Volume 106, Issue 3

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

Volume 106 No. 3

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

October 16, 2015

SLT Meeting Sparks Discussion over Pedrick’s Position

NEWSBEAT

J

he Greater New York City Council Boy Scouts Air Explorer Program of America selected junior George Papastefanou as a student honoree at their annual fundraising dinner for his dedication to Boy Scout events and his achievement of Eagle Scout status.

I

nternationally recognized scientist Dr. Richard Spinrad visited Stuyvesant on Friday, October 2 to talk about his work as the Chief Scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Chloe Delfau / The Spectator

unior Geena Jung was selected as a violinist for the All State String Orchestra and senior Menjin Kuk qualified as a piccolo for the All State Symphonic Band. They will participate in the New York State School Music Association annual conference this December in Albany.

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stuyspec.com

By Sharon Chao and Anne George Student Union President Ares Aung posted a petition on Facebook on Thursday, October 1, entitled, “What Pedrick Means to Stuy.” The petition stated, “Two anonymous faculty advisors proposed to strip [Pedrick] of her position as a result of her interim status, at the Student Leadership Team meeting on September 30th, 2015.” Principal Jie Zhang, however, has said that while Casey Pedrick may not become the official Assistant Principal of Personnel Services—the position she now occupies is considered “interim,” or temporary — Pedrick

is likely to retain her position.

This discussion over Pedrick’s position began when United Federation of Teachers Chapter Leader and math teacher Bernard Feigenbaum proposed to reduce the number of Assistant Principals of Administration from four to three at the School Leadership Team (SLT) meeting in order to hire a new staff member. Math teacher Melissa Protass also described current problems with class sizes that a new teacher could resolve. Principal Jie Zhang responded that the only way to do so would be to eliminate the position of Assistant Principal of Pupil Personnel Services, currently occupied by Pedrick, because it

is the only one of the four positions that is not permanently filled.

Zhang clarified that her comments during the SLT meeting did not mean that she agrees with either side. “I simply stated the facts, the conditions that there need to be in order to have fewer Assistant Principals,” Zhang said. Pedrick declined to be interviewed on the topic.

There are four administrative positions because in 2012, due to a request by the Department of Education, Zhang increased the number of Assistant Principals of Administration from three to four by hiring Assistant Principal of Safety and Security Brian Moran. “It was right after the cheating scandal, and I thought that we needed a new position to handle everything. Now that it’s been several years, we don’t need a full-time person to have the position, so I combined [Moran’s] duties with the Assistant Principal of Health and Physical Education.”” Zhang said.

Normally, interim-acting assistant principals hold their unofficial statuses for half a year before being appointed officially or dismissed. However, Pedrick’s case is special, because Pedrick could not be officially appointed to her position until Assistant Principal of Technology Services Randi Damasek’s case was settled. “It has to do with the fact that Damesek was

undergoing investigation [regarding the cheating scandal], and her case was not closed. This caused a personnel issue,” Zhang said.

Now that Damasek has returned, Zhang released a posting for the official position of Assistant Principal of Pupil Personnel Services. “Pedrick and other candidates have applied, and in theory, the school can choose to appoint someone else,” Zhang said. “However, the position is not hers [until] she is appointed.”

The majority of the SLT Parent Representatives want Pedrick to retain her position. “We support the functions and personnel in college, guidance, and other pupil personnel services under [Pedrick’s] direction. [We] are against rash changes that would result in great reductions in those areas,” Senior SLT Parent Representative Wai Wah Chin said.

In a separate interview, Aung said that he showed Zhang the petition to make Pedrick an official assistant principal. “Nothing really changed. The Chancellor’s Regulation 30 (C-30) [the process to select a new assistant principal] is still happening, so that’s good,” Aung said.

An infographic detailing the changing Assistant Principal of Administration positions is on page 2.

Courtesy of 2010 Blackboard Awards

A Closer Look At Damesek’s Two-Year Absence

By Sharon Chao and julia ingram Former Assistant Principal of Organization Randi Damesek returned to Stuyvesant this year after investigation by the Department of Education (DOE) on 15 charges pertaining to the mishandling of the June 2012 cheating scandal. After spending two years defending herself against the charges, Damesek was cleared of all of them. She is now the Assistant Principal of Data and Technology Services and will be taking on many of the responsibilities of former Assistant Principal of Technology Services Edward Wong, who retired in June 2015.

Damesek received an e-mail from Principal Jie Zhang on Monday, September 2, 2013, stating that Zhang had been directed to tell her that she was not permitted to enter the building indefinitely.

WHAT’S INSIDE? Opinions A&E

Damesek was instead to report to a reassignment center in Midtown while waiting for her 3020-a proceeding, the trial process before a tenured DOE employee can be terminated from her job.

During school hours, Damesek reported to a Children’s First Network (CFN) office, a DOE facility located at 333 7th Avenue. The DOE eliminated “rubber rooms,” or holding facilities where accused teachers report daily, in April 2010. Instead, accused teachers are reassigned within their own schools or to other DOE buildings in the city to perform various administrative tasks.

Damesek, however, claims she was not doing much of anything during her time away from Stuyvesant. “[I was doing] very little except for preparing for my trial. As far as I know, no one there was assigned any admin-

13

istrative tasks,” Damesek said.

Damesek’s charges, referred to as specifications by the DOE, all concerned the June 2012 cheating scandal. She was the testing coordinator at the time when a junior, referred to as “Student A” by the DOE Office of Special Investigations (OSI), circulated answers to four New York State Regents Examinations via text message among 92 classmates. In the OSI’s November 5, 2012 report of the incident, Damesek was accused of failing to carry out her responsibilities as testing coordinator and having a “lack of professional judgment” in managing Stuyvesant’s testing environment.

Some of Damesek’s specifications included the accusation that the proctors were not supervised throughout the tests’ administration or given adequate instruction beforehand. Another specification accused her of embarrassing the DOE by allowing the situation to reach media outlets. Damesek declined to disclose any further details of her specifications.

Despite being banned from entering Stuyvesant in September 2013, Damesek was not charged until January 2014. The next five months were spent trying to find an arbitrator of whom both the DOE attorney and her Counsel of Supervisors and Administrators (CSA) attorney approved.

The arbitrator would eventually decide whether Damesek was guilty of each specification, which amounted to approximately 30 charges because there were

Original Sin Opinions editor Zora Arum explains her decision to begin observing Shabbat in order to focus on what matters most.

some sub-specifications as well.

Damesek’s trial against the DOE did not start until September 2014, a year after she was first removed from Stuyvesant. It concluded on April 21, 2015, though the actual hearing only lasted 11 days. “We had to coordinate three people who were busy with other things to be free for a whole day [for each day on trial],” she said.

She received the official notice of her exoneration in August 2015.

The arbitrator’s final report, called an award, stated, “Recorded evidence supports the find that the respondent is not culpable of any of the specifications.”

Damesek was entitled to return to Stuyvesant to resume her old position, which was one of four Assistant Principal of Administration positions, which included the Assistant Principal of Safety and Security, Assistant Principal of Pupil Personnel Services, Assistant Principal of Organization, and Assistant Principal of Technology Services.

“These four people are identical. I can actually switch two [people’s positions] completely; that is still within my discretion. That is why we call [all of ] them Assistant Principals of Admin[istration],” Zhang said. Zhang selected the title of Assistant Principal of Technology Services for Damesek.

The basis for Zhang’s choice of Damesek’s position was a combination of the position’s vacancy once Wong retired and the need for maintenance of certain technological systems in the coming

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school year. “It was based on as assessment of the school’s needs.

That was all done in August [when Damesek was exonerated],” she said. Zhang amended the title to Assistant Principal of Data and Technology Services. This now includes the task of data analysis, or evaluating student statistics regarding topics such as Advanced Placement (AP) exams, NYS Regents Examinations, course selections, and more. Damesek’s experience as a math teacher at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School and as a Statistics major in college give her a background for this task.

Damesek’s responsibilities also include the maintenance of the website, a new online system that will replace Daedalus (though the particular system has not been confirmed), and technology in the theater, as well as the supervision of the Technology staff. However, Zhang can change these specific duties at any time. Additionally, until a new Assistant Principal of Mathematics is chosen, Damesek will help Zhang with the administrative aspects of the position. “I’m here more for the teachers’ latenesses and textbooks, so they have someone to go to. I’m the administrator that math teachers can contact,” Damesek said. “It’s nice for them to have someone to go to when things aren’t running perfectly.”

After two years of absence, Damesek is glad to be back at Stuyvesant. “I’m thrilled. [...] The welcome that I received [from students and faculty] was fabulous,” she said.

Moms, Grandmas, and Pregnant Teenagers A&E editor and avid Gilmore Girls fan Danielle Eisenman explores why seemingly silly comedies might be meaningful.

The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 2

News A Brief History of Administrative Positions at Stuyvesant In response to Damasek’s return to Stuyvesant, and the recent controversy regarding Assistant Principal of Personnel Services Casey Pedrick’s position, The Spectator decided to investigate how the four Assistant Principal of Administrative positions have been occupied during Principal Jie Zhang’s tenure at Stuyvesant.

assistant PRINCIPALs of administration

2012-2013

organization

technology

guidance

Safety & Student Affairs

Randi Damasek

Edward Wong

eleanor archie

Brian Moran

retired January 2013

August 26 August 30, 2013

Saida Rodriguez-Tabone

Edward Wong

Randi Damasek

Brian Moran

September 2 November 11, 2013

Saida Rodriguez-Tabone

Edward Wong

vacant

Brian Moran

November 12, 2013 June 30, 2015

Saida Rodriguez-Tabone

Edward Wong

casey pedrick**

Brian Moran*

Saida Rodriguez-Tabone

Randi Damasek

casey pedrick**

Brian moran*

August 31, 2015 Present

*Position was expanded to include health and physical education. **Interim

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The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 3

News New Faculty Advisor Chosen for ARISTA

By Giselle Garcia and Selina Zou

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and NASA

WORLDBEAT

R

ussia has sided with Iran to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his country’s civil war. Russia has stated that it is intervening to help defeat the Islamic State, but it has mostly directed air strikes and cruise missile attacks at Syrian rebel groups, some of which are allies of the United States.

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he Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the winners of the Nobel Prize this week. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the National Dialogue Quartet in Tunisia, which helped Tunisia build a democracy after its 2011 revolution.

H

ouse Representative Kevin McCarthy, who was expected to take the place of Speaker of the House John Boehner after Boehner’s resignation, has decided he will not run for the position because he feels he would not be able to gain the votes of the right wing members of his party. In response, Boehner has postponed the vote.

A

26-year-old gunman opened fired in a classroom at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, leaving 10 dead and seven wounded.

Last week, two other shootings on college campuses, one at Northern Arizona University and another at Texas Southern University, left two dead and four injured, heightening the debate over gun control.

F

ollowing extensive debate, state and city officials agreed on a deal to finance a five-year $29 billion plan that will sustain and improve the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Mayor Bill de Blasio has agreed to dramatically increase the city’s contributions to the MTA, from a proposed $657 million to $2.5 billion.

Student Tools To Be Replaced By eSchoolData

By Vanna Mavromatis Principal Jie Zhang sent out a mass e-mail on Wednesday, October 1, informing students that the school’s current data-management and communication software, commonly known as Student Tools, would be replaced by a new system called eSchoolData (eSD). This switch is occurring as a result of the discontinuation of the current Student Tools program by its company, Daedalus.

After the discontinuation of Student Tools by Daedalus, the school was forced to find a new program. “We did research a couple of options,” Zhang said. “Existing [programs] don’t really tailor to our needs.” To avoid sacrificing the functionality of Student Tools with the transition, Stuyvesant’s eSD program was adjusted. “[Daedalus] is helping [eSD] to program the functions that [Stuyvesant needs],” Zhang said.

One of the changes prompted by eSD is student access to college admissions statistics, which were previously available via Student Tools and Naviance, the application for applying to college. Naviance will now be the only option for viewing these statistics. “Even in the old days, we never gave more than three years [of college data],” Zhang said. “[With] college acceptance data, it is better to look at recent years. You can’t look at [how] nine years ago, somebody got into Princeton.” The new information will also be more accurate. In the past, the college data,

including SAT scores, has been entirely student-provided without confirmation. With Naviance, SAT scores will be automatically added.

To expand access to admission statistics, the college office hopes to be able to add underclassmen to Naviance at some point in the future. However, their accounts will not have full access to all the features of Naviance, such as the Common App. There are no definitive plans in place at the moment.

Teachers received access to eSD during the week beginning Monday, October 5, and the software is planned to launch for students on Thursday, October 15. Daedalus will go offline soon after. “I hope to give [students] at least a week [of ] overlap,” Zhang said. However, she is not worried about the change.

“Right now, [Daedalus] is just view only. I think, with [the students’] technological ability [they] do not need a big transition[al period].”

The majority of teachers, however, have not yet activated or begun to use their eSD accounts.

The replacement of the system itself has been met with a few technical issues, however. eSD sends log-in information to students’ official Stuyvesant e-mail addresses. Some students, including nearly 300 freshmen, have not yet activated their accounts. Additionally, eSD assigned students usernames based on their e-mail addresses, resulting in duplicate usernames for students with the same name. Computer science teacher Christopher Brown Mykolyk is handling these issues.

Guidance counselor Jo Mahoney will replace former Assistant Principal of Mathematics Maryann Ferrara as the faculty advisor for ARISTA, Stuyvesant’s chapter of the National Honor Society. This position, which has been vacant since Ferrara’s retirement in June 2015, involves overseeing several important aspects of ARISTA alongside the organization’s Executive Council (EC).

Having served as the faculty advisor for the National Honor Society in her previous school (The Law, Government, and Community Service High School), Mahoney came to Stuyvesant already having valuable experience with ARISTA. However, her role in Stuyvesant’s chapter will be different from her previous experience. While her former school’s National Honor Society was comprised of about 15 students, there are nearly 250 students in Stuyvesant’s chapter, along with the five students who are part of the EC. “I was more of a leader there. Here, I am more of an advisor while the Executive Council [takes] the lead,” Mahoney said.

Despite this, Mahoney still aims to play an active part in the organization. She plans to introduce herself personally to the entirety of ARISTA in a meeting to be held within the next few weeks, though she has already played a significant role in Stuyvesant’s ARISTA since her arrival. For the past three years, she has helped with the appeals process, which allows applicants who were rejected during the first round of selections the opportunity to reapply. Because of this, Mahoney is well versed in the essay criteria

and point system used to judge the applicants, and will be wellprepared to oversee first round selections, a task that is new to her.

Mahoney will also continue to work with the appeals process alongside her other new responsibilities as the faculty advisor of ARISTA. These responsibilities include overseeing the EC of ARISTA to make changes that will help the organization uphold the four pillars of ARISTA: scholarship, character, leadership, and service.

One of Mahoney’s first goals is a revamp of the current tutoring system. “[As a guidance counselor] working with colleagues, students, and parents, I witnessed firsthand that one-on-one tutoring sessions have not been beneficial to everybody,” Mahoney said.

“To uphold the four pillars, we need to find what works best for the whole student population.”

A significant issue with the current one-on-one tutoring system is the difficulty of matching free periods between students and their peer tutors. To resolve this issue, Mahoney wishes to introduce more ARISTA tutors to after-school AIS tutoring sessions. While a few ARISTA members currently volunteer at these sessions, the teachers present mainly run the sessions. “We’re planning on having a greater ARISTA presence at AIS tutoring sessions,” Mahoney said. “[This way] we don’t have to worry about who has what frees, and [students] will know that there are tutors there for them after school.”

To further improve the tutoring system, Mahoney also intends to take polls from the student body about their tutoring preferences, emphasizing how she still intends for ARISTA to be a stu-

dent-centered organization. This will also involve communicating with the EC in order to continue improving ARISTA. “[Mahoney] clearly cares a great deal about ARISTA and how we can better serve the Stuyvesant community,” ARISTA President Ariel Levy said. “It has been quite beneficial to have a fresh perspective on our policies. I am confident that [...] we will continue improving upon the work the organization has done in years past.”

Mahoney also hopes to ensure that all ARISTA members understand the duties of membership well, another concern that stems from her experiences as a guidance counselor. In the past, she has observed students who were more focused on putting ARISTA membership on their college applications than fulfilling the duties that membership entails.

“I plan to make sure that we only accept members who take it seriously, and the responsibilities of membership seriously. ARISTA is […] a National Honor Organization, but [it] also heavily values community service,” Mahoney said. To fix this, she plans to place more emphasis on the community service component of the applications process, though fixing this problem is an ongoing process.

Mahoney sees her new role at Stuyvesant as an opportunity to increase both ARISTA’s and her own positive impact on the entire student body. “I’ve wanted to be involved in something more than just my job [as a guidance counselor] and to work more so with the student body,” Mahoney said. “Sometimes you don’t know where your place is, but this seems to be a really good fit.”

Alumni Mentoring Program to Expand This Year

By Michelle Lin and Blythe Zadrozny This year, the Stuyvesant Alumni Mentoring program is planning to provide more time for students and alumni-mentors to get to know each other.

The program, founded by YanJie Hou (’06) and guidance counselor Harvey Blumm in the spring of 2015, offers students the opportunity to prepare for college and careers by partnering them with Stuyvesant alumni.

Hou is reorganizing the program based on the feedback she received from the previous year’s members. Last year, alumni mentors met with one or two mentees based on their desired area of expertise, such as medicine, law, or technology.

The meetings, which were held four to five times over the course of the semester, covered different topics, such as resume writing and career preference. The program began with 33 alumni and 50 students; however, Hou is looking to increase numbers.

While the program received mostly positive feedback from its participants, there was some criticism. “[The mentees] wished that they [could] have a way to engage more in the sessions… a lot of it seemed very lecturebased, and they couldn’t really take much [out of it],” Hou said.

To increase student partici-

pation, Hou released applications for student leadership positions. The seven chosen student leaders will coordinate sessions this year, and mentors will help lead meetings. Hou, who attends graduate school outside of New York City, will thus be able to keep the program running even while out of town. “[Hou] trained us to… watch over the program while she maintains more of a distant overseer role,” student leader April Lim said in an e-mail interview.

Additionally, the program is being restructured so that students will be paired randomly with mentors, allowing them to learn about different career fields. “A very large number of the students still haven’t decided yet on exactly what they want to do, so we thought that they would benefit more from hearing all around career information,” junior and student leader Kofi Lee-Berman said.

Since the groups are no longer divided based on industry, mentors will focus instead on skills necessary for any field, such as resume writing, interviewing, public speaking, and marketing. Additionally, the program will offer at least one session during which students can meet with mentors who work in fields they are interested in.

With career discussion moved to later in the course

of the program, mentors and mentees can place more emphasis on developing their personal relationship, an experience many of last years’ participants found to be invaluable.

“Some of the most valuable lessons that my mentor, Arthur Handler [(‘53)], bestowed upon me… were not even career related,” junior and student leader Hasan Tukhtamishev said in an e-mail interview.

“Mentors at the Mentoring Program volunteer their time to help us out, and their wisdom carries far beyond the limits of their respective fields.”

Mentors also recognized the importance of this relationship. “Since the program ended, I’ve still been in contact with my mentees as they experienced their first summer internships and are now deciding where to go to college,” mentor Brian Levine (’01) said.

The program will begin in November for the 2015-2016 year. While still developing, it has already made a significant impact on the students who participated in it last year. “It has really given me an opportunity to get out of my shell and explore ways in which I can improve,” junior and student leader Joyce Lei said. “I believe that this program has been one of my first stepping stones to becoming a better communicator and leader.”

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The Spectator â—? October 16, 2015

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The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Features The Subject of the Matter

By Stephanie Chang, Alice Cheng, Vincent Jiang, and Katrina Wong

At Stuyvesant, hard work is second nature to many students. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that students like all their subjects. And so, looking at some of our teachers who students might consider as great intellectuals, it is intriguing to see what struggles or dislikes teachers had with high school classes when they were our age.

Be it poor curriculum or demotivating classwork, many of the teachers we might compare to kings, prophets, and even gods themselves, were, at one point, in the same desks as ours, thinking, “What in the world does math, English, history, or science have anything to do with my future?”

Eric Grossman, Assistant Principal of English

Debbie Goldberg, Mathematics What subjects did you dislike or struggle with in high school?

Truthfully I had a hard time understanding [history]. When they talked about the immediate causes of WWI and the underlying causes and the assassination, I just didn’t get it, nor was I interested in it. It didn’t affect my life. So that was one part of it, and the other part of it was that my class was filled with very aggressive boys who would stand up and start arguing politics. My friends and I would look at each other and roll our eyes. We thought the whole thing was so boring. We didn’t want any part of it.

Has your relationship with these subjects changed in any way?

In college, the history classes were much more interesting. Being taught by PhDs in history, they just made more sense of the subject, but I think a lot of it really had to do with my own maturity. I was getting older. When I was 18, I could vote, so now I was interested in who was running presidential election, who’s campaigning. So I was more interested in how my life was affected.

Jennifer Dikler / The Spectator

Why do you love the subject you teach now and/or what lessons did you learn from your academic experience?

It was fun. I don’t think I viewed math as a tool for doing something else. I viewed it like an art or a philosophy. There’s entertainment mathematics, which is like puzzles and problems, so that’s like math team. And that I enjoy. But then, you study logic, and that’s connected to philosophy. There’s a lot in there that’s an art and how everything is connected together.

Emilio Nieves, English What subjects did you dislike or struggle with in high school?

What subjects did you dislike or struggle with in high school?

I took chemistry when I was a sophomore in high school, and up until that point, I don’t think I really struggled with a subject.

That doesn’t mean I wasn’t a great student, but when I applied myself, I tended to be able to do whatever was asked from me.

Chemistry proved to be an exception. Maybe I just got off to a bad start and wasn’t working that hard, and I somehow got behind, but something about it, I just couldn’t understand the material, which was a new thing for me. Pretty quickly, I was trying, and after a while I even got a tutor, but I couldn’t wrap my brain around the way the different subatomic particles bonded with each other or broke apart. There was nothing in it that felt intuitive to me. It was like learning a different language.

Has your relationship with these subjects changed in any way?

Well, I’m not forced to interact with chemistry. I assume that there are all kinds of chemical reactions going in and around me at all times, but that’s not one of the main lenses through which I see the world, and while I do believe that there’s value and interest in any subject, the world’s a richer place the more you understand about it, chemistry was really hard for me and not a lot of fun.

I kind of had a love-hate relationship with math because I didn’t have stability when it came to the teachers teaching it to me. For example, my ninth grade algebra teacher, Mr. Chin, was outstanding.

He made everything easy to understand. Then, in geometry, I had like four different teachers in one year and the same for trigonometry. Math [was] a subject that [was] hard to staff because there was not a glut of math teachers throughout the city.

Has your relationship with these subjects changed in any way?

Today, I am indifferent about math. As long as I know what’s in my bank account, that’s all I need to concern myself with!

Why do you love the subject you teach now and/or what lessons did you learn from your academic experience?

I love my subject because I love to read, I love to analyze literature, I love to write, and I love to analyze writing. I also enjoy seeing students grow as writers and thinkers. You wouldn’t believe how good this feeling is when you recognize the growth in a student and realize that you as a teacher had something to do with it. I assume this feeling is what teachers crave.

I didn’t dislike any subject that I took during my academic career. I looked at every subject as an opportunity to learn and didn’t close my mind to the subject. So, I expect the same from my students: approach each subject as an opportunity to learn something, and don’t close your mind/attitude/ motivation to it because it doesn’t interest you. That kind of attitude is a cop out.

You know, it’s funny, when I was interim, acting assistant principal in the year that I unofficially had the job but had not yet been appointed, way, way back in the day, there were teachers in the department who claimed that because I was not an English major in college, that I was unfit for the job, although I studied English in graduate school for years and years and years after that.

No, English is about reading, writing, talking, thinking critically and creatively and what I like about English, what is interesting to me about it, is how open-ended it is—that it encompasses so many different things. Being an English teacher walking around New York, anything is potentially material for class. Interaction with my children might prove to be an illustration of an idea from the book. Some recollection from the past might find its way into what happens in the classroom. Being an English teacher means, in some way, you’re always sifting through your days to figure out what might be used in its way as kind of being awake to the world.

Yulia Genkina, Computer Science and Mathematics What subjects did you dislike or struggle with in high school?

I did dislike literature. Since I went to school in Russia, we had Russian literature. So when I was actually a really good student in middle school, and I was following the curriculum, I read the book that we were supposed to discuss in class, and it was so sad and depressing that I was crying for two or three hours, and I could not stop. It was the saddest story.

From then on, I decided that the school curriculum that we were given, especially in classical Russian Literature, was just so depressing and absolutely unnecessary to discuss.

I didn’t enjoy math in high school. I didn’t necessarily like computer science in my high school either. A lot of the teachers and professors assume you know stuff, and I would think, “Everyone around me is a genius.”

Has your relationship with these subjects changed in any way?

It has changed. I have always been a reader, in terms of literature, but I never liked lot of the Russian literature in the school curriculum and the way it was discussed. Once I got beyond my high school irritated-ness, I really really do enjoy it. Math was more accessible. Here it’s like, well everybody can do this, so let’s try and make it work.

Why do you love the subject you teach now and/or what lessons did you learn from your academic experience?

I think they’re fun. I think they are not necessarily memorization based. It’s just kind of those subjects that help you, that are practical, that you can actually use in life. And that help develop as a thinking outside of the box, which any subject really is, but I feel like Computer Science specifically, you can see and feel that development instantly [...] It’s like “Oh! I’ve just gotten smarter! I just got this to work and I found clever solution.”

Christine Jegarl / The Spectator

Why do you love the subject you teach now and/or what lessons did you learn from your academic experience?

The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 7

Features Lisa Greenwald, Social Studies:

Brian Sterr, Mathematics

What subjects did you dislike or struggle with in high school?

There were no subjects I disliked where the teacher was passionate about his or her subject. It was indifference that annoyed me. I’m fascinated by science and medicine, and I think if I had to do it all over, I would have liked to become a doctor. I was “bad” at history in high school but “good” at science. I seem to remember more enthusiastic science than social studies teachers. I was confounded by math but found all the figures and how one could make them line up and perform symbolic functions on the page fascinating.

Has your relationship with these subjects changed in any way?

Watching me constantly struggle, my mother would remind me that I took after my father who was also bad at math. I think that made me believe that being bad at something was somehow intrinsic to myself. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that I could learn almost anything if I put my mind to it and that those “stories” we tell ourselves or are told to us by others can be very powerful—for good or ill.

Why do you love the subject you teach now and/or what lessons did you learn from your academic experience?

You know asking me why I love history puts you in for a long answer… let’s just say that I think studying history is a never-ending activity that brings me closer to understanding people who were different from me but yet had similar hopes and dreams. The challenges they faced and how they overcame them were unique for their time and yet can help me understand how to live my life now and show me examples of moral courage under difficult circumstances. I think, in our world with violence and extremism, we need as many examples as we can get.

Alice Li / The Spectator

Ulugbek Akhmedov, Physics

What subjects did you dislike or struggle with in high school?

Anne Duncan / The Spectator

Generally, my high school grades were pretty good, but the one class I didn’t do as well in was probably English. I remember one thing in particular that I didn’t like was the unit on poetry and trying to interpret poems and having to say the right thing that the author was supposed to be thinking. How do you look at the words and determine what the author’s thinking because who knows what the author is really thinking, besides the author? Honestly, sometimes, I just didn’t take time to read the books in their entirety.

What subjects did you dislike or struggle with in high school?

I hated music [chorus]. The teacher I had worked with had a few favorites, and the rest of us were just a backdrop for her.

I [also] anticipated astronomy class like no one else in my class […] I was trying to learn ahead. I thought we would use a telescope and all this stuff. I studied star maps over the summer before class started in the fall, attempted to understand astrophysics journal. Come the fall, the teacher was the most boring ever in my life! She made us read the text the whole period and wasted time yelling at misbehaving students. The whole year of astronomy was wasted. I expected more from that class.

Has your relationship with these subjects changed in any way?

IWhen a different teacher arrived a few years later, she reached to all of us and I got [to] appreciate music more than before. But the cold indifference I felt from the first teacher discouraged my interest in music for a very long time Again, it took a while until I’d gotten to read astronomy books. Science fiction about star travelers woke up my interesting stars and universe in my later college years. I read a lot of Isaac Asimov, which mostly were about space travel, like Foundation Series.

Why do you love the subject you teach now and/or what lessons did you learn from your academic experience?

I grew fond of physics gradually. My own understanding improved through teaching and relating to my students. Physics leaves very little for superstition. Whatever is still unknown is the realm of science fiction, which is basically a poetic flight of imagination wrapped in the feathers of the written human language.

Jessica Quenzer, Biology

Has your relationship with these subjects changed in any way?

I didn’t really take that many English classes in college. So it wasn’t my favorite subject in high school, and still in college, it wasn’t my favorite subject. But just independently, as far as hobbies, I really enjoyed reading a lot, so I really enjoy the subject in practice.

Why do you love the subject you teach now and/or what lessons did you learn from your academic experience?

I see a lot of beauty in that system. We just have a few basic rules and we build up this entire system of numbers. We can do different things with it. We can represent them with graphs. All these different connections and different ways of representing things, I think is really interesting. But I did have experience in college which I didn’t enjoy much. For one semester, I went to study in Budapest. It was a program just for math majors and people from all over the United States. Some really, really good colleges were in this program, and so the program was really challenging.

But also, I found a lot of people in the program knew math, and they didn’t know anything else. They didn’t know anything about current events or things that were going on in the world. There were only interested in math. After that, I was thinking I don’t want to become one of those people. I don’t want it to be to the point where my whole life is math. So in college, I majored in math and history, but I also had a major in German and minored in computer science. Most recently, I was taking classes at City College in International Relations.

What subjects did you dislike or struggle with in high school?

Gym was never my thing. I had a hard time running the mile, and also I had to make basketball hoops. And well, I’m really short so that put me at a huge disadvantage right there. I was expected to be able to do cartwheels—that didn’t work. Climb a rope, I fell down. I honestly don’t like exercising in general, but I felt that gym class was extra awful because there was some things, I was just like, look, unless I’m trying to do this every single day, I’m not going to get good at it. And I am not trying to make baskets every day.

I never liked my math classes. I was good at them. I worked hard at them. But I found the classes themselves very boring. There were times I liked the teacher, but the curriculum, the class would just go on forever, so I would just write my poetry and short stories during class [...] One day my math teacher caught me, and she found all these poems and stories and drawings in my notebook where I’m supposed to have math notes. She was like, “Hey. These look pretty good.”

Then there was a math teacher I didn’t like to the point where I made the biggest mistake of my academic career: I refused to take calculus because I hated that math teacher that much. That was a mistake. Because when I got to college, I really needed a background in calculus. And since I didn’t have it, I was behind my classmates.

Has your relationship with these subjects changed in any way?

I hate gym. Some of my students have noticed if I go to the gym, the next day, I’m in a bad mood.

Why do you love the subject you teach now and/or what lessons did you learn from your academic experience?

Take calculus in high school! Don’t make my mistake.

Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman offered some wise closing words during his interview: One of the things that schools tend not to be so good at, and Stuyvesant is guilty of this in some ways, is conveying the idea that information is connected, that the world doesn’t naturally break things down into different disciplines. That is shorthand that schools use. There isn’t English and History and Sociology. Those things don’t exist in a state of nature. Those are just ways of talking about things, and I don’t think that I was that well served by the idea that they were wholly distinct from each other. I mentioned that most of the education that was meaningful to me came from my own reading and learning, and that was much more omnivorous, reading about things and biographies and history and reading about music. That’s funny, I feel like I was in school and was taking classes but my learning happened outside.

All interviews were condensed.

The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 8

Features The Art of Being Inked Up: Teacher Edition

By Rose Cytryn and Geena Jung

You see intricate designs of a panther with piercing

blue eyes and wings like an angel and a cross with two names written over it. No, these aren’t the drawings street vendors try to sell to you as you make your way to the subway. Instead, they’re the tattoos found on two Stuyvesant faculty members, librarian Mary McGregor and English teacher Rosa Mazzurco. While many people choose to commemorate their loved ones through pictures, McGregor and Mazzurco chose to remember significant figures through body art.

Defying Stereotypes with Unique Tattoos

Jiaqi Gao / The Spectator

Librarian Mary McGregor walks gracefully in the library, with her frames tucked beneath her blonde, wavy hair. While her coordinated and modest outfits probably don’t scream “tattoo” to you, McGregor carries various symbols of her life on her right

shoulder. Three unique pieces—a panther and thorns, a thistle, and a cluster of orange blossoms— curl into each other as a tribute to her family and her education.

McGregor got her first tattoo in Florida as a tribute to her late brother. Even though they were twelve years apart, McGregor and her brother were particularly close to each other. “Out of all my [older] siblings, we were the closest,” McGregor explained. “He always took me trick-or-treating and brought me to the library. He really did a lot for me.”

The process of getting her first tattoo required a great deal of contemplation and preparation. “After [I thought] of a design, I consulted with an artist by explaining the image I wanted,” McGregor explained. The artist proceeded to freehand draw an outline of the image on transfer paper, and then transferred the design directly to the body.

McGregor picked out a panther and a ring of thorns because her brother had the same combination of tattoos on himself. “I gave the panther blue eyes like my brother and wings to represent that he is no longer here. These images were not particularly

meaningful to me, but I was able to make a part of him a permanent part of myself,” she said.

McGregor’s second tattoo, the Scottish thistle, is meant to symbolize her marriage and husband’s background. For as long as she can remember, her husband has been proud of his heritage.

“When we got married, I thought it was a unique way to signify that I was a part of his family,” McGregor explained. Specifically, the thistle stood out to McGregor because it was not clan-specific, unlike the majority of Scottish symbols.

Finally, McGregor has five orange blossoms connecting the thistle and the panther. These blossoms represent her experiences in Syracuse, New York. Not only were her father’s family, her husband, and many close friends from there, but McGregor received two degrees from the Syracuse University as well. As an undergraduate student, McGregor majored in advertising and marketing, with a dual in communications and management. Most of her current close friends were also from the communications department. “When you move somewhere away from your family, you kind of build your own family,” she said.

Ultimately, McGregor’s tattoos hold a much greater significance to her than they do to anyone else. Normally, people are surprised to hear that she has designs on her shoulder since it doesn’t seem too obvious at first. “I don’t really worry too much a b o u t what others may think of my tattoos,” McGregor said. “I like my tattoos as a proud expression of things that I draw meaning from in my life. I also like that my tattoos might challenge some people in their stereotypical ideas about librarians.”

While she might get more in the future, McGregor has decided that for now, her son is her main priority, and getting inked up again can wait.

From Nomadic Living to a Settled Lifestyle Usually in the corner of the English Faculty Room, right off of room 615A, you can find English teacher Rosa Mazzurco talking to other faculty members. From behind, you might be able to catch a glimpse of a faded, black Greek lettering on her upper shoulder.

However, what are not so obvious are the intricate medieval coin, fish, and tribal print, which appear on her back and stomach, respectively.

“I gave the panther blue eyes like my brother and wings to represent that he is no longer here.”

—Mary McGregor, librarian

Mazzurco got her first tattoo in France to mark her leaving Europe. The tattoo is a tribal print designed by herself and her friend. “[My friend] was reminded of something he saw in Polynesia, particularly indigenous Polynesian tattoo designs,” Mazzurco explained. The tribal print is in a block form, with interconnecting lines forming a pattern.

Mazzurco had stayed in Europe for two and a half years working and traveling. After working as a bartender for five months in France, she moved to Italy to study at the University of

Florence. There, she took classes on Dante and Umberto Eco. After starting her master’s degree at the university, Mazzurco decided it was time to think about her future. In addition, her sister, who had been living in America, wanted her to help plan her wedding. As a result, Mazzurco decided to leave Europe after spending years traveling and working.

The tribal print tattoo was “a goodbye present and it marked a transition between nomadic living and graduate school, since I was starting graduate school at [New York University],” Mazzurco said.

After arriving back in America, Mazzurco decided to get two tattoos done by her friend who worked at East Side Ink. Mazzurco designed both tattoos, consisting of intricate black lines.

“One of them is a depiction of a medieval coin […] which was the one possession that my grandfather had before he passed away,” Mazzurco explained. The tattoo resembles a florin, a type of Italian currency used during medieval times. After her grandfather had passed away, Mazzurco’s family moved from Buenos Aires to Sicily because they had relatives living there. “That coin was special to my mother be-c a u s e it was her father’s coin and was passed on for generations,” Mazzurco explained.

Her other tattoo, a depiction of a fish, represents her love for the ocean and water. “When I lived in Italy, I would go with my family on vacations to Lampedusa, a tiny island between Tunisia and Sicily. That’s when I started ‘snuba diving’, which is slightly different than scuba diving,” Mazzurco explained. Even now, she tries to go out to the ocean and scuba dive whenever she has time.

While Mazzurco loves her tattoos for their sentimental value, she does not think she will be getting anymore. “Nothing happened to motivate me to put something on my skin. I feel like I view life differently now that I’m settled,” she explained. Since her tattoos are nearly 20 years old, Mazzurco does not think much about them unless she sees them. She has never thought of her tattoos as fashion. “I worry that something that is considered so highly spiritual in many cultures is viewed as fashion in Western culture,” Mazzurco said. As a result, her tattoos are not usually visible, and only she and her close friends understand their value.

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Page 10 The Spectator â—? October 16, 2015

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The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 12

Editorials Staff Editorial

English Composition 101 Many of our classes are dominated by topics that may not be directly applicable to our futures, whether they include learning how to graph radical functions or studying the intricacies of the Napoleonic wars. Writing, on the other hand, is one of the skills that is, undeniably, critical to students’ success in the “real world.” On job applications, resumes, and work e-mails, at the very least, written eloquence means professionalism. Concision and coherence demonstrate a clear mind. Strong grammar suggests social competency.

teachers should instruct their students. Teachers are left to make up their own definition of “good writing,” which inevitably creates even more disparity among freshmen writing levels. While one teacher emphasizes creative writing, and gives three assignments a semester, others enforce writing strictly according to academic standards, and assign essays more frequently. The inconsistency among teachers takes a toll on the students, some of whom may not even know how to write a strong argumentative essay by the end of freshman

While one English teacher emphasizes creative writing, and gives three assignments a semester, others enforce writing strictly according to personal standards, and assign essays once every two weeks.

Writing, however, cannot simply be broken down into bits of formula and facts for students to memorize. It is a skill that must be developed and practiced over time. And so, the moment we started learning how to write our names in bright red crayon during kindergarten, we began the long and hardy trek to achieve the proficiency the future will require.

When students first enter Stuyvesant, the writing skills they carry over from middle school range over every place the spectrum—some students are well-versed in essay writing and are literary aficionados, while others have not yet learned how to write a fiveparagraph essay. This is due to the large variety of backgrounds that students bring with them, an element that is beyond a high school English teacher’s control. Once students enter their randomly assigned Freshman Composition classes, however, teachers do the best they can to improve everyone’s writing at an equal rate, regardless of the disparities.

The problem with this approach is that there is no standard guideline as to how

year. As a result, the initiative behind Freshman Composition becomes completely lost.

In response to this, we suggest that all freshman year English teachers establish a standardized curriculum to create a level of uniformity across classes, and ensure that each student enters sophomore year with the same strong foundation. Don’t get us wrong; teachers each have their own unique teaching styles, and teachers’ freedom to do what they want is the reason many students believe the English department is one of Stuyvesant’s best. However, a partially standardized curriculum and clearly defined rubric for a good analytical essay would ensure that all teachers know exactly what skills they should be teaching their students. Stronger feedback, in which teachers highlight how students can improve upon their basic writing skills, would also help to ensure that all students finish freshman year as competent writers. In addition, we suggest that teachers show more examples of strong analytical essays in class so that students are exposed to good writing, and not just good lit-

The inconsistency between teachers takes a toll on the students, some of whom may not even know how to write a strong argumentative essay by the end of freshman year.

erature.

That is not to say that we want students to adhere their writing solely to a formula or any sort of standard. In fact, the foundation in analytical writing built during Freshman Composition is only a stepping stone that can be added on later or discarded completely. Once students understand the basics, they should have the opportunities to develop their own writing styles. To achieve this, we believe that English teachers after freshman year should include the importance of creative writing. Too much analytical writing can cause a writer to grow rigid in his or her writing since it often calls for certain requirements to filled (i.e. thesis at the end of introduction, analysis follows quote, conclusion regurgitates thesis in different words). We don’t want writers to grow accustomed to this and end up writing creative pieces such as narratives in such a formulaic fashion. After all, writing is a form of expression, empowerment, or even escape. Why should we ever feel obligated to confine our writing within any sort of structure?

The basis from freshman year is meant to make students feel confident enough in their writing ability to explore their more creative sides. They will eventu-

The basis from freshman year is meant to make students feel confident enough in their writing ability that they explore their more creative sides.

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The Stuyvesant Spectator 345 Chambers Street New York, NY 10282 If you have any questions, e-mail us at: business@stuyspec.com

A Note to Our Readers: ally be able to juggle effortlessly between analytical and creative writing and perhaps even learn to merge the perks of the two, which is what a “real world” essay does.

The ability to write well is one of the most important skills a student can learn, and Stuyvesant students should leave as articulate writers, not just as math and science exemplars.

Developing a structure and formal rubric to teach freshmen exactly how to write well will help not only for their English essays, but for their history papers, Intel projects, and beyond.

Though each class and each teacher is different (and rightfully so), having all our teachers know exactly what they should be helping their students learn will give all students a strong foundation during their freshman year. Rules are meant to be broken, but what does not exist or is not acknowledged, cannot be broken in the first place.

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

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

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Or speak your mind?

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

F o r t he

Rec o r d

An Issue 2 article titled “Introducing Stuyvesant’s Freshest Faces” incorrectly said that Chemistry teacher Thomas Cork has only taught in private school — he also taught in public schools prior to coming to Stuyvesant.

Jordan Hodder wrote the Issue 2 Humor article, “Program Changes: Pros and Cons.”

The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 13

Opinions The Consequences of Sanders’s Sixties Slang

By Livia Kunins-Berkowitz This past August, Bernie Sanders rallied followers with a rousing speech, denouncing big money and rejecting the notion that a few conglomerate corporations should be capable of controlling politicians. He declared our government an oligarchy, and rejected the two-party system, instead advocating for a system run by the people, rather than elite politicians. In his stirring conclusion, he went on to embrace the audience as his “brothers and sisters.”

Later, a daily email update sent out by his staff proclaimed: “[a national campaign] will require nothing less than a political revolution that combats the demoralization and alienation of so many of our people from the political process.”

This rhetoric may sound refreshing to Millennials like us, who crave cosmic change in a country whose unbending political institutions seem to oppress more than they protect. However, Sanders’s rhetoric is not as novel as one might like to think. Rather, Sanders is intentionally harnessing the dialogue of the sixties—a time when leftist ideology dominated most college campuses and “counterculture” became mainstream— to appeal to today’s disgruntled youth and reach out to older leftists’ sense of nostalgia.

The radicals of the sixties, like Sanders, held distaste for the political and economic elite. They aimed to destroy the pervasive systems in our country—namely racism, the two party system, and capitalism—and establish an alternate government. By adopting these ideals and using terms like “brothers and sisters” and “revolution,” Sanders

pays homage to the movements of the sixties, such as the Black Panther Party, who also used familial terms.

However, before jumping on the Bernie bandwagon in the hopes of emulating true revolutionaries, we must acknowledge the tremendous flaws of the movements of the sixties, and ask if Sanders’ rhetoric is celebrating a complex and often misguided set of movements.

I have always admired the movements of the sixties, From the Black Panther Party to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) penetrating the elite college campuses of America, the youth of the sixties seemed to care deeply about speaking out against injustice. But despite the breadth of the sixties’ movements, in many cases, women were excluded from and suppressed in these movements.

Many women struggled to reconcile their commitment to antiwar movements that treated them as inferior with the allure of women’s separatist movements. As Cathy Wilkerson, a member of SDS and a radical militant group known as the Weathermen, explains, “The men in our organizations demanded that we assert and re-assert constantly our loyalty to them, and not to the independent women’s movement.”

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee also suffered from

pervasive gender inequality, as detailed in the group’s position paper “Woman In the Movement.” One example of such sexism was experienced women being given clerical work, while men with equivalent experience were invited to lead large meetings. One entry states, “Capable, responsible, and experienced women who are in leadership positions can expect to have to defer to a man on their project for final decision-making.”

Even in organizations such as the Black Panther Party, which was almost two-thirds women, sexism ran rampant, causing women like Regina Davis, the manager of the Black Panther school, to be beaten for admonishing male co-workers who do not complete their tasks.

The most prominent organizations of the sixties were a mass of contradictions.

Though they accomplished incredible feats by promoting racial and class equality, sexism was a pertinent force throughout their workplaces.

Furthermore, counterculture was so intertwined with radicalism that some people joined organizations simply to embrace the aesthetic of being different, utilizing radicalism as a means to channel their contrarian attitudes.

The sixties were complicated: full of brilliant passionate minds, Yuchen Jin / The Spectator

Babies Shouldn’t Be Brides

By Zora Arum A couple weeks ago, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday of repentance, I spent nine hours, in three different increments, sitting on an uncomfortable wooden seat at the Cooper Union Foundation Building, listening to my rabbi chant incessantly in semimelodic Hebrew. In fluid verse, for the most part taken wholesale from the Torah and obscure rabbinical scholarship, she implored me to ask God for forgiveness for my sins and transgressions, and I clung to every word, as if, by mere virtue of listening to her speak, I could be absolved.

At the end of every service she leads, my rabbi gives a thirty-minute long sermon. Her sermons are always surprisingly beautiful, full of remarkable wisdom and vaguely politically charged messages, calls-to-humanity, and references recalling emotions that I’ve felt, but never found the words to voice.

But, during this year’s sermon, when my rabbi asked us to let go of our worldly possessions and open our eyes to what was happening in the world around us, a plump, overdressed woman sitting in the wooden seat in front of me took out her iPhone and, with a bored expression on her sagging face, began texting a friend about the merits of her newly bought air conditioner.

I rolled my eyes, disregarding her behavior. A woman who was so attached to her phone that she could not spend even a couple hours away from it was not worth thinking about. After all, I was above her. I was listening my way to enlightenment.

But, when I got home, I couldn’t stop thinking about my rabbi’s speech, or the woman who had sat in front of me earlier that morning, tapping away on her touchscreen keyboard. I realized, with mild horror, that I couldn’t remember the last time that I had gone more than three or four hours without using technology of some sort, usually to access Facebook.

I was selfishly absorbed in the drama of my own life, and I was letting the world pass me by. My sin was that I gave too much weight to things in my life that were largely irrelevant. My sin was that I thought myself, and my problems, uniquely and preeminently important. My sin was that I lacked humility.

This is when I decided that I wanted to start observing Shabbat.

For those who don’t know, Shabbat is a Jewish holiday that is celebrated every week, from Friday night to Saturday night.

On Shabbat, observers do not engage in acts

Adam Wickham / The Spectator

Chloe Delfau / The Spectator

Anne Duncan / The Spectator

Original Sin of “creation.” This includes writing, igniting a flame, connecting a fuse, and cooking, to name a few.

Though this is based directly off of the Old Testament, and is meant to emulate God’s “day of rest” after creating the universe, Shabbat is not solely a holiday dedicated to God and his purported “act of Creation,” as is often assumed. It is, more importantly, also meant to remind observers that our work is less significant than we often think it is.

At Stuyvesant, it is easy to forget that we are not the only people in the world who matter. Our school promotes an environment where we are pushed to succeed in all things—an environment where the best way to get ahead of our peers is to drown ourselves in work, submerse ourselves in extracurriculars, and hope that we are fit enough to survive.

Because of this, the best way to “succeed” at Stuyvesant is to prioritize schoolwork and studying. The problem with this mindset, however, is that it encourages students to sacrifice aspects of their lives that are crucial to being happy, well-rounded individuals in order to excel in the academic sphere.

After two years at Stuyvesant, this year, I realized that I had become so absorbed in my grades, and my ambitions, that I had forgotten who I was. I had stopped reading, and, for the most part, writing, outside of class requirements. When I came home at night, I didn’t allow myself time to dress up like Princess Leia and have a lightsaber fight with my three-year-old brother, because I had convinced myself that my work was an obligation, so it had to take precedence.

But, by celebrating Shabbat, I give myself an opportunity to remember who I am, and what is important to me. By eliminating work, travel and electronics from my life, even just for a day, I allow myself time to pursue things that I care about, but have pushed aside.

In this way, my decision is not based on my identity as a Jew, but, rather, on my identity as a Stuyvesant student who needed to feel a little more human. I celebrate Shabbat to feel more grounded—to carve out a space for self-reflection and growth in my life, and to push away self-imposed stress.

I celebrate Shabbat to remind myself that, if I take a pause from the hustle and bustle of my everyday life, my world will not crumble.

On the contrary, taking a break gives me perspective, and teaches me the value of humility.

It teaches me that, no matter how important my “obligations” feel, they are, ultimately, beautifully insignificant.

free love, equality, and boundary pushing counterculture, but also full of sexism, and a brash narcissism that led small groups to believe that their individual actions were capable of changing humanity. Bill Ayers, another former Weatherman, summed up the problem succinctly when he said, “Don’t embrace a manufactured nostalgia for the so-called 60’s, now thoroughly commodified and sold back to us as myth and symbol.”

When Sanders screams revolution or touts his actions in the Civil Rights Movement, he is transporting his fervent supporters to a time of national dissent. I, like many other leftists, yearn to feel a part of a greater movement, working to revitalize and revolutionize society’s worn out fabric, but we need a new vernacular.

By using the terms of the sixties, Sanders calls his supporters to action, but he also contradicts his beliefs surrounding women’s rights. It is easy for Sanders to utilize the vernacular of the sixties to get people excited about governmental change. It is more difficult, however, to envision a new movement and bring about new language—one that fully represents the scope of his political views, and confronts the issues that plague us today.

Sanders needs to stop taking the easy way out and work to be less contradictory than the revolutionary movements of the sixties. It is unsophisticated to worship a period without examining the slew of problems it represents, and, by ignoring those problems, Sanders is encouraging his followers to revere a time that, in reality, was not representative of his core beliefs.

By Rahat Huda She is nine years old, in a beautiful red sari that keeps unraveling because she is playing in the mud with her younger siblings. Her hands are intricately painted with henna, her ears and neck lined with gold— these are extravagances she knows her parents cannot afford. Seven years later, she is in labor with her first child—my mother— the father is the man she married when she was just a baby herself; the father is sixteen years her senior.

Child marriage is, sadly, not uncommon in South Asia, where 42 percent of all child brides worldwide reside. In Bangladesh alone, 66 percent of girls are married before the age of 18. Girls who come from poor rural families are especially at risk, because without the chance to become financially independent, their families search for the only source of income they can provide their daughters: an older husband.

Thus, the parents of child brides often see their actions as protective rather than harmful or oppressive. They see their daughters will be better off living elsewhere. The choice between bad or worse is a result of the high risk for rape and sexual assault that exists in many communities in Bangladesh.

Although child marriage is a result of rape culture in nations such as Bangladesh, it is often thought by its practitioners to be the solution to that same exact problem.

This is because marital rape is not considered rape in Bangladesh. In section 375 of the Penal Code it states “sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under thirteen years of age, is not rape.”

Although child marriage and marital rape are acknowledged by the Code, they are not addressed, leaving young girls vulnerable to the very behavior their parents are trying to protect them from.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised to end the marriage of children under 15 by 2021 and teenagers under 18 by 2041. In 2014, however, she approved a draft of the Child Marriage Restraint Act that lowered the legal age of marriage for women from 18 to 16. This might lower crime rates, but does nothing to help end the actual crime.

The key problem is that child marriage often goes undocumented, and birth cer-

tificates are frequently altered to make children seem older than they really are. While increasing the legal marriage age would create a stricter, safer standard for marriage, it is meaningless if that standard cannot properly be enforced.

To really prevent child marriage, nations like Bangladesh must improve access to free public education—especially for girls. But trying to break the cycle of child marriage is easier said than done. Illiterate parents often don’t see the value in providing education to their children (mostly their daughters), and once girls are married off, they are often forced to work full-time in their husband’s home. Because these girls are bought off at such an early age, they don’t get the time to develop the independence and identity most teens get during their adolescence to help them make their own decisions.

Compulsory public education would mandate and provide a standard for childhood education. Teaching children about things like health and government empower them with knowledge of how their bodies work as well as their rights. Sexual education is vital in a country like Bangladesh where child marriage and sexual violence are national epidemics.

In addition, if the girls at risk for child marriage were better educated, they would be able to pursue certain lifestyle choices— such as moving to a city and taking up a job—that would have been inaccessible to them without that education.

The need for education is not confined to children; parents can also benefit from learning about the realities of child marriage and how it does not always protect their daughters from being raped. But in order for this kind of social upheaval to occur, the government must take matters into its own hands. Instead of passively neglecting the problem and allowing generations upon generations of girls to fall prey to a vicious system, the country of Bangladesh must work to educate communities and protect children from rape, sexual assault, and child marriage. Organizations dedicated to helping parents understand and providing children with other avenues for success need to take an active role in the regions in Bangladesh where child marriage is most prevalent.

Bangladesh’s government has already demonstrated recognition for the need to educate its young girls. UNICEF’s Basic Education for Hard-To-Reach Urban Working Children program in Bangladesh provides basic education in core subjects such as math, science, social studies, Bangla, and English, while helping girls learn life skills such as job searching. Topics such as child marriage and gender equality are also covered during the learning sessions.

Ultimately, the problem is rooted in deep, pervasive social conditions in Bangladesh and in South Asia at large: rape culture and insufficient education. And if we want that nine-year-old out of her beautiful red sari and into a school uniform, education is where we need to start.

The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 14

Opinions Point-Counterpoint: Constitutional Conundrums A Government for the People

By Stiven Peter The executive branch has passed 36,877 federal regulations in the past ten years. Congress, on the other hand, passed a measly 1,706 bills in that timespan. While many often cite this imbalance as a sign of the flaws in the Constitutional system, it’s actually a sign that America is turning away from the constitutional model, generating massive repercussions throughout the federal system. Turning to alternative systems of government won’t resolve the incompetency of government, but adhering to the wisdom the Framers will.

When forming the Constitution, the Founding Fathers feared the possibility of two extremes of government: a tyranny and mob rule, both of which silence the people. To help prevent one branch from becoming too powerful and possibly mimicking one of these systems, the Framers instituted the system of checks and balances that promotes good government and hinders corruption. Each branch has primary authority on certain issues, but will ultimately fail if it does not cooperate with other levels, to form coalitions and negotiations in creating and executing the law. The result is a slow but thoughtful governing process that that has served the U.S well through the times of hardship and prosperity. A slow government isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I would rather have a government that fights for my rights and wellbeing than a fully functioning government that is efficient at hindering them.

Moreover, the Constitution provides a framework for the Federal government distinct from that of the local and state governments. Citizens’ rights and issues are meant to be fought for at the more local levels, as they would address those issues more effectively than Federal action. The Constitution posits a limited Federal government with a separation of powers and checks to make sure that government doesn’t grow too big, but also is powerful enough to keep the states together.

Despite this enduring vision of the Federal Government, the current political landscape seems disconnected. We have a firm and energetic president who is hesitant to compromise and prone to act unilaterally.

Congress, too, seems to operate outside the outlines of the Constitution. Its approval rating is 14 percent according to Gallup yet it has a 90 percent turnover rate for incumbents. In fact, only nine percent of the population feels that Congress represents them according to a New York Times poll. The current state of politics makes it seem as though the framers have failed us.

There are ways we can work to restore our government to the rightful hands of the people. This starts, of course, with a citizenry that is actively engaged with politics at the local, state, and federal level.

But the problem is not the Constitution, instead much of government ineffectiveness stems from ineffective al-

location of powers between federal and local governments.

This is problematic because many issues are simply unsolvable with a onesize-fits-all approach. The best example of this is healthcare, where each state has its own nuances and specific groups that would oppose the implications of a plan like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) employer mandate or contraception mandate. Thus, it becomes clear that political deadlock stems not from an inherent flaw in the Constitution, but instead, a congress that overextends its reach into local issues.

The problems with our government are deep-rooted, complex, and can’t be fixed with a single silver bullet. However, there are ways we can work to restore our government’s strength. This starts, of course, with a citizenry that is actively engaged with politics at the local, state, and federal level. For example, you can join the local Democratic or Republican club to get connected with your local party’s events or attend a local district meeting, or you can talk to your local representative concerning an issue you care about.

Our Flawed System

By Adrian Aboyoun The 113th Congress was the least productive in American history—it passed a record low of 296 bills. Of these bills, nearly ten percent awarded medals and renamed post offices. And despite being presented with 12 budget proposals, this congress failed to approve any of them, resulting in a federal government shutdown from October 1 to October 16, 2013.

The inaction of our prior Congress and the 16-day government shutdown reveals a nearly fatal flaw in our Constitution and its system of checks and balances. On the surface, the system seems foolproof—the elected legislature passes bills that must be approved by the President to become law. The President can veto these bills, but Congress can overrule his veto with a two-thirds majority.

In this system, legislative power is split between the President and Congress, preventing either of them from gaining excessive power. This is our system’s most-touted strength, but it is also its greatest flaw. The system works when both Congress and the President work

Yujie Fu / The Spectator

There are many ways to participate in government, but the point is that in doing so, the people put pressure on local government officials to represent their opinions and beliefs. This is important because the problem with Congress is that policymakers across the political spectrum are searching for federal solutions when policy is best done by diverse local solutions.

This is clearly exemplified again by health care policy, where a blanket onesize-fits-all system would total something near 1.2 trillion under Obama care. By addressing health at the local level, citizens can come up with diverse solutions to their unique healthcare situations in their state. This governing at the local level is Constitutional in its basis and allows for the people to be faithfully represented.

The problem with our government isn’t the Constitution—it’s the fact that it is detached from the people and prone to expanding its own power. Change starts with all of us and that means getting involved with local politics, fighting for our needs at the state level and electing politicians that will faithfully represent us—just like the framers wanted.

together. If they don’t, nothing can compel them to act, as the shutdown demonstrated. The President and Congress can effectively go on strike over a disagreement, and there is no legal mechanism to force them back to work until the next election.

Perhaps this seems like more of a product of recent political polarization than an inherent flaw in the design of our political system. While it is true that politicians today are less willing to compromise than they were in years past, the executive and legislative branches have been sharing legislative power since the Constitution was established in 1788. Convincing everyone to work together has always been difficult, leading Presidents and party leaders to rely on a variety of less-than-ethical methods to garner legislative support, such as pork barrel spending, or provisions that provide federal funding for projects within a legislator’s district. President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on pork barrel to pass many of his Great Society bills, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It reflects poorly that such landmark legislation was passed with bribes. However, in the absence of this form of this strategy,

Congress is often unable to pass major legislation, such as the Dream Act, the American JOBS Act, or the Buffet Rule.

This is a lose-lose situation: either our leaders use bribes to get stuff done, or nothing gets done at all.

Obama can get away with sidestepping Congress because both Obama and Congress are equally legitimate. The Constitution has no way of deciding who is more right, allowing these disputes to drag on and prevent work from getting done.

The reason for this dysfunction is dual legitimacy. Both the President and Congress are elected, and therefore should represent the people’s interests.

This is fine when the President has a majority in Congress from his own party, like Obama had in 2008. However, it becomes a problem when the President does not have a congressional majority to support him, which Obama has been facing since 2010. In this case, the President still has power and an agenda, but has no way to implement it, because the majority of Congress has a different agenda. The President can kill his opponents’ agenda with his veto, but cannot promote his own agenda without Congress. This creates a constitutional impasse, as the only options left to the President are to try and bully the recalcitrant Congress into implementing his agenda, as Obama did, unsuccessfully, with the 113th, or to try and go around Congress and implement his agenda without them. Obama announced his intention to do the latter in his fifth State of the Union address, and has since taken executive action on pollution and immigration, creatively interpreting existing laws to so. Obama’s actions are not strictly constitutional, and do nothing to resolve his disagreements with Congress. Obama can get away with sidestepping Congress because both Obama and Congress are equally legitimate. The Constitution has no way of deciding who is more right, allowing these disputes to drag on and prevent work from getting done.

Unified governments will always run more smoothly than divided governments. However, divided governments still need to govern, despite their internal disagreements. The Constitution has set up a political system that allows unified governments to govern very easily but allows divided governments to spar amongst themselves seemingly ad infinitum. Our government has been divided for the past five years. During that time little has been done and the division has become so severe that Obama has decided to act unilaterally on key issues, skirting Congress and constitutionality. The only way to resolve this dispute is with a decisive win in the upcoming election—a win that creates a unified government. Otherwise, it’s more of the same. Our Constitution offers no other way.

The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

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The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

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Arts and Entertainment PLAY As someone who frequents Broadway shows and is constantly bargain-hunting, I know that reasonably priced theater merchandise is difficult to come by, especially for long-gone shows. Or if you have the money, maybe you dream of owning a prop from your favorite

show, or even joining the chorus of a show you love after a lesson with a professional choreographer. The Broadway Flea Market and Grand Auction, an event hosted by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (BC/ EFA), is where both of these dreams can come true. Every September, this year on the 27, Times Square, Shubert Alley, and West 44th Street host over sixty tables on the streets, selling all the things theater

fans love, like CDs, buttons, toys, shirts, and tickets. And, at the Grand Auction, you can find some major props and opportunities.

The selection of shows ranged from popular to obscure—every show currently running on Broadway got its own table, but many less popular shows that are no longer running were featured as well. Even some off-Broadway shows, like “Avenue Q,” and certain off-Broadway entities (like The Public Theater) had tables. At each of the stands, there were products such as shirts, magnets, and jewelry—the kind of fare you can often get inside the theaters. The tables were not just limited to selling items from the shows they represented, but those from related shows, as well. For example, the “Aladdin” table also featured long-lost goodies related to other Disney shows, such as “Tarzan” and “Newsies.” The “Wicked” table had some things from “If/ Then,” another Idina Menzel hit (and one of my favorites).

A lot of these things were miraculously cheap, even going for prices under $10. I searched every table for a “The 25th Annual Put-

Yujie Fu / The Spectator

A mountain climber steadily walks across a ladder above a crevice in the ice, treading with caution to the other frost-ridden side. The ladder creaks under his every step, and after walking halfway across, the climber slips and dangles perilously with one arm on the ladder.

There are countless scenes like this one in “Everest,” a disaster action thriller film directed by Baltasar Kormákur. The movie follows a group of climbers who attempt to reach the peak of Mount Everest. The film’s crisp realism is a refreshing change from the cliché “anything is possible if you try hard enough” climbing films have made in the past. Kormákur portrays the harsh reality of not only Mother Nature on Mount Everest, but also the conflicts and dangers faced by those who climb it.

Prior to watching the film, I expected “Everest” to have a simple plot because it was based on a true story. But, Kormákur brings the film to a completely new level by creating conflict

musicals and sold alongside signed playbills. The artist Squiggy sold his caricatured drawings of the casts of multiple shows based on years of plays and musicals. Tables were packed with CDs that featured solo albums of Broadway stars, Christmas albums, and music from other BC/EFA events. The stars of “Matilda” and the upcoming “School of Rock” even gave short performances outside.

The Grand Auction and silent auctions allowed people to bid on not only Broadway memorabilia and props, but dates with Broadway stars, sheet music, and passes to private parties. The biggest prizes were the walk-on roles, which allowed the highest bidders to perform in the choruses of shows such as “Wicked,” “Chicago,” “Kinky Boots,” and “Les Miserables.”

The large sums of money will go to a great cause: supporting people with HIV/AIDS and increasing awareness of the disease. This year, the earnings hit a record high of $756,655, beating the record of $713,986 last year. If enough Broadway fans eager to score some awesome merchandise and opportunities pitch in next year, the 2016 earnings will be even higher.

Where Death and Pride Meet

film

By TJ Westfall

nam County Spelling Bee” recording in preparation for my audition for the Stuyvesant Theater Community’s production, and I got it for only two bucks instead of the usual 20.

The playbills, props, and other memorabilia from various shows being sold on the same tables as the cheaper products were unique.

For example, the “Wicked” table included a monkey mask, Elphaba’s boots, and sheet music used by the show’s orchestra. Some tables even sold the boards that once held the cast lists of closed shows.

When I went to the “Something Rotten!” table, I saw they were selling a head sketch prop of Christian Borle’s Shakespeare character used in the show. One lucky man I saw on the street managed to acquire a gigantic neon “N” from the original “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” sign. Last year, I managed to score a notebook used by my favorite Elphaba (Lindsay Mendez) because it was interesting to see what she wrote during the show.

Props and typical merchandise were not the only things offered at this event. One table sported the adorable “Broadway Bears,” teddies dressed as characters from current

between the characters. Because the equipment they shared was becoming increasingly worn, and everyone was clamoring to reach the peak at once, tensions began to rise. For example, a ladder going over an otherwise impassable crevice could only be used by one person at a time, and would take hours to use if multiple groups were on the sides waiting. From a practical standpoint, not everyone would get to the peak and back during the two weeks they had to make the trek. When the groups decided to sit down at base camp one night to sort out some schedules for the equipment, their attempt to negotiate the situation resulted only in heated arguments and a lot of frustration.

It requires a great deal of skill to immerse the audience in the plot on a personal level, and Kormákur nails this with the introduction of some of the climber’s families. As the climbers talked to their wives or kids over a satellite phone (which costs 50 dollars a minute), I recognized how well scenes like these put characters into perspective. They enabled

the audience to empathize with the climbers’ families because we realized that they are just normal people. So when I watched the wife of one of the climbers helplessly shed tears, phone in hand, for her husband’s safety, I was genuinely moved.

The cinematography of “Everest” shows the audience what it’s truly like to climb the tallest mountain in the world.

Epic camera angles portray the full action of the film, whether they give the audience a magnificent glimpse at the mountain’s peak or the base camp. Watching a climber inch his way above a crevice on a ladder, step by step, makes his vertigo apparent, and seeing a huge icy drop with no visible bottom when the climber glances down elucidates the incessant danger.

The film lacked decent shots of the actual mountain itself, however. When the characters reached the peak of Mount Everest, I hoped to see some beautiful, focused shots of the surrounding area of the peak from a climber’s perspective. I was disappointed to only see the characters plant-

Yuxin Wu / The Spectator

By Jenna Bawer

The Broadway Flea Market: A Theater Nerd Haven

ing flags on the snow and crying.

If Kormákur had put in a couple of shots in without any climbers blocking the view, the grandiose feeling that the audience is supposed to feel could have been more pronounced.

Climbing a mountain may seem irrational, especially given the amount of self-inflicted risk

involved. But the reason anyone would climb a mountain is simple and plays as one of the main themes of the film: a person climbs a mountain just because it’s there. Kormákur makes it clear that as long as there are mountains to climb, there will be people with the ambition to go out and climb them.

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The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 18

Arts and Entertainment calendar

Get a Life: The Cultured Edition

“An American in Paris” Palace Theater Theater

By Liam Elkind Two men approaching their 70s, William Bryson (Robert Redford) and Stephen Katz (Nick Nolte), walk the treacherous Appalachian Trail determinedly. They rush on, out of breath, excited to see the end of the trail. One hour later, they are tired.

They have walked as far as their legs can take them. And they have traveled… little more than half a mile from where they started.

Bryson and Katz instill a fresh sense of humor in the classic Butch/Sundance theme, where two old buddies get together for one last adventure. Humor comes from the defiance of expectations, and a story about two arthritic men hiking the Appalachian Trail is unsurprisingly loaded with it. Director Ken Kwapis’ ”A Walk in the Woods,” based on Bill Bryson’s memoir of the same name, effectively captures the spirit of adventure and humor as its protagonists face dilemmas including bears, treacherous terrain, and a really annoying hiker.

Despite his allergies and arthritis, Katz joins his old friend Bryson in his expedition to conquer the Appalachian Trail. The two set off excitedly, and as they walk, they discuss how their lives have changed since last seeing each other. During their scenes, the interpersonal dynamic between the two men takes center stage. Katz is a recovering

Music

By Samantha Han There was a lot of skepticism when Scottish synth-pop band Chvrches announced their release of a second album. Their first album, “The Bones of What You Believe,” had amazed listeners—the vocals of front-woman Lauren Mayberry shone through the powerful lyrics she wrote herself on top of ‘80s-influenced synthesizers. “Bones” became considered one of the best albums of 2013 and garnered a strong fan base for the band. Despite their success, there were still many doubts that their sophomore album, “Every Open Eye,” would be on par with their first.

However, all uncertainty disappeared when the opening track “Never Ending Circles” debuted.

It immediately launches into an opening of thumping beats that the band is so beloved for. Mayberry then joins in and sings about resilience at times of change: “I’ll

Prudential Center Concert

5 Seconds of Summer Album release

OCTOBER

“Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn” Brooklyn Museum Art

Film

“The Who”

“Sounds Good Feels Good”

“Activist New York” The Museum of the City of New York, at 103rd St. Art

“Cloud Nine” Linda Gross Theater Theater Through Nov. 1

10/25

10/23

ONGOING

10/16

10/24

“Be Small”

“Young the Giant”

Here We Go Magic Album release

Wellmont Theatre Concert

Two Old Friends On One More Adventure alcoholic; Bryson is a successful author lacking inspiration. As they continually talk about their old age and how this might be their last adventure together, themes of mortality and friendship ever-present.

Nolte delivers an outstanding portrayal of Katz, who feels inadequate next to Bryson, the successful writer. At first mentioning Bryson’s success in a teasing fashion, it later becomes clear that Katz is insecure about his lack of accomplishment in life. He and Bryson share a heartfelt moment in a ravine on the trail, when Katz reveals his alcoholism and his jealousy over Bryson’s strength (both emotional and physical) and success. Nolte portrays his role with such subtlety and authenticity that the audience can’t help but sympathize. Redford, delivering a similarly impactful perf o r mance, reveals his own insecurities as well.

The film often dilutes the gravity of dramatic scenes, however, by focusing on the humor. After Bryson

and Katz’s dramatic conversation, Katz candidly says, “Well that was a nice moment!” They then continue to hike, encountering goofy dangers along the way. The humor is well-developed and nuanced, but never shies away from an opportunity to add in a knee-slapping slapstick gag (ex. Bryson falling in a river, and Katz attempting to help him up and falling in as well). Much of the humor came from the

differences between Bryson’s modest and emotionally conservative character and Katz’s more outgoing and pompous personality. In one scene, Bryson tries to philosophize with his friend, while Katz would rather flirt with the waiter at a restaurant.

As much as it is a buddy movie between the two men, “A Walk in the Woods” also features an outstanding supporting cast. Emma Thompson delivers a beautiful and honest performance as Bryson’s wife. Always supportive of his professional and personal endeavors, she frets over Bryson’s reckless decision to travel the trail. Her attempt to dissuade him added to the adventurous humor present throughout the rest of the movie.

Thompson and Redford had flawless chemistry; even their characters’ main conflict arose from how much the two loved each other.

When Bryson left for the trail, his reluctance to leave his wife was made painfully clear. Despite these more serious undertones, Kwapis never dwelled too heavily on them. Instead, Kwapis kept the banter between the two peppy and lighthearted.

A nod must also be given to the special effects crew, who effectively followed through

on Kwapis’ vision to juxtapose the humorous and dramatic aspects.

Different environments were utilized to enhance both: a running creek into which our heroes tumble and a dark ravine beneath a starry sky during the deep conversation.

Occasionally, the usage of green screen was apparent, but was easy to ignore given the natural lighting and sound of the scene.

As Bryson and Katz hike the trail, they transform from everyday adventurers into philosophers.

They are able to overcome their mutual fear of inadequacy through their friendship and respect for each other. The Appalachian Trail is, at the end of the day, simply a backdrop which Bryson and Katz use to propel themselves forward.

On their journey, the two rediscover their own worth. Bryson, ever the poet, puts it best when he says, “They say the Appalachian Trail is like life. You never know what’s gonna happen, but you give it your best shot.” “Walk in the Woods” takes this message to heart, not by loading its characters with heavy dialogue or forcing humor onto the audience but by allowing the chemistry between the actors to drive the scenes. Kwapis gave it his best shot, and emerged with a funny, heartfelt movie.

Katherine Gershfeld / The Spectator

Here’s to “Never Ending Circles” go my way if I’m going at all / This time / Believe that the strong red lines / That I will draw will come and cover you up.” The tempo slows down to a soft vulnerability during the bridge before launching back to its dance tempo. The strength of “Circles” leaves the listener eager to hear

more and sets the tone for the rest of the album: a collection of songs about being tough against a backdrop of catchy syn-

thesizers.

The songs about striving for the better don’t stop there. In the song “Clearest Blue,” which is about being discontent in a relationship, Mayberry sings “You were the perfect storm / But it’s not enough.” The title makes it seem like the song will be a gentle, mournful ballad and at first, filled with soft beats, it is.

But then the tempo is more intense until it finally releases into a euphoric burst o f dance mu-

Sarah Chen / The Spectator

sic. This isn’t simply a track about grieving a failed relationship, but one that celebrates being stronger because of it.

This attitude is seen again on “Playing Dead.” This time, the rhythm is neutral until it suddenly becomes heightened just as Mayberry sings about getting over and ignoring an ex-boyfriend. Not only is it a scathing breakup song that leaves no room for remorse, it also empowers the listener to possibly do the same.

After all these energetic songs, listeners will appreciate “Afterglow,” the last song on the regular edition. It’s so much slower than the rest of the album that it almost sounds as if it were performed by an entirely different band. However, it’s a necessary and pleasant break since it gives the listener the opportunity to relax and process what they’ve just listened to.

“Every Open Eye” is a crisp, lively album. Its only problem is its lyrics—while beautiful, they

can get repetitive towards the end of the songs. This is especially evident in “High Enough To Carry You Over,” which has Martin Doherty on vocals instead of the usual Mayberry. The only thing that brings it down is the fact that the chorus—which consists of only two sentences—is repeated over and over again. It starts out strong but could have been improved if it had been cut short.

This is the album’s only flaw; the rest of it leaves fans excited to listen on repeat and impatient for what will no doubt be a stellar third album. Chvrches has been through a lot—they started on their album a mere six weeks after they finished touring, Mayberry has received brutal sexist comments, and the band has had to deal with comparisons to other synth-pop bands, such as Passion Pit and the Knife. But as one of the songs says and the entire album embodies, they’ve truly “made [it] gold.”

The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 19

Arts and Entertainment What’s in a Name?

Sunny Chen / The Spectator

music

By Jasmine Tang When the highly-anticipated and well-received “Modern Vampires of the City” was finally released back in the spring of 2013, Vampire Weekend fans had already began to cross their fingers, in hopes of a fourth album in the works.

Now, fast forward to fall of 2015—though the world has yet to hear even a snippet of a new

song for a future album, the wait is a bit less grueling, thanks to the release of “The Names,” the first full-length solo album by Vampire Weekend’s bassist, Chris Baio.

By deviating from the usual sounds of Vampire Weekend, Chris Baio seems to be stepping out of his band’s shadows, creating a new identity for himself as an artist. “The Names” is a fun electro-pop album with heavily embellished, bizarrely titled

tracks, but it still evokes a cool and collected atmosphere.

The album kicks off with “Brainwash yyrr Face,” and the song is as bold as its title, which is a reference to Banksy’s film, “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” It starts off with light drumbeats that are followed by synths and an unusually processed vocal sample of female singers. The complexity of the sounds juxtaposes Baio’s calm voice, but does not overpower his vocals. The track is definitely different from the rest of Vampire Weekend’s music and other electro-pop songs out there; it somehow comfortably sits in a position between acoustic and electronic, creating a sound that is demonstrated throughout the album.

The feel-good music continues with “Sister of Pearl,” which is the highlight of the album. After a single listen, the melody is planted in your mind, and you’ll be left to endure the displeasure that accompanies having an infectiously catchy tune stuck in your head.

It’s hard not to become infatuated with the piano riff and happy rhythm. Baio’s vocals tastefully garnish the song. The applied sound effects and a speech-like quality make Baio sound as if he doesn’t want merely to sing to his listeners, but converse and connect with them, establishing an intimate feeling.

Communion is the quality that captures the overall feeling of “The Names.” The title track, “The Names,” is a paragon of Baio’s attempt to get close with his listeners. A bit more toned down than the rest of the songs in the album,

it consists of a steady bass and easygoing vocals that mask his emotions. “I can do it / If it’s really what you want / I can mend it / If you give it a shot,” Baio sings, declaring his competence at being a lover. “The Names” isn’t exactly a track you would dance

short-lived silence has a powerful impact, enabling listeners to reevaluate what they just heard and to prepare to listen to the rest of the song. Baio’s audacity when it came to producing this track gives “I was Born in a Marathon” its stand-out status.

The applied sound effects and a speech-like quality make Baio sound as if he doesn’t want merely to sing to his listeners, but to converse and connect with them, establishing an intimate feeling.

to, but it sounds incredibly pleasing to the ear, especially with the unique echoes Baio uses to adorn his voice.

The experimentation with sounds is another feature of the album. The anticlimactic songs “Matter” and “Scarlett” were compensated for with other tracks that contained outlandish elements. In “I was Born in a Marathon,” another song with an odd title, Baio inserts an unexpected pause that lasts for a few seconds around the second minute of the song. Though this seems to create a sense of awkwardness, the

As Baio devises an enjoyable album and defines himself as an artist, he seems to also embrace his love for works of art, literature, and music. From naming his album after a novel by Don DeLillo, to titling a song “Brainwash yyrr Face” as a reference to Banksy, and even paying homage to Roxy Music’s song “Mother of Pearl,” Baio’s album seems to be much more than a group of songs—his album also serves as a collection of works that has inspired him, motivating his listeners to take risks and aspire, similar to how he has by releasing “The Names.”

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The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 20

Arts and Entertainment TV

By Danielle Eisenman A Friday night is not complete unless I’ve eaten falafel over rice (with extra white sauce, of course) from the Halal Guys and watched one episode of “Gilmore Girls.”

There’s nothing better than being invited into the adorably idiosyncratic world of Stars Hallow for a full 40 minutes except, maybe, bright orange rice drowning in gallons of a sour mayonnaise mixture.

In the Gilmores’ fictional Connecticut town, everything vaguely represents real life, but is a whole lot better. Autumn leaves are that much more vibrant, the teenage girl character you’re supposed to relate to is that much more beautiful, and her boyfriend is that much cuter. The show, whose seven seasons ran between 2000 and 2007, follows three Gilmore women—Emily (Kelly Bishop); her daughter, Lorelei (Lauren Graham); and her daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel)—as they navigate their relationships with one another and the various men in their lives.

This Friday, however, instead of “Gilmore Girls,” I opted for Paul Weitz’s “Grandma,” which is currently being shown in a few theaters around the city. The events in “Grandma” occur on a single day—the film follows teenaged Sage (Julia Garner) and her grandmother, Elle Reid (Lily Tomlin) as they drive around their unspecified West Coast town in search of 630 dollars to pay for an abortion for Sage. The film can be seen as a foil to “Gilmore Girls” because it zooms in on another grandmother-mother-

Moms, Grandmas, and Pregnant Teenagers teenage daughter trio, but with a sense of indelicate realism that’s missing from the Gilmores’ story.

Rory Gilmore may not possess supermodel looks or be at the top of her school’s social ladder—she’s a mousy brunette who would much rather cuddle up with a Dorothy Parker anthology than go to a party—but she has problems we’d all be honored to have. (Who wouldn’t want to have to choose between Harvard and Yale after being accepted to both schools?) Rory’s ability to use words too complicated for the SAT is endearing, not intimidating, because of her wide blue eyes and prepubescent-sounding voice.

While Sage has an equally puerile voice and equally adorable blue eyes, she’s the kind of student that

struggles to maintain a B average in school. Sage’s cloud of blonde curls might make her look even more angelic than Rory, but her situation is much more adult.

She’s a pregnant teenager who, unlike Juno MacGuff, is not swayed by the pro-lifers that tell her about the existence of her baby’s fingernails when she tries to enter her local abortion clinic.

Sage is determined to terminate her pregnancy because the boy who impregnated her is a “little creep,” according to both her mom and her grandma.

Unlike R o r y, who

Sunny Chen / The Spectator

always had to choose between dating equally handsome good guys and bad boys (following the cannon of Teen Dramas— Buffy had Angel and Spike, Angela Chase had Brian Krakow and Jordan Catalano), the only man in Sage’s life has “a face like an armpit” (her grandmother thinks “some people just aren’t supposed to have beards”) and, when we meet him, is wearing a jersey printed with a giant hemp leaf.

The kid who got 16-year-old Lorelei Gilmore pregnant with Rory was a good friend of Lorelei’s, and his good looks managed to stay with him through adulthood. Because Rory’s father is mild mannered and pretty, and the show’s audience doesn’t have to be confronted with a pregnant Lorelei (it starts when Rory is already 16), Lorelei’s teen pregnancy a lot less vulgar than it could have been. On the other had, we have to see Sage throw up behind a tree and into a kitchen sink.

It would be easy to say that, because “Gilmore Girls” takes place in an idyllic, nuance-free bubble, it’s inherently worse than “Grandma.” I actually believe the show serves its purpose. If my mind has been struggling to understand the Rational Roots Theorem all week, I’m not usually tempted to find something mentally stimulating right away. I don’t want to and thankfully don’t have to scrutinize the show’s characters because it’s hard enough

to have to sit around and figure out all of the characters I see in school every day. I want to cuddle up with a show that’s warm and familiar, where events unfold as I wish they would in my own life.

Like, whenever an obstacle pops up in one of the Gilmore girls’ lives—maybe, a boyfriend will decide he’s had enough— after one tearful ice cream-eating montage is over (these usually last for about half a minute)— she’ll have moved on. Next thing you know, she’s been elected vicepresident of her high school’s student body, and has started crushing on a brand new boy who, incidentally, likes her back.

Even though it’s not realistic, it’s comforting to see the characters liberate themselves from pain in less time than it takes most people to process upsetting events.

But, in “Grandma” the ungraceful residue of each tragedy, large and small, remains. Everything is not fine and dandy after Sage gets the abortion. Cramps from the procedure cause her to double over in pain, and, during her last appearance in the film, she’s still wincing. Problems in “Grandma,” like in the real world; they’re stubborn.

It’s not the kind of film I would want to watch before bed, because it doesn’t exactly shut my brain off. I continue to be plagued with uncomfortable uncertainty whenever I think about Sage and what will become of her, but that’s probably just because I’m wondering the same things about myself.

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The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 21

Arts and Entertainment playlist

Lob-autumn-y The Native Americans believed that colorful autumn leaves were indicative of a good hunting season. According to them, after a bear was killed, its blood would drip from the heavens and give leaves their seasonal orange and ruby hues. The golden leaves would be colored with the bear’s liquefied fat.

Any person with a basic understanding of biology, however, knows that this explanation is almost entirely incorrect. The leaves show their warm colors because they have grown to old to hold on to their green chlorophyll. They are dying. Like an elderly person’s translucent, wrinkled skin, pretty leaves are a sign of imminent death.

The desire to fetishize autumn for its pumpkin spice lattes, its oversized sweaters, or its plentiful harvests is irrational, if not positively loony. The only way to deal with this, we have decided, is to mandate that those who fetishize this morbid season have the problematic parts of their brains killed off.

Well, just kidding. We love the crisp air and Technicolor trees as much as everyone else does.

We in no way condone the “medical” procedure of lobotomy (or, in our case, “lob-autumn-y”), but we are still compelled by the beauty we see in the death of trees. We decided that the best way to understand this phenomenon would be to listen to songs that seem to communicate our seasonal irrationality.

“American Beauty—Plastic Bag Theme” London Music Works Film score

Christine Jegarl / The Spectator

“Teenage Lobotomy” Ramones Punk rock

“R.I.P. 2 My Youth” The Neighbourhood Indie rock “The Flowers” Regina Spektor Anti-folk

“Brain Crack” Tracy Bonham Alternative rock

“A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left” Andrew Bird Indie rock

“Gust of Wind” Pharrell Williams Funk

“Insane in the Brain” Cypress Hill Hip-hop

“Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground” The White Stripes Alternative rock

“Army Dreamers” Kate Bush Art rock

“Someone New” Banks Alternative pop

“Autumn Leaves” Cannonball Adderley Jazz

“The Hanging Tree” James Newton Howard, Jennifer Lawrence Film score “Walking the Cow” Daniel Johnston Lo-fi “Guernica” Brand New Alternative rock “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion” The Flaming Lips Alternative rock “Who Are You, Really?”

Mikky Ekko Indie pop

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Page 23

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The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 24

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

By Randolph Higgins PIER 40 — Coming off of a 2-3 start to their season, the Stuyvesant Peglegs—who, last year, made the Championship Game and ended the season 11-2—are fighting just to make the playoffs.

This has prompted comments from many students that the team’s dominance is over now that the class of 2015 has graduated. However, many others have noted surprise that Stuyvesant has a football team, with some going so far as to suggest that the football team is just an elaborate invention of several of the larger upperclassmen.

The Stuyvesant Peglegs is one of the oldest teams in the school.

Around for the better part of the century, it has seen its ups and downs, even though it has not

seen a championship since the late sixties. Still, many things never change on the team. Mark Norwich, who graduated last year, told reporters, “I come back to Stuy and it hasn’t changed: the camaraderie among the players, the dedication to the game, the baffled looks on people’s faces when the words ‘football’ and ‘Stuyvesant’ appear in the same sentence.”

For the last several years, the team has been on an upward streak. In 2012 and 2014, the team made the championship and last year the Peglegs lost only one regular season game. The team was also very popular at school in those years, and at one point the varsity quarterback was almost able to get a date. But the team has had a hard start this year, losing its first game to its rival

Eagle Academy, and then losing most of the spectators at its first home game to apathy. Captain Laolu Ogunnaike told reporters that the decline is at least partly due to the makeup of the team this year, saying, “We lost a lot of good players this year, and the guys replacing them just aren’t as experienced or attractive.”

One of the team’s most ardent fans, senior Sabrina Sun, gave another account, saying, “I don’t even know how they did last year.”

Coach Mark Strasser told reporters on Tuesday that it wouldn’t hurt if students occasionally came to cheer on their football team instead of studying for AP Biology tests, watching the chess team, or whatever it is Stuyvesant students do instead of having fun.

Soham Ghoshal / The Spectator

Hochlewicz Developing System to Monitor Broken Escalator Monitors

By Jacob Faber-Rico Unlike many other public schools, Stuyvesant is fortunate enough to have a great deal of helpful technology, including monitoring systems to tell students which escalators are working and which

aren’t. However, as many students have noticed, these systems often do not work. After standing idly for as long as one day, watching these systems break, senior Krzysztof Hochlewicz decided to take action.

“I’ve been wanting to install a system to monitor broken tablets ever since I installed tablets to monitor broken escalators, but for the longest time, I couldn’t come up with a practical way to make it work,” said Hochlewicz, who predicts that the system will only take a couple weeks to fully develop. Hochlewicz spent the summer coding software for his escalator-monitoring system, much of which he plans to reuse for crucial parts of the escalator monitor-monitoring system, such as the colorful graphics indicating which tablets are broken.

Once he finishes developing the system, Hochlewicz will need to convince the administration to set it up permanently, a process which could take up to six

months. However, when all is said and done, the system should be capable of monitoring all of Stuy’s 14 escalator monitors in real time, providing students with valuable information about which monitors are not monitoring correctly.

One weakness is that students could potentially break or steal the tablet-monitoring tablets, but Hochlewicz does not think this will be an issue. The tablets cost less than $40 if new, and are worth even less because they have been heavily used. Hochlewicz even bought and repaired many broken ones. “The tablets aren’t worth stealing, and since they’re here to help everyone, I have faith that people won’t just break them for no reason,” Hochlewicz said.

However, in the event that something does happen to the system, Hochlewicz is prepared, as he also plans to eventually install a system that will alert students of broken escalator-monitor monitoring systems.

AP Psychology Student Analyzes Teacher’s Penis Envy

By David Rosen It was a perfectly normal day for senior John Smith as he walked into English teacher Jane

Doe’s fourth period British Literatur class. It wasn’t until the lesson started that Smith noticed that something was horribly wrong.

When Smith saw that the homework assignment for that night was to read fifteen pages of Virginia Woolf’s “To The Lighthouse,” senior and witness to the scene Henry Walker said Smith “flipped out.” “He acted like he’d never sparknotes’d anything in his life,” Walker said. Some students took out snacks in preparation to watch what could only be described as “vio.”

Smith began to complain that Ms. Doe had always previously assigned the class ten pages of reading a night, and that fifteen was going too far. Ms. Doe responded, saying that she was confident the students could handle five extra pages.

Smith, an AP Psychology

Christine Jegarl / The Spectator

student this year, began crudely psychoanalyzing his teacher, Freudian style, and making outrageous assumptions. “Why are you giving us more work? Are you compensating for something?”

Smith said. Continuing with this line of questioning, Smith asked, “Are those five extra pages going to make your dad stop wishing he had a boy? Did he always tell you that doing more work will ‘make you a man’? I think that the underlying reason you assigned this extra homework, Ms. Doe, is because you subconsciously have penis envy. Trust me, I’m taking psych.”

Smith has been suspended for his disorderly and rude conduct in this incident as of October 6.

However, Smith has opened up an entirely new can of worms, as students across the school have been accusing teachers who assign pop quizzes of having Oedipus complexes.

Student Opportunities New Clubs to Join

Chloe Delfau / The Spectator

Football Team Opening Disappointing To Some, Irrelevant to Others

By Alec Dai and Samantha Gendler

•

European-American Alliance

•

Pigeon Club

•

Pidgin Club

•

Pig Gin Club

•

Homeroom 1 Reject-Reject—The Big Sibs Rejects Club

•

SING! Themes Brainstorm Club

•

ATSIRA— 5 pillars of teaching smart kids how to have fun. (max.

•

grade requirement: 75)

•

Future Couch Surfers of America

•

Stuyvesant Club/Asian Club

•

Petitioners Club

•

We Think Student Politics Actually Matter Club

•

Estonian Alliance Club

•

Antarctican-American Club

•

JOHN CEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENA CLUB

•

Let’s Teach Hillary Clinton about E-mails Club

MTA to Add Five Stops to 1 Train Just Because

By Shaina Peters and Henry Walker Sophomore Evan Winters stepped out of his apartment building on 7th Avenue and 26 Street last Wednesday to find a new stop on the 1 train in the lobby of his building. But this wasn’t an isolated incident. The 26 Street station is part of the MTA Capital Program’s effort to increase coverage on the 1 train, a task that the MTA has been under no pressure to undertake.

After careful deliberation, the MTA decided that the 1 train program should take priority over minor projects like the Second Avenue Subway or increasing the quality of service. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years, it’s that we always need to think one step ahead, and skip the previous steps. That’s our recipe for success,” MTA Chairman Thomas Prendergast said.

The five stops are all in separate locations, strategically placed for minimal efficiency. The first, which is exactly in the middle of the tracks, doesn’t let anyone on or off, or exist for any real reason, is the most popular of the five. Sophomore Ann Caplin shared her reasons for liking this stop so much. “It takes the least amount of time out of the commute, so even though it does nothing, it’s actually the most useful out of all the 1 train’s stops,” she said.

Other train stops include the stop directly in front of Winters’s building (between the existing 23 street and 28 street stations), a onestop detour to Weehawken, New Jersey (between the 50 street and 59 street - Columbus Circle stops), a tunnel to the Flushing - Main Street

station from South Ferry (where the 1 will meet with the 7) and a stop on top of the newly-opened 128 Street Loop-de-loop.

According to MTA Capital Construction president Michael Horodniceanu, the Loop-de-loop is the technological, recreational, and logistical highlight of this addition.

At a price of only $1.2 billion, the loop and accompanying station was completed, adding the thrill of a loop-de-loop to an ordinarily mundane ride, as well as the convenience of an upside-down 5thstory station. “This is the type of construction we need to usher our transit system into the 21st Century.

This will be a message to the rest of the world that our transit system, and our city, is alive and thriving,” said Horodniceanu.

However, these stations have come at a price. The 1 train has suffered from repeated delays because of construction. “I’ve noticed that in the last two years, there’s been an awful lot of train traffic. I didn’t think much of it, but it’s a little disturbing to find out that it was because of construction I won’t even use,” Upper West Side resident Sophia Flanders said. “I appreciate the upgraded coverage, but I don’t feel like a trip to New Jersey is really necessary.”

Despite the criticisms, though, the stops have received a warm reception. Since their opening last week, they have already served multiple riders and helped several people walk fewer blocks to the train. “You’re always going to upset someone, no matter what you do,” Winters said. “However, you can’t put a price on convenience.”

The Spectator â&#x2014;? October 16, 2015

Page 25

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The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 26

Sports 2015-2016 Fantasy Basketball Late Round Sleepers

By James Ng and Joshua Zhu The National Basketball Association (NBA) season is just around the corner, and with a new year comes a fresh start for every team. After a strong draft class and a free agent frenzy, many teams hope to make a splash this season. Carmelo Anthony is back from a season-ending surgery, LaMarcus Aldridge has a clean slate on the slowly aging San Antonio Spurs, and Derrick Rose is (probably) making a return after another gruesome injury. For all of the avid fantasy players out there, this is the most nerve-wracking time of the year. Who do you pick to establish the strongest team possible? Well, we’ve compiled a list of our must-have late round gems to complete your perfect fantasy team.

be worth drafting in the later rounds. Before suffering a season ending torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) last season, Parker single handedly revived Milwaukee Basketball. He is a front runner for rookie of the year and averaged 12 points and five rebounds in 25 games. Fantasy owners will also appreciate his efficiency, since he shot 49 percent from the field. Parker says that he rebuilt his body, battling through ACL therapy and gaining muscle, and is excited to pick up right where he left off last year. His optimism is a good sign of moving forward. Now that the Bucks have Greg Monroe occu-

pying the paint, Parker should be able to free himself up for easier drives and open jump shots. Expect to see a re-energized Jabari Parker filling up your stat sheets this season.

3) Mason Plumlee, Portland Trailblazers Mason Plumlee was a solid player in Brooklyn. After two years in the league, he has averaged eight points, five rebounds, and just under a block per game.

However, in Brooklyn, Plumlee played behind Brook Lopez, the offensive focus of the Nets, limiting Plumlee’s minutes and stats.

Now that Plumlee is on Trailblaz-

ers, which has rid itself of much of the core from last year, he will have considerably more playing time. Lacking a front court, the Trailblazers should expect Plumlee to be an integral part of the team. This is also Plumlee’s third season in the league, a common breakout season for NBA players. If you want a solid, big man to round off your team, Plumlee is a low risk, high reward player.

4) Rajon Rondo, Sacramento Kings To say that Rajon Rondo has fallen off since his ACL tear during the 2012-13 might just be the understatement of the

1) Isaiah Thomas, Boston Celtics After being traded into the Celtics last year, Isaiah Thomas quickly made a name for himself as the team’s leading scorer and assister. He averaged 17.5 points and seven assists per game, all while coming off the bench.

Thomas is currently the only perimeter scorer on the Celtics, which means a majority of the offense will be run through him. Thomas is expected to up his scoring to around 20 points and nine assists per game due to new acquisitions David Lee and Amir Johnson. They should be able to attract players away from Thomas, prevent double teams, and serve as reliable players Thomas can pass to. As a Sixth Man of the Year snub this past season, Thomas is going to work even harder to prove himself this year.

5) Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers Kobe Bryant would have been a first round pick in the 2012-2013 season. Three seasons and three season-ending injuries later, Bryant has reminded us that all good things come to an end. This season will be his 20th season with the Lakers, and age has definitely affected Bryant’s value as his fantasy ranking has dropped to 67 (ESPN). However, if you can snag Bryant in the middle rounds of the draft, he can certainly be a benefit to your fantasy team. Bryant is expected to play a smaller role at the small forward position, which may increase his efficiency. In addition, he is only one year removed from season averages of 22.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game, which are solid numbers for any player. With his name, someone may be inclined to draft him earlier—just don’t let it be you.

2) Jabari Parker, Milwaukee Bucks Arguably the face of the Milwaukee Bucks, Parker will

Yujie Fu / The Spectator

Boys’ Fencing

Girls’ Volleyball

Joun and junior Jade-Anast Thompson, Joun kept hesitating when it came to taking jabs or lunging. This let Thompson get free hits since Joun could not manage to parry. Sophomore Kailash Eaton missed multiple times while trying to hit his opponent’s back, which cost him his position and thus allowed his opponent to easily lunge at his open chest several times. “We underperformed this game,” Choi said. “However, I have high hopes that our team has the potential to improve throughout the season.”

“I have high hopes that our team has the potential to improve throughout the season.”

—Aaron Choi, senior

The Bulldog’s epée team, on the other hand, did exceptionally well. There was little chance the High School of Arts and Design could defeat Stuyvesant in this matchup. There were no major flaws and everyone performed at the top of their game.

Senior Tinghe Lu even managed to pull off a few fancy parries while junior Jacob Schluger got off a shoe hit on his opponent.

Unlike Lu and Schluger, however, captain and senior Edward Ansour kept things simple and went with very quick finishes that caught both of his opponents off guard. Stuyvesant won the epée matchup 45-10.

With the conclusion of their first game, the Bulldogs look ahead to more challenging matches this season. Their main contender during the regular season is the Nest+M’s Eagles. The Eagles have a very formidable foil team and coach Winston says it will take a lot of training before the Bulldog’s foil team can be ready for the upcoming game. Winston is also looking forward to the playoffs where schools like Benjamin M. Cardozo High School and Staten Island Technical High School will be playing. With all these challenges in mind, the Bulldogs will be practicing more than ever, with the hope of becoming city champions.

Vixens Serve Up Big Season Opener continued from page 28

lowed consecutive aces, and frequently hit the ball out of bounds. The run ended with a kill by senior Ashley Lin, making the score 21-2. A service error by Stuyvesant only delayed the inevitable as the Vixens eventually regained possession. Two consecutive aces by Lin helped the Vixens cap off the first set 25-7.

The momentum from the first set carried on into the second, as Stuyvesant opened up with four straight aces by Kamm. Because of the Vixens’ dominant performance, some of the newer players were also given a chance to play, including sophomore Khrystyna Andriychuk, who swapped in for Kamm and contributed four aces of her own. Sophomore Rochelle Vayntrub subbed in

“[This was] a great start to the season, we have a good season ahead of us.”

—Mariya Kulyk, senior

Xin Italie / The Spectator

Promising Start for the Bulldogs continued from page 28

century. Once regarded as a premier point guard in the league, Rondo is now ranked at 123 by ESPN. And his ranking seems to be quite reasonable—after joining a Mavericks team that fully expected him to be the missing piece of a championship contender, Rondo failed to live up to expectations, shooting a measly 43.6 percent from the field.

However, as Rondo now plays out a one year contract with the Kings, he can certainly redeem his place atop the point guard hierarchy. Rondo will have the opportunity to post high assist numbers, as he is surrounded by big men such as DeMarcus Cousins and shooters such as Marco Belinelli. Rondo averaged 8.9 points, 5.5 rebounds and 7.9 assists per game last year, which are respectable numbers for a guard. If you are willing to take a risk on a pick with high upside, draft Rondo in the mid to late rounds.

and had great service as well, and soon the second set seemed like a replay of the first.

The Vixens worked very well together, communicating clearly and helping each other out after mistakes. A poorly angled set almost sent the ball out of bounds, but Kulyk was ready to save and send it over the net for a kill. Even as the Vixens swapped in rookies to give them some game experience, they managed to maintain their lead. Washington Irving picked up some steam toward the end of the set, scoring five points in the last few minutes, but they ultimately could not overcome the lead built by the Vixens, who won 25-10.

Washington Irving had an

off day. The players did not communicate well and made many unforced errors, which lost them possession often. On the other hand, the Vixens had an extremely successful serving game, with ten aces in the first set and 13 in the second. Their frontline also played excellently together, with Ostergaard and junior Lucy Wang totaling six and three assists, respectively.

Liang and Kulyk were both very happy with their team’s performance. While they may not want to get ahead of themselves, as they have yet to face the stronger teams in their division, they definitely got off on the right foot. “We have a good season ahead of us,” Kulyk said.

The Spectator ● October 16, 2015

Page 27

Sports Girls’ Swimming

Julie Chan / The Spectator

Stuyvesant Penguins Dominate First Few Weeks of Season

By Justin Lin With a 4-0 start to the season, including a win against swimming powerhouse Hunter College High School, the Stuyvesant Penguins hoped to continue their streak on Friday, October 9, against one of their biggest opponents, Bronx Science.

dance of energy and excitement.

Though there were some close races, the Penguins came out on top with a 55-49 win, the closest one this season.

The meet began with a Penguin win in the 200-yard medley relay. Freshman Mandy Chan helped Stuyvesant build a lead in her leg of the butterfly. Senior

“It always feels good winning a meet, no matter how big or small, but especially this meet, because it is against Bronx Science, who is one of the biggest rivals in our league. It was also our playoff ranking meet.

Everyone was excited and pumped.”

—Yuxiao Lei, senior and co-captain During the regular season, the Bronx Science Wolverines are considered the Penguins’ most difficult opponent. In the past, meets against the Wolverines have generally been extremely competitive, and the Penguins did not expect this year to be any different. As the Penguins prepared for the meet on Friday, the pool was filled with an abun-

Krystal Lara continued to build the lead during the backstroke leg of the race, and left freshman Laura Saliy and junior Paulina Ruta to finish the race. The Penguins easily won first place, as well as third place in the event, giving the Penguins a 7-3 lead.

Though the Penguins performed quite well, Bronx Science provided fierce competi-

tion, with a one-two win in the 100-yard freestyle, in which Bronx Science sophomore Jasmin Bouzarouata came in first and junior Skylar Hunnewell second. Besides this event, the Penguins dominated in every other event, including the 200yard individual medley, in which junior Britney Cheng and sophomore Maddie Wong placed first and second place, and the 100-yard breaststroke, in which Cheng and Saliy also placed first and second place.

As the ending of the meet neared, the Penguins were winning by a reasonable margin and went unofficial in the 400 free relay. But they did not only win; some of the penguins placed best times in their events.

The win against Bronx Science will help the Penguins with their confidence against other teams as they go further into season. This wasn’t just a big meet for them—it was the Penguins’ playoff ranking meet.

Every time in this meet was converted into power points; the sum was used to determine which team would be seeded top in the playoffs. Knowing this, the Penguins went into the meet, trying to swim their best times to get good positioning in the playoffs.

“It always feels good winning a meet, no matter how big or

small, but especially this meet, because it is against Bronx Science, who is one of the biggest rivals in our league,” senior and co-captain Yuxiao Lei said. “It was also our playoff ranking meet. Everyone was excited and pumped.”

One factor that allowed the Penguins to come out on top this year was their strong rookies. With the addition of seven

events. They, along with the rest of the rookies, have been working hard every practice and their results are showing.

“I think we received a lot of good freshmen this year. They have great experience with some of them being club swimmers,” said senior and co-captain Clara Zheng. “They put in a lot of the work and they are really dedicated.”

“I am proud of what these girls are doing. They are really working hard.

I hope after taper, they get what they want out of their season and they meet their goals and they realize all the hard work paid off.”

—Peter Bologna, coach swimmers and two divers, the Penguins were able to improve upon an already strong lineup.

Every year, with the departure of previous seniors, the rookies have a big job to fulfill in order to replace the gaps, and the current rookies have showed that they are capable of such job. Two examples are Chan and Saliy, who have shown up in big meets and done well in some of their best

With this win, the Penguins hope to continue through strong as they draw closer to playoffs and Opens. “I am proud of what these girls are doing. They are really working hard. I hope after taper, they get what they want out of their season and they meet their goals and they realize all the hard work paid off,” Coach Peter Bologna said.

Boys’ Soccer

A New Hope for the Centaurs

By John Park Practicing since August to become a playoff contender this season, the Centaurs, Stuyvesant’s soccer team, displayed the effects of their hard work with a blowout win against Louis Brandeis with a score of seven to one on October 4. Later that week, on October 7, Stuyvesant headed into a crucial game against Frederick Douglas Academy with momentum, and were able to pull off a one to zero victory against the traditional soccer powerhouse.

Ever since preseason in midAugust, the boys’ soccer team trained by coach Vincent Miller practiced at Pier 40. They had a strong, lengthy training for three and a half weeks before competing in their first game. Though the Centaurs won their first game, they lost the next three games to the prestigious soccer teams in this city, one including a humiliating loss against Frederick Douglas Academy with a

score of five to zero.

“Losing ten seniors and now having to fill in those holes with last year’s bench is a taxing adjustment,” sophomore Nikolas Cruz-Mastard said. “We were trying to make those adjustments during those early games which didn’t work out too well.

But we didn’t lose confidence and we all put in work to quickly raise our team’s chemistry, which I think is the fundamental key to soccer.”

identify what aspects need to be worked on each game and bring that to practice the next game, as well as try to get these guys to play well together, games as well as practice,” Fossati said. “Most importantly I just have to lead by example, I know my team trusts me to lead, but trying to tell them what to do at all times is not effective.”

Miller and Fossati’s contributions to the team’s chemistry were seen during Sunday’s

second half, sophomore Sunny Levitis proved to be the man of the match by scoring an addition goal and assisting three others.

“Our squad was clicking. We had a lot of successful passes with one another, and we just trusted each other,” Sandler said. “We kept the hype from before the start of the game when we did the Spongebob-themed call and response chant.”

The Centaurs continued to

“We didn’t lose confidence and we all put in work to quickly raise our team’s chemistry, which I think is the fundamental key to soccer.”

—Nikolas Cruz-Mastard, sophomore Senior and Centaurs’ captain Paolo Fossati also played a significant role in improving team chemistry. “As captain I need to

match against Louis Brandeis.

After the first half, the Centaurs led by two points—both scored by junior Laszlo Sandler. In the

prove their team’s chemistry was efficacious when they defeated Frederick Douglas Academy on Wednesday, the fourth-ranked

team in the city who previously defeated the Centaurs by a large margin. However, coming to the field that day, the Centaurs were an improved team from what they were earlier in the season.

Throughout the first half, the Centaurs’ defensive lineup and junior goalie Tai Manheim kept Fredrick Douglas away from scoring. Later in the second half towards the end of the game, junior Noah Fichter kicked an accurate 20-yard through pass to Sandler, who deflected the ball in to score the game winning goal.

“Scoring the winning goal is one of the best feelings you can have, but the win was certainly down to the team’s performance,” Sandler said.

The Centaurs are looking to continue to play their high performing level and prepare for the playoffs on Sunday, October 18, with their last seasonal game against Washington Irving High School.

October 16, 2015

Page 28

The Spectator SpoRts Cross Country

CALENDAR

Mayor’s Cup Brings High Expectations for Greyducks

OCTOBER Girls’ Swimming vs. Fiorello FRIDAY H. Laguardia Stuyvesant H.S. Pool

Julienne Schaer / Mayor’s Cup

16

24

Manhattan Borough Championships Track and Field Van Cortland Park

22

Girls’ Volleyball vs. Murry Bergtraum THURSDAY Stuyvesant H.S. Gym

SUNDAY

Junior Kiyan Tavangar (left) finished fifth in the Varsity race, and freshman Tobias Zinner (right) finished third.

By Max Onderdonk The Mayor’s Cup on October 4 was the first of what looked to be many great performances this season by both the boys’ and girls’ cross country teams. The boys had strong runners at the Mayor’s Cup, with two, junior Kiyan Tavangar and senior Samuel Greenberg, finishing fifth and seventh in the 2.5-mile race, respectively. The Greyducks placed all of their top five runners in the top 60 with a balanced effort throughout. With so many good performances from top to bottom, they showed a lot of promise for this season.

Most members of the boys’ team have this attitude, confident that they can go far this year. “We’re going to win cities,” senior Jacob Faber-Rico said.

“We still have to improve, but I think we can do it.” Faber Rico placed third among Stuyvesant runners in the 2.5-mile race on Sunday, and 47th overall, with a time of 14:55.37.

Sophomore Matthew Fairbanks will have a similar role on the team, and he had a

similar outlook. “[I can] absolutely [make an impact as a sophomore]; being the fourth/ fifth man on varsity is a really important position because it is at the cusp of scoring and not scoring. Meets are won by strong teams, not just strong players,” Fairbanks said. He compared the varsity team to the Germany World Cup team; everyone plays their own part in reaching their ultimate goal.

Fairbanks finished fourth amongst Stuyvesant runners, just three seconds behind Faber-Rico with a time of 14:58.29.

Since he is only a sophomore, he represents a bright future for the Greyducks, and he’s focused on making a big “splash” now. “[My goal is for] our varsity to win cities this year and do well at states, [and] to win sophomore boroughs as an individual, even sophomore cities if I can.”

The Greyducks also excelled in the underclassmen races, with freshman Tobias Zinner placing third in the 1.5mile Freshman race. With ambitious goals and a balanced team, the boys Greyducks cer-

tainly have a chance at accomplishing what they are striving for—a city championship.

The girls’ cross country team was led by junior Zovinar Khirmian, who finished 14th overall with a time of 17:04.29.

However, she wasn’t very satisfied with her performance. “I was pretty disappointed in myself. I haven’t been performing the way that I’d hoped,” Khirmian said. “I really want to match some of my times from last year. I had a great season and I’d really like to replicate it, but so far, things aren’t looking too good.” Last year her top times for the 2.5-mile race and 5K race were 15:46.39 and 19:43.36, respectively.

Yet, she has very high hopes for the team. “The team performed well, especially with some of the Junior Varsity girls who will likely be moving up to Varsity,” Khrimian said.

With the season getting into full swing, it’s hard not to see the potential of both the boys’ and girls’ teams. Now it’s up to both teams to fulfill their high expectations for this season.

Boys’ Fencing

Yi Zhu / The Spectator Senior Nicholas Yang fences against student of High School of Arts and Design at Stuyvesant High School.

The lights of the dance studio reflect off of two foils as two Stuyvesant fencers warm up before the start of their first game of the season against The High School of Arts and Design. The Weekend is playing in the background as oth-

26 MONDAY

HS of Art and Design Gym

WRAPUP tuyvesant’s Varsity Badminton team faced off against Seward S Park Campus on Wednesday, October 7. Both teams were undefeated thus far. Stuyvesant won the match 3-2 and is now in first place in their division.

tuyvesant’s varsity boys’ fencing team added its fourth win to S the season on October 7, beating Long Island City 90.00-0.00.

Two of these wins, however, are due to early forfeits. o-captain and senior Laolu Ogunnaike threw for 156 yards and C three touchdowns in the Peglegs’ win over East Harlem Pride, 23-12. Stuyvesant’s varsity football team has a 3-3 record for the season.

he undefeated Birdies, Stuyvesant’s varsity girls’ golf team, T tacked on another win at the Dyker Beach course on Thursday, October 8, beating Fort Hamilton, 4-1. he Mimbas, Stuyvesant’s varsity girls’ soccer team, lost their T fourth straight game on Monday, October 12 to Lab Museum United, 5-3. The Mimbas are a win in front of LaGuardia for last place in the division.

Girls’ Volleyball

Promising Start for the Bulldogs

By Xuanjia Fan

Boys’ Fencing vs.

HS of Art and Design

ers are discussing strategy for the upcoming match. While some try to practice feinting and parrying, others practice lunges. The lax atmosphere makes it feel like it was a party rather than a game—perhaps a testament to the Stuyvesant Bulldog’s ease in the game.

They came out victorious, win-

ning with a score of 90-30.

The Bulldog’s foil team performed well against their opponents. Senior Aaron Choi and junior Jian Ting Gao led the way to victory as both showed exceptional fencing skills on the strip. Choi’s style of quick and strong lunges at the chest and abdomen paid off well while Gao’s feints and patience helped him win two bouts, 5-0.

Sophomore Nicholas Li fought relentlessly with stab after stab while his opponent struggled to parry each blow. Stuyvesant won the foil matchup 45-20.

Still, the Bulldog’s foil team still has a long way to go in terms of overall performance.

Coach Joel Winston said there is a lot of “fine tuning” the team must undergo. “There’s a lot of room for improvement,” Winston said after the game. For example, some of the sophomores and juniors did not have good footwork. During the second bout between junior Jean continued on page 26

Vixens Serve Up Big Season Opener

By Andrew Qu After a successful 9-3 season last year, the Vixens, the Stuyvesant girls’ volleyball team, made quite the impression in this year’s home season opener. A few losses during scrimmages in the preseason left the team anxious coming into the game. However, a hot start in the first set became a huge run that lasted until the end of the match.

The Vixens went on to win a resounding victory against Washington Irving High School in two sets, 25-7 and 25-10, on September 28. “Hopefully, this will be a boost of morale after a few scrimmages we lost and a boost to the rookies’ self-confidence,” senior Tammy Liang said.

Washington Irving began the set with an ace by senior Abigail Bruce. However, a fumble during her next serve

resulted in a net and Stuyvesant possession. From there, the Vixens went on an 8-0 run, including several aces served by senior Georgia Kamm. She eventually served the ball into the net, but Washington Irving couldn’t get any points before losing possession again.

The Vixens then went on an astonishing 13-0 run, starting with two consecutive kills by senior and captain Mariya Kulyk. Junior Madeleine Ostergaard made a great set that appeared to be intended for Kamm but actually went to Kulyk. The fake threw off Washington Irving and allowed for the easy point. Liang also played a significant role in the runs, converting excellent serves in the first set and finishing with five aces.

Washington Irving had trouble handling the ball, alcontinued on page 26