Volume 102, Issue 14, Features

The Spectator ● April 27, 2012

Page 6

Features

Justin Strauss / The Spectator

Setting the Stage: The STC Slate

The new members of the Stuyvesant Theater Community Slate (left to right): Russel Skinner, Lucy Woychuk-Mlinac, Ivy Wanta, Eliza Mitnick, and Emmalina Glinskis.

By Tasnim Ahmed and Arielle Gerber No show really starts on opening night. It takes weeks of planning to make sure that when the lights come up, the show can go on. Behind every production is the five-person slate of the Stuyvesant Theater Community (STC), which includes the Administrative, Communications, Studio, Productions, and Tech Coordinators. These five juniors are the primary decision-makers in their respective departments, but coordinate their efforts with each other and with those of the STC as a whole to create a production worth watching.

Communications Coordinator: Ivy Wanta Having acted semi-professionally for Nickelodeon, offBroadway plays, and various other companies, junior Ivy Wanta was a theater veteran when she first entered the Stuyvesant Theater Community (STC). Since joining the STC in her freshman year, Wanta has directed the 2011 spring comedy, “Cul de Sac,” and the 2011 fall drama “With Their Eyes.” She was also part of the cast in various other productions and co-wrote this year’s junior SING! script. She even plans to continue to work in theater after high school by double majoring in theater and physics in college.

“STC is one of the driving forces at Stuy, it’s my motivation,” Wanta said. She decided to join the STC so that she could continue to be involved in the theatrical community, as well as in the highly academic environment of Stuyvesant. With her new position, she hopes to help the STC reach out to more of the student body. “I’m so grateful to be involved in something I’m so passionate about. The fact that it allows you to be open with everyone is something you rarely find in a school like ours,” Wanta

said.

Wanta’s new responsibilities include handling public relations for the organization, regulating the board and Facebook group, and advertising STC events. Next year she hopes to hold a fundraiser to get people who are usually not a part of the STC involved in the theater community. She also plans to hold more STC events aside from their plays, including a showing of past productions or

“Even though I’ve moved up, I still really love being in the shows.”

—Eliza Mitnick, Productions Coordinator films that coincide with a current production. She will continue to advertise the STC by putting up posters and making announcements about productions over the loudspeaker. “My biggest hope is for people who aren’t in the thick of the STC community to be able to find out more about shows and why they should get involved, too,” she said.

Studio Coordinator: Lucy Woychuk-Mlinac The job of Studio Coordinator entails organizing productions for the studio, or black-box, theater. The studio theater is home to Stuyvesant’s smaller productions and provides a comfortable environment for people who are intimidated by a large audience.

However, due to overwhelming

budget cuts and organizational problems, several studio shows, including one-act performances, have been cut recently. As the new Studio Coordinator, junior Lucy Woychuk-Mlinac’s primary goal is to bring back one-acts and other studio productions.

Having been involved in10 productions in three years, Woychuk-Mlinac has found her niche at the STC. She was influenced by her sister, who also went to Stuyvesant, to first join the STC. “When I came here, I didn’t know what to do, I was overwhelmed.

[STC] is something that makes me feel so comfortable. Now with budget cuts, I want to make sure STC stays alive,” she said. However, because of space and time constraints, it is easy for disorder to ensue for any studio production. Woychuk-Mlinac hopes to “enforce why we need [studio shows] and organize them so it’s not a hassle to do it, but an enjoyment,” she said. This will include lobbying with the Stuyvesant administration to bring these shows, especially one-acts, back. If the shows cannot be brought back, she hopes to collaborate with other theaters so that Stuyvesant can continue to create the shows that were cut.

Administrative Coordinator: Emmalina Glinskis To junior Emmalina Glinskis, STC has provided a haven outside of academics in school. “It’s important to have a creative outlet, especially here where math and science are stressed,” she said.

Now, as the Administrative Coordinator, Glinskis will have the opportunity to be an even greater part of STC, in addition to the five productions she’s already been a part of since her freshman year.

The job requires her to manage the other coordinators of the slate and the members of STC. She will also handle the finances of the organization by allotting budgets to different heads and by keeping

track of reimbursements.

“I am an organized person, and it’s important to make sure everyone is organized because it’s so easy for STC to become relaxed,” Glinskis said about her new position. Her most daunting challenge this year is the crippling budget cut and its effects on the studio shows. “Our biggest mission as a team we want to embark on is bringing [studio shows] back. It was disorganized in past year, but we want to show the admin that we can run it and be a model for later years,” she said.

Glinskis also wants to see more student involvement in future STC productions, “We want to be open, but we feel that a lot of people don’t know about STC. We try to get people who haven’t done theater. We want to get people who are scared to join it, but still want to do it.” Glinksis wants a more solid union between the different departments in STC, such as costumes, lighting, and technology, so that the organization is more welcoming to the students who may feel intimidated by the tightly knit community.

Productions Coordinator : Eliza Mitnick When Eliza Mitnick auditioned for the STC musical “The Pajama Game” in the fall of her freshman year, it was far from her first theatric experience. In fact, she has been acting since elementary school, in improvisational groups, summer programs, and

“My biggest hope is for people who aren’t in the thick of the STC community to be able to find out more about shows and why they should get involved too.”

—Ivy Wanta, Communications Coordinator school plays. However, the experience was still tremendously meaningful to her, as it gave her the opportunity to make friends in a new school, most of whom she is still close to.

Since then, she has acted in four other STC productions, including “Tommy” and “All My Sons,” and has directed the STC production of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Even though it was her first directing experience, leading the production “really made me feel like I would

like to take on a bigger role,” she said.

As Productions Coordinator, Mitnick will have the involvement she asked for: she will be in charge of overseeing all three of the STC’s main stage productions and mentoring new directors.

She will also be involved in selecting the shows and advertising them to the student body.

Mitnick chose to apply for the position because “I know what works and what doesn’t work on stage,” she said. However, her goals as productions coordinator extend beyond what happens on opening night. She also aims to help the STC reach as many students as possible.

“I want to get more kids involved,” Mitnick said, citing the fact that most STC casts are composed mainly of veteran STC actors and newcomers are relatively rare. To fix this, Mitnick plans to make the STC “more appealing to students” by stepping up the advertising and “picking shows kids love,” she said.

While Mitnick will be taking more of a leadership and overseeing role in the STC, she still intends to act in STC productions. “Even though I’ve moved up, I still really love being in the shows,” Mitnick said, her face illuminating at the thought of being under the stage lights.

Tech Coordinator: Russel Skinner It is highly unusual for an STC slate member to have no prior STC experience. However, while Russel Skinner has never been directly involved in an STC production, he is anything but unprepared to take on the role of Tech Coordinator. Skinner has been working on the light and sound crew for SING! since his freshman year and acted as the light and sound director for Soph-Frosh SING! in his junior year.

Skinner’s first experience with the technical aspects of theater came as a result of his acting endeavors. From first through seventh grade, he acted in school plays and for the City Lights Youth Theater. In eighth grade, he became more interested in what went on behind the scenes than what happened in front of them.

By the time he entered high school, Skinner was “fed up with dealing with directors and not being able to make creative decisions.” As Tech Coordinator, Skinner looks forward to leading the creative discussions behind the set, sound, and lighting decisions. However, he doesn’t want to assume complete control.

“I won’t be calling all the shots,” Skinner said. “Others will still have a lot of input.”

While the productions for next year have not been declared, Skinner is not short of ideas.

“We’ve been thinking about putting on “Seussical” [a musical version of Dr. Seuss stories],” he said. “Ideas vary. But when I get into a show, I get a flood of ideas, and I try to make those shows as awesome as they can be.”

72.5

24.0

2.4

1.2

Percent of the Student Body that is Asian

Percent of the Student Body that is Caucasian

Percent of the Student Body that is Hispanic

Percent of the Student Body that is African American Source: New York Times

The Spectator ● April 27, 2012

Page 7

Features

Mark Zhang / The Spectator

A Changing Sanctuary

The school library, located on the sixth floor, is a place for a variety of student needs.

continued from page 1

Since then, the arrangement of space has changed over the years to accommodate technology. The place that we know as the writing center used to be crammed with microfiche, small slides of old newspapers that had to be read on large microscopes designed for them. The microfiche was highly flammable and rather dangerous. In addition, the machines rarely worked and the location was not a very good resource for students.

Reflecting on what the library was like when he was a student, Stuyvesant alumnus Ronald Rapatalo (’93) said that it was “more of a place to think you would do some studying, but ended hanging out and figuring out where you’d hang out after school,” indicating that some aspects of student attitude has stayed the same. However, he doesn’t “recall a lot of shushing in the library.

Like a lot of Stuyvesant spaces,

we were given a large amount of latitude on how we used the space,” he said. With the number of students increasing each year, we cannot say the same for our school today.

The English classroom 615E was formerly the back of the library and a notorious hangout spot. Until the construction of the classroom, the area was stacked with shelves and served as a place for students to use their cell phones, play hacky sack, or engage in some other unsanctioned activities. At one point, there was a sofa in the very back that gave rise to what librarian DeLisa Brown discreetly mentioned as the “apocryphal sofa stories.” Assistant Principal English Eric Grossman confirmed that the hideout was difficult to supervise, especially with some students who abused their privileges by mooning the elementary school kids across the street. Due to the pressing need for more classroom space in the English

department, the back area was transformed into a classroom in 2009. Included in future renovation plans is a separate entryway to the classroom to reduce traffic at the main library entrance Controlling students during their free and lunch periods has gotten even stricter since then.

This is partially a response to the growing numbers of students admitted each year. For many, the library is a place to spend time with friends, but Brown takes measures for this to ensure that it does not get out of hand. She explains that there should be somewhere people can go to not only joke around with their friends, but also have some time for silent study. “A lot of people don’t have quiet in their lives. There aren’t really many places you can go. You can’t be in the stairwell, you can’t be in the floors that are quiet […] It’s just an effort to provide one moderately quiet place in people’s lives,” she said.

Earlier this year, the library launched its New York Public Library (NYPL) pilot program, which allows the Stuyvesant library to connect with NYPL, so that students can check out or request any book that is available in the NYPL system. The NYPL program has been a success so far, causing a rise in student use of the library’s resources. “You can be sure that if you request something or put a hold on something, it’s going to happen,” Brown said of the new system. More people are using databases, like JSTOR or GALE, provided by our school, and returning or ​ordering books from the NYPL through their student accounts. However, textbooks still remain the most popular resources of the library, with 24,000 checked out since September. Librarian Christopher

Bowlin spoke of the possibility of introducing electronic textbooks and mentioned Apple’s alliance with major textbook companies.

“A lot of people don’t have quiet in their lives.

There aren’t really many places you can go. You can’t be in the stairwell, you can’t be in the floors that are quiet […]

It’s just an effort to provide one moderately quiet place in people’s lives,” —DeLisa Brown, librarian He said, “we would probably have to move in the direction of iPads, although that’s not immediate. It’s down the road but it’s something we’re projecting.”

There are rumors flying that the library will be closed for all of next year due to the renovation,

but the Librarians insist that the library should be ready for students by 2013. “We’ll pack up in June, store the books in what is now 615E. Construction would start by July, and most likely we’re looking at Halloween or November first [as a completion date.]

We still have to put all of the hardware in, the computers, and put the books back on the shelves,” Bowlin said.

The rearrangement of space is intended to make room for about 30 more computers. The writing center will be where the circulation desk currently is, and circulation will move to where the computers are now. The computers will extend to where the English offices are behind the writing center, and the English offices will move back to the area near 615A. Furthermore, shelves will be placed along the perimeter of the library.

The library is a place that must remain flexible over the years, whether that means increasing or reducing supervision, checking IDs, and housing events such as Open Mic and author visits. It is “the place in the building that has to accommodate the most diverse uses and functions,” Grossman said. “Designing it in such a way that all those things can coexist harmoniously, and supervising in such a way that ensures that everyone is both respectful of the other things that are going on, and yet doesn’t make the library feel like a police state, requires delicacy and sensitivity and constant judgment calls,” Grossman said. Shelves may get moved around, but the intention of the administration is to keep the library what it is and what is has always been – a sanctuary.

By Aliya Tuzhilin Many students at Stuyvesant have a cause that they champion, or are always looking for ways to better the world. While some do this from home, others go abroad to learn about foreign culture, often roughing it with rudimentary toilets and sharing space with animals other than their pet dogs.

When their trips end, they return home with a sense of satisfaction, funny stories, and an altered perspective on their lives.

Last summer, junior Rachel Kim went on a short-term mission to the Dominican Republic with the New York Cho Dae Church. “I learned that a huge portion of the DR is poverty stricken, so I wanted to go out and help the people in any way that I could, whether by providing them with clothing, or helping out at relief centers,” Kim said.

Kim and her fellow missionaries had three priorities while in the Dominican Republic: to provide relief to the children in the churches they went to, to teach them English, and to spread Christianity. For five days they ran a day care where parents sent their children for an English class, an activities class, a Bible study, and an arts and crafts class, while they went to work. This service was so necessary for local families that by the end of the week 300 children would come for each shift.

To Kim, the most rewarding part of the trip was the two days she spent as an English teacher to a class of Dominican children.

The relationship she built with her students was the highlight of her experience. “They were the sweetest children ever,” Kim

said. “The day that we had to say goodbye, they all ran up to me and basically gave me a mob hug screaming, ‘Adios Rachelle!’ The smiles on their faces and their loving embraces really made the trip worth it.”

As Kim experienced a new level of poverty in the Dominican Republic, she became aware of how much she appreciated her life in New York City. “I had never felt the sting of poverty before in the U.S.” Kim said. “It was strange to actually live in a non-air-conditioned room in 90 degree weather.” While altruism was Kim’s original motivation for signing up for the trip, she found that she gained almost as much as she contributed on her mission.

Like Kim, Senior Debajan Roychoudhury faced formidable temperatures in Nicaragua while building a school in a village and learning about local culture through the Build On organization. His volunteering work was also based on spreading education as a means of solving problems like widespread hunger, disease, and conflict, which was something that made the organization stand out to him. “It’s not just a one-step solution where America goes and gives aid or drops off shoes or water or stuff like that,” Roychoudhury said.

“It’s an on-going process. [Once those rural areas receive education] one of the local villagers there with that education will go out and uplift the whole community.” This was an important aspect for Roychoudhury largely because his parents had immigrated to the United States for better educational prospects.

On a daily basis, the volun-

teers spent half of their day doing tasks like making bricks to build the school, and spent the other half of their day involved in cultural activities, which were where a lot of the fun moments were, in Roychoudhury’s opinion. “We would be milking cows and making funny noises and we had dancing workshops where we learned the cultural dances of the area,” Roychoudhury said.

They also had more serious workshops where they met with the adults of the community and learned about the strife the locals experienced. “For some of them, their kids were learning to work a machete instead of learning to read a textbook,” Roychoudhury said. These stories helped the volunteers understand the importance of their job building the school.

Roychoudhury also had a great time with his host family, whom he described as warm and from whom he was sad to part because of the strong bond they had built during his time there. “The whole time [my host father] had this little camera that he’d go around taking pictures of me with, as if I was a part of his family,” Roychoudhury said.

He loved playing soccer with his host brothers, and enjoyed learning how to cook plantains (a local staple) from his host mother.

Junior Jessica Chen’s international volunteering experience was an opportunity to do something meaningful for kids who have shared a similar childhood as hers. Before she immigrated to the United States from China, she went to a public elementary school in Guangzhou. Years down the line, she called her school up and asked if she could

Niki Chen / The Spectator

Volunteering Globally

come back, this time with both her invaluable command of English and many books for students to read.

“When I went there, their library was really bad. They didn’t really have any books,” said Chen. “A lot of people here have all these books that they don’t use after they grow out of them.” Realizing this, Chen asked people she knew to give her the books they did not want anymore and brought them with her to children back in her hometown.

Chen also taught a class of students English and informed them about life in the United States compared to life in China.

“They completely understood me and even answered me in English. I was expecting that they’d speak maybe a little broken English here and there and that I’d need somebody to translate for me,” Chen said.

Reflecting on her trip, Chen recalls a funny experience.

“When I first met all the teachers they thought I was an elemen-

tary school student who got lost.

They knew I was coming, too. I don’t think I look that young but they did,” she said. “I stood there for a good 30 minutes having to explain [who I was] to every teacher who passed by.” She also remembers that some of her students were pretty interesting characters. “There was one boy who knew more about politics than I did, and he was in fourth grade. He knew all about Gaddafi,” Chen said. “[In the end] we exchanged emails and some of them still contact me and ask me questions about being a high school student.”

Volunteering internationally gives students the opportunity to make a difference in the world while having a fun new experience. It broadens their cultural horizons by exposing them to different cultures and forcing them to adapt to other ways of life. Students return with a new perspective on their lives and a better understanding of other cultures.

The Spectator ● April 27, 2012

Page 8

Features Winning Stuyvesant students shone at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, which recognizes young talent in a variety of categories in literature and the arts. It is a national competition that is open to students from seventh to twelfth grade. In the 2012 competition, five Stuyvesant students won silver and gold medals for their written pieces. Below are excerpts from the winning pieces.

Ava Ava Sol Gantenbein. Her name was cool and mine wasn’t. Ava had hair down to her bum and cried when she had to cut it. She had a young hippie vegan mother with long blonde hair and baggy clothing and the watery name Brooke that always perplexed me. And she had an ex-rockstar father who drank beer and watched baseball and erupted with passionate yells in the living room while we played with stuffed animals in Ava’s quaint, comfy bedroom. Ava’s laugh was enticing, raspy, contagious. She giggled at everything and so did I, but that’s how it was supposed to be. Seven-year-old invincible girls wearing bell-bottoms, turtlenecks and Mary Jane shoes, bursting with infectious smiles. *** Our faces wouldn’t stay straight. We contorted them into what we hoped would be appropriate for our performance but it didn’t work. Ava and I, as one, doubled over laughing. Our hands clasped, our laughter the same frequency, our hearts beating at the same rate. There was no audience, no one else. We were twin beams of light, forming intertwining patterns of brightness in the theater we made our home.

Ava hated change and I embraced it. When I entered middle school, ditching my gaucho pants and t-shirts, Ava stayed in the small school where she’d been since kindergarten. I talked about boys and tried on bras. Ava was Ava. Still, we were the usual around each other. She always acted in her way, while I noticed the changes in myself that were so distinct when she was near me. The way I spoke, the way I let loose, the way I joked. With Ava, I was isolated from a different part of me. My childhood grew into full bloom again. I was her. *** “Basically, I’m manic depressive and have anxiety issues,” Ava said, looking forward and smiling. We were fifteen then, and she’d just switched to a big performing arts high school, lost among stars. I put my head down and mumbled “What?”

“Yeah,” she said. I almost laughed.

“What?” I said. *** On a cool clear day in April, Ava and I walked home in the sun after leaving rehearsal together tensely. The conversations we had became familiar. I would briefly explain the drama I experienced in high school—meaningless encounters that distracted us from her sadness—and then she’d talk. She scared and startled me with her thoughts. My back would arch anxiously as we walked, leaving sore spots that later jarred me back into her laments when I least expected it. We approached my building and she turned to me as we said goodbye, looking into my eyes.

Before words could leave her mouth, I sputtered, “All we really have is life. So why would anyone choose not to live?”

“Ellie, it’s different than you think.”

“I know,” I replied.

We hugged lightly and I watched her walk down the block. That night, when a ringing p ​ hone jolted me out of my work and Ava’s father responded to my frazzled hello, saying she hadn’t gotten home yet, I knew where she’d gone. She’d be sitting along the stone ledge in Fort Tryon Park. Pondering. Perhaps thinking about what I said. Her hair blowing, legs dangling, skin shining, mind racing.

Senior Odreka Ahmed- Silver medal winner for Personal Essay/Memoir

Justin Strauss / The Spectator

Moving On

Oh

I met him in band and two weeks later I am in his bed and though we barely know each other we are interestingly comfortable. We lay on our backs looking at the ceiling as his left hand idly drums on my shoulder and his right hand outlines my hip and we’re talking but really he’s talking and I’m listening and our limbs are tangled and his skin burns against mine, a nice contrast to the ice cold of his Chinese silk sheets on my bare body, and he isn’t making much sense – or maybe I’m not understanding him – but he seems pretty f--king profound and in the midst of it all, still staring at the ceiling, he asks “what is this to you,” and I’m not really comprehending but I hear myself say “moving on” and his fingers stop drumming.

He says “oh.” *** Sidewalk Art It’s uncharacteristically sunny in Boston this weekend making the typically strong wind almost enjoyable. The wind slams into our sides mimicking the current of the river as we walk the bridge from Boston to Cambridge, but I don’t mind, the wind has a strange way of making everyone look attractive. He pulls his beanie closer to his head in an attempt to keep his black curls intact; he’s particularly concerned with his appearance, but he is beautiful. The biting wind makes his skin paler but his cheeks are flushed and his lips, slightly chapped, but pleasantly so, are such a deep shade of pink that they were bordering on red. I slip my hand into his pocket to keep it warm, a habit we had already established, but he takes my hand anyway and his fingers find themselves mine. He looks over a few seconds later to gauge my reaction as I had anticipated, and I bite my lips to contain the inevitable smile.

The sidewalk we turn on to has a lot of writing on it and he begins reading from it. I’m still biting my lips and the second I release them I blurt out “you make me happy,” and this time I watch him for his reaction. He doesn’t respond right away, unusual for him, but the corners of his lips twitch and he’s visibly thinking. “You make me happy too,” he responds finally making eye contact.

“I was just reading the sidewalk...”

“Oh.”

Mark Zhang / The Spectator

Junior Ellie Abrams- Gold medal winner for Personal Essay/Memoir

The Spectator ● April 27, 2012

Page 9

Features Words Junior Nadya Kronis- Silver medal winner for Poetry

Senior Mollie Forman- Silver medal winner for Flash Fiction

Drifters Pots and pans float by slow Moving almost on their own Over the still water like they have escaped Domesticity Gil is watching my snorkel And for a second I go under my breath hitches I want to replicate your disappearing act For days I was proud and thought you a magician who would come back to show us all so I asked Gil our mother the neighbors and my Ouija board led me back to the city of dunes, humped like monstrous old men.

Goggles casting all the World in green I thought I had made contact Not like on late night UFO specials, but real pull towards a cinched strand of hair: just yellow rope tangling a wheel.

Mark Zhang / The Spectator

Gil’s call hoarse and warm Pruny fingers push me on the dock sputtering exhausted He laughs at my shriveled nakedness and raw palms, the snorkel protruding like a feeler Dragging out the silence between us intermittently after the seaweed trailing my toes.

Carolyn Kang / The Spectator

His grandmother died in her sleep In a rocking chair that his mom Gave to salvation army. The nurses called her a cool customer The hospital like an icebox, red and white Candystriped for its pruny children: Full of bad bones and begrudging mashed potato smell.

Standing by the piles of documentation He was approached with accusations, a shining papery woman said she knew all about what he did with her sister in the Polish camp trembling in her walker with the full weight of truth, Far away The stars in the suburb were like wormholes, They looked like a soul’s prison break from The hard-bitten quiet; ​moths had eaten through the sky fibers Like it was an old sweater.

Senior Karen Zheng- Gold medal winner for Poetry and silver medal winner for Writing Portfolio Impukane Supposedly these animals came from the circus If you close your eyes you can imagine them dancing Now open your mind and approach the beast and touch its wild trunk It’s not what you expected rough and hairy when all you’re used to is ​New York smooth city Try to look in her soft brown eyes but suddenly she’s pulled away and goes back to eating Swinging around streetlight posts Feet tapping around each other Sliding on cement as if The city’s ground was cellophane as if You didn’t keep it down it would rise and wrap you up Shooting words upwards Cocked already knowing they’d be lost A ritual circus routine is what you live You can’t make cellophane a roof of the world A pigeon’s as wild as it gets by home Scrutinize the forgotten pigeon corpses Those lifeless flying rats Choke when car after car storms cartilage and guts into road when pigeons swoop down and peck at stale bread sitting next to carcasses Gaze as silhouettes of the red-eyed fowl Beat their wings against the wind Push themselves forward until they soar and flock out of tunnels in hordes Dark winged bullets against glaring headlines and then the starless sky You ask if one of them maybe many more than just one has ever wanted to tuck its wings close against its body and beat itself Against walls and trees and let inertia Carry it to wherever the laws of physics stop To wherever the desire to succumb to darkness takes over Watch her wild trunk wrap around stalks and shove them into her mouth still alone from far away

I don’t want to leave yet, but something in my gut says I mustn’t stay. It’s those little pockets of anxiety I carry with me always, irrational and biting but always there, nibbling at my shins and the ends of my toes.

Lying down, I can see squirrels bounding in the grass, grasping for a tree limb and hanging there a moment, their clasp in doubt, but then they continue on, the limb groaning beneath the new weight.

I roll to my back and can see the sky. The clouds move lazily, hazy like smoke, reaching down and nipping at the wakes of fleeing birds. The trees whisper to each other as they move the w ​ ind through their boughs, bending their bodies so the clouds can be pushed on and away. ​I think this is what peace should be.

Molted mourning doves coo in the bushes.

The grasses part to let them gather. A sparrow wanders towards me, eyeing the plump bee clambering around a flower head. I wait still and silent, thinking inviting thoughts, but it starts and flies away. ​I try to tell peace it is welcome here. I will my eyes to follow the zipping insects, zooming round and round beneath the trees and the sky and the hovering blackness only I can see. I swat lazily at a buzzing by my cheek. I close my eyes and try to filter past the reggae being played in the distance; I look for what moves the earth, the tides of creation that can only be heard with an ear to the soil and the other to the trees. It moves on without me, the tides of man eddying about and holding me still. ​I wish there were mists, and dragonflies, to thicken the veil between this world and the next, so I know it is there in truth and not just a whimper from my groaning ribcage. I think I see the world in its true hues, but a glint from the top of my sunglasses, vanishing ere I search for it, recalls the sepia I’ve bourn for its mortal comforts.

There is a whisper in the air, calling of change; I loose my hair so some of it may fly away and sleep with birds in their peaceful boughs, to go where I cannot. I am nowhere but where I am, born into this humble body while the world screams, “Come! Find me!

Touch every inch of me with every inch of you!” But somehow in this one body my many minds crouch and wilt, shielding their ears from the odd and constant drumming—pounding, pounding, pounding on my heart and lungs—remnants of a world we knew so long ago and shall know again, but cannot recall with our waking eyes. I see myself as a flower, subletting parts all my life, giving to the bees and the soil until I wither away to a passing nothing, ignored by the restless passersby as I wish to ignore myself. ​The true words of the soul cannot be spoken, but perhaps they can be written.

The letters start a knocking on every door.

They cry, “Find me! I wait for you!” Words fly away and rest in the trees, but the ink dissolves to sediment, crunching underfoot and creeping up the ankle beneath our socks, watching, listening, awaiting that rare and screaming moment when its words will be known as truth.

Carolyn Kang / The Spectator

On The Grass, Beneath The Trees

Fragment

Page 10

The Spectator ● April 27, 2012

Features

Jasmine Kyon / The Spectator

Stuyvesant Wants YOU!

By Bebe LeGardeur and Lily Lin Recently, the lack of input from the student body regarding administrative regulations has been a cause of much concern among the Stuyvesant community.

In many recent articles in The Spectator, including the staff editorial “Stuyvesant Activated,” students have bemoaned the degree of power that the administration has over the student body simply because the students are unable to band together to fight the policies that they view as unjust. Students have become increasingly aware of the dire consequences that can result from this hesitance to act and have begun to stand up for their views.

During the 2005-2006 academic year, the Stuyvesant administration introduced a policy that would necessitate students swiping in upon entry or exit of the building. Previously, there had not been scanners at the entrance to the school; students simply needed to show their ID cards. Students protested in defiance of this new policy, leading to a

compromise between the Student Union and the administration. This compromise was that students only had to swipe into school in the morning and would not have to swipe in or out for the rest of the day. However, the agreement was not upheld, and students are now required to swipe in and out for out-of-school lunch as well.

“I don’t have any problem with students protesting but what they need to understand is that sometimes I don’t have a choice,” Principal Stanley Teitel said. “The scanners are a good example. This was not a choice. They were being put in place by the Department of Education. All high schools now have scanners.”

Many students still consider the fine for not having one’s ID card unfair. “Forgetting your ID isn’t really a big issue as long it isn’t a constant recurrence. But it is slightly unfair that we have to pay a dollar each time for a thin piece of paper,” junior Mengdi Lin said.

Sophomore Jiten Patel agrees.

“The purpose of the temporary ID is to let the school track the attendance, so there shouldn’t be a need

to make us pay,” he said.

The Stuyvesant administration has continued to impose rules, restricting many privileges Stuyvesant students enjoy, and student movements to challenge these decisions have become nothing more than talk.

Most recently, the administration implemented new restrictions on SING!, which has been a Stuyvesant tradition for 40 years. In the past few years the administration cut the amount of preparation time for SING! and banned the mosh pit, as well as the live announcement of the winners, citing as reasons for such actions as the distraction that SING! causes and un-safe behavior, respectively.

There were a few unsuccessful attempts to fight the administration’s new policies. Some students tried to create a petition to allow the mosh pit if there was parental supervision.

A Facebook petition stated that though the elimination of the mosh pit and the live announcement of the winner may be small changes, if left unchecked, “it will ultimately lead to even more strict rules and the eventual demise of SING! and other long-standing Stuy traditions!” the petition said.

Regardless, Teitel’s primary concern is the safety of students and after two students were hospitalized last year, he believed he could not allow mosh pit anymore.

“My first concern always is for the students’ safety. Nothing takes precedence over that,” Teitel said.

SING! participant junior Nancy Ko affirms this concern of student safety. “Punishment for the mosh pit injuries should be finite and should be effective in making a justified point,” she said. “I agree that cancelling the mosh pit this year was the safe and responsible thing to do, but in future years I hope that the ban will be lifted, given that the student body is aware of the dangers of taking advantage of the exciting tradition.”

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Many students were also disappointed last spring when the new dress code was announced for the coming school year, prohibiting shorts or skirts shorter than fingertip length as well as sleeveless shirts, stating that inappropriate choices in clothing were inhibiting the learning community. The consequences for breaking the dress code include the removal of outto-lunch privileges and, in more serious scenarios, a meeting with a parent.

Because this was the first time that the Stuyvesant administration had ever imposed such regulations, there was plenty of outrage. However, almost no notable action was taken. A Facebook event was created that called on students to dress in violation of the code on the first day of the current school year, but the protest did not occur. Whether out of lack of leadership or for fear of being alone, students did not come together in unified protest.

Junior Jake Soiffer blames this on the Stuyvesant focus on academics and lack of a more holistic perspective among students. “Everyone at Stuy is completely engrossed in their own kind of thing.

Everyone is really involved in clubs and stuff but only to the extent that it helps them get into college,” he said. “So everyone is doing something but they don’t actually think about changing the school, which is such an individualistic way of looking at the world.”

Another complaint regards the uneven enforcement of the dress code, and how it is at times random in its punishment.

“It’s ridiculous,” junior Saru Nanda said. “Girls who wear shorts and skirts that are barely shorter than their fingertips get called into Ms. Damesek’s office, while others wear ridiculously short shorts and skirts get away with it. If you’re going to enforce the rule, enforce it the right way.”

Soiffer agrees that the enforcement of certain policies is unfair.

“[The administration] enforces rules to the extent that they aren’t really useful anymore,” he said.

“Everyone just walks in with a sweater on. If they’re going to enforce [these] rules they should be better at it.”

Another problem students have with the administration is its detachment from the student body.

Soiffer cited the administration’s “refusal to listen to the students” as one of the main causes of the problems the Stuyvesant community faces. Along those lines, many teachers refused to comment for this article.

Teitel believes that among the numerous plausible solutions to this problem would be an increase in involvement in the Student Union. “Since it’s a small number who elect students, you get what you paid for. If 20 percent are going to vote, then 80 percent have no right to say a word,” he said. “If 80 percent vote, then you’ve got a right to say something.”

Teitel also added that some of the elected students leaders have never even gone to speak with him.

“If you’re elected as president of the Student Union, you represent 3300 students. How come you don’t find your way to the principal’s office,” he said. “It may not amount to anything, but at least you as the elected official have made the attempt to represent the student body.”

Soiffer also believes that students need to take a more involved approach. “I think if people actually start caring about what future generations at Stuy will be getting and voicing that and stop being so apathetic about that, things might actually change,” Soiffer said.

Though change is clearly on the minds of both the administration and the student body, an effective solution to appease both parties will require improved communication and cooperation between the students and the school administrators.