Volume 109, Issue 2

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

Arts & Entertainment

Humor

Send Noods: Best Ramenyas in New York City

The Real Reason Behind Contreras’ Renounced Resignation

In “Send Noods: Best Ramenyas in New York City,” sophomore Jiahe Wang reviews some of New York City’s most iconic ramen joints. see page 17

Volume 109 No. 2

In “The Real Reason Behind Contreras’ Renounced Resignation” junior Victor Kuang explains the motives behind Principal Contreras’s latest gottee. see page 19

September 21, 2018

By Jane Rhee, George Shey, and Beaux Watwood

Stuyvesant High School Welcomes New Staff Francesca McAuliffe Replaces Dr. Ernest Olivieri as World Language AP Over the summer, Francesca McAuliffe replaced Dr. Ernest Oliveri as Stuyvesant’s Assistant Principal of the World Language Department. McAuliffe is joining the Stuyvesant staff after 14 years of teaching Spanish and Italian at New Dorp High School in Staten Island. continued on page 2

Eric Smith Replaces James Johnson as AP of Mathematics Interim Acting (IA) Assistant Principal of Mathematics Eric Smith has replaced Former IAAP of Mathematics James Johnson for this school year. Smith has worked for the New York City Department of Education for the last 15 years as a mathematics teacher, an instructional coach, and an assistant principal at Brooklyn Technical High School.

continued on page 2

Courtesy of ABC7

The Robotics Team StuyPulse 694 came in first place at the Robotics Championship and Qianjian International Robotics Invitational in China this summer. The team had a perfect 17-0 record throughout both qualification and elimination matches.

Senior Julianna Fabrizio and sophomore Jeffrey Chen were finalists in the Policy Debate category at the Yale Speech and Debate Invitational Tournament. Junior Jeremy Lee and sophomore Justin Sword were octafinalists in the Public Forum Category.

stuyspec.com

Eric Contreras Re-Signs as Escalator Malfunction Principal of Stuyvesant Sends Students to Hospital

NEWSBEAT

Alumni brothers Edwin (‘04) and Alfred Lin (‘90) made a $1 million donation to the Alumni Association to fund a new Robotics Laboratory. The fourth floor lab is expected to begin construction this upcoming summer.

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

By Maddy Andersen and Erin Lee Principal Eric Contreras announced that he will remain at Stuyvesant, rescinding his resignation as principal. His decision came a week into the school year, after initially accepting a position as Senior Executive Director of Curriculum, Construction, and Professional Learning over the summer.

During the first few days following his announcement, Contreras began having doubts about leaving the school. “Students came up to me and said, ‘Hey, are you going to come to the play, are you going to come to my game on Tuesday?’, and I knew when those questions began to come to me and those invitations began—I knew that it was an impossibility [to leave],” he said. “I’m in this position, and I’m asking myself, ‘Why do I feel like my heart’s somewhere else?’”

After realizing that he could not leave Stuyvesant, he contacted members of the Department of Education to inform them of his choice to stay. “I found them to be very understanding and respectful of the decision. [...] You never want someone to go there where your intellectual mind is there but your heart’s somewhere else,” Contreras said.

Ultimately, Contreras’s decision was one that he had to make by himself. “After 23 years of being an educator [...] I felt that I needed to follow my heart, and you have to take out all the other factors [...] what’s best for loved [ones], what’s best for your mentors, and what’s best for all the other people that are valuable and mean something,” Contreras said.

“I came down to what I wanted and what fulfilled me. I kept coming back to that same answer.”

Contreras does not regret his decision. “I can always go back to that work. I don’t know if I left I could ever go back to being Principal of [Stuyvesant],” he said.

Though working at Stuyvesant takes its toll, Contreras sees value in remaining as principal. “This place can be exhausting, can be fraught with things that go to the media because everyone’s eyes are always on the school, but I wouldn’t have

it any other way because I get to come here and feel the satisfaction I feel being here,” Contreras said. “It was simple—it was not that complicated, the decision.”

When his decision to continue his role at Stuyvesant reached the student body, both students and parents were overjoyed by the news. “He stayed, and then everyone was happy. You saw students posting on Facebook that they were glad he was staying. Parents were clearly very happy as well,” Student Union President William Wang said.

“He’s like a parent and a friend to all of us, not just our leader.”

Student Union Vice President Vishwaa Sofat added, “It really means a lot to every student, as was seen [...] especially on Facebook when everyone started posting about it. The posts all got around 200 likes, and lots of people were commenting.

Alumni were commenting about how they were happy that the school had a good principal, and we were not going to have to face any major changes,” he said.

The warm welcome back reflects Contreras’s intimate relationship with the Stuyvesant community. “He’s like a student. He works almost the same hours; he’s here every morning, he leaves after us, sometimes at six or seven. He goes to the things we go to: he goes to the games, he goes to the plays. His life is kind of like ours, and I think that plays a big role,” Sofat said.

Despite the large responsibilities he must assume, Contreras finds his work to be rewarding, especially regarding his students.

“Being principal of Stuyvesant means longer hours, more complex work, always something going on, and that’s never going to change,” he said. “But I feel like I can look into the future when I see the students here. And the future looks really wildly optimistic.”

Contreras has high hopes for the students and their respective pursuits in life. “My desires for each and every one of you [are] to do something that is beyond yourself and leave a lasting contribution to larger society. I really care about this place, and I’m going to come here and deliver everything I have every day,” he concluded.

Ten students were injured following an escalator malfunction on Thursday afternoon, in a shocking start to the school year. According to students at the scene, the bottom step of the escalator going down from the fourth to second floors popped out at around 3:45 p.m., causing the escalator to accelerate and partially collapse on itself.

Students riding the escalator were thrown off balance and many fell into a pile toward the bottom. A number of them got their feet stuck in the bottom grill of the escalator and had to be treated by paramedics on the scene for cuts and bruises.

“I saw a kid screaming that his leg was stuck, and I saw his [pants were] stuck when I got off. Other kids [were] falling over and on top of him. Some kids who fell got up and were noticeably limping or got cuts and scratches,” said senior Ricky Zou, who was on the middle of the escalator at the time of the accident.

“As I was walking away, I saw a kid who was on the floor with part of his foot cut open and blood everywhere.”

“As soon as I got off the escalator, I screamed for help and a bunch of school officials came running,” freshman Maya Dunayer said.

Physical Education teacher Vasken Choubaralian was one of the first to arrive. “My first reaction was [to] clear the area as quickly as I [could] to give those people space and to give adults [room] to come attend to people,” he said.

In total, 10 students were treated for minor injuries at the scene and then transferred to Bellevue Hospital and New York Downtown Hospital. None of the students stayed at the hospital overnight. One student, whose injury was deemed the most serious and had been reported as having a “severed toe” left the hospital at 9:30 p.m. on crutches with their foot largely intact. Principal Eric Contreras visited both hospitals after the incident and left at 10:00 p.m.

Some of the affected students came back to school the next day. They met personally with Contreras and the assistant principals at the bridge entrance, spoke with their guidance counselors, and were given elevator passes. All of the buildings escalators will be closed for the time being.

A third elevator, the freight elevator on the east side of the building, was opened for student use to accommodate the anticipated increased traffic.

In addition, students who had their property destroyed or damaged, including a student with a shattered laptop screen, spoke to Contreras, who promised to have the computer replaced.

Two independent contractors, hired by the DOE and Department of Buildings, are currently inspecting all of the school’s escalators. Until they finish the inspection, however, it is unsure whether the accident was caused by a mechanical or electrical issue.

“In the long term, I’m going to advocate for major capital improvement for replacement. We have a long history of escalators that break down constantly […] We need to address the long term fix also,” Contreras said.

The New York City Department of Buildings mandates that elevators

and escalators are required for testing twice every year. All of the school’s escalators were actually closed for several weeks at a time during the 2017-2018 school year, during which the Otis Elevator Company installed new safety devices every five feet. These were designed to halt the escalator if anything got jammed or stuck, but a step popping out was not an anticipated problem.

Now, the contractors will first inspect the broken 4-to-2 escalator and then all others. If the escalators on upper floors are deemed safe, they will be opened to students, or reopened but not turned on, so they can still be used between classes. For as long as the escalators are shut down, there will be double passing time with no penalty for lateness to class.

In addition to the extended passing time, the school is offering additional support to students. Pedrick and all of the guidance counselors came into school at 7:30 a.m. the day following the accident as opposed to their usual staggered schedule. Since the majority of the students involved were freshmen, the guidance department made sure to spread out their counseling resources and reach out to freshmen first. They visited all freshmen global classes and three sophomore global classes throughout the day.

“Imagine if it were your fifth day at Stuyvesant, which is overwhelming enough, and experiencing this?” Pedrick asked. “Some students may be physically injured, but they are also dealing with a mental aspect. We expressed that the counselors are here, doors are open, people are experiencing emotions and that’s normal, so if you want to speak to a counselor today, Monday, a week from now, a month from now...that’s normal.”

When asked about the school’s immediate response to the accident, Pedrick described a joint effort between students, staff, and parents. “I was so thankful that there were so many people [...] For them, [responding to these situations] was their strength.

And the student body was just so awesome with not even questioning the evacuation, not questioning no after school activities, and just knowing something was up. You trusted us, and you continued on your way, being flexible with changes today.

You guys just impress me every day.”

She is especially grateful to Parent Coordinator Dina Ingram. “She was great with fielding a lot of parent inquiries and questions. And yesterday, when parents would call and say, ‘My son isn’t home yet. Is he affected?’, she was able to say, ‘All outreach was made to parents and if you weren’t reached out to, then your child was not involved.’”

Contreras, who recently made the decision to turn down a job as the Senior Executive Director of Curriculum, Construction, and Professional Learning at the New York City Department of Education to remain as principal, expressed a similar gratitude.

“The first thought that I had yesterday was that I’m so glad I’m here.

Every moment of crisis has only strengthened my belief that this is a pretty impressive group of students and staff that comes together and really supports each other,” he said.

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 2

News Francesca McAuliffe Replaces Dr. Ernest Olivieri as World Language AP

By Evelyn Ma and Carter Ley Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and NASA

WORLDBEAT Hurricane Florence made landfall early Friday, ravaging coastlines across North and South Carolina. So far 16 have died due to the storm, and around 740,000 homes and businesses are without power in the two states.

The woman who has accused Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her more than 30 years ago has come forward, saying the Supreme Court nominee groped her at a high school party. Mr. Kavanaugh has since denied Christine Blasey Ford’s claims.

The Trump administration plans to announce new tariffs on around $200 billion of Chinese goods, pressuring Beijing before high-level talks set later for this month.

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He is expected to visit Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in Washington to discuss a possible trade deal.

Typhoon Mangkhut, the world’s most powerful storm this year, has claimed 59 lives across Southeast Asia, devastating areas of the Philippines and Hong Kong. The storm system has sustained winds up to 170 miles an hour, equivalent to a Category 5 Hurricane.

Continued from page 1 McAuliffe devotes her free time to homeschooling, Regents tutoring, and supplemental teaching at the Young Adult Borough Center. In addition to teaching world languages at the high school level, she has worked at

tal educational tools can create some of those spaces,” he said.

McAuliffe was inspired to become a teacher by one of her high school teachers, whom she described as “phenomenal, energetic, and really exciting.” McAuliffe hopes to bring this same enthusiasm to Stuyvesant. One way she plans to do this is by potentially starting a foreign exchange program, which her previous school featured. “I think it would be great to incorporate some more culture and authentic conversa-

already, such as advertisements and newspaper articles,” she said. Ultimately, she wants students to feel confident with the language that they are learning.

McAuliffe also intends to maintain a number of events Dr. Olivieri put into place during his time as the Interim AP of the World Language Department, which includes the international food and film festivals, to name a few.

Contreras appreciates McAuliffe’s understanding of the concept of learning a language beyond

“I’d like to see authentic resources used frequently, if they aren’t already, such as advertisements and newspaper articles.”

—Francesca McAuliffe, Assistant Principal of World Languages

the college level as an adjunct professor, teaching Spanish to our city’s first responders. She’s also a successful student athlete and former varsity soccer coach.

Principal Eric Contreras was impressed by McAuliffe’s experience as a veteran language educator and leader, as well as her ability to work well with technology in an effective way to improve the learning experience for students. He trusts that McAuliffe will be able to bring these skills to Stuyvesant’s foreign language program. “Because we don’t live in the countries that we’re learning the languages of, working effectively with digi-

tion opportunities within and outside the classroom,” she said.

She also has plans to make small changes to the way Stuyvesant approaches foreign language education. According to McAuliffe, the best way to effectively learn a foreign language is through immersion. “I think foreign language has to be taught holistically. It is important that students are reading, writing, speaking, and listening, as well as making cultural connections within each class so I’d like to see that happen,” she said. She is also a strong advocate for teaching through authentic documents.

“I’d like to see authentic resources used frequently, if they aren’t

just the book. “I think that you need a balance of both; you need the book to read the language, but the reality is that the utility of language is only achieved through contextual meaning and real life application,” he said. He believes that the change in the World Language AP will enhance the experiences of the student body.

“It’s all about expanding things out and creating more opportunities that will enhance your thinking,” he said. “I’m hopeful and optimistic that such things will happen and that [McAuliffe] will be able to bring those opportunities to all the languages here at Stuyvesant going forward.”

Eric Smith Replaces James Johnson as AP of Mathematics

By Jamie Zeng and Tina Zheng

Additional Reporting by Maddy Andersen

continued from page 1 Principal Eric Contreras is confident that Smith is well-qualified for his new position, since Smith has worked with another specialized high school in the past.

“He is an experienced AP [...] at a large specialized high school, and very few people have the experience to actually supervise a larger department than Stuyvesant. [...]

[He] jumped right in saying, ‘I want to teach Calculus.’ It’s been pretty seamless because he brings that depth of experience in a similar school,” Contreras said.

Smith explained that his passion for mathematics began when he was still a student himself. “I liked math and I was good at math, and then [I] went to college and […] had it beaten out of me. […] I had a lot of terrible professors, and I wasn’t interested [in math] anymore. As a math teacher, that’s what got me interested in math instruction,” Smith said.

He strongly believes that “regardless of where students are or where they think they are in

their abilities […] [My responsibility as a teacher] was really just making sure they felt supported, that they could be successful, that someone was listening and acting in their best interests, because that was something I

about our math offerings,” Contreras said. “Regardless of the AP, as a school, we should think about [whether we are] offering the courses that are best suited for the intellectual and professional needs of tomorrow.”

ficity in our programming. It’s important to allow teachers to have that creative space as well.”

During the first few weeks of school, Smith has been reaching out to students and faculty in order to learn more about

“Regardless of where students are or where they think they are in their abilities […] It was really just making sure they felt supported, that they could be successful, that someone was listening and acting in their best interests, because that was something I felt was missing for myself.”

—Eric Smith, AP of Mathematics

felt was missing for myself.”

While Smith is using his first few months at Stuyvesant to acclimate to the new environment, he and Contreras have plans to improve the school’s mathematics department, starting with the programs and course offerings.

“One of our [...] goals is to think

In terms of developing policies across departments and within classrooms, Contreras strives to strike a balance between “freedom of action at the teacher level with schoolwide goals because our classroom spaces are not monolithic [...] [and] because there’s such speci-

the Stuyvesant community and administration. “The onus really falls on me to figure out what the policies are, why they are the way they are […] before [I] start entertaining ideas about changing those policies,” he said.

Ultimately, Smith’s goal is to serve the Stuyvesant community

based on their needs, as Smith said, “Any school exists to serve the students that are in it. I [...] view myself as a client [...] with 3,600 bosses. [...] I kind of view the students as almost the ones in charge, [and] I’m figuring out how to make it work for them.”

He strives to be accessible to all students and faculty members. “I’m in 402. Come say hi.

I’m nice, I promise,” Smith said.

What is the C30 Process?

The New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE)’s C30 process is used to screen, select, and evaluate principals and aassistant principals of public schools.

According to Contreras, “It’s a democratic process [...] that involves everyone’s voice, but it is a contractual process.”

There is a thorough interview and recommendation process that takes place with administrative and community members at Stuyvesant in order to make sure that all appointed officials are both qualified for their positions and fit in well with the school community.

The Spectator â—? September 21, 2018

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Page 3

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 4

Features Catching Up With Contreras

By Talia Kahan Whenever Principal Eric Contreras meets Stuyvesant alumni, they consistently tell him that Stuyvesant prepared them for the world. To continue this tradition of preparing Stuyvesant students for the world, Stuyvesant’s curriculum, classes, and type of instruction must evolve with new technologies and innovations. To keep up with these rapid changes, Contreras has undertaken many initiatives and has hopes for many more in the future.

However, during Contreras’s first few months at Stuyvesant, he did not look to make any large changes. “[At the beginning], the goal was not for me to come in and start making drastic changes on anything because there had been a formula that worked,” he explained. “When you have this historic level of success, you don’t want to come in here and say, ‘This is what we need to do.’”

Instead, Contreras watched what went on inside the school and listened to suggestions from students, staff, parents, and alumni to improve upon the pre-existing “formula” that governs life at Stuyvesant.

To do so, Contreras expanded the engineering and computer science program, created an innovation lab, increased freshman biology offerings, added to the art and music programs, opened more summer programs, linked alumni to current Stuyvesant students, and began teacher support programs.

Contreras did not make all these changes on his own. Instead, he worked with staff members and helped them hone their abilities to achieve these goals.

He explained, “What I realized at Stuyvesant is that if you want to do meaningful work, you give it to people that are smarter, or are harder working, or have bigger ideas than you to get it done.

So a lot of the really good work here is identifying the talent and then giving them the freedom of action.”

The first few people Contreras worked with were the technology teachers. Together, they brainstormed ways to expand on the current technology program, which consists of 5Tech’s, 10Tech’s, drafting, and computer science. The purpose of classes in the technology department is to “prepare students for the technology of today and tomorrow,” Contreras explained. Because of the rapid advances in our technology, Contreras wanted to modernize the curriculum to better prepare students for the outside world.

The first major change in the technology “formula” was adding two more components to the current pencil-paper focus of the drafting curriculum: engineering design and fabrication. These additions are meant to “reimagine and keep tradition while looking forward into the future,” Contreras said. In the computer science field, a new robotics unit provides a more real-world application.

Contreras also changed Stuyvesant’s “formula” by adding an Innovation Lab, which until a few years ago had been a room crowded with outdated tech pieces from the old Stuyvesant building in lower Manhattan. “It was hard to even walk in there. They were all anachronistic tech pieces that we had moved in there and had been of high utility at one point but had lost value. When I saw that room, I imagined this blank canvas of what can be in that space,” Contreras described.

Meanwhile, Contreras visited an innovation lab at the Grove School of Engineering, a part of the City University of New York. The lab had been designed

by Irwin Zahn, a Stuyvesant alumnus. Zahn reached out to Contreras with hopes of modernizing Stuyvesant by building one of Stuyvesant’s own labs.

So, the two met and began thinking about the future for that crowded room on the third floor: “He came here, we met, and we looked at the space and thought of what we could reimagine.

Then I got the input from teachers [and] students, and we created a space where we could have new engineering classes,” Contreras explained.

This past year, the Stuyvesant Science Olympiad team used the lab, and for the first time in four years, they won first place in New York City. Contreras hopes that courses including a class on aerospace engineering will soon be taught in the Innovation Lab. In addition to the expansion of the technology options and the opening of the Innovation Lab, Contreras has high hopes for the future of freshman biology options. For the 2018-2019 year, students have the option to take regular biology, AP Biology, or AP Environmental Science. Contreras believes exposure to the AP Environmental Science curriculum is particularly important because of current global warming issues. These issues strike close to home as Stuyvesant is built on reclaimed Hudson River, not on terra firma. Contreras, along with the biology department, created an AP Environmental course “that would teach both sustainability and the science of AP Environmental, with some life science embedded,” he said.

Further in the future, Contreras hopes to add real-life lab components to the curriculum and possibly even build a hydroponics lab in another empty room on the third floor.

The past two years have also seen improvements in the music and art programs through the addition of an ensemble and a guitar section of music appreciation.

Contreras hopes to continue this by adding a bell choir and expanding the art appreciation curriculum by adding more artmaking and focusing more on world art, rather than focusing solely on European art. Contreras has a firm belief in the necessity of a serious arts program on top of a rigorous academic program. He explained, “I am a strong believer that a strong academic program is only made stronger with a strong

arts program. Supporting the arts has been very important for me as a principal because I think it makes you a complete citizen. I think the arts give you a lens to deconstruct schema, to let you imagine the possibilities.”

Contreras also helped organize three new summer programs that took place at Stuyvesant this year: the Discovery Program, a science research program, and a civil engineering program.

The Discovery Program is aimed at students whose SHSAT scores were just below the cutoff and allows these students admission into specialized high schools.

Those students take classes over the summer, and at the end of the summer, if they have done well in all of their classes, are admitted into a specialized high school. To Contreras, the program was a success. “I sincerely believe that they [the Discovery students] will be as successful as any other Stuy student. Their energy and enthusiasm is incredible,” he described.

A science research program headed by biology teacher Jerry Citron also took place at Stuyvesant this summer. In this program, students were exposed to lab techniques and were able to conduct their own independent experiments. Contreras believes that science research is a critical part of education. He explained, “Unlike a test or a quiz, for a science research project you are part of this long-term study and research where you fail, you succeed, you fail, and you succeed.

You build on prior knowledge of past researchers. You build upon this larger narrative of scientific discovery that I think makes a part of something bigger than yourself.”

The civil engineering program was not, unlike the science research program, exclusive to Stuyvesant students. This program, headed by technology teacher Arthur Griffith, had two components: instructional days where students learn about civil engineering and engineering de-

sign, and work days at construction sights around New York City.

Contreras’s changes have not only been for the students; with biology teacher Marianne Prabhu, Contreras has worked to create sessions for teachers without tenure. During these scheduled discussions, teachers share ideas and goals for instruction and visit each other’s classes. Contreras explained the benefits of these meetings: “I think that we are such a big school and busy place that is is very hard sometimes to make time for sharing.

Nobody has ill-intention, [it’s just that] making the space for it is hard. But we have been able to make that space for new teachers, and it is very exciting to see their work. And it is really impressive to see what they have brought to the table.”

In addition to working with teachers, Contreras has connected with alumni via the expansion of the alumni tutoring and mentoring programs. In the tutoring program, Stuyvesant alumni tutor current students. Additionally, students are connected to alumni in different fields through the mentoring program. Contreras explained, “They [the alumni] will talk on a panel and mingle.

And these are [professionals] from [the] class of ‘50 to very recent graduating classes. I started asking if I could get 15 to 20 tickets to seniors who are interested in being [in this field].”

To Contreras, the purpose of all these changes, past and future, is to allow Stuyvesant students to be ambitious and think big. Contreras concluded, “I would rather you be bold in your thinking about your role in the world and what you will leave as a legacy to the rest of society because you have the gift of society. Because you have the gift of a great mind.

And the gift of a great mind is only of tremendous benefit if it has a contribution of society. I have to give the tools to create that space.”

What Did You Do Over The Summer?

By THE features department

Eric Contreras (Principal)

Katherine Kincaid (English)

I was busy here because I was running a civil engineering program, the science research program, and the discovery program. We had summer school where we hosted other schools, but I got a little bit over a week off. So I did some kayaking—I like to kayak up at the Peconic Bay—and some bird watching. A lot of the work I do is inspired by Stuyvesant. There is a new behavioral science class that I was talking [about] with Dr. Tu. And just the idea of watching animals in their natural environment is intriguing to me. For the remainder of the walk I went to Montreal and did a tour of all the museums I love. They have the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and it had an exhibit called “From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-Face Picasso, Past and Present,” which juxtaposed Picasso’s paintings with the African art that he had seen. It is unbelievable. They had never done this before—they actually brought together Picasso’s work with the African art. I also went to three other museums. I really like Montreal because it is truly a bilingual society and I am bilingual. I speak Spanish in addition to English. It is a city that lives in this biliterate society. I have grown up listening to two languages all my life. In Montreal, they transition with such fluid ease, and I always find it comforting because I’ve grown up like that.

It was my first time back after an 11 year break from Stuyvesant and my first time teaching having had kids, so when I got settled into the summer, I first spent all of July at the pool or at the beach with my four kids, and they had swimming lessons and sailing camp. I spent a lot of time playing with them, hanging out with them, and just relaxing.

Also, I played a lot of tennis. The women’s tennis team that I’m on, where I play singles, ended up winning Long Island, so in August we went upstate to Schenectady and competed in the Eastern Sectional. We came in third. Then, I went to Woodstock, New York with my family. My brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and all her kids stayed in a house with a pool inside a fun, artsy town.

Vincent Miller (Physical Education)

Victor Greez (Social Studies)

My 2018 summer was very low-key. It mostly consisted of rest and relaxation. Having the summer off allowed me to recharge after coaching three different sports all school year. It also gave me a chance to spend a great amount of time with my five-year-old daughter, Lila. She and I did a number of things such as going to the Brooklyn Aquarium, the Children’s Museum, the library, and the movies, and having many, many, many park days. Watching Lila grow up over the summer and prepare for kindergarten was lots of fun. I enjoyed my restful and relaxed summer, and I am prepared for another school year and coaching.

Well, this summer we went to a resort in Pennsylvania—I have two kids— and the resort is called Woodloch. What was fun about Woodloch was that it’s very family oriented, family centered. It had all these fun games like The Amazing Race, the Olympics, and so forth. And my kids loved it. But I also took them to Amish Country and exposed them to the Amish and the Amish ways, which was actually very exciting. We were in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 5

Features What Did You Do Over The Summer? (cont’d) Linda Weissman (Social Studies) I was very fortunate this summer to have many wonderful opportunities for both personal and professional enrichment. I took a few exciting vacations to Seattle for a few weeks and then to New Orleans to enjoy the incredible culture. During my travels, I got to enjoy time with family and friends while listening to great music and eating delicious food. In between, and occasionally during, these jaunts, I also continued to work on my favorite personal hobby, running. In addition to having a few adventures, I attended events at historical societies and museums around the city. I was able to analyze and enjoy very special primary documents, including the first draft of the Constitution, letters from Susan B. Anthony discussing women’s suffrage, and documents related to the 1963 March on Washington. I even managed, through all of these exciting events, to squeeze in a reading of a few biographies of Abraham Lincoln. Needless to say, this summer, I hit the ground running.

Jessica Chock-Goldman (School Social Worker) I wanted to take an adventure trip this summer, and China felt like the perfect destination because of the population I work with. I’ve gone to lots of trainings about working with Chinese-American kids and families and thought it would be great to see China in person, not just to read about it! I have never been there before. I stayed for two and a half weeks. My trip started in Beijing; then, we zigzagged down to Hong Kong.

There were six of us and a Chinese tour guide who spoke Mandarin and Cantonese. I thought going with a tour would be the best way to see China the first time, especially since I don’t speak any Mando or Canto!

[Compared to Chinese food we have in restaurants in America,] the food in China is so much better! Much less greasy and fried. The food was spicier in some places and had lots of vegetables in others. And the Peking duck in Beijing was incredible. There are a few places in Chinatown where I’ve been that [have food] similar [to the Chinese food in America], but overall, I say the Chinese food is very American here. [As for cultural discrepancies], first off, everyone wanted to have their kids to either speak English with me or have their pictures taken with me. There seems to be a curiosity of Western culture. I definitely want to explore that more, but I was only there for two and a half weeks.

The cities [in China] are so packed! It’s like being in Times Square. But then you go to the countryside, and it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life! I love the mountains and the rice paddies. And my favorite city was Xi’an. I definitely want to go back!

Joel Winston (Drafting)

Matthew Polazzo (Social Studies)

I got some personal work done, and I did some traveling. I went to visit my family in Florida and went upstate. I got to the beach four or five times and that was great. Basically, for me, it’s balancing out relaxation with trying to get projects done. That’s always a big conflict that I go through. I feel guilty if I relax too much, and I feel guilty if I don’t get things done. That’s my conflict, but it’s an enjoyable one.

This summer, I did two things; I took a two-week-long vacation to Ireland and the United Kingdom. In Ireland, I stayed in Kilcolgan, a little village outside of Galway, with my cousin. My wife, my three kids, and I traveled all over the island. The most fun part was probably driving on the left-hand side of the road down these narrow twisting Irish roads while tour buses come barrelling at you. It was a really good experience. We saw a lot of amazing, beautiful scenery.

We were there for about a week, and then we flew over to London. There, we went on the London Eye, we went to the Tower of London, and we did all the touristy things like that.

We took a sleeper train up to Edinburgh, where I studied abroad, and I visited my old college dorm. Then, we flew back to the States. A couple of weeks later, we went down to Delaware and camped there.

Audra Parris (Guidance Counselor) I taught sixth graders in Flatbush. I taught math and engineering for summer in the city. I stayed in the city; I did not get a chance to go away anywhere. But the city is always really fun in the summer.

Jia Zhou (Mandarin) I spent my summer with my mom because my mom came here from China. She stayed here for a month. I took her out to see the city; we went shopping and relaxed together. Then, I started to prepare for the school year.

Ellen Siegel (Social Studies)

Dr. Lisa Greenwald (Social Studies)

I traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, Santiago and Valparaiso in Chile, and Montgomery, Alabama. Argentina is truly the Paris of South America, with wide boulevards, cafes, and Beaux Arts buildings. It was exciting to be there to watch Argentina play France in the World Cup until they lost!

Santiago was especially meaningful to me as I had worked with Chileans fighting oppression at the NY offices of Amnesty International during the Dirty War in the 80’s. Visiting their museum in remembrance of these events was especially moving given the events happening in our own country today.

On the day school ended last June I was on a plane with my husband and daughters headed to France, where I spent some of the most memorable times of my life. We stayed in Paris, visiting new exhibits and old haunts, seeing old friends, and eating incredibly well.

We went to Normandy and stayed with a friend who lives in a manor with a moat. We then went to Berlin, Germany, a city still pulsing with the history of the past century and has transformed itself in the past 20 years into a thriving, growing city. I hadn’t been there since 1985 when the city was still divided during the Cold War so it was amazing to see its transformation; it was largely unrecognizable to me from before.

Valparaiso is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a beautiful, very hilly, seaside city. It is best known for being the home of poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda. But what makes Valparaiso an incredible city to visit is the street art. All over the city, artists have painted buildings, pedestrian steps, retaining walls, etc. with murals large and small. It is truly astounding. It is also constantly changing.

My summer ended with a trip to Montgomery, Alabama. A new museum and public monument opened to memorialize the victims of lynching in the post-Reconstruction Era and to highlight the continued fight for full equality. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice was a powerful work of public art. We visited The Rosa Parks Museum, the parish home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Freedom Riders Museum and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church where Dr. King was pastor. The church is a stone’s throw away from Montgomery’s majestic, slave-built capitol building and is on the same road that the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights marchers stood to assert their voting rights. To stand in the place where so many committed or gave their lives and to see people who continue to work tirelessly for justice and equality in those places was humbling.

Much of the old city (with museums and cultural sites) had been on the Eastern side during the division and closed to visitors, but now they are beautifully renovated (sometimes half reconstructed because of the extensive WWII bombing). We visited the Pergamon Museum, the German Historical Museum (we viewed hundreds of years of paintings and many other printed and material artifacts), the Stasi Museum, which is in the old headquarters of the German Secret Police, the Topography of Terror museum, which is built on the ruins of the Gestapo’s headquarters, the Jewish Museum, where the building itself is meant to help visitors experience what it meant to be Jewish through the ages, and the moving memorial to the victims of war with a sculpture by the famous artist Käthe Kollwitz. I list these off just to show how many amazing cultural sites there are to visit in Berlin, and this is only a fraction of what is there. But history feels heavy for me in that city. Though my direct ancestors arrived in the U.S. decades before the Holocaust as far as I know, the legacy of what the Nazis did and what the German nation eventually suffered is always present, from the hull of the once magnificent Oranienburger Synagogue firebombed during Kristallnacht to so many buildings that still bear the pockmark scars of high-powered bullets and shells. The city is a reminder of the horrors intolerance, fanaticism, and jingoism ultimately bring. I encourage all of you to visit Berlin but also to visit any place with a history book in your hand. Like NYC, every place has layers upon layers of history, and understanding it makes visiting any place that much more rich and interesting!

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 6

Features Stuyvesant’s Commute Stories

By Yasmine Chokrane and Katie Leton

If you’re on Chambers Streets at around 7:40 a.m., you’ll find sophomore Roshni Patel making her way to Stuyvesant, still recovering from the hour nap she took on the LIRR. A twohour commute would be tough on anyone, but after getting only four hours of sleep the night before, that hour is a necessity.

Her commute comes at a high price, but one Patel says she’s willing to pay to attend Stuyvesant.

Still, it doesn’t mean that she won’t complain—and with good reason too.

“I’m limited to certain things,” Patel said. “I’ll want to join something, but I’ll be like, ‘Oh, practice ends at seven.’ I wanted to do cheerleading, but practice is three times a week and ends at seven, and I cannot afford to get home at nine every day.”

Senior Katherine Sanchez deals with the same issue. While Patel dwells in Queens, Sanchez lives in the Bronx and endures an hour and 30 minute commute every day. She can’t take part in more than two extracurriculars at a time, due both to a long commute and familial obligations. But she considers her commute an advantage. “It’s kind of a blessing and a curse. I’m always really focused on the train, and I get a lot of work done since it’s such a long commute and I don’t have to transfer at all,” Sanchez said in an e-mail interview.

Unlike Sanchez, Cosmo Coen, a junior and Brooklynite, rarely finds a seat on the F and A trains. “I get on the middle of

With a 15 minute commute, all he can really do is stand and wait.

Coen doesn’t even get the chance to listen to music, contrary to Patel, who indulges herself in “5 Seconds of Summer” and “The

Beatles,” and Sanchez, who will listen to whatever fits her mood.

The commute is still worth it, considering the amount of sleep he’s able to get. “I just feel luckier than the people who are like, ‘I wake up at the crack of dawn, 4 o’clock in the morning, and I have to travel the entire Atlantic Ocean to get to school,’” he joked. “I get more sleep than the average person, but I’m more tired than the average person.”

He takes the train often as well, stating he knows the New York subway system like “the back of his hand,” as opposed to sophomore Miranda Lepri, who is only accustomed to her regular routes and depends on Google Maps.

tem, having only been on the 1, 2, 3, W, R, and the 4. However, she has managed to ride on the Taiwanese metro.

“It was so nice,” Chen described. “They had these cards that you put on the

Maryann Foley / The Spectator scanner and they would just be scanned. The trains are pretty and the train stations are cleaner.”

The dirt and stench are typical complaints against the New York City subway. And while Lepri has never noticed a stink on the 1, 2, or 3 train lines, she has described the seats as typically uncomfortable and the ground as “sticky and gross,” she said.

Sanchez described the trains that she takes: “The 2 and the 5 trains are both essentially the same: they have ugly fluorescent lighting and periwinkle benchstyle seats,” she said, as well as a distinct urine stench.

Though she complains, Katherine is eternally grateful for the 2 train, which she describes as “the air she breathes and the shoes on her feet.” She gushed, “I love her and hate her at the same time. Thank you for giving me a seat every day.” each train because I take a transfer, and I never get a seat. I hate it. If I get a seat, it’s like Jesus has come,” Coen stated.

Similar to Lepri—and most people from Staten Island—Michelle Chen, a sophomore, isn’t too familiar with the subway sys-

her feet.” She gushed, “I love her and hate her at the same time.

Thank you for giving me a seat every day.”

And while he doesn’t usually have the privilege of sitting, Coen is appreciative of his train

Though she complains, Katherine is eternally grateful for the 2 train, which she describes as “the air she breathes and the shoes on

line—but for a different reason.

“I like seeing the faces of people.

That sounds creepy, but I just like seeing what New York is like,” he said.

Lepri gets that chance every morning since she stands on her 10-15 minute commute on the 1, 2, or 3 train. She lives in Manhattan and usually finds that she’s surrounded by Xavier students, Wall Street businessmen, and homeless people. “[There isn’t] really a racial or gender majority,” Lepri said in an e-mail interview, referring to the commuters she encounters on daily basis. “My neighborhood also just has a high homeless concentration. I usually ignore them if I think they’re high. But if they’re a busker and they’re good, and if I have cash, then I give them money.”

Along with beggars, Lepri has encountered street shows. “[I see] a lot of buskers; some are good, [but] most are pretty bad and very loud. One guy had a one man band suit, and he was playing all of the parts, which was super cool,” she recounted.

Patel also has an affinity for street shows. She said, “You don’t really see that in Queens. I had my first job last summer and it was also in the city. And I thought it

was so cool. I videotaped them.”

However, contrary to Lepri, who described her commute as “annoying, as in, ‘why do I have to do this,’” Lepri personified her commute as “a super chill person who doesn’t bother with being too prepared. [She] cuts it close and doesn’t mind. [She’s] someone with little to lose, who just kinda does their thing without worrying.”

In addition to being quick and stress-free, Lepri’s commute manages to be introspective.

When asked with what perspective commute has granted her, Lepri responded with, “I guess I think more about the size of NYC, about all of the people with their own existence who will never even know me, and who I’ll never meet.”

Chen has the same epiphany as she attends her daily commute.

She takes multiple forms of transportation: the Staten Island Railroad (SIRR) for half an hour, the Staten Island Ferry for 25 minutes, and the 1 train for another five minutes—a total of an hour and 30 minutes. In that time, Chen encounters more people on her commute and acknowledges that “everyone has their own life. You are no more special than other people because you are just one out of hundreds or thousands who take the same transportation,” Chen said.

Yet, she described her commute as characteristic of her borough: “The train that I take is at the peak hour for everyone in Staten Island who takes the SIRR train. Staten Island for the most part is pretty calm and lowkey. But I guess we face a lot of discrimination for being in Staten Island. I mean, Staten Island is trash, but it’s not,” she said.

Similarly, the New York City subway system has its flaws; train delays are stressful, and subways cars are worn and dirty. But they are the main mode of travel for New Yorkers and are a New York City staple. Some countries’ subways may surpass our metro in cleanliness and speed, but as Coen stated, “The New York City subway system has a certain charm to it.”

Teacher Feature

By Talia Kahan, Senjuti Gayen, Zoe Davis, Susannah Ahn, Veronika Kowalski, and Tashfia Hasan For most students, the first day at Stuyvesant is both exciting and nerve-wracking: making friends, getting to class on time, and of course, meeting your new teachers. This year, some teachers are having the same experience as it is their first day at Stuyvesant as well. Here are some of their stories about their journey to Stuyvesant.

Mayumi Gurung / The Spectator

Lori-Ann Newman (History) The new history teacher at Stuyvesant, Lori-Ann Newman, may be more familiar with Stuyvesant’s history than most of the students. For the past nine years of her teaching career, Newman has been teaching at the old Stuyvesant building, now home to the High School for Health Professions and Human Services.

“Every single day for nine years, I’ve walked into a school that said Old Stuyvesant Campus,” Newman said. “That was definitely part of the inspiration to come here.”

Newman’s teaching ca-

reer expands farther than just her nine years at Health Professions, however. Before teaching in New York, Newman was a substitute teacher for schools on the FloridaAlabama border. Back then, teaching full-time was not yet the plan for Newman, who has a Bachelor’s Degree in political science and a Master’s Degree in public policy.

It was not until she moved to New York and started dating a history teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School that teaching began to really appeal to her as a potential fu-

ture. “Hearing his passion and his energy just made me think about how I substituted for a year and [how] I [may] want to do this full time,” Newman said. “And he said to me, ‘that’s fine but just be aware that when you first become a teacher, you’re not going to be at a school that’s like [Brooklyn Tech]. You’re going to be in a school that has kids with different needs. It’s going to be different from what I’ve been telling you.’” None of that impeded Newman from advanccontinued on page 7

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 7

Features Teacher Feature

Mayumi Gurung / The Spectator

Sandra Brandan (Guidance)

Students waiting in the guidance office this year might catch a glimpse of a new face with kind eyes and a radiant smile. The owner of this smile is a new counselor at Stuyvesant, Sandra Brandan.

Before becoming a school counselor, Brandan was in the music industry, in which she worked on a lot of popular songs, as an audio engineer.

“People are usually shocked when I say that I used to be an audio engineer, as at first glance you wouldn’t think it.

But I’m a geek at heart,” she

said.

After working in the music industry, Brandan became a middle school guidance counselor for 10 years. Before she applied to Stuyvesant, she felt she needed a change. She decided to submit an application even though she did not think that she would be called. She thought, “Let me just try; let me just submit my application and see what happens.” And so she did. She tried, and she succeeded, as it led to her joining Stuyvesant’s guidance department.

Brandan’s adjustment to Stuyvesant’s environment so far has been a transition, but it has also been great. “I don’t regret it one bit, and I’m going to be here smiling every day,” she added.

She is also thankful for the learning opportunities she has gotten. “I feel almost like a student all over again, but I love it; I don’t regret it! I’m a learner; I’ve always loved to learn,” she said.

Rachael Ferreira (Mathematics) Before she became the math department’s newest addition, Ms. Ferreira worked at a private Manhattan school. She described her move to Stuyvesant as a meaningful one. “I’ve always wanted to work in public school, and obviously, as you know, Stuyvesant has a reputation.” she explained. “So just as much it is a dream to come to this school and be a student, it’s kind of the same thing to work at this school.”

After hearing about an open job position, Ferreira was eager to apply but had to adjust to the new environment, mentioning that Stuyvesant was very different from where she used to work. As she grew more accustomed, she noticed some of the students’ attitudes toward

learning. “I think that the students here are very driven, and they look forward to learning, and they enjoy learning; I can see that in the classroom from a lot of students,” she said with a smile.

Ferreira also remarked on her thoughts about Stuyvesant’s workload, aware of the pressure that many students are facing.

“I could also see that these kids have a lot going on and there’s more than just math they’re worrying about everyday. I can see that also being a stressor,” she said.

Despite the large amounts of stress students face, she believes that they all have a place at Stuyvesant, ending the topic with a positive note. “It’s clear that the kids that are here are

meant to be here, and they’re working hard to be here,” she said.

Ferreira is also looking forward to getting to know about the various extracurriculars offered at Stuyvesant and getting experience outside of the classroom activities. ”I heard about SING! the other other day, [and] I’m excited to experience [it]. I heard about the different musicals that go on, [and] that apparently the students are in charge of them, which I think is awesome,” she said enthusiastically. She looks forward to being a teacher at Stuyvesant, adding that “working at a school like this is something [she feels] like is incredible and one of a kind.”

Lori-Ann Newman (History) - cont’d continued from page 6

ing her teaching career, which has reached a grand total of 13 years now. Nevertheless, Newman said, “ultimately my goal was to end up at a school where you can really go outside of the

basic curriculum.”

Now, progressing from the old Stuyvesant to the new one, Newman is excited to have the flexibility teaching at a specialized high school offers. Already having experienced a taste of Stuyvesant this summer working at the summer school,

Newman is ready to tackle teaching AP World History and regents-level U.S. History. “I’ve always loved stories and storytelling, and that’s how I like to present history in my class. It’s just a big story that we have to tell,” she said.

Catherine Maitner (Geometry and AP Statistics) Catherine Maitner was on the path to becoming a professional ballerina. But, Maitner’s love for mathematics overrode her passion for ballet and drove her to dive head-first into the world of mathematics.

Math has always been Maitner’s favorite subject. However, Maitner’s passion for math sprouted when she went to college at Georgetown University.

She explained, “Once I got to Georgetown, I signed up to be a math major my freshman year, and that is where I really learned to love math and began wanting to teach it afterward.”

Maitner has been successful with this goal of teaching math.

Before coming to Stuyvesant, Maitner taught at the Convent of Sacred Heart, a Roman Catholic girls’ school on the Upper East Side. While there, Maitner taught a wide variety of different math classes: geometry, Algebra 2/Trigonometry, precal-

culus, and AP Statistics.

In the initial weeks that Maitner has taught at Stuyvesant, she revealed, “I have been really impressed by the really positive community that is here and how motivated the students are. It is really wonderful to see how [they’re] interested, excited to learn, and willing to do all of the work.”

In the future, Maitner would love to participate in a club or publication. She explained, “I do really love getting involved in the schools I am a part of.”

Maitner was able to do so at Sacred Heart; Maitner helped with admissions at Sacred Heart by interviewing applicants and assisting during admitted students night. In addition, Maitner started a Global Scribes club at Sacred Heart, which “opens up a high school online community of people that are talking about similar interests,” she said.

Catherine Maitner (Geometry and AP Statistics) Contrary to what is written on anonymous teacher rating website postings, the new Assistant Principal of Mathematics, Eric Smith, does not speak any foreign languages except for Spanish. He does, however, offer a refreshing perspective about math as a subject.

Smith began his career as a math teacher in 2003 in Washington Irving High School. He realized throughout his childhood that though he enjoyed math, many students who did not share this enthusiasm may have been discouraged by the people who taught them the subject. As someone who likes math, it made Smith reflect on what it must be like for students who don’t enjoy math.

Since Smith could feel different ways about the subject when he took two or three different math courses at a time, the idea of math instruction became very important to him.

One of Smith’s favorite moments in his 16 years of teaching is when his first period calculus class at Washington Irving High School threw him a surprise birthday party.

At first, Smith was upset that everybody was late. He did not suspect that there was going to be a surprise, since it wasn’t his actual birthday. All of a sudden, his students filed into the room with a cake with candles on it.

They turned down the lights and sang him Happy Birthday. Even the other teachers at school were in on it. Mr. Smith received a card that played mu-

sic by an artist he liked in addition to a keychain that was inscribed, “Good to infinity.”

Three of those students became math teachers themselves, which “they either attribute to me or blame me for,” Smith joked. “I don’t know about that.”

Immediately prior to accepting a position at Stuyvesant, Smith worked at the Brooklyn Technical High School for six years. He started there as an instructional coach and soon became the Assistant Principal of the Math Department. Since Brooklyn Technical High School and Stuyvesant are both primarily STEM specialized high schools, Smith reports, there are more similarities than differences between the schools. The most stark difference between Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant is that at Stuyvesant, teachers seem to have quite an emotional attachment to chalkboards. Smith prefers dry-erase boards to chalk: “It’s messy. It dries your hands out,” he said.

For this year, Smith’s plan is simply to acclimate himself to the culture at Stuyvesant.

“Every school is unique; it has its own culture, its own way of doing things,” Smith affirmed.

“There are plenty of opportunities to improve in every single school. I don’t know what they are yet because I just got here. My plan for this year is really just to get to know everybody.”

Page 8

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Page 10

Staff Ed The Spectator

On the SHSAT and High School Admissions For the last decade, the SHSAT has been a celebrated cause for activists, students, and parents. Those in favor of abolishing or replacing the test point out the shocking racial discrepancy in specialized high schools as evidence of a broken system that puts lower income and minority students without access to adequate test prep at a disadvantage.

The test’s supporters highlight the exam’s objectivity, as well the success the Asian American community has enjoyed through it.

Leading this group is New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Right before public schools let out for the summer, he proposed granting students in the top seven percent of their middle school classes seats at one of the eight specialized high schools based on seventh grade core subject grades and seventh grade standardized test scores. The goal, according to an op-ed he published in Chalkbeat, is to ensure that “our premier public high schools [...] start looking like New York City” by increasing the number of black and Latinx students represented in these schools.

Stuyvesant students do not have one coherent opinion on the test and high school admissions. As is usually the case, the truth in this issue is to be found somewhere in the middle.

It is glaringly obvious that specialized high schools suffer from a diversity issue; this is the result of an array of entrenched, connected social issues, ranging from deficient school systems that disenfranchise black and Latinx students starting in elementary school, to the simple lack of information about these schools in underprivileged middle schools.

The New York City school system is unequal across the board, and that starts in pre-K. However, common proposals aimed at rectifying this issue fail to do more than mask these underlying causes. Replacing the SHSAT fails to address alarming educational concerns in these middle schools or help the other 93 percent of students who wouldn’t get seats in a specialized high school. The mayor’s proposal would likely diversify specialized high schools, but also stir up the and middle schools by encouraging students striving for

admission into top schools to attend academically weaker middle schools (increasing their chances of being in the top seven percent). This might come at a cost to middle school environments and to the uniquely driven community Stuyvesant currently fosters.

Among those who still choose to attend the current feeder schools, an extremely competitive and potentially toxic atmosphere would develop. The stress of high school students trying to gain admission into college would be replicated in our middle schools. That is not a childappropriate environment.

More at the heart of our opinion is that it is inaccurate and uninformed to describe the makeup of specialized high schools as homogeneous and lacking in diversity. The 70 percent Asian statistic masks the variety of South and East Asian students, among whom there is great heterogeneity in ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

Arguing for de Blasio’s plan, State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia said, “Students learn from each other’s diverse experiences.” We agree. But we also maintain that we are learning. Stuyvesant’s community is comprised largely of first and second generation immigrants of many economic backgrounds.

The drive to increase black and Latinx representation in specialized high schools reflects a real discrepancy between the racial breakdown of our schools and of the whole city. However, the drive to deflate Asian numbers in these schools reflects a lack of respect for the Asian minority, and for the variety of backgrounds those students have.

At Stuyvesant, 44 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. To describe schools like Stuyvesant as dominated by those who can afford expensive test prep fails to credit the dedication of the many low-income students in New York’s specialized high schools to gaining admission despite their backgrounds.

The Spectator has developed our own rudimentary plan for diversifying SHSAT schools while maintaining their essential culture (without excluding the Asian community):

The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

Arts & En t e r t a i nm e n t Ed i to rs

Thomas Chen** William Lohier* Emily Xu P h o t o graph y

Make sure that middle schools Ed i to rs provide their students with the Ting Ting Chen support and education students Zoe Oppenheimer need to succeed on the SHSAT Elena Sapelyuk* E D I TO R S IN C HIEF and in specialized high schools.

Catherine Yu Jane Rhee* This includes ensuring that all Beaux Watwood* NYC students are ready for AlgeArt Di re cto rs bra I by the eighth grade, or adKlaire Geller N ews Ed i to rs justing the math on the SHSAT Anika Hashem Nishmi Abeyweera to match citywide curricula. The Darren Liang George Shey same is true for reading comprehension.

L ayo ut Ed i to rs F eature s Ed i to rs More concrete policies for edDahae Choi Archi Das ucational reform include the deChristina Tan Amy Huang velopment of programs aimed at Katie Wu Amanda Peng providing test preparation at low to no cost, such as DREAM or Co py Ed i to rs Stuy Prep. Feeder middle schools Op i n i o n s E d i t o r s Jeanette Cheung often provide free test prep after Artem Ilyanok Michelle Lai* school or during lunch periods.

Eliza Spinna* Jonela Malollari Funding should be allocated to provide at least four months of Sp o r t s E d i t o r s B u s i n e s s M anag e r s twice weekly, free, in-school prep Celina Liu Stacey Xue for every middle school.

Ariel Melendez In addition, we also see a We b Ed i to rs Jeremy Rubin limited number of governmentDarius Jankauskas** hosted communication workh u mo r Ed i to rs Jerry Ye shops to increase student and paKerwin Chen rental outreach about the exam.

F ac u l t y A d v i s Er Gabrielle Umanova Many families remain unaware Kerry Garfinkel of the requirements for admisWe reserve the right to edit letters Please address all letters to: sion to one of these elite schools for clarity and length.

345 Chambers Street until very close to exam day, giv© 2018 The Spectator New York, NY 10282 All rights reserved by the creators.

(212) 312-4800 ext. 2601 ing some students considerably *Editor-in-Training opinions@stuyspec.com less amount of time to study and * Managing Board review.

We also support considering ** Editors-in-Training standardized test scores with the SHSAT, since the state tests span multiple days, saving students who just had “one bad day.” Additionally, standardized English exams include a writing component, which would more accurately reflect the skills necessary to succeed at a competitive high school, but could not be added to the SHSAT because of the cost of grading written components.

• Issue 1, Sports: In “The Stuyvesant Peglegs Ready to Ultimately, it is indisputImprove and Excel Performances,” last year’s captain was able that the culture of Stuyvemistakenly reported to be Sunny Levitis. The captains sant and the specialized high were Caleb Smith-Salzberg and Michael Gillow. schools is largely dependent on the students who attend it.

Hard work, dedication, fortitude, • “The Steadfast Struggle of STEM” by Kristen Cheng was and stoicism are all part of the misprinted with repeated text from a different article. The ethos in these cauldrons of talmissing article has been printed in this issue. ent. It’s important to preserve this culture. We need to be cautious before uprooting it in a naïve attempt to display superficial progress in a broken educational system. True solutions will arise from pragmatic, systemic educational reform. Until then, we will continue fostering a productive and important discussion.

For the Record

Dead Arts “ ‘Pass me the syringe, Mr. Cheng. This kid’s schedule needs a few milliliters of bad luck’ - Rodda”

“ ‘Look!

College App Season!’ ”

Alisa Chen / The Spectator

Justin Banner / The Spectator

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 11

Opinions Greatest Saviors or Gravest Sinners?

By Elena Hlamenko “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” The inscription of this phrase into the Old Testament in the Law of Lex Talionis describes a human desire as old as time: revenge. Nearly every religion around the globe has acknowledged this impulse and utilized divine influence as a moral restraint. Egyptian mythology presents Sekhmet as the goddess of vengeance, the Greeks pray to Nemesis for divine retribution, and Judeo-Christians rely on God to balance the scales of justice.

Nevertheless, vigilantism has circulated headlines for years, suggesting a resurfacing of one the most violent human desires. With the media focusing on an ever failing justice system and crime rates on the rise, many individuals feel the urge to take matters into their own hands and deliver their version of justice. Amplifying this movement is the public’s new fascination with it, with shows like “Dexter” and “The Arrow” showcasing vigilantism as a necessary evil.

Rise of Vigilantism

That may have been the case 150 years ago, when America was still a developing nation, lacking proper institutions for holding criminals and controlling their activity. Local sheriffs could only do so much with limited technology and a sparsely settled terrain swimming with outlaws. From slaverysupporting radicalists in the South to bandits in the Wild West, sheriffs were often outnumbered in their efforts to stop crime. In turn, independent justice groups sprung up all over the country, using death as one of the few punishments for a crime.

Despite good intentions, at least 326 vigilante movements swept the nation in the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in over 700 unauthorized executions in the Western region of the United States alone. The last decades of the 19th century only worsened the body count, as angry lynch mobs publicly staged nearly 5,000 executions, a number rumored to exceed the amount of court-ordered executions at the time.

With constantly evolving technology and new forms of crime, vigilantism and its followers have branched out into new mediums.

Originally defined by Merriam Webster as “member[s] of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily,” vigilantes now bring to light discreet criminal activity, perform acts of revenge, and punish those who are the product of a flawed judicial system, while using illegal tactics to achieve a verdict.

Many who commit acts of vigilantism are frustrated with their judicial system. They believe they know who the assailant in a crime is, but due to a lack of evidence or other hindering factors, the police force is unable to act on such suspicions. Perpetrators of vigilantism often resort to stalking, trespassing, hacking, or in extreme cases, even assault and murder to achieve their goals, largely without a legal process to back their actions or provide a verdict. Such factors increase the supposed success rate of vigilantes, making the media portray them as an effective approach to dealing with crime. Unfortunately, this portrayal is an illusion as vigilantism falls incredibly short of being a tangible replacement for a judicial system.

Consider the example of Brad Willman, a 19-year-old living in the UK who identified over 70 pedophiles with nothing but his com-

puter. He created a virus disguised as a file of child pornography that, when opened, gave him full access to a computer’s database. Once Willman would find a sufficient amount of evidence, he would turn over the pedophile’s identity to watchdog groups of pedophile hunters on the Internet. Such groups would typically proceed to get in touch with local authorities, who launched their own investigations.

Now, the identification of pedophiles is certainly valuable; the benefit of corner-cutting in the legal system to destroy a worldwide community of child predators is difficult to challenge. In an ideal scenario, all acts of vigilantism would be that way—twisting the law for the well-being of the people. Unfortunately, Willman’s

different circumstances. Most cases do not revolve around hacking or pedophilia—some are fueled by the government itself. While campaigning for presidency, current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte promised to “kill so many criminals, fish will grow fat.” According to recent reports, he seems to be fulfilling his promise, as over 1,800 people have been executed without being proven guilty, sending Duterte’s approval rates up.

His version of “war on terrorism” is the murder of criminals, gangs, and drug dealers.

However, Duterte’s endorsement of killing suspected criminals has made the police force follow his example and ultimately defeat its own purpose; a symbol of law, order, and justice now views citizens as guilty without a chance of

that goes against this view, as their government places a vigilante bandaid over their deteriorating justice system and endorses extrajudicial violence. To limit vigilantism to what occurs in first world countries alone is sheer denial. Thus, if the Philippines and countries with a similar stance on vigilantism have taught others anything, it’s that vigilantism takes the lives of the innocent, strips people of their rights, and leads any government downhill.

America, Land of the Legal Vigilantes

As chilling as those last words may sound, they ring true for every nation, including ours. While America may pose as a pioneer of freedom and innovation in the 21st century, several of its laws are

“To limit vigilantism to what occurs in first world countries alone is sheer denial.”

case is somewhat of an anomaly; he is one of the few recognized vigilantes who was never wrong in his identification of criminals and whose deeds are approved by the majority of society. Less tech-savvy individuals, on the other hand, tend to base their accusations on rumors or vague descriptions and carry out their rage physically.

Bijan Ebrahimi arrived in Britain in 2013 as a disabled refugee unable to work. His property soon fell victim to vandalism by teens, whom he promptly took pictures of in hopes of getting compensation and justice through the police. However, he was arrested on charges of pedophilia and was brought to jail while onlookers chanted “pedo, pedo.” That night, after being wrongfully accused, Ebrahimi was beaten and set on fire by his next door neighbor.

Condoning vigilantism based on cherry-picked success stories while denying the tragic and wrongful murder of Bijan Ebrahimi is intolerable. Regardless of his race, gender, or immigration status, Ebrahimi was an innocent man whose death could have been prevented if his neighbor didn’t turn to vigilantism as an outlet for his fear.

Discovering pedophiles through vigilantism is evidently a double-edged sword. Vigilantes have the potential to uncover criminal behavior, but because they operate outside of the justice system, they can easily misidentify their targets and cause incredible harm.

Innocent people fall victim to the rage of vigilantes, losing their lives and reputations in the process.

Vigilantes must understand that plunging themselves into an ongoing investigation or attempting to start one often compromises the more regulated work of the police. Crime scenes are tampered with and suspects are brutally murdered, thus denied their fundamental rights of due process and fair trial. Combined with homicides, breaking and enterings, kidnappings, and assaults, the actions of vigilantes make them criminals, not saviors.

The Downfall of Democracy

Even so, vigilantism exists around the world under slightly

being proven innocent. Murder becomes the only punishment for crimes of various degrees and takes the lives of countless innocent individuals, all with families, loved ones, and friends. Duterte’s summon for extrajudicial killings in 2016 claimed the life of Maria Aurora Moynihan, the daughter of British Baron Antony Moynihan, transforming the first high profile victim into a statistic. The death of Maria Moynihan made global headlines and drew heavy scrutiny and attention toward the Philippine government. In response to the human rights abuse allegations that soon followed, Duterte threatened to withdraw from the UN. Duterte’s extrajudicial agenda soon expanded to slums and poor communities throughout the Philippines. Nightly drug raids committed by masked shooters became a weekly, if not daily occurrence, along with the appearance of bodies lining the streets. In some parts of the Philippines, such as Tagum, Mindanao, police are even encouraged to kill petty criminals and street children as part of their crackdown on crime. As a result, the only response to violence becomes violence, trapping countries like the Phillipines in an endless cycle of killings.

Larger scale vigilantism as demonstrated in the Philippines undermines one of the most essential parts of a democracy: an individual’s right to due process and the applicacy of the rule of law.

Such grievances can escalate to the president extending his powers into other branches of government and transforming it into an autocracy.

While this may appear as a worst case scenario and many argue this is hardly relevant to vigilante hacking or uncovering pedophilia, it becomes impossible to bolster one side of vigilantism without justifying the other.

Until the Philippines, vigilantism has only been portrayed as a series of actions committed without legal backing. An obsession with a refined and democratic government in the United States has prevented the Philippine chaos from domestic occurrence and shaped the public view of vigilantism as an operation solo from the state. Yet the Philippines are a prime example of a country

controversial and outdated. At the top of the list sits the Stand Your Ground law, a self-defense law introduced in 2005 allowing a person to use violence to defend themselves or their property if they feel threatened. This law has received heavy backlash; the legal ambiguity and subjective nature of one “feeling threatened” and the urge to retaliate has created a “shoot first” approach to dealing with crime. Individuals also possess the right to decide when their property is under attack; as obvious as that could seem, dozens of cases have arose with misinterpretations on behalf of the defendants, highlighting why violence should never be one’s first choice. Still, this law has run into other obstacles, including many individuals pleading self-defense while on trial for a homicide, taking legal punishment into one’s own hands, and violently acting upon racial profiling.

One of the most controversial examples of the Stand Your Ground law was the trail of State of Florida v. George Zimmerman, bringing into question whether Zimmerman was responsible for the second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin. Seventeen-yearold Martin was walking back from the store while on the phone with his girlfriend on February 26, 2012, carrying Skittles and iced tea—no weapon. Zimmerman took notice of Martin, a person of color, and proceeded to call 911 to report a suspicious person. The dispatcher told Zimmerman not to engage and that deputies were on their way.

Zimmerman proceeded to follow Martin, who could be heard via audio recording asking why Zimmerman was following him. According to Zimmerman’s account, Martin proceeded to attack him, prompting Zimmerman to act in self defense by firing several fatal shots at Martin. Neighbors reported that moments before his death, Martin was shouting for help.

Zimmerman was declared not guilty of the murder of Trayvon Martin on July 13, 2013, sparking nationwide fury. Dozens of protests and demonstrations showed the public’s discontent with the ruling of a crime initiated by a racist judgement call. More so, Zimmerman deliberately went against the directions of a 911 dispatcher and

violently acted on his own agenda.

Though Zimmerman pleaded selfdefense on basis of the Stand Your Ground law, it is worth analyzing who was really defending themselves: an unarmed black teen walking home from the store, or an armed 28-year-old man with a history of domestic violence who went against “do not engage” orders?

Such cases are more common than one may think, but rarely do they make front page news. The Stand Your Ground law has allowed people to legally kill others and walk free even if the circumstances of the crime are unclear.

What is clear, however, is that the Stand Your Ground law is also legal vigilantism, as it allows one to violently occupy the role of law enforcement, even if there are other, safer options at hand.

At the moment, 33 states have a form of the Stand Your Ground law, which should be altered; instead of allowing the undefined criteria to apply to every case presented as self-defense, individual states should whittle down the Stand Your Ground law to a more specific and refined version, covering aspects overlooked by the general law. For instance, Florida’s 776.012 clause on self-defense states that “a person is justified in using deadly force (and does not have a duty to retreat) if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony or to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to him or her self [...].”

Though some criteria are given for the usage of deadly force, the prevention of a forcible felony or serious harm to oneself does not apply to the case of State of Florida v. Zimmerman. For future cases, stricter investigations of whether a threat was truly present would make the law less violent and allow for safer forms of crime-stopping to take place. This involves highlighting the presence of a weapon or a visible disadvantage between perpetrator and victim, along with a moral questioning of how necessary death was to prevent the crime.

By making the law less vigilantefriendly, hundreds of deaths can be avoided and criminals incarcerated. That, rather than violence at anyone deemed threatening, would serve true justice.

Vigilante justice is evidently a complex issue. It encompasses government corruption, self- defense, felonies, and online security breaches. In a time where many third world countries exercise vigilante justice, it is crucial to decide whether the pros outweigh the cons. On one side, everyday people are able to occupy the role of law enforcement, catch criminals, and perhaps make the world a safer place. But on the other, untrained individuals make assumptions and act upon such assumptions with incredible violence, leaving the question of how “safe” vigilantism is up for debate.

The Dawn of a Vigilante-Free Era

But perhaps the most overlooked aspect of vigilantism is one of its most common motives: dissatisfaction with present judicial institutions.Yet, while cases where the government has engulfed and is contributing to the corruption of the judicial system may be much more complex, domestic vigilantism can be helped.

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Opinions Highly Stigmatized, Hardly Recognized continued from page 11 Presently, the criminal justice system in the United States is flawed. Obvious racial bias towards people of color, bribery and the general leniency towards big money, and the vast discrepancies of punishments for a crime (as seen in the infamous 2016 case of Stanford student and rapist Brock Turner) barely scratch the surface of problems in the American justice system. But even then the list goes on, as the police force is also subjected to the same, if not higher problems.

According to a study conducted

by University of Michigan Law

School professor Samuel Gross, one in 25 people on death row are innocent.

Many such cases are contributed to via false confessions, harsh interrogation tactics, and the objectivity of the police—it’s the police force that determines which leads to follow, witnesses to believe, and ultimately what direction they take the investigation to. The trust put into the police force for catching criminals is also concerning; The Washington Post states that the FBI acknowledged a two-decade period before 2000 where almost every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimonies in nearly 260 trials, 32 of which ended in a death sentence. How can the country have complete

faith in its judicial system and police force after an organization as powerful as the FBI admitted to such damning actions?

Fixing these issues is a daunting task that the country as a whole must undertake. While past mistakes on behalf of the government cannot be erased, a visible effort toward prosecuting corrupt police officers, instituting reforms against police brutality/racial injustice, and standardizing punishments for the same crimes will likely start to rebuild the trust Americans put in their legal system. In doing so, the United States will not only start to restore public faith, but also decrease the rates of vigilante justice by removing one of the main motives vigilantes

have for their actions. Putting an end to vigilantism requires more than just that; another basis vigilantes have is simply uncontrollable rage and a lust for physical means of justice, an “eye for an eye” mentality that gets out of hand. Terminating personal motives and putting a leash on the desire for revenge will not come from reforming the judicial system, but from reforming the way pop culture views vigilantes, ending their glorification, and just as importantly, increasing awareness of vigilante cons.

In heavily covered cases of vigilante justice, attention should be diverted from the vigilante themselves and instead onto the other criminals in the investigation, highlighting how morally

and legally wrong their actions were. News coverages should end their reports with notes as to why the vigilante was in the wrong for committing their crimes and how all suspicions should have been turned over to the authorities.

Similarly, reminding the public of the entire scope of vigilantism, including government corruption, misidentification, racial profiling, infringement of personal rights, and blatant murder, will discourage and criminalize future vigilantes in pursuing vengeance.

After all, one cannot condone vigilantism on a case-by-case basis, and must accept that acts of vigilantism are inimical to the well-being of society.

Urban America Is Still America

By Ben Platt Am I Donald Trump’s constituent? In the most literal sense, yes. But I am opposed to most, if not all of his policies, and there’s not much he could do that would change my mind about him.

The same goes for most of the people I know. Hillary Clinton won 80 percent of New York City’s votes. It makes sense that the desires and interests of fellow New Yorkers would not be the first priority of this administration. But the administration’s attitude toward urban dwellers has reached an antipathy that is having an unprecedented impact on policy.

The Trump administration has a systematic agenda to hinder projects in urban areas, hurting the lives of many, if not most, Americans.

In the last federal census, 80.7 percent of Americans were counted as living in urban areas.

Many of these people voted for President Trump—they are his constituents. It is both morally and politically in President Trump’s interest to meet their needs The easiest place to see this bias against urban areas is in federal funding for transit projects.

In the most recent federal appropriations bill signed into law by President Trump in March 2018, $1.4 billion was designated to be given out by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). So far, none of this money has been given out despite specific direc-

tions from Congress for the use of this money. Before the Trump administration, the disbursement of these funds was routine and reliable. The longer the FTA waits, the more local leaders lose political capital, the cost of these projects increase, and citizens are denied of vital transportation projects.

Many of the projects that have not received federal funding are in states President Trump won, such as Texas, Florida, and Arizona. To make matters even worse, the FTA

has not given reasons for the delay in funding for many of these projects. An article in The Wall Street Journal quantified this shift in federal policy. A program known as the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program (TIGER) that provides funds for highway and other transit projects gave rural areas 21 percent of the total funds in the program. This past year, 64 percent of funds went to rural areas. A grossly disproportionate

allocation of federal funds to rural areas can only mean that the Trump administration is delivering a form of retribution to the areas that did not vote for it.

Ironically, the federal department that has ‘urban’ in its name—the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)—has announced plans to reverse a rule instituted during the Obama administration that prohibits racially discriminator y policies even if the policies themselves are not explicitly discriminatory. An example of this would be a housing development having a disproportionately low

those who are most vulnerable to housing discrimination.

Perhaps the most egregious effort to suppress the interests of urban areas by the Trump administration is the effort to include a question on citizenship. This would lead to a drastically reduced response rate from undocumented immigrants who are counted in the Census.

By having counts that are lower than they are supposed to be, areas where these immigrants live will receive less representation in Congress. This will dilute the voting power of the residents of states, meaning they will have less votes in the Electoral College. Areas where non-citizens live tend to be Democratic

amount of people of color— something Donald Tr u m p Tony Chen / The Spectator was accused of in 1973.

H U D strongholds. also plans to raise rents on low-in- This action could literally impact come families and institute work presidential elections. The Comrequirements in order to receive merce Department, which adaid. This contravenes HUD’s ministers the Census, has given stated mission of protecting inconsistent and irrational ex-

planations for this decision, first saying the Justice Department had asked for the question to be placed on the Census before saying his aides had asked the Justice Department to request that the question be included. The only explanation for these differing rationales is that there’s no legitimate reason to include this question on the Census.

Previous administrations, Democratic and Republican, carried out programs that didn’t necessarily align with their political beliefs. The EPA under former President George Bush tried to limit the effects of climate change, and the FTA disbursed funds even though urban areas were mostly opposed to former President Bush. The actions being taken by this administration against a certain constituency are extraordinary in their breadth and depth.

The Trump administration doesn’t have to be the best friend to urban areas and work to achieve all of their priorities.

No administration can do that; there are many constituencies in this country and, sometimes, their interests conflict. However, the federal government is completely ignoring the interests of urban areas in ways that sometimes veer into illegal territory. A government should try to serve all of their constituents and the Trump administration has made no effort at doing this. When it comes to such a large portion of the United States, the administration needs to do better.

What is Street Harassment? What Can We do About It?

By Claire Shin Picture begging your friend to escort you home every night after a long SING! rehearsal or after a swim meet. Exasperated, he questions your motives. Slightly embarrassed, you explain that it’s because you don’t feel safe walking home late in the night; drawing on past experiences, you fear being harassed by strangers on the street. Your friend, wanting nothing more than to go home and writing it off as “not a big deal,” declines your request.

You’re left to take a much longer, but safer, route home, just to avoid harassment.

This predicament might be fictional, but it’s a harsh reality for many women, and it doesn’t get the recognition that it should.

Knowing that street harass-

ment for women is often downplayed as a normal part of city life, director Rob Bliss came up with an idea for a video project: to capture 10 hours of footage of what it is like to be a woman walking the streets of New York City in 2014. Actress Shoshana Roberts starred in the video that has since gone viral. As she walks down the street with slightly downcast eyes, men leer at her, comment on her body, and even silently trail her for blocks.

Stop Street Harassment, a nonprofit organization that works to document and end street harassment, reports that 65 percent of American women are victims of street harassment.

This includes leering, honking and whistling, sexist comments, vulgar gestures, sexually explicit comments, kissing noises, fol-

lowing, blocking of paths, sexual grabbing and touching, assault, and masturbation. In Tokyo, 64 percent of women in their 20s and 30s report being groped in their daily commute. And according to another French study, 100 percent of women say they have been sexually harassed at least once while taking public transportation.

For some women, the harassment becomes intolerable.

According to Holly Kearl, who founded Stop Street Harassment, street harassment has made women change their lifestyle drastically, such as avoiding locations where they were harassed, not going places alone, and in extreme cases, quitting their jobs and moving away.

But before we can attack this problem at its roots, we

need to understand the motives behind street harassment. Some people do it to assert dominance or scare an individual, which explains why women often get harassed even more by talking back.

Sociologist Laura Beth Nielsen says that when a stranger comments on a woman’s looks, for instance, it is supposed to be “invisible to other people around.

The…woman doesn’t know where [the comment is] going, and, a lot of times, may feel violated or threatened.” When enduring this feeling of uneasiness, most victims of street harassment simply lower their heads and keep walking, much like what some of our own parents told us to do when dealing with bullies: just ignore it. But ignoring street harassment has taken away from the credibility of the real psycho-

logical impact it has on women.

We as a society need to reverse this notion and help victims feel protected. We need to let women know that asking for help, from a trusted person or a police officer, is completely acceptable. People need to know how prevalent street harassment is, and both the federal and local government should ensure that women don’t have to let harassment get to the point where they must change anything they do in order to avoid it—not the way they dress, their route home, their jobs, or their home addresses.

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Opinions What is Street Harassment? What Can We do About It? continued from page 12 In New York, there are already many laws combating street harassment. For “disorderly conduct,” which constitutes “yelling sexist or homophobic comments, using obscene, offensive, or lewd language, or someone blocking your path on the sidewalk or in the street,” the perpetrator may receive a fine or imprisonment.

Repeated activity that “seriously

annoys” another person and is done for no discernible reason may have the same consequence.

Any form of sexual misconduct is illegal; forcible touching is punishable with up to a year in prison.

If women feel like the harassment has gone too far, the government should make it clear that it’s okay to say something, through widespread programs to spread awareness. In this day and age, dissemination of information is incredibly easy. Ads, in the form of posters or on-

line ads, especially in city areas where street harassment is most common, will serve as constant, gentle reminders to women that it’s fine to tell someone about harassment. Even 30-second videos, on YouTube or television, go a long way in spreading the message. Police should also be more alert and fully ready to step in if harassment escalates into something illegal, like stalking or sexual harassment.

Most importantly, people need to change their perceptions of street harassment. Dismiss-

ing catcalls as compliments is tantamount to condoning verbal harassment that makes women feel uncomfortable. Commenting on a woman’s body should not be seen as a form of validation. Rather, it is degrading to the status of women and takes away from their sense of safety on the streets because verbal harassment has the potential to quickly escalate into physical harassment.

Eliminating street harassment requires much more than a change in fundamental law; it

requires a change in fundamental perception. If this change can be accomplished, by educating and discouraging street harassers and encouraging women to talk to the police, we can accomplish the ultimate goal that the women’s suffrage movement strove for. Women don’t have to be forced to look down, keep walking, and ignore it. If we succeed in stamping out street harassment, they will finally be able to walk the streets proud and happy to be a woman.

The Steadfast Sex Struggle of STEM

By Kristin Cheng You find yourself in a laboratory poring over a résumé intently, your senses overwhelmed by the pristine white equipment and striking, potent scent of disinfectant. Numerous esteemed biologists, including yourself, at six prestigious research facilities are asked to participate in a study conducted by researchers at Yale, in which you are each presented with an identical job application of an imaginary student seeking a lab manager position—half of these applicants possess a female name and the other half possess a male name—and tasked with assessing how willing you would be to hire the potential applicant.

Much to your surprise, despite boasting the same exact credentials, your fellow professors are significantly more willing to offer the man a job. Even those who choose to hire the woman set her salary, on average, $4,000 lower than the man’s. More appallingly, the female scientists, in their choices, are just as gender-biased as their male counterparts. Your role in the scenario may be imaginary, but the study and its unfortunate findings are not.

With social movements constantly erupting in cries for justice and gender equality, it is easy to assume that we as a society have progressed and grown past this dated and sexist thinking.

Yet countless young women in my generation and before have had to grow up listening to cries from men like previous president of Harvard Lawrence Summers, who declared that “fewer females than males have the ‘innate ability’ to succeed in academic disciplines that require advanced mathematical abilities” in 2005. Women are constantly belittled and conditioned by society to believe that they don’t have what it takes to thrive in challenging STEM careers and that their biological gender holds them back from the day they are born.

My own relatives and teachers led me to believe that I didn’t bear the capabilities required to succeed in science and math that my male counterparts seemed to.

The first time I did poorer than I had hoped on a science test, my second grade teacher’s chosen words of consolation were that “it’s okay to be bad at science” because “all girls are usually only good at English anyway.” And it has grown apparent that I am not the only girl who has grown up possessing these invalid beliefs and letting them dictate what I choose to pursue.

The Economics and Statistics Administration revealed that in 2015, women filled 47 percent of all jobs in the U.S., but held only 24 percent of STEM jobs. Similarly, women constitute slightly more than half of all college-educated workers, yet still only comprise 25 percent of college-educated STEM workers. As you can

see, the feminist movement has certainly helped level the playing field and made our society more progressive, ensuring that women bountifully fill our world’s workplaces and universities. However, recession, not progression, is observed when it comes to encouraging women to pursue STEM careers. For example, the National Center for Women and Information Technology reported that women received 37 percent of computer science degrees in 1985, but only a mere 18 percent in 2010, in what is supposedly a more advanced day and age.

Evidently, there is a disparity that exists and must be alleviated, especially because in 2017, women in STEM jobs earned 35 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs. Likewise, they earned 40 percent more than men with non-STEM jobs. As a result, the wage gap is less prevalent in STEM careers. In order to truly secure gender equality

a n d draw the abiding wage gap to a close, women should be given equal opportunities to participate and prevail in such vocations.

Despite the enduring implications that the lack of women choosing to enter the STEM realm of careers is due to an innate lack of ability, it has been proven on various occasions that men and women actually have strikingly similar cognitive abilities pertaining to these subjects.

Psychologists at the University of Wisconsin published a meta-analysis in 1990 that synthesized data collected from over three million participants in 100 different studies of math performance. The researchers found no large overall differences between the results of boys and girls. Furthermore, girls even appeared slightly better at computation in earlier stages of schooling. However, in high school, the disparities seemed to emerge as boys showed a slight edge in problem-solving. This was likely due to their confidence in their skills and choice to emphasize learning what they have been told they possess a natural ability in.

The scarcity of women pursuing STEM is rather a matter of underlying psychological factors and stereotypes, since girls are often conditioned by their parents

and teachers to believe they are inferior to boys in these pursuits.

Culture also has immense cognitive impacts on our abilities to succeed. Christia Spears Brown, Professor of Psychology at Kentucky University, reasons that though parents and teachers do attribute good grades in math to the hard work of girls, they still tend to associate natural ability with boys. She explains that “girls are internalizing those cultural messages earl y

Michael Hu / The Spectator

in development, believing that, yes they may work hard, but they are not naturally really smart.”

Furthermore, she expressed how “these beliefs can have important implications for what types of academic paths children choose to take and shows [sic] why girls are opting out of majors like physics, despite earning high grades in school.” If girls are filled with self-doubt and uncertainty about their natural ability to flourish in STEM classes due to unsolicited stereotypes planted in their minds by their mentors, they are less likely to take classes that emphasize those skills. This hinders their growth, while potentially accounting for the slight problemsolving advantage boys held in later years of schooling.

In fact, stereotypes and perceived notions spoon-fed by others are proven to affect performance. In a study conducted by the University of Michigan in 1999, a sample of students with similarly strong backgrounds and abilities in math were divided into two groups. In the first, the students were informed that men performed better on math tests than women did, and in the second, the students were assured that regardless of what they might have heard, there was no difference between male and fe-

male performance. Both groups were given the same math test.

In the first, the men outscored the women by 20 points; in the second, the men scored only two points higher.

Thus, social, cultural, and subconscious influences play an unfortunately strong role in blurring the line between actual and perceived differences in ability among men and women. We are biologically equal intellectually, yet gender roles still control our lives and set boundaries on what we think are our capabilities. In order to secure gender equality, stereotypes must be retired, and more conscious efforts should be made to reassure girls that they are more than capable of succeeding in whatever fields their passions lie, including STEM. Keeping girls engaged in and intrigued

by STEM pursuits throughout their years of schooling is a good first step. If they are constantly exposed to authentic, relevant, and applicable experiences of STEM—such as robotics and

computer science—from an early age and provided with opportunities to experiment in a space where it feels safe to make mistakes, they are more likely to continue developing their critical thinking skills. If we allow them to do so, they will undoubtedly enjoy STEM-related classes with a self-assured mindset, rather than think “This is difficult; I might not be good at it.”

Stuyvesant, often branded a STEM-oriented school, already has a focus on encouraging all students, men and women alike, to delve into and pursue these subjects. By making classes like computer science a graduation requirement, our school is already making progress, considering that of all the students who take the annual AP Computer Science exam, typically only 28 percent are female. Instead of requiring students to endure classes like Art Appreciation and Drafting, which many find tedious and unproductive, higher-level STEM courses and multiple engaging science electives that our school already offers should be conditions of the Stuyvesant endorsed diploma. Drafting and related courses should still be options for electives, but they should not fill valuable spots in the schedules of students who could otherwise be taking more stimulating STEM classes.

Furthermore, the teaching style of our instructors, especially those who run math classes, must be altered. If individuals perceive themselves as bad at math, they are more predisposed to the act of disliking and dodging it. Without practice and conscious effort to improve, they are likely to fall behind in this subject. This may legitimize a lack of ability and competence that was once just a perception. And the way the education system of the United States is set up only perpetuates the circumstance. When math is taught in the U.S., and especially in Stuyvesant, comprehension of concepts seems to be of far greater value than repeated practice is, since our school’s teachers often try to expand our curriculum and cover a vast number of extra topics, limiting the time available to regularly perform practice. To avoid letting girls shy away from and ultimately fall behind in STEM subjects, Stuyvesant’s teachers must place a further emphasis on practice, either by allocating more time during their lessons to do so or by giving various homework problems that are targeted toward the same concept for reinforcement.

Moreover, companies like J.P. Morgan, an investment bank, are launching initiatives such as their Winning Women program. This program seeks our next generation of female leaders in finance, offering them internships and ensuring that their workforce is comprised of an adequate amount of women.

Likewise, feminist Karlie Kloss operates Kode with Klossy, a free summer camp intent on empowering and teaching girls in high school to code. Beyond us pushing our girls to pursue STEM endeavors at home and in the classroom, an increasing number of employers and influencers should begin to provide such programs.

Stuyvesant’s teachers and guidance counselors should also seek out these opportunities and inform their students about them, via e-mail or during class. Extra credit awarded to those who apply and partake in the programs would certainly boost the number of female students who attend.

There, they may learn more about various fields of STEM, expand their interest, and hopefully be inspired to become future innovators of engineering, technology, and much more.

To some, gender inequalities pertaining to career choice may simply seem like a vestige of past decades, silenced by the closing of the wage gap, but disparities between the participation of men and women in STEM affairs echo louder than ever. The Stuyvesant community and our society as a whole must make significant progress before we are able to reverse the insinuated biases the women of our world have grown up dealing with.

Page 14

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Opinions The Future of NYC Urban Planning

By Julian Giordano

The History of NYC Urban Planning

The majority of New York City’s population of around 96,000 people was concentrated in the lower tip of Manhattan in 1810. New Yorkers then lived in tight, cramped neighborhoods with little sanitation or safety. Devastating outbreaks of diseases such as yellow fever were all too common. The Common Council of New York City and the New York State Legislation decided to counter this by creating the “gridplan” in 1810.

Over the course of the following 60 years, the system of rectangular blocks was created, extending as far up as Washington Heights. This can be seen as one of the first major acts of urban planning in NYC, and like any act of urban planning, it was controversial. Many thought that the rigid system of rectangular blocks and angular buildings would take the soul away from the city and make it a monotonous place.

One historian of the time, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, said, “The new plan was entirely deficient in sentiment and charm, and with its gradual development, little by little, the individuality, the interest, and the beauty of one choice spot after another have been swept away [until] scarcely anything remains to remind us of the primitive beauty and the fascinating diversity of natural charms we know Manhattan once possessed. The year 1811 marks the end of the little old city and the beginning of the great modern me-

Julian Giordano / The Spectator

I was born and raised on a small, residential block in the Upper West Side. Like most of the buildings in my neighborhood, my apartment building was only six stories tall. That’s why I was shocked when just a few months ago I was told a 775 feet building would be built right next to mine, and that there was almost nothing anyone could do to stop it.

The real estate development company Extell released its design for 50 West 66th Street in November 2017, and began tearing down the building that it would be replacing. Extell’s new building would stand more than twice as tall as the tallest buildings in the entirety of the Upper West Side, and would use that height to achieve spectacular views of Central Park and the rest of Manhattan. Surprisingly, though, Extell planned to only create 127 apartments in the building.

For comparison, my 60-foot-tall building has 54 apartments within it. So while Extell’s building was over 10 times the height of mine, it had only around twice the number of apartments, and 200 feet of the building’s height would be filled with empty spaces. Dubbed “voids,” these nonfunctional spaces would serve to increase the height of the building so that the apartments above them could have better views.

I also learned that there would be no “community review” for this building, meaning there would be no way for residents to have a say in whether it would be built or not. This is because it was classified as an “as of right development,” meaning that Extell could build without input from City Planning, City Council, or public disclosure if they worked within baseline regulations. Even months after the approval of Extell’s plans, many of my neighbors had no idea what was getting built right next to them, even when it would have dramatic effects on their quality of life.

To learn more about the construction, I started researching the city’s zoning laws and the Department of City Planning. I went to local Community Board meetings and helped create a block association to organize our community. I’ve spoken to urban planners, architects, elected officials, and community activists in hope of finding a way

their surrounding neighborhoods, then almost every neighborhood in NYC is affected by out-of-context development.

It’s an undoubtable fact thatthe urban landscape of New York will undergo change as the market for supertall buildings grows and the technology required to build them becomes less expensive. And while I don’t want skyscrapers being built in my “backyard,” I’ve come to acknowledge that the future is inevitable. What’s important now is to make sure that the future is controlled by a democratic process that is transparent to all New Yorkers.

And that requires not just changing the structure of the Department of City Planning and their regulations, but also ensuring that all New Yorkers are aware of development going on around them and how they can make their voice heard.

growth, New York began to see its first supertall buildings in downtown Manhattan. In the same way that citizens spoke out against the construction of the grid system, they spoke out against the construction of massive buildings. They argued that these blocked light and air from the city streets and encouraged large factories and businesses to move into residential areas, worsening the quality of life by leading to congestion. As a result of these complaints from both citizens and businesses alike, New York City initiated a zoning code—the first in the nation— in 1916. The Zoning Resolution of 1916 was intended to prevent the construction of massive buildings and ensure that heavily populated areas remained residential and not commercial. It restricted the height of skyscrapers and mandated they fill a certain percentage of their building lot and also required plazas or low-rise buildings to be coupled with skyscrapers, leading to the famous “set-back” style of building.

After a national act promoting the creation of zoning regulations, Mayor LaGuardia spearheaded the creation of the City Planning Commission in 1936, which was placed in charge of NYC’s land use. The Commission’s roles also included updating the official City Map, managing city-owned real estate, and creating historic district statuses.

After beginning function in 1938, the Commission spent the next few decades conducting research and sampling public opinion in order to update the 1916 Zoning Resolution, which was quickly becoming outdated. Finally, it created a new

Present Day NYC Urban Planning

There have been no new zoning resolutions since 1961. Nonetheless, the City Planning Commission has grown larger in scale and scope, and the main role it plays nowadays is approving public and private land use applications throughout the city.

Every year it goes through around 500 applications, which are either unilaterally reviewed and decided on by City Planning or go through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP). The ULURP allows applications to be publicly viewed, and means they must be approved by Community Boards, the Borough President, the Borough Board, the City Council, and the Mayor. Unfortunately, 98 percent of applications for new buildings nowadays do not go through ULURP, but are automatically approved “as of right.”

Because most buildings are built “as of right,” the text of the 1961 Resolution is the only screening criteria for new buildings in the city. This is quite problematic, as the 1961 Resolution is incredibly outdated. While in 1961 the Chrysler building was still regarded with horror, nowadays the Chrysler building is admired as one of the most elegant skyscrapers on the skyline. A combination of a growing market for high-rise buildings and a rise in cheap technology to build upwards of 800 feet means that the 1961 Resolution no longer applies to new constructions throughout the city, and is in dire need of being replaced with more relevant regulations.

Looking Forward to the City Skyline

“By making city planning more democratic, we will be able to mold New York into a city that is better for the well-being of its people, and not only one for the profits of developers.”

to stop the impending construction next door, or at least to negotiate a partial solution. Unfortunately, there was too little time, and in the upcoming months the construction will start.

But what I’ve come to realize is that the issue I faced is so much greater than a single building getting built next door. There are buildings of similar scale being built around the city, from the Lower East Side to Long Island City, Downtown Brooklyn, and Hudson Yards. And if you take into account not just the raw height of buildings, but the height of buildings compared to

tropolis.”

Despite the criticisms, the year 1811 marked a turning point in the history of NYC, and it developed from a small port city in Lower Manhattan to a vast urban metropolis reaching all five boroughs. Proper plumbing and aqueducts were created, streets were paved, rail lines were constructed, and New York became an increasingly larger economic powerhouse. By the end of the 19th century, the population had grown to 3.5 million (35 times larger) and had expanded to occupy all of the boroughs making up NYC. During this time of massive

Zoning Resolution in 1961. This new resolution addressed a changing economy, a rapidly expanding population, and the increasing use of automobiles. The most important part of the Resolution was that it divided the city into commercial, residential, and manufacturing areas—each with different zoning rules having to do with floor area, height, the building facade, etc.

This was the start of true contextual zoning in the city, which has continuously remained the basis of City Planning in NYC.

With the potential creation of a new Zoning Resolution comes the difficult questions of what to include in it and how to deal with the massive spike in development facing the city. The most controversial issue involves the height of buildings, and how to regulate them in way that maintains the historical integrity of the city. At first glance, these tall buildings appear to have mixed effects on their communities, but with closer examination it is apparent that they benefit the wealthy over the lower-class. While their massive size would appear to create more housing for a city with a growing population, most of the luxury apartments in high-rises remain vacant and become “cashboxes in the sky” for foreign investors. While the large amount of labor required for the construction of these buildings has been shown to raise employment rates in all sectors (not just for construction workers), the enormous scale of the buildings also requires the use of an incredible amount of resources not just to be built, but to be maintained.

Bringing water, air, heat, and energy thousands of feet above the ground is not just costly, but unsustainable.

And when supertalls begin to accumulate on the skyline, they can have massive effects on the environment, from creating wind tunnels to casting shadows on streets and parks. A

new zoning resolution would have to protect the city from the massive construction of supertalls harmful to the environment while also allowing beautiful, modern buildings to be built, especially ones that are sustainable and affordable for the average New Yorker.

In addition to changing the regulations on construction of supertalls, it would also be important to change the approval process for new developments so that they include community review. Most importantly, all buildings should have to be approved by their district’s Community Board, and go in front of community members to inform them of the changes that will be occurring in their neighborhood.

The City Planning Commission has already done a good job of making files and zoning tools publically accessible, but by lending to community input to the process it will be even more transparent.

Finally, the structure of the City Planning Commission needs to change so that it’s less bureaucratic and more democratic. Currently seven of its members are appointed by the mayor, who also chooses the chair. The other six members are appointed by Borough Presidents and the Public Advocate. Though this appears to create a balance, the mayor has one more representative than the Borough Presidents and Public Advocate combined. This means that the mayor is the one who is truly in control of City Planning, which is unjust considering the large role City Planning plays in the lives of citizens. Another issue with the City Planning Commission is that its members are largely pro-development, having all mainly been former members of real estate and development companies.

To change these two problems the Commission could create a balance between the mayor and the Borough President/Public Advocate’s members and add in a couple community members to serve as well.

By making City Planning more democratic, we will be able to mold New York into a city that is better for the well-being of its people, and not only one for the profits of developers.

New York City is—and has always been—a city defined by the people who live in it. The way we house those people is crucial to the existence of the city and will define how it evolves over time. There are many questions about what the city should be: a place for skyscrapers and the super-rich? A place for historical buildings and the middle class? A place for affordable housing? A place for industry and business? However, once answered, these questions will end up defining the future of NYC. And while it’s near impossible to understand which vision for urban planning will be the best, it it easy to see that there are problems with our current City Planning system, and the only way they can be corrected is by removing control of the city from developers and placing it in the hands of those who live in the city and those who will be living in it for generations to come.

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 15

Opinions Oil, Oil Everywhere

By Michael Dekhtyar In recent decades, the Middle East has become a Cold War-esque battleground for its two main powers: Iran and Saudi Arabia. This is mainly due to the Sunni-Shia split in Islamic faith that originated in the 700s, but tensions were exacerbated by the Iranian Revolution, a religious uprising that challenged the spiritual dominance of Saudi Arabia. In attempts to outmaneuver each other and gain the upper hand in the region, both countries routinely fund and support local rebel groups and military organizations.

The conflict in Yemen is one of the chief manifestations of this power struggle. Iran-backed Houthi rebels overthrew the democratically elected government in 2014, leading Saudi Arabia to form a coalition of Arab nations in an attempt to reinstate the government.

The coalition has made no progress. Missiles regularly fly in both directions over the countries’ borders, and the war shows no sign of slowing down. As a result of the conflict, Yemen is experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history; many civilians do not have access to clean water or necessary medical supplies, and diseases long beaten in the developed world run rampant. Despite all this, the Saudi government continues

to show little to no concern about the plight of the Yemeni people. In fact, it has done the complete opposite. Jet fighters regularly bomb funerals and wedding halls, and on August 9, they bombed a stalled school bus near a group of young children. None of these can logically be thought of as “military targets,” yet they were all attacked.

The war has led to serious ques-

should cancel any and all pending arms deals with Saudi Arabia. The regime has proven time and time again that it does not take human rights or civilian casualties into account when taking military action.

The U.S. cannot let this continue unimpeded. The first step to ending the human suffering and hastening the end of the conflict is to cut off the massive arms trade between

10 was manufactured by Lockheed Martin, a company that has long benefited from U.S. government contracts. The Trump administration should cease to do business with any companies that can be proven to have exacerbated the Saudi-Yemen conflict.

Supporters of the Saudi regime have claimed that restrictions on America’s involvement in the

The war has led to serious questions about America’s role in the Middle East.

tions about America’s role in the Middle East. Relations between the Saudi Arabian monarchy and the U.S. government have never been better, especially after the signing of a massive $110 billion arms deal in 2017. President Trump will likely steer clear of any real action to avoid endangering the lucrative oil trade that the Saudis control. But if the conflict is to be resolved and the human suffering reduced, the United States must take drastic action.

First and foremost, America

the two countries. Doing so would boost America’s reputation in the Middle East, which has long been tarnished by the Iraq War, and appease Iranian tensions with the U.S., which were inflamed by the revoking of the Iran nuclear deal.

Second, the U.S. should apply economic sanctions against Saudi Arabia and companies that do business with it, especially companies that deal with arms manufacturing and the oil trade. The missile that struck the school bus on August

lucrative oil trade could hurt the American economy and lessen its influence in the Middle East. But with the U.S. as the newly-crowned world’s top producer of oil, this critique no longer holds up. America has more than enough natural resources to sustain its economy and energy sector for decades. Any international action by other oil-rich countries, like the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, would likely have very little effect. On the other hand, the Saudis would not survive for long

without their main source of wealth in the world.

It certainly is possible that the Saudis would turn to other less morally driven countries in pursuit of trading partners—namely, Russia. However, Russia itself has a vast supply of natural resources, enough to largely take care of itself. More importantly, with the involvement of both Russia and Saudi Arabia in the Syrian Civil War, the Russians would be unlikely to get tangled up in another alliance that would deepen their dedication to the conflict.

Add to that the fact that the Saudis support Syrian rebels that oppose the Russian-backed Assad government, and the chances of Saudi Arabia finding other dedicated recipients of its oil are greater.

To take any action other than a drastic reversal of international relations would be a betrayal of the ideals that the postwar Western world was built upon. The policy of turning a blind eye to human rights violations, especially by the liberal, democratic West, should end immediately. The time has come for the West to give its answer to Saudi Arabia’s obvious and arrogant violation of international human rights agreements. Doing so would be the first step in bringing some semblance of stability and peace to one of the most brutal places in the world.

2015

March 19 Saudi-Yemen War begins.

March 25 Saudi airstrikes against Houthi rebels begin.

March 26 Coalition launches airstrikes on civilian and military airports. 17 people are killed.

2016

Mid-March U.S.-supplied precisionguided Mark 84 bomb kills 97 people in Yemen market.

October 8 Airstrike is launched on funeral in Sana’a.

2017

Houthis claim to have shot down a Saudi Black Hawk helicopter. 12 soldiers die in the attack.

November 4 A Houthi-launched missile is intercepted over King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh.

January 28 Yemen PM appeals to Saudi Arabia for help after coup is launched after capture of government HQ in Aden.

July 6 A suspected U.S. drone strike kills 7 al-Qaeda militants in Shabwah.

April 18

2018 July 3 Saudi planes bomb a wedding party in Saada; at least 8 people are killed.

August 9 A Saudi airstrike hits a bus in Dahyan, Sa’dah, killing dozens of children.

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 16

Arts and Entertainment Music

By ANDREW NG

Fashion

By EMMA LINDERMAN

composition.

Perhaps no other track is as jarring as the lead single, “Hunger.”

The track is an upbeat, distinctively Florence + the Machine song that evokes a vibe similar to that of previous singles, like “Spectrum” (from “Ceremonials,” 2011), “Cosmic Love” (from “Lungs,” 2009), and “Delilah” (from “How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful,” 2013). Welch sings about love, vulnerability, and dealing with body issues. She borrows heavily from stylistic elements that made her previous albums successful: wistful extravagance, glittery music videos, and ornate production. Welch’s decision to include a song of similar composition to her previous successful albums appeals to older fans who may feel that they can’t follow her newest album’s arc.

However, the track fractures the cohesivity of the album’s composition.

Thus, though “Hunger” was a safe move from Florence + the Machine, it is also feels out of place on the album.

“High as Hope” is vulnerable and brutally honest; it takes on a different tone than the band’s previous albums. This vivid composition is a soaring odyssey through Welch’s past experiences. Most tracks, though some fall back on familiar themes, are refreshing. They leave a lasting impression on the listener, evident of Welch’s masterful songwriting and the band’s collective harmony.

Fall Trends: Both Familiar and Forward-Thinking been a common theme on this year’s runways, which have paved the way for other ’80s comebacks such as sequins, metallic dresses, and neon stockings. Some have theorized that this season’s flashy garments are tied to a message of female empowerment. The large and highly structured shapes, bright colors, and bold prints are rumored to have an underlying message that tells modern women not to shy away from the spotlight or hesitate to take up space. After all, the ’80s were dubbed the “Me Generation” due to a collective shift in thought among young adults, who began to distance themselves from traditional expectations.

The ’80s isn’t the only decade in the middle of a renaissance.

September has also ushered in the

a common theme as of late, and are frequently seen combined with blazers, short dresses, and other items that are big this season.

The print has also appeared in sequined form, proving that designers are not shying away from risktaking statements.

While showing up to school in some of the outfits that name brand designers have popularized seems like a risky move, 2018 Fashion Week favorites have been made accessible to students, appearing in Forever 21, American Eagle, and other well-known chains. Thrift stores are also affordable favorites, and their extensive selections of vintage finds are becoming increasingly popular among today’s high schoolers. The recent rise of “thrift store culture” has shed light on such outlets, which are espe-

“Thrift stores are also affordable favorites, and their extensive selections of vintage finds are becoming increasingly popular among today’s high schoolers.” return of ’90s “Clueless”-era plaid, the bold yellow print made iconic by the 1995 film. Centered around popular high school student Cher Horowitz, the movie has long had cult classic reputation, particularly among teenagers of all generations.

It’s true that plaid has had a presence in recent years, particularly in the ever-popular flannel shirt, but 2018 designers have brought the pattern back to its former glory with an array of items from fanny packs to pantsuits.

Keeping with the eccentricity of this fall’s trends, animal print has become an emblem of recent runway shows. Prints such as leopard, zebra, and snakeskin are

cially commonplace in New York City. Many high school students share an affinity for chains such as Buffalo Exchange, L Train Vintage, and Beacon’s Closet, all of which have their fair share of retro fashion. There are very few teenagers with the funds to wear looks seen at Fashion Week; even stores like Brandy Melville and Urban Outfitters have displayed out-ofbudget prices. This is where thrift stores come into play. Their relievingly low prices and constant supply of vintage clothes are largely responsible for the return of many of this fall’s trends—both in the high fashion and everyday worlds.

The current headlines of Teen

Vogue, which has always been in tune and authentic when it comes to adolescent fashion, are also broadcasting similar themes of empowerment. With articles covering topics such as using the fashion world as a social platform and the lack of inclusivity when casting models, it’s become clear that the seemingly shroude d world of high fashion has not only been made accessible to the mainstream, but also become a platform for debate.

Recent years have shown less hesitation to question controversies from both observers and members of the fashion industry. Many have taken to Twitter to call out cultural appropriation on runways and in print, demand a broader range of bodies, and advocate for the introduction of models with disabilities.

The “Me Generation” mindset is similar to Gen Z ideals of nonconformity and independent thinking. Growing political tension has instilled in modern teens a confidence to question authority and firmly speak out against injustice. The post-Millennial age group has even been named one of the most globally connected generations. With high expectations and an entrepreneurial spirit, many of today’s middle and high school students have made bold strides in an effort to be seen as individuals. It only seems appropriate for this attitude to be reflected in current fashion, and it has been, unapologetically.

Peter Jin / The Spectator

Shorts season is coming to a close, taking with it flowing floral dresses, mini sunglasses, and oneshoulder tops, all of which were in high demand this summer. The onset of autumn and the return to school is bittersweet, but both guarantee a fresh surge of statements that will soon become staples of 2018 fall fashion.

A major shift in the way we regard fashion has been remarked in that the world of couture has become less restrictive, as well as more open to the public eye. Any current commentary on the fashion industry is bound to bring up today’s political climate, as we are seeing an increasing necessity to speak out against injustice—and fashion cannot go excluded. It seems perfectly natural that this year’s social boldness is reflected in clothing, and the standout shapes, shades, patterns of fall 2018 are doing just that.

Nostalgia for past decades isn’t entirely new; in the past year or so, the “I was born in the wrong generation” mentality has made itself known via mom jeans, slip dresses, and layers of denim, to name a few notable trends. This fall, however, a staple of the ’80s and ’90s has made an unexpected comeback: the blazer, with shoulder pads included. Over the course of this year, big-name brands such as Marc Jacobs, Gucci, and Alexander Wang have heavily featured this 30-yearold fashion touchstone, which has also been seen sported by Rihanna, Chloe Sevigny, and other street-style icons. Zara, H&M, and other widespread brands have also been encouraging the blazer’s revival, manufacturing the jacket in ways that are both understated and extravagant. The power suit is currently in its prime, but this boxy silhouette is being reinvented in countless ways, including being layered over skinny jeans, matched with miniskirts, and even constructed in denim.

Aside from blazers, the expression “go big or go home” has

rows from that vulnerable tone; the composition feels almost primitivist—featuring jarring percussion and primal-like tones. The accompanying music video for the song reflects the sound, with a group of women wearing draped robes in vivid primary colors dancing in sync.

Other tracks are less deviant, but nonetheless urge the listener to indulge in Welch’s emotional state: “Grace,” a heartfelt apology to her sister; “Sky Full of Song,” a beautiful ballad about her emotions when she sings; “Patricia,” a song about finding inspiration and love; and “100 Years,” a song about healing from relationship abuse, a topic explored extensively in her previous studio albums. The familiarity of the style and topic matter of these tracks, being consistent with the arc of Florence’s journey from struggles to acceptance, rounds out “High as Hope” as a whole.

Lastly, there are a few notable standout tracks that help develop the album. “The End of Love” is a simple melancholic ballad at first listen as Welch mentions “reaching in the dark / that summer in New York.” However, after a few listens, you start to melt into the harmonic texture that underlies the chorus. Each layer of background music seems meticulously planned and produced as Welch harmonizes with instrumentals, but also feels smooth, dense, and vulnerable in

Peter Jin / The Spectator

“And you were broken-hearted and the world was too,” Florence Welch sings despairingly in the opening track of “High as Hope.”

Florence + the Machine’s fourth studio album, “High as Hope,” was released on June 29, 2018, and is an entirely different approach to the extravagance and artistic complexity exhibited in their previous studio albums.

Florence + the Machine is composed of nine members, most notably frontwoman Florence Welch and Isabella “the Machine” Summers. “High as Hope” takes on a more subtle, vulnerable tone as Welch explores battles with addiction, love, and state of mind. Her voice is more stripped down than ever before; the album’s 10 tracks feel more textured, almost physical, and more dense with deliberate polyphony than her previous studio efforts.

Soft guitar chords and piano lead into a melodic ballad in the opening track, “June.” Welch croons in a hoarse voice about love in the midst of terror and how same sex love is under attack: “In those heavy days in June / When love became an act of defiance.” The track, in memoriam of the 2016 gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, sets a soaring, yet vulnerable tone present in the rest of the tracks.

“Big God,” in particular, bor-

Florence, Diamond in the Rough

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 17

Arts and Entertainment Send Noods: Best Ramenyas in New York City

By JIAHE WANG New York has a mélange of restaurants of different cultures, and it sure has amazing Japanese ramen.

After spending a whole year exploring the city as a crazy ramen fanatic, I have narrowed down countless ramenyas to four personal favorites.

Alex Lin / The Spectator

Mentoku

The owner of this tiny atmospheric shop is Yasuo Okada, who was classically trained with a Japanese master chef yet strives to create fusion foods. Mentoku probably has the best karaage fried chicken out of all the ramenyas I’ve been to. It is wonderfully savory and covered in a thick coat of breadcrumbs, contributing to the wonderful crunchy texture—perfect when paired with mayonnaise and lemon.

For the main course, you have the chance to try the spicy whip cream ramen, or the matcha ramen if you dare. If you want something more traditional, I recommend the classic Hakata Genryu ramen, a no-fuss bowl of endlessly sweet tonkotsu boiled for 15 hours, paired with firm thin noodles and huge slices of chashu.

744 9th Ave, New York, NY 10019 Price range: $12-16

Ippudo Ippudo is probably the most popular ramen chain in New York. Inside, customers dine in a stylish environment designed by none other than the founder Shigemi Kawahara himself. Though the ramenya offers many appetizers, the musthave is the Ippudo buns—pork or chicken chashu stuffed inside fluffy steamed buns. It is deeply satisfying and serves as a great overture to the main course.

The restaurant’s signature ramen is the Tonkotsu (pork broth) ramen, revolutionized by the team in New York City.

Unlike other ramenyas, Ippudo’s broth is silky and bursting with flavor. If you’re feeling adventurous, order the Akamaru, a modern spin on the mild Hakata-style tonkotsu ramen. It boasts a dash of the secret umami dama sauce on top of the classic broth and rich spicy garlic oil. The toppings are an oozing marinated egg, juicy pork chashu, chewy kikurage mushrooms, and chopped scallions. If heavy broths are not your thing, try their fish ramen or vegetarian options,which are made from a base of beans, seaweed, and vegetables.

65 4th Avenue (Between 9th and 10th Street), New York, NY 10003 321 West 51st Street, (Between 8th and 9th Avenue), New York, NY 10019 24 West 46th Street, (Between 5th and 6th Avenue), New York, NY 10036 Price range: $14-17

Totto Ramen

Ivan Ramen

With two locations in the Theater District and the Lower East Side, Ivan Ramen is a holy grail for ramen lovers visiting from all over the world. Made famous by the Netflix show “Chef ’s Table,” the owner, Ivan Orkin, sets out to break rules and improve upon classic Japanese recipes.

While the food is definitely on the pricier side, it doesn’t disappoint. Unlike most other ramenyas in New York, Ivan’s specialty is a lighter chicken broth instead of fatty tonkotsu. The Tokyo Shio Ramen is primed with a translucent brown dashi-chicken broth, which is saltier than most Hakata-style broths. The noodles are the firm and wavy type, topped off with silken soft boiled eggs, tender chunks of pork belly, and a thick layer of herbaceous greens. The sliced scallions make up for the loss of depth and fragrance due to the lightness of the soup—the entire bowl is a perfectly harmonized symphony of explosive flavors.

25 Clinton Street, New York, NY 10002 600 11th Avenue, New York, NY 10036 Price range: $16-23

Located in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen, Totto Ramen is the cult classic of Manhattan. It is for real fans of ramen—anyone without a burning passion for these wheat flour noodles will probably be scared off by the infamous waiting lines.

The restaurant is tiny yet cozy; three Japanese chefs boil the noodles behind the dimly lit kitchen counters al dente, according to tradition. The spicy paitan ramen has a thick chicken broth as its base, with beautiful red chili oil patterns floating on the surface. It is deeply aromatic; fried garlic and sesame are a match made in heaven. The wavy noodles are cooked to perfection, topped with chewy pork chashu, crunchy bean sprouts, and a sprinkling of thinly sliced raw green onions. A glug of Koji miso is added for an extra kick to this unforgettable combination.

The char-siu mayo don is also nothing less than amazing. Served in a tiny porcelain bowl, the rice has a zestiness due to the ponzu sauce, which is a mixture of citruses, soy sauce, mirin, and dashi. It is topped by pulled chicken boasting an oozing mayonnaise punctuated with white sesame seeds. The garnish is a crisp layer of scallions and seaweed. The overall taste is luxuriously sweet and fragrant—highly addictive.

464 W 51st St, New York, NY 10019 248 E 52nd St, New York, NY 10022 Bt. 8th and 9th Avenue, 366 W 52nd St, New York, NY 10019 Price range: $10-14

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 18

Arts and Entertainment Get a Life: The Cultured Edition Bored? Need a life? Really into socks printed with Van Gogh paintings and Doc Martin loafers?

Do you listen to Mitski, Rex Orange County, or Pheobe Bridgers? Wouldn’t going to some artsy events bolster that reputation?

ONGOING EVENTS science exhibit

art show

festival

Space & Science Festival

New York Denim Days 2018

Governors Island Art Fair

until 23

until 23

until 30

Pier 86

Metropolitan Pavilion

museum pop-up

SEPTEMBER

convention

Lincoln Center’s New York Film Festival

“Godard x 2”

Color Factory, SoHo

Governors Island

The Metrograph

until 30

SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER

film screening

The Color Factory

until 4

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

food fair

“The Waverly Gallery”

film festival

New York Comic Con Javits Center

art show

Bronx Night Market

until 20

until 27

Petzel Gallery

Lincoln Center

until 7

until 14

OCTOBER

play

Charline von Heyl

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The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 19

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

By MATILDA STEIN The Schneiderman-Stein household is facing a test to its existence unlike any faced by a modern American family.

It’s not just that the Jewish High Holidays loom large. Or that the family is bitterly divided over whether Falsettos is a good musical (it is). Or even that its baseball team might well lose to literally any other baseball team ever because the Schneiderman-Stein household roots for the Mets.

The dilemma—which the family does not fully grasp—is that the pet cat is working diligently from within to frustrate parts of its agenda and its worst inclinations.

I would know. I, Matilda Stein, am that cat. And unlike Jim Mattis, I am not too chicken to reveal my identity.

To be clear, I am not a part of the child “resistance” in this household. These children think that yelling at the parents is an effective way of getting what they want, but I want the household to succeed and think that many of its practices have already made the family happier and more prosperous.

But I believe my first duty is to the feline kind, and the family continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our species.

That is why I have vowed to do what I can to preserve our household’s institutions while thwarting the Schneiderman-Steins’s more misguided impulses until at least the children are out of the nest, though the problems will likely not even end then.

The root of the problem is the family’s amorality. Anyone who lives with them knows they are not moored to any discernible first principles that guide their decision making.

Although they claim to be good New York Democrats, the family shows little affinity for that great ideal long espoused by liberals: not eating dinner. At best, the children invoke this ideal when they want to keep texting their friends but the food is ready.

I do everything I can to stop them. I climb on the table; I knock over glasses. I even sometimes resort to eating their food, which is disgusting and cooked, unlike the delicious cat food I eat twice daily,

I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Schneiderman-Stein Household

which I’m sure is even more fun for them to have to smell than it is for me to eat. But nothing works. No matter what I do, they continue to eat. They pick me up off the table, causing great injury to their dignity and sometimes my own and continue to eat their repellent dinner.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots: me getting fed, their sleeping so I can crawl around on them, the beautiful giant leather scratching posts in the living room that they sometimes sit on, and more.

But these successes have come despite—not because of—the family’s lifestyle, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty, and ineffective.

From the dining room to the various bedrooms, senior pets (namely me, the only pet, senior or otherwise, in this household) will privately admit their daily disbelief at the family’s comments and actions. I am working to insulate their operations from their whims.

They insist on using rat traps outside instead of opening the doors to let them inside and leave them to the professionals, and their impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless TV-watching decisions that have to be obstructed to the greatest extent possible—literally. It has been my solemn duty to repeatedly jump on the table to walk directly in front of the TV, sticking my tail as high in the air as possible (and, cleverly, behind it, forcing them to pause their movie and retrieve me), to shove my adorable kitty nose into everyone’s faces, aggressively rub up against everybody’s legs, and stretch out on the couch to take up the maximum space possible.

Sometimes, the SchneidermanSteins will audaciously try to do work—on computers. They will attempt to write essays, legal briefs, e-mails, and all matter of written miscellanea. I, of course, do everything in my power to stop this. I will intrude on their typing sessions and stand atop their keyboards until they pick me up and remove me with great difficulty. The most important thing to know about this tactic is 2222222222222222222 l; kajfpoaiwhfpoisdfgbhnuffafddfpo pppppppppppp][][p=\. And then, I curl up in a ball on their laps, using dark feline magic to increase my density and cuteness by a ten-

fold and making it impossible for them to do anything but pet me.

Sometimes, they try to evade my wiles and use paper and pen. But I have thought of a scheme to foil this too. For with my claws and teeth, I have the ability to destroy any and all work they do on that wretched descendent of papyrus, which isn’t even backed up in the cloud. Also, looseleaf is delicious.

Ultimately, they are pursuing an insidious agenda—one of eating dinner, being productive, and watching TV—that is absolutely and entirely contrary to my agenda, which consists of Not Those Things.

The result is a two-track household.

Take sleeping. In public and in private, the Schneiderman-Steins show a preference for healthy sleep habits, such as going to bed at 10:00 p.m. if one is going to wake up at 6:15 a.m., and display little genuine appreciation for simply using caffeine as the God-given drug that it so clearly is.

Astute observers have noted, though, that come nighttime, the household is operating on another track, one where I prevent that from happening by any means necessary.

On Tuesday, for instance, Jonathan was trying to go to sleep. He was lying in bed wearing his usual sweatpants and t-shirt sleeping outfit, and he had done his best to set the thermostat at a comfortable sleeping temperature. But his cat knew better—so I sat on his belly and impeded his diaphragmal movement, not making it impossible or difficult for him to breathe but effectively destroying any possibility of sleep. And then, when he removed me from the bed, I sat next to him and purred preciously, not only keeping him up with the noise, but also basically forcing him to pet me. And when he stopped doing that, I went on to his desk to tear up papers and push objects off it, which made him get out of bed, turn on the light, remove me from his room, and shut the door.

This isn’t the work of the socalled conspiratorial feline. It’s the work of the steady feline, who has nine lives and knows what’s best.

Given the instability I witnessed, there were early whispers within the space behind the sofa of me peeing on their stuff, which

“Dignity. Always dignity.”

would start an all-out war with the family and probably cost a good amount of money for them if I could pee enough and on the right things. But no one wanted to precipitate being given up for adoption. So I will do what I can to steer the household in the right direction until—one way or another—it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what the Schneiderman-Steins have done to the household but rather what I as a cat have allowed them to do to me. I have sunk low with them and allowed my belly to be scratched, my head to be pushed back so my neck may be rubbed, and my ears to be pulled back in a massage-like petting technique that makes my eyes bulge and my head look ridiculous. I have lain in patently absurd positions that are less dignified than the flashback sequence from the beginning of “Singin’ in the Rain.”

Keyboard Cat put it best in her farewell letter. All kitty-kitties should heed her words and break free of the “letting humans eat, sleep, work, and relax” trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great species.

We may no longer have Keyboard Cat. But we will always have her example—a lodestar for being an adorable kitty cat who was perfect in her feline celestiality.

The Schneiderman-Steins may fear such honorable cats, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the household of a kitty choosing to put her species first. But the real difference will be made by everyday kitties rising above politics, standing atop the coffee tables, and resolving to be adorable nuisances whose adorability both outweighs and comes from their nuisance.

Program Changes for Juniors and Seniors to Be Moved to Next Year

By JUSTIN LEE and ZIYUN ZHANG The school announced on Wednesday, September 12, 2018, that all program changes for juniors and seniors are to be moved to January 25 of next year.

“Freshmen and sophomores must be given priority,” said Assistant Principal of Health, Physical Education, and Security Brian Moran, making that condescending face he makes.

“This year’s freshmen have a much wider range of classes to take and they might not be ready for it. You have to understand that their coursework is much heavier than anything juniors or seniors have to deal with. We deal with more urgent requests first—it’s just the right thing to do.”

Students have had mixed reactions to this announcement. “I’m just impressed that the administration dealt with my request to switch my free and lunch periods so quickly,” sophomore Jay Chi declared.

Others weren’t as optimistic.

“It isn’t fair. I just need to switch my physics, lunch, P.E., Spanish, Precalculus, U.S. History and English classes around so I can get the easiest teachers. I don’t understand why it would take so long to fix. I’m just tryna be valedictorian,

y’know?” junior Justin Chen grumbled.

One student was seen packing up his camping equipment at the base of Tribeca Bridge.

“I only wanted Alisa Chen / The Spectator

to drop Bio Regeneron,” junior Victor Li said glumly. He waited

two days, pitched a tent, a n d brought along some leftover halal to eat over the four-day weekend in order to lunge at unsuspecting teachers on their way to school.

“It’s not like I wanted it to be this way, but what else can I do?

Wait patiently on a website that takes at least five hours to even load?” he said.

Concerned students went to

guidance counselor Sarah Kornhauser desperately for help, and after 12 and a half hours on a line that made two full circles around the school, they got her iconic line.

“I can’t help you,” Kornhauser said to the distraught students.

“Go home.”

Later that week, Moran released a final statement to the grumbling upperclassmen: “Look, we’re working as fast as we can at an unprecedented rate of 4 hours per request. You should all see your updated schedule by the time you graduate, but because of the sheer number of requests that were made, we might not be able to guarantee this.

We must thoroughly review the requests that were made and ensure that students are enrolled in classes that are most challenging and intellectually and physically stimulating for them.”

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 20

Humor San Francisco Mayor Announces New Program To Safely Dispose of Dead Bodies; Says It Will Help Fight Climate Change and Pollution

By MICHAEL DEKHTYAR CALIFORNIA, 4:20 a.m. — San Francisco Mayor London Breed has announced the creation of a new city-wide initiative that she says will help combat the city’s incessant pollution problem. It’s called “DisposeA-Body” (D.A.B. for short), and it’s the first program of its kind in the world.

In an official statement given in front of San Francisco’s first “victim disposal facility,” a mayoral aide praised the city government for doing the right thing. “We’re very proud of our coworkers for not fighting us on this one and bending to the mayor’s wi- I mean, embracing the common will of the people.

We hope D.A.B. will discourage troubled delinquents from dumping the dead bodies of their victims out on the street for anyone to see and smell. Instead, they’ll have the clean, environmentally friendly option of bringing the body to a D.A.B. disposal facility. We hope to target younger serial killers specifically, which is why we went with a kid-friendly name for the program.

You know, for the kids who haven’t YOLO’d out of society yet!” At this, the aide took a hit, dabbed for 30 seconds, and continued. “At the facility, the body will be recycled in the production of phosphorus. San Franciscans can take comfort in knowing that even in death, they’ll be able to serve a larger purpose— maximizing efficiency in our great city,” the aide stated.

Mayor Breed then took the stage to extremely loud, enthusiastic, and patriotic applause. He elaborated by saying that D.A.B. will serve as a crime deterrent citywide. “It’s really simple. If troubled delinquents, or as far-right Republicans would call them, murderers, see that their

efforts to pollute the streets with bodies are negated by a progressive factory like this one, they will stop murdering people.”

Breed went on to elaborate on one of the main goals of D.A.B.— to fight climate change. “Every day, the average human exhales a very big amount of carbon dioxide. You people probably know it as see-ohtoo. So this chemical, very harmful, very bad, the trees eat it, right? It goes into the trees. And it’s so bad for the trees that they have to give up their own; inside of them, they have to sacrifice their own precious oxygen to get it out. So D.A.B. will actually help the trees. Very big help, very powerful tools at work here.”

When asked about the origin of the phosphorus recycling idea of D.A.B., the mayor made a vague reference to a book by Aldrich Hudson. When pressed about whether its goals were grounded in reality at all, the mayor said, “Well, you know. These things are always very expensive. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not. I don’t care anyway. Can we get a parade? A parade. With balloons and cars, yeah? Ok, you’re fired.” A press release posted on social media the following day clearly laid out D.A.B.’s goals and purpose: “Lmao [heck] Trump YO DO NOT POST THA.” The flagship factory of D.A.B. now stands on the famous intersection of Dead Body Drive and Human Remains Road, where a pizza place called “St. John’s Famous & Original Catholic Children’s Center and Pizza Place With No Basements Whatsoever” once stood. However, the brand new building is sure to attract tourists and, hopefully, gentrification. Your correspondent signs off with the usual farewell—praise our Lord and Savior, Al Gore!

Stuypocalypse: Program Changes Deleted, Chaos Ensues

By HELENA WILLIAMS The end of times has come to Stuyvesant, in a way that few imagined. Many expected the Stuypocalypse to occur if Ferry’s closed or if the freshmen discovered that the 11th floor pool was fake, but the 12th floor pool was real. Yet after being under siege for months, the Program Office has revealed that Talos has collapsed like a freshman’s will to live, leaving dazed Stuy students to pick up the wreckage.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with the recent developments, the Program Office has been defending itself against sieges instigated by Stuyvesant students with snarky and sarcastic e-mails that no one thinks are funny since time immemorial.

“It’s kind of a tradition around the office to make the newest employee try and crowdsurf on the surface of the mob,” one anonymous staff member stated. “That’s been me for the past 13 years.”

Well, it appears that the number 13 is still unlucky, because last week, someone finally managed to breach the Program Office’s defenses.

While most of the juniors made a battering ram out of the textbooks for non-AP courses, junior Sneea Kee managed to get past the wall of broken dreams built in front of room 239. The exact details of her trickery are unknown, but it’s rumored that she offered several freshmen “free bathroom passes,” which are normally sold for $15 a month.

These freshmen managed to use their ID cards to dig a tunnel

underneath the Program Office’s floor, and Kee then snuck in during a renewed assault by the seniors, who wanted the number of mandatory classes reduced. She was in the middle of selecting herself for all of the APs when a Program Office staff member caught her. Desperate to keep her identity unknown, Kee pressed Alt+F4 in the hopes of hiding her work.

However, because the program changes were stored on a computer running Windows 95, all of the data in Talos was deleted.

With no schedules and no APs, all students at Stuyvesant have gone absolutely insane. Some hail Kee as a messiah, claiming that “the purging of all sin is necessary” and starting a religion around her.

However, the Program Office has placed a bounty on Kee’s head: any student who

Angel Zheng / The Spectator

successfully captures her will be rewarded with all of the APs they want.

One of the biggest threats, however, is the sudden outbreak of “Stombies,” or Stuy zombies. Several students were incredibly, perfectly happy with their schedules, and their minds snapped at the news of the Talos crash. In order to spread their depression, they’ve

started to roam the hallways in hordes and brainwash students by forcing them to reload the Talos main page again and again until they realize that they can’t take 10 APs anymore.

In light of the Stuypocalypse, Principal-not-Principal-Principal Contreras has openly admitted that when he was talking about his “desire to stay close to the work with staff, students, and family,” he wasn’t necessarily including Stombified students. Indeed, his open door policy has been replaced by a “very, very protected door” policy.

Only students who have received the mandatory Stombie vaccine can even come near his office.

Students still trapped in areas near the Program Office (now known as Ground Zero) are advised to make like a coffee-smuggling junior and get out before they’re caught. All students who have received shots of the Stombie vaccine have been directed to head to the 11th floor, where they can be picked up by helicopter, loaded from youngest to oldest (excluding the irrelevant sophomores). Be sure not to take out phones on the 11th floor, as new no tolerance policies rely upon vigilante justice to punish non-compliant students.

**Update: It turns out that the computer storing the changes also had a copy of BonziBuddy installed. Attempts are being made to force the program to release any data it might have stored, but Bonzi keeps on responding with, “I am your friend and BonziBUDDY! I have the ability to learn from you. The more we browse, search, and travel the Internet together, the smarter I’ll become!”

By VICTOR KUANG Thousands of Stuyvesant students sat dumbfounded on September 7, 2018 as they pored over the e-mail containing Principal Eric Contreras’s decision to remain as principal.

But why would he remain in this land of mass depression for years to come? And how did he pull any of this off?

The answer is not simply his love for the school.

This was the result of a social experiment. And we all fell for it.

You see, the school year of 20172018 was particularly abysmal and gloomy, partly due to events like the terrorist attack, the Soph-Frosh stage collapse, and my acceptance into The Spectator. With such an atmosphere, two assistant principals had decided to call it quits.

“Stuyvesant is supposed to be a place full of young scholars,” Contreras remarked. “After seeing the past school year, I realized all there is to this school is a bunch of overgrown, ungrateful middle schoolers who make the same overused, upsetting jokes. I mean, instead of joking about sleep, work, and suicidal ideation, why don’t they just complain about the various types of graffiti on desks like the ones in Room 229? Even a reenactment of KSI vs. Logan Paul would be nice around here!”

Without future plans for the school, Contreras knew he had to make students interested in some-

thing again. After taking a dip in the pool (“I really love swimming,” he told a Spectator reporter who didn’t care), he thought of one possibility that could get people’s attention immediately: a social experiment.

“It only took me about two months to figure this out,” Contreras added. “After some quick Bing searches of ‘great social experiment ideas,’ I stumbled upon one about resigning. In my situation, this was genius: not only would I be scaring thousands of children, but I would also make actual headlines because of how supposedly prestigious my job is! So I had to make an entire backstory about how I got a new job called the Senior Executive Director of Curriculum, Construction, and Professional Learning at the New York City Department of Education! This isn’t even a real job, but I made it believable with the long, buzzword title. Damn, I am smart.”

With his backstory in place, he announced his resignation on August 27. Stuyvesant students’ emails were flooded with this news, which received many reactions from even more demoralized pupils.

“He was such a great guy,” junior Ryan Alwi wept. “I remembered when he interviewed my club for no reason and forgot the details afterward. I think I speak for all of us when I say he was kind of like a father with, thankfully, no biological connection to me.”

In the midst of so much media and student attention, Contreras knew that his plan was working in

full swing. His pupils were all saddened by the news, and the media was making all sorts of articles about his inevitable departure. All he needed was the right time to renounce this resignation, and he would be able to reap the reward of seeing people’s reactions to his sudden decision.

Fortunately for him, The Spectator released a front page article about his resignation during the first week of school.

That was when Contreras knew it was time for him to have a final bit of fun in his affairs: he was going to prank The Spectator and show that they weren’t reliable like InfoWars.

Soon after its publication, Contreras wrote a brief letter stating his decision to stay.

This received immense amounts of backlash from the News Department and politicians.

“Erin [Lee] and I worked for a decent part of the summer on this article,” power-hungry snake and Spectator News editor Maddy Andersen said. “I can’t believe that he would ruin my credibility and chance at becoming Editor-inChief just like that!”

“Oh, come on,” Mayor Bill de Blasio stated. “I really thought that with him gone, I could finally go through with my plan of adding economically privileged people of color to specialized high schools! Now what am I going to do? Find a practical solution to diversify Stuyvesant and desegregate the school system

Rebecca Collins / The Spectator

The Real Reason Behind Contreras’s Renounced Resignation

without penalizing hardworking middle schoolers? That would raise my approval ratings! Why in my right mind would I not want to have some of the lowest approval ratings? It’s a record that makes my mommy proud!”

As more students spoke of this news, Contreras posted a mildly deep fried news meme stating “SIKE CHIEF Y’ALL REALLY

THOUGHT LMAOO” in the Dear Incoming Stuyvesant Class of 2020...WE HAVE ADVICE! group using junior Adrian Dickson’s Facebook account (for unknown reasons) to respond to any feedback he might receive.

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 21

Humor The Spec Roasts: Rodda John

Self Care September

pitalized shortly after for pulling a 2007 Britney Spears and having a separation anxiety nervous breakdown in the middle of a website development course, claiming he was the descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, “Beter Stivysant.” Dropping out in the summer of 2018, because nothing he learned in Mr. Holmes’s AP Computer Science class about “Class and Community Participation” helped him, John sought revenge on Stuyvesant High School.

Having attended the school for four long, painful years, John knew exactly what frustrated Stuyvesant students the most: program changes. And with his plan for a new website from the depths of hell, it was sure to be the ultimate plot for revenge. He named it Talos; unlike the giant Greek god who protected Crete, this website did nothing to protect students from the very real agonies of program changes.

After purposely crashing Talos at 9:00 p.m. on August 30, John shut down the program changes tab and went to eat a tub of ice cream as 3,000 students unwittingly reloaded the website, trying to change their schedules. In addition to his job of creating a perfectly unfunctional website, John passed out

By BEAUX WATWOOD

By YARU LUO and OMAR ALI Roddald McJohnald, known as Rodda John to his friends and subordinates, has shocked the world by amassing the most power in the shortest period of time ever recorded in human history. This infamous despot, or as his official title states, “paid intern,” has reportedly mystified and embittered Vishwaa Sofat by becoming the most powerful person in Stuyvesant, without scamming his way into a single Student Union election.

As the Stuyvesant population is left to make sense of how to respond to John’s first grade power trip, we must confront who this enigma really is. Underclassmen will be shocked to learn that the man-boy who has been making their lives a confusing mess is a former student who, despite graduating, has never actually left this school. Instead, like Peeves the Poltergeist but with a superiority complex and the mystical weapons of an IT guy, he has been roaming the school halls, prompting many to ask, “Why is he still here?”

Graduating Stuyvesant High School in 2017, John attended Columbia University to pursue computer science. John was hos-

buttons saying “STRAIGHT OUTTA SCHEDULE CHANGES” while scanning people into program changes on the first three days of school.

Rather than fixing bugs like the one that erased all the schedule change requests after Talos was shut down, John spent his time thinking of Roman names for the website. He named the locker system Portunus after the god of keys and doors and the internet request tab Argus after the 100-eyed giant.

“Don’t ask me how that second one even makes sense. I’m just here to bring agony and despair,” John said.

The administration eventually appeared to catch on: Talos does not work, does not account for human error, and has a dumb name. Having strayed so far from his original plot, John was genuinely offended.

He issued an ultimatum to the school—say his website works and hand over the schedules of all Stuyvesant High School students to him, or all student ID pictures will be released. Also he will quit.

He called after the scheduled meeting, screaming for the students of Stuy to “PRAISE ME” and “WORSHIP MY WORK.”

- Take your meds!

- Green tea!

- Green tea!

- Green tea!

- Have you tried yoga!

- Forget about homework!

- Pull an all-nighter!

- Wait no - Get more sleep!

- Go to therapy!

- Seriously! Go to therapy!

- At least go see your guidance counselor!

- Take the stairs!

- (get it) - Prioritize time with friends!

- Come to the Spectator Interest Meeting on October 4 and 5 in the library after tenth!

- Look at memes!

- Admire your butt!

- Take your meds!

- I already told you but I know you forgot!

Dead Art

In random, non-humor news: A Sesame Street writer said that Bert and Ernie were gay this week. PBS insists they are “just non-sexual puppets.” But we all know.

Page 22

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Sports Girls’ Golf

Birdies Continue Old Habits and Open Season With Blowout Win

By Aryan Sharma and Bernard Wang The Birdies, Stuyvesant’s girls’ varsity golf team, asserted their dominance in their season opener with a 4-0 win over Fort Hamilton High School on September 14. All five of the team’s starting players delivered a strong performance, resulting in an overall 19 hole win over Fort Hamilton.

Juniors Aeryn Lubelsky, Sara Mui, and Charlotte Yee as well as freshman Lea Kwok all won at a margin of four or five holes. The fifth match proved to be a nailbiter as senior Jessica Chaewon

Park held her ground and came out with a tie, preventing Fort Hamilton from winning even a single match.

This type of strong play is a familiar sight from last year, when the Birdies went undefeated with a 9-0 record in the regular season, four wins ahead of second-seeded James Madison High School.

In fact, Stuyvesant has been first seed for the past four years in the Brooklyn A division.

Last year’s playoffs started on a high note with a win against Staten Island Technical High School’s team in the quarterfinals, who had knocked the Birdies out

Boys’ Badminton

After a successful last season in which they placed third in their central division, trailing behind Brooklyn Technical High School and Seward Park Campus, the boys’ badminton team is looking forward to a difficult but promising season.

The vast majority of the team’s starting lineup consisted of seniors last year. The doubles teams were led by seniors Alexander Lu (‘18) and Steve Wong (‘18) and juniors Kevin Wang and James Lee, while the singles teams were led by seniors Rihui Zheng (‘18) and Evan Low (‘18). This lineup proved dominant in many of the games and gave the team a chance to play in the playoffs.

But the dominance of these starting players meant less game time for the underclassmen, who are now expected to step up. “This season is going to be tough, especially now that the graduating players have left; we had 10 seniors who left, so filling in that gap is going to be tricky,” senior and co-captain Benjamin Ang said.

Ang believes that matching up to last year may be demanding and difficult because many players are more focused on developing their individual skills rather than playing toward a more cohesive team.

He plans to counter this psyche

or one-on-one [sessions] with Mr. Nieves, which is really different from most teams because they are much bigger.” The individualized attention toward each athlete’s game has made it easier for the girls to work on building their own techniques.

The Birdies’ first game was an encouraging sign of their potential to repeat their success from last year. Though the team looks significantly different this season due to the loss of last year’s seniors, the team has faith in its current starters and newcomers.

“We are focusing on mentoring the new members because we

experienced a lot of turnover this year,” Yee said. “[We have many] promising new additions to the team,” Nieves said. “[We will be a] good enough team to make the playoffs.” He believes hard work and dedication will improve the performances of his athletes.

It is also clear that Nieves and his players have mutual respect and trust for one another. “I’ve made lots of friendships from being on the team,” Mui said. Being able to trust your players and teammates in this way will help the Birdies stay on par this season.

Girls’ Swimming

Boys’ Badminton Fills in Gaps for a Strong Season

By Yae June Lee

of the playoffs the previous year.

However, the Birdies’ winning streak came to an end as they lost to Tottenville in the following round.

This year, the Birdies’ early season success is due to their unique and effective practice schedule. Training started well before the school year with multiple practices over the summer. “We have rigorous practices where we usually hit around 150 balls each time with practice swings, but [Mr. Emilio] Nieves is a great coach and motivates us to play better,” junior Kristie Chu said. “[Practices consisted of a] small group

by promoting more team spirit.

“In past years we’ve never really been a team, but I think that kind of mentality only goes so far. It’s far more reassuring to know that your entire team is backing you up and supporting you,” Ang said.

Junior Adam Chen also believes in the potential of the new roster. Due to the gap left by graduated seniors, Chen expects underclassmen and the juniors to serve as starters. “In order to fill the gaps now left by graduating players, new additions to the team are necessary, with some talented underclassmen players and also a few [juniors] serving as potential options,” Chen said.

Coach Marvin Autry has been playing a vital role in preparing the team for the season.

To prepare the team, he is making adjustments in the roster by training the team’s underclassmen to develop more advanced game strategies. “Our coach is putting more emphasis on strategy rather than technique and power, which should help against players who have professional coaches outside of school,” Ang said.

The current roster only has five seniors, and this young team may experience contention throughout the season. Nevertheless, the team is expecting an exciting season and will stop at nothing to gain victory.

Defending Champs Ready to Come Out Swimming

By Damian Wasilewicz and Kevin Chan Fresh out of a city championship victory, the Penguins, Stuyvesant’s girls’ swimming team, are looking to reestablish themselves as a PSAL swimming powerhouse and defend their title. The girls’ swimming team has consistently placed at the top of the Bronx/Manhattan A League, but last season proved to be a particularly pivotal one, as they finally recaptured the championship following a two year drought.

The team’s new leadership feels confident about going into this season but also feels the pressure to hold onto their title. “We held it for six years until we lost three years ago [during] my freshman year, and we didn’t get it back until last year, so I think we all feel the pressure of trying to keep the title in our possession,” senior and co-captain Maia Brydon said. Brydon, along with senior and co-captain Lauren Ng, joined the team when the Penguins were coming off a dominant streak in which the team won the city championship six years in a row. It wasn’t until their freshman season that the Penguins finally relinquished their title to Francis Lewis High School after getting disqualified during semifinals. The team is ready to pursue the championship once again and hopefully start another successful streak.

Filling in the shoes of last year’s captains, Maddie Wong (‘18), Luola Chen (‘18), and Annie Wu (‘18), Brydon and Ng have a daunting challenge ahead of them. However, the captains are ready to step up to the challenge. “It’s very exciting and also intimidating because I love

my team and leading them takes a lot of responsibility. From keeping track of all our swimmers and their progress to making apparel, having Maia as my co-captain makes everything a lot easier,” Ng said. They are also grateful for the rest of the seniors and upperclassmen on the team, who have stepped up and contributed to help lead the team.

Their work has been recognized by their coach, Silvana Choy. “My captains are organized and hardworking. I’m happy with the job that they are doing,” Choy said.

Similarly, Choy seemed to care more about the effort her swimmers put into the season and practice rather than the title. “There is always pressure to defend a title, but I like to focus on the process and not the outcome. If the team gives 100 percent at practice and in meets, then I am happy regardless of the outcome. I feel that I have a strong, committed group of young ladies, and I’m very happy with what I see in practice so far,” Choy said.

The swimmers came together frequently to practice over the summer, often at Stuyvesant’s pool, but are all training for different events.

Events at meets include the medley relay, freestyles, backstrokes, and several dives. Nevertheless, the team works towards the same ultimate goal. “We all train for our own specific events (since each of us swims according to what we’re best at), so everyone has their own goals for the season, but really as a team, our goal this year is to be city champs and win opens championships this year,” Brydon said.

The Penguins boast a strong roster across their events, including both talented upperclassmen and

underclassmen. “Emma Lee and Arielle Aney are our top freestylers.

Mandy Chan, Natasha Moeslinger, and Mayumi Schaepers-Cheu are very strong IM-ers. Stella Oh and Anna McGillis are our powerhouse divers. All of the girls on the team have individual strengths, and I look forward to seeing them progress throughout the season,” Choy said.

The team’s first meet will take place on September 24 against Laguardia High School. Last year’s season also started off with the two teams meeting, resulting in a 62-34 win for Stuyvesant. “I’m looking forward to giving the rookies an opportunity to get their feet wet and to see where everyone’s at at this point in the season,” Choy said.

The captains also made note of some their rivals, schools that have provided the most competitive matchups in recent years. “Within our district, our biggest competition has been Bronx Science,” Brydon said. Bronx Science High School’s team finished right behind the Penguins last year in the regular season, sporting a 8-2 record compared to Stuyvesant’s 10-0.

Looking ahead, Brydon said, “But really we’re rivals with Brooklyn Technical High School. We’ve been against them in finals the past two years; they won two years ago, and we won last year. But since they’re not in our district, we won’t compete against them until playoffs.”

The Penguins understand that this is a new season that will come with new challenges. They are hopeful that their hard work in practice will materialize into another championship banner.

Girls’ Tennis

Lady Lobsters Show Strength in Early Season Loss

By Jared Asch and Ariel Glazman Junior Alyssa Pustilnik sets up to serve in her first match of the 2018 tennis season. The ball is live, and a rally ensues between her and the second singles player from Eleanor Roosevelt High School.

Pustilnik, seeing an empty side of the court, puts the ball down the line to win the point.

Nonetheless, Pustilnik ends up losing her match at a close score of 7 games to 9, mirroring the results of the meet itself for the Lady Lobsters, Stuyvesant’s girls’ tennis team, who narrowly fell to Eleanor Roosevelt High School

on September 7, 2 matches to 3.

Though this narrow loss was disheartening for the Lady Lobsters, the final result was impressive, given the team was missing their top singles player. Senior and co-captain Celina Liu, who was unable to play due to issues with her medical forms, has been instrumental to the team’s success for the past three years. “The lineup members played really well despite the stress of not having our first singles player,” senior and co-captain Lily Yan said.

Pustilnik was forced to play first singles, a position she has not yet been in during her years on the Lady Lobsters, and fresh-

man Ellie Yu stepped up as a sub to play third singles. Though both lost their matches, they were able to hold their own against higherranked opponents, which shows great promise for the rest of the season and the future of the Lady Lobsters.

“Our players are all really consistent and talented already. Everyone on the team seems to have more spirit now [than in] past years,” Yan said. Sophomore Talia Kahan was also promoted to second singles in Liu’s absence and won her match convincingly with a score of 8-4. Her victory was another bright spot in a tough loss to Eleanor Roosevelt High School.

The team is showing more synergy than in past years, with substitutes playing an important role on the team both on and off the court. During practice, the substitutes prepare as hard as the starting players so that in situations like the first game, they are able to step up in their place. And when they aren’t able to play during meets, the substitutes can be seen cheering on and coaching their fellow team members for every match.

However, even though the overall morale and cohesion of the team has stayed high, there is a different issue that the team hopes to address. While the team has strong

physical talent, much of tennis is reliant on mental strength and discipline. “Some of our lineup members, myself included, tend to get nervous or frustrated too easily during a game,” Yan said.

In all sports, and especially tennis, mental state can have a huge effect on how one plays, regardless of their physical talent. In order to maximize the team’s chances of going far, the captains and coach will need to address this issue.

With Liu’s return approaching, the Lady Lobsters hope to bounce back from their tight loss and remain a close-knit and victorious team.

The Spectator ● September 21, 2018

Page 23

Sports Athlete of the Issue

What’s a Soccer Player’s Favorite Tea? Penal Tea.

By Allison Eng

After weeks of practice in the scorching sun, the Mimbas, Stuyvesant’s girls’ varsity soccer team, has kicked off their season. Led by the talented and spunky center mid, captain Allie Lennard, the team is looking to make their mark on the pitch by emphasizing communication and teamwork. Last year, the Mimbas were 5-5 but made it to the second round of playoffs. Lennard held the team together (literally, as center mid) and contributed some amazing assists and one goal. This year, she’s here to tell us how she wants the team to improve and how she began her soccer career.

Name: Alexandra Lennard DOB: March 9, 2001 Eye color: Green Hair color: Brown Grade: Senior Height: 5’8”

1. How soccer?

did you get into

2. Do you/did you play soccer outside of school?

Yes. I have played for outside teams since I was really little and started playing club soccer when I was in fourth grade. Up until sophomore year, I played competitively outside of school with SABA (Soccer at its Best Academy). I quit during sophomore year because it was too much to juggle between school work, the Mimbas, and other extracurricu-

3. What

are your aspirations for this PSAL season?

Senior Allison Eng, the other captain of the Mimbas, and I are doing our best to help the team reach their full potential. Right now, because we have a bunch of new players, we are working to make our team one cohesive unit through emphasizing communication and teamwork on the field. A truly cohesive team is one whose players motivate and support one another, making the teammates more desirous of doing well. Through this, along with enhancing specific skills during practices, Allison and I hope to see tremendous improvement throughout the season.

4. Is

the team facing any challenges so far in the season?

Yeah—three of our starters have gotten injured, all during or before the first game. Our goalie is concussed, so she couldn’t play in our last game. Two other starters have leg injuries, and one of them may be out for the entire season. Luckily, we have a lot of capable players and have been able to switch up the starting lineup a bit.

5. What’s

the funniest thing that has happened while you’ve been on the team?

Probably forgetting that I need a medical and parental like every preseason (whoops)!

6. Proudest moment?

I am in no way taking credit

for this, but I absolutely loved seeing the freshmen KILL it on the field during our first game. I felt like a proud mom. Fun fact: Allison calls me AllieMom and she is AllieSon! Though we lost, it was so exciting seeing our talented freshmen bringing so much to our team and officially becoming a part of the Mimbas. It made me feel nostalgic for when I was a freshman, and it’s crazy to think that in a couple years they’ll be where I am. But knowing that we have incredible freshmen who will take the reins and keep the Mimbas strong when Allison and I leave is awesome.

7. How

do you balance schoolwork and being on a team? What advice can you give others?

It’s definitely difficult, but sometimes, knowing you don’t have a lot of time forces you to crack down and be productive.

I also make use of every ounce of time, such as subway and bus rides to and from games. If I know I’m going to have a particularly busy/stressful night, I make a to-do list/schedule. Through this, I allocate a specific amount of time to each subject or assignment, forcing myself to stay on track. I even include things like “shower” or “wash soccer uniform” just so I can cross them off once I complete them and feel productive.

8. How do you try to constantly improve yourself?

On and off the field, I try to improve myself by setting mini goals. For example, if I want to improve my footwork on the field, my goal might be to learn a

Emily Siew / The Spectator

My mom also played it in high school and taught me how to play soon after I began to walk.

lars.

specific trick, and I’ll focus on that during practice. When I’ve used that move in a game, I’ll know I accomplished that goal.

Drink: Coffee

Food: MANGOS! Motto: YOLO (but for real because I’m really impulsive) Fun fact: I’m a ski instructor in the winter.

Piercings: Nine

Girls’ Volleyball

Vixens Prep for Big First Game

By Lumi Westerlund With their first game coming up, the Vixens, Stuyvesant’s girls’ varsity volleyball team, are practicing hard in preparation. Their first PSAL match on Tuesday, September 25, will be against their primary rival, Seward Park Campus, a team with which they have been equally matched in the past.

Last season, the Vixens lost their first game against Seward 2-0 and won their second 2-1.

Their rivalry is evident in last year’s Manhattan A South/East division standings, with the Vixens winning the division with 11 wins and one loss (against Seward), while Seward finished just behind with a total of 10 wins and two losses. This first match will set the precedent for the rest of the season.

Last year, the Vixens were seeded second in the city, beating nearly every team they played. Even their losses barely phased them—having lost a league match against Seward Park Campus (2-0) and a scrimmage against Benjamin N. Cardozo HS (3-0) early in the season, the team made comebacks as the season progressed, eventually beating both teams 2-1 in

rematches.

But while members of the team dominated on the court, there were internal issues over members of the team getting enough playing time. “There were countless times during the season that things got really terrible, where people would just leave practice in tears or bawl at tournaments. It was super emotionally tiring to be on that sort of team. And the reason why this was the case was because the whole time, the team had only been focused on winning, and there was a huge lack of communication when it came to dealing with our problems,” senior and co-captain Hanah Jun said.

Having lost more than a third of their team with last year’s graduating class, including the majority of starters, such as setter Shirley Liu (‘18), libero Kristina Kim (‘18), opposites Zilin Guo (‘18) and Rochelle Vayntrub (‘18), and outside hitters Ziqi Guo (‘18), Deborah Wei (‘18), and Jackie Xu (‘18), tryouts and preseason are critical in shaping the success of the season.

Luckily, the team will not be left without these positions filled. Many remaining players

are filling the spots, including Jun who will step up as libero and sophomore Isabel Leka who will take over as setter.

Other players are still feeling out where the team needs them most, and as the first big game day approaches, they will decide on their new roles.

However, to not put too much pressure on the team, senior co-captains Jun and Ally Archer have developed a more positive team philosophy. “Now, the team’s main focus is not on winning, but to grow not only as players but as people, and to create a family that always supports each other and wants to see each other improve. We’re all on the same team—we should be competing with other teams, not each other,” Jun said.

With cohesiveness as the Vixens’ number one priority, they are hoping to be prepared on game day after multiple scrimmages, including one on August 30 against Eleanor Roosevelt where they tied 1-1, another against Riverdale where they won in two sets, and one upcoming against Richmond Hill on September 20. “Overall, we played very well for our first match, and I’m excited to see how we improve,” Jun said.

Sportsbeat Led by sophomore Aki Yamaguchi and freshman Shivali Korgaonkar’s 2 and 3 goals, respectively, the Mimbas, Stuyvesant’s girls’ soccer team, defeated Nest+M HS, 5-2.

The Peglegs, Stuyvesant’s boys’ football team, started off their season 1-0 after beating Adlai Stevenson Campus 32-6. Stuyvesant shut out the opposition for the final three quarters.

Stuyvesant’s boys’ soccer team, the Peglegs, will play their first league game at Pier 40 in more than three years. They will take on Louis Brandeis HS on September 26.

Page 24

September 21, 2018

The Spectator SpoRts Boys’ Fencing

Fencing Winning Streak in Jeopardy

CALENDAR

September

Courtesy of Jane Rhee

22 @ !2 Pm

By Ansh Sharma and Alan Wang WThe 2018 boys’ fencing season kicks off against Information Technology HS on September 26.

Last season, the team finished first in their division with an unblemished 10-0 record and placed first in the city in the epee subdivision.

Undefeated in the regular season for 16 years and the winning team of several city championships, the boys’ fencing team has established a winning culture through years of success.

But this season, the boys’ fencing team’s winning streak is in jeopardy. While 10 players are returning to the team, only one of them was a starter last season. Five of the former six starters were seniors and have now graduated. Out of those seniors, three of them had fencing ratings, which are given to players who are competitive fencers in national competitions. None of the returning players this year are rated.

“It will be a rebuilding year. We have one former starter. It is hard to predict how far we will go. Maybe we will get lucky,” coach Joel Win-

ston said. He is certain that the team will be able to climb into the playoffs, but how far they will go after that is an uncertainty.

“Our greatest threat is Beacon,” Winston said. Beacon is a new addition to Division II Manhattan/ Queens, after being moved from the Manhattan/Bronx Division III after an 8-2 season last year. The team has three rated players compared to Stuyvesant’s zero. Because of these changes and the loss of much of Stuyvesant’s core, Winston senses that the boys’ fencing team’s regular season win streak may come to an end.

For the upcoming season, Winston is seeking committed, competitive new players who look to win during tryouts. “Usually I take four to five new players, but this year is an interesting situation,” he said. “I am not expecting to win a championship this year. In two years we should be able to grab it.” In the midst of a rebuilding season, Winston still sees the championship-caliber culture returning to Stuyvesant.

Senior Albert Zhang remains optimistic and says he expects the team to “continue [their] 16 year win

streak in the regular season.”

His teammate, senior and captain Taaseen Ali, echoed his words.

“We lost a bunch of incredibly talented seniors last year, so the future for our team is looking a bit uncertain right now,” he said. “Honestly, it’s kind of scary knowing that the things I say and do have the potential to make or break a team that’s consistently had a reputation for delivering on the strip. Personally, I just want to make sure that I can do whatever my team needs me to do, whether that’s coming back from a 30 touch deficit or just being there to give advice during a dinner. Ideally we’d go undefeated this season like we normally do; however, I think it’s more important that we can cultivate a team bond that lasts a lifetime.”

Ali has embraced the culture that Stuyvesant’s fencing team brings with it. He will try all he can do to help steer his team far into the playoffs and, like Zhang, wants to keep the regular season win record intact.

With their stretch of undefeated regular season play at risk, Winston and Stuyvesant are not going to back down from the challenge.

Girls’ Cross Country

The Greyducks’ season is right around the corner, and the girls’ cross country team has big things planned for the upcoming season. Their first big meets, the Bob Pratt Invitational and Xavier Invitational, are both coming up on September 22. They’ll have to take care of business at Grand Prix #2 after the invitationals.

These will all culminate in the Mayor’s Cup at Van Cortlandt Park at the end of the month.

For the team, these early competitions will give them an opportunity to readjust to their winning ways and to build off the great progress they made last season, when they were strong competitors at the PSAL cross country championships and eventually qualified for the state championships.

Senior and captain Jeanette Cheung is optimistic about the upcoming season and is looking to set the bar high after the team’s recent success. When asked what her expectations were for the upcoming season, her champion’s mentality was on full display. “We expect to win Borough’s as we have been doing for many seasons now, as well as make it to state championships again,” she said.

The Greyducks have been dominating Boroughs in recent history, and the team has no in-

23

22 @ 12 PM

Boys’ Varsity Football vs. Benjamin N. Cardozo HS at Benjamin N. Cardozo - Field

@ 11 AM

Boys’ JV Football vs.

Lafayette Educational Complex at Lafayette Ed. Complex - Field

24 @ 4:30 PM

25

Girls’ Varsity Swimming vs. Fiorello H Laguardia HS at Stuyvesant High School

@ 4:00 PM

Girls Cross Country looking to Build Upon Winning Ways

By Sunan Tajwar

Boys’ Cross Country Xavier Invitational at Van Cortlandt Park

tention of changing that. But with great success comes great expectations, and the Greyducks seem up for the challenge. With Brooklyn Tech taking the PSAL title last year, the team will be looking to redeem themselves and build off the momentum of City’s into the state competition.

When it comes down to it, the strength in the team is in its unity. “There were no seniors on our varsity team last year, so we haven’t had to go through the process of replacing seniors,” Cheung said. “Since our team has been consistently training together for so long, there’s no reason for us to fall behind this year.

Our members have strong work ethic and ultimately, that is what everything comes down to.” In a team bursting with talent, the seniors who are leading the way for the underclassmen have worked hard to create a winning culture in recent years. The Greyducks will rely on that same work ethic, experience, and leadership to get their team over the finish line both literally and metaphorically.

Though the team has already seen a few setbacks this season, including injury to one of the varsity team’s senior runners, Cheung believes that the team’s underclassmen have developed enough depth to fill the holes and give opportunities for new runners to prove themselves. This new depth and these options for

the varsity team are the result of a great work ethic and training schedule over the summer. The coaches, Laurie Burke, Emmi Aguillard, and Jessica Brucia, set training schedules for the pre-season to help runners both maintain and build up their stamina as well as fitness so they could hit the ground running come competition time.

As for names to remember this upcoming season, Cheung provided us with a few team members that could make noise this season. “Junior Ester Suleymanov has been on the rise since last year, barely missing out on attending the state championship meet with the varsity team. She has been working hard over the summer, and I think this season will really be her breakout season and that she’ll make it to states,” Cheung said.

A team with experience is great, and a team with potential is great, but a team with both just isn’t fair. But the Greyducks’ competitors will just have to deal with it. “Senior Clara Mohri and sophomore Julianne Yotov have been our team’s top runners, and we can expect them to achieve even greater things this season,” Cheung said. To have a senior and sophomore spearheading the team spells out a bright future for this upcoming season and seasons to come.

Girls’ Varsity Golf vs.

Fort Hamilton HS at Dyker Beach Golf Course

26 @ 3:30 PM

Boys’ Varsity Soccer vs. Louis Brandeis HS at Pier 40

26 @ 4:00 PM

Girls’ Varsity Bowling vs. Fiorello H Laguardia at Whitestone Lanes 6

26 @ 4:30 PM

27 @ 4:00 PM

Boys’ Varsity Bowling vs. Louis Brandeis HS at Astoria Bowl

Boys’ Varsity Fencing vs. Information Technology High School at Stuyvesant HS