The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper
Opinions
Shots Fired in the Gun Debate: Lessons from Las Vegas In the wake of a tragic shooting in Las Vegas, Opinions writers explore the relevance and meaning of the Second Amendment in the 21st century, suggest causes of the recent wave of shootings, and propose solutions to gun violence. see pages 4-5
Volume 108 No. 1
“The Pulse of the Student Body”
Humor
After the Allahu Akbar Moment: How Muslims at Stuyvesant Feel After the Attacks Senior Tashfia Hasan gives Muslim students at Stuyvesant a voice after the attack. They recount their fear and describe a sense of misplaced guilt in post 9/11 America because of how misunderstood Islamic faith is in our society. see page 11
November 10, 2017
stuyspec.com
Deadly Terror Attack Outside Stuyvesant
NEWSBEAT
By ANNE GEORGE. Shameek Rakshit, and Matteo Wong
The NYC Math Team will compete in the PUMAC Competition at Princeton University on Saturday, November 18. Half of the 24 members of the team are from Stuyvesant.
Winnie Kong, GloGhita, and Emily Xu as well as sophomore Andrew Ng were recently published in YCteen’s September/OcSeniors ria
Seniors Jenny Gao and Alexander Lu are semifinalists in the 2017 Siemens Competition in Math, Science Technology.
&
The Attack
Saipov turned the truck onto the bike path along the West Side Highway near Houston Street at 3:04 PM on October 31 and mowed
Greg Huang / The Spectator
tober issue.
Walking across the Tribeca bridge, senior Grace Tang was headed to a doctor’s appointment when she heard a loud crash. Below, she saw the mangled remains of a school bus and an armed man running around. “He came out and he had two guns with him,” Tang said. “That was when I started running back into the school.” Sayfullo Saipov drove a Home Depot rental truck down the Hudson River bike path on Tuesday, October 31, before crashing into a school bus in front of Stuyvesant. Eight people were killed and 12 were injured in what became the deadliest act of terrorism in New York City since 9/11. One of those injured was Stuyvesant’s biology lab specialist Dr. Yanjun Zhang. The next day, students returned to school, taking a detour around the cordoned-off section of the West Side Highway, the chaotic roar of helicopters and sirens replaced by a solemn stream of high schoolers, dressed in black out of respect for the victims. Tuesday’s attack will have both global and political repercussions, but it has also profoundly impacted the Stuyvesant community.
Saipov’s battered Home Depot rental truck on Chambers Street.
down bicyclists and pedestrians. “We walked up to the bike path and we saw pools of blood, bloodied up jackets, broken bikes with blood on them, people crying, it was something out of a movie almost,” said sophomore Andrew Hirtle, who was at Pier 40 for football practice. Four minutes later, Saipov
crashed into a school bus parked at Chambers Street. Saipov jumped out of the van, brandishing a paintball gun and a pellet gun. “I was at the mural, near the entrance of the bridge [...] I heard the crash, then we went to look and saw a lot of smoke. Then we saw a man jump out of the van,” freshman Laith Bahlouli said.
Saipov allegedly began shouting “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is greater.” “He shouted that phrase [...] he screamed‘Allahu Akbar,’” said freshman Timothy Yen, who was also near the Chambers Street mural during the incident. continued on page 7
“I’m extremely scared:” From Dr. Zhang’s Perspective By SOPHIE WATWOOD I found Dr. Yanjun Zhang in one of the biology labs on Thursday, November 2. Despite being the only person from Stuyvesant directly harmed in Tuesday’s attacks, he had only missed one full school day. Dr. Zhang, a lab specialist for the biology department, seemed to be doing well. He was shuffling around the labs with another teacher, cleaning things up, and arranging for the next lab. His right pinky and ring finger were both bandaged, and his right hand was noticeably swollen—a battered rainbow of yellows, greens, purples and blues—but it didn’t seem to bother him at all. He even asked me to come back during his free period because he didn’t want to leave the other teacher alone with the work. During the attacks on Tuesday, Dr. Zhang was one of the Citi Bike riders hit by the truck. He was only injured in a minor way, but the person in front of and behind him were both killed. When I finally did get to talk to him, he told me his story.
Tell me what happened from your perspective. My working hours are from eight to three, so on that day, I left a few minutes past three. And then I went downstairs as usual and picked up one Citi Bike. You know there’s a yard in front of the building and the bike path. I had just entered the bike path. I saw a truck driving in my direction, southbound, very fast, so I got very scared. I immediately stopped my bike. My position was about half in the path. The truck was very fast. Actually, the truck was on the other side of the path, so if the truck kept going in that direction, it wouldn’t hit me. I think the truck intentionally turned in my direction to hit me, and it hit my front wheel. Because the truck was so fast, the bike was hit, and then it tumbled, so I was also flipped backward. It happened so fast—I don’t even remember what happened. I remember I tumbled backwards and stood up. I remembered that there were some instructions from my old instructors for emergencies, that I was supposed to talk to people right away, so I
immediately asked people, “Am I bleeding? Am I bleeding?” and then they responded saying, “You’re okay, you’re okay.” But I was actually bleeding. And at that time, I heard somebody say, “He’s got a gun!” So I hid behind something solid. I ran behind a building, and I heard something similar to gunshots—I had no idea if they were gunshots because I was on the other side of the building. Later on, I came out. I saw a lot of policemen, and I went to look at the bike I was riding. The front wheel was distorted. At that time, I was bleeding, so I told the policeman that that was my bike, and he told me to sit down and that he was going to get an ambulance for me. A few detectives also came to me to get information and take pictures of my driver’s license. I was put in an ambulance, and after some time, it brought me to the hospital, very close to the Brooklyn Bridge. I think it’s the Brooklyn Bridge, but I don’t really know. At the hospital, they made me go through a lot of tests to make sure that my body was not dam-
aged. One of the EMT guys said that I probably had my hand broken, because it was deformed so badly, but after all the x-rays, they found out that it wasn’t broken— it was just tissue damage. There’s a lot of bruising and swelling. The whole body—there are lots of minor damages. How long were you at the hospital? I think they brought me to the hospital at about six. I was released at about 11. I remember I arrived at home sometime around 11 or 12, so I would say about five hours. Two of my colleagues actually came. They somehow got information from detectives. Detectives usually don’t give out information like that, but they came to visit me. It was very moving. The FBI has some kind of victim counseling agents, and there was a lady there to provide some kind of comforting effort, and my two colleagues came, so we were talking about it. At that time, I was very disoriented and very confused, and with them talking to me, it began to clear my mind a little bit. It has been very helpful. How come you only
stayed at home for one day? Yesterday, I felt that there were too many wounds, and I shouldn’t come. But today, I felt that I should come, mostly to be with my colleagues and talk to them in a stable environment. It’s psychologically better to be communicating in an environment where people can talk to each other. Do you feel okay? Um, not okay, but not really that painful. I just can’t get the swelling off. But I asked some people, and they gave me all sorts of suggestions. So how do you feel about it? I don’t really have a lot of general opinions about it yet, but I’m deeply moved by the support that I’ve gotten from my colleagues. There are times where in normal situations we might have conflicts, but when bad things happen, the true natures of my colleagues show up. They are very, very decent people. They care about me very much. I believe that I care about them just as much. continued on page 11
Special Coverage of Tuesday’s Attack on pages 7-18
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 2
Features What College Taught Me By JANE RHEE On a Saturday in June, I overpacked my blue suitcase and boarded a train north to South Station in Massachusetts. On the train ride there, I read a paper about how pigs and baboons are now being used to grow organs that can be grafted into humans in a cross-species process called xenotransplantation. For the next two weeks in Cambridge, I lived in Harvard University’s recently renovated Dunster Hall, where I taped photographs of my friends and family on the wall, dragged a white trash bag full of dirty clothes down to the basement where I learned how to do laundry, ran 9:45 p.m. coffee runs to the nearest CVS with my roommates in the rain, and occasionally had a bag of Swedish Fish from the vending machine for dinner, even though the Pre-College program offered a full meal plan. I slipped on my slides with socks as I picked up a chocolate Pierce Brothers coffee at Annenberg Hall every morning and chose a spot in Widener Library. Surrounding me were other rising high school juniors and seniors with identical crimson lanyards around their necks, all equally as excited, nervous, and hyped up on sugar and whatever was floating around in the Cambridge air that day. My classmates and I visited our professor’s lab and saw mice, zebrafish, and axolotls, met in the basement of Dunster for gossip and study sessions, and had an after-hours dance party at Chipotle. It was there that we fleshed out the applications of CRISPR and stem cell research techniques as we had burritos and my friend from India had his first-ever taco. We keep in contact to this day, so I know that Taco Boy has an AP Biology test on Thursday that he’s worried about and that my friend who lives in Central California had her first ever date on Friday and is excited about her second. Living an abbreviated college life as a high school student was in some ways like xenotransplantation. Before I started the program, college seemed distant. I had the impression that you had to reach a certain level of intellectual and emotional maturity in order to handle life away from home, and the people who could claim this sort of sophistication at the age of 16 or 17 were an entirely different species. But when
I received my acceptance e-mail and an extremely generous scholarship to attend the program, I decided to take the plunge and take on the identity of a Harvard student for two weeks. This is what I learned. College-level work is demanding. In an e-mail interview, Jacqueline Newcomb, the director of the Pre-College program, explained that the Pre-College program’s courses “are in line with the Harvard curriculum. Typically, we ask our faculty to cover almost a semester of work in the two-weeks, but with the understanding that when teaching daily, there may not be time to assign as much reading and writing as a freshman seminar would have. We ask that they assign two to four hours of homework per night. However, since the majority of our faculty are teaching Harvard students in the academic year, they model their summer course including the rigor after their semester courses.” As someone who wants to go into science journalism, I opted for a course on regenerative medicine and stem cell research, and I definitely felt the weight of the
academics. As a junior at Stuyvesant, I am all too familiar with what it feels like to be overwhelmed by school. Oftentimes, my classmates and I wake up before the sun rises and come out of school after it sets, and while walking home in the dark some days, it feels like high school is all we have. College is supposed to remedy the occasionally toxic academic community that being surrounded
by three thousand of New York City’s top students creates. These students become desperate to graduate and get into college before they burn out. Though I wasn’t falling asleep on my walks to class or crying at
brakes on life and slow down a little. But college, and other institutions of higher education, can’t work that magic. I no longer see college as a means of escape from the academic pressures of high school.
bleary-eyed classmates in the morning. We cry together when school gets tough, and we celebrate each other’s victories because each one of them is so precious. My math tests are worth around three-quarters of my
When I look at my photos from that summer, I see a smiling girl with an overpacked blue suitcase who’s not as much of a stranger to the idea of learning to be a smarter, kinder, and more curious person anymore. my desk at night, I was consistently challenged by my work at Harvard and had to put in long hours. One night, sitting quietly on the duvet in my dorm room with the lamp on and the door slightly ajar, I realized that college won’t solve my problems. My classmates and I are run-
Courtesy of Jane Rhee
ning through our high school years with our eyes closed. We sleep in intervals of REM cycles so that we can maximize our nap time, sneak study guides into weightlifting class, and retake the SAT to bump the score up by 20 points. I go to a school of absolutely brilliant kids who push themselves to incredible lengths, telling themselves that once they get into college, they can pull the
ADVERTISEMENTS
The Spectator’s survey of the graduating seniors this year revealed that nine out of 10 seniors plan on going into an academiabased profession. But while studying to become a doctor, engineer, or lawyer is an admirable endeavor, none of us will be able to handle the necessary
years of higher education unless we prioritize mental health over academic success, no matter how much satisfaction being able to wear a Stuyvesant or Harvard hoodie brings. Because of this realization, I also came to think about why I love being a student here. Even though waking up at four in the morning to study for my daily physics quizzes is painful, I find a collective joy in meeting my
grade, but I care more about the teacher in front of the room and the gracious, quirky, and funny person she is than the number on my report card. The other Spectator editors and I stay up late at night to edit articles, but seeing our writers improve and distributing the papers when they come and seeing the smudges of dark ink on our fingers are worth 100 sleepless nights. I’ll admit I felt a fleeting moment of pride when I received my crimson lanyard, but Harvard’s program has left a much more important impression on me than pride in the name of a school or the beauty of the architecture. I will remember how I felt when I ate lunch with my professor, how excited I was to learn about stem cell research, how satisfied I was after my partner and I presented our final project on nerve cell regeneration, and how heartbroken I was to leave my friends. Each and every day brought its own challenges, but I found a kind of strength in the support of the academic environment and my classmates. We’re now scattered all over the world, but we all keep a photo of each other on our phones or on our desks so that we can remember what it was like to live unabashedly unashamed lives as biology nerds in Cambridge. When I look at my photos from that summer, I see a smiling girl with an overpacked blue suitcase who’s not as much of a stranger to the idea of learning to be a smarter, kinder, and more curious person anymore. Here’s to hoping that she will always be that way.
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 3
Features Mr. Polazzo: Preparing Stuyvesant Students to Think By TASHFIA HASAN Hidden in the corner of the Student Union (SU) room is a tiny office with two comfortable couches and a wall covered with a collage of family vacation photos. Government teacher and Coordinator of Student Affairs Matt Polazzo and his family smile down in frozen moments. To the right of his desktop, there are portrait photos of his government students last year and their quotes regarding his class. As I sit down on his couch to begin the interview, SU Vice President Alexa Valentino approaches Polazzo’s office and asks if he has any concerns about the open house event that is going to happen later that day. Polazzo responds, “Alexa, do you think there is anything more you want to do? If everything is going well, I am confident the open house should run smoothly.” Around Stuyvesant, Pollazo is seen as an intellectual character that works as a strong facilitator, overseeing the SU in general and supervising all major SU events such as SING!. In addition, he challenges the construct of political thought in the classroom. Pollazo has been a teacher at Stuyvesant for 17 years, during which he has taught different levels of social studies. He is currently teaching Western Political Theory and US Government, and he will teach Comparative Government in the Spring. Polazzo grew up in New York City and attended Saint Ann’s, a small private school in Brooklyn from seventh to 12th grade. The environment of the school was the opposite of Stuyvesant. “The school was very funky, where we called teachers by their first names, and I had 70 kids in my whole graduating class. There were no grades, just written comments,” he said. From there, he went to Bowdoin College and obtained a Masters degree in Political Science and decided to become social studies teacher. He was the son of an economics teacher at Brooklyn Technical High School. “Growing up, I always thought teaching was a cool profession, but I didn’t know if I wanted to make a life out of it,” Polazzo said. After college, he signed up for a program called Teach for America that took highperforming educators and put them in under resourced schools. He was placed at I.S.143 in Washington Heights, where he taught social studies to sixth to eighth graders. Unlike Stuyvesant, I.S. 143 had a largely Dominican student body. “[I strived to be] the teacher I always to wanted to have—approachable and excited about the material,” Polazzo said. However, Polazzo didn’t get along with the administration. “I preferred a more studentcentered model of learning, and the principal wanted something that to me seemed more rigid and authoritarian,” he said. Polazzo left I.S. 143 after two years of teaching, but he still wanted to continue his
teaching career. His father knew Assistant Principal of Social Studies Jennifer Suri and suggested that Polazzo apply for a position for a teacher. “I applied because I knew that Stuyvesant was the best school in the city, and I figured it was worth a shot. I also applied to Brooklyn Tech, and they called me with a job offering 15 minutes after Stuyvesant did.” Polazzo applied ambitiously, but after his interview with Suri, he remembered her blatantly telling him, “ It’s a really demanding job, and it’s unlikely that we are going to need you.” Then, on the first day of the 2002-2003 school year, Polazzo recalled, “[Suri] called me up and said she had a job for me. [At the time,] I was working for a website that was associated with the Conference Board. It was my job to track down businesses that engaged in socially responsible actions but made money while doing so. I wrote blurbs about them and publicized their good deeds. I quit that job and went on to be a teacher.” But the teacher he was replacing decided to unretire. Later on, around Thanksgiving of 2003, Polazzo replaced a retiring teacher and started working around December of that year, teaching five periods of government classes. After teaching government for so long, Polazzo still enjoys the course because government is an important blend of multiple aspects he is interested in: philosophy, economics, and aesthetics. In addition, he enjoys teaching government because there is always something n e w
happening.“In my first years of teaching, the Bush-Gore election was happening, and every day, we would have discussions concerning the controversies of the election. Now, with Trump as President, I have
students who I taught years ago, emailing me about impeachment and Constitutional crisis. But in order to declare if
losophers. For instance, in his Government class, Polazzo acknowledged that
into the bigger picture of society as a whole. He often assigns three or four news articles a week based on major debates
“I want students to be excited about the world and look upon the world with clear and informed eyes.” —Matt Polazzo
something is a Constitutional crisis, you need to understand the Constitution, which I want my students to know,” he explained. The evolving, contemporary questions that students
Vanessa Man / The Spectator
ask stimulate the lessons and structure of government class and Western Political Theory, which focuses on the teachings of influential Western phi-
he makes the students carry around pocket Constitutions and has them read the document constantly. “We have come to know the strengths and limitations of the document,” he said.“I try to take things [that] seem obscure and boring and strip the mask off and see the power relations that exist underneath it.” For example, in one of his class lectures, he talked about congressional staffing. He described the class lecture as something that “seems like a really boring thing to talk about. But when you drill down into the topic, you get to these really interesting questions about how laws can only be written by staffers because the members don’t have time to write laws. However, laws need to be very complicated because government is very complicated. So now, something that seems boring, like congressional staffing, is a matter of a conflict of dem-
ocratic ideas, because ordinary Americans are unable to read the complicated laws written by congressional staff.” Polazzo makes a great effort to explain the deeper issues of government and how they fit
happening in the country so that students can be aware of current events. He adds on saying, “Recently, we’ve been talking about gun control and the second Amendment after the Last Vegas attack has occurred, the concept of whether or not hate speech exists and whether NFL players or others should respect the flag. If you want to see the constant changing political climate, just open up the New York Times or Breitbart.” Western Political Theory, on the other hand, was created by Polazzo. He describes the course as “much more theoretical than the government class. It focuses on the writings of great Western philosophers from Socrates all the way up to Nietzsche.” It is important to point out that the majority of Polazzo’s students are juniors and seniors who are paving their lives to higher education and often come from immigrant families and have tremendous pressure to go after high-paying jobs. “I hope my students won’t just sleepwalk into a career where they’re not doing it for the right reasons. Sometimes, on Sunday night, people feel the dread going to school the next day, but I honestly never feel that because I like my job,” he said. “I feel blessed to have the opportunity to come into contact with some of the smartest, most interesting kids in New York City and talk to them in the most pivotal moment in their life. It’s fun to be able to teach young people who tend to be more flexible.” Polazzo believes that this generation’s leaders will be Stuyvesant students who are lifelong learners. “Idealistically, I believe Stuyvesant students should take classes that they thoroughly enjoy. But realistically, students should learn to balance their desire to learn with the need to have a valuable outcome,” he says. “As for advice about life, well that’s hard. Lots of scientific research and personal experience lets us know that to really lead a good life, it is important to maximize on exposure to things you find enjoyable, like spending time on family [and] friends and having amazing experiences and not focus on the acquisition of physical items but still have enough to provide for yourself.”
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 4
Opinions Shots Fired in the Gun Debate: Lessons From Las Vegas By THE OPINIONS DEPARTMENT
Fifty-eight people were killed and over 500 were injured in a mass shooting at the Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas on October 1. This shooting was by far the deadliest in modern American history and has baffled politicians and the media. How could 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, a man with no apparent motive, successfully plan and carry out such a brutal attack with military-esque efficiency? The sudden and unpredictable nature of this shooting has left Americans scrambling for answers. The shooting has also brought attention to the broader gun violence epidemic ravaging America, which has some of the highest rates of gun violence in the world. In fact, according to the American Journal of Medicine, Americans are 25 times more likely to be killed by firearms than people in other developed countries. In this spread, Opinions writers explore the relevance and meaning of the Second Amendment in the 21st century, suggest causes of the recent wave of shootings, and propose solutions to gun violence. Raihana Sultana / The Spectator
The Second Amendment: Outdated and Irrelevant By SEHRISH ALI In 1789, over two centuries ago, James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights, a list of unalienable rights for the citizens of the newly founded United States of America. In the 21st century, we still exercise the rights outlined in this document. However, no one involved in the writing of these laws could have predicted that in 200 years, we would have machine guns that could mow down hundreds of innocent people at a time, or citizens that would stash these weapons with the intention of taking innocent lives. The Second Amendment, which declares any U.S. citizen’s right to bear arms, makes it possible for anyone to acquire guns after passing a brief background check. The leniency of gun laws and the interference of the Second Amendment in any movements toward gun control contributes to the prevalence of mass shootings in the U.S., including the one that occurred this year in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The “right” to bear arms should not be extended to just
anyone. Even those in favor of gun rights do not fully believe that anyone should be able to carry a weapon. If truly anyone were able to bear arms, this would mean that any mental ward patient would be able to carry weapons. Children would be allowed to have machine guns handy. Any U.S. citizen would be able to bring a weapon on an airplane in order to use it in self-defense. Whether leftist or rightist, none of us think that any of these scenarios should be allowed, which means we all, to some extent, believe in gun control laws, thus not completely agreeing with the Second Amendment. We base our current laws about gun control off of an outdated amendment that was written centuries ago. There was no way for our founding fathers, men who lived in the time of muskets, to be able to predict how this amendment could be used centuries after they wrote it. In the era of weapons such as machine guns, which can kill hundreds in minutes, the Second Amendment is not enough to justify the murders of hundreds a year for the right of self-defense. According to the study, “civilians of the United States own
about 270 million guns,” which is enough guns to arm every adult in the U.S. and still have weapons left over. It’s no wonder then that the U.S. accounts for over a third of the total amount of the world’s mass shootings from 1966 to 2012, summing up to 90, while
roughly the same amount of guns are sold. More consistent background checks are necessary to address the problem. More consistent background checks are necessary to finding a solution to gun violence. However, they are not sufficient to com-
The addition of five words to the Second Amendment can make our country more safe: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed except to ensure public safety.” These five words will allow for the passage of legislation
It’s no wonder then that the U.S. accounts for over a third of the total amount of the world’s mass shootings from 1966 to 2012, summing up to 90, while the Philippines, in second place, had 16.
the Philippines, in second place, had 16. One solution is increasing the prevalence and thoroughness of background checks. CNN found that the amount of background checks for gun sales surges for one month preceding a mass shooting, and then drops back down right after, even though
pletely solve the problem. The Las Vegas shooter, Steven Paddock, passed all his background checks. The root of the problem is the Second Amendment. As a nation, we must revise the Second Amendment so that it better fits our needs in the 21st century, rather than the ideals of a select group of men 200 years ago.
that prevents the multiple mass shootings that occur every year, while letting qualified citizens keep their right to bear arms for self-defense, such as those in rural areas. We must change an outdated law passed down to us by politicians from 200 years ago.
from a Constitutional perspective, but inefficient from a policyoriented one. There are already stringent gun control laws in place across much of the U.S. It is illegal to buy a fully automatic weapon made after 1986. People forcefully consigned to mental institutions, fugitives, and people with criminal records are banned from purchasing firearms of any kind. Instead of holding the increasingly partisan gun control debate after every shooting, we should search for solutions to gun violence that everyone can get behind. One bipartisan solution is the creation of social programs that provide people in struggling communities with more economic opportunity. The implementation of programs that prevent poverty would improve the quality of life in impoverished communities, and in the process prevent crime.
One example of such programs is Saturday Night Lights, started by the New York state government, which opens gyms on Saturday nights in areas like East Harlem, where gun violence is prevalent. Since Saturday night is the most crime-intense time of the week, the program provides an alternative to people who might otherwise be committing gun-related crime. Programs like these would cause a large reduction in gun violence, most of which occurs in the inner cities that would be helped by such programs. If America is to solve its gun violence epidemic, people across the political spectrum must unite, abandon the closed-minded partisan thinking that has prevented the passage of reform, and work together to make America a safer and better place.
Gunning for Reform By ARTEM ILYANOK The horrific shooting in Las Vegas has brought the passionate, politicized, and polarizing gun debate back to the forefront of public attention. It has led to an increase in calls for stronger gun control, with some outlets such as The New York Times even calling for a full repeal of the Second Amendment. History suggests that there is a minimal chance of any gun control legislation passing, especially in a Republican government. However, after a mass shooting which killed 58 people and injured 500, a discussion concerning the balance between the right to bear arms and public safety is necessary. Now more than ever, Americans must come together to reaffirm the rights outlined in the Second Amendment and create bipartisan legislation aimed toward preventing gun violence in the future.
A common misconception among proponents of stronger gun control laws is that guns are no longer useful or necessary in our modern society, and thus can be justifiably restricted. However, this claim fails to take into account legal defensive gun uses per year, which, according to a study conducted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, range from 120,000 to 2.5 million. Of these instances, 15.7 percent of the people using firearms defensively stated that they “almost certainly” saved their lives through their usage of the gun. Further restrictions on gun ownership would hamper many innocent civilians’ ability to protect themselves. The most commonly cited reason for the introduction of harsher gun control measures is to reduce gun violence and mass shootings. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention found
that in 2013, there were 33,636 deaths due to “injury by firearms.” However, over 60 percent of these deaths were suicides. Overall crime trends in the U.S. are positive as homicide rates continue to decline. In fact, FBI statistics show that the total U.S. homicide rate has fallen by over half since 1980. Furthermore, a study by the National Institute of Justice finds that this crime decrease has coincided with a significant increase in gun ownership. While correlation does not necessarily imply causation, this statistic casts doubt on the belief that more guns are certain to result in more crime. After all, the vast majority of gun owners are peaceful civilians who, according to the Pew Research Center, overwhelmingly cite protection as their reason for purchasing a firearm. Restricting their rights on the foundation that more gun control equals less crime is not only unjustifiable
Guns Are Only A Necessity For Rural Areas By HRISTO KARASTOYANOV There’s only one country in the world where civilians are not only legally allowed to own automatic and semi-automatic weaponry, but where they also don’t need to show mental stability in order to purchase it. Practically every mass shooting in recent memory has been
committed with legally purchased weapons, from Sandy Hook to the recent one in Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, the shooter had a startling 23 weapons, including some which were modified to function as fully automatic ones. The argument of the necessity of self-defense doesn’t hold up when a person is legally allowed to own a platoon’s worth
of weapons. A few months ago, a friend from North Carolina casually mentioned to me that she owns dozens of guns. I was astonished. While I know that gun ownership is quite common in the less urban parts of this country, with The Guardian finding that there are 88 guns per person in some regions, I never imagined that I’d
be meeting someone and talking to them about it casually. I found it hard to fathom that in some areas, owning weapons capable of killing is normal. I asked her why her family owns and needs these guns. After all, she lives in a town where police can’t be that far away, unlike in some of America’s most rural places, where police can take
over half an hour to respond. Her response was, “Everyone where I live has one; it’d be weird if we didn’t.” People not only feel the need for the right to own guns, they also feel a need to due to cultural pressure. These needs manifest themselves in easy access to legal guns for mentally continued on page 5
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 5
Opinions Shots Fired in the Gun Debate: Lessons From Las Vegas Guns Are Only A Necessity For Rural Areas continued from page 4
unstable people to use to commit acts of violence. In addition, being shot by a toddler is a worryingly common phenomenon. In 2016, the Children’s Firearm Safety Alliance found that 111 children below the age of seven shot themselves or someone else
with a gun. However, in some places, the police take a long time to arrive, by which point the crime is done and a police response is futile. That doesn’t vindicate the need for military-grade weapons, however, and neither does the argument that “they’re used for hunting.” Instead, people who live in areas below certain population densities, and as such are
underprivileged when it comes law enforcement response time, should be allowed to own some sort of gun, such as a shotgun or pistol, purely for self-defense purposes. This shouldn’t be a military-grade weapon. However, even if a person lives below that population density cutoff, the requirements for owning a weapon should be much more strict and require not only proof
of mental competence, but proof of necessity as well. If a person attempts to circumvent that rule by moving guns from rural to urban places, they should be fined and face charges upon repeated offences. A gun culture which affords people the opportunity to buy ammunition at Walmart is dangerous, reckless, and the main contributor to America’s
extremely high gun violence rates. Unless genuine concern for one’s safety is demonstrated, there is no reason for owning a protective tool. Buying a gun as a fashion statement is like wearing glasses while having 20/20 vision: an unnecessary statement, and probably not good for the person’s wellbeing.
The Media’s Role in Mass Shootings By MIA GINDIS Las Vegas, notoriously nicknamed “Sin City,” was rocked by a horrific tragedy almost two months ago. With close to 500 injured and 58 dead, the shooting has been the worst in American history—the latest, it seems, of a rising trend. Recent shootings such as those in Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, and Orlando have left the public petrified, shattering the rose colored lens through which they viewed American safety. Politicians and civilians alike are scrambling to place
blame for the recent wave of mass shootings. Much of this finger pointing only exacerbates the hysteria it aims to quell and fails to provide substantial solutions to America’s gun crisis. Some politicians have pointed to loose gun control as the source of the shootings. However, while mass shootings are growing more common, gun crime in America has steadily decreased. According to data from a Pew Research Center analysis, homicides by gun violence fell from 7 per 100,000 people in 1993 to 3.6 in 2013. The is-
sue concerns weapons less so than the dangerous individuals wielding them, ranging from psychopathic loners to agents of terror groups. A more likely explanation is the “contagiousness” of these violent rampages. A study published by four public health researchers in 1999 titled “Media and Mass Homicides” analyzed the relationship between a series of mass homicides in Britain, New Zealand, and Australia. Distinct incidents greatly influenced each other due to media portrayals of violent murders. The perpetrators of
these horrendous shootings fed off of the media attention, the confusion, and the controversy. The media tends to humanize people like Stephen Paddock as “a nice man with a quiet life” while simultaneously building him up as a criminal mastermind. While it’s important for media outlets to report on gun violence, the coverage shouldn’t blur the line between real life and action movie. Once this sort of glorification is taken away, the act becomes hollow. Consequently, copycats lack inspiration.
The media must reform its approach to covering homicides. The outflow of information to the public should remain an integral part of our freedoms. However, the race between channels to portray tragedies in the most dramaticized light only perpetuates these atrocities. People need to be united through grief, not polarized by politics; criminals should be shown with disgust, not as romanticized biographies. There are too many violent crimes already. The American media shouldn’t be responsible for the next one.
After A Horrific Tragedy, the Left Goes On the Attack Again By AIDAN GRIFFIN When I first received a news notification on my phone that at least 50 people had been killed in the shooting in Las Vegas, I was horrified. I thought, “How does one person kill so many people so egregiously without feeling remorse or pain?” I also wasn’t surprised by the left’s politicization of this event in an attempt to gain support for “commonsense” gun control legislation, as they had after the attack at the Orlando nightclub. Before the full details of the gunman were disclosed, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel claimed that Republicans and NRA members deserved some blame for what happened in
Vegas. He blasted Republicans sending their prayers to the victims of the massacre in his latenight monologue, saying Republicans “should be praying to God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country because it is so crazy.” He also went on to remark that law-abiding gun owners “bear some responsibility” for the tragedy in Las Vegas. This nasty rhetoric toward conservatives only furthers the disconnection and tension between the liberal viewpoints of the coasts and the conservative beliefs of the Midwest. As shown by Kimmel’s actions following the shooting, many Democrats ignore the fact that conservatives have legitimate complaints about their gun
control proposals. For instance, many Democrats use the example of the AR-15 used at the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting as an excuse to push for a ban on AR-15s. However, the deadly shooting would not have been less deadly if semiautomatic weapons like the AR15 had been banned. In fact, the third deadliest mass shooting in American history happened with the use of a mere Glock. In addition, the gunman in Colorado deliberately chose a movie theater where the restrictions on the use of guns were the strongest because he expected the least resistance that way. Thus, gun control policies only serve to make civilians less safe, especially in suburban or rural
areas. Democrats disagreeing with conservatives is only natural. However, Democrats, along with the leftist media, attempt to group anyone who is opposed to “common-sense” gun control laws as heartless. This demonization of anyone who has different viewpoints is contrary to the principles on which this country was founded. In fact, liberal “commonsense” gun control bills haven’t saved lives. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, 92 percent of mass public shootings between January 2009 and July 2014 happened in gunfree zones. A violent criminal will choose a place with a lower probability of resistance so that
they can kill as many people as possible. Furthermore, the murder rate by rifles when Bill Clinton’s 1994 assault weapons ban was in place was 2.7 percent in 2003, while it dropped to 2 percent in 2014, a decade after the assault weapons ban was lifted. According to the Center for Disease Control’s study in 2013, a gun is 16 to 100 times more likely to save a life than take one. After this tragedy, it is important for liberals to evaluate conservative policy proposals and ideas without attacking the right as heartless. We are all facing the crisis of gun violence together, and we must remember that those across the political spectrum care just as much as we do.
Restrict Deadly Weapon Modifications, Not Guns By ADAM OUBAITA The Second Amendment, which guarantees U.S. citizens the right to bear arms, was in-
After the harrowing massacre in Las Vegas, authorities scrambled to find out how the shooter, Stephen Paddock, could cause so much carnage so rapidly. Ste-
a semi-automatic rifle and use the recoil to reset the trigger, allowing a shooter to fire at high rates with minimal effort. In the case of the Vegas shooting, with
Widespread access to attachments such as silencers, bump stocks, incendiary bullets and large magazines allow for increased murder rates and extreme carnage.
tended to keep local militias stocked with slow-firing weapons to protect settlements from raids. However, our founding fathers could not anticipate the development of police protection and easily upgradeable weapons with munitions. The Second Amendment is obsolete, and the United States must adapt to include laws that prevent the true source of gun violence: access to deadly modifications.
phen Paddock had purchased dozens of guns, thousands of bullets, and specialized attachments. From the 32nd floor of his hotel, he rained chaos on Vegas concert-goers. Widespread access to attachments such as silencers, bump stocks, incendiary bullets, and large magazines allow for increased murder rates and extreme carnage. Bump stocks specifically reduce the recoil of
the use of bump stocks, Paddock was able to shoot into the crowd with near-automatic machine gun speed. While automatic weapons have been banned in the U.S., bump stocks are a loophole to this ban. Given the existence of this attachment, automatic weapons are still in reach for many people. Bump stocks should be banned to bottleneck automatic weapon capabilities. Suppressors, also known as
silencers, minimize the flash and noise of a gunshot. Silencers are available to purchase by private citizens living in 42 states, including Nevada, with minor restrictions. Citizens should not have access to silencers because a gunshot from the 32nd floor of a hotel with a muffled sound would be difficult to hear in a large Vegas crowd near a concert. Additionally, because silencers muzzle the flash of a weapon, it would be more difficult for police to actually locate the shooter. Noise-reducing ear plugs void the need for silencers, hence silencers should not be available for public use. Recent reports confirm that Paddock shot incendiary bullets at jet fuel tanks. These special types of bullets are designed to create fires and allow shooters to follow the path of their bullets for more precision. Though it was unlikely that the gunfire could actually ignite an explosion inside the jet fuel tank, this type of munition can easily create mayhem and is simply not needed for hunting and self-defense purposes. High round magazines allow shooters to fire more bullets without actually reloading, granting more time to inflict bloodshed. Gun control laws
should be passed to reduce the maximum size of a magazine clip to 15 bullets in order to reduce the amount of bullets fired in a small amount of time. Most importantly, restrictions need to be placed on how much ammunition people can acquire. Without access to vast amounts of bullets, shooters simply won’t be able to cause as much damage; lack of munitions will bottleneck any efforts to commit mass murder. This can be accomplished by granting the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and local law enforcement more authority to collect information and more thoroughly regulate ammunition trade. By placing restrictions on ammunition, incendiary bullets, high round magazines, suppressors, and bump stocks, guns will not actually be taken from the hands of law-abiding citizens, and their right to bear arms will be maintained. Instead, legislation restricting access to deadly modifications will place preventative measures on a shooter’s capability to inflict gun violence. This allows for people to have access to their Second Amendment right, while also curbing gun violence.
Page 6
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
ADVERTISEMENT
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 7
News
Coverage of Tuesday’s Attack Pages 7-18 STUDENT ANECDOTE
Deadly Terror Attack Outside Stuyvesant continued from page 1
I was in the Student Union room on the second floor [...] the doors closed and some guy started talking, and he said something along the lines of “there’s a guy [and] he has guns.”
What was most alarming to me and sort of frightening was [that we] saw no one on the path. There was this one Citi Bike right in front of the window just dropped, sitting on its side. It was next to a group of Citi Bikes, but there was this one fallen. And if you looked up the path to your left there was this one Citi Bike and it was folded [on the] path. I didn’t see anything at first so I tried to look it up on the news. There were rumors we were on a soft lockdown, no one really knew what was happening. It started popping up on the news and when I walked back to the window I saw these white sheets on the ground. We heard the PA system and then the Student Union coordinator [Matthew] Polazzo was in the hallway. He came in and he started looking out the window as well and he told us to stay calm, and then an announcement came over the PA system about a lockdown, and then we started getting news from multiple sources. And then people started calling their parents, and all you heard was people calling their parents and everyone was huddled by the window.
Greg Huang / The Spectator
Everyone else in the room was like, no, there were no shots, no, he doesn’t have a gun. We didn’t hear anything, so it made no sense. Two minutes later, all of a sudden, we heard the distant sirens. [So] we went to the window [and] we saw traffic at a complete standstill. You walk over the West Side Highway every day [yet] you never see the cars stop. But here you just have, it’s like someone clicked pause and all of a sudden all the cars are just stopped where they are.
Students and staff ran into the school to alert security about the attack. “I was sitting at the main desk when a substitute teacher, Lisa Erica James, came in and ran to me sitting at the main desk and told me there’s a man outside with a gun. My coworker [Agent] McConnell locked the doors and I started pushing the kids inside the auditorium,” School Safety Agent B. Taylor said. As Stuyvesant locked its doors, police officers, who were in the building due to an emotionally distressed student, responded to the attack. “The first thing I saw was the smashed bus,” junior Tobias Zinner said. “I walked further into the street to see what was going on, and then I noticed all the cops next to me were crouched down and had their guns out of their holsters, and they were screaming, ‘He has a gun, he has a gun,’ and then I heard shots fired.” Police officer Ryan Nash of the First Precinct fired nine shots, one of which hit Saipov in the abdomen. This effectively ended the attack, and Saipov was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center. Inside, approximately halfway through tenth period and only minutes after Saipov was shot, the administration tried to assess the extent of the attack and immediately began following the NYCDOE’s General Response Protocol (GRP), instituting a shelter-in. “I was going from the third floor to the second floor and [saw] from the stairwell by the window that kids were rushing back into school,” Assistant Principal of Pupil Personnel Services Casey Pedrick said. “At that time of day students should be leaving not rushing back in, so I opened the
Nov 1st - Students cross the West Side Highway the morning after the attack.
door and said, ‘What happened, what happened?’ and a kid said there was a shooter. So I turned to [Assistant Principal of Organization Jeremy] Rynders and said we have to shelter in. [We] went into his office because he has a [loudspeaker] and I called the shelter-in. And then for the next however many hours, I continued to work the loudspeaker.” Faculty and students were instructed to remain inside the building and respond to announcements while conducting business as usual. All staff and students receive training in the GRP through drills that are conducted throughout the school year. “You have to be certified in school-building leadership to become an assistant principal,” Pedrick said. “So there’s that training, but then, schools are required
to run drills and have meetings of the BRT, which is the building response team. I also run the crisis team. All the drills that [Assistant Principal of Security, Health, and Physical Education Brian Moran] runs really helps keep what to do fresh in your mind.” However, under these circumstances, it became clear that this training did little to alleviate the anxiety of the community: an emotional response to terrorism can’t be taught. “As Pedrick was talking, we heard shots fired. [Computer Science teacher JonAlf Dyrland-Weaver] peeked out the window, and he said that there was a smashed school bus,” senior Adam Abbas said. “We assumed that the noise was the engine popping. Then, we start checking the news. When we found out that it was a shooting,
By around 4:30 [p.m.], approaching [5:00 p.m.], FBI agents and the police came into the school, I think. Some walked into our room with administrators and told us to get away from the windows. No one had been thinking that, no one knew what was happening but it could have actually been a threat to look out the window. If there had been an active gunman that could have been a problem.
Greg Huang / The Spectator
Not knowing what happened was almost worse than knowing. I knew people who had ninth and 10th periods free sitting by the [mural outside], and that was literally where the man crashed the car by the intersection. No one knew if their friends were okay, and it was really worrying and really, really scary to not know.
- Julian Giordano, freshman
First responders gather in front of Stuyvesant’s main entrance during the attack.
it still hadn’t clicked in my mind.” As the shelter-in commenced, Parent Coordinator Dina Ingram sent out an e-mail to inform parents of the active situation that was occurring right outside Stuyvesant and the procedures that were being followed. Students in the building began using social media to figure out what had happened, receiving messages through Facebook from friends who were outside, or even watching Snapchat videos from students who recorded the event. Others looked to Twitter and news websites for live updates. Despite rumors that Stuyvesant students were hurt and that the school bus had children from P226M, the special education school located within Stuyvesant’s building, the bus was not connected to Stuyvesant, according to Principal Eric Contreras. The injured students are 14 and 17 years old, and P226M serves 18-21 year olds. While Pedrick kept announcing that the shelter-in would continue, police officers and FBI agents began circulating the building. “Stuyvesant is a location which offers a conference space with a smartboard, online access, and conference calling. The police requested the use of the facilities to set up an operations hub. The same thing happened during 9/11,” Contreras said. With Mayor Bill de Blasio, Governor Andrew Cuomo, and counterterrorism officials sealing off the conference room to coordinate the investigation, the administration had to work with NYPD to start planning how they would dismiss students in an orderly manner so that they would not compromise the ongoing investigations. “I started working with Moran on a plan to dismiss students while we waited. We knew that Chambers was closed and that multiple blocks of the West Side Highway were closed. We also knew that we didn’t have access to the bridge,” Contreras said. “I asked the staff to set up the CASS [scanner] system so we could make sure that everyone was here.” continued on page 8
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 8
News Deadly Terror Attack Outside Stuyvesant continued from page 7
Once the coordinated evacuation began, NYPD sergeants visited each classroom to inform students and staff about the situation and elicit any pertinent information students may have had regarding the attack. Meanwhile, the school administration figured out the logistics for students, supplying MetroCards and designating an area in the theater where students could wait for their parents. “Once they gave us the go ahead, we dismissed by floors and asked students to scan out,” Contreras said. “We asked teachers to line the road along River Terrace to guide students to the main streets. That was another big moment for me because I saw teachers whose days were supposed to [be] over hours earlier line up in the cold and stay there. It took time to dismiss, but they stayed there.” After all the students were safely dismissed, administration stayed at the building until past 11 p.m. in order to plan for Wednesday. “Collaborating with the Chancellor’s office and the Mayor’s office, we decided that we needed to be open the next day. I also took the decision to cancel homework and exams the next day to ease some of the stress,” Contreras said. “We realized that the streets were safe and that there wasn’t an active crime scene so we thought it was best to stay open.”
In The Wake of Terror
Students and parents received an e-mail that night from Ingram on behalf of Contreras, addressing the incident and outlining protocol for the next day. A several-block radius was closed off for police and FBI investigation, and the e-mail included a special map for walking to school. Students were not allowed to go outside during free periods or lunch, and there was no access to the Tribeca bridge.
“Coming home and realizing what we had gone through and that something awful had happened was really hard,” Abbas said. In an effort to reflect on the events, the Student Union began organizing a response. “We asked every student to wear black as a way to pay tribute to the victims of the attack and a symbol of the Stuyvesant community’s unity,” Student Union Vice
pers, that advised teachers on how to discuss the event and help their students cope. “We kept the regular counselors in the guidance suite and opened up the theater to anyone who [needed] additional support. We’re also collaborating with an outside agency to get more support for any students who just need to talk to someone about all of this,” Contreras said. A homeroom sched-
teacher Katherine Fletcher said. For teachers who taught at Stuyvesant during 9/11, it was difficult not to draw parallels. “The feeling was very similar, the sense of some kind of outside threat that quickly became international news,” Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman said. “We were in the building, getting e-mails and texts from former colleagues, former students, and faculty who
“We spent a lot of time in most of my classes talking about it, and I am particularly conscious of how difficult it is for our Muslim students for the man who committed this act to have said ‘Allahu Akbar,’ which is a prayer that our observing Muslim students say dozens and dozens of times a day, and it only means good and loving things.” —Katherine Fletcher, English Teacher President Alexa Valentino said. On Wednesday morning, Stuyvesant students walked to school along police-barricaded sidewalks. “It’s really weird seeing how the street’s empty, being rerouted. It’s just surreal, knowing what I saw on the news last night actually happened to me and I was there,” sophomore Caitlin Chao said after her Wednesday morning commute. At the same time, federal prosecutors began filing terrorism charges against Saipov, attributing the attack to ISIS. Saipov waived his Miranda Rights at Bellevue and had begun detailing his year-long plot to drive south to the Brooklyn Bridge, hoping to ruthlessly murder people on Halloween. The DOE and Stuyvesant administration provided several resources to help students and staff cope with Tuesday’s events, including advice from the National Association of School Psychologists’ website, printed and distributed on green pa-
ule was implemented in order to make an announcement about the counseling resources. Support was also provided for adults. United Federation of Teachers Chapter Leader and statistics teacher Dr. Bernard Feigenbaum worked to get support for teachers, and counseling was available for school safety agents. “Coming back the next day was really I was overwhelmed, but they brought in counselors, for us as well as you guys which was really good,” Agent Taylor said. Some teachers decided it was important to address the attack in class the next day. “We spent a lot of time in most of my classes talking about it, and I am particularly conscious of how difficult it is for our Muslim students for the man who committed this act to have said ‘Allahu Akbar,’ which is a prayer that our observing Muslim students say dozens and dozens of times a day, and it only means good and loving things,” English
were watching live while we were inside. The scale, thankfully, was very different. The sense of participating in something historically can be tragic.” In the aftermath of crisis, Stuyvesant students and faculty attempted to resume their routines. “Almost all our students came. We have great attendance for our faculty, but it was better attendance than most days,” Contreras said. As students left the building after their extracurricular activities, Saipov was wheeled into a Manhattan federal courtroom, accused of killing eight and injuring 11. Thankfully, Dr. Zhang returned to school on Thursday. The dead include five Argentinian tourists, Hernán Mendoza, Diego Angelini, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij, and Hernán Ferrucci, who came to New York to celebrate their 30-year high school reunion, Belgian tourist Anne-Laure Decadt, New Jersey resident Darren Drake, and Manhattan resident Nicholas Cleves.
STUDENT ANECDOTE I was walking to Pier 40; the car must have driven by me on the bike path. We were on the river so we didn’t see it. We got to Pier 40 and then we saw like 10 ambulances and tons of police cars and fire trucks, and we just assumed it was a bad car accident so we went into the pier, [but] like five minutes later we came back out to check it out. We walked up to the bike path and we saw pools of blood, bloodied-up jackets, broken bikes with blood on them, and people crying. It was something out of a movie almost. It didn’t hit me until the day after; I was like, wow, that sucks, it’s really messed up, but I wasn’t in shock in the moment, I was like, wow, this is terrible. I had known the shots had happened at Stuy by then, [but] I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t know if they were connected or not. We tried to ask a police officer what happened, [but] they brushed us off, so we went back inside to Pier 40 on the field and waited while helicopters flew over us, and we just waited for our coach to come who was like, “You should go home.” It happened between [3:00 and 4:00 p.m.]. Yesterday, what I saw and what happened, I wouldn’t say I was traumatized but I was in shock yesterday; it was all kind of surreal, all that had happened in front of me. It wasn’t that bad coming to school, it was more like when everyone talked about it, just thinking about it made me uneasy almost, but like I’m fine now.
- Andrew Hirtle, sophomore
I was coming back from the subway station and I saw some freshmen running away from the direction of the bridge, but I thought they were running from a fire because they had set fire to a bag as a joke. So I didn’t think anything of it. So I kept walking to the bridge. And when I got to the intersection, I saw the the terrorist guy. He was holding up two guns. He was also chasing two other people from what I saw around the cars. When he rounded a corner, I just heard three shots and then I just turned around. I didn’t take it too seriously because I just wanted to get back into the school and didn’t know that he had already did so much damage with his vehicle. So I just thought that he was one gunman. I did try to get back onto the bridge, but when I was on the bridge they had already administered the lockdown, so the doors were locked. I was with four other Stuy kids but they couldn’t get in, either.
Elena Sapelyuk / The Spectator
I was with the four other kids and the five of us were just really angry because what if the gunman had come up onto the bridge with a real gun. The five of us would’ve been dead. I think it’s reasonable that they had the lockdown, but I think they should have put two guards at the door to let the students in because we couldn’t get in and we were just stuck on one end of the bridge. Nov 1st - Students are dismissed via the front entrance due to continued police activity around the Tribeca Bridge.
- Maxwell Lin, senior
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 9
Features STUDENT ANECDOTE
I was at the window that was facing the lawn, so if you tilted your head you could see the school bus but you couldn’t see the actual truck that came from the West Side Highway. It started with the lockdown. I didn’t think that it was a serious thing. I thought that it was another drill since Stuyvesant usually does all these drills. I started realizing it was getting serious when [Assistant Principal of Pupil Personnel Services Casey] Pedrick was on the announcements saying the drill was going to continue.
My mom called me. She works at Union Square and she found out what happened before I did. She called me right when it was 3:35 and I was still in class and she said she was coming down from Union Square all the way to Chambers Street. I asked her, “Why are you coming to Chambers Street? Don’t you know there’s probably a suspect out there?”
I didn’t expect school to be open [Wednesday, November 1]. I kind of did expect it. I just thought that things were going to be a little different, but surprisingly classes were still pretty normal. I just didn’t know New York was going to be the next target. I heard about such attacks in Barcelona or in Las Vegas but I didn’t expect New York, again in the same territory as 9/11. As a person who grew up in New York, I felt kind of attacked in my identity.
Oh, and the reporters. When I was walking out of school there were all these reporters lining up, there was literally an entire string of TV channels with TV cameras set up. They were so malicious in a way; they just approached students and were asking questions like “Did anything happen?” [and] “Did you see anything? What did you feel?”
There was this one reporter who kept asking me for [my] name. They just kept asking my name. I explicitly told them I wasn’t comfortable telling them my name. Then they asked me, “What’s your English name?” [and] I was kind of offended. Next, they asked me, “Can I get a photo of you?” and I was like, “No, I’m not comfortable with that either.” The way they wanted information just to be added to the next article, it was just not what I expected from the media.
- Michelle Yang, junior
Teaching Through the Terror Matthew Polazzo, social studies teacher
Katherine Fletcher, English teacher
I was in the inner office here, and I was getting work done [...] and then I heard [Assistant Principal of Pupil Personnel Services Casey] Pedrick through the speaker and she said that it was a shelter-in, and then the next thing I knew there were tons of kids crowding into the SU. So I went out into the middle to see what was going on and through the windows there it seemed like all hell was breaking loose. There were like tons of vehicles driving from all directions, there were cops sprinting everywhere, some with guns drawn. From these middle windows over here, you couldn’t really see what was exactly going on, but then after watching people running frantically through that window I went out to the outer SU. From the outer SU, paradoxically— you can see it’s further to the south—you still get a better view of the north, because the angle is better, and so that was when, by that time, the police had already put white sheets over the bodies of the two cyclists that had been struck. By that time there were a lot of rumors flying around: people said that they had been shot, the news media still had not yet really figured out what was going on, and so the students in the SU and [I] were just trying to figure out what was going on, what happened. Between all the people in there we were able to get a pretty good sense of what had happened, that it was somebody in a truck. We figured out that they had driven south, that the victims hadn’t been shot, they’d probably been struck. We could see the mangled bicycles. I couldn’t help but think back to the September 11 attacks, I was in the building for that. On a scale of one to ten this was like a one and that was like a nine in terms of the magnitude, obviously, but in a lot of ways it was similar—the interruption of the day, waiting to find out what was going on, the evacuation of the building, [...] the fact that during both attacks students encountered death. Anyone who looked out the windows of the building were able to see the bodies of the dead people over here, and also paralleled with all those individuals that saw people jumping to their deaths during the 9/11 attack. And then of course the aftermath, in both cases going back into the building and trying to sort of calm down a population that may or may not be sort of shell-shocked by what they saw. I never really felt afraid or worried for whatever reason, maybe that was—I don’t know—cockiness or foolishness or maybe an unearned feeling of immortality, but I didn’t feel personally endangered even when I saw the flaying of guns. I can’t really say what that was but I just felt that way. The only time I got a little bit nervous was after it became clear what had happened and I was a little worried that maybe there was like a bomb or something in the truck. But, after that fear was assuaged I never really felt nervous after that. I was really proud of the way everyone at Stuy conducted themselves and I’m really sorry that people had to see this event, but hopefully as a community we can come through it together, and become maybe stronger and more resilient.
I was with my 10th period freshman composition class [...] And the announcement came over the loudspeaker—it was somewhere around three o’clock—that we were in a shelter-in, and I could tell from the tone of Pedrick’s voice that it was not a drill. I don’t know how I knew, but I just sort of did. My students had a piece of writing due that day and we had a sharing day, and the students were reading their writing out loud, and then it became very difficult for them to focus. I could feel the anxiety building in the room, so I actually ducked next door to the teacher workroom and I asked [English teacher Eric] Ferencz what was going on, because the students hadn’t started getting messages from friends and family yet, or checking the news, or whatever, and Ferencz told me that there had been an accident involving a school bus [...] I was very worried that children had been injured and that was why we weren’t going outside. I started trying to think of games we could play. We played three rounds of telephone, where you whisper things into people’s ears. We played a couple rounds of hangman. Some students tried to do some homework [...] Some students started singing “Feliz Navidad,” some students were singing “Guns and Ships” from the musical “Hamilton.” I tried to keep them from becoming incredibly rowdy. They kept their spirits up. But then, slowly, they started to get really restless. A couple of students started pacing. When the detectives started coming around and it became apparent that the school was working toward an evacuation, many of my students put on their coats and acted like, even though we weren’t actually going to end up leaving for another 45 minutes or so, they put on their coats and they started hovering by the door. They were very claustrophobic, but very well behaved. I made sure they had all contacted their parents, and a lot of them had their phones out, they were receiving news updates about what was going on. I had a couple of sophomores in my room who didn’t have a class that period and needed to be in a classroom. When it was time to evacuate, on 9/11, we had never had to think about how to evacuate in a safe and orderly manner. On 9/11, after the first tower collapsed, the assistant principal came over the loudspeaker and said, “Everyone leave the building and walk north,” and that was it. It was just get out of here and start heading north, and that’s what we all did. We didn’t even have the concept of a shelter-in back then, that didn’t exist; there was no shelter-in, there was no lockdown, that stuff didn’t exist. So I was really impressed of how well-managed the evacuation was. Even though it took a little bit more time, it was really orderly; it just felt very controlled and I was really grateful for that. I went home. I have two children. They wanted me to be there to help them celebrate Halloween. I went home and my apartment building was having a Halloween party in the halls, and that was sort of a strange contrast. I didn’t have a sense of whether the whole city was reacting to this attack in the way that we did on 9/11, everything shutting down. If 9/11 had happened on Halloween, there would not have been any Halloween parties that would have happened. Going home to Brooklyn was weird because I realized how in some ways how local and contained the attack was, that it wasn’t reverberating throughout the city in the same way. My kids were not even really very interested in what had happened. My daughter was a little bit. One thing that I was really curious about, actually, was what it would be like at school the next day, whether it would be one of these things that was no big deal, business as usual, or if students were going to be coming in the next day feeling really traumatized and needing to process what had happened. It was definitely the second thing. I was surprised at what it felt like to come to school the next day. I wasn’t expecting so many blocks to be cordoned off, and all the bright lights that were shining, and all the emergency vehicles, and it really felt like a disaster zone. We spent a lot of time in most of my classes talking about it, and I am particularly conscious of how difficult it is for our Muslim students for the man who committed this act to have said “Allahu Akbar,” which is a prayer that our observing Muslim students say dozens and dozens of times a day, and it only means good and loving things, and so this for this man to sort of claim those words in this violent way, in this hateful way, is really hurtful, and so makes life really difficult for our Muslim students in ways that I wish I could protect them from. It’s horrible.
Annie Thoms, English teacher I was teaching my 10th period Freshman Composition class; we were reading the Joy Luck Club, and we were discussing the story “Double Face,” and it was a lesson I really enjoy teaching and everyone was really into it. And then Pedrick came on the loudspeaker and announced that we were gonna have a shelter-in and I thought, “Oh it must be a drill, I didn’t remember seeing that on, you know the schedule for the drills, but you know it must be a drill.” And then she came on again like five minutes later and it was like, that seems odd. And then I started to be aware of the sirens outside and this classroom faces more north, so we started hearing emergency vehicles and seeing emergency vehicles and then hearing a lot of emergency vehicles, but I kept the lesson going and wanted to try and get to the end of it and also wanted to keep everybody focused on that, rather than gathered by the windows in a panicked state. By the time we realized what had happened, it was over and then it was just sort of the waiting game [...] Pedrick just kept coming on the loudspeaker and then just kept telling us to wait in place, and my students are a really lovely group of ninth graders and they were terrific, I mean they were singing karaoke and some of them did their homework and they braided each other’s hair and they started doodling on the boards and they drew diagrams of mitochondria and started writing their Mandarin homework on the board. In terms of the actual incident, this was a much smaller and contained incident than the attacks of September 11th. [...] On the morning of September 11th, I came in on a late schedule, and I actually got off the subway after the second plane had already hit. I didn’t have a class of my own that morning, but I came into the building and then we were sent to homeroom fairly shortly after that. So I was with my homeroom, my freshman homeroom, and it was in the cafeteria for whatever reason, and so that was where we were evacuated from. So it was much more of a sense of a, chaos is a strong word, but it was much more a sense of like improvisation, you know; we didn’t know, the administration didn’t know what was happening. After September 11th, I was in my second year teaching here and I had just become the theater faculty advisor, and so I worked with a group of [ten] students [...] and we created this play called With Their Eyes. [It used] interviewbased monologues, so it was in the style of actors and playwrights and editors and so these ten students, the ten student actors, interviewed 27 members of the Stuyvesant community about their stories. [...] One of the things that struck me in 2001 and was one of the reasons why I decided to do this with the winter drama in 2001 is also very striking to me right now, which is that the human instinct [is] to tell your own story right after something like this happens. [...] I think that that’s a very human need, and I think that listening to the details of other people’s experience is incredibly valuable. I think that it is an exercise in empathy, and that it helps you remember and understand that our reactions to something like this are wildly varied and diverse and that’s fine, that’s totally valid. I will say that one of the things that has frustrated me over the last couple of days was sort of the craziness of the media coverage, which was also true after September 11th. You know, you have reporters just like mobbing people, and mobbing our students [...] I had reporters calling me for the last two days, you know, calling me and e-mailing me. Everybody just wants to tell the same story, and they all want to tell like this tiny slice of the story, but all the same thing, over and over.
continued on page 10
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 10
Features Teaching Through the Terror
STUDENT ANECDOTE
continued from page 9
Gary Rubinstein, mathematics teacher
David Hanna, social studies teacher
I was with my 10th period class and when we heard that there was a lockdown we eventually looked out the window and saw the bus that looked like it was crashed pretty bad, it looked like a bomb because there was a big charred area. We thought that was everything and that was the whole incident so we were watching out this window, the south window, we didn’t realize, had we looked out the east window it would be bodies on bike paths. Most of the time we were looking out at the bus rescue. We did not see the chase. On Tuesday the truck was right outside this window so unfortunately we were in a position where we saw things we wished we hadn’t seen. It’s pretty scary to think that you could [have been] walking home from school or [have] been an innocent bystander in this and also I feel bad that my students had to see a bus crash and people coming out in a stretcher and that they had to see victims themselves lying on the ground and that was hard for them. I think a lot of students feel like they’re not affected by it but it might affect them later on, I worry about that.
I was on the subway heading to Penn Station to catch a train home to New Jersey. I was unaware of what was happening. I didn’t learn of the attack until my wife saw something about it online, after we had returned from trick-or-treating with our younger son. My initial reaction was shock, and then concern about students and colleagues at Stuy. It wasn’t clear yet what had actually happened. Just that people had been run into by a truck. I walked across the footbridge about ten minutes before it happened. This upset my wife. She probably was thinking, “What if [he] had left ten minutes later?” My sons, in as much as they were aware of the attack, at least to my knowledge didn’t associate it with Stuyvesant. And I would like to keep it that way, if possible. I don’t want them to worry about me being in New York. They have enough to deal with at school, etc., without worrying about me. Sadly, I’m not surprised by these types of events anymore. It’s the world that we’ve lived in for some time now. But you can’t stop living your life. That was my feeling in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and I’ve held to that ever since. I will say that the eagerness of some to seize on this event to try to push a divisive agenda must be confronted. If ever there was a time to reach out and stand shoulderto-shoulder with our classmates, colleagues, and fellow New Yorkers who are Muslim, it is right now. I heard a story on NPR about the five friends from Argentina that were killed in the attack, and it really spoke to me. They were about my age, and they were out there living their lives to the fullest. I respect that. And I mourn for them, and the other victims of the attack, and their families. I think it’s important that the suspect be tried in a criminal court for murder, and not to give him the political “enemy combatant” platform he seems to want.
Dan Esposito, English teacher I was in the English teachers’ room and I was grading papers. That’s when we got the first shelter-in announcement. That seemed pretty normal. I think that a lot of people’s first impulse was that it was a drill or something. Just kind of out of curiosity I walked over to the window, and that’s when I saw people running. My first thought was that they were running away from basically where the World Trade Center was, where the Freedom Tower is. So that was kind of worrying. Those of us who were around sort of tried to piece together what was actually going on. The first thing we saw was the bus that had been hit, and it looked really scary. We didn’t really know what to make of it, so the next 30 minutes were just very confusing and frightening in the sense that we couldn’t get a full picture of what was happening other than what we could see out of this one, very limited, view of the window. It was very jumbled at first, like it is in these things all the time. We were hearing all different things from different people, and I think that’s definitely scary. What was reassuring was seeing how level-headed everyone was staying, especially the students and the teachers. Everybody kind of knew what to do and knew how to respond. That was super helpful, not panicky or nonresponsive. That was really inspiring. Throughout the night, what the school did such a terrific job of was, even though things were unclear and still very frightening, the school did such a good job of making everyone inside feel safe. At least that was the experience I had. There was a ton of announcements. I think pretty early on, we got the impression that all students were safe inside, and that was a huge relief. I was kind of shut off in one little room with a few students who had been in the hallway. I know Grossman was running around checking in on people, and you got this impression that everyone wanted to make sure everyone else was okay, and that was very reassuring. What I remember is that everybody was kind of working together to piece together as much of a full story as we could get. We had one student with a laptop out who had a news report, and people were on their phone, people were sent Snapchat videos that other students on the bridge had taken. It did feel like very much like what a newsroom must feel like, of piecing together this story. It was just kind of surreal because we were in it, as we were trying to figure out what was going on. The attitude that all the students had for each other was very supportive and calming. Even though we were in here for so long, it made the whole thing more okay. The Halloween parade runs right past my apartment. So I got off the train, and I was in the middle of this party and it was so surreal because I had gone from this really intense, emotional experience to this very silly Halloween party. That was, I think, jarring in a way. I went straight home. I feel like I got into my apartment, sat down, and I exhaled for the first time in four hours. I definitely needed to decompress for a little bit. I felt really proud of everyone else, and students especially. [I am] honored to be part of a school that can face crisis the way that Stuyvesant came together [and] faced it the other day.
Eric Grossman, Assistant Principal of the English Department By the time I realized what was happening, it was over becauseithappenedveryfast.Ittookmeawhiletoregister“Ohno!” I wanted to make sure the students and staff were safe. I quickly found others from the administration and tried to get a sense of what they knew. The driver was apprehended very quickly, and once we were aware of something, he was already in custody. Very quickly, there were a lot of police officers and FBI agents. So I was not fearful about what was going on here. Overwhelmingly I saw kids were playing telephone, drawing on the board, signing songs; it seemed safe and not as horrifying and no one from Stuyvesant was seriously injured. The feeling was very similar [to 9/11], the sense of some kind of outside threat that quickly became international news. We [were] in the building and getting emails and texts from former colleagues, former students, and faculty who were watching live while we were inside. The scale thankfully, was very different. The sense of participating in something historically can be tragic. I don’t know anyone who thinks anything other than what happened was terrible and the work of someone deranged. I know that the attack will be used for political purposes. My response is to want to make sure that all of our students, especially our Muslim students, can feel safe, respected, and totally free to change or anything like that.
STUDENT ANECDOTE
STUDENT ANECDOTE
I was in Spanish [class] when everything happened. I was closest to the window following Pedrick’s announcement. Everyone thought it was a drill. We joked about sitting out of the view of the windows and crouching under our desks. However, after the subsequent announcements and the audible sound of sirens, it was clear that this wasn’t a drill. The thing I remember most is the astounded silence with this backdrop of silence. The gravity of the situation was unclear but as people started to pull out their phones, a feeling of dread started to make its place in my stomach. The gravity of the situation truly sunk in when an FBI agent checked our IDs, when I saw the flashing red lights, [and] when I saw the suspect’s truck the next morning. Everything I had heard and seen was a whirlwind in my mind. I had peers who had seen the suspect pull out the fake guns, fearful that they were real. I had peers who were there and started running. I had peers who had seen the trail of dead bodies. That was something I kept thinking about. Imagine seeing these victims. Imagine not knowing where the bikes started and the bodies ended. If I [had been] there, I [don’t] know if I would have ran away or tried my best to help. My friend later [showed] me a picture of a dead body. I could not stop returning to the eight people who lost their lives. These were people who had families, loved ones, homes, and it was taken away from them. Following this was a barrage of posts on Facebook. Each one I saw seemed to break my heart and repair it back simultaneously. The posts about terrorism made me stop.
I was walking down the staircase toward Terry’s and then I came back up to the bridge. I saw the crash into the post and saw the man take out two pistols and then I heard gunshots. I think my brain has kind of washed out the rest but that’s pretty much all I saw. [The people] were all crazed and as soon as he came out I heard screams and people were scrambling for cover. I saw the elementary schoolers across the street rushing back inside.
- Debi Saha, sophomore
The vehicles just kind of stopped there, I think. The bikes were all knocked over. There was soil all over the ground. And the truck was pretty smashed up [...] and it smelled like gunpowder. I could smell it from the bridge. I was dazed and I honestly had no idea how to react. If it wasn’t for my friend dragging me back up the stairs towards Stuy I don’t think I would have done anything at all. I was frozen to the spot. I remember some stayed by the staircase to keep watching and someone took out their phone? I don’t remember who. But others ran back. They were shocked and they didn’t know what was happening but someone screamed that there was a man with a gun outside. I didn’t really feel anything but I think I’m finally getting the aftershock that this really happened and all these what ifs are running through my head and I can’t imagine what the families of those who died must be feeling right now. Honestly, I think social media kind of blew the story out of proportion. I heard that some claimed it was a terrorist attack and I think it just kind of promoted Islamophobia again. Some were making jokes about the whole situation and others were like, “I heard the man said, ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he took out the guns,” and I think that it’s wrong to just spread a story like that because it’s really easy for facts to get twisted along the way.
- Ziyun Zhang, sophomore
We saw him walk around the vicinity, walk around the road, and he was carrying two guns, [at least] they looked like guns. Then someone screamed he has a gun, and then immediately a lot of people started running away, and then this dude in a green shirt started to chase after the attacker, tried to chase him, and they were running around the entire intersection, and then the attacker [came] very close to the sidewalk. The sidewalk is separated by the road by a gate, he was right at the gate.
They continued walking around that area and chasing after each other. I turned my head because my friend said that we should leave, and then I heard the gunshot, four or five, I look back and I see Saipov on the ground and somebody screams and then everyone starts running, it was almost like a stampede. And then I run like three feet, and then me and this kid turn around and we run back to continue to see what happened.
[My friend and I] went on top of the bridge and we saw exactly what happened. They hadn’t covered the bodies yet and we were able to actually look at the bodies. They were on the side of the highway where the Citi Bikes are. There were two bikes crushed, just thrown about, and there [were] two bodies: one right next to the Citi Bikes and one back next to the trees.
It was pretty scary because Saipov came really, really close and he even looked back on me. And we actually saw, well I only caught a glimpse of the Home Depot truck crashing, [but] it was pretty intense.
It felt weird [coming back]. It was unbelievable, the way the police had blocked everything off, it was a big crime scene that people just the day before had died on the very land. I heard that eight people had died; it was kind of scary to see all the police with their heavy weaponry, everything was so odd going through a different entrance, and even the victims and the injured weren’t even released at that time. It was very uncomfortable.
- Laith Bahlouli, freshman
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 11
Features STUDENT ANECDOTE
continued from page 1
When we first heard the tires, obviously we thought, we are in the middle of New York City, so it wasn’t a huge thing, but someone who was sitting next to the window kind of gasped so everyone ran to see what happened and we ended up seeing people getting hit and stuff. Before they called the shelter-in we knew something was happening. We didn’t know it was as serious as it ended up being, but we knew people got hit.
I wasn’t in my class at the moment, I was up on the ninth floor. The teacher who was on the ninth floor with that class did not continue teaching, but eventually I had to go back down to my math class and the teacher downstairs thought it was a drill when they announced a shelter-in so he kept on teaching until students told him that people had actually died outside.
During the shelter-in, announcements were being made, [and] I thought that [they were] shocking. I get that they were trying to keep kids calm, but I felt like the way that they went about it, first of all not telling us what was going on outside, which made a lot of teachers think it was a drill and not an actual shelterin, and then the way they were kind of cheery about it. I guess they were serious, but the way they were talking about it made it seem like Pedrick was cheering almost. I thought that was shocking given the circumstances because I felt that she should have been more solemn and more appropriate for what was going on outside.
When I was walking back to my class, I am not going to lie, I was pretty scared because there was no one in the hallways. I felt that there should have been more teachers standing in the hallways just to make sure that if kids were out using the bathroom or something that they would safely get back in the classrooms. I guess there was no threat in there but at the same time we as students didn’t know what was going on outside because no one told us.
- Sehrish Ali, junior
Taking Back “Allahu Akbar”
“I’m extremely scared:” From Dr. Zhang’s Perspective How has the attack affected you? Yes, I feel I have been very fortunate. Were you here for 9/11? I was in a different high school. At that time, I worked in Jamaica High School in Queens, so I saw it from the other side of a river.
By Raniyan Zaman
have never been in such a situation where two people have died right in front of me. I still can’t comprehend the situation. Two bicycle riders were, just a moment ago, alive people, and now they’re lying there, lifeless. It’s very difficult to deal with. That’s part of the reason I want to be with people. To be stabilized by people. After all, we are social animals.
Did that experience change your experience of this at all? It’s difficult to say. I should say yes, because since then, we’ve gotten all sorts of trainings. Our whole society is more alert. At that time, we weren’t informed that easily. Has the administration contacted you? The principal called me! And even after that, he gave me his personal phone number and asked me to call him anytime. They are very concerned, and they are very supportive. Also, my colleagues are very supportive too. I am here and they always ask me not to do anything and whatever I want to be done, they will do it for me (He chuckles). It’s very moving. Have you been emotionally affected by this? Yes. I’m extremely scared. I
Courtesy of Dr. Zhang
I’ve written this article before— or at least something very similar. I wrote it in 2015, after the Paris terror attacks; suicide bombers targeted a stadium and various restaurants and cafes, killing 130 people and injuring 413. Prior to that attack, various Middle Eastern countries had already been targets of deadly shootings, bombings, and explosions, but I think of the Paris attack as the first in a pattern of homegrown domestic terrorism in Europe, incited by ISIS’s propaganda. It was jarring to Europeans, Americans overseas, and the world at large. In the Opinions article I wrote following the attacks, I mourned the victims. I cautioned people not to paint Muslims with the brush of terrorism. I condemned the cowards who claimed to be Muslims and then took innocent lives. It was a message that I knew I might have to deliver again—when the Brussels and Istanbul attacks occurred, when trucks drove over civilians in Nice and Berlin, when a van struck pedestrians on the London Bridge. But I never anticipated an attack near Stuyvesant. I never anticipated the masses of police officers that would be standing outside our school the next day or the deafening silence as throngs of people wearing black navigated a maze of barricades and orange vests, unsure of what to say and where to walk. We referred to it as “what happened yesterday” instead of calling it a terrorist attack—the latter would have felt too real. Frankly, I don’t think I ever anticipated Stuyvesant would be on the news
for anything besides our cheating scandal, racial imbalance, and alumni disputes, but here we are. I consider myself fortunate that I don’t have to deliver that message again, that I don’t have to remind you not to conflate Muslims with terrorists, that I don’t have to tell you that the Diversity Visa Lottery is one of America’s finest points, because I’m not entirely convinced that you need to hear it. I keep thinking of the way Stuyvesant responded to Donald Trump’s inflammatory remarks during his campaign; the way Stuyvesant came together after the 2016 election; the way we responded to the travel ban. Pundits online blame the attack on America’s supposedly lax immigration system, calling for stricter vetting and limited immigration, but I’m not sure they know that this is the last thing on Stuyvesant’s collective mind and that we are more focused on looking out for each other than looking for someone to blame. I certainly never anticipated the words “Allahu Akbar” to come out of a terrorist’s mouth after he attacked my community. Allahu Akbar doesn’t belong in the mouths of evil; it belongs during prayers, during congratulations and celebrations and dinner and laughter, during miracles. You might have heard that Allahu Akbar means “God is great.” This is false. Allahu Akbar means “God is greater.” Greater than you or me, greater than some psychopath who is so afraid of life that he would try to snuff it out. Not everyone at Stuyvesant is religious, of course, but I think the concept of believing in something greater than yourself is one that strikes a chord within all of us.
After the Allahu Akbar Moment: How Muslims at Stuyvesant Feel After the Attacks By Tashfia Hasan The attacks carried out by Sayfullo Siapov on Tuesday, October 31, occurred on Chambers Street, making Stuyvesant the center of a crime scene. After the attacks, it was publicized that Siapov yelled “Allahu Akbar” and has affiliations with ISIS, which has caused an influx of Islamophobia and hate speech against Muslims. Celebrities like Laura Loomer have made tweets that target and degrade women who wear hijab and Muslims in general, forcing Muslim students at Stuyvesant, who are no different from any other student who witnessed these attacks, to defend their religious faith and humanity.
Syeda Rahman, 10th Grade
“I was really annoyed to hear that that this guy yelled out, “Allahu akbar” when he came out of the truck, but I hate to say that I wasn’t surprised. Whenever you hear about radical Islamists doing terrorists attacks, people tend to put all Muslims under the same umbrella. They think Islam is equivalent to radical Islamist views. I stopped wearing the hijab out of fear. My parents told me that I should try not to look suspicious. People I know try what they can to not look suspicious and to hide where they’re from essentially. For instance, some people with bulky bags try to carry less. Little things like that assure us that we aren’t confronted. After the attack, I can’t stop replaying the sounds in my head, especially the gunshots. The fact that it happened is hard to process, but at the time, it was so surreal. I try to distract myself and tell myself I’m safe. Being affected by the attack and seeing it makes it different. Honestly, every time you hear about an attack, we tend to slide it off and think of it as another attack. But I understand that ev-
ery attack is important in its own way. Experiencing it myself kind of made me realize that it’s not just another attack because it affects people in different places and ways. Also, I wish that people wouldn’t base their views about Islam on these attacks because they aren’t representative the whole Muslim population. I’m afraid of the people afraid of me.”
Ayham Alnasser, 10th grade
“I was at Battery Park when the attacks happened. I heard the car crash, and I thought it was a UPS truck right in front of the park, so I didn’t think much about it. I walked up towards St u y ve s a n t to see if the UPS truck crashed. But that was when I saw the per-
Reflecting on the situation now, I consider myself to be a Muslim, so when I first heard him come out and say “Allahu Akbar,” I was irritated by the fact that he would say it. It’s clear that he isn’t really a Muslim because he killed people. He just pissed me off as a Muslim and as a student at Stuyvesant. I am not unnerved by the incident, even though I have seen a lot because the [cop shooting him] was warranted. I’m not traumatized by the incident. It only helps me further respect the NYPD. I don’t like how much this incident has been so publicized because it’s become politicized, and it stops the incident from actually being an actual m u r der and just becomes a statistic.”
Klaire Geller / The Spectator
petrator walk out. I was going to take my phone out to record what was happening, but it was dead. I watched him run out and scream, “Allahu akbar.” After that, I saw the police officer shoot him six times. Being at the crime scene, a police officer escorted me to the school because it wasn’t safe for me to be there. When I was in school, I was a part of the lockdown for the next three hours. When I came back home, my phone charged, and I checked and saw that I got 20 texts. It didn’t really set in [that] I just witnessed this attack.
Stephanie Raza, 10th Grade
“I’ve heard various reports about whether the perpetrator even said, “Allahu akbar” when he came out of the truck. It could be that he was just saying something in a foreign language and people are so scared or racist they just assume he said “Allahu akbar.” I was kind of disappointed seeing people categorize this attack as being done by another Muslim and it being so publicized because of that. When the Las Vegas shooting happened, people jumped
to the assumption that he had a mental disorder before they said the massacre was a terror attack. But in this case, they jumped on the opportunity to call it a bloodbath or a terror attack without having details fully confirmed.”
Yasmeen Hassan, 9th Grade
“A lot of my friends saw the attack happen, and they didn’t hear the man say “Allahu akbar.” I know that people have different stories, but I think just that part of the story stuck because people want to know this was part of a community or a bigger organization, so they can [turn their fear into] hatred. The next day on the subway, I was coming to school, and there was a newspaper on the seat right next to me, and the front page had “Terrorist Attack: Deadliest Since 9/11.” This title isn’t true because there have been a lot of attacks and mass shootings which have killed hundreds of people. Also, when I was going to the subway, I was terrified about what the people next to me are going to do or say to me when they see me because I’m Muslim. There was literally a woman reading about the attack on her phone, and I was just sitting there worrying if she was going to say something to me. I was a bit shaken up by the attacks. I wondered why would Muslims do this to other people. If he was really a Muslim, why would he do it? He would be putting his family and everyone that is close to him in danger. I see this as a test from God to see how Muslims are going to handle this situation. Someone told me, ‘Our religion is going to be put under a lot of pressure, and it’s a test to see who’s going to power through and have faith in God to protect them.’ I know this community is pretty safe, but there is always one person that’s going to do something that is not right. I think the best thing we can do is stay strong.”
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 12
Arts and Entertainment Photography in Terrorism: An Exploitation On the evening of Halloween, room 629 was a frustrating scene. My classmates crowded around the leftmost window, squinting their eyes at the only visible sliver of a damaged school bus (I sat back trying to finish my physics homework), when I realized what I had left at home: my camera. All I wanted was a single shot of the window. Articles were telling us that two people were dead, which quickly turned into four, then eight, and it was all somewhere close by, outside that window. For me, photography has been a way of understanding moments after they happen and of looking at a scene and highlighting the most intimate and meaningful things within it. It’s not always about capturing tragedy, beauty, or people in conflict. What truly matters about a photograph is simply its mood and its message, and it can convey those things in seconds. The most recent attack has brought the role of photography in terrorism to the forefront, and it shows us how the media has abused photography’s true purpose. Rather than releasing images that should capture the strength and unity that our city must exhibit, they’ve instead taken photographs that exploit the Stuyvesant student body and the international community. And at its worst, this can only heighten feelings of fear and chaos. On the night of the attack, Stuyvesant was surrounded
by vans and trucks of several media companies that turned the streets of TriBeCa into photographer-and-reporter galore. As students walked down the moderated path leading towards train stations, many of us noticed the press all around—specifically, the men and women that were trying to take photos of us as we passed. Many of my friends and I covered our faces from the flashbulbs. We did not ask to be photographed, and we did not want to be. Even the next day, a photographer had his camera pointed at such an obscure detail as our shoes, recording us all as we walked past him. Be it a staff member or student, everyone at Stuyvesant experienced the attack either directly or indirectly, and the feelings that we have about it may be extremely personal. However, when media companies take photos of us without our consent, they bring our own private spheres out into the public. They violate our comfort in a place where we should feel motivated to learn. These are not simply individual headshots of a student or two; they are largescale depictions of our student body. Terrorism is meant to incite fear, but a photograph showing that all Stuyvesant students are frightened and nervous victims does not tell the truth: we are indeed shocked, but not weak. The first photograph of Sayfullo Saipov (the Uzbekistani man who committed the attack) was released on the night it happened. His dull
mugshot was the icon of nearly every single news channel that night. The most troubling part about this photograph is how little important information it gives us; all we see is the color of his skin and the fact that he has a long, blackhaired beard—nothing else. I don’t believe that releasing his picture to the general public will benefit anyone. The only purpose of this photograph should have been to help keep his face recorded on a federal level. Past that, it allows us to unconsciously group together a skin color with Islam or a beard with terrorism. The reality, however,
is that there is no such facial feature as the “Islamic” kind. Slowly but surely, the photograph of Saipov contributes to sweeping generalizations about millions of Muslim people across the world. At this point, Islamophobia worsens at all costs. Consider political activist Laura Loomer, who enraged the twittersphere when she posted pictures of two hijabi women walking on Chambers Street and blamed them for simply being in the area where the attack happened. Photographs in the media are full of ideas and messages that we sometimes di-
gest without even an ounce of conscious thought. Nonetheless, they are effective. A photograph should be a positive change in and of itself. But reporters and the media only seem to want to capture the grim and the grit, and this is the seemingly unfixable problem. In a week from now, the media might be scrambling to tell another more “important” story. By then, the violent attack on our community will likely just become old news, tangled within a jumble of exploitative photographs, thousands of news articles, and Islamophobic media.
Greg Huang / The Spectator
By SHRAY TRIPATHI
Camera crews set up in Tribeca the night of October 31.
The Media’s Right to Capture Our Reactions By VICTORIA HUANG What is the media’s main purpose? To inform and share experiences with the public—whether they’re from the United States, South America, or Europe. People from around the country and across the world rely on the media to catch up on important events and to get educated on topics, but they can’t do that if they don’t have accurate news from reliable and primary sources. The media provides us with the latest news, and without it, many would be lost. “If the media wasn’t allowed to ask the students questions, there
wouldn’t be a job for reporters. It is their duty to get the freshest information and spread it,” senior Joelle Lum said. Especially with the whole spectacle of “fake news,” it’s hard to find out what actually happened on that horrid night. After only an hour had passed since the attack happened, there were already articles claiming that Stuyvesant students had been killed. However, while we now know a majority of the immediate articles were either exaggerations or straight-up false, no one knew what was happening at the time, and as people read those articles, they became more fearful. That’s
exactly what terrorists want—to instill fear and to interrupt our daily lives. Because we don’t want these false headlines spreading, the only way to get authentic news is from the people who actually saw the event unfold. And some of those people happen to be Stuyvesant students. In asking students about the event, there is also the possibility of obtaining new facts on the attack. One student may have seen something that the NYPD hasn’t picked up on, and that bit of missing information could perhaps help the ongoing investigation into the sudden attack on Tuesday.
If students were more open to talk about the event, they would create a less tense and more united environment. When people turn on the news and watch students continuing with their daily routines, it’s empowering, and it shows that the terrorists weren’t able to achieve their goal of instilling fear in the public. A student may have a very different story to share—one that can inspire others to stand up or teach others what to do while there is an attack. Students can not only get through to adults but also to the scared younger kids in nearby schools affected by the attack. Students can show them that they are
not alone in this and that other people are going through the same thing as they are, which can be super helpful and influential. I’m not saying that reporters should continuously hound students who don’t want to be on the news. Obviously, if you are uncomfortable in the presence of cameras and reporters, you have every right to tell them to not film you, and they should respect you and your decision. However, reporters asking students to express their thoughts on Tuesday’s act of terror is not directly an attack on us.
Politicizing Tragedy Through Social Media By DINA HEDEISHA At about 3:00 p.m. on Halloween, Sayfullo Saipov drove a pickup truck down a crowded bike path along the West Side Highway, crashed into a school bus on Chambers Street, and got out of his truck with two imitation firearms. In the process, he killed eight people, and seriously injured 11 more. Shortly after the attack, President Trump tweeted, “In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE U.S.A.!” How very like our president: he never misses an opportunity to use his Twitter account as a commentary outlet amidst political unrest, as opposed to holding an organized press conference. After a brief ac-
knowledgment of the victims of the shooting, he continued to use Twitter to push his own agenda forward, showing more biased anger in his tweets than sympathy towards the victims and their families. In particular, his xenophobic opinions were made clear. There was a stark difference between his reaction to the white Las Vegas shooting earlier this month and the recent attack by a foreigner. When asked if the man that shot and killed 58 people at a concert was a terrorist, Trump declined to answer. He used his infamous stalling tactics and barely brought up the possibility of his administration tightening gun laws in the future. But after this attack by an Uzbek national in the name of ISIS,
Trump wasted no time in proposing a new approach to immigration to Congress and the public through social media, proclaiming his desire to get rid of the Diversity Visa that brought Saipov into the United States. He tweeted, “CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!” (Nevermind the fact that Saipov did not come here through chain immigration and that the people he did bring to the U.S. in this manner have not brought any harm to the country.) Trump acknowledged that there are bills going through Congress about ending chain migration, but asserted that they’re being “stopped by Democrats because they’re obstructionists.”
In also immediately blaming ISIS for the attack, President Trump took advantage of this tragedy to add to partisan divide. The NYPD and the FBI had barely begun their investigation of the crime scene before he tweeted about refusing to let ISIS return to our country. His comments were clearly motivated by his bias against foreigners and Muslims, making this great tragedy no longer about the victims but about finding new ways to discriminate against these groups. He also used this event as a jumping-off point to discuss further controversial matters, such as the death penalty and Guantanamo (which he spoke about in subsequent tweets). For instance, he discussed his annoyance with the justice system we have in place
because he didn’t think this “animal” deserved to go to court or receive the leniency he would get (since the death penalty is illegal in New York). Through social media, President Trump quickly politicized the tragedy that happened on our school’s doorstep and incited arguments about immigration and justice, which effectively took attention away from the victims and the survivors. Instead of uniting our country after the attack, he used his platform to divide us on issues loosely related to the offender. Rather than following his lead, we should stand united, regardless of political differences, following such a tragic event.
The Spectator â—? November 10, 2017
Page 13
Photo Essay
Victoria Huang / The Spectator
Greg Huang / The Spectator
Courtesy of Sage Demopoulos
Courtesy of Sage Demopoulos
Elena Sapelyuk / The Spectator
The 10/31 We Will Always Remember
Page 14
The Spectator ● September 29, 2017
Editorials STAFF EDITORIAL
The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper
“The Pulse of the Student Body” E D I TORS
IN
CHIEF
Anne George* Matteo Wong* N EWS
EDITORS
Elena Sapelyuk/ The Spectator
EDITORS
Jane Rhee Eliza Spinna S P ORTS
Nov 1st - One of the many police and service vehicles stationed around Stuyvesant the days after the attack.
Dear Stuyvesant, During 10th period on October 31, The Spectator Editorial Board was celebrating Halloween in room 639, on the west side of the building. We were distracted by candy, college apps, and talk about our next issue. While some students were facing horrors no high schooler should have to, we only began to learn of the attack from Snapchat stories and Twitter feeds. We were able to follow the news minute by minute from inside our classroom, occasionally reading inaccurate accounts during the preliminary stages of the investigation. Most students had a very different experience. Some were on the Tribeca Bridge or on the wall, some were watching out the window, and some heard gunshots. Some teachers continued to teach their classes. Although every student in the building was on the same block as the attack, we were isolated through the well-enforced three-hour lockdown, sealing us off from the incident. You can find many of their stories in their own words throughout this issue. Though the attack has been covered heavily in the media, Stuyvesant’s role has been largely overlooked. Students provided much of the footage and photographs used by police and media outlets. The first floor of the building was used as a command center for the investigation and hosted the mayor and governor as they were briefed on the events of the afternoon. The exterior of the school was used as a backdrop for press conferences. Most of all, the event has a lasting effect on students, though reactions have differed greatly among individuals. Students have cried, students have made jokes, students have posted long reflections on their social media accounts. The various ways that students have expressed their feelings on the subject have prompted many to question others’ reactions. While some do not hesitate to call jokes inappropriate, others have used humor to distract themselves from the gravity of the events. Everyone copes differently, and the way one expresses him- or herself on the outside does not always reflect how he or she is feeling on the inside. Inappropriate responses do exist, but the line is not easily drawn. Despite the differences, the majority of the school came together on Wednesday, November 1, to wear black in mourning for the victims, a show of solidarity and support that transcends individual opinions. And to freshmen, this incident should not cast a dark shadow on your four years at Stuyvesant. This attack has clearly made us aware of transgressions against our safety—bringing terrorism to our doorstep. It is understandable to be afraid. Yet, in light of this, we celebrate the overwhelming strength and compassion that the school at large responded with to the terrible attack. This solidarity comes without surprise to the upperclassmen of the school. The Stuyvesant community—from teachers to students—will be here for you in this time of distress. We have dedicated this issue of the paper to the attack to show our school’s response and to provide an outlet for students. This is not about getting the best story or making waves, this is about representing our school and its experiences in the wake of an event that has affected all of us. Countless tasks have gone unappreciated, performed by teachers, administration, first responders, and more. They have stayed up until nearly midnight planning for our safety, and despite being equally impacted by Tuesday’s events, they have carried out the everyday tasks that keep our school running. Thank you to Principal Eric Contreras, Assistant Principal of Organization Jeremy Rynders, Assistant Principal of Pupil Personnel Services Casey Pedrick, Assistant Principal of Health and Physical Education Brian Moran, and the countless other administrators who helped organize the school’s response. Thank you to the teachers, who waited for us in our classrooms, administered the evacuation, and provided support the next day. Thank you to the School Safety Officers and NYPD, who always put our safety, and the safety of the city, before their own. Thank you to the counselors and the United Federation of Teachers, who have helped students and staff recover from Tuesday’s tragic events. Thank you to everyone who has helped us through the past week. The Stuyvesant Spectator Editorial Board
Ting Ting Chen Julia Lee Mika Simoncelli DIRECTORS
Klaire Geller Christine Jegarl Vivian Lin L AYOUT
EDITORS
Kerwin Chen Shaina Peters Michael Xu*
EDITORS
Arpita Nag Jessica Wu Katie Wu COPY
EDITORS
Vincent Jiang Michelle Lai Venus Nnadi BUSINESS
EDITORS
Ray Jones Sam Merrick Max Onderdonk* H U MOR
PHOTOGRAPHY EDITORS
EDITORS
Archi Das Asim Kapparova Sophie Watwood* O PI NIONS
Karen Chen* Sophie Feng Eliana Kavouriadis William Lohier
ART
Nishmi Abeyweera Shameek Rakshit Blythe Zadrozny F E ATURES
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITORS
MANAGERS
Saloni Majmudar Donia Tung WEB
EDITORS
Jason Kao George Zheng FAC U LT Y
ADVISER
Kerry Garfinkel
Please address all letters to: 345 Chambers Street New York, NY 10282 (212) 312-4800 ext. 2601 letters@stuyspec.com
We reserve the right to edit letters for clarity and length. © 2017 The Spectator All rights reserved by the creators. * Managing Board
Interviews throughout this issue were conducted by Spectator staff members in the hopes of representing our the experiences of students and faculty before, during, and after Tuesday’s attack.
Reporting by: Nishmi Abeyweera Chloe Doumar Chloe Hanson Vincent Jiang Wen Shan Jiang Sarah Osman
Mai Rachlevsky Peter Tam Grace Tang George Shey Sasha Spajic
A Note to Our Readers: The Spectator will now accept unsolicited Op-Ed pieces written by outside students, faculty, and alumni. These columns, if selected, will be published in The Spectator’s Opinions section. Recommended length is 700 words. Articles should address school related topics or items of student interest. Columns can be e-mailed to opinions@stuyspec.com.
Do you want to reflect on an article? Or speak your mind? Write a letter to the editor and e-mail it to opinions@stuyspec.com or drop it in The Spectator box in the second-floor mail room.
Elena Sapelyuk/ The Spectator
VOICES Would you like to share a personal narrative with the school? Whether it’s an essay you’ve written for class, or a piece you’ve been working on by yourself, if it’s in first-person and it is nonfiction it could get published in The Spectator’s issue-ly Voices column! Send your stories into opinions@stuyspec.com, or email us with any questions or concerns you have. Dina Ingram, Dr. Fiegelbaum, L. Kelly Johnson, and Principal Contreras.
The Spectator ● September 29, 2017
Page 15
Opinions Point-Counterpoint: Memorializing the Attack Remember, But Don’t Remind By BEN PLATT An often forgotten aspect of many terrorist attacks and mass shootings is how to deal with their aftermath. Often, these attacks happen in places that are used regularly and serve an essential purpose to a community, such as Sandy Hook Elementary School or the Mother Emanuel Church. Similarly, the attack on the Hudson River bike path is particularly challenging to deal with because it happened in a public, heavily-used area. Different places have responded differently to violent conflicts. After the devastation at Sandy Hook, the school was torn down completely and a new one was rebuilt. At Columbine High School, the library—the main scene of the trauma— was rebuilt into an atrium. On the other hand, an Arizona Safeway where six people, including a Congresswoman, were shot reopened just a week later. When it comes to the site of last week’s
to terrorists that the people of New York City will not be intimidated. Stuyvesant students will continue to hang out at the scene of this carnage just as they did before. By the end of the week after the attack, the heavy media presence in the area and the bouquets of flowers honoring those who perished will be gone. We shouldn’t etch the memories of this traumatic incident in stone: creating a constant reminder of the pain people felt on that horrible day helps no one. Students and teachers want to get over this distressing experience, not relive it everyday. Instead, we must show how acts of violence will not affect our collective psyche. The bike path reopened the day after the attack, and right away, Citi Bikes were riding down the path. The day after the attack, rather than missing school to recover, everyone came in for a mostly normal day of classes. Many teachers did not even feel the need
We shouldn’t etch the memories of this traumatic incident in stone; creating a constant reminder of the pain people felt on that horrible day helps no one.
horror, the best course of action is to leave the bike path as is. While it is important that the people who died are remembered, memories don’t have to be set in stone—they will always be in our hearts and minds. This is a response of resilience, not amnesia. By showing that Americans will continue to bike up and down the path just as they did before, we demonstrate
to mention the attack to their students. Ultimately, teachers and students desire a return to normalcy. No one will forget what happened on Tuesday. It will continue to weigh very heavily on my mind. That memory is all we need: the school doesn’t have to erect a monument for us to feel the pain that we all felt on Tuesday.
In Remembrance By MIA GINDIS
anyone who passes by of the vitality of change at a time where tragic attacks hapAmidst the excitement of the chilly pen, and, if nothing is done, will continue Halloween afternoon, two friends and I to happen. Some members of the Stuyvesant commarked the end of our school day by photographing our extravagant costumes. I as- munity argue that commissioning a monusumed the role of photographer, laughing ment would defy our defiant “business as at their silly poses while facing away from usual” attitude. Marking the landscape impedes the normalcy of life afterwards. the West Side Highway. Moments later, their wide smiles But that’s exactly the point: it isn’t normal wilted into looks of sheer terror. I heard a to have such a massive loss of life. It isn’t loud crash behind me, and I turned to see normal when we know the perpetrator’s life body lying atop a crumpled bicycle. As the story but not the name of a single victim. It’s crucial to call out these events as screams of bystanders sent shivers down abnormal for my spine, I rethe civilized, alized the imcompassionmediacy of the ate nation we situation. After aspire to be. finding shelter We put up in a lobby, we monuments sat for what after atrociwhat felt like ties not to an eternity unnormalize the der strict lockpitfalls of hudown, with manity, but to the doorman recognize the updating the Americans body count Suzy B. Ae / The Spectator who suffered. Their expeevery hour. It emerged later that we had experi- riences will be normalized if we disregard enced a confirmed act of terror. Saifullo this sentiment. Therefore, we owe it to the victims Sapov, an Uzbek immigrant turned radical, murdered eight innocent civilians after ca- of the latest terror attack to memorialreening a truck down a bike path in Lower ize them. Their names and stories should Manhattan. This tragedy hit close to home stand out for years, even after the hype and for the Stuyvesant population. Some stu- urgency subsides. Moving on as a nation, as a school, and as individuals isn’t equivalent dents witnessed the attack firsthand. In the difficult days following, students to repressing our memory of the attack. The monument shouldn’t overwhelm and administrators have debated how we can properly memorialize the attack. Some the landscape (just as this horrific tragedy claim that commemorating such events didn’t overwhelm our school), but it must would only serve as a constant, physical re- certainly be present. The profundity of being so near a threat has affected us all. minder of the horror we seek to forget. However, we cannot deny that there A monument would be a physical maniwas an attack. If the people most closely festation of this mindset: it could’ve been affected by this atrocity deem it forgettable anyone that afternoon, so we must work by not erecting a monument, there is less toward it being no one ever again. The following Wednesday after the atmotivation to prevent similar attacks in the future. Without attributing a plaque tack, the hallways were overwhelmed with or monument, Stuyvesant sends the mes- with students clothed in black. Friends sage that we’ve stopped discussing what gave each other reassuring hugs; hopeful we can never really forget. While the media smiles were flashed on escalators. Classes promotes discourse for several days after resumed as usual with remarkably high the attack, spurring legislators and local attendance rates. An otherwise tragic inauthorities to act while fear still lingers, cident brought forth the spirit of our stuthere is less public urgency as the massacre dent body as we united for another typical grows less recent. A monument will remind school day.
We Need To Do Better: Challenging Staff Apathy By JONELA MALOLLARI “Hello everyone! Thank you for your patience! The shelterin… does continue!” A cacophony of groans drowns out the rest of the announcement that projects patronizing gratitude for how incredibly patient we’ve all been. “Yo, I heard a freshman got shot.” “Apparently four little kids from the elementary school were in the bus.” “Did you hear about the lab assistant? What’s his name again?” The room buzzes with chatter; some verbalizing updates from uncertain news sources, some on the phone with relatives, some complaining about how hungry they are, and some fidgeting, waiting for an announcement that will confirm or deny the rumors flying, or provide any kind of update at all. This announcement is not forthcoming. Entering Stuyvesant the next day, I notice the school has a somewhat muted quality to it. Not like the hallways echo less noise, but like someone threw a heavy afghan over us. From time to time, the P.A. blares. Counsel-
ors are in the theater. Counselors are in the theater. Counselors are in the theater. We float from room to room, waiting to hear what our teachers will tell us. Waiting for our teachers to guide us in our reactions and responses. Waiting for them to pay respects. Many of us are still waiting. For a school that claims to prioritize its students’ health and safety, the lack of an organized and empathetic response from the staff was disappointing, if not shocking. During the evening of the West Side attack, the administration’s policy of retaining necessary information would have been appropriate for an elementary school—not so much for a high school full of teenagers and adults with Internet access, social media, and the maturity and experience to understand the implications of a terror attack. This tactic may have been effective 30 years earlier, but not today, when the sheer terror of not knowing is amplified by a plethora of false news reports and frightened gossip. When the majority of the student body is bombarded with rumors and posts and is simultaneously infantilized by the administration, panic spreads—the very same
panic the administration had been trying to avoid. Even more upsetting was the lack of a collective decision from the staff on how the attack should be addressed in class— despite receiving and ignoring advice from the counseling department on how to broach the issue—which resulted in a variety of teacher responses. Some chose to act blasé, asking at the beginning of class, “Remember, if any of you feel too traumatized or distracted to focus on the lesson, just leave to counseling now… no one?” Others decided that the attacker didn’t deserve the attention of a class discussion and said as much before moving on to the planned lesson, leaving the question hanging in the air: What about the victims? Do they not deserve discussion either? Still others chose to pretend it didn’t happen at all, even having the audacity to administer a quiz the following day. Not all teachers were indifferent—there were teachers, particularly English teachers, who did allow their class to become a space of open discussion and free thought about the attack. It wasn’t until I had English myself that I realized the full absurdity of focusing on coding and equa-
tions and imperfect tenses when a literal terror attack had occurred in our front yard not even 24 hours earlier. It was an insult to our intelligence, but more importantly, it was an insult to the memory of the victims of the attack. The point is that we’re resilient, right? In fact, we’re so resilient that a single P.A. update on the crisis happening 20 feet from our doors is clearly too much for us kids to handle, so we’re just going to frantically refresh Snapchat in desperate hope that not even one of the rumors is true. We’re not going to let this affect us, so we’re going to isolate this conversation in the theater and ignore it in the classroom. We’re going to trust that the teenagers of a competitive school will choose to seek support on their own in lieu of attending classes they can’t afford to fall behind on, taught by teachers so oblivious and unconcerned one would think they had slept through the past two days. We’re not going to mention eight dead people, or their mourning families, or the news crews colonizing two streets, or the students who didn’t come to school, or the students who really shouldn’t have come to school. We’re so resilient
we’ve chosen to set an apathetic example for our students to follow—which many of them did. We’re going to keep moving forward into the same numbness that we criticized in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting—a legacy perpetuated by the staff and carried on by the student body. Somehow, by proving theorems and discussing Andrew Jackson’s contributions and failures during his presidency, we’re supposedly refusing to let “them” win—but the ultimate loss isn’t just ours, it’s that of the grieving families devastated and left unmentioned. Of course, there isn’t a way to be prepared for every imaginable crisis. However, a news update and a more coordinated effort toward empathy and respect isn’t a special request, it’s a basic responsibility. If the Student Union can organize a school-wide gesture of respect for the victims of the West Side attack the night before, the staff can pause or postpone their lessons. We’re not asking for perfection, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect the adults in charge of us to do better—or even, inconceivably, to care.
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 16
Creative Responses “Okay”
True Fear
ANONYMOUS, senior “Are you okay?” “Are you guys okay?” “How are you guys feeling?” Words like screams into the oblivion, Desperate grabs for air. From far away I am watching you call to me From far away I am calling to you At a standstill At a standstill These words fall Like a thin sheet of snow They melt as they touch skin The heat of colliding realities “Thank God you’re okay.” At least I am.
DEBI SAHA, sophomore dated halloween night, 2017 I remember astounded silence, the backdrop of sirens, the stifling gravity of the situation, the descriptions, the rising death toll, the speculations, the details, the dead bodies I cannot fathom, I can’t think of not being able to tell where the bikes start and the bodies end bikes dented like Play-Doh bodies mangled like rag dolls
Debi Saha, sophomore Inspired by the complexity of my feelings, the thoughts that keep repeating, and the pictures I can’t get out of my head.
the only thing I can think of walking home, is that these unsuspecting, trick-or-treating children will never know true fear until their life flickers in front of them.
Ode to October 31st ANNE CHEN, senior
“Stronger Together” by ELAINE GO, freshman
Rage-filled carnage trails the bike path that my worn sneakers once pounded against two years ago, my teammates running in rhythm alongside me, our matching track jackets beating down like blueberry plumes. Debris and wet tire marks imprint the once smooth asphalt, chaining down flesh, draped across with unfamiliar white tarps, pure blinding white, like cuts of bone, adjacent to the mangled blue Citi Bikes toppled across, mirroring the clear blue sky above, dotted with blinking red and white lights. I tried to shield myself from the heavy beating of the helicopters raining down on my ears, the acrid taste of my spit pooling to the roof of my mouth, my teeth pulling dead skin off of the worry shadowing the faces of my classmates milling around me, our ribs pushed against the radiators towards the large windows encompassing the 10th floor classroom, to the jumble of police cars and firetrucks blocking the highway, a breathing faceless mass along the serene Hudson.
Eugene Seo, sophomore, in an email interview “After getting home from school, I felt constrained and angry. How could someone have the indecency to do that to innocent people? I wondered what I could do to express my thoughts and I realized that I could post on my Instagram. I was looking through my photos to see what I [could] post when I came across this photo. I remembered walking around the World Trade Center on 9/11, watching firemen from around the country gather in front of the memorial and salute those who gave their lives on that day. 9/11/2001 was a day of terror no different from the day we had on Halloween, and I realized that instead of feeling angry at others, we, as New Yorkers, should stand together and salute those innocent people that were wrongfully taken from the world. These attackers want to instill fear in us, but we need to stand firmly together and commit to change.”
Our fingers frantically clicked against glass screens, calling home to loved ones, constantly refreshing Daily News, New York Post, CNN, any news outlet our fingers could reach, vigorously tapping as if we could reach through the screen, extend, extend, undo the screaming
text, undo eight dead, 15 injured, undo this clear blue sky, this bright blue, this GODDAMN blue, undo, undo. Undo. Undo. Undo. My small fists, nails carving bruised crescents into my palms, can only beat and beat with frustration, but if I could intertwine, if I could extend my fingers to my classmates, my teachers, my friends, my family, and build a ladder of limbs, reaching always, to the top of the ladder, bathed in soft light. If I could unpeel my tongue pressed stubbornly against my cheek, let it curl, and cup the angry sorrows, the indignant tears, the silt crumbling into hatred and violence, if I could swallow it whole and still find love, springing out from cracks of urban sprawl. If like dandelions, we could sprout, cupping sun in our cheeks, thin colored allbrights, then we can believe, believe that hope will sprout again in stronger, in greener shoots than before. I am sorry to those of you who left too early, too early to reach the sun, to let its warmth tickle you, billow in the expanses of your well-worn, well-loved body. You didn’t deserve this. So we will love, overflow your graves with love, until you rest in a sun-kissed wreath, growing among a field of dandelions. Undo.
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 17
Creative Responses Speed of Life
Samantha Adrianzen, junior At the time, I was unaware that Saipov had a B.B./paint gun, or that people were run over on West Side Highway. I was also unaware that the gunshots were from the policeman rather than the criminal. I initially thought I was in the midst of a mass shooting. Thankfully, I didn’t see any of that, because if I did, I would probably need more help and counseling than the amount that I already get. The Stuyvesant community has been really supportive in helping me cope with this situation. Listening to music, talking with others, and simply seeing my friends made it seem like life was finally back to normal. Certain visuals sometimes trigger me, and sometimes it still hurts. I try not to think about that afternoon by being busy throughout the day. I’m just so grateful for my guidance counselors, my peers, my family, and my teachers. I have never been so happy to see everyone I know unharmed and present. It wasn’t until eight people died that I realized Stuyvesant is like my second family and my home. By SAMANTHA ADRIANZEN, junior 9/11. I always knew that it was an extremely sensitive topic to discuss. Every year at school,
all my teachers would talk about how terrible and traumatizing that day was, how firefighters from the five boroughs were brave enough to go to the World Trade Center, and all of those
kinds of comments. I practically have it memorized like a tape recorder. I get it. 9/11 destroyed our nation’s sense of immortality. I almost felt guilty that I didn’t feel as bad as all those people who lived through it. I was merely an infant—I didn’t really live through 9/11. It just felt like the world had always had increased, dramatic security and Islamophobia—all caused by a day in infamy that happened years ago. Isn’t it a little too much? 9/11 wasn’t really a day of infamy for me. But the Halloween of 2017? That was real. That was my day of infamy. I was so excited to see my friends that day. I was 16 years old, full of life, only expecting to see the best of New York City. I was ready to make fun of my friends’ “hard-worked” costumes. That afternoon, I walked across Tribeca Bridge, which was normal as ever. I didn’t see any unusual activity. But as I descended the steps of Tribeca Bridge, a row of curious young faces started approaching my direction. All eyes were on me... or so I thought. As curiosity turned to concern, I finally looked at what was behind me—what everyone was actually looking at: a car accident. I couldn’t really pinpoint what my eyes were seeing. The white pickup truck looked like a black hole. A huge cloud of smoke rose from the vehicle. I tried analyzing what had actually happened. Instead, a few burning ash particles went inside my eye. Everyone was still looking at the incident. I started moving away from the scene, thinking it was insignificant. I was mid-conversation with my friend when I suddenly heard somebody shout, “He’s got a gun!!” My ears couldn’t believe what they were hearing. He’s got a what? All the memories of 9/11, of Sandy Hook, and of Paris started racing through my mind like crazy. Instinct took
over me. I started running further away from the scene, with a few other confused teenagers. However, my friend thought otherwise. “Maybe it’s just a couple of freshmen who wanted to pull a prank,” he said. Maybe. But that wasn’t a good reason to risk death. I always wondered what I’d do if I was the main character in a suspenseful movie, and I’d have to run for my life. Well now, this was it. I continued running. My friend ran along with me. Breathe in, and out, in, and out. I ran past West Broadway and Church Street, intersections at Chambers Street. Four gunshots. Those were bullets, my friend shouted. We started running even faster, jaywalking and petrified with fear. The situation became even more dire. I passed Church Street onto Broadway. I heard some more shouts—was it safe? Please, please don’t tell me I didn’t run fast enough. Turns out, my calculator, its batteries, and a few books had fallen out of my backpack. A young man said, “Ma’am! Your book-bag is opened!” The man picked up all of my fallen belongings and kindly handed them to me. “Take it easy, Ma’am,” he said. I couldn’t run anymore with my hands full of batteries and books, so I walked more slowly. My friend waited for me near City Hall. I asked him to hold my stuff while I called my dad. I panicked as I spoke to him and couldn’t formulate words correctly. At the City Hall station, I relaxed a little bit more and took out my Metrocard, but I clearly wasn’t relaxed because I had trouble swiping it correctly. My hands were trembling. I didn’t really talk with my friend. The sound of the bullets and shouts were still fresh in my memory. I got off at 14 Street-Union Square to take the L train. Everyone around me just acted so normal, like everything was okay. Everything was not okay. How could
they all just stand there typing on their phones? Suddenly I heard some more sirens from aboveground. People just obliviously glanced up and then looked back down at their phones. No one on this platform had the knowledge that I had. My eyes started swelling with tears, which then started streaming from my eyes. I was scared to death, and nobody knew about it. I greeted my family with hugs and sobs. I told them about what happened to me, and they asked me how I felt. How I felt? I didn’t really feel a feeling. I felt like I was in some parallel universe, or a movie scene—the director was going to say, “Cut!” at any moment. But the director never appeared. This scene was too surreal. The city isn’t as great as it seems, my parents said to me. But they were wrong. I love New York City. I love New York City more than I love anything else in my life: my school, my friends, and even my own family. But I have seen the best and worst of my favorite city. I once said to a friend, I’ve never had a bad experience. Yet, on that day, I experienced terrorism. And because of that, I will never be the same person. And? Well, that transformed me. I never thought New York City would experience terrorism again, especially after 9/11. I always thought I would be safe in NYC’s bubble and that life was like a box of chocolates—sweet and fulfilling. That day, however, surprised me. I’m sure it surprised the younger children it affected even more. Nobody should ever feel like a situation means life or death. Nobody should feel like their city can’t protect them in times of crisis. I’m even more passionate about stopping terrorism and crime, because if I have learned one thing from this experience—it’s that bad things do happen, but nonetheless, our city will remain strong.
Finding Peace with Violence By JAMES HUANG, junior
James Huang, junior I’d like to thank our police, fire, and city services for acting so bravely on that tragic day. I’d like to thank my guidance counselor, Mrs. Mahoney, for listening to my tears and grief. I’d like to thank my friends for just being there and listening to what I had to say. You four were there too, and we’ll forever be there for each other. I’d like to thank the universe, God, and my parents for allowing me to live in such a happy and prosperous world. It’ll take weeks for the full extent of trauma to disappear, but I think it’ll all be okay.
The hallways were bustling with a plethora of entertaining and unique costumes, teachers were handing out candy, and people were animatedly talking about the usual struggles of Stuyvesant—tests, quizzes, and the lack of sleep. Later that day, I was planning on going trick-ortreating or at least overdosing on Skittles or M&M’s. Tests—and the ensuing anxiety—were coming up, but today was going to be a wonderful day. I exited onto the bridge and down to the wall across the Tribeca Bridge. The sky was brilliant, the sun left a warm embrace on the pavement, and the air was crisp, yet comfortable. One could sit there on the wall, forget about the struggles of schoolwork and homework, and just appreciate how beautiful the weather was. My friends and I were talking about something, and everything seemed to be so normal, when a loud bang interrupted our laughter and banter. A horrifically dented school bus was the first thing I managed to discern through the putrid smoke in the air, and then, a deafening silence filled the air. Even the incessant movement of traffic seemed to freeze for a moment as everyone took in what seemed like a terrible accident. “What just happened?” How could this have happened in the
first place? The truck was in an extremely awkward position, and never in my life had I heard such a loud accident. “He has a gun!” For a moment, I froze in shock. A man got out of the truck, but from my angle and across the street, I could not discern a gun. For a moment, I stood there in awe. Then I saw the running, the screaming from across the street, and the panicked expressions on the people around me. It suddenly dawned on me that this was something much more serious. I sprinted down Chambers Street, and behind me I heard four gunshots. I didn’t even stop for a moment at the busy intersection. What the hell was happening? Police sirens pierced the air, and they joined together in a progressively louder wail that only intensified my heartbeat. When I got home, I turned on the news, and I felt a sense of numbness. I was in shock. The helicopter footage showed my school and a scene of carnage that could only be described as traumatizing. I saw the bike path me and my teammates occasionally ran on strewn with the wreckage of bikes; on Snapchat, I saw the body bags. Terrorism had struck with its evil scythe right in front of my own eyes, and suddenly, a concept we learned about in history class became so real. At first, I only felt a sense of
emptiness, of shock, of denial. This couldn’t have happened. Not in my world. That night, the nightmares came in full force. Gunshots, me dying, my friends dying; I saw it all. I woke up early that morning, in a panicked sweat. It had scarcely been a day since the attacks, and on the way to school, I still only felt shock. The long, slow procession of students marched around the crash site, under the watchful eye of thousands of policemen. The usual sounds of honking and chatter were replaced with the eerie drone of helicopters and the scary silence of West Street. This is all a bad dream. I walked the detour to school with the same friend that had run with me across Chambers Street when the attack started, and we couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed. At school, the teachers all tried to return to business as usual, but a subdued sense of fear and sadness loomed over us all. People hugged me that day, and for the first three periods at least, I was holding up well. The tsunami of emotions finally came crashing down when I went to guidance to talk about the incident. I didn’t even see it coming, but as soon as I sat down in front of my guidance counselor, the tears came rushing out. I had written about the events the continued on page 18
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 18
Creative Responses Finding Peace with Violence continued from page 17
night before, but now the gravity of the situation rained down on me with full force. All the thoughts that were suppressed by my stress response the night before came rushing out. Eight people died that day, and I was just in grief and extremely afraid. At that point, words couldn’t express the emotional roller coast-
er that I was on. When I got home that day, I cried some more; I had homework that night, but I did so little of it. The usual background noises of sirens triggered me, and once again, my sleep was plagued with nightmares. On Thursday, the Tribeca Bridge reopened, and life seemed more and more normal. With the exception of the police barricades and the flowers left for the
victims of the attack, it almost seemed like the attack never happened in the first place. I no longer felt emotional pain or thought about the attack 24/7. Now, the attack’s emotional trauma is gradually fading away from my mind, and in its place, new feelings have taken place. I hug my parents more often, I take the extra minute or two to appreciate them. I feel a newfound sense of appreciation for
the world around me and the city I live in. My friends and I have grown closer, and our bonds have become stronger after this tragedy. The terrorist attack on Halloween struck fear in my heart, but even though that fear has still not subsided, I strangely feel at peace with the demons in my heart. I still feel terrible for the eight families who won’t be able to appreciate their loved ones,
but as their legacy, I love the people close to me even more. I am forever changed by the Tribeca Attack, but I hope it’s for the better. This evil coward who tried to terrorize me has only made me feel more thankful to the greatness of humanity and the wonderful people my friends and family are. This act of terrorism hasn’t divided me—it’s stitched me back together, stronger than ever.
Regarding My Experience on October 31st, 2017 THIBAUD ROY, sophomore Screeches and then a loud bang. Car crash, was my first thought. I moved from my group of costumed friends to the staircase to see what the commotion was. Smoke from the crushed front of the pickup truck. Black oil spilled all over. I waited, pensively. All traffic on the West Side Highway had slowed to a crawl. A group of ten or so middle schoolers had gathered on the other side of the street. Why was no one going to help the person inside get out? I kept thinking. I waited, expecting the person to stagger out or some altruistic individual to step up. Suddenly, the door banged open, and the man inside leaped out. I vividly remembered his golden handgun being the only thing I could focus on. He looked all around with his handguns point-
ADVERTISEMENTS
ed, looking for a target, wildly turning. I was frozen. Holy [expletive], I thought, he’s going to kill somebody. Someone behind me screamed, “He’s got a gun,” and I heard shrieks and footsteps taking off back into the school. I was still glued watching. He looked at the group of kids at the other side of the street, and strode towards them. I wish I could say I did something heroic, like turn his attention away from the kids, or that I threw something at him, but I just turned around towards Stuyvesant, and sprinted through the metal doors back into school. I was herded by Mr. Tillman and the school police officers into the Student Union room. I went to the windows and watched as the police cars swarmed around the crashed truck. After several minutes of craning my neck to see, someone pointed out the two bodies on the bike pathway and the crumpled, strewn Citi
Bikes. Police officers crowded over the bodies. Everyone was asking where the ambulance was. When the police officers brought out the white plastic covers, the questions stopped. I live by Stuy, and the next night, as I was walking home, I decided to check out the deathbeds of those lost on that day. There was a police officer every 10 steps. There was a police officer stationed at the bloodstain of the biker. The police officer, a 35-year-old man with dark eyes, nodded at me and looked away. I sat down on the side, staring at the darker part of the con-c r e t e . The closest I had been to death before was with my great-grandparents, and that was when I was much younger. I don’t know how I feel. I’m still stuck with a lot of questions. I don’t think many of them will be answered anytime soon.
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 19
Arts and Entertainment Turtles All the Way Dab
books I started reading “Turtles All the Way Down” by John Green a few days after receiving it in the mail on its release date, October 10, 2017. I had pre-ordered a copy (signed in green Sharpie) the day after I heard about it, because I am a White Girl (as in while writing this sentence, I literally pushed up my clear Warby Parker glasses and took a sip of my Tangerine La Croix Sparkling Water boss-level white). I am in fact so white, and so openly obsessed with the idea of John Green, that my father, who is in the habit of surprising me with books, also pre-ordered a copy he then had to cancel. As the epitome of Green’s demographic (emotional white teenage chicks who read), my opinion of his new book is expected to be positive. But I don’t think you should read it because it’s “beautifully written and just breathtaking” or “EMOTIONAL,” (lines I stole from reviews of Green’s previous and most popular book, “The Fault In Our Stars.”) You should read it because it tells a story that is important for teenagers to hear in the midst of an epidemic of depression and anxiety: what it is to be someone or love someone who lives with debilitating mental illness. “Turtles All the Way Down” focuses on Aza Holmes, a highly anxious high school junior in Indianapolis, Indiana. It satisfies everything you’re looking for in a Young Adult (YA) novel. There are teenagers in it. They go to class, and they fall in love, and there’s holding hands and some kissing. The characters are awkward and young in a real-feeling way, and
art By Lucy Lu Alexander Calder’s mother painted portraits for a living, and his father was the third sculptor in his family. The two met at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and started a family in California. As a child, Calder would fashion metal toys for his
they go on comedic adventures, where they piss off Holly, the Applebee’s waitress, by coming in every week to use up an excessive number of “Two Burgers for Eleven Dollars!” coupons. There’s clever banter about interspecies romance between Chewbacca and Rey and tender moments of emotional sharing. Bonus: Aza and another character, Davis, both have one dead parent for extra angst and emotional connection because absentee parents are a YA tradition. Spoiler alert; Davis is the romantic interest. Wow. What a shocker. What makes “Turtles All the Way Down” unique within its genre however, is its very real portrayal of mental illness and obsessive thoughts. I started reading “Turtles All the Way Down” in the middle of a mental breakdown. I was trying to get myself to stop crying. It was 11:00pm, and I hadn’t finished a single thing that day. There were no lights on in my room, and I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the carpet and treading frantically as my thoughts tried to drown me. I was convinced that the world was caving in, that
Sunjung Bok / The Spectator
I just wanted to stop crying. Aza’s struggle with OCD does not feel romanticized; it feels crunchy and difficult and frustrating and awkward. Aza experiences mental health the way my friends and I do, and as I was reading it, I constantly heard our
words in hers. I read Aza’s explanation, “I don’t know, I don’t like the feeling of having to take a pill to feel like ‘myself,’” in my best friend’s voice. When Aza talks to and about her therapist: “I wanted to tell her that I was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: it was a hurdle you jumped over, or a battle you won. Illness is a story you tell in the past tense,” I read in my own. I’ve always been a fan of Green’s work; beyond novels, he and his brother Hank Green run an internet empire centered around their YouTube channel “vlogbrothers.” Part of what draws me to their online work is how Green has always been public about his mental health, and in the last year, has been increasingly candid about his OCD. “I experience these obsessive thought spirals in which intrusive thoughts, that is, thoughts that I don’t want to have that seem to come from outside of me, sort of hijack my consciousness,” he said in a vlog published this July, titled “What
OCD Is Like (for Me).” “If I can’t choose my thoughts, and I am at least partially made up of those thoughts, am I actually the captain of this ship I call myself? And the more you think about that, at least for me, the more it becomes like… the premise for a horror movie.” The veritas of his experience and the eloquence with which he translates it into fiction is what makes the book rich and valuable, rather than just entertaining. This novel is warm, satirical, and romantic. It is a comfort food for the YA reader. But as a young person in an increasingly emotionally-tumultuous age, it is recognition for my experience. In the last few weeks, I’ve been made aware that for people who haven’t experienced mental health, it can be incredibly difficult to empathize. “I never viewed PTSD and stuff as real,” a girl in my English class shared. “I never got why that wasn’t something you could just get over.” Another friend confided in me that when her sister was dealing with severe anxiety and depression, her family didn’t really understand what was happening — to them, it seemed like something she should be able to get over. And I’ve even had those thoughts myself: the painful thing to ask myself is why I won’t just do my homework. It’s difficult to understand that sometimes the problem is bigger than yourself. Reading “Turtles All the Way Down” is valuable because it creates empathy links, either helping neurotypical people understand neurodivergence, or reminding mentally ill people of the importance of self-forgiveness.
Songs of Motion: Calder’s Mobiles features a small number of his works. They represent the key components of his art in terms of types of sculptures and aesthetics. There are mobiles (kinetic sculptures), stabiles (sedentary sculptures), and wire sculptures. His pieces are simplistic, composed of different abstract shapes joined together, usually
Calder’s mobiles are the sirens of the art world. They capture the viewer’s attention with the beauty of their movement, making it nearly impossible to look away.
sister and make sculptures for his parents. In high school, he built a train set with his father’s friend, painter Everett Shinn. Despite his pedigree and obvious interest in sculpting, his parents discouraged him from living the life of a starving artist. Out of obligation, Calder studied engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, though he held no interest in it. A few years after receiving his degree, Calder took a job in Washington. Inspired by the mountainous scenery, he decided to move to New York to become an artist. “Calder: Hypermobility” is a new, temporary exhibit at the Whitney Museum of Art that
everyone would be disappointed in me, and that I wasn’t living up to the expectations everyone else had for me. I picked up the book from my bedroom floor and turned on my reading lamp, hoping to find solace in its pages.
by wires. Some of his pieces hang from the ceiling, some are bolted into the ground, and some are attached to the wall. His works are characteristic of the Parisian avant-garde style: abstract and unconventional. On a Sunday morning, I found myself on the eighth floor of the Whitney. The room was small, with navy blue walls that offset the artwork and a glass ceiling that let in mottled sunlight. The exhibit was filled with tourists and New Yorkers alike. Conversations filled the air—some in French, some in Russian, some in southern drawls, and others sounding distinctly New York. At the far right of the room
hung a series of mobiles. One hung from the ceiling by a thread of wire. Attached to it was a series of ascending and descending uniform, white circles of various sizes, all held together by nearly invisible aluminum wires. It gently rocked clockwise and then counterclockwise, repeating this motion over and over again. An employee walked to the front of the room holding a long white stick. She held the stick up to the mobile, pushed it, and the room fell silent. The mobile spun rapidly in one direction for a few seconds, stopped, and reversed its course of movement. It did so for a while, with its movements getting smaller and slower before it regained its balance, falling to a stillness. Upon being disturbed, each piece was thrust vigorously into motion before falling back into a delicate state of balance. Calder’s mobiles are the sirens of the art world. They capture the viewer’s attention with the beauty of their movement, making it nearly impossible to look away. Calder’s art is a feat of engineering—his works rely on gravity and balance of individual components to make up a whole. Gravity drags down his mobiles, but is essential to their composition. On the flip side, his works appear to be antigravitational: the largest pieces are at the top and the smallest pieces hang out on the sides and at the bottom. There seems to be no way that the mobiles could stay still, but they do. Their balance relies on two opposing forces. Calder’s knowledge of engineering and physics plays a vital role in his art
by allowing him to create such delicate yet stable pieces. I hold a special appreciation for the engineering aspect of Calder’s work. Though his works look relatively simple, the science behind them is extremely complex. I found the exhibit to be euphoric and almost dreamlike. By taking in the motion of the mobiles, I was able to lose
myself in the art and clear my mind. Other visitors were equally mesmerized—nobody in the room moved. They stood still and looked up at them, either discussing it with their friends or gazing in silence. I was simply one of many people among the mobiles, staring at them wordlessly and in wonder.
Lucy Lu / The Spectator
By Sophie Watwood
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 20
Arts and Entertainment music By William Hong Enter the Wu-Tang There are few greater introductions in hip-hop than RZA’s “Bring da mother[expletive] ruckus!” in Wu-Tang’s acclaimed debut album “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).” Since their entry into the scene in 1993, Wu-Tang did precisely that, as the group established a reputation as hiphop’s arguably most legendary and talented group of rappers. Hailing from the projects of Staten Island, Wu-Tang was one of the most prominent players in the ‘90s East Coast hip-hop renaissance known for its dark, gritty sound and lyrical dexterity. In spite of the success of groups that preceded them, such as the bad-boy groups NWA and Run-DMC, Wu-Tang aimed for a more cerebral approach, focusing on lyricism and wordplay and compromising aggression, catchiness, and volume in favor of a more stripped, minimalist sound to complement their lyrics. Wu-Tang’s songs are heavily influenced by the members’ experiences with gang violence, drug abuse, and poverty in the housing projects of Staten Island, which are ripe with storytelling possibilities. A hallmark of Wu-Tang is the frequent references to kung fu and martial arts films in their work, which add an additional poetic layer to their lyrics. By incorporating Chinese philosophies and schools of thought, Wu-Tang created an unusual blend of Western and Eastern cultures, which was considered groundbreaking for hiphop at the time. Elements of violent gangster rap were juxtaposed with Eastern themes of spiritual enlightenment. Wu-Tang also drew inspiration from the swift, brutal, and calculated blows seen in martial arts, metaphorically adopting those techniques into their unique style of rapping and representing rap battles within their songs as “duels.” These qualities highlighted the group’s unusual articulation of storytelling and drew in many listeners. Wu-Tang’s most notable contribution to hip-hop was their album “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).” While well known for its raw and violent lyrics, the album also had trademark elements that defined the group: skits, soul and R&B sampling, and knowledge of martial arts films and Eastern culture. Consequently, Wu-Tang’s debut album established an unfairly high standard for their subsequent work as a group. The general consensus in the hip-hop community is that the solo endeavors of members of the Wu-Tang Clan far eclipse their collective efforts with the exception of “Enter the WuTang.” Albums such as Ghostface Killah’s “Ironman” (1996) and Raekwon’s “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx” (1995), to list only a few, are revered as some of the genre’s greatest. In the case of Wu-Tang, the whole is less than the sum of its parts as the group gradually garnered acclaim and attention
Wu Tang: A Return to Former Glory? through its individual members; every member has gone on to release solo albums in his career. Wu-Tang has no shortage of rappers that are dominant forces in their own right with their defining skills, whether it’s Raekwon’s vivid and violent imagery, GZA’s unmatched lyricism and vocabulary, Ghostface Killah’s storytelling and narration, Method Man’s eclectic persona, or RZA’s talent as a producer. The mythical status attributed to Wu-Tang is almost certainly a result of the amount of raw talent the group possesses. However, the ability to utilize each member’s’ skills to its fullest potential has eluded the grasp of Wu-Tang since the release of their first album, the groundbreaking idiosyncrasies of which have long lost their novelty. Subsequent Wu-Tang albums, though unfairly held to the incredibly high bar set by their debut, were criticized for trying too hard to outdo the creativity seen in “Enter the WuTang.” Producer RZA had a large role in this, as he was responsible for orchestrating the sound and thematic elements behind many of the group’s songs. RZA often attempted to re-
successful foray into the realm of contemporary pop, which produced considerably tame results stripped of the elements that made Wu-Tang a force to reckoned with in the past. Hip-hop has taken a completely different trajectory since the ‘90s, a period often called its golden age. This distinction is apparent with the de-emphasis on both lyricism and musicianship, hallmarks which defined the golden age. Wu-Tang’s raw sound, which incorporates R&B, soul, and simple driving beats, would alienate most listeners of contemporary hip-hop. “WuTang: The Saga Continues” was produced with the fans of WuTang’s former glory days in mind, hence the album title’s allusion to a saga —the legacy of hip-hop’s golden age. An Homage to the Old School The intro of “The Saga Continues” begins with trumpets to signal a triumphant return after a three year hiatus. It also contains a familiar Wu-Tang trait: dialogue excerpts from martial arts films. RZA then interrupts and goes on on to establish the premise of the
battles of hip-hop that Wu-Tang had witnessed in the past. This notably includes the well-known East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry which the group helped spark by reviving the East Coast scene with their release of “Enter the Wu-Tang.” The musicianship of “The Saga Continues” is also one of its strongest elements reminiscent of Wu-Tang’s classic works. This includes R&B/soul sampling and traces of jazz through a driving bass line, simple beat, and a piano melody quietly buried in the background sound in lead single “People Say,” much like the melody used in the Wu-Tang classic “C.R.E.A.M” from “Enter the WuTang.” However, the dark, gritty sound prevalent in early Wu-Tang works has a diminished presence in “The Saga Continues.” Rather, Wu-Tang draws musical influence from its fellow East Coast contemporaries and borrows heavily from jazz-centric rappers such as Nas and JAY-Z. Songs such as “If Time is Money” (Fly Navigation) and “Frozen” complement powerful basslines with an unusual array of instruments such as wood-
Joyce Liao / The Spectator
brand the group’s image with each new album release, departing from the qualities that made “Enter the Wu-Tang” such a success. The colorful dynamics and chemistry between each member were also lost after each one of them released successful solo albums in the late ‘90s and developed their own preferences for how an album should be produced. The Saga Continues 24 years after the release of “Enter the Wu-Tang,” the group re-emerges into the radically changed music industry of 2017 with their latest album release “Wu-Tang: The Saga Continues.” Despite a slew of album releases this past decade, Wu-Tang’s reentry into hip-hop in 2017 holds more significance than any of their other post-“Enter the WuTang” albums, many of which were considered disappointments because of the current state of hip-hop that the group refers to throughout the album. Their previous album, “A Better Tomorrow” (2014), was an un-
album by alluding to Wu-Tang as the “Buck Rogers” of the 21st century, a group that awakened from their slumber and found themselves amidst an unrecognizable future. “The Saga Continues” really takes off following the intro with “Lesson Learn’d,” one of two singles in the album. Paying homage to the hip-hop classic “Nuthin But a ‘G’ Thang” (1992) by Dr. Dre with the opening verse lyric “One, two, three and to the foh,” Inspectah Deck immediately follows with swagger characteristic of Wu-Tang in the self-praising line “I splash bravado, fast cash aficionado / Savage vandal, I’m a legend of tomorrow,” demonstrating the group’s awareness of their considerable footprint and influence on the hip-hop world. The next song “Fast and Furious” also pays homage to an old school hip-hop legend by sampling Biggie’s “Who Shot Ya” (1994), an East Coast classic known for its ominous piano melody and simple beat. The outright violent raps in “Fast and Furious” are stylistically reminiscent of the legendary feuds and
winds and the xylophone. The album’s utilization of percussion is also a testament to its insistence on old-school sound and rejection of the rapid-fire trap beats that are ubiquitous in contemporary hip-hop. Wu-Tang consistently uses steady, snareheavy beats to complement, not overpower, their instrumentation. Beatdown of the New School “People Say,” the lead single in the album, showcases the group’s dissociation from today’s social media-driven hip-hop, defined by rappers that are more in touch with mainstream pop culture. Rappers from the golden age were the antithesis to mainstream pop culture, often denying themselves a marketable image in favor of producing insightful lyrics and narratives of marginalized ghettos and projects, a side of society that was largely hidden from consumers. The biting social truths of golden age hip-hop are mostly absent in hip-hop and the music industry as a whole today, as making the Billboard Hot 100 has become a disproportionately larger measure of success
than producing thoughtful lyrics and musicianship. Keeping this in mind, “People Say” is a standout in the album. Method Man’s opening verse in particular contains a few gems, one of which is “Nah see I don’t dab and I don’t nae nae / Got bottles coming out, warriors coming out and play-ay,” distancing WuTang from some of the most recent hip-hop fads. Method Man takes it slow with his flow and reminds his listeners of his unquestionable authenticity in the lines “Until my heart turns cold, I’m a product of the block / We used to cook the product in the pot, add soda turn the product into rock.” Method Man’s verse in the song “Frozen” further points out the group’s distaste for contemporary hip-hop and firmly establishes this distaste as a major theme of the album. His lines “Music is life, I ain’t into fashion or ice / I ain’t into chain snatchin’, ain’t into smackin’ a wife” and “It’s always been about the struggle, y’all just didn’t get it / My hood trouble, if y’all don’t live here then don’t visit” are self-explanatory. Method Man criticizes rappers today for losing touch with the purpose of hip-hop: to evoke thoughts and emotions on social injustices, rather than to align with the trends of mainstream pop music. This sentiment is most apparent in the line “I push the limit while rappers is pushing gimmicks.” In the song “Why Why Why,” RZA’s introductory lines “If I put my fist through the face of a racist, smack ‘em tasteless / Would I face three cases in court, locked in places? / Or shackled to a seat of a bus, a hundred of us / Life in America shouldn’t be so tough” bring to light the very questions that were asked several decades prior by m a n y rappers. The interlude l i n e s “No discrimination, peace and love / From generation to generation” are timely, given that the nation is being torn apart by terror attacks, debates over anthem protests, a rise of white nationalist groups, and a bitter divide between political parties. Closing Comments “Wu-Tang: The Saga Continues” shines in its homages to golden age hip-hop and its criticisms of contemporary hip-hop. The album’s social commentary and use of vivid narratives are also refreshing returns to hiphop’s lyrical and poetic prowess that was the norm years ago. The album functioned as a collection of lyrics that showcased the unique skills and styles of each member that were present in each verse they took over, much like in “Enter the Wu-Tang”. “The Saga Continues” is ultimately a success because it draws influence from Wu-Tang’s early works and does not deviate from the formula that originally rocketed them to fame. Given the state of hip hop today, WuTang did not need to produce a groundbreaking album like they did in 1993. Rather, “Wu-Tang: The Saga Returns” is exactly the album that many rappers now need to take note of; this is how you do hip-hop.
The Spectator ● November 10, 2017
Page 21
Arts and Entertainment food
There’s No Fall Without Pumpkin Spice By Andrew Ng and Jacqueline Thom
Before there was pumpkin spice everything, there was fall; that dreadful time of the year when dirty, moist leaves get stuck on your shoes and you can’t tell if it’s summer or winter. However, in recent years, an autumn “aesthetic” has emerged: an obsession with “Instagram-able” fallen leaves, sweater weather, and of course, the pumpkin spice latte. So many chains offer the drink that all the choices might be overwhelming, so we visited three of the fastest-growing food chains in the U.S. to give you a glimpse of the taste of their pumpkin spice lattes.
Starbucks ($4.75)
5.0/5.0 stars Our first stop was the Starbucks down Chambers Street that is situated right next to the 1, 2, and 3 train station. Starbucks, the epitome of the café industry, features a variety of drinks, from those in their ironically popular secret menus to the traditional espresso. Upon entering the dimly lit café, the harsh, busy mood of the city seemed to melt away. Customers sipped their drinks and typed away at their MacBooks while still more patiently waited for another warm round. In a small cup with the signature Starbucks logo were our lattes, which smelled heavily of pumpkin spice seasoning. It was an adventure at first sip as the pumpkin spice latte topped with whipped cream led to a sweet tooth overload. When we had gotten over this, the spices characteristic of pumpkin spice lattes, including cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice, produced a mouthwatering concoction. There has been little criticism for Starbucks’s drinks, and the same can be said for this fall variant. With the texture of an extremely creamy coffee and the aftertaste of a steaming cup of hot chocolate, it’s hard not to finish this drink within minutes unless you care to not burn your tongue.
Dunkin’ Donuts ($3.25)
2.5/5.0 Stars Down by the A, C, and E trains is Dunkin’ Donuts, a brand most known for its array of glazed donuts and Munchkins. Although the store isn’t generally appreciated for its small selection of drinks and breakfast sandwiches, we headed to the small store to test its own take on the popular fall drink. As usual, the place was quiet and ordering lattes was a quick affair. Dunkin’ Donuts’s pumpkin spice latte came in a dull brown cup and was as hot to the touch as it was to the tongue. When the burning sensation stopped, our first tastes were surprising. There was an excess of sugar and the latte tasted more like an Americano. Only near the bottom of the drink did we experience the spices that were usually offered in pumpkin spice lattes; however, they were so unabsorbed by the drink that the drink was quite disagreeable and led to a bad aftertaste.
McDonald’s ($2.00)
3.0/5.0 Stars Just one short block from Stuyvesant itself, the popular fast-food chain is known for its inexpensive but questionable Camilla Cheng / The Spectator food and drink choices. Yet, the store is almost always booming with customers lining up to buy a cheap snack or meal. Characteristics of this McDonald’s are its impossibly long lines and slow serving times. Faint music is drowned out by the loud chatter of people socializing and employees yelling out order numbers. At first taste, McDonald’s pumpkin spice latte was rather bland, reminiscent of instant lattes made from powder where you forgot to add sugar. On the visual side, the latte seemed lacking as well; there were no decorative spices like those that Starbucks had offered, and it looked like just another watery coffee. We began to doubt that they had even gotten our order right. However, as we kept drinking, a sugary cinnamon taste gradually became stronger. By our last sip, the latte was overwhelmingly sweet and left a sugary aftertaste, similar to the one someone gets after eating too much sweet candy. With the cost in consideration, the drink wasn’t horrible. It’s an inexpensive, sugary drink with the flavor of pumpkin spice that only appeals to those with a major sweet tooth.
1776 Review Coming Soon The Stuyvesant Theater Community performed the musical 1776 on Friday, November 3, and Saturday, November 4. Look to Issue 6 of the Spectator for a review by our Arts and Entertainment editors. Photos by Mika Simoncelli
Page 22
The Spectator • November 10, 2017
ADVERTISEMENT
The Spectator • November 10, 2017
Page 23
Sports Football
Peglegs Finish with Pride By DIMITRIY LEKSANOV, MICHAEL GILLOW, and MAX MAH The Stuyvesant Peglegs ended their season with a warm farewell to their seniors. Friday’s Homecoming game at Pier 40 saw a large crowd full of supporters showing their gratitude for the hard work the team had put in all season. With awards being given out and banners commemorating the seniors, the stage was set for a final season hoorah. However, the game did not go as planned. While the Peglegs ended up losing in a blowout, senior kick returner Rafsan Hamid gave the crowd something to cheer for. Having already taken a commanding lead late in the first half of Stuyvesant’s own homecoming football game, Frederick Douglass Academy was kicking off yet again. It was a short boot this time, without much air under it. The ball struck the ground well short of Hamid and seemed to meander towards him, seemingly bouncing without any rhyme or reason. Hamid approached it gingerly, anticipating the ball’s next maneuver. As he went to pick it up, it grazed off of his fingertip and came to a stop at his feet. It seemed like déjà vu: Stuyvesant had already lost one possession to a muffed kickoff in the first quarter, so another fumble would have been the nail in the coffin with the game rapidly spiraling out of control. However, as quickly as he had dropped the bouncing ball, Hamid recovered it, promptly turning upfield and heading down the right sideline. In a slick sequence of jukes, Hamid snuck past the cover men,
with the last tumbling to the floor like a horse on rollerblades. At that point, he was running free. With nothing but daylight in front of him, Hamid burst into the endzone. On one play, a swift sequence of no more than 10 seconds, Hamid had changed the course of Stuyvesant’s homecoming game and had given the Peglegs life—or so it seemed. The return was called back due to a penalty. In an instant, all the hope and thrill that Hamid’s moment of greatness had brought was gone and erased. The Peglegs never recovered after that. As it turned out, that touchdown would have been Stuyvesant’s only score of the night, as the match ended 42-0 in favor of Frederick Douglass Academy, which was a disappointing culmination to a disappointing 0-9 season. Despite what the scoreboard and standings table indicate, however, the Peglegs still have plenty of reason for optimism. While the Peglegs were outmatched by fierce competition throughout the season, they learned the lesson of getting up after being knocked down and never giving up through it. Ultimately, that is an indicator of success. “I believe each of these athletes will benefit from the experiences and memories from this season, no matter how much [a] 0-for season might hurt now,” head coach Mark Strasser said. The night was a fine commemoration of the cherished time the team spent playing and bonding together. Playing their last game in the chilly air and under the lights of the pier, each of the seniors celebrated the amazing journeys and team experi-
The Determination of the Mimbas Facing off against Midwood High School in the first round of the playoffs, Stuyvesant’s girls’ soccer team, the Mimbas, played a tightly contested game. After giving up an early lead, senior and co-captain Saloni Majmudar tied the game up in the first half with a solid assist by sophomore Selene Kaehny. Then, nearing the end of the half, Kaehny hit a decisive free kick to give the Mimbas the lead that they wouldn’t relinquish for the rest of the game. This was the team’s first playoff win for the graduating senior class, and they savored every moment of it. Once again, the Mimbas’ defense played a critical role in the win. For the sixth time in 16 games, the team limited its opponent to under two goals. This defensive-minded approach takes pressure off the offense by limiting the opposing team’s scoring. “I was really proud of how we played,” Majmudar said. Sadly, in the following game, the Mimbas lost a difficult match of 6-0 against Francis Lewis High School, ending their season. Even though the match was onesided in its outcome, the team fought until the end. “We definitely played our hearts out for the full 80 minutes. We knew we were going into a tough game, playing the two seed, but we didn’t let that get to our heads,” senior and co-captain Charlotte
rushers, especially up the middle, on any given play. Thus, the Peglegs’ passing offense was mostly limited to quick-hitting screen passes, and, in that dreadfully limited environment, Rigneyla was still able to hold his own. Junior Aidan Griffin is expected to take over as the starting quarterback, but it remains to be seen whether he will have the ability to lead the team every Friday, as his 30% completion percentage in limited action does not inspire much confidence. Furthermore, the Peglegs
Strasser suggested, “Teams are unfairly judged on records alone and not on actual performance, team culture, and improvement of the team from start to finish.” While the seniors may not be leaving next year’s team with a winning record, they hope to leave a positive impression on them. Wang’s advice to next year’s team members is “to cherish the time you have left. It disappears really fast and you have no idea where time went.” Through all of the team’s setbacks, including the ill-fated homecoming game,
“Reflecting back, I can say with confidence that some of my fondest memories of high school have to be playing football under the lights on Friday.” —Perry Wang, senior and co-captain 30, 40, 50 years down the line. It’s been an amazing journey, and I don’t regret anything.” The team may continue to struggle into next season, as the losses of graduating players with key positions will be tough to overcome next year. The team will rely on its current juniors to step up and fill these voids. Replacing senior quarterback Rigneyla is an area of controversy. While his play was somewhat inconsistent, with a completion percentage and passer rating of just 45 and 46 percent, respectively, one must account for the variables around him. Stuyvesant’s pass protection has been porous all season, with the quarterback seeing penetration from multiple
must also replace much of their offensive line, including tackle Michael Kaydin and guard Matthew Au. Kaydin is an especially notable loss, as he became a lynchpin at left tackle toward the end of the season. His long arms allowed him to beat rushers to the edge, keeping the respective blind sides of Rigneyla and Griffin relatively clean. Au is no slouch either and was a mauler in the run game, clearing the edge for Rigneyla and running backs Tahsin Ali and Perry Wang to pick up first downs on the ground. However, as the sentiment of the team’s leaders this year shows, success to the Peglegs means far more than just dominance on the field. As coach
there was still a distinct pride and energy that wafted over Stuyvesant’s sideline. The way that the team erupted during Hamid’s kickoff return was electric and represented a winning culture in spite of a losing record. While this year may not go down as the strongest for the Peglegs, there was more to this team than record implies. The Homecoming game showed the support the Stuyvesant community has for its team, and even though it got out of hand, the team battled throughout. Led with strong senior presence and overall dedication, this team played with resiliency and heart until the last snap of the season.
Cross Country
Girls’ Soccer
By PERRY WANG and DANIEL KIM
ences. As senior and co-captain Rafsan Hamid enumerated, “We all love and support each other, and we grew into one big family. Even though we had a tough time this season, we had a lot of fun.” Co-captain and running back Perry Wang was just as grateful for his time as a Pegleg. “Reflecting back, I can say with confidence that some of my fondest memories of high school have to be playing football under the lights on Friday,” he said. “I’ve grown tight with a group of brothers I know I’ll stayclose with
Ruhl said. However, after such an exhilarating game two days prior, the team did not have enough to muster another victory. Though the team lost in the second round, the Mimbas have been steadily improving since the current seniors first arrived. “During my freshman year, we only had one win so it was so rewarding to see my four years of hard work on the team pay off,” Majmudar said. Each year, the team has improved. After going a combined 3-22 in 2014 and 2015, the team jumped to 6-5 in 2016 and had a playoff berth. Unfortunately, they lost in the first round to Cardozo High School, 3-0. This year, the team made it to the second round and finished with a tie for third in its Manhattan A2 division, the highest finish to date. Overall, this team will hopefully continue to improve for next season. Only three players will be graduating—Majmudar, Ruhl, and senior Sophia Gunluk—so much of the team will remain the same. Many of the team’s offensive players will also be back, as sophomores Kaehny and Eve Wening, as well as freshman Aki Yamaguchi, who scored eight goals each, will provide an elite 1-2-3 combination for the offense next year. After a taste of the playoffs this year, this young and competitive team will remain strong in the upcoming years. “I can’t wait to see how this team continues to grow in the years to come,” Ruhl said.
Greyducks Continue Streak of Borough Championship Victories By NOAH GRENERT
Junior Justin Zhang cramped up in the middle of the 4-kilometer varsity race in the Manhattan Invitational at Van Cortlandt Park on Saturday, October 14 and was forced to drop out. Just two weeks later, he finished third in the Manhattan Borough Championship varsity 5-kilometer race. This turnaround was symbolic of the performance of the entire Stuyvesant boys’ varsity cross country team, who bounced back from near last place in the Manhattan Invitational to winning the Borough Championship at Van Cortlandt Park on October 28. The Greyducks entered the championships with an ample amount of pressure. In the last decade and a half, when the team was coached by Mark Mendes, they never lost a borough championship. However, the Stuyvesant team had been beaten badly by the High School for Math, Science, and Engineering (HSMSE) team at the Mayor’s Cup, and therefore, it was no longer thought that the team would win. In the Manhattan Borough Championship varsity race, sophomore Baird Johnson finished second with a time of 18:14.79 and was followed by Zhang in third place, who ran an 18:28.25. A trio of Grey-
ducks, senior and co-captain Minhein Htet, senior Clive Johnston, and senior and co-captain Jesse Sit placed in sixth, seventh, and eighth, respectively, accomplishing coach Carl DiSarno’s game plan. “[My goal for the team is to] break up [HSMSE’s] pack,” coach DiSarno said. Junior Caleb Hoo placed 12th and sophomore Oliver Cai placed 14th to round out the varsity team. Zhang, Htet, and Sit all ran personal bests at the meet, but had higher expectations for themselves. “I was hoping to run in the 18:20s, but I wasn’t able to,” Sit said. Both Sit and Htet believed that the windy conditions lowered the times, but they were satisfied with the team’s overall performance. “The fact that people still ran better despite the wind shows that our team is getting stronger,” Htet said. He also thinks that their training has contributed heavily to their success. “The patience from building a proper base [and] then moving on to speed is finally paying off,” Htet said. The junior varsity team dominated the event to the surprise of the upperclassmen. “I was shocked,” Htet said. The Greyducks had five of the top 10 finishers, with James Huang in first, Ramon Wang in second, Steven
Zheng in fourth, Steven Tan in fifth, and Jacob Olin in ninth. “Many of our JV runners set new personal bests,” DiSarno said. In both the varsity and junior varsity races, Stuyvesant placed first, followed by HSMSE in second and Hunter College High School in third. The Greyducks now have their sights set on the city championships, which take place on Saturday, November 11. Despite having greatly improved from their first meet of the season, the Greyducks have to get even better in order to win the championships. “If you were to combine the results from the five boroughs, we currently sit fifth in the city. [The] top four [teams] make it to the Federation Meet, so we’ll need to perform our very best if we are to qualify,” Coach DiSarno said. Captains Sit and Htet are both hopeful that the Greyducks will be successful in the city championships and qualify for states. “If we keep doing what we have been doing, getting the mileage and the speed work in, we can definitely beat out the other contenders for the third and fourth spots,” Htet said. “If one of the top four teams slips up, I think we’ll be ready to pounce,” coach DiSarno said.
November 10, 2017
Page 24
THE SPECTATOR SPORTS Cross Country
Girls’ Tennis
Christina Xia / The Spectator
Game, Set, and Match for the Lady Lobsters
By JOOAHN SUR and SEAN STANTON The Lady Lobsters, Stuyvesant’s girls’ varsity tennis team, were served a disappointing playoff exit by the second seeded team, Beacon High School on Friday, October 20. The Lady Lobsters had beat Hunter College High School 3-2 in an earlier playoff match to get them into a second round match against Beacon. It was the second year in a row that the team had lost in the quarterfinals of the playoffs. The Lady Lobsters entered the playoffs with a regular season record of 6-4, placing them third in their Manhattan A1 division. However, the Lobsters had lost their two matches against the first place team in their division, Beacon, in the regular season 0-5 both times. However, the scores of the individual matches between players grew closer between matches. At the teams’ first meeting, an away game for the Lady Lobsters, all of the Stuyvesant singles players lost to their opponents 2-8. But the Lady Lobsters learned from their
mistakes and worked to increase their number of game points. At heir second and third meetings, junior and first singles Celina Liu lost to Beacon’s junior and first singles Kyra Bergmann 5-8, a significant improvement from the duo’s initial meeting. Similarly, Stuyvesant’s first doubles duo, senior and cocaptain Karina Irwin and freshman Talia Kahan, went from losing 2-8 in their first match against Beacon’s first doubles, to losing 3-8 in the playoffs against the same team. The Lady Lobsters may have a 0-3 record against Beacon at the end of the season, but at the very least, they were able to make the Beacon girls work for their wins. Despite the early end to their playoff prospects, the Lady Lobsters have reasons to feel good about their season, as they never lost two games in a row and improved from last year’s 5-7 record. “We weren’t that disappointed because despite us losing, we still played really well. I think that matters more than how far we actually advanced. Also, the team we lost to was incredibly good,” said senior, co-captain, and second
singles Marie Ivantechenko, who went 4-2 in her singles matches in the regular season. In the playoffs, Beacon was the second seed, while Stuyvesant was the seventh seed. Beacon later finished as the runner-up of the entire tournament, losing to Brooklyn Technical High School. Out of the team’s 19 members, six of them are seniors, so the loss of these seniors will be a significant blow to the team’s dynamic lineup. “There are so many seniors this year and it’s just sad to have a final game and know that these five or six people will never play with you again,” sophomore Alyssa Pustilnik said. Pustilnik was a large part of the team’s success and will attempt to fill this void, as she looks to build on this season in which she had a singles record of 7-2. The team will also look to junior Lily Yan, who earned high praise for her strong performance this past season. “[One of] our second doubles [players], Lily, really stepped up. She’s been on the team since her freshman year, but was a sub until this year. She really improved over the summer, and is actually going to be one of the cocaptains for the next season,” Ivantechenko said. Though the season ended sooner than they would have liked, the Lady Lobsters still have a positive attitude about the season as a whole. “We’re losing a lot of players this year, but the captains are great, and we have a lot of strong players to build a new lineup next year,” Ionkina said. Some of the freshmen have already begun to help the team significantly, such as Kahan and second doubles Palak Srivastava, who had overall records of 6-3 and 6-4, respectively. In order for the Lady Lobsters to continue their success and increase their chances of beating intense schools like Beacon, the young talent on the team will have to step up to fill the gaps in the lineup left by the seniors.
Greyducks Dominate Borough Championships Once Again By YUKAI LIU As junior Clara Mohri and freshman Julianne Yotov approached the end of the varsity 5-kilometer race, they were sideby-side battling for first. Well ahead of the others, they both had the finish line in their sights. They mustered the energy they had left, and as they crossed the finish line, they both believed they had won. The runners had the same time (21:26:55), but Mohri was crowned the champion by less than a hundredth of a second in an amazing finish. Going into the Manhattan Borough Championships on October 28, the goal for the Stuyvesant Greyducks, the girls’ cross country team, was the same as it was for the first day of practice: make it back to the state championships. The Greyducks were in great form coming into the race, with fresh, good performances in the Grand Prix and Manhattan Invitational. After the invitational, coach Rachel Beck said, “Our Greyducks went out in full force last week at the last Grand Prix race, as well as the Manhattan Invitational. We had a lot of personal records and we are gearing up for the final push into the championship season. Stay tuned. These girls are on fire!” As the last runner crossed the finish line, the results brought them one step closer to their goal of reaching State’s. In both the junior varsity and varsity 5-kilometer race, the Greyducks overwhelmed their opponents, handily winning both. In the junior varsity race, out of 42 total participants, five of the six top finishers were Greyducks, led by junior Vivian Cribb with a time of 25:4:13. She has been a consistent force for the Greyducks, plac-
ing third at the NYC Mayor’s Cup on October 1. She was followed by sophomore Jing Su (25:32:28), senior and co-captain Connie Lei (25:48:80), sophomore Ling Chen (25:52:04), and junior Bernice Chen (26:0:65) who finished third, fourth, fifth, and sixth respectively. “During the recent race, we made many accomplishments. Many of our newer JV girls were running their very first 5-kilometer race at Van Cortlandt Park. Some girls broke personal records, [and] others showed steady race times and race ethics,” Chen said. “I’m proud to say that Stuyvesant High School is the Manhattan Borough Champion.” In the varsity race, the Greyducks had five runners in the top 12, with Mohri and Yotov finishing at the top of the podium in first and second. Junior Tiffany Zhong, who placed 11th (23:21:17) in the varsity race, said, “We prepared for the race by practicing everyday and giving it our all during hard workouts. I’m extremely proud of the team for placing first in both varsity and junior varsity in the Manhattan Boroughs. Our top five JV girls all placed sixth and below, and our top five varsity girls placed 12th and below.” Despite their win in the Borough’s, the team still needs to work hard to qualify for the State Championships, which will be based on the City Championships on November 11. “Our team is still working hard toward improving our times. Last year, we qualified for states for the first time in 13 years, and we hope to maintain our streak,” Zhong said. After enjoying tremendous success in the Borough Championships, the Greyducks hope to overcome the next hurdle on their quest for State’s: the City Championships.
Boys’ Soccer
Tomas Engquist / The Spectator
Peglegs’ Playoff Run Cut Short by Tough Competition
By LUMI WESTERLUND and LEE-ANN RUSHLOW The Peglegs, Stuyvesant’s boys’ varsity soccer team, finished off its strong season with an unfortunate loss in the playoffs. Second in the Manhattan A1 division, the Peglegs finished with an 8-2 record during the regular season and 24 team points out of 30, a high standing for any team. With their strong record, the Peglegs hoped to continue their momentum during the playoffs,
but ultimately lost 0-1 to Newcomers High School in the first round on Sunday, October 29. Though the Peglegs were second in their division, behind their primary rival Martin Luther King Jr. High School (MLK), this season’s record is their best divisional standing in three years. Their successes, however, have not come without sacrifices. During their last regular season game on October 24 against Frederick Douglass Academy, the team lost senior and first-
string (starter) goalie David Power to an injury. Power took an ugly kick to the face and had to make an early departure, accompanied by the team’s coach, Vincent Miller. Luckily, both of the boys’ and girls’ soccer teams were playing their last regular season games on adjacent fields. As Power and Miller left in an ambulance, the girls’ varsity soccer team coach, Hugh Francis, took over as the team’s legal coach. Junior Feras Roumie filled in on goal. “[Feras has played in] a couple of games, so I feel confident [about his playing], and I think that he’s ready to step up. He’s going to be our starting goalie next year,” said Miller, prior to their playoff game. Despite the harrowing injury to Power, the team did not give up. “I think we did well on converting our chances. We scored three goals again against this team that had pretty good defense,” said senior and co-captain Michael Gillow, when asked about what the team did well during their final game. “I think that we were able to shut down their long ball[s], which should help us a lot in the playoffs,” he continued. However, the game was not an easy win. With five remaining minutes and a tie at 2-2, junior Robert Nava was able to score a goal off of a free kick just outside the box, breaking the tie
and securing a win for the team. With the team’s final regular season game exhibiting the individual talents as well as the teamwork of the players, the Peglegs entered the first round of playoffs as a force to be reckoned with. They played their game against Newcomers’s Lions, with a total of 21 team points. During the playoff game on October 29, the team faced bad weather and a new goalie on the opposing side. Roumie stepped up throughout the game, making a total of six saves, more than the Lions’s goalie. The match was very close between the two teams, but ultimately the Lions were able to score a goal off of a free kick, with the shot sliding just below the crossbar. During the game, the ball was slippery and hard to control, leaving Stuyvesant with a difficult loss. Despite this being the final season for the senior Peglegs, they have high hopes for the future of the team. While the playoff game left the Peglegs without any goals, they did take several shots throughout the game, four by Nava and one by sophomore Jeremy Moller, illustrating the power of the underclassmen and juniors, something that did not go unnoticed by the captains. “I think we have a really bright
future ahead with a strong core, including Robert, who was a highlight this season with his goal-scoring, sophomores like [Moller] and Lewis [Woloch], and also freshman, especially Amane [Anderson],” said senior and co-captain Caleb SmithSalzberg, showing his confidence for the years and seasons to come. Commenting on the season, Miller gave also shoutouts to various players. “[Junior] Jeffrey Shen (left mid) has been playing exceptionally well for us these last couple games. [Senior] Sunny Levitis (right mid) also has been off to a little bit of a slow start early in the season and is now playing very well. One of our better players, Robert Nava [(forward)], who has been great all year long, [...] has done very well for us. He’s set up a lot of opportunities. All three of them play very well, especially together,” Miller said. With their season drawing to a close, the seniors are confident that they will leave the team in good hands, as the juniors and many underclassmen have shown themselves to be reliable and vital to the team this year. Though the Peglegs were unable to make it as far into the playoffs as they had hoped and they will miss their graduating seniors, their future is loaded with young talent and a strong core.