Volume 107, Issue 7

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper Sports

A&E

Voices of Failed Education: Exploring the School-to-Prison Pipeline Through a One-Woman Show

Junior Sophie Feng reviews Anna Deavere Smith’s “Notes From the Field,” noting the value of educating ourselves about the school-to-prison pipeline, despite its stark contrast to the situations of most Stuyvesant students. see page 4

Volume 107 No. 7

NEWSBEAT Physical Education Teacher Peter Bologna will be replacing Christopher Galano as Stuyvesant’s Athletic Director.

Blake Debate Tournament from Friday, DecemAt the

ber 16, to Sunday, December 18, juniors Daniel Ju and Luola Chen were awarded first speaker in the Public Forum and Policy categories, respectively. Junior Jenny Han was awarded second speaker in the Policy category.

The freshman and senior divisions of the chess team placed first at the national tournament in Nashville, Tennessee, on from Friday, December 16 to Sunday, December 18. The junior team placed third. Senior William Yen placed third in the individual round.

Sophomores Joshua

Weiner, Ben Platt, and Joseph Yusufov won Best Delegate awards at the Model

United Nations Conference at the Bronx High School of Science from Saturday, December 3 to Sunday, December 4.

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

Pirates Ready To Reclaim PSAL Banner Last year, they lost the Public School Athletic League finals by four points. Now, six meets into the season, the boys’ swimming team remains undefeated, hot on the trail of redemption. see page 26

December 23, 2016

stuyspec.com

SLT Meetings Open to the Public

By SHAMEEK RAKSHIT

Members of the public will now be allowed to attend School Leadership Team (SLT) meetings. These meetings were previously only open to students, parents, and staff members of each school. This decision is the result of a recent New York Supreme Court ruling which extends the Open Meeting Law to SLTs. The Open Meeting Law allows citizens to observe meetings of government organizations to increase the accountability of public officials. The court ruling, delivered on Tuesday, October 25, marked the conclusion of a case brought by retired Department of Education (DOE) math teacher Michael P. Thomas against the DOE in May 2014. Thomas attempted to attend an SLT meeting in I.S. 49 in Staten Island in April 2014. Though he was initially invited to stay, the SLT later denied him entry because he was not a member of the school community.

Schools are legally required to form SLTs composed of staff, parents, and students, to discuss matters related to a school’s Comprehensive Education Plan goals, which are the school’s education policies, and the plans to execute these policies over the school year. Though attendance is now open to all, only elected members of the committee are allowed to vote on proposals.

Thomas argued that SLTs were public organizations involved in governance, and therefore, the general public should be allowed to access their meetings because

of the Open Meeting Law. The Manhattan Supreme Court ruled in Thomas’ favor in April 2015, and after the DOE appealed, the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court’s First Department upheld the decision in October 2016. The result of the case was soon raised by Stuyvesant’s administration during an SLT meeting on Tuesday, November 15.

The SLT has discussed the potential effects of the new regulations on the school, including the implications of allowing people outside the school community into the building.

The administration does not believe that the law will cause any major security issues. People who wish to attend SLT meetings and who are not affiliated with the school will be expected to sign in at the front desk and present an I.D. just as other visitors do. The school will also ensure school safety agents are aware of when SLT meetings take place.

The administration’s primary concern is the effect of the court’s decision on the privacy of students. Under the extension of the law, members of the press will also be allowed to attend and report on SLT meetings. “The concern I have is the idea of minors who are going to be photographed or recorded without their parents’ permission. My natural inclination is to always make sure that students are protected,” Interim Acting Principal Eric Contreras said.

The school has decided that the best way to deal with this concern is to inform students attending SLT meetings that their thoughts

and words will no longer be private. “My plan is to respect the intent of the law, abide by it, and follow the mandate,” Contreras said.

“At the same time, I want to make sure all student members are fully informed of their rights and what it means to participate in the SLT.” In accordance with the Open Meeting Law, the school has posted the schedule for these meetings on the school website for those who wish to attend.

The Supreme Court’s verdict also requires schools to make the minutes of SLT meetings available to anyone who requests to see them. Until now, the minutes reflected all items that were brought up during meetings and discussions about them. In light of the new policy, however, the SLT has decided to adjust the minutes to meet the requirements set by the DOE. The minutes will only reflect the proposals, votes, and decisions made regarding the educational policy of the school.

Oftentimes, however, the SLT’s discussions extend beyond these parameters. “[The SLT] will discuss other items like sports, school safety, or transportation. It takes advantage of [the] opportune moment of having a broad constituency represented,” Contreras said.

Contreras believes that these discussions are an essential part of the SLT, even though they do not fall under its jurisdiction. “These additional discussions transform the SLT into this vibrant meeting, [where] voices [are brought] together in conversation,” he said.

The SLT will continue to discuss topics outside its author-

ity by holding executive sessions which will include the same constituents. The Open Meeting Law allows government bodies to hold executive sessions during meetings if they wish to discuss topics that do not directly fall under their control. Members of the public will not have access to these sessions, unless invited by the SLT, and these proceedings will not be included in the minutes.

The Student Union (SU) hopes that this set-up will not adversely affect the lines of communication between the SLT and the student body. “Of course I am concerned because this decision hinders our ability to keep students informed about the SLT, but the court has decided that the law applies to SLTs so there’s nothing we can do,” senior and SLT student representative Asher Lasday said.

“Currently, [the SU] posts a detailed description of the meetings on Facebook. The SU will continue to do everything we can to get information out to students.”

Despite the concerns that have been raised, the school believes that time will tell whether or not the new policy is beneficial. “I do think at Stuyvesant, this is less of a concern because the SLT is not the only means of communication [...] there’s the student government, a vibrant newspaper, 150 clubs, and even our classes and hallways are safe environments for students to express themselves, ” Contreras said. “At [Stuyvesant], even if you didn’t have the SLT, you would still have a free exchange of ideas, and I value that.”

The Young LGBT Latino Who Cares About a Strong Israel

By CHLOE DOUMAR and mai rachlevsky

Courtesy of Bayle-Smith Salzberg

Daniel Hernandez, recently elected to the Arizona House of Representatives, visited Stuyvesant on Tuesday, December 6, to give a presentation titled “Strange Journey: My Story as a Young LGBT Latino Who Cares About a Strong Israel.” The lecture, wellpublicized through posters hung around the school bearing the talk’s intriguing title, drew approximately 70 students.

Hernandez, a Democrat, works for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and is a member of the Sunnyside Unified School District Governing Board. During his talk, Hernandez explained how he became interested in Israel and the challenges he has faced along the way as a LGBT Latino.

He also discussed his experiences volunteering and working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and the 2008 campaign of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Hernandez is widely credited with saving Giffords’s life during the 2011 Tucson shooting, in which Jared Loughner attempted to assassinate the congresswoman during a public event and also shot 18 others. Hernandez, an intern at the time, was in attendance and provided first aid to Giffords.

When Hernandez first heard

gunshots, he said his first thought was to run to Giffords. Hernandez kept Giffords conscious by talking to her and wrapping her head in an Israeli Bandage, a device invented by an Israeli medic used to stop bleeding in emergency situations, until she could be brought to a trauma center. “For me it was really important that in one of the toughest parts of my life […], one of the tools I had that ended up being really special was the Israeli Bandage,” Hernandez said during the lecture.

Hernandez became interested in Israel after learning about the Holocaust in third grade. As a child, he spent a lot of time reading to perfect his English, and often gravitated toward books concerning the state of Israel and the Holocaust. “Reading about a country that only started 50 years before was really interesting,” Hernandez said during the lecture.

While campaigning for Clinton, he worked with many elderly Jewish women, all Holocaust survivors or children of survivors, who educated him on Judaism and the Holocaust. “They taught me about their cultures, they taught me about their families, and they talked to me about […] this place called Israel. Many of them [had] either spent time in Israel after the Second World War or had family that lived there,” Hernandez said during the lecture.

Arizona Congressman Daniel Hernandez speaks to a library packed with Stuyvesant students.

As an Arizona Congressman, Hernandez works to enforce stricter gun control regulations, improve schools, and promote LGBTQ rights. He also works with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and reaches out to groups outside of the Jewish community to raise awareness for problems in Israel.

Hernandez, only 26 years old, became politically active at a very young age. “I remembered being the youngest person at every political event that I had ever been to and sometimes not being taken as seriously because I was the youngest person,” Hernandez

said during the lecture.

“It was seriously inspiring,” said senior Rhys Suero in an e-mail interview. “Your youth doesn’t have to be a determining factor in how you involve yourself with resources and connections. If you put yourself out there and just take the opportunities that come your way, you don’t always have to overwork yourself to get to a position of power.”

The event was organized by the Stuyvesant Jewish Student Union and Stuy Spectrum. Senior and co-vice president of the Jewish Student Union Bayle SmithSalzberg played a major part in

organizing the lecture. “I thought Stuyvesant students would be interested in a successful guy who has persevered despite the odds against him,” Smith-Salzberg said.

Furthermore, the lecture encouraged students’ political awareness. “It inspired me to learn more about the local elections. The lecture inspired me, if not to become more involved, at the very least to become more aware,” junior Michela Marchini said. “I can make an impact even if I can’t vote or if people maybe think I am too young, because he’s been able to do it.”

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 2

News Social Science Research Class Reimplemented for Spring 2017 By sasha spajic and queenie xiang

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and NASA

WORLDBEAT A truck barged through a crowded Christmas market in Berlin on Monday, December 19, leaving 12 dead and 48 wounded. ISIS’ Amaq news agency has claimed that the driver was a militant of the Islamic State. A day after the attack, German authorities announced that they have arrested a 23-year-old Pakistani refugee as a suspect.

Twenty-five buses entered Aleppo, Syria, on Thursday, December 15, to evacuate civilians. The evacuation effort was halted just a day later, because there was an attack on the buses. The U.N. Security Council voted on Sunday, December 18, in favor of sending international monitors to the city.

President-elect Donald Trump nominated Rep. Mick Mulvaney to Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney has served on Congress for 11 years and has frequently advocated for tighter budget control.

Yahoo announced that hackers stole information from more than one billion accounts on Wednesday, December 14. This is the second major breach on Yahoo’s servers in the past three months.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a Public Health Emergency on Friday, December 16, for the town of St. Joseph, after officials found water contaminated with copper and lead.

The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission approved a plan to kill up to 15 mountain lions and 25 black bears each year on Thursday, December 15, in hopes to raise the mule deer population. fake news stories on Thursday, December 15. The organization will be teaming up with fact-checking groups to identify fake stories and will warn users if a story they’re trying to share has been reported as fake.

Facebook announced its new plan to combat

Dr. Henry Heimlich died from a heart attack at the age of 96 on Sat-

urday, December 17, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is credited with indirectly saving thousands of people from choking with his method, which was popularized in 1974.Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards declared a Public Health Emergency on Friday, December 16, for the town on St. Joseph, after officials found water contaminated with copper and lead.

A Look Back at the Holocaust, Through an Oscar-Winning Film and its Lead Actor

By Nishmi Abeyweera, Nusheen Ghaemi, and Pazit Schrecker The social studies and English departments organized a screening of the Oscar-winning film “Son of Saul” (2015) and a question-and-answer session with the leading actor, Géza Rohrig, on Tuesday, December 13. The film was shown in its entirety to students in the Jewish History and Advanced Placement (AP) English Literature: Psychology and Literature classes during periods eight, nine, and 10 in the Murray Khan Theater. The event was primarily organized by these classes’ respective teachers: social studies teacher Robert Sandler and Eng-

lish teacher Dr. David Mandler.

The Hungarian film, directed by László Nemes, follows a day in the life of the fictitious Auslander Saul (played

by Rohrig), a sonderkommando working in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. With almost the entire movie featuring shots either of Saul’s face or from over his shoulder, the story is told from his point of view.

Earlier this year, the film won the Grand Prix in Cannes, the Golden Globe for best foreign film, and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year in 2016. continued on page 3

Sarah Chen / The Spectator

China seized an unmanned underwater vehicle that was deployed by the U.S. Navy in international waters on Thursday, December 15. The U.S. has issued a formal diplomatic protest and has demanded the vehicle’s return. A Chinese military spokesperson responded to the incident by saying that it was taken so it would would not pose a threat to ships.

After a one-year hiatus, the social science Intel program, now named Regeneron following a change in sponsorship, will be reinstated starting in the Spring 2017 semester.

Once students are enrolled in this elective, they will develop an understanding of what social science is, what kind of data social scientists look at, how to conceptualize social variables, and how to state and test hypotheses with data. Students will also learn about the statistical analysis tools used by social scientists, including Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, a program used as an analytical tool.

Last year, social studies teacher Ellen Schweitzer did not have room in her schedule to teach the research class.

After Advanced Placement Microeconomics teacher Catherine McRoy-Mendell went on maternity leave, Schweitzer stepped in to fill the teaching vacancy left by McRoy-Mendell, giving up her hours spent teaching the research class.

With McRoy-Mendell’s return, Schweitzer voiced enthusiasm for the class to be reinstituted, and approached Assistant Principal of Social Studies Jennifer Suri about offering the class again. “I enjoyed teaching [the class] very much and I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for the students.” she said.

A number of students also expressed interest to Suri. “There weren’t enough students for a full section, but numerous students expressed [a] will for the class to be formed again,” Suri said.

Principal Eric Contreras’s effort to revive Stuyvesant’s research program further motivated Suri to bring back this class. “Throughout this entire process, he has been supportive of all the Intel programs and persuaded us that this program is one that should not be abandoned,” Suri said.

History teacher Ellen Schweitzer, above, will return to teaching the Social Science Research class this spring.

Next spring, Social Science Research will be available to current juniors. No prerequisites or minimum grade are required. However, some students have already received invitations to join this class.

“Schweitzer and I spoke to all of the junior classes to make students aware of it, because it wasn’t offered last year. We’ll review their academic standing and in addition, teachers have been asked to identify [the] top students in [their U.S. History or Advanced Placement U.S. History] classes for consideration,” Suri said.

Students who are enrolled will take the class spring term junior year and continue into the fall term of their senior year. If the class and the final

research project are both completed, students will be exempted from taking a 10Tech course in their senior year.

In previous years, students have also brought their social science projects to a number of competitions. Last year, a student won second place in the MIT Inspire contest, and three students won first place in the Quality of Life Competition.

Additionally, the most recent Intel finalist from Stuyvesant, Soham Daga (‘14), was a social science student. He completed a project that used GoogleTrends to predict patterns in the economy.

Schweitzer is pleased to be teaching the class again. “I believe in the research program [at] Stuyvesant and [...] it should include social science,” she said.

“Re Jane” Author Visits British Literature Class

By Giselle Garcia Instead of reporting to their usual British Literature classes, students of English teachers Dr. Emily Moore and Annie Thoms walked into the library on Thursday, November 29. They were greeted by Patricia Park, the author of “Re Jane,” a book both classes had just finished studying.

This is the first time “Re Jane” was included in the British Literature syllabus. The book is a modern-day retelling of Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.” Park’s protagonist, Jane Re, is a half-American and halfKorean orphan. Like Jane Eyre, Jane Re flees from her adoptive family to start a life of her own.

However, unlike its source of inspiration, “Re Jane” discusses issues such as racial identity and the development of New York City in the early 2000s.

Thoms’s class read both novels in full and drew comparisons between the two, while Dr. Moore’s class read excerpts from “Jane Eyre” to provide background for “Re Jane.” “I thought that was a way to make the orig-

inal text more relevant and applicable,“ Dr. Moore said. “One of the things the British Literature curriculum is definitely not is Asian American, but our students are much more Asian American than British. I wanted some way to connect these two.”

Park herself proved relatable to the students, as a New York City native and former student at the Bronx High School of Science. ”She seemed really downto-earth. She talked about what kind of student she was, and about the things she was unsuccessful at,” Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman said. “She was good at putting students at ease and speaking to them informally.”

Park read excerpts from her novel, and then took time to answer students’ questions. “I asked about the role that faith played in the book,” senior Sheldon Peng said. “She said that faith wasn’t actually important, and that Koreans tend to go to church as a social gathering, instead of as a religious thing.”

Others were more interested in Park’s personal relationship

with the novel. “I thought the novel would be somewhat autobiographical, but it wasn’t,” senior Solomon Medintz said. “So I found it interesting that Park [is] still related to this novel. Although not an orphan herself, she talked about how being a Korean person with predominantly white friends sometimes made her feel like an orphan.”

“Another Korean-American student [...] asked for advice on navigating two cultures,” Park said in an e-mail interview. “I wish I had a better answer for him—it’s something I continue to deal with, sometimes on an hourly basis.”

Overall, Park hopes that her writing will provide students with hope. “As a student at Bronx Science, I really struggled to find my place,” Park said. “I hope they find a community they feel they belong to—whether it’s at Stuy or the world beyond.”

She is currently working on her second novel, which is set in the Korean community of Buenos Aires during the Argentine Dirty War.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 3

News A Look Back at the Holocaust, Through an Oscar-Winning Film and its Lead Actor continued from page 2

Rohrig, who was born in Budapest in 1967, lived in Jerusalem in the early ‘90s before moving to Morristown, New Jersey, to learn at a Hasidic yeshiva. He has lived in New York since 2000.

He graduated with an M.A. in Jewish education from the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York and has taught in various schools.

the interest of sharing his experiences with the students.

Dr. Mandler and Sandler were both interested in the movie. “I’ve always been really fascinated with this topic, and I’ve had survivors who escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe [come to my class recently],” Sandler said.

Dr. Mandler said the movie shed new light on the time period.“This is a film that deeply impressed me not only by its

Rohrig and Dr. Mandler knew each other as children, and Rohrig reached out to Dr. Mandler in

novel approach to depicting the Holocaust, but also in the way a single person’s fate and decisions were captured on screen,”

ADVERTISEMENT

Courtesy of Robert Sandler

“This is a film that deeply impressed me not only by its novel approach to depicting the Holocaust but also the way a single person’s fate and decisions was captured on screen.”

—Dr. David Mandler, English teacher

he said. The film, an immensely powerful production, also features many intense, violent scenes.

After the screening, Rohrig answered questions from students. During the session, Rohrig revealed that it was the first film that the director had produced and that it was filmed in just 20 days.

Sandler also found Rohrig to be an excellent speaker and provided new, unique insight on the topic. “He was so thoughtful in his responses to the kids.

Each question he answered with so much honesty and such thoughtful comments, relating it to history and contemporary politics,” Sandler said.

Students had strong opinions on the film. “It was not a fun movie to watch—it was kind of sickening, but I think it gave me a better impression of how people felt during the camp rather than afterwards and how they reflect on it,” senior Bayle SmithSalzberg, a student in Sandler’s Jewish History class, said.

The teachers hope that other students shared Smith-Salzberg’s experience. Dr. Mandler said he wanted his students to a gain “an appreciation of the film as an art form and its subject matter,” Dr. Mandler said. “I wanted students to see how art is able to capture human psychology even in the most extreme situations.”

English teacher Dr. David Mandler (left) organized a showing of “Son of Saul” (2015) with history teacher Robert Sandler. Mandler invited lead actor Géza Rohrig (right) to give a Q&A session after the screening.

Page 4

The Spectator ● December 23, 2015

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The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

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The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Features Spotlight on: Stuyvesant’s Youngest Actors

By Vincent Jiang, Maya Mitrasinovic, and Raniyan Zaman

There are certain points throughout the year when Stuyvesant lights up with energy. Shirts boasting slogans for Soph-Frosh SING! or the Winter Drama begin to appear in the hallways. Behind the scenes, weeks of grueling, yet rewarding, work go into making Stuyvesant’s theater scene what it is. In this first installment of a feature on Stuyvesant’s actors, we are profiling the underclassmen who are part of this piece of Stuyvesant culture.

are worth it when he performs.

Despite a few years of experience, Elsayed still struggles a bit when adjusting to characters with very different personalities from his own.

He laughed and jokingly said, “I’m completely awkward, I’m an awkward guy.” As a result, it was a bit more difficult to play Gomez from the Addams family, a rather flamboyant character. But he enjoyed it, nevertheless, and he hopes it helps him better understand others.

In addition to making him a more empathetic person, acting has also caused Elsayed to become more talkative. Though quieter when he was younger, “now I talk so much that people want to ignore me more than they actually want to listen to me,” he joked.

At the moment, Elsayed is involved in “The Most Miserable Christmas Tree,” a play at Fort Hamilton. He is also looking forward to “The Laramie Project,” an upcoming play about the reactions to a murder of a gay student at the University of Wyoming in 1998, something he considers to be more serious and dramatic than previous performances he has had roles in.

In the future, Elsayed

“All the aspects of theater—the community, the character, the acting, the enjoyment—really start to collide, that’s where acting is at it’s finest, and that’s why I want to do it in the future.”

—Adam Elsayed, sophomore dents,” he said, describing his experience auditioning for “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and eventually landing the role of Chip, a contestant who fantasizes about a girl he likes onstage, leading to a few embarrassing problems.

He also acted in SING!, where he was a prophet who told four students about the end of the world. “It was really a joy, I was that one wacko who had an ex-wife so it got pretty complicated,” he said. Though his schedule is a bit more filled compared to before, he still feels the long rehearsal sessions

dreams of moving onto the wide stage of Broadway. He notes that it will be a difficult goal to reach, but nevertheless, he is optimistic and determined to make it. “All the aspects of theater—the community, the character, the acting, the enjoyment—really start to collide, that’s where acting is at it’s finest, and that’s why I want to do it in the future,” he said, and at that moment, it wasn’t hard to imagine him on the bright stage, in front of a large crowd, performing the way he had just half an hour earlier at Open Mic.

Freshman Hiro Savage Kimura’s entered the world of theater in junior high school, when he joined the school production of “Beauty and the Beast, Jr.” because his friends had joined and wanted him to be a part of it, as well. Though he had a small role as a hat seller, the experience piqued his interest. He enjoyed being another person for the hour or so when he acted, and he wanted more.

Kimura’s next role came soon after in “Grease” as Vince Fontaine, a fast-talking radio announcer. Though the theater company charged $1,200 to participate in the show, he was able to get a scholarship in exchange for helping the head of the company with various jobs.

It was a bigger role compared to his first production, and it was a musical as well, though he didn’t sing as much as many of the other actors. Nevertheless, he did enjoy the time he spent dancing and singing on stage.

“I thought it was going to be hard to concentrate on singing and dancing at once, but once you’ve practiced enough, it comes to you naturally, sort of muscle memory. I’m still not great at dancing, and I only started singing a year ago, so I’m not perfect by any means, but it’s really fulfilling to do that, and I think it’s fun to do both at once,” he said.

But most of the population at Stuyvesant don’t know him

as a hat seller, or as Fontaine; they know him as Aldolpho from STC’s “The Drowsy Chaperone,” a rather dopey and funny character to play.

“This character moves around a lot more, which is fun, and I’m not great at it, but it was still fun doing all of these crazy Latin lover antics,” he said.

Kimura wasn’t sure which of his three roles thus far has been his favorite. But one thing he did point out was how it was easier speaking as the slick Fontaine than the slow Aldolpho.

He remembered how it was a bit difficult forming his Aldolpho accent, but with Fontaine, the voice came almost naturally to him; when he was younger, he and his friends would pretend they had a radio show.

But taking part in STC was a bit difficult for Kimura in terms of managing his time. Rehearsals

finished around six or seven at night, and he had to miss meeting with his other clubs, such as with Speech and A Cappella.

“After the show ended, I’ve been chilling out. I need to go back to my clubs,” he said, laughing sheepishly.

Acting has taught him the meaning of how “the show must go on.” He notes how actors in general occasionally mess up when performing, and he learned to deal with that, both when he acts, and in real life.

For Kimura, his future in acting is a bit unclear. He did not receive a callback for the “Laramie Project,” but will be back for the spring comedy. He is also looking forward to SING!, which he hasn’t had a chance to experience yet.

Outside of Stuyvesant, Kimura also has an opportunity to return to the company that held the production for “Grease.”

Sara Stebbins: A Star in the Making Freshman Sara Stebbins sees herself as a newly-minted “theater kid.” Until fifth grade, she had never even thought of acting as something she would be interested in, let alone be good at. However, she has always been very musically-inclined, having played classical violin for nine years. This prompted her 5th grade music teacher to push her to audition for the school musical, “Annie.” She scored the role of Pepper, exploring the world of acting through the eyes of a tough orphan.

It didn’t take Stebbins very long to realize that acting was more than just a passive hobby.

During her last dress rehearsal for “Annie,” Stebbins had a realization. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is a group of people who are all doing the same thing as me, going through the same thing,” she said. It became clear to her that this unmatched sense of community would make acting something she would hold onto forever.

In middle school, Stebbins started an acting showcase program, giving more students access to the art form. She knew that she didn’t want to end her acting career when transitioning to Stuyvesant, so when the opportunity arose, she tried out for the Stuyvesant Theater Company’s fall musical: “The Drowsy Chaperone.” To say that she enjoyed being a part of the show would be a mere understatement. Stebbins was immediately struck by her fellow

Mika Simoncelli / The Spectator

Before his interview, sophomore Adam Elsayed took part in an Open Mic performance by Stuyvesant A Capella. Though there were many others that were also part of the show, his vocal expressiveness made him stand out.

Elsayed’s devotion to a cappella ties into his acting experience, for many of the productions in which he has performed were musicals. He acted in his first play at the age of nine with a community theater group, and he played the mayor of Munchkin City in “The Wizard of Oz.” At the time, he was rather apathetic toward theater. But he “didn’t really have a schedule,” he said, laughing, which allowed him to have fun and enjoy the singing and the acting, sparking an interest that would soon develop into a passion.

Elsayed went on to play Charlie Bucket from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” his first main role, along with a few other community theater plays.

Elsayed’s acting experiences only continued to grow at Stuyvesant. “I was just a plucky young freshman, not entirely innocent, but innocent by the standards of Stuyvesant stu-

Hiro Kimura: Selling Hats and Selling Smile

Mika Simoncelli / The Spectator

Chloe Delfau / The Spectator

Adam Elsayed: The Musicality of Acting

actors.

“I was so surprised on the first day of rehearsals to hear how awesome everyone was,” she said. It was completely unlike the plays of her middle school days. Their dedication to the success of the musical was unlike anything she had ever seen. “They all clearly work so hard and are so passionate, and I’m so inspired by them every day.”

This does not mean that transitioning from middle school to high school acting was easy. Adjusting to her new workload was hard enough, and getting home past seven o’clock from rehearsals was a burden Stebbins hadn’t experienced before. She wanted to devote herself to academics while also making her first Stuyvesant production the best it could possibly be. If anything, this experience taught her how to do work;

the only way for Stebbins to fully put herself into acting was to be able to simultaneously put herself into her work, and STC quickly taught her this balance.

Stebbins describes acting as being unparalleled to anything else. “If you’re someone who enjoys making people laugh or cry or just feel things in general […] then acting is for you,” she said.

As an actor, Stebbin loves to see the reactions of her audience. There’s a certain beauty in hearing laughter and knowing it’s not at her, but at her jokes, or seeing the audience cry and being aware that she evoked such raw emotions out of them.

“It’s really life changing to have people come up to you after the show and be like, ‘You were really, really great,’” she explained.

Though Stebbins’ love for acting is relatively newfound, she has an inexplicable connection to it.

Though these underclassmen entered Stuyvesant with varying levels of acting experience, Stuyvesant’s theater scene brought their passion for acting to new heights and provided them with opportunities for their talents to emerge and thrive. Though they come from different backgrounds, all three are eager to see how theater will affect them and help them grow as people and actors in the years they have left at Stuyvesant—and we are eager to witness their evolution on stage.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 7

Features Dr. Moore’s Election Song

By Vincent Jiang

No one truly knows who will perform during Open Mic, so when English teacher Dr. Emily Moore came to the stage almost a month ago, it was a welcome surprise. Known by many students for teaching the poetry elective, many probably expected her to recite a poem. But then she pulled out a chair, sat down, took out her ukulele, and began to sing.

Everyone fell silent as her voice swept through the library. The song, her own composition, was about the election, but it was also about Stuyvesant and our everyday experiences, and her hopes for our futures. Chills pulsed through the crowd as people listened to her words, and when she finished only a few minutes later, everyone cheered.

how did you come up with the song?

I wrote the song after the election, because I had my own complicated feelings about the results. And I also thought about my students and what it means to teach at this school that has a very high first, second, and third-generation immigrant population. In the election, where so much of the rhetoric was anti-immigrant, I thought about what I would want to say to various students who might have felt as upset as I did.

what inspired you to create the song, versus a poem?

Poems take a really long time for me to write, and there’s a truism among poets that it takes maybe five or 10 years to write about something. Some poets are amazing at responding immediately, but I’m the kind of poet that takes a really long time to respond, so in 10 years, maybe I’ll be able to write about this election.

And also, for years on and off, I have been in a girls’ country trio.

Even though my band is on hiatus right now, I do have a long tradition of writing songs for them. I haven’t written a song in a long time, because I haven’t felt like there was something I particularly wanted to say. But here I thought, there’s something I really want to say. Songwriting for me is a medium that is much faster and more interpersonal, so it just felt like a good match.

what are some other songs you’ve written?

My band [Menage a Twang] started a million years ago. We would write silly songs about love and real estate. We had songs with titles like “The Key to Your Apartment is the Key to My Heart.” And the idea was to write country songs but about young life in New York. I wrote a song maybe eight or 10 years ago called “I’ve Got the Answer. It’s Called a Pantsuit.” Hillary was not running, even the first time, but in a way it ended up being a song that I thought about a lot during the election because of the idea of Hillary as being part of this pantsuit army of motivated women. We’ve written lots of different kinds of songs over the years, most of them really silly, but some involving some deeper themes like women’s leadership or power.

can you elaborate on the writing process?

I write songs in my head when I’m doing things like walking or taking the subway. If I’m working on a song, I’ll write it in the back of my mind, and sometimes I’ll sing to myself as I’m walking and picking up my daughter from daycare.

After the election, I didn’t sleep very well, because I was really upset, so I would lie awake and think about it a little bit. But if I’m writing a song that I feel really joyful about, I tend to do it in those funny moments when you’re walking down Chambers Street to school. Sometimes I’ll think and the lyrics and the music come together in my mind, and I’ll record a little bit on my iPhone, and it slowly comes together. And then at some point I’ll sit down and I’ll put chords to it with my ukulele or my guitar.

I had a wonderful mentor years ago when I was in high school. I’d never thought of myself as musical, but she was a music teacher, and she and I used to work at a camp together. Her philosophy was anyone can write a song about anything, and she was right. She gave me so much courage. It’s very empowering. I was amazed by how simple it is to write a song. You don’t have to be an amazing musician, you just have to have an idea you want to express, and you have to enjoy music, and lo and behold, you can write a song.

do you mind going a bit deeper about your feelings on the election?

The song that I wrote really encapsulates my feelings about the election, my feelings about the work there is to do after the election, and the different groups that I feel are impacted by the election, like young women or recent immigrants.

In some ways my own personal feelings about the election results are actually far more depressing and broken-hearted than the song suggests, but when I was writing this song I thought really deeply about what would my message be to the next political generation, which I do feel much more positively about. As I said to my classes the day after the election, you guys, with all of your beliefs, are really the generation that gives me faith, politically. So I would much rather have had you guys vote.

do you have a favorite line from your song?

I think it keeps changing. I will say one of the lines in the chorus is about commuting, wearing the hijab. That for me has become a metaphor because Muslims were so targeted by Trump’s rhetoric, and because that’s a student population that is so fundamental to Stuyvesant High School. That tradition of wearing the hijab is so visible. It’s this profound metaphor for what it means to go on with your traditions in your own life. I decided to repeat it in the chorus because to me, that image connotes this sort of bravery that I really believe in.

what was it like performing it?

Well, as anyone who’s performed knows, you make many more mistakes in performance than you do when you’re rehearsing privately. So in the actual Open Mic, I made lots of mistakes on the ukulele. In a perfect world, I would have performed it many times and been really comfortable. But this is the first time I have played it for anyone, and I care a lot about the students at Stuyvesant. They are such lovely audience members, and I saw that their faces are so thoughtful and attentive, so I did feel a special feeling looking out at the Stuyvesant student body.

Stuyvesant is an incredibly forgiving audience and they really care about the spirit of what you’re trying to do as opposed to the flawless execution, so I was relieved by how happy and forgiving the audience was.

what do you hope students will take away from your song?

There are students at Stuyvesant who are thrilled with the results of the election, so that’s wonderful for them, and I’m glad. I wrote this song to make myself feel a little bit better, and I also thought a lot about students who might be saddened and disheartened by the results of the election or feel less welcome somehow in their lives in America. I wanted to think about some things that I had to say to them. My hope was to make students who felt like me feel a little bit better and to perhaps make myself feel better.

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2016 Post Election Open Mic Song In eighth grade you aced the SHSAT The pride and joy of Flushing Queens Now after the election of 2016 It’s time to stand up for what we believe You’re immigrant students with high GPAs Commuting in hijab on the MTA Attending Chinese school every Saturday And you’re going to lead this country someday Young women, this is a time of change Let’s learn from Hillary how to get back up again Run for office and keep on fighting The feminist movement is standing beside you You’re immigrant students with high GPAs Commuting in hijab on the MTA Reading Toni Morrison on the 7 train And you’re going to lead this country someday I grew up gay in the 1980s Harassed and rejected by my own home nation Now I’m a legally married lady Justice can take an extra generation You’re immigrant students with high GPAs Commuting in hijab on the MTA Speaking Korean with your friend who’s gay And you’re going to lead this country someday So stand by each other, get your education Condemn hate speech and threats of deportation New York was built on immigration Your city needs you at graduation You’re immigrant students with high GPAs Commuting in hijab on the MTA Multiracial and multifaith And you’re going to lead this country someday ...I want you to lead my country one day.

Listen to Dr. Moore’s song on our website, www.stuyspec. com.

Page 8

The Spectator ● December 23, 22, 2016

Art Caption Contest Each issue, we provide an ambiguous cartoon or image in need of a caption. You, the reader, can submit your caption to www.tinyurl.com/SpecArtCaption. These are last week’s winning captions.

Justin Banner/The Spectator

Nathaniel Unger / The Spectator

“Do you think he’ll write a recommendation for my college ape-lications?”

(Freshman Theo Haegele)

“When the wind be blowing hard and you gotta call upon gravity to maintain your hairstyle.”

(Junior Sarah Chen)

“Pencils out for Mr. H.” (Junior Karen Chen)

“Can’t find where my grades dropped to.”

(Junior Jessica Sun)

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The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

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Page 9

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 10

Editorials Staff Editorial

Leveling the Playing Field for Girls in the Classroom In a Spectator survey taken by 555 Stuyvesant students—302 female, 233 male, and 20 who identified as other genders—42.7 percent of respondents reported having experienced what they perceived as gender-based treatment from teachers.

Female students reported sexist behaviors on the part of teachers which ranged from microaggressions to inappropriate physical contact. More commonly, both girls and boys reported what they perceive as favoritism toward girls. These situations are explored in the written responses to our survey, some of which are included in this editorial.

Problematic Positives “I feel like, because I’m female, sometimes teacher[s] have a better impression of me; they think I’m more trustworthy and responsible than I may be.” —anonymous female student

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

“The Pulse of the Student Body” E DITOR S

IN

N ews

E di to rs

Anne George Julia Ingram* Blythe Zadrozny F ea t u r es

E di to rs

Alice Cheng Geena Jung Elizabeth Lawrence

“In physical education, I’ve been able to get away with not doing as much work as the boys do. I’m going to be honest—I enjoy it. However, in the long run, I know it’s not beneficial for me to go through physical education without having to do any serious work.” —anonymous female student

O p i n i o ns

“I don’t think disparity based on gender is always a bad thing, as it could contribute to closing the sizable gender gap in some fields (particularly females in STEM areas).” —anonymous male student

S p orts

Comments such as these were reiterated by numerous responders. Despite the positive connotations of being trustworthy and responsible, a stereotype is a stereotype no matter how you twist it. Positive assumptions about a student’s characteristics come from the same ill-informed place as do negative stereotypes, which portray girls as weaker or less intelligent than their male counterparts. Unwarranted assumptions about a student’s character can and will distort her development as both a student and an individual. It is axiomatic that both genders are entitled to a fair playing field, and only with equal treatment can all students flourish.

Notably, 20.8 percent of female responders said that they believe that their grades have been impacted positively because of their gender. For males, this number was 1.7 percent. As one male student reported, “I had a female teacher sophomore year [who] quite obviously favored females, and even gave them higher participation grades [and] often overlooked small mistakes on their part that she reprimanded male students for.”

Females share the same views. One stated simply, “My teacher usually gave girls a higher grade, and so I got a higher final grade than I should’ve.”

The practice of curving girls up is more common in STEM classes in which female students are a clear minority, and teachers want to encourage diversity in the classroom. Promoting girls’ involvement in STEM is certainly admirable, and on an individual level it only serves to benefit the students. On a broader scale, however, the teacher is sending the wrong message: that for girls, the expectations should be lowered. Instead, teachers can open doors for students by being attentive mentors, giving them the guidance they need and being enthusiastic about their accomplishments. But projecting the idea that the expectations for girls are lower than those for boys is discouraging and demeaning.

C HIEF

Danielle Eisenman* Sonia Epstein*

E di to rs

Zora Arum* Asher Lasday Nalanda Sharadjaya* E di to rs

Nadia Filanovsky Max Onderdonk Dean Steinman h u mo r

E di to rs

Alec Dai Shaina Peters Please address all letters to: 345 Chambers Street New York, NY 10282 (212) 312-4800 ext. 2601 letters@stuyspec.com

F o r t he

&p h y P h o At ro tgsr a E nte t Er d ti a t ionmen rs E di to rs

Nancy Cao Karen Chen Xin Italie Liana Chow Kaia Waxenberg Liam Elkind

EP nh to e E E

Arts & tt o ag irnmen a p h yt r d d ii t to o r rs s

A Ar rt t

D D ii r r ec ec t to o r rs s

NancyChen Cao Karen Xin Italie Liana Chow Kaia Waxenberg Liam Elkind Yujie Fu Fu Yujie Christine Christine Jegarl Jegarl Vivian Vivian Lin Lin

L L a ay yo o u ut t

E E d d ii t to o r rs s

Xinyi Gu Gu Xinyi Tina Tina La La Michelle Michelle Lin Lin

C Co o p py y

E E d d ii t to o r rs s

Fionna Fionna Du Du Kate Johnston Johnston Kate Zoe Zoe Orlin Orlin

B Bu us s ii ness ness

M M anage anage r r

Evelyn Gotlieb* Gotlieb* Evelyn

Web Web

E E d d ii t to o r rs s

Sebastian Sebastian Cain Cain Haley Zeng Zeng Haley

F F ac ac u ul lt t y y

A A dv dv ii s sE E r r

Kerry Kerry Garfinkel Garfinkel

We reserve the right to edit letters for clarity and length. © 2016 The Spectator All rights reserved by the creators. * Managing Board

Rec o r d

• The Spectator would like to retract “Brexit’s Impact on the Premier League,” a sports article that ran in Issue 5, because it was plagiarized.

We at The Spectator do not condone academic dishonesty, and we truly apologize for publishing another source’s work as if it were our own.The Issue 6 article “Administration to Pursue All Core Classes” was misattributed to Shameek Rakshit and Julian Rubinfien. The reporters were Wen Shan Jiang and Alexia Leong.

• In Issue 6, the Stuyvesant boys’ fencing team was misnamed as the Garden Snakes. This is incorrect the boys’ fencing team does not have an official name.

• In Issue 6, three Arts and Entertainment articles had accompanying art without crediting the artists. The art for “Unadorned and Unembellished: Alicia Key’s New Style” was by Tiffany Leng, “Understanding My Blackness Through ‘The Boondocks’” by Nikita Borisov, and “The Magic in the Madness of Improv” by Justin Banner.

Power Dynamics “I’ve seen several cases where girls were harassed in class. The worst cases tended to be when one or two girls were singled out and teased or creepily flirted with throughout the year.”

—anonymous male student “I’ve been called a “bad housewife” by a teacher because I was trying to clean something up.”

—anonymous female student “[A Teacher] used to tell [a female student] in our computer science class to “manage” the boys who were programming, instead of telling her to program herself.” —anonymous female student

A Note to Our Readers: The Spectator will now accept unsolicited Op-Ed pieces written by outside students, faculty, and alumni. These columns, if selected, will be published in The Spectator’s Opinions section. Recommended length is 700 words.

Articles should address school related topics or items of student interest. Columns can be e-mailed to specreaderopinions@gmail.com.

Mild harassment, such as inappropriate language, is often subtle enough to be laughed off and normalized. For example, comments about the way a female student is dressed, often made by female teachers, may seem like minor offenses, but ultimately make female students feel self-conscious, and therefore less comfortable in their learning environment.

In rare cases, some teachers have engaged in inappropriate physical contact with students. This usually occurs between male teachers and female students, and can range from a teacher putting his arm around a student while coming over to help her to something more serious. These actions are extremely harmful to the learning environment because they make students feel unsafe. Such concerns about safety and feelings of discomfort inhibit students’ ability to focus on school.

Because the fate of a student rests in her teacher’s hands, she may be more likely to let him dominate her and she may be less likely to call him out or report him for inappropriate behavior.

Do you want to reflect on an article?

Or speak your mind?

Solutions

VOICES

Issues surrounding gender in the classroom are hardly anything new, but they are also not addressed simply. Gender biases among teachers are often subconscious, or may be more acceptable in the culture or period in which the teacher were raised.

Currently, professional development programs at Stuyvesant do not explicitly address how teachers should react to the gender diversity within their classrooms, and as a result, teachers act according to what they feel is right. If the administration and the Department of Education were to utilize professional development as a platform for discussion, we might see many of these unconscious biases addressed and ultimately expelled from our learning experience.

When we witness these biases in classroom settings, it is important that we reach out to our administration. Many of the issues we experience are subtle and thus easily overlooked by both students and teachers. But it then becomes our responsibility to speak up—to elucidate the issues, and ensure that they do not go unrecognized.

Write a letter to the editor and e-mail it to letters@stuyspectator.com or drop it in The Spectator box in the second-floor mail room.

Would you like to share a personal narrative with the school? Whether it’s an essay you’ve written for class, or a piece you’ve been working on by yourself, if it’s in first-person and it is nonfiction it could get published in The Spectator’s issue-ly Voices column!

Send your stories into voices@stuyspec.com, or email us with any questions or concerns you have.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 11

Opinions

Allison Eng/ The Spectator

Stand for Standing Rock

By jane rhee A banner reading “Veterans Stand for Standing Rock” proudly flies over the heads of 2,100 U.S. military veterans as they march to the Northern Plains. Robin Gage is one of them. She is a former member of the California National Guard whose grandmother was a part of the Choctaw Nation. “Here’s my chance to use my energy as a vet and as a Native American,” she said to Sandy Tolan of the Los Angeles Times. She and her group will join the more than 5,000 “water protectors” at the Seven Council Fires Camp near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

For the past year, the water protectors have been protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, an Energy Transfer Partners project that was first introduced in December 2014. This $3.78 billion pipeline is set to span 1,172 miles, crossing North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. It will be able to transport up to 570,000 barrels of crude oil every day.

This project would ideally make America more energy independent, keeping the oil market within its borders, and is supported by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which has concluded that pipelines are the safest method of transporting oil. Proponents of the pipeline are also hopeful that this will stop the flow of money into countries such as Saudi Arabia, a country known for funding terrorism and backing oppressive regimes.

However, only 12 percent of our oil comes from this region, the bulk of it coming from the U.S. and Canada.

Supporters of the pipeline are also hopeful in the prospect of creating new jobs. Energy Transfer Partners states on its website that the pipeline “will create 8,000 to 12,000 local jobs during construction” and “will generate an estimated $55 million annually in property taxes.”

But compare this to the $1.25 billion spent to clean up the BP oil spill or the 20,000 Sioux already living and working on the land.

These benefits are not enough to justify police brutality, a blatant disregard for Native American rights, and the possibility of environmental pollution.

The media has represented the unarmed protesters as violent, with headlines from

right-wing news sources such as The New American reading, “Greenies, Lefties Protest Dakota Access Pipeline With Violence.”

The Chamber of Commerce dubbed the Standing Rock tribe as the “anti-energy protestors.”

An example of a peaceful protest that was labeled as aggressive occurred on the evening of November 20, when around 400 people gathered on Highway 1806, north of Standing Rock. The protectors were moving trucks in order to block the highway and the flow of supplies to the camp so that construction would be delayed.

The police came armed with tear gas, mace, guns with rubber bullets, attack dogs, and water cannons. The police used water to stop the protesters in below freezing temperatures. The New York Times reports that after hours of hosing down the crowd, 167 injuries, including head trauma and hypothermia, had to be treated.

Trespassing on private property is a crime, and the police have every right to enforce the law. However, when the police hose down a group of peaceful protestors in subfreezing temperatures and the right-wing media reports it as rioters getting punished for violence, law enforcement crosses the line.

These armed policemen are not fighting an immediate threat, yet their use of tear gas against children and the elderly suggest they’re treating a peaceful protest like a war zone. But the issue is more complex than one

legal infraction.

Completing construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline would be sacrilegious and detrimental to Native American culture. The pipeline runs under burial grounds, which are sacred sites where the Sioux recite protection prayers over the burial places of relatives. These prayers are believed to facilitate the walk to the spirit world. Faith Spotted Eagle, 68, lives on the Yankton Sioux Reservation of South Dakota. When told that the pipeline didn’t cross any burial grounds, she said, “Archaeologists come in who are taught from a colonial structure, and they have the audacity to interpret how our peo-

ple were buried. How would they even know?”

Government officials who have no background with the Sioux have no authority over their culture and should not get to choose what is sacred to the Sioux and what is not. After all, like Spotted Eagle says, “What if the Great Sioux Nation decided

supposed to be compensated.

However, the Sioux did not and still have not taken that money because they want official ownership of the land, not small monetary compensation. Now, the government may ally with Energy Transfer Partners in order to once again milk the Sioux’s remaining territory of its natural

the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in 2015, which would have spanned the land between Canada and Texas and transported 800,000 barrels of oil a day.

To justify his decision, he said, “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change, and frankly, approving this proj-

Government officials who have no background with the Sioux have no authority over their culture, and should not get to choose what is sacred and what is not.

to build a project through Arlington Cemetery? The point would be taken that you don’t disturb people that have been put to rest.”

Politicians have made it clear that the U.S. isn’t proud of its treatment towards indigenous peoples, including putting them on reservations in the first place.

Obama signed a Native American apology resolution as recently as 2010. But for it to now take away the 38 miles of territory that legally belong to the Sioux demonstrates a blatant disregard for Native American rights.

Perhaps not taking advantage of indigenous

resources, with no regard to the people that live there.

The federal government must also consider the effect that this pipeline will have on the environment. The Army Corps of Engineers permitted construction of the pipeline using a process called “Nationwide Permit 12,” which ultimately allowed the Corps to fast-track approving the project. However, using this process undermined federal laws, including the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Mandy Mai / The Spectator

peoples for once would be a way for the government to symbolically right past wrongs.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie granted the Sioux possession of the land that the Dakota Access Pipeline is set to cross in 1868. 11 years later, the U.S. government threatened the Sioux with starvation in order to regain the Black Hills of South Dakota, where gold was mined. The Sioux were forced to give up this land even though they considered it sacrilegious. When the Supreme Court ruled that the territory did not legally belong to the government in 1980, the Sioux were

These laws exist for a reason. The planned trajectory of the pipeline cuts through wildlife habitats and the Missouri River. A spill or contamination would threaten the quality of drinking water and compromise the life of all organisms living in the river. In fact, it was only a few weeks ago that the Belle Fourche Pipeline, only 150 miles from the Standing Rock Camp, leaked 176,000 gallons of oil into the Ash Coulee Creek. This creek eventually leads to the Missouri River.

President Obama rejected

ect would have undercut that leadership.” While construction and maintenance of the pipeline would have created jobs, the potential effect on the environment and its contribution to climate change should be a larger concern.

On the other hand, Presidentelect Trump has recently made a public statement that he “intends to cut the bureaucratic red tape put in place by the Obama administration that has prevented our country from diversifying our energy portfolio.” The issue here is that he sees preventing the construction of a 1000mile oil pipeline that directly threatens the Sioux and everyone else that depends on the Missouri River for water as a step back in terms of environmental technology.

Trump had invested anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million worth of shares in Energy Transfer Partners as of May 2015. However, according to him, his support for the divisive pipeline “has nothing to do with personal investments and everything to do with promoting policies that benefit all Americans.” Clearly, Trump does not consider the Sioux a part of “all Americans.”

Ultimately, it seems as though the government must choose between an economic gain and the welfare of all of its citizens. The Army Corps of Engineers recently halted construction in order to “explore other routes” as requested by the Obama administration.

However, whatever their findings, the Trump administration can still push for the original plans once Tr u m p is inaugurated, making this a temporary victory.

It was only in 2010 when the country officially gave an apology to all of its Native Americans citizens in a resolution passed by Congress. The Defense Appropriations Act also promises to work towards a “brighter future where all the people of this land live reconciled as brothers and sisters, and harmoniously steward and protect this land together.”

This time, let’s keep our promises.

Page 12

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Opinions

Victoria Huang/ The Spectator

A Defense of the Mainstream Media

By Rodda John Immediately after the passage of the Constitution, the collection of 10 amendments we now call the Bill of Rights was ratified. The first amendment guarantees that Congress shall make no law infringing upon freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition. Recently, many news sources have been using their first amendment privileges in the United States to propagate what has been come to be called “fake news.” Although this modern phenomenon is not uniquely American, it’s in this country (and in the presidential election) that the impacts have been most tangible.

The press has long held a

unique position in the United States and is known colloquially as the fourth estate. The people of the republic have relied on the press to engage in investigative reporting and reveal issues within government. The corruption surrounding Tammany Hall helped establish The New York Times as one of the country’s foremost papers. Journalists’ investigations into financial irregularities surrounding the construction of Tweed Courthouse showed the public the value of an independent and free press.

This role of the press is underappreciated by the populous. Many historians of journalism point to Watergate as the moment when public opinion began to turn against journalists—this trend continues today in Trump’s attacks on both reporters and liberal media outlets. The press doesn’t have to be loved in its role, it must be respected and trusted.

Fake news has begun to erode the ability of respected journalistic outlets to provide this check on the power of government. As more and more of our supposed news comes from online sources, often transmitted over social media, it becomes harder and harder to separate fact from fiction. This process is only accelerated by the efforts of some public figures to spread these false nar-

ratives.

The growing preponderance of these fake news sites has hastened the demise of respected news outlets, the same outlets that have done the most to protect our republic and the rights of its citizens against overreaches of government power.

What can we do to prevent

The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune, watching CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, and Fox, and listening to NPR. All of these sources take thoughtful, investigative looks into the world and governments around them. Even when websites like Buzzfeed provide meaningful, truthful news, they still largely

pothetical New York Times article about widespread corruption in the federal government has become increasingly likely to be lost in a sea of similarly titled articles that were merely crying wolf.

Don’t let the rise of tainted news distract from the fundamental importance of news.

The growing preponderance of these fake news sites has hastened the demise of respected news outlets: the same outlets that have done the most to protect our republic and the rights of its citizens against overreaches of government power.

this dangerous option? I offer two simple suggestions.

First, let’s not rely on our Facebook and Twitter feeds for news stories. By clicking on clickbait, we are providing financial incentives to the organization that comes up with the most clickable title—and not the most truthful. We instead need to be reading The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times,

reprint stories published in other news sources. By looking to Buzzfeed instead of The Wall Street Journal for news, we fail to support active discovery and analysis.

Second, let’s be careful about the news that we share.

Even when sharing news that is not fake, but still heavily biased, the gravity of more important, objective news decreases. A hy-

Tocqueville wrote, upon visiting America in the early 19th century, that perhaps the most interesting thing was that somebody in Detroit—on the outskirts of civilization—was reading the same news as a merchant in Boston. This is where the strength in American republicanism lies, in the power of truthful, respectable, and reliable news sources.

Jessica Wu/ The Spectator

Renzi’s Referendum

By Matteo Wong In less than 30 days, my mother, an Italian citizen residing in the United States, was abandoned by the two countries she calls home. A month after America elected a misogynist to the White House, the Italian citizenry voted “no” to a referendum attempting to reshape the Italian Constitution on Decem-

ment is a bicameral legislature, which means it has two houses: a lower Chamber of Deputies, which is elected directly, and an upper Senate of the Republic, which is not. To elect senators, citizens vote for the party they support (Italy has a multi-party system), and the heads of the parties choose senators proportional to the percentage of the popular vote received; citizens have no say in that choice. In order to pass, all Italian legislation must be ratified by both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.

The referendum, which was backed heavily by former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, aimed to take away the Senate’s power to approve legislation and make the Chamber of Deputies the dominant legislative body.

A bicameral legislature makes passing laws through the Italian government a cumbersome and inefficient process.

Forcing all laws to be passed through two chambers creates long waiting periods; for

posefully designed to limit the power of both houses and the prime minister in reaction to the rise of Benito Mussolini and fascism. However, 60 years have made this system obsolete, and as a result, Italy’s government is weak and indecisive, leading to a failing economy and a shrinking young labor force as millennials leave a nation they perceive cannot offer them anything. Changing the legislature would allow the government to act more decisively and give the Prime Minister the ability to have more laws passed, increasing the government’s effectiveness and ability to evolve.

Beyond its pragmatic benefits, the referendum’s failure is also emblematic of the rise of the right throughout Europe.

In January, Renzi attached his political future to the referendum by declaring that he would resign if it failed. Renzi was a young, energetic prime minister in a political arena that has been dominated by the quasidictator Silvio Berlusconi for decades, a man who has been

Italy’s government is weak and indecisive, leading to a failing economy and a shrinking young labor force as millennials leave a nation they perceive cannot offer them anything.

ber 4, leaving many feeling like the country had forsaken progress for politics. I spent dinner listening to my mother grumble in distress.

Currently, the Italian parlia-

instance, this referendum was originally proposed as a bill, and after two years of political infighting, it was unable to pass, a huge waste of time and resources.

Italy’s constitution is pur-

sued multiple times for corruption. Renzi promised to bring a fresh look to Italian politics and was trying to pass labor, economic, and immigration reforms that could bring the nation beyond its barbaric laws

and openly racist, homophobic political rhetoric.

When he tied the referendum to his reelection, Renzi’s opposition, namely the populist Five Star party led by Beppe

(such as Berlusconi’s “Forza Italia” and other conservative parties), which staunchly opposes change, will continue to have the upper-hand in the government. Senators will continue to

Opposing the referendum was a calculated political gesture to remove Renzi, showing how politics came before Italy’s well-being.

Grillo, began to campaign against the referendum. The Five Star movement claims to be anti-establishment, but the referendum’s refusal has only re-entrenched the antiquated Italian legislature, which greatly diminishes the possibility of future reforms. Opposing the referendum was a calculated political gesture to remove Renzi, showing how politics came before Italy’s well-being. Regardless of whether Renzi represents Italy’s best hopes for the future, his resignation will launch the government into a state of turmoil due to the appointment of an interim prime minister. In the midst of a refugee crisis and economic downturn, this is particularly troublesome—and it is difficult to imagine the Five Star movement didn’t understand these consequences.

Moreover, the referendum sought to restructure the Senate to be more democratic and would remove the ability for Senators to serve for life, decreasing the power of old, outof-touch politicians. Without a change, the older generation

wield enormous power, despite not being directly elected.

It seems that throughout the world, reactionary politics are seizing power; from the conservative powerhouse headed

by Marine Le Pen in France to the resignation of Matteo Renzi in Italy, progress seems to be crumbling before us.

Younger generations have been leaving Italy in search of opportunity, and many young Americans are looking for ways to escape a Trump presidency.

We should not be so quick to lose hope; we should not run, but rather stay and fight. Just as Americans are protesting Trump’s cabinet picks and hoping to change his policies for the better, Italians should continue to vote and demonstrate an investment in their own government so that reactionary elites cannot take over. Italian politics in particular, as a multi-party system, can be heavily impacted by political minorities. As a dual citizen, I know that when I turn 18 and can vote in Italian elections, I will be mailing in my ballot alongside my mother’s.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 13

Opinions The Creatures of the Drained Swamp

By Ben Platt and Eliza Spinna With Donald Trump’s inauguration only a month away, the president-elect has a lot to do. On top of tweeting hourly and taking a victory tour, Trump is faced with the challenge of choosing a cabinet. This is no easy task: he must choose an effective and diverse group of people and balance the interests of both moderate and extreme republicans while also representing his own beliefs.

The common ground for his choices is extreme wealth; they have a combined net worth of over $14 billion. “I want people that made a fortune because now they’re negotiating with you,” Trump announced. Another uniting factor? Many don’t believe the departments they now direct should be powerful, or even exist, in some cases.

One of Trump’s most controversial picks is Ben Carson, his adversary in the primaries and a retired neurosurgeon.

Carson is set to oversee a department with a $47 billion budget as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

While Carson’s appointment brings much-needed diversity to Trump’s cabinet, he lacks the necessary qualifications. He has no experience in government or housing policy.

Trump may have nominated him because of his impoverished background in Detroit, where his family received assistance through the HUD Department in the form of subsidized housing. However, it’s unclear if Carson really believes in the department’s objectives:

called the Obama administration effort to racially integrate majority-white neighborhoods a “failed socialist experiment.”

Considering that Carson has expressed disapproval of the HUD Department’s core beliefs, his fitness as its secretary is questionable.

Another former competitor of Trump is Rick Perry, who will be Trump’s Secretary of Energy.

Perry was the governor of Texas, the leading producer of crude oil, natural gas, coal, wind power, and refined petroleum products. Therefore, Perry initially seems like a good choice for the Secretary of Energy: he’s familiar with the energy market and has announced his beliefs in exploring new, efficient energy sources.

In recent years, the importance of the Energy department has increased dramatically, since it is now responsible for nuclear energy, weapons, and cleanup. Ironically, Perry sees no such importance: in November 2011, at a Republican primary debate, Perry pledged to eliminate three government agencies, including the Energy Department. Like Carson, Perry will thus be in charge of an agency that he believes shouldn’t exist in the first place, which cannot bode well for the vital work conducted by the Energy Department.

Betsy DeVos, known for her efforts to reform the Detroit school system, will be Trump’s Secretary of Education. DeVos is a strong proponent of charter schools and educational vouchers; she has proposed a $20 billion plan to finance “school choice” initiatives.

Considering that Carson has expressed disapproval of the HUD Department’s core beliefs, his fitness as its secretary is questionable. in 2015 he said that he wanted to get rid of “dependency” on the government by the impoverished, and stressed in his biography that hard work, rather than government assistance, is the key to climbing out of poverty. In a 2015 opinion piece in The Washington Times, he

While DeVos definitely has experience with sweeping school reforms, her record is dismal. Her reform plan in Detroit, which promoted charter schools and gave families vouchers that let them choose which school to attend, was called the “biggest school re-

form disaster in the country” by the New York Times, lacking oversight and leading to a massive decline in test scores and overall student achievement.

School choice has the potential to work in urban areas— in New York City, the multitude of public, charter, and private schools creates competition and leads each school to strive to perform better. However, in

“far from settled.” It flies in the face of logic and is grossly irresponsible to nominate someone to lead the EPA who doesn’t believe in its stated mission: combatting climate change in one of the world’s most polluting countries.

Thus, the EPA being led by one of the main opponents of its agenda is not conducive toward helping the environment. When

the oil industry. Though Tillerson will be forced to sell away all of ExxonMobil stock, he will still be working with countries where he previously had a financial stake in, which could easily cloud his judgment. The Secretary of State is often regarded as the most important cabinet position in a president’s administration, as they represent America around the world

It flies in the face of logic and is grossly irresponsible to nominate someone to lead the EPA who doesn’t believe in its stated mission: combatting climate change in one of the world’s most polluting countries. rural and suburban areas with few or only one school accessible by each family, vouchers fail to make an impact. DeVos needs a more holistic plan that promotes education for all areas, not just select urban ones.

One area where Barack Obama has been most successful in using executive action to advance his agenda has been climate change. However, Republican attorney generals have sued the federal government many times to stop energy regulations from President Obama’s Clean Power Plan from being implemented.

The most prolific of these has been Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, who has been nominated by President-Elect Trump to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Pruitt has received more than $300,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industries and is known for having close ties with these industries’ leaders. There is a clear conflict of interest between someone who has done close work with the oil and gas industries and is now being asked to regulate them to preserve the environment.

Pruitt does have significant experience with the fossil fuels industry and is certainly knowledgeable about the topic; he just is on the wrong side of the road when it comes to the goals of the EPA. It’s not even clear if Pruitt accepts the scientific consensus that climate change is happening, calling the issue

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considering Donald Trump’s statements on global warming, it makes sense that he nominated Pruitt, as Trump has also labeled climate change a “hoax” invented by the Chinese to get an economic leg up.

Another one of Trump’s unorthodox picks has been Rex Tillerson, the Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, as Secretary of State. Tillerson certainly has experience in diplomacy, having conducted negotiations in countries as varied as Yemen, Iraq, and Venezuela. In addition, he has managed the world’s largest oil and gas corporation fairly successfully for the past 10 years.

However, a deeper look at Tillerson’s record shows that he is unfit to be Secretary of State.

A major concern that has been raised about Tillerson is his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Under Tillerson’s leadership, ExxonMobil has invested and jointly developed natural gas fields in the North Sea with the Russian-run energy giant Rosneft. Tillerson was even awarded an Order of Friendship from Vladimir Putin in 2013. Russian hacks on the Democratic National Committee and Russia’s possible intent to disrupt the electoral process should make the Senate extremely wary of confirming Tillerson.

Tillerson’s allegiance should also be called into question because of his 40-year tenure at ExxonMobil: his worldview may be shaped by his connections to

and have a large say in foreign policy. Therefore, extra attention should be paid to a nominee who is not well versed in many areas of diplomacy and has conflicts of interests in many countries he will be working in.

Many policies of a president are executed and shaped by his cabinet members. This will hold especially true for PresidentElect Trump because of his lack of governing experience.

Current Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz helped negotiate the Iran deal, which lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for dismantling their nuclear program. It’s unclear if PresidentElect Trump’s picks would have been as successful, given their collective lack of public sector experience or knowledge about the jobs they will be assigned.

And for those nominees who are well-versed in the position, it seems most have tried to subvert or oppose the very job they will soon be assuming.

Some of President-Elect Trump’s picks could do very well in their roles, such as Elaine Chao, who is the nominee for the Secretary of Transportation position, or Congressman Ryan Zinke of Montana, for the Secretary of the Interior Department. However, nominees such as Scott Pruitt or Rick Perry deserve close scrutiny from the Senate before they vote on whether to grant them power over decisions that affect all people in the United States.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 14

Arts and Entertainment Books By lena farley The author of the well-known “Gossip Girl” series, Cecily von Ziegesar, is out with a new book.

This time, the book features charismatic horses along with charismatic people. “Dark Horses,” which came out September 16, is a young adult novel told from two perspectives.

One is from the point of view of a teenage girl, Merritt. Merritt is a senior at a private school in Manhattan and is having a hard time coping with her grandmother’s death.

The other perspective is that of a hot-headed horse named Red. Red is hard to control and ends up injuring several riders during a horse show. Both Merritt and Red end up at Good Fences, a school for troubled girls who take care of horses as part of their therapy. Merritt is assigned Red as her horse and they form a strong friendship, but one that runs into several challenges throughout the book. After the owner of Red sees Merritt’s talent for riding Red, Merritt and Red are sent away from the therapy school to train in Florida.

Von Ziegesar’s choice for writing from a horse’s perspective was based off of what she herself has read. “Since ‘Black Beauty,’ which is a really old book, I hadn’t ever read a book that was from a horse’s point of view, so I was just trying something new,” she said, explaining how “Dark Horses” came about from a classic book she loved as a child.

Writing from a horse’s perspective turned out to be a new

Theater Review

of “Notes From a Fied”

By Sophie Feng Videographer of the Freddy Gray beating. Inmate at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women. Chief Judge of the Yurok Tribal Court. The list goes on.

All of these roles are captured in the show “Notes from the Field” playing at the Tony Kiser Theatre through the end of December (although tickets are currently sold out). The show is comprised of a series of monologues, each from the point of view of a different character.

However, what is unique about this show is that the words spoken by each character are entirely true to life. The creator and writer of the play, Anna Deavere Smith, facilitated this by interviewing hundreds of individuals and condensing their words to form the script for “Notes from the Field.” This process of collecting and integrating material gathered from interviews is in fact her signature form of theater, one that she previously employed in her show “The Arizona Project.”

This approach lends Smith’s work immense validity. Although you can argue that she is presenting an overarching point, it is comforting to know that Smith is doing something akin to arranging her evidence, rather than fabricating it.

Yet, unlike her previous stand-alone shows, “Notes from the Field” is a piece of something bigger, a movement started by Smith called the Pipeline Project. This venture is an outreach of sorts, by which she hopes to draw attention to the school-toprison pipeline, a phenomenon in which young disadvantaged people leave public schooling and almost immediately enter the criminal justice system.

From the Upper East Side to the Stables: A Conversation with Cecily von Ziegesar and challenging experience.

“First, I started out with using only Red’s point of view in the first person,” von Ziegesar said.

“And then, in the next chapter I would have, ‘Merritt was feeling down, she took a pill,’ but then I decided that was really jarring and it wasn’t going to work, so I decided to switch between their points of view in first person.”

Von Ziegesar also pointed out that this was her first book written in the first person. Not only was “Gossip Girl” in third person, but the rest of her other books have also been written in the third person.

“I have written other books and I try to do something different every time, so this was new,” she said. “I was exploring.”

The narration style isn’t where the comparisons between “Gossip Girl” and “Dark Horses” end. Both are inspired by actual events in her life and in the lives of people she has met.

Von Ziegesar wrote the first Gossip Girl book while working as an editor in 1999. Von Ziegesar, who went to a private school on the Upper East Side, wanted to create a book that was not set in “imaginary, very suburban places” like the books she had been editing.

“I’m from Manhattan, so I thought, ‘I want to read something that’s about kids here,’” von Ziegesar said. “I started brainstorming about a series about people who went to a private girls school of the Upper East Side like I did and I came up with a cast of characters.”

In a very different scenario,

von Ziegesar was walking her dog when she ran into a man with an interesting story. That encounter was the inspiration for “Dark Horses.”

“He told me about his daughter who is in her 30s, I think, and she went to this place called The Ranch, in Tennessee, where you get assigned a horse. She had a lot of alcohol and drug problems, I think, but she was helped by having this relationship with a horse,” von Ziegesar explained.

“I got this idea about: What if the horse has problems too? So it’s not just this sweet, wonderful, horse who rescues people.”

Good Fences, the fictional school in von Ziegesar’s novel, sounds very similar to The Ranch, but von Ziegesar put her own twist on the story by giving not only the students, but also the horses, their own issues. Red suffers from wild behavior and the inability to control himself, which in turn leads to injuries and getting fired as a riding horse.

Merritt suffers from depression after her grandmother’s death and resorts to alcohol and pills for comfort. Merritt and Red find support in each other’s company, in a time when company is what they both need most.

As shown by the differences in inspiration between “Dark Horses” and “Gossip Girl,” “Dark Horses” deals with darker issues than the more humorous “Gossip Girl” series does. Although “Gossip Girl” does deal with some family and alcohol issues, the stories are told through the lives of entitled Upper East Side teenagers, and they are told in a funny

manner because of the absurdity of the rich teenagers. “Dark Horses,” on the other hand, has some funny parts to it, but is mainly about Merritt and Red trying to figure out their issues.

Von Ziegesar said there’s a reason behind that. “Everyone always expects me to be so funny and to write about more glamorous things,” she said. “I think the humor is there in Red’s voice and one can’t be funny [and] campy, all the time. Merritt has a lot of qualities in her that many of the ‘Gossip Girl’ characters have. I think Blair has a dark side too, but [Merritt] has just had more bad things happen to her.”

However, von Ziegesar points out that despite the divergence between the plots of “Dark Horses” and “Gossip Girl,” the characters turned out alike. In “Gossip Girl” there is a wide range of characters, or an “ensemble cast” as von Ziegesar puts it, but perhaps the most iconic of the characters are Blair and Serena, a dynamic pair of best friends.

“Serena was just as hard for me as Merritt, because she’s never satisfied and she doesn’t know what’s bugging her,” she said.

“It’s funny, everyone wants to be like her, or be with her, but she doesn’t seem to like herself that much and so she was always difficult for me to write. Merritt and Serena have similar qualities.

They’re complicated and hard to get to know, but that’s what’s intriguing about them.”

Von Ziegesar contrasted Blair from Serena in that, “[Blair] is feisty and funny, and she can be kind of mean, but that’s what

makes you like her,” she said. “I always loved writing Blair.”

When von Ziegesar said this, it immediately sounded like what she had said about Red, earlier: “I really enjoyed writing from the horse’s point of view. He’s sort of irrational and he reacts to everything in a dramatic way.” Like Blair, Red gets angry easily, making them more interesting characters to read about.

When I brought up this similarity to von Ziegesar, she noted, “Blair definitely has very animalistic qualities. She’s very impulsive. When Blair wants something, she has to have it right now.

When something’s bothering her, it’s the only thing she can think about and everything else is not important anymore. That’s very animal-like.”

Reading “Gossip Girl” as well as “Dark Horses,” you can see von Ziegesar’s writing style shine throughout. She writes so that even if you have nothing in common with the Upper East Side queens of “Gossip Girl” or the struggling horse in “Dark Horses,” you can still relate to them.

Writing in such a way doesn’t come easily. Von Ziegesar’s main advice to aspiring writers is simply to “read,” Von Ziegesar said with urgency in her voice. “I still go back to books that I love and try to find a sentence I remember,” she said. “Whenever I’m writing something new, I’m constantly referencing stories that stuck with me. I’m always inspired by things that I read. It’s such a valuable thing to do. Just read.”

Voices of Failed Education: Exploring the School-toPrison Pipeline Through a One-Woman Show This trend is the major focus of “Notes from the Field” and one that she presents in detail.

Before the show even starts, as we find and settle into our seats, a variety of sentences are projected onto the panels of the stage: “Black South Carolinians are over four times more likely to be imprisoned than white residents.” “Every seven seconds a Latino public school student is suspended.” Though the statistics vary, the overall message is clear: this school-to-prison pipeline overwhelmingly targets racial minorities, especially blacks and Latinos.

There is a particular cleverness in the way these statistics are presented to us. The minutes before the lights dim and the show starts are usually a time when we can be at ease, checking our phones for lastminute messages and flipping through the playbill. However, through displaying them in a way that we can’t quite ignore (because they are literally right in front of us), “Notes from the Field” forces its audience to recognize facts that might make us a little bit uncomfortable.

These statistics don’t merely exist as ideas that disappear once the lights come up and the audience leaves the theater. The school-to-prison pipeline is a national trend that is real and deserves our attention, not just

when we sympathize with a character in a play.

However, it is important to note that the element of sympathy is also an effective tool employed to humanize the issue. Hearing the exact words and seeing a victim of this school-to-prison pipeline portrayed is incredibly moving. The concept of living in a privileged bubble is all too real at Stuyvesant, yet these monologues lend a voice to opinions we might not hear otherwise.

We hear from Councilmember Michael Tubbs, a mayoral candidate for

Klaire Geller / The Spectator

Stockton, CA. He describes, with a hint of desperation, his sense that the young black people, threatened by the gun violence and poverty of the city around them, “just want to be alive at 25,” a situation likely unimaginable for both myself and most of my peers.

We hear from inmate Denise Dodson, who, in reference to a life intertwined with the criminal justice system, “started believing that that was it and that was all.”

These characters are both played by Smith. In fact, the entire 19 characters of the show are. Over the course of two-anda-half hours, she transforms herself into this multitude of people with varying perspectives on education and racial tensions. She speaks at a near-constant rate, and not only is this dual feat of memorization and delivery physically impressive, but her depth of involvement with the characters is equally powerful.

While the wardrobe changes serve to physically establish Smith’s identity as each new character, the masterful way in which she conveys each character’s specific viewpoint enables each role to be more than just their words placed in her mouth.

For instance, when she assumes the role of Taos Proctor, a Yurok fisherman and former inmate, she dons a bright orange pair of overalls. Yet, what transcends her physical appearance is the nearperfect detail she pays to all the other parts of Proctor’s character and personality, capturing his habit of standing with his arms tucked inside his overalls and delivering the monologue in a slow and gruff voice.

Smith, when assuming the roles of each character, comes as close to becoming another person as is humanly possible.

Nor does she need an elaborate set to reinforce the identity of the character she is playing at the moment; the simple stage, almost

always devoid of anything but a chair, ensures that the attention is focused on her.

When aspects of the set are utilized, it is usually in her transitions between characters. We, the audience, are shown videos of the Baltimore riots and the beating of Freddy Gray, blown up on a huge screen that forces you to look, to confront the realities of the injustice that Smith speaks of. Watching tragedies like these played out on a big screen is an experience unlike simply viewing clips of them on Facebook, and it leaves one’s mind weary with sadness and a feeling of being overwhelmed.

In truth, this play in total is not easy to sit through. It challenges you to face the reality of life as an underprivileged young person in America, an experience most theatergoers will not be accustomed to.

Tupac’s lyrics, “Long live the rose that grew from concrete,” is quoted at one point during the show by Councilmember Michael Tubbs. If there is something positive to be gained from the bleak picture painted by “Notes from the Field,” perhaps it reflects just that.

By creating, writing, and acting in this show, Smith hopes to draw attention to the issue of the school-to-prison pipeline, planting an increased awareness of the issue that will hopefully blossom into reform.

“Notes from the Field” invites and challenges us to do what few shows do: to go beyond our experience of simply viewing it, to start a conversation about what we have learned, and to facilitate meaningful change about an issue that affects young people like us.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 15

Arts and Entertainment Advertisements Chronicle Half A Century of Sexism

Media Insights

By Anika Hashem Advertisements have sold us a revamped brand of sexism every decade for the past 60 years.

More than ever before, advertising plays a crucial role in today’s society. Besides helping businesses sell products, advertisements often reflect the general beliefs of their time period.

A look back on the evolution of advertising since the 1950s, whether in print or in electronic media, can provide insight into the attitudes toward women and the ways they have affected us.

1950s

Trapped in the Kitchen The Pyrex glass company released a poster of a bride holding a glass bowl during the ‘50s. The role of women in the ‘50s is summed up in its caption: “Now the new mistress of the house can go right ahead with some of those girlhood dreams, planning lovely meals for her man, preparing all sorts of interesting little dishes.”

Although women had filled industrial jobs during World War II, after the war they retreated back into their domestic, family-pleasing roles. More advertisements emphasized this: Chevrolet, Chlorodont (a company that sold toothpaste), Bell, and Howell Headliner, for example, berated women to sell their products.

Hotpoint, a company that sold automatic dishwashers, took a stance ahead of its time.

It circulated an advertisement in the ‘50s that showed a distressed woman washing piles of dishes while her husband and kids watched television. The words, “Please, let your wife come to the living room” were written across the center. In contrast to other advertisements, it acknowledged that women deserved more than just being trapped in the kitchen.

1970s and 1980s

Keep Her Where She Belongs We often imagine the ‘70s as a time of bohemian and hippie culture, where men and women were able to roam around freely and independently. However, advertising companies of this time, like those in the years prior, dehumanized women to attract audiences.

This time, the target audience for advertisements had shifted from females to males.

An ad for “Mr. Leggs” Dacron slacks in the late ‘70s featured a man standing on a tiger-skin carpet, with his right foot resting on top of a woman’s head where the tiger’s head would usually go. “After one look at his Mr. Leggs slacks, she was ready to have him walk all over her,” the caption reads. Just a glance at this ad perpetuates the sexual, object-like image of women.

The trend of belittling women continued through the rest of the decade. Weyenberg Massagic promoted its men’s shoes in one of the most controversial advertisements published: a naked woman, her makeup and hair perfectly made, lies on the floor and gazes at a man’s shoe.

The caption reads “Keep her where she belongs.”

At its time, the picture was widely distributed and is still infamous. It has been decades since Weyenberg and Dacron published their images, but they leave us with a variety of questions.

Where does a woman belong? At your feet? Does she belong on the floor, naked and beneath men?

2000–Present

Where Are We Now? We like to think that the 21st century and all its technological, cultural, and political changes brought a significant alteration to gender stereotypes. However, it is this view that often causes us to glance over commercials and subway advertisements depicting woman in a negative light.

Sure, if a company “crosses the line,” there will be outrage on social media– –but rarely for more than a couple

weeks before it is forgotten.

Many advertisements of the 2000s and even those of the present day are characterized by body shaming. Well-known brands, such as American Apparel, Calvin Klein, and Tom Ford, have released degrading prints and commercials. With the emergence of supermodels, adverts often display barely dressed females (often underaged) or other provocative images.

Despite gains in women’s rights, ultimately, we are far from achieving the perfect balance in equality between genders. And, in a nutshell, the advertisement industry can take some of the blame.

Art Review

of “Dreamlands”

By Shaikh Mahsheeat We all have that song or album that transports us into some psychedelic state. It envelopes us, shows our minds something beautifully abstract, and evokes emotions impossible to grasp.

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s most recent exhibition, “Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016,” is the embodiment of that dreamlike state in art and cinema.

This exhibition, running until February 5, is particularly important because it is the first cinematic exhibition at the Whitney’s new location between the Highline and the Hudson River and displays the true flexibility in exhibition creations of the Whitney. Covering more than a century of art and cinematic work in small rooms and

1960s

Women As Sexual Objects The hit show “Mad Men” (2007-2015) is infamous for highlighting the glory of the 1960s. Set in New York, the show illuminated glamorous clothing, expensive alcohol, and unsurprisingly, sexism.

Although major changes (such as the Civil Rights Movement) were occurring during the “Mad Men” era, our country was still a “man’s world.” The 1950s stereotypes remained. But sexualizing women was the new norm, and advertisements showed this.

Tipalet cigarettes released an advertisement showing a wide-eyed woman wearing a low cut top in the late ‘60s. “Blow in her face and she’ll follow you anywhere,” it bragged. It displayed woman as passive creatures who should be easily manipulated by men.

Companies even sexualized young children.

Love Cosmetics, a brand which sold makeup and fragrances, published an advertisement in the early ‘60s that showed a young woman, perhaps a child, holding a dog and looking straight at the audience. “Love’s Baby Soft. Because innocence is sexier than you think” is printed on top of the page in bold letters.

Even at the time, this advertisement was highly controversial. It was degrading to both older and younger women.

However, Love Cosmetics continued to publish ads until the late ‘70s and early ‘80s with the same slogan printed on every one of them.

1990s

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back The ‘90s feel as if they were only a few years ago, so it is quite difficult for many of us to imagine the magnitude of misogyny in advertising. An increase in television and computer use led to ideas being shared quickly, which has impacted and continues to impact us both positively and negatively.

In a commercial released by Mentos in 1990, a woman takes “charge” when her heels break in front of a man. Being quick and witty, she fashions her heels using pieces of Mentos.

In a sense, this commercial is empowering compared to the advertisements from the previous decades. That is, until you consider that she used her brains to fix her shoes.

Though the sexism here was subtler than it once was, women were once again portrayed as creatures whose main concerns were makeup, hair, and broken shoes. Many of the commercials and prints released during this decade showed empowered women by depicting sexist situations.

The advertisement industry of the ‘90s took us one step forward toward equality and two steps back.

Dreamlands: The Whitney’s First Cinematic Exhibition upon walls, it displays the transformation and usage of light, color, and music through cinematic expression.

As the elevators open, the first thing you see a cluster of cushions situated in front of a floor to ceiling screen. On the screen is a film of wooden marionette dancers performing a rather abstract form of ballet. Their costumes are a crude joining of simple shapes. Some resemble clouds and fans, and all pop with pastel colors that call to mind the innocence of childhood.

This nostalgia is only amplified by the twinkling melody, faintly similar to “The Nutcracker,” that accompanies the installation. The various shapes and colors echo the abstract yet simplistic nature of childhood in Oskar Schlemmer’s short film, “Das Triadische Ballet” (1970).

One of the exhibition’s more abstract works is “The Line Describing A Cone” (1973) by Anthony McCall, an installation not only abstract in concept, but also in composition. The installation is essentially a pitch black room with a projection of a tunnel of light, depicted on the opposite wall as a line. The room is filled with a vapor which not only allows for the projection to be seen, but imposes a disconcerting effect upon the visitor.

As you pass through the projection, you become encapsulated in the tunnel of light. Passing your hand through the edges of the tunnel refracts the light and creates small rainbows slipping off your fingertips. The installation creates a muted contrast between the darkness of the room and the brightness of the light, which in-

stills the faded memory of the projector used to show movies in a dark classroom.

An example of a truly immersive cinematic installation would be “Easternsports” (2014) by Alex Da Corte and Jayson Musson, located toward the back left of the exhibition. The installation is composed of four disjointed walls, each with neon lights creating a retro design and an ambiance of neon pinks, purples, and oranges, which add to the effect of the installation.

Within the four walls are metal chairs, damaged oranges, and an argyle carpet.

The oranges are strewn haphazardly across the carpet, and the multi-colored chairs are simply a convenience for those who do not wish to sit on the carpet if they would like to view the film being played simultaneously on the in-

sides of all four walls. The film is an artistic display with profound subtitles, which when combined with the funkadelic ambiance, makes for one of the most popular installations in the exhibition.

These, of course, are not the only prominent installations in the entire exhibition. There is also the iconic gridded room amongst many others. The exhibition as a whole allows you to leave with a satisfied feeling at the end of your visit, as all the different parts of the exhibition slowly come together as one larger motif.

With the many varied installations, 100 years of film are neatly wrapped up into a little package.

From twinkling Christmas balletesque music to funkadelic neon-lit walls, Dreamlands is a new page and a new standard for exquisitely enigmatic art.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 16

Arts and Entertainment

Seven Web Series that are Definitely Worth Binge-Watching

Webseries

By Eliana Kavouriadis

Comedies, dramas, old favorites, new projects, and everything in between, web series are a great way to binge-watch quality content without spending too many hours in front of a screen. Just like a standard television show, they have episodes and seasons, but their episodes are usually only a several minutes-long, giving you the entertainment of a television show compacted into a much shorter time frame.

Web series, in many ways, are like small-scale television shows. They are often low-budget productions and produced with smaller studios and sets, and many are accessible on free, user-friendly websites like YouTube. However, small-scale production gives web series more freedom in the content they create than a something produced by a larger studio, because the content creators don’t have to worry about pleasing a studio executive. Consequently, web series are often more avant garde and fringe than popular television shows, and thus a different viewing experience entirely. Here is a variety of quality web series that you should enjoy during your downtime over the upcoming holiday season:

The Most Popular Girls in School

Anyone but Me

Animated with Barbie dolls, “The Most Popular Girls in School” (often abbreviated as MPGiS) takes the American high school mean girl stereotype from classics like “Mean Girls” and “Clueless” and only further exaggerates it. Alcoholic mothers and girls with serious bowel problems are two examples of the show’s varied set of absurd, intriguing characters. The jokes in MPGiS are equally absurd, but they are not suitable for print. These girls—many of whom are voiced by men—sport hilariously nasal voices. The classic MPGiS voices, paired with impeccable comedic timing, have made MPGiS an all-time favorite.

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl J is a hilarious, charismatic, relatable character who struggles her way through everyday life as a clumsy, socially awkward black woman. While these said “misadventures” may put a damper on her life, the narration, the upbeat soundtrack, and the show’s overall atmosphere bring an air of light and humor to every one of J’s misfortunes. The show resembles HBO’s “Insecure” in its comedic portrayal of the troubles that come with being a black woman and clever treatment of common racial stigmas and stereotypes. However, “Awkward Black Girl” is entirely unique in its tone, full of brash quips and golden lines like “How many fake laughs are acceptable before it becomes too much?”

Slightly Dramatic Perhaps the main running joke of the series is that its title is the understatement of the century. The series follows Emily Jordan, a melodramatic middle school drama teacher and rising star who hopes to bring an “actual artistic experience” to her students. Her over the top, absurd teaching methods are appropriately entertaining, and while they may petrify her students at first, they definitely make this web series worth the watch.

Doomsday A creepy, bone-chilling 2016 favorite, “Doomsday” is a drama about the daily lives of an all-female cult residing in the middle of the Catskills. The picturesque scenery, paired with hippie attire, makes for amazing imagery, and directors Sonja O’Hara and Jaspal Binning used an impressive range of camera angles effectively and wisely. The eerie indie folk music in the soundtrack tops off a sensational viewing experience.

Film Review

of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”

By Gabrielle Umanova It starts. The familiar theme song plays and the title comes up against a dark, misty background, following the heart-attack-inducing Warner Brothers symbol.

A young man is sitting on a boat in a sturdy blue coat and vintage trousers, talking to a suitcase. He proceeds to make his way through inspection at Ellis Island. What should be an unsuspecting scene is sprinkled with small magical clues that invoke great anticipation.

And finally, finally, we hear the words we have been waiting for with bated breaths: “Welcome to New York, Mr. Scamander.”

For years, the Harry Potter universe was at a standstill. The last page was turned and the last film credits had rolled, and all was not necessarily well as fans tried to accept the end of not just a story, but a childhood, and in some cases, a lifestyle.

Now, the wizarding world has returned, not with a whisper but with a bang. “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” is a masterpiece, and frankly, nothing short of the miracle we were hoping for.

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and writer of the film’s screenplay, proves that whether through novels or screenplays, she is a literary supernova and one of the greatest storytellers of all time.

“Fantastic Beasts” is a whole new ballgame. It offers a unique, exciting world of magic seamlessly interwoven with the old one we are used to, yet brilliantly original.

Fans of the Harry Potter series might recognize spells, a couple of dropped names, and the passion and excitement brought out by the original series. Yet “Fantastic Beasts” is so different with its characters, setting, and plot that it never feels repetitive or boring.

The movie is focused on a wizard, Newt Scamander (Eddie

A heartwarming tale of love and adversity, “Anyone but Me” follows the stories of teenagers coming of age in a post-9/11 New York City. Teenagehood is confusing to begin with, yet these kids also have to grow up in a particular time of heightened fear and pessimism, and some characters suffer from personal losses as well, wishing that the events that panned out would happen to anyone but themselves. Oftentimes, the low-budget, relatively limited web series medium poses as an obstacle in plot and character development, but “Anyone but Me” manages to gloriously overcome such obstacles and depict well-developed romantic, familial, and platonic relationships. From ill fathers to friends that feel ostracized, each relationship in the show has its own emotional arc. Also, the cast is multiracial and many of the main characters are queer, which is icing on this already perfect cake.

Carmilla Series Two words: lesbian and vampires. The delightfully cheesy “Carmilla Series” begins as Silas University freshman Laura Hollis’s journalism project. However, it eventually unravels into a story filled with vampires, evil gods, near-death experiences, and most importantly, Laura’s romantic relationship with the title character, Carmilla. “Carmilla Series” was adapted from J. Sheridan le Fanu’s 19th Century novella “Carmilla,” a story about a young girl named Laura being tricked and seduced by the eponymous vampire. “Carmilla” is an older work of literature than “Dracula” and a classic work in the realm of vampire culture, but the web series is definitely an anomaly. The show takes many new, innovative approaches to storytelling, such as incorporating Sumerian mythological references and multimedia. For instance, some of the characters have actual Twitter accounts created by the writers that are used to propel the story and enhance the viewing experience.

Lemmings With multiple tragic, fatal accidents, this 2016 webseries toys with dark concepts revolving around death, gore, and natural selection, and tops it off with an eerie soundtrack.

Comedic elements like snarky quips and unrealistic reactions to sudden death are sprinkled into this dark, gruesome web series, giving it an odd dark humor twist. The premise of the story is that people cannot be reduced to lemmings, or can they? A misfit group of friends tries to answer that question over the span of the first season, losing many along the way. However, amidst the grave atmosphere, “Lemmings” manages to deliver warm, heartfelt moments that are just the perfect amount of relief, such as the romantic relationship between Peter and Georgia, two members of the group of friends “Lemmings” depicts.

A Warm Welcome Back to Wizardry Redmayne), who travels to New York City with a case full of magical creatures. They just so happen to be illegal in America, and some escape into the bustling city. In his efforts to catch them, Newt meets a variety of characters, including the wizards Tina (Katherine Waterson) and Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol), who work for the wizarding government.

The actors knock it out of the park. Redmayne does a fantastic job portraying a character who is incredibly complex, all while making Newt relatable and inspiring.

As Tina, Waterson makes a difficult and sometimes frustrating character understandable and infused with depth.

“Fantastic Beasts” is centered around adult characters and in that sense can be considered a more refined look into the Potter universe. Newt is a magizoologist (one who studies magical animals) working for the Ministry of Magic, traveling the world to learn about magical creatures and how best to protect them. In t h i s w a y,

“Fantastic Beasts” also reminds us of our own reality––specifically, the need to coexist with other species and to take care of our own no less magical wildlife. This is one of the little messages J.K. Rowling sprinkles throughout her works.

The new leads are quite different from the adolescent protagonists of the Harry Potter series.

And yet, the same themes endure: an emphasis on kindness, toleration, acceptance, the dangers of division, the importance of friendship, and the inevitability of good triumphing over evil. The same ideas that drew readers and viewers to Harry Potter, set in Great Britain, are still present in the North American wizarding community: hope, unity, and faith.

They are simply interpreted in a grand new way, one that persists into adulthood.

One of the most exciting changes offered by “Fantastic Beasts” is the extension of magic to North America.

American communities are given their own vibrant, magical cultures, whose values are simultaneously juxtaposed with those of their European counterparts.

Newt is English (he attended our beloved Hogwarts), and through

Of course, the differing beliefs of the two breeds of wizards serve to teach us something. Both the Harry Potter series and “Fantastic Beasts” allude to European wizards’ relative freedom to interact with Muggles. In America, as the new movie makes clear, fear and suspicion on both sides lead to prejudice and separation: The Second Salemers are a frightening, cult-like group of American NoMajs focused on inciting persecution of wizards.

In response, American wizards have adopted a policy of isolation, keeping their world hidden and limiting all possible contact with non-wizards. The film emphasizes that this is a backwards way of thinking and that a lack of toleration and unity disrupts the potentially beautiful relationships that could have formed between magical and non-magical people.

The movie pervades the message that it is critical that people of all backgrounds learn to coexist in peace.

An example is the introduction of No-Maj Jacob Kowalski, an aspiring baker, into Newt’s antics.

Dan Fogler is not only as hilarious as Kowalski, but he also captures the wondrous sentiments of all viewers ex-

Carrie Ou / The Spectator

his eyes and familiar experiences, we are introduced to American wizards.

posed to the Wizarding world. His interactions with Newt promise the development of a strong friendship, one that surpasses magical barriers.

As always, J.K. Rowling is not afraid to go dark. In addition to all the new beautiful, innocent creatures she introduces into the wizarding universe, she also incorporates darker aspects of magic––manifestations of the dangers of persecution. The tensions that build between magical and nonmagical people are reminiscent of our own world, where cultural differences and differing backgrounds can lead to judgement and paranoia.

“When No-Majs are afraid, they attack” are the wise words of Madame President of MACUSA, the Magical Congress of the United States of America.

It is a harrowing reflection on our own human nature, our tendency to allow fear to turn into violence. It is what makes the film so bold. It’s not afraid to make you think.

In every category, “Fantastic Beasts” is a winner, and by a long shot. It is cinematically beautiful.

Everything, from the costumes to the sets to the soundtrack, flawlessly recreates the feel of the Roaring ‘20s––exciting and brilliant with a tangible underlying tension. The movie transports you back to the time of flappers and speakeasies, all the while enveloping you in a childlike wonder as you gaze wide-eyed into this incredible new world.

The plot, the complexity of the characters, and the suspense all keep viewers anxious for more.

The screenwriting and the character dynamics are wonderfully executed. And even after you leave the theater, the film is on your mind as you question what will happen next, and, more importantly, what are the implications of what you just saw? But, perhaps more important than anything aforementioned is the simplest reason the movie is so excellent: it fills you up with magic.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 17

Arts and Entertainment In Memoriam

By William Hong The world lost 2Pac 20 years ago, one of the greatest rappers to ever grace the mic, to a fatal shooting. Despite his untimely death, 2Pac left behind a lasting legacy— his contributions to hip-hop forever changed the landscape of the genre as we know it today.

2Pac’s legacy was defined by his mythic persona. He took the mid ‘90s hip-hop scene by storm and left his mark through his involvement in the infamous East Coast vs. West Coast feud and his upfront and ferocious rapping style.

His early works were influenced by political rap groups such as Public Enemy and N.W.A. and it was his unrelenting, angst-ridden style that garnered him attention in the hip-hop community. He was able to deliver insightful first person narratives on poverty, gang violence, and substance abuse that tore apart his communities.

2Pac’s landmark album “All Eyez on Me” (1996) marked an era of rap that glorified the thug life.

Under the label of the West Coast Death Row Records, 2Pac was one of the major orchestrators behind this movement: his outspoken flaunting of reckless behavior and threats of violence drew controversy to the newly emerging genre of gangster rap.

Gangster rap became defined by rivalries among the most prominent figures in hip-hop. Competition between the West Coast Death Row Records and East Coast Bad Boy Records escalated into feuds and gang violence. The rivalry between 2Pac and East Coast rapper Biggie Smalls was legendary because of 2Pac’s audacious, volatile, and wrathful side that provoked his audiences. It also set the precedent for numerous other rivalries to follow and established rap battles and diss tracks as one of the most popular facets of hip-hop, further popularizing the genre.

Despite the stigma attributed to gangster rap due to its provocative nature, 2Pac’s captivating persona and unmatched ferocity helped keep the genre entertaining and fresh.

One of 2Pac’s most distinguishing qualities as a rapper was his dichotomous nature. He si-

Film Review of “Moana”

By Anglea Peng

multaneously possessed a violent gangster persona and a sensitive, endearing side. 2Pac certainly embodied many characteristic traits of the West Coast rap scene, particularly his outspoken character, yet he also stood out from the rest of his contemporaries by embodying other traits that defy his gangster persona. 2Pac’s legacy and persona often overshadowed his underappreciated poetic achievements.

For all his accomplishments in popularizing hip-hop, 2Pac’s unmatched poetic ability was what truly transcended the genre and set its standard for lyrical prowess.

While 2Pac’s most commercially successful hits such as “Hit ‘Em Up” and “California Love” have rocketed him to the spotlight, they were directed toward an audience

and his vulnerability is apparent throughout “Dear Mama.” This vulnerability does not seem characteristic of 2Pac when compared to some of his popular songs or other prominent rappers during his time, further adding to 2Pac’s intriguing dichotomous nature.

2Pac was fiercely individualistic and independent at heart. Several analyses of his lyrics provide insight into his character. For instance, the lyrics “Back in elementary, I thrived on misery / Left me alone I grew up amongst a dying breed” from “So Many Tears” shed light into 2Pac’s isolation and tribulations during his youth. This brewing hatred was further exacerbated into his adulthood. The title of one of his most acclaimed albums, “Me Against the World” (1995), firmly establishes this no-

love to go back to when we played as kids,” presumably referring to his innocence and happiness he held before it was shattered by the rest of the world around him.

As a tortured soul that longed to escape the walls that confined him, 2Pac was forced to endure many dark realities of life that have shaped his character. At his very core, 2Pac was a poet and someone who was articulate with expressing his emotions and suffering. 2Pac’s collection of poems from the anthology “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” provide even more fascinating insight into his multifaceted personality.

One notable theme from “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” was 2Pac’s loneliness and quest for self-identity. To quote an excerpt from the poem “What of Fame?”

“Because we all spring from different trees does not mean we are not created equally Is the true beauty in the tree or in the vast forest in which it breathes the tree must fight to breed among the evils of the weeds I find greatness in the tree that grows against all odds it blossoms in darkness and gives birth to promising pods I was the tree who grew from weeds and wasn’t meant to be ashamed I’m not in fact I am proud of my thriving family tree” “Family Tree,” poem excerpt from “The Rose That Grew From Concrete”

by Tupac Shakur that readily consumed the popular and trending West Coast rap scene mentioned earlier and were thus a result of the profitable feud between the two coasts. 2Pac’s best works were arguably his most personal and sensitive, qualities which both songs mentioned had lacked.

“Dear Mama” is one such embodiment of 2Pac’s personal and sensitive side. The song encompasses 2Pac’s appreciation for his mother who raised him in his youth despite their difficult circumstances including poverty, drug addictions, crime ridden environments, and the absence of a father figure.

The lyrics, “Even though you was a crack fiend mama, you always a black queen mama,” precisely embodies the love he had for his mother.

2Pac’s harsh upbringing has been a major element of his songs,

tion.

2Pac’s remarkable awareness of the injustices that he has suffered was manifested in his politically conscious works. Some of his most profound lyrics are “I’ve been trapped since birth, cautious, cause I’m cursed” from “Only God Can Judge Me.” 2Pac acknowledged the injustices he had to face due to his race and grapples with this theme on a larger scale in his song “Changes,” arguably his best work and one that provided great insight into his character: “Is life worth living?

Should I blast myself / I’m tired of being poor, and even worse I’m black / My stomach hurts so I’m looking for a purse to snatch.”

Despite all the difficulties he experienced and the bitterness he held, 2Pac held an endearing soft side. As the song “Changes” progresses, 2Pac mentions that “I’d

“Everyone knows ure face / the world screams ure name / never again are u alone.” Yet in another poem “In the Depths of Solitude,” 2Pac mentions that he was “CONSTANTLY yearning 2 be accepted / and from all receive respect / and that is my only regret.”

Full of bitterness and angst directed toward the world, 2Pac revealed through his poems a longing to understand his purpose in a world marred by suffering. This desire was particularly evident in the poem “What Is It That I Search 4,” where he laments, “I know not what I search 4 / But I know I have yet 2 find it / Because it is invisible to the eye / My heart must search 4 it blinded.”

2Pac’s contributions to hip-hop seem to be lost today considering the recent decline in quality of the genre. The emergence of trap and a de-emphasis on lyrics have made

land slowly begins to wither away.

In the meantime, Moana grows up torn between the external pressures to be a good daughter and future chief and her internal desires to answer the call from the sea and leave the island. Moana’s theme song, “How Far I’ll Go,” a reflection of her conflicting feelings about her place in society, is reprised multiple times throughout the movie, each time sung with more and more confidence.

When the island’s resources begin to fall short because of the missing heart, Moana, with the help of her grandmother, realizes that she can follow her passions and fulfill her responsibilities at the same time by taking a journey to return Te Fiti’s stolen heart and restore the health of the island. In the inspirational culmination of Moana’s theme song, “I Am Moana,” Moana fearlessly affirms her identity and decides to go on her voyage. Defying her father’s orders, she sets off to sail the vast, unexplored ocean on an old boat, with nothing but supplies and a stowaway chicken for company.

Facing every obstacle along the way, from an uncooperative and arrogant Maui to a treacherous sea storm to her own lack of confidence, not to mention a half dozen or so actual monsters, Moana braves through all the dangers and comes out stronger because of them.

“Shiny,” a soundtrack standout, features one of these monsters––a giant, flamboyant crab obsessed with hoarding shiny objects. It is the perfect example of a typical Disney villain song, demonstrating Hamilton-esque wit and wordplay, and is sung in a glam rock style.

The movie is both a comingof-age story and a Disney princess movie. Moana goes through a process of self-discovery and learns an important lesson about accepting all parts of her personality, even those that her father doesn’t approve of. The voyage helps her develop confidence in herself and her abilities: to sail, to defeat the monsters, to fix the island, and, eventually, to rule. This presents a stark contrast to early Disney princess movies, which provided little to no character development.

The film also strays from the classic Disney princess formula in other ways—Moana does not have a love interest. With “Moana,” Disney cements the path set forth by “Brave” (2012), which features a confident princess defying her parents by competing for and winning her own hand in marriage, and “Frozen” (2013), which turns the charming prince cliché on its head by making the Prince Charming a villain. “Moana” is so revolutionary because it’s about Moana’s own story, not about a prince completing her happily ever after or even happiness in spite of not having

a love interest. The story focuses solely on her and her personal journey, providing an excellent role model for children about to embark on their own adventures.

Perhaps most important of all, the writers of Moana made a conscious effort to respect the cultures portrayed in the movie. This is something that Disney hasn’t been as careful about in the past––a popular criticism of “Pocahontas” (1995) was that it was insensitive to Native Americans. The writers of “Moana” ensured the authenticity of every detail with the founding of the Oceanic Trust, a team of people from Polynesia dedicated to factual accuracy and tradition. Most of the actors had roots in the Pacific Islands as well, allowing them to contribute their own unique experiences to the process. For example, Cravalho, who plays the role of Moana, said that she grew up hearing myths about Maui as bedtime stories, and for the role, blended her own image of him with the writers’ ideas to create a wholly unique character.

When representation is done well, it is a great way for an underrepresented group of peo-

hip-hop indistinguishable from pop music. Contemporary artists such as Future, Desiigner, and others continually fail to produce thought-provoking and engaging works, but rather focus more on the beat, consequently resulting in monosyllabic and trite lyrics.

Yet despite this trend, 2Pac left behind a legacy of using powerful lyrics to promote awareness of the many injustices that occur everyday. Such a legacy is especially important today in a time when political unrest, xenophobia, and social rights movements have swept the nation. This legacy is carried on by a select few today who have realized the importance of lyricism and poetry in their songs. One such example is Kendrick Lamar, a prominent rapper who has experienced a harsh upbringing similar to 2Pac’s and uses influences from 2Pac’s lyricism to incorporate politically conscious lyrics and deliver a message to his audience.

2Pac never hesitated to speak his mind, a quality which distinguishes hip-hop from other genres; it has the capacity to provoke and enlighten through a powerful use of words. In this aspect, 2Pac was nearly unmatched in his ability to use words in a way that can evoke deep emotions and thoughts. That is what separated him from the rest of the pack and is what rappers today must aspire to reach.

2Pac will be forever remembered as an iconic rapper, a symbol of hip-hop during its glory days in the ‘90s. 2Pac was, however, not merely a rapper, but a poet who spoke from his soul. Against all odds, he overcame his adversities that were beyond his control such as poverty, racial injustices, and crime-ridden neighborhoods, and left behind words that continue to resonate today.

Despite all that he had experienced, he urged his listeners to “Remember one thing, through every dark night / There’s a bright day after that / So no matter how hard it get, stick your head out / Keep your head up and handle it,” from “Me Against the World.”

Rest in peace, 2Pac. 6/16/1971-9/13/1996

“Moana” Triumphs With Pacific Islander Representation and a Strong Female Protagonist ple to see someone they can connect to culturally in a major movie.

Children of Polynesian descent can look to Moana as an example for how to live their own lives. They can see her confidence and leadership as something to aspire to.

It’s also an important opportunity for people who aren’t from that culture to learn about people who aren’t like them, especially for kids, who will learn to look beyond the scope of what they’re familiar with and search for new opinions they might not have considered before.

Representation of all cultures is more significant now than ever.

Hopefully, more films like “Moana” will make people realize that the rich cultural diversity of our world is something to be celebrated, not hidden away.

Sally Chen / The Spectator

“Moana,” the new Disney princess movie, is the uplifting story of a young Polynesian girl who is destined from birth to become the next chief of her small island community and sets sail on an ocean voyage. It features newcomer Auli’i Cravalho as Moana and Dwayne Johnson as Maui, a hulking demigod with silky hair. “Moana” is the perfect mix of a princess story and an adventure movie, with an outstanding soundtrack that incorporates traditional Polynesian instruments with the lyrical genius of writers like Lin-Manuel Miranda to produce music that is authentically Disney in its brilliance.

“Moana” takes place on the tropical island of Montunui, shown in stunning shots of glistening waves and luscious forests.

The island provides its community with all they could want––everything from fish from the waters to coconuts from the trees. This is the first Disney movie set in the Pacific Islands, demonstrating Disney’s growing emphasis on the importance of diversity.

The film incorporates traditional mythology into its tale.

When Moana is a toddler, the sea chooses her to return the lost heart of Te Fiti, which had been stolen by the demigod Maui thousands of years ago, to its rightful place.

Without the heart, the beautiful is-

Remembering 2Pac 20 Years Later

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 18

Arts and Entertainment Get a Life: The Cultured Edition

Events Calendar ONGOING

December

Musical “Fiddler on the Roof” @ Broadway Theater until 12/30/2016

23

Art Show “Who Shot Sports: Photography Exhibition” @ Brooklyn Museum

wednesday

Film Screening “Why Him?” @ Select Theaters

Art Show “Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art” @ Queens Museum

Film Screening “A Monster Calls” @ Select Theaters

Concert “Revelations” by Alvin Ailey @ New York City Center until 12/31/2016 Art Show “Love is the Message, The Message is Death” @ Gavin Brown’s Enterprise Comedy Show “Whiplash” @ Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre

28

Concert “DJ Snake, Tchami, Malaa & Mercer Concert” @ Pier 94

29

wednesday

Concert “Phish Concert” @ Madison Square Garden

Art Show “Dreamlands Seminar” @ Whitney Museum of American Art

30

wednesday

Poetry Slam “Friday Night Poetry Slam” @ NuyoRican Poets Cafe

Film Screening “Christmas at Metrograph” @ Metrograph Art Show “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter” @ Museum of Modern Art

JANUARY

31

wednesday

Concert “Disclosure Concert” @ Secret Brooklyn Warehouse

5

Art ShoW “Native American Masterpieces” @ Metropolitan Museum of Art

friday

Comedy Show “Jerry Seinfeld: The Homestand” @ Beacon Theatre

Art Show “Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design” @ Jewish Museum

6

friday

Performance Art “Contemporary Dance Showcase: Japan + East Asia” @ Japan Society

Art Show “Rothko: Dark Palette” @ Pace Gallery

Film Screening “The Bronx Bull” @ Select Theaters

Musical “The Front Page” @ Broadhurst Theatre

We Wish You a Merry Crossword

Crossword ACROSS

1. A colorful way to cover your present before it’s opened 2. Nun, Gimel, Hay, Shin 3. The main reason Stuy students are excited for next week 5. What you hang on holiday trees 6. For some reason it’s a big deal to kiss under it 7. A red, leafy plant, popular this time of year 8. Chanukah commemorates an eight-day-candlelasting _______ 10. A big sock where we get presents 11. The snowman!

13. Olive was the other one 15. Jewish candelabra 16. A result of the commercialization of holidays; we’re not complaining!

18. The drink that thinks it’s custard pie 20. All she want for Christmas is you

Television Premiere “Doctor Who Christmas Special: The Return of Doctor Mysterio” @ BBC America

monday

Performance Art “Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo” @ Joyce Theater until 12/31/2016

DOWN

25

friday

4. What the holidays have become about 9. Snow dagger 12. He says “Ho ho ho!”

14. Add marshmallows for an extra treat 17. Used by old people with a sweet tooth 19. It’s harder than it looks to make one of these houses 21. Secular African American holiday

Answers

Across 4. COMMERCIALIZATION 9. ICICLE 12. SANTA 14. HOTCHOCOLATE 17. CANDYCANE 19. GINGERBREAD 21. KWANZAA

Down 1. WRAPPINGPAPER 2. DREIDEL 3. VACATION 5. ORNAMENT 6. MISTLETOE 7. POINSETTIA 8. MIRACLE 10. STOCKING 11. FROSTY 13. REINDEER 15. MENORAH 16. PRESENTS 18. EGGNOG 20. MARIAH

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 19

Arts and Entertainment Sixties Glamour and Women Penning a Revolution

Television Review of Amazon Original “Good Girls Revolt”

By Paulina Klubok Women made up around 35 percent of the workforce in the 1960s. In the Newsweek magazine, there was one woman writer and 50 men. That writer was Lynn Povich, whose book on her fight for gender equality in the workplace inspired the release of the Amazon original series “Good Girls Revolt.” It’s a colorful and compelling retelling of the story, an exciting look into the lives of the women who worked at Newsweek and their journeys of realization. They come to see that they are facing discrimination but hold the power to take control of their lives.

Women were relegated to work as “researchers” at Newsweek and most other publications at the time. They would research and edit articles but could not write them despite having received the same, if not better, education as the men. Though women did as much work as their male counterparts, they received no credit and a much lower salary.

The show follows the lives of three researchers: Patti, Cindy,

Cosmetics

and Jane. Patti (the refreshingly spunky Genevieve Angelson) is an ambitious, savvy, badass hippie who toys with the rules and knows she’ll get away with breaking them. Cindy (Erin Darke) is a quiet and lonely aspiring writer stuck in a miserable marriage.

Despite the downsides of her job, it’s the best thing Cindy has. Jane (“Pitch Perfect’s” Anna Camp) is head researcher and the perfect girl. She’s smart, self-possessed, always put together, and waiting for her boyfriend to propose.

These women love their jobs and they do not question the cards they’ve been dealt. It takes Nora Ephron (Grace Gummer), a recent addition to the magazine, to break the bubble they live in.

“It’s like you guys are fighting over the lower bunk bed in jail: who gets to make the guys who are writing the story look better,” said Nora to an arguing Patti and Jane over who gets to research an article.

Nora invites Patti and Cindy to a consciousness-raising meeting where they meet lawyer Eleanor Norton (Joy Bryant), who informs them that it’s illegal that

News of the Week (the show’s version of Newsweek) doesn’t let girls write. She encourages them to file a lawsuit with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), which is both a terrifying and exciting prospect.

This knowledge is empowering, particularly for Patti, who aspires to be a reporter. But the lawsuit has an unpleasant reality––it would mean opposing the often genuinely good men that the researchers work (and sleep) with.

For the lawsuit to work, Patti and Cindy need to recruit most of the other girls at News of the Week, which is a risky game that could lead to harsh consequences. The girls must figure out how to navigate the complicated new terrain of desire for equality that they have stumbled into and the effect it has on their work, relationships, personal lives, and perceptions of the world, which makes the show so interesting.

What I love about “Good Girls Revolt” is that it captures the essence and events of the ‘60s while keeping the spirit of the show contemporary and relatable. The glamour of the decade holds an

undeniable appeal, personified in a scene where Cindy sits at her desk in an elegant skirt, clacking away at a typewriter, a cigarette held gracefully between her fingers. The Free Love themes of the ‘60s also come into play––there are a lot of sexy scenes, most of them in the office.

Powerful themes of the civil rights movement, feminism, and the Vietnam War surround the show. To see the painful impacts of events I’ve only read about, such as the difficulty of returning veterans to integrate back into society and the disconnection between them and everyone else, was an emotional and humbling dose of reality.

The sexism experienced by these women is often subtle but sometimes abrupt, utterly unexpected, and shocking.

This is felt most poignantly through Jane, who starts off the series grateful to be delivering the mail and getting coffee for the reporters. She begins to be bothered by the sexism and yet must maintain her image of a perfect woman: one who never complains. Jane keeps a charm-

ing smile plastered on while her father hands over the family business to her clearly incapable younger brother, her boss makes wildly inappropriate gestures and advances at her, and her mother informs the waiter that Jane is done eating when a clearly full plate sits in front of her.

And yet, Jane is a wealthy, privileged, white woman. If things are bad enough for her to protest, how much worse is it for everyone else?

Despite the heaviness of the subjects addressed, at the heart of the show are young women trying to figure out who they are and making their way in the world. They come together to root and cheer for each other and to give themselves an equal chance. They’re not unyielding and untouchable textbook heroes we learn about. They’re regular people––a little brave and a little scared with a lot of boy drama. In other words, these women are utterly real and it’s an empowering and comforting thought. If they can change the world, why can’t I?

A Few Solutions to Chapped Lips

By Tiffany Chen

Evolution of Smooth (EOS) is best known for their cute egg packaging, with a vibrant color palette that can catch most people’s eyes. In fact, the packaging is what truly sells the product. The spherical shape gives buyers 0.25 grams of lip balm, which is a large upgrade from the typical 0.15 grams a tube gives you. In addition, having a small egg is super fun to play with, and there is a flatter surface on the bottom to prevent the egg from rolling down a flat surface.

What makes customers continue to buy the egg, however, is the amazing lip balm inside it. The lip balm smells and tastes amazing, replicating the marketed flavor well, such as vanilla bean and coconut milk. Yes, this lip balm is on the pricey side, but this makes sense, as the packaging gives you 67 percent more than the typical packaging.

The lip balm has been criticized for purposely being addictive, making your lips chapped if you don’t use it. However, I don’t agree with this. My lips stay moisturized for a relatively long time after one application of EOS, and I have not noticed my lips getting drier because of it (this may be because my lips are just naturally dry but alas). Overall, EOS is my first choice, and I will continue to buy this lip balm as they create new flavors and colorful eggs.

Talia Pomeroy / The Spectator

BABY LIPS Rating: 2 out of 5 stars Price range: $4.00-$6.00 Baby Lips is a lip balm line from Maybelline New York. The packaging for this is cute as well, with a transparent top and “BABY LIPS” in bubbly font. However, unlike EOS, all Baby Lips has is good packaging.

The lip balm doesn’t work very well and sometimes will dry out your lips even more. My first Baby Lips was “Too Cool,” which was one of Baby Lips’s medicated lip balms. “Too Cool” cooled and dried my lips so much that it took a full year for

me to try another Baby Lips after that.

The main line, while working better than the medicated lip balm, still did not moisturize my lips as much. The main line has six different lip balms, with four tinted and two untinted. The only lip balm from the main line I would recommend is “Quenched.” Its lemony flavor seems to nourish the lips best. However, I would do this with apprehension; Baby Lips sells for an even higher price than EOS, making many other lip balms a better alternative.

Talia Pomeroy / The Spectator

EOS Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Price range: $3.75-$5.00

CHAPSTICK Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Price range: $1.00-$3.50 Chapstick is what many think of first when hearing “lip balm.” It’s grown into a classic method to moisten lips, to the point where the word “chapstick” is used to describe any type of lip balm with a lipstick-like application. This isn’t unmerited: Chapstick moisturizes lips well and is easily accessible to anyone.

Chapstick is similar to Vaseline in that it moisturizes lips but gives a restrictive feeling on lips, making them harder to move. However, Chapstick is a better alternative: it is easily applicable, easily transportable, and easily customizable. As of today, there are over 100 different types of Chapstick under more than 10 different lines. There are also many different flavors to choose from, ranging from cake batter to spearmint to raspberry to rose petal. There are so many variants of Chapstick that it is almost impossible to find one that works best for you.

Still, many of the tubes feel grainy after enough applications, and not all of the flavors taste or smell like their marketed flavor, having more of a beeswax smell and taste. Despite this, Chapstick is one of the cheapest options for lip balm and is available in many places. It’s great for anyone that needs a cheap tube that works or is always on-the-go.

vaseline Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars Price range: $1.20-$4.00 Talia Pomeroy / The Spectator

Talia Pomeroy / The Spectator

Winter is coming. Christmas music has started blaring through the radio and you’ve started wearing more than three layers to school. However, with the dry winter comes an unwanted curse: the chapped lip.

While it’s most common in the winter, I have chapped lips year-round. Because of this, I’ve always had to carry lip balms with me, with one in my bag and one on my desk at home at all times. With this, I have acquired so many lip balm tubes over the years, to the point where I can fill a fish bowl halfway with all the empty tubes. I was able to learn which ones are the best for me. Here is my take on the most popular brands.

Vaseline is a simple home remedy for chapped lips. Many households have Vaseline, and it’s an effective way to smooth dry lips.

However, there are still better alternatives to this lip balm.

First, Vaseline doesn’t moisturize lips like other lip balms do. Because of its petroleum jelly base, Vaseline causes the lips to feel a different sensation. The lips, while feeling moister, feel restricted; they’re difficult to move. This may be because petroleum jelly naturally makes a membrane that protects the lips from drying factors, such as the wind. Still, this is not a preferable side effect, as the lips feel constrained rather than smooth and supple.

Also, Vaseline isn’t as portable as other lip balms. Usually in a larger container meant to stay at home, it’s much more of a hassle to take it places. While there are portable sizes of Vaseline (they’re really cute to look at), Vaseline still falters with its application, which requires you to use your fingers to dip into a tub of petroleum jelly. It’s a small detail, but the application makes a difference for a person on-the-go. (It’s much more difficult to apply Vaseline while walking than a typical tube of lip balm.)

Vaseline best functions as a stay-home lip balm. However, as someone who needs lip balm everywhere, I find it an inconvenience on-the-go.

Vaseline best functions as a stay-home lip balm. However, as someone who needs lip balm everywhere, I find it an inconvenience on-the-go.

burt’s bees Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars Price range: $2.00-$4.50 Talia Pomeroy / The Spectator

Burt’s Bees feels natural, and a lot of this has to do with the packaging. The duller colors used give the lip balm an earthy feel. This goes well with the gimmick that Burt’s Bees is made out of beeswax, which only adds to Burt’s Bees’s flair.

Burt’s Bees works well. However, when first trying it, it feels harder to apply than most other lip balms. Beeswax is a harder substance to rub on your lips, so this should happen naturally. For those who want to transition into this lip balm, the fruity ones apply easier than the honey and the plain beeswax ones.

The lip balms smell nice; however, they all taste the same, with the beeswax overpowering. Burt’s Bees also isn’t as fun as EOS; it doesn’t use the egg packaging and vibrant colors to sell. Still, it’s a great alternative and does its job well.

In winter especially, it’s important to carry lip balms that nourish your lips easily and effectively. While I prefer EOS, the most important thing is how the lip balm works on your lips. If one lip balm brand doesn’t work for you, keep trying until you find the perfect match. Still, through personal experience, I’ve found that EOS works best for me, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Page 20

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Arts and Entertainment Concert Review of “Digitour Winter”

By Zovinar Khrimian

Allison Eng / The Spectator

When the first two boys appeared on stage at the Highline Ballroom, their enthusiastic, albeit heavily-rehearsed, voices cut through the sound of pop music blaring from the speakers. Unable to make out their names in the combination of shrill cries and parental exasperation that came from the audience, I asked the young girl in front of me who those boys were.

She came up to about my shoulder and couldn’t have been more than 11 years old, and so her mother peeked over to check on her. “That’s Nathan and Blake,” she told me, giggling ever so slightly at my ignorance.

Hundreds of kids filled the venue to witness Digitour Winter, a showcase for up-and-coming social media stars. The audience cheered as each act took the stage, some completely enamored with the young men and women. The performers were a mixed bag of teenagers just a few years older than the audience of 11 to 13 year olds, with Blake Gray and Nathan Triska the Instagram stars among them.

As these social media personalities bounced around in the glow of purple and yellow lights and engaged the audience with simple, interactive games, I tried to gather how they could possibly transform the acts that gave them this early taste of fame into a live performance.

As with the content these young stars are known to produce, most of their acts were short-lived energetic bursts, with

Digitour Delivers Social Media Stars to the Preteen Masses

the next act following promptly afterward, like the quick succession from one YouTube video to the next. While some of those who took the stage simply interacted with the audience, others performed catchy pop music in a combination of covered and original material.

During the show, this space was dominated by a tightly packed group of young fans, their parents hanging far behind towards the back walls.

Digitour showcases performers from social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and musical.ly whose content attracts fans in their preteen or early teenaged years, so as much as this arrangement allowed the audience to jump along to the music, it created complications for their guardians who squeezed into corners, carrying the belongings

of their enthusiastic kids.

The showcase’s format catered to fans approaching their teenage years. The fast movement—from introduction to a short act, musical or otherwise, followed by a friendly photo op and prompt exit—was a pattern that every performer or group of performers made sure to stick to.

It seemed, from the bright screens onstage and the pop music blasting through the speakers at a throbbingly loud volume, that maintaining the energy in the room was essential. However, more striking was the emphasis placed on the relatability of those on stage.

The first musical act came from a 16-year-old pop singer named Sophia Kameron, who, with her casual dress and sweet, almost nervous speaking voice, exemplified this aspect of relat-

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ability. Before she left the stage, she told the audience to raise their hands in a heart shape and smile into the camera of her cell phone, her face displaying a look of utmost gratitude.

She was a real kid just like them, accessible despite being up on a stage. She was humble even with her talent and early success, and with that, the audience connected.

This young woman stood out because she was so connected to her audience and consumed with emotion. The other acts were charming in their own right, but at the same time lacked the free flow of emotions that Sophia Kameron had. Her early performance was a great way to set the mood.

The progression of Digitour from act to act became predictable after a while. Nathan and Blake, the young men who ap-

peared after Sophia, appeared onstage with enthusiasm and well-rehearsed confidence, as would most of the other acts that followed afterwards.

The nature of this showcase of young stars in the world of 10year-olds with iPhones was in itself unremarkable. The acts were cheerful and full of energy but fairly uninspired. The music was upbeat; the performers had energy on stage but lacked originality.

However, Digitour provided a glimpse into the world of entertainment aimed at young consumers. This world is one dominated by charismatic, goodlooking, trendy teenagers posting selfies, music videos, and other forms of easy-to-consume content on mobile apps.

These new celebrities are not without talent, but the platform on which they have grown their fame is one that doesn’t transfer particularly well in the world of live shows. Furthermore, the simplicity of this social media content will likely produce quick turnover of a currently thriving fanbase.

In spite of this, it is clear that for young audiences who have grown to idolize these social media personalities, Digitour provides an exciting taste of what the entertainment scene could be as young fans go deeper into their teenage and adult years. In that sense, Digitour successfully melds more mature elements, such as the venue and energized atmosphere, with the youthful, relatable entertainers to provide a well-rounded experience for adoring fans.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

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Page 21

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 22

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

Students Overwhelmed

By Colleges’ Attempts at Courtship

By Shaikat Islam “When I got the 10th ‘We want you’ letter from UChicago, I knew there was a problem,” senior and Linguistics of Visual English (LOVE) Club President Carl Edgegaud said, whose first term of senior year was not only filled with a heavy course-load, but also stress from what he calls “flirt notes.”

“When the 11th letter was a fancy cut-out of all the coolest places to hang out in Chicago, I was a bit flattered that they had bothered to even send me something so well-thought out and artsy, but then I saw the ‘You’ll love it here’ in big, bold, Garamond letters, and I was starting to get a bit freaked out,” Edgegaud said.

“And this isn’t the only one,” he said. “UMass sent me two e-mails with the subject ‘RE: We Love Your SAT Scores! Apply Now! XOXOXO.’ Why does this keep happening to me?” Carl pleaded, while opening up his locker.

In an instant, a flurry of 400+ letters and e-mails from colleges flew out and onto the floor.

Of the 400+ letters, 200 of them had at least one of the following emojis: the heart, the 100, the fire, and the kissy face.

There was even the occasional aubergine. 100 of the letters were formatted on corny postit notes with sixth grade-level flirting dialogue. Remarkably, 10 of the letters were stylized in the format of English Romantic poet William Wordsworth’s “She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways,” except all references to ‘she’ in the poem were replaced with Edgegaud’s first name.

“So far, I’ve had to file a ceaseand-desist letter for three Ivies, six Hidden Ivies, and a bunch of safeties,” Edgegaud said.

“I’m still getting the mail, and it hasn’t stopped. I’m kind of worried about how far these colleges will go to get my attention and whether or not it would even be safe to attend their campuses.”

Other seniors are not too happy about this.

“I’m honestly kind of jealous.

I have 14 ZeeMee accounts—two are linked to my regular and stuy. edu e-mails, the other 12 were created using temporary e-mail addresses on a VPN from Romania—and I still haven’t gotten a single letter from Harvard. What does a guy have to do to prove his DEMONSTRATED INTEREST?” senior Traing Toohad said.

Former seniors aren’t surprised.

“Colleges have a dark sense of humor, believe it or not,” Thedarc Wan (‘14) claimed. “The only typed word on the white rejection letter I got from Princeton was ‘LMAO.’ I actually think this Carl Edgegaud guy should bask in the attention he’s getting, at least for now. When results come out, he’ll wish he got more love letters.”

In regard to these unsolicited notices, the Stuyvesant College Office has released this statement: “Around this time of the year, we request that all seniors ‘stick to their core list’ and make sure they don’t make any random changes so far into the year. Our office is also receiving a lot of “unsolicited mail.” Good luck!”

Following this mass e-mail, 200 seniors lined up near the office, holding apparel bags, water thermoses, cardigans, shirts, and other ‘goodies.’

When asked what they were doing, senior Nobad Yiznos ignored our question and said, “Cornell Admissions sent me a heart on their latest ‘RE: Are you a thinker or a dreamer?’ e-mail, and I looked into Old Babylonian notions of existentialism in relation to hedonism, and that made me look up the Platonic theory of eros, which basically says that beauty is found in idealism. And you know what else is ideal? Getting into ALL OF THE TOP TIERS! So, I’m applying to 20 more schools now.”

When asked the same question, senior Eli Itesm replied, “What that dude just said.”

Christmas Gift Recommendations For the Desperate

By Alexandra Wen and Tiffany Chen 1: Are their backpacks falling apart from all of their textbooks, 27section binders, lab notebooks, and SAT review books? If so, get them a wheelie backpack. They’ll be sure to flaunt their new set of wheels without causing any inconvenience and scorn at all. Adorn it with jingle bells for the holiday spirit!

2: If they’re into makeup, send nudes! Makeup brands ranging from Sephora to Nyx will be having huge sales, and you can get all the nudes you want. Just don’t flirt too much with the store employees!

3: Hand-knit them a fabulous Christmas sweater. If you’re not sure if you will finish it in time, or if you’re having problems learning how to knit, just buy them one and pretend that you made it. Remember to cut off the tags!

4: Make them the quintessential Christmas beverage—eggnog! Be sure to use Red Bull instead of milk and add espresso instead of cream.

They will have the holiday jitters in no time!

5: If all else fails, you can give them the most thoughtful gift of all—a gift card!

Student to Give Teachers Christmas Gifts, Wonders If It’s Too Obvious to Include a “Raise My Grade” Note

By Gilvir Gill As the holiday season approaches, students and teachers alike are preparing to spread the joy of Christmas trees, ugly sweaters, a 100 hours worth of projects, and swimming in the melted snow from the train station to school.

Some students are celebrating the festivities by buying gifts for their teachers. One such student, junior David Liu, plans to buy gifts for all of his teachers as a last ditch attempt to graduate from both Santa’s naughty list and high school.

The school year has been especially tough on the suffering junior, who made the decision to take seven APs, including AP Chemistry, AP US History, and AP Anxiety and Regret. For him, the holidays promise to provide a nice change in spirit around the building, and hopefully around his chemistry average as well.

“Christmas is a time of giving,” Liu said. “We give the

teachers a new tie or some assorted chocolate, and they give us a one way ticket to Harvard. At the end of the day, it’s really just about spreading the Christmas spirit.”

He is not alone in this practice. Hundreds of students buy their teachers gifts obvi-

Minseo Kim/ The Spectator

ously out of the goodness of their hearts, their love for giving, and for no other reason at all. For instance, one particularly affluent junior tried to buy moon rocks for his geology teacher, only to find out

that they were not a strain of cannabis, but rather rock fragments taken from the lunar surface.

“The key to a good gift is getting something that really makes the teacher appreciate just how thoughtful you are,” junior Shadman Khandaker said, who bought the entire biology department environmentally friendly smartphones.

After observing others engage in gift buying, Liu decided to take it one step further. Each gift he bought was uniquely tailored for a specific subject, and with each of his gifts, he had chosen to include a personal note, articulately crafted for each one of his teachers. The note for his poetry teacher read, “Roses are red, violets are blue. Please raise my grade, big thanks to you,” while the note for his math teacher included a detailed algorithm for rounding a 49.6 percent to a 90.

Local Family’s Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner Record-Breakingly Dry; Red Cross Commences Emergency Relief Efforts

By Sara Stebbins The entire Stowell family gathered in Springfield, Illinois on November 24 to have a runof-the-mill Thanksgiving dinner. When they sat down at the table, it was shaping up to be the best Thanksgiving they had ever had. The mashed potatoes were salted to taste, and the cranberry sauce was a sufficient combination of sticky and gooey.

But when they made the first incision into the centerpiece of the meal, the famed Thanksgiving turkey, their lives would change. Upon their first bites, the whole family discovered something that ruined their holiday irreversibly—the turkey was catastrophically dry.

“I was just so shocked,” Jennifer Stowell, the mother and resident cook in the household, said. “I had never tasted anything like that in my life—not even when I visited that PF Chang’s over in

Kansas. It was just so devastating to us. No amount of gravy could’ve fixed it.”

The children, Ashley and Jonathan, sat listlessly on the living room floor, traumatized by the utter dryness of the dish they had just consumed.

Alex Lin/ The Spectator

Jennifer immediately called the local Red Cross Emergency Service Unit. Firetrucks and other

emergency vehicles, stockpiled with various condiments and cooking oils, arrived on the scene minutes later.

“In all my years of working with the service, I’ve never seen a turkey quite as disastrously dessicated as this one,” Fire Chief David McCormick said. “From the bottom of my heart, I am so deeply sorry for the Stowell family and all they’ve had to go through.”

Ashley and Jonathan Stowell were given shock blankets and hot drinks to soothe their shot nerves and dry mouths. They shivered in the back of a Red Cross emergency vehicle as their parents attempted to offer them some sort of comfort.

The Red Cross is still looking for volunteers and donations to aid the Stowell family.

If you are interested in contributing to a noble cause this holiday season, visit the Red Cross website at www. redcross.org.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 23

Humor Letter From a Stuyvesant Jail

By Michael Espinosa Stuyvesant, it is not a good morning. This is your student announcer, Michael Espinosa, and if you’re reading this, please send help. It’s been two months since I’ve been locked up, so I haven’t had any wi-fi access. I can only imagine how angry my friends are after I broke our Snapchat streaks. I just hope that I can come out before January 20 to see Hillary Clinton’s inauguration address.

Do you think school food tastes awful? Tired of the few options offered? Well, stop by Riker’s Island after 10th period on Thursday, January 5, for the interest meeting of the Student Announcer Vacancy Elimina-

tion (SAVE) of Michael Espinosa (M.E.). Learn how to make the cardboard I’m fed on a daily basis and experience what it’s like to be waterboarded. You can even hear a guest talk by your current student announcer, Cassandra Joseph. Find out how she’s coping with this terrible loss and how you can help make a difference in bringing back Michael. Yes, there will be food. (It just won’t be edible.)

Worried about getting sick from eating jail “food”? The prison doctor will be here on Tuesday, January 10, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. If you would like team medical, working papers, or just want medicine for the terrible nourishment, please make appointments in advance in room 371. You will

be able to see the doctor without an appointment, you’ll just have to give up your weekly call. Thank you for your cooperation.

Congratulations to the Girls’ Badminton team for their successful raid on the prison late last week. The team freed 138 prisoners with senior Kathy Lau leading the way with 45 personal liberations and three guard tower demolitions. The team looks to repeat their success during their first playoff raid at Guantanamo Bay in March (and maybe when you’re done you can come back for me?). Go Birdies!

Seniors! Your Senior Caucus is looking for ideas for the senior prank. If you would like to submit an idea for how the class of 2017 should go down in Stuyve-

sant history, please report to Ms. Damasek’s office (Room 207) after 10th period on Monday, January 19. Your ideas are completely anonymous, so make sure not to tell anyone where you’re going.

See you there! (Actually, I won’t.

But you get the idea.)

Monitors are needed in the janitorial office: room 203. I share a cell with none other than the famous election rigger: senior Asher Lasday and he makes a mess of this place everyday. The other inmates aren’t much better. They work twice as fast as I do which forces me (the least productive person) to spend some nights in solitary confinement. Although the number of people I talk to makes me feel like I’m back at Stuy, I’m under the careful watch

of a guard who makes sure I can’t dig, climb, run, or write my way out.

And now, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance: I Pledge Allegiance To the flag Of the United States of America And to the flagpole On which it stands Outside, in the yard, While I’m stuck in here, With Liberty and Justice for me…Maybe.

Have a wonderful day, Stuy.

And if anyone is willing to send me some soap, I would greatly appreciate it. I won’t drop it. I swear.

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Page 24

Sports NFL

How to Level the Plummeting Jets

By Dimitriy Leksanov For years now, the New York Jets have struggled to find an identity. After draftFirst of all, 2015’s savior, Fitzpatrick, took a steep nosedive. Fitzpatrick has neving quarterback Mark Sanchez in 2009 on the heels of a disappointing season, the er been known as an acute decision-maker on the field, which has led to constant Jets experienced brief success. They appeared in two American Football Conference throws into coverage, which can easily turn into interceptions. While many such Championship Games behind a daunting defense, and their future looked bright at throws were dropped by defensive backs last year, Fitzpatrick has not been as lucky the time. this time around.

However, the success proved unsustainable, as Sanchez’s many This, combined with a devastating injury to wide receiver Eric Decker and flaws were exposed with the departure of key members of the offeninjuries to key offensive linemen Nick Mangold and Ryan Clady, has brought sive supporting cast, like wide receiver Santonio Holmes and runthe Jets’ team passer rating from 88.0 and 19th in the league in 2015 to 68.3 ning back LaDainian Tomlinson. Thus, two dysfunctional seasons and dead last. and one Tim Tebow later, the Jets were left to go to the quarterback Moreover, the running game has taken a step back, as bruising runwell again, this time picking West Virginia gunslinger Geno Smith ning back Chris Ivory left in free agency only to be replaced by longtime in 2013.

Chicago workhorse Matt Forté. Yet, this seemed to eliminate the physiWhile Sanchez’s struggles really showed later in his career, cal presence that Ivory carried, one well-complemented by receiving Smith disappointed right off the bat, throwing for 21 intercepback Bilal Powell. With Forté, a running back very similar to Powell, tions in his rookie season. So, with questions lingering at the the “element of surprise” of changing running styles is now gone, and quarterback position and age affecting key pieces like center it has showed.

Nick Mangold and tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson, the Jets seemThen, on the defensive side of the ball, there is also major regresingly had little hope going into the 2015 season. sion, in large part due to Revis’ severe struggles. While he did However, over the offseason, things began to change slowmake some key plays in what appeared to be a renaissance ly but surely. In trades, the Jets acquired journeyman of sorts in 2015, ultimately, the signs of age were there quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick to compete with the whole time. At 31, he appeared to lose a step, being Smith, and also managed to wrestle away superbeaten deep several times by high-level receivers such as star receiver Brandon Marshall from the clutches Sammy Watkins and DeAndre Hopkins. of the Chicago Bears for a late-round draft pick.

While regression seemed natural last year, 2016 has They also saw the return of their former star, been a nightmare for Revis. He has been out-played Darrelle Revis, who left the rival New England Paroutinely by just about everyone under the sun, from triots in free agency. Finally, and perhaps most superstar receiver A.J. Green of the Cincinnati Bennotably, the Jets managed to snipe defensive end gals to no-name wide receiver Marquise Goodwin Leonard Williams with the sixth pick in the 2015 of the Buffalo Bills, to even quarterback-turneddraft. wide receiver Terrelle Pryor of the winless Cleveland In a flash, the Jets had gained immediate upBrowns. grades at numerous positions, and after Smith This has limited the rest of the Jets’ defense, as was ruled out for the season’s beginning after a they are no longer able to blitz on a consistent basis, locker room fight, Fitzpatrick was thrust into acsomething that, last year, put them 12th in the league tion. He promptly set the tone for what became in sacks and fifth in the league in interceptions. Now, a dominant season. however, this conservative game plan, combined with With Fitzpatrick managing to pass for over down years from Sheldon Richardson and Lorenzo 30 touchdowns for the first time in his career and Mauldin IV, has the Jets at a lowly 29thth in sacks.

Revis able to regain some of his old moxie, the Jets To put it bluntly, this team needs fixing. Seeing that shocked everyone on the way to a 10-6 record and the passing attack and the passing defense, mostly their first winning season since 2010. Then, after drafting Dardue to key veterans, were a big part of the reason that ron Lee out of Ohio State to fill the biggest perceived defensive need at the Jets won in 2015, the deterioration of both those areas Klaire Geller / The Spectator linebacker, the Jets looked poised to strike again, bigger and harder, in and the key players involved means that overhaul is necessary in or2016. der to both replenish the young talent in those areas, and also in other Now, everything looks wildly different. At 4-10 heading into Week 16, the Jets are areas that may have been neglected, such as on an oft-injured and underperforming out of the playoffs, and marred by the same problems that seemed to haunt them offensive line. So, here is a series of moves that the Jets can make this offseason to get before. So, what went wrong? them well on their way:

1. Addition by Subtraction

Quarterbacks Ryan Fitzpatrick and Geno Smith are taking up close to a combined $14 million in salary cap, and will both become free agents in 2017. With neither offering any value to the team, and youngsters Bryce Petty and Christian Hackenberg on the roster, it would be wise for the Jets to cut their veteran quarterbacks.

Additionally, wide receiver Brandon Marshall can be cut with no penalty. While he was a linchpin for the 2015 season with a lack of depth and certainty in the Jets’ wide receiver corps, the receiving corps is now actually one of the team’s strongest points now on paper. Quincy Enunwa offers a reliable slot option, and rookies Robby Anderson and Charone Peake are looking like capable backups to Decker, who has showed his ability to be a fine number one target in the past. Along with getting the youngsters valuable game reps, this would clear up $9.5 million in cap space, allowing the Jets to splurge.

Finally, defensive end Sheldon Richardson needs to be either traded or released. Though he has been a valuable pass rusher his whole career, his 2016 season has been a big disappointment, as he has been relatively phased out in favor of Leonard Williams and Muhammad Wilkerson. This, combined with a looming $8 million 2017 cap hit, makes dismissing Richardson a no-brainer.

2. A Free Agency Treasure Hunt

Much like the Chicago Bears and Oakland Raiders last year, the Jets can use their new cash to find their own gems. The most intriguing players out there are outside linebackers Nick Perry and Melvin Ingram of the Green Bay Packers and San Diego Chargers, respectively. Both have admirable sack totals and are also relatively young. They can become long-term pass rushers for the Jets, adding edge pressure that the Jets have missed for some time.

Additionally, with the Jets desperately needing help in coverage, they could use a cornerback like Malcolm Butler or A.J. Bouye, both of whom have been producing consistently at a high level this season.

The offensive line is also a major point of concern, but can be bolstered by someone like guard Ronald Leary, who has found great success in a reserve role for Dallas, or guard Luke Joeckel, a high-upside interior protector.

3. A Veteran Leader

While it is good to have a pair of young quarterbacks to develop, it’s even better to have a veteran presence for them to learn from. The two best options seem to be acquiring either Tony Romo or Jay Cutler in trades from either the Cowboys or Bears, respectively. Both have experience, particularly Cutler, who has had a career arc similar to that of Hackenberg in college. Acquiring one should not be too difficult, and could be supremely conducive to their young passers.

4. Drafting a Future

Finally, all good teams build through the draft, and with a team with as many holes as the Jets, the best move seems to be to trade back in the first round and collect more picks.

Since 2017 is likely going to have a deep secondary class, the Jets could find some gems at lower picks with cornerbacks like Quincy Wilson or Gareon Conley readily available.

Overall, no rebuild project is easy. However, if a team is willing to fully commit, clean house, and build around its youth, it is something that can be done. While one offseason may not be enough, it can certainly be a good start.

Soon enough, the Jets could end up mirroring the success that the Oakland Raiders and Tennessee Titans have enjoyed recently, but only if they manage to take the right first steps.

Boys’ Track

Greyducks Off to a Promising Start

By Nikki Daniels After many successful seasons of boys’ indoor track and a fantastic cross country season, the Greyducks are gearing up for another season. In the cross country season, the varsity team won the City Championships for the second year in a row. In previous indoor track seasons for at least the past decade, the boys’ indoor track team has won the Borough Championships, and this year is expected to be no different. At the City Championships, the team has also slowly

moved up in the ranks, and last year they got fourth place. This year, they are hoping to get on the podium.

Most of the boys who run distance in cross country also participate in indoor track, and even the sprinters who did not run in cross country have been training since August. “We have athletes that can make us very competitive in sprinting, distance, and field events,” senior and co-captain Kiyan Tavangar said. “We have a great shot at getting on the podium, and if we run the City Championships

to win it, there is a chance we could do that as well.”

Led by a core of upperclassmen, the team has already had some meets where it performed very well. At its meet on December 4, the team finished third overall and won the 4x800-meter relay race. Tavangar set a school record in the 600-meter race (1:24.76), as did senior Eric Cao in the 55-meter hurdles (8.17).

In the Night at the Sprints meet on December 8, the Greyducks performed well once again, with several runners qualifying for the City Champi-

onships. Senior Moses Oh ran in the 55-meter dash and qualified for the City Championships, and he got the second fastest time in Stuyvesant history (6.79), and the 4x200-meter relay team nearly qualified for the City Championships (1:37.71).

The sprinters continue to work hard, spending three days a week at school including an hour warming up before going to the weight room. On the other two days, they go to the Armory, where their coach has them do specific exercises to hone their skills.

“I think the biggest thing the sprinters need to work on at this point is speed endurance, or being able to maintain speed as the distance we run increases,” senior Noah Fichter said.

The distance runners spend Monday, Wednesday, and Friday running at school. However, on Tuesdays they run repetitions of longer distances and on Thursdays they run shorter repetitions. With this consistent and regimented practice, the Greyducks are sure to dominate again.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 25

Sports Boys’ Wrestling

Spartans Look to Add to Undefeated First Half

By Yae June Lee and Jeremy Rubin The Spartans, Stuyvesant’s wrestling team, have started their season strong, pulling out wins on December 14 against the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex High School and on December 15 against Baruch College Campus High School.

With 45-32 and 56-18 victories, respectively, the Spartans move to a perfect 3-0.

The wins have buoyed the young members of the team. “[It’s] a great way... [for] most of our first year wrestlers [to] develop,” junior and co-captain Terence Wong said. He added that he believes the team will get stronger as the second half of the season kicks off after winter break.

Senior and co-captain Carson Wong believes the wins have had a positive effect on the team’s morale and are an indication of future success. “The team has very rarely won their first dual meet of the season,” Carson Wong said. “We pulled off the win with our dedicated core of team members and their

Martin Xu / The Spectator

hard work, and that’s what’s going to get us through our season with a winning record.”

Last season, the Spartans were 3-3 and fourth in their di-

vision, which was disappointing after going 6-1 the year before and coming in second place in their division. This year, the team has already tied its record

from last season and has shown no signs of slowing down.

“This year, we have a really good team. We have taken in a lot of freshmen and [have]

seniors coming all the way through. That’s the key,” coach Michael Cigala said. “We have a really powerful team this year and we expect great things.” He is depending on the team’s core players, Terence Wong, Carson Wong, junior Allard Peng, and senior and co-captain Michael Gaschler, to lead the team.

During the match on December 14, Peng (decision, three points) and Carson Wong (fall, six points) both came away with match victories to help the team pull ahead.

The Spartans are in a difficult division: last year, Tottenville was a perfect 7-0 and Petrides was 5-1. They will have to compete with both again this year for the division title. Now, with the victories they have won so far, the team has these results backing them as they compete with these two schools.

The Spartans will look to continue their recent winning streak, and prove themselves to the competition.“We have to show what it means to wrestle,” Wong said. “We have to be examples and lead the team into victory.”

NBA

Top 5 MVP Candidates for the 2016-17 NBA Season

By Ariel Glazman and Sean Stanton The Most Valuable Player award is one of the most prestigious awards in the National Basketball Association (NBA). To win the award, a player needs more than a high average of points or rebounds per game. Without that player, the team would not be able to do as well, making them the most crucial, or “valuable,” player. With these factors in mind, here are the five standout MVP contenders.

5. LeBron James:

Small forward LeBron James is considered one of the best players in the history of the NBA, with three NBA championship wins, three finals MVP awards, and four regular season MVP awards on his résumé. However, all great players decline at some point, and James, who turns 32 in December, is getting to that point.

Despite this, he still lands in the fifth spot on this list. Last year, James averaged 25.3 points per game (PPG), 7.4 rebounds per game (RPG), and 6.8 assists per game (APG). To cap off a great year, he led the Cleveland Cavaliers to win the NBA Championship, winning the finals MVP in the process against the heavily favored Golden State Warriors.

James has already had a large amount of success in the past years, and it is continuing this year, but to a lesser extent than usual. So far this season, he has averaged 25.0 PPG, 7.6 RPG, and 9.0 APG. The Cavaliers are 18-6 this year and have a promising season in the making, which helps his case to win the MVP. However, with the rising young stars of the NBA, James is a longshot to win the award.

4. Kevin Durant:

Small forward Kevin Durant, who left the Oklahoma City Thunder for the Golden State Warriors this offseason, is one of the best offensive players in the league. Even though he hasn’t won any championships, he won the regular season MVP in 2014, and has won four scoring titles.

With the move to the Warriors, he is surrounded by a better team, and has had the ball in his hands less often. However, he is still one of the best offensive players on his team, and scoring has not been a problem. It will also make it easier to rack up more assists.

Last year, Durant averaged 28.2 PPG, 8.2 RPG, and 5.0 APG, and this year he has averaged similar stats, with 25.5 PPG, 8.4 RPG, and 4.7APG. Even though Durant is one of the best players in the NBA, being on a team with many good players who also want the ball doesn’t help his chances to become the MVP.

2. Kawhi Leonard:

Klaire Geller / The Spectator

Small forward Kawhi Leonard of the San Antonio Spurs is deemed by some to be one of the best defensive players in NBA 3. James Harden: history. He is the back-to-back NBA Defensive Player of the Point guard James Harden is having a breakout year, by Year, as well as the starting small forward on the 2016 Allusing his excellent offensive skills, to create plays for his NBA First Team and the 2015 and 2016 All-Defensive teammates. In past years, Harden has been known as a ballTeams. Additionally, Leonard is an NBA champion hog that doesn’t play defense. who also won the 2014 Finals MVP in only his However, this season Harden is playing like a completethird season. ly new player. He is now a powerful offensive threat who Though it’s early in the season, Leonpasses the ball effectively, and he is carrying his team, the ard has already shown his dominance on Houston Rockets, to a winning record of 12-7. both the defensive and offensive side of Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder Last year, he averaged an impressive 29.0 PPG, 6.1 RPG, the ball, as he boasts 24.5 PPG and 6.1 RPG, along with 2.0 and 7.5 APG This year, however, his stats have risen dramatically to an steals per game. With a dominant, title-hungry team in the Spurs to supastounding 27.7 PPG, 8.0 RPG, and 11.8 APG. With his breakout year in the works, plement Leonard’s talent, watch out for a possible upset in this year’s Harden has a great chance of carrying his team to the playoffs, and getting his first MVP voting.

MVP award.

1. Russell Westbrook:

Point guard Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder is one of the most formidable players in the league. He is sixth all-time for career tripledoubles, with 49 already career-wise, leads the league with 12 on the season, and has been on a tear recently, tying Michael Jordan as second all-time in consecutive games with a triple-double, at seven straight. Westbrook, a five-time All-Star, was also on the 2016 All-NBA first team as the starting shooting guard, and was the scoring champion for the 2014-15 NBA season with 28.1 PPG. During this young season, Westbrook has absolutely dominated, averaging a triple-double every game with 30.5 PPG, 10.6 APG, and 10.5 RPG. There is little that holds Westbrook back from absolutely destroying another team’s defense, and now with the only other superstar on his team, Kevin Durant, gone, Westbrook is the true leader of the Thunder. He is surrounded by a supporting cast of young, quickly developing players in shooting guard Victor Oladipo, and centers Steven Adams and Enes Kanter, which gives him sufficient support to lead the Thunder to win.

At 28, Westbrook is hungry for a ring as he does not have much time left to lead the Thunder to a championship. He knows this and will be eager to defeat the Thunder’s rivals (the Golden State Warriors) and overtake his long-time former teammate Kevin Durant. As long as Westbrook avoids a serious injury or a long slump, he is very likely to win the MVP award this season.

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 26

Sports Girls’ Track

Boys’ Swimming

Pirates Ready To Reclaim PSAL Banner

Greyducks Strong at Start of Season

Sarah Chen / The Spectator

continued from page 28

By Michael Gillow Stuyvesant’s boys’ swimming and diving team, the Pirates, are 4-0 at the start of their season. The Pirates won their last game by a convincing 5043 against George Washington Educational Campus.

The team earned first place in seven different events, with sophomore Ethan Park swimming the fastest time of 2:14.72 in the individual 200-yard medley and junior Leon Lai beating out the second place swimmer in the 200-yard freestyle by over five seconds with a time of 1:55.19.

The team has been able to enjoy an undefeated record thanks to its hard work and focus. “Each of us have been giving it our all at practice and some have even been attending multiple practices within a day,” senior and co-captain

Lawrence Kwong said. “The key will be fine-tuning the smaller aspects: turns, underwaters, breakouts, finishes. If we nail each of these, I think we’ll have an even greater chance of success this season.”

The team ended last season on a mixed note. Though the Pirates reclaimed the City Championship title, a tournament separate from the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL), they lost in the PSAL finals to Brooklyn Technical High School by a heartbreaking four points. It was their only loss of the season. Claiming the City Championship again is important to the Pirates, but their ultimate goal is to hoist the PSAL Banner.

The team lost many players to graduation, but is still confident that it can achieve its goals with the current team.

“We had really good tryouts,”

coach Peter Bologna said. “A lot of returners came back in good shape, and a lot of new guys were in shape. We are a good, young team.”

While it’s always a hard task to replace a graduating class, the team has been working hard all offseason and preseason to ensure that its success would continue. “All of us have been reinvigorated to work harder than ever, and we’ve been training individually over the summer and as a team since the first day of school,” Kwong said.

Though the Pirates have enjoyed perennial success, there is a long way to go before the PSAL finals. “We have no doubt it’s going to take extremely hard work and dedication on our part, with many of our opponents only getting better, but we’re ready and looking forward to the challenge,” Kwong said.

competition. “We usually don’t place this well in citywide meets, but we’ve been doing really well as a team lately,” Nnadi said.

Many of Stuyvesant’s competitors in the second meet vied at the City Championships last year, in which the Greyducks came in seventh place.

Both Young Women’s Leadership High School and Brooklyn Technical High School ranked higher than Stuyvesant, placing fourth and fifth, respectively. In this meet, Brooklyn Technical High School came in seventh place, a sharp contrast from its championship performance. At this point in the season, it is too early to predict the winners, so the fate of the season remains uncertain.

This year, 23 freshmen comprise the 52-member team, a statistic that Markova highlights as a possible key to success. “We have really promising freshmen and good [returning runners] from cross country entering with great skill,” Markova said. Though the freshmen have promising potential, they will need to work hard to overcome certain obstacles first. “The girls have to learn everything from the beginning,” she said, explaining how the role of the upperclassmen is very important not only to the team’s success, but also to the individual development of the younger members.

Senior and co-captain Kamila Radjabova shares this view of the team. Radjabova is looking forward to seeing what the next meet holds for the team, as the members of the cross country team will be participating. “Our varsity distance team from cross country has gotten back to practicing for indoor track and they’re

looking especially strong,” she said.

This year was the first time in 13 years that the girls’ varsity cross country team made it to the State Championships, proof of their truly dominant runners this year. “It’s exciting to think about the new school records that we might set during this season with our relays and individual events,” Radjabova said. As the anchor (the fourth and final runner in a relay event) of the Greyducks’

“If we’re all passionate and give it our alls at practices and meets, we can definitely make a strong showing at City’s this year.”

—Venus Nnadi, junior

relay A-team, Radjabova hopes to improve the relay’s performance from Sunday’s meet, in which it came in 16th place among 34 teams.

With many meets ahead, the team will have a better picture of specific things to work on moving forward. In the meantime, the team is holding on to a sense of optimism.

“If we’re all passionate and give it our [all] at practices and meets, we can definitely make a strong showing at City’s this year,” Nnadi said.

Boys’ Basketball

Runnin’ Rebels Earn Back-to-Back Victories continued from page 28 “This just goes to show that the ball is moving and not sticking to just one person,” Fisher said. “It’s nice to take pressure off [Feinberg] and to be able to share the scoring load.”

Stuyvesant was also able to play a strong defense, forcing the Huskies to take a lot of longrange shots, an area they struggled in. “We just stayed in our zone and let them shoot threes, which they missed a lot of,” Lange said. “We boxed out well and kept them off the offensive glass, an area they had been very strong in.”

The team maintained a high level of intensity and toughness by diving for every loose ball and fighting for every rebound. The Huskies attempted a late fourth quarter comeback, playing aggressively and scoring 22 points.

However, this effort fell short as the Rebels came together and responded in the final minutes,

making a few crucial shots late in the game to hold onto the lead.

In addition, the team benefited from the Huskies getting into

“We kept our composure and kept running our offense to get key shots and keep the lead.”

—Michael Feinberg, senior and co-captain foul trouble, giving the Rebels the chance to extend the lead.

“We kept our composure and

kept running our offense to get key shots and keep the lead,” Feinberg said.

Despite their underdog status, the Rebels felt confident going into the game. “We had been close in all our first three games, losing by two, 14, and eight against the top teams in the division, so we felt good about our chances,” Lange said.

In addition, the Rebels worked hard in practice all week to address the issues they faced in their first three games. Some prevalent issues they faced were fundamentals and running their sets, particularly in the second half of play. They addressed this issue thoroughly in practice and their effort manifested itself in their strong performance.

Another source of success for the Rebels was the enthusiastic support of their peers. “They really help us keep our energy and intensity up on the court,” Lange said. “They’re the little extra energy we need when we get tired in the second half.” The combi-

nation of energy from the crowd and hard work at practice on their fundamentals and endurance gave them just what they needed to outplay a very strong Eleanor Roosevelt team.

At press time, the team’s success carried over to the next

puts the Rebels at 2-3 for league games so far this season.

With the back-to-back wins, the Rebels look good, but Fisher doesn’t want them to stop here.

“We are finally having some success and learning how to win and have more confidence,” he said.

“They really help us keep our energy and intensity up on the court; they’re the little extra energy we need when we get tired in the second half.”

—Tobias Lange, senior and co-captain game, as the Rebels defeated Washington Irving High School by an impressive score of 5841 on December 15. The win

“However, we have not reached our ceiling in terms of room to improve. I hope that we can continue to win and improve.”

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 27

Sports Girls’ Gymnastics

Joydeep Baidya / The Spectator

Flipping their Way to Success

Junior Anna Pacheco performs a cartwheel on the balance beam.

By muhib khan By 5 p.m. on Thursday, December 15, the third floor atrium was transformed, assembled from wall to wall was a floor

room for the wrestling mats, and the balance beam was placed a couple of feet away from wrestlers, whose shouting and cheering created unanticipated distractions for the gymnasts, who

“My goal is for the Felines to medal in team finals this year. We have been so close in the past couple years, but I really think this is the team that is going to make it happen.”

— Grace Stempel, senior and co-captain made of wooden panels raised on springs, which gymnasts from Stuyvesant, LaGuardia High School, and Christopher Columbus High School tumbled across. This was the Stuyvesant girls’ gymnastics team’s first home meet, and second of the season, and it was starting off in an unideal fashion.

Due to a miscommunication, the administration scheduled three sports games at Stuyvesant for the 15th, so the gymnastics team, known as the Felines, had to share the third floor gyms with the wrestling team, while the basketball team used the sixth floor gym. “We were forced to set up the floor in the atrium which was pretty dangerous considering how close it was to the lockers,” senior and co-captain Grace Stempel said.

Additionally, the vault runway had to be shortened to make

were concentrating on sticking skills on the four-inch-wide apparatus.

This was not the only setback for the Felines in this meet. A key member of the team, sophomore Lee-Ann Rushlow, was sick and unable to compete. But even with all of these challenges, the team performed very successfully, finishing with a final score of 102.25, almost 20 points higher than its opponents.

A week earlier, the team had its first meet at the Bronx High School of Science. The school is over an hour and a half away, and the team came in already tired. Several members were out injured, including junior Anna Pacheco who provides significant contributions to the team score.

The gymnasts gave their best efforts, sticking nearly every routine and breaking 100 points in

their team score with a 104.5, a significant achievement so early in the season. But despite this, they lost by one point to Bronx Science.

“Bronx Science is our toughest competition [as] they have two high level gymnasts,” Pacheco said. Even though the meet was lost, the close finish was a great achievement for the team.

The Felines had a successful season last year, ending in fourth place in the city with a team score of 114.125, their highest in recent memory. “Our team goal is to reach the A division and place in the team finals this year,” Rushlow said. Despite the loss of three seniors from last season, the team is still strong and ready for the challenges it will face.

The team’s starting lineup is largely stabilized by its upperclassmen core. This includes Stemple and seniors and cocaptains Sonia Epstein and Julia Ingram. This is the first time in recent memory that the team has had a group of seniors who can step in on so many events, and with four all-around gymnasts— Stempel, Epstein, Pacheco, and Rushlow—the starting lineup is well-fortified.

Seven of the team’s members are sophomores, and most of them will be competing more seriously this year. Rushlow joined the team with previous experience competing in gymnastics and is therefore already very skilled, despite being a sophomore. She is working up to doing twists on the floor exercise (a flip with a simultaneous rotation added), which only a few gymnasts in the city can compete in; executing twists requires significant strength and coordination in the air.

Practices so far have proved to be very productive for the team, especially for those who are new to the sport. “Incoming gymnasts have already immensely improved and are already trying to participate in doing more difficult events [such as] beam and bars,” Rushlow said.

As gymnasts progress, they attempt and practice progressively difficult skills, many of which are very mentally and physically challenging. Ingram is working on her round-off backhandspring, a powerful cartwheel which connects into a backwards flip onto her hands and back onto her feet. Stempel is perfecting her handspring on beam, meaning she is doing the same maneuver without the round-off on an apparatus four inches wide and four feet high.

Along with these new skills, the team is cleaning up its form and execution of routines to

city.

Despite this success, Coach Vasken Choubaralian believes some of the team is still not reaching its potential. “I don’t feel that they are working consistently enough. [However], there are some [who] are still working very hard and making progress,” he said.

The team has also struggled with injuries. Gymnastics is a sport that requires lots of physical strength and precise skill from the body. “We’ve already had about three or four injuries [...] and that is one of the challenges—keeping everyone healthy and fit,” Choubaralian said. Junior Anne Lee, who has contributed to the team’s vault lineup in the past, is out for several weeks with an ankle injury.

As the season progresses, the Felines will only look to improve.

“We need to work on consistency, and do more full routines in a

The Felines had a successful season last year, ending in fourth place in the city with a team score of 114.125, their highest in recent memory.

make them look more elegant.

All of this reflects in their scores when competing. Stempel’s scores make her one of the top gymnasts in the Public School Athletic League. Epstein also makes the top ten in beam and bars as does Rushlow on floor, showing that the Felines display some of the best routines in the

competition setting so the team can acclimate to the pressurefilled environment,” Stempel said. “My goal is for the Felines to medal in team finals this year.

We have been so close in the past couple years, but I really think this is the team that is going to make it happen.”

The Spectator ● December 23, 2016

Page 28

The Spectator SpoRts Boys’ Basketball

Runnin’ Rebels Earn Back-to-Back Victories

CALENDAR

December

27 Tuesday

Boys’ and Girls’ Indoor Track: PSAL Holiday Games Armory Track

January Crystal Zhu / The Spectator

3 Senior Tobias Lange dribbles around a player from Eleanor Roosevelt High School.

By Tahsin Ali and Ariel Melendez After losing their first three games of the season, the Runnin’ Rebels, Stuyvesant’s boys’ basketball team, came into their game against their division rivals the Eleanor Roosevelt Huskies with a mustwin mentality. As a result, the Rebels played their best basketball of the season, defeating Eleanor Roosevelt by a score of 58-51.

The Rebels found themselves as underdogs entering the game against the Eleanor Roosevelt team, which was averaging 74.5 points per game, while giving up an average of 62 points per game. Despite this, Stuyvesant got off to a strong start right out of the gates and

kept the game relatively close, as they led 15-12 after the first quarter.

“They’ve really handled us the last few years. However, we ran our system of basketball successfully and managed to get them frustrated to a point.

We got a lot of easy baskets and open looks, and we took advantage of that. We were able to take lot of time off the clock on offense and were able to cut down on their possessions,” coach Philip Fisher said.

In the second and third quarters, the Rebels exposed the weaknesses of the Huskies, as they scored 29 points and allowed just 17 in this time. The Rebels used their offense to their advantage by moving the ball and looking for the best shot, leading to multiple play-

ers contributing on offense as the team totalled 17 assists in the game, their highest of the season so far.

Fisher has made it a point throughout the season to move the ball, and it’s certainly been shown. “Everyone knows who [senior and co-captain Michael Feinberg] is when we walk into the gym, but so many people are contributing,” he said. “[Senior and co-captain Tobias Lange] is scoring and doing a ton of little things to help us, [senior Niko Ziozis] is playing really physical setting screens and rebounding, and [senior Angelo Yu] and [junior Nicola Manfredi] have had a few games scoring in double digits.”

continued on page 26

Girls’ Track

Greyducks Strong at Start of Season

By Sam merrick After unlocking the weight room, coach Anna Markova began to set up for indoor track practice. The team was in the hallway doing form-running, which was highly organized for the large group of high school students. Stuyvesant’s girls’ indoor track team, the Greyducks, were back to their strict training schedule after finishing second in their second meet of the season on Sunday, December 4. Three weeks into the season, the Greyducks have transitioned from the cross country season and are now working on their track and field events.

The first meet of the season, the Annual Pilgrim Games, was on November 27, but it was not

the most accurate display of the team’s ability. Many players were not in attendance due to the rest period they took in between the fall cross country season and the upcoming indoor track season. In addition, many of the runners at the meet were underclassmen, who were still acclimating to the sport.

However, the second meet of the year, the Jim McKay Games, featured a strong performance in the field events, and consistency in the distance events. Though schools from all over the city competed, the Greyducks finished the meet in second place with 57 points, behind Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem, which tallied a total of 84 points.

Among those who earned points for Stuyvesant was junior Daria Shifrina, who came in third place for both high jump and triple jump. Stuyvesant also dominated the 1500meter race walk, with junior Joyce Wu, senior Sharon Hu, and sophomores Bernice Chen and Kayla Lew filling the top four spots, respectively. The team is especially strong in the distance events, relying on its players’ strong stamina.

The Greyducks’ presence was also noted in the pole vault competition, as junior Venus Nnadi came in third place, with two fellow team members finishing behind her. The team’s success was significant because of the multi-borough continued on page 26

Tuesday

4

Wednesday Boys’ Swimming vs.

Hunter College High School Stuyvesant Pool

6

Varsity Boys’ Basketball vs.

Murry Bergtraum Murry Bergtraum H.S.

5 Thursday Girls’ Gymnastics Meet Home

Friday Girls’ Basketball vs.

Beacon High School Home

WRAPUP The Phoenix, Stuyvesant’s girls’ basketball team, moved to 5-0 on the season following a 40-37 victory over Seward Park Campus on December 16. With that, they maintained the top spot in their division, one game over Millennium High School, who sits at 4-1.

Stuyvesant’s boys’ table tennis team, the Titans, are 7-0 this year after winning their match against Murry Bergtraum 5-0 on December 14. The Titans are leading their division by one game over Brooklyn Technical, and have dominated their opponents as they are yet to lose a single individual game.

The Peglegs, Stuyvesant’s girls’ table tennis team, defeated Maspeth High School on December 13 by a score of 4-0. With that victory, their record is 4-0, and they are tied for the top spot in their division with Seward Park Campus.