Volume 105, Issue 3

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

Volume CV No. 3

• Social Studies teacher Kerry Trainor, Assistant Principal (AP) of Security and Students Affairs and AP of Physical Education Brian Moran, and eight upperclassman students attended a conference on cybersecurity at the Secret Service Field Office in Brooklyn on Tuesday, October 7. They heard from specialists in the field and toured one of the facility’s analysis labs.

• Brooklyn Technical High School teacher Sean Shaynak was arrested on September 30th for sexually assaulting students in the school.

• After receiving a multitude of complaints from the student body, the maintenance staff has been readily addressing the issue surrounding the lack of toilet paper in the bathrooms. “I got a lot of complaints, so I complained the maintenance staff into submission,” Head Custodian Fred Arnebold said.

• During the first month of school, students did not have homeroom because the administration felt there were no tasks to administer during that time period. After a discussion with the Big Sib Chairs, the administration has decided to continue homeroom on Tuesdays bi-weekly.

Then and Now: Polling the Student Body Over the Years

On average, how much time do you spend on homework every night?

Senior Franco Caputo spoke about his role as a male feminist during TEDxStuyvesantHS 2014.

2014

1987

By Ariella Kahan and Maisha Kamal

0-1 hours 7%

> 2 hours

0-1 hours

33%

1-2 hours

36%

22%

> 2 hours 70%

1-2 hours 31%

See pages 16-17 for more data

Jan Li / The Spectator Stand up economist Yoram Bauman explains how economic principles can be used to curb global warming.

When Yoram Bauman Ph.D told his parents that he wanted to be a standup economist, they were, understandably, worried. “[My father] didn’t think there would be enough demand,” Bauman jokingly said. “I told him not to worry: I’m a supplyside economist. I just stand up

Features

The Makings of TEDxStuy

Throughout its history, The Spectator has conducted surveys of the student body to determine students’ opinions on various issues. This September, we found old surveys conducted by The Spectator and asked some of the same questions to the current student body, hoping to shed light on how students’ political views and school lives have changed over the past several decades.

Stand Up Economist Stands up for Climate change

By Emma Lichtenstein

stuyspec.com

Justin Strauss / The Spectator

Newsbeat

October 20, 2014

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

and let the jokes trickle down.”

By the time Yoram Bauman received his Ph.D in economics, he was struck by that fact that he actually wanted to pursue comedy as a career, not just a hobby. Combining both of his interests, Bauman became the world’s first stand-up economist.

In his lecture at Stuyvesant High School on October 3, 2014, Article on page 9.

“The Mother Duck’s Story” How did Economics teacher Catherine McRoy-Mendell become Stuyvesant’s mama duck? Read about her journey on page 9.

Bauman started off by cracking jokes about economics, ranging from the groups of the “American political spectrum” to the recent recession of 2008. The lecture took a more serious tone when he informed the audience of his new carbon tax initiative.

Bauman began pulling the audience into his performance by dividing the auditorium into the right wing and left wing to represent the American political spectrum. “We need to sort out the most important part of the American political spectrum, the swing voters,” Bauman then said.

“A couple of important things about swing voters: there are a lot of swing voters. If you are not a fascist [right wing] or a communist [left wing], then you are a swing voter. If you didn’t know what any of those terms meant, then you are definitely a swing voter.”

Once Bauman set a basis for those with limited knowledge of economics, he continued to make fun of American politics.

“Left-wing Libertarians want the continued on page 2

It’s not every day that you see an Asian-American rapper, a mathematician, and a male feminist all in the same room.

On October 10, however, amidst electric green and blue chairs and a table stocked with breakfast foods, students gathered in the Boaz A. Weinstein library for just that. A six-hour event with 10 speakers and 80 attendees— this was TEDxStuyvesantHS. TEDxStuyvesantHS is the independently run Stuyvesant chapter of TED, a set of worldwide conferences that was originally created to promote the spread of ideas. Stuyvesant

began to host its own TED talks in spring of 2013, organized by then-junior Mandy Wong (‘14).

Though Wong hoped to hold another TEDxStuyvesantHS last spring, the event was delayed for logistical reasons. Thus the team waved goodbye to the graduating seniors and postponed the event to this October.

Since deciding to hold the event in the fall of 2014, seniors Scott Ma and Shamay Osipov took up the reins as coorganizers. They managed to put together an engaging event themed around the question: What makes you you? continued on page 7

Big Sib Little Sib Luau Cancelled on Yom Kippur

By Ariel Levy and Sharon Lin

The Big Sib office in the Student Union was filled with Hawaiian themed decorations, including DJ equipment, a fog machine, and inflatable palm trees, in preparation for the Big Sib Little Sib Luau. However, on Friday, October 3, the day of the Luau, the event was abruptly cancelled.

“Nothing happened until eighth period when [AP of Guidance Casey] Pedrick asked me to come and talk to her. She basically told us that we had to cancel the [Luau]. We were obviously really upset, but we didn’t have a choice,” Big Sib Chair Franco Caputo said. Caputo announced the cancellation over the loudspeaker during ninth period.

The Big Sib Little Sib dance is typically held on a Friday in the beginning of the school year, but this year’s dance was difficult to schedule. “We had a lot of trouble trying to find a date for the dance,” Caputo said. “The week [of Friday, September 26] was Rosh Hashanah, the week [of Friday, October 3] was Yom Kippur, the week [of Article on page 22.

Friday, October 10] is the day before the SAT, the week [of Friday, October 17] is the junior college trip, the week [of Friday, October 24] is Parent Teacher Conferences, the week [of Friday, October 31] is Halloween, and the week [of Friday, November 7] is Rent.”

While the Big Sib Chairs eventually chose the date of Yom Kippur for the dance, they said they did not intend to disrespect the Jewish holiday. “We tried whatever we could. We didn’t make it official for a really long time because we were hoping a day would free up,” Big Sib Chair Harmehar Kohli said. Any Big Sib who needed to leave before sundown or be excused completely for religious reasons would not have been penalized for missing the event.

In the weeks leading up to the Luau, the dance was heavily advertised through Facebook and posters in the Stuyvesant school building. “No one indicated that they were upset with us: parents, students, or Big Sibs,” Caputo said.

The administration first becontinued on page 2

A&E “This is All Theirs”

Need some new music recommendations? Check out page 22 for a review on Alt-J’s new album.

The Spectator ● June 14, 2011

Page 2

News

Anne Duncan / The Spectator

CASS Scanning System Does Not Allow Big Sib Little Sib Luau Upperclassmen Out to Frees Cancelled on Yom Kippur

Students scan out for frees despite setbacks with scanning system

By Julia Ingram and David Kang It was finally eighth period, and senior Anne Duncan had been looking forward to scanning out during her free period, a privilege enjoyed solely by upperclassmen. Having submitted the Out of Building Consent form, Duncan expected only the familiar approving “ding” of the scanners, not the sound of screeching tires (an indication that she had scanned out at the wrong time) that she actually encountered.

“At first they said the forms hadn’t been processed yet, and the program office told me they would be processed around October,” Duncan said. She went back to the programming office in the beginning of October to ask again what was going on.

“They told me the forms had been processed in the end of September, but it still wasn’t working.”

In previous years, the program office was able to change the programs of those who had filled out the Out of Building Consent form, the document allowing them to

leave the school building during free periods. The office gave these students’ programs a functional code, such as QZ1, which allowed the scanning system, or Comprehensive Attendance Administration and Security System (CASS), to allow them to exit when they swiped their ID cards at the second floor entrance. These codes are distinguishable from the codes indicating a lunch period, which start with the letter Z. Recently, however, there have been issues with the scanning system. “This year, CASS isn’t downloading information properly.

What’s happening is that CASS isn’t downloading the functional codes, only the ZL lunch codes,” Assistant Principal of Technology Services Edward Wong said.

Though this seems like an issue confined to Stuyvesant’s computer scanning system, it is really in the hands of the Department of Education (DOE). “It has nothing to do with the computers. It has to do with the DOE, something to do with their policy,” Wong said.

“They were just not allowing for the download of the correct codes.”

Since the DOE controls the functional codes that the CASS system downloads, the program office is not sure how or when they will be able to address the problem. “Stuyvesant is really the only school that uses this system to the max,” Wong said. Fixing this issue, since the technology is not widely used throughout New York City schools, may not be a top priority of the DOE. Until the system is fixed, a physical list of students who have submitted their consent form is checked as students approach the scanners. “If we can verify that a student has submitted the form, then they are allowed outside,” Assistant Principal of Security & Student Affairs Brian Moran said.

“Basically what happens is they have a list of all the people who handed in the form, and when you scan out they point to your name, and you say ‘this is my ID, and that’s who I am, and this is my free period,’” Duncan said.

However, the monitors at the scanners do not always pay as close attention to whom is attempting to exit the building.

“Sometimes they just look at the list, and they don’t check to see who I am,” Duncan said. This could potentially allow for some students getting outside when they do not have permission to do so.

The main issue, however, seems to be with the less effective method of checking a printed list of students’ names.

“I think the print-out list is kind of inefficient, especially when they could be using IDs,” senior Tali Rose Herzfield said.

Other students feel relatively inconvenienced by the system currently in place. “It’s not really a big issue because they let you go out anyway,” senior Alice Oh said.

“The system with the print-out isn’t much of a hassle anyway.”

Poll: Feminism

By The Spectator News Department In tandem with the staff editorial, the Spectator News Department conducted a poll surrounding the issue of feminism. An email was sent out to 2500 random students. The responses of the 636 students who responded are shown below.

Do you consider yourself to be a feminist?

Have you experienced gender discrimination in some form at Stuyvesant?

continued from page 1

came aware of issues with the dance on Thursday, October 2.

That afternoon, Principal Jie Zhang was informed that a reporter from the New York Post was interviewing Stuyvesant students outside the school for their opinions about the date of the dance. Zhang later received a call from the Department of Education Press Office, which supervises all media inquiries concerning public schools. “The [Press Office] asked me about the dance, and I replied that it would involve about 10 percent of the student body, would not be mandatory, and that we were sensitive to students who could not attend,” Zhang said. Zhang does not know who informed the New York Post of the event.

No complaints from within Stuyvesant were received until the morning of the dance, when a group of several staff members approached Zhang. “A lot of issues brought to me were about respecting culture and each other. [The teachers’] concern wasn’t that students couldn’t participate, it was the fact that it was a very serious religious observance, and they wished that it would be respected,” Zhang said.

Zhang chose to cancel the dance, but this decision was not influenced by the possibility of a New York Post article. “It wasn’t that the [Department of Education] didn’t allow it, or that the Post might be reporting on it.

There wasn’t anybody who forced me to make that decision. It was a collaborative process,” Zhang said. A New York Post article has not been printed on the subject.

Many students were disappointed by the cancellation of the dance. “I was really look-

Stand Up Economist Stands up for Climate change continued from page 1

Yes

(181)

No

(294)

Yes

(342)

Do you believe there is an active feminist community at Stuyvesant?

No

(455)

Do you believe students who have experienced sexism at Stuyvesant have a safe place to go to?

No

(146)

No

(324)

Yes

(312)

Yes

( 490 )

ing forward to meeting the new freshmen,” sophomore Muhammad Rivaldo said. “When they cancelled last minute, I was actually really upset.”

Junior and Big Sib Kristen Chang supports the decision to respect the Jewish holiday. “I do understand the concern made by teachers, as Yom Kippur is a more solemn holiday, a time to reflect and repent,” Chang said.

However, she was displeased by the sudden decision. “I believe the Chairs could’ve been notified earlier than three hours before the dance that people felt strongly about rescheduling the event.”

The Chairs have postponed the dance to Friday, November 14. The new date is much later, possibly hindering its original purpose to encourage the freshmen to make new friends. “The dance is supposed to help break in the freshmen and welcome them. Get them out of their shell.

The middle of November is a little late, so I don’t think it will have its maximum impact,” Chang said.

For the time being, however, the change does not seem to have a major impact on the attendance rate. “Yes, I’m still going [to attend], since [the dance] is the first major event I’m going to in [Stuyvesant],” freshman Rafsan Hamid said.

“I wouldn’t want to miss out.”

Big Sib Chair Jasmine Thomas acknowledges this point.

“Now it is more for going with your friends rather than going to make friends,” Thomas said.

Even so, the Chairs hope that the Luau will still provide an opportunity for freshmen to bond with their Big Sibs and each other. “It will be almost like a mixer; [freshmen] will still meet other freshmen and other people,” Caputo said.

freedom to do drugs, right-wing Libertarians want the freedom to use guns, and neither of them believe in Social Security. Although with those interests, who is going to make it to 65?” he said.

For the second half of the lecture, Bauman educated the audience on his carbon tax plan, which increases carbon taxes to help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. “When you make polluting expensive, you get market forces promoting innovation and conservation and development of new technologies,” Bauman said, explaining why the strategy works.

To compensate for the increase in carbon taxes, taxes for businesses will be lowered by one percent. “If we had higher taxes on carbon and other types of pollution, we could afford to have lower taxes on things like income and investment,” Bauman said.

Bauman’s lecture left a good impression on many students.

Senior Farzana Haque found his lecture both funny and informative. “The idea of taxing companies based on carbon emissions wasn’t new to me, but the idea that it would lead to a decrease of taxes for consumers was an obvious jump that I hadn’t realized be-

fore. Like one percent lower sales tax doesn’t seem that much, but it definitely adds up,” she said.

Bauman is currently working on a British Columbia-style carbon tax for Washington State.

The British Columbia-style tax will cause fossil fuels to cost $25-$30 more per ton. Sales tax, on the other hand, will be cut by a whole percent. Bauman and his organization, Carbon Washington, are currently trying to put this tax reform on the November 2016 ballot in D.C. Bauman enjoyed his visit to Stuyvesant as much as the students did. “The Stuy audience was definitely on the fun end of the spectrum: attentive and intelligent,” he said.

Economic teacher, Catherine McRoy-Mendell organized the event and thought that it was definitely a success. “We’ll definitely have him in contact to come back,” she said.

Bauman’s comedic style of economics shone through his lecture. When talking about his trip to China, he recalled a native calling America a loan shark.

“That is exactly backwards,” Baufman said. “America is not a loan shark; America is like a borrowing walrus, floating in a sea of our own treasury debt!”

The Spectator ●October 20, 2014

Page 3

News Cocoros Steps Down from NYC Math Team

By Sharon Chao Until spring of 2014, math teacher James Cocoros not only influenced students within Stuyvesant, but also held a major role in the citywide math team community as the head coach of the New York City (NYC) Math Team.

The NYC Math Team is a collection of students from public and private schools in the city that participates in national and international math competitions. A majority of the students are from top schools such as Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Hunter College High School (Hunter), but there are also some from Francis Lewis, Cardozo, and Dalton, among others. In addition to the practical purpose of the NYC Math Team, “the more general purpose is to connect the top kids and give a venue for them to interact, and a way to connect with like-minded students around the country,” Cocoros said.

As the head coach, Cocoros was in charge of the housing and food arrangements during the overnight-trip math competitions, practices, math problems for the practices, and paperwork.

Cocoros stepped down because he felt like he “needed a break,” from all the administrative work.

Throughout his eight-year term, Cocoros implemented some fundamental changes to the math team. Though the team only practiced three times a year before he became coach, there are now six to eight practices a year either after school or on Saturdays at Stuyvesant. “I also let the captains of the teams take the reins,” Cocoros said. This means that the captains, who

By Sharon Lin, with additional reporting by Julia Ingram The Stuyvesant High School administration boasts one of the strongest security systems in the city. The identification (ID) cards, one issued to each student, are used both as a check for valid identity, and as a means for recording daily attendance. However, early last year, the Spectator editorial staff decided to conduct an experiment – select editors would scan in with the ID cards of a fellow student, and observe any reactions from the staff. Much to their surprise, the administrators did not even notice a difference in the identities of the editors.

This method of “manipulating” the ID card system occurs whenever students want to scan out of the building. Despite the attempts of ID monitors to check the photos of students that appear on the computer screens when students scan in and out of the building, the rush of students scanning in and out sometimes allows a number of students to get by without scanning out. An unmatched image can also slip under the monitors’ radar--especially if the two people look alike. More commonly, a student may accidentally be pushed past the scanners without checking in, especially during lunch periods, when a large horde of students may be signing out at the same time.

In light of these recognized loopholes, there is almost unanimous agreement that cracking down on the security would not be preferable. “I’d rather

“The more general purpose is to connect the top kids and give a venue for them to interact, and a way to connect with like-minded students around the country.”

—James Cocoros, math teacher run eight- to 15-member teams for competition purposes, were put in charge of ensuring that all the members go to the practices and get the necessary information about upcoming competitions.

The most important change concerned the competitions.

Originally, the NYC Math Team only went to two math tournaments a year: the New York State Mathematics League competition (NYSML), and American Regions Mathematics competition (ARML). Cocoros added the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament (HMMT) and Princeton University Math Competition (PuMAC) to the list.

Currently, there is no head coach; instead, three people share the responsibilities of the team: math teacher Oana Pascu of Stuyvesant, math teacher Eliza Kuberska of Hunter, and Dimitri

Sagalovskiy, former member of the NYC Math Team from Brooklyn Technical High School. This one-year trial of a shift in organization was voted on by math team coaches around the city.

Math teacher and Stuyvesant Math Team head coach Ashvin Jaishankar agreed with the new setup because he, along with many other coaches, did not want one person to be overburdened by all the responsibilities of running the NYC Math Team.

Even with the new committee of three, “it’s not just the job of those three people; it’s the job of many others very much involved. We want to make this as community-based as we can,” Jaishankar said.

The new administration has already made one major decision: the team will not go to PuMAC this year. Pascu cites financial troubles as the major reason. “The NYC Math Team is currently in a tight financial situation and does not have enough funds to attend the usual state and national competitions. In fact, the team will need to raise funds in order to attend NYSML and ARML,” Pascu wrote in an email interview.

Although Cocoros retired from his position, he will not be leaving the Math Team entirely.

He will still help at practices and is even doing a joint math team lecture with Hunter math teacher Sheila Krilov this October at New York University. “My goal was to create a family out of the Math Team, and that is what it is now. The older kids come back to be assistant coaches and write problems for the practices,” Cocoros said. “The atmosphere of the [NYC] Math Team is what contributes to us being among the top teams in the country.”

Stuyvesant Students Volunteer with Malaysian Youth Organization

By Ariel Levy Six Stuyvesant students walked through a crowd of secret service agents and approached the Malaysian head of state, Prime Minister Naijib Razak, on Friday, September 26. They were able to shake his hand and even take a selfie with him.

Razak and other Malaysian dignitaries had gathered in New York City for a community service event organized by the Malaysian government initiative 1Malaysia for Youth (iM4U). iM4U is a youth organization founded by Prime Minister Razak in 2012. It aims to promote social activism and sponsors community service events and groups. iM4U’s past projects in Malaysia have included sponsoring a dinner at a soup kitchen and a media campaign to combat incidences of abuse on public transportation. iM4U also has chapters in several universities in the New York area, including Stony Brook University and Binghampton University, that primarily cater toward students of Malaysian descent. This event, overseen by iM4U’s New York branches, was organized to repaint a playground on the top floor of the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center.

Senior Rebecca Chang heard about the event through a family friend, who is a board member of the Malaysian Association of America. Aware that more volunteers were needed, Chang advertised the event through Facebook and extended personal invitations to friends. Ultimately five Stuyvesant seniors and one sophomore attended.

What’s the Big IDea?

have the knowledge that I have some freedom than total security,” an anonymous student said.

Many believe the strict nature of the current system allows for a greater number of students to illegally sneak out of the school during their frees, especially underclassmen who are not allowed out of the school during this time. “The reason why so many kids sneak out, in my opinion, is because they don’t have enough freedom,” another anonymous student said. “They want to be able to leave school if they need, and to come into school without having Stuyvesant’s administrator track them everywhere they go.”

New methods of sneaking out without scanning have been popular among students looking to cut classes. “Sometime a kid will drop his ID card on the ground in front of the scanners, lean to pick it up, and then just walk away,” an anonymous student said. “The monitors usually don’t even blink.”

Other students simply scan in cards during a large rush of students, for example, right after the lunch bells rings. Typically, if two students have the same facial shape, hair, and other identifying features, the difference may go unobserved.

However, sometimes the differences are noticed, and students may face a consequence.

“Students have been caught before [swapping ID cards]. Both the student using the ID and the person who gave them the ID could face disciplinary action, including having their lunch privilege revoked, parent-guidance intervention, and more serious infrac-

tions could result in suspension,” Assistant Principal of Security and Student Services Brian Moran said in an e-mail interview.

Apart from students leaving the building, there have also been issues surrounding alumni entering the building. Many students find that they can also easily sneak in friends from college or other schools in the city, due to the relaxed security.

For instance, sometimes students sneak their friends from other schools into the building.

“So one time, my friend and I were eating halal, and he told me that he had brought a senior from Brooklyn Tech[nical High School] to Stuy[vesant]. He asked a bunch of students if he could borrow their ID and eventually one of them said, ‘Yes.’ They eventually got the Brooklyn Tech senior into the school and returned the IDs [later],” another anonymous student said.

Many of the alumni entering the school in this manner come in for more innocent purposes.

“For past students, if they were part of an after school club, then they might want to come back and check up on the club to see how they are doing, and catch up with their friends who they don’t get to see [often] anymore,” sophomore Kalvin Chi said.

In one case, another student brought in a friend from college for one of their club meetings.

“In September, we brought in [an alumnus]. He’s now a freshman at NYU, but he still had his Stuy[vesant] ID,” a student said.

“He didn’t get into any trouble, and no one ever found out.”

If these people were to come

in as visitors, they would have come through the main entrance to the security desk, tell the reason for their entry and where they are going, sign the security log, and show some form of identification, all with the possibility of being denied entry. In contrast, Stuyvesant students can enter through the bridge by simply by displaying their ID’s to the security guards as they walk through. Because there is less of a hassle, sneaking in becomes a viable option for visiting alumni.

Although the Stuyvesant building is under high security, as evident by the various signs that indicate that the building is highly monitored with surveillance devices, there may still be the concern of whether it is safe for the students. “I’m sure the students take responsibility for their actions,” SPARK coordinator Angel Colon said. “It’s just a matter of whether they know the consequences of their actions.”

In regards to the question of student safety, sophomore Abraham Yim said: “To be honest, I haven’t really found [significant] faults in the system. And, well, I do feel safe.”

Another reason for which someone might need to enter Stuyvesant is if a student has had his or her phone taken away.

Often, Assistant Principal of Security and Student Services and Assistant Principal of Health and Physical Education Brian Moran permits the re-acquisition of electronics if the student from whom the device was taken away is able to bring in a parent.

For some parents, it is inconvenient to enter Stuyvesant in or-

The events started with a lunch for the volunteers, during which Stuyvesant students were able to speak with iM4U representatives and Malaysian dignitaries. In the middle of the lunch, Razak arrived and greeted the volunteers. Though the volunteers did not get a chance to personally converse with Razak, they described him as very open and approachable. “He was very friendly. People kept asking him to take pictures and he was really happy to,” Chang said.

Sophomore Lorenz Vargas got a similar impression of Razak.

“Here was someone you see on CNN and BBC, and there he was as a normal person who [did not] seem any different from a guy you might see on the street,” Vargas said.

After lunch, volunteers proceeded to the playground to repaint the walls and roof. “Even though it was a really small act for us, it was really heartwarming to feel like we were making a difference,” Chang said.

The volunteers of both Malaysian and non-Malaysian ethnicities found the experience to be extremely rewarding. “Though I am not even Malaysian, I got to see what other Malaysian youths find important enough to dedicate their time to,” senior Jerry Dai said.

Despite limited interaction with Razak himself, senior Andrew Goh was impressed by him.

“Although we did not get a chance to personally speak to the Prime Minister, it was nice to see someone so influential travel across the world to promote community service among his people,” Goh said.

der to retrieve confiscated electronics. “My dad drives a cab, so to get my phone, he has to take a break from work and spend half [an] hour looking for parking,” an anonymous student said. “Then I’m called down from my class, and after, my dad gets the phone.

[He] can’t afford to be away from work that long because, well, you don’t earn that much money from driving a cab in the first place. [O] n top of that, it feels like I’m to blame for it, since he could have spent that hour working and getting some nicer things for us.”

For this reason, some students prefer to bring in other adults. “I know that there have definitely been cases when kids would bring in adults from outside, such as halal food workers or the guy from Terry’s,” an anonymous student said. “They would then pretend to be their parent, get the electronics afterwards, and gain more customer loyalty.”

The man working at the Rafiki’s halal cart refused to give an opinion on the matter.

“I haven’t ever done it before, but I can understand why some kids prefer to bring in ‘fake parents,’” an anonymous student said. “I mean, it’s pretty terrifying to have to go to your real parents after a few bad grades and tell them you lost your cell phone, too. I’d much rather fake my way out of that kind of a situation.”

The personnel that monitor the students scanning in, Principal Jie Zhang, Assistant Principal of Organization Saida Rodriguez Tabone, and Moran all declined to comment on the flaws in the ID system.

Page 4

The Spectator ● October 20 2014

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The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 5

Features The Young Student’s Guide to Stuyvesant Part 2

Girls, and Dangerous Pie,” was written for a student of his whose brother was in a critical state due to cancer. He based the main character off of his student, and did extensive research leading up to his writing in order to ensure that it would be up to his own standards. Drawing inspiration from his childhood, he was able to weave together a book that eventually was supported by Scholastic in 2005. It quickly rose through the ranks, and despite it having been his first novel, it was named on the American Library Association (ALA)’s Teens’ Top Ten list that same year.

“Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie” tells the story of a young boy whose family and community is struck by tragedy when his younger brother contracts leukemia. Despite this, he is still able to pursue his passion as a drummer and makes several influential friends along the way.

Sonnenblick was able to make numerous personal connections to his characters, which helped with both character and plot development. By comparing aspects of the fictional world to his own, he was able to craft a more realistic and thus more emotionally intriguing story.

Like his main character, Steven, Sonnenblick loved to drum in high school. He cultivated this love for drumming by playing in the stage band and SING! and participating in most theatrical productions in his high school career. Along with his musical interests, he co-wrote the scripts for SING! his junior and senior year. The integration of his two favorite hobbies into his writing career was an obvious move for Sonnenblick. He even noted the striking similarities between the subtle backstory of his main character and his own.

During the start of his drumming career, Sonnenblick had been the only freshman in the school stage band. The other drummer, a junior, pushed him around “pretty mercilessly, and a lot of the other members followed suit. It was so bad that they didn’t order [him] a T-shirt for the concert. [They] were supposed to wear dress clothes for the first half, and then come out in T-shirts after the intermission.” However, Sonnenblick soon found out that he was the only member of the band with no matching T-shirt.

While he knew he would look a fool, he decided to perform onstage anyway. “That experience taught me a lot about perseverance; my mom told me years later that she’d never been so proud of me as when I walked out into the lights with my mismatched outfit on,” Sonnenblick said.

Sonnenblick also attributes much of the independence he gained to his commute to and from Stuyvesant every day. He travelled 90 minutes from Staten Island just to arrive at school on time. His commute to school may not have been as difficult as some other students’, but it was difficult enough for him to have to learn to cope on his own. Nevertheless, he claims that it helped him make the decision to travel abroad junior year and join Teach for America after moving to Texas following his graduation from University of Pennsylvania.

After graduating from high school, Sonnenblick knew that he wanted to pursue writing in the future, but the wasn’t entirely sure how it would fit into his career. One of the most influential people he met at Stuyvesant— who instilled Sonnenblick’s self-

By April Miao and Philipp Steinman

Courtesy of Scholastic

Jordan Sonnenblick: Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Words

By Sharon Lin “I feel as though Stuy is where I grew up,” said famed young adult author Jordan Sonnenblick (’87) in an email. As an English major and professional writer, he does not appear to represent the average alumnus from Stuyvesant High School. Nevertheless, Sonnenblick credited his high school years as having had a huge influence on his current career. Not only had he been taught by the renowned author Frank McCourt, but he had also written scripts for school productions, strengthening his passion of expressing himself through words.

He also fondly remembers his days of practical jokes, disastrous dates, jamming with his band, and feverishly doing last-minute studying for exams.

Sonnenblick is best known as an English-teacher-turned-professional-writer, author of several best-selling young adult novels including “Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie,” “Notes from the Midnight Driver,” and “After Ever After.” His books often deal with adolescent emotions, as well as overcoming hardships in life. He drew the majority of his stories from a combination of personal experience and research he gathered throughout the course of his teaching career.

Unlike other students who attended Stuyvesant, Sonnenblick decided to attend to fulfill his own interests. He explained that he had taken the SHSAT in order to surpass a classmate with whom he had a competitive streak. “My smartest friend, B. J. Purow, was taking the test, and I had a pretty competitive relationship with him, so I took it as well. We both got in, and when I found out he was going, I basically felt that I had no choice but to go.” Nevertheless, he immensely enjoyed his time at the school, cultivating his longtime hobbies of music and writing.

Even today, Sonnenblick and many of his best friends at Stuyvesant still keep in touch. “To this day, my best friends are from Stuyvesant,” Sonnenblick said.

Although he commented that the school exemplifies a “sink-orswim” environment, he personally felt like he was able to keep afloat during his stay. Apart from a “couple of disastrous dates” and “romantic missteps” that would eventually become material for his young adult fiction, he genuinely enjoyed the intense workload and research opportunities available to him. Although Stuyvesant is generally known for its profound math and science education, Sonnenblick is one to advocate for the humanities as well. “It sounds trite, but read everything you can get your hands on. I learned to write by reading books and analyzing them,” Sonnenblick said.

For instance, his first and possibly most iconic novel, “Drums,

confidence—was Frank McCourt, author of the Pulitzer prizewinning novel Angela’s Ashes and long-time English teacher at Stuyvesant. Sonnenblick notes how McCourt had tremendously influenced his writing style, as well as impacted his career choices. “He even wrote the jacket blurb for my first book,” Sonnenblick said.

McCourt, however, had an even more profound effect on Sonnenblick than simply providing mentorship. Up until his senior year of high school, Sonnenblick had been a straight-A student, albeit a troublemaker.

He would constantly make jokes throughout class, to the point where a girl he was infatuated with pointed out how irritating he was. It was in McCourt’s class that he both strapped himself down from his troublemaking past and discovered that he had a penchant for writing that extended beyond comedic presentations in front of his class.

McCourt’s yearbook message to Sonnenblick read, “Yes, you’ve got the comic talent. But there’s deeper stuff waiting to come out.

You’re a born writer.” According to Sonnenblick, “The part about ‘deeper stuff waiting to come out’ became the marching orders for [his] entire writing career.”

He ended up winning a creative writing award from McCourt at his graduation, and moving on to the University of Pennsylvania to study English.

However, as stellar a student as he had been in the English department, Sonnenblick admitted that there were several slip-ups in his past as well. For instance, he was not very fond of math and as a result, chose to put less effort into the discipline. In addition, Stuyvesant had begun to pilot a “special honors science pilot program” starting with the class of 1987. Sonnenblick enrolled in the class with little idea of the difficulty he would face to simply pass the class. “The school took the 34 kids with the highest test scores on the entrance exam, and put us all in our own super-intense classes for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and several lab courses. Our Biology teacher freshman year was a woman named Suigene Aukim, who had tremendously high standards,” said Sonnenblick. “I literally never had to study before my first Honors Biology test. I got one of the three lowest grades on that exam, a 73. Ms. Aukim took me and the two other lowest-scoring guys out in the hall and reamed us out until I was in tears. I got a 96 on the next test. Ms. Aukim singlehandedly taught me how to strive, a priceless lesson.” He also noted that the research skills he developed in that class would be undeniably valuable in his later years.

One of the most important aspects of Sonnenblick’s current career is definitely research and exploration. He explained that learning is a constant component of his daily life as a novelist. “My time at Stuy […] played a huge part in shaping my life,” said Sonnenblick. “Some of the topics I have gotten to spend months and months researching are pediatric cancer, Zen Buddhism, photography (both its practice and history), the Woodstock festival, Alzheimer’s disease, and jazz guitar. When you’re getting paid to sit around and jam along to Jimi Hendrix videos, I’d say things are going pretty well in your life,” Sonnenblick said.

15 classes that don’t exist but totally should 1. Cooking For the Young Broke College Student: Training the future you to eat one less Cup Noodle at a time.

2. Sleeping Soundly: A Hands-On Experience. Remember to bring a pillow!

3. The History of Stuyvesant: From Peter, to men in short shorts, to Tribeca.

4. Overcoming Procrastination: A gentle guide to increasing your attention span. Course materials: pen, pencil, War and Peace.

5. Urban Parkour: Getting to the tenth floor, stairs optional.

6. How to Win Friends And Influence Teachers.

7. How to be the Ultimate at Frisbee.

8. Escalator Mechanics. Get popular fast.

9. AP Lunch. We had to do it.

10. Asking Someone Out: A practical course on eye contact, heart rate containment, non-awkward handshakes, and suave segues.

11. Evading School Security Guards or, in other words, How to Become a Stealthy Hallway Ninja.

12. Evading Shady Looking People On the Streets, or, in other words, Don’t Buy that Candy!

13. The Stanky Leg, the Twerk, and Other Dance Moves to Make You Valedictorian of the Dance Floor.

14. Seduction in French (post-AP): Time to put those four years of learning into action.

15. Moonshine, Meth, Munchies: Finally using lab equipment for something productive.

21 thoughts that every Stuy student has had 1. “I’m not good enough.”

2. “I wish I had 36 hours in the day to get things done.”

3. “I love this place.”

4. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

5. “Literally nowhere but at Stuy could this just have happened.”

6. “Why didn’t I go to some other high school?”

7. “I wish I could push these slow walkers out of the way.”

8. “This class is totally pointless, I’m going to forget this material anyway in a month.”

9. “All my non-Stuy friends are having fun and enjoying their lives and I’m just sitting here studying.”

10. “Some teachers deserve a prize for their enthusiasm.”

11. “Some teachers just need to be fired already.”

12. “It’s 3 in the morning; why am I still studying?”

13. “Why are the escalators never working?”

14. “Homeroom is such a waste of time.”

15. “All our teachers must have wickedly planned for all our tests to be on the same week.”

16. “Why are we always starting some kind of protest?”

17. “Oh, I know that girl over there. Definitely. Probably sat next to her in math some semester. Okay, she’s walking towards me. Why can I remember calculus but not people’s names? It started with an C, I’m pretty sure. Hold on, does she even know who I am? Will it be awkward if I initiate the ‘hey’s? Oh, God. Look down, look down. Yes, AP Chem homework, very interesting, very difficult.

Okay, she’s passed. Phew. Where am I even going?”

18. *In Class* “I can totally be doing next class’s homework right now.”

19. *In Class* “I can totally be starting tomorrow’s homework right now.”

20. “Private-school kids with school uniforms have it so easy. Who likes sifting through their wardrobe at 6AM?” 21.“Wow, jeez. Man. What—how did you even manage to—OK, I’m just gonna find another bathroom.”

8 hilarious college essay ideas you should totally not submit to Harvard 1. “Zen and the Art of Escalator Maintenance”: “Old Bertha is broken again. I sigh, don my apron, open her up, and descend to help her out. Soon I am covered in grease, but as I turn that wrench, ever so gently, I know this is where I’m happiest. And when I’ve fixed her all right and she’s purrin’ like a cat on a radiator I smile and ride her up to the sixth floor.”

2. “Why did I Ever Come To Stuyvesant?” or, “Stuyvesant and Other Mistakes in My Life” 3. “Lose Yourself in Your DBQ” : “My palms were sweaty, my knees weak and arms were heavy. There were eraser marks on my Scantron already, mom’s spaghetti. I was nervous, but on the surface I looked calm and ready to drop outside information, but I kept on forgettin’: What came after Mao, When did Louis lose the crown, I open my mouth but my friend won’t help me out, I’m hyperventilating, how? Everybody’s hyperventilating now, The clock’s run out, the proctor says time’s over, bloah!”

4. “The Spice In My Life”: “There is a food cart that is central to my identity and without which my application, and also my morning routine, would be incomplete. Halal Food by name, it occupies a lovely spot in front of BMCC and in my heart.”

5. “I’m Only Applying Here Because BMCC Won’t Take Me: A Story of My Struggle to Get Into BMCC” 6. “The Futurist Manifesto”: “The future will be great, I thought one pensive November evening. We will have machines of unthinkable might, capable of curing our diseases and guessing our every desire. They will also be able to do our homework for us. It certainly seems a waste to exert such an effort now on math. In triumphant celebration of this bright future to come I swiveled my chair back to my computer screen and started watching the next episode of Sword Art Online.”

7. “Don’t Send My Kid to the Ivy League”: “This is Brian’s mom. I got his Common App password and am sending this plea to you: This cannot go on. He’s been up all night cramming for the SATs. He’s taking six APs. You guys are driving him crazy, and I can’t see my son so stressed. For his sake and for mine, reject him. Please.”

8. “Reasons Why You Should Not Accept Me”: “(In other words, my parents are making me apply here.)”

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 6

Features The Makings of TEDxStuy continued from page 1

The event began at 11:00 a.m. with a recorded TED video, which was prefaced by Osipov saying, “This is what we hope our event won’t become.” In the video, which lightened the mood and drew a number of laughs from the audience, a speaker stumbled upon technical errors seconds after beginning his TED talk. As the mysterious sounds his computer made morphed into an electronic music song, his TED talk became a spontaneous dance performance in which dancers dressed in costumes that mimicked a Mac’s loading icon took over the stage.

Though this introductory video was incorporated into the event to lighten the mood, some of the staff members in charge of TEDx were concerned that the event would be plagued by similar technological difficulties.

(They did not, however, worry about the possibility of a flash mob.) Before the event began, senior Mika Sarkin Jain confessed to being worried that the big windows in the library would allow in too much sunlight and the television screen would be obscured by glare.

Osipov was not particularly apprehensive about technological difficulties, but had other concerns when asked before the event began. “Some speakers didn’t really practice with us so we don’t really know how well they’re going to speak, how well they’re going to captivate the audience. Also since we have so many speakers, I mean, I myself would get bored watching speaker after speaker go on,” he explained.

Despite worries all around,

the event ran smoothly. The only hitch in the day was the fact that lunch arrived half an hour late.

The audience was captivated by a range of speakers who approached the overarching TED theme differently.

One speaker, Farooq Zafar (’07) delivered a personal account of surviving suicide and offered a unique interpretation of the phrase “yolo.” He even dramatized his point that “time is the only non-renewable resource,” by cutting his original speech, which was 18 minutes, to three and a half. When asked how he hopes attendees’ views will change after hearing him speak, he said, “I’m hoping we can reclaim a semi-academic sentiment to the phrase ‘yolo.’ I think it’s an overused cliché and a subject of pop culture.

But I think the deeper meaning behind it is quite profound.”

Another popular speaker was Awkwafina, a female Asian-American rapper. In her presentation, she gave a lighthearted speech on a profound topic that kept the audience laughing while contemplating her words. Awkwafina explained how she reconciled her father’s expectations with her own life goals; at one point she mentioned that a rapper was the last thing her father wanted her to be besides a prostitute or stripper. She also spoke about how it is okay to be one of the middling sorts, as she was neither an outstanding student nor a trumpet prodigy at LaGuardia, where she attended high school.

Though, to the disappointment of many, she did not rap at the end of her talk, her speech was well regarded by the audience. During the fifteen-minute break following her presentation Awkwafina was surrounded by attendees, with some request-

The Young Student’s Guide to Stuyvesant Part 2 continued from page 6

19 things about Stuy to appreciate 1. We have the privilege of going outside for lunch, compared to many other schools who don’t get to.

2. Our school is located in Manhattan, surrounded by towering skyscrapers, a twenty-minute subway ride away from Chinatown, the 9/11 Memorial, and the High Line.

3. We have one of the best computer science programs in the city.

4. We have some of the brightest, most interesting teachers to teach us every day.

5. We are surrounded by a friendly environment of intellectual students who are driven by hard work.

6. We almost never have to deal with in-school violence or bullying due to our atmosphere of mutual respect (or absorption with school work—either way it’s peaceful).

7. Although we have academic prestige, we also have brawn, as demonstrated by our many top ranking PSAL teams.

8. Through every window there is a great view of the Hudson River and the surrounding neighborhood, filled with lush parks and glistening skyscrapers.

9. We have escalators (enough said).

10. There is a sense of accomplishment and pride when tell other non-Stuy peers that you go to “Stuyvesant High School.”

11. When you swipe in to school on your birthday, a little jingle plays and you get a candy of your choosing.

12. You go to a school that’s old enough to have sepia photos and World War II placards adorning the halls.

13. You have such an excellent selection of classes that it’s easy to forget that sometimes that some schools only have a few AP classes, if any.

14. Your school has enough prestige and enviability to be the object of widespread fury in the newspapers whenever a petty cheating scandal occurs.

15. You have learned to appreciate intellect—being called a “nerd” is not considered an insult at Stuy, but rather a compliment.

16. You have not just one but two delis available for lunch whose names rhyme with “berries.”

17. Given that you carry half a polar bear up five flights of stairs every period, you probably have quadriceps above the national average. Probably.

18. The people are so interesting that there’s a “Humans of Stuy” page dedicated to interviewing them.

19. Stuyvesant has alumni of a calibre few other schools can match, which means optimistic prospects for your own future (and of course ample funding for clubs).

ing photographs and others asking questions about anything from what her yearly income is (“enough to pay my rent”) to when the last time she had a formal job was. “I like[d] how she was talking about how even though you’re not a straight-A student or a musical prodigy or anything there is a middle ground, because most of us are in that middle ground,” junior Caitlin Stanton said.

It was Awkwafina’s presence, in fact, that convinced some of the Bronx Science students in attendance to come to TEDx. “A couple of my friends over there heard that Awkwafina is coming so they got really excited and I think that’s what drew them in,” said Tehani Gunaratna, a junior at Bronx Science. Gunaratna, however, simply decided to attend because she wanted to hear TED talks live.

The diversity of the topics presented in the five-hour span did not disappoint viewers. Coupled with Awkwafina’s lighthearted delivery were speakers such as mathematician John Conway, investigative journalist Dana Priest, and Niloy Jagar Iqbal (‘09).

Iqbal, who is currently an MD/PhD student, spoke about an approach of studying science in which one does not form a hypothesis before experimenting, but rather, observes what is going on around oneself and then draws conclusions. He cited an example in which he claimed that giving an elementary school student a potato and asking him/ her to come back in two weeks with some discovery about the potato was much more valuable that asking a student to follow the rigid structure of writing a hypothesis, executing an experiment, and presenting their findings at a science fair. Though his

ideas seemed to diverge from the theme of TEDxStuyvesantHS, many appreciated Iqbal’s sentiment. “I like science in general so I thought it was interesting how he had a different take on it, a different perspective from what we usually hear,” junior Emily Redler said.

Beyond the accomplished speakers, three pre-recorded TED videos were shown throughout the day. In addition to the aforementioned “worst case-scenario” recording, one TED talk was by Hans and Ola Rosling about the way media skews information. In their video, the Roslings asked the audience three multiple-choice questions, one being “how did the deaths per year from natural disasters change in the last century?” The three answer choices were: remained the same, more than doubled, and decreased to less than half. After compiling the responses and discovering that more chimpanzees, through guessing randomly, would have gotten more correct answers than the audience did, Hans Rosling explained that these widely held misconceptions are a product of the media distorting the truth.

This distortion gives viewers the impression that big issues in the world are getting worse, while in reality they are getting better (the answer was decreased to less than half).

Amidst the videos and famous speakers, three current students at Stuyvesant presented. One was senior Frankie Li, who spoke about his parents’ lack of support for his passion for slam poetry.

His talk culminated in a chilling recitation of a poem he wrote.

While performing, Li’s jitteriness and apparent nervousness gave way to an air of confidence as he completely immersed himself in

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the poem. When asked why he chose to perform this specific poem, he said that this piece “really just gets to the root of [him], of who [he is].”

His talk was very emotional, and many attendees left with thoughts whirling around their heads. Senior Radhika Kaicker said that his speech, coupled with the numerous cups of coffee she drank earlier that morning, “set her off the edge.” Gunaratna agreed; she said, “My friend over there, Elaine, was a crying a little bit ... It was really great.”

The other two students were seniors Mohammed Islam and Franco Caputo. Islam, who brought an entourage of investors with him, spoke about his career as an investment banker and why his losses had been more valuable than his gains (experience-wise, not monetarily). Caputo infused anecdotes about family reunions and his experience in elementary school into his speech about life as a male feminist.

After Caputo’s talk ended and the staff members wrapped up the event with “thank yous” to all, attendees and speakers filed out of the library and headed towards the food tables for cake.

Meanwhile, the students behind TEDx stayed in the library to catch their breaths and start to put the room back together.

Many were relieved the event went smoothly, and others were already recruiting attendees to lead the next TEDxStuyvesantHS event. “I can’t say it was amazing, but a lot of things didn’t go wrong that could have gone wrong,” Opsipov said. He promptly took off to join the throngs of attendees and speakers surrounding the dessert table and discussing the multitude of ideas presented that day.

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

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Page 7

Page 8

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Features

A Stuyvesant junior rushes into a sixth floor English room, her teacher excitedly scribbling onto the board the day’s aim.

Nothing seems unusual as she takes her seat and reaches into her bookbag for a novel. Upon closer inspection, however, one comes to realize that this isn’t any typical mainstream novel, and this isn’t just a regular English class. The student isn’t reading boring, old classics with long SAT worthy words—instead, she is focused on recent ghost stories and adventures by acclaimed female authors. In another classroom, a student works frantically as he attempts to do lifesaving CPR. Except he’s not saving a person; he’s trying to save a doll. If you’ve ever fantasized about the opportunity to step out as a hero and save someone’s life, or wondered what it was like to be an average American with an image of changing the world, then Stuyvesant’s two newest classes will teach you to excel in both these areas.

The first new class, AP English: Defining American Voices, taught by English teacher Maura Dwyer, is a class that interchanges between classical works that define American literature, to other less known works that respond to these classics. An alternative to the AP American Studies class, this one will focus on what it really means to be an American author. The second class, CPR and First Aid Training, taught by health teacher Zhi Yuan Fang, will include content on how to respond to many types of emergencies involving people of all ages, as well as preventing disease transmission, injury management, and how to manage a healthy lifestyle. This class will teach people how to act in times of emergencies, and will grant you the glorious knowledge of how to save a life.

Finding America’s Voice One Book at a Time Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and other famous authors and writers may be familiar names to many of Stuyvesant’s students that have taken an Advanced Placement (AP) English Language class during their junior year. Their stories and writings mirror the ideas and themes found throughout America’s history and are quintessential to any English course in America. However, for Dwyer there’s more to

what defines the literary voice of America than what she considers the literature of “old white men.”

That belief led to and inspired the creation of the new AP class, Defining American Voices.

Unlike most English classes that focus on reading the classics of American literature, Dwyer focuses her class on the less prominent writers. “The idea behind the class is sort of going back and forth through the works that are in the canon,” Dwyer explained.

“So things like the Crucible [by Arthur Miller] and stuff like that.”

These books are taught by Dwyer in order to prepare her class for the AP exam. “Then also the responses to works that are inside the canon. Things that may not be considered a classic, but are sort of responses to the ideas that are presented by the classics.”

From reading the writings of typically underrepresented groups in American history, Dwyer hopes that her class can get a better understanding of the ideals that exist in American literature. “I am trying to mix it up and hear from more women and minorities who also contribute to the notion.”

“I am trying to mix it up and hear from more women and from more minorities who also contribute to the notion.” —Maura Dwyer, English teacher

With this idea, Dwyer formed a curriculum of books that are radically different compared to the usual books sampled in English classes. During the fall semester of the class, she hopes to sample both classic ghost stories from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe. Along with these classic ghost stories, she plans to have her class read more contemporary ghost stories from female

authors like Kelly Link and Karen Russell.

In the spring semester, in addition to other novels, she hopes to teach one of her favorite plays the Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman. The play tells the true story of a town in the aftermath of a violent homophobic hate crime and includes an astonishing 120 characters. She enthusiastically explained how it was her favorite play because “there are so many different people in it… It seems impossible, but by the end of the play you have a clear sense of the perpetrators, the families, the people who thought this was okay, and the people who didn’t think it was okay. It’s a really interesting portrait of a town in the aftermath of a tragedy.” This play, along with many others, is a prized choice of Dwyer’s because of her love for the stories and how they contribute to an American identity.

Luckily, coming up with ideas for books to teach was easy for Dwyer because she had already pictured some of her favorite picks. According to Dwyer, she was able to teach the class as a replacement to former AP American Studies. In short, AMSTUD was a humanities-style curriculum that linked two AP courses: American literature and history.

This was taught by english teacher Hugh Francis and history teacher Victor Greez. However, because of the low demand for the class, Grossman asked Dwyer to come up with a new curriculum.

Although the curriculum for the class has been going well for Dwyer, she’s still somewhat uncertain about the future of her class. “I have ideas of where I want to go, and I am really happy that I like all the students that I have, and that they’re on for the ride with me, but I am creating it from nothing,” she said.

Nevertheless, she’s hopeful that the class will continue making progress and gradually grasp the “whole notion of what it means to be an American, what is the American voice specifically in literature. Also inhabit and think about the experiences that are perhaps different from our own and consider other viewpoints or experiences that you may not think about.”

A New Chance to Save a Life For most people, when they think of a hero, they imagine Superman and Batman. An image comes to their mind of these superheroes saving a damsel in distress from an evil villain. How-

Derrick Lui / The Spectator

By Kachun Leung, Andrea Ma, and Stella Ma

CPR Dolls and Little Known Writers: A Look at Stuy’s Newest Classes

Ms. Dwyer helps a student read a funny minutes gift.

ever, other people may imagine a heroic, but normal looking person who rushes to the rescue of a person in need in a moments notice. Who is this person and who is the villain they’re fighting against? Well, any regular Joe from the streets of New York with knowledge of CPR can be a hero, while the villain we’re talking about here is the obscured yet deadly condition of heart disease.

CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is an emergency procedure commonly done when someone has just undergone a heart attack or any incidence where their breathing or heartbeat suddenly stops. It is also the focus of one of Stuyvesant’s newest classes, CPR and First Aid Training. “With something like heart disease, it’s very important to know how to respond to this,” Fang said. The class also covers various units devoted to studying responses to drowning, choking, burns, poisoning, severe bleeding, and other emergencies.

However, CPR classes aren’t something new to Stuyvesant.

The Stuyvesant Red Cross Club has been offering after school lessons for some time now. Yet, the classes offered by Red Cross are shorter in length, being only four sessions long. Although this difference exists, the material and teaching methods of both classes are relatively similar.

Despite these similarities, Fang hopes that her class can add to the number of Stuyvesant students who are certified to perform CPR. “[CPR] is important, and sometimes students may not be able to go after school because of clubs or sport teams. This allows for people to be able to learn the skill during the school day,” Fang said. Furthermore, unlike the two week classes taught by Stuyvesant’s Red Cross club, Fang’s class

goes into greater depth because of the amount of time they have.

This longer stretch of time is what allows for Fang to be able to teach more than CPR and basic first aid skills to her students.

Fang also noted that the Health and Physical Education Department had wanted to create such a class for some time already. “Some other school’s health department may offer a CPR class, and we thought why can’t Stuyvesant also be able to do this?” Although the idea of this class was accepted, there was still one problem that stood in the way of creating the class earlier.

According to Fang, she had to be certified to teach the course before she could actually start teaching students and certifying them.

Once Fang had been certified, she began to prepare for the class, which is heavily based off of the curriculum created by the Red Cross. Typical classroom periods will also involve a lecture in the first half of the period before watching a video clip or setting up the class and mannequins in order to practice the skills they have learned. Equipment such as the mannequins that are used in the class may also be shared with Stuyvesant Red Cross’s CPR class.

Occasionally, Fang hopes to perform simulations which will act as tests for the students. These simulations will be conducted randomly and may include scenarios like a snake bite in which Fang will then ask students to respond to this emergency.

Fang has admitted that, as the year progresses, she hopes everything would be ready a lot quicker for her to teach. Ultimately, she hopes that her class will expand from being just one section to multiple classes, allowing for her to certify a bigger portion of the student body in the future.

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The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 9

Features The Mother Duck’s Story Meet Catherine McRoy-Mendell: money-handling extraordinaire and mother to several hundred ducklings. For the past three years, McRoy-Mendell has taught AP Macroeconomics, AP Microeconomics, and Economics at Stuyvesant. As a teacher who feels responsible for the welfare of her students, McRoy-Mendell often sees herself as a mama duck and her students as “duckies.”

Her motto, “I’ll put you under my wings, and guide you along the econ way,” illustrates her warm and effective approach to teaching.

Every mama duck, however, must stumble and learn from her mistakes before becoming capable of helping others. McRoyMendell shared her tale of her journey from a duckie to a mama duck with The Spectator, detailing the ups and downs in her life as well as the beliefs that drove her to where she is today.

It all began when her parents decided to emigrate to the U.S. from Poland a year before she was born. They settled down in the small city of Norwalk, Connecticut, where McRoy-Mendell spent most of her childhood and teenage years. She did gymnastics to “channel [her] boundless energy” and especially loved playing the flute, which she started learning in fourth grade.

The flute, however, was not the instrument McRoy-Mendell intended to play—her initial choice was the clarinet. But because she never succeeded in getting the reed to buzz, she picked up the flute. Mcroy-Mendell ended up playing it for the next ten years and regularly entered competitions and recitals. In high school, McRoy-Mendell participated in a marching band that traveled all over the Northeast for competitions. When asked how good she was, McRoy-Mendell said she was ranked fourth in the state in 2001.

“But it was Connecticut,” she added humbly.

But as high school drew to a close, McRoy-Mendell struggled to decide what to focus on in col-

lege. While she enjoyed the flute, she didn’t believe it would bring her the stable career that she desired, and frankly she did not like performing in public. “I actually had really bad stage fright in high school,” she admitted. And so, with no idea of what to do with her future, McRoy-Mendell turned to business. Her decision to study business was not influenced by anybody or anything in particular. “I just asked myself, ‘What is a practical degree and something that I’m interested in?’” McRoyMendell said. “And I was like, business is something that I’m interested in, so I could learn how to run my own business and if not, then I can work for another business.”

In the end, McRoy-Mendell decided to attend McGill University. Located in Montreal, Quebec, McGill was known for its strong music and business courses. It was an unexpected choice. For six years, McRoy-Mendell had learned Spanish in school, so she was surprised to find herself applying to a school full of French Canadians.

In addition, her friends felt that the school was too far away. Fortunately, the professors at McGill taught in English, and to her friends, McRoy-Mendell argued, “It’s still closer than LA.” To this day, McRoy does not regret attending McGill (to this day, she also cannot speak French).

She found the experience eyeopening, mostly because of the change that came with living in such a big city compared to homey Norwalk. The school forced her to grow up by demanding that she be independent. “I remember visiting McGill, and that after [the] first year, you have to move out of the dorms and go find your own place,” McRoy-Mendell recounted.

“I remember being just so scared as a seventeen-year-old.” Nevertheless, McRoy-Mendell was determined to stay at McGill and as a result matured very quickly. She stopped taking flute lessons in her second year when it became impossible for her to juggle the flute with her management classes.

As planned, McRoy-Mendell put her business degree to good

use; it was not long after graduating that McRoy-Mendell began to work in a bank on Wall Street, where her job focused on compensation. This means that her role was to distribute the base salaries and bonuses among the workers. Her job was important because the amount of base or bonus given to an employee could motivate that person to continue working or make them disgruntled enough to leave.

Ironically, McRoy-Mendell, the person in charge of motivating employees to stay, ended up resigning from the bank four years later. Though her job at Wall Street paid well (all her college loans were paid back within around a year), the stress was too much for her to handle. “Once I got into it, I learned that’s what I thought I wanted and then you kind of grow up as a person. Your priorities change sometimes. I was realizing I just wasn’t enjoying it,” McRoyMendell reflected. Her work called for a minimum of ten hours of labor every day and demanded high accuracy under a short time crunch. During end of the year evaluations that took place in the fall, she never knew when she would arrive home. “Thanksgiving always sucked,” McRoy-Mendell remarked. She decided that enough was enough—the mama duck was leaving.

Though disappointed that Wall Street did not work out, McRoyMendell rebounded quickly and decided to chase a new passion: teaching. “I had always liked the idea,” she said. “Even when I was at my firm, I was a mentor … to onboarding members, I would [teach] the ropes of trade.” Going further back a step, she was a teacher’s assistant who taught fellow undergraduates at McGill.

Once sure of her decision, McRoyMendell decided to attend Columbia’s Teacher’s College to get a teaching degree.

It was there that she was introduced to Stuyvesant for the first time; part of her curriculum involved working at another school as a student teacher. McRoy-Mendell worked under the guidance of social studies teachers Jennifer

Suri, Josina Dunkel, and now-retired economics teacher Clarissa Bushman. While teaching under their wings, she found herself falling in love with the students at Stuyvesant. Despite her desire to work at Stuyvesant immediately after finishing Teacher’s College, McRoy-Mendell was not hired because the administration did not have any open positions for her.

Instead, she was a substitute teacher at charter schools for approximately a year, reinforcing the skills she acquired from her time student teaching. “The Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn sometimes,” she described her adventures. “Yeah, I was all over, geez. That’s the thing with substitute teaching: you find out maybe the night before where you’re going the next day and it could be anywhere.” Throughout this whole time, McRoy-Mendell stayed in touch with Suri, hoping that a position in the social studies department would open up. When Bushman retired, McRoy-Mendell was immediately contacted for the job, bringing her to the position that she stands in today.

And so ended McRoy-Mendell’s years as a duckie. Since then, she has been very happy as a teacher at Stuyvesant. McRoyMendell fills the room with her eccentric personality and upbeat attitude. The rhythm of the class is

fast-paced but optimistic, as she welcomes students to ask questions and make mistakes. “I (insert name here) hereby promise I will not hate Ms. McRoy-Mendell for her booboo,” she had students pledge when she made a mistake in her work.

McRoy-Mendell still remembers the imbalance of her work and social life in her Wall Street years and tries to apply this experience in her classrooms. “Every weekend, part of their homework assignment is to go do something for themselves. At first they think, ‘Oh, she’s so full of it’… And then they get surprised when every Monday I ask them, ‘What did you do for yourself this weekend?’ Just this morning I cautioned them with, ‘You can either tell me two to four sentences about what you did do yourself this weekend or you can write me a two page paper on why you didn’t do anything for yourself this weekend,’” McRoyMendell said. She soon returned to the lesson’s topic, now applying the knowledge she gained through studying at McGill and working on Wall Street itself.

As we grow older, it is usually deemed unfitting to end stories with the confirmation of a “happily ever after,” but in the case of McRoy-Mendell, it can’t hurt to wish her and her students a “quackily ever after.”

Jan Li / The Spectator

By Alice Cheng

Ms. McRoy-Mendell instructs her students, whom she calls “duckies”, on the intricacies of calculating GDP.

Dr. Ned: Cultivating a Love for Science

Stephanie Chan / The Spectator

playing with, but the rules governing those were very different in the ‘30s and ‘40s. So my father lived near a chemical supply store and was able to buy stuff like nitrogen-based explosives, and he made waxes in his mother’s kitchen. I don’t know how he survived that, but he did all these things based on stuff he learned from school. He viewed Stuyvesant as an intellectually rich environment. He knew it was sanctuary like I did, and he spoke of it very fondly.

Dr. Maria Nedwidek-Moore speaks about her journey from being a Stuyvesant student, to a Stuyvesant teacher.

By Geena Jung and Kachun Leung Stuyvesant biology teacher and alumna Maria Nedwidek-Moore (‘88) talks to The Spectator about her influences in life, her memories of being a Stuyvesant student and the importance of being an educator.

What memory stands out the most to you from your time at Stuyvesant as a student?

Well, it was before I even started school here: the entrance exam.

I was scared out of my mind, as was common. I was 13, my father took me, and it was raining. I had to go to the bathroom, and I didn’t know where the bathrooms were.

I didn’t even know I could go to the bathroom. My former biology teacher, Mrs. Bierig, was also my exam proctor. When she stopped the class at the end of the test and told us to put our pencils down, I didn’t put my pencil down, so she screamed at me to stop. I was petrified out of my mind. She and I later became close friends when I started working here!

You mentioned that your father went to Stuyvesant; was he the reason you wanted to come here?

My father (’46) learned certain things in Stuyvesant about highly dangerous chemicals that would react and explode. They were things children shouldn’t be

Did you have a favorite teacher?

My freshman year English teacher. Her name was Lynne Evans.

She taught me formal grammar, she was patient, she was positive, and she did a lot of positive reinforcement. The class was at the end of the day during my freshman year in my first term. I don’t know if you remember how tired you were freshman year, but the end of the day is not your best moment. It felt good to end with her every day.

Did she ever impact the way you teach?

She had a really positive attitude on the class. I might not always have that type of attitude.

Sometimes I get annoyed, but remembering that she never really seemed to show that she was annoyed and that she always seemed to be in a positive mood was something that I found comforting.

What made you want to go into biology?

I was in middle school, and I went to Louis Armstrong Middle School. My second year there I had a chemistry sequence with Ms. Daly. She realized I liked science, and this was when I realized science was something I was good at. She told me she wanted to mentor me after school, so regularly I would meet with her and do special projects. She was the first person that taught me how to use a microscope properly; she taught me how to do dissections. It was my interaction with her that taught me science was fun. So that’s when I got that this wasn’t just something that I liked, but something that I can do and that I might be good at.

How do you think Stuyvesant has changed from when you were a student to now?

When I was here, we were all about colleges, but it wasn’t as competitive as now. Now, the kids are all doing early decisions, and if they don’t get into the school they want, their worlds fall apart.

In my time, we applied regular decision and waited until we got into a bunch of places. Also, I took two APs in Stuy, AP Bio and Calculus BC in my senior year.

That’s it! Now, sophomores are taking AP classes, and may have up to 10 APs under their belt by graduation.

If you were an animal, which one would you be and why?

A blue-fronted amazon parrot.

If I had my choice, I would be a tropical bird capable of meaningful speech with longevity. They live so long because they can communicate well, which allows them to escape predation, and they have superior logic. Plus, birds can fly. That’s insanely cool from a mechanical perspective; I wouldn’t need a plane ticket.

If you weren’t a teacher, what do you think your profession would be?

If I had my way and I could get in to see Obama, I would sit down and say, “Hey! These are the things I want to do. Give me the money and an office. These are the things I see that work, these are the things I see that don’t work. We need to cultivate a love for science and math, and develop as many creative minds as we can. We’re already good, but it could be so much more amazing. Don’t just throw money at the problems; use the money to make things available and develop these amazing minds because once they get turned off to science and math at a critical age, there’s no getting it back.”

These are the things that I want to see happen. I don’t know if I can accomplish them, but they’re things to think about.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Page 10

The Spectator â—? October 20, 2014

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The Spectator â—? October 20, 2014

Page 11

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The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 12

Editorials Staff Editorial

Stuy’s Feminist Culture The “F” word. Some of us love it, some of us hate it—but none of us can avoid it, or more so, the message behind it.

When Emma Watson announced her “HeForShe” campaign (intended to involve men in the discussion of feminism) at the United Nations this September, feminism filled the news, the radio, and probably your Facebook wall. Before we go any further, it’s important to lay down what this movement really is. Feminism is defined as nothing more than the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities, and the “HeForShe” campaign is working to promote it in order to end gender inequality in all senses.

So we can just say it.

Feminism.

Feminism is defined as the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.

The “HeForShe” campaign aims to establish the key role that men play within the feminist movement, and establishing that equality can be achieved only through the cooperation of all the genders (not simply those included in the gender binary). Watson’s campaign has been sparking national discussion about the feminism movement, but “HeForShe” is only one example of the increased attention to feminism.

This September, for example, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden worked with a number of organizations to launch the “It’s On Us” campaign, which specifically focuses on rallying American citizens to raise awareness of and end sexual assault. Adding to this feminist spotlight is the recent announcement of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, 17 years old, for her activism in female education.

Despite all of the recent headlines, it is important to note that feminism is always relevant, and will continue to remain pertinent until gender equality issues are resolved.

Sexism is a societal phenomenon, and we cannot pretend that Stuyvesant is fundamentally different from the outside world. Actively speaking out for feminism is actively speaking out in favor of equality for all people, regardless of their biological sex or gender identity. Our rhetoric shapes our reality—without the necessary discourse, the Stuyvesant community cannot maintain the welcoming, unprejudiced environment we strive to uphold.

Although we Stuyvesant students may be more open-mind-

ed than some, students still face sexism on a regular basis, from the previously imposed dress code (did you notice many boys being reprimanded?) and “slut shaming” to off-hand “make me a sandwich” jokes. While some clubs, such as StuyFem and GLASS, have been formed as safe havens for those facing discrimination based on gender or gender identity, it is rare that a victim of gender discrimination speaks out. Sexism is so ingrained into our daily lives that it is often difficult to identify, and even harder to speak out against. Because so much sexist behavior is widely accepted, it is not easy to muster the courage to approach a faculty member, and it is possibly even more difficult to approach the topic with friends.

In order to change this pervading sexist attitude, the simplest (yet possibly most important) way you can fight for feminism is by keeping sexist comments and slurs out of your vocabulary. Calling another person a slut is not okay, because it allows sexuality to become the basis for personal judgment. In addition to monitoring your own dialogue, if your friend or classmate makes a sexist comment, you can respectfully explain to them why it is offensive. Raising awareness of the issues that are present today is the first step to changing the culture surrounding gender roles.

Even more important, and also telling about the gender equality problem at Stuyvesant, is the gender breakdown of certain classes offered. Although Stuyvesant is identified as a math and science school and certainly boasts a rigorous curriculum in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) education, the school faces similar problems to the rest of the country: there is a lack of female representation in advanced levels of left-brained subjects. In an Opinions article titled “Wanted: Girls in Science” by Nalanda Sharadjaya published last year, a study was conducted to determine the gender breakdown in different classes at Stuyvesant. The statistics were jarring. In classes such as Multivariate Calculus, girls only made up 25.32 percent of the population. In AP Computer Science, 27.27 percent of students were female.

More advanced electives such as Systems Level Programming

had only eight female students last year. Furthermore, electives such as Senior Intel Research and Robotics were 100 percent male-dominated.

This statistics bring to light a glaring problem integrated within Stuyvesant: the subconscious stereotype that girls are more oriented toward the humanities and boys are more inclined toward the math and sciences. Although this is certainly not true, the Stuyvesant community must be more active in debunking this myth.

Not only should teachers foster a growing encouragement for girls to take these STEM classes, but students should create a supportive environment for girls interested in pursuing the math and science fields. The lack of female representation is not because girls can’t handle these rigorous classes. Rather, many female students who wish to take these often maledominated courses may often be intimidated by being one of the few girls in a classroom, or may hesitate to take these courses because of a sexist stigma surrounding them.

Actively speaking out for feminism is actively speaking out in favor of equality for all people, despite their biological sex or gender identity.

Stuyvesant is not immune to the feminist issues that have dominated national interest, and it is important that the student body realizes that. It is a misconception that feminism stands for an aggressive anti-men campaign, and this has given the ‘F’ word a harsh, negative connotation. Labeling yourself as a feminist simply means that you believe in equal rights for men and women—something that we should agree on.

Although Stuyvesant is identified as a math and science school, and certainly boasts a rigorous curriculum in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) education, the school faces similar problems to the rest of the country: there is a lack of female representation in more advanced levels of left-brained subjects.

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Page 13

Opinions ANECDOTES Our staff editorial posits that girls at Stuyvesant experience sexism on a regular basis, sometimes overtly but often subtly. Below are several students’ personal experiences with gender inequality both inside and outside of school, as well as their opinions regarding the controversial topic of feminism.

By Samia Sidquii Marginalized groups, such as the transgender community, often deal with issues that transcend the scope of traditional, mainstream feminism. This makes it difficult for many transgender women to find their place in a movement that is led primarily by cisgender women (those who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth).

While a major issue for cisgender women is the wage gap, job discrimination against transgender women is legal. Solving the issue of violence against women is also considered a feminist priority, especially for the LGBTQ community. But a study from The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects found that while transgender women account for 1 percent of the total LGBTQ population, 50 percent of LGBTQ homicide victims in 2009 were transgender women.

As a general trend, transgender women are affected by mainstream feminist issues disproportionally, and often face obstacles that cisgender women do not. This is unacceptable. Women in the feminist movement should be supportive of the problems transgender women face. While these issues may impact only a small population of women, they should be given the same importance as mainstream issues.

I sit down on the crosstown bus, 7 a.m. sunshine slowly seeping into my scrunched-up eyes, bleary with sleep. The bus rocks back and forth lulling me into sleep.

Bored, I look around the bus. I notice the Asian boy who goes uptown dozing off, and the old lady, who also goes uptown, sitting calmly in the back. Everyone is where he or she is supposed to be, the average and generic bus ride.

But it’s not. A NYC government poster beams down on me, the large letters searing themselves into my mind: “I’M A GIRL. I’M BEAUTIFUL THE WAY I AM” I can’t believe my eyes. Two girls, Hispanic maybe, whisper into each other’s ears, giggling. The contrast of the blue-sky backdrop and the neon pink letters sickens me.

I do some research. Apparently our city government deemed these posters necessary for girls in grades 7-12, with the nyc.gov website stating that “New York City is launching a self-esteem initiative to help girls believe their value comes from their character, skills, and attributes – not appearances.”

This is just adding kindling to an already exploding bonfire.

This campaign attempts to curb societal expectations for girls that often lead to low self-esteem and low body image. But the notion that girls need this sort of emotional support emphasizes that girls are weak, and that without the all-mighty NYC government helping, girls would wallow in self-pity. It’s degrading. The poster is further ingraining into society’s mind the supposed inferiority of women, and the concept that women need something to rely on. It’s not fixing the problem. It’s fueling it.

Are there posters on buses saying, “I am a boy, I am beautiful the way I am”? No. So why is there a need for girls to have these posters? We don’t need to be reminded or convinced that we are “a leader, adventurous, outgoing, sporty, unique, smart, and strong.” We know what we are.

Nearly two years have passed since the truly horrific events which took place on a bus in Delhi, India, in December of 2012, when a student in her young twenties was brutally attacked and gang-raped by six men. The (quite literally) gory details spread like wildfire, and many major news outlets, even western ones, covered the story closely.

The victim, who died thirteen days after the incident, was twenty-three. At the time, I was thirteen.

I was horrified by what I read and heard about, unable to fathom what it would be like to endure that kind of torture, and even less able to understand what could possess a person—let alone six—to commit those acts against someone else. Even more shocking was the fact that many Indians cited, for example, the lack of an appropriate dress code for women to adhere to as the reason (some went so far as to call it the justification) for acts like this being committed

As difficult as it was to come to terms with the fact that something like this could actually have taken place and with the kinds of reactions I was seeing from some people, I was uplifted by the sheer number of Indian women—young, old, and everyone in-between—who came out in droves to protest. College students objected to the lack of safety for women on their own campuses.

Women’s rights groups and prominent female lawyers worked to enact laws that would impose harsher punishments for rapists and hopefully reduce sexual violence in the long term.

Maybe you could call it a rite of passage: my mother had taught it to me, and now reluctantly, I was to teach it to my sister: When you walk home in the dark, always keep your keys between your fingers with your fist clenched. Just in case. Just in case.

The problem is that we don’t do it because we’re afraid of an “if,” we’re afraid of a “when.”

I taught my sister how to construct her own makeshift housekey weapon the summer before her first year in middle school.

She had come home from the park around 2 p.m. and she didn’t want to go back because a man had made inappropriate comments about her body. She was 11.

The worst part is that I wasn’t even surprised.

“All right, boys come over here for free weights and chin-ups. Girls, over there for hula hoops and jump rope.”

Hula hoops?

It was freshman year in Physical Education, and I glanced around hesitantly at my girl friends. “This is so BS,” one of them said. “Why just the boys?” But we all shuffled over to the far side of the gymnasium, and picked up our hula hoops with disgust.

It took me a few classes until I walked up to the teacher and prodded, “Why can’t I do chin-ups? Why is it just the boys? I can do chin-ups. I’m just as strong as they are.”

Flustered, he stammered something about the safety of the girls, but ultimately found himself cornered.

“All right, do a chin-up. But first hang from the bar for 10 seconds so I know you won’t fall.” Fall? Pshaw.

But the bar was foreign to me; I realized that never had a Physical Education teacher, nor sports coach, asked me to do a pull up, ever. I followed his instructions, managed one pull up, but naively locked my elbows and found myself unable to do another. I dropped to the floor and walked away silently.

“Good effort!” he called after me.

The 2/3 train is always packed at 7:23 in the morning. If you don’t want to seem like a terrible person, you take off your backpack and hold it among people’s legs, so that there’s more space in the packed car. But ever since halfway through freshman year, I’ve tried to keep my bag on as much as possible. In fact, I try to avoid the massive amounts of people by leaving for school early, at around 7:00, even though my commute is only thirty minutes.

It’s not claustrophobia or anything, but instead it’s how adult men press up against women, no, 14 year old girls, for their sexual pleasure.

I was a freshman, on my way to school, leaving pretty late. I squeezed onto the train, the doors shut, and I was happy to have made it on. But thirty seconds into the ride I noticed a man was much closer to me than he should have been. I tried to shift away, but he pulled me back. The next stop, he ran off. It wasn’t until days later that I realized that something had actually happened, that it wasn’t just my imagination.

Why is this allowed to happen? I understand that the few men who do this don’t represent the norm, but the fact that some men feel that they have the freedom to violate someone’s personal space and use them without their permission as a sexual object is ridiculous. If a woman were to attempt anything similar, she would immediately be called out and deemed crazy. But women are scared to speak up; what if the man has a knife or a gun, or can otherwise overpower her, or what if no one believes her?

I shouldn’t be scared of being 15 minutes early to school instead of 30. These fears shouldn’t play a role in my day-to-day life.

I shouldn’t have to be hyper aware of every movement. That’s why I need feminism.

Feminism is a concept I became formally introduced to through debate; before that we were simply acquaintances. I had no reason to be a feminist until freshman year began and I went to my first tournament.

Midway through the first day, I walked into a round with the belief that I had befriended my opponent (male), that this round would be light hearted between two novices attempting to gain debating experience. Only after I ended my speech with a confident grin plastered across my face did I realize that this idea of simply being “friendly” meant nothing to him; his way of explaining why I lost this round was that my “loud, whining voice” couldn’t possibly convince the judge (male) of anything I had stated.

His speech went on to criticize the way I spoke and got to the point where he blatantly stated “she should just walk out the room and quit debate.” Oh, if I had a penny for each time I was told that there were ‘problems’ with my presence during a round, I would be able to buy a pizza bagel! Of course, he won.

The adaptations I took after that to be confident, but not too confident, loud, but not too loud, perceptually dominant, but not too perceptually dominant, astonish me. I entered each subsequent round with a list of things to remember on how to act.

Then one day I woke up. The question I asked myself was very clear: “Do men try this hard to be accepted? To be equal?”

Why is the best female debater in Lincoln Douglas only ranked #18?

I need feminism so that my female novices will not have the same experience I did. So that they are never called a bitch. Or whiny. Or # 18. So that they are #1, loud, perceptually dominant, and confident.

In the fall semester of my junior year, I had weight training for one of the marking periods. As I stood waiting for one of the machines to free up, a male student working out on a machine next to me began to laugh, and I could feel as he stared at me waiting for my turn. Then, to my utter shock, he said to me, “I can feel you absorbing the calories that I am burning. I hear your boyfriend doesn’t like fat girls.”

First of all, it is appalling to me that any boy in our community feels that he has the right to call a female student fat, or any other derogatory word. Secondly, it shows a strong sexist flaw at our school, and in our society as a whole, that my body is judged by whether or not my boyfriend, or other boys, like my figure. I don’t live for my boyfriend or any other boys just because of my gender. I live for myself.

To the average man or woman, the reason why we need feminism might seem obvious: we need equality between the sexes so that both men and women can do what they please, despite gender roles and such. However, I would like to address a more specific reason on why I personally need feminism. In today’s society, rape is still acceptable, and female consent often seen as optional.

When most people think of rape, they think of a creepy man who hunts out his prey, usually on women “asking for it.” But young women, such as myself, know of a different tale—a partner or a boyfriend, even a trusted friend, who tries to push the physical boundaries to an uncomfortable limit. Now, as I walk the streets I don’t fear the atypical serial rapist. I fear the boy next to me on the couch at the party I’m at whose name I barely remember; who might not necessarily know that “no” means to immediately stop whatever you’re doing. I need feminism because this is still an issue; ask many girls if they’ve been sexually harassed or had consent forced on them, the number of yeses will definitely surprise you.

I need feminism because of what happened on a summer night not too long ago. I have always regarded myself as a stark feminist but have never really experienced something that would push me even farther to the cause. It was a late night, and I was at a secluded park with one of my guy friends who called me to hang out. The night before, he tried to make a move on me, which I easily rejected, and he seemed to take it in stride. Everything seemed fine, and I assumed that since I had spoken up previously we were cool, and I had nothing to worry about. I wasn’t alarmed at the fact that we were alone; the thought didn’t even cross my mind. However, things started to take a turn for the worse when he started touching me without my permission. I started saying “no” both verbally and physically, but things continued to get rougher until eventually I was able to fight my way out of the situation. Luckily, I ran into a close friend who was able to calm my hysterical crying and reminded me I was safe with her. I was, and still am in shock that such a thing could happen, even to me.

I need feminism because I hope that my daughter never has to go through the things that my mother and I have faced, along with countless other women. I need feminism so that next time I’m in the park with a boy, I won’t have to worry about not being in control of the situation.

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 14

Opinions

By Ioana Solomon It’s been three hours. The black Nokia phone burns against your ear, and the stack of papers in front of you seems just as thick as when you began. Your eyes drift from name to name as your fingers dial number after number and check “Not Home” or “Call Back” or “Not Interested” time and time again.

After the 100th voice messaging system pierces through your wandering thoughts, you begin to question why it’s even worth it.

If you’ve worked on a campaign during your Stuyvesant

career, this scenario should be pretty familiar. After countless call summaries with five percent success rates, you realize you’re wasting your time. You endure only to get a banal letter of recommendation and the right to list a wonderful internship title on your college application.

But the reason your internship seems so plain, the reason you aren’t able to “change people’s minds,” “make history,” or whatever other catchphrase your supervisors use, is closely related to the reason you’re there in the first place: an ultra-utilitarian mentality that is far too ingrained in today’s society. Voter outreach offers you certain benefits: outside experience, community service hours, and something supposedly meaningful to list on your college application. But for the Americans you spend hours trying to reach, the act of voting is no longer “beneficial” enough to justify the expense of their time. At the individual level, it seems harmless to ignore local elections, to opt in for an extra half-hour of sleep, to care more about your perpetually beeping cell phone than about which old white politician represents you. At the national level, this mentality has dire consequences.

Humanity’s Vice: Facebook

By Zachary Ginsberg

Alisa Su / The Spectator

Facebook is the world’s most popular social media site, and its benefits to society are largely undeniable; I have gotten a lot out of the easy-to-access communication Facebook provides. However, Facebook’s detrimental flipside is often overlooked. The fact of the matter is that when you use Facebook to the point of nearly replacing person-to-person contact, you lose empathy for other people.

When you interact in person with others, it is easy to understand that they are people who have complex emotions and multi-faceted personalities because you can hear them, see them, and touch them. Unfortunately, this fundamental aspect of human interaction is lost when you use Facebook to communicate. An emotionally active face is replaced by a cold screen with a newsfeed of data. What could be a pleasant conversation turns into an unemotional, brief exchange.

The result is that it becomes harder to believe that there is really a person on the other end of the line. The person who you are communicating with becomes an abstract idea instead of a person, making it much more difficult to feel for the person and resulting in decreased empathy.

An example of this decrease in empathy is cyber bullying. Many cyber bullies post hateful comments on Facebook, but wouldn’t think of saying those same remarks in person. This dichotomy exists because the recipients of the bullying seem less human over Facebook than in person.

Advocates of Facebook often say that the benefits of quick and easy communication, like coordinating school projects, outweigh the negative aspects. However,

this beneficial type of usage is so scarcely utilized that it doesn’t offset the loss of compassion. Even these beneficial uses of Facebook contribute to a loss of empathy, making people seem less concrete by erecting an electronic wall between them.

Furthermore, Facebook eliminates human communication altogether. First, Facebook deters people from making the effort to talk to each other in person because they feel like Facebook is enough. I have been witness to people meeting in person but looking at Facebook on their phones at the same time. Once Facebook becomes the only way people know how to communicate, it will destroy communication completely. Looking at Facebook is the scanning of data, not the reception of ideas. Posting on Facebook is uploading data with a prewritten template, not making a statement. So, even though people think that Facebook makes communication easier and more accessible, it makes communication meaningless.

Normally, societal problems like the ones outlined here are solved with convincing rhetoric, the formation of awareness groups, lobbying, etc. However, nowadays protests and awareness groups are all formed on Facebook, and creating an anti-Facebook Facebook group is not only contradictory, but also an inhibitor to the cause.

What we need to do to reverse the damage is revive older methods of communication before they are gone completely. Maybe I could try to write more articles about this, or maybe others could protest or form an awareness group, but we’re more likely to be found scanning an Internet webpage instead.

But before you begin to mumble expletives in association with the 20-, 30-, even 40-year-olds not answering your campaign phone calls, read on. The problem is systemic. Low voter turnout is in part due to the frustration of political minorities in swing states where gerrymandering, the manipulation of district boundaries to benefit one party over the other, is rampant. The congressional redistricting following the 2010 census left minority voters entirely unmotivated to show up at the polls and vote for candidates who were almost certain to lose.

Combine outdated redistricting rules, cutthroat political interests, and higher stakes than ever before and you get computer programs with a larger influence on election outcomes than actual votes.

It’s no wonder we have states like Oklahoma in which a 10 percent voter turnout represents a record high.

And if all this seems inconsequential, look at the 2010 Tea Party turnout spike, the result of motivated old white men rushing to the polls while everyone else could barely remember the date of Election Day. As long as gratitude for freedom and fear of misrepresentation aren’t good enough rea-

sons to get young, middle-class Americans down to poll stations, we’ll continue to have organized interest groups who can offer better incentives representing three or four percent of the electorate in Congress.

Statistics speak. A nonpartisan survey of voter rolls released on July 21 noted that 15 of the 25 states that have held statewide primary elections reported record-low voter turnouts. Despite billions of dollars in campaign spending, the Center for the Study of the American Electorate reports that only 18 million of the 123 million eligible voters have cast ballots in primaries.

Consequences are expected to materialize in the 2014 midterm elections. Republicans are merely six seats short of controlling the Senate, and not much stands in their way. Add to that the historical tendency of the president’s party to lose seats in midterm elections.

Brown University researcher Brian Knight posits the idea of a “presidential penalty” — midterm voters tend to use their ballots to express their dissatisfaction with the president’s performance and ensure that his party doesn’t control all levels of government. Since 1842, Knight notes that the Presi-

dent’s party has lost seats in 40 out of 43 midterms. If the trend continues this November, Democrats seem almost certain to lose seats in both House and Senate. A New York Times statistical electionforecasting model gives the G.O.P a 63 percent chance of gaining a majority in both houses.

Take what you know. Republicans will almost certainly control the House. Democrats already have the White House. Now imagine an entirely Republican-controlled Congress against a Democratic executive. With our heavily polarized political climate—the two parties disagreeing on almost every issue (healthcare, immigration, inequality, same-sex marriage, etc.)—it’s hard to imagine a very active government during the next two years.

You expect a solution? Good.

Go home, make your parents some coffee, and sit down for a talk. Take them by their hand to the voter booths if that’s what it takes. Our government may be dysfunctional, but it doesn’t have to be unrepresentative. What’s stopping equal distribution of votes by age or race is you taking a five-minute walk to your voting booth on Election Day.

Life after Girls Who Code

By Caitlin Stanton Technology is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. Our streets are filled with people’s thumbs flying across their touch screens, ears covered by bulky headphones, and pockets bursting with the newest technology. Our lives revolve around the technology that we utilize daily. The problem is, the population that produces it is far from representative of its user base.

The population that produces technology is far from representative of its user base.

Think about it: Bill Gates and Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Apple, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, Jack Dorsey and Twitter, David Karp and Tumblr; the list goes on and on. They’re all male. Despite the fact that women actually use technology more frequently than men, only about one in four computer science jobs is held by a woman, and although the computer science industry is growing rapidly, female participation is declining (between 2000 and 2012 there was a 64 percent decline in women majoring in CS). This is even evident at our own school; in my AP Computer Science class, only about one in three students is female.

The problem is clear if we take a trip to Game Stop, where the walls are covered in games for every console, shelves bursting with Call of Duty, Super Mario Brothers, and Legend of Zelda.

Check out the small section of ‘girl games’ in the corner like Cooking Mama and NintenDogs, which focus on fields that are naturally associated with the female gender: cooking, sewing, and other mundane activities.

I was a huge fan of Intro to Computer Science, so I was al-

ways going to be a strong member of the 33 percent representation in AP. In March, I signed up for Girls Who Code, a computer science program for high school girls. The fact that there was a computer science program exclusively for girls showed me how dire the gender gap in technology is.

I expected a typical computer science class, where teachers would give us monotone lectures and the girls would absent-mindedly doodle in their notebooks out of sheer boredom. I expected it to be a waste of time, seven fruitless weeks stolen from my precious summer.

Boy, was I wrong.

In Intro, we spent our class time listening to lectures about loops and conditionals, and our nights writing code to make our turtles draw squares or solve equations. The languages in which we coded were simply mechanisms to introduce coding concepts.

Girls Who Code took a completely different approach. They made us teach ourselves. They gave us the basics and let us take the reins from there. For example, when we were learning how to code dances in Python, they gave us robots on which to test our code. After learning basic functions in JavaScript, we were told to make a functional 2048 game. Following a short lecture on HTML and CSS, we each made our own websites. Even though we had just learned these new languages, we were pushed to use what we knew (and more, thanks to Google) to make amazing projects.

Girls Who Code taught us how to create in languages that are used at every company, in every app, inside every website, giving us a wide range of possibilities.

No longer would someone have to download the NetLogo software to run my game of Fruit Ninja; now I could just run my website in Google Chrome. This new knowledge provided us with infinite possibilities.

I have also befriended a group of girls who will always be there for me, and I’ll always be there for them. We fostered a special bond while programming our projects, pitching at hackathons, and meeting up outside of the class.

Throughout the summer, I was constantly surrounded by a group of girls who supported me, joined me on the coding #strugglebus, and believed in a future where being a girl in computer science isn’t

Sabrina Chan / The Spectator

Stephanie Chen / The Spectator

The Cost of Voter Apathy

such a big deal.

I am urging you now: if you are a high school girl, google Girls Who Code. Back in 2012, the program consisted of 20 girls at one location. Now, in 2014, Girls Who Code has locations at companies such as Intuit, Facebook, AppNexus, and Intel. What will it be like in another five years? This program has already opened many doors for me, teaching me skills that I will need in the future: how to write a resume, how to toot your own horn (respectfully), how to introduce yourself, and how to shake someone’s hand. When I introduce myself as a candidate for an internship, people are impressed by my knowledge of computer science and my eagerness to continue my education. I have other girls to join me on this journey into the technology industry, and I now have the knowledge to spread this opportunity to others.

But what happens if you can’t apply for Girls Who Code? What about the students whose schools don’t teach them computer science? What about the people who can’t afford laptops and coding equipment? That shouldn’t stop anybody.

We live in a rapidly-changing world in which technology is becoming a bigger and bigger part of our daily lives. Shutting out half the population based on gender norms is ridiculous. Female perspectives are necessary to build the next generation of smartphones, social media platforms, and energy sources.

Look at me: at the end of June, I was another high school student who was able to think logically and use the right NetLogo functions. Now, I’m a coder. I don’t know everything, but I will never stop exploring and learning, and neither should anybody else.

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 15

Opinions

In your time at Stuyvesant, you have most definitely heard, been described as, or described another person as a Twinkie, a banana, or an egg. If you don’t already know the meanings of these terms (which, considering their prevalence, isn’t very likely), I’ll fill you in. A person who is of Asian descent, but acts as if they are Caucasian, can be described as a “Twinkie” or a “banana.” (In the most simple and grotesque terms—yellow on the outside,

“My thousands of years of Chinese heritage are discounted to be a mere banana peel.”

Alisa Su / The Spectator

Most of the time, these metaphors are not said in a serious manner—they’re just there to giggle and joke about. But even if you throw around these words without any particular malicious intent, you still shouldn’t do it. Don’t participate in the propagation of oversimplified and damaging stereotypes. The scope of our mannerisms is much too vast to fit in a little aluminum can or alongside Hostess cupcakes on a supermarket shelf. Do everyone a favor, and don’t think of or refer to people in terms of food; think of and refer to people as people—the complex individuals that we all are.

By Daniel Kodsi A few days into François Hollande’s term in office, a Facebook friend of mine posted to my wall a picture of France’s new president trying to check the time on his watch. Only trying, because the face of the watch was on the inside of Hollande’s wrist. “Cet homme dirigera le pays comment?” she wrote. “This man is going to run the country, how?” Poorly, it turns out.

First, the numbers: France’s unemployment hovers over 10 percent, the highest it has been since the turn of the century, and the International Monetary Fund predicts France’s gross domestic product will grow but 0.4 percent in 2014 and one percent in 2015.

Meanwhile, the other developed world economies continue to recover from the nadirs reached in 2008 and 2009: the United States and United Kingdom, especially, have seen growing economies and falling unemployment rates.

This divergence begs the question: what can France do to end its stagnation?

Importantly, the answer is not “more austerity!” as the powers in Brussels demand. In “Pain Without Gain,” published in May of last year, I argued that imposing fiscal stringency on the Eurozone’s ‘sick’ nations was akin to draining patients of their blood. With much of the intellectual backing for austerity having unraveled with Reinhart-Rogoff, the facts seem only to have borne out that conclusion in full. Further driving the nail into austerity’s coffin, Lawrence Summers pointed out in the Washington Post on May 4 that Britain’s strong performance—which

By Sharon Lin The people of Yulin, China, a rural village bordering Inner Mongolia, have been raised on the sustenance of one important animal.

Granted, it is not the sole basis of their diet, but it holds a special cultural meaning to them. Unfortunately, they have been scorned and shunned by international animal rights organizations, humane societies, and even their own government for their consumption of this meat, despite the lack of evidence supporting the opposing side. They do not wish to relinquish this tradition, but the alternative is worldwide cultural opposition.

That important animal is the dog.

Of course, the initial reaction for most people when they hear about dog consumption is disgust.

Some have said that dogs are bred for companionship, and that by eating dogs, we are essentially eating our friends. The logic of this argument doesn’t quite hold—if cows had been bred as companions early on, would we have stopped eating cows? Probably not, given the sustenance provided by cows and their sheer practicality as livestock. Even if this wasn’t the case, and we did stop consuming cows, who says we would not have begun consuming dogs as a result? There is nothing intrinsically special about the dog. The only factor preventing the widespread consumption of dog meat is social taboos, and these social taboos originate from cultural prejudice.

Just think of the first words that come to mind when you hear of dog meat. Barbaric. Cruel. Uncivilized. Brutal. These are the words we, as western civilization, have been using to describe our fellow people halfway across the globe for centuries. It’s this very same thought process that brings us to believe that consuming dog meat is wrong. The only thing preventing us from consuming it is the fear of being judged by society.

It doesn’t even stop there. Societal taboos encompass issues

Philip Shin / The Spectator

these silly reasons, my thousands of years of Chinese heritage are discounted to be a mere banana peel. At a school like Stuyvesant, where students belong to a variety of ethnicities, it is important for us not to get too wrapped up in superficial clichés. Stereotypes may affect how teachers look at their students or manifest themselves in how different groups of friends or cliques are formed. We need to realize that race does not correspond to a selection of personality traits, and we should embrace our cultural backgrounds and make our own decisions as to how our backgrounds affect our world views and actions.

as varied as women in STEM, gay marriage, and religious education.

The problem with taboos is that they are empirically a standardization of one demographic’s viewpoints forced upon others, who are often oblivious to the issue at hand. Anyone who opposes this status quo is deemed as a maverick or else as a threat to the welfare of the majority. For instance, the people of Yulin are viewed as barbaric beasts who consume the flesh of beloved animals, ignorant to the social norms respected by the rest of the world. Hardly anyone takes into account that perhaps it is not the people of Yulin, but those of the rest of the world, who should re-evaluate their beliefs.

The act of questioning others who do not follow social norms is not the problem—conflict arises when we fail to listen to what they have to say. Coming up with conclusions without knowing all of the facts, and spiting others because their customs are different and foreign does not allow us to solve any problems. Imposing our beliefs upon others, who may be unaware of the fact that what they believe is “wrong,” only lends itself to more conflict. Sometimes, just taking a step back and rethinking our beliefs can allow us to see the bigger picture.

Alisa Su / The Spectator

By Danielle Eisenman

white on the inside.) On the other hand, someone who is, for example, Caucasian, but is good at math and exclusively talks to Asian kids, is an “egg.”

Food-related racial metaphors are becoming more widespread than ever. Not only are we literally equating people to inanimate objects, we are also failing to acknowledge racial history behind this everyday behavior.

At Stuyvesant, where students are obsessed with race, I hear these words being thrown around with alarming frequency, and I sometimes wonder whether people are talking about their peers or drawing up shopping lists. Our assumption that skin tone dictates its own narrow set of character traits is silly. The nonexistent link between race and personality is reinforced every time we don’t bother to understand people different from ourselves. Racial stereotypes are so ingrained in society that it’s difficult for some to see past them.

A friend once told me that I could never be considered Asian at school because of my wardrobe and my enthusiasm about humanities; I am simply too fond of history class and writing for fun.

I also never took up learning to play the piano or the violin. For

Let Them Eat Dog

France, Please Make a Change many have used to vindicate austerity programs—actually “refutes austerity advocates and confirms Keynes’s warning about the dangers of indiscriminate budget-cutting in the midst of a downturn.”

As Summers explained, Britain’s success has only come as a product of the depth of the hole it had been in and the lessening of austerity measures, not the reverse.

The fact that France has been unable to reach the budget deficit goal of three percent set by the European Commission, however, is emblematic of greater, underlying obstacles. While France would be harmed by extreme short-term budget cuts, it needs to implement considerable structural change: namely, reducing its overall tax rate, promoting business-friendly initiatives, and examining the waste generated by its unwieldy welfare state. As the Economist remarked on October 4, “[France’s] budget has not been balanced for 40 years, and public spending takes 57% of GDP—far the highest in the euro zone.” Yes, the French are able to enjoy a high standard of life: five weeks of vacation, a free education system, universal health care; but given rising public debt and waning innovation, such a system cannot be sustained forever. To prevent catastrophe for the next generation, France must modernize—and quickly—to be competitive in the 21st century global economy.

Luckily, the government has taken steps in the right direction under its new Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, a fierce pragmatist, and its new Minister of Economy, Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker. Mr. Valls, who has previously accused France’s So-

cialist Party (to which he belongs) of “not adapt[ing] its thinking to a changing world,” has taken every opportunity to reconcile the massively unpopular Hollande administration (Mr. Hollande’s approval rating, at 13 percent, is lower than that of the United States Congress) with the business sector. It is now time for gestures to give way to actual legislation.

First, France’s tax code needs an overhaul. As the Economist reported in January, “At over 45% of GDP, France’s tax take stands with Belgium’s as the highest in the euro zone.” While such a rate would be unimaginable in the United States, it is now too high even for the French. Perhaps worst of all, it has risen for not just the rich, but for most of the country over the last two years—the French middle class has been pushed to its limit. Lifting the onus of high taxes would go a long way towards reinvigorating sluggish investment in the private sector.

Second, as Mr. Macron has attempted to do, it is imperative that the country works with labor and union leaders to loosen entrenched government regulations that have made France one of the least accommodating Western countries to business. Markedly, France ranks 38th in the World Bank’s ‘Ease of doing business index,’ far below the United States (fourth) or the United Kingdom (tenth). France stands much to gain; according to a 2011 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study, “an ambitious reform easing regulations in services would increase GDP by about 5% over a 10-year period.” Given the potential of French markets, the only thing

keeping companies away from France is France itself.

Finally, France must spend more efficiently on its vast welfare programs. The cradle-to-grave support offered by the government is a staple of French society, and it has had great success: France is one of the few rich-world countries not to have grown more unequal over the past 25 years.

However, the government has become bloated. In its March 2013 Economic Survey of France, the OECD laid out a series of feasible reforms. Key proposals included a systematic review of existing and proposed spending items, such as subsidies to business; adjustments to the pension system—for example, changing that public sector employees receive a higher pension than private sector ones; merging smaller municipalities (the average French locality has 1,800 inhabitants, fewer than the average of 5,500 in the rest of the European Union); and finding ways, like only reimbursing the cost of generic drugs, to drive down health care costs. There is no excuse for not adopting these suggestions; the country’s straits are too dire for political posturing and apprehension.

Moreover, France’s problems extend beyond its economy. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s xenophobic, anti-semitic National Front has seen growing popularity for herself and her party, and continues to hold her own with former president Nicolas Sarkozy, and Mr. Hollande in polls for the 2017 national election. This success bodes poorly for the European project as a whole—the National Front’s dangerous Euroskepticism (which has been seen across the far-right

Stepahnie Chan / The Spectator

Jessica Wu / The Spectator

I Am Not a Banana!

of Europe’s political spectrum) threatens to put yet more daylight between France and Germany.

Without a firm Franco-German alliance, there is a real risk that the Euro will not hold, especially if plans continue to go forward for Catalonian independence.

Even so, there is light at the end of the tunnel—reforms, though certainly not easy, are possible, and with falling unemployment will come falling support for fringe parties on both sides of France’s political spectrum. And of course, not all is ill for France. As Paul Krugman noted on August 27, the country, which won its 15th Nobel Prize for Literature and its third for Economics in the last couple weeks, faces a core inflation rate of less than one percent and its longterm interest rate reached an alltime low of just 1.35 percent last month. In 1994, Newsweek’s cover proclaimed “The Fading Glory of France”—today’s headlines say the same. They are no more grounded now than they were then.

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 16

Centennial Special Then and Now: Surveying the Student Body The 2014 data for the “Political and Social Issues” section represents represents responses from 455 students out of 1000 who were emailed the survey at random. The 2014 data for the “Student Life at School” section was taken from the school-wide survey published in The Spectator in January 2014. The data for years prior to 2014 was taken directly from surveys published in old issues of The Spectator.

Political and Social Issues Should marijuana be legalized?

Are you pro-choice?

1989

2014 No

No Opinion

8%

No

16%

27%

Yes

16%

No Opinion

Yes

30%

Yes

Yes

73%

No

92%

1998

33%

Do you have a close friend who is lesbian or gay?

1998

2014

2%

38%

No

68%

Do you disapprove of homosexuality?

No Opinion

2014

1989

2014

No Opinion Yes 6% 8%

Yes

28%

No

57%

No

Yes

39%

Yes

43%

No

61%

No

70%

86%

Would you vote if you were 18?

2014

1997

What is your political party?

Other

1997

Other

4%

2014

2%

Unsure No

10%

Unsure

8%

22%

None

None

28%

No 7%

Yes

82%

38%

Democrat

No

Democrat

42%

7%

47%

Yes

71%

Independent 10%

Republican 17%

Independent 9%

Republican 5%

The Spectator â&#x2014;? October 20, 2014

Page 17

Centennial Special Student Life at School Racial Demographics 90

Percent of Student Population

80 70 60 50 Then and Now

40 30 20 10 0 1970

1975

1980

1985 White

1990 Asian

1995

2000

Black

2005

2010

Hispanic

Then and Now

Have you ever cut a class at Stuyvesant?

1976

On average, how much time do you spend on homework every night?

2014

1987

2014

0-1 hours 7%

No

> 2 hours

30%

0-1 hours

33%

Yes

No

48%

1-2 hours

36%

22%

Yes

52%

> 2 hours

70%

70%

1-2 hours 31%

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 18

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

A shady Halal food cart was recently renamed Fafiqi’s.

By Johnathan Rafailov with additional reporting by Wasif Zaman On September 4, 2014, an increasingly popular halal cart among Stuyvesant students of-

ficially changed its name to “Fafiqi’s.” The change, enacted by owner and investor in the cart, senior Mohammed Islam, aims to make it more competitive with its cross-street rival: Rafiqi’s.

“People can barely tell the differ-

ence between Ferry’s and Terry’s.

According to our cost-benefit analysis, that same marketing strategy can help us increase our assets and consumer confidence greatly,” Islam said.

It is reported that Fafiqi’s has also formed an alliance with the widely known deli Ferry’s to combat the mainstream practice of having an actual name. “Who even needs one?” Fafiqi’s headchef Farooq Azad said.

Ferry’s cashier Ana Cruz had a similar mindset. “If Kanye had no name before he started rapping, then we can too,” Cruz said.

The two facilities have also begun featuring popular ingredients and products from one another’s menus. Ferry’s now serves all their sandwiches with pita bread, and a turkey bacon vertical rotisserie now resides next to the lamb rotisserie in Fafiqi’s.

Ferry’s has also completely eliminated ketchup as a side and has begun using white sauce as an alternative. “Having more white

Student Finds That His Life is Pathetic

By Nathan Mannes At the beginning of the school year, Economics teacher Victor Greez assigned his annual résumé project to students, in which they must construct their own résumés and business cards. Sadly, many students found this project difficult to complete.

“For the résumé, I needed to have a section that included prior work experience. But I don’t have any. That job at Bain Capital is too elusive. It’s ridiculous. I have three children to support and a fourth one is on its way. I can’t do this for much longer,” senior Eric Chen said.

Many students felt the same way as Chen, but Greez said, “I don’t do this because it’s helpful, let me be clear. I do this because the things that get submitted to me are absolutely hilarious. If I got a dollar for every student who put ‘is proficient in computer

programming’ because he/she took Intro to Computer Science, then I wouldn’t have to have this job.”

Two days before the assignment was due, Chen found himself questioning his life choices.

“I haven’t ever had a real job, or done anything with my life, for that matter. I haven’t done anything with my life except study and cry myself to sleep night after night when hospitals don’t email me back with job offers. All we do in that Future Doctors Club is eat potato chips.”

Usually, students do not have to worry too much about writing résumés until they get to college, but Greez forces his students to learn about how harsh, demanding, and, quite frankly, unfriendly all workplace atmospheres are.

Though most colleges don’t worry about their students getting work experience until at least sophomore year, that has not stopped

Stuyvesant students from worrying.

“I really can’t do this anymore,” Chen said. “I’ve been emailing Bill Gates every single day for the past four goddamn years trying to get a job. I even tried emailing him the résumé that I did for class, but he still won’t email me back. How many fake clubs and charities does a guy have to start to get a job?”

A few weeks later, Chen revealed how he broke through his writers block. “I didn’t actually pass my CPR class, but I wrote that I’m certified anyway. As long as nobody actually chokes, I’ll get away with that. I also think I can write that I know how to code.

That impresses old people, right?

Anyway, if I just put everything in a big font and include my contact information in an even bigger font at the top I think that will be enough,” Chen said.

many times he needs to help the same student learn the same verb.

Also, on occasion, when I call on him to answer a question, he’ll say, “Sorry, Teach, I have no idea what we’re doing right now.” This answer is much more productive than those the students who pretend to know what we’re doing come up with while looking through their textbook to catch up.

Kevin is also one of the most creative students I’ve ever taught.

I’ve never heard so many different excuses in my life as to why a student didn’t have his homework. “I was busted for possession, and I had to spend all night at the precinct, so I wasn’t able to do my homework,” “My daughter was sick, so I had to take care of her,” and “Honestly, I didn’t feel like it, Teach,” are some of the most ingenious excuses I have heard in my 120 some-odd years as a teacher.

When Kevin does turn in his homework, it tends to be of superb quality. And, while having the exact same answers to the math problems as some other classmates might suggest plagiarism, Kevin gives credit where credit is due. He is always quick to

point out which classmate he has taken his answers from. I consider this practice to be “academic honesty” rather than academic dishonesty, because if all students were like Kevin, spotting plagiarism would be so much easier.

Last but not least, Kevin has helped me introduce a new testing practice into my classes. He used to fill in every bubble on the Scantron when taking a test, and, once graded, erase all the incorrect answers and then show me the grading errors. Amazingly, once those errors were corrected, he always got a 100. This led me to ask students to slash their answers in pen, in the hope of reducing grading errors. When Kevin heard about this, I could have sworn I heard him mumble, “Thank God for erasable pen.”

What a solutions-oriented kid!

Kevin would certainly be a great addition to any school.

Please accept him and help him avoid becoming a super-super senior.

Leaked College Recommendation Letter

By Laszlo Sandler

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing this letter on behalf of Kevin Lee. Having had him in my Spanish class for three semesters, I can personally attest to his character. Kevin is a very friendly and outgoing person. Every morning, he greets me with a “Bonjour, comment ça va?” Not many of my students take the time to speak in the language they’re learning when they don’t have to.

Kevin also shows that he has superior self-restraint capabilities. He manages to limit the Imaginaçãos that he writes on his desk to three a day, and I’ve only seen him draw one or two male body parts during the entirety of this semester.

Kevin is also an honest student who is helpful to others.

Sometimes when we are doing class work, I think I hear him talking with another student, saying something like “God, this class makes me want to kill myself,” but when I ask him, he explains to me that he was just helping his friend. “Teach, I was just helping him conjugate the verb ‘matar’,” he says, although I question how

Sincerely, Michael Waxman Teacher, Stuyvesant High School

liquids in my life is always good,” sophomore Tobias Lange said.

The new changes surrounding Fafiqi’s have been praised by many Stuyvesant students. “I can’t even tell difference between the two anymore. Good job on Fafiqi’s part,” colorblind junior Neil Meepagala said.

Junior Joydeep Baidya was especially ecstatic about the new additions to the menu at Ferry’s.

“Popcorn chicken over rice with chipotle sauce is so good. I finally understand why Mexico has an embassy in Bangladesh.” Baidya also mentioned a strange phenomenon that occurred when he first bought lunch from the cart; the new food reminded him so much of Ferry’s that he was even tempted to kneel down and steal a drink from the bottom of the cart. “But then I remembered a can of soda came free with a meal,” Baidya said.

Inevitably, the changes have also been met with scorn by some.

Political, social, environmental,

and economical activist junior Aidan Fitzgerald reportedly organized a march through Facebook with the moving slogan “End Copyright Infringement!” referring to the similarities between the carts’ names. Approximately 400,000 people showed up — but with a cause much different than Fitzgerald’s intended one. Apparently, the new hot sauce used

by Fafiqi’s caused a large climate change in peoples’ mouths and sparked an outcry. The march ran from the United Nations down to the intersection of Chambers Street and Greenwich Street.

Although the generic gray of Fafiqi’s cart is not as visually appealing as the royal red color and enticing smiley faces of Rafiqi’s cart, Fafiqi’s new name and authentic cuisine will likely make it the new face of halal in Tribeca.

“Hell, if our progress continues, we might be able to expand and share our joint with many others,” said Islam, definitely not referring to marijuana.

Boys’ Bowling Team Renamed Stuyvesant Ebowlas, Wins All Matches By Forfeit

By Daniel Goynatsky and Adam DeHovitz The Stuyvesant boys’ bowling team was distressed after finding out that they were one of the only PSAL teams in the school to not have an official name. “Even my bowling ball has a name, why doesn’t the team have one?” said senior David Yao as he meticulously polished Martha’s spherical body.

“Without an official name, a team doesn’t have an identity; it doesn’t have an image; it doesn’t have a purpose,” said a tearful Di Wu, coach of the team.

It was announced last week that the bowling team was to be named the Ebowlas. “We could’ve been named the Lady Lobsters, so at least that didn’t happen,” said senior Jonathan Li, who secretly wanted to be a Lady Lobster.

Not only did this name change reflect a new identity for the team, but it also represented a shift in strategy.

“After a third straight match where we guttered every bowl, we realized that we needed to think outside, well kind of inside, but also outside, the alley,” Li said. Seeking inspiration, the team went on a school-sponsored trip last summer to the Republic of Senegal, a country known for its booming tourism industry and bowling prowess. There, they spent weeks studying the intricacies of Senegalese bowling, eventually bringing it back with them to New York City. “One of the techniques we learned was practicing via the computer. We would wear an apparatus that converted our hand motions to data that could be analyzed. The locals

called it e-bowling,” Li said.

“Our first game was an unprecedented success,” Yao said. “Jonathan went up and tried out all of the balls available, only to throw another gutter, but unexplainably, the High School of Art and Design team refused to even bowl and forfeited.”

News later came out that that 60 percent of those who attended the game came down with a mysterious illness. Fortunately, no one at Stuyvesant was affected. “It was a great coincidence that no fans came to watch our game today,” coach Wu said.

“We usually have quite the crowd!” he added.

The team is now practicing new styles of bowling to continue their perfect run.

“We’ve been practicing a long, almost cough-like exhale after every bowl,” explained Yao. “Another advanced technique is bowling in HAZ-MAT suits.

It really throws the opponent off guard.”

Lydia Wu / The Spectator

Yasmeen Roumie / The Spectator

Halal Cart on Chambers Renamed “Fafiqi’s,” Allies with “Ferry’s”

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 19

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

Andrew Fischer / The Spectator

Brian Moran Sets World Record for Longest Title

By Dennis Nenov Former Assistant Principal of Family Affairs and Student Engagement and Current Assistant Principal of Safety, Security, Student Affairs, Health, and Physical Education Brian Moran recently defeated Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Muammar al-Gaddafi by setting a new Guinness World Record for “Longest Title.”

“It’s quite the achievement.

Kim Jong-Un’s title is only two words: supreme leader. Assad’s title is, like, what? Nine words?

And even the current record holder, Gaddafi, had a title that was only a mere 15 words,” Moran said. “My full title, on the other hand, is 22 words long.

Nobody is going to be able to top that for a long time.”

Moran’s new title is so long that his new plaque covers his

entire desk. “I was originally going to get a ‘The Buck Stops Here’ plaque for my desk, but then I realized that nothing says ‘The Buck Stops Here’ more than a plaque with your 22-word title,” Moran said.

“Also, I get a power trip every time anyone decides to use the whole 22 words when addressing me. It’s sweet.”

“I almost forgot to mention that since I now have two major positions, I also have two offices,” he said. “I use one to do work in, and I use the other to store my mirror and all my titles, awards, decorations, and outfits. Do you remember that scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman is looking at himself flex in the mirror for, like, two hours? That’s what I use my second office for.”

Moran hopes that his new world record, when viewed in conjunction with his accomplishments as an administrator at Stuyvesant, will earn him an invitation to join The Breakfast Club, an exclusive New York society—its members include Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, New York Post writer Gary Buiso, Raul Castro, and Dick Cheney—that meets for brunch at Tiffany’s every Saturday. Many believe, however, that Department of Education Chancellor Carmen Fariña is the current favorite to be awarded an invitation to the elite group.

“Listen, few people can claim that they’ve done abso-

Senior Writes Divisive College Essay

By Randy Higgins

“Do you remember that scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman is looking at himself flex in the mirror for, like, two hours? That’s what I use my second office for.”

—Brian Moran, Assistant Principal lutely nothing except continue a culture of institutionalized incompetence at a major taxpayer-funded institution,” Fariña said. “Sure, I haven’t killed millions of people or stolen billions of dollars. But I have indirectly made the lives of hundreds of thousands of teenagers worse by ignoring their concerns and choosing not to address the major underlying issues with the school system. Isn’t that enough to get me invited to at least one brunch?”

A report from the Stuyvesant college office confirms that colleges are going to be completely blown away by the piece of egotistical, self-promoting horse-crap that senior Cooper Weaver submitted this week as an essay for his college application.

Each year, colleges around the country receive hundreds of thousands of applications from students who are impossible to distinguish from each other. However, guidance counselor Harvey Blumm confirmed that “they’re not going to have any trouble remembering this manipulative asshole,” adding that, “they’re going to eat him up like a piece of selfcentered pie.”

Using a control of language and alteration of facts usually reserved for despotic state news outlets, Weaver reportedly created his nauseating work of self-promotion during a onenight session of uninterrupted, narcissistic fact-editing. Although the exact content of the essay has yet to be released, Weaver did confirm that he had managed to work a minor event from middle school into a life altering event that had turned him into “basically the coolest person ever.” He added that, during the entire piece, he didn’t switch out of the first person singular once.

Weaver’s friends were

equally shocked by the essay.

“If I was a college admissions officer and I read this, I’d think, ‘this guy could go to any college he wants, full ride,’” said senior Kyler Chase, a close friend of Weaver. “I mean I really couldn’t tell that the person being described was Cooper.”

Other friends further described Weaver as “pretty chill” but also “a bit of a prick.”

College application essays are renowned for their tendency to increase a student’s desirability. A good college essay can vastly increase almost anyone’s chances of being admitted to the college of their choice. But many doubt that anyone’s college prospects have ever been as boosted by an essay as this self-serving bullshit artist.

Guidance counselor Di Wu told reporters, “In my first year here I saw a student turn an hour volunteering at the Red Cross into a 650 word thesis on helping those in need, but the second I saw the picture of Cooper rescuing a kitten from a tree, I knew I was dealing with one of the best college applications ever written.”

In a press conference Sunday, Weaver was quoted as saying, “I think a lot of people think I lied or used some special format to write this, but the truth is that I just sat down and wrote about how I feel about myself and why any college I apply to should take me instantly.”

Arts and Entertainment

Rent is coming to STC

The Stuyvesant Theater Community prepares to put on their production of Rent, the hit musical about art, AIDS, and friendship in 1980’s New York. Tickets for the performances (11/5, 11/7, 11/8) will go on sale soon.

Page 20

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

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The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 21

Arts and Entertainment Music

By Elvin Shoyfer By the time he was a teenager, he had composed 100 hours of stillunreleased music. He also invented an automatic rhythm and melody generator based on algorithmic processes. He creates melodies in his lucid dreams and records them with a studio he built himself. He drives a freaking tank, lives in a bank, and sleeps two hours a night.

We can readily accept this and more. Richard D. James—known as Aphex Twin—is more than a pioneer of electronic music: he’s a living legend.

It’s common for artists in the electronic scene to build their personas around eccentric costumes and getups, be it Daft Punk’s robot alter egos or deadmau5’s signature mousehead. James rejects this outright, notoriously plastering his infamous grinning face all over his work—even in the spectrogram of his single “ΔMi−1 = −αΣn=1NDi[n] [Σj∈C[i]Fji[n − 1] +Fexti[n−1]]” (as you can tell, he also has a penchant for creating the weirdest song titles).

The irony: in spite of his choice to avoid hiding his face, he is shrouded in more mystique and intrigue than any other electronic artist; he is more incomprehensible than an extraterrestrial machine could ever be.

Throw in a 13-year studio album hiatus since his last release, “Drukqs” (2001), and it’s easy to see why “Syro” (2014) almost feels mystical. It’s new, bona fide Aphex Twin material. One may be so blinded by the recently developed sanctity of James’ earlier work that it creates an obligation to view this album positively, but it’s important to see the album for what it is.

“Syro” marks a return to the ambient techno of James’ 1992 debut album, “Selected Ambient Works 85-92,” while incorporating elements of style that James has dabbled in over the course of his career. You’ll hear almost chiptuneesque, glitch elements from his late90’s work present in “CIRCLONT6A (Syrobonkus Mix).” While the solemn piano of “Aisatsana” will be more reminiscent of his last album, “Drukqs,” this record as a whole is far more groovy and fast-paced. It’s a modern re-envisioning of old-

school Aphex Twin, complete with high sound quality—rest assured, this album was not recorded on a cassette damaged by James’ cat (as “85-92” was).

None of James’ trademark style has been lost. He has a way of taking you to a destination without you realizing that you were traveling in the first place. You would be hardpressed to find a track that ends in a similar manner to how it started out; in fact, you might have a hard time believing that the two sections are even from the same piece.

James seamlessly manipulates multiple basslines, quietly flipping their roles until the track has taken on a new character entirely. In “PAPAT4 (Pineal Mix),” he alternates synths with vocal harmonies and fastpaced drums to stagger his transformation of the melody. Layers pop in and out continuously, returning in different roles and often in unorthodox ways. In “Minipops 67 (Source Field Mix),” the droning, distorted voices that initially complemented the main melodies take over and transform the track from its sharp and distinctly modern lounge feel into something far more tribal and fundamental. Each track is intricately crafted and laden with underlying detail.

That’s not to say that this record is intimidating by any means.

It’s incredibly easy-going—perhaps so much that its style may easily be lost on the listener. On the surface, there may not seem like there’s much going on; the experimental aspects of it aren’t as readily apparent as in other contemporary works in which the artist is clearly tipping you off that they’re flexing their creative muscles. This is in stark contrast to some of James’ earlier work; in “Ventolin” he had incorporated an ear-splitting, high-pitched ring throughout the track to replicate the medical condition tinnitus.

Those familiar with the Aphex Twin name or other electronica may enter “Syro” expecting to find something grandiose, but will instead find themselves trapped with a sense of ennui. There are no heavy drops or moments of exciting, instant satisfaction like in today’s EDM, nor does it offer the listener the self-awareness of listening to something immediately unique.

James’ magic is buried within the intricacies of his rhythms.

If your interest has been piqued by “Syro,” there’s more to come.

James claims that it only represents only a fifth of his work in the last decade, with “experimental things, noise things, weird things […] all pretty much ready to go.” And if that’s not enticing enough, he says he’s got a crew of drum-playing robots backing him up. “Syro” is only an exciting first taste of what’s in store.

“The Southern Reach”: Frustratingly Fantastic

By Caroline Bredthauer “The Southern Reach” trilogy is a series that rewards patience above all else.

Written by Jeff VanderMeer, the trilogy, which is made up of the novels “Annihilation,” “Authority,” and “Acceptance,” is a masterpiece of tense build-up and slow, creeping realization.

Set some time in the near future, the books center around the mysterious Area X, a stretch of wild American coastline that is surrounded by a strange, intangible border. Danger lurks behind every innocuous feature of Area X, a danger that is never fully realized but is nonetheless a constant threat.

All three of the books revolve around the main characters and their attempts to determine Area X’s true nature. Although it seems like an ordinary, albeit uninhabited, coast, Area X is closed off by a border with only a single opening. Expeditions through the opening of that border almost always fall into ruin: the members of the second expedition, for example, turned their guns on one another, while the members of the eleventh expedition all developed cancer and died upon their return. While at first “The Southern Reach” seems like a classic horror story, building tension until an explanation is given and the atmosphere is shattered, the trilogy works in a much more insidious way. Possible explanations are proposed throughout, a great deal of which seem to make sense but none of which can ever be proven true. Additionally, the tension never stops building.

There’s never a moment that feels entirely safe in “The Southern Reach.” For example, Control Rodriguez spends a good amount of time at home during “Authority,” but even these domestic scenes have an unpleasant sense of urgency, particularly since none of the characters know what (if anything) Area X has in mind; whether or not it means to encroach upon the rest of the world or whether it will be content to remain undisturbed, destroying any humans that try to enter.

The first book, “Annihilation,” is narrated in the first person by a woman simply known as the bi-

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Sunny Chen / The Spectator

Alisa Su / The Spectator

Syro: The Return of a Legend

Book

ologist. “Authority” is narrated in the third person and centers on a completely different character, John “Control” Rodriguez, while “Acceptance” follows five main characters, one of whom narrates in the first person, another in the second, and the remaining three in the third.

The three books have their own takes on Area X as well.

“Annihilation” brings you up close and personal as the biologist explores Area X with a team of three other women, aware of the risks involved. This team was sent by the Southern Reach, an organization tasked with unearthing the reasons behind Area X’s creation and its subsequent destruction of nearly all human visitors. Book two, “Authority,” is focused on the inner workings of the Southern Reach, particularly what it knows about Area X that it never tells the expedition members. Control Rodriguez, its narrator, is the newly-appointed director, so he is in a position to ask the very same questions that the readers are asking. “Acceptance” wraps things up by telling the (admittedly vague) story of Area X’s creation and finishing the stories of the main characters of the first two books by taking them into the heart of Area X. Personally, I found myself to be very taken with “The Southern Reach” trilogy. It is the kind of series that remained with me long after I finished reading each of the books. I spent days trying to figure out Area X’s true nature and what the ending of “Acceptance” would mean for the outside world. Because of this, I can respect VanderMeer’s decision to leave a lot of that interpretation open, as it invited me to work

things out for myself, which is not an opportunity I get with most other book series. “The Southern Reach” does not spoonfeed you.

You draw conclusions for yourself, or you get nothing out of it.

That being said, I wouldn’t recommend this series to everyone.

“The Southern Reach” trilogy is a curious blend of horror and mystery, with “Annihilation” focused on the horror, “Authority” on the mystery, and “Acceptance”on a little bit of both. After reading “Annihilation,” during which Area X attempts to kill the biologist, I was surprised and at first disappointed to be transported to a relatively mundane setting for its successor. But the trilogy is anything but mundane, and soon enough I was engrossed in the world of the Southern Reach and its web of lies. Still, this kind of genre-switching will not appeal to everyone. There has to be a certain amount of dedication to read this series through to the finish, what with the constantly building, never fully-satisfied tension and VanderMeer’s apparent determination to make each novel as radically different from its predecessor as possible.

Despite all this, I loved “The Southern Reach” trilogy, and was sad to finish all three books for good. If none of the above has put you off in any way, I highly recommend the series. None of them are too long, so they won’t put much of a dent in your schedule, and they are worth the time. An extremely well-written, engrossing series, “The Southern Reach” trilogy has the potential to be a favorite if readers can look past some of its flaws.

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 22

Arts and Entertainment Music

Lydia Wu / The Spectator

This Is All Theirs

By Anne Duncan On September 15th, 2013, I was surrounded by twentysomethings in flannel shirts and bandanas at Rumsay Playfield. Clouds of smoke rose from the audience, who gently swayed to the sweetly melodic vocal harmony and keyboards or vigorously nodded along to electric guitar lines. Throughout the crowd, fans held up their hands, fingers forming triangles in tribute to the band on stage.

The British rock band Alt-J got their name from the keyboard shortcut alt-J on Apple computers, which creates a delta, the symbol for change. This fits in with their largely hipster following, as the triangle (among other geometric shapes and patterns) is often incorporated into hipster art and clothing styles. Though it is difficult to pinpoint why the triangle has

become such a central aspect of the hipster aesthetic, it is no surprise that the audience hung their limp triangles above their heads, each sway or head-nod slowed by the crowd’s apathetic culture and lazy smoke puffing. Even on the train with my iPod, it is difficult to listen to Alt-J without entering a similar haze.

Alt-J hit the markets with their 14-track second album, “This Is All Yours,” on September 22nd, 2014. The 4.5 minute “Intro” introduces the inconsistent tone of the rest of the album: it starts with a cappella, harmonized vocals and melts into electric guitar, drums, and harsher vocals with lyrics. From here, it continues to oscillate between these two styles, one more airy and acoustic, the other jarring and more electric.

Building off of the styles established in “An Awesome Wave,” Alt-J’s new album ex-

plores their surreal, light acoustic sound in contrast with their guitar riffs and expressive lyrics. What makes “This Is All Yours” remarkable, however, is that it ties together an expanding spectrum of intensity and mood. That is to say, if the band’s mood could be shown as a sin graph, its amplitude would be increasing yet it would remain continuous. Perhaps the evolution in style can be attributed to the loss of the band’s bassist, turning Alt-J into a trio and shifting the focus of the songs from the bass lines to the airy vocals.

The themes explored in “This Is All Yours” are similar to those found in Alt-J’s first album. If you could understand any of the lyrics, you would find them similar in style and even some repetition of specific phrases. Joe Newman, the lead vocalist, does not make a point to articulate the lyrics (further contributing to the band’s dreamlike sound), but a close read reveals lyrics that tend to be graphic and that are often filled with sexual innuendos.

One of the most popular tracks from the first album, “Breezeblocks,” describes being “muscle to muscle, toe to toe” and ends by repeating, “Please don’t go. I’ll eat you whole. I love you so.” Similarly enough, “Every Other Freckle” on “This Is All Yours” starts out by asserting, “I want to share your mouthful” and later requests, “Devour

me.” These graphic descriptions can be found throughout both albums, further tying together Alt-J’s style as a whole.

The unity of the album is impressive, to say the least. The instrumentals from track to track are similar enough in style and key to create a ties from one song to the next, but even within any given song there is distinct phrasing that rises and falls with the intensity of the echoing vocals and low-tempo instruments.

The only obvious breaks in the album’s continuous mood as a whole are in “Hunger of the Pine” and “Warm Foothills,” which sit consecutively in the middle of the album. “Hunger of the Pine” starts with a simple rhythmic keyboard pulse and gentle vocal line about butterflies that follows the previous song, “Choice Kingdom” (largely made up of swooping vocal harmonies and soothingly repetitive keyboard arpeggios).

The loud drums and looping “I’m a female rebel,” a segment pulled directly from Miley Cyrus’s “4x4” are the centerpiece of “Hunger of the Pine,” making the rest of the song cater to a foreign style. “Warm Foothills,” the following track, jolts back into acoustic instrumentals and unmodified vocals, but it is in itself also unsettling. The lyrical line is a collage of vocals

by Conor Oberst, Lianne La Havas, Sivu and Marika Hackman glued together.

The rest of the album also branches out in different directions. “Left Hand Free” has strong electric guitar lines. It starts out with a blunt and sexual “Hey shady baby I’m hot” and develops into a rock song only a stone’s throw away from something you would find on a Black Keys album.

In the other direction, “Pusher” features acoustic guitar as well as harmonized vocals singing of pure love: “The idea of life without company fell suddenly. / It crashed through the ceiling on me.” In contrast, “Bloodflood, Pt. II” follows up with a similar musical style, including an acoustic piano that would not have been found on “An Awesome Wave.” Yet, it is an obvious follow up to “Bloodflood” on the first album and repeats some of the same lyrics.

Though Alt-J is reaching out into a few different styles, they continue to remain true to their identity. The band’s uniquely airy yet electronic mood allows the album to remain cohesive.

“This Is All Yours” is like the continuation of some trippy story that Alt-J started with the first album. The distinct shift in mood from the first to second album is apparent to any fan, and it is difficult to say which stylistic path the band will pursue, but Alt-J has laid a solid foundation with their first two albums. Hands will still form triangles in the smoky air, no matter what Alt-J has to offer.

Ken Ken

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The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 23

Arts and Entertainment Playlist

Songs of Autumn “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion” The Flaming Lips Alternative Rock Courtney Chiu/ The Spectator

“Broken Crown” Mumford & Sons Indie Rock “Autumn Shade” The Vines Alternative Rock

By the arts & entertainment department It’s finally October, and that means leaves crunching under your boots, foggy days and downpours, sweaters, and hot apple cider. This playlist is for those

autumnal days spent sitting by your window, watching each leaf spiral down from its branch, and cozying up with a good book as it only continues to grow colder.

“Two Weeks” Grizzly Bear Indie Rock

“Autumn Leaves” Ed Sheeran Pop

“Talk” Kodaline Pop “Riverside” Agnes Obel Classical/Folk “Daughter of the Woods” Vudu Sister Folk “Wolf” First Aid Kit Folk

“The Glow, Part 2” The Microphones Lo-fi, Indie Rock

“The Dress Looks Nice On You” Surfjan Stevens Folk

“Riptide” Vance Joy Indie

“England” The National Indie Rock

“November” Gabrelle Aplin Pop Folk “Ragged Wood” Fleet Foxes Folk “Special Death” Mirah Indie Rock “Thistles & Weeds” Mumford & Sons Folk “Take Me To Church” Hozier Indie Rock

By Anjelika Amog The Delacorte Theater is usually home to the Shakespeare in the Park series and experimental musical productions. Naturally, I wondered how the stage would look when it hosted the 11th Annual Fall for Dance festival kickoff, a ceremony made up of a series of dances.

The effect turns out to be rather fantastic. The stage setup is simple, a makeshift Marley floor lying flat on the stage with the open space of Central Park as the backdrop. It’s nothing short of magical to see a group of dancers climb onstage from the trees, holding flickering candles against the twilit Belvedere castle.

These dancers are members of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, presenting a piece called Gnawa. The dance is an exotic ritual set to complex drum rhythms overlaid with flute trills, evoking a Mediterranean setting. The ensemble of fourteen dancers lines the candles along the front of the stage, as if in ceremony. The women, clad in long, black dresses form one line while the men, bare from the waist up and wearing khaki trousers, form another. The dancers stay low as they circle their heads,

the lines moving backwards in sync. From these parallel lines, the dancers move into a cluster and movement ripples from the center of the cluster until one of the dancers on the edge breaks away. With each break, the entire group responds, pulling the dancer back in, causing a wave of energy to undulate across the cluster. The simplicity of both the costumes and the movement combined with the forceful beat of the drum evokes a sort of primal force, amplified by the sprawling trees surrounding the stage.

The full ensemble piece alternates with a duet between a man and a woman, both simply clad in flesh toned full body outfits. They manage to take up the same space that had been occupied by fourteen dancers with visceral partnering. They chase after one another onstage, with each meeting lifting the woman high up into the air or sweeping her across the floor between her partner’s feet. Rather than narrating a story, the dance creates impassioned, primitive feeling through the way that people can move against one another.

The program also features three other pieces. The Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux, presented by two members of the New York City Ballet, begins with

a man, dressed simply in a black shirt and pants, and a woman clad in a black leotard and pointe shoes, in a classical balletic duet.

They seem to pierce through the space in clear lines of extended limbs, in cool competition with one another. The piece becomes more playful when both dancers put on yellow skirts, with the man completely relinquishing his black garb. The competition becomes more flirtatious, adding a touch of humor to an otherwise austere dance.

For the third piece, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company presents the first part of D-Man in the Waters. The piece was originally choreographed in 1989 when AIDS was still new and little understood, as a member of the company was suffering from the disease. Dressed in camouflage, the dancers seem to be in a battlefield, yet they dive across the stage and swim against the tide, meeting resistance in their movements but still breaking through and moving forward. The dancers’ expressions show wide open eyes and earnest smiles. The vitality of the dance lies in the support that the dancers provide for each other, shown in the way they leap into the air by pushing off of one another’s backs and also in those moments when one danc-

er guides another who is bent over, seemingly in pain. With the costumes melding with the trees and the patterned green lighting, the dance evokes a dreamlike state of strength and force and perseverance through difficult times.

The final piece of the night is called Bend in the Road: New Orleans, a festive affair combining Memphis jookin, a style of dance similar to hip-hop, with New Orleans jazz and ballet.

With fast moving feet, jookin dancer Prime Tyme opens the piece by gliding across the stage before balancing elegantly on the tips of his sneakers. The piece focuses on a New Orleans wedding celebration between two

newlyweds who led one another in a light ballet duet, while an eclectic mix of dancers dressed in colorful garb jammed to live jazz music. The evening ends in a high energy dance party where both musicians and dancers alike grooved onstage.

The variety of pieces offered in this opening night holds the promise of more assorted programs as the festival continues.

Whether through clean balletic lines or fierce dives across the stage, the wide range of styles immerses viewers in the vibrant experience of the power of movement.

The Fall for Dance Festival runs at the New York City Center from October 8-19.

Food

Asian Cuisine Standing Out In Little Italy

By Jenny Jiang As a person who shuns spicy foods when possible, and therefore avoids Malaysian cuisine, I was surprised to find myself at Nyonya, located in Little Italy.

“Nyonya” refers to ethnic Chinese groups living in Malaysia, a term which accurately describes the food here—an original and clear fusion of Malaysian delicacies with other Asian food. I came with some friends for a birthday celebration, but this restaurant, with its fairs, shows, and loud music that give it a very lively vibe, became my new favorite place to eat. This restaurant is also spacious and nicely decorated with paintings, flowers, and dim lights on

the walls.

One of the most popular orders at Malaysian restaurants is Roti Canai, a thinner, more flexible version of the Indian-style Naan bread with flavorful spicy curry dipping sauce. The main courses at Nyonya include Pad Thai, Hainanese Chicken, and Mango Chicken. The Pad Thai, a concoction of warm stir-fried rice noodles with plenty of palatable vegetables, was tinged with hints of sweet and spicy, and the chewiness of the dish brought my chopsticks back to the plate for more.

Though the Hainanese Chicken was unexpectedly lukewarm, it wasn’t unpleasant.

It reminded me of the Chinese cold poached chicken; the skin of the chicken pieces came off

easily and were soft and chewy.

Along with the “Chef’s soy sauce” on the side, this chicken came in an unknown cold and salty orange sauce, and just met my expectations.

Mangoes, my favorite fruit, gave me higher expectations for the Mango Chicken, but hearing about the peppers and chicken that would come with it made me initially apprehensive. However, the sweet and spicy flavor of this Malaysian-fusion cuisine had already begun to grow on me. The plate itself was small but full of generous amounts of mango slices, strips of chicken, and vegetables. The pop of the mango’s sweetness blended playfully and smoothly with the light spiciness of the peppers.

For people with different tastes,

Nyonya even allows you to vary the spiciness level of your dish if you ask the waiter to change it.

The appetizers (about $4) and main courses (ranging from $7-$15) were reasonably priced, so it was normal that the desserts would be somewhat pricy, at approximately $6. Malaysian desserts usually feature an abundance of coconut flavors, too sweet for me, so I tried the Peanut Pancake instead. Because of the care it took to make this dessert, the wait time, 15-20 minutes, was rewarding. Inside the many slices of the Roti Canai-like pancake was creamy, smooth butter with small pieces of peanut.

Each bite was something to savor—from the crispy top to the

sweet, toasty-warm bottom. As I slowly experienced my food, I realized that if all of Nyonya’s desserts were this good, then the money spent would be very much worth it.

When our enjoyable dishes all came within five minutes, even though we were eating at a crowded dinner hour, Nyonya’s good Yelp reviews were immediately validated. Though I expected the dishes to be average and merely palatable, each one added something new to the meal. The only downside is that the restaurant only accepts cash. However, Nyonya is definitely worth a chance going to, just to try something new and unexpectedly sublime.

Nyonya is located at 199 Grand Street.

Courtesy of Tammy Shell

Festival An Eclectic Mix of Energy Kicks Off Fall for Dance

Page 24

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

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Page 25

Sports Boys’ Football

Peglegs Get Their Redemption Against the Ambassadors

By Anthony Cheang Everyone’s hearts pounded asLast year, the Peglegs squared off against the Adlai Stevenson Ambassadors at home, only to lose 49-14. On Sunday, October 5, the result was very different. “We lost to them at home, so this time, the boys came in prepared and focused,” coach Mark Strasser said.

The game was relatively even coming into halftime, with Stuyvesant and Adlai Stevenson scoring just one touchdown each. Despite the low scores, the intensity on the field was high. The Stuyvesant bench shouted with seemingly endless energy, and coaches were even going onto the field, nearly drawing penalties from the referees. An Ambassador defender yelled at a referee after a blown coverage, resulting in an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.

After halftime, the weaknesses of the Ambassadors started to show, specifically their weak special teams and

“There was definitely a grudge coming into this game and I think we played with that attitude.” — Kyler Chase, senior

inability to stop Stuyvesant’s relentless running game. The Peglegs outscored the Ambassadors 22-10 in the third quarter. Due to the Ambassadors’ lack of a good kicker, they were forced to go for the two-point

conversion after every touchdown, which is more difficult than the extra point kick. “Our ability to kick PATs (Points After Touchdown) was definitely helpful in this game, as it gives us an automatic extra point, whereas we were able to shut down Adlai’s two point conversion attempts,” senior Kyler Chase said.

On top of not being able to use field goal kicks or extra points to keep up on the scoreboard, the Ambassadors were unable to punt successfully, allowing Stuyvesant to take excellent field positions after every failed fourth down from the Ambassadors.

The Peglegs won the game 43-18, and their offensive prowess was mostly due to the combination of senior quarterback Eric Morgenstern and senior running back Cooper Weaver.

Weaver, who missed last year’s game against the Ambassadors due to an ankle injury, showed his importance in this game, rushing for 105 yards on 19 carries, good for 5.5 yards per carry. Known as a trucking back

who runs through tackles, the Ambassadors needed multiple defenders to take him down.

Weaver also showed his versatility on defense, as he blocked a punt for a touchdown.

When the Peglegs weren’t running the ball, they were throwing it with precision.

Morgenstern threw for two touchdowns and ran for two more, as the Ambassadors simply could not put enough pressure on Morgenstern to make him uncomfortable. “I have the athleticism to run the ball if necessary, and I showed that this past game, but I still identify myself as more of a pocket passer,” Morgenstern said. The Ambassadors did not expect Morgenstern, who only ran for 17 yards in the first four games of the season, to be a running threat, and he added another element to an already dominant offense.

In spite of the Ambassadors’ efforts to repeat the success they had against the Peglegs last year, they clearly were not prepared for the impact of Weaver, and the Peglegs made

all the clutch plays necessary to extend their lead in the second half. “We were really looking forward to facing them, and we got the job done.” Weaver said.

The Peglegs took care of business and extended their winning streak to five games, but are not ready to simply sit back and relax. “Right now what we need to focus on is keeping up our intensity both during games and during practice and to not be content with what we have achieved so far,” Chase said. “If we can keep the same intensity and mentality that we’ve had since camp on both sides of the ball, no team can beat us.”

This year’s Peglegs team is truly a force to be reckoned with, and will almost certainly make the playoffs after a 6-0 start to the season. They have the talent, the swagger, and the right mindset. This blowout victory over a team that beat them last year not only showed improvement, but also maturity. “We were definitely coming in looking for redemption,” Morgenstern said.

Girls’ Bowling

Pinheads Strike Out the Lady Blazers

By Jason Lee The Pinheads improved their record to 3-0 by defeating the winless Murry Bergtraum Lady Blazers on Wednesday, October 1.

From the start of the game, the Pinheads found it difficult to adjust to the new lanes.

They played a majority of their games at Chelsea Piers last year, and a new location meant different oil on the lanes affecting the speed of the balls. Although the Pinheads had a slow start to the game, all the members of the first game were able finish with a score of 90 or above. The high-scorers were seniors and co-captains Fawn Wong and Stephanie Lin with a 127 and a 118, respectively.

“We had a little bit of a slow

start,” Wong said, “We need to work on not letting a bad frame get to us and affect the rest of our game.”

With the consistent performance and leadership of the captains, the Pinheads grabbed the first game easily, 430-292.

Senior Si Ja Liu and junior Yubin Kim also helped the effort, with scores of 95 and 90, respectively.

In the second game, the Pinheads started slow again.

Though the team struggled with their consistency, the Lady Blazers also underperformed, as three of their four players also scored below their prior games from this season. The Pinheads won 368-294, and sophomore Sosonia Ma leading game B with a score of 113.

“I’m proud of my team for doing so well, even though

we were against a school that wasn’t well known for winning a lot,” Lin said, “I definitely think the team can improve on getting used to frames. I personally can speak about the struggle of trying to transition lanes.”

Though the team still is getting accustomed to the new lanes, they also look to focus on other fundamental skills.

“We definitely will work on our spares because as they accumulate, scores will increase,” junior Guanhua Li said.

Getting to games and practices, however, is difficult for coach Eric Wisotsky, who, due to a scheduling issue, was programmed for a tenth period class. Because of this, he is not able to help the team through the start of games and practices as much as he would like to, but he is still well-liked by his play-

“We had a little bit of a slow start but we all ended strong.” — Fawn Wong, senior and co-captain

ers.

“Wisotsky is very supportive of the team,” Wong said. “He comes a little late to our games, but he makes it up to the best of his ability with all of the administrative issues that he handles.”

“He is a very supportive coach and always tries the best he can for the team,” Lin said.

“He is also very supportive and loves giving pep talks, which I am grateful for.”

Since their win over the Lady Blazers, the Pinheads have picked up two more victories for a 5-0 record, and they hope to improve even more on spares and preventing gutter balls. The Pinheads have had a history of excelling throughout the regular season, and they should cruise into the playoffs.

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The Spectator ●October 20, 2014

Page 26

Sports Girls’ Golf

Girls’ Swimming

Jennifer Dikler / The Spectator

Penguins Float on Top

By May Chen For any team, there is always one opponent in the division that brings excitement and competition. For the Penguins, Hunter is that opponent.

Hunter is considered one of the strongest rivals in the Manhattan division, and as expected, the meet on Thursday, October 2, was filled with much anticipation and energy. Though there were several close races, including the 500-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle, and the 100yard backstroke, the Penguins ultimately won 52-41.

The victory against Hunter starts the season on a good note for the Penguins. “Winning the Hunter meet definitely put the team in a good mood for the rest of the season,” senior and co-captain Sappha O’ Meara said.

In addition, this meet motivated certain team members to work harder against the tougher competition. “I tried to swim

my best and after swimming in the 200 freestyle and Stuyvesant not coming in first, I knew that we had to swim extra hard to ensure a win over Hunter,” freshman Maddie Wong said.

The Penguins started with a first and third finish in the 200yard medley relay, gaining a 7-3 upper hand. Junior Krystal Lara, one of the top swimmers in the city, led off the relay with a time of 28.08 seconds, already a few yards ahead of the other teams. The Penguins kept their lead throughout, with the team of Lara, senior Grace Lu, junior Audrey Lee, and junior Gabriela Almeida ultimately finishing in a time of 1:58.61.

Hunter, however, quickly caught up with the 200-yard freestyle, in which they placed first and Stuyvesant placed second and third. Hunter senior Simona Dwass, one of Hunter’s fastest swimmers, took first place timing 2:05.51. The result was similar in the 500-yard freestyle, in which Dwass and Almeida were neck-and-neck

with Almeida holding onto a slight head, but Dwass pulled ahead within a few laps and took first place. Almeida placed second with a time of 5:41.37.

“For some of the races, Hunter would get first only by a slight margin, and then we would get second and third,” senior and co-captain Kimberly Wong said.

In addition, the Penguins could not employ their new divers because they hadn’t learned all the necessary dives yet, and because Hunter did not have a diving board. Junior Jenn Dikler and sophomore Maria Fomitchova were recruited from the gymnastics team and sophomore Claudia Zelek is a returning member who has gotten into diving. Having divers could essentially provide the team with six free points if their opponent has no divers.

“Our divers aren’t ready to compete yet, they’re still working on their skills,” Wong said.

The Penguins expect to continue their reign as city champions this season, but they know that after tying with Francis Lewis last year, they will need to put in the effort. The team practices after school four days a week and before school on the fifth day. In addition, they have dryland practices during 10th period to improve stamina.

Coach Peter Bologna also put the girls on a “swimming diet,” which essentially omits all unhealthy foods, such as chips, soda, McDonald’s, or any foods with low nutritional value. “We are not taking this season lightly,” O’Meara said.

Birdies Continue Strong With a Win

By Susan Wu Though initially apprehensive about the foreign conditions of the Marine Park Golf Course, the Birdies played another successful game against Fort Hamilton. Having previously played against Fort Hamilton, the Birdies were able to easily win the game 4-1 on Thursday, October 2, continuing an undefeated season.

Unexpectedly being moved into the Brooklyn division, the Birdies were at a disadvantage going into the season because they were not familiar with their opponents. Even so, the team has remained the number atop the division. “Coach Nieves deserves a lot of credit for the success we’ve had. I’m proud to be a part of such a tight-knit, resilient, and strong team,” junior and second starter Amanda Chiu said.

On the first two holes, Chiu clearly outplayed her opponent with seven and four strokes on the first two holes, respectively, while her opponent had 10 and nine. Chiu rode her hot start to an easy win. “Marine Park is fairly open and straight, but the greens are hard. They’re curvy and fast, so it was difficult for me to reduce strokes in my putting game. The hardest part for me was staying focused on the hole ahead,” Chiu said.

Senior and first starter Sabrina Chan won her fifth match this season. Going into her match, Chan was not wor-

ried because she had also previously beaten her opponent.

“I realized that though Marine Park is not easy to play on, I need to improve on my mental game, which is a major part of golf,” Chan said. The match was closely contested, however, as Chan tied three out of five holes and narrowly won the third and fourth holes by three hits and one hit, respectively. “This was definitely a step down since the only other time we competed against Fort Hamilton, when I defeated her 5-0,” Chan said.

In addition to Chiu and Chan, senior Erica Chio helped secure the victory. Chio started off her match with a tie on the first hole but was able to keep ahead of her opponent for the remaining three holes. “I remember the first because I kept hitting the ball over the green.

It took me several tries to get it on the green,” Chio said.

Undefeated so far this season, the Birdies look forward to future matches and to maintaining their ranking as the number one team in the Brooklyn division. While the Birdies have not encountered a major challenge yet, the absence of one of their strong players, senior Jane Jeong, due to a hand injury has set the team back.

“We’ve been trying to manage without her for now. But her absence will be detrimental to the team’s future if she does not come back for the playoffs,” Chan said.

Boys’ Badminton

The Road To the Finals Begins

By Joshua Zhu Everyone’s hearts pounded as the shuttlecock flew over the net and bounced on the floor. Sophomore Jeffrey Wang triumphantly yelled, “STUY!,” as he scored the winning point of the decisive third set. With this win, Stuyvesant completed a hard-earned, 3-2 comeback win over the Brooklyn Tech Engineers on Tuesday, September 30 in the season opener.

“We had a really tough time today with [Brooklyn] Tech,” Wang said. “We had a rough start, lost a few matches early on, but I feel that our team really picked up the slack and came through.”

Stuyvesant had anything but a smooth start. Sophomore Andrew Tang lost his third singles match in a show of total dominance by Brooklyn Tech’s Andrew Li, who won 21-3 and 21-17 in the two sets. Soon thereafter, sophomore Brandon Zhang and senior Daniel Goynatsky put up a good fight in their second doubles match but ultimately lost in three sets with final scores of 21-16, 1621, and 18-21. In both games, players were clearly nervous as service errors led to easy points for the Engineers.

“I don’t think [all of us]

were mentally prepared for the game,” Tang said. “A lot of us are new starters and weren’t used to the pressure. I have to admit that I was pretty nervous and that led to some bad mistakes on my part.”

Stuyvesant players, however, kept their cool, and sophomore Charles Sang won his second singles match, making the score 2-1. During the start of the first set, the Engineers’ Jakob Kojablo misjudged a serve and returned with a high lob. Sang locked eyes on the shuttlecock and effortlessly smashed it for a winner. This play turned characterized the match as Sang easily dispatched his opponent in two sets with final scores of 21-6 and 21-6.

“Although I ended up winning 21-6 both games, my opponent knew a few tricks and I slipped up a couple times,” said Sang. “I can always improve, but I was pretty satisfied with the way I played today.”

Stuyvesant used the momentum of the win and tied the game with a win in first doubles. Sophomore Chris Ye and freshman Steve Wong were evenly matched against the Engineers. In the first set, Brooklyn Tech’s Alvin Yao soared and smashed the shuttlecock to the other side.

Unfortunately for Yao, his play was thwarted as Ye dove and just barely returned it. His opponents were too astonished to react to this turn of events and watched as the shuttlecock bounced on their side.

After several long rallies, the first set was tied at 19-19.

“We had a really tough time today with [Brooklyn] Tech. We had a rough start, lost a few matches early on, but I feel that our team really picked up the slack and came through.”

—Jeffrey Wang, sophomore

Then a game of nerves kicked in. With the Engineers’ turn to serve, Yao had a service error. A subsequent ace gave Ye and Wong their first win of the match. The second set of the match was less stirring than the first. With Ye and Wong already used to their opponents’ style of play, they raced out to a 10-1 start and never looked back. The final score was 21-10, as Stuyvesant won in two sets.

With the score tied at 2-2, the winner of the game would be decided with the first singles match, the most suspenseful of the day, which pitted sophomore Jeffrey Wang, nationally ranked 33rd in boys’ singles, against the Engineers’ Mitchell Liang, nationally ranked 44th in boys’ singles.

Both Wang and Liang play in the same badminton club and were familiar with each other’s playing styles coming into the game.

Wang walked onto the court confident of his ability to prevail; however, a big surprise was in store as Liang sped out to a 10-4 lead. Wang could not climb out of the hole he had created and eventually lost the first set 21-17.

During the second set, Wang did not underestimate his opponent like he did the first, rolling to a 6-1 lead. Liang

persevered and tied the game at 10-10. Wang reacted by going on an incredible 10-0 run, winning the second set. With his confidence back, Wang started out the third set with an 8-0 lead. Again, Liang came back and took the lead 20-17, but Wang managed to fend off three consecutive match points to tie the game. With Wang locked in, a smash and an ace did the trick to close out the win for Stuyvesant.

“It was a pretty difficult game because we train together often. I know his game and he knows mine,” Wang said.

“During that last set, when I was down 17-20, I just mentally locked in, which allowed me to make a comeback. I underestimated Mitch[ell] and have to thank him for putting up a great fight.”

With this win, Stuyvesant started off their season strong.

Considering their aspirations of making the finals this year, they will have to continue to prove themselves in close games like these. Last year, the team lost by two points in the semi-finals against Bronx Science. With a two point win in this game, Stuyvesant proved themselves capable of facing the mental challenges associated with close games, which will be essential to a deep playoff run.

The Spectator ● October 20, 2014

Page 27

Sports

Alice Oh / The Spectator

Who is Galano To Us?

By Annique Wong If you were a Spectator sports editor sitting in room 501 (the Stuyvesant Athletic Director’s office) five years ago, or even a year ago, you would be shaking in your boots. But as I sat waiting in Mr. Christopher Galano’s office this October, I felt only excitement as I waited to learn more about the Physical Education Department’s newest member.

Dressed in a maroon Oakley collared t-shirt, Galano sat relaxed in a black wheely chair across from me as I started off with simple questions. Galano came from a sports family – his two older brothers and dad “all played a bunch of sports” and his mom swam, so it made sense for him to be “very interested in sports,” he said.

He took this interest to North Shore High School where he played varsity lacrosse and was

often praised in the sports section of Glen Cove Record-Pilot, an internet paper. During summer internships at sports programs, he “realized there was an education part” to athletics and “enjoyed helping out other kids if they had issues.”

At SUNY Cortland, Galano continued his stint as a varsity lacrosse player until he hurt his shoulder his sophomore year. Despite having shoulder surgery, Galano continued to be active in the sports world and, as soon as he graduated in 2008, began coaching for Long Island High School.

After getting a quick background story of Galano, I shifted my questions to be more Stuyvesant related. When asked about his first impressions of the Stuyvesant athletic community, he said that he was “pleasantly surprised” that enough students are interested in trying out for teams that coaches have to make cuts, especially because Stuyvesant is so “academically driven.”

He was also impressed with the wide range of sports that Stuyvesant offers: 45 in total throughout the fall, winter, and spring seasons.

In regards to Stuyvesant’s general attitude about sports, like every other Phys. Ed. Department member, Galano “would like to see more student engagement.”

Nevertheless, he doesn’t believe that school spirit is an issue, as he sees students carrying athletic gear and the football and girls’ cross country team wearing their jerseys frequently. Interesting-

ly, he believes that school spirit goes hand in hand with school sports spirit; if students are proud of going to Stuyvesant, which most students are, then inherently there is a decent amount of school sports spirit.

Even so, Galano as reported in the Issue 1 news article, “The New Faces of the Health and Physical Education Department,” he has been attempting to create a pep rally as he wishes that students who “aren’t on a team [would] go see sports and be interested in what the teams are doing.” According to him, he “hit the ground running the first couple of weeks [into the school year] but has slowed down.” While there are time limitations imposed on Galano as the school building is owned by Battery Park City, I have to wonder how aggressively he pushed his idea for a pep rally, as Student Union President Keiran Carpen and Vice President Jonathan Aung were not informed about potential plans. It also doesn’t seem very realistic to have a pep rally without the support of Stuyvesant’s unofficial booster club, Woo Peg Sooie, which Galano did not know about until I explained to him what it was. Of course, Galano is “still learning the ropes,” but it’s important that he speak to student leaders and organizations about events that pertain to the student body.

But before Galano can work together with the student body, he needs to make sure that he is a known authoritative figure.

When I asked him if he felt that

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he directly affected students, he said, “I feel that I’m part of every single program. I will be at a game for every team and I might not be on the court or in the pool or on the field, but every athlete comes through me, and I know these kids pretty well even if I don’t know their exact face […] so I feel that I do have an influence.”

To prove his point, when captain of the boys badminton team, senior Kevin Liang, strolled into Galano’s office during the interview, Galano addressed Liang by his name and asked if he needed more jerseys and if everything was set up for the badminton game later in the day. It’s a good sign that Liang felt not only comfortable walking into Galano’s office, but could also have a conversation with him.

Although it’s only October, it seems as if Galano is making strides in becoming an integral part of the Stuyvesant athletic community. He said that he hopes to be an engaged director and wants to be part of what’s going on. At the two home boys’ badminton games that I have attended, Galano was also there for short periods of time.

Besides being “engaging,” I believe that Galano should be accessible to student athlete complaints about bad situations with their teams or inappropriate conduct by coaches.

But, on the 17th page of the Public School Athletic League (PSAL) Athletic Director’s Manual, found on the PSAL.org, there is no section instructing

directors on how to act if students report to them.

So what will he do? Galano said, “What I’d like to do is be out there so much that I know what’s going on.” But perhaps that is too idealistic. It’s intimidating for student athletes to approach Galano during a practice or game in front of their coaches and teammates, and even more so to approach him in his office: the offices of all the physical education teachers (most of whom are coaches) are adjacent to his.

In regards to any alliance between him and the coaches, he said, “Obviously I am collegiate with my fellow teachers, but I do expect them to do their job.

I have to do my job, and it’s a tough part of my job, but I will look into any complaints and hold people accountable.”

When I proposed an anonymous tip jar in which student athletes could drop their concerns on a piece of paper into, he said, “I would rather hear it personally, even if it’s intimidating.”

From my time spent with Galano, it is clear that he is has only the best intentions for Stuyvesant and its athletic community. I trust that he knows what a good team looks like, especially since he’s coached for almost seven years (never mind the fact that his Long Island City football team had a regular record of 5-4 in the 2013 season). When that pep rally comes along, I’ll be there, wearing my “Woo Peg” shirt.

October 20, 2014

Page 28

The Spectator SpoRts

Sports Wrap Up

Cross Country

By Eric Morgenstern The number one priority of any athlete is to stay healthy, and the top priority of any coach is to keep his or her athletes healthy. When an athlete does get hurt, in some cases, there is someone to blame, and in other cases, unfortunate situations occur that are out of everyone’s control. The Greyducks have faced a little of both scenarios early on in this cross country season.

The Greyducks competed in the Mayor’s Cup track meet against 83 other schools on Sunday, October 5, trying to run their way to victory. The girls’ team came in eleventh place and the boys’ team came in eighth place in the varsity races, which normally would be a major success. However, these two teams should have the potential to do better in the future, once injuries and illnesses subside.

Senior Eamon Woods’ situation is the epitome of what the Greyducks are facing right now.

Woods is “arguably our second best runner,” coach Mark Mendes said. This past spring, he had surgery, and then in August was diagnosed with mono, and he faced a difficult recovery that required a lot of hard work and rehabilitation to try to get back to form for the season.

Woods may have had to overcome many obstacles, but he was ready to race in the Mayor’s Cup. Although he was only healthy enough to compete in the junior varsity race, he is still satisfied with his second place finish in the 2.5 mile race. “I ran a fine race. I was 13 seconds faster than I was at this meet last year, which I’ll definitely take after having to

recover,” he said. Last year he finished in eighth place with a time of 14:45.87, and improved this year to 14:32:00.

Senior and captain Eric Chen did not perform up to expectations. He “‘only’ finished in fifth,” Mendes said. His time of 13:16 was only one second faster than his time in last year’s Mayor’s Cup. “Though my time was still impressive, I haven’t improved as much as I had hoped,” Chen said.

Part of the problem for Chen may be his new training regimen. Now that he is by far the best runner on the team, nobody is able to keep up with him, so he has to train alone.

“It’s hard for me to push myself as I did in the past when I had people better than me on the team,” he said. “I think that I need to start pushing myself in my workouts.”

As for the girls’ team, “some of our best runners could not attend the meet because they were injured,” senior and cocaptain Shuxing Lin said. Lin finished seventh in the junior varsity race with a time of 18:49.79 in the 2.5 mile race, but the highest Stuyvesant finisher in the varsity race was senior Lily Olson in 40th with a time of 17:59.17. If so many runners weren’t injured, the results definitely would have been better for the girls’ team.

“Since we run five to six times a week, some of us push ourselves too hard and are too eager to get back into perfect shape. Their dedication is admirable but we would do better if it were not for irresponsible habits,” Lin said. The Greyducks need to avoid so many injuries and not partake in running activities that can negatively impact their performance.

But not everybody on the team thinks that the amount of running is leading to the injuries. Freshman Simran Sharda believes that the team’s strong performances at most meets this season is due to the amount of running the team does in practice. “[Coach Anna Markova] had us run five miles the day after the meet and I think that really helps our confidence in being able to run the 1.5 mile,” she said. Having a team run such a long distance the day after an intense meet is an unusual coaching strategy, but Sharda seems to think that it is helping the team to get better.

Freshman Anna Pacheco led the freshmen team to a second place finish in their race and showed off her abilities by finishing in 15th with a 1.5-mile time of 12:54.01. She has finished as high as third place so far this season, and could be a key part of the team for the next few years.

With just over a month until the City Championships on November 9, the boys’ and girls’ Greyducks need to improve their times if they want a chance to win it all. However, Woods seems to be content settling for second place. “Brooklyn Tech seems to be the favorite at the moment, but I don’t think we’re completely out of the competition. A second place finish overall at city championships would be great for the team,” he said.

The girls’ team seems a bit more optimistic about the rest of the season. “I’m expecting a lot from the team this season and strongly believe that the Greyducks will go above and beyond my expectations,” Lin said.

Girls’ Volleyball

Yueer Niu / The Spectator

Vixens Render Raptors Extinct

The Vixens win their game against Bard High School.

By Rayyan Jokhai The Vixens came out of the locker room with confidence and high morale on Friday, October 3. After a collegial team chant and cheers from the crowd, the team took to the court looking to bounce back from its 2-1 loss against Seward Park Campus.

With a combination of good communication and the ability to hold onto a large lead, the Vixens defeated Bard 2-0.

The team started off 6-3 run in the first set, with three service points from senior and co-captain Julia Gokhberg, who ended

the game with one ace and twelve assists. “Our team gets out to [a] strong opening because of our high spirits before the game. Especially after the game against Seward where we gave up our lead, we were determined to stay in command of this game,” Gokhberg said.

Despite some minor errors in not being able to return the ball towards the beginning of the game, the Vixens were able to push their early lead to 10-5.

The Vixens made sure not to surrender this lead as they had in the previous game, and by hustling on every point, they took the first set 25-14.

Committed to being vocal on the court, the team’s hard work in practice was shown throughout the match with their constant communication. “We build our coordination and teamwork during [our] practices,” coach Vasken Choubaralian said. “As a team, we are able to build things like communication, which is hard to develop. While it doesn’t always work perfectly during games, we try our best to make sure we are always talking while on the court.”

The beginning of the second set started out tighter than the first, with the Vixens only up by two points early on, but the Raptors began making mistakes.

Stuyvesant’s lead continued to grow to until they had a commanding 19-10 lead, forcing a timeout called by the Raptors’ coach. “We played every point as if it was our last, something that really helped us hold onto our lead,” coach Choubaralian said.

The Vixens won the second set 25-17, winning the match 2-0 for their second victory of the season.

“We played really well overall,” senior Veronika Azzara said.

“We did everything right. We communicated, we hustled, we had little errors, and everyone did their part.”

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The Peglegs, Stuyvesant’s football team, remained undefeated with a 26-16 win over Far Rockaway Education Campus on Friday, October 10, their sixth straight win. Senior quarterback Eric Morgenstern continues to dominate with the second most passing yards (1110) and passing touchdowns (10) in the division. Senior running back Cooper Weaver has 674 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns on the season.

Stuyvesant’s boys’ badminton team beat John Dewey 4-1 on Thursday, October 9, improving their record to 4-0. However, they lost the following game to Franklin D. Roosevelt 5-0.

The Centaurs, Stuyvesant’s boys’ soccer team, lost to Fredrick Douglass Academy on Friday, October 10, their third loss of the season. The Centaurs are second in their division, at 7-3, behind the undefeated Martin Luther King Jr. Knights.

Senior Sean Fitzgerald is third in the league in goals scored with nine, and senior goalie Demos Sfakianakis has the highest save percentage in the league at 80 percent.

The undefeated Birdies, Stuyvesant’s girls’ golf team, extended their winning streak to seven games with a 2-1 win over Brooklyn Tech on Tuesday, October 7.

The Penguins, Stuyvesant’s girls’ swimming team, has a perfect 5-0 record after defeating rivals Bronx Science and Hunter in back-to-back meets. Congratulations to junior Krystal Lara who set a new school record in the 500-yard freestyle. Her time of 5:08.5 broke the old record by a whopping 12 seconds.

Boys’ Fencing

Untouchables Outduel Millennium

By Zhe Lee The seats were surprisingly full at Millennium High School, but their fans were dead silent as the Untouchables breezed through their second match of the season. With their first two games postponed because of errant schedules, the Untouchables took care of business against a lower-echelon team that has retained losing records for the past few seasons. The lopsided 90-17 score reflected Stuyvesant’s dominance.

In the beginning of the meet, there were technical difficulties involving the scoreboard, so referee Josie Fusco was forced to manually keep track of the points. In addition, Millennium’s team was co-ed, as they had girls and boys. But none of the above seemed to deter the Untouchables at all. As the first three matches went by, there were murmurs in the audience over whether the score was being kept accurately because each of the Stuyvesant players seemed to easily rack up five consecutive touches with little resistance from Millennium. However, the fourth match proved otherwise, when sophomore Jian Ting Gao ran into trouble against Millennium junior Alison Grossman.

Grossman was able to score two touches, but Gao quickly closed the match out before it got out of hand.

“We weren’t in trouble at any point,” senior Brandon Ngai said. “We’ve beaten Millennium by very large margins in the past.”

The rest of the foil matches were much of the same routine: even if Millennium managed to score one or two touches,

Stuyvesant quickly adjusted, increasing their focus and defeating their opponents. One of the Millennium fencers was so hesitant to lunge at an advancing Stuyvesant fencer that she shirked in one side helplessly while limply gripping her foil.

She was subsequently ousted 5-0. The foil matches were an annihilation, with Stuyvesant winning 45-6. “[Millennium] might’ve been a little less experienced,” senior and co-captain Kyle Oleksiuk said. “Usually as you get a little more comfortable you really become more comfortable with being aggressive.”

During the epee matches, the more experienced Millennium players, several of whom managed to score multiple touches, tried to mount an unlikely comeback. Oleksiuk, however, displayed his agility in winning three of the nine total epee matches. However, Millenium junior Lukas Alarcon didn’t shy away after Oleksiuk’s display of dominance. In the final epee match between senior and cocaptain Malcolm Wells and Alarcon, Alarcon nearly stole a victory from Stuyvesant, but Wells ended the match by winning 5-4.

There is a certain atmosphere of confidence within the Untouchables, and justifiably so; for the past four seasons they have dominated their division and have established a winning culture. Unlike many other teams that are simply hoping to squeeze into the playoffs, the Untouchables are looking for another PSAL championship and add to their already-impressive resume.

Yi Zhu / The Spectator

Greyducks Pushed to the Limit