CM Summer 2024

WHY I MADE IT: FLAURNA

Although Drawing and Painting has taught me to draw precise, realistic versions of what I see, I think my favorite style of drawing will always be the one I developed on my own: a semi-realistic combination of squishy cartoon shapes and small, defined details.

When I first started drawing, I was inspired by two very distinct art styles, both for very different reasons. I was always impressed by the photorealistic drawings that seemed to capture every detail. I, too, wanted to capture on paper the intricacies I saw so clearly in my imagination. On the other hand, the vibrant colors and fluid simplicity of more cartoonish art also appealed to me.

In particular, I was impressed by how easy it was to recognize what was being drawn and how active the figures seemed with just a few pencil marks on the page.

When I had to choose an independent project for Advanced Drawing and Painting, it made sense that I wanted

BY MILANA ZIVANOVIC ’25

to do something that would allow me to blend my favorite aspects of both of these styles to make something of my own. By taking the vibrant, squishy, and active aspect of one style and combining it with the intricate details of the other, I had found something that allowed me to express what I saw in my mind’s eye. Similarly, I knew I wanted to use a combination of alcohol markers and fine-tipped pens to get both the color and the detail I wanted.

Funnily enough, I ended up knowing how I wanted to draw before knowing what I wanted to draw. My first thought was flowers, because I love drawing all the details with fine-tipped pens; my next was animals, because I loved to draw them in cartoony styles, often with crazy colors. In the end, similar to how I combined styles and materials, I combined these two ideas into what I like to call “flaurna.” Part plant, part animal, somewhat creepy, but mostly cute: this combination of flora and fauna ended up being a project I loved and one that challenged me in the best of ways.

Looking back on this project—or maybe just looking at it, since I’m not done!—I can clearly see the theme of amalgamations pop out. The combination of cartoons and realism, markers and pens, plants and animals, and creepy-yet-cute all come together in a way that intrigues people just the way I hoped it would. And it makes me happy to finally see my mind’s eye framed in paper.

The combination of cartoons and realism, markers and pens, plants and animals, and creepy-yet-cute all come together in a way that intrigues people just the way I hoped it would.”

Not long after I returned here to take on this extraordinary opportunity to serve as Commonwealth’s Head of School, I bumped into an old friend and former classmate on Newbury Street. “Jenny?” she said, and I was startled, thinking I knew almost no one in Boston. But I immediately recognized Carla Brodley ’81, P’16, who you will read about in this issue (page 16). Though we had both been through a lot in the intervening forty years (marriages, children, jobs, cities), I quickly felt the same spark we’d shared as friends while at Commonwealth. Carla and I reminisced about the teachers who’d inspired or scared us; our part-time jobs at the maternity shop on Clarendon Street; and all of the times we laughed, broke rules, felt awkward, or dreamed about our possible futures.

I have subsequently connected with other former classmates and many alumni/ae from all eras of Commonwealth. It’s been a true gift. In every conversation, I notice a quality of intense engagement and curiosity. We talk to each other with real interest and authenticity—no posturing, no small talk. I am struck by all of our varied careers but even more by our commitment to the work we do, whatever it may be. (In this issue of CM, you’ll read about our work in computer science, law, theater, package design, and neuroscience.) When I talk to our alumni/ae, I hear memories of struggle—because adolescence is often difficult and Commonwealth was never perfect—but much more often I hear stories of transformation. We note how we were galvanized and empowered to shape the lives we’ve made for ourselves.

As I write this, we have just celebrated the Class of 2024 at their graduation. They join us as our newest alumni/ae. They have had quite the journey through Commonwealth. Since 2020, when they began as ninth graders, they’ve experienced a pandemic, a contentious presidential election, two wars, and some monumental Supreme Court rulings. Their time here also coincided with the emergence of ChatGPT, campus protests, and the FAFSA meltdown, as you’ll read in my conversation with Gena Rodriguez, our Director of College Counseling (page 12). Despite the upheavals, the Class of 2024 remained optimistic, eager to create connection, and as intensely curious as the older alums I meet. I can’t wait to hear what they tell us about their journeys in college and beyond. I am eager, too, to learn how they make retrospective sense of their years at Commonwealth. I share the same hope for you: that you’ll come back and tell us about your memories and your pathways. If you find yourself in Boston, I hope you decide to ring the doorbell at 151. If you’re farther flung, I hope you find opportunities to connect with our alumni/ae community in your part of the world (and via Commonwealth Connect: commschool.org/connect). We have stories to tell each other that will expand our understanding of our own pasts and new, meaty conversations to start for the future.

Jennifer Borman ’81 Head of School

Commonwealth School Alumni/ae Magazine

Issue 26 Summer 2024

Editor-in-Chief Jessica Tomer

Editor Becca Gillis

Contributing Writers

Jennifer Borman ’81

Catherine Brewster Becca Gillis

Claire Jeantheau

Jessica Tomer

Lillien Waller

Milana Zivanovic ’25

Contributing Art and Design

Wyatt Abel ’24

Ralph Alswang

Iris Eckleman ’27

Stephanie Poynter

Sarah Rahman ’27

Tony Rinaldo Photography

Amanda Trogolo ’26

Printing Hannaford and Dumas

CM is published twice a year by Commonwealth School, 151 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02116, and distributed without charge to alumni/ae, current and former parents, and other members of the Commonwealth community. Opinions expressed in CM are those of the authors and subjects, and do not necessarily represent the views of the School or its faculty and students.

We welcome feedback: communications@commschool.org. Letters and notes may be edited for style, length, clarity, and grammar.

Printed on recycled paper. Please recycle. @commonwealthalumniae

CM

the cover: Inspired by New York Magazine’s recent “Reasons to Love New York” issue, Commonwealth’s yearbook team, led by Ben Summey ’24, gathered about 125 students, faculty, and staff for our own “Reasons to Love Commonwealth” recreation. The image now graces the 2023–2024 yearbook cover, and readers can even test their knowledge with a “cover map” (both pictured above). Learn

The Comedy of Errors

Long-lost twins. Vibrant musical numbers. Wordplay galore. On March 1 and 2, Commonwealth students, faculty, staff, and families flocked to the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center to experience the sold-out Comedy of Errors, directed by Susan Thompson, with assistant director Jordan Palmer and help from alum Jo Axel ’23 Our student performers and musicians brought joyful life to the Shakespearean classic, leaving audiences delighted by an evening of witty, convoluted quadruplet comedy. (Turn to page 24 to step behind the curtain of this and decades of Commonwealth theatrical performances.)

Mermaids Making Music

We were delighted to have a number of our students represent Commonwealth at Massachusetts Music Educators Association events this year. Congratulations to the following students who qualified:

All-State Festival

n Jacey Li ’26 (Violin)

n Tomi Duintjer Tebbens Nishioka ’27 (Viola)

All-District Festival

n Brian Li ’26 (Violin)

n Jacey Li ’26 (Violin)

n Linus Schafer Goulthorpe ’27 (Bass Vocals)

n Felix Hentschel ’27 (Viola)

n Tomi Duintjer Tebbens Nishioka ’27 (Viola)

Junior All-District Festival

n Peter Jacques ’27 (Violin)

n Chloe Li ’27 (Cello)

n Vybhav Velamoor ’27 (Clarinet)

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards 2024 M

ore than 300,000 original works across twenty-eight categories of art and writing were submitted to this year’s Scholastic Art and Writing Awards—and ten Commonwealth students, across all grades, received recognition, with thirteen awards given to our students in total.

ART AWARDS

Gold Key

n Alice Guo ’27, “A Solo Fantasy,” Digital Art

n Mirabel Han ’26, “Man Selling Cows,” Photography

Silver Key

n Iris Eckelman ’27, “Going Up,” Photography

n Katie Heim Binas ’25, “A Sidelong Glance,” Photography

n Sophia Seitz Shewmon ’24, “Deconstructed, Reconstructed: An Anatomically Accurate Model of an Eastern Grey Kangaroo,” Expanded Projects

n Milana Zivanovic ’25, “Behind Closed Doors,” Painting

Honorable Mention

n Mirabel Han ’26, “Beach After Storm,” Photography

n Katie Heim Binas ’25, “Sidewalk Prayer,” Photography

n Caro Taylor ’27, “Warm Regards,” Digital Art

WRITING AWARDS

Silver Key

n Katie Heim Binas ’25, “Again,” Science Fiction & Fantasy

n Angelina Yu ’27, “The Demeter Plant,” Science Fiction & Fantasy

Honorable Mention

n Koki Cameron ’26, “The Criminal Legal System and Transgender Lives: How the American Legal System Systematically Oppresses Gender Non-Conforming Individuals,” Critical Essay

n Sol Shin ’27, “Danger: Keep In,” Poetry

Winning Winter and Spring Sports Seasons

Whether dribbling down the basketball court, salsa dancing through the Cafegymnatorium, or lunging on the fencing strip, Commonwealth students made strides in a variety of winter and spring sports this year, and they’ve got the accolades—and the fanbase—to prove it.

n Our men’s fencing team took home third place at the state championship this past February, scoring a 14-13 win over Brookline High School in the bronze medal match. Special shoutout to Max Lin ’27, who won all of his bouts during the tournament.

n Two students were named to all-league basketball teams: Ben Hines ’26 to the Massachusetts Bay Division II Independent League team and Anya Nigro ’27 to the Girls’ Independent League team.

n Commonwealth’s Ultimate Frisbee team finished their season undefeated and in second place in the league, with Eli Denenberg ’25 named their MBIL League MVP.

n Sailor Oliver Grant ’25 took home a seventh-place finish in the 420 A Fleet Championship Race.

Introducing Commonwealth Volleyball!

This spring, we were thrilled to inaugurate our very own Girls’ Volleyball team, the newest addition to Commonwealth sports! With coaching assistance from Director of Operations Stephanie Poynter and her daughter Annabel, the team had an impressive first season, winning two out of seven games in their month-long run.

Tackling Long-Term Goals

Throughout the year, faculty and staff put their heads together on big-picture topics that shape our community. The What Makes a Grade? working group considered the merits and deficiencies of various approaches to grading and how to ensure equitable practices. In a similar vein, the Faculty Evaluation and Growth group built on work started last spring concerning the processes through which faculty are reviewed. Focusing on the classroom, the Reading Comprehension group studied strategies for supporting developing strong reading skills, while the Classroom Climate and Student Belonging group explored ways of promoting a sense of belonging through culturally inclusive and responsive curricula and classroom practices. Finally, the Student Attention and Distraction group tuned into an ever-growing body of research on the impct of devices on our ability to engage.

Committee in Session

Commonwealth students had a strong showing at Model United Nations conferences this spring, with five students receiving recognition in their committees across two major conferences at Concord Academy and MIT.

Best Delegate (First Prize)

n Jaewon Choi ’27, CAMUN

n Henry Levenson ’24, CAMUN

Outstanding Delegate (Second Prize)

n Jaewon Choi ’27, MITMUNC

n Will Washko ’25, MITMUNC

Honorable Mention

n Aditya Anand ’26, CAMUN

n Will Washko ’25, CAMUN

n Ethan Qian-Tsuchida ’26, CAMUN

Building Bots and Bridges

Commonwealth’s Robotics Club

enjoyed a successful competition at the Saint Bernard School VRC Over Under Qualifier this February, where they won five out of their eight matches and, in true Commonwealth fashion, also received the “Best Sportsmanship Award.” These roboticists do our community proud!

We were thrilled to return to Camp Fuller in Kingstown, Rhode Island, for another beautiful, coastal spring Hancock. Students, faculty, and staff jumped right into vigorous matches of volleyball, soccer, Ultimate Frisbee, and more as sunny skies greeted us on our arrival. While day two saw some rainier weather, that couldn’t shake the enthusiasm for indoor morning activities, as we came together for board games, jewelry making, word games, and even trying out some exotic fruits. With an impressive and hilarious talent show (and a bit of Celtics viewing) to cap off our last night, spring Hancock 2024 was one for the books. Winners of this spring’s Hancock Photo Contest include:

n Sarah Rahman ’27, “The Dock View”: Grand Prize (1)

n Amanda Trogolo ’26, “Pebbles”: Best Golden Hour (4)

n Anto Catanzaro ’24, “Too Cool for School”: Best Would-Be Album Cover

n Wyatt Abel ’24, “Weightless”: Best Water Color (3)

n Angelina Yu ’27, “By the Docks”: Best Coastal Vibes

n Natan Shapiro ’27 and Ramya Ramathan ’27, “Aiden Mendes” and “Mir Dabbing”: Best Portrait (tie)

n Katia Nigro ’25, “Thunderstorm”: Best Tents

n Iris Eckleman ’27, “Fireside”: Best Burn (2)

n Sol Shin ’27, “By the Sea”: Best Crocs

Global Perspectives—Including a Return to China

Over spring vacation, nearly a third of our students participated in study-abroad trips to Spain, France, and, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, China. The Spanish trip included language exchange with host families, touring Granada's Alhambra Palace, and delving into the modern art scenes at Madrid's museums. In France, Parisian cafés and stunning châteaux inspired students in between strolling boulevards, seeing Renaissance masterpieces, and visiting Normandy’s storied Mont SaintMichel. Meanwhile, in China, students volunteered with pandas and explored ancient wonders like the Great Wall and Forbidden City. Following spring vacation, we had the pleasure of welcoming our exchange students from Spain for a week of touring the Boston sites and reconnecting with some familiar Commonwealth faces.

Class of 2024 Matriculations

Boston College

Brandeis University

Carnegie Mellon University

Columbia University

Cornell University

Harvard University

Johns Hopkins University

McGill University

Mount Holyoke College

New York University

Northeastern University

Northwestern University

Princeton University

Stanford University

Tufts University

University College Dublin

University College London

University of Chicago

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

University of Toronto

Washington University in St Louis Wellesley College

THIS PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM: Amith Saligrama ’24, Aaron Li ’24, Henry Levenson ’24, Ziv Rome-Blech ’24, Will Narasimhan ’24, Arjun Krishnan ’24, Ty Himmel ’24, Luke Gardiner ’24, Charlie Liebenberg ’24; Dava Sitkoff ’24; Genevieve Robinson ’24; Bojan Bugaric P’15, ’24, Alenka Kuhelj P’15, ’24, Max Kuhelj Bugaric ’15, Athena Kuhelj Bugaric ’24; Wyatt Abel ’24; Aaron Tian ’24

NEXT PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM: Brian O’Loughlin P’24, Lizzy Wakefield ’24; Hanna Gialil ’25, Sienna Shapoval ’24; Head of School Jennifer Borman ’81; Mirai Duintjer Tebbens Nishioka ’24; Bella Wright ’24; Tien Phan ’24; Olivia Wang ’24, Paris Wu ’24, Rayna Yu, Jay Sweitzer-Shalit ’24, Rihanna Perry ’24, Sienna Mathur ’24, Anto Catanzaro ’24, Eliza Lamster ’24

Graduation 2024

The Class of 2024 entered Commonwealth at a time of uncertainty, getting to know each other and our school behind masks and across six-foot distances. Since then, they’ve impressed us with their perseverance, kindness, and good humor as they’ve grown into strong and inclusive leaders—as sports captains, Model UN champs, poets, chemists, and everything in between. What a joy to gather to celebrate four years of growth and accomplishments, surrounded by family, friends, and loved ones for Commonwealth’s sixty-fourth graduation ceremony. Speakers Genevieve Robinson ’24 and Tien Phan ’24 offered poignant reflections on their time at Commonwealth, emphasizing the incalculable impact of being supported by our community as students. May they feel that same warmth and care throughout their days as alumni/ae.

Commonwealth’s Board of Trustees comprises some of our most steadfast, committed champions—alumni/ae, parents, and friends who give generously of their time and talent out of dedication to Commonwealth’s students, mission, and future. How crushing, then, to lose five of these individuals in the span of six months, including our longest-serving trustee, Charles Fried. We are deeply grateful for their service to Commonwealth, and we are fortunate to have known them.

Anthony “Tony” Hill ’70 (1951–2024) Trustee 1985–1993

I will never forget my first early and subsequent impressions of Tony when I came to Commonwealth. Brilliant, independent, and fearless. Our “Jimi Hendrix.” Always played life’s tunes his way. Carved his own paths with self-confidence and firm convictions. Exceptionally good at recognizing the kind, the gentle, the ego-less, the modest, the selfless, and those deserving of praise who never sought nor asked for it. He incorporated the best of us in so many ways. Unique, as we should all be. —Alan Glaser ’70

Charles Fried P’79 ’81 GP’19 ’23 (1935–2024)

Trustee 1979–2024

I am certain that, as a student in the ’90s, my experience at Commonwealth benefited greatly from Charles Fried. But the part I got to see directly has been over the past twelve years on the Board together. Charles exemplified what it means to be a trustee: he challenged and listened, he probed and synthesized, he guided but also deferred. He was always direct with opinions and never shied away from asking the real questions or facing challenges and opportunities. He also, without a doubt, was always thinking first and foremost of the school, its mission, and doing the right things. On our board, he was a beacon powered by his dedication and passion for Commonwealth, his long tenure and the unique perspectives it provided, and his strong moral compass and conviction fueled by his broad experience and knowledge. Many a Head of School and trustee has benefited from his perspective. Rather than a specific moment, what sticks with me the most is how at any important juncture of the school or conversation, Charles would step back and summarize with confidence and clarity. He would say things like, “This is good, this is right, we must do X, we mustn’t forget Y.” Given I am not capable of doing justice to Charles’s many impacts at Commonwealth over forty years, I will instead channel his directness and simply state with conviction: Charles was a great trustee, one we should all emulate. And he will be sorely, sorely missed. —Jeffrey Schwartz ’96

Elizabeth Thomson P’95 (1937–2024) Trustee 1999–2017

Annette J. Procter P’86, ’88 (1935–2024) Trustee 1985–1992

She thought the teachers at Commonwealth were brilliant— people like Mary Kate Bluestein, Richard Robinson, Rusty Crump, Jean Segaloff, Leland Giovanelli, etc. One of the main things she was involved in when she was on the Board was helping set up an actual fundraising program at the school. This was in the transition period between the school running on Mr. Merrill’s largesse and having to become independent and they knew essentially nothing about development. Our mother was a big fan of Commonwealth.

Jon Lorsch ’86

Susan Klaw P’94, ’96 (1949–2023) Trustee 1994–1997

Mom loved Commonwealth as a school when we were students there. She was never one to sit quietly on the sidelines. She wanted to get involved. She wanted to help. I think she felt her most important contribution was helping the school work with families that might not otherwise have known about the school and figure out what the school would need to do to make it possible for kids from low-income and non-English speaking families to apply to and attend Commonwealth.

Sonya Del Tredici ’94

Elizabeth was already a long-serving trustee when I joined the Board in 2005. She believed in the mission of the school and saw the results embodied in her son, James. His experience sparked a deep appreciation for the teachers and teaching at the school, and Elizabeth always was keenly interested in making everything he enjoyed at Commonwealth available to all of its students. She helped create the endowment for the Mary P. Chatfield Cultural Scholarship, which funds exchanges and student projects, and generously supported Hughes Grants (now Hughes/Wharton Grants) for faculty enrichment. In fact, Elizabeth could have been a Commonwealth student herself! Her talents and interests were wide-ranging: career editor with major publications, artist, musician, gardener, cook, and supporter of education, theater, church, community organizations, and land conservation. It’s no wonder she could engage with everyone she met. Elizabeth devoted boundless energy to others and blessed all who knew her.

Therese Hendricks P’05, ’07, Chair, Board of Trustees, 2017–2024

In Memoriam

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE HEAD

Gena Rodriguez Director of College Counseling

Commonwealth is not a means to an end, a pitstop on the path to college—or so we fervently hope. Yet, we’re immersed in a college-going culture, and students and families come to us brimming with excitement and ambition about what their post-Commonwealth future may hold. As our Director of College Counseling, Gena Rodriguez has helped students harness those college ambitions since 2022, striking a balance between “shooting for the stars and a really great place on Earth,” as Head of School Jennifer Borman puts it. Listen in as they discuss the evolution of college counseling at Commonwealth, how families can best support their children during the admissions process, how the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) unfolded imploded this year, and what to expect when you have high expectations for higher education.

Gena, what led you to Commonwealth, and what does your work as Director of College Counseling entail?

GR: My work is about supporting students and families in reaching whatever their post-Commonwealth dreams are. More often than not, that involves college, and I help with all of the things that go along with the application process. (Details below.)

My path to working in the higher education space started when I was a high-school student. I was very fortunate to have a wonderful college counselor. She came to my high school as part of an AmeriCorps program, and I gained so much from her experience and her expertise. When I graduated college, I wanted to give back in a similar way and joined that same National College Advising Corps program, working in a rural Pennsylvania school, primarily with first-generation and low-income students. We tackled all things related to future planning but certainly with emphasis on college applications and creating a college-going culture. It touched me personally, as a first-gen student, and also professionally, working with students who might not otherwise believe college is for them. It also led me to graduate school to study how higher education works as a system. After coming out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I worked with college admissions offices, helping them shape their strategy and reach all kinds of students. As much fun as that was, I really missed working with high schoolers, which is what eventually brought me here.

Students everywhere have things to teach you—but maybe nowhere more so than at Commonwealth. I always learn from our

students, and just hearing about all the things they’re involved in and passionate about broadens my horizons, too, which is awesome.

What was the college search process like when you were a student here, Jennifer, and how has it shifted?

JB: Oh, I definitely got some wonderful essay coaching from [legendary Commonwealth English teacher] Mary Kate Bluestein, for whom I’m eternally grateful, but there wasn’t much systematic help with college exploration. There certainly wasn’t a dedicated full-time staff person providing the kind of support Gena does, nor were my parents particularly involved. I think many, though not all, of today’s families are very invested in the college-search process and very involved. And, Gena, I know you frequently work with families as well as students to talk about college aspirations, constraints, and choices along a tier of selectivity. That requires fantastic listening skills and empathy and relationship building—as well as all your expertise about the college landscape!

That landscape and the assumptions people have about college have undergone generational shifts at Commonwealth and nationally, I think. For the most part, my classmates and I were always excited about college, but I don’t think we were as hyper-focused as high-school students aspiring to attend elite colleges are today. The acceptance rates were much more generous back then: schools with 12-, 15-, 20-percent acceptance rates are now at 4 and 3 percent. And the applicant pools were much smaller with less competition from international students when I applied. Students of today are playing in a much tougher arena and thinking much earlier about how to position themselves to have the college choices they want. It’s become a really strange landscape in the last twenty years, I would say.

How do you balance students’ high college expectations and ambitions with that increasingly competitive admissions landscape?

JB: I teach seniors, so I get a front-row seat to their college process and college psychology. They’re pretty honest about the stress of college, and that makes my heart ache for them. I know how incredibly skilled they are, how strong they are in so many domains, and they feel the weight of anonymous rejection for seemingly, if not actually, arbitrary reasons.

I try to tell them that their Commonwealth education has positioned them to flourish at college and beyond in ways that many, many students are not able to and that they will be able to accomplish things in college that will

allow them to be incredibly successful however they define that success. Of course we want them to get into the college of their dreams, but—and they don’t always believe me on this—it’s not going to matter nearly as much as they think. I know, we all know, that they are going to soar at many, many schools. Yes, there’s a small number of colleges that have gotten intensely selective, but the vast majority of colleges in the U.S. are hungry for and aggressively marketing to find students like ours.

GR: That is absolutely true. People do focus a lot on those forty or so schools that continue to get more selective. However, the vast majority of colleges—thousands of schools— are not in that boat and would love to admit Commonwealth students. At the end of the day, we help students put their best foot forward and submit the strongest application they possibly can—and with those highly selective, highly rejective schools, that doesn’t guarantee anything. I don’t have a crystal ball or a magic wand, as much as I wish I did.

I’m heartened to hear more from the juniors now about the excitement they have for all sorts of different possibilities post-Commonwealth. My hope is that, while there are stressful parts of the admissions process, overall they are excited about their next steps and going out into the world. What’s wonderful is that so many colleges already know Commonwealth, know the kind of students we produce, and know our kids will be successful at whatever they put their minds to, which is exactly what every college wants: students who are driven and passionate and well-equipped to jump right in.

Speaking of legendary English teachers, Eric Davis once asked, “What is the purpose of success at Commonwealth? Is it to get into the best college, leading to the best career, leading to the best family, house, stuff, leading to the best spot in the best cemetery?” How do you see that ethos playing out in college advising at Commonwealth today?

GR: What stood out to me about Commonwealth and what really drew me in is our philosophy about students’ time here: Commonwealth is not just a stepping stone to whatever comes next. These are four formative years. There is a lot of growth and a lot of learning. By the time fall of senior year comes along, students can make really wise decisions about what they want their future to look like. They’re reflecting on the ways

they learned and grew here, and how they want to continue to learn and grow.

JB: I had a long conversation with my seniors about learning for the sake of learning versus doing well to get into college. They are aware of the complexities and tensions of pursuing their passions and admissions competitiveness, but they still feel really torn about some of the pragmatic advice—and it’s advice, not dicta— that we give them. We tell students to develop their capacities and that college will take care of itself, but the reality is more complicated than that, especially if students have their hearts set on those top-tier colleges.

GR: We try to find a balance. We tell students, “Stretch yourself. Take classes you’re interested in”—and they do. We would also not be doing our jobs if we didn’t explain the possible implications of their choices on their college options. For example, you can take that philosophy elective, but I have to tell you that colleges would probably rather see a fourth year of language instead. It can be challenging sometimes, and there isn’t always a “right” answer, but empowering students to make well-informed decisions for themselves is my goal. And sometimes the answer is to take philosophy!

JB: Two of my seniors just made a documentary where they interviewed eight recent Commonwealth alums. They asked about the social and academic transitions into college, especially coming from a tiny high school like ours. And it was just so inspiring to hear alumni/ae say they felt like college was a snap and that it wasn’t hard to go from a very small social world into a larger arena, whether these students were going to small liberal arts colleges or big state schools.

In broad strokes, how do we prepare and guide students through the college search and admissions process?

GR: So our ultimate goal is to help students find their college match and fit—and that can be at several different schools. We work with kids to build a really strong college list from the start. That means having those dream “reach” schools and a mix of schools that they’re really excited about and feel pretty confident will admit them.

Our small size helps in a number of ways. Certainly, I get to know students very well— during the college search, of course, and I also get to see them a bit over all four years, which is lovely. But helping students through the college process is not a one-person job. Lots of kids have the same teachers more than once, and they have their advisors. So we get to see kids

in the classroom, obviously, and as club leaders and musicians and actors and scientists and community members and all of the wonderful things they are. We guide them in thinking about what their next step might be as far as a college list, and we can reflect, in recommendation letters and such, on them as individuals. That is not something most students get at most schools.

We have formalized test prep, even though our students have mostly covered all of the material on the SAT and ACT by the time they get to spring of junior year and senior fall, when they’re taking these tests. We also know the test is one piece of the college application puzzle, right? It is one score from one or two days. And one test score does not tell you all you need to know about a student, and, thankfully, colleges know this too.

JB: Which is why we spend so much fruitful time on application essays. We assign students an essay advisor/coach, who helps with brainstorming and revision and being a sounding board. I know you do a workshop in the spring of junior year to help get creative juices flowing and jumpstart essay-writing over the summer, Gena. And then there’s lots of opportunity for feedback and review in the fall, too. Again, I think that it is so rare to have that level of mentoring for what is the hardest part of the process for many students.

GR: In some ways, the essay feels like the counterbalance of the standardized test score, because students have a chance to say something about themselves directly to the college, in their own voice. Colleges take that very seriously, and I take that very seriously.

Since students take the lead in the college-search process at Commonwealth, what role do their families play?

GR: We absolutely want students to be the drivers of this process. They are the ones going to college; they are the ones who will spend their next four years there. And the hope is that they are the ones most invested in the college-search process. As a side note, that is also exactly what colleges want to see: students who are really excited self-advocates! That said, parents and families certainly play a really big role.

Most if not all students will encounter some disappointment during the college search. And it can be helpful when a parent or family member can help put that disappointment into perspective, reiterating, like you were saying, Jennifer, that wherever they go, they get to define their future success.

College is also obviously a big financial investment for most families, and that’s often a large part of the reason why it’s important to have families involved.

JB: I know that, as part of your conversations, you’re asking parents as well as students about preferences and constraints, whether those constraints are financial or their preferences are geographic. We always tell students and families, “We will be your biggest champions with your application, no matter where you’re applying. And you need to be realistic: shoot for the stars and a really great place on Earth.”

GR: Absolutely. I kick off the college-search process with parents in January of their child’s junior year, and I have them reflect on what their goals are. We can have thirty families in the room with thirty different goals: I want my kid to stay close to home, to get into a “nice” school, to stay at a small school like Commonwealth. I’ve noticed many parents saying their goal is for this process to not be stressful. And we try to make those goals as manageable as possible, using them as the guiding light throughout the process, so even if things get frustrating, you can look back and say, “Here’s why we’re doing this.”

College admissions has always been media fodder but it seems to have been dominating the headlines in recent years, such as with the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard Supreme Court Decision and the more recent FAFSA delays. How have they impacted this year’s admissions cycle?

GR: Fortunately, nothing in the SCOTUS ruling changed how we are able to speak about our students or how they’re able to speak about themselves. They can include in their application and in their essays all of the activities they’re involved in, all of the pieces of their life and their person that are important to them. And so can we in our recommendation letters. Really, the onus is on the college side. I think the most notable impact we have seen is that many colleges have added additional supplemental essays to try to learn more about each student. We’re also seeing that admissions officers have changed how they read and evaluate applications. I expect that will continue to evolve, and we’ll be staying on top of these updates as colleges set their plans in place.

FAFSA has been…a ride this year. Every high school and every college has been trying to figure it out and navigate every new issue that keeps popping up. Certainly, students and

families have been dealing with FAFSA delays on an individual level. But, system-wide, we’ve seen many colleges push back enrollment deadlines and have longer waitlists, because they’re unsure about what their ability to meet financial need will be. Our hope is that by October 1, when the next cycle starts, FAFSA will have resolved these issues.

JB: I think about the Class of 2024 and the amount of upheaval in our world that has transpired in the past four years. They have seen not only the SCOTUS ruling but this FAFSA fiasco and uncertainty with regard to their ability to pay for college. They’ve seen wars, and they’re heading to campuses that are currently riven by really intense protest. They started high school during COVID and have been through a lot of its permutations. They’ve seen the emergence of generative AI as a feature of the educational landscape. And I just marvel at the amount of resilience I see in this class. I think it is really rational to be anxious about the state of the world. But they are also optimistic and make the most of what opportunities they find or can create. I’m pretty awestruck by what they’ve experienced in their four years here and how they are going forward with a lot of pizzazz.

What other college admissions trends are you seeing, in general and among Commonwealth’s recent graduating classes?

GR: Certainly, this senior class had phenomenal outcomes (turn to page 8 for a list of matriculations), especially considering what the past four years have looked like in their educational journey, like you said, Jennifer.

One notable change is that more and more students, not just at Commonwealth, are using

Early Decision applications, because those highly selective schools are admitting more and more of their class though those binding rounds in order to reduce their own uncertainty and keep their yield numbers high. And that earlier push is not going anywhere.

JB: A third, if not more, of our seniors knew where they were headed next year by January. It’s interesting, though, because we had a few apply to U.K. and Canadian schools, with timelines that are often much later than U.S. schools. They can’t make a final decision until AP scores are available in July.

GR: And I think that trend will probably grow, too, especially with more of our students interested in Canadian schools—many of which are actually much closer than California or other West Coast schools! College is also, obviously, getting more expensive. More schools than ever offer 100 percent need-based aid, and that relies on the FAFSA and sometimes the CSS Profile, which is part of what made this year’s FAFSA issues so stressful for many families.

Another trend we’re seeing is the return of testing requirements. With COVID, we saw many schools go test optional. Now we’re seeing that start to reverse a bit. Almost all of our students plan to take these tests anyway, so not much will change for Commonwealth students. But, certainly, more schools are going to require the SAT or ACT this coming fall or perhaps the next cycle.

Part of my job is to stay on top of this continually changing landscape, and I don’t think there will ever be a point at which I say, “This is the perfect college admissions model. We’re done!” In the future, we might rethink timing, moving some steps earlier for many students. There’s always more on the horizon. t

D0ES N0T C0MPUTE

The Ups and Downs of Gender Parity in Computer Science

DO YOU LOOK LIKE A COMPUTER SCIENTIST?

For all the social progress of the twenty-first century, a pervasive image of the computer scientist persists. He’s in Silicon Valley –style fiction, he’s the first (and second and third) iteration of “programmer” generated by AI art programs, he’s who we picture behind the keyboard—and, yes, he’s still a “he.”

BY BECCA GILLIS

0f course, perceptions of the computer scientist, Web developer, programmer, hacker, insert-your-technologist-term-of-choice have shifted over the past few decades; the ’80s movie trope of a hapless, hopeless, bespectacled nerd has transformed into something much more traditionally white collar, even hip, as the field has grown in size and prominence. But while the clothes have changed, the person we picture continues to be a man (often, a white one), because it usually still is—but this outcome was not preordained.

It’s no secret that men, particularly white men with middle- or upper-class backgrounds, have historically dominated high-paying and high-profile jobs: doctor, engineer, CEO. Legal advancements like the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 provided women and people of color greater legal ground on which to fight their way into these careers, although they still struggle to reach true parity. But in the field of computer science, that’s not how the story goes.

“You have to understand that, back then, nobody knew how to program,” says Carla Brodley ’81, P’16, Dean of Inclusive Computing at Northeastern University, explaining her introduction to computer science as an undergraduate. “It was 1982, and most people didn’t have computer science in their high schools. So when I took the first class…I felt fine.” At that point, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports, 34.8 percent of students graduating from U.S. institutions with a degree in computer science identified as women.

Rebecca Wright ’84, Professor of Computer Science, Director of Computer Science, and Director of the Vagelos Computational Science Center at Barnard College, had her own reasons for initially feeling welcomed into the field of computer science, as the daughter of a computer programmer. “Over the years, I have understood and realized that it was very formative, the fact that my mother and many of her friends were women that had gone to MIT and were working in technical or scientific fields,” she says. “From the beginning, it was normalized.” But such normalization faded quickly. “When I went to graduate school in 1988,” Carla recalls, “out of our incoming Ph.D. class of around forty-five to fifty, there were only three people who identified as women.”

WHAT HAPPENED, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

So how did computer science go from an up-and-coming field made up of more than one-third women to something that looks much more like a boys’ club? There’s no one simple answer. According to NCES, the number of women graduating from U.S. institutions with computing degrees peaked in 1984 at 37.1 percent, having risen steadily from 13.6 percent in 1970. By 1985, however, this promising trend began to reverse, with numbers resting between 27–30 percent throughout the 1990s and plummeting to 17.6 percent by 2011, the lowest percentage of women graduating with computing degrees since 1974. Reporting in 2014, NPR connected the beginning of this decline to the rise of home computer companies, like Apple, focusing their marketing efforts on boys and men, which might have contributed to shifting cultural attitudes that persist today. “[These attitudes are in] portrayals on TV and in movies,” says Rebecca. “There are still cultural assumptions that certain kinds of careers or subjects are better for boys or for girls, and there is a pervasiveness to that.” It’s not confined to university computer science programs, either; a 2024 Forbes Advisory report found that in coding bootcamps, an alternative to traditional degree programs popular among professionals looking to shift careers or improve their skills, just over 30 percent of students identify as women—higher than the number of women majoring in computer science at universities but still far from gender parity.

Whatever factors led to the decline in women studying computer science, both Carla and Rebecca argue that the persistent gender gap can be traced to high schools and how students are prepared (or not) for computer science classes at the undergraduate level.

“There’s still a big disparity in high schools,” Rebecca explains. “You’re more likely to see students get to the end of high school with computing experience if they’re in a more affluent area. And then even in those schools, those classes are often not required, and the guidance counselors might be more likely to point the boys to them than the girls.”

Carla is also quick to emphasize the impact of missing out on computer-science classes at the high-school level—and how making those classes electives is not doing girls any favors. “Not everyone is getting an equitable opportunity to try computer science,” she says. “If you walk into a classroom to take Japanese or French, and everybody already speaks Japanese or French, it’s not an equitable start for you, and that’s what it feels like to start in a computer-science class if you have no prior experience.”

The resulting gender disparity in computer science leads to more than just a few skewed graphs. The field faces concerns about workforce shortages, particularly mid-level programmers, which Rebecca says will not be remedied “if we’re systematically leaving out half the population.” And, like many other industries, computer science is also grappling with the same basic issues stemming from a lack of diversity: a dearth of perspective, missed opportunities for reaching and serving a wider range of communities, and less innovation overall.

But perhaps most significant are the larger socioeconomic implications of women’s presence, or lack thereof, in a remunerative field. While tech may no longer be a guaranteed golden ticket to a cushy job, it remains one of the most lucrative careers you can have coming out as an undergrad, Carla stresses. “You can make six figures [as a computer scientist] in Boston, and I think that wealth needs to be distributed to everybody. That’s the number-one reason why I care so much about this. You can make enough as a twenty-two-year-old that you can pull a whole family out of poverty. I think that anything that puts up artificial barriers toward some people being able to do lucrative careers is wrong—and the barriers are artificial.”

ROADS TO PROGRESS

The Center for Inclusive Computing

Carla discovered an opportunity to break down those barriers at a national level when she received a phone call from Pivotal Ventures, a Melinda French Gates company. The organization had noticed Carla’s work in creating a beginner-friendly and inclusive computer-science program at Northeastern University, and they hoped to expand her vision to computer-science programs across the country. With Pivotal Ventures’s support and funding, Carla became the Founding Executive Director of the Center for Inclusive Computing, a Northeastern-based initiative that works with universities across the United States to tackle barriers that prevent women from discovering and pursuing computer science.

“We do systemic, sustainable changes that make it so everybody can have an equitable start to computer science, regardless of prior experience. And because prior experience is not uniformly distributed with respect to demographics, this has the result of broadening participation in computing. So we do things like make it so that true beginners feel comfortable in the intro sequence, not by making it easier, but by doing the things that support them,” she explains. “We work inside the system to make changes to the way in which computer science is actually offered, as opposed to providing enrichment things or help from the outside.”

Some of those changes are happening inside the classroom, such as training teaching assistants how to better support beginner students, mitigating the trend of new (and often female) students exiting the computer-science program due to feeling unwelcome or like they are too far behind to make meaningful progress. In the early- to mid-2010s, the computer science program at Northeastern, Carla’s own institution, was struggling with a 25 percent rate of students dropping, withdrawing from, or failing the first course (CS1) in the computer science major. Half of all women who tried CS1 left the program. After implementing more culturally appropriate training for teaching assistants, as well as splitting introductory computer science classes into standard and accelerated sections (using the same material and assessments), the program not only saw the dropout rate fall to below 5 percent, but also saw that rate become evenly distributed across demographics.

Other initiatives focus on more administrative issues, such as limiting prerequisite chains that force students to enter college as a computer science major in order to graduate on time, leaving little to no room for discovering the subject during a student’s first few semesters—which can be a vital gateway for those students who missed out on high-school computer-science classes.

Forming Community at Rutgers and Barnard

“I’ve been fortunate in being welcomed into computing pretty much every step of the way,” Rebecca says. “I know that is not everyone’s experience. But I think a big turning point for me was when I made this shift or realization that I wanted to more actively take a role in helping to promote diversity and wider participation in computer science and computing more broadly.”

Rebecca got the chance to do just that while teaching at Rutgers University, where she developed a living-learning community for undergraduate women in computer science. The Computer Science Living-Learning Community program, for which Rebecca also served as faculty director, provides students with faculty and graduate-student mentorship as well as a community of first-year women with a shared passion for computing who live and take a class together. “We ended up doing some research on the program as we were developing it,” Rebecca says, “and our qualitative work found that a majority of the students didn’t feel they would have persisted if they hadn’t had that community to draw on.”

Rebecca’s work with the living-learning community at Rutgers helped propel her to her current position at Barnard, a women’s college where she has been instrumental in developing a robust and inclusive computer-science program. A key component has been the development of an Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science course, which allows students to learn some basic computing and data analysis without fully committing to a computer-science major. In addition to providing a learning opportunity for non-majors, the class “can also serve as a pre-intro class for students that are interested in majoring in computer science but don’t feel ready to take CS1,” Rebecca says. “Even though that class doesn’t explicitly require any background [in computer science], a student who really, truly doesn’t have that background often doesn’t feel ready.” Thanks to this class for true beginners, a wider variety of students have considered computer science as a viable career option.

REMAKING THE IMAGE

Today, the percentage of computer science majors in the United States who identify as women sits around 21.5 percent, inching forward from about

Above, left to right, Carla Brodley ’81, P’16, Founding Executive Director of the Center for Inclusive Computing, Dean of Inclusive Computing at Northeastern University, and Rebecca Wright ’84, Professor of Computer Science, Director of Computer Science, and Director of the Vagelos Computational Science Center at Barnard College

18 percent ten years ago but still not matching levels from the 1980s or even mid-1990s. Some barriers to growing those numbers have been harder to knock down than others, including university policies like GPA-based enrollment caps. “That’s where they say, ‘Hey, everyone can try computer science, but only those of you that can get a grade higher than this can major,’” Carla says. “If a school’s decided to have that as a barrier, nothing we can do can fix it.” It’s hard to measure the impact of cultural mores, too, if women in computer science feel socially isolated or singled out in predominantly male classrooms or workplaces.

In the face of such lingering hurdles, where do we go next? Rebecca’s work highlights the importance of focusing on the ubiquity of computing in the modern world and utilizing that to broaden the subject’s appeal and attract more students. “Computing technology is used across really every discipline, as well as our everyday lives; I think that’s the biggest change I’ve seen in my time in computing,” she says. “It gives many more opportunities to connect with people.”

In an effort to appeal to a wider variety of students, many of Barnard’s computer-science classes address various societal challenges and how technology can either alleviate or exacerbate those issues, adding a social justice lens to classes that once were entirely technical. Barnard’s computer-science department has also made a point to connect computer science to its various creative uses, helping students recognize the potential of applying computing to the arts or to creative projects. “Things like that are happening more broadly, partly as a way to attract a more diverse population and retain them in the computing workforce and partly because of a realization that that’s actually how we need to be thinking about computing,” Rebecca says. “You can’t think about building these technologies in a vacuum.”

To ensure female students are actually enrolling in undergraduate computer-science classes, however, Carla believes that the single most effective step we can take is to make these classes mandatory at the high-school level. “I mean, chemistry, physics, and biology are required, and I’m not going to say anything negative about those three fields, but if you think about it, the vast majority of people are never going to use their chemistry, their physics, or their biology—but they are going to use a computer,” she says.

Carla witnessed the effects of mandating high-school computer science firsthand while working with the Community Charter School of Cambridge, which made the decision to require an introductory computer-science class for tenth-grade students. Following that change, Carla recalls, their AP Computer Science elective had thirty students in it last year—eighteen of whom identified as women. “That wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t make that first class, the explorations class, required for everybody so that people could discover for themselves whether they thought it was interesting,” she says.

High schools, then, have a starring role to play in how the story of computer science unfolds from

here, as the point at which students receive—or fail to receive—that vital introduction to the subject, and perhaps where they form or break down that image of who a computer scientist is.

Commonwealth’s computer-science curriculum has evolved in recent years to address these demographic disparities and become more inclusive of true beginner students through the introduction of the Computer Programming Essentials course, designed for students with no prior experience in computer science. “A big part of my philosophy of teaching computer science is that the first time around might not stick, the second time around might not stick,” says Commonwealth computer science teacher David Gold. “But if you can have an experience where you see yourself as a computer scientist, then the next time around it’s more likely to stick… thinking, ‘Oh, I’m a computer scientist.’”

For Maya Venkatraman ’17, who studied computer science during two of her years at Commonwealth, the school’s small size helped counter some of those feelings

“

You can make enough as a twenty-twoyear-old [computer scientist] that you can pull a whole family out of poverty. I think that anything that puts up artificial barriers toward some people being able to do lucrative careers is wrong—and the barriers are artificial.”

of being an outsider. “I have taken classes at [college] that are hundreds of people, and you’ll be one of three women. That’s a very shocking ratio,” she says. “Whereas when it’s five people and the teacher knows you individually and is able to help you individually, I really don’t think you feel the lack of equity in the field as strongly.”

It seems largely inevitable, at least for the time being, that women pursuing computer science will encounter classrooms and workplaces with warped gender ratios favoring the same male computer scientists they’ve been conditioned to expect. But if they get the opportunity to see themselves as computer scientists before stepping into those rooms, they just might feel more comfortable in those spaces—and, hopefully, pave the way for a much more representative field. “You might realize, ‘Oh, there’s not that many of us women,’” Rebecca says. “But personally, if I was having trouble with a computer science class, I wasn’t like, ‘Well, women don’t belong here.’ I knew that wasn’t true, because I had had these examples. I didn’t have a sense of, ‘I don’t belong here,’ because it was too late for me to.” t

Becca Gillis is the Communications Coordinator at Commonwealth School.

PURPOSE-DRIVEN LAW

ALUMNI/AE LAWYERS

ON THE FUTURE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE

BY LILLIEN WALLER

The future of the legal profession isn’t a question of numbers: there are currently more than 1.3 million active lawyers in the United States, according to the American Bar Association. Rather, it’s a question of priorities: what are the most pressing issues of our time, and how can skilled legal practitioners help us reimagine how society addresses them? At least that’s how these five Commonwealth alumni/ae, who practice, study, or teach law, view their work. Catherine Sevcenko ’79 deploys movement lawyering in support of abolishing incarceration for women; Laverne Berry ’67 reveals the practical matters in entertainment and media law; Charles Kip ’18 discusses the role of class in housing eviction cases; Alexandra Natapoff ’83 shows how “snitching” and misdemeanors racialize crime in America; and Etenish Abebe ’13 finds the personal in practicing corporate law.

CATHERINE SEVCENKO ’79

Senior Legal Counsel, The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls

The number of incarcerated women in the United States increased six-fold over the past four decades, “from a total of 26,326 in 1980 to 168,449 in 2021,” according to The Sentencing Project. (The number of men increased three-fold, from 329,122 to 1,121,436, during that same period.) Like their male counterparts, many of these women are imprisoned as a result of mandatory minimum sentences, pretrial detentions, minor offenses, and wrongful convictions. But unlike men, incarcerated women are particularly vulnerable to sexual assault and exploitation, human trafficking, and reproductive abuse while in prison and, upon release, they face collateral consequences that make rebuilding their lives difficult if not impossible. But what if we imagined and worked toward a future without incarceration that provides women and girls—and the families and communities who rely on them—with systems of support, rather than imprisonment?

That is the singular question upon which the mission of The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls is based. Founded in 2010 by formerly incarcerated women of color, the nonprofit seeks to end the incarceration of women and girls via issue advocacy, community and economic development, campaigns to prevent the construction of new prisons, decarceration (helping women get released from prison), and education.

As Senior Legal Counsel, Catherine Sevcenko works primarily on decarceration. She supports the work of the council’s organizers, who have achieved such successes as the Dignity for Incarcerated Primary Caretaker Parents Act. Drafted by The National Council and now passed in states such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, Kentucky, and Missouri, the law requires that if the primary parent is a defendant and has young children, then the judge must put in writing reasons why a carceral sentence is preferable to some other alternative. “[Incarcerating women] destroys families,” Catherine explains. “When a man is incarcerated, it’s the mother who takes the kids. When a woman is incarcerated, very often it’s the grandmother. But what if the grandmother gets sick or incapacitated and there’s no other family member to take the children, so they become wards of the state? After fifteen months, as a matter of federal law, which many states follow, all parental rights are severed.

“You can go to federal prison for a minor drug offense for five years. And you can come out and not know where your kids are, have no right to find out where your kids are, and only hope that when they turn eighteen, they try to find you. It’s that kind of urgency that necessitates having to use clemency or compassionate release or whatever we can think of to get women out before their families are utterly destroyed.”

Currently, The National Council’s biggest legal campaign is focused on prison moratorium bills in New England states, which would stop the construction of new prisons for five years in order to study alternatives. A moratorium bill passed in Massachusetts but then-Governor Charlie Baker vetoed it. It has been reintroduced this session.

“At the end of the day, I would advocate for movement lawyering,” Catherine says. “My practice is very different because I’m not looking for cases I can win; I’m looking for ways I can help organizers end the incarceration of women and girls by moving public opinion to support decarceration. Movement lawyering turns the traditional assumption about the lawyer as the expert on its head: I use my technical knowledge to help formerly incarcerated women create the solutions their experience tells them are needed.”

LAVERNE BERRY ’67

Entertainment

and Media Business Affairs Lawyer

Long before you think you need a lawyer is when you need a lawyer the most, says Laverne Berry to her clients in publishing, film, television, and music. Before her work begins, Laverne has her clients complete a questionnaire about a given creative project, covering nitty-gritty details like who is responsible for financing and approvals. This deep dive serves as a helpful roadmap for a given case—and as a wake-up call for lay people, who think entertainment law is all celebrities and glamour when really it’s largely negotiations, contracts, and copyrights. “There are certainly entertainment lawyers who work with classic clients and do all sorts of things for them, from protecting their rights to protecting them personally,” Laverne says. “But my law is for artists and creatives who create things and the public wouldn’t actually know it was them.”

Representing both individuals and entities, including production, distribution, and media companies, Laverne specializes in business affairs, arbitration (dispute resolution), and developing strategic relationships. “If you were going to write a screenplay, I would work with you as you were writing it to make sure that the screenplay had copyright protection and when you were selling it to make sure there was a reasonable agreement between you and the person who was going to develop the film,” Laverne explains. “And if I were representing the company, I would see to it that they were able to get the rights to your screenplay for a reasonable amount, with the time to be able to develop it, and whether there would be spin offs or merchandising or books.”

Prior to becoming an attorney, Laverne worked for eighteen years as a television producer and media business executive. She sees her practice as an extension of her prior work, a response to an increasing need for media professionals who can negotiate deals, write contracts, and wrangle trademark and copyright issues. Becoming a lawyer gave her the ability to do those things, and it allowed her access to—and authority in—the elite rooms of the entertainment industry often closed to African American women like her. Getting a law degree also represented an eye toward the future, as she realized the production

and consumption of media was evolving. Rapidly. That includes the advent of AI technology and all of the pressing creative and legal concerns that accompany it.

“AI has implications for both sides of the business,” Laverne says. “A lot of lawyers are learning how to deal with it in their law practice. [AI] may help organize documents or write contracts, for example. That’s going to be my future, too. But there’s another side to it, because all of my clients are dealing with it from a creative perspective as well, and my job is to figure out how to help them contractually or in terms of copyright with those issues.”

CHARLES KIP ’18

Law Student, Georgetown University Law Center

“When you put the onus on the individual to assert their rights, you are going to get disproportionate outcomes along income and class lines,” says Charles Kip, a rising third-year law student and a Staff Editor at the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy. That becomes even harder when people living in poverty don’t know what their rights are. This is the case even in the District of Columbia, which, Charles notes, has strong protections for tenants relative to the rest of the country. The problem is exacerbated by lack of resources and the inability to afford a good lawyer, something he noted while working in an eviction legal clinic in fall 2023.

“People would come in at various points in the eviction process, and we would walk them through the process, represent them in court…give them whatever support they needed,” Charles explains. “And what we found is that most people don’t know about all of their rights as tenants.... So what we see is a major differential outcome based on whether there is a person asking the tenant, ‘Do you have housing code violations [as many low-income units do]? Do you know that housing code violations mean you don’t have to pay rent?’ And if that was a function of the court rather than a function of a private attorney, I think we’d see a lot better outcomes for poor people in eviction cases.”

Charles points out that most people wrongly assume that they must leave immediately when they receive a notice to vacate—or that they will be charged with a crime if they can’t pay. In D.C., eviction notices must be accompanied by information on legal-aid organizations, but this isn’t the case in many other jurisdictions. Even D.C. is no stranger to landlords who don’t follow proper eviction procedures, despite having stronger safeguards. And while there may be a few jurisdictions that provide an attorney for eviction cases, Charles adds, the Constitution only guarantees the right to representation in criminal cases.

It’s a problem created and compounded by poverty. Might regulating landlords be a possible solution? “There has to be much heavier state involvement at all stages of the process,” Charles says. “A landlord can, in many cases, get away with not following proper eviction procedure, even in a protective district like D.C., because the tenant has no idea what their rights are. Theoretically, there should be some state oversight there where, for example, if [landlords] had to register every tenant they have with the state, every time they evicted somebody, they would have to submit all the paperwork the tenant had given them, even if that tenant voluntarily leaves.”

ALEXANDRA NATAPOFF ’83

Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Most criminal convictions—upwards of 95 percent—in the U.S. are the result of plea bargaining, says Alexandra Natapoff. This may sound benign but it creates a big problem: an environment in which informing, or “snitching,” can thrive, fueling wrongful convictions and wreaking havoc on low-income, heavily policed neighborhoods, often communities of color.

“Once you’ve decided to run your criminal system as a market where people are wheeling and dealing, in the most basic sense, over the name of the crime and the extent of the punishment,” says Alexandra, author of Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, “then you are going to have deals in exchange for information, in exchange for cooperation, in exchange for all kinds of things. And that’s why snitching is so pervasive, because we permit police and prosecutors to negotiate with people over guilt, to put pressure on them, to reward them. And once you do that, you open the snitching can of worms.”

The idea for Alexandra’s book emerged from on-the-ground work experiences after law school, which have fueled her scholarship ever since. She knew she wanted to do community-based legal work on civil rights, racism, and inequality issues, and in 1998 she was awarded a Community Fellowship from the Open Society Institute— Baltimore. Later, she worked as a criminal public defender in the city, an experience that showed her the legal system is not only unfair, it’s broken, particularly if you are poor and Black.

Given their access to lawyers, wealthier defendants can more easily navigate the legal system and can better shield themselves from law enforcement pressure to inform. “The use of informants varies wildly by who is being pressured or who is being rewarded, and the nature of the crime and the community in which it is taking place, and which law enforcement entity is using it,” Alexandra says.

Alexandra’s research ultimately led her to another open secret of the criminal justice system: misdemeanors, or petty offenses, which are the subject of her book Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal. She explains that 80 percent of all criminal cases are filed as misdemeanors. While the law may refer to the crimes in question as “petty,” the “collateral consequences” that such convictions introduce into the lives of the millions of people who are herded into the system can be devastating.

“Even a very brief stay in jail can completely derail a person’s life, wildly out of proportion to the offense that they are accused of,” Alexandra says. “Many people are sentenced to probation and a fine, for example. That’s a typical sentence for a misdemeanor. But the actual burden on the individual is much greater. They may have been incarcerated prior to trial. They may have lost their job. They may have lost their immigration status. They may have lost custody of their child. They may have been evicted.”

Misdemeanors, like snitching, are a way of racializing crime in America; they just haven’t always been analyzed that way, Alexandra says. “The future of criminal law in the United States is up for grabs right now. People have started asking, do we really need to be locking people up for this stuff? Do we even really need to be arresting them in the first place? There have been reforms and changes to shrink the system. Arrest rates and prosecution rates have gone down over the past decade. So have racial disparities. At the same time, we’re still the largest, harshest criminal system on the planet. We haven’t eliminated the problem, but this decade has seen a new willingness to reconsider.”

ETENISH ABEBE ’13

Corporate Associate, Cooley LLP

“Corporate law” doesn’t scream “scintillating.” Popular media has advanced the narrow view of corporate lawyers as dutiful, joyless paper pushers. For alumna Etenish Abebe, however, corporate law not only fulfills personal interests but also enables her to provide much-needed guidance to her mostly tech-based clients in the early stages of their companies and business ventures. It can be exciting, and, refreshingly, revolves around relationships.

“[Advising] emerging tech companies and venture capital firms— that’s our bread and butter,” says Etenish, a second-year associate. “When you’re more junior, you get to work with companies in different phases of their life cycle. Right now in my role, I do a little bit of everything, although a lot of my practice is focused on emerging

companies: the initial financing rounds, as well as figuring out what needs to be done from a legal perspective to protect the company and set it up for success in its early stages.”

Etenish wasn’t looking to pursue law, but she did want a career that would enable her to be creative and tackle interesting problems. After earning a degree in English and American Studies at Wesleyan University, she worked briefly for a public-relations firm. While the work didn’t necessarily allow Etenish to hone the skills she was hoping to develop, she felt drawn to the firm’s tech clients. Later, while working as a paralegal for a nonprofit, she discovered transactional law, which emphasized analytical thinking rather than arguing cases.

Her work as an associate at Cooley marries the best parts of those experiences. And corporate law, Etenish notes, relies mostly on interpersonal skills, problem-solving, and the ability to work within and across teams. “Even within a junior role, I’m able to advise clients and build those relationships with founders,” she says. “Soft skills are huge in my field, and I think that sometimes people come in from law school and they don’t really consider that. As a junior [associate], you’re often the first person that the client will contact, and you have to know how to manage those relationships.”

For Etenish, a Black woman and the child of immigrants, one of the most significant issues her field will need to address in the future is its lack of diversity. According to the American Bar Association’s 2020 Profile of the Legal Profession, at 13.4 percent of the U.S. population, African Americans make up a mere 5 percent of all lawyers, a statistic that has remained relatively static for the last decade. That needs to change.

“There is a lot of power in representation,” Etenish says, whether it’s in law or startups. “If we saw more investors who look like us, that could mean more people who feel inclined to invest in companies that we think are important or that impact us on a day-to-day basis or that are founded by people who look like us. The impact is almost cyclical. That’s where I think this field needs to go in the future, and I hope, over time, it gets there.” t

Lillien Waller is a poet, essayist, and editor. Her essays focus primarily on the intersection of art and personal history. In 2023, she was awarded an Arts Writers Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to profile interdisciplinary artists of color in her hometown, Detroit.

The INVISIBLE MADE VISIBLE

BY CLAIRE JEANTHEAU

For a long time, they sat in the dark, listening. Researchers, including Clay Reid ’78, investigating electrical activity in the brain could only perceive the sounds of neurons clicking, each noise representing a signal transmitted to another part of the body. Then, in the early 2000s, a new technique called cellular-resolution imaging allowed them to take images up to half a millimeter deep inside of living tissue to suddenly, strikingly illuminate the firing of neurons.

Clay is still enraptured describing the sight, his face alight just as the pixelated bursts must have been on the display screen: “It was the most exciting thing ever, after living inside—not even Plato’s cave—inside Plato’s cave with a blindfold. It was like watching the light panel on one of those ancient computers.”

Moments of revelation like this, Clay knows, don’t come every day; as a Senior Investigator at the Allen Institute in Seattle, Washington, understanding often arrives piece by piece. But with the help of a dedicated team and advances in technology, those pieces are adding up to an unprecedented view of the brain’s inner workings.

A “Fundamental Problem”

Clay has always been fascinated by philosophy, his time at Commonwealth capped by a tight-knit seminar that covered Hume, Kant, and Hegel. Until very recently, the structure of the organ involved in producing such thought was a mystery in itself.

Human brains are made up of gray matter (where neuronal bodies live) and white matter (composed of axons that connect neurons from one brain area to another and to muscles, nerves, and organs). Many of the axons are myelinated, surrounded by a material that dramatically speeds the transmission of messages sent throughout the brain. Historically, only a few millimeters of myelinated axons could be traced within human brains; we know now that there are more than

100,000 kilometers of them. That’s almost one-third of the distance of traveling from the earth to the moon—a feat, one might note, we accomplished before we mapped the brain.

For neuroscience researchers, a complete understanding of the structure of the brain and its network of connections would be a discovery as thrilling as space exploration. But research is motivated by pragmatic considerations, too. “There are numerous degenerations that, on a human level, cause great suffering,” Clay says, disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s that impair memory and mobility, and could be more effectively treated with a complete understanding of neural networks.

Clay was drawn to complex problems like this as a Yale undergraduate but unsure which direction his study would take; he deliberated whether to pursue a career as a physicist or mathematician. When he approached a mentor in the philosophy department, the professor pointed him towards the pioneering work of scientists David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel on how the brain’s visual system processes information. Clay resolved to follow their path.

“There isn’t a more fundamental problem, I think, than the workings of the brain, and certainly none more fundamental than the human cerebral cortex,” Clay asserts. “What does it do? How does it do it? I think the wiring [of neurons] makes it do it…so what is the wiring?”

The Horizon of Possibility

Along with Hubel and Wiesel’s research, a prescient 1979 Scientific American article by Francis Crick also struck Clay in college; to this day, he can still quote it nearly word-for-word. In “Thinking About the Brain,” the geneticist states that in neuroscience research, “it is no use asking for the impossible, such as, say, the exact wiring diagram for a cubic millimeter of brain tissue and the way all its neurons are firing.” Impossible, that is, until recently.

“That’s the exact experiment that we’ve been trying to do for a long time and finally did for the first time five years ago” at the Allen Institute, with help from collaborators at Princeton and Baylor College of Medicine, Clay says. “We’re not yet at a complete wiring diagram…but it’s kind of fun to realize that something in the back of your brain percolated for thirty-five to forty years, and we’ve made a pretty good stab at it.”

Between 1979 and 2024, those deceptively simple questions—What does the human brain do? How does it do it?—drove Clay to earn an M.D. at Cornell University Medical College and a Ph.D. at The Rockefeller University, where he eventually collaborated with Wiesel. Before joining the Allen Institute, he returned to Massachusetts, working down the hall from Hubel as a Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. Like the pair of scholars that first guided his research, Clay has a particular interest in understanding how neurons in the brain’s visual system transmit information. “It’s not terrifically different from a camera, except neurons are slightly more finicky than individual camera sensors” when they take in light, he explains.

Visual technologies like cameras have been critical in Clay’s work, too. After the “magical” discovery of cellular-resolution imaging, “we got greedy,” he says with a laugh. “If we could see the neurons, why don’t we see the connections, too?” The smallest diaxons in the gray matter are a tenth of the wavelength of light; when using light microscopy, those bonds are too small to see. So researchers turned to electron microscopy, where resolution on a nanometer scale enabled them to see hundreds of thousands of connections in finely cut segments of brain tissue.

At the Allen Institute, Clay’s team and their collaborators at Princeton used tools like 3-D computer modeling and machine learning to map the brain’s wiring, drawing from billions of data points collected from electron microscopy.

Making Progress Together

With research advances inching across several decades, it can be difficult to convey victories to those outside the lab—especially if they lack the visual allure of the outputs of cellular-resolution imaging. “When you try to do science that is potentially encyclopedic” like mapping the brain, Clay notes, “people tend to think that if the current state of the art is not yet encyclopedic, in some sense, you’re failing.” He recounts the common critiques: “‘Didn’t you set out to do X? You’ve only answered a few questions so far. Why haven’t you done something yet?’” When Clay writes research grants, he works to show that incremental successes are successes nonetheless. Clay values the network of fellow researchers, at the Allen Institute and beyond, who share his experience, the same sort of conviviality that marked his years at 151 Comm. Ave. “I just loved Commonwealth,” he says. “We all talked to each other. There were extremely high standards but in a playful, non-punitive way.” He credits teachers Polly and Charles Chatfield and Judith Siporin for showing him the composition fundamentals he still uses when communicating with others through grant-writing. (His one-sentence summary of that education: “If you can’t write a paragraph that someone enjoys reading, why bother?”)

Today, Clay aims to cultivate a similar “family” atmosphere amongst his team of scientists and regularly teams up with experts across anatomy, biology, and other fields of study. “No single lab can learn one percent of what one could learn from the new large data sets,” he says. Clay envisions a future for neuroscientific study that mirrors the Human Genome Project, with computational scientists from different disciplinary branches and institutions receiving grant-funded training and joining together to share conclusions.

“Be brave,” Clay advises the researchers-in-training who will one day step into those efforts. “It’s hard to be a scientist, and it can be all drudgery or you can keep trying new things. It’s fabulous to try out new ideas that start out as fairly harebrained but can eventually yield really exciting science.”

Were the twenty years he spent waiting in the dark for a breakthrough drudgery? Clay smiles. “If you’re getting somewhere,” he says, “it’s not.” t

Claire Jeantheau served as Commonwealth’s Communications Coordinator before becoming the Marketing Manager for the American Exchange Project.

COMMONWEALTH THEATER, THEN AND NOW

BY CLAIRE JEANTHEAU

You can hear it in recess soliloquies and the manic energy of Hancock skits. You can see it at the school-wide Shakespeare competition, where, when not performing monologues, students hurl the Bard’s put-downs (“Thou art a plague boil!”) at each other in good fun during intermissions. You might even find it in the architecture of the building itself: alcoves that seem designed for rehearsing lines with a friend, balustrades that offer themselves for dramatic proclamations.

Yes, Commonwealth has a theatrical spirit. And in the school’s theater department, that spirit is nurtured as students, many of whom continue their creative endeavors as alumni/ae, perform three annual productions like pro troupes. Take a seat with us as a cast of thespians, stagehands, and directors share why and how the program has endured—even in the midst of a pandemic.

An Uncommonly Ambitious Curriculum

After falling in love with theater in middle school, Gabby Farrah ’14 came to Commonwealth arts with one thing on her mind: musicals. She didn’t yet know how much her range of artistic influences would expand by the end of her first year.

“We did mask work in Acting 1, and it was heavily influenced by commedia dell'arte [a traditional Italian popular art that utilizes masks],” Gabby remembers. “We were doing a lot of Shakespeare, which other high schools do, but then also Chekhov and works from modern drama and other traditions outside of Western theater. It was really kind of unusual, I think, for a high-school theater department.”

Taking in the full breadth of theatrical tradition, especially global works, remains a critical part of Commonwealth’s theater program. In recent seasons, students have staged The Other Shore, an experimental show by iconoclastic Chinese writer Gao Xinjian, and Inflation Vacation, an adaptation of an Italian political farce. Commonwealth’s English and theater curricula often work in tandem, introducing students to electrifying works and the close-reading techniques needed to truly grasp them.

Kaila Pelton-Flavin ’20 recently earned a B.F.A. in acting at the University of Michigan and was involved in more than ten Commonwealth productions. “I remember how excited I was to do a Shakespeare play my senior year. I felt so ready to apply what I had learned in my English classes to a full production,” she says. “It was special to be able to go through that experience with the cast and crew, who shared my excitement at the many discoveries we were able to make through literary analysis.”

Richard Pettengill ’72, chair of the Theater Department at Lake Forest College, feels likewise, comparing his encounter with King Lear at Commonwealth to Emily Dickinson’s feeling “as if the top of

my head were taken off” upon reading good poetry. “I remember [English teacher Polly Chatfield] patiently sitting with me and talking over the play, and she helped me to realize that I had some good ideas about it,” he says. His class then caught the “extraordinary” 1970 cinematic adaptation by Peter Brook: “That was my first exposure to the work of a visionary director and made me thirst for more great theater.”

Opportunities abound for aspiring technical designers and stage managers, too; students regularly work with the state-of-the-art lighting and audio equipment at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center (CMAC), the frequent venue for Commonwealth performances. “My favorite experience is seeing the acting being combined with the lights, sound, and set to make an actual production,” says Danny McDonnell ’26, who spent this school year’s theatrical season delving into all aspects of stagecraft.

One tradition that captures the zeal and creativity of Commonwealth Theater is the senior play, where students race against the calendar to prepare a production in just three weeks, the time allotted for senior projects. When Gabby finally had her chance to do a musical as one of those senior projects, it couldn’t be just any piece. The group chose Steven Sondheim’s Company: a complex show with rapid-fire patter numbers and emotional depth. The production stretched their demographic limits, like casting Gabby’s “well-behaved, quiet” friend Rachel Tils ’15 as the jaded, acerbic Joanne, a woman in her mid-fifties. They rose to the occasion, and, Gabby thinks, “it was a lot of fun.”

No Small Parts

Whether onstage or behind it, students never take on challenging pieces alone. “I remember my first theater ritual, chanting with the seniors for The Other Shore in a dark, closed room,” says Paris Wu ’24, reflecting on pre-show warmups. Katia Nigro ’25, a dedicated stage manager, still laughs about “having fun over the headsets” with fellow crew members Jo Axel ’23 and Sienna Mathur ’24. And Gabby describes bonding with her castmates through “having a singsong and then doing weird dances and making fools of ourselves day after day.”

Where does this theatrical “ecosystem,” as Katia puts it, come from? All Commonwealth students must complete one art class—performing or visual—each year. Some, like Katia, whose mother is a playwright, enter the program raring to go. (”I was excited because I hadn't really gotten to work in a real theater before,” Katia says.) Others, “people who aren’t naturally inclined to be onstage,” need some cajoling but end up staying for more, Gabby says.

As a result, students with varying levels of theatrical experience are drawn to work together, and Commonwealth’s small size lends itself well to those interactions. “You didn’t have factions as much as you would at a bigger [high] school,” Gabby adds. “You didn't have the kids that do arts and kids that do sports.” That close-knit environment also enables students to collaborate and take responsibility for every aspect of a show.

“For the fall play [in 2023], we had four total people on tech, so we all had to work together in new ways that I don’t think you would find at larger schools with much larger productions,” says Danny.

Above all, students and alumni/ae alike note how Susan Thompson P’10, ’12, who has helmed Commonwealth’s theater program since 2002, helped them fully engage with their performances and each other—promoting, in Kaila’s words, “a sort of fearlessness and willingness to try.”

Susan frequently divides students into smaller groups “so they can really dive into the emotional world of the play,” she says, another kind of close reading. “I love using my acting classes as an opportunity to work on scenes and using assistant directors and other collaborators to help.”

When Gabby returned to Commonwealth in 2017 to be an assistant director for The Crucible, watching Susan’s encouraging

interactions with students in those small-group settings left a deep impression. She currently supports new plays and writers in New York City by organizing workshops and readings, previously serving as the Robert Moss Directing Fellow at Playwrights Horizons. Gabby aspires to adapt works so people with varying levels of theatrical experience, not just professionals, can perform them. As she does so, Gabby’s “thinking about Commonwealth and how to create a community of people, actors and non-actors, around a play.”

Cast and crew members have come and gone, but they remember Commonwealth Theater and the remarkable feeling of connection—all the more remarkable, considering just how well that feeling endured during the drastic transitions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Screens and Stages

“I felt for students during the pandemic more than myself. I found it to be incredibly challenging and taxing for the students, as they were very lonely,” Susan says, recalling spring 2020. Live performances, including the storied senior play, were canceled. But the bonds students had forged in backstage warmups and tech weeks weren’t lost as easily.

During the 2020–2021 school year, Commonwealth Theater migrated to Zoom and film, opening up new and compelling ways to stage shows. That season’s fall play, Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, performed in the wake of the summer’s nationwide protests for racial justice, covered the unrest following the acquittal of LAPD officers on police brutality charges two decades earlier. Adapting Twilight: Los Angeles for video added new meaning to a show centered on the recording of violent acts.

“We know that these incidents have been happening. But now that they’ve been captured on camera, it’s an undeniable, shocking fact,” Susan says. “And I felt, as a school, it was really important for us to do a production that would allow us to speak to that.” Faculty joined students as actors, including Susan herself: “I found it to be very meaningful and a way to create community in the theater program and in the school.”

In addition to this Zoom-based production, students took full advantage of Commonwealth’s place in the city. In the spring, a senior project team mounted a filmed production of The Importance of Being Earnest, recording around greater Boston. When the show premiered on YouTube, the online audience could watch students having high tea on the Charles River Esplanade, dressed in Victorian period clothes (and garnering only a few confused stares from passersby).

Despite the disorientation of the pandemic, it wasn’t an unfamiliar situation for Commonwealth Theater, where productions, historically, have had no fixed address. Richard spectated some of his first live theater performances at Commonwealth: Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets in 1971, and Plautus’s Amphytrio, a Roman comedy, in 1972. The former takes place during a taxi drivers’ strike, the latter in the ancient city of Thebes; both were brought to life in Commonwealth’s Cafegymnatorium multipurpose space. “I was struck by the simple, straightforward costumes and minimal sets of these productions,” Richard remembers, realizing that “one could make theatrical magic in the most unlikely of places.” Beyond the Cafegymnatorium, past performances have been staged at venues around Boston, including the Cambridge YMCA and the Black Box Theater at the Boston Center for the Arts. The program wouldn’t find an unofficial partner in CMAC until 2009.

“There was a culture around going to the theater,” Gabby says. “It was fun to say, ‘Oh, we’re all traveling, I’m going to get dinner in Cambridge with my castmates, and then we’re going to go into rehearsal.’” While that experience was lost during the pandemic years, the sense of flexibility and community remained.

Commonwealth students and staff enjoyed their first post-pandemic theater outing in February 2024, seeing the world premiere of Becoming a Man at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, thanks to generous support from Alison Hoppin Murchison ’79, P’10 and Bob Murchison P’10

The Show Goes On

The long-awaited return of live theater came in fall 2021 with The Other Shore, which merged live acting with the video techniques that Susan and students had honed while classes were virtual. Using a projector, edited clips of students in eerie costumes looped in the background during live sequences set in the land of the dead. Precautions remained in place during classes at Commonwealth as well as arts performances, according to Katia, so it wasn’t an immediate return to normalcy. “We had to take a [COVID] test before tech week began, where we would be together almost all hours of the day and into the night, and every day when we got home,” she says.

There were shocks, too. In spring 2022, several cast members for Much Ado About Nothing tested positive for COVID before final rehearsals, leading to last-minute role reversals. One actor, who suddenly needed to play two characters, was set to appear in consecutive scenes with no time for a costume change. That student, Margaret Hines ’23, “was just in a dress with a coat thrown over it with the script in hand,” Susan recalls. “But those kind of things remind us of why we’re doing theater.… The actors have to continue on with whatever that day, that moment, that evening gives them.” Katia, who assistant stage managed the show, adds, “Students stepped up, even one that was not in the production to begin with, and performed beautifully.”

After a pandemic dip, theater enrollment numbers are rising again. Following years of Zoom-based social interactions, the intimacy necessary for performance can feel intimidating. “We do some exercises where you do have to look each other in the eye, and you become very aware of how very odd that feels,” Susan notes, touching on a broader issue of digital distractions. “We have our phones now to protect us. Even when someone’s coming down the street, we can always look at our phone.”

Paris credits theater with helping him relearn the ropes of face-toface social interactions following the pandemic. As the stage manager for Inflation Vacation in fall 2022, he shared candy and pre-rehearsal basketball sessions with new sophomores—the same ways that a group of older students once welcomed him into theater. “Commonwealth actors are never gone, even after they have left to pursue dreams beyond high school,” he observes. “They are there in the basketball hoop, in the gummy bears, in the homemade gluten-free cookies, on the balcony, and of course, with us in our cultish rituals.”

But alumni/ae aren’t only present in spirit: Susan invites them back to share their talents and collaborate with current students. “As an older artist, I do like to look at the talent of young alums and younger artists around me and try to bring them into the process, both as mentors for our students and so that they can see paths in the arts,” Susan explains. For the 2023 senior play, TEA, a student-authored send-up of comedies of manners, M Berry ’15 returned to assist with lighting design. And that fall’s production, Boundless as the Sea, was adapted from a series of short works on love and loss composed by Ellie Laabs ’17 for a senior project.

Building social connections helps students new to theater feel more comfortable taking risks. “Since the pandemic, what I have noticed is that the stakes seem higher to the students,” Susan observes—particularly sophomores, who can feel a sense of trepidation during their first year without the pass/fail grading system. To give as many actors experience as possible in a madcap staging of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors this spring, she doubled the play’s twin plot to make the leads quadruplets. “We had a much bigger list of participating students this year, and even so, there was still that sense of closeness I had experienced the previous year,” Katia says.

“I say to my students, we don't yet know how much you’ve learned from this experience,” Susan reflects. “I think that there might be some skills and some tools that people have developed through enduring the pandemic.” Students can count a network of fellow artists and friends among those new gifts, joining those who have tread the boards (and Cafegymnatorium linoleum) before them. t

Claire Jeantheau served as Commonwealth’s Communications Coordinator before becoming the Marketing Manager for the American Exchange Project.

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, 2020

Grammar & Climate Change

BY CATHERINE BREWSTER

When I want to talk about syntax but don’t want to suck all the energy out of the room by admitting it, I often rely on “What’s wrong with this sentence?” prompts. Among the many rewards of my 2023–2024 sabbatical, as part of a remote writing gig, was this new example:

The purpose of the Energy Technology Board is to identify worthwhile and effective energy technologies to create energy, air quality, haze, or other environmental benefits for the State of Washington.

If I put this sentence on the board in Reasons for Writing or even English 9, I know that after a minute or two, someone will start laughing. It will take a lot longer for anyone to explain, “Haze isn’t an environmental benefit,” and some heavy lifting before that’s further articulated as “The four objects of the verb ‘create’ aren’t parallel and need to be.” Only a few students, I also know, will feel the same visceral thrill that I do at being able to describe the problem in those terms. But all of them, I hope, will go forth feeling a little more empowered to use the tools of grammar to tackle a sentence or a poem that doesn’t immediately yield up its meaning.

“Yeah, but,” one of my scrappier students might say. “It’s perfectly clear what this sentence is trying to say. We all know haze isn’t an environmental benefit. Who cares whether it’s grammatically perfect?” And “who cares” is an excellent question, because there’s evidence that no one does: in March 2024, this sentence appeared several dozen times on the website of the Centralia Coal Transition Grants. It was pasted into the boilerplate at the end of every news release announcing a project the Grants have funded. That funding amounts to $55 million over ten years, $25 million of it disbursed by the Energy Technology Board, as part of a deal with TransAlta, which operates the last coal-fired power plant in my native state of Washington. The power plant will fully shut down in 2025, and the money has gone to solar arrays and new HVAC systems for schools, apprenticeship programs, weatherization of low-income residents’ homes, and countless other decarbonization efforts.

“Come on, Ms. Brewster,” I can hear any number of my students saying. “Don’t the $55 million matter more than the faulty parallelism? Should you really be so upset that the people who wrote that didn’t go to Commonwealth and didn’t care?”

But what really bothers me is that while someone, or some group of people, wrote that sentence and at least a few people signed off on it, it might have taken years for anyone to really read it. Instead, they did something more like look at it and nod along, in the same way people’s eyes move across sentences like these, sent to me by a communications professional for a Northwest seaport:

We have consistently been observing a decline in our emissions. This positive trajectory reflects the equipment advancements and investment in flexible and adaptive maritime infrastructure we have executed over the past two decades.… Electrification is a viable path to achieve further and more dramatic improvements.

These sentences encourage looking rather than reading not so much because of the technical terms as because of the eye-glazing pileup of abstract nouns—“decline,” “trajectory,” “advancements”—the kind Joseph Williams’ Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, a foundational text in Reasons for Writing, calls “nominalizations.” The Rocky Mountain Institute, which tirelessly quantifies the kind of actions the port refers to and their effects, has its own term for such language in decarbonization pledges: “empty ambition statements.” George Orwell, of course, in “Politics and the English Language” in 1948, said these euphonious phrases were “tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.” “The

attraction of this kind of writing is that it is easy,” he went on: “you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.”

In one of the New Yorkers I had time to read on my sabbatical, Merve Emre made a related complaint in a different context, in an essay on recent books she called “feminish”: “One starts to feel as if there is something a little hollow and shiftless about the ease with which phrases such as ‘white supremacist, homophobic, classist, ableist, xenophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, capitalist patriarchy’ are trotted out. We get the right words, strung together like marquee lights, but not the structural analysis that puts them in relation to one another.” In other words, if you’re either putting up the marquee lights or gazing at them—either reverently or in disgust—you’re not thinking about what, if anything, they mean.

Rising above this tendency is Heatmap.news, whose writers on climate and energy all seem as well versed in the principles of Williams’ Style as anyone who went to Commonwealth. (And, yes, I am a sucker for headlines like “13 Ways of Looking at Biden’s New China Tariffs,” complete with link to the Wallace Stevens poem it riffs on.) They make people, rather than abstract nouns, the subjects of their verbs, as in this reporting on a CBS News/YouGov poll:

About 45 percent of respondents said climate change is a very important issue, but just 10 percent of those said they had heard or read “a lot” about Biden’s climate policies. And 42 percent said the administration hadn’t done enough on the issue. More than half of respondents said the outcome of the November election would have no effect on climate change.

This poll did not ask what the respondents had been reading, or not reading, or just looking at. I can’t prove that it’s because of nominalizations or faulty parallelism that even people who worry about climate change don’t think it matters whether Biden or Trump is president. But whether or not those survey respondents think about syntax in deciding what to read, I’ve looked at enough marquee-light sentences that I can see why they’d decide that there’s nothing else out there, that paying attention to climate policy is a matter of nodding along, not reading.

If so, they haven’t been reading Heatmap, or the Rocky Mountain Institute’s studies and reports, or the work of the Clean Energy Transition Institute in Seattle, for which I did the freelance writing that led me to the coal transition boards and the port. In response to the email about the “positive trajectory,” my job was to ask: How much of the cargo-handling equipment is electric, how much is still “clean diesel,” how clean is that, and how much more electrical capacity does the port need to add and where will the money come from? I tried, with Williams’ principles always in my ears, to turn the answers into sentences that people would not just look at, but read, expecting to understand something new to them.

“Nobody reads anymore,” I remember teachers grumbling when I was new to Commonwealth in 2000. As I get ready to meet this year’s ninth graders in September, and to teach seniors I last knew as ninth graders, I know they read, but that most will have to learn how to fight their way through Milton’s enormous similes (“As.... So....”) or Arturo Islas’ elegantly built restrictive clauses. Because of their science teachers, they will be able to identify “positive trajectory,” “improvements,” and so on as “hand-waving.” Because of their English and history teachers, I hope, they will come to see sentences not as decorative items but as tools for thinking. t

Catherine Brewster has taught English at Commonwealth since 2000.

OUT AND ABOUT IN THE BACK BAY

Lots of Boston-based schools call the city their campus—but Commonwealth’s corner of Back Bay can’t be beat. Charles Merrill chose our location with deep intention: for its accessibility to students from every corner of the city and its centrality to Boston’s ample resources. And students now, just as then, have taken every advantage, whether for life-altering community service or internships or just the simple pleasures of a good cup of coffee nearby.

Students still sit on the Commonwealth Mall on a just-warm-enough spring day. Still wait on the Green Line. Still scuttle between Commonwealth and the Boston Public Library. Still carouse on Newbury Street (or just in front of the building). And we are still incredibly grateful to call 151 Commonwealth Avenue home.

What was your favorite part of learning in the Back Bay?

CELEBRATING THE VISION

Alums from the early sixties to 2023, parents, grandparents, faculty, and friends all became Commonwealth students for the day for Celebrating the Vision, an afternoon of joyful learning to commemorate the conclusion of our most ambitious fundraising campaign to date. Launched in 2018, The Power of a Vision raised $13.45 million (exceeding our goal of $12.5 million!) for critical building renovations, financial aid and student scholarships, faculty development, and dedicated funding for Commonwealth’s work in diversity, equity, and inclusion. We remain deeply grateful for our community’s support in furthering these efforts.

1. Campaign Co-chair José Alvarez P’10, ’12, ’18; Former Head of School Bill Wharton P’06; Former Director of Development Janetta Stringfellow; Director of Advancement Alisha Elliott ’01

2. Therese Hendricks P’05, ’07; Xiang Li P’27

3. Math and science teacher Anna Moss ’06

4. Assistant Head of School and chemistry teacher Rebecca Jackman

5. Former Head of School Bill Wharton P’06

6. Dive In Commonwealth team members Paul Brunick ’02, Mónica Schilder, Rui Shu

7. History and humanities teacher Don Conolly

8. Amy Merrill ’64, Barbara Goldman ’64

9. Photography teacher Derin Korman, Sharon Yamamoto P’22

10. Head of School Jennifer Borman ’81

11. Peter Corbett P’01, Director of Advancement Alisha Elliott ’01, Tobie Atlas P’01

12. Rachael Rosner P’23, ’25; Dean of Students Josh Eagle; Kuan Zhou P’26

13. Angela Kuhnen P’28

IMAGES: TONY RINALDO PHOTOGRAPHY

WASHINGTON, D.C., AREA RECEPTION

Old friends. Sangria. The world’s largest paella (we’re guessing). We had a wonderful time at our Washington, D.C., Area Reception this spring. Many thanks to all who joined us in Bethesda. We hope to be back in the Beltway soon!

1. Gabe Scheinmann ’03, Adam Weingarten ’01, Jonah Green ’86

2. Rebecca Ennen ’00

3. Kirstie Saltsman, Jon Lorsch ’86

4. Elizabeth Waters ’81, Jennifer Borman ’81, Ron Carver ’64

5. Janique Parrott-Gaffney ’04

A TRIO OF REUNIONS

Members of the Classes of 2014, 2019, and the 1960s and 1970s gathered for a springtime afternoon of reminiscing, reconnecting, and revisiting cherished spaces. What a thrill to see so many alums from so many generations milling about our halls again!

1. Members of the Class of 2019

2. Kaila Pelton-Flavin ’19, Nina Wattenberg ’19

3. Doug Kant ’65

4. August Kane ’19

5. Judith Sanford-Harris ’70

6. Benjamin Blake III ’61

7. Ceci Costas, Matt Costas ’14

IMAGES: RALPH ALSWANG

20 questions with... Masha Portiansky ’97

Even after decades in the industry, seeing her designs in the real world—like iconic robins-egg blue boxes, embossed in gold, with delicate black Optima script—still gives Masha Portiansky a small thrill. A creative from her days at Commonwealth, she earned her B.F.A. in Product Design at Parsons School of Design in New York City. After taking jobs in small studios and a five-year stint as an art dealer, she found herself in the Print and Advertising Design department at Estée Lauder, Inc.; twenty years later, she is the Director of Package Design for the brand.

1. What three words best describe Commonwealth? Mind-expanding and humbling.

2. What is your favorite Commonwealth memory? So many! Watching French New Wave films in the fifth-floor classroom with Madame Folkman.

3. What was your favorite Commonwealth class? English with Mr. Davis (tenth and twelfth grades—super lucky to have had him twice); Physics with Mr. Riahi.

4. What’s your #1 piece of advice for Commonwealth students? Commonwealth teaches critical thinking across all disciplines. Everything you learn will be useful in your life in unexpected ways.

5. What myth(s) would you like to dispel around your work? Designers are not well paid and it’s not a glamorous career.

6. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? Take pride in what you do.

7. What does your ideal afternoon entail? Going on a hike, digging in the garden, or working on a DIY project around the house.

8. If you could study any field aside from your own, what would it be? Glaciology. It was my dream job as a kid and would be so important now. I did not do great in science, however, and focused on my creative skills instead.

9. Whom do you most admire? Teachers, especially in early childhood education.

10. When and how did you first become interested in your work? I discovered 3D design freshman year of college and entered the Product Design program. That’s when I first realized that I love packaging design, that the look and feel of every product in the world was conceived by a designer.

11. What is your favorite aspect of your career? Getting to see your ideas produced and live in the real world.

12. What book do you wish you had read sooner? Günter Grass’s Tin Drum

13. If you could have dinner with one person—alive or dead—who would it be? Eva Zeisel, Hungarian-born American Industrial Designer.

14. What is your favorite museum?

15. What is your favorite paradox? “If I know one thing, it is that I know nothing.”

16. What was your go-to Boston eatery? When I attended Commonwealth, there was a tiny sushi place on Newbury Street with $1 cucumber rolls. I skipped school lunch to eat there a few times a month. My family rarely ate out, so it was a special treat.

17. If you could live as a local for 48 hours anywhere in the world, where would you go? Hokkaido, Japan. I’ve never been, but it’s on my travel bucket list.

18. If you could join any past or current music group, which would you want to join? Bikini Kill. My teen feminist rage is burning hotter than ever.

19. What is the theme song of your life? “Dancing Queen” by Abba.

20. What is the best gift you have ever received? Two original paintings by a friend gifted to me by my husband.

Bonus: What is your motto? Always be kind.

Neue Galerie New York.

THE HANCOCK SOCIETY

Named for our longest-running tradition, The Hancock Society recognizes alumni/ae, parents, and friends whose commitment to Commonwealth will endure in perpetuity by including the school in their estate or retirement plans.

Start the Conversation

Contact Alisha Elliott ’01, Director of Advancement

aelliott@commschool.org 617-266-7525 ext. 293

There are many ways to include Commonwealth in your plans. You may be able to name the school as a designated beneficiary of your retirement, bank, or investment account or donor-advised fund (DAF) with just a few clicks. Your attorney can assist you with including a bequest to Commonwealth in your will. Whether you have plans in mind or are considering The Hancock Society for the first time, we want to hear from you.

commschool.org/legacy

151 Commonwealth Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02116

commschool.org

We miss you already, Class of 2024! Top row, left to right: Bella Wright, Wyatt Abel, Matteo Sabatine, Jay Sweitzer-Shalit, Amith Saligrama, Luke Gardiner, Charlie Liebenberg, Mirai Duintjer Tebbens Nishioka, Aaron Li, Tien Phan; middle row, left to right: Genevieve Robinson, Paris Wu, Ben Summey, Olivia Wang, Rayna Yu, Sienna Mathur, Henry Levenson, Arjun Krishnan, Ty Himmel, Will Narasimhan, Ziv Rome-Blech, Rihanna Perry; bottom row, left to right: Athena Kuhelj Bugaric, Sienna Shapoval, Eve Shapiro, Lizzy Wakefield, Dava Sitkoff, Eliza Lamster, Alex Troubh, Thomas Du, Sophia Seitz Shewmon, Aaron Tian, Anto Catanzaro, Douglas Rogers