Issue 12 Volume CVII

The Disrespectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

Volume 107 No. 12

“The Angery Reaccs of the Student Body” stuyspec.com

March 31, 2017

NEWSBEAT

Disrespectator content on pages 1-4 and 25-28

Many students were forced to

The Spectator News Department Finally Publishes the Truth

sleep in tiny crevices dispersed throughout the hallways after security guards began a drive to remove “bad hombres” from Stuyvesant’s floors.

E

“ ggs, bacon, and cheese on a roll” sandwich option has been discontinued at Ferry’s.

News

Department writers were forced to study Kellyanne Conway and publish alternative facts out of sheer boredom after failing to find real news that was actually interesting to read.

Increased

amounts of students taking laps around Asphalt Green after a proposal to offer gym frees to PSAL athletes resulted in a surge of membership for athletic teams.

New

Messenger “react to messages” and Messenger Day updates caused an increase in the number of students caught “angery” reacting on mobile devices during class.

By SHAMEEK RAKSHIT On a day during this month, a change occurred in the school’s policy for something—something important, mind you not.

Although the administration announced this development three weeks ago, the writer had to study for his AP Chemistry exam. Fortunately for the author, a slow news week convinced his editors to publish this article.

Here’s where I get to the important details of this policy change.

Having fallen asleep during the three-hour long School Leadership Team (SLT) meeting, however, this task has proven especially difficult for the author. Nonetheless, the reporter can take solace in the fact that the new policy is common knowledge amongst students by now and that the news ceased to be relevant even before I began writing about it. Furthermore, 95 percent of the student body will have stopped reading this article right around now.

For you—the 5 percent—who have chosen to continue reading this article, I will attempt to tell you the tale of how this policy change came to be. “So you’re telling me that I pushed for this change? It’s been so long that I don’t even remember. Sorry,

Improvements

made to Stuyvesant’s escalators do not last more than a week after students purposely destroyed them and demanded that they are able to be treated equally as any other New Yorker and simply walk.

Senior

Stiven Peter shocked the world by offering to write an article outlining his opposition to the Stuyvesant Masculinists Club. Yes, you read that right.

Opposition.

a fire on Tuesday, March 28, to force all anti-masculinists out of the school.

ulations, you played yourself.”

Eventually, the writer was able to enter the principal’s fortress. “You know I really value The Spectator,” Interim Acting Principal Eric Contreras said. “I set up fake meetings to fill my schedule, lock my door, and hire the best guards—I mean secretaries—but you guys still manage to get through. You don’t see determination like that these days.”

In a last ditch effort to gain some meaningful insight for this meaningless article, the writer did the unthinkable and approached the Assistant Principal of Organization. “Wait, you’re

from The Spectator? I thought someone finally volunteered to help me with these AP forms. Go away,” she said. After the writer persisted in his attempts to get a quote, the A.P. responded, “Cash me ousside. Howbow dah?”

Since deadlines were approaching quickly, the writer ignored interviewing protocol and private messaged his friends for the student perspective on the issue. “Yo, it’s 2:00 a.m. wyd my guy? hmu with math hw im tryna pass this class too,” an anonymous source said.

PTC Evasion Methods

By Daniel Knopf and Katie Wu While many parents insist on attending Parent Teacher Conferences (PTC) as an opportunity to slip a Franklin to teachers, most students dread PTC. “It’s the night my parents gossip with my teachers about why I am a disappointment,” junior Vivien Lee said.

Rather than improving their grades or talking with their teachers, many students have decided that the best way to mitigate the potential damage of PTC is simply to prevent their parents from meeting their teachers. Below are some of the evasion methods students have employed.

1) One popular strategy employed by students involves hiring a friend to pose as a fake teacher. Students convincing their parents often call these teachers “student teachers.”

Many upperclassmen use PTC as an opportunity to make some money and fund their more pricey addictions, like Supreme clothing, Yeezys, and hot food from Whole Foods. “I don’t even need the money, but I just like it when other people have even less money,” junior Holden Higgins said.

2) Another common practice is for students to cross out their names immediately after their parents sign up on the sheet. “I’ve seen my parents punch other parents because they thought their name was crossed out by a line-cutter,” sophomore William Wang said.

3) Many Stuyvesant students with parents who do not speak English employ the “alternate translation” strategy. These students simply escort their parents to PTC and claim that they will translate for them.

“My teachers must think that

my parents are insane since they started cheering after my teachers said I was cutting too much,” junior Gregory Zeng said. “Too bad for my parents—I guess they didn’t realize it was opposite day.”

4) One increasingly less common method is to get the teacher terribly sick right before PTC. This method, nicknamed “Sneesus Christ,” is very risky because it may not work, and it often places the student in uncomfortable and precarious situations.

“I’ve only seen one kid desperate enough to use ‘Sneesus Christ’.

When he saw the teacher yawning, he ran up and sneezed directly into the teacher’s mouth,” sophomore Oliver Ripps said, shuddering. “It was disgusting and horrifying, but his teacher couldn’t come to PTC, so I guess it was worth it.”

Christine Jegarl / The Spectator

The Masculinists Club started

but I can’t be bothered by you muckrakers,” Student Union (SU) Vice President Tahseen Chowdhury said in an e-mail interview.

Despite the student body having an obvious lack of interest in the topic, the reporter approached the school administration to get the quotes for an acceptable article. “Did you schedule an appointment 13 months in advance?

The open-door policy doesn’t apply to The Spectator—otherwise we’d be really bored here,” the principal’s secretary asked as she skimmed through President Donald Trump’s latest book, “The Art of Getting Rid of Journalists.” In the meantime, another principal’s secretary furiously typed away at her computer in an attempt to continue her record year-long streak of snubbing reporters.

In a stroke of luck, the Assistant Principal of Safety, Student Affairs, and Health and Physical Education Brian Moran was walking towards his office. The writer decided that this would be a good opportunity to gauge what Moran thought about the issue, so he asked for an interview. “Wait, are you recording this on your cellphone? Sorry, but I’m going to have to confiscate that,” Moran said as he removed the device from the writer’s hands. “Congrat-

Student Admitted to Meme Rehab After Near-Fatal Meme Overdose

By Nishmi Abeyweera and Eliza Spinna Junior Daniel Ju was admitted to the Meme Rehabilitation Center on Saturday, April 1, after a meme overdose triggered by 29 hours of viewing memes non-stop. Ju was last seen waiting in line with many other fellow memers to be admitted to the center’s highly expensive, highly exclusive Meme Rehab for Millennials (MRM) Program.

Stuyvesant recommended the facility after several teachers noticed that Ju was talking

to himself in a “Kermit” style voice. “There were lots of signs.

One day [Ju] came into class and start uncontrollably dabbing while screaming that he was ‘dabbing through the galaxy.’ Another day, on a test, he would answer ‘Harambe’ to every problem,” Chemistry teacher Michael Orlando said.

Ju’s closest friends also noticed the dark changes he had undergone. Initially, Ju would occasionally share marginally humorous mainstream meme videos. However, over time, his fun pastime developed into a se-

rious condition. He spent hours searching for the juiciest memes in the far corners of the Internet.

By the end, Ju had discovered every last meme on the Internet. At this point, Ju began to take drastic and clinically unhealthy measures: creating his own memes. He cultivated these memes to be funnier, more obscure, and more potent than other memes. “While the memes Ju shared on his Facebook wall had never really been funny, his own creations were even more wack,” sophomore George Shey said.

All the while, he was showing

signs of a serious condition. Ju isolated himself from his friends and family, tagged classmates in an average of 257 different memes a day, and shared his “home-grown” memes, begging others to share them to increase his so-called Memer Fanbase.

Finally, Ju’s peers, teachers, and family members had enough. Ju was forced to attend the rehab facility by an “angery” (as he called them) mob. Minutes before his admission, he posted his one last call for help—his last meme: “Why are the meme police here?”

Unfortunately, few treatments are known for meme addiction. Awareness is at an alltime low for this fatal disease.

Thus, most meme addiction cases go undiagnosed and untreated.

Fortunately, Ju’s specialists are already reporting rapid improvements, and he is expected to return to Stuyvesant soon.

Doctors hope that Ju will be able to spend more time focusing on his 19 AP classes and less time “angery reacting” the various memes he views on Facebook.

Page 2

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Alternative News The More-Practical AP

By SHAINA PETERS with additional reporting by Michael xu Stuyvesant is constantly adding new APs, and this year is no exception. The Programming Office has finally added the coveted AP Lunch (available period nine—it’s for hardcore eaters).

In light of recent events, the Programming Office is adding AP Alternative Government and Politics (AGAP). AGAP is being offered to any student who meets the GPA requirement of below a 91.

This bold move is meant to teach students things that are more relevant to real life. Instead

of teaching students why taxes exist, it teaches them to not pay them. And instead of teaching students about checks and balances, it teaches them that it’s easier to try again than deal with them.

Furthermore, part of AGAP will highlight alternative forms of government from around the

Escalator Policy Change

By KERWIN CHEN

Physical Education teacher Dr. Anna Markova has worked with Principal Eric Contreras to come up with a plan to fix these issues, and after many months of hard work, the principal has implemented a new escalator policy to promote healthy living. This new escalator policy requires that students go up the down escalator and down the up escalator.

“Students will be able to work out between classes and not just every other day for 40 minutes.

Fifteen minutes, actually, since I spent the other 25 minutes teaching my kids about the 50 different functions of the piriformis stretch,” Dr. Markova said.

To enforce this policy, Principal Contreras plans on having a rotation system in which teachers monitor a pair of escalators when they have a free period, and people found violating this policy must perform 50 pushups

Vivian Lin / The Spectator

Stuyvesant is notorious for its frail students and permanent caffeine smell in the hallways due to a huge workload and sleepless nights full of tears.

before rushing to their next class.

“I really like this policy actually,” senior Mitch Choi said. “It gives me an excuse to show off my bicipital aponeurosis to the whole school instead of just the 50 people in my gym class. This way, I might actually get a flower this year during the flower sale!”

However, even with the potential to display various enlarged muscle groups, many students also opposed the policy, as shown through an online survey conducted by The Spectator. Unfortunately, all the students who opposed the policy were too sick and frail to come to school for an interview.

“This policy is very promising,” Contreras said. “And hopefully, the change in room temperature due to the generated body heat will directly correlate with [the student’s] grades.”

world. These new forms of government have been described by a credible inside source to win bigly, guaranteed. Additionally, these new forms of governments are more inclusive of animals, namely orangutan leaders.

The school is looking to hire a substitute teacher for the course.

“We want a teacher who will be

there to teach when the students are there to learn,” Assistant Principal of Social Studies Jennifer Suri commented.

AGAP students will take the newly-created AGAP AP exam in May. This test has 10 short answer questions. In addition, they all have the same answer: “short.”

What You Missed At Spectator Recruitments

By Michael Xu For everyone who missed the Spectator Recruitments, shame on you. Allow me to just gloat about it and make y’all feel terrible.

First off, let’s take a look at me—yes, me, not-funny Humor editor! If you write for the Spectator, you can be 98.7491 percent as awesome as me! (You’ll never be just as awesome as me though— only my imaginary friends can.)

At Recruitments, we had 290 boxes of pizza and roughly seven million munchkins. We weren’t kidding when we said that there would be food— in fact, we were planning to hold y’all hostage until you bought a slice of pizza for $99.99. Unfortunately, there was no food allowed in the library, so we had to toss the idea.

Then came our wonder-

ful lil’ spiels about each department! They were so captivating and exciting that everybody was out of it by the third department. It was just too intense!

Unfortunately, that meant that no one got to see the best parts of our Recruitments. They missed Pablo Picasso, whom Art had brought back to life just for Recruitments. Then, they missed “The Life of Journalists,” the latest Kanye album which he released at Recruitments.

Most importantly, they missed President Donald Trump, who took the opportunity to praise Humor for all of our positive coverage. “Humor is YUUUUGGEE! It’s amazing, believe me,” Trump declared. “CNN, The New York Times, even the News department of The Spectator—they’re all very, very, very terrible. No more fake news!”

Spectator Book Review

By Kai Hin Lui After a day of listening to nothing but fake news, I just want to sit by my gold-plated fireplace, stop pretending to care about my presidential duties, and settle into a new book. I recently finished reading King James’s second alternative history novel, “The New Testament,” the second major installment to the series after “The Old Testament.” His novels follow the story of this character named God, a megalomaniac who becomes bored of his isolation and spawns the entire world out of thin air. It was an interesting premise, but I think the author went a little overboard with the alternative facts. On page one, he literally tried to introduce EVERYTHING into the plot, even claiming that the start of his book was the start of the universe.

The first major arc of the story talked about God’s new

playground and this man named Adam. One day, God performed a bone grafting procedure on Adam, but then he decided to be clever and turned one of his ribs into a woman. God then tries to impose all these new rules on the couple, but he fails to explain the notion of “right” and “wrong” to them. Adam and Eve accidentally eat the apples that he was saving for later, and God gets so angry that he deports them to this dystopian hellhole called “Earth.”

On Earth, God uses Adam and Eve’s children to wage a long proxy war with his mortal enemy Satan. They both like to kill people, but by the end of the story, God emerges as the victor. Satan is only able to rack up a handful of kills, whereas God is able to annihilate the entire human population.

In “The New Testament,” God becomes a much better person and exhibits more restraint and

maturity after fathering a son. After he juked Abraham, he doesn’t joke to anyone about sacrificing their child anymore. He really tries to get rid of all his previous frustration and scorn, and he stops seeing people worshiping idols left and right.

That being said, I feel like these two novels would have been better had the author considered his implementation better. For all the depths of his stories, his books only glorify a small group of characters exclusively from the Middle East. The books make no attempt to reconcile massive plot holes, and it also suffers from a serious over-proliferation of characters.

After reading the Bible, I decided to read “The United States Constitution” written by The People. I must say that for a work of nonfiction, the Constitution isn’t really that historically accurate, and it suffers from the same

problems that plague the Bible.

The characters in this story are never named, and all you’re left with is this somewhat archaic and delusional narrator. The prologue talks about this collective “we the people,” who came together form a “more perfect union.” The narrator then goes on to speak about how he and this alleged group of people are working to “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity,” a highly unrealistic goal that I think calls into question the narrator’s sanity.

The author tried to be poetic in the prologue, but he ended up using really fancy words that made you think that he was born 200 years ago or something. The rest of the narrative took on an extremely legalistic tone and introduced a bunch of historical inaccuracies. There was something about a Congress, people called “citizens” who were apparently enfranchised and were supposed

to pick people to run their society, and something about safeguards of justice and reserved powers.

The author mentions that everything he said was supposed to build up a “representative democracy,” but everyone knows that democracy was a myth created by the Chinese to make American politicians squabble amongst themselves and fool the American public into thinking they have a voice.

Plot-wise, there isn’t really much in the way of suspense, and this story can get incredibly repetitive at times. At the end, you get a list of 39 people, whose identities you’re left guessing about. It’s impossible to tell which one is narrating, and you can’t help but feel that they botched up their collaborative writing and editing process. In the end, I was left questioning the significance of this piece of writing and its purported “historical value.”

Teacher Recommendation Requirements

By Alexandra Wen and Marie Ivantechenko As the academic year comes to a tortured end, juniors (along with some overachieving, incoming freshmen) are frantically asking their teachers for letters of recommendation. According to Principal Eric Contreras, each department has established new requirements for recommendation letters. Below are the new standards: English Department You must have a six on the AP. “Students have stormed in angrily saying that it’s impossible to get a six on the AP. Nonsense!

Nothing is impossible,” Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman explained as he proceeded to book a month-long getaway for the entire English department during college recommendation writing season.

“I’ve had one student get a six because of a misprint, but that really doesn’t mean the AP graders can’t be so wowed by your essays that they won’t give you a six,” Grossman elaborated. “If anything, money always talks.”

Math Department You must have created your own new theorem, applicable to the Advanced Honors AP Multivariable Calculus Class.

Although most students typically take regular Multivariable Calculus their senior year, if at all, students looking for a letter of recommendation will be required to write a theorem for this newly-created course. This course requires the prerequisites of Multivariable Calculus, Honors Multivariable Calculus, and AP Multivariable Calculus.

“If you want to write a theorem, just start reading,” Assistant Principal of Mathematics Jim Johnson encouraged. “Start out with Euclid’s “Elements,” and then progress onto every other math textbook.”

Many students were undaunted by this new requirement. “I started doing research, and then I found pure ingenuity within a basic geometry primer. I felt utterly enlightened,” junior Jason Wong reported. “In fact, Johnson said that I may have broken math with my new theorem.”

Wong’s new theorem states,

“A square has four right angles.”

He has received recognition from math communities around the world and will be presented the Presidential Medal of Mathematical Ingenuity in May. Foreign Language Department You must not have been a member of your language class’s Facebook group.

In light of recent scandals, the foreign language department has decided that in order to protect their dignity—not only will they restrict the number of tries on homework or simply fail their students—but they will only offer letters of recommendation to the three students who were not in the foreign language class’s Facebook group.

“The administration will know if anyone deactivates,” Assistant Principal of Foreign Language Ernest Oliveri said. “Don’t even try to unlike that post from five months ago. This is gravely serious.”

Computer Science Department You must be able to recite the four steps of incremental development if awakened at any point in

the night.

One of the first things students learn in their Intro CS classes is recursion and the steps of incremental development in order to break up complex problems and to think mathematically. The best computer science students are the ones that immerse themselves in this way of thinking and begin to apply it to their everyday lives.

“I used to wake up sleeping students I found in the Hudson staircase and ask them what the steps to incremental development were,” Computer Science Coordinator Dyrland-Weaver recalls. “That’s how you can tell if students are truly committed to computer science, of course—if they dream about it.”

Dyrland-Weaver believes that if students takes more than three seconds to answer, they do not deserve a letter of recommendation. “I understand that most students are drowsy when they first wake up, which is why I give them a few seconds,” Dryland-Weaver explained. “But if they can’t answer even after a few seconds, it’s obvious they don’t know.”

Science Department You must cut all of your humanities classes to sit in on multiple oversubscribed science electives.

The science departments will be applying the Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest” in determining which students will receive recommendations. Students are encouraged to exhibit evolutionary prowess by thinking of creative ways to take as many science classes as one can fit into his or her schedule.

Rather than having to wait long hours (days, really) after school for schedule changes or to engage in arguments so long and complex with your guidance counselor that you could win debate tournaments, a simple way to take as many science classes as you can is to cut all your other classes.

“There was once a student who cut all of his periods to attend science classes,” Assistant Prinicipal of Chemistry and Physics Scott Thomas explained. “Although he got 60s in all of his other classes, he did manage to get a 100 in Forensics.”

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 3

Alternative News Five New Courses For The Next Academic Year

By Alexandra Wen and Tiffany Chen

AP English Literature & Composition: Great Books

As the name suggests, we will be reading as well as writing great books! Students must be willing to experiment with writing assignments that relate to their own lives and contribute to the daily discussions about America’s lack of respect for the common man. The book list will include: - “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” Donald J. Trump - “Fifty Shades of Grey,” E. L. James - “Twilight,” Stephenie Meyer - “The Communist Manifesto,” Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx - “Physics: Second Edition,” James S. Walker - “Green Eggs and Ham,” Dr. Seuss While students are encouraged to take the AP exam at the end of the year, the final project will be to write a story and pub-

lish it. Failure to do so will result in an automatic zero for the class, and the class must be repeated during senior year. (But that’s okay because having to deal with failures in life is a great starting point for a great book!)

- Puella Magi Madoka Magica - Boku No Pico

* This indicates that class debates will involve the discussion and evaluation of the anime

“Anime Japanese” I

This course focuses on students performing labs, which include creating your own miniature black hole, learning to slide across the floor with socks, and reversing the electromagnetic field that encapsulates Earth.

Highlights include counting how many cuts, burns, and near death experiences students experience in each lab.

Students will also focus on the academic component, and their final project will include a 60-page paper about whether Newton deserves recognition for his second law since he wasn’t the one who originally came up with it.

There is a small cost for replacement materials (e.g.: socks, lightning rods). This course is one of two prerequisites for AP

Students in the course must have a deep desire to connect with their inner otaku. The class is intended for those who would like to continue to learn exactly what their favorite anime character says, and only those phrases.

Auditory and oral presentation skills will be developed and prepared so that students may attend Comic Con 2017 as a cosplayer and become a voice actor for future anime.

Anime that students will be required to watch (in full, subbed): - * Sword Art Online - Tokyo Ghoul and * Tokyo Ghoul √A - Attack on Titan - Naruto and Naruto Shippuden

Physics Lab Techniques

Mysterious Pranks Force Stiven Peter to Transfer Schools

By Michael Espinosa Senior and professional agitator Stiven Peter has since transferred to Staten Island Tech following a series of mysterious pranks.

“One day, I encountered the devil decked out with a flaming pitchfork as I was walking down the Hudson staircase hand-in-hand with [sophomore Shafali Gupta],” Peter quipped.

“The devil in fact tried to convince me about the existence of non-heterosexual relationships.”

The primary suspects in these pranks are the many student Facebook commenters who backlashed against Peter after he shared his latest article “A Beautiful Thing: Sex and Sexual Ethics”

By MICHAEL XU Stuyvesant’s Lost and Found box has overfilled to the point where the abandoned Hudson staircase has been reopened in order to accommodate the items.

School officials are seeking recognition of the issue and have signed up for the next season of “Hoarders.”

One entire set of stairs was

(Issue 10, The Spectator). The article argues that “To be human is to be one of two. One is born either male or female, with one sex opposite to, but inseparable from, and complementing the other.” Stiven Peter’s Facebook account has since been deleted as a result of the foreign language department’s measures, but the article remains.

After Peter shared the article, hundreds of his Facebook “friends” furiously typed away replies, including “Stiven that makes no sense”, “Do you even know what you’re talking about?”, and “Whose mans is this?”.

While most of the comments (and memes) expressed confusion, a few comments actually

hinted at the threats that Peter would soon encounter. One commenter wrote “Cash me battery after 10th”, and when Peter appeared at Battery Park after 10th period, there appeared a transgender couple. Subsequently, Peter fainted in a selfdescribed “feminine manner”.

Peter encountered many more pranks in the next week.

His water bottle was tampered with “satanic water” and his girlfriend announced that she was a “feminist.” Finally, enough was enough— Peter would visit his guidance counselor, who told Peter to show his emotions and let go of his masculine uptightness.

Physics C, and students must have already taken Physics with a 100 percent average.

AP Health

In this course, students will be expected to learn how to appropriately handle the mindnumbing stress of success. The class will mainly focus on coping mechanisms, including the consistent creation of ironic memes, and how pineapple pizza is not as demonic as it sounds.

This course is intended to supply self-therapy methods, teach students how to effectively microsleep, and combat the societal ideal of the Hardworking and Exhausted Stuy Student™.

Students will be ready to take on college life and have a healthy living style through ramen noodles and coffee.

Prerequisites include health and being a vegan.

AP Computer Science Z

In this class, we will be covering important topics needed to code for those living in the

The Best Pranks for April Fool’s Day

By ANTHONY HOM and GILVIR GILL 1. Remind the teacher that they forgot to check the homework. That will really ensure a good, completely friendly laugh out of your classmates, especially if you’re a junior.

2. Start a fight club. Bonus points if you manage to bring it to the attention of colleges. Super, extra bonus points if the members of your newly formed school-funded club threaten extra-probing freshmen at the interest meeting.

3. When signing up for APs, make sure to sign up for as many as possible, especially the ones that you

Lost and Found Box Over-Flowing

a meticulously arranged collection of phones, confiscated by the Phone Reserve’s Chairman Brian Moran. The smartphones ranged from the original iPhone 3G to the iPhone 8S. There are more phones buried here than in the rest of the world; many other schools have chosen to safeguard their phones here as well.

Many other finds have been located in the Lost and Found as

well. There are study guides still glistening with tears, Supreme bricks, and a random easy-bake oven.

There were 54 students who made a home out of the Lost and Found. They constructed a labyrinthine system to secret living chambers, where thousands of sweaters and hoodies created beds, and the half eaten Whole Foods containers made for ample

1940s. We will be spending two weeks watching the life-sized computer perform the incredible feat of summing two non-float prime numbers in the complex number system, namely two plus one, before going into how to remove bugs from any form of hardware. Languages required for the final exam include: - Serpiente - Ç, along with its derivative languages Ç-- (which is coincidentally the grade you will get in this class) and Ç - Racquette - That language you need to build a website - That language you need to build a laptop - That language you need to build a hovercraft which you will be using in 30 years Students taking the course are also required to prove P vs. NP by the end of the school year and donate all money received from its discovery to the Confiscating Phones Administration run by Assistant Principal Brian Moran.

nourishment.

The most peculiar find, however, was the 3,400 souls of the undead (and dead—we found many caskets). These souls were collecting dust, and some were downright dangerously unviable: walking in their vicinity reportedly sucked the energy out of an Open House visitor completely, causing his heart to cease beating.

Last Friday, seeing that the

are not interested in. It’ll sure be funny for the kids who don’t get to take the class they’ve been dying to take since freshman year.

4. Go to class, especially if you’re a second term senior. Teachers will think you’ve decided to audit their class when you show up for the first time since January. If you dare, consider doing your homework, staying awake, or even participating. Keep it up, and they might actually fail you.

5. Announce that you’re running for Senior Caucus. Actually campaign—that’ll make it somewhat obvious that it’s a joke.

If Maszlo can do it, so can you.

pile was growing to an untenable level, Assistant Principal of Organization Randi Damasek made an announcement: “If you lost your soul, come down to Room 289 to retrieve it.” The mass exodus of students searching caused sheer pandemonium as students lined up from the 11th floor.

Copy The spektater Stuyle Guide 2k17

By Vincent Jiang, Michelle Lai, and Venus Nnadi Did you know, The Spectator has a department called “Copy”!?

What does this “Copy” department even do? Copy articles from other publications? Actually, no.

We aren’t the Huaxia Journal.

The Copy Department is generally ignored by the entire board until it’s asked to proofread The Spektater for grammer mistakes.

The following excerpts are taken from our Stuyle Guide, which is our guide to proper writing.

Formatting: “Thee quothed thisth.” – Name, grade and/or position There is a single space after the quote, followed by an en dash because, well, we ate all the em & em’s.

Numbers & Dates: One through nine are written out: one, two, three. 10 and up are written numerically: 10, 17, 14.

The proper format for dates is as follows: June twenty-eight, one thousand nine hundred and eighty-fourth.

General Style: In journalism, we use shorter sentences, fewer commas, and much shorter paragraphs, ‘cause this is Stuy, also known as Stuyvesant, also known as Stuyvesant High School, also known as “better than Bronx Science,” and we all have too much homework and too little time, and ain’t nobody got time to be reading long, boring sentences full of unnecessary words, clauses, and Oxford commas.

Don’t overuse SAT words. We get it, you spent your entire sum-

mer memorizing hundreds of vocabulary words. You do not appear more erudite.

Sports: Do not cheerlead for a team in sports articles. Do not claim that the team is going to do well. Do not say it is a great team. All these assertions must be in quotes. The only exception to this is the track team.

For track, always format the names of the events like this: “1000-meter run.”

Do not use a comma in the number and always place a hyphen between “1000” and “meter.”

If you get this wrong, the track team will chase you down, and trust me, you can’t outrun them.

Photo: It is the job of the photographer to write a strong caption.

The following example refers to a

photo of Mr. Garfinkel.

Wrong: This is Mr. Garfinkel and his shiny bald head.

Right: English teacher Kerry Garfinkel, shown lecturing his third-period class, has shaved his head every week since the early 1790s.

The Slug: The slug is all the administrative information at the top of the article. The things in bold are to be replaced with your information.

Title The Spectator / Department / Issue (Number) Initials of the Article’s Editor: Editor’s Notes AG/MW: KG:

By Name(s) of Writer(s) (# of words) words Outquote(s): At least two

Outquote(s) Focus Sentence: Summarize the focus of the story in one sentence For example: An Underrated Department The Spectator / Copy / Issue 2 AG/MW: Can this please be in SBC (Seen By Copy) tonight?

Thanks.

KG:

By Vincent Jiang 803 words Outquote(s): “I just want the ten people who actually edit in this department to get some form of recognition.” – Michelle Lai, sophomore and Copy Editor “7-page articles are my favorites!” – Venus Nnadi, junior and Copy Editor Focus Sentence: Three grammar freaks fight to bring attention to their department.

Page 4

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Art Spectator Art Editor Application

By Jarett Lee Name: Jarett Lee (you can call me Mr. Art Editor though) Grade: So is a super-senior grade 13, or is it like 12.5?

What other extracurricular activities do you partake?

I’m an active member of the Stuyvesant Confessions and Stuyvesant Memes Facebook pages, where I’ve actively read, analyzed, and provided commentary to the content in the form of angery reaccs.

Anyways, I actually did direct SING! tech crew, but I had to retire from hearing loss due to my fellow director Pardeep Singh screaming at people to move out of the way.

Nowadays, I just sing Christmas

carols with Mr. Mott on the subway. It’s actually really gratifying to see the awestruck (or is it dumbstruck?) faces of commuters when they realize that the best Christmas carols really are sung in March.

Can you use Photoshop, Clip Studio, Paint SAI, or other editing/ drawing programs? If so, which ones?

I have no clue what any of those things are. Are those made up? Those are totally made up right? I usually use my calculator to draw my pieces so I’m not too clear on these new fancy drawing programs.

If you’re talking about that new TI-Nspire junk, I don’t dabble in that. I don’t think it’s very fair that we need to have expensive calculators to be considered artistic.

Describe an experience when you

stood out as a leader.

One time I had a group presentation—we had a few weeks to do it—but I had to go to New Jersey to visit family for a day. Anyways, I was fully prepared to take the L, but my group members weren’t having it.

Thus, I took one for the team and pulled the fire alarm. We had to evacuate—I can’t believe they made us walk two blocks; I would’ve never pulled the alarm had I known. My group ended up getting a zero because my teacher saw me pull the alarm, but I’m inclined to believe that it’s the effort that counts.

Why do you want to be an art editor? What makes you qualified?

I think that I’d be a great fit for the next Editor in Chief because I’m pretty certain the current EICs are running a corrupt breeding

ground for nepotism—how in the world did SophFrosh SING! lose to Junior SING!? Under my leadership, we can “Make the Spectator Great Again and Drain The Swamp.”

I’m the most qualified applicant. I know; you know; everyone knows. Don’t let the fake media fool you.

List an idea for a comic series.

Could we get some artists to work on my fanfics? What about a 20-page spread of my portraits?

List an idea for art spreads.

Jeez, do I have to think of everything for y’all? No wonder The Spectator always seems to need new editors. I don’t mean to be rude, but if my ideas are actually used, am I going to get proper credit?

Even if The Spectator is basically fake news and only prints

what the Crooked Administration tells it to print, I expect to receive credit for my revolutionary ideas.

If I’m not credited, it’s deadass Battery after 10th. Also, don’t touch me ‘cause my dad’s a lawyer.

What changes would you like to make to the current department policies, Spectator Art, or The Spectator in general?

I think that the rule preventing an editor from being involved in the SU is really dumb because Laszlo was a lit editor and an even lit-er SU president, so I think he should’ve kept his job as both.

We should also instill a death penalty for anyone caught throwing a The Spectator onto the bridge.

Tell us any other questions or concerns: So, when do I start?

Memeing Around By the Spectator Art Department

When your English teacher assigns two papers, both due this Friday... it’s Thursday 10:48PM

When stuy makes you realize that you have a small brain and that your only talent is to balance a water bottle on it

When you drink tea because you know that no acid or base can neutralize the salt in your body because they are neutral and dont react with water #stuykids

Daniel Tam / The Spectator

Sarah Chen / The Spectator

You can have a 100 average if you get a 100*number of classes you flunked + 100 in just one class

When you want to be a dentist but end up as a sculptor Alex Lin / The Spectator

Sally Chen / The Spectator

When art can’t do the meme spread and humor comes in to save the day

Rachel Zhang / The Spectator

Rachel Zhang / The Spectator

When your colleagues talk about that rowdy kid in their class and you see them in the hallway for the first time

Rachel Zhang / The Spectator

When a meme baby looks healthier than me

Angel Zheng / The Spectator

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

Opinions

He Said, She Said: What Students and Teachers Want Each Other to Know Opinions editor and sophomore Jane Rhee explores the underlying dynamics of student-teacher relationships by asking the Stuyvesant community what the counterparts should realize about one another. see pages 12-13

Volume 107 No. 12

NEWSBEAT The Science Olympiad team competed at the Science

Olympiad States Tourna-

ment on Thursday, March 9.

The Model United Nations team competed at EagleMUNC on Friday, March 17. Sophomores Joshua Weiner, Emily Furman, and Julia Arancio as well as senior Lorenz Vargas won the awards for Best Delegate.

Junior Shameek Rakshit won first place in the category of Senior Individual Website at the

27th Annual NYC History Day Competition. Juniors Kristin Lin, Jenny Gao, and Samantha Ngo placed first

in the Senior Group Website division. Juniors Anne Chen,

Anya Wang, Eugene Thomas, Venus Nnadi, and Vivian Lin won second place in the Senior Group Exhibit division.

The Stuyvesant Muslim Association won the award for Second Best Overall Team at the

Muslim Inter-Scholastic Tournament on Saturday, March 18.

A&E

Raindrop, Drop Top (Drop Top)…

The Impact of “Culture” on Hip-hop

Junior William Hong reviews “Culture” by Migos, placing the popular album into the context of the Atlanta hip-hop scene and exploring the lyrics, innovations, and shortcomings of Migos’ latest work. see page 18

March 31, 2017

stuyspec.com

Meet the 2017-2018 Big Sibs Chairs

By Nishmi Abeyweera and Shameek Rakshit, with additional reporting by Blythe Zadrozny Juniors Kevin Li‎, Max Onderdonk, Charlotte Ruhl, Leila Storkamp, and Aren Tucker have been chosen as the 20172018 Big Sib Chairs. Excited and ready for the year ahead of them, each chair hopes to bring something different to the table.

The selection process for Big Sibs Chairs is both a long and rigorous journey. This year’s Big Sib Chairs were chosen by the 2016-2017 Big Sib Chairs: seniors Chloé Delfau, Liam Elkind, Jean Joun, Olivia Kusio, and Benjamin Zhang. After filling out an application as well as submitting both teacher and Little Sib recommendations, candidates were further narrowed down based on grades and attendance. A personal interview in front of their predecessors and two guidance counselors finally secured each new Big Sib Chair their positions.

“We were really focused on compatibility. We picked the five who we thought would work best together and complement each other,” Delfau said.

“We feel that we worked really well together so we wanted a group that would do the same.”

The new chairs are looking forward to using that group dynamic to implement their ideas for the program.

Li is an active member of Stuyvesant’s Lincoln-Douglas Debate team and plays for the varsity boys’ volleyball team. Li hopes to spur greater interaction between Big Sibs and Little Sibs.

“After Camp Stuy finishes, [Big Sibs] only get to see their Little Sibs once in a while and [they] don’t really get to build a close relationship with them. We want Little Sibs to meet their Big Sibs out of homeroom as well,” Li said.

Storkamp’s Little Sib experience played a large role in her decision to become a Big Sib Chair.

“One of my Big Sibs, Shannon [Lee], who ended up being Big Sib Chair, really reached out to me,” Storkamp said. “Seeing her face

Mika Simoncelli / The Spectator

The team won 10th place overall. Juniors Shiva Vummidi and Jenny Gao won first in the Ecology division. Juniors Nikita Borisov and Andrew Chen placed second in the Material Science category.

Senior Elaine Ng and junior Despoina Sparakis took second place in the Wind Power division.

every other week really brightened my day. I can safely say that I wouldn’t be the confident person I am without her and [...]

I wanted to have that kind of effect on the incoming freshman.”

Storkamp is a participant in both SING! and Stuy Squad. She is also a member of Stuyvesant’s girls’ lacrosse team and competes in national events as a member of Stuyvesant’s Speech team.

Tucker had also been heavily influenced to become a Big Sib Chair from his years as a Little Sib. “[The Big Sibs] as a source of guidance and support is necessary for all the incoming freshmen, and developing this program [...] and working on ways to strengthen it is essential,” Tucker said.

Tucker, who is a member of Stuyvesant’s Piano Club as well as a volunteer for Stuyvesant Red Cross, also hopes that he can bring Big Sibs and Little Sibs closer through individual meetings with each Little Sib and their respective Big Sibs.

Like the others, Ruhl believes her experience as a Little Sib gave her a natural reason to become a Big Sib. “I know it’s scary when you first come to Stuy[vesant] so it’s nice to know that there are people there to support you and comfort you,” Ruhl said.

“I just wanted to give back to

the school because I know how daunting this experience can be.”

Ruhl, who is a member of Stuyvesant’s girls’ soccer team and girls’ softball team, encourages underclassmen to fully immerse themselves in the Stuyvesant community and enjoy all that the school has to offer. “Don’t be afraid to go out of your comfort zone. I know I wish I tried out more things during freshman year,” Ruhl said. “There are so many opportunities and awesome people at Stuy[vesant] so don’t be afraid to try something new. The worst thing that happens is that you don’t like it.”

Onderdonk, who is a member of Stuyvesant’s boys’ baseball team and is an editor of The Spectator Sports Department, wants to ensure that Stuyvesant is more than just a school to the incoming class. “Be happy. Too many people think Stuy[vesant] is just a pathway to college,” Onderdonk said. “Do things that make you happy and enjoy the experience at Stuy[vesant].”

To achieve this, Onderdonk seeks to draw from the example that his Big Sib Rose Cytryn (‘15) set. “I want to have the same impact on incoming Freshman and Sophomores that Rose had on me,” Onderdonk said. “She turned what seemed to be a scary transition

into a smooth and fun process.”

The new chairs hope to encourage underclassmen to interact with each other and their Big Sibs to enrich their experience at Stuyvesant. To do this, the chairs plan to host more community events such as the summer picnic for incoming freshmen. “The picnic [helps incomers] talk with not only people in [their] own homeroom but also in different homerooms, [...] so that when [they] go into Stuy, [they] already know people. Another idea is that final push for perfect Big Sib attendance in homerooms,” Storkamp said.

To help the incoming class open up and try new things, Ruhl has also proposed arranging more meetings between Big Sibs and Little Sibs and spirit days. These events, including basketball games and more picnics, would help underclassmen interact with each other and their Big Sibs more.

The chairs are confident that the diversity of their backgrounds and shared enthusiasm will help them work together to make the upcoming year of the program a success. “We have different friends, different interests, and different ideas, but that will help us come together and work really well,” Ruhl said.

Cheating Discovered in The Spanish Department

By Chloe Doumar and Queenie Xiang

The foreign language department launched an investigation after Spanish teacher Abigail Carpenter received reports about students cheating on online homework in her Spanish III class in late February. The administration, led by Assistant Principal of World Languages Dr. Ernest Oliveri, discovered that students in other Spanish III classes and in some French classes were posting homework answers on Facebook class groups.

Vista Higher Learning Central (VHL), a textbook publishing company used by most of the foreign language depart-

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

ment, allows teachers to assign online homework that students complete through their website.

Teachers may choose how many attempts students are given to complete the homework before it is officially scored. Many Spanish teachers assign most, if not all, of their homework through the VHL website.

While some students have used the argument that cheating is inevitable at a competitive school, Interim Acting Principal Eric Contreras disagrees. “I don’t think that it is inevitable. Inevitability means there aren’t choices and we all have a choice when we cheat,” Contreras said.

Many students are members of the Facebook groups in which the cheated occurred, but

the evidence is circumstantial.

Students who were suspected of participating in the cheating were called into a meeting with the administration, including Assistant Principal of Security, Health and Physical Education Brian Moran. All students who were found to be directly involved had an additional meeting with Dean and physical education teacher Vasken Choubaralian.

According to Stuyvesant’s policies, students who commit a first offense of academic dishonesty receive a warning and their parents and guidance counselors are informed. Students who commit a second offense receive suspension.

In addition to the school’s

academic dishonesty punishments, the foreign language department made the decision to give all students directly involved zeros on multiple assignments.

The department also acted swiftly to implement new homework and classroom policies designed to combat future cheating. Many teachers have begun to give frequent pop quizzes and only allow one attempt to correctly complete VHL homework assignments. “I think […] especially the pop quizzes will eliminate the cheating. If [students] are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, then the [pop quizzes] will probably be really easy,” Choubaralian said.

When the one-try

homework policy was implemented, many students took to social media, especially Facebook, to express their opinions on their homework grade being based on the accuracy of their work instead of solely on completion. Simple mistakes such as placing an extra space between words or failing to capitalize can cause the homework question to be marked wrong by the VHL online system, and no partial credit is given. “I think the program itself is created in a very bad way,” Chowdhury said, “If you have five questions and you miss a comma, that is minus 20 right there, and if you get an 80 on one homework that ruins your entire homework average.”

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 6

News Stuyvesant Conservators Club Saves Ancient Roman Shoes

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and NASA

WORLDBEAT

Mika Simoncelli / The Spectator

A man identified as Khalid Masood drove a car into a crowd outside the British Parliament in London and stabbed a police officer on Wednesday, March 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack which left five people, including the attacker, dead. This is the deadliest terrorist attack in the United Kingdom since the July 2005 bombings in London.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy was victorious in the Dutch general election as farright politician Geert Wilders fell short of expectations.

Wilders’ Party for Freedom, which campaigned extensively on an anti-immigrant and Islamophobic platform, was expected to emerge as the largest party. The election was widely seen as an indication of the strength of the wave of populism sweeping the Western world.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye became the first democratically elected South Korean leader to be impeached on Friday, March 10. The country’s Supreme Court upheld the Parliament’s decision to remove her from power after allegations of corruption.

The United States banned electronic devices larger than smartphones from the cabin baggage on flights from eight Middle Eastern and African countries. The United Kingdom soon issued a similar ban affecting six Middle Eastern and African countries. Passengers flying through from these countries must place their laptops, tablets, and other large electronic devices in their checked baggage.

FBI is investigating ties between members of the Trump administration and Russia in his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. The inquiry is part of ongoing effort to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. Comey also denounced President Trump’s claims about President Obama wiretapping him.

FBI Director James Comey revealed that the

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan withdrew the Republican Party’s plan to repeal Obamacare after failing to win enough support to pass the bill in the House of Representatives. The bill was widely criticized after the Congressional Budget Office revealed that millions of Americans would lose their healthcare coverage and that the plan would cost taxpayers more money.

President Trump released his budget proposal on Thursday,

March 16. The plan proposes large cuts in funding for most government agencies and a $54 billion increase in spending for the Department of Defense. The budget cuts have been widely criticized for the effect they will have on the government’s ability to deliver services to people.

By Chloe Doumar and Grace Tang The Conservators Club, a club headed by junior Gloria Ghita, held a ceremony on Wednesday, March 22, in recognition of the club’s successful efforts to save two ancient Roman shoes. This ceremony was held in Interim Acting Principal Eric Contreras’s office and was attended by the members of The Conservators Club, Italian teacher Pasqua Rocchio, who is the club’s advisor, and Contreras.

The shoes are part of a larger discovery of 421 Roman shoes at an archaeological dig last year in Vindolanda, which is in Northern England near Hadrian’s Wall. Each shoe costs approximately $111 to preserve.

The shoes date back to approximately 212 C.E. and give historians more information as to how the Romans lived.

Inspired by Rocchio, the club was first founded in November 2015. “The club started out of my AP Italian class over a handout that I gave to the students that talked about art preservation in Italy. One of the students was inspired and decided to start a conservation club,” Rocchio said.

The Conservators Club’s

mission is to preserve various cultures and cultural artifacts. “[Preserving culture and artifacts] is very important because today’s society is based on the foundation of what came before us,” Ghita said.

A second goal of the club is for Stuyvesant students to become more aware of careers in conservation and preservation.

Club meetings discuss future

money to visit Italy in the summer to see cultural heritage sites.

This year was the first year that the club had managed to organize a big event. “I brought the idea [of trying to save the Roman shoes] to the club and the club decided that they wanted to have a bake sale [...] we sent the money to Vindolanda and they sent us the certificates of conservation,” Rocchio said.

“I brought the idea [of trying to save the Roman shoes] to the club and the club decided that they wanted to have a bake sale [...] we sent the money to Vindolanda and they sent us the certificates of conservation.”

—Pasqua Rocchio, Italian teacher fundraisers and further artifacts to preserve. “We are also organizing trips to visit communities centers to learn about their cultures,” Vice President of the Conservator’s Club Rubin Peci said. The Conservators Club is also trying to raise enough

“We sold cookies and different baked goods that the students brought in,” Peci said.

The club will continue working, and their next project is to preserve the terraces of the Philippines by adopting them and working with RICE, Inc.

Free New York Times Subscription for Stuyvesant Community

By Chloe Doumar, Chloe Hanson, and Mai Rachlevsky The Student Union (SU) signed a one year contract on Thursday, March 9, giving all Stuyvesant students and faculty free access to The New York Times (NYT) online. All students and faculty with a stuy. edu e-mail address are eligible to claim a free All-Digital Access online subscription to The NYT. The subscription will give users unlimited access to NYT articles and other content including blogs and multimedia.

For someone without a free subscription, it would cost $3.75 per week to buy basic online access to The NYT. The new subscription is a result of the efforts of Student Union Vice President Tahseen Chowdhury. Chowdhury initially reached out to The NYT in November 2016, but at the time, the cost to get a school-wide subscription was $9,000, and it was determined to be too expensive for the school’s budget. Chowdhury was inspired to reach out to The NYT again after a Stuyve-

sant student approached him in the hallway, asking whether getting school-wide access to The NYT might be possible.

In response to Chowdhury’s original e-mails, a representative of The NYT reached out to Chowdhury, offering a free subscription to the online paper.

The free access came about as a result of an NYT fundraising program aimed at giving schools access to The NYT, irrespective of the school’s ability to pay. In the end, the agreement was reached quickly.

“They ended up reaching out to me via e-mail and I was like, let’s do it. It was done in a couple of hours,” Chowdhury said.

Many students believe this new access will have a lot of benefits. “We can use The New York Times to do homework and maybe with this free access to The [New York] Times, [students] might look at news more often,” freshman Evelyn Cao said.

Teachers are also excited and supportive of this new resource. “A bunch of teachers have e-mailed me and they have been very happy about this because it is another re-

source for them. Especially in a time when there is fake news and a ton of media issues, it is important that we know what is going on and we have reliable resources available to us and

because I’m not subscribed.

This is a major radical improvement for the Stuy[vesant] community,” Ngai said.

However, there are differing opinions as to the actual impact

this is a great opportunity for Stuy[vesant] students, it will not be taken fully taken advantage of,” junior Daniel Knopf said.

Although the contract signed by the SU is only for one year,

“A bunch of teachers have e-mailed me and they have been very happy about this because it is another resource for them. Especially in a time when there is fake news and a ton of media issues it is important that we know what is going on and we have reliable resources available to us and The NYT, I believe, is a very reliable resource.”

—Tahseen Chowdhury, Student Union Vice President The NYT, I believe, is a very reliable resource,” Chowdhury said.

Guidance counselor Vivien Ngai has already signed up for the new NYT subscription. “I am super super excited. I [read] The New York Times headlines every single day, but when I want to go deeper it stops me

the new subscription will have on Stuyvesant’s access to the paper, and overall, the relevance it has to students. “I feel like most of the people who would read The New York Times are people whose families already have subscriptions to newspapers. My general impression is that while

they are hopeful that The NYT will decide to renew it. “I think we’ll extend it into the next year. It usually gets extended.

In terms of the paperwork, it is a year. Of course, if they ask me to renew it, I will definitely renew it. It is a good thing for everyone,” Chowdhury said.

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

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Page 7

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 8

Features How We’re Raised

By Cathy Cai Stuyvesant students are often praised for their academic success and celebrated for their multitude of accomplishments, but lesser known are the efforts of the parents of the students.

Perhaps one of the biggest curiosities at Stuyvesant is what goes on behind the scenes—the diverse family dynamics that contribute to student life.

For sophomore Emily Xu, there has always been an understanding between her and her relatively lenient parents. “I have to say, though, I know they do care about me,” she started off. “But our relationship has never been them controlling everything I do.”

Although Xu’s parents have never berated her about her social or academic life, that’s not to say that they are simply dismissive of her well-being.

In terms of schoolwork, Xu admits that she hasn’t been completely honest with them about her grades.

“They’re not very strict a b o u t my schoolwork because I just don’t update them on my schoolwork,” Xu said with a laugh.

“Like I haven’t shown them my test scores or even my report card yet.”

However, even without the pressure to do well in school that some students get, Xu emphasized that it in no way gives her an incentive to slack off in school.

“I know how to handle my grades,” she said. “They can trust me.”

In terms of her social life, they are more concerned about her safety rather than who she is hanging out with or what she is doing.

“When I first started doing SING!, during one of our really late practices, I told my dad that I was going to come home around 7:30, and he was sort of worried about it. He told me that he was concerned for my academics,” she said. “But I had a talk with him, and I explained that SING! was something really important to me, and I didn’t want all the practices we’ve had so far to go to waste. After that, he understood and was fine with the late practices.”

There are, however, slight parenting discrepancies between her parents. “My dad is semi-strict, but my mom is chill with everything I do,” Xu explained. Xu has to tiptoe around certain issues in front of her dad.

Though, he is not completely unreasonable about her wishes.

But then again, she added, “They don’t get into disagreements on how to discipline me.”

Sophomore Robin Han’s parents, however, take a different approach. While they don’t micro-manage every step he takes

in his life, they do put a significant emphasis on his academic life.

When he gets home from school, his parents make sure he finishes his schoolwork as soon as possible. “They basically watch over every single one of my grades,” Han said.

But this doesn’t mean that they give him free reign. “If I mess a test up, they will go over the entire thing with me, and make me do practice problems based on the questions I got wrong,” he continued. His parents’ efforts to manage his schoolwork greatly contributes to his motivation to study.

Test review is, however, a small part of the journey when compared to test prepa- ration.

“I feel like if they were more lenient,” Han concluded, “ultimately, nothing would change.

I’d get less sleep than I get now, but I’d still do decently well in school.”

The case is different for sophomore Alexander Radu, who admitted that without his parents’ strict parenting methods, he would not be at his current academic standing. Similarly to Robin Han, his parents exhibit polarizing parenting methods.

“My mom is really tough on me,” Radu began. “She looks through all my tests and controls how much I go out and hang with friends.” If he goes out one weekend, for instance, she forces him to stay in and study the entire

dards, considering both her parents were doctors,” Radu said.“This idea that in order to do well academically, the parents need to be strict runs in the family.”

Radu’s father, by contrast, is very lenient for the same reason. “He doesn’t restrict me that much because he grew up in a different kind of household,” Radu said.

But Radu has another theory—that this may also be connected with their races. “My dad is Caucasian, and my mom is Chinese,” he said. “While I don’t think that their parenting is stereotypical, they do have different priorities.”

While his mother pushes for his academic success, his father

Fareeha Tabassum/ The Spectator

“If I have a very important test or competition coming up, about a month before, my dad won’t let me go outside,” Han said, “He wants to know where I am at all times. I have to come home right after school.” Even on weeknights, he would spend one or two hours prepping for a major exam.

But just like Xu, Han’s parents have discrepancies in parenting methods. “It’s mainly my dad,” Han said. “My dad believes in a hands-on approach to learning, but my mom doesn’t think so.”

Different from Xu, Han’s parents do often get into disagreements on how to raise him.

This is not to say that Han isn’t appreciative that his parents take the time out to help him in his studies. “I’m not always on top of my game, like I push things off a lot, but my dad is always on the side pushing me,” Han said. “He just wants me to get my homework done, so I get more sleep.”

Nevertheless, Han admits that even though his strict parents do encourage him to study, by this point, he would have the motivation either way. Han believes that in the end, the strict parenting style has instilled in him a sense of routine, and the studying schedules that his dad instilled in him will still be adhered to.

next weekend.

His mother controlled his choices for as long as Radu can remember. “Like when I was little, I was given two choices— violin or piano. I had to choose,” Radu said. “Even now, I have to practice for at least seven hours a week, and if I can’t practice on weekdays, I have to practice on weekends.”

Like Han, Radu prefers these restrictions to his complete independence. “Of course, when I was little, I really wanted my mom to change and not be as strict,” Radu said. “But now, I actually think her strictness helped me improve academically and pushed me to continue pursuing piano.”

Without his mother constantly hovering over him, Radu admits that he would slack off.

He wouldn’t study for tests and definitely wouldn’t practice seven hours a week in the piano.

“She keeps me in check,” Radu said.

But this does not mean that Radu completely listens to his mother either. “Sometimes, I’d be able to sneak in a bad grade,” he said. “But if she catches me, there’d be really bad consequences.”

Radu believes that his mom’s strict parenting method is, in part, due to her equally strict upbringing. “She grew up in a household with very strict stan-

wants him to go outside and play a sport. “I think, however, I would raise my children similarly to how my parents raised me.” Radu mentioned. “I would develop a sports hobby for them by getting them lessons, and after middle school, advise them to focus more on academics.”

“Even though I would get frustrated at my parents sometimes, in the end, I think their different parenting methods really cancel each other out,” Radu said.

For senior Shirley Chan, however, her time at Stuyvesant has changed her parents’ parenting techniques.

They’re neither strict nor lenient; they’re, simply, realistic.

“I would consider my parents in the middle,” Chan said.

“They’ve just accepted who I am as a student and what type of grades I typically get and have just pushed me to try harder instead of setting up idealistic guidelines.” Compared to elementary school, however, this was a huge change. Her parents don’t expect her to fail or get below an eighty on a test, but at the same time, the consequences of her doing so are not severe. “[The transition] started slowly in freshmen year,” Chan said. Straight out of middle school, she retained the mindset that she can get good grades without trying hard or studying.

However, her dismal first report card gave her a reality check.

“My parents were angry at first,” she said. “But despite my best efforts, obviously paired with procrastination, I still stuck around a mediocre grade range.”

But luckily, they understood.

“As my parents saw more and more report cards,” Chan continued, “I’d like to think they saw that I wasn’t as good in academics like they perceived in middle school and let go of their Ivy League and 95 average expectations.”

Chan’s parents saw that Stuyvesant was a hard school and knew that even strict parenting m e t h ods cannot change the fact that she was doing the best she could.

The best Chan did, h ow e v e r, was not what she could do.

“I slacked quite a bit without the looming threat of my parents being extremely angry from a grade,” Chan admitted. She wanted to both enjoy her life as a high school student and do decent in school.

As for Chan’s social life, however, her parents have always been more lenient. Not only do they always let her hang out with her friends, but even when Chan breaks curfew, they are understanding.

For instance, there was one case last year when Chan’s coworkers at her summertime job wanted to hang out together at Dave and Busters. Chan went, stayed until 12:30 in the morning, and didn’t get home until over an hour later. “But my mom even offered to drive me home and didn’t complain about the time,” Chan said.

Reflecting upon her parents influence on her overall, Chan explained, “Ultimately, them being more lenient let me have more respect for them, as they weren’t imposing ridiculously high expectations.”

Had they proposed that perfect Ivy-League GPA or rules on how long she could hang out with her friends, perhaps Chan wouldn’t have listened to them in the first place. Chan said, “I’m glad they learned to accept reality.”

In all these cases, there is a congenial relationship between the children and the parents, regardless of how strict or how lenient the parents are. Part of the reason is because having been together for so long, parents need to use a discipline method that both caters to their desires and is accepted without too much dissent from their kids. Everyone is raised differently, because each family functions in a way that only works for them.

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

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Page 10

Opinions He Said, She Said: What Teachers and Students Want Each Other to Know

By jane rhee

Passive aggressive Facebook statuses posted in the early morning and whispered complaints in the teacher’s lounge between periods highlight what seems to be a given— teachers and students don’t always understand each other. We asked six teachers and six students to respond to the question, “What do you wish students/teachers would realize?” through in-person and e-mail interviews. Here are the responses we received.

Hanah Jun, Sophomore

Sean Takada, Sophomore

I wish that some teachers would listen to students as if they were almost peers.

Sometimes, teachers tend to ignore messages from students or come up with arbitrary excuses for mistakes that they make, rather than owning up to their mistakes. Teachers sometimes tend to look down upon students and consider them all completely naïve children, though most of the students who care to approach a teacher about their work act like young, sophisticated adults.

Rodda John, Senior

One thing that I wish some teachers could change is how they treat students based on their first impressions. A student might start off the marking period poorly, but if both the teacher and the student are committed then the student can most likely start to show more improvement.

However, some teachers aren’t exactly passionate about helping students out and I feel that doesn’t help motivate the student.

Anton Solodkov, Junior My biggest problem is zealous, homework-giving teachers.

I hate it when teachers seem to view it as their duty to transform all their students into prodigious lovers of whatever subject it is they teach. We’re all already overloaded just simply with classes and commutes. We are, as you so often remind us, some of the smartest teenagers in the city, who don’t need to be cajoled like animals to do tedious

daily assignments. If we want to learn, if we are behind, we’ll catch up. The worst part is that homework is almost never the answer in any scenario. If it’s for a class I enjoy, then it’s simply grunt work that takes more effort to pen down than to actually think about. If it’s for a class I’m struggling in, it only forces me to realize that I can’t do it and fall into a spiral of missing homework and falling behind.

Also, if there is good [online] content out there, teachers shouldn’t be afraid to utilize it, and then supplement that content with explanations and topics it might not have touched on.

We live in an age of technology, and we have to embrace that fully. Teachers are no longer the sole source for knowledge on a subject, and they shouldn’t be threatened by that, but rather use it to their advantage.

What I want teachers to know is how much we appreciate them, and value what they teach us, even if we almost never say it. We, as students, know that when a teacher assigns an assignment, it is to expand our knowledge base. And sure, we may complain in the short term, but we most certainly will not in the long term. Let’s make it known to teachers how much we value and appreciate the work, the intellectual discussions, and the not-so-intellectual discussions. We have a lot to learn from all of you, and I want you to know that I look forward to every minute of it.

Victoria Huang / The Spectator

Shuhong Jiang / The Spectator

I get it. Homework is important, and I don’t blame you.

But I have seven other classes besides your own, totaling up to eight classes. If each class gives half an hour of homework, that’s four hours. To all my teachers, imagine four hours of homework every day in addition to your typical schedule. Also, don’t forget those four tests coming up later in the week. Moreover, the fact that 60 percent of my grade depends on my test is unfair. I can’t believe that 40 minutes and a sheet of paper can affect my grade so much, while my effort and participation over the course of weeks are barely accounted for.

Shuhong Jiang / The Spectator

Michelle Yang, Sophomore

Shuhong Jiang / The Spectator

Students

Hillary Hao, Junior I wish teachers knew the weight college puts onto my shoulders. I wish they knew that every time I step into that classroom, every time I raise my hand, every scantron I fill in, can feel like a step backwards from my dream school, a step backwards from seeing my own value as greater than a number.

I wish teachers knew what it was to go through a week of tests, to feel as if you’re going to fail every single one simply because there just isn’t enough time. Yet I know that they’re paving the way for something greater, for a student that can and will make a difference in the world. I wish they knew that.

Shuhong Jiang / The Spectator

Eric Grossman, European Literature and AP Great Books Teacher

Being successful in class, doing well, is largely a function of finding a way to care about it and to be interested about it.

Like going to the gym, whether I’m in the mood to do it or not, if I run on the treadmill for 20 minutes, it’s good for my cardio.

Reading and writing are different. You can scan your eyes across a page and take just as long as someone else scanning their eyes across the page. But unless you can find a way to be interested in it, you’re not going to get much from that book.

And that’s what makes English different from some other disciplines. While there are certain skills involved, the things that make your writing authentic, the things that make your role in class meaningful and valuable, are asking good questions which emerge from genuine interest. Insight emerges from genuine interest, and being interested is a skill.

Teachers

continued on page 13

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 11

Opinions He Said, She Said: What Teachers and Students Want Each Other to Know

Dr. Zachary Berman, AP World History and Freshman Global History Teacher

I was just talking to my colleague about what type of work students do at home versus in class […] I used to send students with long primary source readings and I didn’t realize that they’re too distracted with Facebook and things to get that done

[…] but they’re perfectly capable of doing them, it isn’t an issue that they’re not prepared, it’s an issue of finding something that they can focus on. It’s the quantity, I thought students weren’t going to be able to handle the challenge of the reading. But it turns out it’s not the challenge, it’s finding one that’s the right length, and presenting it at the right time. Students are capable of just about anything as long as it’s the right amount.

One thing I always tell my students is that it’s always better to do the work than to not do it because it’s not good enough.

Even when I was in graduate school, the thing that would usually kill students is that they would just not complete their papers because they were afraid they weren’t good enough. That’s definitely the secret to success in college - to turn everything in on time even if it’s not good enough.

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David Peng, Geometry Teacher

ZhenHong Chen / The Spectator

Shuhong Jiang / The Spectator

1. Grades aren’t a measure of your intelligence. Not at all. Not even a little bit. All that grades measure is your work ethic, or how you adjusted so far to this sort of lifestyle, and it’s not for everyone. I hate grades […] But unfortunately, it’s my job to issue them.

2. Even though this is a math and science school, art and music are as important. Science and math come hand in hand with music and art; it’s all

about creativity and a different way of looking at things and they should feed each other and help each other out. You require the same work ethic to be good at either one of them and they help you be a more interesting person and a better person all around.

3. Know how to be grateful. Being here is a huge privilege. Nothing is a given in life and just the fact that you’re here and using what the school has to offer is a privilege. It’s stressful, it sucks a lot of the time, but ultimately, if you don’t care about the grades themselves, you should still be grateful that you’re here you have all of these resources and you are surrounded by smart people […] that’s awesome!

Treat this place and the people who work here with respect.

4. People’s appearances or job titles aren’t necessarily defining features of their personalities.

Just because I teach [computer science] doesn’t mean I’m not an artist. Assuming things about people, and lots of students do that about each other, don’t assume stuff simply based on appearances.

continued from page 12

One thing I always encourage in my students is to always put in conscientious effort. I want my students to always try and attempt to solve any problem because even if they are wrong, it’s always a learning experience. Many students are just too afraid to speak up and be incorrect, and I try to foster a culture of error in my classroom where it’s okay to make mistakes. I think this year I’ve made

it a point that it’s okay to make these mistakes in class because other students will benefit, and they’re probably thinking the same thing. Even in life, you’re not going to be perfect or correct all the time. It’s better to make mistakes, acknowledge them and learn from them than to live in fear of being wrong.

Some of these habits (work ethics, learning from mistakes) students are developing now can carry over in real life, especially during college.

I remember when I was in college, during freshman year, all these other students panicked when there was a midterm, a paper due, presentations, or all three. But all my [Stuyvesant] friends and I were fine because we learned how to handle academic stress from [Stuyvesant].

I implore the students here to be patient and struggle and persevere through these challenges because [Stuyvesant] really prepares you for the future, both for the next four years in college and in life.

David Hanna, AP European History and AP US History Teacher

Mika Simoncelli/ The Spectator

At John Dewey High School, my BC [Calculus] class was made up of all immigrants […] there were students from Hong Kong, or Russia, some from the Philippines, and because I was only a little older than they were, I actually formed a very close relationship with them and I am still friends with some of them to this day. Now they have children of their own, so after they graduated, we just became very close friends.

So back then, because I was so young, I understood teenagers in a different way because I was just so close in age to them. But now that I’m a mother, I definitely realize that teenagers are still children, they have to be taken care of, they still have the basic needs that children have, and they’re not as grown up as I used to think they were.

I also wish the students knew that there’s no shame in struggling in math. Sometimes students feel ashamed that they have to struggle or work really hard and I just want them to know that eventually, everybody is going to struggle in mathematics. Some struggle earlier than others, and that’s all right. I get so few visits in my office from students asking for help because they don’t want to show me what they don’t know and I wish they would because I’m not judging them.

Ms. Yulla Genkina, Computer Science Teacher

Shuhong Jiang / The Spectator

ZhenHong Chen / The Spectator

Debbie Goldberg, Algebra 2/ Trigonometry and Freshman Math Team Teacher

There’s a direct link between reading a lot, especially reading higher level literature or nonfiction or journalism, and your writing […] it really has an impact and I don’t think students

realize that.

As a student, I used to like humanities courses. I didn’t like science (except biology) and math that much. I think it’s important that teachers are really interested and knowledgeable in their subject instead of teachers who are more interested in ingratiating themselves with students and so I try to remind myself of that as a teacher, that that’s what’s important, the subject. That’s what I felt as a student, when I knew I had a teacher that knew what they were talking about and what they were doing more than whether they were my buddy or even what degree they had; there was more to it than that.

It’s a combination of knowledge and enthusiasm. Enthusiasm isn’t enough.

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 12

Opinions

Ting Ting Chen / The Spectator

Being Jewish Under Trump

By Ben Platt My father grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and my mother grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They experienced little anti-Semitism growing up, partly because large numbers of Jews lived in their communities, and there were peaceful relations with the Christians that lived alongside them. They never reported hearing antiSemitic slurs or seeing swastikas drawn on walls. My parents were

accepted in their communities and were able to coexist with their neighbors regardless of religious belief.

However, these safe havens that my parents peacefully grew up in have been rocked in turmoil recently. Jewish cemeteries were vandalized in St. Louis and Philadelphia, with tombstones being knocked over. Each time this happens, it feels like a little piece of me is knocked over as well. Anti-Semitism is nothing new to Jews; much of our history involves fleeing people who virulently hate us, yet America is supposed to be different. It was designed to be open to all regardless of race or creed, which is precisely why Jews have flourished and found a safe haven in the U.S. What went wrong?

Was it the rise of fake news and accusations that Jewish billionaires like financier George Soros were rigging our political system? Or was it the constant accusations from Donald Trump throughout his campaign that Hillary Clinton was meeting with international bankers to plan a new global order—a well-known anti-Semitic trope?

Maybe it was the lack of mention of Jews in the White House press statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Donald Trump understands the power of words just as well as anybody, so it’s not as if the omission of Jews from this statement was an accident.

There has been a noticeable increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. Thirty-one Jewish community centers and day schools received bomb threats and had to be evacuated on Monday, February 27. My eightyear-old cousin was in a community center that had to be evacuated because of a threat.

He is young enough to not understand that it was because of his religion that he had to evacuate, but he knew that something ‘bad’ was happening.

Thankfully, these threats were no more than just that, threats, but next time it could be far worse.

Fifty-seven percent of all hate crimes are motivated towards Jews, according to the FBI. Given all of these threats to Jews, our President should deliver a strong rebuke to this scary trend, in the form of a speech or

some other highly visible public forum, especially since our president has a Jewish daughter and three Jewish grandchildren.

Moreover, it falls upon everyone to be vigilant against anti-Semitic behavior and hateful behavior of any kind, calling it out right when it is seen and then making clear such actions are not welcomed. Going to protests, signing petitions, and contacting local legislators are all ways to make your voice heard.

I have heard anti-Semitic comments myself from classmates at Stuyvesant and from people on the subway. It’s something that I have struggled to respond to because it is such a emotionally charged topic. Oftentimes people are ignorant of the struggle that Jewish people have endured as a minority always on the run.

Am I facing as much danger from Trump’s administration as undocumented immigrants or Muslims? No, but the fact that so many religious and racial groups have seen hate crimes increase because Trump is willfully ignorant or even encouraging such behavior by demonizing immi-

grants and encouraging violence at his rallies is why his presidency is so alarming. This distinction between those who are part of Trump’s America—white, male, Christian—and those who are not is magnified by Trump, when these differences should not be a point of division. I wish

Each time this happens, it feels like a little piece of me is knocked over as well, and I feel more vulnerable than before. that Trump would make America great again, by returning it to the welcoming and accepting culture my parents were able to enjoy.

Trump’s Next Target: Free Press

By Eliza Spinna and Mia Gindis Since 1915, The Stuyvesant Spectator has served not only as an extracurricular activity for thousands of budding journalists, but also as the voice and informant of the student body.

We’ve investigated and published groundbreaking articles about the 2012 cheating scandal and the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. We’ve won awards for our outstanding journalism and our original reporting has been cited by The New York Times.

Any established newspaper, however, is bound to have conflicts with authority. The Spectator published a series of humor and opinions articles in 1998 criticizing individual teachers and the United Federation of Teachers’ employment practices.

In response, the administration changed The Spectator office’s computer passwords and locks, suspending its production until they wrote up a charter.

So, with the help of The Columbia Spectator, The Stuyvesant Spectator editors devised the present c h a rter.

This outlines our succession processes, relationship with the administration, and policies in regards to what we can and cannot publish. The charter frees us from review by all school administrators except our faculty adviser. It gives us consistency and legitimacy, and thus, freedom.

As student journalists, we respect the administration, as long as it does the same for us. However, President Donald Trump does not seem to share this respect for the press. Since the Republican primaries, he’s insulted journalists and newspapers, calling The New York Times “failing” and persistently attacking conservative journalist Megyn Kelly.

The day after his inauguration, he announced he was engaged in “a running war with the media,” whose members he decided were the “the most dishonest human beings

Cien Huang / The Spectator

on Earth.” He’s called legitimate stories by well-established media outlets “fake news.” Most recently, the White House excluded

cians, and publish sensitive content is critical to our democracy.

It is also important to note that the relationship between

roots media organizations cannot cooperate. Preserving friendly relations is critical.

This makes it imperative to

The relationship between the government and the media should be a two-way street: Trump treats the press with respect, and the press in turn publishes a fair, diverse array of news.

multiple news outlets from an off-camera press “gaggle.” These outlets were most likely singled out for their role in investigating ties between the Trump administration and Russian leadership.

These icy relations are appalling and unprecedented in America. Since the invention of the printing press and the rise of newspapers, journalism has often been a critical instrument to investigating and exposing societal issues. Especially now, with politics brimming with scandal on both sides, journalism has a duty to exist and thrive.

For Trump to dismiss this, at least in part because it threatens him politically, is undemocratic. Indeed, the Committee to Protect Journalists finds that censoring and repression of the press and journalists is characteristic of authoritarian regimes. There is no denying that having journalists who are free to ask controversial questions, investigate politi-

the government and the media should be a two-way street: Trump treats the press with respect, and the press in turn publishes a fair, diverse array of news. Liberal and conservativeleaning outlets must constantly check themselves, making sure they are covering stories that portray both Republicans and Democrats in both positive and negative lights. The Media Research Center, after examining multiple news outlets during the campaign season, found that 91 percent of statements about Trump were negative, while Clinton received far less criticism.

CNN president Jeff Zucker took a step in the right direction when he conceded that CNN aired too few Trump rallies and speeches during the election, and said the organization would make a greater effort to show coverage of both Republican and Democrat rallies in the future. As long as journalists are constantly making a distinct effort to eliminate their personal biases and opinions from their coverage, Trump will have no base in his accusations.

As high schoolers and journalists, we cannot let Trump get away with this. Discourse between the administration and the community media must be maintained; it sets a precedent for larger-scale fair journalism.

A vicious cycle is created when press coverage is unjust or when the administration and grass-

maintain values of free press and speech within our own community. The Spectator must publish articles covering both sides of the political spectrum; we cannot stoop to Trump’s level and see only one side. We cannot let his complaints be well-grounded. High school journalists must use legitimate sources and not descend into the world of fake

Especially now, with politics brimming with scandal on both sides, journalism must exist and thrive.

news just to receive more attention. We also must continue to maintain our independence from outside organizations. The Spectator will continue to make 100 percent of its own money. We will continue to cover controversial topics. We will not let Trump silence us.

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 13

Opinions Point-Counterpoint: Should Cities Be Trumped?

By Joshua Weiner In a show of camaraderie and leadership, mayors of America’s largest cities are opposing measures by President Trump which target illegal immigrants for deportation. Opposing executive orders which many see as racist and unfair is a moral high-ground many of our cities’ leaders are taking, but this opposition is not well reasoned. Even though America’s cities have a different agenda than Republican Washington, this alone does not warrant the refusal of mayors to work with Washington; doing so will cause long-term harm to cities in exchange for a short-term political victory.

The critical component of opposing the Trump doctrine is for cities to pick their battles.

Let’s begin by exploring the claim that mayors are looking out for their constituencies by opposing these executive orders from the Trump administration.

Given at least four years of potentially damaging executive orders, more groups than illegal immigrant populations are going to be at risk. However, given the reliance of cities on federal funding and resources, mayors cannot risk fighting the Trump administration on every issue. Unfortunately, cities are facing a situation in which executive order after order will take aim at their populations; therefore, it is the job of mayors to oppose the administration and fight issues which are going to be the most harmful.

For instance, take the Trump administration’s push for federal mandatory minimums. These are sentencing laws that disproportionately affect the African American and Hispanic communities by creating excessively long jail sentences as well as posing a huge financial burden on large cities. For example, any amount of illegal drug possession can result in a minimum five year sentence, and African American and Hispanic communities are convicted of these crimes more than five times as much as other racial groups, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). As an issue that will impact minorities on a much greater scale, this should be higher on the agenda that fighting increased ICE deportations. Under threat of losing federal funding from fighting the Trump administration on one of its key campaign promises, mayors should instead work to fight the administration on equally important—if not more so—issues that the Trump administration has the politi-

cal capital to compromise on.

A city that has a lot to lose from opposing the federal government is Chicago. ICE deportations are not nearly as prevalent in Chicago as in cities such as Los Angeles, yet the city is fighting Trump on the issue under threat of its federal funding being pulled. Chicago is a city on the brink of disaster because the South Side is overflowing with violence, the city has a drug problem, and it is dividing even further along racial lines.

But it’s largest issue is that it is a city on the brink of bankruptcy. In the interest of protecting a few hundred people from deportation, Chicago’s mayor Rahm Emanuel is jeopardizing so much more.

As reported in The LA Times in November, Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, warned President-elect Trump that defunding sanctuary cities over this issue would cause “social, economic and security problems.” He also said that “programs targeting clean air and homeless funding may be jeopardized if federal money no longer comes in.” These effects would be amplified in Chicago, as without federal funding, not only would these programs no longer exist, but the city may go bankrupt.

Traditionally, cities and the federal government have a symbiotic relationship, and this relationship should be preserved by having local leaders focus on issues that are relevant to their communities. Examples include issues ranging from clean energy to sentencing laws. On the campaign trail, these issues were more of a footnote of Trump’s agenda, and therefore on these issues he isn’t risking losing the confidence of his voters if he were to give way on these issues.

Therefore, mayors should shift their focus to covering these topics which are more negotiable and less likely to result in the cutting of vital funding, which can help preserve the overall agenda of our large cities instead of jeopardizing it.

The most effective action mayors can take to oppose the Trump doctrine is to pick their battles with the administration. Fighting over less important issues such as small-scale deportations and a temporary ban on refugees reduces the ability of cities to act in the future when more pressing issues that affect more people and with greater consequences arise. Just as cities are opposed to fully accepting Trump’s agenda, Trump is opposed to fully accepting the agenda of the city. Two political polar opposites have no choice but to find a balance.

Find Sanctuary in Our Cities By ben platt

for politicians to save political capital.

In the 1986 Supreme Court ruling South Dakota v. Dole, the court ruled that the federal government could only withhold federal funding from a project if it was relevant to the federal interest of the project. Simply put, the federal government could withhold funding if they thought federal funding wasn’t being well spent to achieve the goal of a project, but they could not withhold it if they just decided they didn’t like the goals of a project. Trump isn’t proposing withholding funds for a specific project, but rather using funding as a bargaining chip in order to buy support for his blanket immigration policy.

Additionally, almost all sanctuary cities are places that have significant illegal immigrant populations that may not be able to vote, but still have sizeable political power. They are a constituency that politicians must serve and represent because they live and interact with citizens who do have the ability to vote for elected officials, and it would thus benefit local officials to listen to the needs of immigrants. Also, there is strong support for illegal immigrants among the populations of sanctuary cities (which lean liberal), so by going along with Trump’s executive order, local officials risk losing support.

It may appear prudent to the leaders of sanctuary cities to save their political capital and not fight President Trump on this executive order. But these leaders are risking the lives of some of the most vulnerable Americans by potentially getting them deported back to lands where they face appalling violence and poverty from gangs and a lack of government stability. A president who uses his power to aggressively and arbitrarily persecute undocumented immigrants deserves strong opposition, and that is what cities must bring to Donald Trump.

While the flurry of executive orders from President Donald Trump in the past couple weeks was highlighted by his travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, another of his executive orders that has flown under the radar is one concerning sanctuary cities.

Sanctuary cities are cities or counties that do not comply with federal immigration authorities. For instance, they may refuse to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation. Of the 168 counties or cities in the U.S. where most illegal immigrants reside, 69 are sanctuary cities, including areas such as New York City, Denver, and Los Angeles.

These cities and counties shelter some of the most vulnerable people in the United States who do not have access to many government services, such as a driver’s license or welfare programs. Asking municipalities with limited budgets to spend money to detain illegal immigrants is wasteful when these cities could be using that money to actually make neighborhoods safer. Contrary to what President Trump claims, the American Immigration Council has stated that illegal immigrants are 20-50 percent less likely to commit crimes than citizens.

In his executive order, Trump vaguely stated that he would take away federal funding from sanctuary cities without detailing the processes by which he would do so, only saying he would keep funds “as mandated by federal law.” At first look, sanctuary cities should be scared; New York City, for instance, receives $10.4 billion in federal funding, some of which Trump could potentially take away. However, in this case, cities should resist the financial pressure of Trump and take a stand against him, as they have grounds to do so legally and politically even if it may seem beneficial

Christine Jegarl / The Spectator

Mayors and Trump: Colleagues Yet Opposites

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The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Arts and Entertainment Fashion

By Cheyanne Lawrence

Television

mary colors and cross-cut pieces that are Nautica’s niche while the DJ played D.R.A.M. and Yachty’s “Broccoli.”

In general, the fashion on the runways aimed to shock. Japanese designer Daisuke Obana sent his street-cast models down the runway in what was described as clothing inspired by the homeless. Obana applied the look of homeless people across the United States to a series of heavy, layered garments, hanging knitwear scarves over puffer jackets and chunky sweaters. Fendi also made waves for spray-painting the Fendi name onto the backs of models’ heads in bright yellow.

Quite a few new, creative designers such as Obana were featured on the runway this year, but most were overlooked in the presence of international names that chose New York as their platform this season, most notably Raf Simons and Hugo Boss. Simons’s collection featured bulky “New York” sweaters, a nod to the iconic “I Love New York” campaign from 1977, as well as knit “arm warmers” worn over the topcoats. However, collections from recurring American designers such as Michael Kors, Tommy Hilfiger, and Thom Browne were not present.

Most designers layered a va-

riety of textures to make their pieces more exciting. There was heavy emphasis on outerwear, like puffer jackets and even rainbow fur. Architectural design served as the inspiration for many collections. A lot of designers produced creative pieces like crop tops for men, pajamas, and high fashion ponchos.

While the New York Men’s Fashion week concluded on February 2, the impact of the show extend far beyond the runway and the Autumn/Winter collections donned by the models.

The most obvious fashion trend of the week was the move further away from the runway format. Instead of the traditional runway format, Alexander Wang took over the RKO Hamilton Theater on Broadway and 146th Street for his show this season.

Kylie Jenner, A$AP Rocky, Sofia Richie, Zoë Kravitz, Fetty Wap, and Brooklyn Beckham were in the crowd.

Fashion week aims to provide a showcase for the rapidly growing men’s high fashion industry, but critics say it only succeeds at being a form of entertainment, especially with the hype surrounding celebrities who attend.

Very few New Yorkers will actually be purchasing any of the clothing debuted at fashion week, and

The Composition Of A Genius

By Shaikh Z. MaHsheeat To be truly intellectually superior, must one sacrifice sentiment? For three seasons of Sherlock, I thought so. Sherlock (BBC) is a modern take on the classic story by Sir Conan Doyle, one of the many to be produced in recent times. However, this show seems to simply grasp the attention of viewers more than its contemporaries—why?

For a while, I believed that the show’s beauty was the masterful portrait painted by Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock Holmes, of a remarkably intelligent and observant individual incapable of relating to human emotion.

However, in season four of Sherlock, released within the first three weeks of 2017, I feel that the most important development was that of the characters, particularly Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch), Watson (Martin Freeman), and Mycroft (Mark Gatiss).

Mycroft, Sherlock’s older brother, has always been a suspicious character. He is a cameo in many episodes of the series, appearing when Sherlock needs his power as a government official or when he needs Sherlock’s sleuthing abilities.

This workplace dependency is indicative of the very strange relationship between the two brothers. Both are incredibly intelligent and find difficulty relating to society, though Mycroft functions better in it than Sherlock. Their difficulty in relating to society extends to their personal relationship, and the lack of traditional sentiment can often cause friction, particularly when Mycroft keeps information from Sherlock with good intentions, as displayed in episode three of the season.

In season four, this characterization extends and develops into that of a villain. Mycroft’s desire to control everything around him and withhold information bites back when he hurts someone deeply and proves that power has its limits.

Watson’s character development in season four was definitely one of the most surprising. When

it contrasts starkly with “street style.” Most of the trends at NYFW: Men’s are obsolete or too eccentric (and expensive) to be worn by the average person.

Generally, the clothing from the men’s fashion show and the clothing worn by men at Stuy (dubbed “f***boy fashion”) are worlds apart. Junior Brandon Lee describes fashion at Stuy as “herbs wearing Superstars and ASSC.” This style is based more heavily on the brands than the clothing itself. This style consists of mostly Adidas track pants and/ or Superstars, hoodies from Supreme or Bape, bomber jackets, and dirty Timbs. Color coordination and the fit of the garments

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Getting Nostalgic About “Nostalgia Critic”

By Jenna Bawer

Carrie Ou / The Spectator

you picture John Watson over the seasons, you think of a seasoned war hero, a doctor, a loving family man, and a faithful companion to Sherlock. He is the ideal character and provides a contrast to Sherlock’s unpredictable nature.

Thus you can imagine my shock at the humanization of Watson in season four as he shows that he is capable of making mistakes and feeling sorrow.

If you did not appreciate Sherlock (the character) before, you definitely will now. The precedent for the character is a complex and unstable genius incapable of understanding society emotionally.

In season four, we see that rock overturned as Sherlock goes to extremes to protect those who matter the most to him.

In the first episode of the season we see him travel across the world to tell Mary, Watson’s wife, that he intended to keep his promise of keeping John and his family safe. How well he was able to keep this promise, however, is arguable.

The second episode of the season is more of a shaker, nothing short of what can be expected from the show. It plays on the relationship between John Watson and Sherlock, in a way quite similar to the course followed after Sherlock fakes his own death in a previous season. Watson experiences a rough recovery after the events at the end of the first episode (which the law of spoilers does not allow me to reveal) and inevitably projects his grief onto Sherlock.

It appears that the relationship between the two had evolved into something greater over the past four seasons. What began as a professional relationship and an odd duo grew into a friendship, a particularly significant development considering Sherlock’s sociopathic nature, and this season highlights how Watson has become Sherlock’s responsibility as much as he is Watson’s.

In episode three, we are introduced to a new character, one who seemingly completes the Holmes family. He/She does not necessarily represent much as an individual character, but rather contributes to the development of the other characters.

For Sherlock, the new character presents a puzzle, an enigma.

He is put in a situation he has never had to deal with before, and due to his emotional development throughout the show, we watch him empathize for the first time and be able to love and care for someone who hasn’t torn down his walls.

This season, marking the coming-of-age of all the characters, would be perfect to end the show with. Sherlock has become a human, Watson is no longer perfect, and Mycroft is self-actualized. If the series continues any longer, there is a risk that it might become repetitive or seem stretched out. While there is nothing I would like more than more of the witty banter between Sherlock and Watson, this could be the end of an era.

themselves are often of little importance as long as the brand logo is clearly visible.

This type of fashion may lack originality but it could very well be making its way to the runways.

To quote designer John Galliano, “Fashion is above all an art of change.” Fashion is constantly evolving and so are fashion shows. Shows like NYFW: Men’s are important because they reflect not only the changes in the Men’s Fashion Industry, but also perceptions of fashion. The 2017 New York Men’s Fashion Week gave viewers a taste of what the future of fashion looks like: unpredictable.

Emily Wu / The Spectator

Historically, fashion has been regarded as a women’s industry, but the influence of fashion on millennials is changing that perception. Fashion plays a huge role at Stuyvesant, yet there is a huge disconnect between Stuyvesant and high fashion. The aim of NYFW: Men’s 2017 was to provide a showcase for the rapidly growing men’s fashion industry, but it may not have reflected the men’s fashion industry accurately.

This season has differentiated itself from previous seasons in almost every aspect. For the first time, some shows, such as Givenchy, were occurring at the same time as the presidential inauguration. Men’s Fashion Week, unlike the inauguration, was packed. The Men’s shows had more international buyers and editors in attendance this season than ever before. Quite a few high profile celebrities such as David Beckham, A$AP Rocky, and Carmelo Anthony were in attendance. This year, celebrities have been more influential in fashion than ever, shown by Lil Yatchy’s creative directorial debut at Nautica’s New York Fashion Week Men’s presentation. Models stood perfectly still on their platforms, displaying the bold pri-

Stuy Fashion vs. High Fashion

Doug Walker debuted his persona, the “Nostalgia Critic,” a man-child with a handgun, a traumatic past, and a terrible temper, in 2007. His job was to review bad movies and television from the ‘80s and ‘90s, such as “Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue,” a mass crossover from the ‘80s about the dangers of marijuana.

His reviews were mostly limited to clips of the source material and him joking around in front of a wall, with some occasional lowquality sketches.

Walker uploaded a halfhour video of that same persona riffing on the new “Ghostbusters” movie in 2016. This review did not have any clips of the film, since he could not legally obtain any.

Instead, he reacted to satirical reenactments of the film’s main plot points by a professional cast.

The review also had a legitimate storyline incorporating a “Church of the Heavenly Proton Pack,” a feminist corporation, meninists, a black Willy Wonka, the Hi-C Ecto-Cooler fruit juice, and a cameo

by Satan’s pony-loving daughter.

How did we get here?

The “Nostalgia Critic” became a landmark of Internet culture in the mid-2000s—his videos hit millions of views and his face became a popular source for reaction images. Walker developed the website ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com (now ChannelAwesome.com) on June 4, 2008 to host his videos along with those of dozens of other critics that would eventually become known as the TGWTG team.

“Nostalgia Critic” did not restrict itself to straight reviewing, incorporating storylines or small skits into the episodes. He and other reviewers would frequently cross over, creating conflicts that continued over several episodes.

Certain jokes returned enough that they became memes, like the catchiness of the “DuckTales” theme.

Eventually, Walker decided he had exhausted the concept of the “Nostalgia Critic” and in 2012, ended the series. The finale was an anniversary special, “To Boldly Flee,” where (spoiler alert) Critic sacrificed himself. In a follow-up video, Walker explained how he didn’t feel the need to continue that series, but the character could show up in other shows on the site, and the website as a whole would continue. He moved onto other projects, his main one being the parodical sketch show “Demo Reel,” starring Walker as an independent filmmaker who would badly remake famous films. However, Walker found the legacy he created was too difficult to leave behind and revived “Critic.”

The restrictions were lessened to any movie not currently in theaters, regardless of whether it qualified as “nostalgic.” He continues to upload weekly videos to YouTube and the TGWTG website (which, the next year, was renamed Channel Awesome), alternating between standard reviews of specific media and editorials about pop culture, answering questions like “When does a joke go too far?” and “WTF was up with the ending to ‘The Graduate’?”

After the revival, the tone of “Critic” changed. Walker and his crew had access to a studio now, and he brought over his actors from “Demo Reel” to perform alongside him (Rachel Tietz has since been replaced by another actress, Tamara Chambers) in the sketch portion of his show.

While the series has involved skits for years, it had usually been Walker yelling at himself as different characters with primitive effects. The expanded cast and higher-quality equipment in the new series allowed more room for elaborate storylines. continued on page 17

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

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Arts and Entertainment Webseries continued from page 16

Not all fans were pleased with this return. Some found the “Critic” character more mean-spirited or obnoxious after returning from the dead. Others thought his plotline wrapped up nicely enough in “To Boldly Flee” or that “The Review Must Go On” was a poor “Demo Reel” finale and that Walker deserved to move on.

Many find the show pointless since he is no longer reviewing solely “nostalgic” properties, even reviewing films that are still in theaters. Walker knows people aren’t fully satisfied and often addresses these concerns in his show. In one episode, he goes back in time to 2007 and wants his old self to review the movie. When the old Critic does so, in a short, formulaic fashion, he realizes how

Music

By EMILY XU English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran shocked much of the world in 2015 by announcing that he was quitting social media and giving up his phone. His reason for this was that he was tired of “seeing the world through a screen,” and instead resolved to travel the world and experience everything firsthand. A year later, he came out with his third album, “Divide,” which bends all genre barriers, stepping into the realms of pop, rap, folk, and even traditional Irish music. Romance dominates the subject matter of the album, but there are glimpses of Sheeran in a larger sense of the world, more specifically, where exactly he stands in it and what he has learned.

“Shape of You” is Sheeran’s lead single from the album, claiming the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the fourth week straight. The use of the marimba is especially catchy and fits well with a song that is about lustful love.

It is a standout on an album that predominantly utilizes the guitar.

Games

By Julia Amoroso and Thomas Chen As kids, we remember the thrills of playing our favorite childhood game, where we could dress up our penguin avatars, explore a winter wonderland, and interact with one another through snowball fights. Even as teens, we adored this nostalgic game, still amused by the struggles of trolls being banned for profanity and inspired by the annual Coins for Change charities the game held.

Of course, this game is no other than “Club Penguin.”

However, future generations of children will never get to experience these memories since “Club Penguin” has been discontinued as of March 29, 2017. Many older fans are outraged and heartbroken, and some even started petitions to bring the game back.

The massive multiplayer online game, created by New Horizon Interactive, now known as Disney Canada Incorporated, was released on October 24, 2005. Its creator, Lance Priebe, stated that he wanted to create a safe place for children on the Internet by creating a virtual world with no outside advertising. At its earliest state, the game had less than 5,000 users, but it soon expanded immensely.

Children were immediately drawn to the simplicity of the fun mini-

Getting Nostalgic About “Nostalgia Critic” many seem to prefer the modern format.

I only began watching the series in 2015, long after “Critic” had undergone its retooling, but I can see the good in both the old and new style of the series. I like some episodes of the old series, but I mostly prefer the new. The improved technology makes the episodes easier on the eyes and ears, and he has more experience as a writer and actor, so his comedy is stronger. His acting team is very talented, able to play a wide range of characters, and their performances often help the review by giving “Critic” something to bounce off of.

Nonetheless, there are some underlying issues with the sketch/ review format in general. If you aren’t familiar with the side characters and their arcs, sometimes the review can be harder

to follow, since you’re constantly distracted by something you can’t understand. However, in defense of the newer episodes, they involve fewer references to other reviewers, so it works more as a standalone series even if the episodes cannot all stand alone.

Even if it’s diverged from its original format and even slightly from its

original purpose, the “Nostalgia Critic” is still an energetic and hilarious show, combining sketch comedy with legitimate criticism on films ranging from average to awful. Its simplistic old format does have charm. Some prefer a straight-up riff with few distractions, focused solely on Critic’s commentary, whereas others prefer the n e w series, findi n g t h e new skits

and characters funny and appreciating the professionalism.

Either way, Walker’s style is developing, and he’s aware of it.

“We shouldn’t be ashamed of our past, nor should we glorify it,” the new Critic tells his old self in the aforementioned time travel episode. “And some times should be looked at with more appreciation than you think. We’re always gonna get angry at ourselves, but as long as you always try to learn and get better, you’ll find it doesn’t last that long.”

Despite a higher video quality, expanded cast, and more intense storylines, the sarcastic quips Walker shouted at movies in 2007 still remain at the heart of the “Nostalgia Critic,” just adapted to fit his new experience as an artist.

Christine Jegarl / The Spectator

A More Intimate Understanding of Ed Sheeran Gained in “Divide”

Sheeran’s other released single is “Castle on the Hill,” and though it has not been revered as much as “Shape of You,” it is one of my personal favorites. Sheeran shows that he is a master of dominating both high and low notes, building up from the raspy bridge to the monumental chorus. The major motifs are growing up, nostalgia, and the realization that he has come so far from the days he spent “[buying] cheap spirits and [drinking] them straight.” Powerful imagery of him running back to his hometown, assuring his friends, “I’m on my way,” and remembering the places that defined this childhood immediately recalls the reminiscence of youth that is in Lukas Graham’s worldwide debut of “7 Years.”

One of the most striking things about “Divide” is how Sheeran is able to convey so much emotion even when the songs are not told from his point of view. The touching ballad “Supermarket Flowers” is told from his mother’s perspective. It is a tribute to his late grandmother, who Sheeran revealed in an interview with DJ Zane Lowe

“passed away at the end of [the completion of ] the record.” He also described this as “the most special song” on the album, and the use of only his guitar put his lyrics and tone on display. Sheeran’s soft voice communicates the sadness and love he has for his grandmother; the angel references and subtle voice hitches on particular lyrics add to the power of the song.

“Nancy Mulligan” is also told from another’s point of view; this time, it is his grandfather’s. Nancy Mulligan is Sheeran’s grandmother (not the one who passed away), and the track relays the story of his grandparents. It is an epic tale of lasting love, something that contrasts with other songs on the album that dwell on the gloomier aspects of romance, such as “Happier” and “New Man.” In keeping with his grandmother’s childhood in Belfast, Ireland, “Nancy Mulligan” has a definite Irish feel to it; the listener is able to distinguish the fiddle and tin whistle.

Though Sheeran is known for being a fantastic lyricist, there are several moments on “Divide”

when his use of cliches takes away from the meaning of the songs.

For instance, “Perfect” is supposed to represent the epitome of love. However, lyrics such as “Now I know I have met an angel in person” and “You look perfect tonight” are unoriginal and have been applied to countless others.

Sheeran told Zane Lowe that he wrote “Perfect” to outdo his 2014 track “Thinking Out Loud,” but it does not even come close to topping the carefully thought-out and poetic lyrics of his former hit.

The effects of Sheeran’s world travels and social media ban are clear in “Barcelona” and “Bibia Be Ye Ye,” which showcase the influence of Spanish and Ghanaian culture, respectively. “Bibia be ye ye” means “everything will be all right” in the Ghanaian language Twi, and if there is something the song conveys, it is that good times are coming. It is very lighthearted and fun, accentuated by the fast, rhythmic beat that recalls African drums.

“Divide” ends with an extremely intimate look at Sheeran’s past drug and alcohol abuse. “Save

Myself” is deeply moving and relatable. Sheeran croons, “I gave away all my oxygen to people that could breathe,” expressing how he sacrificed too much of himself to people who didn’t need or return it. In many ways, though this song is despairing, Sheeran offers himself the opportunity and ability to heal himself. His last lyrics are “And before I love someone else, I’ve got to love myself,” recognizing that he needs to prioritize himself. It is a poignant finish to an album that progressively gets more personal as it draws to its close.

Though “Divide” has its drawbacks in that the lyrics are not quite as effective as Sheeran intended them to be, he makes up well for it by overdoing himself in other tracks. There is a plethora of sounds and emotions conveyed, mixing pure pop with traditional Irish bagpipes in a way that does not seem cohesive, but the tracks ultimately tie together in that they are based on his personal experiences, giving listeners an intimate understanding of him as an artist and his music.

A Farewell to Our Generation’s Favorite Childhood Game

games, the chat feature, and the freedom that the game allowed.

By 2007, “Club Penguin” was trafficked by thousands of players every day.

That same year, “Club Penguin,” along with its parent company, was sold to Disney.

Disney made drastic developments, such as adding many more minigames, complex “parties,” and a fleshed out lore including tales of the pirate Rockhopper and the introduction of the Elite Penguin Force.

This caused an even greater increase in the popularity of the game. The franchise then went on to release clothes, plush toys, books, and even spin-off games for mobile devices and the Nintendo DS. “Club Penguin” was unique in that it created a vast, intricate world meant solely for kids. It was a world for detectives and secret agents who solved brain-puzzling missions and found hidden pins, items similar to badges. It was a world for those who loved pets, as they could spend hours feeding and walking their Puffles, fluffy creatures of different colors and unique personalities. It was also a world for ninjas, who battled each

other in a card game and worked their way to a black belt. Parties allowed players to explore new islands and decorated areas, catch ghosts, or even slay dragons. With over 25 mini-games, 40 locations to explore,

Kristin Lin / The Spectator

and 100 parties, “Club Penguin” gave millions of users a grand experience of entertainment and a way to express themselves in penguin form.

One vital aspect of “Club Penguin” was its kid-friendly chat feature, which allowed users to com-

municate with others and form friendships. While the chat filter turned from being banned for profanity into a meme performed by trolls, the ability to chat was used by some children to its fullest potential. Many were shocked to see penguins voicing their opinions in protest to the recent presidential election.

“Not my president” and “My penguin, my choice” became common phrases that one would see throughout the island. In such tumultuous times, the voices of the younger generation have often been ignored or pushed away, being considered immature, yet when kids take to gaming websites to get their opinions across, we must realize their seriousness.

Unfortunately, the number of visitors to the site had been steadily decreasing ever since its peak in late 2010 to early 2011. With the closure of its developer, Disney Interactive Studios, the game was bound to cease development. There were certain aspects of the game that were negatively received by some, such as membership, which players had to buy in order to access all of “Club Penguin’s” features, causing elitism toward non-members.

However, the biggest reason for this decline is the fact that young

audiences in 2017 have many other forms of entertainment competing for their attention, such as YouTube and Netflix, which have the advantage of more variety in content, and social media sites like Facebook.

Despite the closing of the original “Club Penguin” site and app, Disney hopes to revive interest in the series with a successor in the form of “Club Penguin Island.”

The new mobile app attempts to build on the former game, with 3D graphics, a brand new island to explore, and more features such as a level system, blueprints to create clothes, and daily quests. In addition, the app is slightly more story-based, as the game now has “Adventures,” missions given to players by special characters called mascots, such as collecting wood to repair a ship. While it is not exactly the game we grew up playing, the app may serve its purpose by giving future generations the entertainment we had as kids.

As for us older players, “Club Penguin” had a special farewell in its final party before its closure: “Together, we can build an island, create a community, change the world…even tip an iceberg.

Waddle on.” While the game is no longer available, our memories of the game will last forever, and we must indeed waddle on forth past this tragedy.

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The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Arts and Entertainment Thrifting: Making Someone Else’s Trash Your Treasure

Fashion

By Nusheen Ghaemi Whenever I’m feeling tired and in need of a closet upgrade, my first thought is “I need to go thrifting.” This is because at my favorite thrift stores, I can find the cutest clothes at the cheapest prices and experiment with different looks (from pastel purple windbreakers to groovy graphic tees).

Thrift stores are not a new phenomena, but in the past few years have risen considerably in popularity. Thrifting culture is especially rich in New York City, where there are many good stores to pick from and inspiration all over the streets to help you find your “aesthetic” or look grunge, hipster, or monochromatic.

One important distinction to make is the difference between thrift stores, and consignment/ vintage stores. Consignment stores usually stock actual vintage clothing (often designer labels) at more expensive prices.

However, thrift stores stock vintage and new clothing at cheaper prices.

If you’re looking to make some money, most thrift stores

Music

By William Hong “We live in Atlanta, might have some haters / The new Atlanta like the old Lakers.” —“New Atlanta” by Migos (2014).

The recently developed Atlanta hip-hop scene has taken the music industry by storm for its distinct sound and ethos. At the forefront of this scene is the group Migos, an unforgettable trio of rappers whose audacity and recklessness precisely embody the characteristics of Atlanta hip-hop, known for its chaotic unpredictability and defined by its prominent musical personalities. Their ingenuity helps them stand out from a distinguished cast of contemporary Atlantabased artists who have also experienced commercial success such as Rae Sremmurd, Future, 21 Savage, and several others.

Migos’ latest album “Culture” (2017) captures the signature youthfulness, trap style beats, and bass driven sound of the Atlanta scene that has become the new mecca of hip-hop culture.

Hip-hop is currently undergoing a profound shift and becoming increasingly dissimilar to the characteristics that have defined it in the past. “Culture” represents the “new school” hiphop that is more associated with the Internet and social media culture, in contrast to the old school that was considerably darker, more lyrically complex, and often grappled with the political issues of the time. While “Culture” is a fun listen from start to finish and certainly stands out from the many mediocre mixtapes produced by today’s hip-hop artists, its most notable shortcomings are a lack of cohesion, lyricism, and storytelling that are the hallmarks of what its predecessors established. Despite its shortcomings, the creativity of “Culture” serves as a reminder that the genre is continually evolving and innovating.

The album begins right away with a guest appearance from the larger than life DJ Khaled,

participate in buying as well as selling. Bring over some of your old unwanted clothes and they’ll become someone else’s treasure.

Though from personal experience, some thrift shops can be quite picky. Even so, there are stores like Goodwill or Salvation Army that take all donations.

Thrifting is a great way to experiment with different types of fashion at less of a cost than most larger stores like Urban Outfitters or American Apparel, or even name brands like Chanel and Gucci. It’s also a fun activity to do with friends. Sometimes it can be tough—you may have to sift through racks on racks of clothing in a somewhat stuffy and dusty store, and sometimes you can leave disappointed—but you could also find a gem, making thrifting definitely worth it in the long run.

On that note, here are some recommendations!

L Train Vintage

L Train Vintage is currently one of the biggest and most popular thrift stores, with locations all over Manhattan and Brooklyn. Some stores are just

huge warehouses with clothing covering the floor to the ceiling.

Not only do they have a huge variety, but their prices are among the most reasonable I have come across—I once found a Patagonia jacket for only $8.00, and a multitude of colorful graphic tees are usually priced around $5.00 a pop. L Train is definitely a goto for some more funky, unique pieces (especially jackets).

Beacon’s Closet

Another store with multiple locations throughout the city, Beacon’s Closet has an inventory of tons of normal, modern clothes and some funky throwbacks. I normally head to Beacon’s Closet for finding clothing from stores I normally shop from (like Urban Outfitters or American Apparel) at much cheaper prices than buying them brand new. Their clothing is a little more expensive, normally ranging from $10-$30, but compared to store prices, they’re still a steal.

Also, they often have the same style in different sizes, which can be convenient since most thrift stores have only one copy of each article of clothing.

Buffalo Exchange

Buffalo Exchange spreads not only across the city but all the way to the West Coast. A mix between L Train’s loud colors and Beacon’s Closet’s wide price range, you can find clothing for all occasions here and some fun accessories, from cat bags to hot air balloon bags. I once found a Fjall Raven Kanken bag there for only $25 (normally $70-$80), and it’s lasted me for almost two years. People often underestimate the wear time of thrifted items since they aren’t new. Buffalo Exchange is one of those mixes with designer clothing for sale too.

Goodwill Industries

Goodwill is probably the cheapest of them all, with a huge selection from houseware to clothing. Goodwill may be a lot of trial and error with trying to find clothing, but there’s something for people from all crosses of life at the most affordable prices! This is especially great for people on a budget looking for more than some fashion style. Big shops like these might not always have exactly what you’re looking

for (and it’ll definitely take some sifting) but you can buy items for super cheap and then repurpose them. For instance, instead of dropping $40-$50 at American Apparel for some high-waisted denim shorts, just find a pair of high-waisted jeans at Goodwill and cut them at home.

Housing Works

Housing Works is another to hit up if you’re looking for more than just clothes. They have furniture, clothes, shoes, and houseware. They might be more expensive, but everything is in great condition. Plus, they are a charity-based store and all their profits go to those living with HIV/AIDS. I think of Housing Works as being a bit more upscale than the other thrift stores, with more proper clothing, like business attire-style. If you’re a busy Stuy student with little time to go shopping, no need to stress. There’s a Housing Works just a few blocks from school (on Chambers Street between West Broadway and Church Street) that you can quickly visit after school.

Raindrop, Drop Top (Drop Top)…

The Impact of “Culture” on Hip-hop who immediately establishes the tone for the rest of the album— he introduces Migos as a trio of rowdy troublemakers learning to cope with their newfound wealth and fame. Joining DJ Khaled in the album’s list of guest appearances are fellow trap artists Gucci Mane (also a pioneer of the Atlanta hip-hop scene), Travis Scott, and Lil Uzi Vert, all of whom contribute to the album’s colorful sound.

However, this entertaining lineup of guests does not steal t h e spotlight from the idiosyncratic trio of Offset, Quavo, and Takeoff. Their chemistry is apparent through out the album as each rapper takes turns seamlessly transitioning between hook and verse. This style of lyrical interplay is utilized in one of the album’s hit singles, “T-Shirt.” Quavo’s memorable hook, “Mama told me not to sell work / Seventeen-five same color T-shirt” is followed by Takeoff’s verse, “Young n**** poppin’ with a pocket full of cottage / Woah kemosabe, chopper aiming at you noggin.” This style of frequently disrupted flows in their hook-verse repetition is the foundation of the album’s catchiness; the lyrics are instantly recognizable and memorable.

Another notable track on the album is “Get Right Wicha.” The track begins with an ominous synth melody that is soon accompanied by a staccato beat. The autotuned voices of Offset, Quavo, and Takeoff then interrupt the beat and melody at random

spurts, seeming to ignore any sort of regular, synchronized pattern.

This unique, disrupted quality of sound adds to the track’s brazen nature. Throughout the song, Migos flaunt about the amount of wealth they accrued selling crack, which is so much that they can “Count a hundred thousand, start snowing with it.” The audacious personalities of the trio are well paired with their chaotic sound that can not be

Sally Chen / The Spectator

mistaken for any other artist’s.

“Culture” is not short of catchy beats and hooks, which are the album’s defining elements. The lead single “Bad and Boujee” instantly became a viral hit as an anthem for reckless indulgence of partying, sex, and weed. After listening to the memorable hook “Raindrop, drop top (drop top) / Smoking on cookie in the hotbox,” it becomes apparent that the song’s popularity is partly due to its references to drug culture, and later, promiscuous sex, both of which are trite themes that unfortunately plague much of the album. These themes detract from the album’s meaning, promote dangerous behavior, and aspects in which the album fails to be original, as they are prevalent in much of mainstream

music today.

Their themes and lyrics particularly pale in comparison to other revolutionary hip-hop albums of the past in certain key aspects. Nas’s timeless “Illmatic” (1994) was one of the first albums that incorporated vivid storytelling; it painted a gritty picture of what life was like in housing projects and provided a first-person narrative on how drug and gang related violence tore apart the community. 2Pac’s “Me Against the World” (1995) was a poetic achievement that dealt with the themes of depression, isolation, and selfidentity, a testament to how hip-hop has the power to provoke and captivate t h e mind and soul.

The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ready to Die” (1994) bucked the music industry’s trend of glorifying drugs, wealth, and fame, dispelling the notion that pursuing such things through illicit means is worth the self destruction that follows.

In respect to these albums, “Culture” lacks in lyrical meaning and cohesion. The album has enjoyed massive commercial success and established Migos as one of the biggest names in today’s hip-hop for their irresistible sound and ethos. However, it compromises some key elements that have defined hip-hop in the past and inspired several contemporary rappers, such as J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar, to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. In fact, “Culture” is very much the antithesis of the landmark rap albums of the past; it is defined more by its revolutionary sound than by its lack-

luster lyrics.

It’s important to note that “Culture” is the culmination of a variety of recent movements that have made hip-hop more synonymous with pop culture and music, something it has not been as strongly associated with in the past. Hit singles such as Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” (2007) and Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles” (2016) (note that both artists also hail from Atlanta) became Internet sensations for their viral videos. Migos are no strangers to this trend; they’re the ones who popularized the dab with their hit single, “Look at My Dab” (2015). The prevalence of artists such as Drake have helped to fuse hip-hop with elements of pop and EDM. It was through a Drake remix of one of their singles “Versace” (2013) that Migos broke into mainstream success.

Hip-hop is a versatile genre that is supposed to reflect the trends of its time. While social media and the Internet are more prevalent and influential than ever before, hip-hop is in an even greater need of addressing the current sociopolitical atmosphere like it has done so often in the past. “Culture” lacks power and meaning to captivate audiences in light of what is going on in our country today, whether it involves the rampant rise of nationalist sentiments or the ongoing racial tensions that continue to impede the nation’s progress.

In spite of this, “Culture” is a fresh new spin on the genre that showed sparks of creativity in ways that have not been seen before. Hip-hop is inevitably going to evolve, and Migos have pushed the boundaries of what the genre can accomplish. It is unlikely that they will ever surpass great artists such as 2Pac and Nas, but given the ingenuity and creativity they have expressed in “Culture,” it is entirely possible that they can surprise us again in their next album.

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 19

Arts and Entertainment The 80’s Are Back in NYC Fashion

Fashion

By Zovinar Khrimian and Lena Farley Despite the ever-changing notion of street fashion, a nostalgic style taken from the late 20th century has become a strong trend among young people who are image-conscious yet looking to make a statement.

The increasingly popular, vintage-inspired look is often associated with bold, fearless trends like fishnet tights under ripped “mom” jeans or retro color-block jackets over bandanas worn as shirts. Some call these trends ‘80s-‘90s; others call them stoner grunge, and the best place to find them is at thrift shops, stoop sales, or sometimes just on the street.

Stuyvesant freshman Hiro Kimura explained, “People our age are trying to find a unique style so they take old styles and make it their own...it’s a sort of homage to the past.”

If you have managed to avoid seeing these trends, the style, as Kimura says, “[It] is about giving the appearance of indifference,” and is big on everything—clunky shoes, oversized jackets, and loose pants pulled up to the bellybutton. In contrast with the large, heavy parts of every outfit, form fitting crop tops often balance out the weight of more oversized pieces.

As pervasive as this look is among students in every corner of the city, it is loudest at high schools known for more alternative or “artsy” students. Without

Insights: Film

By Lena Farley and Lucy Lu Whether they are defeating armies or going to balls, the famous Disney princesses have been a huge part of childhoods for millions of children across the globe. However, there is an age-old debate about whether the messages some of these movies give little girls growing up is harmful to their opinions of themselves. Little girls may grow up thinking that they are to be saved by a prince or that they are subpar to boys. Personally, I grew up believing that my twin brother was stronger and more powerful than me. He was a boy and I was a girl. In the princess movies of my childhood, the boys always saved the girls, and my six-yearold brain thought that must be the case in real life. What makes some Disney princess movies provide a better message than others is where the man comes in—whether they have to save the princess in a huge way or are more of a sidekick. Here is a list of the top three worst and best messages sent by Disney princesses.

Worst Three

1. Ariel “The Little Mermaid” focuses on Ariel, a mermaid, falling in love with a prince who she saves. The movie has the star-crossed-lovers cliché with a crazy, power-hungry sea witch involved. Throughout the whole movie, Ariel tries to get together with the prince, even signing away her tail and relationship with her family to do so, implying that she has to change herself to get the guy she wants.

She gives little girls the message that it’s perfectly okay to sacrifice their passions for a man who doesn’t know they exist, which is why it sends the worst message

a doubt, the premier public arts high school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, is unmatched when it comes to students embracing fashion and self-image as a form of personal expression.

Violet Silberman, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, noted “Over the summer...people who were more popular started wearing [these styles], and then everyone started wearing them.” She defined popular as students more wellknown on Instagram, where a well-curated image is everything.

While fashion is certainly a medium of self-expression, it also lends to status and image, especially in the era of social media. It is easy to present every perfectly coordinated color combination and unique set of statement accessories on platforms such as Instagram, feeding the trend even more.

Silberman also pointed out that the style is individual. “Everyone seems to express themselves the same way, and people aren’t really afraid of what other people think of their outfits.” At first, this seemed like a contradiction. How can people express themselves the same way but still be dressed differently enough to worry about judgment?

This contradiction is one of the interesting aspects of the ‘80s style. Though many people wear the same mom jeans, funky patterns, and vintage jackets, everyone wears these articles of clothing in different ways.

Whether people add engraved hoop earrings or a scarf from a stoop sale, wearers of the ‘80s style add something different to each look. The element of chance associated with vintage and thrifted looks allows for this style to be replicated without growing stale. As Silberman says, “Everyone’s really outgoing with their fashion.” If anything, it’s quite a turn from the “basic” styles of the past year from large fashion lines like Brandy Melville. The ‘80s style is a rejection of the black and gray palettes of fast fashion, instead choosing to embrace color and individuality.

However, as fresh as one may look sporting an oversized windbreaker and button down romper, these styles are coming from somewhere and are directly inspired from the looks of the past.

The whole premise of the look is its thrifted origin, giving dimension to the wearer who had to search through racks and piles of old clothing to uncover a gem.

While thrift stores have been around forever, with rows of musty sweaters and questionable feather dresses from the ‘70s, it’s only now that New York’s teens have decided to take up thrift fashion. Stores such as Buffalo Exchange and L Train Vintage take advantage of this, with stores from Williamsburg to East Village as well as other various locations.

These neighborhoods attract young people in droves and maintain a character of youthfulness. Williamsburg and East

Village have been transformed in the last few decades and are understood to be the centers of vintage shopping in New York; it is not surprising that L Train Vintage had its start along the same train line that connects these neighborhoods.

Although both Silberman and Kimura say they aren’t experienced thrift shoppers, Kimura states, “If you can find something [while thrift shopping] that

At the very foundation of thrifting are charity-organization style secondhand stores like Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Clothing is typically at the lowest prices and can be considerably trendy, though seeking out the gems in a sea of unflattering and out-of-style pieces is more challenging than at affordable vintage shops like L Train and well-stocked consignment stores like Buffalo Exchange. The

“The whole trend is about giving the appearance of indifference.”

- Hiro Kimura, freshman someone else didn’t want, but you want: perfect. It becomes a full circle.”

Secondhand fashion is not homogenous in price, quality, and purpose, and thus, there are a variety of ways to achieve the on-trend and eye-catching looks that have become essential to teen street fashion. Furthermore, major retailers like Urban Outfitters replicate the pieces associated with this style at full price, exuding the essence of vintageinspired style without the grunt work of searching for pieces at lower prices.

top tier of secondhand fashion are locations specializing in designer wear and meticulously curated vintage stores specializing in particular eras of fashion.

The loose guidelines for looking simultaneously laidback and image-conscious is characteristic of the current vintage-inspired trend, giving it a range of flexibility. Ultimately, it is a trend of some uniformity, but the oneof-a-kind nature of vintage shopping offers more variation and flavor to the look, arriving at a good balance of personal style and on-trend taste.

Someday My Prince Will Come: A Ranking of the Disney Princesses to young female viewers.

2. Aurora Although not quite as bad as “The Little Mermaid,” “Sleeping Beauty” doesn’t send a positive message to little girls either. Aurora, a princess, is sent into hiding after a witch casts a spell for her to die on her 16th birthday.

The movie ends with Aurora being saved by a kiss from Prince Phillip. This may give girls the idea that they always need a man in their lives to be there to rescue them. Even though that’s a far-fetched idea, it’s a constant theme throughout the movie. For instance, Aurora is only 15, yet the first time she and Prince Philip meet, she is already singing about her dream to marry a prince.

Best Three

3. Tiana “The Princess and the Frog” is one of the most interesting Disney princess movies for many reasons. First of all, instead of being set in a mythical land nobody knows, the film is set in 1920s New Orleans, a majority black city that lacks representation. Second of all, Tiana is the first AfricanAmerican Disney princess, which makes her a favorite princess for many young girls. AfricanAmer-

3. Snow White “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” is one of the earliest movies released by Disney, and it may be why many of the movies following it send a relatively similar message to little girls. They encourage the idea that girls are helpless when they Tiffany Leng / The Spectator encounter a problem and that a ican girls playing prince must save the day. Snow dress-up with friends White is a princess that was or- now have a princess to look up dered to be killed by her step- to. Lastly, and most importantly, mother, but is spared by a guilt- Tiana is one of the only prinridden huntsman. She ends up in cesses that did not start out as the woods, playing a housewife a princess. Instead, as shown by for seven dwarves. This encour- the fact that she holds two waitages the housewife stereotype ressing jobs as a teenager, she that women are often cast aside grows up without a lot of wealth. to, with many of the dwarves However, she is very hardworking not even offering their thanks. and her main life goal is to own Finally, Snow White is poisoned a restaurant. Though she does toward the end of the movie, but get help from a prince, he doesn’t is saved by a prince. rescue her. Instead, he needs her help turning from a frog back

into a human. The only issue with this movie is that Tiana does get sidetracked from her goal and is willing to throw away all her hard work just to save the prince.

However, when he is saved and she becomes a princess, she fulfills her goals and opens a popular restaurant.

2. Elsa & Anna Like “The Princess and the Frog,” “Frozen” is a newer princess movie, involving the famous duo Anna and Elsa. It is number two on this list mainly because it emphasizes the importance of love between friends, not just romantic partners.

Instead of Anna’s love interest saving her, Elsa is able to save Anna through an act of “true love.”

What makes this film even better is that once Anna is saved, Elsa and Anna get revenge on the man who was trying to harm their relationship to gain control over the kingdom.

Though Anna does end up with a man, no marriage occurs and instead, the “happily ever after” involves Elsa and Anna being able to successfully run a kingdom on their own.

1. Mulan “Mulan” starts off with Mulan being prepared to meet with the matchmaker. She has been told that the only way she can bring honor to her family is to be married and bear a son. However, she manages to honor her family in her own way. When her father is drafted for the army, Mulan sees

that he is injured and in no way capable of fighting. She chooses to dress up as a man and be drafted in his place. In the army, Mulan struggles, but eventually manages to master military skills through hard work and perseverance. She is able to help the army defeat the Huns, and does so by using her intelligence. Mulan ends up with a man at the end of the movie, but she is in no way dependent upon him. Even with these positive messages, the movie does have faults. “Mulan” is racist toward the Huns, which is seen when they are depicted as beasts. Additionally, it pushes the message that girls should “make a man” out of themselves. The same message, however, can also tell little girls that they are capable of being on the same level as men. Though “Mulan” is not perfect, it contains the best messages for little girls out of all the Disney movies.

Looking back, it is no surprise that the Disney princess movies ranked with the worst messages are older than the ones sending the best messages. Princesses in fairy tales have long been thought of as the classic “damsel in distress” figure. However, as years go by and feminist ideas such as girl love, heroines, and independence have become more widespread, these ideas are better represented in the more recent movies. Although there are still many issues with entertainment for today’s children, it can definitely be said that it’s getting better. Not only have the Disney princesses become racially diverse, but the main plots of the movies have generally moved away from men and focused on messages that can help young girls become strong women.

Page 20

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The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 22

Sports Boys’ Basketball

Courtesy of Thomson Lee

Bringing Playoff Basketball Back to Stuyvesant

Senior and co-captain Michael Feinberg goes up for a layup.

By Tahsin Ali and Ariel Melendez Deep into the fourth quarter, down by a substantial margin, the Runnin’ Rebels, Stuyvesant’s boys’ basketball team, watched their roller coaster of a season dwindle away one second at a time in Staten Island, where they took on the New Dorp Cougars. The team came out rusty and had no answer for the Cougars’ defense, putting up only two points in the first quarter compared to the 17 that New Dorp scored.

This lopsided game continued

as the Rebels managed to hold the Cougars to 29 points in the following three quarters but simply could not score. Seniors and co-captains Tobias Lange and Michael Feinberg combined for 19 points in the game compared to the combined 32.5 they averaged during the regular season. Ultimately, the Rebels fell to New Dorp in the first round of the playoffs by a final score of 4625, ending their 2016-17 season.

Despite the disappointing early playoff exit, this Rebels team ended the season with quite a bit to be proud of. Coming off a 1-13 season

in 2016, not many expected much of the Rebels entering the 2017 season. Going into nearly every game, the Rebels were seen as underdogs because of the physical disadvantage they had. In addition, the team endured a 0-3 start to the season, the departure of longtime head coach Philip Fisher midway through the year, and an injury to Feinberg, the Rebels’ leading scorer, along the way. However, they played hard and played their own brand of basketball to take advantage of their own skills. Running their more organized, slow-tempo, passing offensive style compared to the “streetball” style many of their opponents played proved to have a significant impact, as the team was rewarded with their first playoff berth in three seasons and proved many wrong.

The team overcame what emerged as somewhat of a losing culture in Stuyvesant’s boys’ basketball program to finish the season with a .500 record (improved from .071 and .375 in the 2015-16 and 2014-15 seasons, respectively) and advance to the elimination rounds of the competitive A division. Both were feats that had not been accomplished since the 2013-2014 season.

A key factor for the team’s success

proved to be their depth. “I think the biggest difference this year was being able to rely on more people to score, as we had three people average over 10 points per game,” junior Michael Gillow said. This proved to have a big impact on the team’s efficiency, as the 2015-16 team, with a lack of depth, averaged 49.02 points points per game (PPG), while this season’s team averaged 58.21 PPG. The team’s defensive efficiency also improved from last year. The team gave up an average of 52.18 PPG to opposing teams this season (during the regular season), compared to the 63.42 they gave up the season before. The vast improvements on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball lead to the significant improvement on the team’s win total. This was huge, as it contributed to many memorable moments this season, which included beating rivals Hunter by over 30 points in Fisher’s last game and beating many division rivals in front of their passionate home court.

In addition, experience proved to be a crucial factor in their impressive seven win turnaround. Retaining their core from last season, including three players from the 2014-2015 season, allowed them

to grow and improve as a team and learn to play together and master the varsity system at a high level. “I would say the biggest difference between this year’s team and last year’s team would be on court experience. Last year, there were only one or two players who had had consistent minutes the previous year, so the fact that we had four starters back this year made a huge difference in the season,” Feinberg said.

This knowledge of and experience in the system was reflected in their substantial increase in assists this season. The Rebels averaged a total of 12.26 assists per game (APG), up from 7.9 APG the previous season.

Clearly, the team saw more success running the offensive system.

The Rebels believe that they can move forward and build on this successful 2016-2017 season. Many juniors saw significant playing time and made contributions in key moments, and they will look to step up and lead the team next year. “Hopefully, every single one of the juniors can step up and help the team next year. I hope they can work hard and repeat the success we had this year, while also helping incoming teammates improve and prepare for the future,” Feinberg said.

Feature

By Ray Jones Sitting across the table from Michael Feinberg, known by his friends simply as “Fichael,” I was taken aback by how modest he was. For a boy who has been called “Jesus” by his peers, both for the long hair he retired last May, as well as his skill on the basketball court, Feinberg’s attitude towards the game is incredibly calm and humble. His play style is similarly unselfish. After years of going to the park to play with his dad and older brother, he joined his church’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) team in third grade. He says that his coach was very team oriented and taught the players to always pass the ball if someone was open. Feinberg thinks that this heavily impacted his playing style even years later, saying, “I’m not really a shoot first kind of player.

I mean if someone is more open than me, then I want to pass them the ball. Unless we’re equally open,

Michael Feinberg

or I have a lot of space, I’m not just going to shoot.”

Though Feinberg played a lot of basketball in elementary school, he made it clear to me that he was far from being the star of his team.

“When I first began playing for my CYO team, I developed good fundamentals quickly, but I still had a long way to go in terms of improving my basketball IQ and being a more confident player,” he said.

It wasn’t until middle school that Feinberg really started to hone his skills.

Throughout middle school, Feinberg played a lot more basketball with his brother’s older friends, usually in the park. It was then, he says, that he really started to improve. In seventh grade, he joined his school’s team, and once he came to Stuyvesant, he made the JV basketball team in his freshman year. The following season, he was one of only three sophomores to make the Varsity team, the Runnin’ Rebels, where Coach Philip Fisher

helped him take his game to the next level. Feinberg said, “Fisher really helped me to start thinking more about Basketball IQ. You know, protecting the ball, preventing turnovers, and taking smarter shots.” Even while coming off of the bench, he played in every game of the season, averaging six points per game (PPG). Feinberg said that the highlight of his Stuyvesant career also came during this season. In a game against Murray Bergtraum High School, Feinberg scored 19 points off the bench. He made five three-pointers, including a buzzer beater to end the third quarter.

As a junior, Feinberg took on a bigger role on the team. Now a starter, he led the Runnin’ Rebels in scoring, averaging 18.9 PPG. However, the team finished the regular season with a record of just 1-13. Hoping for a stronger season, Feinberg looked forward to his senior season. That year, Feinberg was made one of the team captains, a job that he took on with

pride. Not wanting to be too hard on the younger players, he elected to lead simply by playing hard on the court. Senior and co-captain Tobias Lange said, “Michael is the type of leader who leads by example. He won’t really yell at you or get in your face, but he just plays hard and everyone follows.”

Feinberg said the highlight of his senior season came during the team’s first time facing Murray Bergtraum High School. The Runnin’ Rebels started strong, and towards the end of the game, they led by 19 points. But Bergtraum rallied, bringing the score to 48-44.

With the shot clock winding down, Feinberg was able to make a tough fadeaway three-pointer in the corner, increasing the gap and sealing a Stuyvesant victory. During his senior season, he once again led the team in scoring, and the Runnin’ Rebels finished with an 8-8 record, making the playoffs for the first time in three years. Although the team didn’t make it past the first

round, Feinberg says that just making the playoffs was a great way to end his Stuyvesant basketball career. His teammates have credited him for making major contributions to the successful season.

Lange said, “Ever since junior year, he’s been the star and faces the most defensive pressure. It doesn’t dissuade him from attacking and playing like himself.”

Senior George Kalantzopoulos agreed, saying, “Michael has just been that calming presence on the court, because we know what he is capable of doing.”

While Feinberg is not sure in what capacity he will play basketball in the future, he is certain that he will definitely continue with it.

He suggests that wherever he ends up at college, it is likely he will try to play club basketball, but he’s not sure if he’s good enough to make a competitive team in any of the NCAA Divisions. No matter what, Feinberg is sure he will look back at his Stuyvesant career with pride.

Girls’ Track

Greyducks Spring into New Season

By NIKKI DANIELS After Stuyvesant’s girls’ indoor track team, the Greyducks, finished their season on March 5, the team’s members began gearing up for the outdoor season. They performed well in the indoor season, placing second and third at the Freshman/ Sophomore City Championships and varsity City Championships, respectively. This year, as the team acquires fresh runners, Stuyvesant will hope to improve on last year’s fourth place performance in the outdoor City Championships on May 28.

The first meet of the season will take place at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island on Saturday, March 25.

The Greyducks are using each meet as a chance to show improvement from years past. “We have members who are returning from injuries that will make us stronger, and the

team is working hard to improve our times,” said senior Sharon Hu. “Our goals are to continue dominating championships and placing higher, if possible.”

Led by seniors and co-captains Zovinar Khrimian and Kamila Radjabova, the team practices every weekday, with meets on weekends.

The team is divided into distance runners, sprinters, and field eventers.

In addition to hard work, team unity is imperative to having a successful team. Khrimian feels that Stuyvesant does not lack this quality, as she highlights its impact on players’ performances. “My favorite part about this team is the mutual support and encouragement and the improvement-focused attitude,” said Khrimian. With the introduction of new Greyducks this spring, having this attitude will be an essen-

tial component in beating Stuyvesant’s competition.

This spring, one of the Greyducks’ main competitors will be Young Women’s Leadership School, located in East Harlem. “Young Women’s Leadership has a strong team and beat us in indoor, but I think we have a chance at beating them this season,” sophomore Vivian Cribb said. Young Women’s Leadership also beat Stuyvesant in last year’s outdoor City Championship, finishing in third place with 52 points—just above the Greyducks’ 45 points.

This school will prove to be an obstacle in getting a top-three finish, but the team’s outlook is optimistic. “We are hoping to be on the podium at the City Championships, [and] we are hoping to be Borough Champions again,” Coach Anna Markova said. These goals are not

unrealistic, as many of the members of the indoor track team will be working hard to carry over the success had during the indoor season to the outdoor season, especially cultivating the young talent.

One freshman who is a great asset to the team is Angelique CharlesDavis. During the indoor season, she participated in long jump and placed third in the Borough Championship for the 55 meter dash with a time of 7.83 seconds. She will look to help the team this spring, as she now has one track season under her belt.

In addition to Charles-Davis, many sophomores and juniors have dominated their respective events.

During the indoor track season, sophomore Kaitlin Wan won first place in the Borough Championships in both shot put and weight throw, sophomore Clara Mohri

came in first place at the Freshman/ Sophomore City Championships in the 1500-meter race with a time of 5 minutes and 6.65 seconds (5:6.65), and sophomore Jocelyn Tang came in third place for the 1000-meter race (3:18.32). In addition, junior Ziqi Guo placed first in the race walk at the City Championships, and junior Venus Nnadi excelled in many events, including her second place performance in pole vault during the Borough Championships.

This range of talent will hopefully make Stuyvesant a Championship-level team. Being able to earn points in many different events will go a long way for the Greyducks as they try to stand out among their competitors. “Our team has been dominated by long distance runners in the past, and having a greater diversity in our team’s events will definitely benefit us,” Hu said.

Boys’ Tennis

Seasoned Hitmen Eyeing Next Title Run continued from page 24 holding more rigorous practices as a team, the co-captains will need to show the others how to play the game the right way if the team wants

to improve from last year’s run.

Last year’s Brooklyn Technical High School game perpetuated a rivalry for Stuyvesant that will feed the intensity of these teams’ matchups. “It was the most watched

game we have had. It was very intense; both of our teams wanted a win so badly,” Wakefield said. This year, with a team that is largely made up of the same core of players, they can see a championship-

level roster forming. However, the team is taking nothing for granted.

“We have been putting in countless hours of both tennis and conditioning,” Pustilnik said. “Hopefully, our games reflect all the work we’ve put

in.” Even though the team will not play Brooklyn Tech in the regular season, everyone is hoping for a rematch in the playoffs. Once there, each and every player will have his eyes set on revenge and a title.

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 23

Sports Golf

Eagles Aim to Soar Again

By Ronin Berzins and Dimitriy Leksanov The Eagles, Stuyvesant’s coed golf team, gained their second consecutive win against The Bronx High School of Science in last year’s City Championship. Widely considered one of the most successful teams at Stuyvesant, the Eagles aspire to continue their success in the upcoming season.

Despite a great track record, the loss of key players has weakened the team, putting it at a disadvantage to more experienced squads. The coming season will tell whether or not the Eagles will be able to hold onto the title as the Public Schools Athletic League’s (PSAL) leading golf team. Coach Emilio Nieves has hopes to continue the championship appearances. “I expect us to compete for the PSAL championship for the fifth season in a row,” Nieves said. This is a bold outlook, but certainly not unachievable for the team considering its history.

The roster entering the season is not without concerns—the most glaring of which is the departure of Neil Vyas, a member of last year’s senior class. A four-year starter, Vyas racked up numerous accolades during his tenure, including participating in both the Mayor’s Cup and the New York Federation Golf Championship.

With Vyas gone, others must step up in order to fill the number one spot that he held in his four years.

This should not be impossible, as the Eagles do not lack talent.

First, senior Nicholas Ng, last year’s number two golfer, is another player with a long résumé, having also started since his freshman year. He should bring leadership both on and off the links, especially if he starts hot and shows improvement upon his previous years. After a phenomenal freshman campaign during which Ng posted a 9-hole total (a player’s high score over 9 holes of play over the course of a season) of 35 strokes, his perfor-

mance has not advanced since, with this statistic rising to 36 in his sophomore year and to 38 as a junior. If Ng is able to bring that total down, he may not only fill the void left by Vyas, but also set an example for the team’s younger golfers.

In addition to Ng, the talent of junior phenom Christopher Chan is not to be denied. As a freshman, Chan posted a 9-hole total of 40 strokes, proving to be a dominant force even as a rookie. Despite this impressive number, the real optimism comes from his playoff success, as he saw that total drop to 36 on the game’s biggest stage. If he is able to perform in clutch again, the team has a real shot at success.

Another potential obstacle for the Eagles is their schedule.

Since the inception of co-ed golf in 2014, Stuyvesant’s division, the Manhattan league, has always had five or fewer teams, with its only opponent of similar caliber being Hunter College High School.

However, this year, the division

has expanded to a whopping nine teams, including Bronx Science— Stuyvesant’s opponent in the past two finals. This may put the fate of the Manhattan league on the sole matchup between these two schools, as the winner would gain an enormous upperhand in the divisional race. Additionally, though Hunter has finished a tier below Stuyvesant and Bronx Science during the past few playoff runs, they could be looking to play spoiler.

However, the Eagles do not doubt themselves heading into the season. “I think we’re deep enough to still be a top tier team,” Chan said.

Ng affirms this attitude as well: “I’d say that our expectations are pretty high,” Ng said.

With a tougher division and a vacancy at the number one position, the crux of the season will be the contribution of last year’s bench. Seniors Kevin Zheng and Zachary Ginsberg are two strong players who will look to help the team in any way possible. Mainly a

reserve through his first three years, Zheng had success in the limited playing time that he saw, going 3-0 in both freshman and sophomore years. Ginsberg has a similar history, going 3-0 last year. He also posted a perfect 4-0 mark as a freshman while picking up a playoff victory.

In order to ensure the team’s execution of said expectations, Ng intends to assume a leadership role. “As a senior on the team, I’m also hoping to work with some of the younger players to help them improve so that our team is stronger in the future,” he said. This work could be instrumental in helping the team compete for titles beyond this year’s.

With that said, the games against Bronx Science and Hunter should test the team’s depth, as well as determine how far the team ultimately goes. “Right now, Bronx Science and Hunter are also good, and we’ve barely beaten them the past two years,” Chan said.

“This year should be interesting.”

Boys’ Baseball

Peglegs Poised to Return to Playoffs

By Tahsin Ali and Ariel Melendez The Peglegs, Stuyvesant’s boys’ varsity baseball team, headed into the 2016 playoffs with momentum and confidence. After bouncing back from their dismal 3-13 2015 campaign, the team clinched playoffs with a 7-9 record. Despite playing their best baseball at the end of the year, the team suffered a heartbreaking extra-innings loss in the playoffs. The Peglegs look to build off their successful 2016 campaign and continue the momentum they had into this season as they strive for even further improvement.

“We obviously caught a tough break last year in the first round of the playoffs losing in extra innings to a team with a better seed,” senior and co-captain Jack Archer said. “But I think there was a lot to learn from that game and last season as a whole. Rather than change the course, I think we need to build off last year’s energy that got us to the playoffs and learn from the mistakes that took us out of it.”

However, the road to another playoff run will not be easy. The team will look to replace nine seniors, including former captain Nathan Chandler (‘16), who led the team in batting average and now plays at the collegiate level.

“Losing so many seniors, especially Nathan, will be difficult. They composed the heart of our lineup and donned the nickname ‘bombsquad’ last year,” Archer said.

New guys that had previously not started and/or played on JV are going to need to take the reins and have some big shoes to fill, particularly on the offensive side. “It’s true though that some of the best hitters on the team last year left, so we will have to make the most of what we have,” sophomore Malcolm Hubbell said. However, the team has retained the core of its pitching staff. “Last year’s seniors were very good, however, we are confident we can do well this year, since our two best pitchers last year, Jack Archer and Toby Lange, are still at Stuy,” Hubbell said.

Despite the departure of many

starting seniors, head coach John Carlesi believes his team has the potential to be better than they were last season. “I do not think depth is an issue this year. We have very good pitching from starters to relief, and defense looks better than last year. We lost some big hitters last year, but I am hopeful that some of the guys that were getting hot at the end of last season will carry that over to this season,” Carlesi said. This year’s team also consists of a senior class that has strong team chemistry. “Our senior class is very close this year; many have been on the varsity team for the past three years together, which is great for team bonding. I always feel that the closer a team is outside of their sport, the stronger they will be on the field,” Carlesi said.

The seniors will look not only to lead the team on the field, but make the transition for many new faces on the team smoother. “The transition from JV to varsity hasn’t been too hard, because JV goes to Florida with the Varsity team. Also, we’re all familiar with Coach Carlesi, as

he’s very involved in both teams, even though he only coaches varsity,” junior Michael Gillow said.

“I am hoping I can be a positive influence on my teammates and prepare myself for competition at the college level,” Archer said.

This smooth transition may prove to be essential this season, as last year’s JV team saw extensive success, finishing at 9-1 on the season.

The team worked hard during the offseason, organizing workouts during the winter with Carlesi. They continued their offseason training in Florida, where the team spent their mid-winter break finally getting back on the field and preparing for the long season ahead. Defense was one of the weaknesses coming into the season for the Peglegs, but with the entire infield returning to the team, they do not believe this will be an area of concern. “The other things that hurt us last year were errors in the infield. Our infield was comprised mostly of juniors, so hopefully, with another year of maturity, these issues will go away,” Carlesi said.

After the trip to Florida, Archer said, “Our pitching is our clear strong suit, as Tobias and I were two of the top pitchers in the city last year as juniors. I think we probably have the strongest team we have ever had at Stuyvesant, and I think we are capable of beating any team we play.” The strength and potential of the pitching staff were in full effect in pre-season scrimmages. In their first scrimmage against Collegiate High School, Archer and sophomore Jeremy Rubin combined to throw a no-hitter, and the Peglegs went on to win 5-0. In the following scrimmage against Trinity High School, pitchers Tobias Lange, senior Joseph Halim, and sophomore Jared Asch combined to strike out 14 batters. The team knows the strength of their rotation and expects nothing less than a playoff appearance. “Our goal is always to make the playoffs and see what can happen. I think with this pitching staff we have a good shot at making some noise in our division,” Carlesi said.

Boys’ Volleyball

Beasts Looking for Strong Start

By Allison Eng and Muhib Khan

In the second scrimmage set, Stuyvesant switched up the lineup a little bit and was able to build a strong lead behind spikes by juniors Shun Bitar and Justin Chan. Townsend fell apart during the last few plays, allowing Stuyvesant to win the set 25-17, tying the scrimmage 1-1.

In the third and final scrimmage set, Stuyvesant and Townsend traded points one by one. The Beasts faced some tough service errors, putting the Hawks up 19-15. In the end, Stuyvesant would go on to lose their third set (and first scrimmage) 25-20.

Even though it was just a scrimmage and won’t count in the PSAL standings, the Beasts are still looking to improve. Choubaralian said, “The team really needs to improve their mental toughness and [show] greater resilience through tough moments. Another thing the team can benefit from is an increase in the ability to adapt to different game situations. This requires a heightened situational and game awareness.”

The Beasts were able to try out a few different lineups during the scrimmage. All seven juniors on the team rotated into the game, showing promise. Starters Deysine, Patwary, Bitar, and setter Ray Jones all showed a solid performance, contributing to

Allison Eng/ The Spectator

“One, two, three, STUY! Four, five, six, BEAST MODE!” The gym is filled with excitement, pride, and chants as the Beasts, Stuyvesant’s boys’ volleyball team, get ready to start their first scrimmage of the season against the Townsend Harris Hawks.

Last year, the Beasts were 2nd in their Manhattan A West division, with a record of 8 wins and 2 losses.

Their two losses of the season were to High School of Environmental Studies, their longtime rivals. “Our rivalry with them is great. They’re a super fun team to play [with] and always really friendly, [giving] us a great match,” senior and co-captain Jackson Deysine said. Usually, the Beasts lose to Environmental due to slight mistakes during the end of sets. This year, the Beasts are hoping to finish their sets strong, playing hard until the end.

During last year’s postseason, the Beasts were seeded 15th and played their first postseason game against the Richmond Hill Lions, seeded 18th. The Beasts took first set, but lost the next two, ending the season with a 2-1 loss. Coach Vasken Choubaralian said, “Richmond Hill [high school beat us last year] in a difficult and

upsetting loss in the first round of playoffs, even though we had beat them earlier in the season.”

“[I] hope to improve [the] team chemistry, since this is an entirely new starting unit,” senior and co-captain Isfar Patwary said. “It’s important to be comfortable with one another.”

Due to the departure of last year’s seniors, this year’s lineup will feature many new faces. Many players will need to step up to help the team and give their all. This year’s junior class especially will have to fill the gaps, but they have already become a growing presence in the team’s starting lineup and rotation.

Choubaralian said, “Many of the current juniors played volleyball during the off-season and came back this year playing much better than last year. They also have great chemistry together, and that helps make the new line up a little easier.”

In the final moments of the first scrimmage, Stuyvesant was leading 22-19. Townsend was able to rally back, leading 24-25 after a swipe from their middle hitter Vickash Persaud. Throughout the game, Persaud was able to do a lot of damage to the Beasts, hitting the ball almost straight down whenever he could, and the Beasts could not retrieve his spikes.

Stuyvesant lost the first set 25-27.

Senior and captain Jackson Deysine explaining a play to his teammates after a short timeout.

the team in more ways than one.

The Beasts are also looking toward younger players, such as sophomores Kevin Mitchell and Dylan Kim. Mitchell, a second-year returner, says he will take whatever opportunity he receives to help the team: “I want to help the team [however] I can, whether that [is] coming off the bench or any [other] position [that will] best benefit the team.”

Newcomer Dylan Kim has already worked closely with players on the team, honing his skills in the winter to be able to join the team this spring. “I’m excited to

have made this team. I am even more excited to work, bond, and play with the team this year. I can’t wait to train hard with them through thick and thin, get[ting] stronger together,” Dylan Kim said.

As the season progresses, all eyes will be on the team looking to make a playoff run. Junior Samuel Kim said, “My hopes for this team have always been the same. I think we all want to win the chip this year, just like all the years prior to ours, and I have faith that our team can pull it off this year.”

March 31, 2017

Page 24

The Spectator SpoRts Boys’ Gymnastics

Andrew Park/ The Spectator

Lemurs Oust LIC to Claim Third Place at Championships

Martuni Nazrayan during his routine on the parallel bars

By Celina Liu The Lemurs, Stuyvesant’s boys’ varsity gymnastics team, headed into the PSAL Boys’ Gymnastics Team Championship spirited and hungry for a city championship.

The night before, Coach Marvin Autry gave the guys an hourlong pep talk, leaving them confident and optimistic. But, the day of the championships did not start out well for the Lemurs.

Many core members of the team were sick and feverish, including senior Martuni Nazaryan and sophomore Muhib Khan. The two were all-arounders, which means they were expected to account for a significant number of Stuyvesant’s points. While warming up for the competition, senior and co-captain Matthew Aleksey dislocated his finger, an unfortunate situation that might have hindered the team’s performance that day. Regardless,

Nazaryan and Aleksey were still team leaders for the Lemurs, and Aleksey scored top scores in every event he competed in. “We just had a bad day as a team,” Khan said.

With three of its highest-scoring members injured, the team was put at a large disadvantage against its rivals. Although the Lemurs had gone 6-0 in their regular season meets, their wins against John F. Kennedy Campus and Fiorello H. LaGuardia were by less than a point. The two schools performed exceptionally well at the meet, going on to win second and first place at the championships, respectively.

LaGuardia ended up scoring 126.5 points, while Kennedy scored 125.9 points. Autry attributes the difference in points between Stuyvesant and the top two schools to their intense practices. “JFK, after they lost to us, started training harder.

Some of their kids started going to a private gym,” Autry said.

While chances of placing first or second at the championships were slimming as the events went by, Stuyvesant was still set on bringing back a medal. “Once a few rotations of events went by, we started having doubts [about winning first place],” Khan said. Its next closest competition was Long Island City High School, a school it had previously beaten without much trouble.

LIC managed to get their highest score of the season at 119.4 points, but the Lemurs were still able to narrowly beat them out with a score of 119.5 points, winning by just 0.1.

At the end of the day, Stuyvesant went home with the third place trophy, which the boys were more than happy about. “If our team had been in tip-top shape, we would’ve come back with something better,” Autry said.

As a whole, the Lemurs have mostly found successes throughout their season. Being able to beat previous champions of their league, LaGuardia and JFK, during one-onone meets was one of their major triumphs. “[Beating LaGuardia and JFK] was a pretty big deal,” Autry said. Many members of the team also qualified for event championships. Aleksey qualified for five out of six events, senior and co-captain Edwin Liu qualified for rings, and Khan qualified for the pommel horse event. “Overall, it was a great season—we just had very tough competition,” Autry said.

However, the loss of the seniors will be a major loss for next year’s team. Aleksey played a key role in earning points for Stuyvesant this season, along with Nazaryan and Liu. In order to compensate for these losses, the Lemurs must have underclassmen individual competitors to step up. With so many of their all-arounders leaving, the team will have to rely more on its specialists in events and put more pressure on Khan, an underclassman all-arounder. But, in order to improve and get ready for next year’s season, the team is having unofficial post-season training, which will encourage underclassmen to try new events as well as improve their techniques. “We plan to be working out into and during the summer and hope to get a lot better,” Khan said. While the future is uncertain for the Lemurs, Khan is confident in the team’s strive for improvement as well as determination to win championships.

CALENDAR

April

5

3 Monday

Wednesday Boys’ Tennis vs.

Beacon Pier 40 Tennis Courts

Girls’ Fencing vs.

NEST + m Stuyvesant H.S. Gym

6

Thursday Boys’ Baseball vs.

Norman Thomas Pier 40

WRAPUP Stuyvesant’s girls’ softball team, the Renegades, defeated George Washington 21-8 on March 29. With that victory along with wins against Lab Museum United and Hunter College HS to start the season, the Renegades sit atop their division with a 3-0 record.

The Peglegs, Stuyvesant’s boys’ lacrosse team, dropped back-toback games against Albert Tuitt Educational Campus and Frederick Douglass Academy after to starting off their season with a forfeit victory, and currently stand at 1-2.

Stuyvesant’s girls’ lacrosse team, the Huskies, started their season 2-0 with a 15-5 victory over KIPP NYC College Prep and a 13-7 win over Frederick Douglass Academy.

Boys’ Tennis

Seasoned Hitmen Eyeing Next Title Run

By Celina Liu and Jeremy Rubin

here and make us a championship team with the amount of talent we have,” he said. The rookie has also had previous experience playing against many of Stuyvesant’s rival schools’ top players, which is an asset in helping the team target others’ weaknesses. Emitting a positive energy, Sharma is confident in helping jumpstart the team.

One key problem with the team last year was a lack of experience.

With only two players graduating— Yan and substitute Philip Chun— the team did not have many seniors.

With the majority of that team set to return, players are hoping for a better year. “We have only gotten better, and combined with the right mentality, we can go just as far, if not even farther this year,” Pustilnik said. Pustilnik went 4-4 last year as first singles and hopes to remain a major part of the team. Others, including junior Derek Lung (second singles, 4-3 record last year) and senior Julian Neuman (second doubles, 5-4 record last year), will all be back and ready for the new season.

Even with all the returnees, no position is set in stone, and each of last year’s starters will have to prove that he is capable again. Senior and continued on page 22

co-captain Brandon Huang, who has proven to be instrumental to the team’s success, holding a starting spot since freshman year, will need to become more vocal and lead the boys to success. Fellow co-

captain Wakefield believes Huang stepping up could lead the team to the caliber it needs to dominate. “I would like to see him be more assertive on the court,” Wakefield said.

From clearing up any false calls to

Junior Derek Lung serves in his match at second singles.

Stefan Engquist/ The Spectator

In what had been a hard-fought match on both sides, Brooklyn Technical High School pulled out a 3-2 victory against the Hitmen, Stuyvesant’s boys’ tennis team, last May. As the two teams walked off the court, however, tension remained as the schools argued over sportsmanship and disputed calls. Despite some bad blood with Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant still managed to place third in the city and established itself as one of the best in all five boroughs. This year, the team will be looking to re-affirm itself as a formidable opponent and hopefully defeat Brooklyn Tech’s team.

Last season, Stuyvesant went 5-5 in the Bronx/Manhattan ADivision, finishing third behind Bronx High School of Science (8-2) and Beacon High School (9-1)—the eventual PSAL champion. Led by Kevin Yan (‘16), who was first doubles along with then-junior Brandon Huang, the team went deep into the playoffs as the fifth seed. “It was our best season in quite a few years; we ended up placing third in the city after a difficult season, and we made it to semifinals,” said senior and co-captain Zachary Wakefield. “Unfortunately, [we were]

knocked out by Brooklyn Tech.”

While the Hitmen lost Yan, one of their starting players, both returning and new players have the ability to step up. “We have a few talented players coming to the team this year,” Wakefield said. This talent and depth will be needed, as the team tends to have the most difficulty winning its doubles and third singles matches. On multiple occasions, Stuyvesant was tied 2-2 with another team, only to lose its final match in a split-set tiebreaker.

The Hitmen will also be getting help in the form of young players. “We were fortunate enough to get a few new freshmen that [can make] our team better,” junior Nicholas Pustilnik said.

Freshman Sujay Sharma is one of the newly recruited Hitmen.

Currently ranked top ten in New York in his age division, Sharma has proved his continual dedication to the sport even after encountering Stuyvesant’s strenuous workload. “I train at John McEnroe Tennis Academy Sportime Syosset four days a week, and I play a lot of United States Tennis Association tournaments and national [tournaments],” Sharma said. He is optimistic for the coming season and is confident the Hitmen will go far. “I really wanted to come

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 25

Opinions Point-Counterpoint: The Other Racist White Thing

By Asher Lasday and Matteo Wong The following was written and then cut from Breitbart:

WHALES

The Racism of L’actose Every day you walk into the lunchroom, wait on a long line, and get milk.

But, for approximately 87.568% of people at Stuyvesant, this isn’t an option. Why? Because they’re l’actose intolerant. Dictionary.com defines lactose intolerant as “unable to digest lactose (milk sugar) due to a deficiency of lactase, an enzyme for metabolization of lactose.”

Many might ask why the cafeteria continues to serve milk despite many being unable to consume it. It’s because white people can process lactose at higher rates than people of color. The DOE should stop serving milk in schools because firstly it is racist, secondly it’s a waste of cash, and thirdly its inhumanity.

Fist, milk is racist. This is true because milk is only consumed by white people. According to Livestock Weekly, a weekly publication about livestock, “ ‘Tens of millions’ of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans cannot properly absorb milk products into their bloodstream.” This means that when we give tax dollars to buy milk for schools, we are really just perpetuating decades, if not centuries-long racist institutions by only making sure white people can get all the food they need.

That’s racism. >:( Next, remember that because milk cannot be consumed by everyone (only white people), the Unites STate wastes a literal ton of money on food. That’s not just me being crass, that’s legit. According to the NRDC, the US ends up

throwing away about 40% of food. But, if we were to stop funding racist milk in schools, we wouldnt waste as much food because people of colours wouldn’t have to throw away the milk they get in school because their allergic. If you want taxes to go down and schools food delivery systems to be more affective, we should stop serving milk in cafeterias.

Finally, the United States should stop serving milk in schools because the way milk is raised is odee sad. Farmer’s BiWeekly reports that in order for milk to be raised, they need to juice a cow?!?!?!

Wtf how is that natural. The institute for pharmacological research studies explains that in order for milk to be produced in the quantities that modern america demands, cows need to take lots of anti-bacterial drugs that result in them having weaker immune systems and overall shorter lives. But, if we decreased the amount of milk that the government bought from these farmers, then these farmers won’t need to use these harmful anti-bacterial products. That means cows will be happier, healthier, and those who do drink milk (white devils) will have better quality milk that is less likely to contain harmful chemicals like PDH-4/20-69.

THank you for reading my argument about why milk should not be served in the cafeteria. If we were to not serve milk, we would end structural racism, solve america’s wasted food crisis, and save cows. tHank you and good night.

Mr. Speaker, the honourable gentleman would have you believe that milk is racist, but little does he know that the real racism in our society comes from homogenizing milk. That’s indigenous genocide! Much like people, milk naturally comes in all colors, from vanilla to chocolate to starberry. Some even come without l’actose and are from free-range, non-GMO, pesticide-free, gluten-free, farmer-free farms.

L’actose, in fact, is an important protein. You need milk to make gainz. Now, a lot of people will say that gainz are bad because people just use them to punch nazis, but I say if richard spencer is gonna have that haircut, he deserves a punc.h.

Without milk, how would we take action against the alt-right? checkmate.

You might think cows are a big problem, but they’re’s a bigger mammal.

Whales. You ever drink whale milk??

That ish nasty. According to the Huffington Post, .0008% of the population drinks whale milk, contributing to 0.0317 whales dying annually. At the end of the day, you need to weigh juicing cows versus killing whales, and I’d say whales are a bigger problem.

Even l’actose carrying ships are dangerous for whales. Recently I watched an documentarie entitled “Sonic Sea,” which discusses underwater noise pollution. According to Sonic Sea, the single biggest issue under the umbrella topic of underwater noise pollution is the effect that loud commercial shipping vessels are having on whale communication. If

the pollution is loud enough, in an attempt to swim away, whales can have hemorrhaging in their brains and bleed out. Otherwise, young whales can be prevented from communicating with their mothers, leaving them more vulnerable to attack.

Have you ever heard of whale pollution? Nope. Because it’s all a corporate plot to sell you milk. Illuminati confirmed.

Hemorrhaging > indigestion from l’actose. So yes, milk is a problem — but for whales, not people of color. **Drops mic**

Vivian Lin / The Spectator

An Open Letter to Stuyvesant

By Jane Rhee Dear Stuyvesant, I don’t think I’ve ever told you this, but I love you. From walking through the bridge entrance on that very first day (after getting yelled at and kicked out by the security guards at the main entrance), to smiling through my tears as teachers assign my fifth project of the week, I have increasingly fallen in love with your broken escalators and unintelligible morning announcements.

Every day, you continue to shape me into a better person. I’ve become more dexterous as I delicately practice balancing a large hazelnut iced coffee from McDonald’s between my chemistry lab report and AP Euro review book. I’ve become more fit as I run up the broken seven-to-nine escalators, dodging the rolling backpacks and PDA. I’ve learned how to hold my breath as I go to my locker on the fourth floor near the West staircase so that Señor Simon doesn’t come out and impale me with a copy of Descubre 2.

You really play hard to get sometimes, but I’ve come to realize that it’s just a part of your charm. I was ecstatic to get within viewing distance of Ms. Fong’s head at program changes, even if I got turned away after waiting for two hours. I’m absolutely smitten at the fact that we have such sturdy benches, although we’re not allowed to sit on them during normal school hours. And knowing that we have a library, even if I can’t get in because I arrived roughly two seconds after the end bell, gives me a warm feeling inside.

So the next time I squeeze out of the subway, sandwiched in a car full of stressed, half-asleep students trying not to drop their physics study guides as they nod off, I’ll be thinking of you, Stuy. Just know that in four years, I’ll be calling you.

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Xoxo, Jane

Page 26

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

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The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 27

Arts and Entertainment The Honest Reviews That You’ve Been Missing

By Gabrielle Umanova Have you had enough of misleading movie reviews written by incompetent critics? Well have no fear, there is finally an extremely qualified expert and general scholar available to bring the truth to the people: me.

The Best Movies of All Time

Batman vs. Superman - Perhaps the most successful of the Batman movies, “Batman vs. Superman” gives even “Batman and Robin” a run for its money. After all, the frustration of watching your favorite superheroes incite each other in a tiresome and pointless feud that strips them of all charm makes for an enjoyable movie experience. It’s just so…out of the mainstream. Fighting the bad guys might give you something to root for, but it’s simply overdone.

Why stick with a concept that’s worked for decades? Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill shine as the title characters, substituting charisma and depth for darkness and evoking true emotional suffering from the audience.

Christine Jegarl / The Spectator

The Last Airbender - This world renowned film is perhaps the best adaptation of a cartoon into a live action film of all time.

“The Last Airbender” is driven by a plot that left almost the entire audience snore-free. The dialogue evokes the wit and fast pace of a physics textbook, making it a Stuyvesant favorite. The depth with which the characters are portrayed can only be described using antonyms of the word “depth,” and the same can be said for the film’s emotion and excitement. Fearlessly pushing the boundaries, the movie displays both talent and range as its white cast takes on more “exotic” characters. “The Last Airbender” provides audiences with a level of entertainment comparable to an imminently dissected frog, making it a movie the world will remember.

and dreamboat-for-masochists named Edward Cullen. The complexity of this character is mind-blowing. Edward Cullen is a “vegetarian,” and his high sense of morality forces him to survive only off of animal blood, a unique diet which unfortunately leaves him with chronic constipation.

The 80-year age difference between him and his love interest adds a pleasant touch of pedophilia to an already dark movie.

Kristen Stewart portrays the

Twilight - Undoubtedly the greatest love story of all time, the movie is renowned for its ability to reach a diverse audience— teenage girls with low self-esteem and their weird moms—globally.

Robert Pattinson, a once talented actor, stars as a sparkly vampire

ever-relatable love interest and protagonist Bella Swan, a pale, depressed, humorless girl, noted for her use of only one facial expression. Ultimately, this movie teaches us of the perseverance of love, as these two sickos find love

despite a plot that’s as murderous as enemy vampires.

The Worst Movies of All Time Titanic - James Cameron’s mess of a movie about some dumb boat has temporarily murdered joy in the dozens who watched it. Nobodies Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCraprio, two artists who don’t deserve to be so much as nominated for an Oscar, play Rose and Jack, a couple almost

as insufferable as the movie they star in. Rose is alternately an annoying rich girl and terrible old lady—someone who thinks it’s okay to waste a million years of an excavator’s time only to dump the jewel that could have sup-

ported her family and a small country for the length of this never-ending film into the ocean she should have drowned in. Jack, the forbidden poor boy with a French people fetish, woos Rose by spitting from a balcony. Together, they make the stupidest couple of all time, exemplified by their inability to share a door that could have prevented death. The two spend a week lying to Rose’s family and defiling her car, only bringing audiences relief when

Jack decides dying would be preferable to spending any more time with Rose. The most tragic aspect of the film is undoubtedly its existence, and the most joyous—its end.

Harry Potter - This franchise has got to be the worst thing to have happened to cinema. By now, it is widely known that this disaster lacked any genuine, exciting, or captivating plot. The “movie” features washed up child stars that never went far, with Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson playing protagonists Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, irrelevant midget magicians who spend their entire time at wizard nerd school pissing everyone off and being idiotically inefficient at learning their magic tricks. The story centers around some bespectacled and poorly dressed noob who enters a world of magic where (surprise, surprise!) he is the only one who can save the magicians from the looming threat of a bald guy’s shiny head. Needless to say, the entire premise of this story is ridiculous and leaves unsatisfied viewers with questions such as, “Why would you need a glorified stick to do magic?” and “Could they really not have figured out a more efficient postage system?”

The story features no teachable moments or profound ideas, essentially centering around foureyed idiot being an insufferable dweeb at an institution that sounds like a disease that would induce hospitalization, Hogwarts.

Casablanca - A speck of dirt in Hollywood’s Golden Age, Michael Curtiz’s “Casablanca” is a film that has enjoyed little legacy outside of its renowned lack of quality. Inconsequential actors Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman play Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund in a film that explains why they never received any recognition or fame.

The first issue of course is the silly way that everyone talks, giving the impression that they’re trying to talk around a small elephant that had been stuffed in their mouths. Never before has there been a film as monotonous and emotionless as this one. Tragically separated from the love of your life during the most horrendous war of all time? Reunited only to leave one another behind again?

Big deal! It completely lacks plot or conflict, and the scenes, sets, and costumes could hardly be more aesthetically unpleasing.

This film destroys any charm of nostalgia for old films.

Songs to Listen to Whilst Pooping There is nary a more tranquil time in a person’s day-to-day than the brief moments spent seated on the toilet freeing the excrement from your bowels. The sheer pleasure of these special moments perfectly complements this equally stimulating playlist. The next time you find yourself on the John, take a moment to plug in your earbuds and enjoy some easy listening to accompany the familiar plopping sound of your feces.

“Shining” DJ Khaled ft. Beyoncé and Jay Z Hip-hop

“Empty Gold” Halsey Alternative/Indie

“Don’t Explain” Billie Holiday Jazz

“Unsteady” X Ambassadors Alternative/Indie

“Early Days” Paul McCartney Classic Rock

“Say It” Tory Lanez Hip-hop

“Na Na Na” My Chemical Romance Alternative/Indie

“U Can’t Touch This” McHammer Hip-hop

“Ease” Troye Sivan Pop

“Sound” Daniela Andrade Alternative/Indie

“Nancy” Frank Sinatra Jazz

“Don’t Stop” (“Color On The Walls”) Foster the People Alternative/Indie

“Deja Vu” J Cole Hip-hop/Rap

“She’s American” The 1975 Alternative/Indie

“Nasty Girl” Vanity 6 Synth Funk

“Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely” Backstreet Boys Pop

“Eet” Regina Spektor Alternative/Indie

“Do U Dirty” Kehlani R&B/Soul

“Emperor’s New Clothes” Panic! At The Disco Alternative/Indie

“Down In The Tube Station At Midnight” The Jam New Wave/Post-punk

“Encore” Jay Z Hip-hop/Rap

“Nice Dream” Radiohead Alternative/Indie “New York, New York” Frank Sinatra Jazz “Nicotine” Panic! At The Disco Alternative/Indie “Under The Bridge” Red Hot Chili Peppers Alternative/Indie

“Dying For You” Otto Knows House “Drop It Like It’s Hot” Snoop Dogg Hip-hop “Dance” Sam Kim K-pop “Endless, Nameless” Nirvana Rock

“Seasons Of Love” RENT Original Cast Soundtrack “Slide” Calvin Harris ft. Frank Ocean and Migos Dance/Electronic “Skyfall” Adele Orchestral Pop

The Spectator ● March 31, 2017

Page 28

Arts and Entertainment 2017 Political Oscars

Could a $10.00 Cactus Change your Life?

By karen chen

Trump’s Tweets: Best Screenplay

By Chelsea Cheung and Shray Tripathi The new app, “Lucky Cactus,” claims to be able to change your life with “money, love, power, [and] whatever you want,” simply by tapping on a cactus emoji in the middle of a yellow screen. Best of all, this app is available for a mere $10.00—far cheaper than a flight out to the Sonora desert for the more prickly and painful alternative.

Chelsea The first time I opened up the app, I had hoped for more than just the lonely animated cactus I saw at the center of my screen. I tapped once, expecting nothing to happen. After three or so taps, however, I was interested in the tiny icons that would appear and float away from the cactus. While the icons would often repeat themselves, including the dollar sign, heart, briefcase, and lightning bolt; I would sometimes see a car, pink bird, or sunglasses. None of these icons felt of any actual importance to me, but tapping on the cactus just to see them pop up definitely served as a time-passer in moments of excessive boredom.

After the first week of testing out this app on my phone, I’d begun to realize the effect that my cactus was having on my life: none at all. I was about to delete the app, but decided to give it one last try to see if anything would happen.

One day, after miserably failing a chemistry test, I went out for comfort food to a pricey Tribeca restaurant. I ordered its cheddar-broccoli soup and was a few spoonfuls in when I felt a sharp, thin object poking the edge of my tongue. I immediately spat out the soup and was appalled to find a big, fat toenail speckled with dirt and weird yellow stuff.

After mentally cursing my cactus and leaving the shop in a state of trauma, I quickly deleted the app, bidding my $10.00 a tearful but joyous farewell.

None of these icons felt of any actual importance to me, but tapping on the cactus just to see them pop up definitely served as a time-passer in moments of excessive boredom.

Shray The first time I opened up the app, I was on the train, and I was immediately staring at the black “loading” screen, which lingered for about 10 seconds. The first things to catch my attention were the tiny capitalized letters that read “Lucky Cactus is Loading” bolded in an unwelcoming font. Above these letters stood a symbol of a golden eye, which bore a chilling resemblance to the Illuminati.

The app has left me more frustrated about all the negative moments that it has forced me to fixate upon.

Originally, I expected my “lucky” cactus to have absolutely no effect on my life. However, in the span of three weeks, I’ve suffered from even more unlucky occurrences than usual. In most cases, it seems illogical to attribute them to “Lucky Cactus,” but in fact, the app has left me more frustrated about all the negative moments that it has forced me to fixate upon.

For example, my birthday was a few weeks ago, on an undoubtedly cloudy Tuesday of the school week. On my way back from school, I tapped my lucky cactus and decided to treat myself to an expensive but warm matcha latte. With my severe lactose intolerance, I specifically requested for my drink to be made with soy milk, to which the cashier nodded. A few minutes later, I picked up my readymade latte from the counter and headed out, taking my first large sip. Almost immediately, I could taste the signature sweetness of cow’s milk and had to throw out almost the entirety of my $8.00 latte.

Just last week, I had begun putting my hateful thoughts together to draft this very review of “Lucky Cactus,” and later that night, my sister coincidentally closed a car door on my wrist. I’ve had to wear a cast ever since, and to make matters worse, it was the wrist of my writing hand.

IN CONCLUSION It’s safe to say that these $10.00 were not well-spent, and we’ve discovered that even thinking about the app’s effect on our lives tends to invoke lasting migraines. The incomparable luck the app has brought us has consistently reinforced a negative and irritating vibe into our daily lives. “Lucky Cactus,” a talisman that we thought would boost our spirits instead obliterated them, and we don’t want a cactus to waste 67.8 KB of your phone’s data as it did to ours.

[Insert Bad Pun of Team Name]

By Ray Jones After a very successful regular season for the [insert less than menacing animal], Stuyvesant’s [insert obscure sport] team, the end of the season brought disappointment for some members.

The regular season was a pleasant surprise for the [insert team name], as they ended the season with a respectable 1-99 record. In addition, directly before the Borough Championships, the [insert team name] came in second place in their division with an over 100 point gap between first place.

However, the team’s experience did not not come without a lot of hard work. With practices every day, the [insert team name]’s discipline produced noticeable results. For the distance runners,

practices on weekdays included doing a variety of exercises in a variety of locations. Practices on the other weekdays took place in [insert borough here].

Last year, at the City Championships, the [insert team name] narrowly missed third place by 1200 points. Nonetheless, they were jubilated, as Stuyvesant placed [insert positive adjective here] than last year. “I’m proud of the effort the team showed this year, and we’re happy with the result we came away with. We just had a bad day,” the coach said.

With the season behind them, the [insert team name] is looking forward to next season, where they will work hard for a shot at a top performance.

“We could make a run for the podium at next year’s championships,” the captain said.

This year’s candidates from Best Screenplay had a large variety, ranging from Hillary “Crooked” Clinton’s classical performance of “Healthy Presidential Candidate” to more modern pieces like a repeated video loop strangely titled “Cash Me Outside.” However, one clear winner outshines them all: “Tweeting Rainbow.” The alternative documentary piece innovatively uses the social media platform Twitter to reflect the anguish and frustration of the protagonist, Donald J. Trump. Since its premiere in August of last year, Trump’s work has been generating much passionate debate, certainly worthy of a Best Screenplay.

Trump is not a first timer to the acting scene; his first film role was a supporting character as a good-willed businessman in the popular film, “Rich Kid Gets Lost in New York.” He was very humbled by the receptiveness to his acting. “I don’t know why everyone was so surprised by how well I performed. I love kids. I love babies. And I’m good at giving directions. That was essentially the role.”

Trump was quite composed during the ceremony as he accepted the national nuclear launch codes for his award.

When asked what he wanted to do with his increased popularity and influence, the actor replied, “Well, I was thinking about using my influence to improve the general health care of people.

That should be simple.”

Some are still shocked at his huge win. “I assure you, there was so many more audience members this year than the last Oscars,” the actor defensively clarified to us for the fifth time.

Conway/Spicer: Best Improv

An improv actor is not only judged by how convincing he or she can portray a character, but also by how quickly the actor can come up with creative ideas on the spot. In a surprising plot twist there were two winners for Best Improv Comedy: Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer.

Kellyanne Conway was nominated for a stunning impromptu performance on the tragic Bowling Green Massacre while on a news show. Her dramatic narration of the ordeal brought

a strong reaction from the audience members. One notable critic allegedly commented, “I couldn’t believe her acting. It almost seemed unreal.”

To Sean Spicer, improv was his full-time job. “I’ve always worked closely with the media, so it comes naturally to me.” He was nominated through a series of videos that went viral, and audiences were floored by the deep moments and questions he posed. One of the most popular moments includes, “sometimes we have to disagree with the facts.” In addition, his execution of jokes is flawless. “It almost seemed like he didn’t need to think for them,” reviews raved.

Paul Ryan: Best Poker Face

“I couldn’t believe her acting. It almost seemed unreal.”

—an unbiased critic In an industry that is entirely based on the portrayal of emotion, to show none is certainly a feat that needs to be commemorated in this newly created category. The appreciation for poker faces has been on the uprise ever since the creation of the Mannequin Challenge trend, where participants try to stand still and be basic as the filmer takes a panoramic shot. Paul Ryan, the lead actor of the award-winning musical, “Pretend That Everything’s Fine,” took the challenge to a new level, turning it into a film.

Over the course of the week, he invited actor friends to try their best to break him.

One of the highlights of the film was when he brought in an orange-faced clown, but even the clown’s tactics couldn’t tickle Ryan’s funny bone, not even a twitch in his face. When asked what was the key to his newfound talent, Ryan replied, “I had a lot of practice. I had played a rock for most of my plays at the Congressional Acting Company.”

But even the great poker face king couldn’t keep back tears as he watched his colleague Donald J. Trump accept his Oscars.

Sports

Pegleg Pete Finishes Last in Mascot Olympics

By Max Onderdonk After a very successful regular season for the [insert less than menacing animal], Stuyvesant’s [insert obscure sport] team, the end of the season brought disappointment for some members.

The regular season was a pleasant surprise for the [insert team name], as they ended the season with a respectable 1-99 record. In addition, directly before the Borough Championships, the [insert team name] came in second place in their division with an over 100 point gap between first place.

However, the team’s experience did not not come without a lot of hard work. With practices every day, the [insert team name]’s discipline produced noticeable results. For the distance runners, practices on weekdays included doing a variety of exercises in a

variety of locations. the team showed this Practices on the othyear, and we’re happy er weekdays took with the result we place in [insert came away with. We borough here]. just had a bad day,” Last year, at the coach said. the City ChamWith the pionships, the season behind [insert team them, the [insert name] narteam name] is rowly missed looking forward third place to next season, by 1200 where they will points. work hard for a Nonetheshot at a top less, they perforwere jubimance. lated, as “ W e Stuyvesant could placed make [insert a run positive for the adjecpodium Alisa Chen / The Spectator tive here] than at next year’s chamlast year. “I’m proud of the effort pionships,” the captain said.