Inside... News
Opinion
-Latin & Greek students win -Diversity more than awards, pg. 2 just race, pg. 3 -Departing faculty, pg. 2, 3
Feature “If nothing else, value the truth”
-A look at underclassmen call-ups,pg. 7
Sports
-Volleyball falls to DeSmet, pg. 4 -Underclassmen sports finals, pg. 6
The weekly student newspaper of St. Louis U. High - 4970 Oakland Ave. - St. Louis, MO 63110 - (314) 531-0330 ext. 183 - online at sluh.org/prepnews - prepnews@sluh.org
Volume LXXIV
Issue 30
St. Louis University High School, Friday, May 14, 2010
Jazz and hip-hop Junior Ring Banner Signing closes Jazzuit Series Photo by Mr. Matt Sciuto
Drew Dziedzic Core Staff ssistant Principal for Diversity Robert Evans presented the final installment of the St. Louis U. High Jazz Diversity Series Wednesday in the Commons. Over 45 students and teachers attended, and many received extra credit from their history and English teachers. The talk focused on the similarities between jazz and hip-hop, but also discussed how jazz led to the development of hip-hop. “I really enjoyed the conversation,” said Evans. “Obviously during Activity Period you don’t get much time to talk and explore some ideas as you would like, but I enjoyed it.” Evans felt that comparing jazz to hiphop made it more relatable for the students than the previous presentations had. “I felt like jazz is a perfect theme to springboard into a lot of these conversations, but I don’t know if everyone was open to that idea,” said Evans. “I felt hip-hop was a natural transition into more contemporary issues in music and diversity.” The presentation began with a history of jazz, which according to Evans was developed from a variety of cultures, especially African and European. Evans stressed that the important components of jazz include
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individual assertion and improvisation. He played samples of jazz in its early days, including “Doodlin” by Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers. Next, Evans discussed how hip-hop is a style, using rap music, graffiti art, and break dancing to define it. Evans played the movie trailer of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, mentioning how the movie’s colorful, fun, and energetic scenes reflected the early hiphop movement. “In the early ’80s, that’s what you would see, and the evolution is not quite the same,” said Evans. “Someone came up after the presentation and said right now in hip-hop everyone is going with the nerd look ... and I asked, ‘Why?’” Evans showed the parallels between jazz and hip-hop. He described how both came from urban origins, utilize call-and-response patterns, and were initially considered low class music and were not popular among either musical critics or mainstream society. “It was interesting to see connections that I could relate to,” said junior Brian Silvestri, who is a hip-hop listener and thought the talk helped him appreciate jazz. Later, Evans played a variety of songs to exhibit the parallels between jazz and hiphop. Two selections that Evans used were Hank Crawford’s “Wildflower,” a jazz song
Juniors Ben Emnett, Joe Earsom, Andy Eilers, and Tom Dell’Orco sign the junior class banner last Friday. Juniors received their rings at a Mass Friday afternoon, and danced the night away at the Mahler Ballroom Friday night.
from the ’70s, and “Drive Slow” by Kanye West from 2004. The crowd marveled at how both songs began with similar beats and rhythm. As this is the final installment of the Jazz Diversity Series this year, Evans attempted to connect his talk with the multiple talks that have happened throughout the year.
see JAZZUIT, 11
Linhares looks back on his first year as Assistant Principal for Mission Conor Gearin schools,” Moran said of the administration’s Core Staff current structure. “Because if we didn’t have fter 26 years in the theology office, some people devoted to our long-term goals, Assistant Principal for Mission Jim we’d never get there.” Linhares said that when he accepted the Linhares left his full-tme teaching posi- tion for a room in the main office. He has position last school year, his role was broken used his new position to advise and guide up into two main categories. The first was to St. Louis U. High faculty and propagate guide faculty according to SLUH’s style of pedagogy. Toward the Jesuit mission of this end, Linhares the school. met with teachers Tr a n s i t i o n i n g one-on-one, took from teacher to adminpart in the evaluation istrator proved a chalprocess of faculty lenge, but Linhares members, and met has adjusted and does with new teachers not foresee significant to educate them on changes to his role for the Ignatian mission next school year. and teachings of the Principal John school. Moran said that in T h e s e c o n d addition to adminispart of his job entrators tasked mainly tailed “everything with day-to-day issues that falls under the such as Assistant Prinexplicit Catholic, cipal for Student Life Jesuit mission of Brock Kesterson and the school,” LinAssistant Principal hares said. Linhares for Academics Tom served as a liaiBecvar—who also son to the Campus have some long-term Ministry department goals—the adminisAssistant principal for Mission Jim Linhares. and sought to help trative team needed positions that focused on long-term goals— people understand just what the school’s resulting in the creation of Assistant Princi- mission entailed. When he accepted the position, Linhares pal for Diversity Rob Evans and Linhares’ said that in his future role he “saw lots of positions. “It’s a model I’ve seen work at a num- one on one opportunities to talk with faculty ber of other schools, including other Jesuit and I saw and looked forward to lots of op-
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Photo by Mr. Matt Sciuto
portunities to think about the Jesuit identity of the school, read about it, find ways to help people understand it, articulate it, support it in the school.” However, Linhares understood from the start that many peripheral duties would pop up. “The job description and Dr. Moran’s comments to me made it clear that being an administrator always involves all kinds of extra detail. There were three or four responsibilities under the job that looked like asterisks to me when I started it but turned out to be bigger than asterisks” as the year progressed, Linhares said. One such extra detail was managing funds for professional development of faculty members. “The school has access to some funds that allow teachers to do professional development—go out and take courses, and (go to) conferences—and it’s quite a bit of money that comes through an agency that connects to the state,” said Linhares.
see LINHARES 11
Track wins MCC
Nathan Rubbelke Staff he St. Louis U. High track team was on a mission last Thursday evening. They had not just one title to defend, but three. They wanted to match their previous conference sweep at all levels: varsity, JV, and freshman. As any hard-working gentlemen would do, they cleaned house and swept the Metro Catholic Conference (MCC) Championships. It took key performances from every squad and event to win a meet like this. The distance squad, as usual, carried a lot of weight in terms of team points. They pulled off a rare feat, sweeping the distance races and scoring the maximum amount of points, 50. They started off the afternoon cruising to victory in the 4 x 800-meter relay by nearly a minute. Senior Caleb Ford (4:22) and junior Tim Rackers (4:24) went first and second in the 1600. One of the many highlights of the day came from the open 800. Senior Nick Seckfort and Ford finished one-two. Seckfort set a new conference record of 1:54, and Ford finished with a time of 1:57. “I was just very glad Caleb was running that race with me or else I don’t think I would have done that well in the race had he not pushed the pace a little bit,” said Seckfort. Senior Emmett Cookson and Rackers also went one-two in the 3200, wrapping up the Distance squad B-Town beat down.
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Editors’ Note
see TRACK, 11
This week the Prep News is launching its new website, www.sluh.org/prepnews. We are very excited for this major upgrade to our site, and we hope you will consider it a major improvement. Senior Matt Bettonville, junior Patrick O’Leary, adviser Michael Koenigs, and system administrators John Haefele and John Dickmann were all major contributors to the site. The website is based on the Joomla platform, which has allowed us to integrate multiple new features which include links to articles, slideshows, videos, polls, and a much improved design. To access the PDF as you would have done on the old site, click the button in the right hand column of the website that says “Download PDF.” If you have any questions or feedback about the new site please e-mail us at prepnews@ sluh.org.