The Patriot March 2016, Issue 4, Vol 51

THE 3.16.16

Issue 4

Volume 51

www.jcpatriot.com

‫זכור‬

A look at Holocaust Remembrance Day and those who made it happen

News 3

We will remember...

Spending a day with Bluma Shapiro, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp

the faces of those who taught us about the Holocaust.

Community 4 The stories of both a death camp survivor ripped from her family and one of the first liberators at Buchenwald

Community 6

2 NEWS

March 2016

Apple battles FBI over iPhone encryption Grace Mottley News Editor Apple recently refused orders from the U.S. Department of Justice to assist the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in unlocking a terrorist’s phone. The FBI has the iPhone of Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. He was part of the attack which killed 14 people on Dec. 2, 2015.

However, the FBI cannot access any of the information on the phone, and after receiving an order from a federal judge, Apple still refuses to help the FBI unlock the phone.

The iPhone is locked with a

four number passcode, and after ten failed attempts to enter a password, all data stored on the device may be deleted. The FBI requested that Apple create a program allowing them to use a computer to test every possible password combination without potentially

“It is certainly possible to create a new system as the government wants.

But it’s something we believe is too dangerous to do.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook deleting the information on the device after ten tries. The federal

Apple CEO Tim Cook

Apple has sold over 500 million iPhones

1 in 4 The Justice Department has asked Apple to unlock

American adults own iPhones

351

other iPhones

Apple received between

750-999 national securityrelated information requests in the first six months of 2015

Information from Apple.com, the New York Times, and Fortune.com.

judge ordered Apple to comply with the FBI under the All Writs Act, which orders companies to comply with the government if the action is not already covered by law.

According to Apple’s website, “The government asked a court to order Apple to create a unique version of iOS that would bypass security protections on the iPhone lock screen. It would also add a completely new capability so that passcode tries could be entered electronically.”

Apple still refuses to help the FBI unlock the iPhone. In a Feb. 16 letter, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained that they would appeal an order from the U.S. Circuit Court of the Central District of California.

The company is arguing that if they create an operating system that could bypass passwords and security measures, criminals would use it to hack customers’ iPhones and steal their personal information. They are also arguing that the government could use this program to access the information on any Apple device, therefore undermining “the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”

In the past, however, Apple has extracted information from almost 70 phones. Apple claims that they executed these extractions while iPhones were operating under iOS7, and the iPhone currently in the FBI’s possession operates under iOS9.

Apple said in a press release on Apple.com, “it is certainly possible to create an entirely new operating system to undermine our security features as the government wants. But it’s something we believe is too dangerous to do.”

The FBI has asserted that they will use the program responsibly and protect citizens’ privacy. “We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That’s it. We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land,” FBI Director James

Photo by Grace Mottley

The FBI requested that Apple unlock the iPhone of the San Bernadino shooter Syred Farook, who was part of a attack that left 14 people dead in Dec. Apple refused to unlock the phone after being ordered by a federal judge.

Comey wrote in a press release.

Apple is contesting the decision in court and has taken the issue to Congress, despite criticism from the families of the San

“Even if you’re not doing anything illegal, would you still want someone unknowingly checking your phone?”

Director of Technology Greg Russell

Bernardino victims, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, and presidential candidate Donald Trump, among others. Companies such as Facebook and Google are backing Apple’s decision.

Cook has called on the FBI to withdraw its request under the All Writs Act and form a panel of intelligence, civil liberty, and technology experts to discuss the issue before making a decision.

The House Judiciary Committee initiated a hearing on the issue titled “The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans’ Security and Privacy” on March 1. Ac-

cording to the Committee Chairman Bob Godlatte, “our goal is to find a solution that allows law enforcement to effectively enforce the law without harming the competitiveness of U.S. encryption providers or the privacy protections of U.S. citizens.”

Some law enforcement officials have suggested that Congress should resolve the issue and pass legislation “requiring phones to be manufactured so that they would be accessible to law enforcement when law enforcement has obtained a search warrant,” according to a proposal from the New York City District Attorney’s office.

Members of the JC community are concerned about how the fight between Apple and the FBI will affect their privacy. “If they release the encryption code to one group, what’s preventing them from releasing it to another group? Even if you’re not doing anything illegal, would you want someone unknowingly checking your phone?” Director of Technology Greg Russell said.

Phone restrictions eased Grant Sharretts Sports Editor The administration implemented a new cell phone policy on March 2 that allows students to use their phones in the cafeteria, non-academic wing hallways, and the library.

The rule change was established to encourage students to use their phones in a mature and professional way while preventing cheating or unnecessary distractions during class, according to Vice Principal of Technology and Student Affairs Brian Powell.

Many students seem to agree with the rule change, including

sophomore Sarah Decker. “It was really unnecessary to not allow phones in the cafeteria.

I don’t believe many followed [the rule] in the first place,” Decker said.

Not only does the rule change have the support of the students, but the teachers and administration support it as well.

Principal Madelyn Ball is a strong supporter of the rule change. “I don’t have a problem with the rule change, as long as [phones] aren’t used in class,” Ball said.

“We are placing realistic limits on phones, rather than banning them completely,” registrar Sue Cathell said.

NEWS 3

March 2016

Holocaust survivors share their stories formation and the victim’s story.

Seniors were instructed to keep this person in mind during their 11 million died in the Holo- museum experience. caust, and 71 years later JC’s HoThe museum’s central exhibit locaust education program fights follows the Holocaust in chronoto keep their memories alive. logical order, starting with the The annual Holocaust remem- events leading up to the Holobrance program consists of the caust and ending with its results.

Lessons of the Shoah, visits from “Sometimes when I took a step Holocaust Survivors, and the se- back from all the information nior class trip to the Holocaust there’d be a really big artifact like Memorial Museum. a Nazi flag or the hospital gates The senior program began in that really overwhelmed me,” seEnglish classes with the reading nior Isabelle Evelyn said. of “Night” by Elie Wiesel.

On March 1, Holocaust surviThe program for juniors con- vors and others with second-hand sisted of the Lessons of the Shoah knowledge came and shared their event on Feb. 25. 20 different experiences with the Holocaust schools sent stuwith the seniors. dents to experiThe day kicked ence nine differoff with a movie ent workshops about the death on the Holocaust camps. and to hear Sol Next, juniors Goldstein, a conwere invited to centration camp join the seniors liberator, tell the in the auditostory of his firstrium to hear Senior Project Moderator Louise Geczy hand experience Halina Silber, with the Holonumber 16 on caust.

Schindler’s List, tell her story of Next came the senior class field survival. trip to the Holocaust Museum in Seniors were then divided into Washington, D.C. on Feb. 29. smaller groups. Each group heard Upon arriving at the museum, two guest speakers recount their seniors were given the ID of a experiences. At the end of the victim of the Holocaust, contain- day, seniors returned to the audiing some basic background in- torium to listen to Goldstein tell

Kelly Foulk News Editor

“Days like these allow us to be a witness, and it really changes our lives.”

Photo by Kishan Patel

Holocaust survivor Vera Kestenberg arrives and embraces her guide, senior Madison Hooper. On March 1, 18 speakers came to share stories about their or their families’ experiences of living through the Holocaust. his story for a second time.

Not all the guests were firsthand witnesses, however. A significant number of second-generation speakers told their parents’ stories, according to Senior Project moderator Louise Geczy.

Geczy believes it is critical that students take advantage of this opportunity while they still can.

“The further away we get, the more important it is to have days and experiences like this. Not

many speakers are going to be left soon because we are losing them at a rapid rate. And the fear with that is, that these experiences disappear,” Geczy said.

Students enjoyed listening to the speakers as well. “I thought the day was a good learning experience to see first-hand what the Holocaust did to those who had to live through it. I learned about the resistance fighters who fought back. It was really cool to hear

what lengths a fighter had to go to stop the advance of the Nazis,” senior Pat Luft said.

Geczy believes the Holocaust must never be forgotten.

“Days like these allow us to be a witness. It really changes our lives, and allows for us to share [those experiences] with others. I am convinced that it’s people like [our students] that are the ones who are going to make a difference in the world,” Geczy said.

Search for principal candidates begins Claire Grunewald Print Chief The search to fill the principal position has begun.

On Feb. 8, President Richard O’Hara sent an email to faculty, families, and students about Principal Madelyn Ball’s decision to resign at the end of this school year. Ball’s last day in office is June 30.

According to O’Hara, the job listing is planned to be posted soon. Organizations such as the National Association of Independent Schools will post the listing on their websites. Interest in the job existed before the listing even posted. “I’ve already had a couple

emails and calls from people inquiring. Word seems to get out very quickly,” O’Hara said.

After the initial listing, it is expected to take three to four weeks to compile a full list of names and do preliminary screenings on the candidates. “By spring break [March 24], I would think by then we would have a good working list of who would be in a semifinalist pool,” O’Hara said.

To help narrow down the list, O’Hara says that he will most likely have a small representative search committee, with seven to eight people including teachers, staff and maybe a student or two.

They will be most involved in looking at all the data.

Then, according to O’Hara, there will be a segment of the Board of Trustees that will be a part of the interview process in which finalists will visit the school and get interviewed throughout the day. “Typically, you end up with two or three finalists, [and] they’re here for a full day and an evening. Then they meet with the whole faculty at some point [as well],” O’Hara said.

There will be an opportunity for a larger group of students, parents, and the whole faculty and staff to hear the finalists. According to O’Hara, they all will be given evaluation sheets to log their impressions of the finalists, which will go to the search committee who will make a recommendation to O’Hara.

The ideal date to have the new position filled is May 1, but according to O’Hara, they won’t pick just anyone to fill the role.

“What I’ve told the faculty is that if we don’t find the person, we’re not just going to pick a person,” he said.

In the case that a principal is not found, there would be an interim principal for a year. According to O’Hara, this interim position would most likely be filled by an internal person. In the past, this interim position has been filled twice by Vice Principal of Academics Gary Scholl.

O’Hara, who has the ultimate decision about who will fill this position, says the new principal must be “a visionary academic leader who will also be able to convert vision into reality.” They

Photo by Elizabeth Harmison

President Richard O’Hara officially announced Principal Madelyn Ball’s resignation on Feb. 8, over email. Administration is currently searching for a replacement to fill the position by May 1. must also be someone who loves teenagers and relates well to them, and is an effective, open communicator.

Students have their own opinions about the qualities the new principal should possess.

“We need someone who can keep order within the school, and help regulate and centralize things,” sophomore Drew Forthman said. “I also feel they need to expand different areas. A lot of focus is stuck on sports.”

Supporting O’Hara’s belief,

students also think the principal should relate to students. “I think JC needs someone who is capable of fulfilling the needs of the students and teachers, someone who shows so much care toward the school that new students can sense it even before they walk in,” junior Eryn Roach said.

In the end, according to O’Hara, JC needs somebody who is “extraordinarily compatible with the mission of [the school] and is committed to the things our school is committed to.”

4 COMMUNITY

Navigating

through

March 2016

cliques

Finding your way through high school can be difficult, and cliques can complicate the journey

Keep it Real

Kelly Foulk

THE JOCKS

THE COOL KIDS

HIPSTERS

THE NERDS

DRAMA KIDS

Photo by Lilly Stannard

Cliques can most notably be seen in the cafeteria. Students feel that cliques form because people don’t want to branch out from their inner circle.

Caroline Cooney and Grace Mottley In-focus Editor and News Editor

a dozen students responded with comments about the White Shirts and the Black Shirts.

When The Patriot polled 36 students in the cafeteria and a Take a look in the cafeteria U.S. History class, 16 believed during mod seven and you’ll like- that the black and white shirts ly spot two groups segregated by represent two separate cliques, the color of their shirts.

15 believed they represent two Meet the Black Shirts and the friend groups, and five said they White Shirts. were interchangeable.

On the outside, it seems like So what is the definition of a two groups of clique? junior girls are “I think cliques Merriamwearing the same Webster defines shirt color as their make people a clique as “a friends. However, feel like they’ll narrow exclusive there is a debate circle or group over whether the never belong, like of persons especolored shirts rep- they’re isolated cially one held resent a hidden together by commessage: we’re dif- from everybody.” mon interests, ferent from them. views, or purposAnonymous sophomore es.” According to “There’s no other reason they’d all SurveyMonkey, just happen to wear the same col- 76 percent agree with this definior shirt,” junior Maria said. Maria tion, whereas 24 percent believe is a pseudonym given to protect that a clique is defined as a group a junior who thought she would of friends. be “roasted” on Twitter if people The majority of those interdiscovered her identity. viewed by The Patriot agreed that The Patriot conducted an anon- there is not a single cause that ymous survey via SurveyMonkey results in cliques, but there are and recieved 193 responses. When many influences. asked in the survey about the first According to a student who thing they thought of when they answered The Patriot’s survey, heard the word “clique,” almost cliques form because “people

who are only interested in them- a conversation and some people selves [and] who are insecure just give up on that ... so it ends need others to make themselves up being a Chinese clique,” sefeel completely comfortable nior Gavin Ding said. while other people can not join Cliques can have a negative their groups since they’re usu- impact on self-esteem and social ally not confident without their lives. “I was a part of a group that friends.”

I didn’t think was a clique, but Some students believe that they started to shun me and cut cliques consist of people who me out. I felt isolated and I realknew each other before high ized they were a clique,” an anonschool. “I think [cliques are] ymous sophomore said. “I think based on who you went to middle cliques make people feel like school with,” Maria said. they’ll never belong, like they’re Others agree with Maria and isolated from everybody.” think middle schools are the main One student thinks that cliques influence. “I think [students] like can impact you negatively if you to stick [with the people they allow them to. “[Cliques don’t] went to middle school with] be- impact you if you don’t care, but cause they’re too scared to stray I think they make people feel like from their pack, … they don’t they’ll never be a part of somewant to stray from the people they thing,” Maria said. were born with,” senior Darian In a poll of 21 students that Welden said. took place in a junior U.S. HisAnother possible cause of a tory class, eight believed that clique developing is based on cliques are a problem at JC, 13 similar interests or activities that were neutral, and none said that students share. “When cliques were different students do a prob“I don’t know if you not different activities, lem.

When they form groups and can necessarily fix the students stay that way,” another asked cliques because it’s were freshman said. what the comInternational stu- just who people munity can dents often find themdo to prevent want to be friends cliques from selves forming cliques with non-American with.” forming, they students as a result of hesitated and Junior Hailey Ishak the language barrier were unsure and their inability to how to solve communicate. the problem.

“Sometimes it’s hard to make “I don’t know if you can necesfriends when you don’t under- sarily fix cliques because it’s just stand each other,” sophomore who people want to be friends Lily Chen said. with,” junior Hailey Ishak said.

“A lot of Chinese students [...] “If there is a mean clique, then think American students are hard obviously that needs to be fixed, to connect with because they talk but the fact that [people] have about things that we don’t even friend groups, you can’t really fix know about. It’s hard to engage in that.”

Surivor’s story impacts student’s life What do you say to someone who has endured the smell of burning flesh? Someone who has lived in the barracks of Auschwitz? Someone who has marched in a death march?

These were the questions running through my mind as I walked into school on Feb. 28. I had signed up as a greeter guide for one of the guest speakers who survived or whose family members lived through the Holocaust.

I was assigned to a woman named Bluma Shapiro and given a brief biography that said: “experienced ghetto life, Majdanek Concentration Camp, Auschwitz Death Camp, death march participant.” That was all I knew about her.

How could I, who had never experienced true pain, talk to someone who had been through so much? What do I say to this person? Do I give her a hug? Do I say nothing? Do I apologize?

When I met my survivor, the first thing I was struck by was her smile. Before I got the chance to say anything, I was quickly embraced by a hug. All of my worries washed away as we sat down and started talking.

I rarely saw a smile leave Bluma’s face the entire day. She repeatedly told me to erase the word hate from my vocabulary.

As she frequently reminded me, “hate destroys the hater, not the hated.”

Bluma knew she couldn’t change the past, so she refused to ruminate on it. In fact, she hardly even talked about her experiences during the Holocaust.

Memories about the horrors of death marches and living in concentration camps were scarce and had to be carefully pried from her mind. Any reference to her time during the Holocaust was instead about the kindness of people, both Germans and Jews.

Throughout the day, I was continually blown away by how happy and carefree Bluma was. She is happier than almost everyone I know, despite living through an experience as scarring as the Holocaust.

Prior to meeting Bluma, I had only read about the Holocaust in books or seen pictures in museums.

From Bluma, I was able to get first-hand knowledge: a truly irreplaceable experience.

Soon there will be no more Holocaust survivors left, and it’ll be up to us to make sure that those who were lost are remembered.

COMMUNITY 5

March 2016

Clear The Roads Every day, students get their driver’s licenses, meaning more new drivers and potentially more dangerous car accidents Azanae Barrow Community Editor Pulled over by the police, senior Hayden Delpi is asked to have his car searched after speeding down the road. “It was 2 a.m., and I wanted McDonald’s, the 24-hour McDonald’s was closed and no one was on the road when I pulled out, so I just sped up,” Delpi said. He was driving his dad’s new Audi, “I’d never driven in it before. It was a lot faster than I thought,” Delphi said, “let’s just say I was going over 80,” Delpi said.

Police proceeded to ask Delpi if he was a drug dealer. “The car was new, and it had Florida license plate tags, and I didn’t realize,” Delpi said. The officer then asked to search through the car. After the car came up clean, he gave Delpi a ticket, and Delpi slowly drove home.

“I didn’t tell my parents [about the incident] for a week. They were so upset with me,” Delpi said. Consequently, for recklessly driving around town in the middle of the night in search of a Big Mac, Delpi would soon be going on trial to defend himself because of his nighttime speeding incident.

In 2013, 2,163 teens in the

United States from ages 16 to 19 were in a fatal car accident. Teen drivers are three times more likely to be in a fatal car crash than drivers over the age of 20 according to the CDC. Car accidents and being pulled over by the police are common in student drivers. Even after having your license for over five months, “for both men and women, drivers aged 16 to 19 years of age have the highest average annual crash and traffic violation rates of any other age group,” according to the California Motor Vehicle Association.

JC students know all too well the aftermath of accidents. Not all accidents on the road have to be careless or even rushed. Something as natural as ice on the road could potentially be deadly.

On Feb. 15, senior Caroline Angert smashed her car into a telephone pole after her car slid on a patch of ice and started fishtailing. “My car started heading into oncoming traffic, so I pulled my steering wheel hard to the right, and I started sliding. My car hopped the curb, and I hit a telephone pole,” Angert said.

After the accident, Angert decided to take a break from driving. “I was scared to drive with other people for about a week,

but now I’m okay, and I drive like nothing happened,” Angert said.

In Angert’s case, her accident could have been deadly for herself and those around her.

Junior Nick Hinke has often been regarded as an “accidentprone” driver. “I’m not that bad,” Hinke said, “my car just likes to run into stuff.”

On Christmas, while leaving a friend’s house, Hinke was blocked in by several cars on the street. “I was blocked in and the guy had to pull onto the lawn to let me out cause there were cars parked on both sides of the driveway,” Hinke said. After realizing a pickup truck was still blocking him, Hinke decided to see if he could make it out without telling the owner to move his car.

“I thought I could make it anyway, so I went for it and the first few feet went fine while it was still straight but as I had to turn, the truck’s bumper caught my left side and left a big dent and a nice scrape on the driver’s side door,” Hinke said.

Accidents can happen, no matter how long you’ve been driving, but according Angert, they shouldn’t scare you.

“My advice would be to talk about it if you’re scared. It helps if you’re open with it,” she said.

Afraid to take the wheel?

Students share their fears and worries about driving “I have a fear of bridges and I’ve been holding off on getting my license because of that.”

“I don’t want to be killed by a drunk driver.”

“I think a lot of people who drive at JC are inexperienced and some don’t have regard for the laws at all.”

“I have a fear of dying.”

207 responsed to a survey sent out on Feb. 7 by The Patriot.

How do student drivers STOP rate themselves?

Aggressive 24% Safe 22% Distracted 38% Cautious 16%

RECKLESS DRIVING

Racing down the street almost cost senior Will Tokarski his license

Tokarski and his friends were on their way to baseball practice when they were stopped at a red light.

In the next car over was one of Tokarski’s teammates.

“We were both stopped when we kept nudging up and making eye contact and then the light turned green and we floored it,” Tokarski said. After racing down the street for a while, Tokarski turned into Wawa and parked the car. “Once I parked, I was about to get out, when I finally saw the cop with his lights turned on behind me,” Tokarski said. The cop who approached Tokarski’s car accused him of evading police because he never stopped when the police lights came on. “I never even saw his lights until I had parked, which I tried to explain, but he just yelled and didn’t listen,” Tokarski said. Tokarski’s license suspension has not been decided yet. “I thought they [would] suspend it [immediately], based on the amount of tickets they had given me, but they didn’t,” Tokarski said.

6 COMMUNITY

Through the eyes of a Kishan Patel Online Chief Little children tore her clothes, threw stones at her, and beat her repeatedly in the 100-degree heat of Uzbekistan, but still, this life was better than the one she had left in the frozen tundra of Russia. Eight-year-old Jew Ida ChaitSchmidt faced harsh persecutions during the Holocaust. About 70 years later, Chait-Schmidt sits in front of seniors to tell her story.

Chait-Schmidt was one of 18 Holocaust survivors or family member of survivors to share their stories of the experiences.

“We came out like animals, just animals [after the Holocaust],” Chait-Schmidt says with a long pause and a shudder of her shoulders. Seniors stare, speechless, unable to comprehend the extent of the horrors they hear.

The now 85-year-old Holocaust survivor lived through camps controlled by S.S. officers.

Chait-Schmidt recalls the only thing she remembers: malnutrition and isolation.

Shocking the group of stu-

March 2016

SURVIVOR

dents, Chait-Schmidt shares how she felt seeing other Jews burned alive by the Nazis. To avoid this fate, her grandfather paid off a Russian train officer that helped his wife, Chait-Schmidt’s aunts, and her escape to the barely livable part of Russia.

Trembling, Chait-Schmidt explains how her father tracked her down to Russia take her back home to Warsaw, which was still being bombed daily.

Officers patrolled trains.

“Scared, my mom put little sugar cubes in my sister’s mouth, so she wouldn’t attract attention by making noise,” Chait-Schmidt says.

There in Minsk, Russia, ChaitSchmidt received her first schooling. After living there for years, German and Russian relations worsened, and her family retreated to save their lives.

Chait-Schmidt’s hands shake as she tells the story of being in a cattle cart in a train for 30 days.

Arriving in Uzbekistan, her family was stranded on the streets with her sister on the brink of

‫זכור‬

death.

Chait-Schmidt received a small portion of saltdust filled bread and water soup, and she split her ration with her sister who was ill.

“We had nothing.

We were nothing,” Chait-Schmidt says. From there, her family found a hut to live in. “No Photo by Kishan Patel metal, no brick, Holocaust survivor, Ida Chait-Schmidt, hugs senior Holly Driver in the auditorium during the nothing, just hay closing ceremony in the auditorium.

Chait-Schmidt shared her story of facing death and with whatever else work camps in Russia and suffering malnutrition.

Chait-Schmidt was one of 20 people who we could find.” shared stories of the Holocaust with seniors on March 1.

At the conclusion of the war, the struggles contin- her story with. She apologizes for less. As soon as I got off the boat, ued, “They took us on trains. [We her break and continues telling we all kissed the ground,” Chaitwent] to displaced persons camps her story. Students patiently wait Schmidt says. in Austria and Germany, which with watery eyes of their own.

Continuing to cry, she reads a the Americans and French set Chait-Schmidt then shares the letter. “Remember the stories you up,” Chait-Schmidt says. glimmer of hope in having a life are hearing. I’ve shared my stoChait-Schmidt braces herself, worth living: America. ry. You have to keep it alive and holds back tears, while she tries Her family received a visa and make sure no one lives through finishing her story, but she can- traveled by boat for nine days what I had to live through, the not. She bawls her eyes out in to New York City. “Seeing the oppression Jews faced,” Chaitfront of the students she shares Statue of Liberty left me speech- Schmidt says.

We Remember

Through the eyes of a soldier

Photo courtesy Sol Goldstein

Sol Goldstein stands to the right of a person he liberated from Buchenwald, a concentration camp located near Weimar, Germany, during the Holocaust. Before this liberation, Goldstein had never heard about concentration camps and the atrocities taking place in Germany.

Viewing the Holocaust through the eyes of survivor Ida Chait-Schmidt and WWII soldier and liberator Sol Goldstein

Pia Scotto Community Editor A German officer from Buchenwald looked him in the eye, spat in his face, and called him a “dirty, pig Jew.” Immediately, Sol Goldstein raised a knife and slit his neck from ear to ear and disposed of the body in the woods.

Often referred to as “Lucky Sol,” Goldstein was born in Baltimore and was a World War II soldier and liberator who came to JC on March 1 to share his story.

He began his journey by enlisting himself in the army without telling his parents. “My dad was really upset and my mother was beside herself,” Goldstein said.

He also recalls his mother being unrecognizable: “When I left to go to the Army, my mother’s hair was black and when I came back, I looked at my mom, and I saw this little white-haired lady, and I said, ‘Excuse me,’ and I looked at her.

She was crying and reaching for me, and I said, ‘Mom?’ and she said, ‘Yeah?’ I just couldn’t believe it was my mother - her hair was snow white.”

Goldstein would travel to England, Germany, Poland, Holland, Belgium, and more. He was first shipped to England for one year of training.

After training, Goldstein recalled battle and encountering Germans who infiltrated and attacked in vicious ways. “They would fire

at the trees, and so there would be pieces of trees that would just penetrate into your back like wooden splinters. It was just really painful,” Goldstein said.

When in Germany, Goldstein saved his very first set of people from a concentration camp. “We saw this red brick chimney about 30-40-feet high, and there was white smoke binding out of the top of it. As we got closer, we could smell the smoke become more intense, and we knew something was going on here,” Goldstein said.

Looking through his glasses, Goldstein saw fencing and barbed wire. His corporal said he saw people in there and at that moment,

“What took you so long to get here?”

An inmate at Buchenwald to Sol Goldstein

Goldstein stated, “I think we’re gonna liberate a prisoner of war camp.” Going in, Goldstein was confused and realized they weren’t soldiers, but groups of people.

“During my whole time in the service, I had never been told of such a thing as a concentration camp,” Goldstein said.

The people came shuffling toward him, and one five-feet tall, around 50 pound man came up to him, asking him in German, “Are

you Americans?” To which Goldstein replied in Yiddish, “Yes, we’re American soldiers, and I’m a Jew.” The man looked up and asked in Yiddish a question that made Goldstein dissolve into tears: “What took you so long to get here?” This question would stick in Goldstein’s mind forever.

“From that moment, I knew, that if my mother had not come to America in 1913 from Lithuania and my father in 1917 from Egypt, that I could possibly have been one of them,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein was told the war was over and that the Germans surrendered. His corporal said to him, “It’s all over, you can go home now.” It’s all over? The words didn’t settle well for Goldstein.

He didn’t want to go home and decided to help survirors in Paris for seven months.

Coming home after the war, Goldstein had many nightmares.

His wife, who he considered his therapist, helped him through it. In fact, he recalls the day he met Jean Turk to be the most memorable of all his days.

“She would hold me in her arms at night, in the bed, and say, ‘It’s all over honey, it’s all over.’ I’d be screaming or crying and carrying on, and she would just hold me and just make it okay,” Goldstein said.

For these stories and more go to jcpatriot. com

ENTERTAINMENT 7

March 2016

If the shoe fits

Students invest passion, enthusiasm, and cash into The Next building their extensive and exotic shoe collections Bite

Pia Scotto

Rouge brings très chic atmosphere, cuisine

Mike Moxley and Kishan Patel Sports Editor and Online Chief

Rapidly clicking away on his laptop, senior Jeff Jia hopes to be one of the seven thousand lucky shoppers to nab the most prized possession in the shoe world: a pair of Adidas Yeezys.

Jia bought the first pair by pure luck and continued to buy three others, all in women’s sizes, to eventually resell them.

“I bought them for $350 and resell value is probably $3,500,” Jia said.

The culture of “sneakerheads” is reaching an all-time high at JC. Other students have started collecting and reselling shoes like Jia, such as fellow seniors Beni Tasel and Ben Flomo.

Flomo never thought about collecting shoes until moving to the United States from Liberia.

Friends introduced him to shoe

Photo by Kishan Patel

Senior Ben Flomo holds his shoe collection worth thousands of dollars in his arms. Flomo’s newest addition is a pair of Yeezys, Kanye West’s shoe line, which have been reported to sell for $3,500. get money. “Now I buy shoes for the retail price and resell them in the open market,” Jia said. He often makes hundreds of dollars in profits.

The sneakerheads put an emphasis on protecting their shoes.

Part of keeping the shoes clean is using special sprays and other methods of protection.

Protecting the shoes is difficult, especially when trying to move them. “I have to keep the shoe boxes and pack all of those boxes into one bigger box that I double box,” Jia said. “I do all of that to protect the shoes.”

culture. This hobby of matching shoes with different outfits gave him a sense of self-assurance.

“I saw the culture of wearing cool shoes and just jumped right into it,” Flomo said.

Flomo’s average sneaker is worth around $200. Jia has spent up to $1,000 on a pair of shoes to wear, the Louis Vuitton “Red Bottoms” sneakers.

Due to the prices, funds for the shoes become an issue.

Jia finds his funds in the sneakers themselves. Originally, he had to ask his parents for money, but Jia has found a different way to

Artist Spotlight:

It is not all about style to the sneakerheads. Comfort also plays a role in their collections. “The shoe can be visually appealing, but if it hurts your feet, you aren’t going to wear it,” Tasel said.

The shoes not only provide extra style or a way of business, but they have also become a passion for these students.

“I love shoes because sometimes I feel that even if I don’t have good-looking clothes, I can have nice shoes. Some people like to add watches for fashion.

I like shoes,” Jia said. “It’s just my passion.”

Ashlee Kothenbeutel Grade: Sophomore Medium: Pencil, pastel, and charcoal Subject: Portraits or depicting emotion Influence: Her cousin and the world

Photo by Elizabeth Harmison

Sophomore Ashlee Kothenbeutel sits in the Art Wing working on a charcoal drawing in her sketchbook. Kothenbeutel is currently in Studio 2.

“I’ve been doing [art] since I was 10, and it has always been a way to get emotions out and to allow myself to destress.”

Sophomore Ashlee Kothenbeutel

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If you happen to visit Philadelphia near Chestnut St., you’ll see many things. One is a beautiful park, and on the far side of the park, you’ll see a chic little French restaurant, Rouge.

Rouge shouts “city-life” and fits the Philadelphia atmosphere perfectly—fast-moving, small, and crowded.

There are tables outside, which are great for dining during nice weather. Rouge will also accommodate you inside. On the inside, it feels very crowded. This is caused by three things: the number of people, a policy against reservations, and the layout of the restaurant.

Rouge is pretty small in general, but the layout makes it look even smaller. There is a circular bar, which takes up most of the room because it is dead center, making tables surround it and stand in the corners.

The layout restricts movement but is a bold choice. It’s different and causes a bit of commotion.

I see why many view that as a downside, but I enjoyed it because it gave off the fast-moving feel that is not typical of most restaurants.

As for the food itself, there are a few things that stuck with me. One is the cheese platter.

The preparation is lovely with three different cheese samples laid out on a wooden board with one scoop of sweet jam and one scoop of delicious caramel on the side. There are also nuts, grapes, and thin slices of apple scattered across the board.

The calamari is another great appetizer to try. On the side, there is an orange sauce that tickles your taste buds and is very light.

When picking an entrée, you can’t go wrong when getting what they’re famous for: the Rouge Burger. It’s the size of a pillow, so it will definitely fill you up, but delicious none the less.

I usually order burgers cooked medium, but for the size of this burger, I would recommend going a step further and ordering it medium-well.

The downside was the long wait for food and getting my server’s attention. Other than that, it was pretty tasty. We didn’t have dessert because of the delicious ice cream shops around, but I definitely see myself going back to Rouge.

o t e m o c l e W

8 IN-FOCUS

March 2016

% 42 of students

know at least one person who has tried heroin* “It’s so destructive - not just to the users...

it destroys families.”

- State Attorney Joe Cassilly, ’68

Living with an addict

Mark Anderson stares at the track marks on his 21-year-old daughter Melanie Anderson’s arm as a police officer pulls up her sleeve during her arrest. Devastated, Mark feels naïve that he didn’t realize how serious his daughter’s addiction was.

Hours later, the family sits in a circle in a hotel room near the Ripken Stadium. They read heart-wrenching letters expressing sadness and the necessity of proper treatment.

After that day, everything changed.

“It’s made everything a lot more serious for us. It’s had a huge effect on our family,” junior Amy Anderson said about her older sister’s addiction. “It seems as though almost everything we do revolves around her problems in general.”

Amy, Mark, and Melanie Anderson are pseudonyms used in order to protect the identity of the family.

As the Anderson family knows, the first dose of heroin not only consumes the life of its victim, but it also damages the victim’s family, forever.

“They [teenagers] need to be more aware that once they step into that pool, they may not be able to get out, and it’s going to affect their entire life forever,” Mark said. “Even if they get into a recovery phase, they’re always recovering for the rest of their life because they can always relapse.”

Melanie, now 27, nurses a 10-year addiction to heroin that can be traced back to addiction problems that surfaced around age 15 or 16 with

drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana. According to Amy, Melanie had always referred to herself as the “rebellious one” and surrounded herself with people who got her into trouble.

Besides her friends, Melanie was influenced by her boyfriend of three years who attended C. Milton Wright. “My parents didn’t like him at all, and they just didn’t support the relationship, but obviously they couldn’t really tell her not to be with him,” Amy said.

Once Melanie had developed an addiction to heroin, the family started to notice changes in her. “She became really skinny, and she never had much color to her. [She was] really pale, very tired, just all the common symptoms you would associate with [heroin],” Amy said.

According to Mark, “it took away her focus, her drive, her ambition, [her] confidence, [her] ability to cope, and in some regards, her personality.”

Melanie began to beg her parents for money to feed the addiction. According to Amy, the family knew what she was putting the money towards and refused to give her any. This led to the common occurrence of physical and emotional outbursts while she was living at home.

Amy would find syringes and caps on the bathroom floor. While Melanie was struggling with heroin, she also became addicted to prescription medicine such as Oxycontin and Xanax. “We didn’t know how serious her problems were until we had an intervention,” Amy said.

Although Melanie willingly went to Father Martin’s Ashley, a treatment center located in

Havre de Grace, Md., this was only the beginning to a long recovery. “It’s hard at that point for an addict to really care about what other people are saying when they’re so focused on what they need,” Amy said.

Since then, she has been in a dozen rehab centers due to relapses. Two months ago, Melanie relapsed again and was sent to a rehab center in Boca Raton, Fl. “It’s made everything a lot harder for our family because of the expenses of sending her to rehabs, and it’s also been emotionally hard on my parents because they want me to have a normal life, but we have to deal with this,” Amy said.

According to Mark, the hardest part about having a child fight an addiction like heroin is the fear of “getting a phone call in the middle of the night from the police telling you, ‘your child has overdosed.’” Melanie has experienced two near-death situations before, one when she was 26 and another when she was 27. According to Amy, the family was left disheartened and frightened.

Tearing families apart

Similar to the Anderson family, junior Emily Schiavone’s cousin developed an addiction to marijuana in middle school, which escalated to harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine. According to Schiavone, heroin stuck with him and he has been doing it for years.

Her cousin, who will be given the pseudonym Ryan to protect his identity, started to steal and beg for money from his 15-year-old sister, older sister, and parents. According to Schiavone,

he has stolen an estimated $1 million from the combination of family members and companies he worked for in order to purchase drugs.

“My aunt and uncle kept it hidden from the rest of the family for years,” Schiavone said.

“I think up until it got very serious, which was recently with the heroin.” She thinks that they kept everything hidden from the family because they were ashamed.

Her cousin’s addiction interfered with his family and caused problems in their relationships. According to Schiavone, he once did heroin in a parked car with his five-year-old son in the back seat. “They really don’t think he will ever get full rights back to his child,” Schiavone said. She said that it is hard to have sympathy for him because of all the pain he has caused.

Additionally, it created tension in his parents’ marriage due to the different outlooks on the situation: his mother wanted to help him and his father wanted to let him be on his own and away from the family.

According to Schiavone, Ryan was on heroin during a family vacation to Disney World. The atmosphere of the trip was changed completely because he was unable to function properly.

“They [Ryan’s parents] actually said, ‘That was the worst trip we’ve ever been on’ because he was sleeping through days, not showing up to planned events, [...] and he was absent for a lot of it even though he was there,” Schiavone said.

Ryan, according to Schiavone, drastically changed once he became addicted to heroin and was no longer the “really fun kid” that he used to be. “When he was sober, he was in the middle

IN-FOCUS 9

March 2016

For the third time since 1983, a heroin epidemic has spread throughout Harford County, affecting the lives of local families. For users, as well as the loved ones that surround them, the negative effects of addiction are endless.

By Caroline Cooney, Claire Grunewald, Kishan Patel Leaning over an unresponsive body lying on the floor of a stranger’s house, volunteer EMT Maria Cosentino pumps the person’s chest, trying to bring the person back to consciousness. Eventually, the body is attached to a machine that is able to perform CPR more quickly - a common practice when dealing with heroin overdoses.

This overdose is one of many which occur in Harford County due to heroin abuse.

Cosentino, a current senior, has witnessed anywhere from 15 to 20 heroin overdoses since she began volunteering as an EMT five months ago. She received four heroin overdose calls on one 10-hour shift, one call which ended with a fatality.

“It’s a drug that you think is a small deal, but [it] can end up killing you,” Cosentino said.

According to State’s Attorney Joe Cassilly, class of ‘68, 27 people died due to heroin overdose in Harford County in 2015. This number does not include the overdoses which are not fatal due to quick emergency response times and Narcan.

Narcan, known by its generic name as Naloxone, is an emergency opiate antidote used to counteract heroin overdoses by blocking the heroin receptors in the brain of a user. “If it weren’t for Narcan, there would be many more deaths,” Cassilly said.

Cosentino has used Narcan on patients and feels that it can make her job as a volunteer EMT much more scary. “One thing I don’t think people understand is that [Narcan] takes away their high, and they can get very angry as a result. Some people come and start hitting you, and we have police officers to back us up,” Cosentino said.

The number of heroin-related deaths in Maryland has steadily increased from 238 in 2010 to 578 in 2014,

according to the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Doe Lad, Founder of Addiction Connection Resources, was affected by heroin through her son’s addiction, and one thing she stresses is that “addiction has no normal face, [and it] does not discriminate.” At ACR, Lad works with families and addicts to help find the best treatment programs available.

Cosentino, who has been called for an overdose for both a 17-yearold and a 75-year-old, agrees. with Lad. “It affects all ages,” Cosentino said.

In Harford County, the number of heroin overdoses have risen. In 2015, according to data from the Harford County Sheriff’s Office, law enforcement responded to at least one heroin overdose at least every other day.

Outside the Harford County Sheriff’s office in Bel Air on Main Street, there is a sign representing the number of heroin overdoses and deaths that have occurred so far in 2016. As of March 11, the number of overdoses is currently reported as 46, and the number of deaths is six.

Heroin is also a motivation for crime according to Cassilly, who, as the State’s Attorney, oversees all criminal prosecution in the county. “In my time as State’s Attorney, this has been the third [heroin epidemic], and all the epidemics correspond to an upswing in burglary

and petty crime,” Cassilly said.

According to Cassilly, heroin dealers will probably only be given 18 months in jail if caught and end up serving only nine of them. In Harford County, heroin possession itself is considered a misdemeanor, and first offenders are often only prescribed treatment, usually in a methadone clinic. Methadone is a substance that replaces the need for heroin, but it is expensive and users often return to heroin because they can’t afford it.

So, where is all the heroin coming from and where are the hotspots?

The I-95 corridor is a huge lane of transportation for the drug. According to a report by ABC2News, on March 8, Maryland Transportation Police stopped three men from South Carolina on I-95 in Baltimore who had over 600 grams of heroin in their possession.

After the arrest, MDTA Police Chief Colonel Jerry Jones told ABC2News that “this [was] a significant arrest in Maryland’s fight against the destructive heroin and opioid epidemic,” and that the MDTA police focus on keeping heroin out of communities by shutting down dealers using the I-95 transport route.

Cassilly agrees that eliminating the supply of heroin and shutting down the dealers is important to battling the epidemic, but according to Lad, all of society must be involved. “We have to be open to talk about it, and the shame has to be removed,” she said.

Heroin is prevalent in Maryland, but the struggle to combat this epidemic is two-sided: focus needs to surround both the elimination of the drug and the treatment of the addicts.

“It’s just a battle. It’s a battle for your life, just like cancer,” Lad said.

As of March 11, 2016 there have been six deaths and 46 heroin overdoses in Harford County

Attractions: Opiates of the dance floor [at my aunt’s wedding] just dancing with everyone and being so happy and vibrant,” Schiavone said. “But when he was in the middle of his addiction, he was very quiet and reserved, and he almost always had something on his mind.” He became frail, pale, and would sleep through days.

“I think when you’re addicted to drugs sometimes you don’t have a choice. You lose your free will,” Schiavone said.

Mark has a similar belief to Schiavone’s.

“Addiction is ultimately up to the individual themselves. Any parent, friend, [or] loved one can’t do anything to stop the addiction until the individual is ready to stop it themselves,” Mark said.

Because of Ryan’s addictions, Schiavone’s parents are strict about substance abuse and the use of drugs and alcohol in general.

“They’re so strict and cautious about becoming addicted to something, and they always use him as an example,” Schiavone said. When talking to her about drugs and alcohol, her parents always tell her, “You don’t ever want that to happen [to you]. That’s the worst thing in the world.”

“I think that [other people] think that addiction is something you can beat just by strong will and determination,” Schiavone said. “[But] people don’t understand that it’s a disease and that it’s not a desire. You know you don’t want to keep on endangering your child’s life or stealing from your family or doing more drugs, but it’s just kind of inevitable once you’re addicted because it’s an actual disease.”

Depressed and needing a high, Kurt Smith sips vodka to satisfy his addiction as he prepares for school. Stumbling through the school hallways, Smith barely makes it through the first few mods. A call summons the drunk Smith to the main office in the middle of class.

The administration orders his parents to take him home and leave the school indefinitely. On the ride home, Smith ponders future consequences.

“I came to school drunk,” Smith said.

“I couldn’t expect the administration to not do anything, and it made me loathe myself almost.”

Kurt Smith is a pseudonym to protect the identity of the former student. Smith was expelled from JC his junior year.

Smith has struggled with an alcohol and opiate addiction since his freshman year. His first interactions with opiates were in another high school’s bathroom.

Smith believes his addiction started from pressure from fellow classmates pushing him towards abuse.

However, the first few experiences with drug use stretched beyond just school and developed into a serious ad-

diction that he could not control.

“Life wasn’t clear at all. I could tell I wasn’t myself. Everything was a blur. Opiates make depression 10 times worse,” Smith said. “You get on this peak, but that peak drops as if you have a bipolar disorder, which is exactly how it was with drugs.”

When Smith was expelled from school, he recognized his issue and went to a rehab facility for over a week. Following his transition out of rehab, he has since participated in a Narcotics Anonymous session once a week.

“The first 30 days seemed pointless.

I didn’t see a lot of hope. My mindset was ‘if I was doing drugs now I would be having a lot more fun.’ But then my self-esteem [increased], and I had a lot more money,” Smith said.

Now Smith has gone over 90 days sober and recognizes that relapse is a real probability. According to him, addiction is an illness similar to cancer and is not something you can just get rid of. “Addiction is a mental illness that you simply cannot control,” Smith said.

Remaining sober became easier with

time, but relapses still occur. “Every time I drive by a liquor store on the way to my new school, I get tempted,” Smith said. “But I don’t ever want to get back to the spot I was in. I don’t ever want to be kicked out of a place or fired from a job because I can’t handle myself.”

Smith wishes he could have stayed at JC. However, leaving helped him to better himself in many ways.

He used to spend over $100 a week on drugs, but now with the money he saves, he sees new life opportunities and signs that life is improving.

“I want my life to have more meaning.

The more meaning, [the] more chances, the more my life will improve,” Smith said.

Although Smith is improving, he still struggles with addiction. The most resounding advice he hears is from the fellow members of his NA group.

“The first day is the hardest day, but you just have to live day by day. You can’t think about life as a whole, you’ll fail” Smith said. “You have to take it as a day-by-day challenge. Just don’t take opiates today, and you’ll be fine.”

*The Patriot conducted a survey via Surveymonkey on March 8, 2016. 188 students responded.

10 ENTERTAINMENT

March 2016

Pho

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in M

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s ke

By Adriana Guidi and Elizabeth Harmison

Which convenience store offers the best overall experience for students?

Coffee 3

Coffee 5

Price 4

Price 3.5

The prices are reasonable, and they sell their chicken and hot food at a lower price. All of the snacks are priced at normal prices that you can find at any similar places. As for the actual food you can order and customize, the prices are similar to Wawa.

The prices are reasonable for the most part. For the more healthy options, and there are lots of them, the prices are higher. But for things like chips, candy, or any other junk food, the prices are typical and inexpensive.

Variety 3.5

Variety 5

Royal Farms has a touch screen where you can order items like subs and other side dishes. However, the real shining star is their “world famous chicken” and western fries. Besides that, though, they really don’t have much else to offer.

Wawa is definitely the gas station with the most variety in their food. They have touch screens where you can custom order items like hoagies, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, quesadillas, chicken tenders, and more. They also have a kiosk displaying things like salads, wraps, and fresh fruits.

Cleanliness 3

Cleanliness 4

The Royal Farms we have been to, they do not seem to be as clean and updated as most Wawas. The inside of the buildings are outdated, and in general, the whole building seems to not be the cleanist it could be.

We have never had a problem with any Wawa being unsanitary. Now it is still a gas station, and it is never going to be the cleanest place you will go. For the most part, we have never seen anything unclean, and I never feel like the place is gross. Appearance-wise they are decent-looking, and the stores do not feel outdated.

Quality 3.5

Quality 4.5

The coffee selection at Royal Farms is decent. They have a typical selection of coffee, but not a large variety. It has your basic coffee needs, but does not go much further than that.

The quality of the food at Royal Farms is pretty average, and we weren’t impressed with the freshness of the food overall. However, the chicken and western fries were the highest quality out of everything there was to offer.

y

Wawa has a great coffee variety. Between being able to just make your own coffee, or ordering something like a frappuccino, any type of coffee you want, you can find. They have a great self-serve coffee station that contains a wide variety of coffees creamers.

When going to a gas station, you usually don’t expect the food to be high quality, but we were impressed with how fresh the food is. All the hoagies are made with high quality ingredients, and the salads, wraps, and fruit were grocery store quality.

Total 17/25

Total 22/25

Although the prices of their food were easy on the wallet, freshness and variety were average. The best by far was the chicken and western fries but other than that the food and coffee options were very lean.

Wawa has a coffee and food selection above and beyond most restaurants, let alone gas stations. It was clean and the price wasn’t bad considering the quality.

PERSPECTIVES 11

March 2016

Lowering standards hurts everyone Joe Kyburz Copy Editor Affirmative action is not harmless. The same affirmative action that looks to help minorities puts others at a disadvantage.

Affirmative action is defined by “Merriam-Webster Dictionary” as “the practice of improving the educational and job opportunities of members of groups that have not been treated fairly in the past because of their race, sex, etc.” With that in mind, anyone interested in the college admissions process must understand this as well.

With affirmative action, schools and employers take race into consideration so that minority students are able to attend schools that would otherwise deny their admission.

Universities shape their admission policies to allow for more discrete racial bias by switching to what is often called “a holistic review.”

The holistic review of the applications allows universities to justify comparing students that are like apples and oranges, then choosing whichever they like more.

While it is often argued that caucasian applicants are negatively affected by affirmative action, representation of caucasian applicants after landmark Supreme Court cases, such as the University of California v. Bakke, suffers negligible effects. Instead, Asian applicants’ standards are dramatically increased while other minority standards are dramatically decreased.

These “mismatched” students are not only unprepared for their top-tier Ivy League schools, but they are also setting off a chain reaction of lowered standards.

The better the school is, the larger the difference in the students who get in through affirmative action.

This is worrisome when studies show, for black students, SAT scores are a sig-

nificantly more accurate way of predicting college GPA, which could lead to employment opportunity issues down the road.

It is gross negligence of basic human understanding for universities to admit students with dramatically lower qualifications, who they know will not do as well.

The number of students accepted under affirmative action is equal to the number of more-qualified students rejected. This is true because most universities calculate the number of students they will admit based on the number of students who decided to matriculate out of the prior year’s applicants.

Affirmative action by its definition implies exceptions based on race to make up for past wrongs. To move forward and eliminate prejudices, allowing students held to lower-standards into higher institutions should not even be considered, especially because surrounding individuals with minorities who are less qualified perpetuates such prejudices. Racial exceptions in admissions through affirmative action are like saying, “Sorry we persecuted you.”

True justice can only be served by bringing up the lower class and ending prejudices. To help race equality, legislature should focus on helping the impoverished that are still affected by past and present inopportunity, not by allowing minority students an exception for diversity’s sake.

The search for a solution to racial, social, and economic equality should not begin at the college level.

Real affirmative action would be implementing help to primary schools in lowincome areas and enabling a better educational foundation by reinforcing a culture of learning that will promote learning even out of school and allow prejudices to die with the generation that sustained them.

Minorities suffer from disadvantages

affirmative action

Kishan Patel Online Chief

Patriot Debate

college Illustration by Yena Kim

Patriot Answers

Bewildered in my first week of kindergarten, I raise my hand attempting to tell my teacher that I need to use the restroom. She can’t comprehend my jumbled English and Gujarati, an Indian dialect. I feel ashamed and relieve myself in my pants. I have one of the most embarrassing moments in my life because I didn’t know the word bathroom.

Because my parents are immigrants, I didn’t learn English until my first years of school. Like many other first-generation students, my parents struggled with English, so it was up to me to teach myself the language.

We never spoke English at home. Twelve years later, English is still never spoken at my house.

Surely, every American agrees that all legal residents deserve equal opportunity to live the American Dream.

By that logic, affirmative action simply makes sense.

According to The Leadership Conference, President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to compete with all the others, and still just believe that you have been completely fair.”

The chains which Johnson referred to are still hobbling minorities today. Children of immigrants battle adversity by experiencing two cultures simultaneously.

Children have parents who struggle with English daily. They have parents that cannot help them with school, even the smallest assignments. They have to be the ones helping their parents instead.

Being put in the situation where you have to write your first essay in second grade and, instead of asking your parents to edit your essay, they ask you to read

a portion of a business letter to them is unparalleled.

Minorities who experience this deserve and earn having special recognition when applying to colleges and jobs.

Affirmative action extends to more than just minority immigrants, it includes women as well. It gives these students opportunities with colleges and future employers. It allows for their unspoken struggles to be taken into real consideration, struggles that affect minority children every day.

Sure, affirmative action has changed since 1965, but as with every other law, it has adapted sufficiently to meet the needs of the American people.

Affirmative action still functions similarly to how it did in 1965 in its original mission of ending racism.

America has grown and become more diverse, but racism is still an issue.

Unfortunately, it will be an issue for years to come.

Whether it is the Baltimore riots or stereotyping Muslims as terrorists, racism is still alive today.

Objectively it is true that there is still stereotyping and racism occurring that seems ignored. One example is Riley Cooper using racial slurs towards his Philadelphia Eagles teammates and receiving no punishment.

Acts of racism and ignorance of the adversity minorities face leads directly to the rash judgement of affirmative action as “reverse discrimination.”

Take a walk in a minority’s shoes, remove yourself from the comfort of your prototypical American household with educated parents who have mastered English, and tell me it’s not a whole different world. The day you can successfully live a minority’s life with relative ease will be the day affirmative action will no longer be needed in the greatest nation in the world. Until then, keep your ignorance to yourself.

Is affirmative action helpful to society or unfair to students?

Rodney Johnson

Tanner Tipton

Stevie Lutche

Giana Liberatore

Freshman

Sophomore

Junior

Senior

Faculty

“I think it is fair because a lot of people have other obstacles and it can help even it out.”

“I think it’s fair because everyone should have an equal opportunity to go to school and live up to their potential.”

“No, it’s not fair because people want racial equality without affirmative action. Acceptance should be based on academics.”

“It’s fair because everyone deserves a chance at college.”

“I think it’s fair because it helps promote diversity as well as giving different groups of individuals opportunity.”

Anya McSorley

12 PERSPECTIVES

March 2016

Bolton’s Bias Will Bolton

Donald Trump’s tough facade If I had a dollar for every time I heard “I like Trump because he’s brash, bold, tough, strong, etc.,” I’d have almost as much as he has invested in failed ventures.

There is undoubtedly a tough guy persona around Trump, but as Last Week Tonight host John Oliver so eloquently questioned in his fantastic segment on Trump, is he really all that tough?

That, of course, begs the question of what toughness is? To answer that, I will turn to the wisdom of varsity football head coach Keith Rawlings. In locker rooms, on the practice field, at games, and almost everywhere else, Rawlings demands toughness from his players. We are to be physically, mentally, and most importantly, emotionally tough.

Surprisingly, that doesn’t mean what most people would guess.

Rawlings doesn’t want players who are tough enough to be in fights, he wants players who are tough enough not to be. He wants players who have enough mental composure and toughness to stand there and get hit, cussed at, and spit on without doing anything to retaliate.

That’s toughness worth admiring, and Trump’s lack of it is exactly the reason Donald Trump is such an undignified disgrace. Just look at society: the people we expect tantrums from are children, not adults. By the time people have matured to adulthood, they are supposed to be tough enough to keep their composure when they are upset or angry. When you hate someone, the easiest thing to do is call them fat, dumb losers, just as Donald Trump does time and time again.

His most eloquent comments include: “Rosie’s a loser. A real loser. I look forward to taking lots of money from my nice fat little Rosie” and “Dummy Bill Maher did an advertisement for the failing New York Times where the picture of him is very sad-he looks pathetic, bloated & gone!”

All of the people who are so enthralled with Trump are missing the fact that they themselves probably think, and possibly say, exactly the same things when angry.

Losing control of your emotions is as easy as finding things to criticize Trump for. He’s not some macho strongman who is here to put politicians in their place. He’s just an angry billionaire who is so rich that he can treat people like dirt and still be surrounded by admirers.

Patriot File Photo

Seniors Cara Wolfarth, Kristen Isoldi, Kishan Patel, Jessica Fuchsluger, and Matthew Becker (left to right) bond over a tower-building challenge at retreat.

Cliques must be combated through better class unity

As a community that prides itself on being a family, we must be committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive social atmosphere that welcomes all in the school. That being said, in order to create a family, both on the individual class scale as well as the school-wide scale, we have to make a change to combat the formation of cliques the first day.

“From the first day of freshman year, your friend groups were decided, and it hasn’t changed, which is crazy,” junior Beth Sapitowicz said. Sapitowicz admits that she too would be friends with people from her middle school if they all went to the same high school, but she believes that it has created divisions.

This year, freshman retreat took place in the summer and allowed for four groups of incoming freshmen to meet new people and interact with their classmates.

This is a good approach to eliminating the fear of coming in as a freshman and knowing nobody, but the problem was that students were allowed to sign up for the day of their choice. This allowed students from the same middle school to sign up the same

The Patriot Volume 51, Issue 4, March 2016

Print Chief Claire Grunewald Online Chief Kishan Patel Social Media Manager Alex Rasmussen News Editors Kelly Foulk Grace Mottley

day as their friends. These groups new friendships to be made and set up factions. cliques to be diversified.

Students left out of these facStudents also have to resolve tions proceed to form cliques of this issue. The solution on an intheir own. International students dividual student basis is simple: are a prime example of separa- mirror the High School Musical tion at JC. These students stick football players and branch out together in a similar environment. from what you are used to.

Another clique.

In order to allow for this to ocTo break cur, teachers and down this cul- Creating close coaches need to be tural and lan- friendships is not more understandguage barrier, ing of time committhere needs to a bad thing, but ments. A lacrosse be more cultural when groups of player can’t particiappreciation pate in Chemathon and understand- friends turn into or Academic Team ing. One solu- cliques, it hurts if his coach requires tion is a cultural them to be out on exposure fair everyone. the field by 2:55 during one of p.m. rather than at the community blocks. Volun- 3:30 p.m. when sports practices teers could run stations in sepa- are supposed to start. rate classrooms with food, music, Fewer time restrictions for acvideos, and other things that rep- tivities would allow for more soresent the culture, and advisories cial crossover, and the great bycould walk around together and product of social crossover, other visit different stations. than a successful production, is This pattern does not have to that it is a much more accurate be the rule, however. Last year, preparation for the “real world.” several football players particiThe next step of the real world pated in the fall theater produc- is college. In college and beyond, tion of “High School Musical.” people are surrounded with diCrossovers such as this allow versity. Once students leave high

Community Editors Azanae Barrow Pia Scotto Entertainment Editors Adriana Guidi Nick Miller In-Focus Editors Caroline Cooney Lilly Stannard Katie Sullivan

Perspectives Editor Will Bolton

Artists Yena Kim Cara Wolfarth

Sports Editors Mike Moxley Grant Sharretts

Multimedia Editors Kevin Blandeburgo Katherine Grimm Elizabeth Harmison Mitch Hopkins

Copy Editors Joe Kyburz Erin McCloskey Daniel Robinson

Moderators Mark Ionescu Nick Attanasio

school, their social environment may change completely.

To create the social environment JC already has advisories.

Advisories are a great way of helping to disband cliques because they cross every social boundary. More extended advisory blocks would allow for groups of advisories to interact and play Kan Jam, basketball, or maybe just hang out with some food.

Senior year has more opportunities for class bonding than any other, which is sort of ironic. Senior Unity Day, Senior Field Day, Senior Retreat, and the Variety Show all create a strong bond between the seniors. Although this is great, JC should not wait until months before graduation to actively promote class unity.

The burden does not lay solely on the faculty and staff. Diversifying cliques requires students to take the initiative to create opportunities. Students must take a chance and sit with new kids during lunch. Students must take a chance and invite an outlier to a party. Students must lead the charge in eradicating cliques, including one another, and creating a welcoming social atmosphere.

The John Carroll School 703 Churchville Road Bel Air, MD 21014 The Patriot is a publication of The John Carroll School.

The views and opinions expressed in The Patriot are not necessarily the views of the Board of Trustees or the Administration of The John Carroll School.

A copy of each print issue is distributed to each of the 700 students and 110 faculty and staff members. Some of the remainder are sent out to exchanging schools with a return address. The remaining copies are shared

in the Main Office, Library, Admissions Office, Office of Institutional Advancement, given out when needed, or archived. For more information, please visit jcpatriot.com/about.

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The editorial staff invites and greatly appreciates comments from readers on any issue.

Please email comments or letters to editor@jcpatriot. com or submit them through our website: www.jcpatriot. com.

PERSPECTIVES 13

March 2016

Cyber days bury students

Coup de Grace Grace Mottley

Throughout winter, multiple cyber days have forced students to teach themselves complex subject matter Lilly Stannard In-Depth Editor The cistron DNA transcribes into a variety of RNA intermediates. The last version is used as a template in synthesis of a polypeptide chain. A proprotein is an inactive protein containing one or more inhibitory peptides that can be activated when the inhibitory sequence is removed by proteolysis during posttranslational modification.

Alright, got it? I’m sure after reading that a few times you’re an expert and ready for an AP level test, right?

Obviously, I was not, which resulted in the astounding 56 percent I received on my protein synthesis AP Biology test. I can honestly say that the 56 was the

Illustration by Claire Grunewald

single lowest grade I have received in either Honors Biology or AP Biology, and what is to blame for this unfortunate event?

Cyber days.

Tuition is around $16,000 per year, which means I shouldn’t be left to homeschool myself. The reason my family pays these expenses is so I do not have to teach myself. Subjects like AP Biology, AP Calculus BC, and AP Chemistry are not easy to understand by simply reading about them or watching random internet videos from user “mrfox218.”

If I wanted to fail an AP test, I would get an AP course guide book and try to teach myself from it, which is essentially what a cyber day is.

I don’t blame my AP teachers for my failures. I understand that an AP course includes of a

Report Card:

lot of material which needs to be covered by the end of the year.

Teachers can’t omit material for the seemingly endless snowstorms or their students won’t do well on the AP test.

However, having students teach themselves incredibly hard subjects is just as bad, if not worse than omitting lessons in the end. Speaking for myself, I can say that trying to teach myself protein synthesis and bacterial transformation is almost as bad as never learning it at all, and it has an eerily similar effect on my grade.

Having a few extra days tacked onto the end of the year is a much better option than cyber days.

My grades have proven that I am not proficient in teaching myself complicated subjects and need a teacher to bring me through

it step by step and be available for any questions I might have, which is what my parents pay for.

Yes, the AP test dates will remain on the same dates so the few extra days at the end of the school year may not matter when it comes to these tests. What will matter, though, is the fact that I will actually learn and understand these concepts which will not only add to my intelligence as a whole, which is the goal of education, but also help my grade in the class.

Four weeks after the atrocious grade situation and a few 100 percent grades later, I am still failing AP Biology because of one cyber day assignment.

All I can do now is hope that the terrible winter is over and that there will be no more cyber days, so I have a chance of passing.

The Patriot turns the tables by grading the school on today’s issues

By In-Focus Editor Lilly Stannard

School spirit disappoints The Baltimore Catholic League Championship basketball game had little turnout even though seniors were offered a bus straight from the senior trip to the Holocaust Memorial Museum to the game. This disappointing turnout probably had a lot to do with the lack of communication from the school (as usual).

The students were told that tickets to the basketball game were $10, when they were actually $5 for students. Our poor high school student pockets would’ve been completely depleted from that extra five bucks, which may have contributed to the lack of student attendance. At least JC won the game, so that’s a plus.

Holocaust day stuns students The Holocaust Memorial Museum was a profound experience and one that makes me so thankful and proud of the school that I go to. Visiting the museum and meeting survivors added an additional perspective to an important part of history that I will never forget.

The Holocaust museum allowed me to see the Holocaust in a new way. The numbers became more real, and much more terrifying.

We are beyond lucky to be the last generation to be able to spend time with survivors and hear first-hand stories while they’re still around. This experience will be one that will stick with me for the rest of my life.

Senior Retreat unifies class On retreat, we received interesting perspectives from teachers and students on useful knowledge that will benefit us in the future.

The unstructured time built into the schedule helped to make transition into the next topic a lot easier, but this time was rarely used for what it was intended for. When this time was present, people flocked to their herd like scared animals instead of interacting with new people.

The Campus Ministers were more than kind and adjusted the schedule on the spot to give students what they wanted. Students should have been more open as well, but unfortunately that didn’t happen enough.

Cara’s Cartoons: Presidential Daycare

Cartoon by Cara Wolfarth

Barbie serves as role model

Barbie’s appearance has always overshadowed her message, but that is about to change.

Mattel, the company that owns Barbie, has come out with new plus-sized, tall, and petite versions of the Barbie doll in order to end the debate on Barbie’s effect on girls’ body images, according to TIME Magazine. Barbie now comes in an array of races and sizes, but that won’t change the self-esteem issue plaguing girls.

Barbie’s original proportions are unrealistic, but they were created so little girls could easily take Barbie’s clothes on and off.

She was never meant to be considered “the perfect figure.”

Barbie was never meant to be a body image standard by which women and girls judge themselves. Blaming young girls’ negative body images on a piece of plastic is ridiculous.

It’s true that the majority of girls have body image issues. By middle school, 40 to 70 percent of girls are dissatisfied with their bodies, according to the New York City Mayor’s Office. However, these body images stem more from a culture where you either have to look like Nicole Richie or Kim Kardashian to be seen as attractive, and anything in-between is not acceptable.

We are constantly bombarded with advertisements for weight loss programs, zero calorie drinks, and makeup that promises to make women look perfect.

There is constant reinforcement of the idea that you need to be thin to be acceptable. Our society values thin women above all, and the stick figure models plastered all over our televisions only emphasizes this idea.

Barbie is a role model for girls, and she gives them confidence to be whoever they want to be. She is a princess who saves her prince.

She’s a doctor, a veterinarian, a teacher, and much more. In her books and movies, she teaches girls even more life lessons. Every Barbie movie has a moral, and she illustrates the importance of kindness, forgiveness, and being grateful for what you have.

Focusing solely on Barbie’s body defeats the purpose of Barbie. If we pay more attention to Barbie’s looks than the things she teaches, then we’re telling girls that how they look is more important than their character.

Barbie is the only doll that shows girls they can follow any dream they have. It’s time for us to focus on the lessons Barbie teaches girls, and not her body.

14 SPORTS

Kicking into

March 2016

HIGH GEAR

Men’s lacrosse and women’s track and field prepare for championship runs

Stats

Last year’s record: 13-8

Men’s Lacrosse

Photo by Grant Sharretts

Sophomore midfielder Jake Kreiger carries the ball down the field during practice on March 8. Kreiger was one of four freshmen to make the varsity team last year.

Elizabeth Harmison Multimedia Editor Coming off of a championship-winning season, the men’s lacrosse team looks to pick up right where they left off.

Second-year varsity lacrosse head coach Brian King is confident that his team will be as successful this season as they were last season.

“We have a good group of kids who are willing to work hard and play the best in the country,”

King said.

To get them ready for the season, King has been working with the team since early September in preseason workouts with Arena Club trainers. He has also encouraged his players to work out on their own.

The team finished last season’s championship with an overall record of 13-7.

According to returning varsity attack and sophomore Jude Brown, “He’s testing us to our limits and pushing us in practice

in preparation for the upcoming season.”

Since coming to JC, King has put an emphasis on recruiting players like junior defenseman Shaun Vines. Vines transferred after attending Perryville High School the last two years.

“We, as a team, need to work on the chemistry because we have a good amount of new guys and transfers,” Vines said, “but besides that, all in all, we have the talent. We just need to execute and play like we know we can.”

Key returners: Seniors Michael Imbierowicz, Adam Mrowiec, Jake Bowling, and junior Paul Poholsky New additions: Juniors Joe Rayman, Shaun Vines, and sophomore Kieron Leonard Toughest Opponents: Hill Academy, Ontario, Canada; Thomas Worthington, Ohio; and Landon, Washington D.C.

Stats Last year’s placing: Sixth in conference championships Key returners: Seniors Holly Driver, Faith Ensor, Kristen Isoldi, and junior Stephanie Imbierowicz Top Events: 100 and 300 meter hurdles, 4x200 and 4x400 meter relays, high jump Toughest Opponent: Maryvale Preparatory School

Women’s Track and Field

Photo by Grant Sharretts

Seniors Faith Ensor and Holly Driver sprint ahead inside their lanes during practice. Driver and Ensor are returning seniors and leaders on the women’s track team.

Daniel Robinson Copy Editor IAAM champions seniors Holly Driver and Kristen Isoldi return for their final year, hoping to reclaim their championship and improve the team.

“We have a solid core of returning veterans in distance, hurdles, and vertical jumping events,” varsity women’s track and field head coach Michael Monaghan said.

Runners are excited for the coaches this year, too. “[Mr. Al Barrow] is coaching again this year, and I’m looking forward to learning more new techniques for sprinting and hurdling from him,” junior Stephanie Imbierowicz said.

“Being able to cover a majority of the events on the track and field will be a huge boost for us this year,” Monaghan said.

Some key events for the team

this year include the 100 and 300 meter hurdles and the 4x200 and 4x400 meter relays.

Isoldi and Driver are both hurdlers and looking forward for another successful season.

“Our goal for this year is to place in championships,” Driver said. “I think we have a good enough team to do that. On paper right now, things look great, hopefully we look that good on the track.”

Golf tees up for new season Mitchell Hopkins Media Editor After losing to Severn in the semi-finals last season, the golf team is preparing for the start of this season.

Senior captain Taylor Mezzatesta had hoped for more last season but isn’t letting that get to him.

“I was definitely disappointed because we could have beaten [Severn], but we took a lot of positives away from last season and are looking forward to this season,” Mezzatesta said.

Varsity golf head coach Anthony Del Puppo is also looking forward to the season.

“We’d like to make it to the playoffs again, but like every team, we want to make it to the championship,” Del Puppo said.

Last season, the Patriots ended with a record of 5-5 and finished third in the conference.

“There are some good freshmen and sophomores, but also good juniors and seniors. The future doesn’t look too bad,” Del Puppo said.

Women’s lacrosse comes together

After losing by just one point to McDonough, the number one team in the nation, the women’s lacrosse team has been preparing to take on the rest of their IAAM conference opponents.

According to head coach Abby Swift, the team has 12 varsity returners from last year, and ten of them are seniors.

According to Swift, the IAAM is one of the best conferences for women’s lacrosse in the country. Senior varsity member Alice Cumpston is ready for the upcoming season.

“It’ll definitely be difficult, but we will put up a fight,” Cumpston said.

This year, the team’s motto is “Together We Are.” According to Swift, “This is our motto because together you really can do anything when you work as a team.”

Swift is hopeful for the season but doesn’t want to look too far ahead.

“We’ll take it one day at a time.

We have to have everyone playing well to succeed this season. I try not to look too far ahead because we can always get better,” Swift said.

SPORTS 15

March 2016

Razz Reports Alex Rasmussen

40-yard dash overvalued by scouts The 40-yard dash is simply overrated.

The NFL Scouting Combine, an event where the top college prospects gather to compete in drills in front of pro scouts, began Feb. 23. With a lot on the line for these prospects, there is one drill that always draws attention.

That is the 40-yard dash.

This drill is exactly what it sounds like. A player will lean down in a sprinter’s stance, and whenever they’re ready, they will “dash” 40 yards.

Now essentially the drill sounds like a good way to compare the top prospects’ speeds and to an extent it is. However, this drill is more about technique than pure speed.

Speaking from experience, the 40-yard dash can get you crossed off a lot of scouts’ lists based on your position. In my case, being a wide receiver, the range for this position at the NFL and college level is from a 4.4 to a 4.6.

Now does the fact that I run .04 seconds slower than the benchmark range make me slow? According to scouts, it does.

The 40-yard dash is similar to the SAT. Both are used to test athletes or students on an equal playing field, and a player’s on-field abilities are similar to a student’s GPA. If an athlete has amazing on-field ability, but runs a “slow” 40-yard dash, does that make him a bad candidate for an NFL team?

Similar to the fact that if a student has a 4.0 GPA, but scores an 1100 on the SAT, does that make a student “dumb”?

Jerry Rice, hands down the greatest wide receiver of all time, was not in the benchmark range for an NFL receiver coming out of college. Rice ran a 4.71-second 40, which is well out of the prototypical range.

In an interview conducted on the 49er’s official website, Rice commented on the 40-yard dash.

“The 40 is overrated,” he said.

“I never ran a good 40, but they couldn’t catch me,” Rice said.

He never ran what would be considered a fast time, but that didn’t affect his play style. Rice finished his career with 22,895 yards. Terrell Owens is the next best receiving leader with 15, 934 who ran a 4.45.

The 40-yard dash can make or break a prospect. If he isn’t in his position-specific range, he will be scratched off or have to prove that he is more than what scouts think.

Football players race into new season Grant Sharretts and Kishan Patel Sports Editor, Online Chief Drops of sweat fall from his head, his legs ache, and his heart pumps fast as he practices a 400-meter race. He bursts off the line, handing the baton off to the next leg, who just happens to be another teammate he had on the football team. Junior Darius Baugh completes his first track practice and reminds himself as he walks up from the track to keep pushing hard for a football season six months from now.

“I want to become a more explosive athlete for my senior year of football,” Baugh said.

The men’s track team has seen a sudden increase of sprinters this spring. As a result of recruiting and encouragement of their football coaches, the track team has seen an increase in football players this year.

Men’s varsity track and field head coach Robert Torres believes that the new football players will make an immediate impact on the team. “We definitely went from a decent team to a really good team almost instantly,” Torres said.

According to Torres, the new runners are expected to participate in several events, including

Photo by Kishan Patel

There has been a recent increase in football players on the men’s track and field team. Varsity men’s track and field coach Robert Torres believes the new football players will have an immediate impact on the team’s success. sprinting, hurdles, and shot put.

The football players came together in unison to run track as a means to train and create better chemistry. “My friends influenced me because if they do it, I’ll be more comfortable running,” Baugh said. “I feel like we can all get better together as a [football] team, so it carries over into the season.”

Varsity football head coach Keith Rawlings believes that football players running track is beneficial to both teams. “I think

it’s great. They all need to be fast.

That’s what colleges want so

“I feel like we can all get better together as a [football] team, so it carries over into the season.”

Junior defensive back Darius Baugh

track sure helps,” Rawlings said.

Junior wide receiver and sprinter Avery Jones has noticed

a considerable difference in track practices compared to his previous school, Harford Tech. “They take practice more seriously here than Harford Tech,” Jones said.

Though football players have run track in the past, this year the number of players has increased from just a few here and there to 13 players choosing to run.

“I didn’t see the need to do track last year, but this year I want to contribute to the team, while continuing to get fast in the process,” Baugh said.

Athlete Spotlight Drew Isennock & Kevin Smith Sport: Tennis Grade: Senior Event: Starting doubles team

Achievements: Both recieved the triple-threat award last year

“We have a mental connection while on the court. I know where he is at at all times without even having to look for him.”

Men’s varsity tennis doubles player Drew Isennock

Photo by Mitchell Hopkins

Senior duo Drew Isennock and Kevin Smith warm up with slow volleys.

Isennock and Smith started playing as a doubles pair last season.

“They bring athleticism, a positive attitude, and a genuine willingness to learn.”

Men’s varsity tennis head coach Rodney Johnson

16 SPORTS

March 2016

Saddle

UP

After taking over the program, Claddagh Manor has brought the equestrian team to the next level

Junior Selina Petronelli practices a jump at her farm during practice. Petronelli has been part of the team since her freshman year and placed eighth at nationals last year.

Grant Sharretts Sports Editor “I never would have expected this to be the biggest and most important part of my life,” junior Selina Petronelli said.

Petronelli has lived her whole life on an 110-acre horse farm named Claddagh Manor. Now, not only does Petronelli get to experience this life, but many of her classmates do as well.

Back in 2004, when Petronelli’s sister Lauren Moran, class of ’08, was a freshman, there was no equestrian team. “We started the team at John Carroll, and at that time, we just competed at local horse shows. It was more of a club sport,” varsity equestrian head coach Denise Petronelli said.

After Moran left, however, the team was taken over by another farm. According to Denise, that farm unfortunately didn’t encourage their team members to ride as

much as team members do now. had when Selina started,” Denise “When we left in 2008, there said.

Fellow rider sophomore Haley was a strong number of riders, and when we inherited the team Ferguson loves coming to the back to our farm, there were only farm and riding each day. “I love two on the team. This was due to practice, the setting, and all the the fact that the other farm didn’t people on the team,” Ferguson make the kids ride every day, like said.

The intention behind the sport we do here,” Denise said.

The sport is governed nation- is to gave students who want to ride the opporally by the Interscholastic Eques- “I first looked at John tunity to do so without having trian Association to spend tens of (IEA), which all Carroll because they thousands of dolriders and coach- had an equestrian es have to join team, and after that, it lars on a horse.

“Some kids in order to participate in com- only made me love it are just handed a great horse, and petitions.

The more.” team competes Sophomore rider Haley Ferguson all you have to against Oldfields, do is just sit on St. Timothy’s, McDonough, and its back, and it does everything Garrison Forest. you want. The way we do it is the After Selina came to JC in positive to all of this. That rider is 2014, the team gained more peo- made to appreciate the animal for ple through the years. “We have a what it is,” Denise said. good group of 15 kids now, which At IEA competitions, all riders is much better than the two we have to draw for horses the morn-

Equestrian riders can compete in four levels during competitions: Open or Intermediate, which are considered varsity, or Novice or Beginner, which are considered JV.

ing of the competitions and ride with the horses they draw. According to Denise, what sets the riders apart is the ability to control horses that they have never ridden before.

Although equestrian is practically unknown, according to riders it’s arguably one of the most demanding sports that JC offers.

“What people don’t realize is that our season runs from September all the way until March, which is when our post-season starts, running all the way to April,” Denise said.

Now, equestrian is receiving interest from middle schoolers who want an opportunity to ride.

“I already have confirmation of five or six students coming to JC next year that will participate in equestrian, and at least three of them are coming strictly for the sport, because without that you must go to Baltimore County to ride,” Denise said.

“I first looked at John Carroll

Hack Class

Jump Class

Photo by Grant Sharretts

because they had an equestrian team,” Ferguson said. “After that, it only made me love it more.”

Eighth graders that intend to ride will start practicing and getting lessons at the farm in the summer. This is mandatory in order to prepare for the upcoming season that will ultimately start in September.

Selina plans to go to college with a scholarship for equestrian in the future. “I don’t want to go anywhere too far. I intend on coming back and helping my mom out with coaching the team,” Selina said.

Selina believes that growing up the way she did brought her and her family closer together, as they work each day with all their animals on the farm.

“This is my whole life, horse showing and training, and I’m grateful it gave me the opportunity to spend time with my family, because we become closer each day,” Selina said.

Riders can compete in two events. Hack class riders must make their horse walk, trot, and canter. Jump class includes a course in which riders lead their horses over jumps.