SPRING/SUMMER 2022 Lawrentian THE 7 TRACKING TRADES 28 ELECTORAL INTEGRITY 38 BEAK PERFORMANCE THEY SAID ‘L YEAH!’ A FUN NEW ADMISSION CAMPAIGN SHOWCASES THE VIBRANCY LAWRENCEVILLEOFTO NEWLY ACCEPTED STUDENTS AROUND THE WORLD.
inFrozenTime The icy surface of Loucks Ice Center hosted its final hockey games this past winter. The Big Red boys’ and girls’ ice hockey teams will move into the new hockey arena inside Tsai Field House for the 2023 season, while a thawed-out Loucks will be a temporary home to several indoor sports during phase two of the field house construction.
ON RESILIENCE
After pausing to allow the community to grieve, we also slowly brought back some of the healthy rhythms and cadences of campus life, knowing we had to begin, not to move on, but to move forward. And we did. In the final days of May, we held many of our time-honored traditions, like the McPherson Tea, where students thank their favorite teachers, and Prom, where students take a boat ride around New York Harbor with a DJ, dinner, and the New York skyline as the backdrop. “What a year we’ve had,” I said to the faculty, displaying a photo I had taken a few evenings prior from Foundation House after a rain shower at dusk – an enormous rainbow spanning campus. “There is great strength in our community,” I reassured them, “and a sign of better days ahead.”
StephenSincerely,S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21
The Shelby Cullom Davis ’26 Head of School
OFFLEADINGFROMTHEHEADOFSCHOOL
At our final meetings in June, I reminded the faculty that we kicked the academic year off in August 2021 with the specter of COVID-19 still looming. During those early days, we pulled off the athletics preseason, held a raucous House Olympics, and solemnly gathered for Convocation on the Circle, all while the delta variant surged. I was conveying my gratitude and admiration for all the challenges we had met and overcome together and, at the same time, reminding them of all the positive moments we had experienced over the year. The difficulties made us appreciate all the more the moments that, in the past, we might have taken for Throughgranted.words and images, I conjured up the highs and lows of the year. House banquets in December were joyful, and Lessons and Carols in the Chapel was especially beautiful, perhaps because it had been two full years since we last experienced it. We welcomed students back in January with omicron on the rise, and that didn’t stop us from holding our Dance Concert or spending time together on Martin Luther King Jr. Day reflecting on Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. I traveled with the boys’ varsity hockey team to Hill for the Mid-Atlantic Prep League championship and was lucky enough to be on the bench as they took on a very strong opponent that had already beaten us twice during the regular season. They played their hearts out and won 3-0. When I went into the locker room afterwards to announce a day off for the following day, I got the sweatiest group hug I have ever experienced. And we also heard about pain and anger from our students in a Sunday evening Town Hall in late February, facilitated by Student Council. It was month 24 of the pandemic, and masking, social distancing, stress, and cold winter weather had taken their toll. We listened, and we responded with a series of workshops in each of the Houses aimed at producing solutions to the issues our students were raising. The spring brought warm weather, outdoor dining, and a general lightening of the mood, before we experienced the tragic death of a student. It’s hard to convey the depth of sadness we felt together, and I remember the morning we first convened in Kirby Arts Center to hear the news and reflect. We played a recording of Shenandoah by the Lawrentians that included the young man in the chorus, bringing his voice into the room. At the conclusion of the meeting, students did not get up to go – preferring to stay in the comfort of each other’s presence. Over the course of the coming days, we lit floating lanterns on the pond with messages of remembrance, and held a very moving service in the Chapel, where again the Lawrentians sang.
On the Cover: L Yeah!: The Admission Office’s new campaign sported a new tagline this spring, all to help attract the newest class of Lawrentians. (Illustration by Amelia Flower)
2 THE LAWRENTIAN 12 You Can Go Home AgainScholarand journalist Stacey Patton ’96 shared an emotional journey that took her from a social worker’s car to Lawrenceville, where she found her voice. 30 History in the Present TenseAmerica’s past – in all its complicated nuance – comes to life at Lawrenceville through Harvard Business School’s Case Method. 34 Trading Blades On the ice, Ashley Dunbar ’10 used to move the puck with surgical precision. Today, she’s an actual neurosurgeon. 34 FEATURES Brains of the Operation: � Ashley Dunbar ’10, an athletic ice hockey star at Lawrenceville and Yale, now uses her hand-eye coordination as a neurosurgeon. (Photo by David M. Torrence) 4 A Thousand Words 6 In Brief 16 Inside the Gates 18 On the Arts 20 Sports Roundup 24 Go Big Red! 26 Table Talk 28 Ask the Archivist 38 My Favorite Teacher 40 Class Notes 84 Old School DEPARTMENTS
There aren’t many campus photographs in the 1922 Olla Pod, but those few are familiar: the brownstone façade and steps of Woods Memorial Hall, for instance. Ironically, many of the Circle Houses, not yet forty years old, appeared older than they do today due to the lush green ivy climbing their exterior walls – plantings that were removed years ago to prevent damage their invasive roots cause to aging masonry.
The senior portraits, each juxtaposed with a candid photo of the graduate, are truly de l’époque. Boys’ hair, parted directly down the middle and gleaming with pomade, appears to be right out of The Great Gatsby. And the language of the blurbs, written by the yearbook staff, is hard to reconcile with the way any contemporary Lawrentian would describe a classmate: “A recluse and a troglodyte of the most confirmed type, Penny has remained enclosed within his own domains the greater part of the year, only occasionally venturing forth to take the air or to enjoy a leisurely game of baseball on the Esplanade,” wrote the staff, gently needling Reid Pendleton ’22 of Richmond, Va., who apparently resented “attempts to intrude upon his sedentary life.” Perhaps “Penny” knew what was best. Born a year before the Wright brothers first took flight in their rudimentary “aeroplane,” Mr. Pendleton lived long enough – one hundred years and five days, to be exact – to see air travel land human beings on the moon but, later, also to be catastrophically weaponized on 9/11. Oh, but he eventually did make a habit of being out of doors, too, working for most of his years as a land survey engineer.
It’s all to say that a lot can – and should – change over a hundred years, but at a place like Lawrenceville, enduring throughlines always remain. The voices, laughter, and cries you hear on our stages, in our classrooms and hallways, and on our fields of play, are very often the echoes of the past. Each new year is a reminder that the School’s progress always stands on the foundations laid many years before any of us passed through its gates.
All the best, Sean sramsden@lawrenceville.orgEditorRamsden
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 3 FROM BASEMENTTHE OF POP HALL Editor Sean Ramsden Art Director Phyllis Lerner News Editor Lisa M. Gillard H’17 Staff Photographer Paloma Torres Contributors Andrea JessicaNicoleAshleyJonJacquelineFereshtehHaunKrieg’81Lee’23StockWelsh Photography by Jill DavidKlocknerM.Torrence Illustration by Amelia Flower Tiago Galo – Folio Art Joel VectorvexelartKimmel Class Notes Design Selena Smith Proofreaders Rob Reinalda ’76 Head of School Stephen S. Murray H’54 ’55 ’65 ’16 P’16 ’21 Assistant Head of School, DIrector of Advancement Mary Kate Barnes H’59 ’77 P’11 ’13 ’19 Director of Communications and External Relations Jessica Welsh The Lawrentian (USPS #306-700) is published quarterly (winter, spring, summer, and fall) by The Lawrenceville School, P.O. Box 6008, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, for alumni, parents, grandparents, and friends. Periodical postage paid at Trenton, NJ, and additional mailing offices. The Lawrentian welcomes letters from readers. Please send all correspondence to sramsden@lawrenceville.org or to the above address, care of The Lawrentian Editor. Letters may be edited for publication. POSTMASTER Please send address corrections to: The Lawrentian The Lawrenceville School P.O. Box Lawrenceville,6008 NJ 08648 ©The Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, New Jersey All rights reserved. SPRING/SUMMER 2022 | VOLUME 86 | NUMBER 2 L
henever the newest issue of the Olla Podrida is published each spring, I tend to look back at its progenitor from exactly a hundred years prior to see what’s changed over the past century – and what remains familiar. We’ll dispense with the obvious demographic observations – the evolution of the School is well known to you, reader. But some other things stand out in the 1922 Olla Pod. New to the languages faculty that year was a young French teacher named Thornton Wilder, just two years out of Yale. Little could anyone have imagined that the assistant master of Davis House had three Pulitzer Prizes in him, including one for the play Our Town. Wilder himself would have likely chuckled at the notion that exactly one hundred years later, in the science fiction-y sounding year of 2022, Lawrenceville students would be performing one of his then unwritten dramatic works on a campus stage. From this, we are reminded that great art is almost certain to long outlive its creators.
W
4 THE LAWRENTIAN WORDSTHOUSANDA
Once the prospective members of the Class of 2026 received their acceptances to the School, the Admission Office called in the help of current students at Discovery Days in March, urging admitted students to say “L YEAH! ” to Lawrenceville. The spirited campaign contributed to a strong class and generated significant excitement and spirit, displayed in social media photos spanning the globe. The professionals were impressed, too, bestowing the School a Communicators Award for Excellence.
Framing the Issue
NEURO CANCER RESEARCH SEEN AT BRAIN 2022
LEWIS HONORED SCHOLAR-LEADER-ATHLETEAT AWARDS
Lam’s full paper, “Gender Disparity in the Incidence of Childhood Central Nervous System Cancers among Different Asian Pacific Islander Populations,” which relates to gender disparity in the incidence of central nervous system tumors in children and adolescents, was published in The Journal of High School Science, a peer-reviewed STEM journal in the United States.
Gary Lewis ’22 was among 20 student-athletes honored at the 60th annual George Wah ScholarLeader-Athlete Awards Dinner in March. The award honors football players from a local youth league, as well as high schools and colleges, who have made an impact on the area in and out of football. The award is sponsored by the Delaware Valley Chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of LawrencevilleFame.head coach Napoleon Sykes praised Lewis’ leadership. “He approaches everything with a hardhat mentality. Gary’s ability to take over a game showed up immediately, but more importantly, his ability to show his teammates how to practice, how to compete, and how to be a great teammate started from the first day of preseason camp,” Sykes told Joe O’Gorman of The Trentonian. “He has an uncanny ability to reach people at their level.”
A research poster by Alistair Lam ’23 was selected for display at the 18 th Multidisciplinary Meeting for Nervous System Diseases –known better as the BRAIN 2022 conference – in Hong Kong in February.“Iwasthe only high school student selected, so I am thrilled that my research can be presented alongside neuro medical scientists and professionals,” said Lam, who credited Elizabeth Fox, Lawrenceville’s director of student research, and mathematics teacher Douglas Piper for their guidance.
In the season’s final game, and the last to be played at Lawrenceville’s Loucks Ice Center, the boys’ ice hockey team captured the Mid-Atlantic Hockey League championship in February with a 3-0 shutout of The Hill School. Big Red ice hockey will begin play next winter in the new Tsai Field House, currently under construction.
The boys’ hockey team hoisted the Napoleontofield,andwasGaryCenter.insidetoinwinningtrophychampionshipHockeyMid-AtlanticLeagueafterthetitlethefinalgamebeplayedLoucksIceLewis’22aleaderonoffthefootballaccordingheadcoachSykes.
6 THE LAWRENTIAN BRIEFINLAM’S
BOYS’ HOCKEY TAKES M.A.H.L. TITLE
Thanks to George McCain ’23, there’s an app for that – and it’s an award-winner, too. McCain’s SenateTrades, an accessible digest of senatorial stock transactions, won the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in New York’s 10th Congressional District.
While senatorial stock transactions are publicly available on sites such as SenateStockWatcher, from which SenateTrades draws its data, McCain’s creation provides analysis. It shows the performance of individual stock portfolios and how each is doing compared with the broader market.
McCain said his research was inspired by the 2020 U.S. congressional insider stock trading scandal, in which a number of senators were accused of using data from private COVID-19 briefings to inform their stock trades.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. — Lisa M. Gillard H'17
TRACKING SENATE STOCK TRADES?
BOYS AND GIRLS ‘SQUASH’ M.A.P.L.
Dylan Oster ’24 won the 2021-22 Mid-Atlantic Prep League girls’ diving championship February at The Hill School with a score of 388.65. Every participant had to complete 11 dives, at least two from each of these categories: front, back, inward, reverse, and twisting.
Eight Lawrentians were named to the 2021 National Field Hockey Coaches Association (NFHCA) High School National Academic Squad in February. They are Keira Duffy ’22, Lillian Gessner ’23, Anna Gill ’23, Caroline Hunt ’23, Lauren Kim ’22, Emma Kim ’23, Devan Morey ’22, and Layla Shaffer ’22
FOES Big Red squash enjoyed a banner day on February 12, with both the boys’ and girls’ teams claiming their respective 2021-22 Mid-Atlantic Prep League championships. The boys edged out The Hill School, 4-3, in the finals with wins by Noah Lazar ’23, Victor Park ’22, Christopher Bai ’25, Dodge Martinson ’22, and Harrison Emery ’25. The girls went 6-1 against Mercersburg Academy in the finals. Debanshi Misra ’23 lost a hardfought match at first singles, but was backed up with victories by teammates Daphne Volpp ’24, Anika Parr ’24, Karolina Majewska ’22, Eleanor Bunn ’25, Tiffany Yeung ’22, and Madeline Widener ’24
“SenateTrades is dedicated to holding public officers accountable by promoting financial and political transparency,” said McCain, who created the application. He said, “it’s important that [Americans] can see what stocks the people who represent them are buying and they can tell, and actually decipher for themselves, whether those people are worthy of their support.”
“Allegedly, these senators had material, nonpublic information from the hearings that indicated the severity of the impact of COVID-19 on financial markets and protected their portfolios accordingly,” McCain said. “Watching this unfold in the news, I knew that there was a way to better hold senators accountable.”
THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT George McCain ’23 Wins Congressional App Challenge. Ever wondered how your U.S. senator invests his or her money?
BRADY TOPS AT MERCER TOURNAMENTWRESTLING
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 7
OSTER MAKES A SPLASH AT CHAMPIONSHIPM.A.P.L.
FIELD HOCKEY MAKES ITS MARKS
The High School National Academic Squad program, sponsored by OPA Winning Teams, recognizes those high school seniors and juniors who have achieved a minimum cumulative, unweighted grade-point average of 3.50 out of 4.0 or the equivalent through the first quarter of the 2021-22 school year, and were nominated by their NFHCA member coach. Seniors and juniors who have achieved a minimum cumulative, unweighted GPA of 3.9 out of 4.0 or the equivalent through the first quarter of the 2021-22 school year have been recognized as Scholars of Distinction, an honored earned by both Gessner and Emma Kim.
Patrick Brady ’23 took the Mercer County Wrestling Tournament championship at 157 lbs. in February. Brady won by fall over James Stills from Hamilton High West in the Tournament, which took place at Robbinsville High School. Big Red finished eighth overall.
McCain used funding from his 2021 Lawrenceville Welles Award to support development and design costs as well as server and data processing fees. The annual Welles Awards, established in memory of William Bouton Welles ’71, fund Third and Fourth Form student research projects.
8 THE LAWRENTIAN
THE LAWRENTIAN STRIKES SILVER
The Lawrentian won a silver award in the Writing/Short-Form Story category at the 2022 CUPPIE Awards, sponsored by CUPRAP, the College and University Public Relations and Associated Professionals. The winning feature, “Clued In” by Lisa M. Gillard H'17, Lawrenceville’s director of public relations, was selected among published articles of fewer than 1,000 words and detailed the story of Soleil Saint-Cyr ’21, who in February 2021 became the youngest woman ever to have a crossword puzzle selected by The New York Times for publication. Altogether, 333 entries were received from colleges, universities, agencies, and providers of private, specialized and secondary education.
Fifth Form classmates helped Julia and Kevin Chiang ’23 collect more than 250 bags of clothing and hygiene supplies for the Diocese of Trenton’s Loaves and Fishes Community.
SIBLINGS COMMEMORATE MOM’S COMPASSION
Siblings Julia Chiang ’23 and Kevin Chiang ’23 have selflessly turned tragedy into charity. Working through the Ruby Shiau Chiang Fund, the two have teamed up to donate more than 250 bags of clothing and hygiene supplies to the Loaves and Fishes Community of the Diocese of Trenton. Loaves and Fishes provides meals and hygiene products to assist local residents. The Fund was created to honor the memory of Julia and Kevin’s mother, Ruby Shiau Chiang P’23, whose life was tragically cut short in 2015. After consulting the Loaves and Fishes donation “wish list,” the Chiangs set out to collect winter-themed clothing items to warmly clothe those in need, as well as sundry toiletries. With help from Fifth Formers Miles Brodey, Sula Harf, Aidan Kilfeather, Tyler Mininno, Victor Park, Gabe Perez, and Olivia Werts, the Chiangs packed drawstring bags with bars of soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, hats, gloves, socks, and razors. “The Ruby Shiau Chiang Fund aims to continue my mom’s legacy by spreading love and giving back to the community that we are so lucky to be a part of,” Julia said. “We have previously renovated and dedicated a softball field in West Windsor (N.J.) Community Park to my mom. This time, we wanted to give back to the community in a different way by supporting a local soup kitchen.”
For the past six years, the Foundation has also awarded scholarships to “exemplary students who have embodied the characteristics of my mom, showing compassion and quiet leadership within their communities,” said Kevin, who added his gratitude to Rachel Cantlay P’07 ’09 ’11, the School’s director of community service, who helped organize the event. “Clued In” won a silver award for writing at the 2022 CUPPIE Awards.
Noted physician, epidemiologist, and educator Sandro Galea explained to Lawrentians in January how social and socioeconomic factors left world vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic.
PREVENTING THE NEXT PANDEMIC?
Physician, epidemiologist, educator, and author Sandro Galea spoke to Lawrentians in January, discussing ways racism, marginalization, and socioeconomic inequality left the world vulnerable to COVID-19 and the ensuing global health crisis. “I want to make a case for why public health matters to all of us [and] to change our conversations about health,” said Galea, the dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of PublicGalea,Health.whoalso authored the book The Contagion Next Time, explained that health is more than simply individual medical care – it requires us to invest in our communities in ways that prevent illnesses before they start. We must look beyond vaccines, he said, and focus on the economic, environmental, and political factors to prepare for future health emergencies. Galea shared the story of American Blues singer “Blind” Willie Johnson, born in Texas in 1897. Johnson lost his eyesight as a child in a domestic violence incident. As an adult, the home he where he resided with his wife was lost to fire, but they were so impoverished that the family continued to live in the burned-out building shell. In the 1940s, he contracted malaria, was refused treatment at a local hospital because he was Black, and subsequently died. “What killed Willie Johnson?” Galea asked. “Most obviously, malaria … but if he had received treatment, he would have lived.” We must also look at the causes that accumulated over his lifetime, Galea said, including homelessness, poverty, racism, disability, domestic violence – that led to his denial of lifesaving treatment. Galea said he is heartened by the conversations he hears among young people about the importance of combating racism, saving the environment, and other public health influencers.“Idothink things will get better,” he told Lawrentians. “You will be at the vanguard of a better, healthier world. You all get this – previous generations have not. Thank you for being that next step. We, the people, can do quite a lot.”
Physician and epidemiologist Sandro Galea explained how COVID-19 was exacerbated by socioeconomic factors.
– Lisa M. Gillard H'17 English teacher Enithie Hunter was named the new high school chair for The College Board’s Advanced Placement (A.P.) Literature and Composition Exam Development Committee. Her tenure began this July. Hunter will facilitate all committee meetings and work closely with College Board’s A.P. English coordinator, the chief reader for the English literature exam, and Educational Testing Service to select, compile, and approve passages, prompts, questions, and scoring guides for all A.P. Literature and Composition Exam“WhatForms.Ifound was so much more than sources to cite,” she said. “I encountered and was drawn to a whole field devoted to not only amplifying voices, but also grounding that work in ethical practices that honor and respect the humanness of those voices and the experiences they narrate.”
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 9
HUNTER TO CHAIR A.P. LIT & COMMITTEECOMP
Clark is the author of several monographic revisions, field guides, and floristic studies, and his research has been widely published in scientific journals. Most recently, his joint discovery (with Laura Clavijo from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia) of the longest flower known in the Drymonia genus was published in Phytokeys, a journal of systematic botany. He is a contributor to the Gesneriaceae Resource Center, part of the World Flora Online project. “We’re generating this data to get a better understanding of the evolutionary relationships between plants, because many of them have not been represented in scientific literature,” Clark explained.
It's fun. And it's possible because we have really bright kids who are motivated. We have samples that no one else has – it’s not every day someone can study the evolution of a plant that is not represented in GenBank and generate original data,” said Clark, who holds a doctorate in evolutionary biology and is an expert on neotropical Gesneriads - tropical plants that are most abundant in the northern Andes.
10 THE LAWRENTIAN Lawrenceville science teacher John L. Clark P’20 ’22 has discovered (or has been part of a team that discovered) dozens of new plants in the New World Tropics (especially South America and Cuba), and any Lawrentian with an interest in botany can examine the DNA samples to document these new species. He leads a year-long organismal evolutionary biology extracurricular that, each trimester, welcomes students from all Forms. All that is required is an interest in “It'sscience.unique.
Twice a week, students meet with Clark and lab assistant Stuermer to unlock the evolutionary history and discover patterns of diversification. The samples were either collected by Clark, by Clark and Lawrenceville students on a School-sponsored expedition, or donated to the School through his worldwide contacts with botanists and botanical gardens.
Since Clark joined the Lawrenceville faculty in 2015, the findings he and his students (from the extracurricular, as well as in his regular courses, spring/summer trips, and work with the Hutchins Scholars) have been published in several scientific journals and presented at scholarly conferences alongside researchers with decades of experience. “The School has been great about supporting these sorts of opportunities for our kids,” he said.Ting and Xu both “definitely recommend” the extracurricular to any students with an interest in science. “You learn a lot and meet great people. “You don't have to be an expert to enjoy your time here, and anyone's welcome to join, no matter what grade you are in,” Xu said.
Early days in the lab were challenging, Ting explained. “I struggled at first with pipetting our samples into the wells of the microgel (for electrophoresis) because they are quite small and hard to see. However, the experienced group mates were able to give really helpful advice that allowed me to do this successfully.”
Third Former Raymond Xu said he decided to participate in the program because he’s always been curious about science — particularly biology. “It's really interesting learning about how life works, evolves, and adapts,” he remarked. Alayna Ting ’24 said she signed up because she has a “passion for science. The topic of our study in evolutionary biology sounded really interesting especially since we are in the lab studying it ourselves. I also wanted to get more hands-on lab experience, which this extracurricular provides.”
In the course of gathering these vital data, Lawrentians are mastering the skills necessary for lab work. “Some of the most interesting things I have learned are how to pipette, how to run PCRs, and conduct electrophoresis,” said Ting. “Before I participated in this program I had no idea what these were, much less how to do them [and now I’m using] these to analyze DNA samples.”
“We're using DNA sequence data to better understand how species are related to each other – it’s evolutionary-based,” he noted. Results require patience and precision. “It’s a multi-month process to put all the data together — it takes a while from PCR (polymerase chain reaction), to DNA sequencing, to generating a phylogenetic tree, to interpreting what that means,” he continued.
Student researchers are divided into smaller groups of three to five to do their work, something Xu has enjoyed. “It has been a really great experience as a Third Former to work in the lab with a lot of people who are juniors and seniors,” he said “It’s given me the opportunity to work with some really great people, and they serve as an inspiration to me. When I get confused about what's going on I don't hesitate to ask them questions, and everyone's been really supportive and nice to me.”
TRACING THEIR ROOTS LAWRENTIANS DOCUMENT THE EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF NEW PLANT SPECIES.
BIG RED BOYS SWIM TO STATE TITLE
BIG RED GOES TO COLLEGE
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 11
Lawrenceville’s boys’ and girls’ indoor track and field teams turned up the heat at Lavino Field House this winter, with both programs taking home team championships of the Mid-Atlantic Prep League and the N.J.I.S.A.A. Prep A divisions. Individual event winners were: PREP A BOYS: Greg Foster ’22 – 55m hurdles Sid Karthodi ’23 – 55m Manoc Joa-Griffith ’22 – 200m Greg Foster, Elijah Ojo ’23, Rayce Welborne ’24, Manoc Joa-Griffith – 4x400m PREP A GIRLS: Sophia Swindell ’25 – 55m hurdles Jourdan Wright ’23 – 55m Allison Haworth ’22 – 1600m Lexie Koch ’25 – 200m Jaelyn Bennett ’23, Emmy Apfel ’22, Elizabeth Parnell ’23, Laila Ritter ’22 – 4x400m M.A.P.L. BOYS: Matt Baskin ’24 – 200m, 400m, Thomas Atkinson ’22 – 800m Daniel Cummings ’22, Rayce Welborne ’24, Elijah Ojo ’23, and Lucas Garcia ’23 – 4x400m Kaden Hamilton ’22 – high jump, long jump, triple jump Julian Vilfort ’24 – pole vault Victor Colliluori ’24 – shot put M.A.P.L. GIRLS: Jourdan Wright ’23 – 55m Nishka Malik ’24 – 1600m Laila Ritter ’22 – 400m Elizabeth Parnell ’23 – 800m Lexie Koch ’25 – 200m Charlotte Bednar ’22 – 3200m Sofia Swindell ’25, Jaelyn Bennett ’23, Elizabeth Parnell, and Laila Ritter ’22 – 4x400m Sophia Springer ’22 – pole vault Sophia Swindell – long jump Rhianna Scott ’25 – triple jump
BIG RED TRACK CLEANS UP AT M.A.P.L., STATES
Boys’ swimming made a splash at the N.J.I.S.A.A. Prep A championships, taking home the state title in February. Big Red had three first-place finishes in its home pool: Daniel Lu ’24 – individual medley Conan Chen ’24 – breaststroke Daniel Lu, Jack Patel ’23, Alex Xia ’23, and Andrew Lenkowsky ’22 – 200m freestyle relay
Jack Betten – Fordham University, football Kiera Duffy – University of Pennsylvania, cross country/track and field Sophia Springer – Swarthmore College, track and field Evan Tritt – Fordham University, football Lucas Osborne – Yale University, lacrosse Dominic Mauretti – Hamilton College, lacrosse Charley Rossi – Princeton University, football Kaden Hamilton – Bryant University, football Patrick Montgomery – Fordham University, football Zoe Dupuis – Nazareth College, ice hockey Big Red fencing took home andonchampionshipsstatetheboys’girls’sides.
The boys’ and girls’ fencing teams claimed N.J.I.S.A.A. Prep A championships in February on Lawrenceville's campus. Both teams finished first in both foil and sabre. The boys placed second in epée, and the girls were third. Top finishers for Big Red included Ethan Leung ’23 (first place/boys’ foil), Carys Kong ’25 (first/girls’ sabre), Krish Mehta ’24 (third/boys’ sabre), and Ashley Wang ’23 (third/girls’ foil).
Seventeen Lawrentians signed NCAA national letters of intent in February, committing them to study at and compete for some of the nation’s finest colleges and universities. All members of the Class of 2022, they are: Tyler Mininno – Harvard University, lacrosse Holly Kiernan – Lake Forest College, ice hockey Arnav Aggarwal – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, crew Taylor Simpson – Virginia Wesleyan University, basketball Trevor Mackles – Colorado College, lacrosse Amelie Wickham – Tufts University, track and field Maddie Samaan – Williams College, ice hockey
12 THE LAWRENTIAN
“But I didn’t have a plan for how to negotiate being the first foster kid in the School,” she said. Although her public school experience in nearby Ewing Township had accustomed her to “a predominantly White space,” the specter of Lawrenceville’s past was different. Patton was part of just the sixth class of girls to enroll, and only a generation after the first Black students were admitted, Lawrenceville did not feel like her school.
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 13
tudents come to Lawrenceville from all over the world, but very few follow the path that Stacey Patton ’96 traveled to its fabled gates. And to the 14-year-old Patton, who arrived with a case number, that wasn’t something she was comfortable with in the fall of “Well,1993.Idid come in with a plan,” said Patton, a child-abuse survivor and a ward of the New Jersey child welfare system who lived in foster care and group-home settings before enrolling at the School. “I knew that I was going to keep my story a secret from my classmates because I feared that sharing those details about my life – those deep class differences, the cultural differences, all of those things – that I might be judged; I might be made fun of.”
Now an award-winning journalist, author, scholar, and children's advocate, Patton shared her story with today’s Lawrentians through a frank conversation with Zaheer Ali, executive director of Lawrenceville’s Hutchins Institute for Social Justice, in February. Her return to the School represented the Hutchins Institute’s inaugural mini-residency, a program that welcomes scholars, activists, artists, and other social-justice practitioners to campus. Accustomed to teaching digital storytelling and media literacy courses to her students at Howard University, Patton spoke a different kind of lesson from the stage of the Kirby Arts Center. Life on campus was eye-opening to the Third Former, who struggled to adapt. Despite throwing herself into athletics and public-speaking contests – she was a fierce debater – Patton was determined to remain a riddle to her schoolmates.
AGAINHOMECANYOUGO
S
“It was interesting to walk across this campus and into the buildings. There was nothing that reflected me. All the paintings, the statues, just these old, dead, mostly White males,” she recalled. “I would look in their eyes sometimes and just be like, What are you thinking about my presence here? Are you calling me the N-word? What would they think about me being in this space, not as someone who’s tending to the kitchen or to the landscaping?”
AS PART OF THE ABUSEDVOICELAWRENCEVILLE,HERANJOURNALISTJUSTICE,HUTCHINSMINI-RESIDENCYINAUGURALOFTHEINSTITUTEFORSOCIALNOTEDSCHOLARANDSTACEYPATTON’96SHAREDEMOTIONALJOURNEYTHATTOOKFROMASOCIALWORKER’SCARTOWHERESHEFOUNDHERANDBECAMEANADVOCATEFORANDOVERLOOKEDCHILDREN.
By SEAN RAMSDEN Photography by PALOMA TORRES
The present-day atmosphere carried its share of cultural challenges as well. During her first week in her House, Patton said two girls from Texas invited her into their room across the hall, but she stopped in her tracks when she spotted a large Confederate flag draped on their wall. “Oh, that’s just Southern pride,” Patton recalled the pair reasoning. “Not to my people,” she countered. “And so I never set foot in their room. That was my first interaction.” It was not the last time she would encounter what is now a conventional symbol of White supremacist ideology.“Iwaslike 14 and I didn’t have enough education, enough understanding of American history, the emotional literacy, to explain to my classmates why this was problematic,” she said. “I’d walk around campus, and there were still people hanging them outside their windows.” As alien as she often felt, Patton also felt the warm embrace of others who made her feel welcome, “who kept their doors open for me, who smiled when I walked into a room, who wrote little notes and had them sent to my mailbox, saying, ‘I’m happy you’re here,’” she said, “people who helped me find my voice and validated for me that I wasn’tPattoncrazy.”was always incessantly curious, a trait that still drives her scholarship and research into the intersections of race and parenting, media images of African American children, corporal punishment of children, foster care, and the school- and foster care-to-prison pipelines. Still, at least initially, she was more concerned with protecting herself than understanding the perspectives of her peers. “I was so busy trying to keep a wall up to hide the truth about who I was and where I came from, feeling the shame and guilt, and trying to make sure that I fit in,” Patton said, “that I didn’t get a chance to step into the interior lives of my housemates or teammates.”Eventually, though, she broke through her own walls. “I thought, wow, there’s a lot of students here that have their own stories, their own traumas that they bring to this experience that money and privilege doesn’t override,” she said. “So when I did take the time to decenter myself and listen and have these oneon-one conversations, there was some magic there and some connection.”
Patton also found deep humor in many of the more benign cultural gaps she encountered. She recalled seeing a locker room chalkboard on which was scrawled, “Katie, I have your lax sticks” and interpreting the message as something to do with laxatives before a teammate explained that the shortened word was a popular shorthand for lacrosse. They enjoyed a shared laugh, something Patton said often accompanied her newfound possession of unfamiliar cultural touchpoints. With the passage of nearly thirty years deepening her perspective, Patton told today’s students that in retrospect, she would not have been so afraid to fail, nor so guarded.“When I was here, there was a lot of conversation on surviving the Lawrenceville experience,” she explained. “You knew it was going to be intense, and sometimes I just treated this experience like a means to an end rather than how is this going to enrich my life and help me form lifelong bonds with the people who are going through this experience with me.”
“Because [Frederick Law] Olmsted’s vision did not include people that are like me and some of you that sit here, not just in terms of your physiognomy, but in terms of what you look like or maybe your class status, what country you’re from, your culture,” she said, gesturing to the students and referencing Olmsted, the 19th-century landscape architect who long ago designed the layout of the Circle for a school serving what was a very limited demographic. “There’s danger in a singular narrative. When everybody looks the same as you, comes from the same place, there’s no real learning in that,” Patton continued. “And I’ve had to practice this as a journalist, as a college professor, to de-center myself and step into other people’s shoes so that we can see all kinds of different possibilities, stories, and lessons, so that we can grow.”
Stacey Patton '96 was invited to speak to students by Zaheer Ali, executive director of the Hutchins Institute for Social Justice. Her return to the School represented the Hutchins Institute’s inaugural mini-residency, a program that welcomes scholars, activists, artists, and other social-justice practitioners to campus.
Patton followed her Lawrenceville days at Johns Hopkins and New York University, where she received her bachelor’s degree in journalism before earned her Ph.D. in African American history at Rutgers. Her scholarly work often has her peering at the past to understand the present, and Patton said it is important to see Lawrenceville or any other place in the world through someone else’s eyes.
DID YOU KNOW? MOST GIFTS TO EMERGE TRANSFORMED COME THROUGH THE LAWRENCEVILLE FUND! To learn more about Emerge Transformed or to make a gift, scan the QR code or visit giving.lawrenceville.org. Over 6,000 donors have supported Emerge Transformed: The Campaign for Lawrenceville
Colin, who has appeared in a number of Nickelodeon and Disney films, and on the Broadway stage, began acting as an 8-year-old.
While he enjoyed his turn as the protagonist in Conflict, directed by classmates Bobby Cloninger and Jamie Nicholson, Colin is enjoying the entire student experience.
5Q45
Last summer, he was one of just two Lawrentians chosen to attend the annual New Jersey Scholars Program, an intensive, interdisciplinary academic program for 39 intelligent, outgoing, and highly motivated students who have completed their junior year at a Garden State high school.
What person, living or dead, inspires you? My mother. From as early as I can remember, I recall my mom doing it all. Groceries dangling off her arm with glasses pushed up on her gray hair, she never stopped. She has never stopped working, providing, listening, and supporting. She is the “glue” and still holds us all together. Which fictional character from a book or movie would you most like to meet? SpongeBob SquarePants. I would fulfill my childhood dream and try to get my hands on the Krabby Patty formula. It would be a monumental day for my 8-year-old self.
OFTEN OVERLOOKED
Plenty of students have used the Kirby Arts Center stage as a springboard to professional acting, but Colin performed in the WinterFest production of Conflict in February with a set of credits already listed on his IMDb page.
questions for the English Department’s Nick Martin, a Penn Independent School Teaching Fellow, who tells us what songs kept him writing as a student, and what childhood fictional hero he’d still like to meet.
What song can you listen to on repeat? “Una Mattina” by Ludovico Einaudi or “Something in the Way” by Nirvana. I spent most late nights writing in high school and college to both of these songs. So, for any of those students who’ve emailed me from a hot spot after 11:15 p.m. lights-out, see if this song helps at all! What is one book everyone should read? I don’t know if I would say that there is one book everyone should read. It all comes down to preference, taste, and resonance. Still, I do think that there is something in almost every book for everyone. So, I will say One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez or a little book I found while in Ireland called The Lost Joy and Other Dreams by Olive Schreiner. Both of these novels I find myself returning to for comfort, advice, and insight again and again. What is your favorite time of day? Disclaimer: This is not a recommendation. But I do think there is a certain kind of exclusive quiet and calm that only exists between 1 and 3 a.m.
ONE WATCHTO
The 200th anniversary of the original landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, who was born April 22, 1809, is being widely acknowledged in 2022. Best known for New York’s Central Park or Boston’s Emerald Necklace of connected parks, it was Olmsted who designed the contours and landscape of Lawrenceville’s famed Circle, including the positioning of the Houses that surround it; preliminary plans called for dormitories to be placed in rows parallel to Main Street facing Memorial Hall. Today, this bust of Olmsted sits just inside the Class of 1891 Gate, peering out at the distinctive Circle that was the product of his 1880s vision.
16 THE LAWRENTIAN GATESTHEINSIDE
The Curtain Rises … Again Colin Critchley ’22
“The U.S. must not leave Ukraine to deal with Russia alone because it will send a message to Putin that the U.S. and its allies will cave under threat of force. Such a decision to ‘appease’ Putin will be disastrous, just as appeasement of Hitler at the beginning of World War II was. In the Munich Agreement of 1938, British prime minister ChamberlainNevilleagreed to let Hitler annex a part of Czechoslovakia in the hopes of preventing another European war. Chamberlain believed that his decision would satisfy Hitler, but in reality, it had the opposite effect.”
The Architecture Club Founded: 2020 Purpose: To explore the field of architecture with a group of students who share an interest in design. If you’re going to be in a student club dedicated to architecture and building design, you might as well be at Lawrenceville, where the campus was registered as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. Club leader Thomas Atkinson ’22 and the Architecture Club are uniquely positioned to explore the field in rich depth without even leaving campus. The period of growth the School experienced through the joint efforts of Boston architects Peabody & Stearns and the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted has captivated enthusiasts for generations. “Lawrenceville School retains its integrity of original site and structures from the 1880’s design as almost no other private school in the United States,” according to the National Register of Historic Places. “This complex is a rare surviving example of the successful collaboration of architects and landscape planners who worked together to change the quality of life then common at educational establishments.”
Things we learned producing this issue of The Lawrentian 3
1. Andrew Reeder, an 1825 Lawrenceville grad and governor of the Kansas Territory, had to flee its borders to save his life after refusing to certify an 1855 election tainted by a flood of illegal votes cast by pro-slavery voters from Missouri. 2. Before she decided to teach, English teacher Sujin Seo wanted to be a zookeeper.3.Atleast once during his course on T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the late James C.Waugh H’67 ’68 ’72 ’74 ’81 ’85 ’88 P’68 ’70 ’72 ’74 ’76 GP’12 ’14 ’16 affixed bird stickers to his feedback for students rather than an assigned numeric grade.
SAIDTHEYIT CLUB HOPPING
— Maksym Bondarenko ’22 in “U.S. Involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict: A Necessary Must for Ukraine’s’ Autonomy,” which appeared the in February 4, 2022, issue of The Lawrence
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 17
Lawrenceville celebrated its 20th annual Second Form Shakespeare production by bringing The Winter’s Tale to the stage of the Kirby Arts Center in February. Matt Campbell, director of theatre, said the production annually represents an “an assured safe place” for the School’s youngest students to try their hands at all aspects of theater, on and off stage. “We’ve got a net underneath you here,” Campbell said. “You can put ideas out there, you can take a stand, and know that the net will catch you. It’s a chance for students to really push themselves and grow.”
ARTSTHEON Second ‘ThePresentsFormWinter’s Tale’
Lawrenceville theater fans will recall that Roll, Sisyphus debuted in spring 2021 as part of the Jean S. Stephens Play Reading Series. “It’s a comedy centered around the ancient Greek mythical figure Sisyphus following his incarceration as he spends eternity rolling a boulder uphill in the Underworld,” Olazabal explained. “The central conflict and main question posed by my play is: What would happen if Sisyphus simply decides to stop rolling the boulder?”Winning the competition, she said, was “absolutely mind-blowing. I smile when I see someone laugh at a joke that I created or start to cry from a line that I wrote,” Olazabal said. “I feel proud watching directors and actors interpreting what I wrote and bringing it to life on stage.”
The New Jersey Music Educators Association (NJMEA) selected three Lawrentians for all-state honors. Ian Lee ’24 was named to both the All-State Wind Ensemble and Orchestra for his trumpet-playing prowess, and William Huang ’24 and his clarinet were tapped for the All-State Symphonic Band. Allan Zhang ’22, also a clarinetist, was selected to the All-State Symphonic Band and received an NJMEA Award of Merit for excellence throughout his high school career. The All-State Symphonic Band and Wind Ensemble concert was held at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark in February.
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 19
Trio Honored by N.J. Music Educators
Lina Olazabal ’22
Roll, Sisyphus, an original script by Lina Olazabal ’22, placed first in the 20th annual Young Playwrights Competition, sponsored by the Theater Project. Olazabal received a cash prize and will have her work performed by the professional actors of the Theater Project. She can also attend a consultation with a Theater Project adult playwright or director for a virtual, 30-minute consultation on her script.
Tops 20th Annual Young CompetitionPlaywrights
• School Records: Greg Foster ’22, triple jump, long jump, 55m hurdle; Manoc Joa-Griffth ’22, 400m • Coach: Brian Hill • Captains: Manoc JoaGriffith ’22, Jay Swindell ’22, Thomas Atkinson ’22, Dylan Pinkins ’22
• All-M.A.P.L.: Matthew Baskin ’23, Thomas Atkinson ’22, Daniel Cummings ’22, Rayce Welborne ’24, Elijah Ojo ’23, Lucas Garcia ’23, Manoc Joa-Griffth ’22, Brody Herrick ’23, Kaden Hamilton ’22, Julian Vilfort ’24, Victor Colliluori ’24
• School Record: Rihanna Scott ’25, triple jump • Coach: Ian Mook • Captains: Kiera Duffy ’22, Allison Haworth ’22, Laila Ritter ’22, Amelie Wickham ’22 boys’ Indoor Track M.A.P.L. Champions • N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions
WINTER SPORTS ROUNDUP Compiled by NICOLE STOCK Boys’ Basketball Record: 10-15 • All-M.A.P.L.: Hampton Sanders ’23, Dane Moran ’22 • Coach: Doug Davis • Captains: Michael Fessler ’22, Kyle Huyghue ’22 girls’ basketball Record: 8-12 • All-M.A.P.L.: Taylor Simpson ’22, Maria Sanmartin ’22 • Coach: Grey Simpson P’20 ’22 • Captains: Taylor Simpson ’22, Campbell FitzHugh ’22, Maria Sanmartin ’22 Boys’ Ice Hockey Record: 14-11-3 M.A.H.L. Champions • All-M.A.H.L. First Team: Justin Solovey ‘22, William Yee ‘22 • Coach: Keith Dupee • Captains: A.J. Maner ’22, Kenneth Baek ’22 Girls’ Ice Hockey Record: 9-6-3 Coach: Nicole Uliasz • Captains: Kyley Toye ’22, Elisabeth Clements ’22, Maddie Samaan ’22 Boys’ Fencing Record: 8-1 N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions • N.J.I.S.A.A. Foil Champions • N.J.I.S.A.A. Sabre Champions First Place, Foil: Ethan Leung ’23 • Coach: Rich Beischer • Captains: Connor King ’22; Sabre, Gian Beritela ’22; Foil, Roddy Atwood ’22; Épée, Samuel Tang ’22 Girls’ Fencing Record: 6-1 N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions • N.J.I.S.A.A. Foil Champions • N.J.I.S.A.A. Sabre Champions • First Place, Sabre: Carys Kong ’25 • Coach: Rich Beischer • Captains: Lauren Kim ’22; Sabre, Olivia Simonian ’23; Foil, Ashley Wang ’23; Épée, Hadley Flanagan ’22 Girls’ Indoor Track M.A.P.L. Champions • N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions • All-M.A.P.L.: Jourdan Wright ’23, Nishka Malik ’24, Laila Ritter ’22, Elizabeth Parnell ’23, Lexie Koch ’25, Charlotte Bednar ’22, Sofia Swindell ’25, Jaeyln Bennett ’22, Rhianna Scott ’25, Sophia Springer ’22
Boys’ Swimming and Diving Record: 4-1 • N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions • Hill Relay Champions • Coach: Stefanie Harrison • Captains: Andrew Lenkowsky ’22, Rafael Giangrande ’22 girls’ Swimming Record: 2-3 • Hill Relay Champions • Coach: Stefanie Harrison • Captains: Nicole Cheng ‘22, Helen Liu ’22 Coed Diving M.A.P.L. Champion: Dylan Oster ’24 • Coach: Kirk LeCompte Boys’ Squash Record: 11-5 • M.A.P.L. Champions • Coach: Rob Krizek • Captains: Victor Park ’22, Dodge Martinson ’22 girls’ Squash Record: 11-3 • M.A.P.L. Champions • M.A.S.A. First Team: Debanshi Misra ’23, Lindsay Lee ’23 • Coach: Rob Krizek • Captains: Karolina Majewska ’22, Tiffany Yeung ’22 Wrestling Record: 8-5 • Third Place, Nationals: Lilly Gessner ’23 • Fourth Place, Nationals: Elizabeth Duda ’24 • Coach: Johnny Clore H’02 • Captains: Jack Weinberg ’22 For the most current athletic news visit athletics.lawrenceville.org
Record: 15-4 N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions • M.A.P.L. Champions • First Team All-M.A.P.L.: Brooks English ’22, Robert Simone ’23 • First Team All-Prep A: Brooks English ’22, Robert Simone ’23 • Coach: Jon Posner • Captains: Brooks English ’22, Tyler Mininno ’22, Lucas Osborne ’22, Quintan Kilrain ’23 Girls’ Lacrosse Record: 14-5 M.A.P.L. Tri-Champions • N.J.I.S.A.A. Runner-up • All-M.A.P.L.: Caroline Foster ’21 Paige Gillen ’21 Libby Ford ’21 Bella Koch ’21 • All-Prep A: Chloe Babich ’23, Bella Koch ’22 • Coach: Lisa Ewanchyna P’23 • Captains: Piper Harrell ’22, Bella Koch ’22, Mel Josephson Boys’ Crew Brown Cup Champions • Coach: Benjamin Wright P’10 ’21 • Captain: Joshua Cigoianu ’22 Girls’ crew Brown Cup Champions • Coach: Bernadette Teeley P’24 • Captains: Annie Brown ’22, Astrid Gruber ’22 by NICOLE STOCK
22 THE LAWRENTIAN Baseball Record: 14-8 • N.J.I.S.A.A. Runner-up • First Team All-M.A.P.L.: Shaun McMillan ’23, Jack Moses ’23, Hawkins Sutter ’22 • First Team All-Prep A: Hawkins Sutter ’22, Shaun McMillan ’23 • Coach: Steve LaRochelle • Captains: Dhillon Choudhri ’22, Hawkins Sutter ’22 Softball Record: 11-8 • First Team All-M.A.P.L.: Emma Fleming ’22, Mia Bocian ’23 • Coach: John Schiel H’78 P’97 ’08 ’10
SPRING SPORTS ROUNDUP Compiled
Boys’ Lacrosse
• Captains: Emma Fleming ’22, Allison Haworth ’22, Kate McCann ’22
Boys’ Golf Record: 6-3-1 • N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions • Mercer County Champions • Crooked Stick Winner • Leibovitz Cup • Second Place, Swing for Cancer • First Team All-M.A.P.L.: Adrian Jordan ’24, Jimmy DeCillo ’24 Coach: Etienne Bilodeau H’01 • Captains: Harrison Berger ’22, Ben Gubbay ’22 Girls’ Golf Record: 1-6 • All-M.A.P.L.: Angel Zhang ’22 • Coach: Curtis Robinson • Captains: Angel Zhang ’22, Kiley Alt ’23 Boys’ tennis Record: 7-2 • All-M.A.P.L. Singles Team: Brandon Cheng ’22, Bryce Langdon ’24 • Coach: Kim McMenamin • Captains: Brandon Cheng ’22, Jai Dalamal ‘22, Rahil Patel ’22 Boys’ Track & Field Record: 2-0 • N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions • M.A.P.L. Champions • Coach: Brian Hill • Captains: Thomas Atkinson ’22, Greg Foster ’22, Manoc Joa-Griffith ’22, Dylan Pinkins ’22, Jay Swindell ’22 Girls’ Track & Field Record: 2-0 • N.J.I.S.A.A. Champions • M.A.P.L. Champions • Coach: Ian Mook • Captains: Kiera Duffy ’22, Alexis Gonzalez ’22, Laila Ritter ’22, Amelie Wickham ’22 For the most current athletic news visit athletics.lawrenceville.org
T o the casual observer, it may have seemed like Greg Foster ’22 came out of nowhere this past indoor track season. Foster broke the School’s long jump record – twice – and is currently the No. 1-ranked high school long jumper in the United States. His 24-foot, 8-inch leap at the Mercer County Championships on January 24 was good for second all-time in New Jersey, behind only Willingboro High School’s Carl Lewis, who went on to win twenty-two gold medals in international competition, including nine in the Olympics.Foster’s track-and-field path was not always smooth sailing. In 2017, he fractured his tibia and fibula playing football. As a Fourth Former he dealt with a serious hip injury that kept him out of the majority of the 2021 spring track season. Foster has suffered many setbacks in his track career, but he claims that his injuries “strengthened [him] mentally,” and after every one he was able to recover
Greg Foster ’22, who will compete collegiately for Princeton, theschoolNo.Lawrencevilleleavesasthe1-rankedhighlongjumperinnation.
24 THE LAWRENTIAN REDBIGGO
By ASHLEY LEE ’23
BACK ON TRACK
Greg Foster ’22 battled back from multiple injuries to become one of the best long jumpers in New Jersey history.
“So cool to watch,” Foster says of the Easterns, where he also set a personal record in the hurdles. He recalls holding his own against the older competitors without being intimidated, adding that the 55-meter hurdles race helped him “start to blossom into the athlete that [he wants] to be.”
[ Ashley Lee ’23 is a sports associate with The Lawrence
Both of Foster’s record-breaking long jumps occurred in the Lavino Field House, home of the winter track team he joined as a Second Former. One thing that stood out most to him that year was that the group was highly team-oriented, something he was not accustomed to. Foster’s experiences with his club team prior to arriving at Lawrenceville led him to view track as a highly individual sport. After joining the Lawrenceville squad and bonding with the team, however, Foster’s mindset shifted, and he started leaning on his teammates as he pushed himself further.
Foster says his first 24-foot jump this past December “kindled a fire in [his] heart” and was the moment he realized what he was truly capable of. Next, he says, is consistently topping the 25-foot mark, and he is working hard to improve his hurdles time. “It will need some fine-tuning in terms of technique,” but Foster is confident he will prevail.Heis also excited about competing in track at the college level. At the end of 2021, Foster announced his commitment to attend Princeton University – an NCAA Division I program – to continue his academic and athleticFostercareer.leaves aspiring Big Red athletes with one takeaway from his track journey: Running is a mental sport. Only individual runners know what is best for them, and it is with that knowledge that they must push through to become as successful as they can be. Foster attributed his achievement to his ability to trust in himself and remain consistent throughout the approach.
“It is hard work,” he says, “but believe in the path you are on and do what is right for you.”
Foster’s favorite memory at Lawrenceville came during his Third Form winter season when the squad competed in the Eastern State Championships in early 2020, when he saw then-captain Jacob Kunzer ’20 break the Big Red record in the 400-meters.
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 25 and continue stronger than before. His hip injury last year severely hindered his training and trajectory, but he is happy about being able "to bounce back and get back on Foster’strack."dominant winter season started when he topped a 36-year-old School long jump record with a 24-foot mark at the Lawrenceville Invitational Scrimmage on December 12. Foster also broke the School record in the 55-meter hurdles this past season, blazing to a 7.46-second time –good for ninth nationally – at the Mercer County Championships. His 24-8 leap on January 22 vaulted him to the top of the national prep ranks. A week later, Foster finished first at the 114th Millrose Games in New York City.
English teacher Sujin Seo, who came Lawrenceville in 2017, told The Lawrentian how books help students recognize not only themselves, but the realities of others as well. She also shed light on how “good” Harkness can provide an avenue to achieve mutual understanding. BOOKSBY
THE
Perhaps the ability to relate knowledge to others? I realized that sitting with students, tutoring, was not actually teaching content to kids, but more about being there and just giving them the right nudge here or a little bit of guidance here – giving students confidence or just letting them see other possibilities and letting them choose. It really was an “Aha!” moment. A number of teachers have told us that students get “better” at Harkness as they become more accustomed to it. Would you agree?
I think when kids are immersed in this culture of Harkness, it really does make a Good literature, from the canon to the contemporary, provides a way for students to explore the nuances, complexities, and emotions of life. Sometimes they’ll even find themselves in the words.
In one of this magazine’s “5 Questions 4,” you said when you were 12 years old, you wanted to be a zookeeper. What altered your path? I think communicating with animals when you don’t have a shared language is still possible but you have to find other ways to do it. And I think maybe there is a connection or a through line into teaching where you’re bringing a lot of different people together. There’s a bad joke in there somewhere about the similarities between the two professions, so thanks for not going there. As a group, though, we’re forming a community within the classroom. That’s really important to me. But a big part of my job is to be very aware of each individual student, how they approach their work, what are some of the skills as a teacher I have where I can adjust the approach a little bit to get the most out of my students. What interested you in English as a discipline? I was a big reader when I was a kid. Also, growing up as a child of immigrants, and sometimes speaking a different language at home – I grew up in a Korean family –language actually fascinated me. That makes sense. Were you more conscious of the words you chose or the structure of the things you were saying, toggling between English and Korean? The different translations and the different things that you can say in one language versus another, and the texture that speaking different languages can have, has always been really fascinating to me. My parents are both really very passionate readers and writers, so I grew up in a house with a lot of books. And how did that interest dovetail with teaching? Generally speaking, I was a successful student. I understood the work that I had to do at school, and school was pretty straightforward to me. But when I started tutoring, I realized that there was a deeper utility to my own academic abilities, what had generally been an individual pursuit.
GOING
26 THE LAWRENTIAN TALKTABLE
What is something else students have been reading for generations that still creates good discussion? We read The Great Gatsby in the spring with the sophomores, and that’s still part of the canon. I think some of the ways in which we discuss Gatsby might have changed from when you or I were in high school, but students still get very involved in that story, and they also still very much appreciate Fitzgerald’s use of language. That’s what makes it somewhat timeless. I think the curriculum does a good job of fostering this, but the students have a very wide bandwidth for literature, and I think that’s one of the main missions of the department.
English teacher Sujin Seo says that Harkness makes students better at listening to each other and interrogating each other’s stances in a way that’s collaborative, conversational, and driven by a desire to understand complexities.
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 27 difference in terms of how well they listen to each other, how they can interrogate each other’s stances, and really do it in a way that’s collaborative, conversational, driven by a desire to understand all the complexities of something. Does teaching English ever give you the opportunity to introduce the students to literature that might help provide them a lens into today’s world?
Yeah, the last couple of years I’ve been tinkering with the curriculum for my senior elective in the winter. It’s called Literary Dystopias and Voices of Social Protest. First of all, I think that any high school English curriculum has got to have some sort of dystopian lit elective component. Kids are just primed and ready to dive into that kind of material. Naturally. Are they able to make the connection between a work of fiction and whatever observations an author is making? Really understanding what authors are doing when they’re creating dystopian worlds is really to comment on things that are going on around them, right? The last couple years I added James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, from when it was the part of the School’s summer read. And poetry by more contemporary authors, too. Then this year I added Citizen by Claudia Rankine. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2014. Tell us about that one. It’s about the individual but collective experience of Black people moving through a White society, as a series of vignettes, poems, and essays. The settings for these things are always very everyday places like the coffee shop, or in the car with a friend. There are all these very … I guess I would say intimate moments when your guard is down, but everyday moments. That’s when real life happens. You’re just doing your thing, but then something as simple as a remark, a lack of some sort of understanding, can show how far apart people are in terms of how they see each other, what realities are really coming into conflict there. It sounds like these vignettes give students a safe entry point into sensitive conversations that they might want to have but don’t know how to without risking insult or offense. Right, and these experiences, they’re familiar to everybody. You don’t have to be Black, you don’t have to be Asian; they happen to everybody. We’re constantly interacting with so many people who are different from us, but some of those historical social tensions are brewing, and none of my students, when they were reading that text were like, “Oh, I don’t see what’s happening here, I don’t get it.” Everybody recognized it. Do you think students still find relevance in the traditional literary canon? I think in the English department we do a good job of giving them mixed exposure to different time periods and different styles of literature. I sat in on a discussion of Fourth Formers on Hamlet a week ago, and they really were unpacking the complexity of Hamlet’s decision to act or not act. Is the language of Shakespeare ever a hurdle? Let’s get through the language, but then let’s find that core of emotion, of human experience, of human curiosity. And I think our students are very, very curious, and they want to know more about how things happen, why things happen, so I think the classics still are very much appreciated by the students.
28 THE LAWRENTIAN
When faced with conflict between political expediency and the dictates of conscience, Reeder stood up for what he believed in, at the risk of his life.
ARCHIVISTTHEASK
Early Lawrentian Andrew H. Reeder risked his life and his political future to ensure the veracity of an election that would ban slavery in the Kansas
Andrew Horatio Reeder graduated from Lawrenceville about 1825 and served as the first governor of the Kansas Territory in 1854-55. He is depicted here in a circa 1850 engraving by John Sartain. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images) By
the young lawyer married Amelia Hutter, with whom he would have eightReederchildren.became very active in his community, and biographers of the day described him as “distinguished for [his] energy, integrity, and high intelligence.” A loyal and passionate member of the Democratic Party, Reeder worked vigorously on party campaigns and participated in local councils, yet never ran for office himself.
A
JACQUELINE HAUN
Andrew Horatio Reeder was born to Absolom and Christina Reeder in Easton, Pennsylvania, on July 12, 1807. As a teen, Reeder was educated at what was then known as Lawrenceville Academy under the first head master, Rev. Isaac VanArsdale Brown, sometime between 1822 and 1825. Following his graduation, Reeder studied law in a Pennsylvania law office and was admitted to the state bar in 1828. He established his own law practice in Easton, and in 1831
This reputation as a hard-working Democratic stalwart drew the attention of members of President Franklin Pierce’s administration, who thought Reeder might be just the political ingénue they needed in place as the governor of the newly created Kansas Territory.
ElectoralTerritory.Integrity
Originally a part of the Louisiana Purchase, Kansas had been ruled a free territory under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, but with the passage of the Nebraska-Kansas Act, which allowed states to choose whether they would permit slavery or not, its future status would hinge on territorial elections. Neighboring slave state Missouri took a special interest in the outcome, as a free Kansas would have left Missouri surrounded on three sides by free territories.
Pierce, a Democrat from New Hampshire, had been elected president in 1852 because of his personal likeability and his middle-of-the-road political positions. Although a Northerner, his administration contained many pro-slavery Southerners, including his secretary of war (and soon to be president of the Confederacy) JeffersonOfficiallyDavis.neutral on slavery, Pierce personally despised abolitionists, whom he considered radicals, and supported the freedom of new territories to choose to be slave states if they
One early example of the School’s success in this endeavor was Andrew H. Reeder, the first governor of the Kansas Territory.
mong the goals of a Lawrenceville education since 1810 have been the formation of a sound character and preparation for responsible leadership.
Andrew Reeder died in his hometown of Easton on July 5, 1864, leaving behind a sterling reputation for integrity. As a Victorian author wrote in summing up Reeder’s life, “No ruler who ever founded empires, no statesman who ever raised the weary hope of fallen nations, no conquering captain who ever drew a sword, could leave behind to those who loved him the memory of a name more stainless.” [ Jacqueline Haun is the senior archives librarian of the Stephan Archives in Bunn Library. A version of this story first appeared in the fall 2009 issue of The Lawrentian and has been updated.
Reeder was forced to flee Kansas disguised as a simple woodcutter after thwarting electoral fraud by pro-slavery factions from Missouri in 1855. He is shown here in an 1880 oil portrait by Cyrenius Hall.
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 29 desired. In selecting a governor for fledgling Kansas, Pierce sought someone who would unstintingly follow the lead of his Democratic administration and not stand in the way of Kansas’ entering the union as a slave state. Pierce thought he had found that malleable soul in Reeder, who supported states’ rights to choose and, at the time, had no known moral objections to slavery. Unfortunately for Pierce, he underestimated Reeder’s dedication to doing things in a fair and even-handed way. Reeder was appointed governor in June 1854 and arrived in Leavenworth in October. By November, the novice governor had conducted an election for a congressional representative and scheduled an election for March 1855 to seat a new territorial congress – as well as settle the question of slavery in the territory once and for all. During the congressional election, however, a blatant incident of voter fraud took place, in which Missourians poured across the Kansas border to illegally cast votes in favor of a pro-slavery Kansas. Reeder would have none of it. Much to the annoyance of pro-slavery factions and Pierce, Reeder refused to certify the tainted election and its pro-slavery outcome. The newly elected Kansas Legislature, many of whom were put into office by the dubious election, petitioned Pierce for Reeder’s removal, which an aggravated Pierce ordered in July 1855. Pierce’s excuse for the dismissal was an unsubstantiated claim that Reeder had engaged in illegal land speculation deals. Reeder did not leave Kansas immediately, however. His experiences with the corrupt methods of slavery supporters spurred him to rethink the morality of slavery itself, and Reeder became an active member of the free-state movement. With the illicitly elected proslavery legislature still in place, anti-slavery forces quickly set up a rival government. This extra-legal free-state government elected Reeder and James Henry Lane to be their representatives to the U.S. Senate. A grand jury established by the pro-slavery government consequently indicted Reeder and several others for high treason, the penalty for which was death by hanging.
One step ahead of a lynch mob, Reeder fled Kansas in May 1856 disguised as a woodcutter, carrying a bundle of clothes and an ax. During the month it took him to secretly escape the territory, Reeder was in such fear for his life that he wrote out his will in the event he was captured and murdered. Once outside of Kansas, his escape was hardly secretive, however; as he moved eastward, he was “given an ovation in each of the principal towns through which he passed” and assured that the populace would not allow Kansas to seizeReederhim.soon returned to Pennsylvania, where he resumed his law practice and changed party allegiance to the newly formed Republican Party. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln wished to appoint him a brigadier-general in the Civil War, but, citing his lack of military experience, Reeder declined the honor.
Not only did Reeder’s sons, Frank S. Reeder and Howard F. Reeder attend Lawrenceville in the 1850s and go on to distinguished public-service careers in Pennsylvania, but the family’s lineage at the School endures. Former Lawrenceville Trustee Reeder R. Fox ’52 P’81, who passed away on February 13 of this year, was Reeder’s great-great-great grandson, and Fox’s surviving son, Rodman R. Fox ’81, is a fourth great-grandson.
It has become a common refrain in political analysis: American democracy is broken – but what does a healthy democracy look like? You might also hear contemporary education assailed as a vacuum for critical thinking – but how can that be the case around Harkness tables where thoughtful inquiry and the exchange of ideas form the cornerstone of the process?
America’s political past and the search to understand it are animated in history teacher Clare Grieve’s “A History of American Democracy” class, in which students travel from 1787 to 2010 to examine cases that influenced the trajectory of the United States. Grieve employs the case method, the core pedagogy of Harvard Business School faculty that has found broad application in higher education, to examine history using a narrative arc.
“Most students enter the case with a firm belief that they would have voted for free education,” Grieve says. “As the case unfolds, they learn about the nativist, anti-immigrant sentiments that drove the proposal, and they begin to understand that there are complicated motivations for many decision points throughout history.”Grieve explores the concept of constructive tension versus destructive tension throughout America’s past – in all its
HISTORYthe
By JESSICA WELSH Photography by PALOMA TORRES in
“The course offers a deep dive into episodes of American history that illustrate the democratic republican decision-making process,” Grieve says, “which is vital to preserving informed debate and checks and balances in our society today.”The case method encourages students to become active participants in examining issues, considering potential ramifications of a particular decision, and questioning associated policy details – all through the eyes of a stakeholder in that moment of history. Students review roughly twenty cases during the ten-week course, including President James Madison’s efforts to prevent states from superseding federal authority, and how to address the mounting public debt of the 1840s.
In one case, students examine free common school education, established in the mid-1800s through an open-ended tax. The more they learn, the more fluid their opinions become.
CaseBusinessthroughLawrencevillecomesnuancecomplicated–tolifeatHarvardSchool’sMethod.
30 THE LAWRENTIAN
PRESENT Tense
History teacher Clare Grieve employs the case method, the core pedagogy of Harvard Business School faculty, in her “A History of American Democracy” class, in which students travel from 1787 to 2010 to examine cases that influenced the trajectory of the United States.
32 THE LAWRENTIAN history, emphasizing that productive conflict necessary for progress. To wit: How do you reflect the will and desires of the majority while representing and protecting the rights of the minority, and how does this constructive tension manifest in each case?
Once the debate has concluded, Grieve reveals the decision to the class.
Lynch says the case model diverted his peers and him from “standard forms of thinking,” placing them in the shoes of the American politicians they were studying. “By not explicitly disclosing the conclusions to the events in history within the case itself, it fostered different schools of thought around the Harkness table and laid the groundwork for rich debate,” he says. That engaged, informed spirit of inquiry is what Moss sees as the soul of the case method.“It’snot how many facts you memorize; it’s not just how many times you raise your hand,” says Moss, the author of a book about revitalizing conversations about governance and democracy and showing how the United States has often thrived on political conflict. “It’s: Can you think critically? Can you make an argument? Can you marshal evidence and say something that is compelling, but yourThatanswer?”sortof constructive political conflict, Moss believes, is absolutely essential to a healthy“Conflictdemocracy.iswhatgenerates and surfaces good ideas,” he told the Harvard Gazette in February 2017. “There’s a competition in the marketplace of ideas just like in the economicHarvardmarketplace.”BusinessSchool spotlighted Grieve and her success in implementing the case method at Lawrenceville after she demonstrated its effectiveness in increasing classroom engagement. Students’ final exam focused on retention and critical thinking, requiring students to present an evidencebased argument in response to a broad thematic question. Students who had been exposed to the case method performed strongest on the exam, further indicating its role in developing skills vital for academic and professional success. “History doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes,” Grieve says. “We often oversimplify pivotal points in American history, when in reality there are untold nuances that shape how that decision impacts people’s lives in the short and long term, and how we conduct ourselves as a society.”
Lynch says the lessons of the case method will strengthen his analytical prowess beyond the scope of the history class. “I certainly think the critical thinking involved with interpreting political action will serve me well in interpreting more complex scenarios in my other classes,” he says. “The resulting nuance in Harkness discussion taught me how to navigate conversations consisting of very polarized and intense points of view.” [ Jessica Welsh is the director of communications and external relations at The Lawrenceville School.
“The decision itself is only part of the story – we discuss how the selected solutions create ripple effects throughout history, some intended and some not.”
“Students challenge their assumptions and learn that there is no right or wrong answer, no good or bad decisions,” Grieve explains. “They must consider and debate the nuances of the cases and determine what course of action they would take in a particular moment in time.”
The discussion-based class encourages students to challenge each other’s assumptions about democratic values and practices, and draw their own conclusions about what democracy means in America.
Grieve was first made aware of the case method by a family friend who had taken a course at Harvard with historian David A. Moss, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. She invited Moss to conduct a workshop with Lawrenceville’s History Department in 2017, and began incorporating cases into existing courses. Grieve soon realized that to fully realize the arc of learning, she would need to develop a class dedicated to the concept. “A History of American Democracy” premiered in fall 2021 as a 500-level core class, and Grieve’s students already appreciate the format. “Using the case method definitely taught me a lot about taking anecdotal accounts of history and digging deeper into American politics,” says Harry Lynch ’23, a student in the class. “Having the actual stories, [with details] that are normally glossed over, of what occurred in different issues adds complexity and nuance. I believe that the case model provides a more personal and specific breakdown of our history.”
For more information on leaving a bequest to Lawrenceville or for other planned giving opportunities, or if you have included Lawrenceville in your will but have not yet informed the School, please contact Jerry Muntz at the Lawrenceville Office of Planned Giving at 609-620-6064 or jmuntz@lawrenceville.org, or go to lawrenceville.giftplans.org.
For more information on leaving a bequest to Lawrenceville or for other planned giving opportunities, or if youhave included Lawrenceville in your will but have not yet informed the School, please contact Jerry Muntz at the Lawrenceville Office of Planned Giving at 609-620-6064 or jmuntz@lawrenceville.org, or go to www.lawrenceville.org/plannedgiving.
We’d love to thank you.
Please tell us if you have included Lawrenceville in your will or living trust, or as a beneficiary of a retirement account or life insurance policy. We want to welcome you to the John Cleve Green Society – alumni, parents, and friends who have committed to keeping our school great for generations to come.
If your class ends in a 1 or 6, your planned gift will be included in your milestone Reunion Class Gift.
Dunbar never imagined a career on the ice, but she also had not yet made peace with the end of her hockey life when the latest in a series of concussions sidelined her for good just seven games into her senior season at Yale. On a Friday night against Rensselaer, the left-winger turned her back from the play to retrieve a loose puck in the corner when she was slammed into the boards by an opponent. She played again the next night against Union College, but knew she wasn’t right. Monday morning, Dunbar met with the team’s athletic trainer and the sports medicine doctor. “And then they said, ‘You’re done,’” she recalls of their matter-of-fact assessment. “And I was like, Yeah … I’m done.”
On the ice, Ashley Dunbar ’10 used to move the puck with surgical precision. Today, she’s an actual neurosurgeon.
Her decision to stop playing hockey wasn’t made with fanfare, but that doesn’t mean her world wasn’t turned upside-down. Ashley Dunbar ’10 wasn’t a celebrity athlete, but she was a speedy, skilled puck-handler, a four-time all-state forward at Lawrenceville who had come through the USA Hockey National Development Program – often the gateway to legitimate Olympic hopes – before becoming a key player at Yale. Hockey was completely woven into Dunbar’s sense of self until one day when it just wasn’t anymore.
BladesTrading
“Athletes deal with this all the time when they hang up their skates or whatever and they retire,” she says. “It’s like, well, this has been a big part of my identity for so long. What do I do now?”
Knowing that time had run out is one thing. Accepting it is another, especially when the choice – and especially the timing – were largely out of Dunbar’s hands. Doubt and ambiguity crept into her mind. By SEAN RAMSDEN • Photography by DAVID TORRENCE
34 THE LAWRENTIAN
“I think part of it came through the fact that it takes a very big, emotional toll, having to retire,” she explains, adding that such injuries, which can temporarily confound cognitive or vestibular functions, also hinder classroom performance.
The group also participated in a study examining concussion injuries, with Dunbar collecting data based on aggravating practice and game conditions.
“So yeah, I think hockey also was a big part of how I wound up at Yale,” she says. To Dunbar, hockey and academics were inextricably linked, but now, that essential pairing had been uncoupled. “You think, well, a big reason of why you’re at Yale is because of hockey, so you need to keep doing this thing that you were brought here for,” she explains. “And you don’t want to let your teammates down. It’s a big part of your life and who you are.”
“I knew when I was in Lawrenceville that I was interested in medicine to begin with,” she says. “I wrote my Common App, the college essay, about the fact that I wanted to be a Refocuseddoctor.”
36 THE LAWRENTIAN “To a certain extent, it feels like it’s not up to you,” she says of the end of her competitive career. Dunbar had invested thirteen years of her young life on skates, playing on boys’ teams until she got to Lawrenceville. Even her choice to apply to the School was influenced by hockey, following the lead of a teammate. “It wasn’t even something that I had really thought about, going to private school,” she admits.Besides playing for Big Red, which she co-captained as a Fifth Former, Dunbar played on travel teams throughout high school, spending summers in hockey camps and many Saturdays, Sundays, and weeknights during the school year practicing with her travel team. And she was good – good enough to win the under-16 national individual puck relay skills competition and finish seventh in scoring at the 2008 USA Hockey National Championship, playing for the USA Hockey National Development Program.
and reenergized, Dunbar decided to embrace hockey for what it had already given her, honing her sense of adventure and competitiveness. Her involvement with the women’s hockey team would yield another fortuitous connection.
“I think it wound up becoming a part of the decision,” she says of her professional pathway. Even before her injuries, Dunbar had been pouring the foundation for a life in medicine. Majoring in history with a concentration in the history of science and medicine, she had remained in New Haven every summer throughout college to take pre-med classes.
“You think, I’m a student-athlete, and if I can’t be an athlete because I’m injured and then I can’t actually be a student to my best ability, what am I even doing here?”
“We had this volunteer program where we Ashley Dunbar '10 co-captained the Big Red girls' ice hockey team as a Fifth Former, leading to the team to a No. 1 state ranking and earning the opportunity to play at Yale.
In her search to make meaning out of what had happened to her, Dunbar also began to think more widely about others in her position. One of her first steps was creating a support group, in tandem with Yale’s sports medicine doctor, for university athletes who had also suffered head injuries, giving them a safe forum in which to discuss their shared experiences. The group also created awareness about on-campus resources to aid their learning during their post-concussion recovery.
“I think that neurosurgery can be a very grim field,” she explains. “There can be not very good outcomes, but I think in children, there’s a little bit more hope.”
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 37
“I think it wound up becoming a part of the decision,” Dunbar says of her withpathway.professionalEvenbeforeherinjuries,Dunbarhadbeenpouringthefoundationforalifeinmedicine.Majoringinhistoryaconcentrationinthehistoryofscienceandmedicine,shehadremainedinNewHaveneverysummerthroughoutcollegetotakepre-medclasses.
adopted Yale New Haven Hospital pediatric patients onto our team,” Dunbar says. “We treated them just like teammates.” Organized by Michael Di Luna, M.D., a former Yale football player who is now a neurosurgeon at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital, Bulldog Buddies matched teams within Yale’s athletic department with patients who were under Di Luna’s care for pediatric brain tumors. One young girl, Giana Cardonita, was being treated for craniopharyngioma – a rare, noncancerous brain tumor that usually forms near the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus. Giana spent time with the team, receiving her own Yale hockey sweater and a stall in the team’s locker room, and Dunbar accompanied her on occasional trips to see Di Luna. “So it was through going to her doctor’s appointments that I met her neurosurgeon and that was the beginning,” she says. “I started shadowing him and working with him, so that was my first exposure to neurosurgery.”Bythetimeshe completed her undergraduate work at Yale in 2014, Dunbar’s focus was trained on medical school. She did a year of post-baccalaureate work at the University of Pennsylvania, completing her pre-med requirements and doing research work with Sunil Singhal ’90, M.D., now the chief of thoracic surgery at Penn Medicine, and John Y.K. Lee ’90, M.D., M.S.C.E., professor of neurosurgery at Pennsylvania Hospital. At the time, Singhal and Lee were working together to develop an innovative tumor-detection process that makes cancerous cells appear to glow in bright, fluorescent hues under near-infrared light [as detailed in the spring 2017 issue of The Lawrentian]. Dunbar began working in Singhal’s lab, where he was focused on this fluorescence project, but often found herself assisting her lab mate, who was more involved with the technology’s applications for“Itneurosurgery.wasaveryexciting time, because it was all new, what we were doing,” says Lee, who would see his and Singhal’s fluorescence research published in such journals as Neurosurgery and Annals of Thoracic Surgery “There was so much excitement around it, and many students were kind of caught up in the fun or novelty of the surgery and theTheresearch.”twosurgeons became integral in guiding Dunbar’s early steps. “Working with Dr. Lee, he was instrumental in confirming that I wanted to do medicine, especially surgery,” Dunbar says. “And Dr. Singhal helped me through the application process, figuring out where I wanted to go.”
Dunbar chose Frank H. Netter M.D. School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut due to its proximity to Yale and its familiar resources, as well as the connections she had developed during her time there, not the least of which was Di Luna. She reached out to him right away. “I told him, ‘I’m interested in a competitive specialty,’” she recalls. “In medicine, some are more competitive or harder to get into than others, and both neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery are two of the most competitive to get into.”
Di Luna let Dunbar know she would need good board scores and good physicians’ letters of recommendation from her clinical rotations, and would have to show some weighty research. Though he wasn’t heavily involved in research, Di Luna helped set Dunbar up with another attending physician at Yale New Haven Hospital through whose lab she worked in a hydrocephalus project. As promised, the work has been exacting, but in 2021, Dunbar was matched with the Department of Neurosurgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis as one of the department’s three new neurosurgery residents. Though she’s done extensive research across the field, Dunbar believes that pediatric neurosurgery is where her heart resides.
Dunbar rejects the notion that it was her concussion history that led her toward neurosurgery, or that it was a choice she made for the sake of completing a neat narrative arc. “They tell you if there’s literally anything else other than neurosurgery that you’re interested in, do it just because of how rigorous the training and the lifestyle is,” she says. No, if anything, it was the time she spent swiftly moving the puck up the ice, having to decide in an instant whether to shoot or pass, thinking creatively while dancing around defenders, that she connects to the operating room.
“I think there’s so much crossover between sports, especially something like hockey, and surgery. You have a game plan of what you’re going to do,” Dunbar explains. “But I guess in my instance, no human brain and tumor are the exact same, so you have to be a little bit creative on how you’re going to approach taking the tumor out. You have to read and react on the fly and adjust.”
TEACHERFAVORITEMY
38 THE LAWRENTIAN
Jon Krieg ’81 graduated from Grinnell College in 1984 with a degree in classics. After working in the Iowa legislature for several sessions, he’s spent 27 years with the American Friends Service Committee. Jon submitted this essay in March, a month before Jim Waugh’s passing on April 18.
BY JON KRIEG ’81
WHAT’S BETTER – A DUCK OR A CHICKEN? No, we weren’t discussing a menu. My hard-driving classmates and I were trying to compare grades on papers we’d written for Jim Waugh’s course on T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land course at Lawrenceville. James C. Waugh H’67 ’68 ’72 ’74 ’81 ’85 ’88 P’68 ’70 ’72 ’74 ’76 GP’12 ’14 ’16 had given each of us a page’s worth of thoughtful feedback and probing questions about our work. But rather than assign a numeric grade, he gave us birdHerestickers.wasa teacher with a robust sense of humor who drove us to think. Not about how to quantify life or spew back literary criticism to score a grade that would help us get into a fancy college. Instead, he helped us learn how to wrestle with the bigger questions of life. Around the famed Harkness table, Mr. Waugh would mine our reactions to the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg and the prose of Richard Brautigan, Bernard Malamud, and Thomas Pynchon. He wouldn’t stand for sloppy preparation or fuzzy thinking. After one of us would offer some vapid comment, he’d come back with, “You chowderhead, Krieg!” I loved that so much, it’s my Olla Podrida quotation. You can look it up. But when you were on to something, especially an original idea, Mr. Waugh would creatively pull it out of you – just like the root of the word “education” suggests. He would help you craft your thoughts, mull them over, give them a chance to grow and change. At the end of class, he would finally share his thoughts, often so profound we would leave amazed. We’d ask each other, “Is that what this story might beIabout?”recallone assignment on playtoo.coachedNottoheflowwouldspokeandworesweaters,fullLawrenceville.sight“Out,WaughDukebetweenup,endedinterruptionswithouttoiletandbackI’dwriting,stream-of-consciousnesssounlikeanythingevertriedbefore.IwenttoHaskellHouse“borrowed”arollofpapersoIcouldwritelinebreaksorofanykind.Itupbeinganamped-jazzyconversationVirgil’sAeneasandEllington–andMr.lovedit.Hewrote,damnroll,out!”Mr.Waughwasquitethetobehold,especiallyatOnacampusoftweedcoats,preppyanddocksiders,heagrubbyjeansjacketsmokedcigarillos.Heinagravellyvoicethathesitateattimesandatothers.WelearnedwouldtakesemestersoffwashdishesinTrenton.youraverageteacher.Hevarsitybasketball,AlthoughIcouldbarelyformyHouseteam,I remember watching how he led his teams. He was a teacher on the court, too, and guys loved to play for him. You could see the mutual respect.Lawrenceville has always been a place of privilege. I think Mr. Waugh wanted us to know that even as we strive for success and accomplishment in school and our careers, there are other ways to measure happiness. Ways that don’t have a number or a dollar sign attached to them. He wanted us to know there are questions worth considering that don’t come from a teacher or even a book. The most important ones are those we ask ourselves – about our lives, what has meaning, how we should treat each other, and what’s worth our sweat and tears. Mr. Waugh changed my life by helping me learn the value of thinking for myself. For that gift I’ll always be grateful – if still confused about which came first, the duck or the chicken. ∂
BEAK JAMESPERFORMANCE:C.WAUGHH’67’68’72’74’81’85’88P’68’70’72’74’76GP’12’14’16
Don’t
Follow @LvilleAlumni on Instagram! #LIFELONGLAWRENTIAN
WHO WAS YOUR FAVORITE TEACHER?
It seems that for every Lawrenceville alum, there is a Lawrenceville story. So many tales of transformation began on our campus, whether around the Harkness table, on the playing field, in the lab, or maybe with an inspiring chat in your House.
The teachers, coaches, and heads of house play such vital roles in the development of our students at Lawrenceville, and it’s been that way for longer than any of us remember. It’s simple enough for this magazine to report what’s happening at Lawrenceville today, but there is a world of Lawrentians among you who were transformed in some way by those who taught you, coached you, and looked after you during your days on the Bowl, the Circle, or the Crescent. And very often, those experiences have affected so many other lives in wonderful ways. Maybe you’ve witnessed this. Maybe it’s been you. Maybe you should tell that story. Reach out to us at The Lawrentian by emailing editor Sean Ramsden at sramsden@lawrenceville.org. be shy!
SPRING/SUMMER 2022 39
This magazine had already gone to press when we learned the sad news of the death of Alton R. (Red) Hyatt, who died on March 14 of pneumonia complicated by leukemia. Mr. Hyatt was […] an honorary member of Lawrenceville’s classes of 1905 and 1949, and longtime member of the faculty. He came to the School in 1920 as Assistant Master of Upper House, served the following year as Master of Hamill, and then went back to Yale (where he was a member of the class of 1918) to teach history and pursue graduate studies. In 1923, he returned to Lawrenceville to serve in a number of capacities, including […] Director of the Lower School and Assistant Head Master, an appointment he held for 27 years before his retirement in 1960.
— From an “Echoes of the Campus” news item.
Nearing completion is the second step in restoration and modernization of Hamill House, built in 1814 as the dormitory of the school’s first pupils, who previously boarded in the village, and the school’s oldest building. At present the work of the builders and architects is to complete the addition for the house master and his family located on the Trenton side of the old house and made of stone closely resembling that of the original house and quarried from Frenchtown on the Delaware. The master’s quarters […] will connect with the boys’ entrance hall and existing reception room. With the removal of the master’s quarters from the main portion of Hamill, accommodations will be provided for four additional boys on the second floor. Later the front of Hamill will be renovated to what Livingston Smith and Walter F. Thaete, Philadelphia architects, believe to be its original state. A two-story bay window will be removed, and the entrance porch will be reconditioned to its original colonial charm.
65 years ago in The Lawrentian SPRING 1957 LATE NEWS ITEM: A.R. HYATT – 1895-1987
Alton R. “Red” Hyatt H’05 ’39 P’53, shown here at the 1959 groundbreaking of the old Carpenter Wing of John FifthwhoseLawrencevilleLibrary,DixonwasafixturenamegracedaFormHouseandateachingchair. An architectural sketch of the proposed living quarters for then-Housemaster Bruce McClellan H’57 ’58 ’60 GP’10 and his family.
35 years ago in
The Lawrentian APRIL 1987
84 THE LAWRENTIAN SCHOOLOLD
THE HAMMERS ARE AND WILL BE POUNDING Building – some nearing completion, some not yet half completed, and some more to be under way before long. That is usually the story on Lawrenceville’s campus.
The warm glow of the sun rising over Edith thatus19morningChapelMemorialontheofJanuaryseemedtoassurethatspringwasn’tfaroff.
HorizononWarmththe
KlocknerJillbyPhotograph
usps no. 306-700 the Lawrenceville School Lawrenceville, New Jersey 08648 Parents of alumni: If this magazine is addressed to a son or daughter who no longer maintains a permanent address at your home, please email us at kzsenak@lawrenceville.org with his or her new address. Thank you! Lawrentian THE What’s Coming Up? This spring/summer issue of The Lawrentian will be followed in late August by a special edition featuring Alumni Weekend 2022, Commencement, and the Class of 2020’s long-awaited return to campus for their graduation. That truncated issue will not include Class Notes, but the section will return in its regular format in the fall issue in October. Be sure to share your news with your class secretaries or at classnotes@lawrenceville.org.
