Personal accounts from students who traveled to Laos over spring break.
A16
C2
Varsity lacrosse seeks third straight league championship.
the harvard-westlake
CHRONICLE Los Angeles • Volume XXII • Issue VII • April 24, 2013
Dudamel to conduct at assembly By Jack Goldfisher and David Lim
Gustavo Dudamel, the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will be featured as this year’s Brown Family Speaker in an all-school assembly on Thursday, May 23. The Brown Family Speaker series was established by Linda and Abbott Brown (Russell ’94, David ’96) in 2002 to feature individuals prominent in their fields. Past speakers have included journalist Fareed Zakaria and architect Maya Lin. Dudamel, who won a 2012 Grammy and was named Gramophone Magazine’s 2011 artist of the year, will be the 13th speaker in the series. Maria Gonzalez ‘13, on behalf of the Latino Club, approached President Tom Hudnut with the idea to invite Dudamel, a family friend, as the Brown Family Speaker. Orchestra Director Mark Hilt said that there were preliminary plans to have Dudamel conduct students during the assembly in an “open rehearsal” before answering questions from the audience. In the past, musicians invited as the Brown Family Speakers including worldclass violinist Midori and jazz legend Herbie Hancock performed during the assembly instead of giving a speech. The Venezuelan-born Dudamel was named the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009 when he was just 28. “He’s a complete and total musician in every sense of the word,” Hilt said. Dudamel is also known for working extensively with youth in music, Hilt said, notably through the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program. “He’s a wonderful musician and a sparkling personality,” Hudnut said. “His well-known affection for young people will be an inspiration for us all.” Hilt noted Dudamel’s passion and technical skill and praised him personally, saying he had a “perfect personality” to communicate his talents. “Teenagers get a little cynical and ironic—and [Dudamel] is not about that at all,” he said. “He’s about cutting to the humanity of every issue and why humans make music in the first place—and for him it’s one of the most important things we do as human beings on this planet.”
MAZELLE ETESSAMI/CHRONICLE
PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL: Nine student-written plays will be performed April 25, 26, 27, 28 in Rugby Auditorium. The plays will be split into two different sets. Upper School Performing Arts Head Rees Pugh, left, directs students in “Gawking Dead.” Oliver Sanderson ’15, top right, juggles oranges in“Lemonade.” Daniel Palumbo ’14 and Anna Witenberg ’13 act out a scene from “Zamena.”
Bombings cancel college welcome days By Michael Sugerman
Hank Gerba ’12 was sitting in his Northeastern University dorm room when a notification popped up on his iPhone. “Are you blown up?” read a text from his friend. “He said that there were just two explosions at the end of the Boston Marathon,” Gerba said. “And I realized that if I listened to what was going on outside my room there were helicopters and sirens and people screaming.” For Gerba and other alumni in Boston, the drama was beginning to unfold just down the street. “It was something out of a movie,” Blaise Ormond ‘12, a student at Boston University said. He was a mile away from the Marathon finish line when
the first bomb was detonated. Gerba grabbed his camera and walked the five minutes from his dorm to the edge of the police perimeter at Boylston Street, where the first bomb was detonated Monday, April 15. “I didn’t even think of the fact that there might be future danger,” he said. “I figured this was a pretty important event that had happened and to be able to be there and capture some of it on a camera would be a good thing do.” After snapping numerous photos, Gerba was about to head back to his dorm when he noticed a man covered in blood and clutching a bloodstained American flag. “He looked disoriented and it was immediately clear that he had been at the explosion,”
Gerba said. “Some people went up to him and asked if he was hurt or okay. He assured everyone that he was fine and that it wasn’t his blood, which was a strangely good thing to hear.” The man was Carlos Arredondo, who was one of the first citizen reactors to the Marathon explosions. Many may now recognize Arredondo from a dramatic Associated Press photo, where he is pushing a wheelchair with a Marathon runner who lost both of his lower legs. Gerba took video as Arredondo spoke to reporters, and was incidentally featured in NBC’s street interview with the hero. Three days after the Marathon bombing, the suspects reappeared, engaging in a
‘Napalm Girl’ to attend film screening By Elana Zeltser
Kim Phuc, the “Napalm Girl,” will speak to parents and students May 10 at 7:30 p.m. following the screening of a documentary about her life entitled “The Power of a Picture.” The movie, presented by producers Jeff MacIntyre and David Ono, also features Nick Ut, the Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who captured the image of Phuc running naked, her clothes seared off by burning napalm, through the streets during the Vietnam War. “It is probably the most fa-
mous war picture of all time,” Head of the Visual Arts Department Cheri Gaulke said. “Many people say it’s the photo that ended the war.” The evening will benefit Phuc’s Kim Foundation and The Friendship Fund, an organization which recently took 10 Harvard-Westlake students to Laos as part of their World Tours program. These nonprofit charities “help victims of war,” Gaulke said. “The movie evokes the question of what our responsibility is in a time of war, particularly in relation to civilians who are often the victims
of bombs or the dropping of napalm,” Gaulke said. Admission is free, as the evening will be sponsored by the GunterGross Asia Initiative with the mission of informing students about life in Asia. Following the 26 minute documentary, Phuc will answer the audience’s questions. “Kim’s journey is all about forgiveness,” Gaulke said. “That is something we found in Laos, too. There is a culture of peacefulness.” On May 11, students will accompany Phuc and Ut to the Annenberg Center to see a show on war photography.
shoot-out with police at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and killing MIT Officer Sean Collier. “I was really scared, because I was at Stata Center an hour before the shooting happened,” Jeffrey Sperling ‘11 said. “The place where the police officer was shot is not a remote part of campus; it’s one of the hearts of campus. I’m there every day.” Fellow MIT student Jennifer Plotkin ’11 met Collier through her work with the school’s Emergency Medical Technician program, befriending the officer the week before he was slain. “We instantly hit it off,” she said. “He would come hang • Continued on page A9
INSIDE
B4 BRAINS AND BALLET: Kaitlyn Yiu ’13 juggles international ballet competitions with her senior year class load.