and thus queer characters are only meant to be present for short amounts of time to attract queer fans. This method of attracting queer fans is called “queerbaiting.”

Queerbaiting comes from the idea that LGBTQ+ people, culture, and relationships should only be present on television in order to be credited as diverse and cater to a minority group.

However, the reason it is considered so controversial is because it undermines the existence of LGBTQ+ people as more than a temporary love interest or the punch line of a joke. They’re everywhere, and they come in all shapes and sizes. They live full lives, and they don’t die to further someone else’s plotline. Thus, alongside #LexaDeservedBetter came the hashtag #LGBTFansDeserveBetter and the $121,000 raised via the Trevor Project promoting the safety of at-risk LGBTQ+ youth.

Weeks after the commotion began surrounding “The 100,” Rothenberg wrote a long-awaited open apology letter to the queer fans of the show. In the letter, Rothenberg acknowledged the reason that this death was perceived as problematic: “Despite my reasons [to kill off Lexa], I still write and produce television for the real world where negative and hurtful tropes exist. And I am very sorry for not recognizing this as fully as I should have.

Knowing everything I know now, Lexa’s death would have played out differently.”

However, his apology was not fully accepted, for there were excuses embedded in his apology: “In our show, all relationships start with one question: ‘Can you help me survive today?’

It doesn’t matter what color you are, what gender identity you are, or whether you’re gay, bi, or straight. The things that divide us as global citizens today don’t matter in this show.” Perhaps in the fictional universe of “The 100,” homophobia does not exist, and people only care about survival. However, homophobia is a reality in the lives of the people watching the show, and these are the people who can get personally affected by the things that they’re seeing on television.

To this day, Lexa’s fans are still trending hashtags in the name of Lexa, LGBTQ+ fans, and all minorities. It has been a couple of months since the infamous episode’s release, but the message is heard loud and clear. News sites, including “TV.com,” “BBC,” and “Variety,” covered the death’s unusual backlash, and contemplated what it may mean for the future of LGBTQ+ representation on television. Hopefully, it will cause screenwriters to view killing LGBTQ+ characters as a faux pas. Now that screenwriters can see how negatively people react to the “bury your gays” trope, they can keep our beloved characters from becoming a mere statistic in 2017.

“I am Cait”: The Importance of Transition

most likely be attributed to the fact that “I am Cait” just doesn’t feel very genuine.

Jenner is, yes, an icon, but some argue that she will only ever remain a pop culture icon. Due to her background in the not-atall serious “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” Jenner’s ridiculous image can’t seem to escape her.

In addition, Jenner has been accused of only having “I am Cait” to make money

tion, and, consequently, money.

A lack of authenticity surfaces yet again during an infamous moment in Season 2 in which Jenner is on a road trip with her friends, and Jenner harshly criticizes presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, candidly broadcasting her distaste for her as a presidential candidate. Jenner causes a stir amongst her friends, who are also

and to project herself into the limelight even further, and what follows, not prettily, is backlash.

When Jenner recently won the Arthur Ashe Courage award for her 40-year-old Olympic victories, activists argued that the award was stolen from those who deserved it. They accused the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly (ESPYS) award and Jenner for setting up the situation so that both the awards ceremony and Jenner could get more attenMichelle Chu / The Spectator

transgender, when she says she supports Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

Her friends then attempt, in a levelheaded manner, to point out that Trump does not share Jenner’s stance on transgender issues. Jenner comes off as loud and defensive as she fends off any rebuttals. Eventually, the debate grows into a heated argument, and Jenner’s friends leave her alone in her frustration.

However, in a later episode, when Jenner meets Clinton in Washington D.C., Jenner’s demeanor does not reflect her previous commentary about Clinton. Instead, she smiles, converses, and takes photos with Clinton, and Jenner’s friend, Zachary Drucker, says Jenner was “starstruck” after “meeting a presidential frontrunner.”

Times when Jenner lacks the ability to coolly listen to the people around her contribute to Jenner’s isolation from the transgender community—an issue that needs to be resolved in a show where she is supposed to open up about being transgender. Although “I am Cait” focuses on Jenner’s transition, she

is still plagued by emotional barriers.

Throughout the show, her ex-wife, Kris Jenner, makes several appearances in an attempt to reconcile their relationship.

Nevertheless, Caitlyn has trouble opening to her emotional exwife, and stays weirdly emotionless. Later in the interview, Kris Jenner says, “One of the things I’ve noticed is that Bruce wasn’t as sensitive as I wished he would be. I think I used to chalk it up to the fact that he was a guy, but I’m kind of realizing now that that’s just Bruce/Caitlyn’s personality.”

Furthermore, the stake that Jenner has in pop culture is another isolation factor that separates her from the majority of the less privileged trans viewers.

As shown in the show, protesters call Jenner a travesty in the LGBTQ+ community, “an insult to trans people,” and “an insult to women.”

Moreover, much of the public is homophobic, and resents Jenner for defining as a woman.

An appalling amount of hate for transsexuals contributes to the show’s poor ratings.

But, isn’t that what shows like “I am Cait” are for? Transgender issues are still unresolved, but drawing attention to these issues is crucial to resolving them.

Though “I am Cait” may not be a terribly well-made show, it’s significance as a step forward for representation of the LGBTQ+ community outweighs its flaws.

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 22

Arts and Entertainment LGBTQ+ Teen Gala: A Space for NYC’s Queer Teens

ThinkPiece

By Winnie Kong A breather, a sanctuary– –flowers, palm fronds, tea, and teal. Perks included infinite possibilities and people waiting to be met.

The school cafeteria became a space to celebrate LGBTQ+ pride on the afternoon of April 1. Hosted by Annegail Moreland, senior and president of Stuy Spectrum, and made possible with the assistance of Spectrum members (and sponsorship of David’s Tea), the LGBTQ+ Teen Gala was the first event of its kind. “The young

queer community is usually pretty fragmented, and safe places to connect are rare. No one I know has ever done something like this,” Moreland said.

The LGBTQ+ Teen Gala was a stepping stone to gender and sexuality acceptance in schoolendorsed events. “Where older members of the LBGTQ+ community have some gay and lesbian bars, younger people obviously don’t have that advantage,” sophomore Marica Derose said.

It gave the queer youth of New York City a place, even if it was only for one day, to be con-

sidered normal. It was judgmentfree zone based on positivity. Being queer comes with burdens and blessings, and this event wasa blessing that brought euphoria to many.

It specifically invited the LGBTQ+ community, breaking the social norms of school-endorsed events. Gay-Straight Alliances and students from other schools were invited as well. “It made them realize that there were people like them outside the small bubble of their school,” one attendee said.

With approximately 115 attendees, people formed con-

nections while mingling and speaking about their personal experiences. “I met multiple kids from my classes that I had no idea were LGBTQ+, because it’s not a commonly discussed topic,” sophomore Michela Marchini said.

Libby Moore, talk show host and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey’s former chief of staff, made a guest appearance and shared her LGBTQ+ experience, talking about coming out and growing up homosexual.

The LGBTQ+ Teen Gala ended with smiles––it was a triumph for

both the attendees and Stuy Spectrum. “The event really opened up the eyes of the attendees on how tight-knit of a community we are,” said Rhys Suero, junior and co-vice president of Stuy Spectrum. With unity in fighting for the queer youth of the future, there is glory in every little step along the way.

“Spectrum does hope to make this an annual tradition,” sophomore Cheyenne Smith-Harper said.

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Page 23

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 24

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

Carrie Ou/ The Spectator

Trump Insists 7-11 Comment Was Not a Mistake

By YVONNE PAN and MICHAEL XU Presumptive Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Buffalo, New York, on April 18 and referred to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, as

having taken place on “7-11.” He said, “It’s very close to my heart, because I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen down on 7-11, down at the World Trade Center where people lost their lives to Slurpeeinduced brain freeze.”

After his speech, the media,

including “The Spectator: Inside Look,” rushed to report on the billionaire’s slip up. His remark rapidly drew the attention of his rivals. Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio snidely commented, “7-11 is the only place where Trump can find size XXXS gloves and enough napkins to wipe off his sweat.”

Inside Look had the unique opportunity to interview Trump soon after his comment. “The media is a filthy liar,” exclaimed the benevolent billionaire. “I never meant to say 9/11. 7-11 is very close to my heart.”

Trump continued to stress sympathy for 7-11. He remarked, “Those people were robbing 7-11. They came in on 7/11 for the free Slurpees. It’s just like Obamacare.”

Trump went on to explain the connection he feels with the convenience store. He admired the efficiency of its workers, saying, “I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action at 7-11.”

Student Dean to be Elected to Confiscate Phones from Teachers

By MIHAD KHONDKER

“Teachers will finally know what it feels like to not be able to Snapchat, or to not use that Chipotle coupon that’s probably not legit.”

—Tahseen Chowdhury, sophomore and Sophomore Caucus president Dean.

Run-ins with the current adult dean have been traumatic to many Stuyvesant students.

Looking to get over the horrors of getting their phones confiscated by a big and scary adult, students proposed the new position.

The Student Dean is responsible for confiscating phones from teachers. Students claim that being able to watch their

tion from the student body. “Allowing a position for students to finally take back and do what we have suffered under for so long appears to be the sort of equality we have longed for.

Teachers will finally know what it feels like to not be able to Snapchat or to not use that Chipotle coupon that’s probably not legit,” Sophomore Caucus president Tahseen Chowdhury said.

Indeed, according to the BOE, the elected student dean will have the ability to, after two offenses, call the teacher’s parents or guardians and have them pick up the phone, a power which has been met with much hostility from Stuyvesant faculty, with many members claiming that such a rule is unreasonable. “My parents have been annoyed with me for leaving the toilet seat up for a while now, so they probably won’t be willing to come to school for my phone. And I need my phone,” music appreciation teacher Joseph Tamosaitis said. “This is insanity. If it’s taken, how will I get it back?”

In addition, similar to students, teachers will also have their own dean records. Offenses against rules will potentially cause teachers to lose their lunch privileges, their IDs, and even their Social Security.

Teachers caught sitting on a bench above the third floor during class periods risk getting their driver licenses confiscated.

With the stakes and thirst for revenge high, students have already begun campaigning for the position. “I have always longed to be involved in a role that’ll allow for great change,” freshman Kenny Wong said.

“We will finally be equal, no longer set with double standards. We will no longer be the ones crying every day, because our parents won’t bother to get our phones back. We will be united!”

most.”

Trump supporters are waging war against those who falsely believe Trump fumbled. Violence has become an integral part of the Trump message, whereby supporters have started destroy-

“After my wife and my daughter, I love Dorito-shell tacos and diluted iced coffee the most.”

—Donald Trump, Republican presidential frontrunner from the sausage that had been rolling around for 20 years.” He professed a deep love for 7-11’s food, stating, “After my wife and my daughter, I love Dorito-shell tacos and diluted iced coffee the

ing 7-11’s rivals. Dairy Queen, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Ferry’s have seen attacks, robberies and worst of all, the graffiti of Trump’s name and of his slogan, “Make America Grate (Cheese) Again.”

Board of Elections to be Renamed Board of Eggplant

Kaia Waxenberg/ The Spectator

The time has come. The time for elections, the time to vote, the time to find people who will change our school.

With the Sophomore, Junior, and Senior Caucuses, as well as the Student Union (SU) President and Vice President, soon to be decided in a great and organized election, the school administration has decided to add one more spot to this election this year: the Student

terrorizers in similar situations will help them find closure.

The election process has changed slightly to accommodate for the great number of students wanting to run. According to the Board of Elections (BOE), in order to run for the position, a minimum 98 grade point average is required, along with bragging disguised as insecurity about this average.

This announcement has been met with a warm recep-

He went on, “As you all know, I am a businessman, and I am filthy rich. I know a good business when I see one. 7-11 is the best business that God has ever created. It only took them 20 minutes to make me a hot dog

By LASZLO SANDLER The Stuyvesant Board of Elections (BOE), the entity responsible for maintaining the integrity and facilitation of Student Union and Caucus elections, announced last Friday that it would be changing its name to the Stuyvesant Board of Eggplant. The change was enacted following outcry from the student body claiming that the BOE was not transparent enough.

Sophomore Inbar Pe’er is one of the many students who pressured for the name change. “Before the change, I had no idea how the [Board of Elections] picked its leaders,”

Pe’er said. “But now that it’s the Board of Eggplant, I can rest safely knowing that the leaders are picked right from the stalk.”

Other students shared Pe’er’s sentiment. “I’ve always had more faith in produce than democracy,” junior Andre Castro said. “After all, wouldn’t you prefer something all-natural to something man-made?”

Despite the generally positive feedback, the name change has been met with fierce opposition from some. “This name change has totally spoiled my favorite emoji for me,” junior Brandon Huang said. “Are there any phallic emojis nowadays that haven’t yet been associated with politics?”

Ted Cruz Forced to Carry Out Presidential Campaign to Full-Term

By SHAINA PETERS

After a crushing defeat in Indiana, presidential candidate Ted Cruz dropped out of the 2016 presidential election.

While he tried to delay his inevitable downfall, nothing he tried was able to stop it. After a final attempt where he realized that choosing former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina as vice president did not equate to his viewing women as people, Cruz made his decision public.

However, not everyone is sure that stopping his cam-

paign is what’s best for him.

Hundreds of people, most of whom are out of touch with modern times, unsure of what goes on a presidential elections, and have never talked to a presidential candidate, have rallied to make Cruz stay in the presidential race until it finally ends.

While this may be a waste of money and everyone’s time, these advocates are determined to make sure he stays in the race. While they

may not know much about Cruz’s campaign, there is one

Vivian Lin/ The Spectator

thing that they do know. Cruz’s campaign has the right to life, and they will stop at nothing to enforce it.

Cruz himself has asked to back out repeatedly, but after months of talking to random and unqualified people asking if he thinks dropping out of a losing race is really what’s best for him, he has gotten nowhere.

“He brought this upon himself,” one advocate for Cruz remaining in the race said. “If

he hadn’t decided to become a politician, this would never have happened. It’s his own fault he can’t leave the race and he should feel ashamed of himself.”

But while Cruz’s campaign staff have pointed out that there isn’t enough funding for them to get paid and they are being forced to work entirely for free, no one is listening.

As one advocate for the policy stated as a response to everything, “If it were a legitimate campaign, it would have shut itself down.”

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 25

Humor

Christine Jegarl/ The Spectator

Go Ask Alec!

By ALEC DAI, GILVIR GILL, and ALEXANDRA WEN Dear Alec, So, there’s this really cute guy in my chemistry class. And by “cute,” I mean absolutely gorgeous. Like, jaw droppingly so. I am literally unable to close my mouth when I’m in his presence. (This makes talking a bit difficult. I’ll go into that later. I’m getting ahead of myself here.) I mean, he’s tall, athletic, and has the veiniest hands.

Oh god, just thinking about their delicate beauty makes me want to squeal. They look as if he slid long, but slender, worms underneath his skin and proceeded to brush the raised lumps with eyeshadow the subtlest shade of periwinkle you could possibly imagine.

The problem is that I don’t know how to approach him. My friends are always trying to make

me talk to him by pushing me into him whenever he’s nearby. I might ask them not to do this, because it could be weird to bodyslam someone on a daily basis before you’ve actually spoken to them, but I can’t bring myself to do it, because every time our bodies collide, before backing away, I smell his scent.

It’s the most exquisite thing. It’s a very natural, skunk-like smell that reminds me of my favorite American woodland creature. Anyway, I doubt he even notices me.

Ugh, he’s so hot. Anyway, he’s always with my ex-girlfriend, and I think they might like each other.

I’m pretty sure he’s not into guys either. (I tried a pick-up line once and he ran away from me, so now I just lie prostrate on my desk and play dead when he’s nearby, so he won’t notice me.) What do I do? I really want him to be my boyfriend, and I can’t stand him being with that witch I used to date.

—Asher Lasday, junior Dear Asher, First of all, seize the opportunity to make cool puns about chemistry to him that can make you sound cool. For example: “Hey, potentially bisexual guy who talks to my ex-girlfriend a lot! I think we might have… chemistry together.” My teacher taught me that one.

If that doesn’t work, try something like, “Why say ‘bye’ when you can be bi?” Actually, make sure you write this one out in a note. Otherwise, he might not get it.

Secondly, I don’t think a person’s height and build really matters. Though, it is a plus that he has nice hands. Nice hands are important.

But it seems to me that you don’t actually have problems approaching this guy. You “back away.” It’s always a good thing to show your back side, in my opinion. If he looks at your back, it can be an indicator of his sexuality.

Gays love the back. So keep backing away!

Finally, if you can’t stand seeing him with your ex-girlfriend, then just sit. If your butt gets tired, then you can booty call.

Good Luck and Good Butt, —Alec

Got a question?

Ask Alec @ alec.dai17@gmail.com

Courtesy of Jacob Faber-Rico

Opinion: The Spectator’s Entire Editorial Board Should Be Burned at the Stake

By JACOB FABER-RICO The Spectator’s annual Student Union (SU) endorsements are out, so the entire editorial board should be burned at the stake. The endorsements are rude and degrading; for example, the candidates whom The Spectator has chosen not to endorse are referred to as “formidable candidates” and “strong, competent leaders.” This kind of language is disrespectful and quite

frankly, despicable. I just went and burned my copy of The Spectator, and if editors-in-chief and juniors Sonia Epstein and Danielle Eisenman don’t immediately post on Facebook apologizing for their vicious attacks on my favorite “strong, competent leaders,” they will be next.

In fact, I haven’t even read the endorsements yet, nor do I know who’s been endorsed, but I know they’re unfair. The Spectator spends weeks interviewing each candidate, discussing each of the interviews, and then writing a blurb reviewing each candidate’s platforms; clearly, their final endorsements are lazily done and deserve no respect. In fact, when it comes down to it, The Spectator’s editors are evil and deserve less than no respect; unless they change their minds and endorse my best friend, they deserve to be brutally murdered with fire.

Look, as I’ve already outlined, The Spectator’s work is

dismissive of all the hard work that these students put into their

In fact, I haven’t even read the endorsements yet, nor do I know who’s been endorsed, but I know they’re unfair. campaigns. The students running for SU positions care deeply about the student body, and The Spectator’s editors don’t, as shown by the entire spread that they dedicate to the elections each and every year.

Let’s kill them.

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Second Term Seniors Begin to Grow an Affection for Boats After Four Years

By ANTHONY HOM

As May drags on, most seniors have either committed to a college or prepared themselves for a year working at The Gap in an effort to experience “real life” before being shipped off to yet another place where everyone wears khakis.

These “second-term seniors” are expected to act chaotically and weirdly. Their behaviors range from stealing urinals to going to bed before sunrise to chilling with Assistant Principal of Security, Student Affairs, Physical Education, and Probably Something Else We’re Forgetting Brian Moran.

Since the release of Early Decision (ED) results, select seniors have found themselves in a calm, yet weird scenario. Some have begun to watch boats, a hobby introduced by senior Jacob Hoffman, who was ED-ed to Carnegie Mellon University.

For some unknown reason, Hoffman finds himself cutting his first nine periods each day to watch boats at the Hudson

River dock next to Stuyvesant.

“I’ve been stuck in this school for four years working. But I’m taking my time in senior year to enjoy my freedom admiring boats,” explained Hoffman.

Hoffman soon invited another second-term senior, Winton Yee, to join him after his early acceptance to Stanford University. “I never really thought about looking at boats…I’ve always been thinking about schoolwork. But watching boats is very entertaining,” Yee said.

A week later, Yee made his move to invite second-term seniors to join this incredible hobby. In another interview, as Yee often trailed off to glance at the boats, he said, “Boats are great.

They’re so fun to watch. I love to watch them rock back and forth in the same manner for several hours at a time. I often find myself caressing the side of a boat with my feeble hands whenever I get the chance. They’re just so delicate…Feeling boats is definitely a part of my life now.”

Student Tries to Waive into 10 APs

By VED PATEL Sophomore Daniel Sunko was sorely disappointed by an email he received from the programming office. To his unfortunate surprise, his prestigious 98.6 average and body temperature only allowed him to select four Advanced Placement (AP) courses.

He wanted to take six more APs, including AP Lunch, a course not offered by Stuyvesant.

“This school is run by commies,” complained Sunko, referencing the fact that the administration wanted to have as many students take APs as possible, therefore being forced to limit the number of APs allotted to each individual student.

Though he spoke with many teachers to get recommendations for APs, they had all been sworn to secrecy and had refused to comment, and had all not been bribed with several boxes of Oreos. Only after searching the entire school from the eleventh floor pool to the hidden stash of cell phones inside of Assistant Principal of Security and Student Affairs Brian Moran’s office was the truly scandalous na-

ture of Sunko’s mission uncovered: to waive into ten APs. This was the first time anyone had ever heard of a student doing such a thing. While the chance of Sunko even managing to find a way to apply himself to ten APs was less than the chance that he would pass a single one, he tried.

In an attempt to get the APs he desired, Sunko recruited his one of his friends, sophomore Adam Abbas, to break into the programming office and register Sunko for the APs he desired. Describing his experience, Abbas said, “It wasn’t difficult, due to the whole programming office being understaffed, but somehow it took a ridiculously long time to do it anyway, and I’m fairly certain I made at least three mistakes.”

Even though the administration is deeply saddened by their $43 firewall security being broken into, they acknowledged Sunko for his efforts and were willing to compromise. Currently, a date has yet to be set for these negotiations, but it has been planned for after an indefinite date that will totally be announced. Really.

Page 26

The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

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The Spectator ● May 16, 2016

Page 27

Sports How to Get Moving This Summer (for Free)

By Nadia Filanovsky

Shape Up NYC is courtesy of EastBrooklyn

Summer is quickly approaching, promising extensive opportunities to work out and stay healthy. Across New York City there are a variety of ways students can exercise at no cost.

Grab your sneakers and go for a run, try out yoga with a friend, or head to the Big Apple Games to play sports with other high school students. There’s something for everyone.

Tiffany Leng / The Spectator

Bryant Park Yoga: the free, bring-your-own mat, outdoor classes have already begun.

Tuesdays: 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Upper Terrace Thursdays: 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the Lawn

Long Island City Community Boathouse: free kayak rentals on select Saturdays and Sundays throughout the summer.

Washington Square Park: the park hosts yoga classes, sponsored by Sacred Sounds, as well as Tai Chi classes on the Garibaldi Plaza.

Yoga: Wednesdays from May 8 to September 7: 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.

Tai Chi: Tuesdays from May 10 to October 25: 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Shape Up NYC!

Brooklyn Bridge Park: early-morning Abhaya yoga.

Note: if you’re under 18, you need to bring a parent.

The free program, sponsored by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, features activities ranging from Zumba to kickboxing to boot camp. Locations vary across the boroughs, and no pre-registration is required—walk-ins are welcome.

Mondays from June 6 to July 25: 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. at Pier 6 Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse: free 30-minute kayak rentals on Saturdays and every other Thursday.

Kayak Staten Island: 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays on South Beach

Gowanus Dredgers: after settling in a canoe, explore the Gowanus Canal and help with preservation efforts on select Estuary Stewardship Days.

Big Apple Games

West Side Highway Jogging and Bicycle Path: 5.8 mile run Williamsburg Bridge to FDR Drive at Delancy Street: a beautiful route with less tourist traffic than on the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. 1.38 miles each way.

FDR Drive along the East River: 8.6 miles from South Street and Broad Street to 96th street.

The Big Apple Games last for the month of July (and sometimes the first week of August). The free program, an extension of the Public School Athletic League, provides students in all five boroughs with the opportunity to work out and play sports with other teenagers, as well as receive coaching. Sports ranging from volleyball to gymnastics are played in different gyms across the city each day, and beginners are welcome to join. The program offers a great opportunity to meet other students from all over the city and get in a free workout.

Credit to Boston Rowing Center

A Hidden Treasure: Stuyvesant’s Rowing Club

By Nadia Filanovsky and Dean Steinman While most Stuyvesant clubs congregate in empty classrooms after school, safe on dry land, the Stuyvesant Rowing Club heads down to Pier 40. There, under the guidance of the Village Community Boathouse, they take several

boats out on the Hudson River, sometimes working with other people who come to row at the boathouse.

Contrary to popular belief, the Rowing Club engages in Whitehall gig rowing, not crew.

Crew involves eight members and a coxswain arranged in a single row on a type of boat called a

shell, which is designed purely for speed and is often made of carbon fiber. The Stuyvesant rowers use the larger, more stable wooden boats called Whitehall gigs to deal with the strong currents and large boats passing through the Hudson River. Utilizing only four rowers, these boats travel slower and require more brute strength for propulsion.

Though the club generally practices Wednesdays, more experienced rowers often attend Saturday sessions at the boathouse. Many also attend Sunday sessions, which are open to person (and in some cases families) who wishes to partake in the rigorous workout whilst looking at scenic views of the city. “I even saw a Hasidic Jewish family come rowing last Wednesday,” senior Adam Rosen said. The sessions also continue in the summer, a perfect way to exercise and enjoy the sun.

Rosen often partakes in competitions, where he is the only Stuyvesant student on his boat.

The other members are from other New York City high schools such as Brooklyn Technical High School, Bard High School Early College, and New Explorations into Science, Technology, and Math. There are Stuyvesant-only teams, however, which compete at various tiers of skill and achieve high levels of success. Races are categorized into subdivisions: sprints (which can include obstacles) and the Nautical Mile (where boats are all pitted against each other to travel a nautical mile in the fastest possible time).

Members particularly enjoy the bonding aspect of the club, often traveling together and visiting alumni in order to keep in touch.

The community extends after its members leave high school, for many former members of the club continue to row in college.

“I did crew in my freshmen year at Hamilton and it was a lot more intense than our club [at Stuyvesant]. [At Hamilton] we had practice everyday from four to seven, Saturdays from eight to one, and weight lifting twice a week at six in the morning,” former president Sungmin Kim (‘14) said.

The close-knit community serves as testament to the dedication members feel to the club.

Each meeting is filled with a new chance to explore the city via its rivers, as students row to landmarks such as Chelsea Piers, the tip of Manhattan, and the Statue of Liberty. “Sometimes we row up and across the river to Hoboken which is fun because we get to go to Sixteen Handles, chill on the beach, and go to Starbucks for free water,” Rosen said, making it the perfect reward for the hard work that rowing entails.

May 16, 2016

Page 28

The Spectator SpoRts Girls’ Lacrosse

Courtesy of Tiffany Lam

Huskies Hunting for Late Playoff Run

Junior Lucy Wang races a player from the Queens High School of Teaching to the ball.

By Michael Gillow The boys of the lacrosse team smiled smugly. They clearly held the favorable side of the bet they had just made against the girls’ lacrosse team, the Huskies, in which the boys maintained that the girls would be unable to beat the Bronx High School of Science in their second to last game of the season on May 4. And they had good reason to feel this way: the Bronx High School of Science girls’ lacrosse team had won all 15 of their regular season games thus far, and didn’t seem to be slowing down in time for their final regular season game.

There was no way the girls, who had four wins and ten losses, could win.

The boys’ confidence only increased as the game played out. After a scoreless first quarter, Bronx Science swept up six goals, while the Huskies only managed three. A scoreless third quarter seemed to cement in those standings. But then the tables turned.

Both teams rallied in the final quarter. Bronx Science scored three goals, bringing their final score to nine. Stuyve-

sant scored seven.

In disbelief, the Huskies realized that they had won the game, and the bet, by one goal.

The next day, a group of tall, muscular boys could be seen about the school in short blue skirts and white jerseys that were too small for them, wearing the uniforms of the team they had thought they’d outwitted.

Unfortunately, this thrilling win was not representative of the rest of the Huskies’ season.

With ten losses and five wins and one more game left to play, the girls still have a chance to make the playoffs, but not a promising one.

Much of the Huskies’ troubles came from offensive struggles. This season the offense only scored 72 goals, opposed to 120 goals last season.

A main reason for this drop was an injury early in the season for star player and top goal-scorer of the team, junior Lucy Wang.

Wang currently has 36 goals and six assists, and is responsible for over half of Stuyvesant’s goals. Last year, she was tied for having the third highest number of goals in the entire league.

Even with her injury, she still

has the second highest number of goals in the division, and is top-five in assists.

Thus, after Wang’s injury, “it was sort of an uphill battle to try to make playoffs,” sophomore Inbar Pe’er said.

In her absense, the rest of the team has fought to elevate its own performace. “Captains Chiara Baker and Emily Wang proved to be key players on both offensive and defensive ends,” Coach Jenna Gilbert said.

There were some concerns going into the season about the defense because five defenders had graduated last season. “I was worried after we lost most of our defense, but they’ve been solid,” Wang said.

A combination of old and new players has helped fortify the defense. “Inbar Pe’er is another returning player who plays a key role to our defense. She has a natural talent for the position,” Gilbert said.

“Newcomer [sophomore] Anna Pacheco has impressed me as well as her teammates with her hustle and again natural talent for defense.”

“The team has really improved in terms of skill. The defense has gotten a lot better and there are a lot of girls that are new to the team that now start because they’ve worked really hard,” Pe’er said.

While the Huskies have had a disappointing season, they feel that they made some big improvements. “We’re hoping to make playoffs and have a few more games left in this season. I have high hopes for next year as the girls who will be returning are all extremely dedicated and hardworking,” Gilbert said.

Many of the team members are underclassmen, which bodes well for the upcoming season. “If we continue our momentum and continue improving our next season can be a great one,” Pe’er said.

CALENDAR

MAY Softball vs. Frank Sinatra School of the Arts East River Park Field 8

16 Monday

13 Friday

Varsity Baseball vs. John Adams Parade Grounds Field #3 Boys Track Manhattan Borough Multi-Event Championship DeWitt Clinton HS Field

WRAPUP he Peglegs, the boys’ varsity baseball team, defeated William C. T Bryant 5-4 on Wednesday, May 4, bringing their record to 5-7 and moving them to third in their division. he girls’ softball team, the Renegades, defeated Hunter College T High School 6-0 on Thursday, May 5. With the win, the Renegades have now won seven of their last nine games, and sit in third place in their division with a record of 7-5

he boys’ lacrosse team, the Peglegs, won 15-4 against Midwood T on Wednesday, May 4, snapping their two-game losing streak and improving their record to 10-4.

Girls’ Handball

Victoria Huang / The Spectator

Another Stellar Season for the Peglegs

The girls’ handball team finished its season with a 7-1 record.

By Arya Firoozan and Lucy Wang The girls’ handball team, the Peglegs, started its season with back-to-back matches against Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School. The first was a

close but thrilling victory, 3-2.

Junior Joanne Cheng had the only singles victory with 21-3.

Juniors Esther Park and Vicky Huang won the first doubles match 21-10, and sophomore Ariel Huang and junior Joanne Chung took the second with a

closer victory of 21-17. (Each of the five matches in a game— three singles matches and two doubles matches—is played to 21.)

But in the rematch against LaGuardia one week later, the Peglegs slipped and suffered a 2-3 loss, with Cheng and Park and Huang bring the only wins. “We had bad nerves, and we were inexperienced. Maybe we were so used to winning that we underestimated their abilities,” Chung said.

Indeed, the Peglegs have gotten used to winning. This was their first regular season loss in two years, having dominated the last two seasons with a 10-0 record. This season they have regressed a bit, but have still easily taken all five matches in games against the High School for Health Profession and Human Services and the School of the Future. They finished the regular season with

an excellent 7-1 record, with their lone loss being the second game against Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School.

Coming into this season, the Peglegs lost several crucial members of their team, including first singles player Hannah Yep (’15), and the first doubles team of Lisha Han (’15) and Jenny Li (’15). “A lot of our starting lineup last year was seniors,” Chung said. “We had to step up our game this year, and we definitely did.” Chung rose to the occasion by being a reliable player for the second doubles team, performing in six out of the last eight matches and winning five of them.

Cheng, Huang, and Park have been among those to fill the shoes of the past seniors.

Cheng is currently undefeated, with seven singles match wins.

Huang and Park are first doubles partners and have also gone undefeated in the regular

season. This bodes extremely well for the Peglegs, as they will have a powerful team of seniors next year.

Despite the Peglegs’ success within their league, they struggle consistently in the playoffs.

In the previous two years, they have not yet advanced further than the first round. Last year, they lost a close game of 2-3 to Benjamin N. Cardozo High School, one of the powerhouses of girls’ handball. The year before that, they lost in a similar fashion to New Dorp High School.

“In the playoffs, we’ve played extremely skilled teams and teams we have never versed before,” Huang said. The Peglegs will go into the playoffs with this fear looming, but with the desire to snap their two-year losing streak and go for a deeper playoff run.