OPINION
A4 Editors-in-Chief Kshithija Mulam Meilan Steimle Managing Editor Sahana Srinivasan
VOLUME 18 • ISSUE 6 MARCH 28, 2016
Unite or perish The arts and sciences need to put aside their differences to fight defunding
News Editor Meena Gudapati Features Editor Maya Kumar Asst. Features Editor Prameela Kottapalli Opinion Editor Vijay Bharadwaj STEM Editor Derek Yen Asst. STEM Editor Katherine Zhang Sports Editors Anjay Saklecha Alex Wang Photo Editor Ashley Jiang Copy Editors Rose Guan Ruhi Sayana Adviser Ellen Austin, MJE Wingspan Editor-in-Chief Kaitlin Hsu Aquila Editors-in-Chief Raveena Kapatkar Tara Parimi Aquila Managing Editor Trisha Dwivedi Aquila Staff Neil Bai Vijay Bharadwaj Nicole Chen Adrian Chu Justin Su Zachary Hoffman
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STAUNCH SUPPORT The arts and sciences are represented above, juxtaposed on a backdrop of all the money we’re not going to get unless we put aside our perceived differences and work together to expand the scope of human knowlege.
EDITORIAL THE OFFICIAL OPINION OF THE WINGED POST Fuzzy vs. techie. Heart vs. brain. Arts vs. sciences. At Harker, we tend to see the arts and sciences as at odds, or at least as incompatible. How many times have you heard a group of coders chuckling over the perceived uselessness of an art degree, or a gaggle at the Artstravaganza grumbling at perceived discrepancies in finding allocations? This isn’t to say the arts and sciences are at war. At worst, it’s a rivalry, but more often
just a comfortable separation. We wall ourselves away at our separate symposiums, and while there are the unusual individuals who bridge the gap (the coder who reads Voltaire or the artist researching biology), they are just that - unusual. This also isn’t to say that the dichotomy of arts and sciences is a uniquely Harker problem. Schools reflect the society that surround them, and this attitude continues into collegiate studies and the working world. We’re not talking about how scientists need to value art to live a fulfilling life, or how we’re switching our “STEM” section to “STEAM” (we’re not, but check out A&E), or
how we need to actively bridge the gap between art and science. Our point is that the gap is an illusion. Art and science are ultimately the same; they are both ways of expanding the horizons of human knowledge. A painter and a researcher are both searching for truth, with different methods. Inquiry, exploration, insight: these are concepts that drive all of us, whether we’re rehearsing for the musical in Patil or studying machine learning in Nichols. Infighting isn’t just pointless, it’s dangerous. Want more evidence that the arts and sciences are essentially equivalent? When funding gets cut, the guillotine falls on the
sciences and the arts with equal (violence). Trump’s budget proposals have included eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Also lined into the budget were significant slashes to the Environment Protection Agency and NASA’s earth science division. We’re all in this together, which is to say we’re getting defunded together. To intellectual explorers, regardless of discipline, this is a call to arms. We can either go down separately, still squabbling, or band together and fight. Your move.
The case against College Confidential: it’s bad news
kshithija mulam editor-in-chief
In the late months of autumn, you can expect to see certain windows open on the majority of the senior class’ browsers. The Common Application. The UC Application. A personal statement. A why statement. A resume. And, to my dismay, College Confidential. For those who are unfamiliar with the website, College Confidential is a website that allows users to create threads to discuss college-related issues such as deadlines, decisions and other logistics. Unfortunately, a large number of threads also serve as a method to post your GPA, SAT scores and an overview of any extracurriculars, left to be judged by a questionably qualified virtual “college counselor” on whether you will be accepted to College X or not. I won’t lie and pretend that I wasn’t caught up in the frenzy as well. In the days leading up to my first college decision, my face was permanently glued to
my screen in my free time, hitting the refresh button on the website as I anxiously waited for any updates on the thread. I vicariously read anything related to that college, including any statistics and “rank my college chances” posts that were available in abundance. By the time I reached the date of my first decision, I had worked myself into such a panicked frenzy that I was already expecting the worst before I even saw my decision, bombarded by worries about what I had read on different threads. When the time came to receive my second decision, I had to stop myself from looking at the related threads, not because of a conscious effort on my part but because I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle that level of panic a second time. In hindsight, avoiding the decision threads on College Confidential was the best decision I could have made. On this topic, the upper school community seems to be divided. In a recent Winged Post survey, 54.5 percent of respondents, when asked how useful they thought College Confidential was, responded with a 3, indicating a neutral opinion. The rest of the answers were equally divided between the extremes of 1 and 5. Of course, I would be blind to not recognize and
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL Although College Confidential has some benefit, it engenders a toxic and panicked environment.
acknowledge the productive, helpful aspects of College Confidential. It can serve as a good forum to mark deadlines and to know when college decisions are being released. You can also find helpful commenters who offer authentic, real advice on how to handle college-related topics. But all too often, the helpful comments are buried under posts from internet trolls or other stressed out, numerically fixated users who feel the need to try and simplify the college application process to a bunch of statistics. The attraction of a website like College Confidential is simple and understandable. College decisions are a scary time for every senior, and there is something innately comforting to us in being able to find like-minded people who are going through the same problems we are. Something in human nature compels us to compare ourselves to others and try to
guess how we “rank” on the invisible college hierarchy. But this virtual mob mentality of trying to simulate the college decision process with no real guidelines or evidence to support any of the conclusions is not only ridiculous; it also stirs up an unnecessary sense of added fear and panic that can easily propagate through large forums of people. So don’t subject yourself to the mercy of “internet counselors,” trolls, and, worst of all, a mob mentality of fear and panic. At the end of the day, the person sitting on the other side of the screen, making that College Confidential post, is not the one making your college decision. So juniors, if you have to check College Confidential for deadlines in the next few months and find yourself tempted to wander its depths, I’d say you should treat it like a bathroom: get in, do your business and get out.