April 29, 2015
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News A3
Prefects to initiate break talks on quad By Jesse Nadel
Following an upper school assembly speech by anti-sexist activist Jackson Katz, the Prefect Council met with about a dozen students last Thursday to discuss his message to test a plan to host talks on pertinent topics on the quad during Monday breaks. “I thought the test discussion was very productive, and I was really happy with what happened,” Senior Prefect Jensen McRae ’15 said. “It was very organic. We talked less about the content of the speech and the speaker than I anticipated, but it was fine because people had great suggestions for how to proceed with our idea about these discussions in the future.” Future talks would focus on multiple topics, depending on what is relevant. The idea for these conversations started several weeks ago, but Katz’s speech catalyzed the plan. “It was something we started talking about in the wake of a lot of Facebook posts [about gender] or apps that were making people have very un-
productive conversations, and we were trying to think of ways to keep those conversations going but not behind a computer screen,” McRae said. Katz encouraged students to shift the rhetoric of gender violence from being only a women’s issue during the April 20 assembly. “Historically, people have seen sexual assault and gender violence issues as women’s issues that some good men help out with. I argue that these are men’s issues first and foremost,” Katz said. Katz, who has a Ph.D. in culture studies from UCLA and cofounded the Mentors In Violence Prevention, specified that categorizing this violence as solely a problem for women gives men an excuse not to listen. “Instead of remaining silent, we have to speak out to make it clear that we do not accept abusive behaviors,” Katz said. Decreasing gender violence is helpful to men, specifically male children of abusive families and victims of male-tomale assault, he said. Solving these problems necessitates a
SU JIN NAM/CHRONICLE
SPEAKING UP: Anti-sexist activist Jackson Katz tells students that gender issues are men’s issues too. Prefect Council talked about his speech as a trial run for a new program to host discussions on the quad. change in the way we see masculinity and violence, he added. “We have to raise the bar about what it means to be a good guy in the United States, if it just means ‘I am not a rapist,’” Katz said. Katz also showed a video he made titled “Up the Ante” depicting the relationship between men and violent acts in the media and how it shapes the perception of masculinity. Katz also visited multiple Choices and Challenges classes, a Peer Support Trainee class and a faculty Q and A session. “I really enjoyed hearing
Relabeled restroom faces opposition • Continued from page A1
Upper school Dean Adam Howard ’93 also agrees that an all-gender restroom on campus is beneficial for giving students a peek at what their college life could be like if they have coed dorms. Many restaurants also have them. “It’s something new to me, so with all change, you’re really questioning of it at the beginning,” Quentin Mckenzie ’17 said. “When I use a multiplegender bathroom at a restaurant, I don’t know the person so I don’t really care, but these are people who I go to school with, so it’s more personal and weird.” GSA president Netanya Perluss ’15 said that she thinks the idea that the all-gender restroom inconveniences male students is self-centered because there is already a large number of male restrooms on campus. “If you do feel uncomfortable using it, you don’t have to because no one is forcing you to use that restroom,” Perluss said. “I think that’s an intol-
erant view to have, but also they’re not in control of the bathrooms since we had the administration’s full support.” Kelly Morrison ’16 said that she supports the all-gender restroom, but the lack of discussion surrounding its implementation was a lost opportunity to start a conversation. Perluss, however, said that the GSA still plans to make a formal announcement in the future and encourages students with questions to attend GSA meetings. “A student contacted me saying they felt more comfortable and safe at school using this restroom, and even if it’s just one person for whom it made a difference, that enough is reason that we did it,” Perluss said. Single-stall, all-gender restrooms are becoming an issue nationally. West Hollywood passed a law that took effect on Jan. 15 mandating that “all single-stall restrooms in businesses and public places … be gender-neutral,” according to the City of West Hollywood website. The
law does not affect multiplestall restrooms and requires that all single-stall restroom signs have non gender-binary images.The Obama administration also installed the first all-gender restroom in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building inside the White House complex, CNN reported April 9. The sign says “Inclusive Restroom” and features the transgender symbol. Backlash against all-gender restrooms is not exclusive to the student body. In California, a proposed ballot measure called the Personal Privacy Protection Act would require people to “use facilities in accordance with their biological sex, rather than their gender identity” in government-owned buildings, according to the website for Privacy for All, the group proposing the measure. The measure would permit people who felt threatened or uncomfortable by a transgender person in a governmentowned restroom to sue that individual or governmental agency for up to $4,000. Upper school Dean Beth
Cum Laude Inductees 57 seniors, listed below, in the top 20 percent of the class GPA range will be inducted into the National Cum Laude society in a ceremony May 19. Noah Bennett Ari Berman Covi Brannan Danielle Brody Perren Carrillo Peter Cha Albert Choi Raymond Chung Annelise Colvin Bradley Comisar Aaron Drooks Aaron Esagoff Sara Evall Koji Everard Shingo Everard
Lucas Gelfen Jacob Gold Benjamin Goldstein Jonathan Heckerman Katherine Hohl Enya Huang Diana Kim Jonathan Klein Grace Kotick Bryanna Lee James Lennon Alexandra Liao Amanda McAdams James McCabe Clara McCarthy
Amelia Miller Paige Moelis Rahul Natarajan Scott Nussbaum Jason Oberman Andrew Park Marcella Park Jack Price Nadia Rahman Sriram Rao Joshua Rubin Jake Saferstein Milan Severino Aaron Shih Jonathan Sington
Jamie Skaggs Theodore Sokoloff Elizabeth Sondheimer Riley Spain Erina Szeto Xenia Viragh Talia Wazana Benjamin Weisman Bennet Weissenbach David Weitz Brendan Wixen Jacob Woronoff SOURCE: CUM LAUDE SOCIETY GRAPHIC BY EUGENIA KO
his insights in a more personal environment because we were given the opportunity to ask questions and have a discussion about how our community responds to the topics addressed in the assembly,” Peer Support trainee Alexa Ranger ’16 said. Students had mixed reactions to Katz’s presentation. During and after Katz’s speech, students published anonymous polls on the app What’s Goodly that called Katz a “feminazi,” a term he discussed in his speech. “I think that people who were getting defensive and
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who didn’t walk away with a take-home message just didn’t listen,” Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Kavita Ajmere said. Other students supported the messages that Katz presented to the school. “I thought Jackson Katz was addressing an issue that is important in life at HarvardWestlake, and we should be making sure we treat everyone as equally as possible,” Kevin Wesel ’17 said. “I thought that although sometimes he could repeat himself, all of his messages were important to hear.”
I like the idea that we are going in a direction where we are being supportive, and I would hope that we would be a school and a society that would move closer to being inclusive.” —Beth Slattery upper school dean
Slattery said that the all-gender restroom is not the first instance in which the school has reached out to support the transgender and genderqueer community, but this is the first instance in which students have expressed opposition. During her second year as an administrator, a student came out to her as transgender and asked to wear a black robe to graduation instead of a white robe, which is traditionally for females. She also said that multiple students have either made this same request, asked to be called by different pronouns and/or came out as transgender after graduation. “If we had done [the allgender restroom] and not explained the rationale behind it, then I think that less people would be upset about it,” Slat-
nathanson’s
tery said. “I imagine that if it was ensuring there is an equal number of restrooms for women and men instead of focusing on a particular disenfranchised group, people wouldn’t be up in arms.” Slattery said she has experience with transgender teenagers in both her professional and personal life and thinks they are a real presence in the community. Harvard-Westlake has been extremely supportive of all students who have come out and asked for help, she said. “Sometimes progress is uncomfortable because people aren’t used to it,” Slattery said. “I like the idea that we are going in a direction where we are being supportive, and I would hope that we would be a school and a society that would move closer to being inclusive.”
Students elect 2015-2016 Prefect Council members
By Eugenia Ko
Prefect Council announced the results of the 2015-2016 prefect elections in an e-mail April 23. The senior prefects are Helene Miles, Jordan Strom, Shelby Weiss and Adam Yaron. The junior prefects are Lexi Block, Charlie Noxon, Matt Thomas and Cate Wolfen. Hunter Brookman and Grace Pan were elected as head prefects before spring break. Yaron was elected as a male senior prefect in the first round, but students voted in a runoff election between Wil-
liam Ruppenthal and Strom. Siddarth Kucheria, Brandon Lim, Kelly Morrison, Brendan Sanderson, Dietrich Tribull and Nina Woythaler also ran for senior prefect. Miles is the only senior prefect new to the council. “I look forward to getting to know a group of students I don’t really know too well, and also getting started on some ideas I have for next year,” she said. Serena Davis, James Kanoff, Emma Kateman, Jordan Khorsandi, Alyson Lo, William Park, Kevin Wesel and Nick Witham all ran for junior prefect.