Issue 13

Record The Horace Mann

DECEMBER 6TH 2019 || VOLUME 117, ISSUE 13

HORACE MANN’S WEEKLY NEWSPAPER SINCE 1903

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Security concern leads to school-wide day off and tightened safety measures Alison Isko and Talia Winiarsky Staff Writers Due to the presence of an unidentified man on campus during the early hours of November 21st, Head of School Dr. Tom Kelly closed all division campuses that day to ensure the safety of the community. Kelly sent the email announcing the closure of school at 5:14 a.m., about five hours after the man had entered the campus.

The individual entered campus through the unlocked Fisher Gate entran ce, which was left open to allow cleaners to enter and exit campus, as well as let the Department of Sanitation pick up waste, Director of Public Safety Mike McCaw said.

On-site cleaning workers began to question the individual and called their supervisor, maintenance employee Danny Aguino, McCaw said. Aguino engaged in a conversation with the individual, who claimed that he was a student who had left his backpack in Fisher Hall, Public Safety Officer Steve Darby said. Darby surmised that the individual saw the sign on the entrance of Fisher and used it in his story to make it more believable, he said. As the interaction between Aguino and the individual continued, Aguino notified Darby, who was on duty that night, to investigate further. Darby arrived at the scene four minutes after the individual had entered campus, McCaw said.

The incident provided an opportunity for the Office of Public Safety (OPS) to review its protocols and implement new safety measures, McCaw said. “Anything to do with our school, anything not to do with our school, if it’s shootings at other schools or at malls, we always review ongoing incidents, and we see where we are in that picture, where are our procedures in comparison to what happened.”

At the time, only one Public Safety Officer was stationed at night. However, the day after the incident, the OPS discussed and effected changes to make the campus safer, which includes having two Public Safety Officers at night: a roving patrol and a stationary patrol, McCaw said.

A second officer was added to the overnight shift to better regulate arrivals and departures from campus, McCaw said. “[Increased security at night] is something we’ve been thinking about for a while, and [the incident] just kind of put it on the front burner, because we have 18 acres of school here and only one person overnight doing it.”

Ayesha Sen (9) was surprised when she found out that the trespasser was able to walk on to campus at night, since she is aware of the dedication of the OPS, she said. Nevertheless, the day off reassured her fears. “All of the security staff worked very hard to make sure that we were safe even after [the incident].”

Moreover, at the direction of Kelly, the Facilities Department had the entrance gates to the Spence Cottage Parking Lot modified as to be easily locked in the event of an emergency or during off hours, McCaw said.

Science teacher Dr. Jane Wesely said that the increased security and the new gate will

Jake Shapiro/Photo Editor

further the safety of the school. Besides that, she believes that students themselves act as a form of protection, especially if an incident like this one were to occur during the day. “You have a cell phone and a pair of eyes, so you are kind of the first line, as well as the teachers, too,” she said.

“We can always be more watchful; we can always be more aware of our surroundings.”

The cleaning crew’s skepticism of the individual was essential that night because it allowed Darby to quickly intervene, he said.

This situation has happened three or four times before where lost people have wandered onto campus, McCaw said. This incident, however, was more dangerous than the others because the individual was unstable and unaware of his surroundings.

The individual could have passed for a junior or senior, McCaw said. Upon later investigation that he conducted in collaboration with local police precincts, McCaw found out that the individual was 25 years old.

“While the police department chose to release this individual with no genuine effort to ascertain who he was or what his record was, through our own resources we were able to find out exactly who this individual was, his alias’ and his criminal past,” Kelly wrote in a follow-up email.

The OPS knew that the trespasser was not a student because Assistant Director of Public Safety Pete Clancy ran the trespasser’s name through a student database, which he provided without any official identification card, Darby said. The database returned no results. When Kelly confirmed that the individual had never been a student at the school, Darby called 911.

The NYPD arrived at the school at 1 a.m. and removed the individual from campus, and released him from a local precinct at around 3 a.m., McCaw said. The NYPD issued a summons for him to appear in court at a later date, the same benign practice that the NYPD uses for drivers who run a red light, McCaw said. Unlike a more severe charge, such as an arrest, the NYPD did not take the individual’s fingerprints and photo.

As the police released the intruder, the school was unable to file criminal trespassing charges, Kelly said.

Louise Kim (9) said she was surprised that the NYPD had released the individual without finding out their exact mental state or identifying them, but then was reassured by the presence of the strong security team. “I don’t notice it often, but there are always people looking at all of the entrances, and realizing that, I felt a lot safer.”

After the individual left campus, the Public Safety Officers and Kelly coordinated the search of the campus to ensure that the intruder would not return to campus and also to search for weapons that he might have left, McCaw said.

The trespasser presented himself as calm and did not seem to have weapons on him, but the OPS did not know if he had been on campus earlier that night and left anything there, Darby said.

In a follow-up email, Kelly wrote that he does not know why the individual came to the school.

“That’s what made me so uncomfortable. The entire incident was so out of the ordinary, and

Courtesy of Anthony Trotta

PUPS AT WORK Security dog poses with front desk stuffed security dog on its search day.

I’ve been working in a school setting for 30 years.”

All Public Safety Officers had photos of the trespasser taken by security cameras and were instructed to call 911 if the individual were to return to campus.

In the early morning, the OPS and Kelly decided to close school to continue their search throughout the day.

“The decision to continue the search throughout the day was driven by the need to have additional dogs come in to assist with the search. The single dog available to us during the early morning hours was not able to search all of the buildings. If we had been able to search and secure all the buildings before 5:00 AM, school would have opened as scheduled,” Kelly said.

The school makes decisions about when to close school on a circumstantial basis; although the school received a bomb threat last February and did not close, in this situation, the school worried about what harm the trespasser could cause, McCaw said. The bomb threat was only a call, while the trespasser posed a tangible danger to the school.

“I am completely confident in our Public Safety Office and in their judgement of when our campus is safe and when it isn’t safe,” Head of Upper Division Dr. Jessica Levenstein said.

Ana Melian (11) would have appreciated an explanation about the school’s closure sooner, she said, as the first email announced only a security concern without details. “Hearing that something was wrong and not knowing what [was wrong] was a little worrying,” she said.

For Walker McCarthy (10), the efforts that the school took to prevent another incident from happening reaffirmed his confidence in the safety of school, he said. “In their response, it seemed like they all handled it really well. And the following days after that, it was clear in a couple of different ways that Horace Mann had responded to the incident, like with the dogs walking around.”

The OPS used three dogs, Leo, Zorro, and Narissa, from a private security company,

Michael Stapleton Associates, to sniff out bombs and other weapons early Thursday morning.

Although school reopened Friday, the school kept the dogs until the following Tuesday, November 26th, McCaw, who was in charge of the dogs’ search, said.

The dogs reinforce the idea of safety at school, Kim said. “Especially in the mornings, it really shows students that they are taking every step possible to protect the student body.”

Another lasting effect of the incident was the implementation of academic accommodations to make up for the missed day of classes. Levenstein, along with Dean of Students Michael Dalo and Upper Division Dean of Faculty Dr. Matthew Wallenfang, helped manage these changes in the schedule. Between November 21st and Thanksgiving Break, the Testing Day Policy, which dictates which classes can test on specific days of the week, was suspended. Advisory was cancelled for the following Tuesday so that C-period classes could meet.

“I think teachers handled it well,” Zack Kurtz (9) said. “They rescheduled everything to when it needed to be rescheduled. Everything I needed to make up, I was able to make up, and there was no problem with any of it. Teachers moved tests that they needed to move, and it worked out very conveniently for me.”

The day off didn’t cause any inconveniences in Kim’s schedule either, and she was glad that school was closed, as it ensured students’ safety, she said. “I think it was a good decision because first of all, they still had to clear the campus and search to see if anything was out of place on the campus and also see if this individual was not on campus in that moment. I felt like the immediate harm or possibility of that individual returning was mitigated by the closing of the school.”

The school has, and always will continue to be dedicated to its safety, McCaw said. “We are going to make every effort that the school is safe at all times, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.”

OPINIONS

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Editor-in-Chief Julia Robbins Managing Editor Mayanka Dhingra Issues Editor Jude Herwitz Features Nelson Gaillard Gabby Kepnes Kiara Royer News Amelia Feiner Madison Li Sam Keimweiss Simon Yang Opinions Victor Dimitrov Abigail Salzhauer Lions’ Den Darius McCullough Mark Fernandez Ranya Sareen Andrew Cassino A&E Nishtha Sharma Eliza Poster Eddie Jin Middle Division Ben Wang Isabella Zhang Design Editors Euwan Kim Reena Ye Chris Ha Art Directors Annabelle Chan Gabrielle Fischberg Katya Arutyunyan Photography Griffin Smith Ahaan Palla Jake Shapiro Faculty Adviser David Berenson

Staff Writers Izzy Abbott, Adrian Arnaboldi, Abby Beckler, Bradley Bennett, Sam Chiang, Sogona Cisse, Jack Crovitz, Adam Frommer, Andie Goldmacher, Julia Goldberg, Andie Goldmacher, Alison Isko, Avi Kapadia, Marina Kazarian, John Mauro, Yesh Nikam, Henry Owens, Oliver Steinman, Emily Shi, Samuel Singer, Natalie Sweet, Sasha Snyder, Vivien Sweet, Joshua Underberg, Talia Winiarsky, Chloe Choi, Emma Colacino, Yin Fei, Lucas Glickman, Claire Goldberg, Liliana Greyf, Lauren Ho, Walker McCarthy, Maya Nornberg, Morgan Smith, Patrick Steinbaug, Katya Tolunsky, Nathan Zelizer Staff Photographers Julia Isko, Daniel Lee, Ava Merker, Kelly Troop, Halley Robbins, Sophie Gordon, Amanda Wein, Maxwell Shopkorn, Emma Colacino, AJ Walker, Lucas Glickman, Lauren Ho Staff Artists Wilder Harwood, Sarah Sun, Rachel Zhu

THE RECORD OPINIONS DECEMBER 6TH, 2019

Using privilege for service: reflections on 9th grade service learning day

Louise Kim The day before my 9th grade Service Learning Day trip to the Ittleson Center on Nov. 14, 2019, I was filled with excitement as I thought back on my experiences with service learning in the Middle Division, including trips to the Mercy Center Carnival and New York Common Pantry. I wondered if my experience the next day would be as enriching as those in which I had previously participated.

What were the facilities and the kids like?

What were their lives like? Most importantly, how would we be able to help the kids?

Each student traveled with their Horace Mann Orientation class (HMO) to different locations, including Van Cortlandt Park, the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, and the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center. My HMO group went to the Ittleson Center, a program that offers special education and treatment for children ages five to 13 who have faced family problems and emotional trauma.

When we arrived at the center, we were given an introduction to the program. We then went to the gymnasium to wait for the kids who came to meet us after their morning classes. There were about 30 students in the center, but we met about 15. We played four-square, basketball, and volleyball with the stu-

dents for about an hour. Some of the kids weren’t interested in playing sports, so a few of us drew with them instead. The kids were energetic, playful, and constantly smiling. One thing that struck me was the children’s respect and kindness for one another. For example, when one kid had the volleyball and another kid wanted to serve, the first kid would give the ball to the second without a moment’s hesitation.

Before we left the center, one of the caretakers told us that the children were asking if we would come back next week.

I felt a rush of emotions. I was sad that they would miss us but happy that we had been able to spend the day with them.

Afterwards, I realized just how excited

school is involved in developing them.

Our community is designed to help us develop a mindset of service and empathy for others. This is even written into our mission statement: “Horace Mann School prepares a diverse community of students to lead great and giving lives.”

Receiving an education in this institution is a privilege. Our mission statement is unique in that it shows one of the goals of the school is to use the education and privilege it provides students with to give service to the world—we are not only wielders of privilege, but we are also givers of its product.

Positions of privilege come with the responsibility to acknowledge that privilege and to use it to help others, especial-

Lauren Kim/Staff Artist

they were to see us—we heard that the children didn’t meet people from outside environments often, let alone other students in their age range.

My experience at the center definitely led me to think in a deeper way about our roles in society and how our

ly those who are less privileged, in ways that show respect, empathy, and grounds for connection. Our school implements the Service Learning program to teach its students that these responsibilities must be fulfilled and that we must put our privilege in perspective.

Through expressing gratitude for our privilege and giving our time and energy to do good works with good intentions, we can make the world better. However, this cannot end with a single day of service requirement—this should be only the beginning of our path to leading great and giving lives. We cannot live a life focused on ourselves because this is a misuse of our privilege. As Horace Mann himself put it, “Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.”

Setting aside resistance, reluctance, and cynicism, we need to reflect on our position in society as people who both have the privilege and responsibility of helping others. From my experience at the Ittleson Center, I learned that people appreciate even the smallest acts of kindness. The students left the gym with smiles on their faces and, afterwards, talked about how happy they were that we had visited—and all we had done was play games and draw with them. They had even asked if we were coming back, showing how much impact a little time and compassion can achieve.

Service learning builds lasting connections rather than one-time moments by continuously reminding us to create a positive impact in our community. The program can be seen as a requirement to graduate or an opening to spaces where we can work with the school’s resources to make these ripples in the world outside of our school. I’ll always remember the way the students smiled, and I now realize that having this opportunity to help others is a gift that we can use to change the world. From our experiences with service learning throughout our education, and through an analysis of our school’s tradition, mission statement, curriculum, and service events, we can learn more about our privilege, our role in society, and ourselves.

Letters to the Editor It is an old story —this work of valuing difference—and it hasn’t come easy. Consider the Biblical Moses who stood up for a people punished for worshipping a single God. Foregoing the safety of his adopted Egyptian identity, he led the enslaved Israelites to “The Promised Land,” a multicultural space where monotheists were free to pray their own way. Armed with 10 [core] Commandments, the first state of Israel was built.

Over the millennia, that ancient kingdom of Judea and Samaria was subsequently serially conquered, colonized, and scattered throughout the four corners of the earth by the Babylonian, Assyrian, Roman, and Ottoman Empires. Even after extrication from the British mandate and the rebirth of Israel in 1948 and in spite of a history of oppression and forced expulsions, many world leaders refused to let their Jewish populations go.

As late as the 1980s, after centuries of torturous pressure to convert to Christianity, the theocratic Ethiopian government prohibited the descendants of DAN, one of the 12 tribes of Israel, from returning to their homeland. In 1984, Israel launched a covert mission called Operation Moses to airlift them to safety. Monday’s guest speaker, Ethiopian-Israeli filmmaker Esti Almo Wexler, was only four-years-old when she immigrated with her family to her religious homeland. There are more than 120,000 Ethiopian Jewish citizens of color in Israel today.

Ms. Wexler identifies as a “black”artist who is also a proud Jewish Israeli citizen . She and her “white” husband founded a film production company and live in Tel Aviv with their beautiful, intersectional family. As a filmmaker, parent, and daughter of a Rabbi, Esti’s moral and aesthetic goals derive from her own painful experiences of prejudice— the collective unconscious that haunts individual psyches and insidiously reinforces institutional inequity. Ms. Wexler’s mission, as she explained to students and faculty last week, is to impugn generalized representations of race and religion by depicting individuals and their unique identities. Her 2018 brilliant comedic drama, Lady Titi, is the first full-length feature film to focus on the life of Israeli-Ethiopian citizens and the social and professional challenges they face. Nominated for several Ophirs (Israel’s Oscar), her film was hailed by The Jerusalem Post for “shattering stereotypes.”

As a teacher and HM alum, I am proud that our community continues to challenge itself to combat prejudice in every form. Founded in the crucible of suffering, Horace Mann School was established in 1887 by Jewish immigrants, escaping systemic anti-Semitism throughout Europe. Their hope was that under the tutelage of Protestant, With regard to opinion piece, “Breaking Down ‘Back to the Bronx,’ “ in the October 25, 2019, issue of The Horace Mann Record, I respectfully submit that I believe the premise of the article to be misguided.

Homecoming, as defined by merriam-webster.com, is “the return of a group of people usually on a special occasion to a place formerly frequented or regarded as home,” and “an annual celebration for alumni at a high school, college, or university.”

While Homecoming at Horace Mann School has evolved into a community-wide celebration, its core essence has always been focused on our alumni. Each fall, HM graduates travel far and wide to come back to their Bronx alma mater to reconnect with our community. The celebration motif, “Back to…” (which happens to be a common Homecoming theme), refers to the return of our former students to their school, which

Courtesy of Deborah Kassel

Mayflower-descended professors, their sons would be able to “pass” as “real,”“white” American gentlemen—educated and assimilated enough to break through pre-Civil Rights legislation quotas that had traditionally restricted their admission.

On college campuses today, a rise in hate crimes spurred by racism and anti-Semitism makes that history in conjunction with Ms. Wexler’s visit all the more poignant.

In spite of being named for the founder of public education, this private institution of ours continues to build on a tradition of excellence, inclusivity, mutual respect, and difference. Thanks to the brave members of our community, we can empower one another to stand up for ourselves and others. “Let the heavens hear and hail” to every hu-man.

Respectfully submitted, Deborah Kassel, PhD HM’84 has been a proud and caring “neighbor” in the Bronx since relocating here in 1914.

Upon arrival, many alums delight in sharing their excitement of, once again, riding the 1 train to the last stop and walking “up the hill” to join us on campus for the celebration.

Homecoming provides all of us – students, faculty, staff, administrators, and parents alike – with a chance to celebrate the important role HM alumni play in the life of our school and, more importantly, the role that our Bronx “home” has played in shaping who our alumni are today.

Respectfully, Kristin Lax Director of Alumni Relations

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HORACE MANN NEWS DECEMBER 6TH, 2019

School hosts its first Gender in Debate conference Henry Owens and Devin Allard-Neptune Staff & Contributing Writers

Students from around the city gathered at the school on Saturday, Nov. 23rd for a day filled with discussions at the Gender in Debate Conference. Alexa Mark (12) spent around a year planning the conference, which is the first of its kind at the school, she said.

The conference hosted over 60 students from Horace Mann, Stuyvesant, and Dalton, Mark said. The students had backgrounds in varying forms of debate, including Parliamentary Debate, Public Forum Debate, Model Congress, Model United Nations (MUN), and Mock Trial.

To kick off the day, students were split into smaller groups comprised of people who did the same style of debate. In these groups, participants were given a chance to discuss their own experiences within debate and recurring

issues involving gender discrimination. Towards the end of the session, students explored possible solutions to the problems that were brought up, Mark said.

Following the discussions, two keynote speakers gave presentations: Amala Karri, a freshman at George Washington University who was the president of the debate team at Hunter College High School, and Inbar Pe’er, a sophomore at Columbia University who was the first sole female president of Stuyvesant High School’s speech and debate team. Both Karri and Pe’er won numerous tournaments and awards in their careers as high school debaters, specifically in Public Forum Debate.

Immediately after the speakers finished, participants returned to their groups to discuss issues brought up in the presentations. Students were then split into new groups of mixed styles of debate to compare the issues facing different realms of debate. At the end of the day, these groups returned to the discussion of potential Courtesy of Alexa Mark

DON’T TABLE THE ISSUE Students explore gender inequality.

solutions for the problems they had identified.

Andie Goldmacher (11), a member of the school’s Model Congress team, learned about some of the unfair expectations girls in other forms of debate had to deal with, she said.

“I was shocked to hear about how girls were told their voice was annoying and they had to change it, or that they needed to dress slutty on Courtesy of Alexa Mark

SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT Pe’er discusses experiences. the first day,” she said.

“I heard people talking about how a lot of the time, even though people are not purposely being exclusive, there will be all-male group chats, or women will sort of just get boxed out by these more aggressive men,” Mark said.

Students also brought up examples of double standards from judges, she said. “If you’re more aggressive as a girl, that’s traditionally looked down upon, whereas if you’re male, it can be a great strategy.”

The bias of judges and chairs is another prevalent issue in debate. At the conference, participants discussed how chair bias can be an especially big problem in MUN, co-Secretary General of the school’s MUN team Arman Kumar (12) said. “We talked about having a more uniform judging system to decide winners,” Kumar said. “It’s currently very subjective at Model UN conferences, where the chair just chooses who they think won.”

One solution to the issue of unfair judging is the possibility of bias training, Mark said.

While some tournaments have already imple-

mented this, bias training at all tournaments could ensure that people are judged fairly and according to the same standards, she said.

During the keynote speeches, both Pe’er and Karri talked about how they were able to succeed in the face of adversity and exclusion, Mark said. As sometimes the only girl on some school debate trips, Pe’er would have to be in a separate room from the rest of the team after curfew. In the morning, she would feel left out from any conversations or preparation that had happened the night before. Pe’er also said that her accomplishments sometimes felt underappreciated and were overly attributed to her male debate partner.

A major takeaway from Karri’s speech was the importance of recognition, Goldmacher said. “Because you’re a girl, people find more things to pick on about you as you get higher and higher in the debate circuits,” she said.

Karri also discussed the importance of Equity Officers, Dalton senior Claire Marchand said. Some tournaments have already begun having Equity Officers, who are designated individuals that debaters can talk to if any issues regarding discrimination or bias should arise.

“It was really inspiring and eye opening to hear what they had experienced and the solutions they suggested to their problems,” Marchand said.

Hannah Moss (9) attended the conference with no prior debate experience and received valuable information about how to handle instances of gender bias during debate. “If a person sees sexism, they need to report it. Your gender does not define how you debate and how good you are at it,” she said.

If the conference were to be done again, Mark said that there would ideally be a wider variety of speakers and more students in attendance. However, she is overall very happy with how the conference went, she said. “I hope that people had a platform to share their experiences,” Mark said. “I also hope that people who attended are able to see the impact that their actions have and think about ways that they can make the community more inclusive.”

Seeds of Peace plants conversation with interfaith workshop Katya Tolunsky and Jillian Lee Staff & Contributing Writers On Nov. 23rd, the staff from Seeds of Peace, a non-profit organization focused on leadership and conflict resolution, joined the school in the Multicultural Center for a workshop which discussed religion and faith and taught students how to empathize and create effective arguments when engaging in conversation.

The workshop was organized by Interfaith Network, a group created by students at the school four years ago. “The goal of Interfaith is to get to know people who you wouldn’t have interacted with otherwise and to get a better feel for what religious diversity is and the different realities that people face both in New York and in the world,” co-President Roey Nornberg (12) said.

As stated on their website, Seeds of Peace is a leadership development organization whose mission is to inspire and cultivate new generations of leaders in communities divided by conflict through respectful dialogue as well as bring individuals from different backgrounds together.

“The mission that they do on an international level is really what we want to do on a more local level,” Nornberg said. Interfaith held the workshop in an effort to introduce these values to the school.

At the workshop, the staff at Seeds of Peace emphasized the importance of recognizing that everyone has a unique cultural perspective which can be utilized for effective discussions in class, Diana Shaari (12), co-President of Interfaith Network, said.

In the workshop, the students split up into groups and took part in activities that provoked reflection of what religion meant and the role it plays in everyone’s lives, Maya Nornberg (10) said.

Over 30 students from 10 New York private schools attended: students came from Trinity, Riv-

erdale, Fieldston, Chapin, Friends Seminary, Dalton, Little Red School House, and Elisabeth Irwin High School, Shaari said. Although the students from the Islamic Al-Noor School were unable to make it to the event due to last minute transportation issues, the workshop was very successful, Shaari said. “I think some misconceptions about dialogue is that it has to be a debate and you need to come with formalized arguments,” Riley Neubauer said. Neubauer, a sophomore at The Chapin School, has been a member of Seeds of Peace for about four months. “That’s just not the case.”

“We ended up having a very meaningful and captivating conversations including personal experiences, opinions on current events, and other important topics and issues,” Maya said.

Nuebauer feels that these are conversations that need to be had on a greater basis, she said. “I think there is something really nice about students from a lot of schools coming together to have dialogue.”

The students were very passionate about the topics in discussion, Shaari said. “We had the opportunity to learn important tools to keep in mind while engaging in dialogue or any conversation with other people. This included self awareness, reflection, and empathy to ensure productive and positive conversations.”

“We spent some of the workshop trying these things out and taking part in other activities that let us meet new people and interact with them productively,” Maya said.

The group talked a lot about active listening, body language, eye contact, and how these expressions of human behavior play into a conversation, Neubauer said. “The facilitators of Seeds of Peace taught us to always speak for our statements and no one else’s.”

“The workshop forced me to be conscious about how to step back and learn the tools to effectively engage in sensitive conversations,” Shaari said.

Courtesy of Diana Shaari

LEARN TO LOVE Seeds of Peace staff lead religion and discussion workshop.

Neubauer enjoyed talking to people not from her own school and found talking about the relationship between religion and politics interesting, she said. “As a Jewish person myself, I often find it confusing that people conflate my religion with my stance in politics and I know that a lot of people in my dialogue felt the same way, so it was nice to talk to them about that.”

Roey hopes that students ultimately took away that difficult conversations are important to be had and that it is good to put yourself out of your comfort zone, he said. Interfaith Network is hoping to expand their group and make this workshop an annual event, Shaari said.

Gabby Fischberg/Art Director

4 Art by Kiara Royer/Features Editor

THE RECORD FEATURES DECEMBER 6TH, 2019

The Benefits of Hirin

“I am a product of independent schools; I know how it feels to be isolated,” former English teacher Deborah Stanford said.

The process of creating a body of educators who looked different from the traditional white, male demographic involved a gradual shift in the school’s attitude towards diversity. As Head of Upper Division (UD) Dr. Jessica Levenstein, who began teaching at the school in 2000, said, “It’s not like a switch was flipped, and all of a sudden we care about diversity.”

The only female member of the History Department left after history teacher Barry Bienstock’s first year of teaching at the school in 1982. That year, there were only four teachers of color, all male, out of the school’s 79 faculty members. Historical issues of gender, race, and class were often not stressed, and few of the materials taught were written by female authors or authors of color, Bienstock said.

Since he was a young member of the department, Bienstock was instructed by the older, tenured history teachers to not deviate from the provided curriculum, he said. In his classes, however, Bienstock did incorporate issues of gender, race, and class as he saw fit, and he required students to purchase different texts than the standard list.

However, when Bienstock became History

the History Department’s process of hiring new faculty also changed, he said. Today, the procedure is democratic: the department chair creates a hiring committee, and the entire department collectively discusses potential hirees. However, when Bienstock first joined the department, he was not consulted during the hiring process of fellow history teachers; rather, he “would come back in September and suddenly find that another one or two people were hired,” Bienstock said.

During the latter half of the 1980s, part of the student body pushed to increase racial and gender diversity in both the history curriculum and educators, Bienstock said. “Students voiced their dissent and became actively involved in some way by appealing to the heads of school.”

Similarly, the student body was very active in diversifying the English Department, said English teacher Harry Bauld, who began teaching at the school in 1981, citing a “variety of channels of students pushing for wider representation among the writers that we taught.”

Unlike the teacher-determined curriculum style that the English Department has currently adopted, the 1980s curriculum required that every grade have their own set list of books that did not vary depending on the teacher. Very few pieces of literature by authors of color were taught, and the only female writers that were taught were Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Virginia Woolf — the most prominent white fe-

had just become coeducational in 1975 after a push to diversify the student body by former Head of School Russell Inslee Clark Jr., who was also the driving force behind opening Yale University to both female and male students.

“It was fine and fun because there were so few of us [girls]; we were so special,” science teacher Dr. Susan Delanty ‘79, one of the 30 girls out of the 150 students in the first co-educational class of 1975, said.

A few girls were accepted as 10th and 11th graders in 1975, but Delanty’s class was the first to go through the high school from 9th grade.

The downside though was that certain resources, such as sports teams were initially unavailable to the female students, she said.

Although The Union, a club that focuses on equity and inclusivity, existed in 1975, there were very few students of color. Delanty said that the issue of diversity was not discussed in classes, nor was it really acknowledged among the students. “I’m sure that the students of color felt it because they were in a serious minority, but they were just my friends, my classmates,” Delanty said.

When Delanty returned to the school to teach in 1990, the conversation surrounding racial diversity was still close to nonexistent, though the school had accepted more students of color, she said.

Stanford was an advisor for East Wind West Wind (EWWW), the school’s Asian culture ap-

arguing that students receiving aid should not have a different set of rules applied to them and brought the issue to then Head of Admissions Gary Miller and other UD administrators. Due to the efforts of many faculty members who backed the discontinuation of renting books to students on financial aid, the practice changed.

Unlike the English curriculum of the 1980’s which Bauld was familiar with, which focused on the study of literature by white, male authors, the English department in the 1990’s “made a concerted effort to include a variety of voices in the curriculum,” Stanford said. Under the leadership of former English Department Chair Dr. David Schiller, the department sought to teach works by Southeast Asian writers, Latin American writers, and other writers of color such as Toni Morrison.

Former English teacher Gerri Woods, who taught Morrison’s Beloved as a supplemental text for English 11, prompted Stanford to reread Morrison’s novel, which alerted Stanford to the importance of the book. Inspired by Beloved, Stanford created a senior English elective based on the study of Morrison’s works in 1992, which remained an elective up until Stanford’s retirement in 2018.

In 1990, Stanford also joined a faculty ad hoc committee, which is a temporary group formed to accomplish a specific task, called Valuing Difference, which included Woods, former photography teacher Karen Johnson, and science and

Department chair in 1988, he took steps to diversify the curriculum, which involved switching the textbooks and adding electives specifically covering non-Eurocentric topics, Bienstock said. In the early 1990s, the department offered a women’s history course for the first time, and Bienstock himself taught the school’s first African American history course.

The older male history teachers were not receptive to Bienstock’s changes to diversify the curriculum as department head — a few insisted on using the old, less gender and race-inclusive materials — but Bienstock and his younger colleagues were resilient, he said. “The younger people of the department brought us into the late 20th century.”

Under Bienstock’s tenure as department chair,

male novelists of the 20th century.

“As with any core or canonic curriculum, it functions to marginalize writers of color, because all you have to do is to say, ‘What we’re teaching is the classics, [which] implies at a certain period,’” Bauld said. “If your focus is on this period up to the 1930s, you’re just not going to find many writers of color.”

However, Bauld acknowledged that the school’s attitude towards diversity was heavily affected by the cultural currents of the time, he said. “Even in the aftermath of the 1960s, where a more progressive idea of representation started to be taken more seriously at predominantly traditional schools, it took a while for representation to occur, both among the faculty and the students.”

In light of these societal changes, the school

preciation club, and was quick to connect with these students of color, especially on issues of racial and economic inequity, when she first began teaching at the school in 1990.

Stanford recalled one particular incident early on in her career at the school where she noticed that certain students were not annotating in their English books and was curious as to why. She was told by fellow faculty members that those students were on financial aid, and consequently had to return their books at the end of the school year.

“The right of a high school student — no matter the financial circumstance — to own a book and have it as the beginnings of [their] personal library should be accorded to everyone in the community,” Stanford said.

Stanford and other teachers created a petition

theater teacher Joseph Timko. The cohort of teachers sought to address issues of racial and gender inequality, and they paved the foundations for the Office for Identity, Culture and Institutional Equity (ICIE), Stanford said.

In 2000, when Head of Upper School and English teacher Dr. Jessica Levenstein was hired, she felt as if the student body was hardly passive in terms of pushing for diversity within the school. “The school has always been, to me, a place where students have felt pretty empowered,” she said.

The lack of racially-driven issues voiced by students of color could be attributed to the fact that student body was notably less diverse in 2000 than it is today, Levenstein said. “They were a smaller minority than they are now, so there would be a different comfort level in voic-

Vivien Sweet Staff Writer

Photos courtesy of Hilary Matlin

5

HORACE MANN FEATURES DECEMBER 6TH, 2019

ng A diverse faculty ing these things.”

Although much has been done since the 1980s to diversify both the English and history curriculum and faculty of the school, science teacher Dr. Rachel Mohammed (who uses they/them pronouns) believes much of the school’s initiatives to promote diversity are “opt-in,” thus mostly supported by “people who are affected by it, [and] the people who care about the people who are affected by it,” they said.

On campus, faculty can engage in a handful of opportunities for diversity training. For instance, since 2011, the school has participated in a nationwide program called Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED), which “partners with schools, organizations, and communities to develop leaders who guide their peers in conversational communities to drive personal, organizational, and societal change toward social justice,” according to SEED’s website.

Former Director of ICIE Patricia Zuroski and Associate Director of Admissions Markell Parker started the SEED cohort at the school, and Stanford and dance teacher Denise DiRenzo, among others, have been discussion facilitators in past years. This year, the 36 participants from the school’s faculty attend one workshop per month, during which they are paid a stipend for their time.

“With having a school as large as this, with

understanding why it is important, were hesitant towards diversity work, primarily because many teachers did not associate themselves with racism, they said. “People equated being aware of racism and not doing overtly racist acts as not participating in a racist system.”

When Mohammed first came to the school

literature or an author that is not covered in the range of materials taught, Wilson said.

“You want someone who is going to be willing to learn how to have certain conversations with students, regardless of their race or gender,” Wilson said. “[Someone] who’s open to conversations around empathy and identity.”

in 2010, they were the only UD science teacher of color. Similar to Mohammed, Stanford stood out among her white male peers in her field of study. She noted that during her time in graduate school prior to coming to Horace Mann, being a woman of color in an institution where she was surrounded primarily by white men was stressful.

“If you’re the only one, it’s wrong for people to ask you to speak on behalf of [people of color], but they don’t have anyone else,” Mohammed said. “Also, there’s pressure to represent all of these people.”

This year, a diverse spread of English electives were offered to the seniors, including a course called “Literature of the Levant: Israeli and Palestinian Literature” taught by English teacher Dr. Deborah Kassel ‘84 and a literary theory course discussing gender and sexuality taught by English teacher Jennifer Little.

In 2018, 9th Grade Dean and English teacher Chidi Asoluka began teaching a senior English elective called New Community Project (NewComm), which is a “year-long social justice course that uses the study of literature as the

that many faculty and employees and staff across these four divisions, which don’t necessarily have the opportunity for conversation, it’s been really nice to be able to — for those three hours once a month — be able to come together to then interrogate, explore, [and] talk about areas around identity,” co-Director of the ICIE Candice Powell-Caldwell said.

As part of the school’s mandatory diversity training, this year, all faculty members were required to read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, which examines why white individuals find it so difficult to talk about racism. The administration is also hosting discussions scattered throughout the year about the book, which teachers are obligated to attend.

Early on in their career at the school, Mohammed felt as though a lot of the faculty, not fully

To Mohammed, a racially diverse faculty is crucial and necessary to show predominantly white students that people of color are not “inherently inferior” to their white counterparts, especially in STEM occupations, they said.

“The thing about having to point out, ‘This is the best black scientist’ or ‘This is the best Asian doctor,’ [is that] you’re saying that out of all the Asians, this is best — not that this is a very competent, great doctor,” Mohammed said.

English Department Chair Vernon Wilson, who began teaching at the school in 2011, said that the forefront determining factor when hiring an English teacher is the applicant’s ability to effectively teach and connect to the students. He and the department tend to keep an eye out for candidates who can fill the gaps in what the department offers students, whether it be an area of

foundation for understanding, analyzing, and making meaningful impact for our local communities,” per the the school’s program of studies.

The first year the course was offered, more than 75 percent of the class was comprised of students of color. NewComm, like every other English class, is also very much centered around the close reading of texts with an eye toward understanding how those texts represent and shape lived experience; alongside the usual close reading, however, NewComm offers students the special opportunity to engage constructively and critically with a community outside the school, Wilson said.

It is this duality — close literary study paired with impactful human interaction beyond HM— that makes the class unique, Wilson said. “It’s important for kids in that class to see the broader

“People equated being aware of racism and not doing overtly racist acts as not participating in a racist system.”

-Dr. Rachel Mohammed

Bronx community, but also [to] share in that class a worldview that allows them to see that many people in the Bronx don’t look like [them],” UD Library Department Chair Caroline Bartels said.

Having a diverse range of English teachers and electives, Bauld said, is fundamental in how the department approaches issues that come in literature they teach. “No doubt the issues raised and discussed in classes might differ with either female teachers or teachers of color,” Bienstock said.

The administration works with multiple recruiting agencies, including one organization whose only mission is to place people of color in teaching positions, and it has recently established more relationships with graduate programs.

“It’s important for students to recognize aspects of themselves in their teachers,” Levenstein said. “Those kinds of visible identifiers are important to have an eye on when we hire so that our students can find members of the faculty they can connect with over shared concerns.”

Additionally, all of the department chairs have been trained in making sure that they are aware of their own implicit bias while reading resumes.

To have an implicit bias means to carry around a prejudice without being aware of the implications of it, Powell-Caldwell said.

This can be detrimental to the hiring process by limiting the scope of candidates who appear

to “fit” the position that a particular individual is offering, co-Director of the ICIE John Gentile said. He believes that people naturally tend to favor candidates who are similar to them.

“As our school continues to recruit a diverse faculty in great ways, we continue to search for new opportunities,” Gentile said. One idea that has been utilized at different institutions is visiting more historically black colleges and universities and going to career fairs in parts of the country other than the Northeast.

“We can’t define success by the colleges and universities [that] we have gone to or we feel like we have [the] most knowledge of because there are a lot of people who are graduates of all types of different educational institutions that are phenomenal educators,” Gentile said.

All photos courtesy of Hillary Matlin

6

THE RECORD NEWS DECEMBER 6TH, 2019

The clay-crazed citizens of the ceramics studio

Hanna Hornfeld Staff Writer For some students, like Taimur Moolji (12), taking ceramics may start as a way to check off a credit requirement, but sometimes, it can unexpectedly become a new passion. Watching those students grow as artists has been a profound experience for Visual Arts teacher Keith Renner, he said.

This year, Renner’s Ceramics IV and IV honors classes are filled with some particularly creative and prolific students, he said. “Some students in that group came in freshman year saying that art was not for them, but now call themselves artists,” Renner said. “That’s very profound.”

Kamau Hubbard (12), who is in the IV class, took ceramics in his freshman and sophomore year to try something new and fulfill his graduation requirement. Sometime last year, he discovered that he loved its relaxing nature, he said. Now, Renner sees that Hubbard is a true artist, he said. “Kamau is making incredible work that would rival professional pots with an incredible amount of dedication.”

Jacob Bernheim ‘19 took ceramics for three years of high school. He is currently taking a gap year but is planning on pursuing ceramics through a club or an art class in college, he said. However, this was never his plan growing up. Bernheim didn’t realize that art was something he could enjoy until he took ceramics in his freshman year. Over time, Bernheim unexpectedly developed a passion for the material and its mix of art and functionality, he said.

Renner loves watching students develop an unexpected taste for ceramics because it happened to him when he signed up for a ceramics class in college to get a requirement out of the way. “I fell in love with it, went to grad school for it, and met my wife in that ceramics studio,” he said. “Some clay

changed my life.”

Madison Four-Garcia (10) can feel herself in the midst of developing a passion, she said. “When school is really stressful, ceramics calms me down,” she said. “Plus, I always wanted to be able to look at something and say ‘I made that.’” This is her second year taking ceramics, and she intends to stick with it through her Courtesy of Taimur Moolji senior year.

Like Four-Garcia, Hubbard feels that ceramics has a therapeutic effect, so he tries to go to the studio at least once a day, especially if he is stressed or frustrated. “It requires all of my attention, so I can relax and immerse myself in it,” he said.

Because of her busy schedule, Four-Garcia doesn’t have enough time to work outside of class, she said.

However, she connects with the subject outside of school by watching videos and following ceramics accounts on Instagram. “I love seeing professionals make complicated things and learning new techniques,” she said.

Moolji, who takes Ceramics IV, created a ceramics account on Instagram last year after having seen other accounts, he said. Moolji mainly posts videos of himself throwing and photos that Renner takes of his artwork.

Renner keeps the studio open to students

throughout the day and they are welcome to work in the studio even when another class is in session.

Renner does this in part to encourage exchanges between different skill levels.

When more experienced students come in during a Ceramics I class, it shows the more inexperienced students something they can aspire to be, Renner said.“There are students who come here every free moment,” he said. “There’s always something happening, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

It was one such experience that drew Moolji to ceramics.

Ceramics was his last choice for a half-credit to take during his sophomore year. By chance, Moolji wound up in Ceramics I that year, but he didn’t originally intend to continue. One day, Kyra Kwok ‘19 came into the studio to work while Moolji’s class was in session.

She introduced Moolji to the wheel and he got hooked, Moolji said.

Because classes aren’t split up by grade level, the ceramics program also encourages friendships between students of different ages. Renner has watched the formation of friendships between students who wouldn’t have had the opportunity to bond if they weren’t in the same class, he said.

Profile of A Potter: Mr. Renner Sam Chiang Staff Writer Ceramics teacher Keith Renner never thought that he would learn to love clay when he signed up for a ceramics night class while attending the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. To him, ceramics was just a requirement for a Bachelor’s Degree and certification to teach in Pennsylvania, he said.

Growing up in a predominantly blue-collar community, Renner said that it was quite uncommon for students to continue their education in college and that he was the first in his family to pursue higher education. In fact, Renner only applied to a single school after putting together a portfoCourtesy of Kyra Kwok ‘19

MASTER & APPRENTICE Kwok & Renner.

lio at the insistence of Pete Murray, his high school art teacher, he said.

Renner was a roaming, undeclared art major who intended to specialize in photography, but the ceramics class helped him realize how photography was relatively removed from the material, Renner said. “When I took the clay class, I realized I needed to get my hands into something tangible and real; it was a mess and all over me, and there’s something really joyous about feeling the material,” he said. “It feels a bit like magic, transforming a lump of earth into something that’s never existed before.”

After earning his Bachelor’s Degree, Renner continued his studies of ceramics in a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Renner said that he knew he wanted to attend a three-year program, and he also wanted to be a teacher’s assistant as it would cover his tuition and earn him a small stipend.

Renner said that his interest in teaching solidified as he neared graduation. “I was always the person who my peers would call into the studio when they had to work something out,” he said. “I realized that this was all sort of part of teaching and it was sort of at their recommendation that I started applying for teaching jobs.”

After receiving his MFA, Renner began working at the school, where he has worked for the past 17 years. The goal of the curriculum is to teach students to become responsible and autonomous artists, he said. His favorite

memories are of students who came into the class thinking that they didn’t have it in them but ended up finding themselves in the studio.

“Renner does so much to keep the studio up and running; he recycles the clay, orders tools, fires the kiln,” Taimur Moolji (12) said. “He does all the logistical work that’s required to keep the studio so prolific.”

“My professional life ebbs and flows,” Renner said. He said he generally prioritizes teaching students, so his professional work is reserved for the summertime. Although his work tends to be different than what he teaches, Renner said that there are some commonalities. Perhaps the most prominent thread in his work is his reliance on clay as a natural phenomenon. For Common Ground, one of his professional exhibitions, Renner said that he watched as cracks and fissures formed on his pieces as the clay shrank around a cement core, tearing itself apart. He also enjoys a sense of adventure in ceramics work. “I find myself uninterested if I can see the outcome. When I start an idea and I can see the end result, I think ‘why bother,’ so I need a sense of adventure.”

Renner said that his work is also similar to his philosophy for his ceramics classes. “I set up a situation for something to occur and let the natural phenomenon take over,” he said.

This year, Samantha Tsai (11) has become extremely close with other members of the Ceramics IV class, most of whom are seniors, she said. Every other Friday, they watch a movie as they work, and they are doing a secret santa as a class. Because Ceramics IV doesn’t have a set curriculum, the students have made up activities to do together, such as working while blindfolded. These activites have brought them even closer, Tsai said.

The lack of curriculum also allows individual students to focus on unique projects; for example, Hubbard’s main focus this year is on making plates.

He chose this because his ultimate goal is to make artwork that he or other people can use, and he enjoys eating off of his own creations, he said.

For Hubbard, working with large amounts of clay or smoothing the bottoms of plates can be difficult at times. “It takes a lot to figure out how your hands react to the clay,” he said. “I’m still learning how my own hands work.”

Everybody faces challenges at some point, Four-Garcia said. “I have really good days where I make a lot and it turns out great, and there are other days when everything falls apart.”

The biggest challenge for Renner this year has been the relocation of the ceramics studio from the room in which he has worked for the past 16 years. “I’ve been teaching out of a box lately, but it’s also kind of fun to start over.” The new space is much more conducive to being a ceramics studio, in terms of shape and access to the outdoors for certain projects, he said.

Tsai has found that the obstacles that have come with the studio’s relocation have actually been beneficial. “All of the glazes are put away and there aren’t cubbies so all of the carts are filling up,” she said, “but because of that you can see the amount of stuff that people are creating, and it’s encouraging to see and I think it’s motivated all of us.”

Courtesy of Reina McNutt

HOT WHEELS Student Reina McNutt (12) spins the pottery wheel in class.

Oliver Lewis / Contributing Photographer

THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS The ceramics studios after hours.

Courtesy of Taimur Moolji

TAMO CLAY Moolji’s art on display.

7

HORACE MANN LIONS’ DEN OCTOBER 25TH, 2019

WNBA leader and alum speaks at SOH Vivien Sweet Staff Writer “If you cannot see it, you cannot be it.”

Associate Director of Admissions and Executive Director Summer on the Hill Markell Parker kept that mantra in mind when he asked Head of WNBA league operations and former WNBA player Bethany Donaphin ‘98 and NBA G League President Shareef Abdur-Rahim to conduct a panel at the school for Summer on the Hill students.

Parker, who was able to connect with Donaphin through Director of Admissions Jason Caldwell ‘97, asked the students to prepare questions for the two guests. The first couple of questions were about casual topics, such as Donaphin’s and Abdur-Rahim’s favorite movies, foods, colors, and songs.

However, the pair was also asked about the struggles they faced in elementary and middle school, which included bullying in addition to misogynic comments in Dolphin’s case. “The questions they asked required a lot of introspection that is relevant whether you’re working in sports or any other industry,” Donaphin said.

The discussion was opened up to audience questions after about an hour of prepared questions. The students asked Donaphin and Abdur-Rahmin about how they integrated themselves into the sports industry, and other jobs they would con-

sider taking in other fields.

Donaphin, who worked with Abdur-Rahim in NBA league operations for a couple of years before switching over to the WNBA side, wanted to show the younger audience the job opportunities that they could pursue in the sports industry. “One of the things I love about this job is how much the WNBA stands for empowering young women and girls, and you don’t have to play basketball to be inspired by it,” she said.

The audience ranged from third to eighth graders who spend their Saturdays at the school taking science, math, and language arts classes as part of Summer on the Hill. The program’s mission is to “enrich the education of promising, low-income public school students from The Bronx, Washington Heights, and Harlem,” according to their website.

Parker aspires for Summer on the Hill’s curriculum in its entirety to be an “uncommon education—one they could not get in private or public schools,” he wrote.

In addition to bringing in Abdul-Rahim and Donaphin to speak about their careers, he is working on similar events with professionals in the music business and local business owners. “While HM students have dozens of positive role models at their fingertips, they are harder to come by for students from low-income backgrounds and NYC public schools,” he said.

For Donaphin, playing basketball

helped her develop a sense of self and taught her about discipline, especially as a member of a team working towards a shared goal, she said. Being an athlete can help boost confidence and a high percentage of women executives in Fortune 500 companies have played sports at some point in their life, she said.

“Any time I have an opportunity to get in front of a group of young people, especially girls, I feel like it’s a privilege and part of my responsibility to share my experiences—both my successes and challenges—with them so they understand what’s possible,” Donaphin said.

From the beginning of her career on the Girls Varsity Basketball team, Donaphin took on a level of responsibility as one of the more dominant players on the court, Director of Athletics Robert Annunziata said. Although Donaphin spent the majority of her childhood as a dancer, she was able to develop her basketball skills on the team relatively quickly.

“That’s not very common at all, especially [for] someone who didn’t have a mindset of basketball early on,” Annunziata said. “To be able to use her abilities to have a very good high school career [and] a very good college career and then be able to move on is obviously a testament to her work ethic.”

Gabby Fischberg/Art Director

Gabby Fischberg/Art Director

PLAYER SPOTLIGHT: PETER LEHV Marina Kazarian Staff Writer Peter Lehv’s (12) love of squash stemmed from his affinity for racket sports, he said. Over the course of his career, Lehv went from playing squash only a couple times a week in middle school to eventually becoming one of the top 75 players in the nation for his age group.

“I was playing a lot of tennis when I was younger, but squash was easier to go to,” Lehv said.

Lehv first started playing tournaments around the age of 11 or 12, but he didn’t take it too seriously, he said. “In high school, I started playing a lot more tournaments, playing five to six days a week, and I got my ranking up a lot higher,” Lehv said.

“Many players have dips in their progress, but Peter has been on a consistent upward trajectory,” Lehv’s mother Maria Danzilo P ‘20 said.

“Peter has been a tireless worker his entire varsity career,” Boys Varsity Squash Coach Ron Beller said. “He adjusted his schedule to fit both commitments in one day. Peter often comes to our school practice and then trains after our practice with his private coach.”

“Aside from being a hard worker, Lehv is also the ultimate team-player that keeps the mood very light,” Beller said. “He has the unique ability to laugh, make others laugh, and more importantly, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, which allows his teammates the platform to have fun and have a positive experience playing squash.”

Danzilo said it is very apparent that the team has great chemistry, and the members really support each other both on and off of the court, even when they joke about wanting to

beat each other for higher positions on the ladder.

Similarly, Lehv gets competitive with his twin sister Clara, who is also nationally ranked, but in the end, they coach and support each other at tournaments, Danzilo said.

Another notable attribute of Lehv’s personality is that he brings focus to the team.

“Peter is very poised on the squash court,” Beller said. “You could never tell if he’s down four points or up four points.”

Squash can be a psychologically taxing game that causes some junior players to become very emotional and agitated from the pressure on the court, Danzilo said. These players may act out by throwing rackets and expressing anger at the referees or opponents, whereas Lehv is a player who “never loses his cool,” she said.

Regardless, matches can get very emotional, and Lehv’s favorite matches have been the ones that are the most suspenseful and that warrant a large amount of support from teammates, he said.

One of Lehv’s favorite matches was playing at nationals with the school team, where he was able to beat his opponent after a very long match, he said. One of the particularly long games ended in Lehv winning with a score of 20-18. Most games are typically played to 11 points.

“I was diving all over the court, and I bruised my arm during the match,” he said. “It was a really fun match; my teammates were cheering me on, especially in the fourth game when we had the really long tie break.”

As a result of his perseverance, Lehv’s mother has observed him emerge victorious in matches as an underdog, she said.

Lehv’s favorite memory playing a tourna-

ment outside of school involving him in rising above odds that were not in his favor, he said.

The tournament was at Poly Prep, and students that Lehv coaches and tutors as a part of a program called CitySquash in the Bronx attended the match.

Lehv played against a player who was much better than him in the under 19’s age group, even though he was only 16 years old at the time. The students cheered him on the entire time and after another suspenseful and long match, Lehv was able to secure the win.

“It was my best victory at the time, and it was

nice to have my City Squash family there,” Lehv said.

Lehv volunteers at CitySquash on the weekends, and for the past three summers, he has worked as a coach at the program’s squash summer camp.

Though he is out now for six weeks due to an arm injury, Lehv hopes to play at the Varsity Collegiate level in the future, he said.

“Peter has grown up to be a great person, and for that I am very proud of him,” Beller said.

“He will excel in anything he puts his mind to.

Courtesy of Peter Lehv

HE’S GOT IT! Lehv (12) slides to make spectacular back hand play.

Lions’ Den Record Sports

DECEMBER 6TH, 2019

Wrestling falls to Iona Prep in first meet of season Liliana Greyf Staff Writer With three people injured and a team of around 20 students, half of which are underclassmen, the wrestling team began its season on Wednesday with a loss against Iona Prep, Elias Romero (10) said.

The team practiced consistently before the meet, but they were unable to defeat their opponents. The practices are challenging but rewarding, Romero said. “We all go through really tough practices together, and that makes stronger friends and a stronger team.”

“We worked a lot on technique and drilling, getting lots of repetition in. I was really impressed with the kids’ effort that they put in at practice,” Varsity Wrestling Head Coach Gregg Quilty said.

Co-Captain Liam Futterman (11) has been wrestling since seventh grade and trains at the Edge Wrestling Club outside of school. Even though the practices are hard, the team finds ways to have fun, he said. “The energy that people bring every day is my favorite part of the team.”

Going into the meet, the team was not sure what to expect, Romero said. “We wrestled them last year and it was a really close match, but we won by a few points,” he said. The team knew that the school would be a really tough team, but they had worked really hard to prepare for the match,”

he said All of this year’s practices have led up to this meet, James Thomas (10) said. Since Iona Prep

defend against,” he said. “We made sure we knew how to defend from their strong attacks.”

Even though the outcome was not what the Sam Siegel/Contributing Photographer

A THROWDOWN Jacob Schorsch (11) holds opponent from Iona Prep down. is a strong team, the meet against them is always important, Romero said. The significance of wrestling Iona Prep was magnified this year because it is the team’s first meet. “We focused on things that the Iona team doesn’t know how to

team had hoped, their practices paid off, Jhanae Ottey (10) said. “We reacted well to our opponents,” she said. “We played smart, instead of playing hard.”

Romero agreed, acknowledging that none of

8

his teammates gave up their fights. Seeing his friends recover and continue to work hard kept everyone’s spirits up, he said.

Futterman and Jacob Schorsch (11) defeated their opponents. A major highlight of the game was when Schorsch won his match, Ottey said.

“He almost lost, but he turned around at the right moment and pinned his opponent.”

Schorsch felt that the work he had put in at practice paid off immensely at the meet. “Even though the dual meet was a little disappointing, it’s an amazing feeling to know that the hard work you put in translates to success on the mat,” he said.

After this meet, the team is going to continue to practice and work hard, Ottey said. “We will work on general technique skills such as knowing where to put your weight and how to finish a move.”

“The team was a bit rusty because we had just gotten back from the break,” Romero said. At Friday’s meet, Romero hopes the team will be more prepared, so they can defeat their opponent.

“We need to work on countering takedowns and improving our stamina and conditioning,” Quilty said.

Thomas knows that Iona Prep is the best opposition the team will have this year, so there is no reason for the team to lose spirit, he said. “We need to stay resilient.”

Squash dominates Friends in victory Joshua Underberg and Arushi Talwar Staff & Contributing Writers The Boys Varsity Squash team is already proving that it is everything it was last year and more after winning their first match on Wednesday by a score of 7-0 against Friends Academy.

After a successful season last year and placing second in the NYSAIS championship, the team is back and looks to build on the successes of its past season, Sen Subramanium (10) said.

“We’ve been preparing for this season for the last couple of years,” Boys Varsity Squash Head Coach Ronnie Beller said.

The player rankings of people on the team have increased collectively over the past few seasons, Samuel Chiang (11) said.

“We are ready to go and compete amongst the best of the best,” Beller said.

To prepare for the upcoming games, the team has been playing several challenge matches to ultimately determine the official lineup for the season, Chiang said.

This year, the team’s preparation so far has included a visit from Aditi Gugnani Malhotra, team member Kush Malhotra’s (11) mother, who instructed the team in yoga and other therapeutic exercises, Chiang said.

Being exposed to the yoga exercises taught the team the importance of stretching both before matches and on a daily basis, Chiang said.

“I’m looking forward to hopefully winning the championship,

coming off of a really good season last year,” Subramanium said.

Though eight of the ten players are returners, this year’s team also features two new players in Will Bramwell (9) and Marcus Lee (9), Chiang said.

“Marcus looks really good and can play an important middle role in the starting lineup,” Daanyal Agboatwalla (11) said. “He has a lot of potential because he is really young, and usually freshman do not start on the team,” he said.

“Marcus has a big role since he is starting as a freshman,” Chiang said. “They’re both very talented and we’re excited to welcome them to the team,” he said.

In Wednesday’s win Daanyal Agboatwalla stepped up big time under pressure, Subramanium said.

For both freshman winning their first matches was also important because it acclimated them to a winning mentality, Subramanium said.

“It felt good to play another school for the first time,” Lee (9) said. “All of my teammates were really welcoming to me, and it already feels like a family,” he said.

One notable moment from Wednesday’s victory involved the entire team rallying around Subramanium’s match, the last match in progress.

“It made me realize that the team had my back, knowing that they were cheering me on, supporting me, and even coaching me in between games,” Subramanium said.

The team has set clear goals that they hope to accomplish,

ranging from successes on the court to increasing team chemistry off the court, Beller said.

“Our goal for this year is to get better and better each day and control our approach,” Beller said. “We scheduled a tougher out of conference schedule this year because we have a strong team coming back and we want to challenge ourselves,” he said.

The high school junior Nationals tournament held in February in Hartford, Connecticut is an important competition that many players are training hard to compete in. “We have a good enough team to win it all, and it is also a great place for team bonding,” Malhotra said.

Other than competing, many players are looking to continue to build strong relationships with their teammates, a tradition last year’s captains, Ryan Hoang and Connor Morris inspired. Many players hope to encourage this bond through team meets and practices.

Though team dynamics changed from last year, the team is still looking to work through the season collectively. “We have a very deep team,” Beller said. “The strength in this team is not in one individual, it’s in the sum of all of our parts,” he said.

Gabby Fischberg/Art Director

Indoor track hits ground running Maurice Campbell Contributing Writer

After a long and hard-working season last year, the Girls and Boys Varsity Indoor Track Team had their first Ivy Developmental Meet on Wednesday. “When I stepped onto the track on Wednesday I had butterflies in my stomach, but I was very excited for the season to get underway” Natalia Mason (11) said. It was the first time she had ran competitively since the spring track season last year.

The Lions are looking forward to the new season to start, Diya Mookim (12) said. “Because we have so many new members on the team, I’m excited to explore this new team dynamic,”

Mookim said. “I’m also looking forward to building upon previous friendships while also forming new ones.”

Even after the first meet, Destiny Green (10) sensed that the team would bond quickly because of the strong senior leadership. “Not only does the track team consists of many excellent, fastpaced runners, but they have the ability to motivate the rest of the team members to do the best that they can do.”

“The upperclassmen are extremely motivated and amazing leaders, which makes our team even better,” Mason said.

Green is not only looking forward to bonding with her teammates, but also to pushing herself and others beyond their limits to help improve

their times over the course of the season. She likes the feeling of knowing you can depend on people who relate and experience the same work ethic she brings daily to practice, she said.

In preparation for the meet and the season, most of the Lions tried to run during the week when they found the time, Masa Shiiki (12) said.

“I ran six days out of the whole week,” he said.

These runs consisted of either a steady 40 minute, long 60 minute, or quick 20 minute runs to keep up cardio, he said.

Athletes competing in events such as javelin and shot put rather than running, prepared for the season differently. Mookim, who competes in the shot put event, knew that when the season started, she would need to be lifting weights ev-

eryday at practice. To prepare for that, she “started lifting a few times a week prior to the start of the season,” Mookim said.

Since most of the events in track and field are individual competitions, Mason believes that the results in future meets will depend on the ability of people to control their emotions. “The results will also depend on goals set by the particular runner,” she said.

Shiiki’s main goal for the team this season is to work hard together, support each other, and set personal records, he said. “My personal goal is to be the best leader I can be as an upper-classmen, continue to put in work, and hopefully set some personal records as well,” Shiiki said.