The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper
Volume CV No. 7
December 23, 2014
Features
stuyspec.com
Stuyvesant Responds to Eric Garner Case Krista Stark / The Spectator
Newsbeat • The Stuyvesant Chess Team competed in the National Chess Championship where they received first place in the Blitz tournament, a form of speed chess. The freshman and sophomore teams placed second overall. The junior team placed first overall. • Senior Fauna Mahootian was selected to participate in the Reischauer Scholars Program sponsored by Stanford University. The program is a rigorous online course that focuses on United States-Japanese relations with a special focus on Japanese history and culture. • Stuyvesant Speech and Debate Team Varsity Public Forum Debate entrants Ben Kessler and Jakob Urda and novice Public Forum entrants freshman Inbar Pa’er and Abie Rohrig both placed first in the Ridge Invitational Speech and Debate Tournament. • Computer Science teacher Michael Zamansky was invited to “Code and Beyond,” a conference that gathers leaders in the field of education technology to discuss the future. Zamansky has also received 10,000 dollars from the Digital Ocean, a digital hosting company, to subsidize his Software Development students in setting up virtual cloud servers. • The Stuyvesant Speech and Debate Team placed second overall in the George Mason University Patriot Games. Seniors Ben Kessler and Jakob Urda won the Public Forum category and sophomore Lela Ni was a finalist in the Declamation category. • Social Studies teacher Linda Weissman brought her Criminal Law students to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office where students listened to a presentation about the inner workings of the judicial system and were also given the opportunity to observe a criminal trial in session. These students also recently visited New York Law School to serve as guest jurors during the law school’s mock trial program. • Social Studies teacher Robert Sandler’s class received the opportunity to listen to Rita Meed, the daughter of noted World War Two Warsaw Ghetto resister, Vladka Meed, talk about her mother’s life. The class was also given the opportunity to listen to a presentation by Holocaust survivor Sally Frishberg about his family’s experience during the war.
“The Pulse of the Student Body”
Several Stuyvesant students joined a large crowd protesting police brutality and racism on 25th Street and Broadway, as part of “Millions March NYC” on Saturday, December 13. The poster on the left reads, “If this doesn’t lead to an indictment, what will? Make police accountable.”
By VANNA MAVROMATIS and NAMRA ZULFIQAR In Staten Island, New York, several police officers of the New York City Police Department approached 43-year-old Eric Garner with the suspicion that he was selling loose cigarettes illegally on July 27, 2014. The confrontation escalated, with Garner verbally—but not physically—resisting arrest. Officer Daniel Pantaleo put Garner
The poster in the middle reads, “White Silence=White Consent.”
in a chokehold, ultimately leading to Garner’s death. Garner was black and Pantaleo is white. A grand jury’s decision on December 3, 2014, not to indict Pantaleo, led to massive protests, rallies, and “die-ins,” where protesters lie down in a public place to raise awareness against the racism that caused the incident. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” have become the rallying cry of people demanding change.
The banner reads, “Real Thugs Wear Flag Pins.”
The case inspired sophomores Livia Kunins-Berkowitz, Zora Arum, Evan Lieberman, Solomon Medintz, and Kofi LeeBerman to lead the racial equality movement at Stuyvesant. “I was talking to a friend from Bard who asked what Stuyvesant was doing and I said ‘Oh, nothing!’ It was frustrating. So I chatted up my friends who were also interested in social justice,” Kunins-Berkowitz said. “We decided a meeting is the
first step. We had a lot of people who had different political ideas, looked different from each other, and had different opinions.” Wanting to take action, the five aforementioned sophomores organized a meeting on Monday, December 8, to discuss the Eric Garner case and racial inequality. “We discussed changing speech — like how the n-word is so thrown around continued on page 2
Check out page 12 for a comprehensive look into Stuyvesant’s response to the Eric Garner case.
Senior Mohammed Islam Presents Contradictory Story About His Finances By TINA JIANG and ARIELLA KAHAN
New York Magazine published an article on Sunday, December 14, titled “A Stuyvesant Senior Made Millions Picking Stocks” as a part of their “Reasons to Love New York” edition. The article was about senior and president of the Stuyvesant Investment Club Mohammed Islam, and it reported that Islam had accumulated a net worth of $72 million through his trades on the stock market. As this story began to trend on social media, some questioned the $72 million figure. On Monday, December 15, The New York Observer released an exclusive interview between Islam, his friend Damir Tulemaganbetov, and a reporter from The New York Observer in which Islam admitted that the $72 million was a hoax; Islam explained that he made $72 million on simulated trades with fake money, not with real money. The next day, The New York Observer released a videotaped formal apology in which Islam profusely apologized Article on pages 8-9.
Are You There God? It’s Me, _____ A Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim, an atheist, and a Catholic walk into a classroom”...what happens next you’ll have to read and find out! The Features department follows the lives of several Stuyvesant students, and how they identify with certain religions.
for lying to the media. “I’ve always dreamed of one day starting a business and becoming wealthy. But at the age of 17, I spent my recreational time doing simulated trades. My financial prowess has not been finetuned and practiced in the real world,” Islam said in the video. “I pretended to be something I’m not, and I’m more than sorry. I can’t even explain it anymore. I didn’t fully realize the consequences of my actions.” Islam did not respond to The Spectator’s request for an interview. In response to the amalgam of comments on social media and The New York Observer’s article, New York Magazine published an editor’s note in which they affirmed that Islam had lied to their reporter. “We were duped. Our fact-checking process was obviously inadequate; we take full responsibility and we should have known better,” New York Magazine wrote in their editor’s note. Despite New York Magazine’s affirmation of Islam’s inaccuracies, the publication continued on page 3
Student Councils Across the City By ARIEL LEVY and SHARON LIN One of the major campaign promises of the current Student Union (SU) leaders was to bring necessary experience to the task of governing the school, an asset they claimed to be especially important in light of the relatively new administration. However, the SU has struggled to act without the help of a Coordinator of Student Affairs (COSA) this year. “The SU has been severely maimed without a COSA,” SU Vice President Jonathan Aung said in a previous interview with The Spectator. “The SU has to take whatever plans we have and directly ask the administration for approval, which can be pretty ineffective.” Despite lacking an adult advisor, how does the Stuyvesant student government compare to governments of other schools in the city? In Stuyvesant, the SU student body president and vice president, as well as each grade’s president and vice president, are elected by student votes for joint tickets. Campaigns are primarily advertised using social media and in-school posters. The elected leadership of the SU then chooses the SU Cabinet, which includes positions Article on page 16.
such as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Executive Secretary. Student governments of high schools throughout the city have very diverse structures and election processes. For example, the Trinity School, an independent co-educational school on the Upper West Side, operates a School Senate. Their Senate has four representatives from each grade, each elected by student vote. The four senior representatives are candidates for Senate president, which is elected after a formal assembly during which each candidate makes a speech to the student body concerning their goals for the school year. The Senate then selects a vice president, treasurer, and speaker from a separate pool of candidates by vote. The treasurer and speaker have similar responsibilities to the CFO and Executive Secretary respectively, managing funds and taking minutes for meetings. Similarly, Townsend Harris High School, a public magnet high school in Queens, elects the members of its Student Government Executive Board. Each spring, candidates are required to make a speech to the student body to appeal for their votes. continued on page 3
A&E
The High School Rock Band Lives On A&E writer and Photo editor Anne Duncan reviews Dolly Spartans, an up-and-coming indie rock band that’s bound to make headlines in the future. Check it out on page 16.