Sheffield, Massachusetts
VOL CXI, No. 1
LUNAR NEW YEAR AT BERKSHIRE: First school-wide celebration brings fireworks unseen in 13 years, Kung-Fu, food, and culture by Darran Shen ’20 This past week, Berkshire School celebrated Lunar New Year as a school community for the first time. First envisioned years ago, this effort was spearheaded by the Asian Affinity Club along with faculty members of the Language Department and was months in the making. With celebrations over the course of many days, the Lunar New Year was a massive success and reflected the burgeoning Asian cultural diversity and exposure across the
Chinese III students preforming a traditional dragon dance.
by Chris Branch ’20
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INSIDE NEWS • Higher Recognition for value of SEED • A Perspective on Gender Equity at Berkshire SPORTS • Inaugural Skate For Her Game • Basketball Player Highlights ARTS • Berkshire Presents RENT • Winter Carnival • • •
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Jack Whitney ’20 performing as Chef from South Park. comradery exhibited is truly a testament to the unit we have become as a form. Berkshire will always be a place where it is safe to learn and grow, and from this, we can extract the greatest versions of ourselves. Such are those that we exhibited during this year’s Hamlet Night. As an actor in this years
Instacart Invasion by Campbell Mecke ’21 & Sophia Pasquale ’21
paying shoppers to do it for them. While this service is helpful to students by eliminating the need to shop themselves, it also raises concern for campus safety. All Berkshire delivery services, like Romas or MealGopher, have instructions to deliver to the student center. This is where the problem starts with Instacart. Instacart is operated on a personal level, meaning that individual shoppers receive delivery instructions from their customers instead of instructions from the school. Mr. Quilty quickly shut this down in an all-school email, stating that, “all
There’s a new buzz in the food delivery sector for the Berkshire students this year. Instacart invaded the Berkshire School last spring, bringing confused drivers, an abnormal amount of produce, and very concerned dorm parents. Instacart is a local grocery delivery application that links a customer with a shopper who does the grocery shopping and delivery for them. This application is very helpful to the Berkshire student body because it replaces the need to go on weekly town trips for groceries by
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production myself, the wacky, wild, and positively strange experience that Hamlet Night was and will continue to be brings to mind a certain quote from the play that will forever be perfectly applicable of this beloved tradition. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” Instacart deliveries need to be delivered to the Rovensky Student Center” and that lack of cooperation with this will lead the school to “stop all deliveries if Instacart is seen delivering to dorms.” We interviewed a student who we witnessed picking up their groceries outside their dorm on a late Sunday afternoon. We will refer to them as ‘anonymous student’ to preserve their privacy. This
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is what she had to say: “When I first signed up for Instacart in the spring of 2019, I originally put down CGR as my drop off location,” confesses the anonymous student “the issue now is that, after receiving an email saying that students are required to get their food dropped off at the student center, I can’t change my drop off location, and have to stealthily get my groceries from in front of CGR.” We followed up with this anonymous student a week later; they since have figured out how to change their drop off location to avoid receiving points from the dorm parent on duty. So the question remains: will students get their groceries delivered to the student center out of cooperation, or will they continue to risk it all and get it delivered to the dorms out of convenience? Sophia Pasquale
Another holiday season has come and gone here at Berkshire, and the annual Holiday Shuffle that accompanies the short time in between Thanksgiving and Winter break too often blurs that activities in between. But one event always seems to shine through the seasonal fog. That event is Hamlet night. Hamlet Night is a show that the sixth form presents each year with the help of their teachers in the wake of reading William Shakespeare’s timeless play Hamlet: Prince of Denmark. Each english class adopts a scene from the play as well as a theme from popular media or literature and performs it as a class in front of the form, their nervous teachers, and an array of curious faculty attendees. Students are tasked with picking a unique theme, altering the script to match it, and creating a set before Hamlet Night Arrives. Some time after the performance, a winner is declared (along with several minor individual awards), and the winning class has the “privilege” of reperforming (or rather reforming) their piece in front of the entire school during an All School Meeting. This year may have presented one of the most harrowing challenges in
Hamlet night history for the sixth form class. A later-than-usual Thanksgiving that resulted in a later than usual break resulted in a time crunch that was somewhat unprecedented. Many classes only had mere days to collect costumes, allocate roles, alter scripts, and memorize lines;the most time any of the classes received was a meager 5 days. Nevertheless, the class of 2020 rose to the occasion spectacularly and, with the aid of a few outside-class meetings, was able to put on a Hamlet Night that will surely go down in the books. Each theme was creative, the line execution was impressive (though at times precarious), and the enthusiasm was palpable. Passing students not attending the show may have been startled by a roar of laughter exploded from the Great Room as Lynx Schiava (as a reindeer [as Hamlet]) or intrigued by gasps as Aimi Sekeguchi (As Luigi [as Hamlet]) let loose a barrage of makeshift fireballs on her adversary. The night was teeming with hilarious and intricate interpretations of the play through themes such as South Park, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and even Dodgeball (the movie). After a phenomenal, hysterical, and at times harrowing night, the entire sixth form and Berkshire English Department as a
Berkshire community. Berkshire Hall and Benson Commons were draped in traditional Chinese signs of hope and prosperity. Paper lanterns hung from ceilings and New Year Couplets posted on walls wished passersby good luck. The celebration represents a significant step for the school in officially recognizing a critical festival celebrated by almost 10% of its student body. In years prior, that support had instead come from Cheng-Chia Wu, co-Director of Berkshire’s music program, who held annual Mid-Autumn Festival and Lunar New Year dinners for those students identifying as Asian in her own home on campus.
Berkshire School
Listen to many, speak to a few: Senior Class Performs Hamlet
whole was left entertained for weeks. Soon after, the winner of the competition for best adaptation and performance was awarded to “The Real Housewives of New Denmark”, a title that explains itself. And to the victor go the spoils. The AP literature class responsible for the wonderful adaptation performed their iteration in front of the entire student body during an all school meeting, flawlessly concluding another year of Berkshire’s intimate introduction to Hamlet. So what did we learn? This years Hamlet Night, despite adversity, was a fantastic showing of the class of 2020’s wit, dedication, and willingness to rise to any occasion. The
February 3, 2020
Instacart orders spotted all over campus.