The ReMarker | May 2021

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Dallas, TX • Volume 67, Number 7 • May 21, 2021 • St. Mark’s School of Texas

The ReMarker

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s l o o h c s s Are all-boy

? d e t a d t u O

STORY Austin Williams, Toby Barrett, Will Pechersky ARTWORK Cooper Cole

Inside

Chauvin verdict

The community’s reaction to the recent rulings in Derek Chauvin’s trial. Page 6

Dear departures

A close look at the impact departing faculty left on campus, plus their reasons for leaving. Page 14-15

Football afficionado

Bud Brooks ‘79 shows off his rich collection of yearbooks and other football-related memorabilia. Page 28

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Essentials

The ReMarker • May 21, 2021

2

Instagram: @remarkernewspaper Podcast: In-depth conversations on movies, podcasts and photography.

Focal Point on Soundcloud Behind the Column Episode 8 airs today:

PERSONAL COLUMN

What's INSIDE 3

Issues A look into the student leaders of the new Diversity and Inclusion Council. 3

Droning on: Aerial coverage needs change A one-man play: Talking with an alumnus about his experiences in the arts. 17 Fun summer activities to stay safe with the pandemic. 18 Getting a look at the Senior Fine Arts showcase. 19

Blue shirt tradition

What will next school year look like transitioning from a pandemic to normal life? 4 A chat with newly-elected student executive officers. 5 Talking with the candidates in the race for Dallas City Council's District 11 seat. 6 What will traditional end-ofyear events look like? 7 Hearing from the community on the Derek Chauvin verdict. 8

9

Discoveries A new format for the annual STEM Conference using podcasts. 9

10

All-boys What's the value of singlesex education in today's world? 10-11

Buzz: Pros and cons of summer job opportunities for students. 22

20

Opinions Editorials: All in-person learning; No COVID vaccine mandate. 20 Williams: Podcasts.

Barrett: Going to the movie theaters. 21

23

Sports What's goes into the process of cutting and gaining weight in wrestling? 23 Talking with a Lions football fanatic with a Facebook page dedicated to its history. 24 Sitting down with this year's Super Fan Men after a crazy year of sports. 25

12

10600 Changes to the annual Pecos trip while celebrating its 50th anniversary. 12

Say what?

Comments overheard around campus.

Cal Graham Junior

I won't strike out. He's throwing so slow, it's like batting practice.

Before striking out

Shane May Mathematics Department Chair

Academic habits and memories from the Cum Laude Society inductees. 13

14

Centerspread Faculty and staff members moving on to the next chapter in their lives. 14-15

16

Culture The struggles of producing a yearbook in a year like no other. 16

Lars Ochs Junior

Chick-fil-A is open for me on Sundays.

Breaking a 38-year-old track & field school record despite battling an injury. 26 SPC championships from both the tennis and track & field teams. 27

28

Backpage An unforgettable Blue & Gold Day to wrap up the year. 28

eporting on the media? Seems redundant, I guess.

Unfortunately, coverage hasn’t been getting enough coverage lately.

Unknown to the average citizen, Texas law prohibits the use of drones for “surveillance.”

That’s the actual term they use in this written law. “Surveillance.”

Somehow, Texas lawmakers and officers take this term to include or signify newsgathering, thereby finding cause to not just prohibit drone use in photojournalism, but also to enforce fines, suits and jail time.

Journalists in the state of Texas are severely restricted when it comes to aerial photography, something many journalists around the country depend on to understand, analyze and facilitate news to the public. To you.

Recently, a group decided to fight this by arguing against the constitutionality of the law, claiming it infringes the First Amendment rights of Americans — unduly restricting the media’s ability to obtain and distribute information.

You’ve heard about the egregious violations of a nation’s freedom of speech.

The violent and unfiltered atrocities committed by powerful leaders to suppress their constituents and the spread of defiant thoughts to maintain control.

But in today’s world — in your world — violations of your First Amendment right to free speech takes a different form — something which that same average citizen wouldn’t even realize.

Ekansh It’s this kind of law and Tambe Photo restriction that can have a Editor profound but covert impact on your life, without you even taking notice.

We talk about our rights a lot at this school, and we talk about positively changing the world even more often. But as high school students, very rarely do we actually get the opportunity to understand and act on how we feel the state government should respect its citizens.

The Media Freedom and Information Access (MFIA) Clinic at Yale Law School and Public Justice on behalf of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), the Texas Press Association and an independent photojournalist are the prosecutors for this case.

The foundation of their case lies in the idea that no matter how seemingly insignificant of an infringement, a violation of Americans’ rights is a violation nonetheless, especially in a situation like this in which the consequences of such an infringement have far-reaching effects unknown to the general public.

It’s our job to cover coverage.

Last December, a federal court in Austin denied Texas’s request to dismiss the lawsuit for lack of stated claim.

Though this is undoubtedly a win, not enough people understand the gravity of this situation.

By not spreading the facts of this case and the injustice being done by the state of Texas, we enact this same injustice upon ourselves.

It’s time to speak up.

School academic team takes first place in national competition

by Will Spencer he Academic Team competed in and won first place in the Small School National Championship Tournament held on April 24 and 25. Along with the group that ultimately won the tournament, two other teams from the school competed.

“We actually had three teams competing,” Director of Academic Information Systems and academic team coach Paul Mlakar said. “The A-team is composed of four players, and that's the team that won. That was [seniors] Ned Tagtmeier, Aayush Goodapaty, [junior] Miki Ghosh and [freshman] Aditya Shivaswamy.”

In the final round of the tournament, the school’s A-team

T I set up one couple on a blind date, and they’re married with five kids. I’m undefeated in matchmaking.

Super Fan Men

R

was squared up against Miami Valley, a team our players had encountered many times before.

“We were playing Miami Valley in the final,” Mlakar said.

“In 2017, we beat them in the final to win the championship. In 2019, they knocked us out, and we ended up finishing fourth, so we have a bit of a history with them.”

After a series of toss-ups and bonuses left the two teams neckand-neck, a judgement call by a moderator was contested by our team in order to gain an edge.

“The moderator starts off by clueing an experiment called the Michelson Morley experiment,” Ghosh said. “The device used in that experiment was called an interferometer, so I buzzed

in and said ‘interfering.’ The correct answer in the packet was ‘interference,’ so the moderator decided to not accept it.”

When the last toss-up was answered, the question our team contested had still not been resolved. Ghosh realized that the impending decision on that question would matter much more than he initially expected.

“At the end of the game, the score was perfectly tied 335-335, but that was without the protest being taken into account,” Ghosh said. “That meant that, if we won the protest, we won that game and the whole tournament. If we lost the protest we would still have to play another game. We really wanted to close it out at that

point, and, luckily, we did win the protest.”

Now, after defeating a team rival and claiming victory at the small school tournament, the team has their sights set on a tournament for schools of all sizes later in May. “We do plan on playing in some other national tournaments,” Mlakar said.

“We've got the High School National Championship Tournament [HSNCT] that's open to any school across the country.

I think there's about 172 teams in that field. We feel good about our chances, but it's really hard to win at HSNCT because there's so many elite schools that could win.”

3

Inclusion

A

fter the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Daunte Wright, things have changed.

At first, there was grief. Then, there was outrage.

And that outrage turned into action.

The action took the form of a reckoning over the summer — the ripples of which are still felt across the country today. It created conversation. A national reevaluation of racism’s deep-rooted place in the justice system.

And this reckoning made its way onto campus: plans are being made for a new student-led Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Council, formed to advance the school’s commitment to making sure every student feels welcome.

In essence, big goals are in place for next year — and there are even bigger ones on the horizon.

LOOKING AHEAD Enoch Ellis gazes at the Path to Manhood statue. Ellis cites wanting to positively impact the experiences of future Marksmen as one of his motivations for his work in diversity and inclusion.

and respect are obviously fundamentally important to the way we approach daily life and are values that we strive to instill in the community,” Dini said. “[The Diversity and Inclusion Council] is a very natural outgrowth of the school’s mission, values and purpose.”

Director of Inclusion, Diversity and Human Junior Zack Stone, one of the founding Resources Lorre Allen mentioned collaboration members of the new organization, hopes to with the administration and a clear direction for create dialogue about racial issues. the council as essential to its founding.

“There’s a lot of preconceptions about “It’s been a journey, but it’s been a short inclusion and diversity initiatives that journey,” Allen said.

Lorre people have, especially given all the “The students were very Allen buzzwords out there today and how intentional in what they Director of Inclusion and controversial some of these issues can were looking for and had the Diversity be,” Stone said. “The initial reaction from support of administration, people, in general, is that they don’t want so it was something that to confront those issues because it’s just was supported, and it’s uncomfortable.” something that will make us Junior Class President Enoch Ellis, better.” another founding member, contends the Further, Allen points to the Dallas Area benefits of the council are not just limited to Diversity Youth Organization, or DADYO, of confronting societal problems on race. which St. Mark’s is a founding member, as a “The fundamental purpose of the Diversity precursor to the new council. and Inclusion Leadership Council,” Ellis said, “DADYO is now more than just a club,” “is to foster greater community cohesion in Allen said. “DADYO is the foundation of what pursuit of building the whole man.” has been created through the Diversity and Headmaster David Dini believes the Inclusion Leadership Council. It’s been critical Diversity and Inclusion Council will play to having these conversations about various a major role in upholding the school’s subjects in this space. DADYO will have its own commitment to fostering a diverse community. leaders and organization, and they will report “I’m really pleased at how those to the Diversity and Inclusion Leadership conversations have unfolded and excited about Council. It’s important to understand how the what it’s going to mean for the future of the transformation of DADYO over the past few school and addressing the commitment in our mission statement,” Dini said, “which is The council will be an important making sure we’re an inclusive place and that touchstone of progress on campus there’s a strong sense of belonging for every and will underpin daily interactions and student on campus.” experiences.

Moreover, Dini emphasizes the importance David Dini, Headmaster of student leadership to help guide the school on these issues.

“The more we talked through opportunities years has helped us get to this point.” and ways to support that commitment in Allen also applauds the work of student our mission statement,” Dini said, “the more leaders like Stone and Ellis in making this evident it became that we wanted student council a reality. leadership to really be at the forefront and “The Diversity and Inclusion Leadership play a central role in strengthening the Council evolved from the work of a group of school’s commitment to diversity with adult students who took it upon themselves to come involvement, support and encouragement.” together and propose how this council could To Dini, the establishment of the council benefit our community,” Allen said. “They’ve goes hand in hand with the school’s emphasis been instrumental.” on character and leadership education and is Echoing Dini, Allen asserts the importance at the very core of what the school hopes to of student leadership on diversity issues. accomplish.

“For the students who came up with this “Values like empathy and compassion idea supporting the school, it’s not just about

what they’re looking for as a student, but they’re concerned about the students that are coming after them,” Allen said. “And I think that’s one of the greatest pieces of this work, that you have the ability to look forward and say, ‘What can I do to help support people even after I’ve graduated.’”

Ellis envisions the council as a positive force on campus, leading events and raising awareness among the student body on diversity issues.

“I could imagine the council hosting events, bringing in distinguished speakers to talk about the importance of this work,” Ellis said, “and educating the student body on what they’re going to be encountering as they get out of this 10600 Preston Rd. bubble into the real world.”

The structure of the council will have three different positions for students: co-chairs from the senior class, vice chairs from the junior class and representatives from every grade in Upper School.

“We modeled the structure of the council on the structure of [the Student Council],” Ellis said. “We have co-chairs—there’s not a set number, but generally, it will be two to three.

They will be typically leading the council.

Underneath the co-chairs, we have vice chairs, who will be exclusively juniors. The thought process behind that was to have the co-chairs mentor these vice chairs on what to do, so there will be a smooth transition between the years.”

Additionally, the council has begun planning possible events for next year.

“Our big thing is the idea of a diversity night. It would be a potluck dinner,” Ellis said. “We would celebrate different people’s foods and cultures, and people could put on presentations. We also plan to have more speakers next year. I believe we’ve booked some pretty famous speakers, but that’s a little sneak peek.”

Primarily, Ellis hopes for the Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Council to have a lasting impact.

“My biggest aspiration is to create something that will continue to affect positive change in the community long after we’re gone,” Ellis said. “I aim to be a model for younger Marksmen like me. I want to show them that it’s possible to chase their dreams unapologetically.”

STORY Keshav Krishna, Myles Lowenberg PHOTOS Keshav Krishna, Myles Lowenberg

TEAMWORK Juniors Elijah Ellis, Sam Eluemenoh and Zack Stone also advocated for the creation of a student-led body focused on diversity and inclusion.

The ReMarker • May 21, 2021

The newly established Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Council seeks to build unity on campus in the face of nationwide conversations on race.

Issues

Leading the way

Expectations Administrators walk through possible changes to health and safety protocols for next year.

Page 4

Local Politics

A look at the candidates for District 11’s City Council race. Page 5

Graduation

A preview of this year’s Commencement ceremony.

Page 6

Verdict

Reactions to Derek Chauvin’s murder conviction. Page 7

Leadership

Get to know the new Student Council officers and their goals. Page 8

In brief

AP EXAMS Two hundred fifty Marksmen took a total of 865 AP exams, including three new subjects, physics 1, comparative government and United States government and politics, from May 3 through May 17.

Marksmen can earn college credit with their exam scores depending on the schools, and some choose to self-report their scores to colleges. Students will receive their results in July.

COMMUNITY SERVICE BOARD The Community Service Executive Board for the 2021-2022 school year will consist of chair Matthew Shen amd vice chairs Zach Lightfoot and Soham Verma, assistant director of Community Service Isabel Cisneros announced April 16.

New members will work to further maintain and upgrade community service projects and opportunities.

In particular, they will help organize drives such as the candy drive following Halloween and the gift drive during the holidays.

The remainder of positions on the Community Service Board will be announced shortly.

VACCINATION UPDATE School nurse Julie Doerge has been monitoring vaccination statistics and data to ensure the safety of students, faculty and staff.

Ninety-six percent of faculty and staff are fully vaccinated with seniors projected to obtain herd immunity by Commencement, May 28. Doerge anticipates the number of vaccinated students to rise as the age limit on the Pfizer vaccine is expected to drop.

In national news, the CDC announced fully-vaccinated individuals no longer need to wear masks indoors May 13.

2022 SCHOOL YEAR

Getting back to normal As a year marked by sweeping, momentous change in day-to-day school life comes to a close, the school faces new changes for the resumption of classes next fall, including the reimplementation of the classic Harkness table. Hoping the community can continue to move farther from pandemic-adapted schooling, school administrators share insights in the changes we can expect to see in the 2021-22 school year.

Toby Barrett: What are some unknowns about the virus that could affect how the next school year begins?

School nurse Julie Doerge: I think the scary part at the moment are hot spots all over the world, like India and Michigan. That’s where we’re seeing all these variants come into play, and I think that’s really the one unknown of the summer and the unknown for us coming back to school. Obviously, at this time, our hope is that we’re going to come back.

TB: Will masks still be mandated when we return to campus next fall?

May 21, 2021

Issues

The ReMarker

4

JD: The Senior Class right now is vaccinated at about 82 percent, and from the phone calls that I’ve made, I think we’ll be at about 88 percent by graduation day for the seniors.

For me, that reflects the family—that probably the parents are vaccinated as well. I also have heard from lots of underclassmen as well, so if it’s true that they’re going to give an emergency use authorization for Pfizer for ages 11 through 15 at the end of May, that’s great news for our school because that means Middle School and up would be able to be vaccinated.

If that’s the case, I think we might be able to drop the masks in Middle and Upper School. I think [the lower schoolers] are the final question. I don’t see that happening probably until 2022. Even though we know that little ones are less likely to get really sick, we certainly saw an outbreak in the fourth grade this year, so we know it’s possible that it can happen.

Keshav Krishna: Do you expect major changes to community time?

Upper School Head Colin Igoe: Hopefully, we can get back in the chapel and get back in Decherd [Auditorium].

Those are two things that I really miss. I’m probably speaking for many people when I say that the Student Council and [Student Council president] Blake Hudspeth, have done such an incredible job of delivering assemblies on Friday, virtually.

And we all know there’s no feeling like the energy of being together in Decherd for assembly or in Chapel on Wednesdays.

I’ll be sad that it’s gone, but 99 percent of me says, “I’m happy that we’re moving away from remote learning routine, at least more so than last year.

KK: Can you talk about the decision to discontinue remote learning?

KK: Have there been any discussions about off-season workouts?

CI: I think everything is on the table as we continue to assess and make sure that we’re delivering as full

STORY Toby Barrett, Keshav Krishna PHOTO Sal Hussain

How do you feel about the administrative decision to discontinue all remote learning as we return to school for the 2022 year?

While I understand the administration’s decision to return quickly to a state of normalcy on our campus, it is slightly unfair to force each student into this decision where either they have to attend St Mark’s and show up in-person in the middle of a pandemic or leave.

and robust a program as possible without compromising health and safety. There’s really promising research now that’s showing outdoor transmission is very, small, and that’s great news for strength and conditioning, workouts and athletics.

We know a lot more than we did a year ago, certainly a year and a half ago. And so we can make informed decisions to try to deliver our robust full program while remaining safe.

Associate Headmaster John Ashton: For us, our true north of the main delivery of information and classroom instruction is in-person, together, with teachers and classmates. COVID-19 obviously prompted all brick and mortar schools to pivot to an online presence, and pivot quickly. And that’s what we’ve all done, to a large degree successfully.

But our fundamental approach to education is inperson, relation-based interactions with teachers and peers, and we feel that’s something that’s at our core.

In their own words

As long as the virus is under control and we are safe, I’m fine with that decision. Students learn better in the classroom with their peers than behind the screen.

BACK ON CAMPUS The administration has announced complete resumption of on-campus learning next fall, entirely eliminating the

Jeffrey Hale Math instructor

Bryce Nivet Junior

Matt Hjertstedt Head athletic trainer

A CLOSER LOOK

Alumnus launches run for city council

B

Incumbents reelected

8

Seats headed for runoff

Districts 2, 4, 7, 11, 13, 14

District 11 votes cast

7,986

Total voter turnout

128,084 ballots cast; 9.6 percent of eligible voters

Editor’s note: The general election for District 11 occured May 1.

Jaynie Schultz and Barry Wernick both advanced to the runoff on June 5 by making the top two. Hosanna Yemiru did not respond to a request for an interview.

Jaynie Schultz: plans for new ideas and communication Jaynie Schultz worked on the City Planning Commission for over six years before deciding to run for City Council. Among the variety of issues in Dallas, she sees the biggest one as Dallas’s self image.

“I think the biggest issue facing Dallas as a city is its perception of itself,” Schultz said.

“There are a lot of conversations about the crime rate, the lack of diversity and the lack of opportunity. I think that until we address the way the various groups of Dallas see the city, it will be very hard to make progress.”

She also emphasized that planning is needed to be able to manage Dallas properly.

“We need to address how we’re going to manage crises in the city, whether the crisis is a pandemic or a climate emergency,” Schultz said.

“We need to figure out how we, as a city, are to act so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.”

When governing, she prioritized trying new ideas for helping the city, even if they could have a chance of failing.

“We have to allow ourselves to fail,” Schultz said. “We may try ten things and only one of them is really successful, but that one thing can be a game changer in the next emergency. For example, I want to set up a full text communication system for District 11 so that, when people lose power, they can still know what’s going on around the district or the city.”

On the topic of communication, Schultz had

ideas for how to respond to another crisis like the ice storm and power outages that hit most of Texas earlier this year.

“I think we need to revisit how we communicate with the people who live here in Dallas about what we do during emergencies,” Schultz said. “I’ve heard a lot of talking about some solutions to crises like generators and communities so people have a place to go. But, once we’ve got a plan, we need to think about how we are getting input from and engaging all of our citizens so they feel like they’re a part of the solution.”

In a district as racially and economically diverse as this one, Schultz Schultz, who was endorsed by outgoing City Councilman Lee Kleinman, acknowledged the differences in lives and experiences a legislator would have to take into account.

“The way people see Dallas depends on where they live in the city,” Schultz said. “If I were to ask somebody in one part of town, they might say it’s a city with great opportunity and good education, but there aren’t enough cool areas of town. If I asked someone else, they might say that there are no grocery stores and plenty of parks but nothing that’s safe.”

Barry Wernick: police, homelessness solution prioritized The very first campaign priority for Barry Wernick is supporting police officers in Dallas. He described what the benefits of moving to Dallas were for him.

“We started raising a family about ten years ago under Mayor [Tom] Leppert,” Wernick said.

“We were one of the safest, strongest cities in the country. Pretty much every year, he was adding at least 200 police officers to our police force. And every time he did that, what happened to our city?

However, he talked about what he saw as mismanagement by the city since then.

“Forward ten years, and our city budget is twice what it was ten years ago,” Wernick said. “It was $2 billion, now it’s $4 billion. You think now that we’ve doubled our budget, we probably should have at least one or two more police officers, right? We double the budget to $4 billion, and how many extra police officers do we have in a city growing at about 12 percent? We don’t have more police officers, we Wernick actually have 1000 less. That should tell you there’s a problem with our city leadership’s priorities.”

He also touted his endorsements from former Mayor Tom Lepper, former City Councilman Ron Natinsky and homelessness solutions advocate Ron Hall. “[Hall] is someone who doesn’t just talk about

homelessness,” Wernick said. “He has actual solutions for homelessness. He’s raised over $100 million for actual solutions, and he’s endorsed me.

He wrote a book about his life called Same Kind of Different As Me, and a movie was made out of it as well. He’s someone that now gets called up by cities all over the world to help with homelessness solutions, not by using the city’s budget, not by using our taxpayer money.”

Wernick asserted he would be the best at fixing the homelessness crisis with Hall’s help.

“The last three years, we have spent $4 million a year,” Wernick said. “And our homelessness rate has gone up 50 percent. We now lead the state. It’s growing because the city thinks they can handle it by throwing money at things. What Ron Hall has told me is he will continue to consult with me, even when I’m City Councilman. They know how to solve these problems. I’m not going to do this and take credit and say, ‘Look what I’ve done. I just threw the money at it.’ I don’t need the credit.

We just need solutions.”

Wernick promised to stand by his campaign priorities and values if he was ultimately elected.

“When I’m serving as a city council candidate, I’m not going to be intimidated,” Wernick said.

“I’ll represent our constituents. I’ll do what is right and be principled, and there won’t be any surprises, even if I do something that’s maybe not politically correct or what the [Dallas] Morning News might not have in mind to do. And that’s why I made public safety my number one issue.

We’ve got 1000 less police officers today than ten years ago. Ridiculous.”

Candy Evans: panhandling, police issues top agenda Candy Evans, who finished fourth in the general election, offered ideas and solutions which are summarized below:

“We should make a welcoming real estate package for police when they move here to make it easier for them to find a home in Dallas. I believe there’s plenty of affordable housing in Dallas—you just have to find it. The problem is that you may find it in an area that’s crime ridden, so it all circles back to public safety.”

“There are two kinds of homeless.

There are the truly needy, and then there are those who simply make their living by begging for money. They can make $700 a day and survive. It’s enough to buy food and find a cheap place to sleep, like a motel. If that begging is made illegal, then about a third will stop because they are afraid of getting arrested.”

STORY Myles Lowenberg, Ian Dalrymple

“I’m a great communicator, and I’m a journalist at heart. I know how to dig into things and investigate, and I know how to communicate with people and ask questions that are deep and probinge. I also have a great real estate background. I understand what sells and what doesn’t.”

5 The ReMarker

Election dates General May 1,

Runoff June 5

After representing the district for the maximum amount of terms, Lee Kleinman ‘77 leaves behind an open seat in District 11 of the Dallas City Council. After general elections May 1, two candidates emerged in a runoff for the spot: Jaynie Schultz and Barry Wernick ‘90. Two other candidates, Candy Evans and Hosanna Yemiru, missed the runoff. Evans, Schultz and Wernick spoke about some of the most pressing issues facing the district.

Issues

Facts and FIGURES

Race for the council

May 21, 2021

by Myles Lowenberg arry Wernick ‘90 has launched a campaign for District 11 in the Dallas City Council, where he grew up and currently lives.

Wernick attended school here and served as student council president. One of his most impactful classes at school was learning Russian.

“We were lucky to have a great language program,” Wernick said. “What was great about St. Marks was we could pick a language we wanted to study, and we had about five kids who wanted to learn Russian. So I was one of the five kids—we had Russian class, and I went to the University of Texas, where they had a really good Russian program.”

In college, he studied Soviet and Eastern European studies and was accepted to a program to study with the United States Army and Air Force as a Russian linguist.

“We were taught by defectors from the Soviet Union, and the idea was to help us protect American values and promote freedom and democracy overseas,” Wernick said. “In 1991-92, I had a USIA grant to study in Russia, and I participated with Ambassador [Robert] Strauss, who was from Dallas and was our ambassador to Russia at the time. And I participated in fighting for human rights over there.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Wernick went to Israel and attended law school in Tel Aviv. He also worked in the Ministry of Justice.

“One of the things I did there was work on helping absorb new immigrants into Israel into a new society and culture,” Wernick said. “Whether people were from Ethiopia or Russia were immigrating into this new country, what was cool was this was a completely different culture for all these people from all over the world. And it was really cool getting them to buy into this new society.”

After working in different industries in Miami, New York and Los Angeles, Wernick eventually returned to Dallas.

When running for City Council, he especially remembers one time he and his class planned to boycott the Marksmen Ball.

“It was to take place at an exclusionary club where no Jews or Blacks were allowed to join,” Wernick said. “I thought that was appalling. We have so many people from different backgrounds, and here we are at the culmination of our career at that kind of club. I led the effort to say no, and almost the whole class said that we’re boycotting it unless they move it. And we changed it, and St. Mark’s hasn’t had it there since then. You’ve got to stand up and be principled, no matter what everyone else is telling you.”

LOCAL ELECTION

COMMENCEMENT

Reaching journey’s end

Commencement will take place May 28 at 8 p.m. in a similar manner to past years ­— a relief for members of the Class of 2021.

I May 21, 2021

Issues

The ReMarker

6

t’s been 12 years in the making.

Countless tests, late-night study sessions, assemblies and everything in between have led up to this one moment.

Year after year, Senior Class president Aayan Khasgiwala has watched upperclassmen walk across the stage at Commencement, signifying the ends of their journeys at 10600 Preston Rd. Now, he prepares to don the same white tuxedo generations of Marksmen have worn before him as he graduates alongside his 102 brothers — perhaps the most hallowed tradition on campus.

But he does so after a year without Homecoming, Alumni Weekend or crowds of fans.

A year with COVID-19, masks and virtual learning.

He does so in a year that has upended tradition.

Following the initial COVID-19 outbreak last March, end-of-year events were moved to mid-June due to government-issued stay-at-home orders and health concerns from the pandemic.

This year, as vaccines are providing a muchneeded light at the end of the tunnel, celebrations will occur on time and on campus. Commencement is planned for May 28.

“Our focus for the end of the year has been to have as normal a runway of final experiences, traditions and events as possible,” Headmaster David Dini said, “which is why we’re bringing forward pretty much every major event that we would typically have.”

While events like the Marksmen Ball and Baccalaureate have been moved outdoors for health and safety reasons, Commencement will take place

on the Quad as usual.

“Graduation will look very similar to what a typical graduation looks like at St. Mark’s,” Dini ONE YEAR PRIOR Colin Campbell, the Class of 2020’s Senior Class president, speaks at said. “There will be a few Commencement in his white blazer. Next weekend, Khasgiwala will perform the same role. modifications, but nothing out with otherwise. We have come together, and it will be too noticeable.” will definitely reach a pinnacle at Commencement.”

Social distancing measures will be relaxed and Ultimately, masks will be optional for guests.

Commencement Khasigiwala hopes “The recent CDC guidance that’s come out on the Class of 2021 will vaccinated people being outdoors without a mask Date May 28 be remembered for its on has provided a lot of reassurance to people,” Time 8 p.m. strength in the face of Dini said. “We’re excited about having a wonderful adversity. concluding run of experiences with the Class of 2021, Location Ida M. and Cecil H. Green Commencement Theater “One thing I and I have such respect, admiration and gratitude talked about in my for the way this class has led in difficult times.”

Speakers Lt. Gen. Steven Shepro, U.S. Air Force (ret.) class president election Senior Class officers recently got together to speech was that I brainstorm ideas for graduation speakers.

Aayan Khasgiwala, Senior Class president wanted our class to “Eventually, we narrowed it down to Lt. Gen. be remembered as the Class valedictorian, Steve Shepro, as I’ve met him in person before to be named people who younger and the mother of class officer Sam Morgan went kids saw in the Prizes Headmaster’ s Cup to the Air Force Academy with him,” Khasgiwala School Flag hallways as mentors,” said. “He’s an amazing man with many incredible Citizenship Cup Khasgiwala said. experiences and great leadership qualities.”

“Instead of detaching ourselves from the school, Khasgiwala believes the Senior Class has drawn which would’ve been quite easy to do considering closer together and risen above the challenges they we were all online for a bit, we decided to push faced this year. through and come together as a class. I believe “We’ve had some ups and downs,” Khasgiwala said, “but I think in the last few months we’ve gotten that’s the legacy that we left behind, and I want our class to be remembered for sticking through it all as much closer, and I think there’s definitely a mutual brothers.” understanding that it will all be over soon. One thing I’ve really noticed in the last few months is STORY Keshav Krishna, Zack Goforth how people are starting to branch out and become PHOTO Courtesy Dave Carden comfortable with people who they might not hang

SOCIAL JUSTICE

The verdict

Members of the greater school community react to the ruling of Derek Chauvin’s trial and speak on the future of police reform.

On April 20, 2021, exactly 331 days after George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty on two charges of murder and one charge of second-degree manslaughter.

The jury took only ten hours to reach the verdict, which was hailed as a rare victory for victims of police brutality and for those reformers seeking systemic change in the justice system.

We asked people their thoughts:

I think you need to create some effort to understand where you’re getting your news.

•••

‘Just because somebody’s in uniform doesn’t mean that they always tell the truth, or they always exercise the best judgment.’

Parent Irene Gicheru (of senior Trevor Gicheru) is a currently practicing attorney: It was hard for me to believe that [Chauvin] would even be declared guilty — it only became real when the verdict was announced. And on a personal level, I felt like justice was done. But as a mother of AfricanAmerican children, I still worry about their safety, or that something could go wrong. So, although it hasn’t given me complete peace of mind, it is a step in the right direction.

This country has a history of acquitting officers, and, in some instances, officers are not even indicted. So I was skeptical about [the trial], and I just wasn’t sure if a jury would have been able to reach a consensus to actually convict him on all three counts.

As a community, we have to understand each other better. It would be good if police officers came from the community that they live in, but obviously that’s not always possible. I do understand officers have very difficult jobs—they put their lives on the line every day, but I also think that there is unfortunate, unconscious bias that I think they act on sometimes.

As a former prosecutor, I know that just because somebody is wearing a uniform and has a badge and a gun, I don’t have to believe everything that they say.

My biggest concern now is how much time he’s going to serve. Of course, it’s not going to bring back George Floyd. Nothing is. But it will serve as a message, that the moment

•••

‘In my personal opinion, this was an open and shut case.’

Junior Enoch Ellis is Junior Class president and was just elected as president of the Class of 2022: The verdict in the Chauvin trial, albeit a welcome one, was a decision that mostly won’t affect me.

That said, its implications for police everywhere will hopefully be felt for years to come.

Over this summer of isolation, the BLM movement and I have had an interesting relationship. At first, I was pretty despondent about the whole situation and just viewed it as another performative movement that would dissipate just as soon as it arrived. I see now that this movement is here to stay. It’s been a catalyst for change, and it’s just getting started.

There was no way to deny that Chauvin murdered George Floyd in broad daylight. Sure, the plethora of social media coverage coupled with the numerous recordings of the incident aided the prosecutors and kept up the hype around the case, but Chauvin’s fate was sealed when he decided to kill Floyd.

As social creatures, of course the sheer amount of emotion in the Chauvin case affected the jury members, swaying them one way or another. That said, I think the court tried its best to find jurors who would be as unbiased as possible.

The only reason we even know about George Floyd is because the news picked up the story. Most likely there are dozens of cases like Floyd’s, yet we see the same thing keeps happening.

This can’t satisfy our community; we’ll never be satisfied until we don’t have to live in a society where ‘Black lives matter’ is a controversial statement. Yes, we’ve made progress. But this alone doesn’t mean anything unless we use it as a lesson to ensure it doesn’t ever happen again.

STORY Toby Barrett, Jonathan Yin ARTWORK Cooper Cole

7 The ReMarker

•••

you use excessive force, the moment you cross the line, there will be severe consequences.

Issues

‘I hope that [the jury] viewed the facts solely based on the evidence that they were given, and not based off of anything else.’

Alumnus Tommy Perkins, class of 2006 is a criminal attorney in Dallas: Watching that video was horrible.

It’s one of those things where, you know, we’re kind of used to hearing about these things happening. We rarely see them recorded in the way that this one was. On a personal level, it was horrifying to see that kind of situation, to have to watch someone basically be murdered in the street.

I think that was certainly the right outcome for that trial — he obviously needed to be found guilty.

I don’t think that there was any other option, from a legal perspective or from just me, being a person, having watched that. I don’t know what the long term impacts of it are going to be or what change is going to come out of that particular incident, but it was absolutely the right verdict, and it absolutely needed to happen.

It doesn’t change anything really, aside from maybe knowing that there’s a chance that things are going to get better, and that those will be the outcomes going forward. But I still live my life in the same way, with the same kind of vigilance and the same expectation that something bad could happen to me or a member of my family at any time.

I hope officers that are charged with these kinds of crimes, that they are actually found guilty, and I hope that this would make some officers think before they act in a certain way that if there’s a possibility of them being convicted of a crime, they would think twice about it.

I think Chauvin was the fifth officer to being convicted of a murder in the past 50 years so. So I would like to think that the realization that you can’t get away with doing whatever you want to do to people is going to trickle down and make officers think before they act, to realize that there are consequences to these actions.

I absolutely think there are still changes that need to be made. I know there was a lot of celebration and a

lot of hope that this was going to be a big change, but I don’t know if that’s true—I think it’s the beginning of something that might be a big change.

There’s been a lot of talk in the past couple years about defunding the police, and ‘we need less police,’ or ‘we need fewer officers,’ all that sort of stuff. I hold the opposite opinion—I think that they need to fund the police more, in the sense that they need to pay police officers more and hold them to a higher standard.

May 21, 2021

‘The vast majority of Americans were thinking the officer should be found guilty. There was definitely a consensus there.’

Minneapolis resident Gary Lundgren, who worked from home as the trial was coming to an end: People in Minneapolis, like people all over the world, were obviously really on edge, and it was very stressful. There are some definite reminders here from the summertime. There were entire blocks in South Minneapolis that are gone now from the unrest this summer, so I think we pretty well had the same feeling everyone else did, except the main difference is that many, many storefronts and buildings were boarded up and there were National Guard troops everywhere. Those were reminders we had here that kind of made it reality. A little more close to home, to see that.

It’s just been a few months, and I think changes are going to take a long time, but the Justice Department and the Attorney General of the U.S. certainly have interest in the Minneapolis Police Department and in the Louisville Police Department to see what sort of changes can be made. I think that they definitely will be making changes.

I think that there’s probably going to be a dialogue across the whole country on what a police department should look like.

I certainly think it’s an incorrect phrase when misused as a weapon out there by people who disagree when people say ‘defund the police.’

What people really are saying is, ‘I think we need to look in major cities at the police department through our prism, our viewpoint in 2021, and ask ourselves whether this is the best way to serve the community.’

The challenge our country has coming to the table right now is that we can’t come to the table on both sides, even though you’ve got everyone dealing with the same set of facts.

I think everyone on all sides realizes that social media needs some check: there’s some responsibility there, you just can’t post anything, because there are people that think if it’s on the computer, it’s true.

CONVICTED After being found guilty on all three charges by the jury, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin faces a sentence to be announced this June for the murder of George Floyd. While these charges carry prison time set at a maximum of 40 years, experts indicate his sentence will likely span between ten and 15 years.

STUDENT COUNCIL

A new council takes the helm With the year coming to an end, the student body has elected the new executive council and each grade’s class officers.

N

ew normal. New normal. New normal.

Those two words have been said countless times over the last year. But soon, students will finally get to see what it looks like on campus.

The newly-elected Student Council is responsible for many of the activities, policies and the atmosphere that will decide it, and they’re ready to make their mark on 2021 and beyond.

May 21, 2021

Issues

The ReMarker

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Students elected junior Alex Geng to be next year’s Student Council president, along with junior Elijah Ellis as the Student Council vice president and sophomore Roome Becker as the executive secretary.

Geng acknowledges the struggles of adjusting to new circumstances this year.

“Obviously, this past year has been quite a challenge for the Student Council because of COVID and everything that’s happened so far,” Geng said. “We weren’t able to do a lot of the things we wanted to do, like Homecoming, pep rallies and a lot of the traditions that we’ve missed out on.”

Geng places a high priority on Homecoming as a tradition that Marksmen missed out on this year.

“Homecoming is one of the biggest things that StuCo [Student Council] presidents get to lead and organize, and it’s going to be a lot more important this year since last year, we didn’t have one,” Geng said.

“This year we can hopefully figure out something so that we can both follow the school’s guidelines for COVID as well as have a great time for everybody” To plan, he is looking at similar events occurring over the summer and observing how they will be executed amidst COVID. “Everyone’s dying to have [Homecoming],” Geng said. “I’ve been talking to my classmates about what they want to see and trying to get ideas out already. I know that the Junior Symphony Ball is with multiple schools and is having a similar dance event. That’s going to happen over the summer. I can see how they organize that and how successful that was and try to build off that. They have it in a big venue, so if we can find a suitable venue for our Homecoming we can definitely pull something off that’s going to be really good.”

The current Student Council president, senior Blake Hudspeth, predicts excitement for many events that his class never got to experience in its senior year.

“You’re going to have a lot of energy, a lot of guys wanting to let loose in the fall and have fun, so just figure out how to channel that and they’ll do great,” Hudspeth said. “It is looking like the fall will be returning to normal, so you guys will be getting Homecoming this year and get to do in person stuff every week, like being in Decherd. That energy is going to be insane in the fall, and they’ll just have to capitalize on that.”

Geng also looks forward to the energy next year and hopes for increased spirit and events on Fridays.

“I hope I can make, with the help of the superfan men and StuCo, school actually fun to attend,” Geng said. “If we could have more spirit nights or spirit days on Fridays for football or basketball games and really just bring out every part of the St. Mark’s community, we could make it so that everybody’s engaged. My main goal is for everybody to really want to be excited about things that we do at the school.”

PASSING THE TORCH Student Council president senior Blake Hudspeth passes his duties onto the newly elected junior Alex Geng during the final assembly May 7. Geng will succeed Hudspeth for the 2021-2022 school year.

Ellis, the incoming Student Council vice president, agrees that sports traditions should return for next year.

“We want to get back to traditions like Friday Night Lights and the Lion Walk, which are big for football players, and the parties after the football games,” Ellis said. “We want to make those happen.”

Sophomore Roome Becker, the incoming executive secretary, anticipates and wants to incite a burst of energy on campus too.

“My ideal next year would definitely look a lot more like 2019,” Becker said. “I really want to make sure there’s a lot of energy around school, and everyone doesn’t feel so far apart. The school feels like it’s coming together more, and there should be a lot of school spirit days, free dress days, and on Friday nights, there’s something big going on and everybody shows up for it and has a good time.”

Geng also wants to listen to the student body on issues like phone zones and freshman PE. “It’s really just listening to the community and seeing what they want,” Geng said. “For example, I know a lot of the freshmen are frustrated because they have to take PE even though they’re a threesport athlete. Also, the main science lobby is a phone zone, but the other Winn [Science Center] lobby isn’t. There’s a lot of general confusion about that, so hopefully, we can clear that up and make it more accessible for people.”

But ultimately, Geng hopes that next year will provide an exciting transition back to whatever awaits in the new normal.

“I just really want to represent the school and what the people want because next year is not only going to be our last year here, but also the last year that we have together,” Geng said. “I want to create a year that we can all be proud of, where we can all enjoy the traditions we’ve always wanted.”

Class OFFICERS Senior Class Enoch Ellis President Vice president: Camden Reeves Secretary: Ian Lin Class rep: Tomek Marczeski

Junior Class Aadi Khasgiwala President Vice president: Sal Hussain Secretary: Aaron Greenberg Class rep: Patrick Flanagan

Sophomore Class Warner Hartnett President Vice president: Zack Goforth Secretary: Ashrit Manduva Class rep: Jimmy Francis

Freshman Class Matthew Hofmann President Vice president: Andrew Jin Secretary: Vikram Singh Class rep: Jack Frary

STORY Myles Lowenberg, Grayson Redmond PHOTOS Courtesy Scott Moore

Jason Leneau named Assistant Head of Upper School following Disimile’s departure

by Keshav Krishna hysical education instructor, lacrosse and football assistant coach and sophomore class co-sponsor Jason Leneau was recently appointed Assistant Head of Upper School for the 2021-22 school year. The move comes after the departure of current Assistant Upper School Head Chris Disimile.

“I’m excited to see what the future brings in terms of being an administrator,” Leneau said. “I feel like [this new appointment] is the opportunity that I’ve been been searching for to grow in the educational field. It’s a great time in my life for me, and I want to continue to grow and develop.”

When filling a vacancy, the administration first considers possible internal candidates. Leneau immediately stood out.

“Mr. Leneau is such a talented and gifted educator and has been

P

continuing to grow and have an impact,” Associate Headmaster John Ashton said. “I met him when he first interviewed here years ago, and he impressed all of us at the time. And since his arrival, he has had a wide impact across the campus – in the classroom, as an advisor, as a cosponsor of a class and on the athletic fields.”

Leneau’s new role is centered around student life. As a former Assistant Head of Upper School, Ashton believes interacting and building connections with students is crucial.

“Everything emanates out of the relationships you develop with students, period,” Ashton said. “So it’s important to be out and among the students, to know everyone by name and to express genuine care and interest in students’ success and wellbeing. Mr. Leneau is just incredibly

effective at expressing genuine, sincere care for people around him.”

Like Ashton, Leneau stresses the importance of building a rapport with students in his new position. To this end, Leneau hopes to learn the name of every Upper School student.

“It’s harder right now because I can’t see everyone’s faces,” Leneau said. “But getting to know every single student from [grades] nine through 12, or even further down the chain, to the first graders in my son’s class, is important to me.”

Leneau will work closely with Upper School Head Colin Igoe, and the two have already had discussions about the next school year.

“We’ve talked a little bit about his aspirations about what this position and this office could be to help serve our boys,” Igoe said. “There are some areas where we can continue to improve and strengthen the Upper

School experience. We’ve talked about those ideas broadly. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll really dig into that.”

Leneau, a Baltimore native, was a two-sport athlete at the University of Virgina, studying kinesiology with the intent of becoming a physical therapist. He began his teaching career at his alma mater, an all-boys school in Maryland. Later on, Leneau moved to Dallas from California to be closer to his wife’s family, a decision he hasn’t looked back on.

“I was first introduced to St. Mark’s at a national wrestling tournament during my high school career,” Leneau said. “When the opportunity presented itself to become a part of this community, I took it, and the rest is history. Having a son here really drives me to be a role model. I’m committed to working hard on a daily basis, and I look forward to next year.”

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Podcast ST. MARK’S SCHOOL OF TEXAS

With social distancing rules and COVID-19 preventing the usual in-person STEM conference, co-chairs Tomek Marczewski, Metehan Punar, Jeremy Yu and Jerry Zhao had to find a new way to host the annual event.

The CAST

connections, like people that we already know, but we don’t always want to find people who have a direct connection to St. Mark’s; we try to expand outside of here.”

Senior co-chair Jerry Zhao says that this process was tricky because St. Mark’s was not well-known in the STEM world.

“A lot of people think that St. Mark’s has a lot of connections; however, in the grand scheme of things, to be brutally honest, we don’t matter that much in the STEM world,” Zhao said. “People that come to talk to us and do podcasts are doing it out of the goodness of their own heart.”

Despite these challenges, the co-chairs found eight distinct scientists to discuss the three topics of the podcasts. In preparation for the interviews, the four co-chairs held mock interviews with themselves, practicing how to keep time and focus under control.

“We rehearsed with each other to make sure that the whole thing would run smoothly,” junior co-chair Jeremy Yu said. “It would be around the time that we wanted, from 45 minutes to an hour, give or take.”

Although they had prepared questions beforehand, Flint believes that maintaining a conversation was more important than a question-and-answer format.

“The students had written out questions, but they also did a good job with not gluing themselves to their next question,” Flint said.

“If there was something else that made more sense to talk about, they would do that. And because they were talking to two to three people that were in the same field, it led to a lot more natural back and forth.”

Senior co-chair Metehan Punar agrees with Flint. He thinks that this fluid conversationmaking was critical to keeping the podcast interesting and engaging.

“That ability to play off each other was what we were hoping for because we didn’t just want to get three climate change specialists with the same job,” Punar said. “Everybody we got all did research related to climate change, but they’re related to it in different ways.

When one was talking about their experiences, another person would be able to play off of that, so it was more like a discussion.”

Marczewski was amazed by the informative conversations he was able to have with the professionals.

“I think more than half of our guests had Ph.D.s,” Marczewski said. “These people just have so much knowledge that being able to tap into that through my questions was really rewarding. For instance, I talked to a psychologist who worked with AI. Psychologists aren’t people you usually think of when you hear AI, so being able to see how this technology is changing people’s lives in so many different ways was really eye-opening.”

Zhao echoes this sentiment and regards learning from the guests as one of the best parts of the STEM Conference itself.

“The fun part has always been talking to the guests and learning more about their fields,” Zhao said. “This year, I didn’t get to interact

as much with actual guests, but last year, my favorite thing was going on stage and talking to those guests.”

Punar was fascinated by the entire project as well as two of the scientists from the podcast he hosted about climate change.

“I really enjoyed the experience and getting to hear these people’s stories,” Punar said. “I thought it was really interesting to see that these people are trying to make the world a better place by doing their research. That’s their true passion. For example, Dr. Molly Brown is trying to improve food production in certain areas of the world. Dr. John Franklin analyzes carbon levels in the soil and how we can regulate that. It was really interesting to see how there were so many people doing so many different things that were still contributing to

A lot of hard work went into getting those guests, and when we finally got the opportunity to interact with them, it was really rewarding and a lot of fun.

Jeremy Yu, STEM Co-Chair

reducing climate change.”

Beyond new knowledge on events and theories in STEM fields, the co-chairs also took away something else.

“One thing I think I learned from this is how different it is to interact and organize things with adults than it is with other students,” Yu said. “A lot of what we had to do as co-chairs was organize and get the logistics set up ourselves because Dr. Flint gave us a lot of freedom. Another thing I took away from this is the importance of having a schedule ahead of time, because if we weren’t as organized as we were, it definitely would have been a nightmare to get everything together and to get all of our podcasts in. I’m pretty happy with how everything went, and I think I took a lot away from it.”

Punar’s takeaway focused more on the new perspectives he developed.

“The experience has taught me not to make assumptions about people,” Punar said. “When you read what these researchers do for a living, you only read a summary of what they do. It sounds a little more boring on paper, but once you get to talk to them, and you’re able to discuss why they’re so interested in the subject, it becomes kind of mind-blowing.”

Marczewski is thrilled to have had the opportunity to participate in this project.

Looking ahead to next year, he pushes those interested to become a part of this conference.

“I’m really happy that I got the opportunity to do this,” Marczewski said. “I feel like I brought a lot of knowledge to the St. Mark’s community, and I encourage any rising juniors to apply when the application goes out.”

STORY Morgan Chow, Ian Dalrymple DIGITAL ARTWORK Morgan Chow

Space Exploration

Host: Jeremy Yu. Guests: Kathryn Leuders (NASA), Rubik Sheth (NASA), Joalda Morancy (University of Chicago)

Climate Change

Host: Metehan Punar. Guests: Dr. Jonathan Ajo-Franklin (Rice University), Dr. Molly Brown (University of Maryland) Dr. Timothy Herbert (Brown University)

Artificial Intelligence Host: Tomek Marczewski. Guests: Dr. Jay Lee (Foxconn), Dr. Russel Fulmer (Northwestern University)

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or years, the STEM Conference has been run in the same way. Co-chairs, made up of juniors and seniors, sat down with guests who had flown in from across the country to talk about various topics related to science, technology, engineering and math.

However, with the onset of COVID-19, the STEM conference was forced to move away from its usual in-person format to a virtual one. Four different podcasts were released on Spotify every Friday from March 30 through April 23, each covering various topics from space exploration to climate change and even artificial intelligence.

For four-year STEM Conference sponsor Bonnie Flint, this setup was the best way to feature several outstanding scientists while still following COVID-19 restrictions.

“We decided early on that, instead of just making one recording that mimicked what we do in the STEM festival normally, where we have a panel and people from different fields, we could probably get more people if people didn’t have to leave where they work,” Flint said. “So we came up with the idea of podcasts and having teams for each episode with about three guests each. This was just a really good way to do something with extreme social distancing.”

With the format Tomek chosen, the co-chairs Marczewski then had to select STEM Co-Chair themes and guests for the podcasts.

Junior co-chair Tomek Marczewski had particular difficulty Metehan settling on subjects that Punar STEM would be interesting Co-Chair and have enough scientists eager to discuss them.

“We definitely knew that we wanted Jeremy [a podcast] on space Yu STEM exploration and one on Co-Chair climate change because those are really easy to make interesting, and there are a lot of good guests,” Marczewski said. “There are so many fields in STEM, but so few in which people are actually willing to talk. For example, in the medical field, people are constantly busy. In the defense field, people have non-disclosure agreements. I eventually settled on AI because I felt like that was something that was growing and something I could get guests for.”

After determining potential topics, the cochairs then had to search for possible guests, a process that took months of emails and replies.

“Finding the right guests, inviting them and getting them to say yes is the hardest step, and it’s also the hardest step when we’re doing a normal conference,” Flint said. “It’s a lot of work, and many times people will see that it’s from a high school and just not answer. Now, of course, a lot of times we’ll find guests through

CONFERENCE

Discoveries

Tuning in to STEM

In brief SCIENTIFIC MARKSMAN The May publication of the Scientific Marksman will be released later this month. This issue will cover changing COVID protocols, senior scientific endeavors and travel. The magazine will feature a cover story on the disproportionate impacts of COVID on minorities. The issue is co-edited by seniors Tamal Pilla and Varun Trivedi.

ENVIRONMENTAL TIB TALK Juniors Sam Adams, Shreyan Daulat and Aadi Khasgiwala of the Environmental Club gave a TIB Talk April 23. The talk touched on many points, including fuel emissions, food and water waste and sustainable energy sources.

On Earth Day, the club encouraged clean energy alternatives through their. The club also emphasizes waste reductions and environmental consciousness through its Instagram account, @green_marks_club. Students can elect to make a TIB, or “This I Believe,” talk on any subject they are interested in.

ENGINEERING ELECTIVES Makerspace director Stewart Mayer will offer a nondepartmental engineering elective to eighth-grade students next year.

The class is the first of its kind to be offered to Middle School students.

MATH OLYMPIAD Junior Jeremy Yu and freshman Kevin Lu competed in the USAMO and USAJMO, respectively, April 13-14.

USAMO (United States of America Mathematical Olympiad) is an invitation-only test given to the 500 best scorers on nationwide exams. The USAJMO (USA Junior Mathematical Olympiad) is given to the top scorers in grades ten and under. Both tests involve nine hours of problem solving over the course of two days, with the highest scoring students being invited to either join the US IMO (International Mathematical Olympiad) team or attend the Mathematical Olympiad Program at Carnegie Mellon.

PHYSICS A team of Alex Geng, Jeremy Yu, Vardhan Agnihotri, Spencer Burke and Jeffrey Chen finished first in the state of Texas in Physics Bowl. Junior Alex Geng finished with the second highest individual score in the state.

COVER STORY | CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE

A masculine environment BACK IN THE DAY Marksmen hopping off the school bus in the 1950’s, soon after Cathedral School for Boys and Texas Country Day merged to form St. Mark’s School of Texas.

May 21, 2021

All-boys

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t’s 8:33 a.m. on a Monday morning.

Streaming in from the parking lot are hundreds of tousledhaired, unshaven boys in half-tucked Oxford shirts.

By 8:35, they’ll be pouring into classrooms and giving each other morning nods as they drowsily settle into their chairs.

By 11:35, they’ll be up and at ‘em — playing spikeball on the quad or laughing about some YouTube video over their lunch.

By 3:35 in the afternoon, they’ll be flooding back into the parking lot in hordes: it’s time to change for baseball or track practice.

That’s a typical day. Welcome to an all-boys school.

Single-gendered schooling has been around for a long time. In fact, the first public school in America was all-boys.

That raises a question in and of itself: have they become outdated in the face of more popular coeducational schools?

Eugene McDermott Headmaster David Dini certainly doesn’t think so.

“I firmly believe in the significance of singlegendered schooling,” Dini said. “But I also believe that being engaged in broader conversations is really important. It’s not to the exclusion of other genders in any way, shape or form because I think we should be having inclusive conversations all the time. Nevertheless, having the opportunity to be in an environment full of shared experiences is really influential.”

To Dini, being an all-boys school is a critical ingredient of what makes up the Marksman experience — but it is just one ingredient.

“The fact that it’s a boys school enables us to do some things that contribute to our uniqueness,” Dini said. “Although, I think there are a lot of things that contribute to what makes an environment like

ours special. Through that single-gendered facet, we’re able to tailor experiences and programs and activities and interactions towards traits that tend to be more prevalent in boys and young men.”

According to the International Boys’ School Coalition, a non-profit organization of all-boys schools, researchers have used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe differences between the developing male and female brain that demonstrate why boys and girls learn in different ways.

Boys’ brains are wired to require movement, space, action and rest. They also learn better when material is presented in small portions.

Thus, a typical co-ed classroom that favors verbal and auditory learning can put an active boy at a disadvantage.

“Whether it’s what we’ve done with Spirit Week in April or our annual trip to the Pecos wilderness, many aspects of the experience are enhanced by the fact that we’re a boys school,” Dini said. “Shared experiences and perspectives among students are also a really important aspect of the experience. The sense of brotherhood we foster is really important to

daily life, culture and community.”

Former Headmaster Arnie Holtberg also feels strongly about the advantages of an all-male environment. The primary benefit he sees is a freedom from posturing.

“We might try to impress members of the opposite sex in ways that may or may not be constructive,” Holtberg said. “We felt that we were providing an alternative where boys could be themselves in the most positive sense possible — taking intellectual risks, taking social risks.”

Both Dini and Holtberg had their own valuable experiences in single-gendered settings growing up.

Holtberg attended Princeton University when it was a men’s college, while Dini went to high school at Strake Jesuit in Houston.

“Strake was very David Dini formative for me,” Dini Headmaster said. “It shaped my high school experience in such a positive way. I draw on all the bonds, the shared experiences and the mentoring to this day.”

Throughout his discussion of the benefits of single-gendered education, Dini stressed time and time again that the all-boys facet of the school does not make Marksmen superior.

“There’s also so much value in co-educational schools,” Dini said. “It’s not to the diminishment of them in any way, because I think they serve a really important function. Many students thrive in co-ed environments.”

Although they attended all-boys schools as students, both Dini and Holtberg began their teaching careers at multi-gendered schools.

“My all-boys high school experience wasn’t necessarily connected to my being at St. Mark’s later in my life,” Dini said. “But my time at co-ed schools has helped me to develop a tremendous fondness and appreciation for the strength of culture that we have here.”

Misconceptions: what role do women play in the lives of Marksmen?

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t. Mark’s boys aren’t well versed in interacting with women. That’s a common stereotype.

You go to an all-boys school, you don’t meet girls.

You go to an all-boys school, you don’t talk to girls.

You go to an all-boys school, how do you know how to act around girls?

For Eugene McDermott Headmaster David Dini, this stereotype is just that — a stereotype.

In fact, Dini believes students develop well-rounded female interaction skills right on campus in spite of attending an all-boys school.

“In many ways, you are learning both alongside and from women

directly,” Dini said. “Think about the many women across campus and in y’all’s classrooms. If our faculty were all male, that would be different. I certainly believe it’s important to have male role-models on campus, too. But that’s why you see — from top to bottom — so many strong, impactful, experienced female leaders, which is great for all of us and certainly for Marksmen.”

Given the impact he sees women having on the student body, Dini dismisses generalizations about unsubstantial female influence in the academic setting.

“Some people think that women don’t play as active of a role in the educational experience, when in fact

they do,” Dini said. “Which is why I think it’s so critically important to have the kind of women that we have on campus. Look at our counseling office. You’ve got three highly accomplished professionals, all women. It’s the same across every discipline in the school, in classrooms and on playing fields.”

Beyond their educational impact on students, Dini finds great value in the role of female community members in fostering the development of the young men on campus.

“When you go to college, almost all are going to be co-ed experiences,” Dini said. “We’re fortunate that our faculty is split evenly, male-female,

literally 50/50. You’re going to learn from women in every discipline, including athletics, fine arts and core academic disciplines. You’ve got women leading across campus, in senior administrative roles and department chair positions, and you’re going to be mentored by women every day, in and out of the classroom.”

In addition to positive female role models, academic programs throughout the school prepare students for the reality of co-ed environments. Director of Counseling Gabriela Reed maintains that these programs familiarize younger Marksmen with equality in the classroom. (continued, next page)

TEACHER IN ACTION History instructor David Fisher leads his freshman Foundations of World Societies class in a discussion about the Renaissance in Northern Europe.

Dini recognizes the ambivalent importance of single-gendered education to applicants and parents, just as he felt when first searching for a job.

“Sometimes I think families don’t necessarily choose St. Mark’s because it’s a boys school,” Dini said. “They choose it because they believe it’s a strong educational environment. We’ll often hear years later that both parents and graduates will reflect and say, ‘The fact that St. Mark’s is a boys school was actually part of what made it such a positive, unique experience.’ They didn’t see that on the front end, and perhaps might have even chosen the school in spite of the fact that it was single-gender — but they found such benefits.”

(continued from previous page) During Holtberg’s tenure at the school, boys had the opportunity to participate in joint classes with The Hockaday School, sister school with 10600 Preston Rd. “I do sometimes worry that not having direct competition from girls in the classroom can skew the way boys think about girls academically,” Reed said. “That’s why we have programs like when we get the fifth and sixth graders together and do cool STEM activities to try and get them to join together and see the girls as worthy opponents.”

Reed also feels curricular additions concerning gender roles prompt students to consider their view on women as partners.

“Unfortunately, our society sends

us lots of messages about the worth of girls and women versus the worth of boys and men,” Reed said. “I’m hopeful that all of the education we’re doing around consent, healthy relationships and gender roles help to plant some seeds that say, ‘Hey, maybe I’m not seeing the full picture here. What’s out there in the media is not what’s real.’”

When students prepare for college and the transition to a co-ed learning environment, their social lives in high school can affect in how easily they fit into this foreign setting. “[The transition] depends on how much time you’ve spent outside of school with girls,” Reed said. “There are a lot of guys here who have really deep, great relationships with girls at other schools, and they’re a

FEMALE INFLUENCE Humanities instructor Dr. Katherine Magruder helps sixth-grader Tripp Schoellkopf III as he creates his labels for an ancient history project.

big part of their friend group, while there are other guys who have only got themselves or maybe only male friends. For them, it might be a bit of a shock and certainly an adjustment.

But I also think that’s controllable — you can choose to expose yourself to different things.”

Former Marksman Merritt Fisher, a freshman who transferred to coeducational Phillips Exeter Academy last year, understands this transition firsthand.

“I know girls better,” Fisher said.

“They’re just people, you know — friends. It’s basically the difference between talking to somebody only online versus talking in an actual classroom environment.”

Yet despite the heightened ease he now feels in talking to girls,

Merritt believes single-sex education environments foster a more closely knit community.

“I’d say, back when it was singlegendered education, I just feel like you could get closer with people,” Fisher said. “The entire classroom environment Merritt is less Fisher former awkward than it is here, Marksman because you’re basically close to everyone — it’s like a brotherhood. Whereas here, you’re friends, and you know everyone, but there’s less flow. In the classroom environment, people are trying to connect because they have to, rather than because they want to interact.”

The ReMarker

EARLY BROTHERHOOD Students lock arms in front of Founder’s Hall burned down in 1943 before Davis Hall was built.

Both buildings precede Centennial Hall. This photo is presumed to have been taken in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

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STORY Austin Williams, Toby Barrett, Will Pechersky PHOTOS Courtesy Jan Forrester, Dave Carden

All-boys

St. Mark’s will be home to hundreds of faculty and staff from across the globe during the 2022 International Boys’ School Coalition Annual Conference (ISBC) June 26 through 29. Middle School Assistant Head Jason Lange, who chairs the school’s host committee, is particularly excited because it will be the first in-person conference in three years.

“An IBSC conference — in a non-pandemic era — is four days long and on a school’s campus,” Lange said. “We like to gather on a school’s campus instead of at a convention center; we’re all educators, administrators, parents and professionals, after all.”

The program on campus will consist of workshops, keynote speakers and a myriad of conversations and dialogue about the best practices for teaching boys and managing an all-boys community.

“Conversations will revolve around sustainability, diversity, pedagogy and all the other things that teachers are interested in,” Lange said. “In the evening, it’s up to the host to show off the culture of their city, so there will certainly be social events involved. Here, we can imagine evenings under the stars, perhaps at a ranch with live music — some barbecue, maybe, or some Tex-Mex.” This summer, IBSC activities looked very

different. One prominent event that took place April 21 was a virtual forum on diversity and inclusion.

“The IBSC has always been interested in conversations about pertinent topics,” Lange said.

“This very first one was about racial equity and identity, particularly at boys schools. 17 member schools participated, and St. Mark’s was one of them.”

Each member school sent five boys and one faculty member into a Zoom meeting, where moderators from the Aspen Institute led a discussion.

The five Marksmen who participated were seniors Blake Hudspeth, Josh Mysore and Cristian Pereira, as well as junior Samuel Eluemunoh and sophomore Morgan Chow.

“Those boys can talk circles around most of the boys and many of the moderators in regards to racial equity and identity,” Lange said. “In fact, during the Zoom meeting, the moderator sent me a backchannel message complimenting them.”

To Dini, an in-person conference like IBSC’s 2022 meeting will be a refreshing change from the plethora of virtual events, as well as an excellent opportunity to hone all-boys teaching techniques.

“We were fortunate to host the conference here in 2004, but the coalition is now so much bigger,” Dini said. “I would imagine we’ll have a huge crowd of educators from leading boys’ schools all over the world. Honestly — I can’t wait.”

May 21, 2021

Beyond Dini and Holtberg’s diverse experiences, history instructor Michele Santosuosso has had the opportunity to teach at both an all-girls school — Ursuline Academy — and an all-boys school. After nine years at Ursuline, Michele the transition took some Santosuosso getting used to.

History “I’m very sarcastic, instructor and I remember certain things I would say that would impact and hit girls more,” Santosuosso said.

“During my first couple weeks with boys, I remember I would say something and be like, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have said that,’ and then it would come right back to me, and I was like, ‘Oh, I found my people. This is more for me.’”

There were multiple important differences between the two styles of school that she noticed.

“Keeping the attention of boys was a little more challenging,” Santosuosso said. “Teaching girls, I could sit for 90 minutes, and we could just talk. On the other hand, I feel like boys regulate and help each other more in the classroom. There’s competition,

but it’s more of a natural, genuine competition as opposed to fighting.”

Ultimately, Santuosso found a deep appreciation for the all-boys environment. Having her son Jacob, a fourth-grader, along with her at the school, she values the interactions her son can have in a singlesex environment spanning from first through 12th grade.

“Back in the day, in the Great Hall, I’d see seniors high-fiving Jacob or I’d hear him say, ‘Mom, I saw this person today,’” Santosuosso said. “I don’t know if those relationships would form at other schools.”

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Cum Laude

Looking into the routines and memories of seniors inducted into the prestigious society. Page 13

In brief ALUMNI AWARD Victor Vescovo ‘84 was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award by the Award Committee in honor of his accomplishment of climbing to the highest altitude on every continent and his work mapping the bottom of all five ocean basins. While the recipient of the award was decided in 2019 and was due to be awarded in April 2020, the ceremony was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

ANNUAL AUCTION Celebrate St. Mark’s, an annual auction, took place April 23. According to Jennifer Applbaum, co-chair of the auction, over $230,000 was raised, which will be divided between the Frank Jordan Wilderness Fund, the St. Mark’s Fund and Great Hall renovations. The theme for the silent auction was “The Great Outdoors” in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the wilderness program. Celebrate St. Mark’s was live streamed from inside the Great Hall due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Additionally, “party-at-home” packages with a variety of food and snacks were delivered to ticket holders to enjoy while they watched the livestream.

QUIZ BOWL Two Marksmen placed at the Individual Player National Championship Tournament (IPNCAT) April 11.

Senior Ned Tagtmeier earned third place and freshman Aditya Shivaswamy earned seventh place. Tagtmeier competed in eight rounds, and afterwards received recognition for the best performance in the following categories: literature, social science, popular culture and sports. Tagtmeier and the academic team are preparing for their upcoming team-based national tournaments. Tagtmeier plans to continue Quiz Bowl at the University of Chicago.

ALUMNI SERVICE MEDAL David Sammons ‘76 was awarded the Alumni Service Medal for his contributions to the school, including chapel talks. The Alumni Service medal is given in recognition of alumni who go above and beyond when they serve the school and is voted on annually by the Alumni Awards Committee.

CHAPEL COUNCIL Juniors Abhi Jain and Benjamin Gravel are the co-chairs of next year ’s Chapel Council. Their roles, along with other students on the council, is to be involved with the spiritual health of the community and to assist and advise Rev. Stephen Arbogast in leading chapel services. The council is optimistic that there will be in-person chapel services next year.

Pecos

For five decades With its 50th anniversary on the horizon, the annual Pecos Wilderness trips continues its march of excellence.

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the same as a kid that would have gone in my first year in 1986.”

This summer will be the 50th anniversary of the trip. According to Eugene McDermott Headmaster David Dini, the experience sets boys on the path to manhood and teaches them to be outdoorsmen, to rely on their peers and to develop their leadership skills. He also sees it as an important transition to high school.

“The Pecos is a rite of passage for incoming freshmen and a graduation requirement,” Dini said. “It’s part of the experience that every boy goes through.”

50 years ago, when a group of Marksmen embarked on a hiking expedition through Big Bend National Park, they initiated the tradition of going on wilderness trips—a significant part of the school’s culture. The wilderness program was established under Headmaster John T. Whatley, who moved the location to the Pecos Wilderness in New Mexico and made it mandatory for all ninth graders. Now, Dini can hardly imagine an authentic school experience without the Pecos.

“The Pecos in so many ways is a part of the St. Mark’s journey,” Dini said. “It’s tied to the fundamental values and ideals that we set forth in the mission of this school. It develops a sense of connectedness with your classmates and the people around you. You also learn interdependence, teamwork and shared responsibility.”

From moving the location to the Pecos wilderness to a plethora of small additions to the camping experience, the trip has undergone many changes. Mark Sullivan, former wilderness program director and director of physical and experiential education, has led the program through many of these.

“Occasionally, [we] get technology upgrades,” Sullivan said. “Backpacks are lighter than they were in the 80’s. Our menu is different than it was in the 80’s. We’ve just streamlined a bunch of different things.”

Many alumni recall their own Pecos Wilderness trips, and, despite the slight differences between the years, it has remained something all alumni have in common.

“The core of the trip is almost identical,” Sullivan said. “I would say the experience that you had on your Pecos trip is fundamentally

Wilderness Program Director Cameron Hillier ‘13 will take the reins from Sullivan this summer in planning and organizing trips.

Sullivan feels confident in Hillier’s wilderness experience.

“I think it’s going to be a nice shot in the arm for the program to have younger leadership, and I’m looking forward to being able to help him and support him in any way that I can,” Sullivan said. “I’m also looking forward to the program taking on the life of a younger, more vibrant personality, and I think we’ve hired the right guy for that.

Sullivan is confident in Hillier’s capability in leading the program because he actually went on the Pecos as a student here.

“Typically, we’ve given up the Wilderness Program to a new hire that has some experience, but they’re new to the school,” Sullivan said. “Whereas Mr. Hillier is an alum and actually went on the Pecos.”

The trip had a big impact on Hillier, sparking his love for nature and hiking. He enjoyed it so much that he went on the trip many more times after his freshman year.

“For me it was a phenomenal experience,” Cameron Hillier Hillier said. “As a student, Wilderness it really cemented in my Program mind the importance Director of taking care of the outdoors and the environment as well as just really striking a passion for being outside.

I went back on the Pecos seven more times after that.”

Because of the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, Dini and Hillier needed to finalize plans for the summer.

Only the current freshman will go on the trip this summer. They will be on campus Aug. 2 for orientation, and their trip is scheduled to span from Aug. 3 to Aug. 11.

After careful consideration, Dini and Hillier decided to organize two trips during the summer of 2022.

“We started thinking early in the school year about how we resume the Pecos experience this summer,” Dini said. “We didn’t know how the COVID situation would unfold. Because the class of 2024 missed the trip last summer, we were thinking about how we would get back on schedule. We knew that we would have to have a double trip at some point, and it became apparent to us for a variety of reasons that we only wanted to do one trip this summer, and two next summer.”

With all of these trips on the horizon, Hillier’s first priority is making sure that the

weat drips down a student’s face. He has been hiking for hours with a 50 pound load on his back. As exhaustion starts to kick in, making it to the next campsite is his only goal. He puts his head down and continues, step by step. Then, as the group stops to take a break, he looks up, seeing miles of trees, a waterfall and his friend chugging iodized water.

Forgetting all about the struggles that he was going through, he marvels at the beauty of nature. He realizes that he is somewhere special. Somewhere historic. Somewhere Marksmen have gone for 50 years.

AT THE TOP Members of the Class of 2021 summit the peak of the mountain in August 2017.

IN THE WILD Former Marksmen check their map on the trail during the school’s yearly trip to Pecos, NM.

trip is as safe as possible for the students.

He plans on partnering with the medical advisory board to ensure the safety of all Marksmen that go on the trip. At the same time, he wants to keep the core of the trip intact.

“It’s important that we keep so much of the trip By the the same,” Hillier said. numbers “For 50 years, Marksmen have done this trip. It’s more than... something that we all have in common, which is really special. We continue students gone to make the trip safer and on Pecos safer by partnering with paramedics.”

Hillier has noticed sherpas served many students’ on Pecos enthusiasm about the Pecos, and the school is considering offering more optional wilderness freshman opportunities in the future wilderness for upperclassmen. trips taken “We are hoping to expand the wilderness program to offer guys opportunities past the Pecos,” Hillier said. “If that really sparks interest, maybe we will offer trips for upperclassmen.”

For Hillier, the experience is much more than a graduation requirement. To him, the brotherhood and camaraderie built throughout the trip represents a transition into manhood.

“It’s a challenging trip,” Hillier said. “It’s not just a shared experience, it’s a shared hardship that we overcome together. And the way we overcome it is by leaning on one another for help. We build on each other’s strengths to get through the trip, which is exactly what high school is all about.”

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STORY Shreyan Daulat, Nikhil Dattatreya PHOTOS Courtesy Dave Carden

The timeline 1971 School’s first wilderness trip at Big Bend National Park. The Lutkin family oversaw the early wilderness trips.

2022 Class of 2025 and 2026 will go on a double Pecos trip next summer.

1972 Headmaster John T. Whatley moved the trip’s location to Pecos, NM. A few years later, the trip’s location changed again to Colorado.

2021 Class of 2024 will go on their Pecos trip in August. Cameron Hillier is the new program director.

1993

1985

1988

Athletic trainer Doc Browning was hired to lead the program.

He oversaw the move of the trip back to New Mexic from Colorado.

Former band director David Pittman was named director of the program.

2009

2000

1998

Associate Headmaster John Ashton, Arnold E. Holtberg Master Teaching Chair Scott Hunt, science instructor John Mead and former science instructor Michael Heald were apponted as the co-directors of the Wilderness Program.

The school began bringing medics and radios on the trip.

Nick Sberna became the new director of the program.

Mark Sullivan, director of physical and experiential education, took over the program.

CUM LAUDE

Going out with a bang

At the annual Cum Laude Society Induction, 20 seniors were recognized as being at the top of their class in academic excellence in the Upper School. We decided to take a look into the habits, rituals and memories of the seniors who underwent the rigorous journey to this achievement.

Students interviewed include seniors Varun Trivedi, Sai Thirunagari, Vatsal Vemuri, Luke Piazza, Rishi Mohan, Robert Pou, Tim Weigman, Sid Sinha and Matthew Ho. Shreyan Daulat: What was your most challenging Upper School class?

Varun Trivedi: I’d say that the most challenging Upper School class that I’ve taken is AP English Language & Composition. That being said, it’s also one of the classes that I’ve learned the most from—I definitely learned a lot stylistically and mechanically from that class.

Sai Thirunagari: AP Calculus BC has been my most challenging Upper School class, but I’ve also enjoyed it a lot. Wrapping my head around the unfamiliar calculus concepts definitely takes a lot of studying, but it has also helped me understand many concepts from my other classes in high school, like physics and economics.

Vatsal Vemuri: The most challenging upper school class I’ve taken is AP Physics C in my senior year. Many of the concepts just did not click immediately like they have in other subjects.

Jordan Gaines Matthew Ho Mustafa Latif Henry McElhaney Rishi Mohan Luke Piazza Robert Pou Sarbik Saha Siddhartha Sinha Ned Tagtmeier

Saivishnu Thirunagari Varun Trivedi Sivakrishna Uppalapati Vatsal Vemuri Benny Wang Timothy Weigman Shiv Yajnik David Yang Maxwell Wu Charlie Zhang

Marksmen Ball to take place in modified state

by Nolan Marcus he Marksmen Ball, a senior-only dance held at the end of each year, will be relocated and reorganized to accommodate COVID-19 guidelines. The dance will take place May 22 from 7 p.m to 11:30 p.m.

The dance’s location has been moved to the Perot Quadrangle to abide by COVID-19 regulations.

“A normal Marksmen Ball would take place at Belo Mansion, which is down in the Arts District next to The Nasher Center,” Senior Class co-sponsor Joe Milliet said. “However, this year it will be on the quadrangle.”

The night will still start out with socialization between the attendees and pictures with the seniors, their parents and dates. Pictures will be taken in the commons one-by-one to avoid breaking social distancing rules.

“There will still be the first 45 minutes, where the kids arrive and go take pictures in the commons,” Milliet said.

Following the pictures, the seniors are scheduled to participate in the customary mother-son dance.

“Instead of doing the video next, they are going to do the mother-son dance while the photographers are still present,” Milliet said. “So now it goes photos and visiting, then the mother-son dance.”

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Following dinner, yearbook adviser Ray Westbrook and his yearbook staff will present the yearbook to the seniors and announce the book’s dedicatee. The Senior Class nominates three faculty or staff members to honor.

“The Senior Class, in a senior meeting, nominates and votes on whom they want to dedicate the yearbook to,” Westbrook said.

Like many other faculty members and administrators around campus, Milliet assigns a great deal of importance to the dedication of the Marksmen.

“The presentation with the yearbook and the dedicatee is a big deal,” Milliet said. “It’s a big honor. It’s a surprise— they don’t tell them until everyone finds out.”

After the presentation, the attendees will be shown a video as a recap for the year. Since the event will be held outside this year, the showing of the video has been rescheduled to a darker time of the evening.

“You can’t do the video first because it’s an outdoor screening,” Milliet said.

“That’s why the mother-son dance and the video have switched places.”

Once the video ends, the parents will leave campus to allow the further proceedings to continue.

“After the parents leave, the boys and their dates will go into the Great Hall and have their dance,” Millet said.

SD: What time do you go to bed on an average school night?

Sid Sinha: In general, I start winding down around midnight. Part of that routine for me is packing my bag for sports the next day, making sure all my papers are in place and charging all my devices. Once all of that is in order, I get to bed by around 12:30 a.m.

ST: I try to wind things down around 10 p.m. so that I can fall asleep by 10:30 p.m. because I like to wake up early to exercise and shower before school.

LP: I jump around on my sleep schedule a lot, so I don’t have a normal time I really go to bed at. On average, I would say I go to bed at 11:00, but I’ve consistently gone to bed anywhere from 9:30 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. over the years.

SD: How long do you spend on homework a night on average?

VT: There’s no definite answer for this.

Sometimes, I find myself with only 30 minutes of work because I’ve gotten everything done earlier. Usually, I’m probably at approximately one to two hours of homework a night this year (last year it was likely three to four hours).

Then, I usually work for a couple more hours on projects, extracurriculars, or whatever else might be coming up. On really bad nights, I’ve worked for more than seven to eight hours, though these don’t happen too often.

Matthew Ho: It widely fluctuates between days.

An average amount of homework in past years would be around four hours. Now, with the new schedule, it is around two to three hours.

STORY Will Pechersky, Shreyan Daulat PHOTOS Courtesy Dave Carden

13 The ReMarker

For their academic achievement and upstanding conduct, the following seniors were inducted into the school’s Cum Laude Society.

SD: Do you listen to music while working? If so, what is your favorite genre for studying?

ST: I listen to a lot of music while doing homework—mainly pop or rock while I do math or complete assignments. My favorite artists to listen to right now are Kanye West, One Direction and The Eagles. When I’m reading or studying, however, I usually turn off the music because the lyrics can distract me.

Robert Pou: I listen to music as long as I’m not doing any reading or writing. I normally listen to country music.

VT: Although I don’t often listen to music while studying, recently I’ve found myself enjoying Machine Gun Kelly’s newest album, Tickets to My Downfall while working on large projects for hours at a time.

SD: What time do you usually start your work when you get home?

Tim Weigman: It really depends, but I usually start my work as soon as I get home and eat dinner. That could be anywhere from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. based on my sports schedule or any other extracurriculars I’m involved in.

VV: During sports seasons, I usually don’t start working until around 9 p.m. Otherwise, I start at around 6 p.m.

10600

Cum Laude Inductees

because they were late or incomplete or something, but the worst major grade I received was a D+ on one of Ms. Sutcliffe’s [former teacher J.T. Sutcliffe] math tests. I only studied the stuff I knew while avoiding studying the stuff I actually needed to learn.

VV: The worst grade I received was a 54 on an 11th grade physics test about torque and rotation.

It was a result of a combination of things, namely lack of understanding in class or studying outside of class, along with a plethora of major assignments that week.

May 21, 2021

SD: What is the worst grade that you have received, and what led to that?

Luke Piazza: I once got a 69 on a history test because I didn’t read the part in the instructions that said, “Justify the historical significance of your answer,” which was minus one point on every single question on the test. If I had, I would have had a 95. Tough luck.

Rishi Mohan: I’ve probably received a good amount of zeros on homework assignments

FINAL REMARKS This year’s Cum Laude Society inductees sit in the Great Hall as Robert Kaplan, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, offers guidance.

A fond farewell

After a combined 74 years at the school, the Lion sports world is losing three key figures: athletic trainer Doc Browning, head varsity lacrosse coach Hayward Lee and Suzanne and Patrick McGee Family Master Teaching Chair Joe Milliet.

TEAMWORK Surrounded by his players, Hayward Lee (fourth from right) celebrates another Lion victory.

A man of many accomplishments Family needs provide impetus for multi-sport coach Lee to leave 10600 Preston Road.

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wo-time Texas High School Lacrosse League (THSLL) coach of the year.

The winningest coach in state history.

Nine SPC titles in lacrosse. One in football.

And finally, a lacrosse state championship.

The list goes on, but for head varsity lacrosse and football coach Hayward Lee, none of that really matters.

For him, it’s all about relationships.

After spending 18 years with the school, Lee will be moving on and jumpstarting the lacrosse program at All Saints’ Episcopal School in Fort Worth. Although he is excited about the challenge, this is a family decision for Lee. “I’ve got a really unique opportunity to do something special for my family,” Lee said. “All Saints’ is a co-ed, faith-based school, so I’ve got an opportunity to take care of my daughters and their education

and have them in school with Dad. I am commanded to be a father and a husband first, and the opportunity to do that is a huge blessing.”

During his time here, Lee has served as the head lacrosse, football and tennis coach for various periods, along with teaching physical education. Over his 15-year career as the lacrosse head coach, according to LaxRecords.com and The Dallas Morning News, Lee has a record of 211-66-1.

In 2015, the North Texas Lacrosse Officials Association created the Hayward Lee Award, given each year to a coach who “brings the most honor and sportsmanship to the sport.” In 2018, Lee was awarded THSLL’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Despite all of these accomplishments, Lee is most proud of helping build the program here over the last two decades.

“The little school that we are with our academics –– doing what we’ve done in the lacrosse landscape as consistently as we’ve been able to makes me proud of the hard work of a lot of people,” Lee said.

“And I’m glad to have been a part of that.”

For Lee, the 2013 state championship season was the pinnacle of his time as a coach at the school. Following an 8-5 win against Coppell High School, Lee held the toughest practice of the season to make a point of playing to a standard and never to a result. This sparked a fire under the team.

“We started clicking shortly thereafter, and then we got hot,” Lee said. “We went down to the SPC championships and played an ESD team that had beaten us earlier in the year. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a team play a better game in my life than that game. It was at that moment that I knew we had lightning in a bottle.”

This state championship run, lead by a strong team of seniors, namely Evan Chang-Tung ‘13 and his series of buzzerbeaters and go-ahead goals, is something Lee will never forget.

“In the finals, we were down 6-1 and came back to win against ESD,” Lee said.

“We never had a lead in that game until the goal that put us up in sudden death overtime and won it. That is what a great group of seniors who refuse to be denied and work their butts off can do.”

Not quite retiring I n In 1984, working for the Memphis Showboats of the long-gone USFL and spending his summers teaching young kids in upstate New York, thirtyyear-old Doc Browning began searching for a new job.

At the time, the school was in need of a Wilderness Program coordinator and an athletic trainer. They only interviewed one candidate: Doc. One year later, Browning began his tenure at 10600 Preston Rd. Now, after 36 memorable years, Browning is retiring –– well, semi-retiring.

Browning has served as head athletic trainer, physical education instructor, announcer, Wilderness Program coordinator, coach, advisor and mentor to thousands of Marksmen.

Parting words

Although winning the state championship was a special moment for him, Lee says he will miss the relationships forged through shared hard work above all.

“Coaching is about relationships,” Lee said. “That’s all it really is. Lacrosse or football is just the vehicle that connects me to the player –– that connects me to the kid.

I’ve learned a few things that I can convey to help teams and players get better, but it’s about the relationships with the kids.

I’ll miss seeing those guys everyday. And I’ll miss seeing the coaches I get to work with everyday.”

To Lee, the school is an embodiment of those relationships.

“St. Mark’s means a ton of special people that I’ve had the opportunity to be connected with,” Lee said. “It’s a ton of special colleagues. It’s a ton of special kids.

It’s a ton of special families. To me, that’s what St. Mark’s is. Facilities change or get destroyed by tornadoes, new ones get built and old ones torn down, but that’s just brick and mortar. In time, the competitive results and those things will fade into gray, and what you’re left with is relationships.”

After spending half his life at 10600 Preston Road, Doc Browning — a man who’s worn many hats here — says it will be hard to leave.

From setting the Guinness World Record for the most free throws in 24 hours with 16,093 made shots to giving out his famous ginger snap cookies during the holidays to starting Grandy’s Week (now known as McDonald’s Week) to benefit Austin Street Center, Browning’s time here has been unforgettable for anyone who’s had the pleasure of being around him.

Along with Grandy’s Week, Browning has started many other traditions, such as teaching lower schoolers how to shake someone’s hand.

“Handshaking is an important life skill, and nobody was teaching it when I got here,” Browning said. “It kind of became a tradition, as things do around here, that it was something I taught. If I leave here completely, I hope somebody else will pick up that mantle and teach the handshaking skill. I think it’s important that the kids

get it very early on in first grade because then it makes a lasting impression.”

When his mentor, former head basketball and baseball coach Tom Adams, retired, Browning continued Adams’ legacy with a Homecoming week staple: Howard Cosell.

“For years, Tom did a thing where he introduced the seniors kind of like I do under the persona of a guy named Les Keiter, who was a famous announcer in Tom’s day,” Browning said. “So when Tom retired, they wanted to continue some kind of Homecoming tradition for the senior football players. We changed it up a bit, and I did more of a roast kind of thing, but I basically took that over from Tom, except with Howard Cosell.”

While Browning has many great memories here, his favorite was an easy choice.

Story continues, next page

Ten other faculty and staff members are entering new stages in their lives at the conclusion of the 2020-2021 school year. We asked them to reflect on their time here at 10600 Preston Road:

Geoffrey Stanbury English Instructor

“Pecos has created some pretty profound memories for me. I am really proud to have been a five-time Pecos leader, even though it’s been difficult at times.”

Rebecca Jenkins Thomas S. Adams Master Teaching Chair

“What I will miss most is watching people grow. I’ll miss seeing guys when they are 12 years old, to seeing them walk across the stage in white tuxedos.”

Catherine Wetzel Third Grade Teacher

“I’ll miss the Titanic, Camp Jolt, and just seeing all those traditions in place every year.”

John Frost Wood and Metal Instructor

“I feel like I’ve been able to really build a program here. It’s been the longest I’ve ever been in one spot — 13 years.

I really like working with the guys and watching the creativity that develops.

I’m just gonna miss the process, miss the people, miss my colleagues.“

Chris Disimile Assistant Head of Upper School

“I’ve learned so much from not only the adults on campus, but also the students. I’m constantly impressed with how they handle themselves through difficult situations — it’s a challenging place, and I feel our students always rise to that challenge.”

Cristina Macaraeg Chemistry Instructor

“You know, it’s a great school. The people have been really welcoming.

I’ve learned a lot from my experience here.”

SUPERFANS For a combined 56 years, Doc Browning (left) and Joe Milliet (right) have been supporting Marksmen from the sidelines.

“My favorite memory has to be the 2013 lacrosse state champpionship,” Browning said. “That whole season was kind of magical.”

or students and faculty alike, it’s just a fact of life — Joe was there. Over the past two decades, Suzanne and Patrick McGee Family Master Teaching Chair Joe Milliet has cemented his role as the number one fan on campus, invested in each and every aspect of his students’ pursuits.

Story continues, next page “That 2013 lacrosse state championship was kind of magical,” Browning said. “We had been to the final four for four years before that. But winning that championship was really the highlight of my experience here.”

Although Browning loves announcing games and strutting around campus playing the harmonica, his favorite part of his job is watching his students mature over the years.

“The best part of my job here has been watching you guys grow up –– working with grades one through 12,” Browning said. “I’ve known a lot of you guys since you were little first graders running around here, so that’s very special to me.

One of the neatest things is watching

Cinda Thoma Assistant Director of the Library

Bonnie Flint Biology Instructor

“My favorite memory here is probably the 2009 SPC baseball championship because it was Tom Adams’ last year,” Milliet said.

“He was the head baseball coach, and a legendary teacher who had been here for over 40 years.”

Because they had been rained out on Friday, the team ended up playing all three games on Saturday.

“When the last game, the finals, came around, you could see his former students lining up all around the field — this was a man who I had worked with here and admired, who had been a legend here — and this was going to be his last game,” Milliet said.

Even though they were down by six

runs, the team came back, winning the SPC championship in a walk-off.

“And everyone just went nuts,” Milliet said. “It was an incredible moment for the school, and definitely a highlight for me.”

But more than the memories, more than the constant procession of activities, Milliet values his relationships with students above anything else.

“My first day here, someone told me, ‘You will be impressed by how much the boys try to please you,’” Milliet said. “I have found that to be absolutely true — if you challenge the boys and are fair in your workload and assignments and fair in your grading, they will work their tails off for you and achieve great things. There’s a relationship that gets built there.”

And that relationship continues long after they graduate. For Milliet, it is the lives he has been able to impact through his teaching that truly mean the world to him.

“Just giving a kid that struggles the confidence that ‘You can be whatever you want to be,’ is the richest reward you can have,” Milliet said. “Helping kids realize how successful they can be is much, much more rewarding than anything else. When you can help the kid who has struggled to feel like he can do anything in the world, that’s monumental.”

that first grader walk across the stage at graduation.”

During his time with the school, Doc has raised over $350,000 for the Parents’ Association through the senior auctions by supervising overnight lock-ins, baking cookies and more.

As much as the community will miss him, Browning will miss the school even more.

“I’ll miss the deep sense of community,” Browning said. “I’ll certainly miss the games and the competition. I mean, I love competitive sports. My life is sports –– that’s what I do for a living. I’ll miss the associations with you guys, my friendships. I’ll miss my lower schoolers.

There’s a lot that I’ll miss. Half of my life has been here, so you don’t just walk away from that –– it’s a process.”

As one of only two faculty members to receive the John H. Murrell Excellencein-Teaching Award, the Ralph B. Rogers Alumni Award and the Ackerman Character Education Award, Browning has been a beloved and appreciated member of the school community for 36 years.

While his time here is coming to an end, Browning hopes to stick around in some capacity.

“I plan to be here,” Browning said. “I may come back and do Howard Cosell. I may come back and announce basketball and lacrosse games. I may be around more than y’all realize at this point. There are many different retirement models at St. Mark’s, so I might be someone who’d be back around, visiting a lot, be on campus and maybe even work for the school in some capacity.”

“I began teaching at St. Mark’s in 2004, but had to retire during COVID because of a pulmonary condition. I miss all the wonderful Marksmen and my extraordinary colleagues.”

Christina Jarke Director of the St. Mark’s fund

“I think that the things that have been most meaningful to me is when students come to me and say that something that I taught them in class somehow helped them in life.”

Amy Stanbury Math Instructor

“My favorite memory is probably my first advisory group. It was fun to be a part of the school culture in a different way, since sometimes you can feel detached a little bit in Nearburg.”

“Some of my neatest memories are from when we used to walk to Gazeebo Burger for advisory — it was just a good time for the kids to be kids. You don’t realize how significant it is for the kids until they come back years later talking about it.”

STORIES Peter Orsak, Jonathan Yin PHOTOS Patrick Flanagan, Courtesy Frank Geng, Communications Office INTERVIEWS Ben Adams, Aaron Augustine, Zack Goforth, Aaron Liu, Nolan Marcus, Grayson Redmond, Dawson Yao

14,15

The ReMarker • May 21, 2021

Superfan, math teacher and class sponsor superstar Joe Milliet, after 20 years with the school, will be retiring at the end of this year. When Milliet first came to St. Mark’s in 2000, he was completely unaware of the school’s traditions –– even McDonald’s Week.

“When the kids said, ‘You’re supposed to take us to McDonald’s,’” Milliet said, “I was like, ‘What?’”

But the next year, Milliet became a Junior Class sponsor. And as a sponsor, he was now in charge of McDonald’s Week.

“They put me in their video, and it has just become a tradition –– that Joe always has to make an appearance in the McDonald’s week video,” Milliet said. “I’m pretty much willing to embarrass myself or use self-deprecating humor just because the kids work so hard for us teachers.”

For Milliet, this concept of reciprocal care has been a cornerstone of his teaching

philosophy — he has been a familiar sight at sporting events, present at each and every one of his students’ games.

“But it’s not just sports,” Milliet said.

“I go to choir concerts, I go to Lessons and Carols, I go to the plays, I go to Quiz bowl tournaments — I go to anything that the kids are involved in, because I like to watch them do the things that they love to do.

And when a kid sees me spend three hours at their baseball game, and I’m asking them to do a 35-minute assignment, they do it. I don’t even have to say anything.”

Perspectives

Joe was there F

If there’s a bigger Lion sports fan around, we’d like to know who it is.

The ReMarker • May 21, 2021

Culture

16

Summer

The coming of the second COVID-19 summer and what you can do to have fun while staying safe.

Page 17

Clay Nichols An alumnus who wrote and performed a one-man play in college and had four jobs during his life.

Page 18

Fine Arts

Pictures from the Senior Fine Arts Showcase.

Page 19

LITERATURE James McAuley ’08 recently published his book, The House of Fragile Things, on May 11. The topic of the book is on Jewish art collectors in France and how they were affected by the invasion of Germany in World War II. McAuley recently received his doctorate in French history from the University of Oxford. The book is an extension of his dissertation.

PHOTOGRAPHY Arnold E. Holtberg Master Teaching Chair Scott Hunt and the photography program are preparing for the Top Program Competition, hosted annually by the Association of Texas Photography Instructors.

Marksmen submit 310 image portfolios across a variety of genres to a panel of six judges. In the last 14 years of the competition, the program has won top photography program 13 times.

ORCHESTRA World-renowned classical pianist Emanuel Ax, winner of seven Grammy awards, returned virtually to speak with Middle School orchestra students May 19. Ax’s first virtual meeting with orchestra students April 16 was exclusively for Upper School orchestra members, in which Ax answered questions posed by the students and played for them.

FOURTH GRADE PLAY The plays King Lear, Julius Caesar and Macbeth, performed by each of the three fourth grade drama classes, was posted on the school website for students, parents and faculty to view May 11. The plays were not performed live due to COVID-19 restrictions.

HISTORY EXHIBIT The Middle School’s “Museum of the Ancient World” exhibit took place May 6-7 in Room N114. The event featured projects made from scratch by sixth graders over the course of three weeks during their humanities classes. Different ancient civilizations across different time periods were represented at the exhibit.

Yearbook

Four hundred pages

Each year, the perpetually undercrewed yearbook staff toils night and day to produce several hundred pages of coverage. Things were already looking hard enough, but in a year of harsh winter storms and a restrictive pandemic, the already monumental challenge seemed even more so. The solution? Perseverance.

D

esigner, journalist and historian.

To be a yearbook staffer working on the Marksmen is to be proficient in many roles, and, in a year where understaffing, hostile weather and a global pandemic threatened their progress, juggling the tasks of designing, producing and editing a 400-page publication seemed nearly impossible.

But to them, these setbacks were only temporary. No matter how many obstacles stood in their way, nothing was going to stop them from producing a yearbook worthy of its predecessors.

The Marksmen staff, led this year by senior Josh Mysore, the editor-in-chief, have many responsibilities, including brainstorming ideas for design and coverage and interviewing personalities across campus. Mysore will be the first to tell you that what you see at the end of the year doesn’t come easily.

“Being editor of the yearbook this year has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life,” Mysore said. “It’s a process where you have a staff of around 14 to 15 guys, five of whom are brand new, and your job is to create a new 400-page book. You have to create a whole new set of colors, fonts and aesthetic, which all goes to your theme of the year. I still don’t understand how we finished.”

Due to COVID-19 cancelling many events traditionally covered by the publication, yearbook staffers like junior Camden Reeves, the upcoming editor, were forced to get creative in order to produce engaging coverage.

“The big-ticket items like Homecoming, Grandparents’ Day and even the ones that we still had but were changed like McDonald’s Week, we had to make those into smaller pieces and focus on more abstract ideas,” Reeves said.

“That was a challenge that we tackled in the summer, brainstorming creative ways that we could tell people’s stories without actual events and getting more personal with it.”

The staff decided to take a different approach than usual, covering topics like current events in addition to the usual coverage on school activities.

“We opted to have a whole new section called ‘Issues’ this year within the yearbook, where we cover important stuff like the tornado and its aftermath,” Mysore said. “We also went over racism and social justice and what that means in America in the modern political climate.”

Despite having fewer events to cover, Mysore and his staff still managed to create around 80 pages in the chronological section, going far above what was expected of them.

“Ray [Westbrook, journalism instructor and Gene and Alice Oltrogge Master

DESIGN NIGHT Junior Camden Reeves, 2021-2022’s editor-in-chief, skimming through an article on the school website, sits in the production suite while working on the yearbook after school. In order to produce a quality yearbook, many late nights like this one were necessary.

Teaching Chair] came up to me and said ‘Josh, I think we’ll need to cut 20 pages from the chrono section,’” Mysore said.

“My team’s reaction was that, even though that would make it easier on us, we were determined to get 80 pages of chronological coverage. That was incredibly difficult.”

Former and future Marksmen editors • 2016-2017:

Andrew Lin

• 2017-2018:

Omar Rana

• 2018-2019:

Jack McCabe

• 2019-2020:

Reid Goldsmith

• 2020-2021:

Josh Mysore

• 2021-2022:

Camden Reeves

Even though much of the content in the book may have changed, the production schedule retained much of the structure from previous production years.

Like before, the yearbook staff worked to reach deadlines throughout the year in order to keep themselves on pace.

“We split our book into five deadlines,” senior Tamal Pilla, Marksmen managing editor, said. “They’re pretty evenly distributed throughout the production year. The first deadline is for senior ads, the second deadline is for senior pages and deadlines three, four and five are just general chronological, academic, index and specialty pages.”

These deadlines weren’t always met easily, though. While many of their peers were relaxing at home or on vacation, members of the yearbook staff like

FINAL CHECK Marksmen Editor Josh Mysore and Gene and Alice Oltrogge Master Teaching Chair Ray Westbrook look over a prototype yearbook spread. Though some mistakes will inevitably get through, the goal of the editing process is to eliminate as many of these errors as possible.

sophomore Michael Gao were hard at work on campus.

“I sacrificed my spring break to proofread senior pages and senior ads to make sure that everyone had their photos in and Michael that there were no Gao grammatical errors,” Sophomore Gao said. “Senior ads took about the whole week. I would spend two hours in those seven days proofreading, but senior pages weren’t that hard since there were only two candid pictures, and the senior photo was usually right.”

Though Reeves says all of the staff are due thanks for their work throughout the year, he gives special credit to the senior leaders for coordinating the yearbook staff through unexpected setbacks and obstacles.

“It all started at the top with Josh, Tamal and Ray,” Reeves said. “They did a great job leading us throughout the year, and they made sure that everyone was working really hard before the school year started to set a solid foundation.”

As Pilla looks back on his experience working on the yearbook, the small moments stick out the most to him. In particular, Pilla fondly remembers walking off of campus after long work Saturdays.

“There’s something really difficult about coming up on a Saturday and working for over ten hours at a time,” Pilla said. “But, when you’re walking off campus after a 12 or 14-hour work day, and you turn around at Nearburg, you can look back and see a beautifully lit campus. I’ve gotten emotional sometimes.”

For their selfless service throughout a tumultuous and understaffed production year, Mysore asks that students simply give thanks to the members of the yearbook staff.

“All I can hope for is that people understand how much work really goes into it, and that, at the end of the day, we’re just students also in five other academic classes trying to do our best jobs,” Mysore said.

With this year’s yearbook production process complete, Mysore’s time on the staff is now largely behind him.

Despite this, Mysore still thinks that his best moment in the program is yet to come.

“When the book finally comes out, and I get to hold it in my hand, that’ll be the best part,” Mysore said. “Ray told me that, as the editor, I get to be the first person to open the book, and I’m very excited for that.”

STORY Will Spencer, Grayson Redmond PHOTOS Courtesy Josh Mysore

A look at the Junior Class basketball league from its Instagram account, @smbball22.

Co-founder junior Camden Reeves gives insight into some of the photos:

SUMMER

Out and about While the country begins its return to normal life, many choose to stay safe by sticking to outdoor activities as summer approaches.

That photo is from our first primetime game of the season.

During the regular season, [junior] Alex [Nadalini] and I would pick one matchup that we thought would be a really good game, and we would call it the primetime matchup.

This was a really good, defensive game.

Both these teams ended up having pretty good seasons, Mac especially.

He’s been a really productive guy this season.

Fishing is an activity Hunt has found to be both stimulating and safe from the dangers presented by the virus.

“Fishing is something I grew up doing, but I didn’t really like it because I thought it was boring,” Hunt said.

“However, I’ve reached a point in my life where I’ve discovered the value of disconnecting from work, technology and electronics and instead choose to connect with nature or simply being outside.”

Another member of the community who has embraced outdoor activities

since the beginning of the pandemic is sophomore Akash Munshi.

“This summer, I feel safe enough to go out to nature preserves and enjoy spending time in the sunshine hiking,” Munshi said. “It’s a good COVID-safe activity because it’s outside.”

Among Munshi’s favorite locations is Dallas’ Cedar Ridge Preserve, a site with a variety of nature and scenery to enjoy.

“I especially enjoy going to Cedar Ridge during the spring time because there are fields and fields of bluebonnets there that are really pretty to observe,” Munshi said. “The center has so many trails and is truly an oasis in Dallas’ urban landscape. It also has some hills which are really cool and you can see a really pretty view of a lake.”

Fishing and hiking are just two of the many activities that students and faculty can partake in to stop the spread of COVID-19. Doerge thinks that, by the end of the summer, the consequences of the Dallas community’s behavior will be evident.

“I think that here in Texas, we probably let things up a little bit too soon, but I think that everybody still did the right thing,” Doerge said. “The proof will be in the pudding this summer to see how we did with our mitigation and that we don’t see a big rise in August.”

STORY Shreyan Daulat, Will Spencer PHOTOS Shreyan Daulat, Courtesy Scott Hunt

TAKING IT EASY For Hunt, fishing gives him the opportunity to escape from the burdens of life and spend more time relaxing on his own while enjoying the peace of his surroundings on the water.

Even when his fly gets caught in a tree, Hunt finds a way to move forward with the adventure.

17 The ReMarker

TREKKING One of sophomore Akash Munshi’s favorite hiking spots in Dallas is Cedar Ridge Preserve, an area providing nine miles of hiking trails through nature.

status of other people around us.”

With the limitations set by COVID-19 on so many hobbies, many students and faculty have branched out and tried new pastimes in order to keep themselves entertained and engaged during the pandemic. One of these faculty members is Hunt, who ramped up his engagement with fishing since the beginning of the pandemic.

“In the summer before last, my girlfriend at the time, now fiancée, and I were traveling through West Yellowstone,” Hunt said. “She was like, ‘Do you want to take up fly fishing? It’s beautiful, I think you’d like it and it’d be good for you to slow down a little bit.

Let’s learn how to do it together.’ So I bought a very simple rod and reel. When I got to the Pecos, Mr. Sullivan taught me how to cast, and I actually caught my first trout.”

Culture

This matchup had a lot of intensity heading into it throughout the week.

Cal had claimed that Mac would not score a point on him that game, so everyone was really hyped up to see that matchup.

Mac fired back, claiming that Cal had not scored a point this season, which was true.

But then Cal came out with the big performance and had six blocks in that game.

Though there are still plenty of things to do over the summer, there are also a plethora of activities students should avoid in the name of safety from the virus. Now that the virus has been around for over a year, school nurse Julie Doerge trusts most parents not to send their children into dangerous situations.

“I can’t imagine that people are going to send their kids to places that are going to be in close quarters without any mitigation in place,” Doerge said.

Along with limiting activities to mostly outdoor spaces, Doerge also recommends some other important steps in order to mitigate the spread of the virus.

“When it’s your turn to get a vaccine, I would definitely get the vaccine,” Doerge said. “Secondly, I would make sure to check if any of the programs kids are planning to sign up for and look and see what their COVID protocols are, and if there are mitigation processes that will make your family feel safe. Thirdly, I think we all have the responsibility to mask up because we don’t know the

ON THE WATER Since the beginning of the pandemic, photography instructor Scott Hunt has spent more time outdoors dedicated to fishing. This passion began for Hunt almost a year before the pandemic when he decided to try out fly fishing as a fun activity over the summer.

May 21, 2021

Conor and Tate developed a rivalry throughout the season. There was a big argument in the league GroupMe about their first matchup against each other.

Conor claimed that Tate only scored six points while he was guarding him, and Tate had 14 in the game. There was a lot of debate about whose team was better and who would do well in the playoffs. There’s a bit of friendly beef between them.

T

he mask mandate has been lifted. Many people have been vaccinated. A sense of normalcy has started to return. Still, as we reinstate regularity into society, members of the community are still planning on enjoying COVID-friendly activities over the summer.

When the pandemic hit last year, like many members of the community, sophomore Akash Munshi and Arnold E. Holtberg Master Teaching Chair Scott Hunt took to the outdoors and pursued activities that were free from the influence of the pandemic. They plan on continuing these activities throughout the summer to mitigate the spread of the virus.

PLAYWRIGHT

Playing it solo

After writing and performing a one-man play for his senior project at Dartmouth, the life of Clay Nichols ‘85 has gone on a wild, ‘curvilinear’ path.

D

uring his senior year at Dartmouth in the late 1980s, Clay Nichols ‘85 worked on his play called The Speaker Series. By himself.

He dropped all his other classes to research and write this play — his final, culminating project at Dartmouth.

When he finished it, Nichols performed his play on stage. By himself.

Fast forward 30 years, and the play is being adapted to audio form. This time, with a team.

Since those days of writing and performing a one-man play, Nichols has worked with countless people in his four-career rollercoaster of a life.

May 21, 2021

Culture

The ReMarker

18

Though he attributes much of his interest in drama to his mother — who was the drama teacher at the Lamplighter School, Nichols’ previous school — Nichols credits his love for drama to his time with former drama instructor Rod Blaydes.

“Rod [Blaydes] was a fantastic teacher,” Nichols said. “It also helped that the drama classes, when I was a kid, were at Hockaday. It seemed like a really cool thing to go to Hockaday in the day and go to drama class. I really fell in love with it and I was in a bunch of plays.”

After graduating, Nichols went off to Dartmouth for his undergraduate degree. Though he intially played football at Dartmouth, a career-ending injury moved him to drama. There, instead of having a normal senior year with a senior thesis, Nichols applied and was accepted into Dartmouth’s senior fellowship program. This meant Nichols could work on one big project for his entire senior year, without taking any other classes. Nichols’ project was writing and performing a one-man play.

“Sam Rayburn had been the Speaker of the House longer than just about anybody else,” Nichols said. “His career started during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, and he died in office when JFK was president, so he saw a huge sweep of American history. And people have kind of forgotten about him. There’s a big office building in Washington, D.C. called the Rayburn Building, but otherwise, people had kind of forgotten who this guy was. So I picked him, I flew to Texas, I did research. I wrote a play that was mostly using his own words, but tried to create a kind of storyline, a flow. Then I memorized it and I performed the role myself at Dartmouth.”

Recently, The Speaker Speaks was adapted into digital audio format. A three-episode podcast — each with introductions by Nichols — premiered March 4 on all major podcast platforms. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with an MFA, Nichols started teaching.

“After my playwriting career, I came to St. Stephen’s,” Nichols said. “My wife and I moved onto campus 25 years ago, and I saw Clay that they had academies for Nichols ‘85 sports, and what I proposed is that we start an academy for drama: a school within a school for kids who wanted to go to audition-based college

programs and really wanted to excel in drama.

So, we built a new curriculum, we brought in guest artists, we traveled to see theater, and we basically built sort of an SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE Clay Nichols ‘85’s senior project The Speaker Speaks found some intensive drama life after his Dartmouth performance. Once he moved to Austin, Nichols pitched his play to an program. I actor whom he thought looked like Rayburn, and more productions of the play were put on. founded and ran that program for ‘you know, what you’ve learned about marketing, about seven or eight years.”

I bet we could use that at SmartyPants,’ So in 2013, After his time at St. Stephen’s, Nichols continued I started full time as the head of marketing at a his work in drama at Austin Street Works, a nonprofit vitamin company. I mean, I never had anything to that supports playwrights with workshops and do with manufacturing consumer packaged goods, producing plays at festivals. However, Nichols then I didn’t know anything. I was a total newbie, but I went out to pursue other, non-artistic ventures. A learned a lot really fast and turned out that a lot of prominent one of these was DadLabs, which made the techniques that I’ve learned at DadLabs were parenting videos targeted at fathers. comparable.”

“My friends and I, we were all new dads, we Since joining the company, SmartyPants Vitamins had young kids, and we were really involved dads,” has grown tremendously. The company was recently Nichols said. “We felt like our parenting was different acquired by Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever. than the way our dads were involved. Suddenly, we “SmartyPants as a business really took off, and were expected to change diapers and do midnight pretty soon, we moved out of my sister’s garage feedings and really participate in raising babies, in and into an office,” Nichols said. “And SmartyPants a way the previous generations hadn’t been. But Vitamins, you can now find them at Costco and there was still no information out there for men. If Target, Whole Foods, basically anywhere you shop. you searched ‘pregnancy’ on the internet, everything And it was my job to grow the brand and to design was for women, the whole world of parenting was the advertising, the marketing, the packaging, all pink. So our idea was, ‘hey, we think there need to be that kind of stuff. What I discovered was that all resources out there for dads, we need to encourage the creative tools that I developed in my career as dads to be engaged and involved and equal partners a playwright, the communications things that I’d in raising kids,’ so I think our idea was that we were learned as a teacher, the techniques of marketing that going to change fatherhood and that we were going I learned at DadLabs, came together and ended up to be the voice of new fatherhood.” being really useful as a corporate marketer, which is

I was playing in a game against Harvard when some really nasty Harvard guy took out my knee.

With my knee hurt, I had to find a way to replace that in my life, so I auditioned for a play.

Clay Nichols ‘85

While DadLabs had success in putting content out into the world to help fathers, the tricky task of monetizing this popularity meant DadLabs had to shut down. Another of Nichols’ ventures that didn’t come to full fruition was LookOut Social, a startup educating parents on how to teach their kids to be smart digital content consumers. However, Nichols was lucky to find great success at his sister’s vitamin company.

“My sister was starting a company in her garage that made gummy vitamins for kids, called SmartyPants,” Nichols said. “And she said [to me],

Headliners

From album drops to movie releases and everything in between, here’s what’s on tap in the coming weeks.

Movies

Videogames

Albums

Cruella

May 28

A Quiet Place Part II

May 28

Space Jam: A New Legacy

July 16

Scaled and Icy, Twenty One Pilots

May 21

Sour, Olivia Rodrigo

May 21

Jordi, Maroon 5

June 11

Rust

May 21

World’s End Club

May 28

Stonefly

June 1

my fourth career. And that’s what I do to this day.”

As a high school student, even as a college student, Nichols couldn’t have predicted how varied his careers would be and how many turns his life would entail. But he sees this as a key feature of the happiness he’s found.

“I think that sometimes people think that they have to take a pretty prescribed path, and my experience is you don’t have to,” Nichols said. “You can follow your creative impulses, and your creative impulses may ultimately lead you to a place where you can find financial success and where you can find impact and you can fulfill that obligation that you felt as a St. Mark’s student. Tom Adams, the great art history teacher of my era, used to describe things as curvilinear. He would talk about art having curvilinear features. And I would say that it’s okay and it’s possible for your career to have a little curvilinearity to it. Mine certainly has, and that’s one of the things that gives me a lot of joy and pride. It’s been a curvilinear ride.”

STORY Axel Icazbalceta PHOTOS Courtesy Clay Nichols ‘85

FINE ARTS

Senior showcase

First established by ceramics instructor Scott Ziegler five years ago, the Visual Arts Senior Exhibition has become an annual staple, highlighting senior artists across various mediums. Here, we share some of their work:

SKYLIGHT “This is one of my favorite nature shots that I’ve made during my time at St. Mark’s,” senior Collin Katz said.

“I took this photo at Antelope Canyon in Page, Arizona. This formation in the canyon is called ‘the seahorse’ and it immediately caught my eye.”

THE REAL ONES These two works, titled ‘The Real Ones,’ work in tandem to communicate the false image people tend to project on society,” senior Daniel Wu said. “I wanted to draw awareness to the viewer that many people feel the need to act natural and present a normal self to the world while they may be struggling with internal conflicts.

The ReMarker

PICTURED ABOVE Displayed in Bock Gallery Hall, photographs and paintings can be seen hanging from the walls. The exhibition, featuring over a dozen artists, will be on display until May 28.

PHOTOS Jonathan Yin, Evan Lai

Culture

ON DISPLAY Acknowledging years of work dedicated to their disciplines, the annual Senior Exhibition features works from throughout the school’s fine arts department, ranging from sculptures and ceramics to photographs and paintings.

May 21, 2021

MISSION “If you look at the seniors’ ceramics exhibits,” Ziegler said, “each of them have an an artist statement.

And you can see that meaning, that theme, in all the work that they produce.”

The collection at right, “Triune Illuminations,” is by senior Knobel Hunt.

19

Opinions

The ReMarker • May 21, 2021

20

Theaters

Managing Editor Toby Barrett recounts his favorite experiences at the movie theater and outlines his argument for their continued existence.

Page 21

Podcasts

Editor-in-Chief Austin Williams tells of his experience with podcasts and gives some advice for those who are interested.

Page 21

Around the Quad STUDENTS AND FACULTY ANSWER OUR QUESTIONS

Q: What end of year tradition are you excited to see back this year?

I am excited for the Upper School Final Assembly — a chance to celebrate all of my Upper School peers and bid farewell to teachers and peers alike.

Bijaan Noormohamed Sophomore

I actually like frocketing a lot; just the feeling of Aaryan perfectly ripping the frocket off was kinda funny to me.

Henry Morgan Junior

Baccalaureate.

It is a powerful final goodbye to the graduates. I love the way the graduates and faculty form human tunnels for each other before entering and after leaving the chapel.

David Cox Latin instructor

EDITORIAL

All in-person learning — sound strategy next fall A fter a year of hybrid learning — combining in-person instruction with Microsoft Teams calls from students and teachers at home — a new school year will start in four months.

We commend the school’s efforts in remote learning this year. Even under challenging circumstances, students have been able to engage in nearly uninterrupted learning throughout the year. Through the use of Microsoft Teams, students have been able to follow along with classes even when sent home for a plethora of possible reasons. Nonetheless, the current hybrid system has its issues.

Simply put, remote learning has no comparison to traditional on-campus schooling. Though Teams proficiency went up as the year went on, persistent issues on the platform hindered students’ learning abilities. Furthermore, despite teachers’ best efforts, integration of online students wasn’t always the best. This meant some online students felt left out, unable to participate fully in class.

Understandably, remote learning also made it more difficult for students to ask for help or go see teachers, as office visits were not possible and office hours had to be scheduled by appointment, delaying the process. Additionally, sports seasons and sports participation were gutted as a result, something we’d like to see return to its pre-COVID-19 state. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of the school’s remote learning plan has greatly exceeded those of other schools.

A June 2020 report by McKinsey & Company found that 3.1 months of learning would be lost by delaying in classroom instruction to the fall of 2020, 6.8 months if delayed to Jan. 2021 and 12.4 months if delayed to the fall of 2021.

Thanks to strong strategic planning by school administrators, the school was able to resume on-campus learning in September, limiting the harmful effects of prolonged periods of remote learning.

Nonetheless, this report demonstrates the

extent of those harmful effects and the great incentives for on-campus instruction.

The school will resume full on-campus instruction for the 20212022 school year. There will be no more hybrid classes, and all students must attend school on campus. If a student needs to stay home for whatever reason, he will remain home as was the norm before March 2020, meaning sick and snow days will return.

Having consulted with the school’s Medical Advisory Committee — composed of volunteer physicians, alumni and parents who meet four times a year — and met for several, several times, senior school leadership came to this decision.

With the school’s mission of delivering rich RAISING HAND In-person learning allows for students to experiences to students quickly and immediately participate in class and ask for help. The and developing them into instantaneous nature of this interaction helps students learn best. good men always in mind, to give to a student who was home sick school administrators that day — a return to the pre-COVID-19 believed this to be the best way to fulfill status quo will take place. this mission. Remote learning was never We commend the school’s decision meant to be the school’s new normal. to move to a fully on-campus model of Remote learning was only a tool with teaching for next year. We believe this which to adapt to the challenges the model will best deliver quality instruction COVID-19 pandemic presented to to students and provide the student body students’ education. with the best possible school experience To truly get a full school experience for both academic and personal growth.

— seeing teachers and classmates face-toWhile we understand the arguments face, impromptu conversations between for keeping some elements of remote classes, a physical presence on campus learning, we believe that only with a full — full in-person instruction is the way transition to on-campus school — the preto go. While remote learning techniques COVID-19 status quo — will we be able might leave some impact at the school — to fully return to normalcy at our school. for example, a teacher recording a lecture

No COVID-19 vaccine mandate the right call for 2021-2022 school year

A

s we near the end of the school year, many questions have arisen about what COVID-19 prevention measures the school will take next fall. Key among these provisions is the school’s vaccination policy.

In the way this year has transpired, we commend the school’s response to the pandemic. Through thoughtful policies that both kept us safe and kept our campus fully operational, school administrators have done a fine job of balancing the safety needs of public health and the academic needs of the student body. Reassessing for the current stage of the pandemic, widespread vaccine administration takes center stage in terms of the most relevant form of COVID-19 containment.

According to the CDC, three vaccines are currently authorized for Emergency Use as COVID-19 immunizations in this country — vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen.

Of these three, only the Pfizer vaccine is available to ages 16 and up — the other two are only available to adults. However, the Pfizer vaccine has recently applied to be approved for ages 12-15 after a Phase 3 trial stage,

according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP).

This means that while the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines might remain only for adults, students as young as sixth graders would be eligible for the Pfizer vaccine.

Furthermore, two vaccines — those manufactured by AstraZeneca and Novavax — are also pending approval as they are currently in their Phase 3 trial stage. All this means that more vaccines are being approved for more people, and more and more of the student body is eligible for these vaccines.

Looking ahead to the 2021-2022 school year, a COVID-19 vaccine dose will not be added to the school’s required immunization list. Similarly to the flu shot, the school will strongly recommend that students get a COVID-19 shot, but it will not be a requirement for enrollment next year.

This decision was made following much consultation among senior school leadership, notably with the Medical Advisory Committee, a group of volunteer physicians, alumni and parents that meets four times a year to discuss matters of medical concern to the school.

It is also important to know that this

decision was made having consulted the latest medical research about the effects of COVID-19 and its dangers to the student body’s age demographic and the school’s circumstances. As opposed to a university, where young adults convene heavily on campus — many living there — a day school of young boys and teenagers faces less risk from COVID-19.

We support the decision the school has come to, seeing as it was guided by sound medical reasoning and concern for the student body. As the vast majority of the school’s faculty has received their doses of COVID-19 vaccines, we do not see a pressing need for a student vaccine mandate.

Nonetheless, we still urge students to get vaccinated and commend the great portion of eligible students who have been vaccinated. As we near the fifteen-month threshold of the COVID-19 pandemic, a return to normalcy seems to loom on the horizon. Widespread vaccination — bringing the American population up to herd immunity — will expedite that process, take that goal into our hands and ensure that no more people are harmed as a result of this devastating disease.

REMARKER student newspaper of ST. MARK’S SCHOOL OF TEXAS 10600 PRESTON ROAD DALLAS, TEXAS 75230 214.346.8000 Editorial Board editor in chief

AUSTIN WILLIAMS assignments editor

WILL PECHERSKY head photographer

EVAN LAI

managing editors

TOBY BARRETT PETER ORSAK opinions editor

AXEL ICAZBALCETA perspectives editor

JONATHAN YIN

publications photo editor

EKANSH TAMBE graphics director

COOPER COLE

Section Editors 10600, culture

SHREYAN DAULAT WILL SPENCER discoveries, issues

KESHAV KRISHNA MYLES LOWENBERG sports

ARJUN KHATTI DILLON WYATT

Focus Magazine editors

MORGAN CHOW IAN DALRYMPLE

Advertising business manager IAN MIZE

Writers

Headmaster

DAVID W. DINI

audience The ReMarker is intended for the students, faculty, staff and alumni community of St. Mark’s School of Texas. Press run is 4,000 copies, with more than 2,600 of those mailed out to alumni, courtesy of the school’s offices of External Affairs, Development and Alumni divisions.

opinions and editorials Editorials represent the views of the Editorial Board and are not necessarily those of the Board of Trustees, administration, faculty or staff. All personal opinion columns, bylined with the writer’s name and photo, represent the views of that writer only and not necessarily those of The ReMarker, Board of Trustees, administration, faculty or staff. online viewing www.smtexas.org/remarker podcast @focalpointpodcast instagram @remarkernewspaper reader involvement The ReMarker encourages reader input through guest columns and story ideas. Contact the appropriate editor for suggestions. letters to the editor Letters to the editor are welcome and encouraged. They must be typed, signed and not exceed 300 words. E-mail submissions are not accepted. advertising Contact the business staff at 214.346.8145. We reserve the right to refuse any advertisement.

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My friend Elijah Baker and I walked into NorthPark early that sunny afternoon in eighth grade completely unsure of what movie we were going to watch.

There was nothing we particularly wanted to see when we made plans over the phone — we considered ourselves excellent improvisers, and figured we would just see what AMC was offering.

When we reached the theater, we faced three options: Truth or Dare, some cheesy horror movie; Beirut, another Jon Hamm thriller; and Rampage.

Rampage appealed to us

immediately — its glorious movie poster depicted The Rock and his typical too-heroic-to-look-terrified smolder, seemingly saying, “Don’t worry about the five-story-tall silverback in the background — I’ve got this under control.”

So, with little more consideration, we bought the tickets at the kiosks and rode up the escalator to the concession stand. I went with a well-rounded meal: a large pack of Twizzlers, a sparkling red 4-liter Coke, and a large bucket of popcorn for us to share during the movie.

Fully ready for the promises of Rampage, we walked into the theater, sat in our seats just a little bit right of the middle and began the feast that would eventually cost our parents thousands in dental fees.

About two hours later, Elijah and I walked out of the theater floating on air. I don’t remember if it was the sugar rush, the adrenaline the movie gave us or our irrational belief that we, too, could someday be as muscular as the Rock — but we felt like action heroes. The movie was forgettable — the experience was not.

It’s disappointing to me that we seem to be losing as great a cultural institution as the movie theater.

In 2020 alone, there was a $9 billion decrease in movie ticket sales in the U.S. — mostly because of

COVID-19. In January, AMC only avoided bankruptcy after investors funneled in $917 million.

This trend started a while ago: interest in attending movies inperson has been waning for years, and when the pandemic made us all stay inside, the movie theater business took a serious blow.

It’s not 2020 anymore, though.

Our social lives are opening back up.

Our whole lives are opening back up.

And, if we’re not careful, the movie theater won’t stick around for much more of it. Especially with how much we’ve adapted our lives to function Toby Barrett without Managing physical Editor interaction this past year, we’re losing all kinds of inperson social opportunities, and our window to go watch films together is dwindling.

All of us have fond memories at the movie theater. Times we’ve spent exploring another world. Times we’ve laughed with our friends and loved ones. Times we’ve gotten goosebumps at an unexpected plot twist.

Ten years down the road, we’ll still want to make these memories.

To make that happen, we need to make new ones — as soon as we can all get back to the ticket counter.

The story of how podcasts opened up the world for me

T

his is a … Global Tel Link … prepaid call from … Adnan Syed … an inmate at … the Maryland Correctional Facility.

That’s how my favorite podcast ever opens. A creepy, distorted, automated prison message unique to every episode of This American Life’s “Serial,” season 1.

That message is overlayed with an iconic piano-chord theme that sets the very tone of the podcast.

It’s nostalgia-inducing for me — I discovered it in 2016, nearly five years ago. Almost a third of my life has passed since then.

The way the theme makes me feel is hard to put into words. It’s sharp and intense, very much in contrast to narrator Sarah Koenig’s smooth voice.

The podcast itself is like a truecrime novel — that’s what captured me. Each episode, more is revealed about an old murder case in a distinctively journalistic style. Adnan Syed, the prisoner in the intro, is the chief suspect, and we get to hear from him first-hand.

One of my other favorites, Incongruity’s “Sword and Scale” uses a similar style of empirical storytelling to capture the listener. Short clips of 911 call recordings and real court hearings are interspersed with emotion-filled interviews and detailed narration.

What’s fascinating about podcasts is that I’ve just described an extremely specific genre. Much like in music, there is something for everybody — from celebrity talk shows to political debates.

I began my journey with nerdy tech coverage: “The Vergecast” from TheVerge.com and Lifehacker’s “The Upgrade.” These discussion-based episodes satisfied my interest in the new iOS software and broke my confusion about “net neutrality”.

As I grew older, I discovered the lighthearted world of comedy podcasts. I would spend days riding my cool-gray Trek bicycle along Redding Trail in Addison, listening to Ethan and Hila of the “H3 Podcast” as they laughed endlessly with their unique guests.

Eventually, I stumbled upon

my current go-to — “The Joe Rogan Experience”. Even those not wellversed in podcasts will recognize that name. A bald-headed comedianturned-podcast-host, Rogan provides a down-to-earth perspective on his shows that feature highly specialized geniuses.

At this point, I’ve listened to 40 of his episodes, three hours long apiece.

I could write a dissertation on my favorite guests, but I’ll keep it short and fill you in on just a few.

Jocko Willink is one of my Dad’s favorite people in the world — we’ve got two pounds of his MÖLK protein powder in Austin the cupboard Williams — and his Editor-inChief episodes with Rogan are nothing short of inspiring.

As a retired Navy SEAL officer, he preaches the importance of discipline as a path to success.

In the same vein, the “toughest man alive” David Goggins has completed more than 60 ultramarathons and endured two Navy SEAL “Hell Weeks”. His story is fascinating.

I’ve also pursued my interest in particle physics through famous scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson CARTOON Cooper Cole

and Brian Cox, which has allowed me to stump Mr. Carron with my questions about the Higgs particle and gauge symmetry. (He just says he’s not up-to-date on modern physics.)

I’m still ever-in-awe of Elon Musk and his unique, intellectual comments about how our future will look.

But enough examples — my point is that there is something for everyone in the podcast world.

Type your favorite smart person’s name into the Spotify search-bar, and I’m sure you’ll find something hypnotising to listen to.

Give it a try — it’s a great switchup from whatever music you’ve had on repeat for the last year and a half.

Editor’s Picks The Favorite

Serial Genre: True Crime

The First The Vergecast Genre: Tech

The Go-To

The Joe Rogan Experience Genre: Talk

21 The ReMarker

Adviser

RAY WESTBROOK

atching Dwayne Johnson’s Rampage at AMC NorthPark was the best audiovisual experience of my life. Without a doubt, my enjoyment of Rampage well surpassed that of Citizen Kane, generally hailed as one of the greatest cinematic masterpieces in the history of film.

It was definitely not because Rampage was a good movie. In fact, I probably couldn’t tell you a single detail of the plot, other than that The Rock plays a scientist, is friends with a giant white gorilla and has muscles that made me look at my biceps selfconsciously.

But it’s still the greatest time I’ve ever had watching a film — all because of the brilliance of the modern movie theater.

May 21, 2021

Photographers

SAM ADAMS, CHARLIE ESTESS, PATRICK FLANAGAN, SAL HUSSAIN, HAYWARD METCALF, AKASH MUNSHI, LARS OCHS

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Opinions

BEN ADAMS, AARON AUGUSTINE, NIKHIL DATTATREYA, ZACK GOFORTH, GRANT JACKSON, AARON LIU, NOLAN MARCUS, GRAYSON REDMOND, MATTHEW REED, DARREN XI, DAWSON YAO

Making a case for the movie theater in the COVID-19 era

SUMMER JOBS

All in a day’s work: finding summer jobs

STREAMING SERVICES

Paramount Plus: will CBS’ new streaming service stand the test of time?

As summer nears, students are seeking jobs to make some money for these three months. In response, we’ve found and judged five potential options.

Lifeguard

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9/10

PROS: easy work, good pay and a great boss CONS: heavy responsibility and sunburns Sometimes we’ll go on breaks and parents and kids come up to us and tell us that they want to swim even though we’re on lightning warning. Still, it’s kind of the ideal summer job.

Hayward Metcalf, sophomore

Tutoring

8/10

PROS: fun kids, flexible hours and nice co-workers CONS: low pay, busy days, uncooperative kids Sometimes you get kids who will just refuse to do their work.

Other times there will be kids who will both do their work and crack a few jokes now and then.

You can have fun with them.

May 21, 2021

Buzz

The ReMarker

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Buck Elliot, senior

Waiter

9/10 PROS: fun co-workers and nice customers CONS: busy days and cleaning large tables.

A lot of the time, it’s fun to interact with nice families.

Where I work, it’s one of those environments where it doesn’t feel like you’re working, and it’s a lot of fun.

Ross Cunningham, sophomore

Intern at startup company

8/10

PROS: helpful with networking and a resume booster CONS: unfocused, normally unpaid and lots of grunt work I’d like to go into the finance side eventually, but I think this will be a really interesting bridge between engineering, working with clients and working with internal people to bring a better product.

James Singhal, junior

INTERVIEWS Morgan Chow, Ian Dalrymple GRAPHICS Morgan Chow

by Darren Xi n the midst of this pandemic, it seems nearly every production company is releasing their own streaming service.

Jumping on this bandwagon, CBS rebrands CBS All Access to Paramount Plus, their newest platform.

Overall, Paramount Plus seems to be a promising start to a true competitor of the industry forerunners like Netflix and Disney Plus, but there are many facets of the platform that need improvement.

First, Paramount Plus offers two plans: ad-supported and commercial free. These two packages are both very reasonable in price, costing $6 a month or $60 a year and $10 a month or $100 a year, respectively. These prices compare well to those of Netflix and Disney Plus with the ad-supported one undercutting both other services. This basis of affordability supports Paramount Plus in its path to reaching the peak of the market.

The streaming service’s platform, as it stands currently, is somewhat lacking.

Even though it contains many programs from CBS itself, there are hardly any exclusive series like those present on Netflix and Disney Plus. However, there are some upcoming exclusives that bear promise like the reboot of Frasier and a series based off the Halo video game franchise.

The platform also offers a few classic selections like Indian Jones and Mission Impossible, but quality movies like these are scarce. Luckily, the platform’s promise to release Paramount films 45 days after their releases in theaters, starting with A Quiet Place 2, will help to fill the void of feature films.

Paramount Plus also adds to its content through live TV channels from CBS All Access. This access to live TV makes it easy to follow local stations even without a television. But the intersection of streaming services and live TV is nothing exceptional or never-before-seen.

Ultimately, I think Paramount Plus’ content library simply lacks must-see series and films. Even though it is new, the platform will have trouble gathering traction in the streaming service industry without any seriously remarkable exclusive content.

The platform’s interface is nothing extraordinary, but it does its job well. The home page is filled with the algorithm’s recommendations for you, and given that you select genres you like after opening the app for the first time, these recommendations are usually on point.

The browse tab is naturally split into movies and shows, and there are options to browse in specific genres.

However, the biggest flaw of the user interface is the lack of a “My List” or a “Queue,” a staple in the streaming service industry. Without this feature, users may find it harder to keep track of shows they are interested in and want to watch in the future. Nonetheless, users should find it easy to navigate through the app and find shows they want to watch.

Overall, Paramount Plus should be a welcome platform in the streaming market. While there exist a few flaws in its current form, namely a lack of must-watch originals, with a dedicated effort from Paramount, this service should be able to truly compete with the biggest names in a few months. But this success entirely depends on how much Paramount values their service, and without much attention, it will be left in the dust.

Grade: B-

Wrestling

The ReMarker • May 21, 2021

Wrestlers often cut and gain weight through intense diets in order to switch into their desired weight class. State champions sopohomore Hayward Metcalf and junior Elijah Ellis have mastered this practice.

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Sports

A game of ounces

WEIGHT WATCHING Sophomore Hayward Metcalf constantly has to monitor his food and water consumption. One of his favorite foods to eat while cutting weight is apples.

Lions history A look at Bud Brooks ‘79’s in-depth history of Lions football. Page 24

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fter his second period class, sophomore Hayward Metcalf makes his way into the Great Hall for lunch. But instead of picking up a full plate of macaroni and cheese and a brisket sandwich like most of his ravenous classmates, he settles for a small grilled chicken breast and some fruit. If he doesn’t meet his weight goal for that day, tomorrow’s lunch might become just a protein bar.

“It’s definitely a rough process the week or two before competition,” Metcalf said. “If I still need to lose more weight at that point, I’ll have to start cutting water, which consists of getting into sweatpants and doing physical activity to shed as much water weight as possible.”

Just weeks away from the biggest tournament of his life, Metcalf is fully committed to reaching his goal. This is the weekend he has prepared all season for, and his only focus is cutting four pounds.

Those four pounds could qualify him for the 120 pound weight class.

Those four pounds could give him a much more favorable matchup.

Those four pounds could help him become a National Prep Wrestling champion.

When it comes to training for a certain weight class, the wrestling program works closely with head athletic trainer Matt Hjertstedt at the beginning of the season to find the safest and most effective way for wrestlers to manage their weight.

Using the data Hjertstedt provides, varsity wrestling head coach Reyno Arredondo ‘87 communicates with his athletes to make sure they are on the right track.

“At the beginning of the season, all of our wrestlers are required by the National Prep Wrestling Association to get certified at their weight,” Arredondo said. “Trainer Matt takes each wrestler’s weight and body mass index, which he then inputs into a program called Trackwrestling. It tells each wrestler the lowest weight class that he can safely reach over the course of the season. It also provides a descension plan that athletes can choose to use on a week-by-week basis.”

By implementing the weight management program and descension plan, Arredondo is able to accurately monitor a wrestler’s progress, allowing them to make adjustments as necessary. But in addition to following these programs, Arredondo believes that making good choices from a nutritional standpoint can also have a profound impact on his athletes’ performance.

“My number one priority for my guys is water,” Arredondo said. “It does all sorts of goodness for your body, and foods that hold water such as vegetables and fruits are

Superfanmen awesome. I’m a big fan of eating right to manage your weight and become a healthy athlete. I’ve been around other wrestlers from other programs, and I’ve noticed that our athletes make really good decisions when it comes to nutrition. As a wrestling coach, it’s one of those things that I don’t really have to worry about because of these guys’ discipline.”

Having been a wrestler in an era when athletes were not as involved in weight control, the programs we have here are a nice failsafe to guide our younger wrestlers in terms of training their bodies right and preparing them well for competition.

Reyno Arredondo ‘87, wrestling head coach

According to Metcalf, while most wrestlers on the team this season have maintained a fairly constant weight, he is one of the few who has made a personal decision to cut a significant amount of weight in order to get into a more preferred weight class.

Although he admits that this process is not easy, eating light and healthy as opposed to skipping meals has proved beneficial.

“Even in the late stages of my cut, I’m still eating apples and bananas during lunch,” Metcalf said. “If I’m about to start cutting, I’ll even have a ham sandwich or a salad. But the chicken breast that they put out is probably my favorite option — it’s just straight protein.”

In addition to cutting weight, some wrestlers, such as 2020 wrestling team MVP junior Elijah Ellis, choose to bulk up in order to compete against athletes who they think they have a skillful advantage on. In his freshman year, Ellis weighed in at 170 pounds, putting him in the 172 pound weight class. Ellis had always dreamed of raising the state championship trophy with his name etched on it, but he needed to gain weight before his sophomore season in order to do so. Ellis quickly got to work and started his bulking process using the advice his coaches gave him. “[Strength and conditioning] coach [Kevin] Dilworth always says you have to eat to get bigger,” Ellis, the 195-pound former state champion, said. “To bulk up, you have to change up the way you are lifting. Heavier weight and less reps will increase muscle mass. Along with that you need to lift more often. If you are lifting three days a week, you might have to start hitting five days a week, and start doing less cardio. You still need to be in shape, but there are other ways to do that.”

While some people struggle to gain weight, Ellis found that gaining weight was not very difficult. Over the course of a year,

Ellis was able to reach his goal of gaining 25 pounds. Ellis went to the gym almost every day of the week, and, unlike Metcalf’s eating struggles, was able to eat what he wanted when he wanted.

“You can either increase the amount of meals you eat per day, or just increase the portions,” Ellis said. “I would say protein is a must if you are trying to bulk. Most of the weight I put on was during the summer. I was lifting six days a week and going to Chipotle and getting a large burrito, and protein along with it, after.”

Regardless of whether a wrestler chooses to cut or bulk, Arrendondo leaves this decision fully up to the athlete.

“Choosing to gain or lose weight in that capacity is determined by the wrestler,” Arredondo said. “There are plenty of guys who choose to stay at their natural weight and they do great because they’re still developing their skills like the rest. But the decision to cut or bulk comes down to the wrestler’s goal of wanting to be the top guy in a different weight class than he would naturally be in.”

No matter the weight class, Arredondo knows that the current format of high school wrestling is structured so that anyone can succeed.

“We have 14 weight classes that we use in all of our competition, and that variety allows guys that are small in stature, all the way to heavyweight guys to be able to compete fairly,” Arredondo said. “That’s what I think is pretty neat about wrestling. A very wide variant of athletes can be successful.”

STORY Arjun Khatti, Dillon Wyatt PHOTO Hayward Metcalf

Cut and BULK Sophomore Hayward Metcalf’s three favorite foods while on the cut: • Apples • Clif Bar • Grilled chicken breasts Junior captain Elijah Ellis’s three favorite foods to bulk: • Nuts • Chipotle burritos • Whey protein shakes

Reflecting on this year in Lions sports with the Superfanmen. Page 25

Kit Colson

Senior breaks the 38-yearold school record for the 100 meter, despite battling injuries. Page 26

In brief

MIT ROWING Senior Blake Hudspeth committed to MIT for rowing April 9 and will be looking to compete as a heavyweight freshman with Christian Duessel ‘20. Duessel, who served as assistant coach on the crew team this year, will also be a freshman at MIT next year.

Together, they will be rowing in the Head of the Charles Regatta this fall.

LOYOLA VOLLEYBALL Junior Miller Trubey announced his commitment to Loyola-Chicago volleyball this April. Trubey, a 6’8” outside hitter, will be joining the team as a freshman.

The Ramblers recently finished their spring volleyball season 2-1 with the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association Tournament, losing their only game 0-3 against Lewis College in the final round.

WRESTLING Lions wrestlers finished their seasons with the Texas Prep State and Prep National Wrestling Championships, April 17 and May 2-3 respectively.

At the 2021 Texas Prep State Wrestling Championship, the Lions placed fourth overall as a team and had two gold medalists: sophomore Hayward Metcalf and junior Jedidiah Kim. Two weeks later in WilkesBarre, PA, three of six wrestlers made it to the last round of the Prep National Wrestling Championship, competing for all-american status.

These three wrestlers, freshman Quina Perkison, senior Cooper Ribman and junior Elijah Ellis, all lost in the final round.

ALUMNUS ATHLETE Daniel Ardila ’20 is undefeated in doubles on the Johns Hopkins University tennis team. As a freshman, Daniel is making his mark, recently winning a doubles match against Gettysburg College 8-6.

His team is undefeated this season, prevailing over rivals such as Washington College and Christopher Newport University 9-0 and 6-3, respectively. In singles, Ardila is 1-1, defeating Dickinson College 8-3 but falling to Christopher Newport University in both sets 4-6 and 2-6.

FOND MEMORIES Bud Brooks ‘79 holds his senior year yearbook along with his son’s, Grant Brooks’ ‘17. He also displays his collection of custom-made miniature football helmets from each distinct decade of Lions football.

FOOTBALL HISTORY

A trip through time

May 21, 2021

Sports

The ReMarker

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From playing the game in high school to watching his son compete on those same grounds, Bud Brooks ‘79 has always been around football. Over the past few years, he has used that passion to recount the rich history of Lions football to the community.

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atching his son’s varsity football game against Trinity Valley School in 2014, Bud Brooks ‘79 sat comfortably in his seat as the Lions took a commanding lead early on. At first, it seemed like a routine SPC matchup. But as the game progressed, Brooks began to wonder why he was so unfamiliar with the opposing team. After all, he is an avid Lions fan who has been immersed in the football program ever since he played for the team in the late 1970s.

After the game, he got to thinking, When was the last time we even played Trinity Valley School?

A few internet searches later, he had his answer.

We hadn’t.

Instantly intrigued, Brooks began to dive deeper into the football team’s intricate history, noting other interesting details as he continued to attend his son’s games.

“I remember in 2016, our team had a tough schedule and went 1-8, so I searched for the last time we had a one-win season,” Brooks said. “Interestingly enough, I discovered that prior to 2016, we hadn’t had a one-win season since 1954, just four years after St. Mark’s was formed.”

Just a few years later, Brooks has now scavenged through countless newspapers and yearbooks, compiling stats, records and anecdotes along the way.

His Facebook group, Bud Brooks’ St. Mark’s Football History, founded in 2017, now serves as the sports fanatic’s ultimate guide to the extensive history of Lions’ football.

After reaching his initial goal of researching the Lions’ football history, Brooks decided it would be a good idea to document his findings to share with the community. No one else had ever compiled a full history of the program, so Brooks took the matter into his own hands.

“I asked around the Athletic Department to see if anyone had done a project similar to the one I wanted to begin,” Brooks said.“Once I found that no one had done something like that, I thought, ‘Well, we certainly should have some record of our 70 plus football seasons,’ so I went ahead and started chronicling every game that St. Mark’s played since its founding in 1950.

I wanted to be as detailed as possible, so I recorded the date, result, score and location, as well as whether it was a conference game or not.”

Brooks recorded the stats of these games on a spreadsheet, but as he discovered other facts about the Lions’ history, he searched for a more convenient way to display his findings.

“I knew there had to be a better way to get these records in front of the community,” Brooks said. “So in 2017, I created my Facebook page which gave me the opportunity to post pictures. I went down to the library’s archives several times across a few summers and started taking photos of all the pictures in the yearbooks, sorting them chronologically. I also made use of local online newspapers that have archives dating back over a hundred years. Those provided photos and historical data from St. Mark’s and other schools in the area.”

Lions football over the years

Brooks’ most fascinating Lions stats since 1950

60.9%

Total win percentage out of 658 total games

20 titles

Total SPC titles, with the most recent one being in 2008

Lowest scoring win; against Dunbar High School (1978)

62 points

Highest scoring win; against Greenhill (2009)

3 points

4 seasons

Total undefeated seasons: 1956, 1974, 1982, 1999

72 wins

14,674 points

Total points scored, average of 22.3 pts/game

11,059 points

Most wins by a coach; set by Charles Quisenberry (1968-1979)

Total points allowed, average of 16.8 pts/game

Chronicling the Lions’ history has also allowed Brooks to further develop his special connection with the community here.

“Another thing that I was super interested in is how the team’s helmets have changed over time,” Brooks said. “I wanted to find a neat way to present the different styles, so I have been ordering custom miniature helmets for each unique design that has been worn by our players. I’ve talked to Mr. [Headmaster David] Dini, and my goal is to donate them to the school, so they can be displayed on campus, hopefully when the new gym gets built.”

By following his passion for both history and football, Brooks has been able to turn his work into something that all sports fans can appreciate. He regularly updates his Facebook page and plans to continue tracking the Lions football program.

“I try to make my research as extensive as possible,” Brooks said. “I think that’s what makes it so much fun. It just brings me incredible joy, and I have learned so many fascinating things doing this. This project has taken me in so many different directions just from learning about the history of our school and surrounding schools, so I definitely want to keep it going as long as I can.”

STORY Arjun Khatti, Peter Orsak PHOTOS Charlie Estess, Bud Brooks Access all four of Brooks’ Facebook pages dedicated to Lions football and the school’s predecessor schools: Terrill School for Boys, Texas Country Day School and Cathedral School for Boys.

SUPERFANMEN

Making every moment count Throughout this year, sports teams were hit hard with COVID-19 regulations. Many teams had games and tournaments canceled and fans were even banned from attending games. The Super Fan Men had a tough task. With all of these disruptions, the Super Fan Men had to come up with creative ways to keep the community involved in everything sports related.

GAME TIME Will Chance (left in far left picture) and Daniel Sanchez (right), holding a cutout of Colin Bajec, cheer on the Lions in their only home game against ESD Oct. 10.

UPDATES Will Chance, Colin Bajec and Daniel Sanchez tell marksmen about upcoming Lions sports events at Upper School assembly.

a camera. So, it’s different in that respect too. It’s harder to get a bunch of people riled up for sports.

Will Chance: For me, it was our one home football game. I thought it was pretty awesome. We only got to have one game with fans at home all together, so that was a pretty special moment for us.

Daniel Sanchez: I would say the same. I know Colin was playing in the game, but for me and Will, it was definitely a lot of fun. The one football game we had, it got to be with senior fans. I think in the spring it’s been nice for the administration to allow fans at events. So, as a baseball player and as a Super Fan Man, that was really nice to have that as well.

DW: How important was it to keep up with your social media to make sure all the fans that could not go to the games knew what was going on?

DW: Was there anything you were looking forward to doing that was canceled this year?

DS: I was really looking forward to pep rallies. I know those are always a lot of fun. It would have been fun to think of new chants to start during basketball season, when Harrison drains a three or

CB: I’ve had a lot of fun commentating all the little assembly matches, going over [to assembly] every Friday. I don’t think they did that last year. So, that’s been another fun and entertaining way that we’ve been able to interact with our classmates.

DS: Yeah, shout out to Blake Hudspeth. He’s been great this year. He’s been an amazing Sudent Council president this year. There’s times when, in a normal year, we would get to do a ton of fun activities in assembly. Since these actvities were not possible, he’s been really good at trying to get us Super Fan Men as involved as we can. So yeah, we’ve been really grateful to be able to have fun in assembly even though we can’t really do what we normally would.

STORY Dillon Wyatt PHOTOS Evan Lai

Marksman invited to national golf tournament

by Dillon Wyatt eventh-grader Duff McKay participated in the Drive Putt and Chip tournament April 4 at the Augusta National Golf Course in Augusta, GA. The course is famous for hosting some of the best golfers in the world, who competed in the Masters tournament just a few days later.

The Drive Putt and Chip tournament allows only ten golfers from around the country to compete for the championship. Each golfer is allowed three drives, three putts and three chips in an attempt to get a perfect score of 30.

McKay placed fifth best in the country, scoring a 16.5 out of 30.

“The first [competition], I missed both my drives,” McKay said. “But then I bounced back and finished in the middle of the pack. There were thousands of kids that tried to qualify, so I thought getting fifth was pretty good.”

Ever since McKay was a toddler, he had a golf club in his hands. At age two, McKay was introduced to the sport by his parents and continued to play golf throughout his early years. “[Golf] is kind of what keeps our family together,” McKay said. “We go out every Sunday and play with each other. By having the whole family

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together, it makes golf really fun to play.”

Not only has McKay gotten to play with his family every weekend, but he also had the privilege of being a trainee of Texas Golf Hall of Fame inductee Eldridge Miles. Miles and McKay spent countless hours together, going out every week and practicing.

“Eldridge and I would go out every Monday and have lessons back when I was a kid,” McKay said. “He would always help me, and he really improved my game.”

McKay’s golfing career took a sudden turn, when Miles unfortunately passed away in 2019. The huge impact Miles had on McKay drove him to play for Miles in the Drive Putt and Chip tournament.

“It was really gratifying to know he was looking down on me while I was playing,” McKay said. “It felt really good to play in his honor.”

McKay has already set the bar high for himself. While only being 13 yearsold, McKay’s goal for the future is to join the varsity golf team freshman year and ascend to the highest levels of golf when he is an adult.

“I really want to play D-1 golf in college,” McKay said. “Then, if I’m good enough, I would like to go and play pro.”

The ReMarker

DS: Oh, where do we start.

WC: With COVID, a lot of the events that I looked forward to the most had to be curtailed. We got to do some of the activities associated with the Super Fan Men, but not all of them. Keeping up with the social media and what’s going on is a fair amount of work. At times that felt like a lot, especially when we weren’t actively getting to do a ton with the student body.

Colin Bajec: Seeing the whole student body was a huge aspect that we missed this year. Having an influence on the little kids and the rest of the students, while also getting them excited for sports, was difficult. Even at assemblies, we weren’t talking to a crowd of people but instead to

DW: What are some things you enjoyed doing that were created this year?

25 May 21, 2021

DW: What has been the hardest part about being Super Fan Men during this crazy year?

DS: I think since that was pretty much our main mode of communication this year, it was really important. We needed to stay active on that because the majority of people couldn’t go to most of the games, especially in the first two seasons of the year. I would try and go to every single basketball or soccer game and keep people updated through that. I think that’s important and just being as close as we could to the action and providing those moments so people who couldn’t be there was super important.

WC: If we heard anything or saw anything cool going on, we just went ahead and got it on the Instagram. Daniel and I both posted today, for example. We didn’t really have to communicate about it. It’s been an understanding between us.

If you see something good or you hear something exciting, get it up on the Instagram, get it on Twitter and just make people know about what’s going on.

when Colin dunks. We all have specific chants and stuff like that, but, unfortunately, we didn’t get to have that. That was a big thing for me. I was really looking forward to getting in front of the whole upper school and doing that.

WC: Not getting to do Spirit Week where we can pick out the t-shirt or go to an SPC tournament.

Being a Super Fan Man, seeing everyone in-person is imperative to being affective. So hopefully, we did a fair job supplementing through the Zoom assemblies and through our social media, but it was a bummer to see all that taken away.

CB: Yeah, I agree.

Sports

Dillon Wyatt: What was your favorite memory being Super Fan Men this year?

Alumni return to help coach lacrosse, golf, crew teams

by Arjun Khatti, Nolan Marcus ver the course of the spring season, Matthew Meadows ‘15, Romil Mathur ‘20 and Christian Dussel ‘20 have returned to campus to help coach lacrosse, golf and crew respectively. Mathur, currently a student at SMU, helped the golf team reach a third place SPC North zone finish out of eight teams. Meanwhile, Meadows, who graduated from the University of Texas in 2019, made his way back to Dallas to pursue his MBA at the University of North Texas. Dussel is in the middle of his gap year from MIT. LEADING “Even though I technically THE PACK don’t have classes, I have been Senior Kit taking optional online courses to Colson test out of some of the school’s sprints across core requirements,” Dussel said. the finish “That has allowed me to be in line while Dallas, so when [varsity crew] breaking Coach Pitts Yandell asked me if the school's I wanted to help out the team, it record for the 100 sounded like a lot of fun.” meter.

According to Dussel, coming back to the crew team with a different role in such a short period of time was strange at first, but he has learned to appreciate the teaching moments that come with coaching younger athletes.

“I'm almost like a peer to them as opposed to strictly a coach,” Dussel said. “I just share what I know and my experiences being in their position. Especially with the newer rowers such as the freshmen, it has been awesome to help them fix their body mechanics. Sometimes I will see an imbalanced stroke, and I’ll take that and do some tests with him to figure out how to improve. It’s like a puzzle every day.”

He also believes that his skills outside of crew have allowed him to become a better mentor to these budding athletes.

“I do a lot of independent tutoring for math and science,” Dussel said. “I’ve noticed that through tutoring and crew, I'm getting pretty good at figuring out how to explain a concept that makes sense to the kid. To see that knowledge apply in both of those ways is pretty cool.”

On the other hand, Meadows learned to see the game of lacrosse through a different lens much earlier when ACL tears in both of his legs sidelined him for his junior and senior year of high school.

“During my high school years on the team, I realized that for us to garner success, I needed to help mentor and coach the younger defensemen,” Meadows said. “As time went along, I came to not only appreciate but also love the coaching side of lacrosse.”

The lacrosse team has had to overcome many hardships this season, specifically with COVID-19 and the absence of senior players. Meadows’ favorite part of coaching is witnessing the growth of the team over the course of the season.

“With every single excuse at their fingertips, they have continued to battle through size mismatches, plaguing injuries and exhaustion,” Meadows said. “I have watched our defense completely transform from a passive group to a much more aggressive, physical and disruptive unit.”

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TRACK AND FIELD

Breaking old records Senior captain and Yale track commit Kit Colson broke the school's 38-year-old record for the 100 meter by two hundredths of a second, despite battling with a hip impingement.

Editor’s note: The original story was written prior to Colson breaking the school record again. For more updated times, please view the infographic at the bottom of the page.

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oing into his final track season of high school, senior Kit Colson was not sure if he would even be able to compete. After an injury interrupted his training regimen leading up to the spring season, Colson was just hoping to help the team.

However, on April 10, he made history. As Colson burst across the finish line, he saw a surprising time for his 100-meter race flash up on the new scoreboard.

10.67 seconds.

Colson knew the previous track record was 10.69 seconds, set by Rosser Newton ‘83. Colson, initially unsure if he'd be able play through his injury, had just broken a 38-year-old record.

“There have been times in the past where I'm like, ‘This is the race I’m going to break a record,’ Colson said. “I didn’t even feel like that this time. But when I went up to Coach Turek a minute later, he just hugged me and told me that I had done it.”

Colson started running track in seventh grade, because his goal was to become a three-sport athlete. He had always been the fastest in his grade, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t catching up to do.

“I was always the top sprinter in my grade throughout Middle School and Upper School,” Colson said. “But there were always people who were faster in the grade ahead of me, like the eighth graders in middle school track and the upperclassmen in varsity track.”

Colson ran well his freshman year of high school and especially well his sophomore year, but his junior year ended abruptly due to COVID-19.

“I only got to run in a couple of meets my junior year and did not have any competition from April onward, which affected my

Personal RECORDS

recruitment process,” Colson said.

“Usually, coaches recruit based on times from an athlete’s junior year, but they had to look at my sophomore times. Luckily, my sophomore times were still pretty good. The coaches had to do a lot of predicting, but I don't think it affected me too much in the recruitment process.”

Colson was excited to learn there would be a track season his senior year despite COVID-19, but he was soon diagnosed with a hip impingement, which occurs when the ball of the hip pinches up against the cup of the hip. This required Colson to take some time to recover.

“It's more of a chronic ailment that has led to other things that have affected my running,” Colson said.

“And I've had to do a lot of physical therapy to help the hip heal. Some of the main people that helped me throughout my recovery process are [head athletic] trainer Matt [Hjertstedt] and [athletic] trainer Natalie [Bumpas].”

Despite dealing with an injury and having no junior season because of the pandemic, Colson recently committed to Yale University after a long recruiting process. He could have run at a bigger D-1 track program, but he feels Yale was the right choice for him.

“Throughout high school, I have wanted to go to a more academically focused school no matter my track situation,” Colson said. “I was especially looking at all the Ivy League schools, and I feel that Yale is the best of that group. There is a great culture there, and they also have a great indoor track in the Coxe Cage, which is a big plus while running in the northeast.”

Colson’s favorite part about the track team here is not the competition or even the winning, it is the culture that surrounds the team. Colson has now gotten to lead that culture as a senior, and he is thoroughly enjoying that opportunity.

“There are just a lot of great traditions with the track team,”

Colson said. "There are some traditions that started here before I was in high school. I was mentored as a freshmen, and now I'm the one teaching the freshmen this year.

Although I can't tell you about all the traditions, there is a Kahoot we do every year full of inside jokes among the track team that is always very fun.”

While Colson began track as a middle schooler, he could not have imagined running at Yale and stamping his time in the school record books. Most of all, Colson is part of a track community at 10600 Preston Rd. that started long before he was born and still exists now.

“I think the community that track has is very special,” Colson said.

“People that graduated a long time before me went to a very different version of St. Mark’s than I did, but we still share the brotherhood of St. Mark’s.”

STORY Ben Adams PHOTOS Courtesy Kit Colson

FULL SPRINT Senior captain Kit Colson leads the Lions to win the event at Prince of Peace by 172 points. The track team went on to win the SPC championship.

100 meter

10.32 sec (+6.4 m/s wind), school and SPC record

200 meter

21.24 sec (+3.2 m/s wind), school and SPC record

400 meter

50.92 sec

4 x 100 meter

42.99 sec

4 x 200 meter

1:31.40 min, third in school history

4 x 400 meter

3:29.01 min

SPC CHAMPIONS

A return to the promised land

After last years' spring sports were cancelled just a month into the season, many athletes were left unsure what the future of their athletic careers would hold. Despite many back and forth struggles to remain on campus this year, these Lions pulled through in historic fashion.

ON TOP The track and field team celebrates just moments after they were announced SPC champions. The team earned 189 points, 87 more than the runner-up, The Kinkaid School.

Track and field

D

Mike Mendoza, senior captain

Head coach John Turek has been with the Lions since 1996, winning 14 SPC titles along the way. Mendoza feels Turek's experience is what led them to their first championship since 2012.

“Personally, Coach Turek is a really great coach for throwing,” Mendoza said. “He’s able to help us visualize what we need to do, and he’s also a vocal coach. He is so knowledgeable too because he used to be a decathlete, so he knows so much about the sport. I know my other teammates appreciate his being very vocal because that’s always super helpful in our events. I’m so lucky to have him as a coach.”

he drought is over.

After nearly 20 years without an SPC title, the varsity tennis team won the SPC championship for the 25th time in school history.

The team did it without losing a single matchup.

At the beginning of the season, the team wasn’t even sure if planning an SPC championship match would be possible. But May 2, they finally earned what they had fought all season long for. “[Winning SPC] was an indescribable feeling,” senior captain Mark Motlow said. “It was so euphoric because I’ve never experienced something like that before. I was finally able to accomplish what I’ve been trying to do for four years. After an entire season, it’s super rewarding to get what [the tennis team] was striving for.”

In addition to the team’s undefeated season, sophomore tennis player Patrick Flanagan displayed one of the most dominant tennis seasons in school history, losing zero matches and winning 84 out of 86 games.

At SPC against St. John’s School, he and junior Jeremy Yu had flawless performances on the second and third singles lines, winning all six games in both sets, but two tough losses in doubles play caused the match to come down to senior captain Mark Motlow’s singles game.

“We expected to win,” Flanagan said, “but it was really special seeing it actually happen on the court. We

I like to say that we played our games 14-on-one, instead of one-on-one because everybody who wasn’t playing was cheering on the side and trying to get in the opponent’s head. That team connection was really special.

Patrick Flanagan, sophomore player

Motlow finished the season winning six of eight matches and will continue to play tennis for Sewanee The University of the South next spring. After playing for the varsity team all four years, Motlow says he’s glad that he will end his career on a high note.

“I’m really proud of everybody on the team,” Motlow said. “They all put in their hard work throughout the season. Everyone did their part.

It wasn’t just me winning the last match. If the two singles players had lost their matches, we would not have won [SPC]. I lost plenty of times, and the team still went undefeated. We were a lot more team-oriented than people think.”

STORY: Arjun Khatti, Dillon Wyatt PHOTOS: Courtesy Kit Colson, Patrick Flanagan

ON THE DIAMOND Sophomore Silas Hosler stands on the field in his shortstop position during a home game in March. The Lions started off playing against non-conference opponents such as Hillcrest High School and Legacy Christian Academy before heading into the counter season.

Sports junkie A deeper dive into Lions sports.

Statistics and records reflect games for the spring season.

Crew

had to realize that we only had one shot at winning that match. Saying you’re going to win is one thing, but actually getting the job done means a lot more. In the heat of the moment, it was really awesome seeing Mark clutch up the last win for us.”

Baseball

Lacrosse

Advanced stats:

Advanced stats:

Advanced stats:

Advanced stats:

Advanced stats:

The Lions varsity quad of senior captain Blake Hudspeth and juniors Paul Valois, junior captain Evan McGowan and Drake Elliot will advance to the USRowing National Championship in Sarasota-Bradenton, FL over the summer.

Senior Jacob Daniels finished his final season as a Lion with a batting average of .480 while also pitching 41 strikeouts on the mound.

The Lions entered as a #2 seed of the THSLL Class A State Championship and made it to the semifinals, losing to #3 seed and eventual champion, Coppell High School.

Sophomore Logan Johnson tied for first individually with a score of 71 during the SPC North Zone Championships April 28, while the team earned a third place finish out of eight teams.

The Lions finished their undefeated season as TISCA Water Polo State champions.

The Lions will take a big loss with head coach Hayward Lee leaving for All Saints, but with every starter returning next year, the Lions will look to make another run at state.

The captains consisted of senior Rex Corey and juniors Mac McKenzie and Anashay Monga.

Medals @ Regionals: 5 Last three results:

Joe Millet, Suzanne and Patrick McGee Family Master Teaching Chair and long-time Lions fan, threw out the first pitch of the the team's final home game, 4/26 against Fort Worth Country Day.

5 medals @ USRowing Central Youth Championships on May 1-2

Season Finish: 6-10

6 medals @ White Rock Rowing club regatta on 4/17

6-2 Win vs. ESD on 4/27

4 medals @ Oklahoma City Invitational on 4/10

Last three results:

5-6 Loss vs. Ft. Worth Country Day on 4/26 2-8 Loss vs. Cistercian on 4/20

Season Finish: 7-7 Last three results: 8-10 Loss vs. Coppell on 5/8 11-4 Win vs. Episcopal Houston on 5/2 15-4 Win vs. Plano West on 5/1

Golf

Tournament wins: 3 Last three results: 3rd place @ SPC North Zone Championship on 4/28 3rd place @ Hockaday Invitational on 4/19 Head-to-head win vs. Ft. Worth Country Day on 4/14

Water Polo

Senior captain Leo Ohannessian was named TISCA Water Polo State MVP. Junior Brett Honaker was also named first team all-state, while senior captain Jack Palmer was named as an honorable mention.

Season Finish: 18-0 Last three results: 12-6 win @ State final vs. Glenda Dawson High School on 5/15 18-5 win @ State playoffs vs.

Memorial High School on 5/15 26-9 win @ State playoffs vs.

Brazoswood High School on 5/14

27 The ReMarker

I told the team how much I love them. I told them how much I appreciated the effort they put in throughout the year. I didn’t even think there was going to be a SPC Championship, but there was, and we came out on top.

T

Sports

The track team ended the season with eight first place finishes, taking home the SPC trophy on their home turf May 8. Numerous Lions won their events, each time contributing ten points to the team's total. Juniors Samuel Eluemenoh, Sahil Dodda and Enoch Ellis, and seniors Kit Colson, Michael Vanesko and Mike Mendoza Mendoza all placed first in their respective events. Mendoza, who threw 47'3.5" in shot put, was pleasantly surprised with his teammates' performances. “[Winning SPC] was crazy,” Mendoza said. “My teammates are all younger than me, and I feel like I wouldn’t have been able to win like they did at their age, but they were all

amazing. It was really mind blowing.”

Mendoza’s first place shot put throw also earned him a personal record. Having recently broken his personal record in the SPC North Zone championship on May 1, Mendoza was shocked to have done it twice in two weeks.

“Something just clicked,” Mendoza said. “It was really an amazing moment because the week before I had broken my PR by two feet already. During SPC, I didn’t think I was gonna [break my PR] at all.”

Tennis

May 21, 2021

evastated.

Heartbroken.

Shattered.

These were the emotions senior captain Mike Mendoza and the rest of his track and field team felt moments after learning that their 2020 spring season was over.

Just two meets into the season, the team had high aspirations to bring home their first SPC championship since 2012. But after the news broke that competition would be cancelled immediately, there was nothing they could do.

There was nothing they could do except prepare for the next season.

That is, if next season was even going to happen.

The next season did happen.

The next season, they became champions.

WINNING IN STYLE The tennis team sports their custom-made championship shirts after going undefeated and defeating St. John's School. This was their first SPC title win since 2002.

ReMarker ST. MARK’S SCHOOL OF TEXAS 10600 PRESTON RD. DALLAS, TX 75230

CAPTAINS Leading the victorious Blue Team, seniors Benny Wang and Rajan Joshi celebrate their hard-earned win.

SCHOOL SPIRIT

Blue and Gold Day

Continuing the classic school-wide tradition, students celebrate Blue and Gold Day, led by Student Council president Blake Hudspeth.

Ekansh Tambe: What did it take to pull off Spirit Week in this historic year?

Blake Hudspeth: Spirit Week and Blue and Gold Day took a lot of planning before hand. The Student Council began to brainstorm the themes and games for the days of the week and plan the Blue and Gold team-dynamic at least two weeks out.

May 21, 2021

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The ReMarker

28

ET: What does it mean to you as a senior and Student Council President?

BH: The Senior Class all got really behind this week because we knew it would be one of the last times we would do something as a whole Upper School and because it was a chance to gain some normalcy in a year with so much change.

Spirit Week had incredible energy from the entire community with everyone from middle schoolers to faculty wearing the themes and getting involved in the activities. The Senior Class is all hoping this new style of Spirit Week becomes a fun tradition that many future generations of Marksmen will be able to enjoy.

ET: How do you think y’all’s Spirit Week will define the Class of 2021’s legacy?

BH: Our goal as a Student Council was to have our year remembered not for the challenge of COVID-19 and instead defined by our progress in growing closer as a student body, and I think this Spirit Week was one of the many events that helped move us as an Upper School towards that goal.

ET: How does it feel to finish off your St. Mark’s career with an incredible Blue and Gold Day competition and Spirit Week traditions?

Benny Wang: It feels amazing but mostly because it was just such a fun week. Like Mr. Igoe said, the whole point of Spirit Week and Blue and Gold Day was to bring students of all grades in the Upper School together.

We certainly achieved that with so much spirit and participation in events throughout the week and some lighthearted trash talk between both sides. I hope Spirit Week stays for decades to come at St. Mark’s because I had not seen this much spirit and fun since pre-COVID, and that means a lot.

ET: What was it like to maintain such a great tradition amongst all the craziness this year?

Aaryan Puri: After seeing so much of our school environment change because of COVID, it made me insanely happy and grateful to see the whole school get together and engage in activities that freshmen to seniors could participate in.

ET: What does being the Gold Team captain mean to you?

AP: Being a captain as a senior was a very special honor to me. I’ve always wanted to lead the whole school and having the opportunity to do that was like nothing else. Blake put on a great week for everyone and the blue and gold activities are something I’ll never forget and are essential to my career at St. Mark’s.

GAMES Blue and Gold Day activities included football (top), tug-of-war (middle), and bubble soccer (left).

STORY Ekansh Tambe PHOTOS Sal Hussain WINNERS After a great deal of hard work and planning genius, Blue Team took the win for this year’s Blue and Gold Day games.