Volume 57, Issue 5

Walt Whitman High School

7100 Whittier Boulevard Bethesda, MD 20817

Thursday, April 4, 2019

Volume 57, Issue 5

International Night assembly showcases diverse talents

Clockwise from top left: senior Amir Khosrodad dances to ‘DNA’ by BTS, a K-pop song, at the International Night assembly March 15; a group of students perform a K-pop dance to ‘DDU-DU DDU-DU’ by BLACKPINK; senior João Otávio Griesinger plays guitar as part of a Brazilian band; students in Japanese jump rope, a crowd favorite, jump to the beat. International club members performed in front of parents, community members and students the night before the assembly at the annual International Night. Photos by LUKAS GATES

Staffing allocation decreased for next year

Breanna McDonald leads Minority Scholars Program

by ALEX ROBINSON For years, senior Breanna McDonald has seen herself as an athlete, a photographer and a high-achieving student. She led the track team to States this past season, where she placed fifth in the 800-meter dash, has been taking photos since she got her first camera in eighth grade and said she has always been a “knowledge-driven” person.

She never had trouble expressing these identities, but when it came to her identity as a black student, she found it difficult to speak out about her experiences. Since joining the county-wide Minority Scholars program last year and becoming president of the Whitman chapter of MSP this year, she said she has found her voice—and even started seeing herself as a leader.

At an MSP internship this past summer, McDonald met with black, Latino and Vietnamese students from across the county to discuss race relations within MCPS. In one exercise, students sat in a “judgmentfree” circle and answered questions about themselves. They started off with easy questions like “What’s your favorite color?” but the conversation quickly moved on to sharing difficult experiences and concerns about

the status of minority students within the county. In this supportive and understanding environment, McDonald found a sense of community that she had struggled to find at Whitman in the past.

“I’ve never become so close to that amount of people in such a short amount of time,” McDonald said. “They believed in me, and made me feel more comfortable and safe voicing my concerns and my past difficult experiences. Having that community of safety and love was just so amazing.”

Back at Whitman, McDonald is working to open up similar conversations. As president of the club, she speaks with school administrators and teachers a couple times a month about how to discuss race in a classroom setting and holds weekly meetings with other minority students to give them a platform to share their experiences, all in an effort to close the opportunity gap and reduce ignorance.

McDonald is currently working on a film project to show the experiences of minority students at Whitman. In the film, minority students share their experiences with racial prejudice at school and address how the Whitman community can work to fix those issues.

by KATIE HANSON and ALEX ROBINSON

Senior Breanna McDonald hopes to increase dialogue about race relations at Whitman. Photo by ISAAC DEMARCHI

She’s working with administrators to air the film and hopes it will prompt students to engage in more conversations about race.

“I want minority students to be able to say ‘this is what I’m going through and this is what needs to happen to change it and for me to feel safe at this school,’” McDonald said. “You can’t effectively continue to grow if you don’t listen to other people’s stories. In order for us to progress as a Whitman community, and for us to even call ourselves a community, we’re going to have to address racial issues head on.”

Continued on Page 12

Several teachers will be involuntarily transferred to other county schools next year and part-time teachers may have to drop a class as a result of the county’s annual staffing allocation, which decreased for the first time in several years, assistant principal Kristin Cody said. Every department, including ESOL and special education, cut one or more class periods, or in some cases entire positions.

The county Office of Human Resources and Development could not comment on requests to provide information about how staffing allocations are determined.

English resource teacher Linda Leslie said the allocations are based on a variety of factors. Next year’s incoming freshman class is projected to have fifty fewer students than the outgoing senior class, Cody said. Cody, who has worked at Whitman for four years, said this is the first time the staffing allocation has decreased during her time at Whitman.

The English department is losing one teacher, and another part-time teacher will be forced to drop a class period. In the math department, some class periods will be cut. On-level math classes, most of which have two or more teachers in the classroom, may lose a teacher. The science department will lose one part-time teacher and four class periods.

A combination of factors, includ-

ing the decreased staffing allocation and the creation of an ESOL program at Churchill, will reduce the size of Whitman’s ESOL program. The program is losing two full-time teachers, so all ESOL classes will be taught by one part-time teacher. ESOL students are separated into five levels but students with varying fluencies will be combined into four classes.

The reduction surprised ESOL resource teacher Sonja Maroni, especially because the department gained three classes last year. The 56-student program had 13 classes this year and will have four next year.

In addition to the reduction of nine classes, Maroni said she anticipates several shelter classes will be cut. Shelter classes are core classes for ESOL students, often taught by teachers outside the department who have experience with the subject and teaching second language English speakers.

ESOL students who live in the Churchill district are currently part of Whitman’s program. Next year, they will join Churchill’s program. Maroni anticipates that with fewer ESOL students and teachers, several of the shelter classes will be cut.

Maroni said the staff reduction is especially challenging for the ESOL program because many students need one-on-one support, and because the department aids international students, regardless of whether or not they’re enrolled in the program.

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Mom of Jojo Greenberg creates camp in daughter’s honor

Teamwork, strong coaching propel poms from Divsion III to Division I

7

The history of Whitman—as told through past Black & White headlines

April crossword puzzle

Continued on Page 3

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briefs

MD Senate overturns Hogan’s school start date executive order

by ZARA ALI The Maryland Senate overturned Governor Hogan’s executive order which required all Maryland public schools start after Labor Day weekend and end by June 25. The bill to overturn the order will now go to the Maryland House, where it’s expected to pass due to the Democratic majority supporting the repeal, Montgomery County Board of Education president Shebra Evans said.

The Senate voted largely along party lines (31-12) in favor of overturning the order. If the House votes to overturn it as well, Governor Hogan has agreed to put the decision on a 2020 referendum.

The original 2016 mandate was meant to support businesses in Ocean City. As a result of the mandate, businesses in Ocean City experienced a rise in tourism in the past two years. However, these benefits have come at the cost of control over the school calendar year; the mandate forced the county to add days and shorten breaks throughout the school year to compensate for the lost instructional days.

“We should have local control over the district to make those decisions, especially around the calendar,” Evans said.

“I’m very positive that we will have support to overturn the order.”

Number of after-school programs, counselors, reading specialists to increase

by BLAKE LAYMAN The Board of Education passed multiple amendments Feb. 12 to allocate funds toward more after-school programs, elementary school counselors and a specialist for students with reading challenges.

The Board allocated $159,000 for a new position that will help students with reading challenges and $50,000 to add more after-school programs in middle and high schools across the county. The money will be distributed to schools starting next year based on need.

The Board also added 53 new positions to reduce elementary class sizes and 44 for special education programs.

These staffing increases are largely due to an increase in the number of students.

“The school system has been growing by approximately 2,000 students for the last 10 years,” Board member Jeanette Dixon said. “The amendments added by the Board addressed things that we as a group felt needed more support.”

A large focus has been placed on ensuring that kids with learning disabilities and special needs receive more support.

The Board is also trying to make up for lost funding from prior budget cuts.

“Around 2009, we had a recession, and our budget was rebased,” Board Member Pat O’Neill said. “We lost money in spending, and we are still trying to catch up.”

County pushes for stricter lead limits in schools

by ZARA ALI A bill that would lower the lead limit for water in Montgomery County Public Schools to five parts per billion is expected to pass in the County Council with full support after member Tom Hucker advanced the bill Feb. 5.

The bill would make the standards equivalent to federal standards for bottled water. Currently, the county follows the guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency, which maintain a 15 ppb maximum in all public school drinking fixtures.

Last year, the county conducted a review that found that 86 of the 206 county schools tested had lead levels above 15 ppb. County-wide repairs were made at these schools last summer to meet the EPA regulation.

These repairs have been made in an effort to decrease lead exposure as much as possible in schools.

As lead exposure increases, the severity of its effects increase. Blood lead concentrations as low as five micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, once thought to be a “safe level,” are associated with adolescent learning disabilities and behavioural issues, according to the World Health Organization.

Similar to the county bill, Maryland Sen. Cory McCray also introduced a bill that would impose the five ppb standard in occupied buildings in local school districts statewide.

Although the cost of replacing school infrastructure in schools and reviewing lead levels in schools again may slow down the progress of the bill, the bill has strong support among the Council, Friedson said.

“There is no safe amount of lead for children,” Friedson said. “No student in the county should be going to school with too much lead in their drinking water because of the obvious health implications and the risks that it creates for kids.”

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

News

Camp Jojo to honor former student Mother of Jojo Greenberg creates camp for teens affected by suicide

by KATIE HANSON Content warning: This article contains language that pertains to suicide.

Camp Jojo, an outdoor summer camp designed to support teens affected by suicide, will be held this July in honor of former student Jojo Greenberg. Her mother, Sonya Spielberg, and her former camp director, Joel Van Egbert, organized the camp, in hopes of connecting a unique community of teens and help them heal.

The camp will be held at the Cal-Wood Education Center, a 1,200 acre campground outside of Boulder, Colorado. Spielberg said the camp will center on outdoor activities, something Jojo loved.

“Jojo’s most healing place was nature. She just loved it,” Spielberg said. “Being away from social media will connect these kids in a positive way, so they’ll have each other. After the camp, they’ll have a group to bond with.”

Last summer, Spielberg, with the help of several friends including Van Egbert, planned a memorial hike in honor of Jojo on a mountain her daughter used to hike with their family and as a camper at Keystone Science School, a sleepaway camp she attended from ages seven to 12. At Keystone, Jojo was known for her joyful spirit, and she often comforted other campers who were homesick, Spielberg said.

Spielberg invited former campers, counselors and the camp director, Van Egbert, on the hike. At the top of the mountain, the group threw colored chalk in the air as a celebration of life. They also shared stories about Jojo and Van Egbert shared his idea to form Camp Jojo to help teens who have lost loved ones to suicide.

“I just had this electric feeling when he said it,” Spielberg said. “I had been searching for a way to put all the sorrow and grief into something positive, and I just knew when he said it that this was it.”

Van Egbert said he came up with the idea on the hike when he reflected on Jojo as a camper. He said she was “the brightest star.”

“It was on the hike where I was like something has to be done. I can’t just stand by and let this continue to happen without at least feeling like at the end of the day, I did something,” Van Egbert said. “Camp is the only tool that I have to hopefully make change for good in the world, so that’s what we’re going to try to do.”

The two co-founders began planning the camp this January. Van Egbert has helped establish other new camps, but this is the first camp he’s created from the ground up.

The camp is focused on transforming grief into joy through a supportive community.

“The hope is that we can create a real community. If these kids that are part of the program do need to reach out, they have 19 other awesome people that they can reach out to,” Van Egbert said. “If they’re with a friend that’s not even part of the camp, hopefully these kids will leave Camp Jojo feeling like they have tools to support and comfort and reach out to the people around them.”

The partners created a GoFundMe in February to raise money for the camp with the hope that a group of around 20 campers aged 13 to 16 will attend for free. The pair set a fundraising goal of $20,000.

Spielberg sent the link to juniors Justin Chen, Leo Ritter and Chris Bartholomew, who were friends of Jojo’s. In the 24 hours after they shared it on social media, the fundraiser raised an additional $1,500, most of which came from teenagers and their family members.

The campaign now has over $9,000.

Spielberg said she has consistently felt an “outpouring of love and support” from the Whitman community.

“It made mine and so many other

(Top) Campers and staff from Jojo’s childhood camp throw colored chalk on the summit of Mount Royal, which is near the site of Camp Jojo, as part of a 2018 memorial hike. (Bottom) Camp Jojo’s logo. Photos courtesy SONYA SPIELBERG

people’s hearts full,” Spielberg said.

“People remember her and they will remember her, and they want to do something, not just for her, but for everyone who’s suffering.”

The camp includes some of Jojo’s favorite activities: painting, white water rafting, hiking, yoga, meditation and lots of messy glitter craft projects. Campers will also silently summit a mountain.

At the peak, they will share who they dedicated their hike to and throw colored chalk in the air, similarly to the hike last year. Spielberg and Van Egbert want the camp to be cathartic for everyone involved.

Van Egbert plans to incorporate intentional programming—a method to incorporate larger life lessons within simple activities—in the camp, he said.

“A lot of camps don’t think about how a game of kickball can teach a life lesson, and that’s how we think of everything that we do,” Van Egbert said.

“Jojo just really bought into that. She was always looking for deeper or higher meaning to the different things that we did at camp. That’s part of what we connected with. I think everyone wants someone to understand their work, and Jojo just always got it.”

Although the camp isn’t focused on mental health, the co-founders plan to have mental health counselors and therapists on-site. Other counselors are volunteers; many are Spielberg’s relatives. Spielberg said her four sisters—two of whom are a doctor and grief counselor—all plan on volunteering. Each camper will be paired with a volunteer counselor, who will act as a mentor. Van Egbert hopes this pairing will give both the mentors and the campers a chance to help each other cope and bond.

Junior Kate Snedeker helped Spielberg spread the word about the camp and GoFundMe earlier this year and plans to host a bake sale this month to continue fundraising.

Snedeker and Spielberg often send each other texts of places and events that remind them of Jojo, she said: a picturesque sunset, a hummingbird, a brand with the name Jojo in the store’s sign.

In November, Snedeker organized a team in honor of Jojo for the Out of the Darkness Walk, which raises awareness for suicide prevention. She wants to attend the camp for the same reasons she created a Team Jojo for the walk: to

honor her friend and help other people who are dealing with grief, Snedeker said.

“I read on the website we want to share Jojo’s favorite things: joy, laughter, smiles and hugs. She was one of the happiest, most passionate people I knew,” Snedeker said. “It made it even more difficult, but it also makes it even better in this sense that we get to live her happy life. I try to live my life to the fullest in the way that she would.”

Now, Spielberg and Van Egbert are in the process of obtaining their 501c3 so the camp can officially be labeled a non-profit. Several camp companies have reached out to them about starting their own branches of Camp Jojo in subsequent summers. Although organizing the camp with a full-time job has been difficult, Spielberg said she finally feels like she’s “on the right path.”

“This is how we’re going to help.

It’s a really good way to memorialize her as well because I know she’ll be there,” Spielberg said. “She’s always there in the mountains in Colorado. I know she’ll be looking down on us and smiling.”

Scan this QR code on Snapchat to donate to the GoFundMe

If you’re interested in getting involved with Camp Jojo as a camper or volunteer, or starting another branch of Camp Jojo, reach out to Joel Van Egbert (joel@calwood.org) or Sonya Spielberg (sonyaspiel19@gmail.com). Volunteers must be 20 or older, and campers must be ages 13 to 16.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

News

Class sizes expected to grow after new staff transfers “Staffing” Continued from Page 1 “We have a lot of kids who struggle. It’s hard to be a teenager under the best of circumstances; when your life is uprooted, it can be very exciting and wonderful, but it’s also filled with may challenges,” Maroni said. “Our staff has done an extraordinary job in maintaining a high level of academic rigor in the classes but also providing a real safe haven, socially and emotionally, for kids.”

Cody, principal Robby Dodd and social studies resource teacher Suzanne Johnson couldn’t disclose the number of positions being cut from other departments. The special education and foreign language resource teachers weren’t available for comment. Dodd said he will make the total reduction in staffing public in May once staff members who are being involuntarily transferred have secured positions at other schools.

Part-time teachers are at the greatest risk of losing class periods because their seniority isn’t taken into account. Fulltime teachers—those who teach five class periods—with less seniority are at the greatest risk of being involuntarily transferred. MCPS guarantees these teachers a position within the county. Seniority is determined by how long teachers have worked in the county, not how long they’ve worked at Whitman, Cody said.

In early March, Cody worked alongside each resource teacher in each department to determine which teachers had to be involuntarily transferred and which teachers would lose class periods. Cody and the resource teachers didn’t have any

jurisdiction in deciding which teachers stayed. Instead, Cody said, administrators reviewed how many students signed up for each course for the upcoming school year. They adjusted the type and number of courses each department will offer, and created staff allocations accordingly.

For both Leslie and math resource teacher Jim Kuhn, the decreased staff allocations come at a confusing time. The school’s $24.5 million addition is being constructed in response to overcrowding and projected long-term growth. The addition will add 75,000 square feet and increase the school’s capacity by 400 students. Next year’s student population is projected to be 2094 students, only 4 students greater than the current 2090, according to a February report released by RRMM Lukmire Architects, the construction company for the addition.

The math department won’t have to transfer any teachers because Susan Wildstrom, who teaches multi-variable calculus, will retire at the end of this year. Kuhn said reducing the number of teachers will increase class sizes and decrease time for valuable individual instruction.

Additionally, the Bridge to Algebra II class and the twoyear Algebra II program will be cut for reasons unrelated to staffing allocations. The classes provide routes for students to graduate who otherwise wouldn’t, Kuhn said.

“We won’t be able to offer supplemental learning programs, so students without a solid math background—maybe students coming from outside Montgomery County who have gaps in their learning—we won’t be able to fill in those gaps,” Kuhn said. “People are very concerned about it because we

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like to provide avenues for students to graduate, and those avenues are dwindling. Systematically, Montgomery County is putting those at risk at greater risk.”

In the science department, enrollment in honors and onlevel classes will likely grow to 32 to 33 students per class, science resource teacher Don De Member said, so it will be difficult for students in honors classes to switch to alreadyfull on-level classes.

Dodd said informing the resource teachers about the reduced staff allocations was difficult, and he hopes to aid teachers in their transfer process.

“I was disappointed with the cuts,” Dodd said. “I’ve been through this before, and it can be a hard process. But the most important aspect is making sure the people that are affected—since this is a people issue—are supported as much as possible.”

Even though next year’s student population will decrease by fifty students, Cody said around fifty new students will likely register over the summer.

If Whitman receives an influx of 50 students or more over the summer, Cody said administrators may have to readjust staffing and course loads once more. This process would involve either rehiring teachers who had been transferred— whom administrators would reach out to first—or hiring new teachers.

“We always have enrollments over the summer,” Cody said. “This is probably just a dip this year, and next year we’ll see the numbers go back up.”

Students, teachers frustrated over college admissions scandal

by ANNA YUAN

When senior Evin McDonald, who is committed to play tennis at the University of Texas at Austin, found out his college coach was involved in the nationwide college admissions cheating scandal, he was stunned.

“I was just in complete shock,” McDonald said. “I talked to the guy literally four days ago, just having a normal conversation.

I could have never expected anything like this. No one did. I’ve been really upset about it because the guy was just great to us. But clearly he did some bad things, and it’s going to be hard knowing that we’re not going to have him for the next four years.”

McDonald’s coach, Michael Center, was accused of accepting approximately $100,000 as a bribe in 2015 in exchange for “recruiting” a student for the tennis team to help that student’s chances of admission.

Center appeared in court March 28 and was released on bond.

More than 750 families allegedly cheated their way into elite colleges, bribing test proctors and coaches through a well known California college counselor to boost their children’s chances of admission. Those charged March 12 included several prominent actresses—including Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman—businesspeople and college coaches.

William Singer, founder of college prep business The Key, allegedly orchestrated the scheme, which prosecutors nicknamed “Operation Varsity Blues.” Court documents charge that he helped students cheat on standardized tests and bribed coaches to recruit students with falsified athletic credentials.

Parents allegedly paid Singer between $15,000 and $500,000 for schemes ranging from arranging for someone else to take the

SAT for their child or correcting their child’s answers afterward, to forging athletic profiles.

Junior Sam Geesing wasn’t surprised by the scandal, but was still appalled by the lengths wealthy parents went to in order to get their children into top colleges.

“I laughed when I found out,” Geesing said. “It’s kind of common knowledge that rich kids have an advantage already, which makes it even more disappointing that parents would shell out this much money just for their kids to have a better chance.”

The scandal sparked national outrage.

Two Stanford students filed a class action lawsuit against eight colleges involved in the case; they’re alleging that the rigged system denied them a fair chance at admission.

Junior Reuben Pegues said the scandal disadvantaged deserving students.

“I understand parents always wanting the best for their kids, but it made me feel bad for all the people who worked so hard to get into these elite schools and put so much work into it,” Pegues said. “Families of affluent backgrounds can just bypass those expectations of doing well in school and being an overall well-rounded student.”

Parents also allegedly paid Singer between $250,000 and $6.5 million to create fake sports profiles with doctored photos for their children and to bribe college coaches to recruit unqualified students. Many of the students had never participated in their listed sport competitively.

Cross country and track coach Stephen Hays said he was disappointed in the college coaches who were involved.

“It’s hard to get to that next level in sports,” Hays said. “There are very few spots available for those kids, and for those spots to be taken by people that don’t even have the

athletic ability is sad.”

McDonald said the issue isn’t singlesided, and people shouldn’t be too quick to judge those involved—including his former coach—based only on the information currently available.

“There has to be some backstory to it all,” McDonald said. “A reason why he took the money, because I feel from his character that he wouldn’t just take it for himself.”

McDonald and the other three 2019 recruits decided to stay committed to Texas.

They spoke with the interim head coach, Bruce Berque, who reassured them that the program will continue to remain at a high level. Often, teams can be prevented from competing in the NCAA if their coach is charged with helping the team cheat.

“It’s not really affecting the tennis program other than the fact that there’s going to be a new coach,” McDonald said. “But there aren’t going to be any sanctions placed on the team as of now, and that was really our only worry. Other than that, we still want to be at Texas, and we chose the school for other reasons, too.”

For many people, the scandal exposed cracks in America’s college admissions process; some believe it goes much deeper than currently reported.

“It’s just who they’ve caught right now,” Hays said. “They’re just now beginning to figure it all out, and if this has been going on since at least 2011, I’m certain that there are a lot more than just 50 people. There have to be.”

The nationwide cheating scandal begs an important question: is cheating surrounding college admissions happening at Whitman?

A week before a senior’s Common Application was due, she was panicking—she had yet to finalize her essay and didn’t par-

ticularly like the direction it was going in.

Seeking help, she and her parents decided to hire a college essay consultant, expecting small edits and feedback to get her on her feet and quickly finish the essay.

But instead of minor tweaks, the consultant suggested something else: she would write the student’s the entire essay for her.

“She was implying that it was something she did normally with clients,” the student said. “It was almost an anomaly for me to be a client who didn’t want my essay to be written by another person.”

Some parents go even further, paying professionals to refer their children to be tested for learning disabilities. These students may receive extended time for learning disabilities they don’t have at all, or only have a mild form of. Many students who seek extended time this way take the SAT because College Board’s extended time application process is less rigorous than the ACT’s, a senior said.

Still, much hearsay exists surrounding cheating the college process, and not all rumors are verifiable.

Since the vast majority of colleges aren’t able to dedicate time to fact checking everything stated on a student’s application, some students lie, falsifying leadership positions on their resumes.

“I have a friend who didn’t even run for track captain [and never] was offered a position,” a senior said. “Honestly, I don’t know if that really benefited them that much. When it comes down to it—these little leadership positions—I don’t think they’re really that valuable in terms of the big picture of college applications. To lie on your application is a morally wrong thing.”

Local Unitarian church fights deportation of Rosa Gutierrez Lopez

by ANNA LABARCA and MAX LONDON

Less than nine miles from the White House, in a sun-filled church, Rosa Gutierrez Lopez stands with a translator in front and an audience of about 150 press and community members March 20. At Bethesda’s Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church, she asks for continued advocacy from her supporters. Gutierrez Lopez, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, wants to avoid deportation. The church has been sheltering her for almost four months.

Gutierrez Lopez crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2005 with her three children after receiving death threats from local gangs in El Salvador. She’s the first known un-

documented immigrant to take refuge at a D.C.-area house of worship since President Trump took office.

Between February and September 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained an average of 436 immigrants daily, a significant increase from 300 in 2016, according to ICE statistics. From those 436, an average of 139 arrests were of immigrants without criminal records, up from 47 in 2016.

Today, Gutierrez Lopez lives in an apartment on the campus of the Cedar Lane Church. Her three U.S.-born children visit her on the weekends, though they live with her pastor in Fredericksburg, Virginia, so they can go to school, and the youngest, who has Down Syndrome, can attend therapy sessions.

“You don’t know how difficult

it is to separated from your children,” she said. “My heart breaks when I see my youngest child, and I start to cry because he doesn’t want to leave.”

Gutierrez Lopez lived in Fredericksburg for thirteen years, where she worked in a restaurant and raised her children. In 2014, after ICE agents contacted her, she hired a lawyer and went to ICE offices for regular check-ins.

Even though her lawyer had petitioned the court to allow her to stay in the country, citing her dependent children, ICE officials ordered her to leave in December. But instead of taking a plane back to El Salvador where gangs dominate her neighborhood, Gutierrez Lopez and her lawyer reached out to the DMV Sanctuary Congregation Network,

Rosa Gutierrez Lopez, an undocumented immigrant, speaks at an interfaith vigil and press conference at Bethesda’s Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church March 20. Gutierrez Lopez, who is facing deportation and has been living on the Church’s campus, asked for continued support from community members. Photo by MAX LONDON

which works to house undocumented immigrants in congregations around the D.C. area. That brought her to the Cedar Lane Church.

Continued on Page 12

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The Black & White|April 4, 2019

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The Black & White is an open forum for student views from Walt Whitman High School, 7100 Whittier Blvd., Bethesda, MD, 20817. The Black & White’s website is www.theblackandwhite.net. The newspaper is published five times a year, and the B&W magazine is published biannually. Signed opinion pieces reflect the positions of the individual staff and not necessarily the opinion of Walt Whitman High School or Montgomery County Public Schools. Unsigned editorial pieces reflect the opinion of the newspaper. All content in the paper is reviewed to ensure that it meets the highest level of legal and ethical standards with respect to the material as libelous, obscene or invasive of privacy. All corrections are posted on the website. Recent awards include the 2018 and 2017 CSPA Hybrid Silver Crowns, 2013 CSPA Gold Medallion and 2012 NSPA Online Pacemaker. The Black & White encourages readers to submit opinions on relevant topics in the form of letters to the editor, which must be signed to be printed. Anonymity can be granted on request. The Black & White reserves the right to edit letters for content and space. Letters to the editor may be emailed to theblackandwhitevol56@gmail.com.

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The Black & White|April 4, 2019

Administrators: reform parking permit process for next year

Decrease in parking spots necessitates creative solutions

Staff Editorial Parking permits are a bigger issue for the student body than ever before.

This semester witnessed a record-setting number of permit applications— over 400 for only 273 spots. In early February, upwards of 50 students camped out in the Whitman parking lot overnight or arrived early to vie for four of the remaining permits. For weeks after the permit distribution, many seniors aired a combination of frustration, confusion and anger over the system’s perceived unfairness and disorder.

This outcry is likely to increase next year. Construction of Whitman’s addition will push portables into the front parking lot, reducing the number of already coveted parking spots.

Asked if there would be significantly fewer parking spaces next year, athletic director Andy Wetzel, who is in charge of allocating permits, said “significant is an understatement.”

To keep the system equitable and

reduce student frustration, administrators and Wetzel should adopt more creative and effective mechanisms for distributing parking permits next year.

For example, several years ago, former business manager Eddie Campbell enacted a share-a-space program, where two students could jointly apply for one parking space. A drama student and tennis athlete, for example, could share the space depending on when they each needed it most. In this system, joint applications would be given more priority.

Administrators could also consider spreading the responsibility of permit allocation to several people, potentially including counselors. Although Wetzel said he already consults counselors in the process, as well as teachers, coaches and administrators, sharing responsibility would bring extra eyes to the process, making it more systematic.

Currently, the permit distribution process is based on several layers of priority, Wetzel said. The top priority is students who live outside the school district and don’t have access to school buses. Next is students with school-sponsored internships—outside-of-school internships are not considered—followed by students with abbreviated schedules. The fourth priority is students who participate in school-sponsored sports or activities, which includes the music and drama

departments, as well as The Black & White. Wetzel said that he tries to allocate permits proportionally to sports and activities, but since there are more athletes than other activities, they receive more permits. The final consideration is clubs, including crew and sailing (which aren’t MCPS sports), robotics and quiz bowl.

While the current process may not be fundamentally flawed, it needs innovation to adequately address next year’s parking situation. Parking is not MCPS’ priority during construction, Wetzel said, which is why other MCPS schools—like Wheaton and BCC—had almost no parking spots during their years of construction. To avoid a huge outcry and reduce stress among Whitman students, administrators must proactively and creatively address the predicted steep loss in spots.

Administrators may not see parking permits as a key part of education at Whitman, but many students, especially upperclassmen, see it as a huge issue that deserves to be treated as such. For many, a parking permit determines whether they’re late or on time to sports practices, internships and other important obligations. Construction will make a perfect process impossible, but that shouldn’t stop us from working toward the best possible one.

LGBT figures, historical events merit incorporation into history curricula Why learning about LGBT students reduces ignorance

by LUKAS GATES By the end of high school, most MCPS students are well-versed in the significance of the Federalist Papers, the timeline of the Civil War and westward expansion. But students are missing out on a valuable part of history: the lives and accomplishments of LGBT people.

LGBT people have histories worth learning. During lessons about Greek history, teachers fail to mention people like Sappho of Lesbos, a 630 BC poet who wrote about her love for women, including hymns to Aphrodite. Her artistic voice affirmed the existence of lesbian and bisexual women before the terms were even coined. In biographing Eleanor Roosevelt, a famous human rights activist and the longestserving First Lady, students don’t learn that she had a romantic relationship with journalist Lorena Hickok. Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr.’s right hand man, was a Black gay man fighting for equality for people of color and LGBT people in the Civil Rights Movement. And even before transgender was a widely understood term, there was Christine Jorgensen.

On December 1, 1952 The New York Daily News ran a front-page story about her gender reassignment surgery, making her one

of the first visibly transgender people in the media.

LGBT history has been buried to the point that most people can’t recognize the names and achievements of prominent LGBT figures.

Schools have a responsibility to correct this by teaching students about this history. By doing so, they validate the identities and experiences of LGBT students and raise awareness about the discrimination these students face today.

The mere mentioning of LGBT historical figures benefits all students. It integrates LGBT students into the classroom: no longer do we feel isolated from our peers for being “the gay kid” or “the trans kid.” Students

first introduced to South America, Asia and Africa

by Western colonial powers.

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalized homosexuality, was introduced by Great Britain and only repealed in September 2018. Learning about laws like these would explain why non-Western societies have a tendency to be homophobic and transphobic. It also makes students aware that around 73 countries still have anti-gay laws, including anti-gay propaganda laws in Russia and Nigeria.

Exposing students to the oppression that LGBT people faced validates the identities of LGBT students. It also shows cisgender and heterosexual students that LGBT people have existed and Illustration by EVA HERSCOWITZ faced oppression for centuries. It reminds students that learn that LGBT people can being LGBT isn’t something be powerful and inspiring. this generation made up, We can be successful like even if it’s the first time that our cisgender and heteromany of us feel safe enough sexual peers, even fightto come out. This history puts ing through homophobia LGBT activism into perspecand transphobia to do so. tive: when the Trump adminThe HIV/AIDS epiistration removed protections demic, which began in the for transgender students un1980s and continues today, der Title IX, for example, is also frequently glossed it reversed years of fightover in textbooks. The dising to acknowledge transease disproportionately afgender people’s existence. fects gay and bisexual men, The first step to erasand it practically erased an ing transphobia and hoentire generation of LGBT mophobia is educating activists. It created fear people about the existence and reinforced homophoof LGBT people and our bic ideas that being gay or history. We need to take transgender is a disease. If that first step, for everyone.

LGBT history is ignored, this ignorance might persist.

Most students don’t know that anti-gay laws were

Opinion

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

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MCPS: don’t designate math tracks until middle school

by WILL BROWN They may not know it, but third grade students in MCPS are taking some of the most important math tests of their lives. One year later, the results of these tests will determine which math level they’re in for the rest of their MCPS education. Some of these third graders will take calculus as sophomores, while others will still be in pre-calculus their senior year.

Separated from their peers because they’re “worse at math,” students might begin to doubt their own ability.

Separating students into different math levels in fourth grade can discourage their interest in math and prevents students from taking advanced classes like calculus, which can close off college opportunities. While there are benefits of having multiple levels of math in high school, tracking should start in middle school.

Placing students in an “on-level” math class—the lowest level—early on can demoralize them. Separated from their peers because they’re “worse at math,” students might begin to doubt their own ability. A

2008 study from The Journal of Educational Research reports that students in higher math levels reported higher self confidence in their mathematical and academic abilities than their peers in lower math classes.

Sorting students into different math levels can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When the educational system tells students that they’re bad at math, they often accept that notion. The end result is some on-level students declaring that they “aren’t math people” and rejecting the subject entirely.

There’s a solution to this: introduce tracking later. Math tracking should be comparable to the way that MCPS currently handles other subjects like English, history and science, which are based mostly on the previous year’s results. Tracking shouldn’t even start until middle school. This ensures that the track a student is put on initially doesn’t have to be the one they finish on.

This isn’t a far fetched proposal. Finland has completely abolished different math tracks for grades one through nine and boasts one of the best education systems in the world; it outscored the U.S. 511 to 470 on an international math exam.

Gaining admission to a STEM-related program is much more difficult if a student’s application doesn’t include advanced math classes. Even if they get into these programs, they have to learn more material than their classmates because they didn’t learn it in

Graphic by NOAH GRILL

high school. We shouldn’t put students at a disadvantage based on how they performed as eight year olds.

Even if a student wants to go up a level, it’s difficult to do so. The only way is to either skip a year of math or go to summer school, where the curriculum is aimed at teaching those who are falling behind, not those who want to get ahead.

Some supporters say that we need the current sorting system because it allows skilled math students to get on a track to take advanced classes that high schoolers usually

Congress: stop using government workers as political pawns

One writer’s experience with the government shutdown

by JOSEPH FERRARI Normally, it’s not difficult for me to enjoy a pizza dinner. But in January, when my mom came home with boxes from &pizza night after night, it just meant another day of government shutdown. While the events of the shutdown are no longer making headlines, its effect is still being felt by many families like my own.

During the 35-day partial shutdown from late December to January, federal government workers who were deemed “essential” were called to work; those who weren’t were furloughed, but neither group was paid until after the shutdown concluded. &pizza was one of many restaurants in the area that gave free meals to government employees like my mom during the shutdown.

My mom has worked at the Treasury Department for 16 years. Since she was “essential,” she had to go to her mostly empty D.C. office throughout the shutdown, but was restricted from doing any work that wasn’t considered “urgent.” She spent 15 minutes of her eight-hour workday on crucial work, leaving the rest of the time to complete puzzles and read John Grisham books.

To me, this sounded great—until I remembered that she wasn’t being paid. As a single parent, she still had to pay my sister’s college tuition, pay her bills and buy groceries, forcing her to borrow from her retirement savings and get a loan from a family member.

While we were uncertain

about when our lives would return to normal, many government leaders didn’t seem to care. At one point, President Donald Trump said that he was willing to keep the government partially closed for years—or as long as it took to get funding for a border wall.

But my family didn’t have to be in this situation in the first place. Congress ended the shutdown by passing a temporary, three-week budget to buy more time before passing a budget for the entire fiscal year. This could have been done before the longest shutdown in U.S. history, saving my family the stress of not receiving paychecks.

My situation wasn’t rare for families in the D.C. area. A report by the Maryland comptroller estimated that Marylanders lost a combined total of $778 million in wages. Dan Schere of Bethesda Magazine wrote that over 80,000 federal employees were affected by the shutdown in Montgomery County.

Gove rnm e nt wo rkers weren’t the only ones directly affected by the shutdown.

About 10,000 private companies holding contracts with the federal government and numerous nonprofits relying on government support faced the risk of losing funding, The Washington Post reported last month.

Whitman parent Jonathan Putnam, who works for the National Park Service, was left without pay for over a month.

Putnam’s mom works for a company that was at risk of

losing funding if the shutdown continued into March.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said he didn’t understand why government workers were visiting food banks when they could just take out loans from credit unions. While my mom avoided such a dire situation, not everyone was as fortunate. Ross’ comment exemplifies politicians’ misunderstanding. The shutdown’s effects exposes their willingness to jeopardize the wellbeing of civil servants to achieve political ends.

The shutdown ultimately concluded and may be old news—but the threat of another shutdown is lurking. President Trump sent his preliminary vision for the 2020 budget to Congress March 11. The plan, outlining many of the same priorities that gridlocked Congress into shutdown months before, was immediately denounced by many leaders on Capitol Hill.

The political clash between the President and Congress caused the shutdown, and innocent civil servants and their families shouldn’t continue to pay the price for politicians’ recklessness.

If anything, I hope our leaders take the disastrous outcome of this shutdown and learn that the livelihood of government employees can no longer be used as a bargaining chip in looming budget negotiations. After all, I should never have to think twice about eating pizza.

don’t have access to. But the current system fails in that regard. It ignores students who are late bloomers, who find they’re good at math and enjoy it after they’ve already been put in lower level math classes.

The way MCPS handles math education needs to change. The current system only creates a demoralized mathematical lower class with little opportunity to actualize their talents. We need to give all our students the best options, not just those at the top track.

Sports teams should require tryouts for returning players

Boys tennis doesn’t give new players a shot

by HIRARI SATO Tryout seasons are always stressful. Students are nervous about whether or not they’ll make the team, stressed about what position they’re going to play or concerned about performing to the best of their abilities. In the end, some will be cut. But at the very least, they can find solace in the fact that everyone was given an equal shot.

But not all tryouts are made equal.

Some teams, like the boys tennis team, don’t require returning athletes to try out, guaranteeing previous team members a spot.

Coach Jason Gohn justifies the system with the rationale that the worst returning player has always been better than the best player trying out.

But the unfairness of this system is apparent; to level the playing field, high school sports teams in MCPS should require athletes—returning and prospective—to try out every year. This would improve the team as a whole, motivating returning players to practice more for the next season and giving everyone an equal chance to make the team.

When spots on the team are already filled, coaches can’t fairly evaluate and choose the most deserving players. A returning player’s performance in previous years doesn’t always indicate his future success.

Also, since coaches don’t know a newcomer’s abilities as well, evaluating him directly compared to previous members would result in more accurate evaluations.

The current policy also harms the overall technical team quality. If a player already has a guaranteed spot, he may be less motivated to practice for their upcoming season. Even some current players take issue with the policy. One returning boys tennis player said when evaluating players, coaches shouldn’t prioritize seniority over skill. If athletes are forced to try

out every year, they’re more likely to stay in shape and use their offseason effectively.

If we want our tryouts to create the best teams possible, we have to make sure that all players deserve to be on the team.

Gohn and some returning tennis players argue that if the coach already knows a player is good enough to make the team, it wastes both the coach’s and the player’s time to try out again—especially with limited court time. But, this isn’t always the case.

Sometimes an incoming freshman, for example, may be better than a returning player, but since there are limited spots, they might not make the team.

We should prioritize the fairness of the process over the minor inconvenience of including all players in tryouts. Tryouts also allow coaches to look at returning members’ skills to help pick positions for the upcoming season, especially since it takes time to understand where players are technically, and pre-season is only two and a half weeks, girls tennis coach Meg Thatcher said. The girls team requires all members—returning and prospective—to try out.

We’re a school that’s proud of our sports teams. If we want our tryouts to create the best teams possible, we have to make sure that all players deserve to be on the team. Players shouldn’t be de-faulted into the team just because they made it in previous years.

In-Depth

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

A brief history of Whitman —

7

told through 57 years of Black & White headlines

by Dana Herrnstadt and Hirari Sato photo by Lukas Gates What do bean bag chairs, Calvin Klein, black and white soccer balls, and my dad all have in common? They’re all over 50 years old, as is our newspaper.

We sifted through the archives behind our adviser’s desk: dusty old Black & White volumes that date back to Whitman’s first year, 1962.

We pored over issues from 30, 40, even 50 years ago to choose the pieces that best capture not only Whitman’s highlights, but the vibrant student life we know today.

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The Black & White|April 4, 2019

“Juniors to hold prom”—Volume. 1, Issue 3

1962

Buckle up, because we’re going all the way back to the ‘60s, the decade in which the Vietnam War, Cuban Missile Crisis and fight for Civil Rights unfolded. In the spring of 1962, the year Whitman opened (with no senior class quite yet), while the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in the Space Race, the junior class was busy planning Whitman’s first prom. The theme was “La primavera,” or “spring,” in Spanish.

On Saturday, May 25, 1962, the junior class gathered in the fieldhouse, Whitman’s geodesic dome-covered gym. They danced from nine to midnight, surrounded by red, orange and yellow streamers and banners. Tickets were two dollars and fifty cents, and students snacked on sandwiches and cookies provided by the Refreshments Committee.

Later proms quickly became more familiar. The senior prom of 1979 was held at the Washington Hilton and students had long done away with the disco dances of the sixties; but the school

didn’t hold post-prom back then, so students coordinated their own plans after the dance. After her senior prom, Tracy Schrider (‘79) and her friends drove to Dewey Beach.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Schrider said. “It was dangerous.”

Promposals—elaborate requests to be someone’s prom date— also didn’t exist. Students asked for dates without flair, though, like today, an intermediary often made sure a peer would say “yes.” It wasn’t unheard of for students to sew their own dresses or to have a family member sew it for them.

For the past 57 years, prom has remained a Whitman—and an American—tradition.

“When I think of prom, I get excited for the night, but I also get excited to reach that point in high school,” senior Danielle Hazan said. “Prom is the end of high school, and I think it will just be a fun night to spend with friends.”

“Students await arrest results”—Volume 17, Issue 1

1979

In the past several years, students have organized protests for gun reform and mobilized to advocate for climate change legislation. In 1979, students were less concerned with gun control and more concerned with the issue of the decade: drugs.

At 12:15 p.m. on a Wednesday, eleven students were arrested for drug use—the types of drugs weren’t specified—on the hill between Whitman and Whittier Woods; all eleven students were suspended for three days, even though at least two students claimed they were “just eating lunch.”

When the bell rang, marking the end of lunch, several students, angered by the arrests of their friends, gathered in front of the school, shouting “Everybody block Whittier!”

About 40 students sat in the middle of Whittier Boulevard, blocking traffic and dumping trash bags of lawn clippings from neighborhood homes in the street.

When former principal Jerome Marco tried to reason with the students, they told him to “go back to class” and called him “Nazi pig.”

By the end of the next period, hundreds of students had joined the protest, totalling 200 to 300 students. When cars tried to drive by, students attacked, placing glass under their tires. Busses couldn’t get through, and the students, who were drinking and smoking, wouldn’t budge.

“SGA launches social events”— Volume 17, Issue 1 Once a month, students gather in the WAUDitorium with guitars, drum sets and sheet music in an event known as Coffeehouse.

They strum, sing, tell jokes or even perform original songs. Coffeehouse is a lively celebration of artistic talent within the student body, and most of the performers aren’t aware of how many Whitman students have graced the stage before them.

The year 1979 marked the beginning of Coffeehouse, a monthly event where students gather in the WAUDitorium to watch and perform everything from acoustic medleys to rock songs to stand-up comedy.

“It’s a really relaxed environment, and there are constantly different types of performances each month,” Coffeehouse codirector Eva Ginns said. “People have always been passionate about music and performance, so I think it’ll continue for a while

The Azalea Club

Tracy Schrider, Claire Siverson, Tim Silard, Lydia Andres and Danny Kobek (‘80) didn’t have many places to hang out. There weren’t any Whitman musicians playing at clubs downtown, and they wanted a change from their typical hangout: Booeymonger, a 24-hour sandwich shop. So one day, in the spring of their senior year, they drove to St. Bartholomew Catholic School, parked their car in the lot and shot the breeze. It was there, overlooking a bank of azalea bushes, that the group thought of their name: the Azalea Club.

“You know how they have old ladies with the camellia club?”

Schrider said. “It was in that sort of vein. It was very funny and just silly.”

The friends met in high school homeroom, and they’ve stayed close for 40 years.

After attending different colleges, Schrider wrote a letter to her old friends suggesting they all go to graduate school in California. Siverson and Silard agreed, and the three eventually settled in the San Francisco Bay area.

“There was something about this club,” Schrider said. “We belonged to each other. Claire and Tim, they’ve seen me through every crisis in my life. They’re just family.”

Solarch and Schrider were the president and vice president of the SGA. Together, in 1979, they created FlexEd, a one-day alternative education workshop. The seniors organized workshops taught by congressmen, artists and lobbyists. Solarch and Schrider hand-registered each of the 2,100 students for their elective of choice.

longer.”

Coffeehouse wasn’t the only organization that began in ‘79.

Students could choose from SGA-sponsored activities like the Disco Dance Club, which helped students perfect their technique before they hustled down to Georgetown discotheques; the Fantasy and Science Fiction Club, which drew students interested in discussing their favorite literature genres and playing games like Dungeons and Dragons; or the Computer Club, which came at an opportune time, since Whitman had just purchased two computers that year.

“Computers were new,” Phyllis Marcus (‘86) said. “The idea that you guys walk around now, with computers in your hands?

That’s astounding.”

“Alternative education, experiential learning, it all seems like, ‘of course,’ right now. But we were in the midst of very regimented, ‘this is the curriculum,’” Schrider said. “It was time to experiment more.”

The group was bound together, not only through the SGA, but through tragedy and activism. During their four years at Whitman, the club lost two friends and witnessed Three Mile Island—a partial meltdown of a Pennsylvania nuclear generating station—on the news. In the middle of one night their senior year, Siverson and Schrider, along with some friends, climbed on top of the dome that covered the gym at the time. Armed with cans of paint and paintbrushes, they painted political slogans.

“I was very against tenure at the time,” Siverson said. “I wrote ‘abolish tenure,’ although I’ve changed my political values. Back in the day, that’s what teenagers did.”

“We weren’t hippies,” Schrider said. “We weren’t old enough or cool enough to be hippies, but we also had this sense of ‘how do we change the system? How do we change to make it better and more meaningful and stand up more?’”

Today, Solarch and Siverson are Schrider’s kids’ godparents, and Schrider officiated both of their weddings. They brought their teenage activism to their careers—Schrider is a hospital social worker, Siverson is a therapist and Solarch works in criminal justice reform—and they still have a commitment to public work.

“It’s a commitment to the Azalea Club,” Schrider said. “It was all silly, and a lot of it was drinking, but we also knew we were going to go out and change the world.”

In-D

Depth

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

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Construction after the Dome Flash forward to the 90s: before our courtyard, track and portables, Whitman looked significantly different. In 1991, the “old” Whitman—a school complete with a geodesic dome and several buildings surrounding a grassy quad—was torn down and construction of the “new” Whitman—the building we know today—began. But some of the students weren’t happy with the shift, especially the destruction of the dome covering the gym.

The dome was described in Whitman’s 1990 yearbook as “a giant ping-pong ball, a big balloon, or a misplaced meteor.” It housed events including jazz night, which featured the Thad Jones and Lewis Orchestra, every homecoming dance and many basketball games—the basketball team thought it added an intimidating edge against opposing teams.

“The dome was iconic,” Whitman parent Roger SolaSole (‘87), now an architect, said. “In fact, I think it was one of the only structures of its kind at the time on the east coast. It was a building that everybody knew because it was so unique.”

As a tradition, students would spray paint the dome with obscene images and offensive or political comments for their senior prank, and every year, Montgomery County taxpayers had to pay $1,600 to clean it up. Neighborhood kids would often try to climb to the top, Sola-Sole said.

“I probably tried a dozen times, but I never actually got all the way up,” Sola-Sole said. “I think I got too scared.

You’d have to try to get a good head of steam and run as far up the column as you could and scale the rest to get up on top.”

The old school also had a quad where students ate lunch on picnic tables, threw frisbees and just passed the time.

It’s where art students painted and music students held Coffeehouse. The 1990 SAGA called it “Whitman’s heart.”

“I loved sitting on the hill and looking over the dome and into the fields beyond the brick and cement of the school,” Caroline Mason (‘90) said.

Though students and faculty were skeptical of the new building, they also looked forward to the change.

“I can’t wait for the new building,” former Home Economics teacher Phyllis Lamiman said in SAGA in 1991. “I’m really excited.”

Although the change was necessary to accommodate the growing student body, the new building lacks much of the old building’s spunk.

“It was really an architecture that was about that generation,” Sola-Sole said. “It kind of had that classic concrete style to it. It wasn’t a pretty building, and it certainly doesn’t look anything like today’s Whitman, but it had a little bit more character.”

1992-93

“Westboro is Back for Protests”—Volume 48, Issue 4

2009

Ten years ago, seven members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a radical group from Topeka, Kansas, came to protest our school’s namesake, poet Walt Whitman, who was rumored to be gay. Church members held signs with slogans like “America is doomed,” and “mourn for your sins.”

“They were picketing near my elementary school bus stop for a day or two,” junior Eva Ginns said. “The parents were just told by Goodwin to not acknowledge them when going to school so we wouldn’t start anything new.”

It was sunny and warm when the final bell rang on that Wednesday. The Westboro group stood across the street from Whitman, yelling and waving signs, while 700 Whitman students and staff stood on the opposite side of Whittier, turning their backs to the group. They wore T-shirts designed by commercial art teacher Nancy Mornini. The fronts of the Carolina blue t-shirts sported an image of Walt Whitman, and the backs contained a quote that principal Alan Goodwin had chosen from a Whitman poem. When the students turned their backs, the Westboro group only saw the words “cool and composed.”

“Instead of vocalizing a protest, we just turned our backs,” Mornini said. “It was just three or four words on the back, but it was powerful.”

To support the LGBTQ+ community and Whitman, students from all over Montgomery County also counter-protested with colorful signs of their own. They held posters with messages like “Love Wins,” painted their faces and brought rainbow umbrellas to show their support for the community.

And the support has remained. In the past few years, Whitman’s Pride Club, which meets every Monday, has grown to more than fifty members. Last year, a banner hung in the main entrance hallway reading “Vikings for Love.”

And on the first day of school last year, teachers distributed pins with the same slogan.

“It’s a right that students have in this county,” Pride Club president Aubrey Lay said. “I have hope for the future of our school’s LGBTQ+ community.”

County Council considers putting in Wi-Fi for schools —Volume 51, Issue 2

2012

Before the games of Kahoot during Spanish class, studying a Quizlet the period before a test or frantically finishing an English essay during lunch, there was a time without WiFi. Instead of slideshows on Promethean boards, teachers wrote on whiteboards and chalkboards. Instead of typing on chromebooks, students wrote. On paper.

The horror!

But in the summer of 2012, MCPS began installing Promethean boards in classrooms and Wi-Fi in schools.

But the change, while large-scale, didn’t quite revolutionize the learning experience right away.

“If anything, the Promethean boards were just like a really fun whiteboard we got to use,” Shruti Gujaran (‘12) said.

“And Wi-Fi wasn’t really a big part of my learning. We didn’t use it that much.”

Two years later, in 2014, Montgomery County supplied schools with 40,000 chromebooks, costing about 15 million dollars.

“We use the computers a lot,” freshman Bea Marcus said.

“I barely handwrite things anymore. Things would definitely be a lot different if we didn’t have chromebooks and Wi-Fi.” Today, Robby Dodd is finishing up his first year as principal. We’re tearing down the WAUD for an addition to be finished by 2020. A group of teachers will begin experimenting with radically different classroom furniture, including standing desks and wall-sized dry-erase boards. Our past 57 years have held a lot of activity, activism and change. But the next 57 may hold even more.

Artwork by B&w production staff

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The Black & White|April 4, 2019

Feature

Clockwise from top left: senior Cami Stillwell (center) leaps during a performance of the team’s competition dance; Stillwell (front) and senior Ally Meyers (back) perform at the Homecoming pep rally earlier this year; junior Jilly Brodsky (left), senior Sydney Johnson (center) and junior Maddie Menkes (right) perform a hip hop portion of their routine at the pep rally; dancers, in full competition makeup, perform full-out at a competition this year. Photos by LUKAS GATES and TOM KNOX

Started from the bottom: Poms journey from D3 to D1 Strong coaching, ‘sisterhood’ unites a previously unstructured team

by CLARA KORITZ HAWKES When poms senior Natalie Gottret was a freshman, the team—then in Division III— was set on perfecting a single pirouette. Now, they’ve locked down a triple pirouette, and in the spirit of tripling their accomplishments, have moved up to Division I. Just like the team’s abilities, the team dynamics were also starkly different four years ago. In that division—the lowest possible— the team was lacking structure, coordination and there was often drama between teammates, current co-captain Julia Levine said.

Now in her senior year, Levine describes the team as “cohesive” and “driven,” having adopted a more “team effort” attitude with the support of coaches Alexa Ciesinski (‘09), who started coaching in 2015, and Kendra Pelletier, who started in 2017. And the new mantra appears to be working: the team of 26 girls has jumped from Division III to Division I in just four years—a feat that no Montgomery County poms team has ever done before.

“I laid down a lot of law and spent a lot of time thinking about what makes the team cohesive since I knew they didn’t think they had the right structure,” Ciesinski said. “Once they had the right structure, they committed themselves a lot more to it. I think they wanted someone who cared because they feed off of that energy.”

In the last four years, the team won 12

of their 14 competitions, mainly because of the high standard their coaches held them to, Levine said.

As soon as she came in, Ciesinski mandated that every minute late to practice equalled a lap around the track. She requires the girls try out for every formation and routine.

“I made it clear that they weren’t going to get a spot just because they were a senior,” Ciesinski said. “They were going to get that spot because they earned it.”

The team’s rise started after jumping to Division II in 2017. Though it wasn’t very difficult, the poms took on the challenge of moving back up to the second division—after sinking to D3 the year before—really well, Ciesinski said. Ultimately, that’s where she felt they belonged anyway, she said.

In contrast, making it to D1 took substantial effort, especially since the teams performing in D1 have team members with greater experience and sometimes full dance programs at their schools, Levine said.

At Whitman, while most of the girls have a few years of training and some have even danced competitively, individual talent doesn’t always translate to group cohesion, senior Ally Meyers said.

“Even though we might not have the same technique, we have something different: innovative choreography and girls willing to try complex technique,” Ciesinski said.

“Now, I think [Division I] is where they be-

long.”

To the team, it was never about being in the top division; it was just about working their hardest, senior Cami Stillwell said.

“Instead of focusing so much on winning, it was more about doing our best. That also made it easier; there wasn’t that pressure to win, it was just how hard we were trying,” Stillwell said.

Making the jump from the lowest to highest division took a culmination of coaching, dedication and most importantly, “sisterhood,” junior Maddie Menkes said.

When Pelletier came in, she challenged the team to try new styles, like different styles of hip hop, that judges don’t usually see at poms competitions, and brought even more energy and excitement to the team, Ciesinski said.

“If you expect them to keep up that high standard for a seven-month season, then you have to match that,” she said. “You have to be what you expect the girls to be: on time, hardworking, energetic. If we don’t walk in with that, they are not going to want to work hard.”

The team emphasizes communication between coaches and dancers.

“Open communication is something I started trying to foster since day one,” Ciesinski said. “I insist they come to me if they have a bad day so we don’t misinterpret anything. They feel comfortable coming to us because that communication has become

such a staple pillar of this team.”

The team has several group chats—one with the coaches, one without and separate group chats for dancers in each grades. The seniors make sure that the underclassmen know they have people to go to when something—poms or not poms-related—is on their mind, senior Bella Young said.

“If we are close and communicate well, it helps us improve. If we aren’t all on the same page during the season, it’s hard to be cohesive as a team on stage,” Meyers said.

The team’s family dynamic sets them apart. Spending so much time with people for almost the entire school year makes the team incredibly close, Levine said.

That closeness is remarkable, considering the team was host to drama four years ago. The girls make a point to see each other often, with team sleepovers, dinners and breakfasts before competitions, Menkes said.

“I have never seen a team in Montgomery County interact the way these girls do.

They come to practice and they just love being around every single other person on the team,” Ciesinski said.

That closeness is what made the experience of poms so special to many of the seniors, Gottret said.

“The team is literally my family. When you have bad days, having a team to go to, no matter what grade they are, is the best feeling” she said. “It’s something I’ll never forget and always will want to keep in my life.”

Feature

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The Black & White|April 4, 2019

It runs in the family: Helf siblings take after their musically-talented father

by ALLY NAVARRETE

In the late 1960s, Whitman parent Tom Helf would go to his neighborhood radio station every Friday after school to pick up the Billboard Top 40, a paper list of the top songs that week. When he got home, he would blast The Beatles and The Monkees on his record player. In high school, he developed his love for music; he played drums in the pit orchestra for school musicals and started a band that performed at Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and school dances.

Today, his two kids take after their father. Senior Gabby and sophomore Gideon Helf both played in the pit orchestra for the school production of “Pippin” and are members of concert band, Talent Show and drumline; Gabby also plays drums in jazz band. A shared love of playing music, combined with an obsession for listening to different genres, has brought the siblings and their father together.

Throughout high school and college, Tom played in the orchestra and jazz ensembles at his school; he later started playing gigs with other musicians. For 33 years, he has played with the folkrock band Cravin’ Dogs; the band writes and performs original music.

He also plays in an Allman Brothers tribute band called The Allman Others (“Blue Sky” and “Come and Go Blues” are his favorites).

Tom’s favorite places to perform are Gypsy Sally’s and Hill Country Barbecue Market in D.C., venues that he loves for their “great sound and great food.”

“I play a couple times a month.

It’s kind of like my golf,” he said.

“Some dads play golf; I play rock music.”

Tom’s wife Michelle Brafman—Gabby and Gideon’s mother—first met Tom in his element: on stage, drumsticks in hand.

“I saw him perform at Iota, a little club in Arlington, Virginia,” she said. “I walked into the bar and said, ‘that’s the man I’m gonna marry,’ while he was playing the drums.”

Michelle started bringing Gabby and Gideon to Tom’s gigs when they were young kids. The kids know all of Tom’s bandmates and the band’s songs, she said. Michelle loves watching Tom perform and still goes to all of his shows today, even when the kids can’t go with her.

“I love watching him perform because you can just see how happy he is when he’s playing the drums,” she said. “I love going to his gigs. It reminds me of our early courtship.”

The family has a drum set in their house that Gabby and Gideon have played with since they were kids; when they were little, they used to build mini-drum sets out of Tupperware. They’ve listened to the music their dad plays and the music he likes all their lives, from Elvis Costello to rock band XTC. “We always had music playing in the house. You never know what kind of effect that’s going to have on kids,” Tom said. “I do favor older music, but I’m open to newer stuff. I like the fact that Gabby and Gideon like to explore different kinds of music, which is a lot easier now with Spotify and YouTube.”

Tom has been playing the drums since he was in fifth grade, so both kids started their musical

careers with the drums. Gideon first started drum lessons when he was about five but stopped after he learned the guitar when he was nine. He still takes guitar lessons once a week, and he recently added a third instrument to his repertoire: bass guitar.

“Some of the older guys who were involved with Talent Show told me I should pick up bass if I wanted to do the show,” he said.

“We don’t really have bass players at this school, so I picked it up and ended up getting into a couple of acts.”

Gideon was in four talent show acts last year, an impressive number for a freshman, and when he’s home, he’s always playing music, Michelle said.

“Gideon always has an instrument around, a guitar around his neck or a bass,” she said. “Sometimes before a swim meet he’ll be sitting with his backpack, waiting for his ride, and he’s playing an instrument. It’s always attached to him.”

While Gideon loves the spotlight, Gabby prefers being out of sight in the pit. When Gabby auditioned for drumline at the end of her sophomore year, there were no female members.

“I was kind of self-conscious about being a girl and being a drummer. I thought people would think that was super weird,” she said.

This year, her confidence has grown and she was even named “Most Musical” as a senior superlative.

Gabby and Gideon love performing together, especially since bass and drums are both integral parts of the rhythm section. “I’m

Clockwise from top: the Helf siblings pose with their instruments in the pit during “Pippin,” the fall musical; Gideon plays the guitar at eight years old; Gabby plays the drums at four. Photos courtesy GIDEON and TOM HELF

usually playing bass with her, and with that we need to be synced up, keeping the groove together,” Gideon said. “Since we’re siblings, we’ve got good chemistry.”

On stage, the two “balance each other out,” Talent Show director Davis Gestiehr said.

“They have a reputation for being very respectful, positive and trustworthy,” Gestiehr said. “You know that they’re going to learn their part, which is insanely nice to know as a high school student.”

The Helfs sometimes have jam sessions together, with Gabby on drums and Gideon on guitar, or Gideon on guitar while Tom plays drums. Last Mother’s Day, the three of them performed a cover of one of Michelle’s favorite songs: “God is God” by Steve Earle.

“I decided that the best pres-

ent would be to see my family perform a song I really wanted to hear,” Brafman said. “I gave Tom the song and they worked out an arrangement and performed it, and it just was the best present ever.”

The parents attend nearly all of Gabby and Gideon’s performances: school concerts, the musical and all three nights of Talent Show.

They’re always excited to hear how the songs they’ve heard being rehearsed in their basement finally come together, Michelle said. But most of all, they love watching their kids perform with each other.

“I just fills me with pride and happiness that they got into it,” Tom said. “I just have a big, stupid smile on my face when I see them play. There’s nothing better.”

Colleges increase mental health services to meet demands Some schools still struggle to provide adequate resources for students

by MEERA DAHIYA and ALLY NAVARRETE When a student died unexpectedly at Yale University in 1981, Whitman parent Kate McGloon, then a Yale freshman, did what any student in that situation would do: she mourned.

But as she and other students grieved over the loss of a friend, there were few resources available to them, McGloon said.

“I don’t remember anybody even talking about mental health when I was in college, and in hindsight, I’m sure I had friends who were depressed,” McGloon said. “We mourned collectively, but no one went to talk to a counselor.”

While more students are struggling with mental illness, the stigma surrounding it has decreased and resources have increased on college campuses. From 2011 to 2016, the number of college students using counseling

55% of students have access to mental health services on campus

Graphic by SAM RUBIN Icons courtesey THE NOUN PROJECT

centers rose from 30 to 40 percent across 147 colleges, according to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State University. The Center also found that the number of clients seeking mental health services nearly doubled from 82,611 to 161,014 from 2010 to 2017.

There isn’t one simple explanation for why more students are seeking access to mental health resources, Nathaan Demers, a clinical psychologist at Grit Digital Health, said. For one, research has shown that technology and social media are contributing to a rise in mental illnesses among students entering college. Students today are also more knowledgeable about mental health issues than their parents, UCLA psychology professor Carrie Bearden said.

To respond to an increased demand for mental health resources, colleges are hiring more counselors and encouraging conversations about mental health. From 2016 to 2017, at least 155 college counseling centers added new clinical positions, like psychologists and psychiatrists, the Association for Counseling Center Directors reported.

College students are utilizing these services. A freshman who was diagnosed with anxiety during her senior year in high school took advantage of mental health resources at her university. After she was sexually assaulted during her first week of college, the supportive community and counseling at the sexual assault office on campus helped her recover emotionally from her experience, she said.

“As far as mental health things go, I found the sexual assault office to be an amazing resource,” she said. “They sent out a note to my teacher excusing me from school for the day and excusing me from work until I felt mentally ready.”

Some colleges are using biofeedback

and other scientific methods to detect mental illnesses. Ohio State University opened the Stress Management and Resilience Training Lab, or the “SMART” Lab, in 2017 because student demand for resources increased.

Counselors refer students to the lab if they show symptoms of high stress or anxiety. In spring 2017, when the lab first opened, there were only 60 students with appointments with the lab. This fall, the number of student appointments rose to 372, said Damon Drew, a doctoral student who helps run the “SMART” Lab. OSU junior Will Sullivan, who suffers from three different types of mental illnesses, has used the lab.

“They gave me resources to help overcome anxiety and testing anxiety,” Sullivan said. “The lab gives you the biofeedback, resources and skills you need to practice that will help you out the most.”

Peer conversation is another method universities are using to improve mental health on campus. Davidson College has a mental health “ambassador” program, where students volunteer to increase awareness for mental health issues. Ambassadors talk to students struggling with mental illness or stress and remind students that their classmates care about them. This is a relatively new concept for helping students maintain their mental well-being. Davidson’s director of counseling, Trish Murray, said she created the program to encourage peer connection.

“Sometimes your peers are the best people to speak to challenges in college,” she said.

“Not everyone needs a counselor, but everyone needs to know somebody cares.”

Although colleges are making an effort to increase mental health services, not all students are able to receive the support that they need; more than a third of college students cited at

least a five day wait for mental health services, a National Alliance on Mental Illness survey found.

At many colleges, the number of free counseling sessions is limited. Davidson, for example, has expanded its mental health resources, but limits the number of sessions a student gets with a psychologist, Davidson sophomore Anna McGuire (‘17) said.

“There is room for improvement,” she said. “I don’t think it’s the best system possible, but I do appreciate the resources given to me.”

There’s often a waiting list for counseling at some schools, and while outside treatment is an option, it can be unaffordable for college students. At Northwestern University, some students were even turned away from the university’s group therapy and counseling due to a limited number of spots, a 2018 North

by Northwestern magazine article reported.

Researchers at universities are trying different solutions to combat the rise of mental health issues. Schools are trying to ensure that all students have a strong support system so when they even face minor stress, they can prevent that stress from becoming more severe, Bearden said.

“Mental health resources are trying to take down that barrier of everyone having to feel like they have everything together, that all of their boats are lined up,” Sullivan, the OSU junior, said. “It starts a conversation, and with that conversation we can bring the stigma of mental health down.”

Anna McGuire (‘17) was an online managing editor of Volume 55 of The Black & White.

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Feature

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

McDonald brings passion, leadership skills to MSP Speaks at MCPS town hall about experiences as minority student at Whitman

Continued from Page 1 McDonald and three other students—Kevan Nathani, Tess Ravick and Jacob Marmol—began the Whitman chapter last year, but the program lacked organization, junior Khanya Dalton said. This year, Dalton said McDonald’s passion and leadership prompted her to become a more involved member; now, the club has 15 to 20 “strong leaders.”

“The way she described her internship and the importance of MSP is really what motivated me to become more involved,” Dalton said. “I was so impressed by her.

She’s such a good public speaker, and she thinks about things so critically and is so sure of herself.”

McDonald has always been kind and passionate, her mother, Jacqueline Brooks, said. Because she lived in New York City for six years—which Brooks called “a melting pot of culture”—McDonald grew up appreciating diversity.

“I always wanted her to be able to get to know people of all different backgrounds,” Brooks said. “I taught her to embrace everybody because we are more alike than we are different.”

As she got older, this mindset helped McDonald recognize the inequity around her. When she was in seventh grade, she heard about Tamir Rice, an African-American boy who was fatally shot by a police officer in Cleveland, Ohio.

The officer allegedly mistook Rice’s toy gun for a pistol. Rice was 12 years old, only one year younger than McDonald was.

“I couldn’t understand why it happened, and even though I didn’t know him, I could feel his family’s pain,” McDonald said. “It could’ve been one of my cousins, it could have been my uncle, it could have been any black male in my family, or any black male friend that I had. Seeing people justify it really put a pit in my stomach because I couldn’t understand how people could hate someone based off of something they can’t change.”

When she moved to Bethesda the summer before her

freshman year, racial prejudice was less recognizable to her.

But during her junior year, a teacher made an assumption about McDonald that was completely unfounded. After experiencing this preconceived bias firsthand, she started to become more aware of the discrimination within her own community.

“I’ve always been a student who has been in honors and AP classes, and I’ve enjoyed those classes,” McDonald said.

“So I couldn’t understand why a teacher would see me in that

“Byactively having these conversations about race and being comfortable talking about it—that’s how we make a change.”

- Breanna McDonald light.”

Since Whitman is a majority-white school—66.8 percent of the school population is composed of white students, and less than five percent is composed of black students, according to the MCPS 2017-2018 Schools at a Glance report—she felt like most of her friends couldn’t understand her experiences. The lack of open conversations about race relations at Whitman stems from a place of privilege, McDonald said. Since most students will never be directly affected by racial prejudice, she said, they don’t think to engage in meaningful conversations about race. This makes initiating these conversations even more crucial.

Last year, then-freshman Bryan Ellis spoke at an

assembly about his experience being called the N-word at Whitman. When McDonald heard students making jokes after the assembly, she knew she had to take action—for herself and for all the minority students at Whitman whose voices weren’t being heard.

“They used it as a joke instead of taking his pain and looking at it seriously,” McDonald said. “It just made me want to create a change because I don’t want to see anyone else, any minority students, go through this and have to be alone.”

Ellis no longer attends Whitman. But through participation in county-wide meetings and a February retreat, other minority students who are MSP members have been able to share and compare their experiences with students from MSP chapters around the county. At the retreat, members participated in student-led task force meetings and workshops, ranging from topics like student advocacy to knowing your legal rights.

This student-led environment has given McDonald the confidence to take initiative in her community, she said; recently, she spoke at an MCPS town hall about her experience attending a racially homogenous school. She hopes that other MSP members will be able to use the confidence they gain from the program to help create change too.

“Students don’t always know the power they have, but it’s important for students to be able to lead this organization because this issue affects us everyday,” McDonald said. “By actively having these conversations about race and being comfortable talking about it—that’s how we make a change.”

The Minority Scholars Program meets every Wednesday after school, and members attend county-wide meetings the second week of every month. If you’re interested in getting involved, reach out to McDonald or to club facilitator Rainer Kulenkampff.

Junior Nick Cook directs surrealist films Cook to become vice president of Tryka Film Coalition

by ADITI GUJARAN With an eye for composition and framing, junior Nick Cook often turns simple school projects into short, unique films: a Spanish 5 Don Quixote project becomes a comical retelling of the classic story, an AP U.S. History project morphs into a spin on HGTV’s Property Brothers and an Odyssey chapter preview assignment parodies filmmaker Ken Burns.

“If you’re writing a story on paper, it’s really limiting on what you can make a person see or understand,” Cook said.

“That potential to produce the images that people are thinking when they hear a story is the best part of filmmaking.”

Cook shoots informal, independent films, edits for Whitman Shorts, is the vice president the Whitman Filmmaker Club and next year, will become vice president of Tryka Film Coalition, a group of student filmmakers from Whitman, Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Walter Johnson high schools. He has been director of photography for 10 films.

He often works with other teen filmmakers from Imagination Stage and Tryka. Most of Cook’s short films are around 10 minutes, and he spends around 72 hours filming per month. His favorite genre to watch and film is horror.

“I’m particularly into films and scripts that have some element that is not realistic,” Cook said. “It’s mostly surrealism because those films are more fun to explore—here are things that are not in the realm of reality. I don’t think I’ve ever shot something that’s completely straightforward.”

Cook took Imagination Stage’s filmmaking class the summer after sixth grade. Despite originally wanting to explore special effects, he said he fell in love with “pure filmmaking.”

Since then, he has taken every class offered at Imagination Stage and is now completing an independent study under filmmaker Dave Stern, who’s Imagination Stage’s director of digital media. Stern has directed over a dozen short films and has earned accolades including the CINE Golden Eagle, an award that honors originality and excellence in storytelling.

Cook follows a routine for each set: he first sets up his Sony A7S camera and lights an hour before the actors arrive on set. When they arrive, he adjusts his lights to correctly expose the actor’s skin tones and go over the scene list with them. Cook self-funds his sets; most of the budget goes toward providing food for the cast.

“You can come up with an idea for every shot and what it means and plan everything on set,” Cook said. “But when you are on set and the take doesn’t go exactly as planned, you have to make a lot of decisions. There’s a lot of creativity that goes into play there.”

Cook joined Whitman Shorts this year but has already been on about 16 segments. Although he won’t return to Shorts next year because of his independent study, he says it has taught him how to balance creativity with strict deadlines, he said.

One of his favorite segments was a student spotlight on chess player Otis Sun. To make the segment brief yet dramatic, Cook said he misted the Whitman Short’s room with atmosphere aerosol, or “haze in a can,” and beamed red and blue lights.

In addition to his Shorts role, as vice president of the Filmmaker Club, he shows the new members how to find their own “technical vision.” He also leads discussions on how to write screenplays.

“Nick is very approachable. If I have a question, I can go up and ask him,” freshman Lauren Tan said. “We’ve done feedback sessions and he gave great feedback, like how to format a film script. When I first started, it made me feel more welcome.”

For the Tryka Film Coalition, he works with other student filmmakers to network, exchange cast and crew information and give feedback on each other’s scripts. Right now, Cook is the social outreach manager. He brings local professional filmmakers to talk to the group and offer advice and insight on the industry.

“Nick is at the backbone of Tryka, not just in terms of leadership, but also the community. He’s one of the most,

As well as Cook editing for Whitman Shorts, junior Nick Cook is the vice president of Tryka Film Coalition. Photo illustration

by LUKAS GATES

if not the most, prolific and talented artists I’ve ever met,” Tryka president Aubrey Lay, a senior, said. “He’s done an awesome job at getting speakers and leading those parts of the meetings.”

After high school, Cook hopes to go to a liberal arts school in either New York or Los Angeles. When he graduates, he said he doesn’t want to produce generic box office hits.

“I want to see a film industry where the types of films that I relate to attract more people,” Cook said. “I want to push something that’s unconventional and see if people are into that. I want to bring those films into the spotlight.”

Undocumented immigrant asks for continued advocacy Gutierrez Lopez files petition for stay to remain in the U.S. with three kids

“Local” Continued from Page 3 The church is a spiritual community that’s dedicated to furthering social progress and agreeing to house Gutierrez Lopez affirms that message, Rev. Katie Romano Griffin said.

“It’s our faith that called us to be a sanctuary congregation,” Griffin said. “We believe in honoring the inherent dignity of every person

and to have justice and compassion in all human relations. Our current immigration system is broken, so we see our work as a sanctuary to help allow due process to happen.”

Rev. Mansfield Kaseman, Montgomery County’s interfaith liaison, told the church’s congregants that the entire county government, including the police force, was rooting for Gutierrez Lopez and the church’s efforts to

offset the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

Delegate Jared Solomon (D18) spoke to the crowd about the need for elected officials to voice their opposition to the federal government’s harsher immigration enforcement. He also pledged to go to the Fairfax immigration office with Gutierrez Lawyer’s lawyer and supporters to file a petition for stay to reopen her case.

“My family came because they wanted an opportunity to build a better life, to have better opportunities for their children,” Solomon said. “That’s all that Rosa is asking for, and that’s all that we’re asking that Rosa is given the chance to do.”

On Feb. 19, the judge who reviewed Gutierrez Lopez’s case said that the arguments her lawyer made―needing to be with her kids

and escaping violence―didn’t merit a reopening of her case.

On Mar. 25, her lawyer, children and Solomon went to the Fairfax immigration office to file the petition for stay.

“Please, please, I beg with all my heart, and in the name of God, please help me and intervene,” Gutierrez Lopez said at the vigil. “I need to be with my kids.”

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

Feature

W C R O S S R D ACROSS: 1. Standardized test widely used for college admission 4. A group of eight 9. What’s everywhere in the kitchen, according to Lil Jon 13. Important stat for pitchers 14. Policy of letting things take their own course, laissez _____ 15. Rapper who sings “Pop Out,” “Finer Things” and “Battle Cry” 16. Decay 17. *Surprise greatly 19. Former controversial radio personality, Don 21. Apparel company known for Maryland pride gear 22. *Bob Ross, Frida Kahlo, or Andy Warhol 25. Website software used by The Black & White online 26. A colorless liquid hydrocarbon of the alkane series, used as a solvent 30. The most important meal of the day … or a literal hint to the answers to the starred clues 36. Largest moon of Saturn 37. Gmail alternative, online service provider founded in 1985 38. An item that gives great pleasure, often a reward 40. Infection passed from one person to another during sexual contact, abbr.

41. Post earrings 44. *A substance with an apparent magical effect 47. The black mirror in Netflix’s show Black Mirror 49. Valley in West Maui, Hawaii 50. *What many do to announce college decisions

57. One who is “smooth”, according to Sade 59. Titular Jane Austen character, portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow in 1996 movie adaptation 60. *Common breakfast alternative to pancakes 63. Common location for a piercing 64. Low-lying land generally flooded in wet seasons 65. Awake and out of bed 66. Name of men’s lifestyle brand, another abbreviation for Au element 67. Color that can be used to describe emotion 68. U.S. Representative for Maryland’s 5th congressional district, Hoyer 69. AJ’s sister and performing partner DOWN: 1. Small line or stroke 2. A strong, generally pleasant smell 3. 21 Jump Street star, Channing 4. Rip ___ 5. What was printed on Aaron Rodgers’ helmet in college 6. Jeweled crown worn by women 7. Home to the University of Michigan, Ann 8. One’s first appearance in a particular role 9. Rapper behind songs “Down in the DM” and “Rake It Up” 10. Premier League all time leading goal scorer, Shearer 11. Dwight’s cousin on the Office 12. Army ranking below corporal, abbr.

Summer plans

by LINUS GHANADAN

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15. Electronic control adjusted beforehand to ease use 20. One of baseball’s best, Sammy 23. University of Nebraska at Kearney, abbr.

24. What velvet and fur coats are 30. Lowest male singing voice 31. Group of college and university-based officer training programs for training commissioned officers of the United States Armed Forces, abbr.

32. Environmental Land Use Restrictions, abbr.

33. Org. that saves dogs and cats

who have run out of time at public shelters 34. What covers most of the Earth’s surface 35. Chinese martial art, ___ Chi 39. What the stooges or little pigs are 42. The action of stopping or resisting attack 43. What you do in google 45. Long haired domesticated relative of cattle 46. Weed, Marijuana, Pot 48. Non-classical CAH, abbr.

51. Vocalists James and Jones

52. Push from below 53. To make a speech 54. Last letter of the Greek alphabet 55. Little, tiny, minuscule 56. Late to class 57. Spoken rather than written 58. Home of Machu Picchu 60. Town on Estero Island, off the southwest Florida coast with a beach facing the gulf of Mexico, abbr.

61. A wrongdoing, religiously 62. Attempt

Sports

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

14

Academic stress, injuries prompt athletes to drop college sports

by SARA AZIMI

From tagging along to her older brother’s clinics when she was four years old, to joining a travel team in elementary school, to playing four years on the Whitman varsity team, Marie Hatch (‘16) had dedicated her whole life to basketball.

She was excited to play at Cornell University; it was a validation of all the hours she had dedicated to the game over the years. But a year after starting school at Cornell, she found herself at a new school, not playing basketball.

Many Division I athletes across the country are finding themselves parting from the sports that have defined them their whole lives. Coaches and athletes reported that about 15 percent of scholarship athletes decide to quit their sport after a year or two, according to The Washington Post.

This trend is apparent among former Whitman athletes. Like Hatch, former Duke University football player Matt Clayton (‘17) and University of Maryland wrestler John Luke Iglesias (‘18) decided to quit their teams only months into college.

Clayton and Iglesias’ struggles with injuries near the end of their high school careers continued into college. After spending his entire freshman season trying to recover from injuries with his ACL, MCL and both menisci in his left knee, Clayton realized that his health wasn’t going to get back to 100 percent, prompting him to quit the team, he said. While Iglesias was cleared from rehab protocol in December, during stretching he felt a shift in his knee similar to what he felt when he tore his meniscus and sprained his ACL during his senior year, so he decided to quit in order to prevent the injury from recurring again, he said.

“I felt like I had a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, but I also felt a bit lost with myself,” Iglesias said. “I miss wrestling everyday and still think about what would’ve happened if I stayed.”

Although Hatch struggled with multiple injuries throughout high school, none of them played into her decision to quit in college. But from the lifting and conditioning of preseason to practice every day during the season, basketball felt like it was starting to take over her life, she said.

Q&A

by BENNETT SOLOMON Tony Reali has been the host of ESPN’s daily sports talk show Around the Horn—one of the most watched daily studio shows on the ESPN network—for 16 years and over 3600 episodes. Each episode, four panelists discuss breaking news, top plays and sports bloopers. Reali was 24 years old when he first began hosting the show. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

“My whole life with basketball I had passion and was so excited to do it,” Hatch said.

“But it kind of became like a chore and a job, and I wasn’t enjoying it anymore.”

Along with losing passion for the game, Cornell women’s basketball assistant coach said the most common reason why athletes choose to leave is because of the academic stress that comes with trying to juggle the academic rigor of college with the practices and games.

College practices brought a new level of intensity that Iglesias described as some of the most “grueling” and “absurd” exercise he’s ever done. He once accidentally missed a morning practice, and later that day, his coach called him and told him to go on a crossfit climbing machine until he reached 20,000 feet. Although the workouts were physically taxing, they were extremely useful, Iglesias said.

“What I got from it was the best shape of my life and the most rapid changes in my body I’ve ever seen,” Iglesias said.

Clayton and Hatch had no idea that their career in their sport was going to end like it did. They both considered it for awhile, but ultimately concluded that it was the right decision for them.

“There was definitely a long progression more born out of health necessity than what I wanted to do,” Clayton said.

Once these athletes decided to quit their sport, they were given an extra few hours a day that they weren’t used to having. Their new free time has allowed them to explore their respective colleges more in depth and do things they might not have imagined they would be able to do in college, like go abroad for a semester, join greek life and participate in different projects around campus. Iglesias is even able to find time to return to Whitman to watch wrestling matches and help coach his old teammates.

Although the decision to quit basketball was difficult, Hatch has no regrets, she said.

She now attends the University of Maryland, and has even started to play pick-up basketball again.

“I’m really happy at Maryland and I think it was good to get some space from basketball for a while,” Hatch said. “I kind of overdosed on basketball a little. Now I’m casually coming back to it.”

Marie Hatch (‘16) plays basketball for the Cornell girl’s basketball team. Hatch decided to quit the team after it “became like a chore and a job.” She attends the University of Maryland, College Park and plays pick-up now. Photos courtesy MARIE HATCH

ESPN’s Tony Reali reflects on hosting ‘Around the Horn’

Host of 16 years says he loves “the rush” of the job

ing, Kornheiser and Wilbon decided to put me on air to be the host of their game-show segment and the stat correction person.

I got the job at “Around the Horn” when I got a phone call during halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl asking if I could fill in for the current host the next day. The rest is history.

The Black & White: When did you first realize you wanted to get into the hosting business?

Tony Reali: I’ve wanted to be a sportscaster for as long as I can remember. When I was five years old, I had a fake microphone and would be in front of the TV fake broadcasting the New York Yankees games. It was the only dream I ever had, and now I’m living the dream.

B&W: What would you say to a student or kid that wants to be a sports broadcaster?

TR: Be prepared to do anything. Another piece of advice would be to say yes as often as possible. Yes is a word that opens doors to possibilities. Evolution is everything in the sports business and in all jobs, so pay attention to how the industry is changing and pay attention to what’s emerging in the industry now. When I started working for “PTI” and “Around the Horn,” podcasts and blogs didn’t exist, and now they’re such a big part of this industry. That’s only going to be more true for the next generations of broadcasters.

B&W: How did you work your way up to where you are now?

TR: After college, I wrote trivia questions for an ESPN show called “2 Minute Drill” and the sportscast for the local news for Channel 11 in New York. In 2001, I was hired to work on ESPN’s “PTI” to be the researcher for Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. But a week prior to the show’s air-

B&W: What have been the biggest obstacles you’ve faced throughout your career?

TR: There are obstacles because the industry is so fast and so forward moving. I think producing and hosting a daily show is a challenge because the way people watched sports when we started doing the show in 2002 is different than the way people watch sports today.

So the biggest obstacle is constantly evolving as the world evolves. We used to do a show that maybe started with the highlight packages of last night’s games in 2004; that’s completely changed now because people have already seen those on their Twitter feed or Snapchat, so we have to approach our stories in a slightly different way.

B&W: What’s the day-to-day life like at ESPN? TR: It’s sports 24/7. Some of us will even tell you we dream about the stories we’re going to talk about; I dream in my head that I’m doing the show. It’s one of those jobs that never actually leaves you—you’re always on. You can have a shift at ESPN that’s nine to five, and then you’re going to go home and watch the games, be on your laptop while watching the games, digest what’s happening and think about it as how you’re going to talk about it in the next day’s show. The word I would use to describe the day is “non-stop.”

B&W: What’s your favorite memory from the show?

TR: My favorite memory may have been April Fools many years ago when we decided to do the show backward. “Around the Horn” is a scored show and debate, so I had to score the show starting at 45 points per winner. I took it from the goodbye and we

filmed the show completely in reverse.

My favorite memories have been when we’re allowed to break the mold a little bit, so the shows like April Fools and Halloween are my favorites.

B&W: What’s it like to be the face of a popular show on one of the biggest networks in the world?

TR: It’s a dream job. I get to talk about sports for a living with the brightest minds and people I’ve become great friends with.

It’s turned me into a different type of fan. I used to be the type of fan that would cry if my team lost, but now I root for the best stories and quickest games.

I also enjoy the performing in my job.

When I host “Around the Horn,” I have four experts on the screen with me who can talk at any moment, and I have to engage in debate.

I have two producers in my ear who can talk to me at any moment. I can have seven or eight voices talking to me at once and it’s like a riddle I have to solve every show. Trying to navigate all that traffic is like I’m landing planes at LaGuardia Airport. I love the rush.

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

Sports

15

Sophie Reilly wins states after recovering from injury Senior Sophie Reilly swims at a meet this year. After suffering back injuries throughout the swimming season, she couldn’t swim butterfly for most of the year. Despite her injury, she won the state championship in 100-yard butterfly with a time of 55.91 seconds. Next year, she’ll swim for Rice University’s Division I program. Photo by ADAM HIRSH

by JOSÉ WRAY After senior Sophie Reilly suffered a back injury just before the season started, winning the state championship in butterfly—a goal that had seemed attainable since last year’s state championship—suddenly seemed out of reach.

“Sometimes I get little tweaks in my back, but I could kind of tell that something was a little different,” Reilly said. “I would feel like someone was winding it up and trying to force the bones together.”

Reilly committed in October to swim for Rice University next year and had been one of the strongest swimmers on the Whitman team for the past four years. But the injury forced Reilly to completely change how she trained: she started competing in freestyle, which was lighter on her back, instead of butterfly, her strongest stroke. She prioritized recovery, routinely stretching after practice and doing extra

abdominal work, and she began aggressive routine visits to her physical therapist; but with states only weeks away, the recovery process felt long and frustrating, she said.

“I’m a very analytical person,” Reilly said “I was adding up the yardage, being like ‘this isn’t enough.’”

As physical therapy began paying off and states neared, Reilly began getting back into butterfly and regaining strength; she soon won regionals and was seeded to win states. Her improvement, though slow, was largely because of her dedication to her recovery process, her mom, Katy, said.

“It’s really a mindset of getting through it and trusting that all the pieces will fall back into place eventually,” Katy said. “She just kept doing what she was doing.”

The team captain ended her high school career with a 55.91 second time in the 100 -yard butterfly—and as a state champion.

Despite her injury, Reilly wasn’t surprised

about her accomplishment: last year she came in second at states, and the swimmer who beat her graduated this past year. But the time she achieved was especially remarkable.

“This year in club and high school I hadn’t been faster than 57,” Reilly said. “Then at states I broke 56 for the first time. So that was just amazing to me because I’ve been working really hard at PT and getting stronger.”

Reilly’s time was the second fastest for the event in Whitman history. She achieved this feat despite going to only one Whitman swim practice all season. Instead, she trained with Nation’s Capital Swim Club nearly every day and sometimes even twice a day. The club is one of the largest in the nation, with 14 different sites and over 90 professional coaches. It has produced multiple Olympians, including Katie Ledecky and Jack Conger.

Even though nearly all of Reilly’s training was done through her club, she was still a large part of Whitman’s team. She helped

build comradery by organizing team socials on Friday nights and encouraging team spirit.

“Encouraging people to cheer and encouraging people to support each other, that’s mainly my role, since I’m not as present at practices as some of the other captains,” Reilly said. “That’s something I try really hard to do.”

Reilly’s teammates were excited by the win and happy her high school career ended with a state championship.

“None of us were surprised because of how good of a swimmer she is,” teammate Clayton Steiner said. “When it actually happened, we were all so hyped.”

Whitman swim coach Chris Schlegel credits Reilly’s success at states and throughout high school to her hard work and desire to win.

“Her competitive drive is unmatched,” Schlegel said. “Regardless of the situation, she’s a fighter to the end.”

Former teacher Russ Rushton continues 14-year legacy as basketball anouncer

by SARA AZIMI “Good evening and welcome to Walt Whitman High School, the home of the Vikings!”

For the past 14 years, the voice of former math teacher Russ Rushton has boomed across the gym before the opening tip of each home basketball game. Though Rushton retired from teaching last year, he returned for another year of managing the clock for boys and girls junior varsity and varsity teams.

“Basketball was always my love, and I like keeping my hand in the game,” Rushton said. “I don’t know that I ever want to coach again or anything, but doing the clock is a good opportunity just to keep close to the action.”

As a teenager, Rushton played basketball at Springbrook High School.

He later coached the Whit-

man boys varsity team for 15 years before stepping down to become head of the math department. Ten years later—in 2005— when then-athletic director Dave Magathan offered Rushton the job as clock manager, he jumped at the opportunity to become involved with the game again.

“I’ve been doing it long enough now that it’s pretty second nature to me.”

Although Rushton has years of experience with the job, he isn’t immune to the stress that the end of tight games entail. Any small error in the clock has the potential to affect the outcome of the game, so it can be extremely nerve-

“Basketball was always my love, and I like keeping my hand in the game.”

- Russ Rushton As the clock manager, Rushton announces the starting lineups and controls the game clock and score.

“I know the game. I know what to look for on the court. I know all of the officials’ signals,” he said.

wracking at times, he said.

Through his years with Whitman, Rushton has built close relationships with the coaches, especially girls varsity coach Peter Kenah. He attends the girls basketball banquet every year and is al-

ways available to provide help or advice, Kenah said.

“In a lot of ways he was a mentor because he’s the only varsity coach in the building,” Kenah said.

“It’s nice being able to talk to him and rely on him for different things.”

Along with trying to stay involved with the game of basketball, Rushton continues this job because he genuinely enjoys watching each team play and evolve throughout the years. Watching the girls basketball team win the state championship then come back strong again the next season was one of his favorite moments, he said.

Rushton hopes to continue working at the table for years to come.

“You never know what one year brings after the next one,” he said.

“But as long as I am able and can do a good job, I want to come back and keep contributing.”

Former math teacher Russ Rushton has been announcing basketball games for the past 14 years. Rushton retired last year. Photo by TOM KNOX

16

Feature

The Black & White|April 4, 2019

Whitman alum, daughter create female empowerment platform

by KATIE HANSON

When Monika Samtani (‘85) and her daughter Natasha think about the media platform they’ve built to share women’s stories internationally, they come back to one word: inspiring.

“Women are the same across the world, all over the universe.

We all have a story to tell,” Monika said. “The goal of our videos is that you see them, you have an intimate feeling with them and their story, and you get inspired.”

The Samtanis officially launched The Fem Word, a website dedicated to sharing influential women’s stories, in February 2019.

Articles often feature a video of a one-on-one interview with an accomplished woman. The interviews, shot in black and white, are supposed to feel raw, intimate and focus only on the woman and her work, Monika said. The Fem Word team has produced nearly four dozen videos and now publishes one video a week.

Although the website centers on the videos, it also includes editorials written by the team members, sends a monthly newsletter and is in the process of launching a radio show.

The Samtanis and their employees have told a variety of women’s stories: they covered a sexual assault survivor who founded a follow up to the #MeToo movement called the #IHaveTheRightTo movement, and they told the story of the co-founder and co-CEO of Sugarfina, a luxury candy company.

The Fem Word team includes eight high school students who mostly write editorials and original articles. The platform doesn’t have a physical office because employees are scattered throughout the United States and India. Instead, the media site focuses on creating a “virtual newsroom.”

Making The Fem Word a reality took years. Monika worked in broadcast TV journalism after

graduating from George Washington University in 1989. Before leaving broadcast journalism, she had her own segment and was a fill-in news anchor on WUSA9, but toward the end of her broadcasting career, she noticed a disheartening trend.

“As I was growing into the industry and got married and had children, I had to take time off,” Monika said. “As I grew older, I started to see myself being overlooked. I wasn’t getting the opportunities I deserved. I just started to not feel good about going to work anymore.”

Monika went on to leave broadcast news and create her own public relations company, Ms. Media.

Before Monika started Ms. Media in the fall of 2014, Natasha was studying broadcast and new media with a focus on media and entertainment at Elon University.

After graduating, she helped her mom with digital projects and directed the social media strategy for her mom’s media company. Together, they worked on promotion for the premiere of “Sold,” a narrative film about sex trafficking in India for one of Ms. Media’s clients.

“That led us to realize that there’s such power in storytelling,” Natasha said. “My mom being a journalist and me having my experiences during my studies in school, we realized that there was a need to share these stories.”

Natasha was also drawn to the idea of creating The Fem Word because she spent much of her upbringing surrounded by women, she said. She graduated from HoltonArms, an all-girls school in Bethesda, in 2010, and was involved in a sorority at Elon. When she moved to Los Angeles to work for ticketing companies in the music industry, she formed a close group of female friends.

“We’re all going through the same stuff, no matter how old you are

and no matter what stage you’re at in your life. ” Natasha said. “There’s always that spark of ‘I felt that connection to you because you said something that resonated with me.’

The more people share their stories, the more likely they are to have that feeling, even if it’s virtual.”

Ms. Media’s first subject was Sahasra Deepika, an all-girls school in India. Natasha and Monika created videos, reached out to press and handled social media for the non-profit school. The Samtanis also worked together on public relations for “Girl Rising,” a documentary profiling individual girls in developing countries fighting for their education.

After these three projects: “Sold,” “Girl Rising” and Sahasra Deepika, Natasha and Monika began reaching out to friends and other women they knew in L.A. and the D.C. area to tell their stories.

In the U.S., senior editor Madlyn McAuliffe edits and writes blogs and editorials for The Fem Word.

Before joining the site, McAuliffe was a freelance reporter and met Monika through an article she was writing about an event for Sahasra Deepika and “Sold” hosted by Ms. Media. When the Samtanis started The Fem Word, McAuliffe wanted to join as soon as possible.

“I have never seen two women who have worked so hard—not just for themselves—but to create this platform for other women,” McAuliffe said. “There’s an altruism in that which is just so compelling, admirable and inspiring.

People around the world now are becoming inspired by that as well.

It’s electrifying to work with them.”

Cognizant of the ageism she faced in the broadcast news industry, Monika enlists people of all ages to write for The Fem Word, including writers as young as 13.

“As a man grows older in the media, he looks more credible,” Monika said. “My goal is that we will

Monika Samtani (‘85) and her daughter Natasha created The Fem Word, a platform dedicated to telling women’s stories, in February. Photo courtesy MONIKA SAMTANI.

have women that we’re highlighting in our videos or women that are writing for us who are 13 up to 90.

I don’t care as long as you have a voice and a story and it fits within our platform.”

Junior Saira Rathod began working for The Fem Word two years ago. Rathod had organized fundraisers for an all-girls school in India prior to joining the platform, and her work led to Monika inviting her to be on the staff.

“It’s amazing that I’ve been there since the beginning. Being able to watch it grow, seeing what it’s become and what it will become has been incredible,” Rathod said. “It shows so many stories and impacts so many people.”

For now, the Samtanis are looking to expand their platform, exploring possibilities to tell the stories of influential women in China and the Middle East, but moving

forward, they are committed to maintaining their message.

“I don’t really care about how old you are or where you’re from or what you look like. What matters to me is that we empower each other.

We’re lifting each other up,” Monika said. “We’re holding hands across the world, and we’re saying each one of us has a story and here’s where you can put it.”

Scan the QR code on Snapchat to visit The Fem Word website.

Junior Julia Clayton leads second annual Pancakes for Parkinson’s

by ALLY NAVARRETE

Junior Julia Clayton poses with her two brothers and mother at her oldest brother’s graduation. Clayton, inspired by her mother’s battle with Parkinson’s disease, led Whitman’s second annual Pancakes for Parkinson event this year.

When junior Julia Clayton applied to join the leadership class at the end of her freshman year, she had one goal in mind: start a fundraiser at Whitman to support research for Parkinson’s disease, which her mom, Susan, was diagnosed with in 2009. Now, two years after she joined leadership, Clayton recently led the SGA’s second annual Pancakes for Parkinson’s event.

Parkinson’s is a nervous system disorder that affects movement, causing muscle tremors and changes in speech. The disease is progressive, meaning symptoms grow worse over time.

“It’s been really hard on my family,” Clayton said.

“We’re kind of missing a mom figure. She’s there, but not as much as a caregiver. But we get through, and my mom is so strong. She’s the best.”

High schools and colleges across the country have been hosting pancake breakfasts for years to raise money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which actor Michael J. Fox started after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991. The organization is dedicated to finding a cure through fundraising.

The University of Virginia held the first pancake breakfast in 2004, and it was adopted as a national fundraiser in 2007. UVA alone has raised over $346,000 from the event in the last 10 years.

Aware of Clayton’s interest in starting a fundraiser for Parkinson’s research, former SGA vice president Elliot Kelly (‘18) presented the idea of hosting Pancakes for Parkinson’s at Whitman to Clayton after hearing about its success at UVA. Kelly was also eager to support Parkinson’s research because his grandfather had the disease.

“Everyone has different charities that they like to support,” Kelly said. “I thought it was a great idea because Parkinson’s is a topic that’s important to me, and I know it’s also important to Julia.”

Julia is a member of the Charity Month Committee for SGA. Since Pancakes for Parkinson’s was a new

event last year, she organized it alone. At the breakfast, students paid $10 for all-you-can-eat pancakes made by members of the SGA. Last year, the event, combined with Whitman Idol, raised $1,600 for Parkinson’s research. This year, the event raised over $1,600 on its own.

“There’s not much you can do about Parkinson’s, which is why I wanted to do something with it,” she said. “It felt good to raise money for something that’s important to me, and Whitman’s a really great community for that, so that’s why I brought it here.”

Julia’s brother, Matt (‘17), found out about Julia’s decision to bring the fundraiser to Whitman when he returned home from college for spring break last year.

He has since started fundraising for Parkinson’s research with Kelly through Duke University’s Pancakes for Parkinson’s club and is now the head planner for the event at Duke “I was definitely both proud and excited that she was passionate about making the same impact that I wanted to make at Duke and for the Parkinson’s community,” he said.

This year at Whitman, a committee of six leadership students across all grade levels helped Julia buy supplies and make flyers and banners to hang around the school. A few people also worked to coordinate the event—which fell on the same day as the mulch sale fundraiser for the Whitman All-Sports Booster Club—with athletic director Andy Wetzel.

“Julia’s really passionate about this project,” senior Amanda Sherman said. “She took leadership both this year and last year when it was piloted, and she’s done a great job in making it a successful event.”

Their dad, Ken, is proud of both Julia and Matt for taking action to help their mom and others with Parkinson’s.

“I have great pride in them for acting on something they care about,” he said. “I’m deeply touched by the love they had for their mom that drove it.”