Issue 11

The Record

Volume 118 Issue 11

record.horacemann.org

Horace Mann’s Weekly Newspaper Since 1903

November 20, 2020

School shifts to HM Online 2.0 early Emma Colacino Staff Writer The Upper Division (UD) and Middle Division (MD) moved to HM Online 2.0 on Wednesday after in-person learning — originally scheduled to continue through Thanksgiving — was canceled.

“Dr. Kelly’s top priority has always been the health and safety of the community,” Dean of Students Michael Dalo said. “While the processes of teaching and learning are, of course, important and integral to our mission as a school, they have never been prioritized over our health and safety.”

The decision to close school was based on an additional COVID-19 positive case in the UD, Head of School Dr. Tom Kelly explained in an email to parents and guardians on November 18. “Given what we have accomplished, to date, and given the sacrifices we have asked everyone in the community to take since March, it would be irresponsible to run the risk of allowing COVID-19 to possibly spread unchecked in our

community,” Kelly wrote.

Kelly also wrote that while the lack of information regarding the closure may seem worrisome, this scenario was always a possibility since the school decided to reopen for in-person instruction.

Additionally, he wrote that the decision to close the school was unrelated to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to close public schools.

Students were notified of the school closure at the end of the school day on Wednesday when Head of UD Dr. Jessica Levenstein sent a division-wide email instructing students to collect anything they would need for HM Online 2.0. “We wanted to take advantage of the fact that students were still on campus, so they could be sure to collect any belongings they would need,” she said.

Soon after, Dalo sent an email explaining that online learning on Friday will follow the normal Day Five schedule--HM Online 2.0 will begin on Monday. “Moving to HM Online 2.0 for Friday seemed too disruptive, given that

many teachers had plans for their classes that would already need to be altered due to moving to HM Online next week and only having one synchronous meeting,” Dalo said.

English teacher Dr. Deborah Kassel said she would have liked to say goodbye to her students in person. “I think having that closure would be something that everyone would appreciate,” she said. ‘I do not think being unable to do that is going to change anything in any significant way, but I would have told my students, something like ‘were going to have a lot of fun as we figure HM 2.0 out together-even if we are not literally together in the same school space,” Science teacher Oleg Zvzedin said he understood the school’s decision to announce the closure at the end of the day because it helped make the actual school day less disruptive. “If [students] found out that we were leaving early on in the day, then I do not see how much learning would go on the rest of the day,” he said.

Kassel was surprised that the school went online because of all of the effort that has gone into keeping the school in-person, she said. “We have had other opportunities to go back to Zoom, but we have come back in person after each quarantine or election issues, so it seemed like we would do the last days in person, she said.”

Zvzedin said that while inperson learning ended early, he is appreciative of the amount of time that students spent on the school’s campus. “The education that students were able to get over the last 11 or 12 weeks is pretty much unmatched in terms of anywhere else in New York City,” he said. “There is so much benefit to that, that I understand willing to take a little bit of risk in terms of COVID.” Similarly, Kassel said that “Getting to know my students and interact with my colleagues before going fully online has been invaluable both pedagogically and personally.”

Caines discusses criminal justice reform Jackson Feigin/Photo Director

SHARING HIS STORY Caines explains his work at the Bronx Defenders.

AJ Walker Contributing Writer Wesley Caines returned to the school for his second year in a row to discuss his experiences with the criminal justice system and his work with the Bronx Defenders at a school-wide assembly on Tuesday, November 17. Following the assembly, Caines visited a 10th grade United States History class to continue the conversation about criminal justice reform in the U.S. Caines currently serves as the Chief of Staff of the Bronx Defenders, where he advocates for criminal justice reform and works with families and communities that are directly affected by inequities. Recent efforts include pushing city and state officials to help incarcerated people apply for stimulus checks amidst the pandemic.

During the assembly, Caines described how the American criminal justice system targets Black and Brown Americans, using the story of Kalief Browder as evidence. Caines spoke of how the 16-year-old Browder was imprisoned at the Rikers Island jail after allegedly stealing a backpack and refusing to plead guilty. Browder’s family could not afford bail and he was held for three years before the charges against him were dropped. Browder later took his own life as a result of the emotional trauma he had experienced while incarcerated.

Browder’s story led Juliette Shang (11) to think about her own privilege, she said. “I’m also 16, but I haven’t had to worry about these situations as much since I’m Asian, and police brutality is

not usually targeted towards Asians,” Shang said.

“It makes me incredibly frustrated at our current system, though.”

Along with the Browder story, Caines also recounted some of his own confrontations with inequality in the justice system. The use of personal experiences was incredibly insightful and encouraged viewers to look at American society through a different lens, Upper Division Dean of Students Michael Dalo said. “Mr. Caines’ lived experience is so starkly different from my own in many ways and for many reasons, and I believe that there is always an opportunity to learn from people who are willing to share themselves and their stories with you.”

Although Caines focused more on his personal experiences this year, when he spoke at the school last year alongside Lynn Novick ’79 he mostly discussed his part in Novick’s documentary “College Behind Bars,” which reported on the work of the Bard Prison Initiative. Through the Bard Prison Initiative, Caines completed his college education while incarcerated.

Last year’s documentary provided helpful background information for Tuesday’s assembly, Chris Kaiser (12) said. “This assembly was a little different in that we didn’t have as much of a base, and I feel like people who didn’t see the last one might not really understand,” he said.

Elias Romero (11), who attended Caines’ assembly last year, loved having Caines back at the school, he said. “The assembly about ‘College Behind Bars’ was the most impactful one of last year for me, so I really enjoyed getting Wesley

Caines’ personal perspective and talking about his story about the Bronx Defenders.”

Caines was happy to return to the school, as he loves speaking to young students, he said.

“If I can get one of you to think critically about any of the many assumptions on which we have ordered society — especially if it moves you to seek change — it is the highlight of my day.”

Caines succeeded in making Jack Chasen (9) think critically about the criminal justice system. “I was unaware that if you’re going to court as an innocent person but you don’t have that much money, that it might be hard to prove your innocence or post your bail,” Chasen said.

“The government lacks enough of the proper resources to help with that.”

Alexander Ment (10) also found it surprising and scary that basic rights such as the right to a fair trial were not always provided by the criminal justice system, he said. “It just goes to show how important Mr. Caines’ line of work is.”

In relation to his work with the Bronx Defenders, Caines also discussed the topic of defunding the police. Caines hopes that by explaining his time with the Bronx Defenders, students better understand policies, such as defunding the police, he said. “I like speaking about aspects of my work and experiences because I think it helps people to understand how our policy choices play out in real life,” Caines said.

One moment from the assembly that particularly stood out to Dalo was when Caines placed his hope for a more just future in the hands of the American people rather than the elected officials in Washington, he said. “That was a reminder to all of us that our voices matter and that we have not just a right, but a responsibility to make them heard.”

Daniel Schlumberger (11) said having Caines return to speak at the school was worthwhile because it’s beneficial to have conversations about problems with systems in the United States. “I think that it’s important that we are reminded of this constantly because it becomes more apparent and more integrated into everything we’re doing,” he said.

While Caines touched on several important topics during the assembly, he hopes that viewers take away the understanding that they can be “agents of change,” he said. “Accepting the status quo is not an option.”

Lauren Kim/Art Director

Third installment of History Speaker Series Professor Jelani Cobb on voter suppression Claire Goldberg Staff Writer On Wednesday night, Dr. Jelani Cobb discussed the history of voter suppression in the third installment of the Upper Division (UD) Race and Ethnicity Speaker Series, “How did We Get Here?: The Past and Present of Electoral Politics and Voter Suppression.” Cobb provided a framework through which students can reckon with this year’s election, History Department Chair Dr. Daniel Link said. Cobb is a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and is also a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Link and history teacher Barry Bienstock hosted the event while AJ Walker (11) and Srijani Shreya (12) moderated it.

“We invited Professor Cobb because he thinks like a historian but writes like a journalist, which makes his writing and talks very accessible to students,” Link said. Cobb also spoke at the school as the keynote speaker for a Book Day assembly about “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehasi Coates, which was a huge success, he said.

In his talk, Cobb discussed how the current political climate, which prevents people of color from voting, is part of a larger history of voter suppression.

“We do not talk enough about the history of partisan violence surrounding voting,” he said. This election, five hour lines to vote disproportionately impacted minority populations, which is a form of voter suppression that stems from the violent suppression of the Black vote throughout American history, he said.

Cobb compared the motivations to vote in the 2020 election to the reason for Black suffrage in 1870: defending democracy. After the Civil War, the Union had to reincorporate the South in a way that did not over-empower white southerners. “With the 15th amendment, Black people were given the right to vote to defend democracy that would’ve been destroyed by white supremacists,” Cobb said. “Now in 2020, we see the same motivation of people coming to vote against Trump.”

Cobb also described his “Christmas list for democracy,” which included an affirmative national voting. In the 2013 Supreme Court Case Shelby County v. Holder, the Court decided to roll back

see Race and Ethnicity on pg. 3

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THE RECORD OPINIONS NOVEMBER 20TH, 2020

"Perhaps I lost a part of my high school experience" Troop (12) thinks that HM students should have more fun Later that week, they messaged us giving us the good news. We were officially the new presidents of the Happiness Club, and we had big plans. We were going to change the school. We were going to get everyone involved in sports. We were going to play division-wide musical chairs and have water balloon fights and a slip and slide. We sat for hours that summer planning and believing that we were going to change Horace Mann. Soon, we would be a school with students who valued their work but also

Kelly Troop

everyone, would be at every club meeting and every event and that Horace Mann would finally shed its toxic image.

And yet when the school year started, things did not go exactly as planned. We tried to plan as many events and meetings as possible, but the response from the students was surprising. We played music every Friday in the lobby, and instead of positive feedback, we received comments like ‘Can you turn that down?’ or ‘It is too early for this,’ or ‘I liked it Rachel Zhu/Art Director

When people hear the words “Horace Mann,” they think solely of academia. They think of perfect standardized test scores, an extremely competitive environment, and a group of students obsessed with their studies. Horace Mann has a well-known reputation. It sends students to Ivy League schools, every child knows of the college process by the age of 14, and supposedly, we never have any fun.

Over dinner with my friend Leah Rakhlin in the summer going into junior year, we discussed this toxic image of the school and came to the decision that it was time to take matters into our own hands.

That night, we messaged the presidents of the Happiness Club that year, Janvi Kukreja ‘19 and Andrew Rosen ‘19, asking them if we could take over leadership of the club the next September.

“We played music every Friday in the lobby, and instead of positive feedback, we received comments like ‘Can you turn that down?’ or ‘It is too early for this,’ or ‘I liked it better when it was silent.’”

wanted to relax and have a good time.

When we had reached out to our friends and familiar peers about our hopes for the future, they were in complete agreement with us. Since ninth grade, I had heard from countless people that they wished Horace Mann was more fun. They wished there were more fun activities and chances to step outside the classroom. With this in mind, Leah and I were so excited to take on our new leadership roles. We believed we would achieve our dreams so easily. We simply thought that most people, if not

better when it was silent.’”

We then attempted a chalk drawing initiative in the early fall and we had to beg even our friends to attend.

When The Record published an article about our club and its effects on the school, I was astonished about what my peers had to say. Someone had stated that they saw the club as a Band-Aid attempting to cover a bullet hole of the stress and anxiety students felt at HM. Another student commented that the music in the library we played during break was

Crossword Puzzle

EDITORIAL

by Features Editor Henry Owens 44. State that flipped blue for first time since 1996 45. Like the Soviet government OR a fitness plan 47. Swaziland ISO code 49. Snape’s Patronus OR first in the list that includes 31 Across 50. “Mr. ___, tear down that wall.”

56. Popular beer from the East 58. Seafood farming/catching locations 59. King of 27 Down and famous clarinetist

DOWN

ACROSS

1. Decisive state in 2020 election 12. e.g. all Greek letters or Cyrillic characters 13. Ecoterrorist organization founded 1990s OR Santa’s helper 14. Move back and forth 15. British mother 16. W ___ DuBois 17. Most Oscar nominated actress 21. First tossup state to be called 25. Heartwarming 2009 Pixar movie

26. 246th st and Tibbett ___ 27. Slimy, slimier, ___ 28. Energy type including coal and oil 30. From’s counterpart 31. Note described as “a long long way to run” 33. e.g. Marc Fisher ‘76 or David Leonhardt ‘90 38. Threatening 41. Distinct period of time OR feminist legislation ratified after expiration date 42. Tech help

1. Acronym: 1569-1795 confederation comprising Poland and Lithuania 2. Lifesaving pen 3. Sports league on skates 4. Lion King (2019) character voiced by Beyoncé 5. Gov’t organization for local entrepreneurs 6. Soon, but not ___ 7. 5G predecessor 8. Against (abbr.)

9. Newcomer (slang) 10. Prairie State abbr.

11. Drifting 12. Satisfying noises 14. Input’s counterpart 15. School with Spartan as mascot 16. Early 19th century upstate New York canal 18. Hearing organ 19. Night before 20. Aquatic flightless bird 21. 21. Across for short

annoying, seeing that they would try to get work done during those 15 minutes. I was shocked. I thought these events were what everyone wanted. I thought that I was changing the school, but instead, I was faced with people who did not seem to care.

During my years at Horace Mann, I have met fantastic people, learned a lot, and had fun. It took me almost four years to figure out how to find the fun. How to join clubs that I loved, not the ones that looked good for college. How to be a goodq student but not prioritize it over enjoying high school. And most importantly, how to have the courage to try to change the mindset of many students who perhaps could not do it themselves. However, a part of me does feel like there could have been more. For the past two years, Ms. Bartels — our club advisor — had been telling us that you cannot force fun onto people. That, since she could remember, “everyone says they want to do a lot but almost never really mean it.” At events like senior movie nights, for example, less than half the grade usually shows up. And it was the expectation for students not to go to Homecoming or Buzzell, or stay for theatre performances or concerts. I think our school has a lot to offer, but this strong emphasis on academics has made me feel like perhaps I lost a part of my high school experience. The one you see in movies, where everyone stays for a Friday night football game under the lights, or where everyone takes part in spirit days, or when traditions mean everything to high school students. I do not know many other kids outside of Horace Mann who would cancel weekend plans due to large amounts of work or skip sports games or school-wide events because of tests and papers.

I want to challenge the school’s students to go to that theatre production their friend is starring in, watch that basketball game and cheer on the kids in their grade, and go to that senior movie night.

School is important, but if we as a community continue to push it above all other things we will miss out on experiences and memories we might never have again. These four years are times we can never get back, so why let the time go by?

22. One who commits slander 23. “Oh my god” abbr. (replacing the “god”) 24. Popular 2000s gaming device 27. 1, 21, 44 Across are all ___ states 29. Yes antonym 31. Zoom’s casual equivalent, for short 32. Prolific sci-fi writer Isaac 33. Broader music genre that includes 27 Down 34. Carbon dioxide chemical formula (less common) 35. Single stranded helix in bio 36. Anger 37. Sink, slump 38. Humorous fill in the blank 39. Where you go when you’re injured 40. Car company known for the Altima and Rogue 43. Short sleeved shirt 46. Tax day is usually the ___ of April 48. The average person sleeps in ___ (2 words) 50. Type of economy that includes Uber, Fiverr, and AirBnB 51. Bear in Spanish 52. Greek letter between pi and sigma OR density notation 53. HM costs an ___ and a leg 54. Secretive gov’t organization with HQ in Langley, Virginia 55. Female chicken 57. Required unless you do sports or dance 58. TikTok home page initials

We owe thanks Today is the first day of online instruction, where we’ll remain until at least mid-January. The abrupt (though not entirely unanticipated) decision to close the school was undoubtedly saddening: it marked an end of a trial run of in-person school amidst a pandemic.

But we stayed open for much longer than our fellow schools anticipated. We had classes in the same classrooms (or outside, if we were lucky), ate lunch in the same cafeteria (as to avoid the bees), and played sports on the same fields.

Extracurriculars ran in semi-full swing: The Record still publishes every week, debate tournaments still occur — albeit virtually — and actors even managed to craft online theatre productions.

Although we are grateful to be a part of a student body that has such dedication to its commitments, above all, we owe our success in staying open to faculty and staff members. We want to thank maintenance and security for tirelessly cleaning our school and ensuring we stay healthy. We want to thank our teachers for risking their health to come to school nearly every day to lead the classroom. And we want to thank Dr. Kelly for spearheading the daunting transition from last spring’s HM Online to in-person instruction.

As we approach Thanksgiving, and when we return to school in January, we encourage you to thank the heroes who have kept us in school until now.

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HORACE MANN MIDDLE DIVISION NOVEMBER 20TH, 2019 Courtesy of HM Flickr

from Race and Ethnicity page 1

MD ASSEMBLY Students listen in the atrium as Khan speaks.

Seventh grader threatened in anonymous texts after testing positive for COVID MD holds anti-cyberbullying assembly in response

Katya Tolunsky and JP Eliopoulos Staff and Contributing Writers After a Middle Division (MD) student who tested positive for COVID-19 received threatening messages from an unknown phone number, Head of Middle Division Javaid Khan reminded students at last Thursday’s assembly to treat peers with the virus with kindness. The announcement was also spurred by students who attempted to find out the identity of the positive case. “I made a really firm announcement that this would not be tolerated,” Khan said.

Students discovered the identity of the student who tested positive based on who had to quarantine, Evie Steinman (7) said. After that, someone made a new phone number to contact the student anonymously and threaten them. At the assembly, Khan urged the student who sent the threatening message to come forward. He also expressed his disappointment in that student, Steinman said.

The assembly didn’t mention names, but Khan said there is no reason to threaten somebody online, Eli Taylor (7) said. “It also gave an opportunity for the offender to turn themselves in, rather than to lie,” he said.

Charles Taylor (7) said the assembly was necessary. Charles overheard mean comments and disrespectful language directed at the student who tested positive, he said. “My peers were treating each other awfully before the assembly,” he said. “They were harassing [the student] because they thought it was funny, but it wasn’t.”

At the assembly, Khan showed a slide that contained four quadrants: mistake-maker, ouch-feeler, bystander, and upstander. Khan explained what each meant and dove into concepts relating to intent versus impact. “In

this case, somebody reached out to a student and tried to find out who is not well, and I don’t know what their intentions were,” Khan said.

“But that’s impactful for that kid who now feels like they’re somehow a pariah, or they have to defend themselves or anything of that nature.”

“It’s happened once and we’ve gotten a warning, and if it happens again, then it’s going to be worse than a warning,” - Ethan Futterman (7) Overwhelmingly, the students were upstanders, Khan said. “After the assembly, I received so many emails and visits from kids who just felt so angry that this happened to one of their peers,” he said.

Charlotte Henes (8) said the assembly helped her peers realize how hurtful words can be and how serious bullying and harassment are.

“Students were harassing peers because they believe it was their peer’s fault that they caught the virus, but that is not a fair or right reason to bully or threaten a student,” she said.

At the assembly, Rena Salsberg (8) said she learned to be mindful before saying something in a chat — or in person — about another student, she said. “It may cause peers to be more mindful about what they say, and respect everyone, especially those that have tested positive for COVID.” Ethan Futterman (7) said it was not the students’ fault for testing positive, and therefore, it was wrong for his peers to go after the student.

“Even though it was just one person who threatened the student [directly], it was one person too many.”

The person who may have sent the threat probably feels guilty about it now, Steinman said. “They probably didn’t know how badly it affected the student,” she said.

This was not an incident of general meanness, Khan said. “I don’t think they just wanted to go after this student. I don’t believe that. I see too many instances of kindness here,” Khan said.

“I think it has to do with those three emotions: anxiety, the need to know, and fear of losing school.”

Steinman said her peers wanted to know the identity of the positive case in order to have someone to blame for having to quarantine.

“Some people are just curious though, or just want to gossip,” Steinman said.

Khan recognizes that many of the students who wanted to know the identity of the positive case were driven by feelings of fear concerning their own safety, he said. “People just want to know if they are safe,” Khan said.

Some students were simply protective of the little time that we had left in school together, Khan said. “We have to honor that feeling too,” he said. “It doesn’t make it right to go after a classmate and try to figure out who has it, but I recognize that those kids don’t want to lose their time away from school and being quarantined feels like a loss to them.”

Charles said the assembly will change his peers’ behavior and it will make them think more carefully about what they do and say in the future.

“It’s happened once and we’ve gotten a warning,” Futterman said. “If it happens again, then it’s going to be worse than a warning.”

Many students were subconsciously angry at the student who tested positive, Steinman said. “Khan helped us get our thoughts straight and realize that the truth is that this could have happened to anybody and it’s not the student’s fault.”

regulations established in the Voting Rights Act that required Southern states to seek congressional approval on rulings pertaining to voting rights. “Rather than repeal it because of the belief that southern whites were being ‘unfairly burdened by the history of racism,’ they should have made all of the country have these restrictions.”

Due to these protections of national voter suppression, Cobb has concluded that the United States is not a democracy, but rather a society striving to be democratic.

Walker hopes that students at the school, who have immense privilege due to their education, reflect on this message. “I hope people take away that America is not and cannot be a democracy unless everyone is given equal opportunity and access to vote,” he said.

Shreya was glad she could participate in Cobb’s talk after witnessing the integral role voter turnout played in the 2020 Election, she said. “This election forces us to grapple with whether or not we are trying to secure our system and make it more accessible to people, or whether we are actually trying to leave people out.”

This talk challenges students to think beyond their privileged view of democracy, Walker said. “For the majority of people in our community, when they turn 18, they will go and vote and be politically active, without ever having to think about voter suppression at all,” Walker said.

Garo Amerkanian (12) lives in New Jersey and said that Cobb’s discussion about the importance of local news to hold politicians accountable really resonated with him and his personal experiences. “Where I live I have seen with my own eyes that a lot of people trust their local news stations, so I know that his point about the revitalization of local news sources would be really impactful in informing the members of my community about pressing issues.”

As a school that is politically active, understanding the fundamental issue of voting and the role of civic engagement is pertinent, Amerikanian said. “If we are to call ourselves politically active students at all, it is really important to talk about this history of voter suppression and grapple with this.”

Bienstock hopes that this talk builds on what students have already learned from the previous installments of the speakers series, he said. “Just like the September and October speakers talked about figuring out the root causes of the problems that we are experiencing today, this talk shows that voter suppression originated way before 2020.”

Courtesy of UD History Series website

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY? Professor Jelani Cobb discusses voter suppression.

Volume 118 Editorial Board Managing Editor Talia Winiarsky Features Henry Owens Emily Shi Vivien Sweet

News Sam Chiang Yesh Nikam Marina Kazarian

Staff

Opinions Maurice Campbell Avi Kapadia Natalie Sweet

A&E Izzy Abbott Abby Beckler Oliver Steinman

Staff Writers Devin Allard-Neptune, Mia Calzolaio Chloe Choi, Emma Colacino, Yin Fei, Lucas Glickman, Claire Goldberg, Tuhin Ghosh, Liliana Greyf, Lauren Ho, Hanna Hornfeld, Purvi Jonnalagadda, Oliver Lewis, Rowan Mally, Simon Schackner, Morgan Smith, Arushi Talwar, Katya Tolunsky, Nathan Zelizer, Max Chasin, Alex Lautin, Jillian Lee, Hannah Katzke, Vidhatrie Keetha, Zachary Kurtz, Clio Rao, Ayesha Sen, Emily Salzhauer, Aden Soroca, Emily Sun, Madison Xu Staff Photographers Kelly Troop, Sophie Gordon, Amanda Wein, Emma Colacino, AJ Walker, Lucas Glickman, Lauren Ho Staff Artists Eliza Becker, Felix Brenner, Lauren B. Kim, Riva Vig

Editor-in-Chief Julia Goldberg Lions’ Den Yotam Hahn Alison Isko Josh Underberg

Issues Editor Adam Frommer

Middle Division Adrian Arnaboldi Bradley Bennett Jack Crovitz

About Founded in 1903, The Record is Horace Mann School’s award-winning weekly student newspaper. We publish approximately 30 times during the academic year, offering news, features, opinions, arts, Middle Division and sports coverage relevant to the school community. The Record serves as a public forum to provide the community with information, entertainment, and an outlet for various viewpoints. As a student publication, the contents of The Record are the views and work of the students and do not necessarily represent those of the faculty or administration of the Horace Mann School. Horace Mann School is not responsible for the

Design Lowell Finster John Mauro Sarah Sun

Editorial Policy

Art Annabelle Chan Gabby Fischberg Lauren Kim Rachel Zhu

accuracy and contents of The Record and is not liable for any claims based on the contents or views expressed therein.

Editorials All editorial decisions regarding content, grammar, and layout are made by the senior editorial board. The unsigned editorial represents the opinion of the majority of the board.

Opinions Opinion columns represent the viewpoint of the author and not of The Record or the school. We encourage students, alumni, faculty, staff, and parents to submit opinions by emailing record@horacemann.org.

Letters Letters to the editor often respond to editorials,

Photography Jackson Feigin Julia Isko Maxwell Shopkorn

Faculty Adviser David Berenson

articles, and opinions pieces, allowing The Record to uphold its commitment to open discourse within the school community.

They too represent the opinion of the author and not of The Record or the school. To be considered for publication in the next issue, letters should be submitted by mail (The Record, 231 West 246th Street, Bronx, NY 10471) or email (record@ horacemann.org) before 6 p.m. on Wednesday evening. All submissions must be signed.

Contact For all tips, comments, queries, story suggestions, complaints and corrections, please contact us by email at record@horacemann.org.

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THE RECORD FEATURES NOVEMBER 20TH, 2020

“Cheating is so normalized”

How students regard and disregard the Honor Code Liliana Greyf and Mia Calzolaio Staff Writers The 54th page of the Family Handbook begins: “As a student at the Horace Mann School, I will not lie, cheat, plagiarize, or steal.” The page is titled “The Honor Code,” and students are required to sign the document and abide by each of its nine policies — if they do not, they will be subject to a set of standard punitive procedures.

The document defines the “honor” of students at the school: students will work individually when it is asked of them, provide assistance only when it is allowed, oppose any instances of academic dishonesty, and “respect the trust placed in [them] by the school administration and faculty and [their] peers.”

A 2015 study by Dr. Donald McCabe and the International Center for Academic Integrity conducted with over 70,000 students at more than 24 high schools in the United States states that 64 percent of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58 percent admitted to plagiarism and 95 percent said they participated in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism, or copying homework.

According to an anonymous Record poll conducted this week to which 144 Upper Division students responded, 80.6% of students believe that the Honor Code is valuable. Yet, 68.1% of students have broken the Honor Code in at least one way.

There is an idea that the code is a contractual agreement and once a student has signed it, they are agreeing to abide by whatever the document states, Dean of Students Michael Dalo said. However, signing the Honor Code is not actually legally binding, math teacher Charles Worrall said. Rather, it is a moment to acknowledge the values that it represents.

Although Mateo* (12), who is anonymous so as not to get in trouble for admitting to breaking the Honor Code, signs the Honor Code in advisory at the beginning of each school year, he does not see it as a valid document. Students are not given a choice when signing this contract, and this forced nature causes the document to have little significance, he said.

While Mateo doesn’t like the idea of cheating because it could detrimentally impact his peers, he does not feel a commitment to the honor of the school. “I don’t feel at all like I owe it to Horace Mann to follow the words that are on the paper that they make us sign at the beginning of the year.”

Whether students sign the Honor Code or not, math teacher Chris Jones finds value in the conversations the code sparks in advisory. “That process where we’re having that discussion [about cheating], regardless of whether it stops cheating or not, is educating people on what it means to be an honest scholar.”

“In an ideal situation, we wouldn’t need to sign the Honor Code because there would be this sense of value and this importance of moral character that eliminates the need to do that signature,” Dalo said.

For now, however, the student body’s signatures

remain an integral part of their commitment to academic honesty at this institution. Still, signing the Honor Code does not necessarily prevent students from cheating.

Photo staged by Jackson Feigin/Photo Director

CHEATING IN CLASSES

Bianca* (11), who is anonymous so as not to be penalized for past cheating, said that cheating in a math class at school is not how it is depicted in movies — it is not necessarily as explicit as peeking over to copy from your neighbor’s paper.

“I’ve heard of some people putting their calculator on the floor and using it during a test, but I think most people just [cheat] on the take-homes because the other stuff isn’t worth the headache,” said Georgia* (12), who is anonymous because she is admitting to violating the Honor Code.

Cheating on math assessments usually happens when students check over answers on take-home assessments that are supposed to reflect their individual work, Bianca said. While she understands that this is cheating, she too participates. Ultimately, Bianca said that in order to get the grade she wishes to receive, she has to utilize all that is available to her — including her peers’ work. Bianca is one of the 32.6% of students polled who participates in this form of dishonesty.

Bianca feels pressure to cheat because she knows that students around her will do so. If she does not use the resources available to her, including those of dishonest nature, she feels she will be at a disadvantage in the classroom setting.

Gertrude* (11), who is anonymous because she is sharing personal information about cheating, also cheats in order to improve her grades. She feels that the grades she receives don’t always reflect the work that she puts into assignments. “I know that I’m hard-working, and I feel like my grades should reflect that,” she said. “So if there’s something that I can do to make it closer to that, then I will do it without actually feeling guilty because I feel like there is a level of deserving it too, which almost tends to justify it.”

It is a discouraging situation for many students when they feel as if they are falling behind in a class. Collaboration on individual assessments can alleviate some of this feeling, said Saul* ‘20, who is anonymous because he did not report past instances of cheating. “A lot of people would have otherwise stopped taking courses and high-level courses if they didn’t have that opportunity to collaborate with other people.”

On the other hand, Abigail Morse (12) sees no possible justification for academic dishonesty. Even though she sometimes struggles with take-home assignments, she chooses never to collaborate with her classmates, knowing that her morality should be at the forefront of her academic career. “It does feel very isolating when you can’t talk to anyone and you’re struggling on something, even though you are putting in hours upon hours of work. But [cheating] really just harms everyone else, because if someone doesn’t want to cheat then they’re at a disadvantage.

Although Dalo understands the frustration of working hard and not receiving the results one

What percentage of students have commited the following Honor Code violations?

Based on an anonymous survey of 144 Upper Division students.

A SLY GLANCE Student uses Post-it notes to see answer while taking online test. believes that they deserve, he does not believe that this is a justification for cheating. “If a student is in that place of frustration, cheating is not the answer,” he said. “The answer is engaging with the teacher to talk about what more can be done to help and support the student to get the grades to where they want them to be.”

Gertrude believes that looking up answers to an assessment can be harmful to a productive academic

Do students believe the Honor Code is valuable?

19.4% No

80.6% Yes

environment, but she thinks it is sometimes justified if she understood the problem in class but could not apply it to her work at home. “If I understand what the Internet is telling me, then I feel like in a way I’ve gone through that intellectual process myself, just with some help,” she said.

Comprehension of a topic or problem, whether it comes from class, the Internet, or a friend, is beneficial to any student’s education, Saul said. “If there’s a very hard problem on a physics problem set, and your friend wouldn’t have otherwise gotten it, they’re better off working with you towards understanding that solution.”

Mateo thinks that collaboration on assignments can be especially helpful in math class. On takehome assessments, students might come across a problem they do not know how to solve, and when they are going through their notes, that student might not understand the solution that they learned in class. In these circumstances, Mateo does not see why problem-solving with the people the student learned the material with would be an issue. “If you asked most people who collaborated on takehomes, I don’t think that they would feel like it was because they just had the opportunity, it’s also because it actually helped them learn the math.”

Similarly, although using SparkNotes is usually deemed a form of cheating, it can sometimes be a helpful resource for students trying to get a grasp on difficult material or those written in a complex style, such as works by Shakespeare, Head of English Department Vernon Wilson said. At the same time, it is never permissible to read explanations online instead of the actual text, he said. 36.1% of students who responded to the poll have used SparkNotes instead of doing reading when they were told not to.

When he first began teaching at the school, English teacher Andrew Fippinger used to tell his

students that reading any outside source about the provided texts was considered cheating. Over time, however, he realized that his message, no matter how passionately explained, was not being understood.

Fippinger now chooses to accept the fact that some of his students will be supplementing, or even replacing, their readings with an online study guide like SparkNotes or Shmoop. No matter how common, this form of academic dishonesty is highly discouraged by all members of the English Department, he said.

However, students can benefit from online analyses, Saul said. “If I derive an understanding of the text from talking to my friend versus doing it on SparkNotes, that doesn’t seem very different to me.”

To read outside sources is to diminish the value of the English classroom environment, Fippinger said. “The point of English is reading stuff together: it’s complicated, it’s difficult, it’s frustrating, and sometimes it takes a long time,” he said. “But we’re working together to try to figure out what it means, to try to interpret it. If you’re letting someone else do that for you, it’s like having somebody do your math homework for you — you don’t learn anything.”

However, collaboration on individual assessments is prevalent in math classes, especially on take-home assignments. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a take-home that people didn’t collaborate on, and I don’t think I’ve ever done a take-home math test without collaborating,” Mateo said.

Before his students submit take-home assignments, math teacher Charles Worrall asks them to sign a document stating that they have neither given nor received help on the exam.

Worrall understands that signing the paper is in no way a legal document; rather, it is a symbolic act that the students must complete. “It’s a sort of participation in a cultural moment,” he said. He sees it as a promise that the students have “bought into” the importance of doing their own work.

Sometimes, students also get help from those older than them. “Occasionally, they get help from their parents or from an adult outside the community, which is extraordinarily fraught because we want parents to be partners in thinking of the school as really educating kids,” Worrall said.

Jolene* (12), who is anonymous because she did not report past instances of cheating, remembers students in two different math classes taught by the same teacher communicating about their exams — the students from the morning class would tell the students in the afternoon class what to expect. This actually caused the later class to have a significantly higher testing average than the other, she said.

“I took a few classes where some students would call each other and trade answers on the take-home tests, go over their answers with each other and even divide up problems,” said Scott* (12), who is using anonymity to report instances of cheating he has witnessed.

Scott and his friends did not cheat on these takehome tests. He was initially unaware that this type of cheating was even happening, and he did poorly on the assessments. “I put my best effort into it, and the people who cheated and didn’t understand the work that they submitted did much better,” he said.

Worrall understands that he cannot prevent all forms of dishonesty — nor would he want to have

that kind of control. “I want to make it hard enough to cheat that it takes work,” he said. “If we could totally shut down all the opportunities of cheating, I think this would actually be a lesser school because kids wouldn’t learn to make these decisions,” he said. In order for students to really benefit from his class, Worrall wants them to make the active choice not to cheat on the assignments.

It is more important for students to learn morals than it is to learn academics, World Languages Department Chair Maria del Pilar Valencia said.

“The most important thing is that in order to function properly as a society, as an intellectual society, as an academic society, we have to be honest, responsible citizens,” she said. “The [learning of] language comes afterwards.”

Academic dishonesty in a language classroom comes in the same forms as many other departments — students share individual work and copy each other’s answers — but the language department must deal with an added layer: students’ use of online translators.

“When you translate a document before reading it, it is not your work because you’re not showing your ability to understand, you’re showing Google’s ability to translate,” Valencia said.

According to the poll, 41% of students have used an online translator when they were forbidden from doing so. Google Translate can be a helpful tool for smaller assignments, said Abraham* (10), who is anonymous because he has not reported instances of academic dishonesty that he has witnessed in the past. “Sometimes the directions for the homework can be long or it just looks annoying to read, so people just copy and paste it into Google Translate to make it easier.”

This dishonesty is particularly fraught because it interferes with the student’s progress in the classroom setting, Valencia said. If a student is cheating, their teacher is unaware of their actual progress. “We need to see where you are in order to help you make progress,” Valencia said. “Kids are betraying their teachers, but mostly themselves [by cheating]. We cannot help them learn the language if we don’t know how they are really doing.”

Worrall hopes the repercussions for cheating — both academic and moral — are enough to dissuade students from cheating, he said. “I want kids to have to think about those decisions and the consequences of them — which often are not just getting in trouble,” he said. “It’s about thinking about what they’ve done after the fact and realizing that they delegitimize some intellectual achievement that they could have had.”

Similarly, math teacher Dr. Linda Hubschman hopes her students recognize the gap in education that is created when a student cheats. “An assessment is supposed to be an opportunity for students to both learn for themselves and to share with me their understanding of a topic,” she said. “Using outside resources prevents this, thereby stifling the learning process.”

Students may feel pressure to cheat, but they must ultimately keep their morality at the forefront of their decision-making process, Valencia said.

“Kids feel that pressure of getting good grades, but the good grades have to come out of learning.”

Worrall is aware of the possibilities of academic dishonesty within his classroom, and he attempts to mitigate these occurrences through the work he assigns. “I try to make my take-home assignments have an open-note and open-book quality because I don’t like the idea of putting kids into situations where it’s really easy to cheat,” he said. If students are given ample opportunity to cheat on a test, they will feel pressure to do so, knowing that their classmates may do so as well, he said.

HORACE MANN FEATURES NOVEMBER 20TH, 2020 “Cheating is so normalized that I don’t think is not always what he is looking for. Rather, he people think about it for even a second,” Georgia wants students to be genuine in their work. He asks said. There is a certain entitlement that students at himself: “What can I do as a teacher to help you see the school feel because they know they can get away that I actually don’t really value that kind of voice, with it, she said.

I value your voice? My hope is that if I can do that Photo staged by Jackson Feigin/Photo Director

THE SUMMARY OF TWISTS AND TURNS The duality of reading: Sparknotes vs original.

To minimize cheating in her classes, Valencia is clear about how she would like assignments to be completed. “I always let my kids know that homework is open book, and I give specific rules when it comes to group work,” she said. Valencia does this to ensure that her students know what is expected of them — and they are never expected to use an online translator.

Dean of the Class of 2023 Chidi Asoluka attempts to create an environment in his classes that pushes Gabby Fischberg/Art Director

students not to feel the need to cheat, he said. He asks broad, thought-provoking questions that students won’t cheat on — not only because they won’t be able to find the answers online, but because they will actually be interested in what they can come up with.

“Teachers sometimes create an environment where it feels like responses [written on SparkNotes] are the ones we are looking for,” Asoluka said.

To combat this, Asoluka is informal in his own responses, reminding students that what is correct Photo staged by Jackson Feigin/Photo Director

TOMANDO UN ATAJO EN ESPAÑOL Google translate is used to cheat on an assignment.

enough in the classroom, then the essays will be their voice, and there isn’t a desire to take on the voice of someone else.”

Fippinger, too, wants to make clear what he expects of his students. For this reason, he sees value in asking his advisees to sign the Honor Code every September, he said. “I do think it has real value in sort of forcing you at least once a year to think about these things, to remind you that these are things that go against the values of the school, to remind you that we care enough to remind you and to put it in writing and have you sign it,” Fippinger said. “I’m always sort of glad as a teacher when that moment comes around, even though my advisees usually try to make it into a joke.”

Fippinger can often tell when students are reading online sources before class discussions.

When a student raises a discussion point in class that has a formulaic quality or an overly completed analysis, he guesses that the student’s perspective is not actually their own, he said.

If this occurs multiple times, Fippinger approaches the student outside of class. During this meeting, he mentions that their answers seem similar to an online study guide and says that he is more interested in hearing the questions the student might have or their authentic responses to other students’ thoughts, he said.

On the other hand, English teacher Stan Lau notices patterns in his students’ work. If a student uses vocabulary or terms that do not match their past assignments or articulates a “graduate-level” argument while struggling to understand the basic plot of the reading material, he begins to wonder why this might be the case. In these situations, Lau connects with the student and asks them to walk him through their thought process or explain the context in which they used the word, always with the presumption of good intentions.

It is nearly impossible to catch all instances of cheating, Fippinger said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me right now there are lots of students who read SparkNotes, repackage it subtly, and I have no idea.”

Sometimes, Fippinger gives surprise quizzes to see who in the class is actually reading the material, he said. Designing these quizzes is often difficult. There has to be a balance between making the questions specific enough for students who only read online summaries, but easy enough for students who actually did the reading.

Teachers often use the Honor Code as a platform to speak about how they catch instances of cheating, Morse said. “They know a lot more than students do about how to tell when someone is not doing their own work.”

Besides using online study guides, the most common — and most strictly punished — form of academic dishonesty that English teachers face is plagiarism, Wilson said. However, only 3.5% of polled students said that they had at some point plagiarized writing.

“Plagiarism is often very ambiguous,” Fippinger said. “[The Honor Code] makes it clear you are not allowed to do these things. If you do them, you are making the decision — even if you didn’t quite mean to make the decision — you’re making a decision to violate the honor code.”

However, Fippinger does not believe students who plagiarize on essays do so maliciously. “They are not lying cheaters who are trying to prove to

5

the world that they can get away with cheating.” If a student makes a conscious decision to plagiarize on an essay, they are almost always under a number of pressures that led to this decision, he said.

Sometimes, students violate the school’s policies unintentionally, specifically in the realm of plagiarism, Dean of the Class of 2024 Stephanie Feigin said. One of these instances occurs when students visit websites to gain inspiration for their work and accidentally put in those exact ideas — or even the exact phrasing — that they read.

“Students might think they just want to understand the plot of a scene, for example, but then their eyes start to wander further down the webpage, and then they get to analysis and that’s when the temptation to keep reading because you think it’s interesting [begins],” Lau said. “Before you know it, either consciously or subconsciously that analysis that you didn’t actually come up with comes through in a class discussion or on a paper.”

Unfortunately, because that student still submitted work that was not theirs, the consequences remain, Fippinger said.

When Fippinger realizes that one of his students has plagiarized, he sits down with the student to talk about their mistake before he brings the issue to the administration. “It’s often a pretty emotional conversation, actually,” he said. “Students who I’ve had plagiarize often feel a real sense of shame.

Sometimes they are angry with me, sometimes they are angry with themselves, but ideally it can ultimately become — in addition to whatever disciplinary stuff happens in the administrative office — a moment between me and the student to work through what happened and move forward in a way that’s actually helpful.”

Students are not predisposed to cheating, Alex Rosenblatt (11) said. Instead, cheating occurs on a case-by-case basis and is caused by external pressures. Students are attempting to maintain good grades while balancing familial and social worries, so cheating sometimes seems like the best way to fulfill those needs, they said.

“A lot of [students] have a sense of almost panic at the thought of anything happening that jeopardizes this future that they think they are supposed to fulfill,” Worrall said. “For me as a teacher, I think that the Honor Code is a tool in pushing back against the lies that are actually at the foundation of that sense of panic, and that sense of necessity of fulfilling certain criteria in your life or else you are a failure.”

This pressure increased dramatically for high school students from when they were in middle school, Abraham said. “People are a lot more worried about their grades in high school, and they’ll be a lot more upset about a B+ than they would in middle school,” Abraham said. “I definitely didn’t think that my grades were as important to my life as I do now, just because they’re not taken into consideration for college applications.”

If a student feels that they have been consistently putting in their best work, and they are not receiving the results that they want, they then may turn to the internet for help, Fippinger said. He can imagine some students believing that a website presents better work than that which they could create.

“It is important for me to teach kids more than just math,” Worrall said. “I am trying to teach them, in some sense, about good living. Part of teaching kids that is about putting them into situations where they have to make ethical choices.”

HISTORY

The Honor Code may not be followed perfectly, but the document is still an essential part of the school’s values, Dalo said. The document puts the school’s beliefs surrounding academic integrity into words and onto a piece of paper. It has been twenty years since the original Honor Code was passed, but it is still the school’s moral and ethical code when it comes to dishonesty in the classroom, he said.

In the fall of 2000, Daniel Seltzer ‘01, a representative on the Governing Council (GC) — a body of the student government composed of faculty and students who met to vote on bills that pertained to issues at the school — pitched a bill titled the “Academic Honor Code Resolution.”

The bill called for the administration to enact an academic honor code that would forbid all types of cheating and to create a set of punishments for violations of said code.

After Seltzer’s original proposal, the GC asked him to draft a physical code. Seltzer created the document by looking at the academic codes of various preparatory schools and universities, he said. He constructed a short, comprehensive list of what he hoped students would abide by in order to create a fairer learning environment.

see Honor Code on page 6

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THE RECORD FEATURES NOVEMBER 20TH, 2020

from Honor Code on page 5 The bill detailed the various ways in which students cheated — plagiarism, sharing answers to a test, and writing hints for or answers to an exam on body parts — and it stated that cheating had become a “black eye” on the student body at Horace Mann. To amend this situation, the bill suggested that the administration must play a large role in demonstrating the unacceptability of a student advancing themselves by dishonorable means.

After three weeks of intense discussion among the members of the GC, the bill was passed by an overwhelming majority of 25 to 6, according to a Record article (Volume 98, Issue 9) from that week. The final resolution from Seltzer was a half-page Honor Code written in accordance with the school’s Family Handbook section on cheating, including a statement that stated that cheating of any form was a direct trespass of the code. However, on top of fervent debates about the “ambiguous” nature of the wording of the code, the GC’s decision sparked a wave of adamant student op-eds both for and against the new bill.

In an article titled “State of the GC: Chair Finn ponders honor code” (Volume 98, Issue 14) commending the GC for their decision to pass the Honor Code, then senior and Chair of the GC Meridith Finn ‘01 acknowledged that this new rule might incite a wave of student disagreement. “There are going to be critics of the Honor Code whether it is long or short, detailed or vague, and a happy medium needs to be met,” she wrote. Her expectations rang true in the months following the GC’s passing of the bill.

About a month after the GC passed the Honor Code and it was signed by former Head of School Lawrence Weiss, Weiss presented the specifics of the code to the Upper Division at an assembly. According to a Record article (Volume 98, Issue 14) about the assembly, Weiss said of the Honor Code, “This is serious, but it’s also very positive for this community. If we can take major steps forward in this area, we will have dealt with a problem that has existed at this school in a comprehensive manner that included students, faculty, administrators, and parents.”

However, after Weiss’ presentation, several op-eds were published in the Record by dissenting students and alumni. In a letter to the editor (Volume 98, Issue 16) titled “Code is just rhetoric for now, says HM Alumni,” Donald S. Hillman ‘42 acknowledged the potential upsides to the Honor Code but remarked that without effective enforcement it would be useless. “In its present state of limbo, the Code is pure window dressing and nothing more,” Hillman wrote.

Some dismissed the code in its entirety. Fleming published a piece titled “We don’t need code to be honorable” (Volume 98, Issue 18) about why the Honor Code would not be successful. “If cheating and plagiarism are indeed a problem at Horace Mann, we need something less cosmetic than wasting a lot of paper and more effective than patting ourselves on the back because every single student’s signature is now on file somewhere,” she wrote.

In that same issue, Mike Pareles ‘03 attacked the mandatory aspect of the Code, arguing that cheating would simply become “more sneaky and insidious” than before. “Instead of protecting the high moral and academic standards to which Horace Mann has always held itself, the Honor Code puts students at unnecessary risk,” he wrote. “This is selfevident when you consider that by its very own mandatory nature, it

nullifies whatever effect it may have had.”

This initial disconnect between students and teachers regarding the honor code still holds true today. Students and teachers continue to have conflicting opinions about the morality of cheating and its applications in regards to the Honor Code.

Seltzer did not realize the impact his creation would have, he said.

The creation and establishment of the Code occurred so quickly that he could not have imagined what it would become, he said. “I am actually really surprised to hear that it has become a punitive, impactful thing.”

Although the Honor Code had a larger impact than its authors originally envisioned, the document’s values are not upheld completely.

The code is a piece of the school’s culture, but no one claims that it maintains the values it presents all by itself, Dean of the Class of 2022 Glenn Wallach said.

Lauren B. Kim/Staff Artist

REPERCUSSIONS

When a student commits a first offense against the Honor Code on a graded assignment, the student receives a “double F” on the assignment. This means that the student has two ‘F’ grades averaged into their final grade.

If a student is thinking about cheating because they are under some sort of academic pressure, they should remember the official consequences of their actions, Feigin said. “A late penalty is a much better consequence than a double F on an assignment.”

Morse does not cheat because she understands that there are always other options, she said. “You can always tell a teacher if you are having a rough day. You don’t need to cheat to get a better grade.” She believes that the punitive section of the Honor Code does deter students from cheating — “this punishment, especially for Horace Mann students, has got to be very worrying,” she said.

Dalo noted that most incidents of academic dishonesty that reach his office have to do with graded assignments. On ungraded, smaller homework assessments, teachers handle cheating in their own ways and often in consultation with grade deans.

Dean of the Class of 2022 Dr. Glenn Wallach has encountered occasional incidents of academic dishonesty in his 16 years at the school; however, it is rare that a student commits academic dishonesty a second time, he said. Wallach credits this lack of repetition to the educational element of the consequences students receive for democracy that is currently in place.

After a formal repercussion is given, a dean meets with the student

who cheated to speak about a plan for the future, Feigin said. During this meeting, Feigin tries to find out what kind of pressures the student was under and the ways in which those stressors can be ameliorated so as to make sure the incident is not repeated. “The attempt is to let them know that we’re on their side — that this is not going to be a moment that defines them,” she said.

In his conversations with students who have cheated, Asoluka tries to ensure that these actions won’t be repeated, he said. Although it is his role to penalize the students for their wrongdoing, it is always his goal to help them do better in the future. “My role before anything else is always as an educator,” he said. “I don’t consider myself a hardcore disciplinarian. I’m an educator, and an educator always leads with love and I think that’s what I try to do.”

Although teachers do their best to ameliorate conditions that lead to cheating, students have, in extremely rare cases, committed a second offense of academic dishonesty. According to the family handbook, this situation is taken more seriously than the original violation. In addition to receiving the same “double F,” the student will be suspended in almost all cases. If the incident is serious enough, the student may be expelled.

“When a kid is expelled here, I believe it’s not to rid our school of some ‘bad seed,’” Worrall said. “Instead, it’s just that this student needs a lesson.”

The penalty system at the school is designed to be educational rather than punitive. “I think that the Honor Code is actually a teaching tool, not a method of punishing kids for wrongdoing,” Worrall said.

At the same time, these consequences are necessary to establish the expectations of the school, Valencia said. The school must communicate that taking any kind of shortcuts is unacceptable. “We need to make clear that work that is not yours cannot be credited as yours,” she said. “We need to communicate that that is not the way that we build a community.”

Students cheat for many reasons, but the formal consequences of cheating are the same no matter the occurrence, Feigin said. There is no way to truly know what went through a student’s mind at the moment of the infraction, so the school does not feel capable to determine the severity of the consequences they give. Rather than modifying each repercussion, deans alter the conversations they have with students based on the type of incident, she said. “We’re going to address [unintentional cheating] differently than the student who intentionally did it because that student who intentionally did it needs a different set of guiding tools.”

The consequences for students in various grades do sometimes differ, Dalo said. Because ninth graders are still learning how and when to put citations on their work, consequences for younger students can be more lenient.

However, Feigin understands the emotional impact that these incidents have on students, and she tries to help the students move on as soon as the consequences have been given. “Every student I’ve ever met with feels badly about what happened and didn’t mean to disappoint and said had they had another moment [they] would have done things differently,” she said. “When they walk out the door, we get to move past it. My goal is not to have a conversation with them about the incident every time they walk through the door.”

ZOOMSGIVING: traditions adapt Purvi Jonnalagadda Staff Writer Many HM families have decided to trade in their Thanksgiving traditions for new plans to adhere to COVID-19 guidelines and prevent the further spread of the virus.

Sammi Strasser (10) said her family has attended a gathering of 10 to 20 people in Florida with her dad’s family or in Westchester at her grandmother’s house for as long as she can remember. Strasser usually looks forward to seeing everyone and sharing all their special recipes. Her family has a tradition where everyone makes their signature dish and shares it potluck-style. However, because of COVID-19, her family is avoiding large gatherings and will instead see them over Zoom.

Rebecca Rosenzweig (12) and her immediate family will also celebrate from home while seeing extended family over a Zoom call. She typically celebrates at her grandparents’ house with around 40 people but will give up their tradition in exchange for a celebration with fewer people present.

Leyli Granmayeh (12) usually goes to a family friend’s house, where everyone indulges in a medley of both Persian and traditional American Thanksgiving foods.

“My family used to just order Persian food for Thanksgiving, but my older brother found that ridiculous,” she said. One year, he said that it was impossible to have Thanksgiving without turkey and has continued to say that every year.

“Now he cooks traditional Thanksgiving foods like turkey, my mom makes or orders Persian

food, and I like to bake so I always do dessert,” she said. This year, her family will celebrate the holiday with Granmayeh’s grandfather, who lives in the same building.

Coming from a mostly Caribbean family, Destiney Green’s (11) family always cooks and eats plenty. There’s always a home filled with family and a table covered in the classic Thanksgiving foods like turkey, but Green’s mom cooks classic baked macaroni and cheese, ham, and fish as well.

This year, Green will spend the day with only her immediate family and her uncle’s family,

and they have taken extensive precautions to prevent the spread of the virus. Green’s family has tested negative for COVID-19 and her uncle’s family will also be tested before and after Thanksgiving. Michael Shaari (11) also plans to see some extended family on Thanksgiving, but not to share a meal and for a short period of time, outside, while keeping masks on.

Other families do not celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional way because of cultural differences, but they still have their own traditions. Uddipto Nandi’s (11) family spends the day gathering with family Lauren Kim/Art Director

friends at someone’s house, eating food, and catching up with each other. “It’s like a potluck because most of my parents’ close friends aren’t American,” he said.

However, Nandi’s family is not inviting anyone or going to anyone’s house for the holiday this year. “For as long as I can remember, the holiday was never an individual family celebration.”

Sareena Parikh’s (11) family also does not celebrate the holiday. Instead, her family spends the day with friends, and they all watch a movie and say what they are grateful for. This year, Parikh’s family will stay home instead of traveling or seeing other people.

Nina Gaither (12) and her family also celebrate a bit differently. Gaither’s aunt, a pastor at Mount Sinai, usually invites a patient without a family over for Thanksgiving but will be unable to continue this tradition. However, her immediate family will spend the holiday with her grandparents, and will also have a second Thanksgiving on the following Saturday with her cousins. Gaither sees her grandparents almost every weekend and will follow the same precautions of maintaining distance, limiting the number of things touched, and making sure everyone is feeling well and has not been in close contact with COVID-positive people.

Green was sad that her family’s initial plans of traveling became unrealistic because of the pandemic. “Without COVID, my family and I would have had a larger Thanksgiving with more of our friends and family,” Green said.

“Our plans usually change every year, but the dishes never do.”

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HORACE MANN NEWS AND ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT NOVEMBER 20TH, 2020

Debate-Able: Klein (12) and Menon (12) dominate Parli Sean Lee and Naomi Yaeger Contributing Writers In the semi-finals of a recent Parliamentary Debate tournament hosted by Yale University, Madhav Menon (12), without any time to prepare, began a speech by saying: “to this argument of my opponents, I have seven responses.” Menon and his debate partner, Jack Klein (12), are currently ranked second in the nation in Parliamentary Debate. During their time together as partners, Klein and Menon have competed and excelled in tournaments hosted by various competitive high schools and universities in the area.

Both Klein and Menon began their careers by debating other formats before committing to Parliamentary Debate. While Menon started on the Middle Division (MD) Debate Team in seventh grade, he said it was not the right fit for him. Unlike the necessary current events and topic related research that occurs before a competition in traditional debate, Parliamentary Debaters are not allowed to prepare anything prior to the competition. Instead, debaters receive a topic, flip a coin to determine which side they will be

arguing, take 15 minutes to prepare, and then are thrown into the debate.

“The only preparation you can do [for Parliamentary Debate] is keeping up with current news, like reading the NY times, [and] watching CNN,” faculty advisor Melissa Kazan said.

When new debaters join the club, their first experience in a tournament is often “trial by fire,” she said.

Klein dabbled with informal debating at his middle school, the Allen-Stevenson School, and attended a debate summer camp the year before he arrived at the school, he said. He then joined the parli team with the encouragement of Menon’s older brother. “The quick thinking [of Parliamentary Debate] and not having to do the same topic over and over again, the same case over and over again, that really drew me in,” Klein said.

The two decided to partner together in their freshman year at the New York Parliamentary Debate state championships hosted by the Dalton School. In their first time debating together, they won the entire tournament.

Klein and Menon have been debating together for a long time and that is critical to a team’s success,

Courtesy of Madhav Menon

Courtesy of Madhav Menon

POINT OF ORDER! Menon and Klein talk strategy ahead of tournament. said Kazan. “You get to know your partner’s strengths and weaknesses, and you can start to anticipate what your partner is going to say,” she said.

Klein and Menon have made it past the preliminary rounds at almost every single tournament during their four years of debating together. This year, they have reached the semifinals at the Vassar College Invitational and the semifinals at the Yale University Invitational. Klein and Menon are one of the only teams from the East coast that have made it to the top 10 in the national rankings, and they are the only team from the East Coast to auto-qualify to the parliamentary Tournament of Champions. “Jack

and I were the first team in New York history to be number one in the country,” Menon said.

One particular semi-finals round at a competition showed Klein how far he and Menon had progressed.

“We were debating one senior from some other school, I just remember the moment in the first speech when he said some line and I turned to Madhav and said ‘We’re gonna be able to beat him, just off of that.’”

Kazan said Menon and Klein have not only shown exemplary debate skills in competitions, but they have proved themselves to be strong leaders of the club. Elise Kang (9) and Sophie Li (9) are new debaters this year and

have said that they appreciate Menon and Klein’s support. In club meetings leading up to a recent tournament, Menon and Klein presented slides that went over techniques on how to debate, Li said. Kang and Li referenced these slides throughout the rounds of a competition last weekend to help them format their arguments.

Besides the future of the club, Klein and Menon said that Parliamentary Debate’s benefits will take them far in their own futures. “I don’t care as much about the tournaments we’ve won or tournaments we’ve lost,” Menon said. “The teamwork skills I’ve developed with Jack, that’s [what] I’m really taking away.”

Bomwell: A journey through jazz Emily Sun and Celine Kiriscioglu Staff and Contributing Writers

“Music is the one thing that I could never give up,” said Michael Bomwell, music teacher and director of Wind Ensemble and Jazz Combo. “It’s always giving something back to me. I learn something about myself every time I listen to it or play it.”

Since his childhood in Canandaigua, a small town in upstate New York, Bomwell has been immersed in the world of music. His father played classical trombone and piano and his family listened to classical music on drives, he said. “I still remember Mahler’s Symphony No.1 — we played it the whole ride one time, and it was still going on when we got home,” Bomwell said. “So we just stayed in the car until it finished.”

Bomwell started learning the saxophone in fifth grade. He took lessons in school and from his father, and he then joined the saxophone quartet and jazz band in eighth grade, he said.

At times, Bomwell said he wanted to give up and “throw the saxophone out the window.”. However, his father’s investment in him and his friend, who also played the instrument, inspired him to stick with it.

“My dad told me, ‘you’ll go through periods where you feel like you’re really getting better, and then it’ll plateau and you won’t see any difference,’” he said. “But really, things are happening, it’s just that you don’t notice, and you have to work through those phases to get to the next ascent.’”

After high school, Bomwell studied classical saxophone at the University of Michigan under Donald Sinta, a renowned saxophonist.

Sinta shared his knowledge from playing with musicians at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, Bomwell said. “He was so excited about [music], he had so much energy, and you just fed off of it.”

Bomwell said he and his peers ate, slept, and breathed music for those four years. “It’s a really magical time because you’ve left high school, you’re thrust into this new environment where so many new possibilities are in front of you, and you’re having your eyes opened left and right with things that you never realized were possible or that existed,” he said.

Bomwell played gigs around Michigan for two years after he graduated college and then moved to New York City in search of more opportunities, he said. He found jobs as an itinerant music teacher at different schools around the city, he said.

He arrived in NYC a month before 9/11, which canceled much of his Courtesy of HM Flickr

PERFORMANCE READY Bomwell conducts Jazz Band.

Courtesy of Mr. Bomwell

ALL THAT JAZZ Bomwell performs on baritone saxophone. freelancing work and made him doubt his decision to leave Michigan, where he played gigs regularly, Bomwell said. “I thought, ‘what have I done? This was a huge mistake.’”

Bomwell said he still faces anxiety that he is not where he wants to be as a musician. “That’s something that always dogs me: feeling like I should be doing something else that I’m not doing,” he said.

Despite moments of uncertainty, Bomwell is drawn back to music because it strikes at his emotional core and tells him what he craves in life at that moment. “There’s a direct conduit between the inner emotional material that you hold and the response you have to music that you don’t access with anything else,” he said.

Eventually, Bomwell’s freelancing picked back up when he helped found Red Baraat in 2008, a band that mixes North Indian bhangra with hip-hop, jazz, and punk. They performed at a South by Southwest festival, Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, and in 2012, at the White House for the Initiative on Asian-American and Pacific Islanders.

At one of Bomwell’s freelance gigs in New York in 2004, he ran into Jay Berckley, a saxophonist with whom he played in college. Berckley, who was then teaching music at HM, informed Bomwell about a job opening for a saxophone teacher at the school. Bomwell accepted the job, and later took Berckley’s position when he left the school in 2009.

“Teaching has been one of the most rewarding things in my life,” Bomwell said. “Sharing knowledge with somebody else and seeing that turn a light on for them is such a great feeling.”

Since everyone learns differently, he also enjoys the challenge of presenting information in a way that clicks for each student, Bomwell said. His teaching style is grounded in an excitement about sharing

music and reaching students no matter where they are at in their music journey, Music Department Chair Timothy Ho said. “There is a sense of, ‘come as you are, please bring all of your amazingness and your ugliness and your stress, and let’s be here in the moment and see what we can make together.”

He encourages students to express their individual voices as they respond naturally to what the music needs and what the ensemble is collectively going for, Alex Rosenblatt (11) said. “[Playing in Jazz Combo] is really spur of the moment, which I wasn’t used to, so he helped me find the joy in that experimentation.”

Students not only feed off of one another as they play but they also feed off Bomwell, Abigail Morse (12) said. “He’s such a passionate conductor and he gives so much energy to the band.”

One of Bomwell’s personal goals is to lead his own ensemble and have the confidence to realize his own artistic vision, he said. He also wants to complete an album, which he had started to record in 2008 but did not finish. “I felt like I was just doing it because I thought I should; it never felt like I have to get this out there to the world,” he said. “I want to do it again and really make it a reflection of who I am as a musician.”

Bomwell said music marks points in your life that you can always return to, such as when he bought and listened to his first jazz album, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out. “There’s this tune on that album called Strange Meadowlark,” he said. “To this day, when I hear [the saxophonist] Paul Desmond come in, it just sends chills down my spine.”

Bomwell wishes students will find a similar experience at the school.

“I hope you all have at least one great musical moment while you’re here that you can take away with you,” he said. “No matter what you ended up doing, music is always going to be there for you, and it’s always going to be something that you can learn from.”

Crossword Answers See puzzle on pg.2

Lions’ Den Record Sports

NOVEMBER 20TH, 2020

Ottey (11) makes wrestling a co-ed team Vidhatrie Keetha and Audrey Moussazadeh Staff and Contributing Writers “It was not very easy to join the team, but I’m glad I’m on it,” Jhanae Ottey (11) said. Ottey is currently the only girl on the wrestling team, and joined when she was ninth grade in an effort to try something new, she said.

“I didn’t necessarily like the other sports that were offered,” Ottey said. “I was like, ‘Okay, I might as well do wrestling, if I’m going to go all out.’”

Coach Gregg Quilty was surprised when Ottey joined the team. “[It] was very brave of her,” he said. “Normally, girls won’t join unless there are other girls on the team.”

Ottey isn’t the first girl Quilty has coached on the school’s wrestling team. Female wrestlers Eleanor Lewis and Akeyla Todd have both had successful careers in the sport, though they only wrestled boys, he said.

In order to join the team, Ottey needed to obtain permission from the school and complete a two-week long process to prove she met the physical standards to be on a boys’ team — a process similar to that a student in the middle school would have to go through in order to join a high school team, Ottey said. Ottey endured multiple physical tests, such as running a mile and doing push-ups, and consulted her doctor to receive forms ensuring her physical capability, she said.

“It was definitely kind of stressful, but I know it was a means of testing myself to see if I was really up to being on the team,” Ottey said. The process is part of a physical fitness exam required by New York State in order for a girl to compete in a boys’ sport — which wrestling is technically classified as, Quilty said.

“For example, if there was a girls’ team and a boys’ team — like there’s girls’ basketball and boys’ basketball — and a girl wants to join the boys’ basketball team, they’d have to prove that they’re up to the standard of boys physically,” Ottey said.

Because boys on the team might not be able to pass the physical tests themselves, Ottey said there is a double standard for girls who want to join the team. Since the school’s wrestling team is co-ed, Ottey also thinks that the process is not necessary and should be removed, she said.

Ross Petras (10) said he did not know about the

Courtesy of Flickr

ON THE MAT Ottey wrestles her opponent. process Ottey had to go through in order to join the team and that it was unfair that Ottey had to prove she was capable of being on the team.

The process serves as a deterrent for girls to join the team, Ottey said. According to Ottey, another girl had signed up for the wrestling team the same year she joined but didn’t end up committing to the team. “She said that she was too busy to be on the team,” Ottey said. “But I have a sneaking suspicion that it was just because she didn’t want to do the process.”

Ottey will go through the same process again this year, even though this is her third year on the team. “They’re trying to see if I’m still up to the standard,” she said. “I really don’t like it. It isn’t necessary.”

When she first joined the team, Ottey was open-minded but didn’t feel very comfortable, she said. “I didn’t know that many people on the team and I was just learning the sport,” she said.

The process of physical testing prevented her from wrestling directly after joining and set her two weeks behind.

Ottey originally believed she would be

excluded because of her gender. “I felt a lot more excluded than I was actually being excluded,” she said. “But soon I got into the mindset that this team was really close, and I was a part of it, and that was that.”

Ottey has since grown more comfortable with her teammates and the sport of wrestling itself.

“I sincerely love the friendship that we’ve created between all the wrestlers.”

While Ottey’s favorite part about the team is seeing the competitive side to many of her classmates, she particularly enjoys its close and supportive nature, she said. “Last year, we had a day where we all wore suits and ties [for team spirit], and every single person on the team did it,” Ottey said. “And that’s just great for us, and seeing us win matches and tournaments and just putting our all into this sport is just really inspiring to me.”

Even if more girls joined the team, Ottey doesn’t think the dynamic would change. “But I do think that without the [process], it would be a lot easier, at least mentally, for girls to join,” Courtesy of Flickr

TAKEDOWN Ottey pummels the competition.

8

she said. When it comes to competitions, Ottey’s opponents have mostly been unfazed by the fact that she was a girl, since other schools’ teams have girls on them as well. However, Ottey sometimes felt as though she was at a disadvantage, she said.

“Last year, I had a lot of matches where I mentally [thought that] I just can’t be wrestling these guys,” she said. “We’re in the same weight class, but they’re just stronger, period. There’s not much I could do about that.”

Ottey’s perspective on her own capability as a wrestler and wrestling as a sport changed when she entered in a women’s tournament through the school because she no longer felt as though she was at a disadvantage. Ottey’s shift in mindset helped her win matches against wrestlers who weren’t girls as well, she said.

Winning matches against boys helped boost her confidence, Ottey said. She remembers a match she won against a boy last year that she was particularly happy about winning. “That was the first time I really proved to myself that I can be successful in this sport, in the same weight class as the guys.”

Since then, Ottey has had a successful wrestling career. Last year, she placed third in the Edgemont Tournament Girls Division and won one of her bouts in the NY State Girls’ Championships, Quilty said.

Petras has never wrestled Ottey, but he does think that she is a great teammate and wrestler, he said. “When I needed help I knew that I could ask her. It’s always great to be with her during tournaments and dual meets and to be on the side with the rest of the team while she wrestled.”

While Ottey was able to join the wrestling team, there aren’t many girls in the sport in general, Ottey said. Even on the co-ed teams she has competed against, there were usually only a few girls, but it did make a difference when there were girls on a team, Ottey said.

“They’re distinctly different in my eyes, because it shows like, ‘oh, that school is more progressive, that’s cool,’” Ottey said. “It’s just the image you portray at matches.” Ottey feels as though her presence on the wrestling team is pushing the team towards a more co-ed direction, she said.

Girls wrestling is now the fastest growing sport in the country, and many colleges have added it as a sport recently, Quilty said. “I encourage more girls to join the team so eventually we can have a full girls wrestling team,” he said.

“I hope that me being on a team can be an open invitation for girls to try new things who aren’t in a sport for the winter,” Ottey said. “Join wrestling, and join the family, because we’re here with open arms.”