The Spectator
“The Pulse of the Student Body”
The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper
Volume CI No. 14
June 1, 2011
Diversity Day Held at Stuyvesant
stuyspectator.com
Principal Stanley Teitel and other representatives sit in for a panel discussion on diversity at Stuyvesant.
By Leopold Spohngellert with additional reporting by EMMA Lichtenstein Alumni, prospective minority students and parents, and current members of the Stuyvesant community gathered on Sunday, May 22, to address the lack of diversity at Stuyvesant. The event focused on improving the minority presence and overall racial makeup of the school. The event was organized by the Stuyvesant High School Black
Alumni Diversity Initiative, an effort that began in 2010 with the aim of bringing more black and Latino students to Stuyvesant. At the beginning of the daylong event, African American alumni members gave speeches reflecting on their personal experiences at Stuyvesant. This was followed by tours for the students and their parents. “[Giving tours] made me really appreciate our school. Considering
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Features
Junior Reema Panjwani and junior Edward Cho vie for Student Union Presidency, to be determined by the General Elections on Thursday, June 2. For more election coverage on page 2 and 3. For endorsements, turn to page 11.
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Roving Reporter
Monday May 2, 2011 marked the death of Osama Bin Laden, the man who orchestrated the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, which took the lives of over 2,900 Americans and left countless others with physical and emotional scars. His death has aroused patriotic sentiments all across the nation, and invoked memories of the September 11 attack in the minds of many. The tragedy of 9/11 is one that is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of the Stuyvesant community. Students and faculty at the time witnessed the attack from their classroom windows, and could only watch as one of the major emblems of the United States and New York City was destroyed. Although the current student body and most of the current faculty were not at Stuyvesant at the time of the attack, everyone remembers the significance of the day and how its impact on our national identity. But amidst the relief that many feel in the wake of the death of the man who has since served as a symbol of that dark day, and who for so long evaded capture, feelings about the celebratory reactions to Bin Laden’s death are varied.
Mark Zhang / The Spectator
Mark Zhang / The Spectator
Leopold Spohngellert / The Spectator
SU Elections 2011
World Famous String Theorist Brian Greene Speaks at Stuyvesant By Nancy Chen and Farzana Yeasmin with additional reporting by john yuen The Stuyvesant Parents’ Association (PA) hosted Stuyvesant alumnus and world-renowned physicist and string theorist Brian Greene (‘80) on Tuesday, May 10, for a talk at Stuyvesant about his work involving string theory. After graduating from Stuyvesant High School in 1980, Greene entered Harvard University to major in Physics and later earned his PhD at Oxford University in 1987. Greene is currently a professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University and has published several books on physics whose contents are designed to understood by non-physicists, including The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality; The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, and his most recent work, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, Article on page 7.
Richard Geller: The Lifelong Mathematician The story behind the man who coined the phrase, “Math is number one.”
which parents could purchase at discount prices before the event. Greene is also a fiction author, having written books ranging from the children’s tale, Icarus at the Edge of Time, to the scientific text, The Hidden Reality, which explores the idea that the universe possibly has ten other dimensions, known collectively as the “multiverse.” Greene also co-founded the annual World Science Festival in 2008, a fiveday celebration of science with the world’s leading scientific researchers, featuring debate, discussions, dance and theater, film, music, and visual arts. This year, the festival will be held from Wednesday, June 1, to Sunday, June 5 in various locations across New York City. After PA member Christina Ross introduced him at 7 p.m., Greene did not give a planned presentation but rather had members from the audience ask him questions, which ranged from inquiries about his life at Stuyvesant to the difficulties of verifying string theory. He describes string theory as trying to connect the “two
pillars of physics,” Einstein’s theory of relativity, which applies to large masses, and quantum mechanics, which applies to atoms and subatomic particles. According to an introduction in his profile on the Columbia University Web site, “One of the strangest features of superstring theory is that it requires the universe to have more than three spatial dimensions.” When asked about the difficulties in verifying string theory, Greene responded that the primary challenge is that “strings are too small to see.” If you were to magnify an atom to the size of the universe, a string - a “filament of energy” that is 10 to the 35th power meters across in diameter and vibrates in different patterns to create various particles such as quarks and electrons would be the size of a tree. To explain the possibility of the existence of string, Greene described his own work. Greene currently performs astronomical observations to indirectly show these patterns. “Imagine I have a balloon and wrote a tiny message [...] If I blow air Article on pages 21.
into the balloon, as the balloon surface expands, my little message is stretched out on the larger growing balloon,” Greene said. “The universe was once very small, and strings, if they exist, would have left an imprint as they vibrated on the young universe through 14 billion years, as the cosmos expanded; space swelled like the surface of a balloon. Just as the message was smeared across the balloon, the little imprints of string theory would have gotten smeared up across the sky. All you need is to look and use math to tell you what to look for.” In this case, Greene searches for patterns in cosmic microwave background radiation, heat left over from the big bang, which would suggest string theory is correct. After all these years of research, it is possible that string theory and the existence of other dimensions are false, but that does not discourage Greene. “If string theory is false, I would be thrilled. I just want to be part of a generation that continued on page 4
Arts & Entertainment
Ghosts of The Boob Tube: Gone, But Not Forgotten Prepare to get inducted into the cult of good T.V.