Volume 104, Issue 6

The Spectator The Stuyvesant High School Newspaper

Volume CIV No. 6

• Education specialist Sadye Campoamor, advisor to Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, addressed Social Studies teacher Kerry Trainor’s AP U.S. Government class on Thursday, November 21. She talked about de Blasio’s plans to reform the education system in New York and her experience working in politics.

• The Stuyvesant Speech and Debate Team won first place at the Villager Speech and Debate Invitational tournament in Philadelphia.

• The New York City Math team placed sixth overall out of 70 at the Princeton University Mathematics Competition.

The eight team-members, seven of whom are Stuyvesant students, competed against teams from across the world, including China, Korea, and India.

• Former New York State Supreme Court justice William Erlbaum discussed the morality of the death penalty with Social Studies teacher Linda Weissman’s Civil Law class.

Erlbaum, who served in State Supreme Court from 1979 to 2004, was an active advocate of full abolishment of the death penalty while on the bench, and currently teaches a course on the death penalty at Brooklyn Law School.

• The boys’ fencing team won the city championship for the second year in a row.

The Foil team finished first in their match against McKee/Staten Island Tech H.S., and the Epee team finished in second-place against the Queens H.S. of Teaching, with the championship based on their combined results.

stuyspec.com

Out for Frees Policy Extended to Juniors

By Tina Jiang and Ariel Levy

Stuyvesant students have wanted the privilege of going outside during free periods ever since it was revoked several years ago. This privilege was granted to seniors in a trial period last May. Many, however, were unsatisfied with this limited concession by the administration. Now, the administration is extending this policy to juniors, who will be able to leave the building between fourth and ninth period.

Throughout most of Stuyvesant’s history, students have held the right to leave the building during free periods. When the school was located on Fifteenth Street, students of all grades were allowed to go out during their free and lunch periods. “You just walked out. Once in a blue moon the security guards checked your schedule card to make sure you had that free period or lunch period, but after a while the guards got to know you and you could just leave,” Ann Mejias Rivera (‘79) said. “Most of the time, they didn’t really crack down unless the administrators were there watching.” This privilege, rare among schools in the city at the time, was granted to Stuyvesant students because of the school’s high attendance and graduation rates. In addition, neither student behavior nor cutting raised any major concerns for the administration. “It’s not like we went outside and got into fights, most of the time we were just playing frisbee,” Rivera said.

Students in the old building greatly valued their freedom. “I think there would have been all kinds of riots if they had tried to take that away from us, precisely because we felt like we were being responsible with it,” Rivera said. However, when Stuyvesant moved to the new building in 1992, there was a change in the tone of the administration. “In the old building everything was rather loosey-goosey, and for the most part it worked. Students felt respected, there weren’t a ton of rules and for the most part we acted like the somewhat mature almost-adults that we were. Then in the new building there were suddenly all these new rules in place, it felt like the administration was taking advantage of the move to clamp down on us. It all felt like an excuse,” Danielle Langton Ellingston (‘93) said.

Eventually, the administration in the new building did revoke the policy. Residents of Battery Park had begun to complain about congregating students in the neighborhood.

Right after the attacks on September 11, 2001, students were no longer allowed to go out for frees due to concerns about unsupervised student safety.

Under Principal Jie Zhang’s administration, seniors were first let out for frees again in May 2013, following a petition

by The Spectator. The petition stated three reasons as to why students should be allowed out continued on page 2

Hochlewicz and Yang Win Closely Contested Sophomore Caucus

By Coby Goldberg with additional reporting by Andrew Wallace Sophomore Caucus President Krzysztof Hochlewicz’s campaign was born from a simple series of questions and answers: “What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now? Nothing. What does it ask? To become something.” Hochlewicz posted these lines, which draw parallels to the French Revolution, on his Facebook page on Monday, November 4, marking the start of his campaign. He and running mate William Yang ultimately won over sophomores Rahul Debnath and Tanumaya Bhowmik in the runoff elections on Thursday, November 21, receiving 193 of the 365 votes.

Hochlewicz’s aspirations almost ended on Wednesday, November 13, when his campaign was accused of bribery.

Hochlewicz and his campaign managers handed out what he estimated to be about thirty

Opinions

frosted pretzels, an infraction of the Board of Elections (BOE) ban on bribery and a violation of the Department of Education health code, according to Coordinator of Student Affairs Lisa Weinwurm. However, even though the elections handbook calls for disqualification in this situation, the BOE only assigned the campaign six points, four less than the necessary amount for disqualification. “Personally, I supported disqualifying them,” junior and BOE chairman Kevin Yoo said. “But we all voted, and a lot of members decided not to disqualify because he didn’t fully understand the rules.”

Junior and Student Union Liaison to the BOE Kyle Oleksiuk provided further insight into this decision. “Most of what they [BOE] do is defined by caution, in respect to holding an election that is fair,” Oleksiuk said in a telephone interview, further elaborating that the BOE wishes to avoid the controversy of last year’s disqualification of the Cahn-Moon campaign.

Hochlewicz’s campaign fo-

cused on increasing the power of the Sophomore Advisory Council (SAC) and hosting more events, including two dances other than the Soph-Frosh Semiformal. Specifically, Hochlewicz plans to advertise applications for the SAC with speeches that he and his associates will make in each homeroom. Additionally, he wants the eventual SAC representatives to distribute surveys in their homerooms.

“The point of any Caucus is to represent the opinions of their grade. For me to represent my grade’s opinions, I have to know what they think first: I need solid numbers,” Hochlewicz said in an e-mail interview. “We’re also arranging for people to make brief speeches about the SAC applications in every sophomore homeroom, so our pool of applicants won’t be limited to people who check Facebook on a daily basis.”

Some doubt Hochlewicz’s ability to effect change once in

Article on page 18.

Point-Counterpoint: Closing Zoned Schools Has the DOE been addressing the plight of “over the counter” students?

continued on page 5

So and Tuhktamisheva Win Freshman Caucus in a Blowout

Stephanie Chan/ The Spectator

Newsbeat

December 9, 2013

“The Pulse of the Student Body”

Freshman Matthew So hands out flyers to freshman on the Tribeca Bridge, campaigning for Zuhra Tukhtamisheva and himself for Freshmen Caucus.

By Scott Ma with additional reporting by Rebecca Chang Even the first snowfall of the season did not stop freshman Matthew So and a group of supporters from handing out flyers outside Stuyvesant for two hours on Tuesday, November 12. So and freshman running mate Zuhra Tuhktamisheva would go on to win 195 of 824 votes in the primary election on Thursday, November 14 and 250 of 318 total votes in the runoff elections on Thursday, November 21, defeating freshmen Mitch Choi and Yuan Yue in a landslide victory.

Many accredit So’s success to his advertising and publicity. “I saw a lot of his posters around school and a lot of posts supporting his campaign on Facebook,” freshman Alex Berg said in a telephone interview.

“I think that Matthew So really wanted to win, seeing that he spent his mornings waiting outside campaigning in bad weather,” freshman Caitlin Phung said. “I didn’t really see too much of [Choi]’s posters.”

“Honestly, we were just the most dedicated candidates. I mean, we spent so many hours, way too many hours, out there, and I think voters really saw that,” So said. “In the end, it was just the effort we put in being out there and into the ads.”

So also believes that his campaign managers, who helped campaign and solidify the platform, played a large role in his success. “They’ve been really, really helpful, and we couldn’t have gotten this far without them,” So said.

Freshman Lowell Weisbord, one of So’s campaign managers, suggested ideas that became core components of So’s platform, including monthly forums. In addition, Weisbord’s presence as campaign manager helped sway voters in So’s favor. “If I have connections Article on page 24.

and people who respect me see that I respect Matt, they’ll respect him,” Weisbord said.

So and 21 other freshmen campaigned in an extremely enthusiastic election. Voter turnout more than doubled from last year. Of the eleven tickets that participated in the primary election, So’s efforts to raise awareness for his campaign were far from alone.

“The candidates were engaged, constantly discussing with their campaign managers on new ideas that could be implemented to win the support of the student body,” junior and Board of Elections (BOE) chairperson Kevin Yoo said.

The competitive nature of the election and the number of candidates, however, led to a relatively large amount of rule infractions. Freshman Kofi Lee-Berman and running mate Danielle Eisenman made a name for themselves by ordering personalized tshirts to support their cause, and former candidates Danny Akilov and Anna Usvitsky were accused of bribing students with food. Both were given warnings by the BOE, but neither was penalized. Freshmen Jessica Titensky and Gwyneth Yi were disqualified for slandering other campaigns.

Candidates brought forth several platforms. So and Tuhktamisheva created a five-point platform called the Communication, Academics, Money, Events, and Leadership (CAMEL) Plan. The duo plans to make the Student Union (SU) budget more transparent, talk to teachers about using extra credit to incentivize underclassmen to sign up to be tutors, create new areas for students to stay during free periods, increase communication between the SU and students, and hold continued on page 5

Humor

Mistaking Ferry for Ferry’s, Student Find Himself Trapped on Staten Island One Stuyvesant freshman takes getting lost to a whole new level.

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 2

News Out for Frees Policy Extended to Juniors continued from page 1

during frees: increased student happiness, reduction of stress, and decreased congestion within the building. After discussion with the Student Union, Parent’s Association, and School Leadership Team, Principal Jie Zhang decided to implement the policy suggested by the petition. Schedule codes had to be changed to make the new policy compatible with school scanners; frees were marked with the same Z as lunch codes. Thus, the ability to leave the building during frees is limited to periods four through nine. Once seniors had obtained the necessary signed consent form from their parents, they had the ability to exit the school during their free periods.

This change in policy was met with a positive reaction from the senior class. “If you get hungry, need a break, or just need a quiet place, going outside for frees allows this,” senior Rafayet Hossain said. “It is a way to get away from the noise.”

“If you get hungry, need a break, or just need a quiet place, going outside for frees allows this.”

— Rafayet Hossain, senior Allowing seniors to go out during their frees at the end of the last school year served as a test period for the policy. “The policy is contingent on the students being responsible and cooperating,” Assistant Principal of Security, Safety, and Student Affairs Brian Moran said. “If students are coming back late, or if we feel that cutting begins to increase, as a result of more freedoms, then we would reconsider the policy. But so far it seems to have been pretty successful.”

When the administration allowed seniors to exit the school during their frees, there were some issues with the paperwork.

Despite these problems, the school will still be going forward with the extension of the out for frees policy to juniors. “This is the second time around,” said Junior Caucus Vice President George Kitsios. “The administration has learned to deal with whatever kinks there may have been with the seniors, so there should be clear skies ahead.”

The expansion of the policy came under consideration as a result of a Student Union suggestion and cabinet meeting of the Student Leadership Team in which Moran was present. The idea was well received by him and so it went forward to Zhang on which the final decision ultimately rests. “There are a few

things to work out. Students have to get parent permission and we have to do a program change, but then the juniors will be also allowed to go out during frees,” Moran said. Part of the reason it was implemented was to reduce overcrowding of the first and second floors during free periods, as the cafeteria cannot accommodate all students without class during a period.

“I think the administration’s decision to extend the policy to juniors is great,” said junior Daniel Goynatsky. “They are finally giving us some responsibility, and I think it is a great way to let the student body demonstrate that the fears the administration has about us are unfounded.”

Some students, however, do not agree with the administration’s policy to expand the out for frees policy. “I like the prestige that seniors earned it after 4 years, it should stay a senior privilege,” said senior Joseph Koyfman. “Seniors also have more frees, so the policy should just stay the way it is now.”

Aside from the various opinions of the student body, the administration still has some lingering concerns with the out for frees policy, such as increased cutting. “It did seem like there was more cutting of afternoon classes, so that’s something we’ll continue to monitor.” Moran said. He added that students have been punished on a case by case basis a few times already this year. “Their frees can be taken away and their lunch voided. So it’s up to the student to be responsible with these freedoms.” he said.

The administration’s leniency towards juniors and seniors, however, does not guarantee that the entire student body will soon be allowed to leave the building during free periods.

“Freshmen and sophomores usually don’t have so many frees and have fuller programs, so it’s less of an issue,” Moran said.

Some students, however, disagree with Moran’s reasoning. “That argument makes absolutely no sense,” said Sophomore Caucus President Krzysztof Hochlewicz. “If underclassmen have fewer frees, then that’s an even better reason to let them outside. It’s a very minor risk on the school’s behalf, and it won’t make the area by the scanners significantly more crowded.”

Many underclassmen are in favor of being let out for frees.

“The only limitation with going out for lunch is your grades [in current classes]. That can be transferred to the frees policy.

However, seeing that there are no other limitations on lunch, there should be none on frees,” sophomore Antonia Stefanescu said.

Freshman Yassim Elbanna disagrees; she believes it is unnecessary for underclassmen to go out during their frees. “Going outside for frees doesn’t matter because you already have time to go out during lunch, which is only for buying stuff anyways.

What would they do additionally anyways? They already had their chance,” she said.

Most underclassmen see this extension to juniors in a positive light, indicative of the possibility that they too may soon receive this privilege. “I do think that it’s a good sign, and I hope that it will be extended to lowerclassmen soon,” said sophomore Peter Samuel.

Drug-Related Incident Disrupts Senior College Trip

By Sam Morris and Jerry Xia One hundred and two seniors attended an overnight series of tours of colleges and universities in New York State on Friday, November 15, and Saturday, November 16. Assistant Principal of Guidance Casey Pedrick and SPARK Coordinator Angel Colon organized the tour.

The students were originally supposed to visit Binghamton University, Cornell University, Syracuse University, Skidmore College, Colgate University, and Vassar College.

“The delay really killed the mood.

I had friends who fell asleep on the bus and woke up two hours later to find that we were still outside Stuy.”

— Anthony Chernyak, senior

However, due to a two-hour delay in departing from Stuyvesant on the morning of November 15, the students skipped Binghamton University. The students were only able to visit their second destination, Cornell University, for about 30 minutes. At Cornell, the students ate in the dining hall and listened to Stuyvesant alumni attending Cornell briefly speak about their school, but did not tour the campus.

“The delay really killed the mood. I had friends who fell asleep on the bus and then woke up two hours later, to find that we were [still] outside Stuy. The confusion and disappointment in their

faces sums up the feeling,” senior Anthony Chernyak said. “We also had to skip Binghamton [University,] which was the college most people were looking forward to.”

The rest of the trip was free of major incidents or delays and the visits to Colgate, Skidmore, and Vassar the next day ran smoothly.

Despite this, the administration is considering several changes for future tours, according to Colon.

First, the administration will try to visit schools that are geographically closer together to save time. “It’s difficult because our kids want to see certain schools, like Cornell and Binghamton University, that hundreds of our kids apply to every year, but often these schools are several hours apart. We end up spending a lot of the trip driving, so we’re thinking about putting more emphasis on visiting convenient schools than on popular ones,” Colon said.

Additionally, the administration wishes to receive better accommodations from the schools.

“We want to try to improve our relationships with the schools to get special accommodations. We want to get tours and information sessions at times that are convenient for us,” Colon said. “A lot of schools really want our kids, so the college office should be able to do that.”

Though some students who were frustrated by the long driving times approved of visiting closer schools, others disagreed with the plan. “College trips are meant to see specific colleges that [Stuyvesant] students want to see, not about seeing schools that are convenient. I think college trips should continue to try their best to visit the most popular schools,” senior Aviv Hargil said.

Colon also mentioned that because they visit three campusdining halls per day, students often overeat. He proposed a boxlunch system. “We want to start giving out smaller box-lunches to prevent some of the over-binging that takes place,” Colon said.

Some students disapproved of this idea. “I like eating in the dining halls of every college we visit, because that helps us get a better sense of the college, both by seeing what the food is like, and how people act,” Hargil said.

“Sometimes kids do over-eat on college trips, but I don’t think box-lunches are a good solution.”

Finally, Colon said that near-

ly 50 students submitted forms to attend the tour, but ended up not going. This forced Colon and Pedrick to downsize the trip from three buses to two. To prevent such incidents from recurring, Colon said the administration is considering requiring a deposit to stop students from backing out at the last minute.

For some students, the trip was a disappointment. “I thought this college trip was inferior to the previous trips. Many people wanted to go on this trip just for

“We want to try to improve our relationships wit the schools to get special accommodations. We want to get tours and information sessions at times that are convenient for us.”

— Angel Colon, SPARK coordinator Cornell and Binghamton,” senior Kelvin Mei said. “I was really disappointed because I didn’t get a chance to tour Cornell.”

But others felt that the trip was enjoyable nonetheless. “Even though I was unhappy when I found out that we would not go to Binghamton and would only eat at Cornell, I thought Ms. Pedrick, Mr. Colon and the other chaperones were able to make the trip efficient and enjoyable,” senior Charles Lee said.

Damesek’s Job Opened to Public Filing

By Rebecca Chang On November 18, Assistant Principal of Guidance Randi Damesek’s former role as one of the Assistant Principals of Administration was opened to the public for filling and added to an online list of New York City Department of Education (DOE) Assistant Principal vacancies.

Since Damesek’s departure, changes have been made to accommodate her absence, such as the appointments of current Assistant Principal of Organization (APO) Saida Rodriguez-Tabone in September and of Interim-Acting Assistant Principal of Guidance (APG) Casey Pedrick in November. Damesek’s far-ranging duties have been distributed among Tabone-Rodriguez, Pedrick, Assistant Principal of Security, Safety, and Student Affairs Brian Moran, and Principal Jie Zhang.

Damesek’s job posting has left many students confused, as the administration has released few details regarding Damesek’s current situation and the status

of a possible return to Stuyvesant. Currently, she is awaiting her DOE hearing in a reassignment center, more commonly known as a “rubber room.”

Teachers who have been accused of crimes or misconduct stay in these centers for a period lasting between four months and two years before they are either officially fired or allowed to return back to their schools. Damesek’s salary will no longer be included in the Stuyvesant budget, but she will continue to receive her normal salary directly from the DOE, according to a DOE official who wishes to remain anonymous.

“I feel like it might’ve been too soon to see who gets this position,” Senior Caucus President Thoasin Bari said. “It brings up the question ‘Does that mean she’s fired?’ because there hasn’t really been a decision and I think that is troubling to the [Stuyvesant] community because it gives the impression that [Damesek] is not returning.”

Despite this, many also agree that it was imperative to have

someone assume Damesek’s duties in order to create more organization in the administration.

“In theory it’s not really fair, but in practice, it’s pretty clear that she’s not going to be coming back for a while and someone has to fill in those responsibilities,” senior Emily Hamilton said.

The opening of Damesek’s previous job indicates the start of the C-30 process, by which vacancies for principal or assistant principal positions are filled.

Once applications are received by the deadline of December 2, Zhang will pick five applicants to be interviewed by United Federation of Teachers representatives, Student Leadership Team members, and Stuyvesant teachers and students. As Interim-Acting APG, Pedrick will still have to apply for the position in order to be chosen as one of the five applicants.

The Spectator ●November 21, 2013

Page 3

News

Alice Oh/ The Spectator

Civil War Historian Thomas Fleming Visits Stuyvesant

Thomas Fleming, a notable American military historian and novelist, presented his latest book, A Disease of the Public Mind, to American History students and generously donated a signed copy to the school’s library.

By REBECCA CHANG A critical time in American history was brought to life for three Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History classes when historian Thomas Fleming visited Stuyvesant to give a presentation on the Civil War on Wednesday, November 20.

A nationally acclaimed author, Fleming has published over 60 books that focus on various eras of American history and key figures such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Even though Fleming’s primary focus is the Revolutionary Era, he also has written numerous books about the Civil War, World War II, and the Korean War, among others.

In addition, he regularly publishes articles in various magazines, most notably New York Magazine and American Heri-

tage. He received the Gomez Mill House 2012 Pioneer Award and the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Gold History Award Medal for his works.

Fleming was invited by David Acton, one of social studies teacher David Hanna’s friends and a director of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.

Acton was acquainted with Fleming because of Fleming’s many works on the American Revolution and suggested that Fleming speak at Stuyvesant.

During the first part of the presentation, Fleming summarized his newest book, “A Disease in the Public Mind, A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War,” which was published on May 7, 2013.

The book examines various causes of the Civil War, focusing on the growing tensions be-

tween the North and the South during this time period. He later went into more detail on how the divide between the North and the South first formed in the 1700s, and how their differing ideologies caused many problems between them. At the end, he took student questions on specific aspects of the war and the events that precipitated them, such as the “tipping point,” the point at which the war became inevitable, and how both sides took advantage of public fear and propaganda to attract attention.

“The questions were absolutely delightful and intelligent,” Fleming said.

Students were glad to have the rare opportunity to engage with an expert in a field they were studying. “I like the different perspective, because if you’re hearing from the same teacher year-long, it gets repetitive. So there is a benefit in having a break with these presentations,” junior Adam Dehovitz said.

“It was actually really interesting to hear him say the names and the things I had learned in class,” junior Alexander Gabriel said. “To hear it in a real kind of setting was pretty cool.”

Hanna agrees that the lecture was a helpful experience.

“Getting to actually meet someone who has written a book on this topic that required a lot of research is always insightful,” Hanna said. “You don’t have to necessarily think his book was a great book, or you don’t have to agree with his premise of the book, but even then, it’s still a great learning experience.”

ATRs Take Attendance

By Tina Jiang and Aimee Lee Several weeks ago, students began seeing unfamiliar adults standing in the doorways of the music classrooms on the first floor. Rumors immediately started flying regarding who they are and why they were in the classrooms.

According to Principal Jie Zhang, these people are Absent Teacher Reserves (ATRs). ATRs are teachers who have lost their daily teaching positions and no longer have an assigned building. Most of the job losses have been due to the ongoing Department of Education (DOE) school closings and reorganizations.

These teachers are reassigned to substitute for absent teachers or to perform clerical work, such as taking down attendance.

New Teacher Project, a nonprofit organization, issued a report on September 22, 2008 that revealed that the city budget for ATRs was $74 million.

This budget would otherwise be spent on substitute teachers, who tend to be younger and less well-paid than ATRs. Every week, Zhang receives an email from the DOE with the ATR assignments for the week.

Due to the large demand for teachers in the music rooms, many of the ATRs are assigned to that area and have been recording and monitoring attendance.

Before ATRs came to the school, the music departments had assigned students to take attendance in place of the teacher, in an effort to start rehearsals earlier. Senior and chamber choir alto section leader Carolyn Fisher believes that it is more efficient to let students take attendance.

“Very little would get done in chorus if students didn’t take the attendance,” Fisher said. “When the chorus was smaller, it prob-

ably didn’t take very long for Ms. Hall to take the attendance, but since the chorus has 130 people, it would take at least ten minutes.”

“Who cares if students take the attendance?” senior Hassan Mohammed said. “Teachers typically choose responsible students and often glance over it afterwards.”

Junior Tali Rose Herzfeld disagrees. “I think that it is possible for someone to mark a friend present that’s actually cutting, so it is understandable that the school wishes to use ATRs instead,” she said.

Orchestra teacher Joseph Tamosaitis has a similar view to that of Herzfeld. “ATRs are extremely helpful. They are useful in allowing the classes to get started earlier so that students can have more playing time,” he said.

Sophomore Fahmeeda Alam, however, believes that the ATR’s are intrusive. “I would like the music rooms to be just for music,” she said. “The ATR’s just seem out of place.”

Senior Sweyn Venderbush agrees. “Based on the time that I’ve been exposed to them, they just never seem busy and it doesn’t appear that they have any assignments,” he said. “The student librarians and managers are still doing all the same work, so I don’t know what they are doing.”

While there is controversy on whether allowing students to take attendance is the more effective choice, according to Zhang, it is illegal. “As I see it… students are not supposed to be taking attendance,” she said. However, with the oversight of a teacher, Zhang believes that it is acceptable. “As long as the students fill in the bubbles on the attendance sheet and the teachers sign it off, we are not violating any DOE rules,” she said, indicating that ATRs may not be completely necessary as attendance monitors.

Naviance: Streamlining the College Process at Stuyvesant

By Tina Jiang and Gabe Rosen In an effort to modernize its college application database, Stuyvesant will implement the Naviance college and career readiness platform at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year. Naviance is a web-based program founded in 2002 that provides a single location for school administrators to engage students and families, improve college and career planning, and measure student outcomes. The program will replace Stuyvesant’s current Student Tools website.

Naviance encourages students to compile their academic information and explore various post-secondary opportunities by recommending programs that match a student’s interests and personalized goals. The software also gives students tools to search for college programs, determines the courses he or she needs to take, and pinpoints areas for improvement based on an evaluative test. Upon beginning the college admissions process, students can search for colleges, apply for scholarships, and track their admissions status through the platform.

Another large part of Naviance is the power that it gives to families of student applicants.

Parents are able to directly track the progress of their kids and to communicate with college counselors too. Naviance will also allow schools to find students that are struggling with the application process so that

these students can be given more help by their counselors.

Furthermore, students are able to quickly access data and goals not only from within their own school but also from schools across the country. Statistics can also be collected on the effectiveness of a school’s college program applications.

Guidance counselors can use the program to collect information when writing recommendation letters. Additionally, the school administration receives in-depth spreadsheets detailing student progress in different areas of the application process as well as student responses to questions regarding their interests. Schools may use this data to gauge student interest in new electives the school hopes to incorporate into their course offerings. “There are so many different layers to Naivance that one single person cannot know everything about it,” Director of College Counseling and Interim Assistant Principal of Guidance (APG) Casey Pedrick said. “We are working on the nuts and bolts of the program and plan to use all of its features to our advantage,” she said.

While Stuyvesant is working towards a future with Naviance, it is already in wide use by private schools in New York, such as the Horace Mann School, the Trinity School, as well as many Minneapolis public schools.

Shelly Landry, lead counselor of Minneapolis Public Schools and former president of the Minnesota Counselors Association,

praises Naviance’s impact on the student body. Since it started using Naviance two years ago, her district has seen a 30 percent increase in the number of students who have postsecondary education and career plans, and the number of students attending a four-year college has increased by 6 percent. Landry says that the Minneapolis public school class of 2011 showed an improvement of 15 percent over the previous year, with 87 percent of students heading to college.

“Naviance has really made the entire process easier,” said senior Zach Stern of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, which has already begun using the software. “Not only does it have useful functions that allow you to look at what programs at what colleges would be best for you, but it has also lessened the workload on the small college office of our school. What’s coolest is the data collected on your interests, because it introduced me and my friends to programs we might have otherwise missed.”

Despite all of the success stories associated with Naviance, it was not until Pedrick joined the staff that Naviance was seriously considered for use at Stuyvesant. “After seeing Stuyvesant still sending all the school forms to the colleges via reams and reams of printed paper, I knew that moving towards Naviance had to be the goal,” Pedrick said. After giving a presentation about Naviance to administrators and recommending it to Principal Jie Zhang, Pedrick

signed onto a contract with the company. This contract serves as a trial run and lasts for one year. For this first year, Stuyvesant will not be paying any money for the program until it renews Naviance again next year.

After the contract was signed, the administration decided that Naviance would replace some parts of Stuyvesant’s current Daedalus based college database software, called Student Tools, which was developed in the 1990s by former Assistant Principal of Technology Steve Kramer. Daedalus only allows for limited automation of the college application process by the college office. It does not provide analytical tools for the administration, nor does it allow for personalized college planning for students. Daedalus will continue to be used for are programming and attendance, but other services will be moved to Naviance. When interviewed about her reasons for approving the Naviance contract, Zhang said, “[Naviance] will provide a quality replacement for our current in-house college database, and hopefully we will have a seamless transition to using it.”

Many students are happy about the transition that the school is making towards Naviance. “Student Tools is horribly slow to use,” senior Frankie Lee said. “And you can tell just from the code for it how old it is, compared to the Naviance website.”

Being in line with student opinions, after taking the first baby steps with Naviance, more

stages to the implementation of this system are being unraveled.

Many teachers such as Math teacher Richard Ku and Social Studies teacher Matthew Polazzo are volunteering to become more familiar with Naviance, as are parents like former president of the Parents’ Association Peter Galasinao. Secretary Angela DeMaso whose son used Naviance said, “My son was very organized and got everything done in a timely and fashionable manner.”

Aside from the parents and teachers that are becoming more integrated with Naviance, two guidance interns, Joy Wang and Nataliya Kisina, have been working with Pedrick to become familiar with Naviance as one of their projects. “We are exploring all the bells and whistles, learning each button and transferring our knowledge to others,” Kisina said. Wang and Kisina will then set up a series of workshops, eventually meeting with every junior to pass on their knowledge of the software.

While the administration has had very optimistic views with Navaince, student opinions vary.

“Naviance will have a practical advantage for the administration, but not for students,” senior Zeerak Abbas said. “In addition, the multiple systems will only be bound to cause confusion.”

Senior Aron Helfet, on the other hand, thinks differently. “Naviance will be an incredibly useful system to implement,” he said. “Even if the transition is rough, everyone will still be better off.”

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 4

News Two Stuyvesant Students Attend 125th GSA Conference

By Aimee Li and Scott Ma Thousands of the most brilliant minds in the field of geology congregated at one of the largest geological conventions of the year, the 125th Geological Society of America (GSA) Conference, to present their research and discuss the state of the geosciences. Junior Kelly Chen and senior Danny Kim were two of the few high school research students who took part in the exhibition, which lasted from Sunday, October 27 to Wednesday, October 30.

The GSA, founded in 1888, is a steadily-growing international group of geologists who strive to advance research, strengthen public recognition of geoscience education, and build a strong community of scientists. The organization’s annual autumn conference, known as one of the largest geoscience gatherings in the world, celebrates professionals and students alike for their achievements in the field. Chen and Kim submitted abstracts of their research to the GSA during the summer and were informed of their acceptance as speakers in early October. “They were looking for something of interest, of value, something that other geologists would want to hear about,” Kim said.

“The research project I’m doing right now is the perfect example, looking at past climate trends to predict future ones.”

Chen and Kim arrived in Denver via plane at midnight on Sunday, October 27 and drove to the Colorado Convention Center the following morning to attend the meeting.

Thousands of members of the GSA were present, from graduate students to professional

researchers. Many groups, including The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and several colleges, also paid a visit to advertise their own research to the attendees. “There were a lot of people,” Kim said.

“You could tell they were geologists. They all wore boots like geologists would wear in the field, and they all had your typical Indiana Jones kind of look.”

Chen, however, describes the event as informal and friendly despite event being a scientific gathering. “They’re all used to being out in the field. People were wearing sandals with socks and jeans,” Chen said.

“They drank lots and lots of beer. They had beer made specifically for the conference,” she added with a laugh.

When they were not giving their presentations, Kim and Chen had the opportunity to listen to other speakers. Kim distinctly remembers one geologist who discovered a species of bacteria highly resistant to modern antibiotics inside a cave that has been shielded from the atmosphere for thousands of years. “That was just a solid example of how you can use biology and geology,” Kim said. “Before I went to the conference, I thought geology was a very narrow subject.

It’s boring, it’s studying rocks, that’s kind of what I thought.”

Both Chen and Kim conducted their research at the Robert F. Kennedy Science Research Institute, a research program run by Dr. Bonnie Blackwell, her husband Dr. Joel Blickstein, and Williams College professor Dr. Anne Skinner. They were both invited to join by Edward Cho (’13), who was recruiting students for the program. “I was looking for students who were very motivated and had a strong background

in science,” said Cho, who joined the program during his sophomore year at Stuyvesant.

The program focuses around geochemistry and Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating, a dating method that tests an object’s ability to trap energy. Students prepare samples and generally work at Francis Lewis High School in Long Island. During vacations and some long weekends, however, Blackwell and Blickstein take students for a three-hour drive to Williams College in Massachusetts to use, with the help of Skinner, one of the few ESR spectrometers in North America. “It’s a very intensive program, so some of the recommended students actually end up dropping out,” Cho said. “We were understaffed.”

Kim presented a study on the possibility that Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis, which is currently a desert, was a lake that could have easily supported human and animal life during the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. In collaboration with Chen and Hunter College High School senior Ada Huang, Kim used ESR dating to determine the ages of animal teeth found in the Dakhleh Oasis. In addition, Kim found the sediment in the oasis to be very similar to sediment found near modern lakes, leading him to conclude the past existence of water in the oasis. “The theory for the research was also very hard to understand at first,” Kim said.

“I received so much help from my older peers in the program.”

Chen, also using ESR dating, attempted to reason the sudden disappearance of Neanderthals 35,000 years ago by dating objects found at the Grotte du Bison, one of the 13 caves at Arcy Sur Cure in France. The French government had allowed Blackwell to use the cave for research

purposes and supplied her with teeth discovered there. By analyzing the bones using ESR, Chen discovered that a single layer of rock contained Neanderthal remains from 40,000 to 90,000 years ago. The significant age disparity of the fossils led Chen to conclude that different Neanderthal groups came at varying times to settle different parts of the cave.

Chen is still in the process of analyzing the fossils at Grotte du Bison. She is currently studying the transition period as well as refining her previous data with more fossils and more accurate dating. “We’re uncovering the past, and it’s just that there’s so much we still don’t know,” Chen said. “You’re finding out things that nobody else knows. There’s no right answer.”

During their presentations, Chen and Kim each spoke to about fifty geologists. “Kelly and I felt out [of ] place. There were all these older professionals,” Kim said.

After a while, however, Kim felt more at home. “I was proud to talk about my work and when some geologists there congratulated me for the talk, I felt that it was all worth it,” he said.

“They are geologists, and they know a lot of geology, but like a lot of things, they all know lots about only one thing: their specific field,” Kim added. “Ultimately, I know that I am the expert on the Dakhleh Oasis.”

Attendees of the convention were primarily graduates, undergraduates, and professors, several of whom are well respected in academia. “Getting to meet the people that you read about in papers, it’s just totally different,” Chen said. “You never think you’ll get to meet these people who you feel like are part of a different world.”

Kim left the convention

feeling inspired. “Before this conference, geology was a very narrow field for me because the work I do is specifically to date these fossils,” he said. “I found out that was only one part of geology. Geology can be applied in many different concepts.”

“I was proud to talk about my work, and when some geologists there congratulated me for the talk, I felt that it was all worth it.” — Danny Kim, senior

“We’re uncovering the past, and it’s just that there’s so much we still don’t know,” Chen said. “How can an entire species of people just die?

Nobody can come up with a solution that we all agree on.”

“There’s no right answer.

There are answers that make sense and answers that don’t make sense,” she added.

“That makes it interesting.”

Stuyvesant Students Visit YouTube Space NY

By Whitney Tam and Jordan Zhou Approximately 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on the website— almost an hour for every person on Earth. It is clear that YouTube has significantly shaped how people spend their time on the Internet. Supervised by technology teacher Elka Gould and accompanied

by Principal Jie Zhang, a group of sixteen students in Gould’s video production classes took a trip after-school to YouTube Space NY in Manhattan on November 15 to learn more about the influential media website.

The students were invited by Chris Chan Roberson, a former graduate of Stuyvesant High School from the Class of 1994.

Roberson is currently a filmmaker, film professor at New York University (NYU), and a producer at YouTube. “He is a bridge in getting students interested [in the film industry] as well as providing students with opportunities,” Gould said.

Roberson is also faculty director of a NYU program called Future Filmmakers. This program is open to high school students and aims to teach teenagers about the different aspects

of filmmaking. According to Gould, Roberson visits Stuyvesant annually to get students interested in this program, but also has “great stories to tell.”

“So opposed to me saying, ‘Hey, creative people, don’t forget to be smart,’ I’d rather say, ‘Hey, smart people, don’t forget to be creative!’”

— Chris Roberson (’94), YouTube producer

“I speak to the Stuyvesant students every year as an excuse to get back to Stuyvesant,” Roberson said in an email interview. “The message I want to relay is that anything is possible. Do everything, experience as much as you can, go out and live your life, then come back to Stuy and keep reminding new generations of Stuy students to get out there and change the world.”

At the facilities, students were taught the history of YouTube and given a tour through office area and the production facilities. They were introduced to different technology in filmmaking, such as the use of green screens.

“I loved the tour of the studio room where [those at YouTube Space NY filmed] because Chris brilliantly explained the use of the lights to create shadow,” said senior Abiramy Logeswaran. Many students were also excited to learn new methods to enhance filming and connect it to what was taught in their video production class.

While some students thought that film production seemed to be a complex and difficult process, they were surprised by the recreation rooms that were in the office. YouTube gave students time to relax by bringing them to a break room where they were provided with

snacks. “There was a relaxation room where you could throw nerf balls. There were different rooms surrounding the space, such as the red room and blue room, which had a pingpong table in it,” Gould said. “[These rooms] exist because if people want to invest in YouTube, we want to invest in those creators. The spaces at Space NY are free to YouTube creators because if they’re going to spend the time to create content, we want to spend the time to give them for free the facilities and equipment necessary to make their content,” Roberson said.

YouTube has revolutionized the entertainment industry throughout the years. The company allows people from all over the world to communicate and interact with each other within the YouTube community. “It’s recognizing what’s going on in the real world, what are teenagers looking at, [and] how it connects the world, because there are incredible changes in the dynamics of communication,” Gould said. Users can create their own channels to upload videos for free, and depending on how popular these videos are, become YouTube Partners. According to the official YouTube support website, “the [Partner] programs are tailored to help you improve your

skills, build your audiences and earn money by monetizing more content. YouTube has also made the world smaller.

It allows people from all over the world to communicate and interact with each other within the YouTube community.

According to some students, the most inspiring aspect of the trip was to learn how many YouTube users began their successful careers. During the trip, Roberson elaborated a lot on how people on YouTube started their channel from scratch: these YouTubers went from filming inexperienced scenes to filming at a professional level. “[Roberson] made a lasting impression and showed us that we can learn and start from anywhere as long as we want to try and don’t give up if we fail the first few times,” Logeswaran said.

“I get very frustrated when people say they went into the arts because they weren’t good at math or science. You can’t be a good producer without knowing math. You can’t be a good cinematographer without knowing science. You can’t be a good director without knowing history, psychology, sociology, etc. So opposed to me saying, ‘Hey, creative people, don’t forget to be smart,’ I’d rather say, ‘Hey, smart people, don’t forget to be creative!’” Roberson said.

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 5

News So and Tuhktamisheva Win Freshman Caucus in a Blowout continued from page 1

more socials and fundraisers.

Communication was an especially common topic among candidates. So and Tuhktamisheva plan to create a monthly forum in which freshmen can propose changes. “[Students] will pitch ideas to us, which will be translated into legislation and then get voted on so everyone has a say,” So said.

Choi agreed with So’s sentiments. “The SU doesn’t really communicate much with students,” Choi said. “I’ve only been here for two months, but I really don’t remember any real communication between students and the SU.” He proposed the creation of suggestion boxes, online suggestion forms, and a homeroom council.

Many other candidates advocated points touched upon in So and Tuhktamisheva’s CAMEL plan. Akilov and Usvitsky created a five-point plan for their campaign, which included creating more free space for students to sit during free periods and developing a

“The growing number of voters in the elections attest to the fact that many students do indeed care about student politics.

Candidates will be trying even harder to get voters to vote.”

––Kevin Yoo, junior and Board of Elections chairperson

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single website for all teachers to post homework and grades.

“We’re trying to keep it simple and effective at the same time,” Akilov said. “We did not focus on just putting posters up and promising things to students that we can’t promise.”

Choi planned to raise SU funds with a Stuyvesant talent show and multiple bake sales and wanted to organize underclassmen spirit days and dances.

Nearly all of the campaigns supported such measures in some form. “The platforms that they all had were pretty much the same,” freshman Lorenz Vargas said in a telephone interview. “But [So] was the one who conveyed them best. It’s not like [the CAMEL plan] was any more in-depth than the others, but it was just more memorable, especially because of his acronym. It was catchy.”

Many freshmen don’t even believe that platforms played any significant role. “Most people didn’t really vote based on the platforms,” freshman Zachary Wakefield said in a telephone interview. “It was about

who you’re friends with and whose name you recognized.”

Beyond the platforms, many voters were turned off by a perceived lack of power held by the freshman caucus.

Sophomore Taekyung Kong, last year’s Freshman Caucus President, believes that the freshman voice is often weaker than those of other grades. “It’s not disadvantaged, but since freshmen are new to the school and they don’t know their way through the Student Union as well as prior students, they don’t want to make a mistake,” he said.

“Every year, it’s just, at least in my experience, a huge popularity contest. You’ve only these people for three months, so you can’t know if they’re a hard worker. So it’s just name recognition and who’s done favors for who,” sophomore Jonathan Aung said in a telephone interview.

“That’s why freshmen never end up doing much in the SU.” Some students, however, are optimistic about the ability of freshmen to enact change.

“Sometimes there’s something that should happen or change, but it’s hard to really get it to happen,” Lam said. “With the freshman caucus, we could probably induce changes to the school faster and better.”

Looking forward, the BOE believes that the success at the polls in this year’s freshman caucus elections will only improve in years to come. “As social media becomes more prevalent, voter turnout rates will continue to increase,” senior and BOE Executive Chairman Charles Lee said in an e-mail interview. “It is hard to predict what power/role the freshman caucus can gain or achieve in the coming years, but the future looks promising.”

“I think the incoming freshman class has realized that Stuyvesant students are politically active and have voices that they want to be heard,” SU President Eddie Zilberbrand said. “You have students who are passionate about student government, which is great for everyone.”

Master Chess Player Returns for Simul

Hochlewicz and Yang Win Closely Contested Sophomore Caucus continued from page 1

“He is smart and competent, especially at school, and he fixes phones, but just because someone is smart at school does not mean they’ll run a school well.”

––Jenn Dikler, sophomore

office. “I hope that Krzysztof can live up to expectations, but there’s a lot of opposition because he had many violations,” sophomore Yakira Kellman said in a telephone interview.

“I think Krzysztof won because he’s well-known as the administrator of many Facebook groups, but I don’t know if that makes him a qualified candidate.”

“He is smart and competent, especially at school, and he fixes phones, but just because someone is smart at school, does not mean they’ll run a school well,” sophomore Jenn Dikler said in a telephone interview. “And sometimes he takes a little too much control, like writes everything out and seems a little over the top.”

Some, however, believe Hochlewicz’s credentials as a Facebook administrator hold real value. “I think he will do a good job, since he is able to take action, shown on Facebook groups,” sophomore and former Freshman Caucus President Taekyung Kong said. “He is able to express his concerns for the SU.”

Though seemingly limited to an eight-by-eight checkered board, the game of chess is in fact a test of one’s wit and ability to strategize efficiently. Some may agonize over playing a single match, but others are able to take part in multiple games at the same time. Honing such skills perhaps takes natural talent, but more importantly, time and effort.

This year, Stuyvesant alum and chessmaster Andrew Ryba (‘10) returned to Stuyvesant High School to conduct a simultaneous exhibition on Wednesday, November 20 after 10th period.

A simultaneous exhibition, or “simul,” is a display of chess matches in which a high-level player plays multiple games at once—in Ryba’s case, 20—against a number of opponents. After one game is finished, another student can replace the one that just completed his or her match.

From 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., the simul took place on the first floor atrium beside the Murray Kahn Theatre. Faculty advisor and social studies teacher William Boericke was pleased with the student turnout, some being members of the Chess Club and others simply choosing to play at the simul. “I think having simuls gets more interest in chess in the school,” Boericke said.

In the past, Boericke arranged for master-level chess players to give a simultaneous exhibition at Stuyvesant. However, this was the first year in which a graduate conducted the simul. “When Andrew played for our club, one year we came first in the country and the next year we came second in the country,” Boericke said. “Andrew was a key member of both of those teams.”

Ryba began playing chess at the age of 12 and continued throughout high school, where he was president of the Stuyvesant Chess Club. He became a master the summer after he graduated high school. Having a United States Chess Federation (USCF) ranking of at least 2200 allows for a player to gain the master title; Ryba’s ranking is now 2282.

The Chess Club currently has

Justin Strauss/ The Spectator

By Dorit Rein

A chess tournament was held amongst Stuyvesant students in the lobby on November 20.

three nationally ranked experts as well: junior Danny Feng and sophomores Alexander Spinnell and Kyle Moon. In order to become an expert, players must achieve a USCF ranking of 2000.

At the simul, Ryba won every game but one, in which he lost to senior Aaron Coppa. “Our position was pretty equal after the opening, but [Ryba] made a mistake that allowed me to win a piece,” Coppa said in an e-mail interview. From then on, Coppa managed to maintain his lead, and turned the piece into a queen. In doing so, Coppa simplified the position down, and Ryba resigned shortly after.

The current president of the Chess Club, senior Justin Duda, thought the simul was a great opportunity for students interested in chess. “It’s good to see an example of how good we can become if we work at [improving] through high school and college,” Duda said in an e-mail interview. “And playing someone better than you is almost always a good learning experience as it pushes you to play to the best of your abilities.”

Some students wished that these simuls would result in greater interest in chess, particularly for female students who wanted to play competitively.

Sophomore Anne Gail expressed her disappointment in being the only girl to participate in the simul. “I wish more girls would

play, but there is this idea that boys are better than girls at chess.

Guys will tell me they’ll go easy on me, and sometimes I’m better than them and it hurts their reputations as chess players. That makes me, and other girls, feel really uncomfortable,” Gail said.

Others seemed to have participated in the exhibition on whim, without a more competitive sentiment. “I’m not on the chess [club], and I only heard about this on the loudspeaker during 10th period. I’m not going to win, but I thought it would be fun to play against someone that good,” said junior Matthew Binshtok. Binshtok was the first to lose to Ryba, after 10 moves.

Ryba now attends Columbia University and is a member of Columbia’s Chess Club. He believes that with more practice and commitment, players can always improve and move up the ranks. “No one here is as good as me yet, but in a few years, some of them could be,” Ryba said.

Despite his win, Coppa emphasized the role that both practice and chance plays in chess. “It doesn’t really matter that [Ryba was] playing so many games; he’s an incredible chess player,” Coppa said. “I think that my win was a combination of skill and luck.

He made a mistake, I capitalized [...] If we played again I think he would be coming for revenge, so I don’t think I would get so lucky.”

Page 6

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Features

Cindy Li / The Spectator

Lunch With Topher Brown Mykolyk

By Michelle Chan and Aimee Li Computer lab 307. 4:02 p.m. He sits easily in his chair, supervising the AIS computer science tutoring session. Students are hard at work, tapping away at their keyboards as they write their code. He flashes students a welcoming smile as they enter the room. After a short while, he beckons us over. When we tell him that we are pretending to have lunch together for our interview, he says, “Okay. I’m pretending.

Are we eating something delicious?”

Topher Brown Mykolyk, better known as Mr. Brown, teaches the Introduction to Computer Science and AP Computer Science courses.

However, he never thought that he would eventually become a teacher.

Raised on a farm in southern Mississippi, Brown’s upbringing was far from that of a typical city kid. He lived with cows, sheep, and horses.

“Quite a distinct lifestyle than the ones you guys lead. I had a lot of chores,” he said. Despite living in a rural environment, he was lucky enough to buy a computer when he was in 10th grade, “a 33 megahertz machine with four megabytes of RAM and a single-speed CD drive,” Brown said.

“It was kinda rare to have a computer, since they were expensive. And what I got was like a generation old,” he said, “but it still cost me a fortune.” When asked why he even got a computer, he said, “I wanted to tinker with it. I opened it up and played with it. I bought it from a guy who was an IT worker, and he showed me what was inside of it, and how to put things in it, and how to take things out of it. And I didn’t really understand it all, but I thought it was cool.” In addition, Brown used it to “fart around,” he said. “[I] would just play games from [my] friends. [T]hey would copy a game or something on like a floppy disk and [I] would plug it in. We wrote programs.

We taught ourselves how to program and stuff.”

Although he couldn’t do much with such a primitive computer, the experience was life-changing. “You would just use the machine to surf the internet and use the machine for

the word processor. I remember typing up articles for [...] a student-panel run newspaper, and writing my applications to get into a school like Stuyvesant, which was like a big deal.

It transformed my life,” Brown said.

Brown was first exposed to computer science when he was in high school. His knowledge of computers expanded once

“I have a handful of role models, and most of them were teachers.”

—Topher Brown Mykolyk, computer science teacher

he entered the Mississippi School for Math and Science, which was “like Stuy, except there was just one school for all of Mississippi,” Brown said.

Initially, he was overwhelmed with the workload. “I didn’t get much sleep for two years, and I thought I was going crazy,” he said. But the school was where he was first exposed to Linux, soccer, and smart people who pushed him to excel. There, he also met one of his teacher role models, Dr. K. “Dr. K., it was his first year teaching there when I arrived. I had him every semester I was there. I had him during bio and chem classes and he was just amazing. He had left a professorship at UNC because he was tired of teaching the auditorium classes and wanted to have more of an interaction with students. And he was just absolutely brilliant.

He was the first teacher I ever had who cursed in class. He was an expert in protein folding. He was passionate about his job. He listened to cool mu-

sic, and I remember lab hours after school,” Brown said. “He introduced me to Frank Zappa.

He’s the reason I give Song of the Week on tests, because he would do things like that. I remember when we had tests, he would do things like write Frank Zappa quotes across the top of the test. Random stuff that would mess with our minds. It wasn’t like his tests were not rigorous; most people failed his class. There was a big student uproar trying to lobby the parents to get him fired because he was too harsh of a grader. But I loved him. He was inspiring and brilliant and he set high standards and showed me that this could be an awesome thing to do. To be unabashed and to be a passionate lover of science.”

Brown continued his pursuit of computer science when he was in college. “I started out as an electrical engineering major, then computer engineering, then computer science. But eventually I left and majored in physics. [I] needed to get back to a purer science,” Brown said.

Prior to settling down as a full-time teacher, Brown explored a whole range of jobs, from being a DJ to working with particle accelerators. He worked for a company that distributes cyclotrons, which are miniature particle accelerators used to diagnose cancer.

He and his team developed the software that would control the cyclotrons. His work was distributed in hospitals around the world. He “loved that job” and thought “it was fantastic,” he said. But he needed a change in scenery, so he left and tried out a variety of jobs.

At one point, he was a DJ spinning tunes on the dance floor. “[Working as a DJ] brings me tremendous pleasure to see people having a good time. Not just because I want to see people enjoy themselves, but there is something freeing in dance,” Brown said. “[A]s long as you can get one person, who’s like a party-starter, and if you could get them moving, they start a chain reaction. So there’s a lot of art involved in like scanning the room, looking to see who that person is that you can trigger, who can set off that chain reaction.” He ties in his DJ experience to that of teaching.

“It’s kinda like running a class

here: if you’re not doing it well, you can feel it. It’s not going well. But when it does go well, there’s this sense of reinforcement. You get this reinforcing cycle that makes for a good party or a good class. I really enjoy it,” he said. Unfortunately, Brown does not have time to do any more DJ-ing. “I sold my turntables when I moved here.

I started a savings account to buy some more back, and I have plenty to buy. But I don’t have any time to pick that up again, so maybe it’s done for good,” he said.

He eventually switched gears and became a waiter because it was challenging.

He had to stand “in front of a table and [try] to tell [customers] about specials and not go red in the face, or stutter, or forget,” Brown said. “That was terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.

So that’s why I wanted to do it.

When I was eventually done with that phase, I had learned everything I could from it, and

chaos in the rooms; kids were throwing things, hitting each other, yelling at you, calling you all sorts of names,” Brown said. The discouraging environment at the school severely impacted his desire to teach. “It is a feat just to maintain order in a classroom, much less trying to do anything meaningful.

It was very disheartening. My battle at that school was really just fighting despair and depression, which was common amongst anyone who jumps into that environment,” Brown said. “I got this job [at Stuyvesant], and it was like night and day.”

Aside from teaching, Brown has studied abroad at the University of Bristol and backpacked across Europe in the summer of 2001. He cites this as “one of the best summers of my life” and as “one of the two pivotal summers” he has experienced. He traveled with nothing but the supplies in his backpack. “I had a backpack

“It’s kinda like running a class here: if you’re not doing it well, you can feel it. It’s not going well.

But when it does go well, there’s this sense of reinforcement. You get this reinforcing cycle that makes for a good party or a good class. I really enjoy it.”

—Topher Brown Mykolyk, computer science teacher

I’ve grown tremendously because of it. I eventually was like: well, what was I gonna do?

And ultimately, I was not very fulfilled being a programmer or computer-fixer, and I had this moment of realization when I realized that my greatest role models—Dr. K, Ms. Carter, Dr. Curtis—were some of my best teachers. I have a handful of role models, and most of them were teachers. I don’t know why it took me most of my life to realize that. They had a tremendous impact on me, and that’s why I looked up ways to get into teaching, joined the Fellows program. You can say it’s because of Dr. K.“ Teaching Fellows, for clarification, is a program for sending teachers over to schools where no one wants to teach.

Brown did not immediately have the opportunity to work at Stuyvesant. He initially taught at South Bronx, which “is the polar opposite of the way things are” at Stuyvesant, he said. Teaching there and teaching at Stuyvesant were totally different experiences for him.

“There was chaos all the time.

There was chaos in the halls,

and that was it. I knew that if it wasn’t in my backpack, I just didn’t need it. Or I’ll do without it, and then if I picked up a souvenir, I’d have to get rid of something. But that led to cool interactions, and having to trade stuff if I needed it. Or I would borrow it, which means I would make a new friend in a foreign country,” he said. “I think it’s tremendously freeing to be living with a limited amount of stuff.”

Travel author Rick Steve said, “Traveling is living intensified.” Brown considers this the quote he lives by. “That’s the reason the backpacking trip and the reason other trips are cool, because when you leave your comfort zone and all the physical trappings of your day-to-day life, I feel that every moment becomes more meaningful. Every day has more stuff packed into it than any given day in your day-to-day work routine or even weekends. If you’re in some foreign territory, your senses are awakened,” he said. “You’re more aware of everything you see and hear and [of the] people you meet.”

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

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The Spectator â—? December 9, 2013

Hands

By the Art Department

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 9

Features

By Stanley Chan and Luo Qi Kong Yasmeen Roumie “Awesome! #ifihadglass I wish I had these glasses this past weekend, when I took my 7yr old on his first ride up the ski lift! it was such a beautiful moment watching him [enjoy] the excitement of being high up on the chair lift and headed up to the top of the mountain for his very first time to ski down the slope!”

—Iffat Mai, February 21, 2013 A month later, Mai received fantastic news: “Hi Iffat, thanks for applying! We’d like to invite you to join our #glassexplorers program. We’ll be sending you a private message with more details in the coming weeks— keep an eye on our stream at Project Glass.”

—Google Glass, March 27, 2013 With one simple post on a Google+ profile, sophomore Yasmeen Roumie and her mother, Iffat Mai, were well on their way to owning a pair of Google Glass, a high-tech piece of eyewear developed by Google. Mai decided to test her luck in a Twitter and Google+ competition called #ifihadglass. The Glass Explorer Program, which was created early this year for beta testers (or “Glass Explorers”), gave 8000 applicants the opportunity to purchase a pair of Glass.

Mai owns the pair of Google Glass, which Roumie sometimes wears to school. Mai is an architect who works with relatively new technology known as augmented reality (AR), which adds computer-generated aspects to the real world by connecting the senses with the function of the digital display.

Mai creates new applications for Glass with this technology.

She has also developed an app in AR for the iPad that gives users a 3D circular panorama view and the ability to pan and zoom by touch. Roumie discussed this casually with me by the fourth-floor benches, almost unwittingly downplaying her mother’s work. It’s the sort of thing she seems used to, but for the majority of us, not so much.

Though Google Glass is still a work in progress, Roumie easily identified some of the advantages it has. The interactive abilities used to activate and use the gadget are simple, while the screen displays the time and an accessible menu of commands in the upper right-hand corner of the wearer’s field of vision.

In general, Glass functions like a smartphone in a compact and convenient form—directly on your face, using voice and touch commands. For Roumie, most of the functions are practical, especially the camera, which she uses on trips. While it may be slow and inconvenient to take out a hand-held device and switch to the camera, taking a picture on Glass is as simple as saying, “OK, Glass.

Take a picture.” This is one among many functions that Glass offers, which include taking videos, getting directions, searching from Google, sending messages, and even talking

to friends on Google Hangout.

Even with these benefits, Glass is not an everyday necessity to Roumie—she didn’t have them on today, though she used to bring them more often.

Roumie recognizes Glass’s limited capabilities as well. For one, its durability is dubious at best. “I’ve broken three pairs already,” she said. “We don’t know how to fix it, but Google sends us a new pair each time.”

Glass isn’t heavy or bulky, but it can be a burden to wear for a prolonged period of time, according to Roumie. And of course, despite its comparisons to the ubiquitous smartphone, there are drawbacks, such as Glass’s somewhat poor image and video resolution and short battery life. Still, Roumie understands these issues as steps in the experimental process.

As with any new product, Glass has its fair share of controversies. Glass allows someone to use its functions without the knowledge or consent of another person, leading to a possible privacy breach.

Roumie firmly believes that, with the proliferation of technology in Stuyvesant, Google Glass will no longer be a rare sight in our halls when it is officially released into markets.

With an improvement of its specifications and a more accessible price, there is little doubt in her mind that Stuyvesant students will be more than interested in the product. In fact, they have already shown some interest in her Glass specifically. Some timidly ask her questions, while others are brave enough to ask for a turn with her Glass itself. “A lot of people assume that I’m either really smart or really rich, and that’s not necessarily the case,” she said.

She leaned back into the bench as I wondered aloud to her—Is it worth it? Are they really that useful?

“I think it mostly looks cool.

I do use it, but at its current stage, its functions just aren’t as useful to me,” Roumie said.

Chris Grant Meet the “Google Glass guy,” who likes reminding people that his name is Chris.

I thought Glass was more of a concept than reality until I saw sophomore Chris Grant by the third-floor escalator, surrounded by five strangers. Everyone, myself included, wanted to try Glass out, perhaps in search of some magical change in perspective. A shameless student asked the question that was on all of our minds: “How much did they cost?” The answer: $1,500. When it was finally my turn, I took off my prescription glasses and gingerly replaced them with Google Glass.

I couldn’t see anything.

There was a floating rectangle of projection in the upper righthand corner, but my high astigmatism prevented me from making out the words and options. I tried swiping the right side of Google Glass like some people had done, only to have the screen’s blurry words transition to more blurry words. After thanking the owner, I left with a strange sense of melancholy.

While I could not enjoy the current Explorer edition of Google

Glass, I still felt inspired by the floating screen of possibilities.

As Google cofounder Sergey Brin put it, “Information would come to you as you need it.”

Two weeks later, Grant and I met on the half floor. He was wearing a dark, plaid dress shirt and navy jeans. He was also still wearing Glass in school, so I easily recognized him in the crowd. We sat on a bench behind the first-floor security desk for the interview. I had found his contact information through his eponymous website (chrisgrants.com) and was immediately drawn to his background in technology as a designer and developer. Was there a connection between his tech background and how he obtained Glass?

“A while back, Google released a concept video,” Grant said. In the video, a guy wakes up and has breakfast; there are several floating circles with different functions and he is touching them. Grant had been a strict fan of Apple and iOS development, but after learning more about the Glass project, he realized that “Google is where it’s at,” he said.

Once Google released a more realistic version of these floating circles—Google Glass—Grant knew that he had to get a pair. He missed his first opportunity at the I/O 2012, Google’s annual developer-focused conference. Traveling to San Francisco, where the event was held, would have been too inconvenient, so Grant jumped at the next opportunity to purchase Google Glass. Right now, he would pay no more than $700 for them, but he bought his pair of Glass for upwards of $2,000. When asked to address this price discrepancy, Grant said, “When you don’t have something and you want it, it’s like this magical device and it’s going to solve everything in your life, [but] when you actually get it, it’s more realistic.”

Regardless, this still begged the question: how does a student have $1,500 in disposable income? Grant does web design on the side and builds websites for small businesses. His background story: when he was 11 or 12, he wanted to make some money but didn’t want to do physical labor. He started learning languages from YouTube and the internet “that ended up being useless,” he noted. His family lacked a technological background, and his siblings were particularly uninterested.

Grant’s parents have encouraged him to make his technology venture profitable. As a web developer, he started going to meetings at Google Tech talks every month, joined Google developer groups, and met a lot of interesting people.

At one of the events, Google I/O Extended, held in New York, Grant met a guy with Glass. “I was just like, ‘what!’ so I asked him to let me try it on or whatever, fell in love with it, so we became friends and talked a lot,” Grant said. However, Grant’s new friend was not selected for the first trial of Google’s “Invite My Friends” (a program that gave Explorers three Glass invites). Grant eventually met some more people, one of whom gave Grant his much-anticipated invite to buy

Philip Shin / The Spectator

Looking Through Google Glass

Chris Grant is one of the 10,000 people testing out Google’s new wearable technology: Google Glass.

Glass for $1,500.

Grant does not think Glass gives him a major advantage over other students; instead, “Glass is an extension of who I am,” he said. “On one level, it’s a tool. I can do Google Search, [something] that is helpful in class,” Grant said. A girl came by our bench, greeted Grant, and moved closer to his Glass.

Grant continued, “So you can say in class ‘Google,’ and [Glass] will tell you what you want.” I ask if it was particularly noticeable to speak aloud in class.

“Google?” the girl wondered, trying to make Glass do something.

“To say it?” Grant asked me.

“Google. Google?” the girl continued on the side. “What the hell?” she finally muttered, as it became apparent that Glass did not respond to her. She waved Grant goodbye.

“I can’t really use it unless we’re doing a class thing where we’re [talking]. You can whisper, but it is very difficult,” Grant said. He sees Glass as more of a supplement, something comparable to a laptop: connected to the internet and able to get information from it. In school, he uses it all the time because he can’t use his phone (I nod in sympathy) and his laptop is inconvenient in many cases.

Other people enjoy Glass as well, according to Grant. “I get stopped in the hall all the time. People are like, ‘Google Glass Guy!’ And I’m like, ‘my name’s Chris,’” he deadpanned.

“Google Glasses Guy,” I blurted reflexively, trying out the moniker. “This thing;s been on more than 300 people’s faces. My policy is that if I trust you, there’s no reason not to,” Grant said.

“It’s really hard to describe it. You can say it’s a floating screen, but that doesn’t resonate with people,” Grant said, trying to conceptualize Glass.

He held it out with his right hand and asked me if I had worn Glass before. I had a sudden urge to wear Glass again in hopes of a better result.

And so, once again, I took off my glasses in exchange for Glass. “Glasses,” I tried, much like the girl had done earlier.

We clearly had no idea how to use Glass.

“No, no, no,” Grant said.

“You have to say, ‘OK, Glass.’”

“OK, Glass,” I said. Grant told me that the words show me a list of options; the first one says “Google,” and the user is supposed to follow up with a question. I took his word for it.

“Google…”

“Life,” I said. Grant let me know that it would give me

search results. I wish I could confirm, but surely some of the 300 students and teachers who have tried Grant’s Glass can affirm that it works.

The feedback has been “all the same,” Grant said. “‘Oh my gosh, it’s Google Glass! Does this really exist?’ Tons of ‘does it work?’ And I’m like, I wouldn’t wear it on my face if it didn’t work,” he said. All of his teachers have tried Glass out, with no complaints. There are many classes in which Glass is not useful, such as English, “but again, I wear it because it is an extension of me and my interesting technology. So even though I am not using it right now, I’m wearing it because they’re my glasses, just like those are your glasses,” said Grant, gesturing toward my face.

Grant predicted a backlash in the future, however. “This is 2013. Why are we learning like it’s the ‘50’s? Smartphones should not be out in class, but technology should be soon, as a tool rather than a distraction,” he said. “The administration and the DOE will react eventually and ban [Glass]; it will be just like having a smartphone.”

But according to Grant, cheating is impossible. “Everything you want in terms of information, you’re going to have to say it, so you might as well say out loud, ‘I’m cheating,’” he said. Second of all, everyone knows what Glass is. Grant pointed out that he could take a picture of somebody’s nearby test, but the text and even scantron bubbles are illegible. At the end of the day, this is a moot point. Grant takes off Glass during tests.

But aside from tests and bathroom breaks, Grant will most likely be wearing Glass, something that has become a part of him. He will be using Google Search and Google Maps, his favorite function. (“It’s crazy; it’s just a map and it floats [over] everywhere you look, and then it has ETA on when [you’ll] be there.”)

Finally, at the end of our interview, Grant shared Google’s philosophy behind Glass: “Google is trying to bring technology closer to people while keeping out of their way,” he said. “We should be looking up at the world instead of down at smartphones.”

“Do you think they’ve succeeded for the most part?”

“I think they’re getting close.

They’re not there yet,” Grant said.

Page 10

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Features NaNoWriMo:

By Sanam Bhatia “Writing comes easy. All you have to do is stare at a blank piece of paper until your forehead bleeds,” Douglas Adams says in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Many of us have experienced this when writing English papers. The process is long and painful. You type out a few words, erase them all, cry a little bit, and sit there in despair because your brain is void of ideas. Partaking in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is like this, but on a much larger scale. Participants must each write a 50,000-word novel in the span of the 30 days of November. Though the experience was daunting, many writers have explained the surprising benefits of the program, which are depicted in the following fictional accounts of an average Stuyvesant participant, based on the actual experiences of students who balanced personal passions with the rest of their responsibilities.

Day 1: I just signed up for NaNoWriMo, an annual program that challenges anyone with a passion for writing to sit down and create a novel of at least 50,000 words. I have no idea how I’m going to finish this novel AND do all my schoolwork, but I’ll make it happen…somehow. One of my friends, (junior) Lester Lee, was in some creative writing program in middle school, so he’s actually known about it for years and really loved the experience. “It’s a nice way to motivate myself to write way more than my comfort zone, but at the same time the word count goal is so high that it can be disheartening at times,” he told me. He’s doing it again this year, but it’ll probably go much better for him than for me. Writing 50,000 words sounds so intimidating…but I think I can do it!

Day 2: I’m sitting here with my Word doc open, but no ideas are coming to mind. How will I write 50,000 words without an awesome plot? (Sophomore) William Yang has already decided to write about a talented pianist who burns his hands and can’t play his instrument anymore. I wish I could just draw inspiration from my life and write—he’s in chorus, so he definitely sees a lot of piano-playing. Maybe I can write about someone who can’t come up with an idea for a novel—oh wait, that’s me.

Day 4: I’ve decided to write about a boy who deals with the murder of his best friend by imagining a world where he’s a superhero. (I think I’ve been watching too many crime-scene investigation shows). But it’s 11 p.m. and I have a physics test to study for and an English essay due tomorrow. My friend (freshman) Sharon Lin told me that “Staying up late trying to finish your word count atop homework and extracurriculars is definitely the worst part of the program.” (Junior) Emily Liao, my friend from history class, also is dealing with the same issue. “Recently, I’ve had [more] many tests than I would like, and therefore, my novel has been neglected in the attempt to create a balance in my life between hobbies like writing and schoolwork,” she explained.

Word count: 12

Day 6: The word document with my “novel” (named Crying5ever.docx) is wide open, and it’s looking awfully empty right now. I really need something to motivate me to work. Yang told me that he really likes listening to Late Romantic music, especially Chopin’s ballets, and Lee said, “I play some ambient background music and open the Word document and stare at what I’ve written for a bit.” So, maybe some tunes will pull me along.

Word count: 1,042

Day 9: This is definitely not like writing essays for English or history. Lee agreed with me when he said, “School assignments force you to write about a specific topic and sometimes it might be a topic you don’t particularly like. NaNoWriMo is mainly for yourself. And for the first time ever, I feel like this story is mine! I did this thing Lee told me about. “I keep a small notebook/sketchbook with me, so whenever I have a new idea or character design or just anything, really, I’m able to jot it down so that I won’t forget it,” he said.

Word count: 5,673

Day 14: I’m dealing with too much writer’s block to continue writing today. Fortunately, the NaNoWriMo site provides funky prompts to inspire me and to keep me going. I also found these things called Writer’s Goods, which include some “pep talks” from published authors. There’s this one by James Patterson, who holds the record for the most “New York Times” bestsellers. Plus, I put “NaNo flair” on my blog. There’re all these cute images that you can use to brag about participating in NaNoWriMo. Word count: 11,682

Day 17: Today is the day! I have 25,000 words, so I’m halfway there (woah, I’m living on a prayer). I’m hoping to make my story more engaging. Lin said, “In my experience, that sort of ingenuity comes in moments of inspiration, not through carefully planned outlines.” So let’s hope for some epiphanies tonight!

(Maybe coffee will help.)

Word count: 25,072

Day 20: I don’t have much homework today and no tests for the rest of the week, so I plan on writing a lot today. I recently talked to Liao, who’s writing a fantasy story about a girl named Masquerade who becomes a thief after her father bankrupted her entire family. She eloquently explained what it’s like to write when she said, “It’s like solving a puzzle and creating it at the same time—you know the outcome, it’s just fitting the pieces together and creating them that’s challenging.”

Word count: 34,891

Day 22: Around the beginning of the month, Yang told me, “Plot twists and developments really allow for character development and are easier to write, but the details in between take a lot of effort.” I’ve certainly found this to be true; it’s just so much more exciting to get your story going.

Word count: 41,442

Day 25: Usually, I’m really excited for Thanksgiving, but this year, I’m more worried. So I’m almost near the finish line, and I’m realizing now that there’s so much more to my story that I have to write about. Lin explained to me that “the program… doesn’t care whether or not you have finished your story,” and that she’s “looking to complete it sometime during the year.” Plus, Liao said, “NaNoWriMo helps young or amateur writers get a feel for expanding their ideas and the importance of… using their time or choosing their words effectively.” The importance of the program is really that it helps writers get started.

Word count: 47,333

Day 30: It’s the end—I finished my story (!!!), mainly because I spent the whole day locked up in my bedroom and completely disregarding anything or anyone else… It was definitely stressful and a huge commitment, but Lin really summed it up nicely when she told me, “Participating in NaNo is like the literary version of climbing Mt. Everest—you set out to do what you’ve only heard of others doing. During the process, you realize that it’s more painful that you’d ever expected, but you keep at it, knowing that the reward of finishing trumps the momentary satisfaction of giving up.”

Word Count: 55,683

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 11

Features A Novel Idea Excerpts:

the soft sighs of morning mists and fingerprints of foggy lips but all is cold and nothing’s clear cause no one knows I’m really here I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore but I knew they were there because every time I looked down I could the rusty handcuffs chaining me to the chair I’m sitting in, the chair that he would have been sitting in if things had been different, but here I was, waiting for him to flip a single damn switch and send me to where I belong. I could see my breath every time I sighed, and the rush of crisp air that followed only reminds me of how many hours it’s been since my last drink, how many days it’s been since he left me in here to die, damn him, damn the King and his idiot son; how could they not see the King’s evils, how could they fall for his charm when he has none, how could they obey his every command, when his every command is the death of another innocent?

I stomped the ground with what little energy I had and let out a pathetic half-scream of frustration, and the room darkened until the only thing I could see were two red glowing eyes and a smile laced with fangs and poison, and something prodded at my heart and whispered into my ear, “Your soul for your escape.” I screeched madly, thinking my time had come and I had gone insane, and I shouted, “Take it! Take whatever you want!”

Alisa Su / The Spectator

—“Untitled” by Lester Lee

I looked out the city skyline, the moon outlining the trace of my smile under her silver glow. Silver like the plane that was the color of leaving. I wasn’t silver. I was black, like the shadows, and the jacket I threw on, the form fitting pants I tugged on, the knee-high leather boots I pulled on at night when everyone was asleep, dreaming that everything was better, while I made it happen. I was black as I pulled the mask over my face, covering who I used to be, who I left behind with Adrian in California for the East coast, in the twinkling lights of New York City, the city that never sleeps. Because all the important things happen at night. The feathers on the end tickle my cheeks, brush against my river of ebony hair that flows behind me.

As I catch my grin in the mirror before I slip out the thick mahogany door, I see who I am. Who I was meant to be. Black. The girl who survived in a world where I love you has more than one meaning, in a world that is far from perfect. The girl who pulls a feathered alibi over her face every night, so that in the silver of the moonlight, you only see her electric ice blue eyes.

Masquerade.

—“Lunar” by Emily Liao

Page 12

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

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The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 13

Features

By Ariella Kahan If you’re a chemist, gold is Au, number 79 on the periodic table. If you’re a historian, gold is a symbol for power and prestige. And if you are a trader, gold is something sold on the commodities market, the market that deals with raw materials.

For junior Mohammed Islam, who was recently selected from a pool of teen traders across the world to be named one of the Business Insider’s “20 under 20” teens in finance, gold is one of the primary materials he trades. Besides in gold, he invests in crude oil and stocks in companies. Islam is a passionate and extremely successful trader and has even begun paving his way to a career on Wall Street.

Islam started trading stocks when he was only 11 years old.

While most of his peers were concerned with the woes of starting middle school, Islam, after making simulated trades with fake money for nearly eight months, made his first appearance on the stock market with money he had saved from tutoring. Islam became interested in trading after his older cousin introduced him to penny stocks, which are stocks that trade for under a dollar. “I was always at his house and saw him [trading], and from then on I was interested. I have always been a business-oriented person, so it made sense for me to go into this field,” Islam said.

Though his cousin, who now works at Goldman Sachs, initially gave him some tips, Islam primarily taught himself how to operate on the stock market. “If you want to work in this field, you have to do it yourself,” Islam said.

Islam has been successful in balancing his “do it yourself” method of trading with school, making a profit from $1,000 to $2,000 every day. Unlike most traders, Islam has to work around the fact that he must be in school for the majority of the day. Because the hours of the equities (“regular” stocks)

market overlap with school hours, Islam places orders the day before, which enables him to buy and sell stocks without being present. However, he still attempts to keep up with the market during the day. “During free periods, I look the [stocks]

“My dad doesn’t work now and I tend to help out with things, and futures gives me that incentive.”

—Mohammed Islam, junior over, but I can’t really trade during school,” Islam said. Islam also devotes a lot of time to analyzing and strategizing on the equities market, which he puts to use over the summer when school no longer inhibits his trading.

However, because the commodities market, which deals with raw materials rather than companies, is open all day long, school hours do not present a problem. Islam still has to deal with completing his homework, which he does promptly. “If I don’t do it now, it will never happen,” said Islam, who spends the rest of the night trading. Trading is such a timeconsuming activity for Islam because he keeps very close tabs on the stock market. “I do press action trading and I read the tape, which gives me a better advantage because I know what is going on,” Islam explained. “I base [my trades] on what bigger players in the market are doing.

People that actually control the

market are investment banks, hedge funds, the government, the Federal Reserve, and we’re just small players, a couple hundred thousand dollars is not much. So we just try going behind the bigger players.”

Islam is more interested in the equities market because it offers more opportunities than the commodities market does. “There is more liquidity in [equities], as in, there is more volume and there are always opportunities,” he said.

“There are some hedge funds and banks that take commodity traders, but it’s not as common as equity traders, and I want to have more opportunities later.” Though Islam prefers equities, he spends more time trading on the commodities market because he makes more money from futures, which are agreements to buy or sell a certain stock on the commodities market at a fixed price. “My dad doesn’t work now and I tend to help out with things, and futures gives me that incentive,” Islam said. Still, Islam’s parents are not very enthusiastic about his interest in trading. “My dad doesn’t like [finance] that much.

He says he is okay with me trading, but my mom is skeptical about the market,” Islam said.

“But they see it as, if I am good at it, then why not?”

Despite Islam’s dedication to trading, he has had his fair share of setbacks. “I once lost $1,400 in a day, and I got really scared,” Islam said. “So I spoke to some of my friends and they just told me to chill. [...] And from there, I started building up more courage to trade more, and trade more strategically.”

Fortunately, Islam made up for the loss by making $3,200 the next week, but it persuaded him to stop trading penny stocks and shift his focus to investing in raw materials, primarily crude oil and gold. This decision has proven to be a beneficial one, but Islam, like any other trader, has continued to suffer from setbacks. Islam has learned how to minimize his losses by selling his stocks

the moment they start declining and quitting for the day after losing over $1,000. Islam has also learned to value his failures more than his successes.

“Losses are terrible, I don’t like them, but I learned a lot more from my losses than from my gains,” Islam said.

Islam has even begun sharing his knowledge of the stock market with Stuyvesant students as the founder of the Stuyvesant Investment Club, which meets one to two times a week. This club accepts both experienced traders and novices, and Islam teaches the

“My favorite part of this entire institute is risk.

[During] my first trade, my hands were shaking.

Every day is a new experience, and you never get used to it. It’s an exciting day, every day.”

—Mohammed Islam, junior members about the stock market as well as how to strategize and trade well. Furthermore, Islam puts the members’ skills to test at investment competitions among the members of the club and between schools.

Some interscholastic competitions the club participates in are the Ithaca High School Investment Competition and the upcoming Wharton High School Competition. Islam also

Courtesy of Mohammed Islam

The Golden Boy

Junior Mohammed Islam, who was recently named one of the Business Insider’s “20 under 20” teens in finance, aspires to build off of his current recognition and pave a long, successful career in business.

includes a monthly publication that will “give out some general thought tips—what happened before, and what happened after,” he said. Islam has high hopes for the Investment Club, and hopes to get “to a point where we are nationally recognized,” he said.

Islam’s future is looking bright, especially after being offered two jobs at investment firms in Long Island and Manhattan. The jobs, which offered him $9,000 and $12,000 per month, respectively, were a product of the publicity he received from the “20 under 20” article. Though Islam is still unsure as to whether he will take these offers because school is a priority, the offers are an indication of the likely successes in his future. In fact, Islam has high hopes for his career and aspires to manage a hedge fund, which is a private investment firm that uses risky methods to make large gains. Luckily, he will not have to worry about pursuing a career he is not passionate about, because he is already confident in his love for business, especially the risk factor and its lack of monotony. “My favorite part of this entire institute is risk,” Islam said. “[During] my first trade, my hands were shaking.

Every day is a new experience, and you never get used to it. It’s an exciting day, every day.”

Roving Reporter: Homework—Honestly

By Teresa Chen and Emma Loh In this issue’s staff editorial, The Spectator surveyed a range of junior and senior classes about homework. We asked students how much time it took to finish the average homework assigned in that particular class. We also asked the teacher how much time they thought the average homework assigned in that particular class took to finish. The results, which can be seen on page 14, are extremely varied, so to investigate possible reasons for this disparity, we asked students: Do you do all of your homework on a nightly basis?

“Actually, no, I don’t do all of my homework because I prioritize sleep. Oftentimes, I do more fun or easier homework. I find that some homework requires a lot of effort, which I don’t do. Like I said, I often find myself too tired to do the more tedious homework. Also, my extracurriculars take up a lot of time, which makes me more tired.”

—Alex Hirsch, sophomore “I do all of my homework every night because I feel like I’m obligated to do it. It also helps me study for tests instead of spending two hours the night before cramming. The time it takes me to do my homework varies—some nights, it could be three minutes. Others, it could take three hours. It’s all about luck.”

—Mark Dijkstra, junior

“I usually do all of my homework.

Usually, I do the easier homework the period before [it is due]. I do the homework because my parents want me to go to a top college and because I want to get a good grade [in the class].”

—Sarjeel Zaman, freshman

“Yes, I want to get good grades, but [I always do all of my homework] because of my morals: teachers give you responsibility, and it’s my job as a student to do the homework.”

—Nina Uzoigwe, freshman Laura Eng / The Spectator

“I don’t do all my homework at home because it depresses me. It usually takes me two hours to do homework in one night...I do math homework first because I feel that this is the class that least depresses me.”

—Mustafa Raja, freshman

“If I don’t take a teacher seriously, I won’t do their homework, or I’ll do it in a different class.”

—Jason Dong, sophomore

“I do my homework because it reenhances what I learned in the classroom...I want to be prepared in class and I want to make a good impression on my teachers.”

—Madina Radjabova, junior

Page 14

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Editorials Staff Editorial

Homework Survey: Results and Analysis

Introduction The Spectator conducted a survey in October, in which students were asked how much time they spent on homework in each of their classes and teachers were asked how much time they thought students spent on homework. The surveys were distributed to junior and senior classes by members of The Spectator Editorial Board. We analyzed the data in the context of 1) Class difficulty, 2) Department, 3) Juniors vs. seniors, and 4) Advanced Placement (AP) vs. regular. The results are outlined below and followed by a discussion section, which includes appropriate policy recommendations.

General Findings We hypothesized that teachers would underestimate the time students spent on homework. After all, it seems as if every teacher believes his/her class is the most important one and therefore assigns inordinate amounts of homework. This proved to be more perception than fact. On average, students spent 32.1 minutes on homework. Teachers thought that they assigned 32.2 minutes of homework per night. The mean difference of only .1 minute per class implies that teachers are capable of predicting the amount of

formance on homework? We defined “difficulty” as a combination of two factors: 1) How seriously do students take the class? 2) How easy it is to do well? A priori (before the experiment was conducted), the data was grouped into five categories, with “Level 1” being the easiest classes/teachers, and “Level 5” being the most difficult. We found that as classes became more difficult, teacher expectations remained the same, but student time in-

niors spend more time on homework, the probably response is, “juniors, of course.”

This is wrong, at least partially.

On average, seniors spent 10 more minutes on homework per class (26.2096 for juniors, in comparison with 36.1482 for seniors). We offer a few plausible explanations for this finding: 1) Seniors take more AP classes than juniors, 2) Seniors take fewer classes, and are therefore able to dedicate more time to each one, 3) Se-

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C HIEF

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On average, students spent 32.1minutes on homework.

Teachers thought that they assigned 32.2 minutes of homework.

Ph o t o g r a p h y E di to rs

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vestment increased dramatically. While teachers overestimated student time spent on homework by almost 20 minutes for “Level 1” classes, they underestimated student time spent on homework by 7.5

While teachers overestimated student time spent on homework by almost 20 minutes for “level 1” classes, they underestimated student time spent on homework by 7.5 minutes for “level 5” classes. time students spend on homework.

The data’s standard deviation, a measure of variance, was 18.78 minutes. The interquartile range, which measures the difference between the 25th and 75th percentiles of data, was 30 minutes. Basic regression (using ordinary least squares) found a statistically significant linear relationship in the data (confidence level greater than 99 percent). The data is not normally distributed (bell curve) and has extremely high levels of variance.

This indicates that, rather than aggregating about a mean, a gradient exists in which performance is dictated less by the teacher’s assignment and more by student initiative. Regardless of the teacher, subject, or class difficulty, students’ work varied significantly for each class. One might ascribe this to the “slacker vs. overachiever” phenomenon. Alternatively, students may be over/underperforming based on relative interest/talent in each of their classes.

minutes for “Level 5” classes.

Difficulty How does perception of difficulty affect student per-

Seniors vs. Juniors If you ask the average student whether seniors or ju-

Level 1: Avg Student Time: 16.5676 min Teacher Expectation: 35 min Standard Deviation: 16.7047 min Level 2: Avg Student Time: 25.3675 min Teacher Expectation: 33.75 min Standard Deviation: 12.1712 min Level 3: Avg Student Time: 29.1622 min Teacher Expectation: 26.785 min Standard Deviation: 19.8982 min Level 4: Avg Student Time: 38.8602 min Teacher Expectation: 34 min Standard Deviation: 23.9797 min Level 5: Avg Student Time: 45.4545 min Teacher Expectation: 37.5 min Standard Deviation: 23.9829 min

niors choose many of their classes, and are therefore more enthusiastic about them.

AP vs. Regular Unsurprisingly, AP students spend 15 more minutes than do their non-AP counterparts on nightly homework. Average time investment for a regular class was 25.914 minutes, while studentsdedicated39.9952 minutes per night to an AP class. Interestingly, however, the standard deviation was higher for the AP class than for the regular class (17.6702 vs. 20.2049). High variation in the amount of time spent on homework for AP classes indicates that, even among overachieving students, self-selected for a more difficult class, the amount of time spent on homework is a function of the student, not the class.

Department We expected students to spend the most time on homework for math and science classes, and for these numbers to decline for the humanities. Contrary to this expectation, we found that the aver-

On average, seniors spent 10 more minutes on homework per class (26.2096 for juniors as opposed to 36.1482 for seniors). age amount of time spent on homework for different departments did not differ signifi-

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• In Issue 5, it was incorrectly reported that former Director of College Counseling Casey Pedrick was appointed Assistant Principal of Guidance (APG). She is currently the Interim-Acting APG. • In Issue 5, the cutline of the photo for “Stuyvesant “Foils” Nest+M” incorrectly identifies senior Philip Shin as the fencer in the photo. It is unclear who the fencers are.

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 15

Editorials Staff Editorial

Homework Survey: Results and Analysis cantly. While an individual student may vary how much time he/she spends on each class, this variance cancels itself out across a larger student sample, in which student preferences/ strengths balance each other out. Important note: Data was only collected for 25 classes in Stuyvesant. Departmental figures listed below represent data from a small number of classes, and may not represent the Stuyvesant average.

Math: Avg Student Time: 41.2948 min Teacher Expectation: 34.167 min Standard Deviation: 23.9288 min Social Studies: Avg Student Time: 37.769 min Teacher Expectation: 36.428 min Standard Deviation: 18.2274 min English Avg Student Time: 34.5625 min Teacher Expectation: 35 min Standard Deviation: 13.6617 min Foreign Language Avg Student Time: 24.0676 min Teacher Expectation: 28 min Standard Deviation: 17.1352 min Science Avg Student Time: 19.7288 min Teacher Expectation: 20 min Standard Deviation: 14.9735 min Computer Science Avg Student Time: 34.0741 min Teacher Expectation: 25 min Standard Deviation: 30.5412 min 5/10 Tech + Health Avg Student Time: 14.7143 min Teacher Expectation: 35 min Standard Deviation: 12.4925 min Conclusions This survey was conducted to shed light on the homework process at Stuyvesant, which continues to be a recurring source of stress for Stuyvesant students. Teachers, on average, expect their students to complete over a half an hour of homework per night – a large amount considering the number of students who have full schedules. Our findings have also helped further the homework discussion by debunking the claim that teachers generally underestimate the amount of work they give. To the contrary, the average teacher estimate of homework given and the average students estimate were nearly the same – the difference was a meager .1 minutes.

Closer scrutiny, however, demonstrated that while, on average, teachers assigned accurate amounts of homework, individual teachers were unable to predict their individual classes’ time commitment.

Teachers whose classes were deemed Level 1 by The Spectator thought their students spent 35 minutes a night on homework, while teachers

whose classes were deemed Level 5 had almost identical estimates (37.5 minutes).

Yet, despite these similarities, Level 1 students spent 16 minutes on homework, while Level 5 students spent 45. This dramatic difference indicates that teachers’ estimates of homework workload is almost completely independent of reality. Similarly, despite the small difference between homework given by the average teacher and homework received by the average student, when taking absolute value difference between those two data points for

each surveyed class, we found that the teachers’ estimates were off by approximately 9.7 minutes per class.

Our conclusions regarding senior/junior time dedicated to homework leave much room for further discussion. We find that seniors spend more time per class on average than juniors, but we do not independently identify the source of the difference. If this finding were due to the smaller number of classes that seniors take, it would support the idea that students learn for the sake of learning, and fewer classes al-

low them to spend more time on each individually. Alternatively, if this result were due to the fact that seniors are able to choose many of their classes, it would support a reduction in the number of mandatory classes and student-wide access to more electives.

Finally, the high level of variance in the data cannot be overlooked. In fact, it might be the most interesting finding of all. Two plausible hypotheses could explain this variation.

The first argues that the difference in performance is due to the fact that some students

work harder and take the initiative to improve their grades.

The second hypothesis argues that certain students spend more time on homework for a class because they find the class more difficult. Our next survey, whose results will be published soon, should shed more light on this process.

This experiment was designed and implemented by The Spectator Editorial Board.

Data-analysis was conducted using Matlab 7.9.0.

Page 16

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Opinions

By Daniel Kodsi

Michelle Lin / The Spectator

Stuyvesant is branded as a math and science school, and to a great extent, we are. Our most successful team is the Math Team, our most advanced class is Differential Equations, and we’re renowned for our routine success at the Intel Science Talent Search.

Six of our eight Nobel Laureates won in medicine or chemistry.

But our success in math and science don’t even come close to capturing the whole picture; our English and social studies departments also excel. Let’s now turn the eye of reform to the humanities, in order to spur them on to a whole new level. One way to accomplish this is to cultivate student enthusiasm by providing more electives, even for freshmen.

As it stands, the non-music electives available to freshmen are Math Team, Math Research, and Advanced Topics (AT) Global History. The ones available to sophomores are only in the sciences, except for three history APs: European History, World

History, and Human Geography.

While this might sound like a considerable amount, you can only take APs, and that’s no more than any other top-tier high school.

Moreover, European Literature isn’t much different from Classical Literature in terms of content, and the non-AP history electives offered are notoriously difficult to be placed in as underclassmen.

This scarcity of options must be turned on its head. Fostering engagement in a subject doesn’t only mean more challenging coursework; it also means placing students who truly care about the material together to create a more rewarding classroom.

First, there’s the English department. Since English classes are almost completely discussion-centric, it stands to reason that the quality of a class is contingent upon the quality of the students in it—perhaps even more so than the teacher’s ability. This is why it’s of paramount importance to place together students who want a more challenging and intellectual English class. As is done with AT Global History, students should be able to sign up for an Honors English class in freshman year, with a written assignment determining their placement—perhaps during Camp Stuy—and then a lottery, like the placement for Math Team. While this may lead to some problems—it is difficult, after all, to gauge aptitude in English, and students might sign up simply to be in an “honors” class—any form of a self-selecting mechanism, where students

sort themselves into an elective or advanced track, is guaranteed to attract a more astute portion of the Stuyvesant community.

Next, for those who perform well, whether in the hypothetical Honors class or in regular English, there should be an option to enter more advanced classes in sophomore year, as opposed to having to wait until junior year to take an English elective or AP English. Given that every other department has the option for placement in faster-paced courses, such as Honors Math, Research Chemistry, and the history APs, this offering wouldn’t go against the norm. In the class, literary works could be covered more rapidly, essays could deal with more challenging prompts, and discussions could be taken to a higher level.

Luckily, the social sciences are in better shape, with AT Global History offered for freshmen and the three AP classes. However, there are still improvements that could, and should, be made: the curriculum should be expanded for underclassmen and overbooked electives should be provided in more sections.

My first suggestion revolves around AP Human Geography.

Given that Human Geography, like normal Global History, is centered around the world and provides, if not a simplistic, then at least a less in-depth curriculum than that of AP World, I believe that we should make it available to freshmen who have had more challenging material presented to them in their history classes

in middle school. According to College Board statistics, almost 70,000 freshmen took AP Human Geography last year. Stuyvesant, which prides itself on providing a rigorous learning environment, should also make the class a possibility. This would serve dual purposes by furthering the selfselecting mechanism already provided by AT Global History or a potential Honors English class, and, more importantly, by introducing high-achieving freshmen, many of whom might already know a great chunk of Global I, to AP classes and preparing them for European, World, and US History in future years.

Finally, AP Economics, Government, and other history electives should be expanded to allow more, and younger, students to take them. As of now, the lottery for getting into a history elective as an underclassman or a junior is very rough, and I understand why—there are limited openings, so those who have been in the system longest ought to have priority. However, that doesn’t mean that the number of sections can’t be expanded to allow room for more students. Allowing juniors to take Government or Economics and allowing more sophomores to take Jewish History, Modern China, or NYC History could provide them with the chance to be hooked onto a field a year earlier and explore it further in our high school career.

Admittedly, there’s one key flaw in my arguments, and that’s the cost of potential implementation. Two large reasons why we

Stephanie Chan / The Spectator

I Want an English Team, Too

don’t have these classes are budget constraints and lack of space.

It’s imperative that we start to explore new options in the humanities department, but the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough money. It’s that we’re spending it in the wrong places. Change won’t come today; it probably won’t even come while I’m still at Stuyvesant. But, given that our system is flawed by encouraging the exploration of some subjects while neglecting others, change must gradually come. So while short-term costs might be prohibitive, adjustments can and should be made over time. It’s a matter of priorities. Stuyvesant is ready for a rebranding: from a school for math and science to one that dominates in all departments.

By Brian Dong with additional reporting by Wenhao Du Directions: Select the best answer from the choices below.

What are college kids most notorious for?

A) PARTAYING!!

B) FREEDOM! #YOLOSWAG C) All of the above If you selected any of the answer choices above, congratulations! You passed the test! Now, why would we bother you with such a trivial question? College students are going to be part of NYC’s newest project. In an attempt to reduce smoking, the NYC city council voted in late October to raise the minimum age for purchasing tobacco from 18 to 21. Effective starting April 2014, this new policy is a prime example of an ineffective law enacted on good intentions.

What’s the big problem? Neither the original law nor the new amendment outlaws smoking.

The amended legislation states it is illegal to sell tobacco to minors under the age of 21. It says absolutely nothing about the act of smoking. This defeats the entire purpose of the policy, since peo-

have drastically reduced the number of smokers. Eliminating a major root of the problem, however, would be more successful.

Smoking is very dangerous and should be considered as seriously as alcohol consumption.

In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), smoking claims more than 440,000 American lives per year. The CDC also cites that “[t] here are approximately 80,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use each year in the United States.” If cigarettes claim more lives than alcohol does every year, then why do weconsider cigarettes less dangerous? After all, it only makes sense that we let younger people handle such a dangerous thing. The law is inconsistent. Both alcohol and tobacco are dangerous and addictive substances and should be treated with equal caution. By raising the smoking age to 21, the city will not only save countless lives, but also spread the message that cigarettes are, in fact, as bad as alcohol.

Proponents of the current smoking age argue that a stricter tobacco law would present profound inconsistencies between legislations. They say that 18year-olds are independent adults who can pay taxes, marry and have children, and risk their lives by joining the military. So why can an 18-year-old essentially sign his or her life away without being allowed to enjoy something as recreational as smoking? It’s because he or she isn’t fully considered an adult yet. A person’s brain, particularly the frontal cortex, isn’t fully developed until the age of 21. In other words, college freshmen are still prone to irrational thinking. Only at 21 are people biologically capable to make fully rational decisions. An 18-year old isn’t responsible enough to make a decision that could potentially ruin his or her entire life and even

the lives of others. He or she must wait to become a more logical, clear-headed person. This is why the national drinking age is 21: these young adults aren’t ready to make a decision of such magnitude.

Opposition insists that tobacco sales and taxes stimulate the economy; by eliminating a substantial source of revenue, the country’s faltering economy would fall into an even more precarious state. Although there are many smokers in the US, smoking costs far more than it can ever hope to make. According to the CDC, smoking was responsible “for $193 billion in annual health-related economic losses in the United States.” In addition, the country loses half a million citizens to smoking per year.

The city is taking the smoking issue in the right direction, but it must be more aggressive if it is to make a substantial impact.

Smoking is very dangerous, as it plagues smokers as well as the people around them in the form of secondhand smoke. It also

Hayoung Ahn / The Spectator

ple can still obtain cigarettes elsewhere. According to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the new ban is “legislation that will save lives,” but how is this act going to save people if they are still allowed to smoke? Young smokers will be able to obtain tobacco from older people without being penalized for smoking it.

Studies show that the majority of tobacco addicts start smoking before the age of 24. According to a survey by the Harvard School of Public Health, one third of college students smoke. Clearly, the problem starts in college, where a pervasive smoking atmosphere pressures many students into smoking. Thus, rather than raising the minimum smoking age to 21, the city should completely ban smoking under 21.

Since most serious smokers start smoking in their college years, an outright banishment of tobacco in this stage would solve much of the problem. People are more susceptible to developing bad habits in college. A pervasive smoking atmosphere pressures many unfortunate students, who are led to believe that smoking is cool. Once locked into that deadly mindset, they become more entangled into the thick, sinewy threads of the bewitching web known as addiction with every cigarette they smoke. If that destructive mindset were eliminated, there would be fewer smokers. Some colleges are already taking action. By September 2012, all members of the City University of New York had banned tobacco use. According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, there are over 1000 smoke-free campuses in the US. Thanks to Bloomberg’s aggressive anti-smoking tactics and policies, such as banning smoking in restaurants and increased public awareness, the smoking rate in the city dropped from 22 percent in 2002 to 14 percent in 2010. These tough tobacco laws

pollutes the atmosphere. Our Founding Fathers created this country on the premises of allowing its citizens to attain “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Let’s not just sit here and be idle. Let’s learn from our mistakes make a difference for future generations. It’s time to crack down on smoking.

Michelle Lin / The Spectator

Justin Kong / The Spectator

Why Can’t I Smoke?

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 17

Opinions

By Giselle Garcia Dear Stuyvesant English Student: Don’t aim for that 100. I mean it.

You might think it’s absurd for me to suggest this—after all, isn’t Stuy the one place where perfectionists and nerds can shine true?

Haven’t we been raised to try to ace tests and all of our classes?

I’m not making an absurd suggestion: I’m making a realistic one.

Unlike your math or geosci-

ence class, English classes rely less heavily on tests with concrete answers and more heavily on participation and writing assignments. Without a clear-cut single answer available in what is evaluated, English grading reflects a class that is far more prone to subjectivity and disparity than any other subject. Additionally, the greater difficulty in scoring a near-perfect grade in English, in comparison with doing so in a more test-reliant subject, is yet another thing that many nitpicking Stuyvesant students balk at.

Unfortunately, this may always be the case. However, instead of constantly stressing over the 100 that we may be unable to obtain, we need to start worrying about something more important: the skills that can be obtained from English class. Both our health and our education will thank us.

The difficulty in achieving a perfect average in English might be due to a tendency to cap grades, possibly due to the lack of existence of perfect writing.

But even for the teachers who do not have caps, such as Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman, the 99s and 100s given out are still few in number. This ten-

dency can be attributed to the fact that English is based more on essays. Although they are more difficult to perfect, this difficulty is not necessarily because of their subjectivity. While it is true that essays lack the clear-cut answers of exams, tests are not objective measures of student ability, as is commonly thought, as they are often not department-wide and vary in difficulty and format among teachers. Instead, this difficulty is caused by the number of skills that go into composing even a single sentence, as opposed to the single factor tested in an exam, which is merely the ability to find the right answer.

This difficulty also showcases the point of an essay: to work with these abilities, better practiced with writing than anything else.

Stuyvesant students need to look past the numerical grade on their report cards when it comes to English class, perhaps over any other class. Although it is a subject one is least likely to achieve “perfection” in numerically, it is also one where the skills obtained can be the most long-lasting. Besides watching their students demonstrate perfect grammar and extensive knowledge of literature,

Yueer Niu / The Spectator

Fear, Far From Reason

By Scott FaiRbanks

Deena Kwun / The Spectator

HONG KONG— From an island 10,000 miles away, 30year-old whistle-blower Edward Snowden launched an attack on the most powerful intelligence community in the world.

Snowden disclosed classified documents concerning PRISM, a U.S. mass surveillance program conducted by the NSA that was previously hidden from the general public. What Snowden revealed had far-reaching social and political consequences: he uncovered the tip of an iceberg, nourished by the icy waters of American fear. Fear, manifested in patriotism and nationalism, has compelled the NSA to act undemocratically. Historically, overreaction to fear has had grave consequences. This fear must be stopped.

The most prominent example of this cycle of fear and overreaction occurred under the Nixon administration. In 1971, Richard Nixon, fearing uncontrolled media leaks, authorized the creation of a special investigation unit, nicknamed the “Plumbers,” to seal these leaks and root out the leakers at any cost. The “Plumbers” decided to target Daniel Ellsberg, who disclosed the Pentagon Papers. They secretly broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in an attempt to find evidence that could be used to vilify him. However, under this blanket of secrecy, the Nixon administration figured it could get away with more. The administration became more corrupt, culminating in the Watergate scandal, or “Operation Gemstone,” in which the Nixon Administration used the “Plumbers” to break into the

Democratic headquarters.

The NSA, like the Nixon administration, is fearful. Intelligence officers working for the NSA fear terrorism. In an attempt to combat terrorism, the NSA feels it is necessary to collect information from everyone.

With the approval of FISA, a secret surveillance court—which recent reports reveal to approve almost everything—the NSA has access to everything anyone has ever said or done. Everyone’s phone calls, text messages, and Internet searches are recorded and stored in a federal database.

This surveillance program is undemocratic and violates our basic freedoms. The actions of the NSA proceed without our consent. Even our elected officials are not fully aware of what happens behind closed doors. The NSA has taken measures to keep the program secret because it is not something the public would approve of. However, like in the case of Nixon, unwarranted secrecy encourages corruption.

The NSA and its contracted employees have enough information to easily frame anyone as a wrongdoer. This program could put an end to whistle-blowers or anyone else who disagrees with a particular law or policy. The administration in power could use the program to control the press. An outside party that gains access to this has the ability to violate the security of an innovation or invention that would otherwise only be disclosed at the discretion of the targeted person or company. Even the president’s phone calls can be easily tapped and interpreted at the discretion of an NSA analyst. The possibilities are limitless.

Fear can lead to unmerited and undemocratic actions. The fundamental principle of these actions and the secrecy used to conceal them stimulates corruption, which harms both the government and the populace.

The issue of privacy vs. security is multi-dimensional. The question of how to address the threat of terrorism while upholding our basic constitutional rights will resound through this era. We can all agree that we need to maintain a state that separates fear from reason and makes decisions motivated by the latter, but the NSA’s PRISM program is not one such policy. It must be ended.

what teachers truly are attempting to do is impart is the skills that English class attempts to hone.

Writing and reading are both practiced continuously in the act of crafting essays and analyzing literature, as well as editing the work of oneself and one’s peers.

Discussion, although a skill more introverted students cringe at, is also readily practiced and may be one of the most beneficial ones in the future, and it encourages the development of the ideas used in writing. More open-ended skills are also trained, such as the creative thinking encouraged in the writing of essays and the attention to detail in constructing every component of a well-written piece. Other classes might be able to give you a good-looking number on your report card, but English class gives you so much more.

As simple as these skills may seem, they are vital in other classes and in the future, something that, if we were to stop worrying about the next essay score, might be more appreciated. While still in school, those who are incapable of reading a passage or novel will also probably struggle in the reading of a textbook in

science or social studies, something that is already setting them up for failure. In the future, when many students are going into job interviews, resumes and transcripts are meaningless if they fail to communicate clearly to the interviewer, as one’s personality cannot be displayed in a list of numbers. Even in fields where one might not think it necessary, writing is still a vital skill. In the worlds of finance and sciences, when set against a plethora of people skilled with numbers, the ability to write an educatedsounding report or email is what can set a hopeful apart from the competition.

The first thing many students look at upon getting essays back is the grade, a reflex that is counterproductive to an English class’s purpose. In English, beneath the numbers written in red are skills being used and perfected and mistakes being made.

Once Stuyvesant students realize that English is much more than the numbers they are bred to search for, perhaps they will stop worrying about that grade, and in doing so, focus on what is truly important: finding the skills that matter more than any 100.

Education for Me, Too?

By Brenda Lu

In 2007, the U.S. spent over $74 billion on correction facilities.

Despite the excessive amount of money allotted to prison, there was still a 67.5 percent chance of recidivism, the act of inmates returning to the prison. Clearly, our correction system is flawed.

In order to ensure society’s safety, use our budget efficiently, and better the lives of the American people, we need to invest in the education of our prisoners. Education, especially for juvenile delinquents, can give prisoners hope for reentry into society, better their lives, and allow them to be more productive citizens. It’s also cost-effective.

While education for inmates is expensive, the truth of the matter is that it’s a worthwhile investment. It costs $1400 to $1744 per inmate to provide them with a general education, as opposed to $8700 to $9700 per incarceration.

If we could successfully educate prisoners right now and prevent them from returning to jail later on, we would save thousands of taxpayer dollars. Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that for every dollar spent educating juvenile delinquents, the state saves about $12. With the rising costs of prison, it is important for us to recognize that education for inmates, especially juveniles, would benefit us not only socially, but also financially.

Education gives hope to the reentry of juvenile delinquents into society, and that alone should be a valid reason to provide these inmates with an adequate education. Almost all of adolescent inmates are released back into society in less than 10 years, and if they are not given satisfactory education in prison, their chances of recidivism only increase. According to the RAND Corporation, inmates who receive a general education of vocational training in prison are less likely to return to prison because they are more likely to find employment.

They are 28 percent more likely to be employed, and this allows them to earn a living for themselves, rather than relying on the government or crime. A highschool diploma or college-degree equivalent helps inmates transition better from prisoners into lawful citizens capable of being self-reliant. When we face such a high recidivism rate, education

Alice Li / The Spectator

Hayoung Ahn / The Spectator

A New Mindset: Don’t Aim for that 100 in English

should be emphasized more in prisons, especially for juveniles.

Statistics have shown that a strong education system in prison is very much effective. Denmark is a leading country in providing education to inmates, with over 14 large prison schools registered as Individual Adult Education Centers. When inmates are released, Denmark allows them to follow vocational training outside of prison through a program known as “frigang.” This has been extremely effective; Denmark has a recidivism rate of only 10 percent. Our system of simply making inmates wake up, “work,” and go back to sleep does nothing.

Our incarceration problems are not going to be solved by putting more and more people behind bars, because that will only be a temporary solution.

Instead, we need to find a way to fund programs that can actively work to make prisoners prepare for participating in the real world lawfully, successfully, and responsibly. Providing them with vocational training, a GED, and basic academic knowledge would be in our best interest.

Prisons would be most efficient if they could serve as places where prisoners could rehabilitate and think about what they have done wrong, rather than simply being confined. America stands for opportunity, but for many of these adolescents, born into poverty, bad choices were all they ever knew. As a society that preaches opportunity, we are practicing hypocrisy if we deprive these people of better futures through education. Yes, they should be imprisoned. But at the very least, let’s give them a path to a better life.

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 18

Opinions

By Danielle Eisenman When you hear the phrase “over-thecounter,” what do you think of? Overthe-counter drugs? Over-the-counter commodity derivatives? How about overthe-counter students? To me, labeling people as “over-the-counter” (or “OTC” for short) dumbs down their situations to, like, bottles of cough syrup on a pharmacy shelf. OTC students are actually students who enroll in New York City public high schools without participating in the high school applications process. This is because they are new and unfamiliar to the NYC school system, left the system and then returned, want to transfer out from their old schools, or didn’t participate in the admissions process for some other reason. Many of these students are new immigrants, have special needs, have been previously incarcerated, are extremely poor, come from foster families, are homeless, are over age for grade, and/or have histories of behaving poorly in their old schools.

Right now, the futures of these OTC students aren’t looking very bright.

They’re being de-zoned, or plucked from their zoned schools and sent to random high schools around the city. While this is unfair, I don’t think these students should stay at their zoned schools. I don’t think most public schools are good places for the types of students labeled “over-the-counter” at all. Most teachers don’t know how to handle these students, the schools are too big for students to get the individualized attention they need, and other students in better situations are negatively affected by going to school with OTC students. For these reasons, it would be better for them to be transferred from their local school to special school that can accommodate them.

School staffers are incompetent when it comes to dealing with OTC students.

The staffers generally don’t have degrees in psychology and/or psychiatry—they probably haven’t studied child behavior extensively. You can’t guarantee that the average teacher has a developed understanding of how special needs children are wired. They probably don’t really know how to help these kids. The way they discipline the students may reinforce their delinquency and they’ll end up leaving school in worse shape than they were in before they started. Obviously, depending on the teacher, things could end up working out for the student.

However, the possibility of things getting worse overshadows that.

Public schools are too big for OTC students to get the attention they need.

In New York City public schools, the average class size is in the twenties. This doesn’t sound too bad at all. But, how can one teacher, and maybe one guidance counselor, address the needs of all twenty students (give or take) at a given time?

Yes, this is an issue for all kids at public schools. No one’s discomfort should be invalidated or ignored because other people “have it worse.” You’re allowed to feel sad even if you aren’t a starving child in Africa. That being said, the kinds of kids that are OTC kids generally do “have

it worse” than, say, a stressed-out kid at a specialized high school. A Stuyvesant student may feel like the world is ending because s/he has no idea what his/ her Physics teacher is saying. That is an issue and it should be addressed. However, a recent immigrant may literally not understand a single thing his/her Physics teacher is saying. In this situation, the recent immigrant should be the first priority.

Because of the way over-the-counter students are randomly assigned to schools today, it’s difficult for teachers to keep track of all of their OTC students, in addition to their regular students. A teacher may not remember that a student is a recent immigrant who doesn’t speak a word of English if she doesn’t speak up. The teacher may yell at a student, forgetting that he was convicted of manslaughter—and the consequences that could hypothetically arise from angering a convicted killer. The teacher may not remember that the reason why one of her students never completes her homework is that she doesn’t have a home. Teachers would be more aware of and attentive to their students’ situations if they had fewer to worry about.

Going to school with the kind of students that tend to be OTC students is not so good for students in better situations.

Since a teacher will spend time trying to help out the OTC students, time and/or quality the teaching is taken away from

Even though some students have lessthan-perfect lives, they can still strive to live closer-to-perfect lives.

the students who don’t need the extra attention. For example, a teacher may be cut off during a lesson because a kid is behaving badly. This teacher will spend a chunk of class time trying to get things under control. The students are distracted by everything and it’s hard to get them focused again on the lesson. If this is a trend and keeps happening, the class will eventually fall extremely behind. If the teacher speeds things up to make up for lost time, it’ll probably take away from the quality of the teaching and how well the students learn the information.

“De-zoning” is an ugly word. Forcibly removing students from their zoned schools sounds evil and unfair—and, it is, the way it’s being done right now.

OTC students are randomly assigned to other public high schools, many of which are struggling. In my opinion, OTC students should be moved from their zoned schools, but not to unspecialized public high schools. Often times, these high schools are not suitable for students in difficult and/or high-risk situations. The one-size-fits-all approach to education is detrimental to today’s youth—especially over-the-counter students. Even though some students have less-than-perfect lives, they can still strive to live closer-toperfect lives. With appropriate attention and encouragement from teachers that are well-trained and knowledgeable, as well as the proper tools to equip them for the real world, a child’s chances of growing up to be a successful adult are greatly increased.

By Emma Bernstein Applying to high school is a difficult process, and it’s about to get worse. Remember all those interviews, and test prep sessions too? The DOE’s now made it even more difficult. Sound impossible? I thought so too. But lo and behold, they’ve managed to by shutting down zoned schools across the city and replacing them with schools that accept incomers by application only.

This decision didn’t come from out of the blue; the DOE is actually working to solve a huge issue with New York City public schools that we don’t see here at Stuyvesant: it’s what they call “Over the Counter” (OTC) students. Every year there are around 36,000 of these students who come into new New York City public school districts throughout the year.

This happens for a few reasons: the students didn’t originally register for that school, they came into the district after moving to New York, or they’re returning home after being detained. These students mostly affect zoned schools, which make up approximately 10 percent of schools in New York City, and their impact doesn’t go unnoticed. This year, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University did a study assessing the schools that OTC students enter.

They found that OTC students typically enter low-performing schools with high percentages of drop-outs and students who are currently learning English. These are issues that use up plenty of resources, making it even more difficult for schools to handle the influx of students needing special care. The cycle that OTC students create is detrimental to their school’s ability to create an effective learning environment.

It’s clear that we’ve got an issue on our hands, but the real one is how our city is choosing to deal with it. They’ve decided to essentially dezone the districts; this means capping enrollment at zoned schools, where OTC students are most densely populated, while opening new smaller schools within the buildings of currently zoned schools. Their logic makes sense on the whole; if schools are struggling because of high concentrations of OTC students, then why not distribute the students more equally throughout smaller schools?

Unfortunately, there are a lot of issues with this solution, mostly because it isn’t one. Notice that the only thing the DOE does is spread the problem from one school to the rest—we’re just putting OTC students in a more difficult situation, even though the overall school may improve. We aren’t solving the core of this issue. Nowhere do we increase funding for students learning English or work to rehabilitate delinquents; instead, we’re just making the problem worse. If a recent immigrant has trouble, or a student has recently been released from a juvenile detention center, the solution shouldn’t be to send them further from their homes. In the case of delinquents, it gives them even more room to get back into trouble, and it places unnecessary burdens on immigrants.

The problems don’t stop there. By limiting enrollment in zoned schools, the DOE strips the rights of all students to attend a neighborhood school. Yes, students living in that zone will be prioritized, but there’s nothing stopping the DOE from sending that student, who could be a ten-minute walk from the zoned school building, somewhere an hour and a half away. Regardless of the DOE prioritizing local students, this is still a very real possibility as OTC students can’t rely on the initial placement into a local school, because they aren’t there for it. Even if new schools are opened, the buildings are still the same, and therefore still hold the same number of students. If we had overflow issues back then, we’re sure to have them now.

Hayoung Ahn / The Spectator

Jessica Wu / The Spectator

Point-Counterpoint: Closing Zoned Schools De-zoning: The Best of Over The Counter, Bad Options and Still Under the Radar

Current students in zoned districts are given the option to choose between the schools they apply to, and a zoned school as well. But when students are refused a zone school, they are now obliged to go to their school-by-application. If you don’t like the school you were assigned to, you’re stuck with it anyway— there’s no fallback.

This creates a multitude of issues for both families and schools alike. For one, now that we’re sending children to school farther from their homes, we increase transportations costs. The original issue that we faced was lack of resources for OTC students, but now the DOE has decided to use the same limited resources

OTC students are a major issue for our city’s schools, but the bigger one is how we’ve chosen to deal with them.

to send these students farther away from their homes. This makes it difficult for parents to be involved in their children’s education, because siblings are no longer guaranteed to be placed in the same school. Unfortunately, lack of parent involvement is detrimental to the educational environment. In a study, the National Education Association found that regardless of income or background, if parents were involved in school, the students had higher test scores and students possessed stronger social skills. A good school requires more than just funding, it needs an environment that fosters educational growth; however, by alienating parents, we’re doing anything but.

Our city’s OTC epidemic needs a solution—we just haven’t found one yet. We can’t hide these students any longer, but we need to find a way to face the issue without disincentivizing parents, stripping students of their current rights, and exacerbating the already pertinent issue of OTC students. Limiting zoned schools is not a solution. Instead, let’s work on solving the root of the issue—the heavy burden of OTC students. Locally, schools need work on increasing parent involvement while they still have that opportunity. On a larger scale, the DOE needs to allocate funding to integrate families into new school districts, whether by providing behavioral aid or language lessons so that we can build active communities and healthier schools. The OTC population deserves real assistance, not just redistribution.

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 19

Opinions BOE: A for Effort, But Keep Trying

By Coby Goldberg “Wait so does he really do crack?”

“No, not crack—LSD.” “Is there a difference?”

“I’m confused though, is LSD particularly bad for you?”

This was a five-minute discussion at a meeting of the Stuyvesant Board of Elections (BOE). This sort of disorganized conversation is typical of the BOE’s meetings, of which there have been four this year.

Over the last several years, the BOE has lost credibility because of its organizational weakness.

It needs to think through consequences of each decision, create a clear set of rules, and behave in a consistent manner, treating each campaign equally. Perhaps most importantly, it must communicate with the student body.

When a body acts in the name of public interest, it is not enough to behave fairly—it must be seen to behave fairly. To be clear, the BOE has an important role to play in student governance, but it cannot fulfill that role if it does not have the respect of the campaigns and the trust of the broader student body.

Because it operates so under the radar, students were largely unaware of the BOE’s weakness until its self-inflicted crisis of June 2013, when it came under heavy fire for its disqualification of the Jack Cahn-Remi Moon Campaign for Student Union (SU) President.

More than 1,000 students signed a petition against the decision.

In response, the BOE has implemented several rule changes this year. The main change is a replacement of the three-strike system with a ten-point system.

Violations now have varying levels of severity, which are reflected in the number of points attached.

Ten points results in disqualification.

First, I would like to commend the BOE for moving in the right direction and replacing the antiquated strike system. The system that punished serious infractions like negative campaigning with the same severity as poster violations did not accurately represent a campaign’s credibility and was not conducive to fair elections. Unfortunately, in this election season, the BOE went too far

to the opposite extreme, replacing the overly rigid strike system with one that barely enforces anything. Instead of fulfilling its mission by communicating effectively with the student body and creating a democratic system, the BOE has created an even more arbitrary, disorganized system of oversight that has allowed some campaigns to get away with egregious rule violations.

Item One: The Berman-Eisenman Campaign for Freshmen Caucus ordered and wore campaign t-shirts. This is in direct violation of rule one of the Election Handbook, which bans usage of propaganda other than paper and assigns one point for such actions. The campaign received a command to stop wearing the shirts but no penalty. “We had a vote on it, and it was decided that, since they weren’t handing it out or anything, it was kind [of] similar to taping posters to your shirt,” junior and BOE chairman Shazif Shaikh said in a telephone interview. “So it wouldn’t have been fair to penalize them for that honest mistake.”

Item Two: The Akilov-Usvitsky Campaign, also for Freshman Caucus, accused the KumiTang Campaign of stealing ideas from its platform. “The group approached me and my running mate personally and said that they will post the same things as us and told us not to tell on them,” Akilov wrote in an e-mail to the BOE. The BOE assigned the Kumi-Tang campaign only 3 points.

“Stealing is a violation of New York Department of Education rules, but beyond that it’s just immoral,” senior and BOE member Zeerak Abbas said. “Especially if it was later in the season, I would give them more. Something like five or maybe six.”

Item Three: In the most serious violation of this election season, the campaign of Sophomore Caucus President Krzysztof Hochlewicz and Vice President William Yang handed out frosted pretzels placed in packages with their names on the packaging.

Around 30 were handed out, according to Hochlewicz. This was in clear violation of rule six of the handbook: “If there is substantial evidence of bribery … [the campaign] will be disqualified.” The BOE assigned them six points for this violation.

The Debnath-Bohwmick Campaign, which faced Hochlewicz-Yang in the run-off, then asked the BOE if it could hand out its own food and accept the six-point penalty, understandably wishing to level the playing field. The BOE responded that they would be disqualified if they did so.

On a basic level, this double standard feels wrong. So many of the BOE rules are designed to prevent financial advantages from playing a role in the elec-

Unfortunately, in this election season, the BOE went too far to the opposite extreme, replacing the overly rigid strike system with one that barely enforces anything.

tions. And yet a campaign was allowed to blatantly bribe voters.

Hochlewicz, in a public argument on Facebook, claimed, “We’re nice people and we want to give others free snacks.” By the same logic, a candidate could hand out money so that voters could buy their own snacks. After all, they’re just being nice!

Unfortunately, telling Debnath he could hand out food and just accept the penalty would only have made matters worse.

But by letting Hochlewicz-Yang get away with giving out food, the BOE left itself only one option: uneven enforcement of its own

rules. What is most worrying is that the election was won by fewer votes, 21 to be exact, than the number of pretzels given out.

True, it didn’t make sense that that a ticket got two-thirds of the necessary strikes to be disqualified last year simply because they put up one poster too many and left garbage in the SU. But that is no excuse for clear violations to be ignored now, especially not in the case of bribery. Bribery is bribery, and we all know it when we see it.

But what I find most disgraceful about this year’s elections isn’t just the poor enforcement of rules. It was the fact that there was no way for most students to know that any of these violations happened. Indeed, when I told students that the BOE is using a new point system, most responded with “really?” or “what’s the BOE?” If the student body has no involvement in the regulation of the democratic processes at our school, how can these processes be truly democratic? A little more transparency could go a long way.

The BOE must make a credible effort to advertise its actions.

One of the biggest problems in the Cahn-Moon scandal was that no students knew strikes had been assigned in the first place.

For most, the disqualification came out of the blue. Would it be so hard to post updates on a Facebook page, or maybe update the page on the SU website every once in a while?

But all of these issues—the lack of communication, the arbitrary enforcement, and the vague rules—stem from basic disorganization in the BOE. “From what I have heard, it’s more organized than last year. Like everything comes to a vote,” junior and SU liaison to the BOE Kyle Olesyiuk said in a telephone interview. “[The meetings] could be a little more focused though. Maybe a bit more formal.” Ten of the 15 BOE members attended each meeting, of which there were only two during the entirety of election season (the first two were held before campaigning started, in order to finalize the rulebook). Moreover, all three BOE chairs missed the first 20 minutes of their introductory and only meeting with the candidates.

You can’t oversee an orderly

election process if your own oversight process is disorderly. I challenge the BOE to use the five months before the next elections well.

Step one: Make the BOE a more serious institution. Hold frequent meetings. Ensure that your members attend. Don’t make meetings look like the hodgepodge of confusion that they have been thus far. Arriving on time would be a good start.

Step two: Rewrite the rules.

You had the right idea when you distinguished between infractions of varying severities this year. Now make them specific.

Approach them from a standpoint of, “If I were a candidate, how would I try to get around these?” It should be clear when a certain action is in violation of the rules. Also get feedback from the candidates at the end of each election season. That way, the people who complain most about the rulebook can help change it.

Step three: Communicate better with the student body and the candidates. The BOE should be consulted every time a candidate wants to make a questionable decision. Making yourself seem approachable to the candidates is key. The BOE would often take days to respond to a candidate’s query during this past election season, which discourages them from consulting the BOE again.

That has to stop. Furthermore, the student body should know when the BOE is making new rules and when it is assigning strikes. How about actually using your Facebook page and website to post updates. Explain what you are doing to improve the existing system based on past complaints.

Finally, stand your ground.

Never again allow violations, even minor ones, to escape the appropriate punishment. You have five months until the next election cycle. You don’t need to spend every minute working on BOE rules. But if you hold serious meetings, and work to make the rules fair and clear, soliciting student input whenever possible, you will have no reason to back down on enforcement.

A for effort thus far. Now let’s see some results.

Cindy Li / The Spectator

A “NU” Way of Doing Things

By Milo BernfieldMillman The great thing about afterschool activities like the Stuyvesant Theater Community (STC) is that students come together in wonderful, creative effort. In the STC, students put on shows almost entirely by themselves with mostly rational regulations. However, I feel that one policy is unfair: the grade requirement. This

policy states that if you receive two “N”s or one “U” on your first marking period report card, you will be removed from an STC show. The STC advertises this rule as a no-exceptions policy, and the results of its implementation are damaging. The grade requirement should be discarded.

For a fall musical such as “West Side Story,” the justification for kicking people out of the show based on grades is very

shaky. Grades that students receive during the first marking period are preliminary and can easily be improved. These grades are usually worse than ones received later in the year because they are, for the most part, compiled from only one or two tests. What’s more, these tests are the first we ever receive from our new teachers and, for freshmen, the first they ever receive at this school.

It makes little sense to remove an actor or show member at this point in the year, and it makes less sense to ban freshmen from their first show.

The STC tries its hardest to be professional, and for an entirely student-run program, it does well. But it’s hard to be professional when actors can be kicked out in the middle of any show. It puts stress on the directors and producers because they have no idea who will be taken out and how to handle the situation if it comes up. It also damages the quality of the show by pressuring other members of the production with worries about how the production will turn out. These members often have to compen-

sate for the loss of a cast member by working harder.

The grade policy also implies that the STC and its productions are partly responsible for a student’s poor grades. This assumption is, for the most part, blatantly untrue. Studies show that when students are unhappy, grades suffer, and, at least from my experience, every person who commits to an STC production enjoys being a part of it. Furthermore, a student’s grades rarely have anything to do with his or her extracurricular commitments. Failing a class is a problem in and of itself, and there is no reason to make students’ lives more miserable by depriving them of their extracurricular activities. Considering how slowly punishments are doled out during the production of some shows, it is like salting a wound to kick students out of shows they have dedicated weeks to for receiving less-thansatisfactory grades. The grade requirement is put in place because the administration wants students to do better in school, but this result is not achieved.

An alternative to this policy is

to give teachers the option of removing students with poor grades from STC shows. This way, if a teacher believes the production is causing a student’s grades to suffer, then he or she can remove the struggling student. On the other hand, if the teacher knows that the student is simply adjusting to the workload and that the first marking period grades are not reflective of the student’s effort, then the teacher can choose to leave that student in. The teacher knows why he or she gave that student a poor grade, and is therefore most capable of making any decisions regarding punishment. This system should be adopted and publicized, so that anyone wrongfully kicked out of a production has a better chance of returning.

The STC and other extracurriculars are great creative outlets that enhance the education of most participants. Two letters on a report card are not good enough reasons to deprive any student of these opportunities.

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 20

Arts and Entertainment Calendar

Looking Forward : December SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY 3

Album release Leona Lewis’s “Christmas, With Love” Genre: Holiday Concert Elton John Madison Square Garden 8 p.m.

WEDNESDAY 4

Movie Release “Out of the Furnace” Genre: Crime Cast: Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard, Woody Harrelson Concert Phantogram Terminal 5 7 p.m.

THURSDAY 5

Art gallery opening Lynette Lombard: “Night and Day” Bowery Gallery (Chelsea) 5 p.m.-7:30 p.m.

Available through December 22, 2013 Concert Twenty One Pilots Irving Plaza 7 p.m.

Concert Caveman Bowery Ballroom 8 p.m.

8

9

10

11

Concert Lucius Bowery Ballroom 8 p.m.

Concert Lupe Fiasco Irving Plaza 7 p.m.

Album release Childish Gambino’s “Because The Internet” Genre: Hip hop

Art gallery Clara Fialho Tria Gallery (Chelsea) Available through January 18, 2014

Concert Vienna Boys Choir Carnegie Hall, Isaac Stern Auditorium 2 p.m.

Album release Toy’s “Join the Dots” Genre: Psychedelic rock

Album release VersaEmerge’s “Another Atmosphere” Genre: Alternative rock

Concert Mikal Cronin Webster Hall 7:30 p.m.

12

Art gallery opening Ingrid Calame: “Tracks” James Cohan Gallery (Chelsea) 6 p.m.-8 p.m.

Available through February 8, 2014

FRIDAY 6

Movie release “Inside Llewyn Davis” Genre: Biography, drama, musical Cast: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham, Justin Timberlake Concert Ingrid Michaelson Webster Hall 6 p.m.

13

Concert Handel’s Messiah Carnegie Hall, Isaac Stern Auditorium 8 p.m.

Movie release “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Genre: Adventure, fantasy Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace

Concert Cass McCombs Bowery Ballroom 9 p.m.

Concert Wild Child Mercury Lounge 7 p.m.

Concert Z100’s Jingle Ball 2013 Madison Square Garden 7:30 p.m.

15

16

New York City Ballet George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker” 1 p.m., 5 p.m.

Single tickets are now on sale online

Concert Rhett Miller New York City Winery 8 p.m.

Concert New York City Gay Men’s Chorus Town Hall Theatre 3 p.m., 7 p.m.

Museum exhibition Christopher Wool The Guggenheim Museum Available through January 22, 2014

SATURDAY 7

Concert TobyMac The Theater at Madison Square Garden 7 p.m.

Art gallery Beth Cartland: “Dialogue with Shape & Color”. Phoenix Gallery (Chelsea) Available through December 21, 2013 Art gallery opening Marvin Bileck, Emily Nelligan: “Emily Nelligan: Drawings and Marvin Bileck: Thimbledon Bridge” Alexandre Gallery (Midtown) 1 p.m.-3 p.m.

Available through January 11, 2014

14

Art gallery Chip Hooper: “Surf” Robert Mann Gallery (Chelsea) Available through February 1, 2014 Museum exhibition “Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938” MoMA Available through January 12, 2014

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 21

Arts and Entertainment

Jensen Henry Foerster / The Spectator

By Caroline Bredthauer By the time I discovered the painting of a girl eating a songbird alive, I was convinced that seeing the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition of René Magritte’s surrealist works was one of the most fascinating, if not disturbing, ways I could have spent a day off.

With surrealism, there is never a right answer. If there

By Jenny Jiang Do Hwa can easily be lost among the countless other Korean restaurants in New York City. I only happened across it because my dad was meeting an old friend from Australia, who had an enjoyable dining experience at Do Hwa during her last trip to the city and wanted to eat there again. I decided to revisit this restaurant a week later with my friends for lunch, and I was pleasantly surprised by both the quality and authenticity of food offered.

The first thing I noticed upon stepping inside was the aroma of barbecuing meat with a thin layer of air freshener gently mixed in. These mingling scents faded as we moved into the seating area. It didn’t take long to order given the simplicity of the menu, and though I wish Do Hwa offered more variety, the food we ordered was more than enough.

Appetizers like Mandu Gui (panfried beef dumplings) and Heymul Pajun (large seafood scallion

100 Years of Avant-Garde

In 1911, two years before the Armory Show, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) was created with a mission to “lead the public taste in art, rather than follow it.” The entire world was experiencing an era of political, social, and cultural revolution, and New York was at the heart of it. Movements like women’s suffrage and Bohemian culture shook conservative society, and if any event was going to change mainstream culture, it was going to happen here. New Yorkers greatly appreciated the dreamy style of Impressionism, the most recent art movement.

But even some of the most openminded art junkies could not handle the boldness of the Cubists and Fauves that the Armory Show had brought from Europe.

The reactions to the show—both positive and negative—helped shape the cultural path of the coming century, as presented in the historical archives included in the New York Historical Society’s exhibit.

The Society’s take on the Armory Show certainly lives up to the original exhibition’s stan-

dards. The current exhibit is laid out in a historically comprehensible fashion. It begins with pieces representative of the art scene before the Armory Show, focusing on works like “Battleships at Newport” by Elmer L. MacRae, which possesses the hazy, summertime bliss characteristic of Impressionism. As the show progresses, the paintings and sculptures shift in topic and style. “Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair” by John Solan shows three immigrant women relaxing on a New York rooftop, a change from the rich, elegantly dressed subjects typical of Impressionist art. Even more powerful are works centered on the period’s latest political and social controversies, such as “White Slave” by Abastenia St. Leger Eberle, which depicts prostitution as disturbingly similar to slave trading.

The pieces become more and more bizarre—and, simultaneously, more and more meaningful—until we finally reach the artists that defined the exhibition’s impact: the Cubists and the Fauves. Their works are wildly colored, unorganized in shape and form, and insulting to almost

every convention in the book.

They include Henri Matisse’s daringly abstract “Blue Nude,” which crudely depicts a reclining female figure in bold color and confusing shape.

Possibly the most emotionally moving piece in the room, though, is Marcel Duchamp’s cubist painting, titled “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2).” Not only did the piece tear apart the conventional subject of the nude into an almost incomprehensible jumble of angles and lines, but it also gave a unique perspective

were a simple way to interpret a painting of a man in a dark room with a glowing light bulb for a head, what would be the point?

Magritte’s work captivates because every painting challenges its audience to come up with the story behind it. My mother, who had visited the exhibition on an earlier date, bombarded me with questions as soon as I got home, mostly about a particular painting of a cloud sprawled over the rocky ground. “I thought it was supposed to represent a loss of hope,” she said. But when I looked at the cloud, I saw a more concrete, physical image of a wounded animal taking its final breaths.

Magritte wanted to “challenge the real world” with his art and invite his audience to determine for itself what differentiates the ordinary and the imaginary.

His style is not overtly fantastical; while it occasionally veers into bizarre territory, his paintings are, for the most part, realisti-

cally rendered. Like fellow surrealist Dali, he paints in a lifelike manner that calls no attention to itself to portray utterly nonsensical subjects.

The MoMA’s collection includes more than 80 works created between 1926 and 1938.

The exhibit is not organized chronologically, and, consistent with Magritte’s style, the layout is eclectic. There are several paintings and collages depicting long swathes of light brown hair erupting from shoes, but they are scattered throughout the exhibition rather than lumped together on account of the similar subject matter. One of these paintings was on its own wall, demanding complete attention; another shared space with a portrait of a man and a woman with machinery working just underneath their skin. The layout was refreshing; the art on the walls was varied enough that I never got bored.

The titles of many Magritte paintings are as absorbing as the

paintings themselves. The painting in which the stoic young girl devours a songbird is aptly titled “Young Girl Eating a Bird,” with the subheading “The Pleasure.”

I could rattle off a dozen theories regarding the subheading: She was starving, and by eating the bird her life is saved. Or perhaps her stoicism is simply a facade, and she is enjoying the morally reprehensible meal. Or maybe the pleasure is not hers but the bird’s, and it is happy to be eaten.

Magritte’s work forces the mind to look at the world differently, because there is no possible way to make sense of his subject matter through normal ways of thinking.

Though I had entered the exhibit with two friends, I found myself drifting away from them after observing the first few paintings. I noticed the same thing happening to others; groups coming in would often fall apart.

It was very difficult for me to enjoy the exhibit with other people,

Sabrina Chan / The Spectator

To New Yorkers in 2013, constantly surrounded by indie-pop, mainstream-rejecting, counter-culture artists and their often bizarre art, the avant garde movement of the early 20th century seems old-fashioned. But the present animated art scene in New York had to have started somewhere. Dubbed the Armory Show, the International Exhibition of Modern Art took place from February 17 to March 15, 1913 at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. Of some 1,400 distinctive works showcased there, it was the exposition of the avant garde artists—textbook names like Picasso, Matisse, and Duchamp—that stirred up a mixed hysteria of praise and criticism in the art world of that era.

The New York Historical Society’s exhibit, “The Armory Show at 100,” celebrates the exhibition’s centennial. Its presentation of this event not only shakes viewers’ emotions with an unexpectedly strong tremor, but also successfully pieces together the event’s complex historical puz-

zle.

The Mystery of the Ordinary

Do Hwa, Do Eat

pancake) caught my eye, but I knew I could never finish it all.

Instead, my immediate hunger was satiated by banchan, a collection of small side dishes that typically start off most Korean lunches. The deliciously spicy kimchi more than made up for the oily aftertaste of the vermicelli side dish and the blandness of the string beans.

Quickly after finishing the banchan, our L.A. Kalbi (barbecued beef short ribs), Deji Bulgogi (spicy pork barbecue), and Dak Gui (pan-grilled, thinly sliced chicken breast in sesame marinade) arrived. The L.A. Kalbi was covered in a thin layer of sweet teriyaki sauce, and the meat was well-done, neither tough nor chewy. Accompanying this dish was a decorative circle of onion rings. In short, it was perfect.

Similar to kimchi, the Deji Bulgogi had a spicy first bite, but left a lingering sweetness. The dish also arrived with spicy circular pepper cuts. It would appear that Do Hwa’s trademark is the careful balancing and mixing of sweet,

spicy, and sour flavors.

The Dak Gui entrée was accompanied by a watercress salad, miso sauce, and rice. The marinade was tangy, and the miso sauce was both sweet and salty.

The rice was certainly a good complement for the miso sauce, as the sauce’s saltiness could be overpowering. Unfortunately, the watercress was spicy, sour, and left a bad aftertaste—ordering a large amount of it was a waste. If I had only known sooner, I would have asked my server to not include any watercress at all.

Perhaps the highlight of the entire experience was dessert: flourless chocolate cake with raspberry coulis. This cake was perfectly balanced with the sweetness of the cake complementing the sourness of the raspberry coulis. Every bite of the chocolate cake mixed with raspberry sauce melted in my mouth—it was nothing short of absolute deliciousness. Alternative dessert options include sorbet and gelato.

on the concept of movement.

Despite the portrait’s lack of resemblance to an actual human figure, one can almost feel the thundering footsteps of the subject descending the stairs and see her chaotic gestures.

Representing a time period of artistic change, this collection of artworks wields an incredible variety of styles and tastes. It successfully captures the essence of diversity that the Armory show itself had while adhering to almost any art fanatic’s aesthetic desires.

mainly because drawing meaningful conclusions on Magritte’s more fantastical works is a very personal experience, requiring you to draw upon your imagination and memories. Having other people around to offer their opinions diminishes the search and reward of coming to a conclusion that makes sense to you based on what you’ve seen in the past, what dreams you’ve had, and where your imagination lies.

It has been nearly three weeks since I visited the MoMA, and I haven’t forgotten the light bulbheaded man, or the carnivorous girl, or the dying cloud, or the shoes sprouting hair. I try to find some sort of explanation for each of them, a story that really explains the subject matter to its fullest extent. I try, but I always end up grasping at straws. I think it will be a long, long time until I find any answers that satisfy me, and a long, long time until this exhibition ceases to affect me.

Food

Jennifer Dikler/ The Spectator

By Claire Burghard

Exhibition

Though Do Hwa is not large, the atmosphere and interior space are comfortable and airy enough for both the waiters to move around and the customers to dine at ease. The wooden tables each hold one small candle, adding a classy touch. The ambience is more of a trendy and romantic one; however, it can just as easily serve as a place for get-togethers with friends. Known by some (including my family friend) as the

best Korean restaurant in New York City, and with everything from great service to delectable main courses, Do Hwa is certainly a place I would recommend to all food lovers. Without a doubt in my mind, I’d say: Do Hwa? Do eat.

Do Hwa is located in West Village at 55 Carmine St.

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 22

Arts and Entertainment Music Night Time, Strange Times

Government Plates: A Landscape of Desolation

By EDA TSE Sky Ferreira’s debut album, titled “Night Time, My Time,” isn’t the most radio-friendly pop album, but it isn’t supposed to be. With a breast-baring cover and dramatic noisealtering echoes integrated into most songs, it’s not trying to get people to like Ferreira, but it manages to sway the listener anyway.

Moreover, classifying Ferreira’s album is just as hard as classifying Ferreira as a person.

This is a prevalent theme in her album: no matter how much they might try, listeners simply cannot know her. Ferreira escapes and defies the label of a single genre, taking a dark, synth-y look at her life and her feelings.

As someone who’s been following Ferreira’s progress throughout the years, I was relieved to finally hear something she fully created. Seven years of hard work, plus multiple attempts to create an album that her record would agree to produce, created “Night Time, My Time.” Yes, it’s a definite departure from the dance pop of her 2011 EP “As If!” and the more quiet 2012 EP “Ghost,” in which her voice flitted from melancholy to longing. But “Night Time, My Time” makes its own mark as another stage of her evolution, and one more fitting for the darkness that Ferreira has always possessed.

“Night Time, My Time” encases every song in synth and production, to the point where some songs are almost impossible to understand upon first listen (listen to “Kristine” or the eponymous “Night Time, My Time”). Ferreira’s attempts to show who she is end up cloudy, indicating that she still needs some time to figure out who she is before making a record about her image. Still, her voice manages to make itself heard on more traditional pop songs, working through powerful guitar riffs and repetitive beats.

The spacey production of Ferreira’s spoken line “I knew it was love” from the song “Boys” is a fitting beginning to the album. The line itself is haunting—thanks to the decision to edit Ferreira’s voice into a thin whisper from behind the beats—and defines the song’s character right up to the point when it pushes itself into the listener’s headphones with a percussive punch.

Meanwhile, the personal and immediate “24 Hours” and “Love in Stereo” follow Ferreira’s formula: synth and her sweet voice. However, songs that stray from this formula end up becoming strange tracks with no context. She sings about Japanese Jesus/Christmas in “Omanko,” rather than the more traditional topics of boys or her personal life. Though I appreciate the slant rhyme, the song has no real meaning; the repetition of “I’m gearing up for a Japanese Christmas” doesn’t seem to signify anything. Likewise, “Kristine” seems to speak about Ferreira’s own life, but the mumbling lyrics are distant, cold, and hard to make out underneath the droning beats. Luckily, Ferreira keeps the overbearing beat in only three songs of the album. It’s a

Sky Ferreira’s debut album, titled “Night Time, My Time,” isn’t the most radio-friendly pop album, but it isn’t supposed to be. particular shame she chose to do it on “Kristine,” though, because the song yields gorgeous lyrics like “the young on the run with a ton”—again nonsensical, but quite lovely in rhythm. Nevertheless, most of the songs on the album never break out of Ferreira’s range or attempt anything technically spectacular, yet the flow from one song to another makes it feel cohesive.

The album is designed to create mixed feelings—putting people on the fence—and the song “Night Time, My Time” highlights this, with the droning and slurring common in the entire album. While the production can be overbearing at times, Ferreira’s rawness (when it can be heard) is beautiful. In fact, she has created a strange amalgamation of synth-pop and grunge that is surprisingly effective. The album grows on you as you realize the vulnerability that Ferreira seizes by the throat in song after song.

A couple of weeks ago, Sacramento noise/hip-hop outfit Death Grips dropped their latest album “Government Plates” for free download without any prior notice. This financially suicidal move was meant to send a message made prominent throughout the album: “Death Grips” makes music without context, without reason, and without purpose.

The album’s awkwardly-titled opener, “You might think he loves you for your money but I know what he really loves you for it’s your brand new leopard skin pillbox hat” (an odd reference to Bob Dylan), starts off with the sound of glass breaking and an extremely high-pitched organ tone that brings out the beast inside vocalist MC Ride. After he shrieks his first couple of lines about “dying in the process,” the beat shifts to a militant, acidic bass punctuated with sampled screeching and the audible anger of drummer Zach Hill’s beats. MC Ride’s furious, lyrical delivery forgoes flow and sensible English (“jellyfish in cold sweat deep end”) for sheer energy, going hand-in-hand with the angry beats. The opener rudely awakes a dormant MC Ride and prepares the listener for upcoming rage in the later tracks.

The extremely impressive opener is followed by a few other chaotic tracks. The second track, “Anne Bonny,” has a beat that switches from rapid synth arpeggios to a slower, distorted, crunchy bass. The vocals are broken up in a similar way: MC Ride goes back and forth from chant-like deliveries of a hook about vicodin abuse to less uniform and more ostensibly meaningless rants.

The third track, “Two Heavens,” features Zach Hill’s ridiculously combative drumming, which comprises the beat. He goes from a rhythmic beat on the snares to cymbals that sound like a heartbeat to a full-on cymbal and snare infuriated beatdown. MC Ride alters between his typical rants, a hook about rings on his finger and an extremely high-pitched sample of him dropping a memorable line: “I’m pressin’ down on the pillow till I can’t hear you breathin’ / for no reason.”

Laura Eng / The Spectator

Katherine Pan/ The Spectator

By Omar Hegazy

“Birds” is one of the most memorable and distinctive songs on the album. Angry drums clash with murky and dissonant synths and warped samples of MC Ride’s voice, making some of the album’s most hectic sounds. However, it all rapidly slows down to a very slow, eerie beat with creepy, chopped-up guitar sample. Simultaneously, MC Ride gives up his traditional anger to dole out harrowing lyrics about a dead bluebird.

The album falters out on some of its shorter filler tracks, while other tracks have interesting concepts that need to be fleshed out more. “Feels Like a Wheel” and “Bootleg” give off the impression of lazy production, with unengaging smears of short, uninteresting melodic motifs that never build up, amount to anything, or provide the intense excitement traditional Death Grips tracks do.

Other tracks are entirely instrumental and lack the energy MC Ride’s vocals bring. The tracks “Big House” and “Government Plates,” for example, both start out with interesting ideas. The former has a rapid synth buildup that belongs in a tense arcade shooting game; the latter has a mix of synth motifs, washed-out samples, a dark, deep beat, and a distorted, Darth Vader-esque MC Ride.

However, they both fall flat, containing weak, empty, and repetitive beats. These tracks fail to answer the call for outrage in MC Ride’s awakening in the first

track. One of the only quality minimalist instrumentals, “Im Overflow,” starts with a hypnotic beat, followed by a small smattering of MC Ride, before continuing with a mish-mash drop of sour booming bass and sampled vocals.

The album ends with a satisfying closer that makes up for its previous misgivings. “F**k Who’s Watching” rapidly switches from an eerie MC Ride coupled with loud screeching to hectic, excited loud synth arpeggios and MC Ride infectiously yelling “F**K WHO’S WATCHING.” It ends with a beat that sounds like warbled electricity zaps. The track aggressively attacks the listener for a full seven minutes with lyrics about theft and corruption of powers (“hand yourself over, remain calm, I only plan to steal whatever I want”).

Everything about this album—the awkwardly-titled opening track; the lazy tracks; the complete rhythmic deterioration in the better tracks, where MC Ride rises in anger until rapping becomes rants and shrieks—serves to promote one idea: Death Grips has no ideals and no motivations for their apparent anger. They do not actively try to impress their fans for financial gain, put forward a political viewpoint, or water down their fury to better attract new listeners. They make chaotic music in a vacuum with no past, and for a present that has no future.

Playlist 1. “Instant Crush” by Daft Punk Genre: Electronic

9. “Say Something” by A Great Big World Genre: Pop

2. “Run” by Daughter Genre: Indie rock

10. “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic Genre: Pop

3. “Come A Little Closer” by Cage the Elephant Genre: Alternative rock

11. “Wolf & I” by Oh Land Genre: Alternative

4. “Pretty Face” by Soley Genre: Indie

12. “40 Mark Strasse” by The Shins Genre: Alternative rock, indie rock

5. “Thirteen Thirtyfive” by Dillon Genre: Singer-songwriter, indie

13. “Let Her Go” by Passenger Genre: Folk rock, singer-songwriter

6. “I’m Not Yours” by Angus & Julia Stone Genre: Singer-songwriter, indie

14. “Made For Each Other” by Emilie Mover Genre: Pop

7. “Pretender” by Sarah Jaffe Genre: Singer-songwriter, indie

15. “Oblivion” by Grimes Genre: Indie pop, electronic

8. “Beach” by San Cisco Genre: Indie pop

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 23

Arts and Entertainment TV “Meh,” “okay,” and “decent at best” would be accurate descriptions of NBC’s “Dracula.”

With so much money spent on its advertising, disappointment kicked in when the drama didn’t live up to the craze.

Vampire movies and shows are the objects of teenage girl obsessions and consequently rack up immense revenue, giving the show a high bar to surpass. “Dracula,” especially as the most recent addition to a centuries-long series of interpretations of the original Bram Stoker novel, had a great deal on its plate.

But from the writing to the staging, the show is riddled with stereotypes that don’t impress anyone anymore. The plot is also confusing at best in its attempts to be original. Tradi-

tionally, for example, Abraham Van Helsing is Count Dracula’s main enemy. In the show, they are allies with a common goal; Van Helsing even wakes Dracula up after centuries for help.

And now Dracula (Alexander Grayson) is an American businessman in England? Beyond these disorienting changes and adaptations are disjointed sex scenes, business transactions, killings, and dialogue, with little relation to each other—not to mention the large cast and burdensome task of remembering which snobby British guy is who. To sum it all up, the convoluted plot of the show can be relieved by an easy changing of the channel.

The fiasco continues with the mundane, recycled, late19th-century setting. Why did the creators not go for a more modern take, which would

Dracula

have given the show the panache necessary for such a constantly retold tale? Modernized adaptations are an often-used trick today and make classics like Dracula more fascinating.

A seasoned professional is what can cause a show to skyrocket in success—except it didn’t, in this case. For Jonathan Rhys Meyers of “The Tudors,” fame was supposed to be an instant bonus, considering his expertise in portrayal of historical themes and racy sex scenes. His performance, unfortunately, was marred by his inability to balance his British accent and orthodox American southern accent.

The show has some redeeming qualities, however.

The authentic 19th-century gowns are dazzling with their rich collection of colors, and

Asim Poddar / The Spectator

By Frances Dodin

these costumes are only a detail enhancing the overall set design of the show. With opulently decorated mansions and lighting that have Grayson’s guests in awe, the atmosphere takes the show further than its script and acting allow.

Sadly, this is not enough to keep a show of this magnitude

afloat, and it probably won’t last more than a season or two.

If NBC is reading this, please lay off the stereotypes. There’s enough of “Twilight,” “True Blood,” and “The Vampire Diaries” to go around.

Film

12 Years a Slave

By HENRY ROSEnBLOOM

Justin Chan / The Spectator

There are some parts of history we would all like to forget.

Slavery and racial prejudice, for example, used to be the norm even in places now considered “civilized.” Today, we’re arguably closer to equality than ever, but that just makes it even harder to talk about things like slavery. “12 Years a Slave” realizes this. It’s not a fun film, nor one that is easy to experience, but it expresses what made this era horrifying by using such careful artistry that it earns the classic status many say it’s destined for. This is an important movie. It faces events we don’t want to remember, helps us accept that they happened, and shows us the bravery of the people who took a stand against them.

“12 Years a Slave” is based

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on the memoir of Solomon Northrup, a free black New Yorker kidnapped and sold in the early 19th century into the Louisiana slave trade. He faces events that would ruin the spirits of most men every day, including mockery, torture, and a near-death experience, yet he remains unbreakable. Solomon was a strong man, and his story is given the respect it deserves with a truly admirable performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Solomon is viciously silenced by his master through most of the movie, forcing Ejiofor to do a remarkable amount of acting with just his face. And he pulls it off with ease: in a scene early in the film depicting a slave auction, men in suits negotiate prices to buy a woman separately from her children, and all Solomon can do is watch.

The subtleties of Ejiofor’s facial expressions show the horror of the scene more effectively than any dialogue ever could. That’s the mark of an amazing performance.

Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o give equally mesmerizing performances as the deeply religious “slave-breaker” Edwin Epps and his favorite slave Patsey. Fassbender plays a dark, commanding man who firmly believes that he can do whatever he wants with his slaves. He plays a villain we haven’t seen before, interesting because he was likely just one of the many men who treated his slaves as nothing more than property. He shows us just how cruel the average slave owner was, forcing slaves to work from sunrise to sunset and depriving them of rest by making them dance with him in the middle of the night.

Nyong’o plays one of the slaves enduring all this, in a much quieter, restrained performance that slowly becomes one of the best in the film.

Patsey has been a slave for years, and though she’s learned to adapt, we can see, through her downcast stare and the sad songs she sings while working, that every day is as much of a

struggle as the first.

“12 Years a Slave” isn’t merely a collection of amazing performances, though.

The cinematography captures Southern Louisiana beautifully.

Each shot is its own work of art.

The camera lingers on the horrors of the film long enough for the events to leave a lasting impact, making them entirely and

The subtleties of Ejiofor’s facial expressions show the horror of the scene more effectively than any dialogue ever could.

historically necessary. Hans Zimmer has made an extraordinary score that turns his usual booming drums and horns into something more melancholy. It captures the sadness and power of Solomon in the main theme, which propels the movie along.

Soon, it’s going to be safe to say that “12 Years a Slave” is a classic, one of the greatest historical stories ever put to film, alongside movies such as “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan.” It will be remembered for the way it depicts individual souls changed by the brutal world of slavery. It will be remembered for its pure beauty and artistry. It will be remembered because it’s simply fantastic, from the performances it gives to the story it tells to the people it reaches.

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 24

Humor These articles are works of fiction. All quotes are libel and slander.

• The boys’ fencing team won its 50th consecutive city championship, as Stuyvesant is still the only school in the city that has a fencing team.

• After leaving his office job, Michael Bloomberg set his eyes on a much more prestigious position: President of the Student Union. “At least now I’ll be in charge of absolutely nothing,” Bloomberg said.

• A poll conducted on the Class of 2015 Facebook group has concluded that the Class of 2015 is fed up with all the polls.

• Principal Zhang was impressed by elaborate nerd costumes on Wednesday, November 13. However, Nerd Day was on Thursday.

By Laszlo Sandler

Stuyvesant Rowing Club Under Investigation for Possession of Seaweed

By Daniel Goynatsky

The Stuyvesant Rowing Club was accused of being in possession of a rare purple strain of seaweed on Tuesday, November 19.

Investigators, who were tipped off by bikers near the Hudson River who had “smelled something fishy,” stormed the Rowing Club’s equipment cabin on 420 West St. in hopes of finding the Californian strain. Many of the club’s members have been defensive about this accusation.

“This is all so ridiculous. There is nothing sketchy going on. The only huffing and puffing that occurs is during our hard workouts,” senior and Rowing Club president Sungmin Kim said.

During a meeting held after the accusations, some members engaged in horseplay, while oth-

ers copied notes from a chalkboard. The lesson was titled CYPHS (Coxswain, Yeller, Port, Hammer, Sweep). “These are the different positions on the boat.

The coxswain and the yeller are the ones who scream out the directions. The port is the member who rows on either the left or right side, the hammer is one of the stronger members, and the sweep is the motion of the rowing. So remember when you’re rowing: CYPHS,” junior Tommy Parker said during a lesson I sat in on.

The accusations about the seaweed have not yet been dismissed, and the investigators plan to sweep the boathouse for clues to aid them in their search for the seaweed. Today’s homework, written in bright green on the board, is for every member to

Tae Kyung Kong/ The Spectator

Newsbeat

Junior and Coxswain Marcus Chan orders his crew members to row away from the authorities in order to save the seaweed.

bring in a can of Febreze for the next meeting in two days.

After the rowboats came back from their run of the night, junior

Stefan Huber was asked for his opinions on how the club was running and any suspicious club activities. “Yes,” Huber replied.

ganization Saida Rodriguez-Tabone. However, Rodriguez-Tabone, befuddled by his predicament, put Tukhtamishev on the phone with Principal Jie Zhang before proceeding to ring the warning bell four times in a row.

“Staten Island?

Everyone knows there are no islands in New York,” said Zhang, who previously worked at a school on Riker’s Island.

Fearing that he would be stuck in Staten Island forever, Tukhtami-

shev was eventually found in tears on the sidewalk by a police officer who kindly directed him back to the ferry.

Now back in the safety of Manhattan, Tukhtamishev has started the Staten Island Awareness Movement (SIAM) in an attempt to educate students about the mysterious island. However, it appears that some students haven’t quite gotten the message.

“Staten Island?” freshman Danny Akilov said. “Is that a book?”

Mistaking Ferry for Ferry’s, Student Find Himself Trapped on Staten Island

Everyone has gotten lost around Stuyvesant once or twice, whether it is while looking for the 11th-floor pool, searching for the 8-10 escalator, or staring into Spanish teacher Robert Weldon’s big blue eyes. However, some students get more lost than others.

Last Wednesday, confusing the Staten Island Ferry with popular local establishment Ferry’s, freshman Hasan Tukhtamishev

boarded the vessel and ended up trapped in Staten Island, the city’s most frightening borough.

“It was really confusing, because all the signs I saw were, like, in Spanish or something,” said a rather perplexed Tukhtamishev, referring to a sign that read, ‘Welcome to Staten Island.’ Once off the ferry, Tukhtamishev searched for Ferry’s, but after walking in circles for a few minutes, he decided to stop and eat at the local 7-11. “It was tough,” he said. “I was really

looking forward to some popcorn chicken, but instead I had to eat six packs of M&Ms for lunch.”

Tukhtamishev eventually realized that he wasn’t in the right place. “I saw houses with lawns, so I knew I couldn’t be in Manhattan anymore,” he said proudly.

Having already missed his eighth-period class, Tukhtamishev realized he needed to get back to Stuyvesant. He called the school for help and eventually got in contact with Assistant Principal of Or-

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The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 25

Sports

Taekyung Kong / The Spectator

Stuyvesant Rowing: Dominant and Unknown

Junior and Coxswain Marcus Chan instructs his crew members to row in the Hudson River.

By Jeffrey Zheng A group of Stuyvesant students returns to New York on a large coach bus after huge success in Boston. The students are all sound asleep, exhausted after all their hard work in the intense competition. No, they are not Stuyvesant’s prestigious Speech and Debate team, nor are they the talented math team. Nor are they Stuyvesant’s dominant swim team or its well-known fencing team. The students are part of one of Stuyvesant’s most successful, yet surprisingly unknown, teams: the rowing club.

In 2006, the Stuyvesant Rowing Club was started by alumni Ye Liu (’07) and Robert Lee (’09). Liu and Lee met Mike Davis, the founder of a rowing program called Floating the Apple, at a summer pro-

gram. Liu and Lee were serious about gathering kids from Stuyvesant who were interested in rowing, so they got Davis, along with three other adults, to supervise the first few meetings and eventually have the Village Club Boathouse (VCB), an organization Davis had strong ties with, sponsor Stuyvesant’s rowing club. Eventually, the Stuyvesant Rowing Club became the VCB’s biggest program.

The VCB is essential to the existence of the rowing club. The VCB is a non-profit organization that provides free community rowing. People who want to row can simply show up at Pier 40 at 5:30 p.m. on weekdays, when rowing sessions are given. However, on Wednesdays, the equipment is reserved specifically for the Stuyvesant Rowing Club. Members of the rowing club sign up on a sheet

and meet at Pier 40. There are no fees for these weekly meetings; the boat and the equipment are paid for by the VCB. “They want to help spread the joy of rowing and whatnot across the community,” senior and club president Sungmin Kim said. “They even help finance some of our transportation fees.

The Boathouse also makes it easy for many members of the club to row just for fun.”

A majority of them, such as junior Alex Lai, joined because “some of my friends were joining at the same time,” Lai said. “It was really easy to join.”

Despite the immense support of the Boathouse, the Stuyvesant Rowing Club faced an unusual challenge. Rowing is not a PSAL sport, and the rowing club is not even recognized as an official Stuyvesant club. “We’re not officially a club because our charter was not approved,” Kim said. “We couldn’t really represent Stuyvesant, so we represented the Village Community Boathouse.”

But whether it’s are a club or not, the team is quite successful.

At the Icebreaker Event at the Northeast Regional Youth Open Water Championships in Boston on November 23, 2013, the rowing club, representing VCB-Stuyvesant, placed second in the First Fours Sprint and Second Fours Sprint events, and third in the Second Sixes Sprint event. They raced against some of the top rowing schools in the northeast, such as the Sound School from New Haven, Connecticut and the Harbor School from Brooklyn, New York.

“Most of the people in our club are relatively new and joined in September,” Kim said. “Some of these schools are very dedicated to maritime-based activities, and I think finishing second in the Northeast Regional Championships is an incredible feat, since we only had about two months to prepare.”

The number of rowers in a boat can vary from eight to just one.

However, Stuyvesant’s rowing club usually enters in the Coxed-Sixes and Coxed-Fours divisions. These divisions consist of six rowers and one coxswain and four rowers and one coxswain, respectively.

Stuyvesant’s main coxswains are junior Marcus Chan, junior Jenny Chen, and senior Jasper Lu. The coxswains are the most important part of the team because “they basically steer the boat and give all the commands for turns,” junior and rower Junhao Dong said. “The rowers just follow their instructions and row.”

Last year, VCB-Stuyvesant brought back three plaques at the same Icebreaker event, with first-place finishes in the First Fours Sprint, Second Fours Sprint, and Second Fours Nautical Mile events. The sprint events go a very short distance, while the nautical mile events cover a much greater distance.

Scheduling rowing events and practices is rather difficult. Their season is shorter because “we can only be in the water from September to November and March to June,” Kim said. “We can only row once a week, so that’s not really a lot.” This really cuts down

on the amount of time the team can practice. A lot of the rowers only row with each other once or twice before competitions. Many of “the other schools, such as the Harbor School, are really focused on maritime activities,” Dong said.

“That’s why we practice on Sundays and Wednesdays.” There are also many events and practices in the summer to keep the rowers in top shape.

The fact that rowing is not an official PSAL sport is bewildering.

Rowing “should be a PSAL sport, because it demonstrates all the skills that an athlete needs, both physically and mentally,” junior Brendan Fu said. “And above all, teamwork is vital to rowing.” Rowing definitely has the competitive aspects of sports such as basketball and baseball and the physical aspects of strength and stamina, along with the need for concentration to keep up with its high intensity. Races are organized and have an official set of rules, just like other competitive sports. In addition, rowing has increased greatly in popularity this year, particularly at Stuyvesant. If not an official sport, the rowing club should at least be an official club. It simply needs three more faculty members. It does not need much funding from the Student Union, since it is already funded by the Village Club Boathouse. Stuyvesant’s Rowing Club should be recognized by the Stuyvesant administration and receive the same resources as rowing clubs in other schools.

Boys’ Swimming

Payback Time for The Pirates

By Grace Lu with additional reporting by Jeffery Zheng After being kicked down from their number-one spot at last year’s championships, the Pirates are struggling to get back on their feet. Long considered Stuyvesant’s most successful athletic team, the Pirates dominated boys’ swimming for 19 years. This season, however, the tables have turned. Stuyvesant’s rivals are more formidable than ever, and the Pirates, lacking their now-graduated, nationallyranked swimmers, will need to develop new talent. Once a point of pride of Stuyvesant athletics, the Pirates have been given a new and unfamiliar status: underdog.

The Pirates’ three-year undefeated streak culminated in a sweeping 67-37 victory against the Brooklyn Tech Engineers in 2012.

Last year, however, the Pirates were defeated 58-40 by the same team. This loss was devastating and served as a stinging wake-up call for a team, which had begun to take victory for granted. “The returners realized that it’s not always going to be handed to us. We actu-

ally have to earn it and work for it,” coach Peter Bologna said.

The absence of multiple national- and sectional-level swimmers will be seriously detrimental to the team’s lineup this year. “No one on the team can really rely on others to step up and perform. We all have to take responsibility now,” junior distance swimmer Andrew Guo said.

Some argue that fewer skill differences amongst swimmers may be for the best. “We didn’t have great teammate chemistry last season.

Everyone tended to focus on themselves rather than the team’s overall performance. This year, we’re making huge efforts to bring the team together and bond,” senior and cocaptain Kevin Lee said.

Bologna also highlighted the importance of teamwork to the team’s success this year. “Every single person on the team has to do their part to make this a better team. This is going to be more of a team effort this year than in previous years,” Bologna said. Not long before the season’s start, however, three veteran swimmers decided not to rejoin the team for another year. “I don’t agree with some of the decisions that they made, but as a

coach, I have to respect their decisions as swimmers. They leave a small hole in our lineups and in our team, because we were counting on everybody coming back, and at the last minute people decided that it wasn’t possible for them,” Bologna said.

The Pirates must continue to deal with the absence of a home pool as well as gaps in the lineup. “A pool really brings a team together.

In my rookie and sophomore years at the Stuyvesant pool, I felt a great sense of pride swimming there and felt happy being in familiar surroundings with my second family—the team,” Lee said.

The Stuyvesant pool was originally scheduled to be finished by September, but construction has dragged on. The Pirates now expect to return to their home pool sometime in December. Until then, the boys must commute to Seward Park High School for practice, where there are only four lanes and no diving blocks. “It cuts into our practice time when we have to travel to Seward every day,” Guo said. Due to the limited use of the pool, Bologna has included Saturday morning practices, as well as

morning practices outside of the water, or “drylands,” from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday before school. “We’re going six days a week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday swimming, Tuesday and Thursday drylands,” Bologna said.

Looking forward to their season ahead, the handicapped Pirates will not only have to face rival powerhouse Brooklyn Tech but also the formidable Francis Lewis Patriots, who have now emerged as worthy competitors. “This year [Lewis] was blessed especially with a whole host of fast freshmen, a lot of whom [swim] in club teams,” Guo said.

According to Bologna, a major reason for other schools’ faster freshmen is Stuyvesant’s selective enrollment process. One sectionallevel freshman planned to attend Stuyvesant, but failed to qualify and instead enrolled at Brooklyn Tech. Though it might be tough to admit, “We’re losing our grip on our dominant status,” Guo said.

The odds seem to be stacked against them, but the Pirates intend on persisting. Their personal expectations have not diminished.

“I want each swimmer to set goals

for themselves and to obtain those goals throughout the season,” Bologna said. Despite the loss of allstar talent, there will still be a few swimmers that are expected to stand out and deliver, including sophomores Peter Strbik in breaststroke and Aaron Glas in distance freestyle, and senior and co-captain Brandon Koo, who is aiming to qualify for State Championships in the 100yd freestyle and 100yd backstroke. “We still have very talented swimmers. We’re not going to have an unsuccessful season; we’re still very good,” Bologna said.

As their first meet against Herbert H. Lehman High School approaches, the Pirates expect to dominate their regular season.

Though they may not be seeded first, they are still one of the most powerful teams in the city. “We’re definitely not going to set our goals any lower just because we lost last year’s championships. With the right mindset and effort, we definitely have a chance at winning back A Championships and making it back to Finals for a shot at the title,” Koo said.

Girls’ Basketball

Will this Year See the Rise of the Phoenix?

By Samuel Fuchs with additional reporting by Louis Susser After a thrilling playoff run last year, the Phoenix returns, not only looking at the playoffs, but perhaps aiming to go all the way. The team, however, faces several major changes this season that can either sink it or put it on top. The Phoenix, which lost several influential seniors from last year and have a new head coach, physical education teacher Vincent Miller, are unfazed by the challenges to come. Hopefully, that’s a good thing.

“We lost a lot of seniors and a lot of height,” Miller said. “We are

going to have a smaller team, and we will have to work around that.

We are just going to have to play a little tougher.” Last year’s captain, Elektra Oates (’13), was the third-highest scorer in the division.

Though the team still has junior and point guard Lauren Sobota to score, Oates’s height was a huge advantage in the paint, as she led the division in rebounds by a large margin. The Phoenix also lost their best three-point shooter in Zambeta Tsapos (’13), which will force the players to drive in more if they don’t improve their shooting. “We’re definitely going to need to work on improving our shooting, so that we don’t need to be dominant down

low,” Sobota said.

The Phoenix will look to play more defensively in order to combat their losses from last year. “I think that losing the seniors and the height we [had] last year just means we have to play more aggressively on defense and have everyone crash the boards to help [junior and center Sophie Gershon] rebound,” senior and captain Marie Frolich said. “We are a good jumpshooting team, though, and I think that will definitely help.”

The Phoenix’s main obstacle, however, will end up being their lack of height.

Yet another change the team must deal with is a new coach, as

their previous coach took maternity leave. Miller is confident in his team, and his experience with basketball will help him along the way.

“I’m very excited to coach basketball this season because I’ve always enjoyed basketball and I played it during high school,” Miller said.”I’m especially excited because some of my softball players are also on the basketball team, so it will be nice to work more with them.”

The Phoenix is looking for two juniors to step up this year. Sobota and Gershon have high expectations on their shoulders. “I think that Lauren sets a great, fast pace for offense, so we should definitely be able to compete on both ends,”

Frolich said. Gershon, as the tallest on the team, is expected to lead in rebounding, and Sobota, who is coming off a fantastic previous season as the highest scorer in the division, can penetrate any defense in the paint. Sobota can make plays out of nothing by attracting other teams’ defenses and then passing the ball to her teammates.

Though the Phoenix is still unsure of what is to come, their three preseason scrimmages surely boosted their confidence, as they were able to upset Lincoln High School—a team in a superior division—in a scrimmage.

Page 26

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Sports

continued from page 28

her coaches had expected. According to Lara, her one competition for this event, and only competition in general,

was Francis Lewis sophomore Caroline Wu Silvera. However Silvera’s personal record (pr) for the event was a 1:1.68, more than four seconds slower than Lara. During Lara’s second event, the 100m butterfly, she swam a 57:79, which was a personal record. Though she expected to place first in the 400m freestyle relay and chose this relay as one of her two events to compete in at States, a team member’s goggles falling off prevented this from happening.

During the 2013 swim season, Lara also broke six Stuyvesant records: 100m backstroke, 100m butterfly, 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, 200m medley relay, and 400m freestyle relay.

Another memorable experience was States, which is a two-day event. This year, preliminary events were on Friday, November 22, and the next day was finals. Lara chose to swim 100 backstroke and butterfly, her favorite and best strokes, and expectedly advanced to Finals for both events. In Finals, there were three heats: A, B, and C finals. Participation in these heats was based on one’s performance during preliminary rounds; the ten fastest girls swam in A finals, the next ten in B finals, and etc. For the 100m butterfly, Lara made B finals and placed fourteenth. For the 100m backstroke she made A finals, in which she placed ninth. When describing the moment before swimming the 100m backstroke, Lara became quite animated and said, “I walked out into a ready room with music playing in the background. And while I waited behind my block, the announcer listed all of my achievements.”

Lara didn’t swim her best times at States (she swam a second slower than her personal records in each event), and was upset. However, her supporters, Bologna and her mother, went to States to cheer on their swimmer. As Lara was the only Penguin to qualify for States, one could foresee some awkward moments, but Lara said, “I was happy that [Bologna] was there for me. I was upset at my times, [but he said] that I was probably tired, that I tried my best and to not hurt myself.”

Now that her PSAL season is over, Lara is focusing on improving and would like to work more on what she considers to be her worst stroke, the only stroke she didn’t swim the whole 2013 PSAL season: the breaststroke.

She also is looking forward to the Tom Dolan Invitational in December, and in February, Sectionals, for which Lara has qualified for several events. Though she hasn’t really thought about college yet, she expects to “always have swimming in her life,” and, if all goes well, will use head AGUA coach Rachel Stratton Mills’s connections for recruitments. Also at AGUA is Lea Neal, a fellow swimmer and a bronze medalist during the 2012 Summer Olympics, who is Lara’s inspiration. Neal swam in the Olympics at only age seventeen, so “[Neal’s participation] showed me that if she could do it, maybe I could too,” said Lara.

After our first interview, before parting, Lara said proudly, “By the way, they call me Krystal the Pistol.”

That’s probably what the crowd will chant when they watch her fly down the lane during the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Boys’ Fencing

Untouchables Win Championship continued from page 28 the team through all of its troubles and rough patches and led it to where it is now.

The Untouchables had a bye in the round of 1 as a result of being first seed. In the round of 8, the foil team faced off against Cardozo, defeating it 45-18, while the épée team faced off in an intense game against Bronx Science. With less than a minute left in the match, the score was 44-43, with Stuyvesant in the lead. The Untouchables came out on top when senior Josef Omar scored the last touch. They won this close match 45-43. Although many of Omar’s teammates, as well as the opposing team and other spectators, were on the edge of their seats, worried about what would happen next, Omar wasn’t. “Even when he started gaining on me to the point where the score was 44-43, I forgot all about the mistakes I had been making because that would drag

me down,” Omar said. “I focused on nothing but the current, and I scored the last single touch without even noticing it.”

In the semifinals, the foil team easily defeated Beacon 45-29.

The épée team dispatched Cardozo 41-31 as well. The épée and foil teams advanced to the finals, where foil faced Mckee/Staten Island Tech and épée faced Queens High School of Teaching. While both teams came into finals with huge momentum, they came out with different results: the foil team won its match 45-33, while the épée team lost a close match 4245. Despite their loss in the épée match, the Untouchables stayed positive; after all, they had just won their second straight championship. Despite placing second in épée, the Untouchables were still first overall, defending their title as city champions. “I don’t know what more we could have wished for besides gold in épée, but it’s difficult

to win everything,” Shin said. “I’m proud of my team’s performance in my last season.”

Throughout the matches, Shin was the epitome of untouchable: his touches scored to touches received ratio was 61:8. Freshman Shuya Ishizuka also helped the foil team place first, outscoring his opponents 32-8. “Whenever we were down in terms of score, both Shuya and Philip would make huge comebacks to gain back the lead,” senior and co-captain Ryan Li said.

Although the season ended strongly, it had start with a group of fencers with very little outside experience. However, with numerous practices, the team gained familiarity with the sport and grew closer as a whole. “I was very proud with the rapid improvement of my teammates,” Omar said. “This year had the least fencers with outside experience, yet I have to say we put on our best performances.”

Due to their improvement and

hard work, the Untouchables have brought home the championship banner for the second straight year and only look to win it again next year. With the talent and vigor this hard-working team has demonstrated throughout the season, there is no reason not to extend its championship streak into next year. Although the team is losing leaders Shin and Li, as well as épée star Omar and four other seniors, underclassmen and juniors and future captains Malcolm Wells and Kyle Oleksiuk have shown much promise throughout the season.

Their skill and talents will only continue to grow. “An ex-captain of the fencing team told me last year: ‘Don’t stop at just one championship; win next year’s as well!’” Li said. “I really took that to heart and worked hard. We had our ups and downs during the season, but as a team, we were able to accomplish our goal: to take another championship.”

Girls’ Bowling

Pinheads Advance to Quarterfinals

By Rayyan Jokhai and Omar Siddique Coming off its 13th straight win, Stuyvesant’s girls’ bowling team was looking as strong it has in a long time. The Pinheads entered the match determined to advance past Midwood despite being the apparent underdogs, and to keep their winning streak going. Hope seemed lost after the first game, but through strong play by its second and third squads, the team was able to claw itself out of a hole and get the victory.

The Pinheads had to overcome many obstacles this year in order to get where they are now the closest they’ve come to winning the PSAL title in three years.

“We have a new coach and all of our really strong players graduated, so we didn’t know how our season would turn out. However, we did the best we could, and we’ve had really great games and lots of high scores despite all

these obstacles,” senior Cindy Chan said. Midwood won the first game of the match 657-547, a slow start that may have been due to the Pinheads’ lack of experience with the new players who joined this year.

This early loss meant that the Pinheads had to win the second game just to have a shot at winning. However, this did not dent the team’s spirit or enthusiasm going into the final games. The pressure was on the shoulders of the team’s second, younger group, consisting of three first-year players. The pressure seemed to be getting to the players at first, as they were unable to break away from Midwood, which seemed to be right at their heels after every frame. The close game meant that Stuyvesant was just one slip-up away from the season’s end, but the Pinheads kept their cool. Junior Si Ja Liu pushed the team past Midwood with consecutive strikes to secure a win in the second game. “It was intense,

The Stuyvesant Girls Varsity bowling team, The Pinheads, was the best in their division this year.

because we were really close to losing until [Liu] made it,” senior Stephanie Truong said. This intensity and team spirit of the second game stuck with the team all the way to the third game, in which the Pinheads were able to secure a win by beating Midwood 579-529. Truong led Stuyvesant’s scorers with a clutch 166 in the final game.

“Determination is a huge

Courtesy of Victoria Li, The Indicator

Krystal the Pistol

thing for us. We knew it wouldn’t be an easy game, and it definitely wasn’t. But my girls and I did not give up,” said Chan. The Pinheads came into the match knowing that the odds were against them, but they didn’t let this affect how they played. Despite a slow start, the team was able to secure its spot in the fourth round of the playoffs.

Wrestling

Spartans Ready for War

By Tahmid Khandaker and Eric Morgenstern Last year, the Spartans began to emerge from the realms of obscurity and into the forefront of Stuyvesant athletics, finishing their season with an impressive 7-3 record. But that was last year, before state finalist and cocaptain Matt Moy (‘13) left, before co-captain Paul Ma (‘13) left, and before one of the Spartans’ strongest wrestlers, junior Cooper Weaver, injured himself during the football season. With new recruits, new captains, and a new start, the Spartans are ready to look beyond their current obstacles and into the future, in hopes of a prosperous season.

Overcoming the losses of Moy and Ma will be very challenging.

“Those two were definitely role models for the rest of the team,” senior and captain Michael Berlin said. Berlin himself was undefeated in the regular season last year, winning six matches that led to 36 team points. “Paul talked a lot about the things no one really thinks about: how psychology plays into the wrestling and how important it is to control the

pace of the match, and Matt was just dedicated as hell, and you can see it through how precise

“We want to win a team championship and we want to win a city championship at every weight class, that’s all there is to it.”

—Cooper Weaver, junior he wrestled,” Berlin said. He acknowledged that replicating such leadership will be tough.

Another problem the Spartans face is Weaver’s injury. Weaver broke his fibula during the football season, putting an end to the

rest of his athletic year, including this upcoming wrestling season.

Regarded as one of the best wrestlers in his weight class and a viable option for captain, Weaver contributed four valuable wins, eight takedowns, 23 team points, and 37 individual points last year.

“I’m a pretty big part of the team, both as a wrestler and as a leader, but this team can definitely overcome losing me,” Weaver said.

Potential candidates to replace him are junior Paul Dzhugostran and maybe even Berlin himself, if he shifts weight classes.

Attitude and dedication may come into play as well this season, as the Spartans have had issues practicing as a team and bonding as a unit. “A lot of the new guys seem intimidated, so invoking a feeling of spirit and optimism would do them good,” Berlin said. Such intimidation reflects the number of people who join the team. Furthermore, several Spartans were upset at the scarcity of practices held this year.

“We should have been practicing much earlier. We only had one captain’s practice, which is insufficient,” junior Henry O’Donnell said. In addition, head coach Mi-

chael Cigala has only attended two of the team’s four practices, making it difficult for the team to practice seriously.

In addition to all of these potential pitfalls, the Spartans “have been having problems getting people in the higher weight classes,” assistant coach Richard Murray said. At a school like Stuyvesant, the sports teams are not able to recruit athletes who fit their needs, and that has led to a lack of big men for the Spartans.

In spite of all of these challenges, the team has a great chance of success this year. “We have a young team and some returning wrestlers with experience, and the team has a lot of potential,” Murray said. “But at this point, it’s too early to [make predictions].”

Although Murray is hesitant to predict how well his team will do, Weaver stated his prediction very clearly. “The expectations are the same as they are every year. We strive to be the best, as a team and as individuals. We want to win a team championship and we want to win a city championship at every weight class, that’s all there is to it.”

The Spectator ● December 9, 2013

Page 27

Sports Girls’ Volleyball

Vixens Crushed by Cardozo

Eva I/ The Spectator

continued from page 28

Junior Julia Gokhberg sets the ball for senior Paula Carcamo as she approaches for the spike during the game against the Long Island City Lady Bulldogs on Friday, November 15th.

in part because they expected a loss entering the game. They were especially satisfied with the way they played in the second set. “Coming after a really terrible loss on the first and the playing number one seed, they were able to pick it up in the second set and play so much better—pass the ball, hit the ball, and block the ball. That made me really happy in the end,” Choubaralian said.

The team also made it a lot further in playoffs than it had expected. “I thought this was our recovery year, because we lost Natalie [Kozlova] (’13) from last year,

and Marta [Poplawski] (‘13) and Anna [Wang] (’13). They were the height and a very big part of our team,” senior Abigail Baltzar said.

The Vixens ended their streak of undefeated regular seasons this year when they lost to Seward Park, but they still placed first in their division. This season was filled with obstacles such as the decrease in average team height, meaning that the Vixens had to work on defense to make up for their dearth of blockers. They also had to go through most of the season without Li, forcing them to switch up positions while adjusting to a new coach, Choubaralian.

The Vixens will be losing the leadership of Li and Baltzar and seniors Carcamo, Joyce Jin, and Janice Yoon. The next season looks bright, however, because the Vixens have strong underclassmen, such as sophomore and outside hitter Mariya Kulyk and junior Julia Gokhberg. Kulyk led the team in kills, while Gokhberg showed the potential to be the team’s top setter. “I’m so excited for the returning players for next year, because all of them have improved so much,” Li said. “Our team dynamic is amazing, and I think they’ll go far.”

Boys’ Gymnastics

By Samantha Lau

Here’s a test: what is the mascot for the boys’ gymnastics team? Chances are, you’ve never heard of them. They’re the Lemurs, and most days, next to the raucous volleyball and basketball games, they practice, working toward the season where they’ll finally emerge.

This year, the team will be under a new coach, Marvin Autry, who was previously the Lemurs’ assistant gymnastics coach.

Coach Naim Kozi, the previous head coach, has been dismissed

by Larry Barth, the Athletic Director of Stuyvesant Athletics, because of Kozi’s inability to submit team members’ medical forms.

As assistant coach last year, Autry worked with the team extensively, so the transition between the two coaches has been smooth.

There is a clear difference between the two coaches’ styles.

“Kozi was very much traditional.

He would make you work your basics until they were pristine which is a good way of coaching, but in a high school level and only four years maximum, it isn’t ideal,” senior and co-captain Steven Zhu said, “Marvin is more willing to let people try new skills.”

What do others think about this change?

Besides the returning mem-

bers, the new members also approve of Autry’s coaching. “Marvin drives us hard enough for us to actually do stuff and get better, but not enough that we kill ourselves. Like my coach at Chelsea Piers, he helps a lot in actually doing and learning the events,” said junior Leon Frajmund said.

But the change in coaches is the least of the Lemurs’ worries. The team lost seven seniors, only leaving six veterans for this season. The seniors that graduated, such as Daelin Fischman (‘14) and Dmitry Treygar (‘14) were vital members on the team.

They competed on apparatuses, or events, that are the least popular, such as rings, high bar, and pommel horse. “The seniors made up most of the points we got last year, so this year will definitely be more difficult,” senior and co-captain Hudson Lee said.

“I do not expect us to do as well point wise as we did last year but we have two sophomores, Greg Redozubov and Aaron Orelowitz, becoming all around gymnasts, so we have the minimum on our events covered.” Each event needs a minimum of three gymnasts, since the top three out of four scores will count towards the team’s final score. Because Lee, Redozubov, and Orelowitz are all-around gymnasts, they will compete on all events , filling

the three minimum spots. This leaves one more spot available for each event.

However, it is critical to note that most other events are events that are less accessible to new gymnasts. For example, performing on pommel horse or parallel bars is a lot harder to learn quickly compared to a regular floor routine. These events take a lot more commitment and time and can be aggravating, so most new gymnasts are less likely to pick it up. There is a large drop in scores in the less popular events compared to floor.

Luckily, despite the large loss of members, there was a large turnout during preseason; there are approximately 10 new members compared to last year’s three. Compared to past years, attendance has improved tremendously and each member of the team has been coming to practice on a daily basis. In past years, there would be less than half the team at a time at any given practice. However, the larger turnout does not mean the team will perform better this year.

While many are coming in with dance or martial arts experience, none of them have strict gymnastics experience. “Most guys join the team in order to learn how to do flips in the air. However, there are many other apparatuses that

are included in boys’ gymnastics that many new members do not bother to try,” Redozubov said.

Because of this problem, Autry and Lee dedicate one day of the week to each apparatus so that each member will have to at least try something different.

Even though the team lacks experienced members, many veterans gained skills over the summer at Big Apple Games, a free summer recreational program run by Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL). Notably, Redozubov has become an allaround gymnast , even though during the previous season, he had no knowledge of other apparatuses besides floor and vault.

He now has considerable skills on all the events. Orelowitz trains at his own gymnastics gym, and has now become skilled on pommel horse and is training to win first in cities on the apparatus.

“It’s like night and day. The gymnasts are improving at a very fast rate,” Autry said. “For example, Greg and Hudson were averaging 4 and 5’s, sometimes even 6’s, but this year their score will be at least two points higher.”

Even though the veterans have notably improved, this is not enough to carry the team. Because of experience and skill level, the Lemurs are not as strong of a team as they were last year.

Emma McIntosh/ The Spectator

New Coach, New Competitors: Time to Emerge

Sophomore Gregory Redozubov supports himself on the high-bar.

Last year, the team was only able to make individual championships, where only specific members compete, and placed fifth in their division. This year, they have high aspirations and hope to make team finals, regardless of the fact that since they have not been able to do so in previous years. “Our goal is to make it to the team finals, not win it. This will mean the team will have to become stronger as a whole and I believe we can do it,” Autry said.

Girls’ Gymnastics

By Junpei Taguchi Gymnasts bend their bodies in extraordinary ways, dance on a beam only four inches wide, and land each aerial skill with precision. The immense skill and rigorous training required to compete contribute to the aura around gymnastics that has made it the most popular Olympic event. At Stuyvesant, however, the sport usually goes under-appreciated. Despite the lack of recognition, the Stuyvesant Felines have been a championship caliber team for decades—a championship appearance is almost a given for the Felines. Yet, despite such success in the past, the Felines may face difficulty this year, as they have a young roster, are short on practice, and lack team chemistry.

Starting on December 12, earlier than the past seasons that start during the first week of January, this season may find the Felines facing difficulty, as they have less time to get in shape and choreograph routines. “We will not have as much time to develop new skills and polish our routines before we are actually judged on them,” se-

nior and co-captain Anna Ruta said. In addition, as the volleyball season coincides with the gymnastics season, coach Vasken Choubaralian, who coaches both the girls volleyball and gymnastics team, has had difficulty planning practices for the Felines. “[The team chemistry is] certainly not off to a good start,” Choubaralian said.

“Time and practice days are very inconsistent, and the attendance of a lot of the girls is inconsistent as well.” Though the practices for the Felines and the Vixens overlapped at times, Coach Choubaralian handled coaching two teams by interchanging which team would have early and late practices. “The amount of time coach sacrificed to thoroughly work with both teams is commendable and shows a lot of dedication,” Ruta said. Both teams were thankful for Choubaralian’s efforts.

Yet, despite these obstacles, an influx of experienced freshmen may give the Felines the boost they need to have their most successful season yet. Maria Fomitchova, for example, is a level 8 gymnast.

Gymnasts are categorized by skill on a scale of 1-10; 1 being a novice

and 10 being a high-class gymnast.

However, ‘elite’ gymnasts, who are of Olympic caliber, are of level 11+. These levels are determined by competitions outside of PSAL based on the specific skills and difficulty. Fomitchova follows a rigorous schedule, as she strives to compete in the Olympics by training six days a week at her own gym in addition to the practices held by the Felines “Normally, I don’t get experienced gymnasts,” Choubaralian said. “I usually get girls who are strong or [are] dancers, and we make the transfer between dancing and gymnastics. [This year], I have gymnasts coming in and that’s a big change.”

As this year’s roster is full of experienced gymnasts, the season ahead for the Felines looks promising, as they may be able to fill the holes left behind by last year’s seniors, including captain Alisa Emag and twins Elska and Zofii Kaczmarek. Notable gymnasts this year who will step up in place of them include the two senior co-captains Anna Ruta and Ruihan Zhao—Zhao plans to compete in all four events (vaulting, uneven parallel bars, balance beam, and floor exercise).

Ashley Lin / The Spectator

High Bars for the Felines

Sophomore, Kimberly Chong, tests her balance by jumping on the balance beam.

As the season gets closer and closer, the Felines are training diligently to qualify for the team championships, hoping to move up from last year’s fifth place ranking out of the 8 teams that competed. They wish to do so by having a flexible event line-up, so that they do not have the same group of girls constantly competing. “We also hope to have some girls qualify for

individual championships for the events they excel in,” Ruta said.

“We want all of the girls to have an opportunity to show off what they have been working on all season.”

As the Felines set the bar high for themselves, the determination of the returning gymnasts and the experience of freshmen will pave the way for a successful season.

December 9, 2013

Page 28

The Spectator SpoRts Stuyvesant Fencing Title Still Untouchable Boys’ Fencing

Boys’ Basketball

Senior and captain Imtiaz Hssan drives to the basket against Brooklyn Technical High School on Wednesday, November 27th.

By Ari Hatzimemos and Chris Kim It’s that special time of the year, when it’s not surprising to see groups of students fill up the bleachers of the third floor gymnasium, chanting “DEFENSE!” and energizing the court. Previously known as the Runnin’ Rebels, Stuyvesant’s boys’ basketball team, the Peglegs, look to continue thrilling their large fan base with their quickness and intensity on the court.

During last year’s regular season, the Peglegs put up a solid showing, finishing with a 12-4 record. The team was led by star Thomas Cui (’13), who averaged a whopping 16.2 points per game throughout the regular season.

However, the team’s season quick-

ly came to an end in the playoffs, where they were knocked out by the fifth-seeded William C. Bryant Owls in the first round.

The Peglegs are coming out this season fresh with a shaky young roster, which will be either just what they need to fill in the huge gap, or a major problem as they progress through the season.

“We’re very young; we have seven rookies, two returning starters, and [senior] Nick [Kalantzopoulos], who was basically our sixth man last year,” coach Philip Fisher said. With a team of nine juniors and only five seniors, the lack of experience will be the deciding factor for the Rebels. “We do have the potential to have the same record [as], if not better than, last year’s, but we definitely need a lot more experience, and

we have to execute our plays,” junior Arlex Gole said.

The Peglegs also lost Ian Oathwaite (‘13) and Muki Barkan (‘13), two key rebounders for the Runnin’ Rebels. Whether they still have what it takes to crash the boards is going to be an important question. “We need to work on rebounding, but we definitely have more size, which is a big help for the team,” senior Imtiaz Hssan said. In fact, the Peglegs’s arsenal contains even more size than last year. With returning junior Noah Brook at 6’4” and the addition of junior Konrad Krasucki, the tallest player on the team at 6’6”, the Peglegs have the size to potentially fill in the missing gap left behind by the previous team.

Despite the obstacles that the Peglegs will have to overcome, the team has the talent, the athleticism, and the ability to learn and adapt quickly. “The juniors are quick learners because they’re used to the game, and we’re more athletic than last year,” Hssan said. “We just need more experience and practice.”

The Peglegs will have to work harder to drain out the inexperience of the rookies in the preseason games. However, if the team is able to do so before the start of the league games, the Peglegs have the potential to outperform last season’s 12-4 record and possibly regain the division title that they had during the 2011-2012 season.

Sabrina Huang / The Spectator

Krystal the Pistol

Krystal Lara (in blue) dives first into the water during Girls Swimming finals.

By Annique Wong She’s five foot five and lean, with good posture and bright eyes.

Her hair is tied in a simple but practical braid. And although she’s a sophomore, she hefts around a plaid freshman backpack. You’d expect her to be more comfortable in a bathing suit, considering the amount of time she’s in a pool, but she shows no sign of withdrawal, sitting bone-dry in front of me.

Her coach Peter Bologna describes her as, “pretty much the fastest swimmer in almost every event in the city.” If anything, I’m confident this article won’t be the last time we see her name in print.

Krystal Lara started swimming at six when her parents enrolled her in the local swim club in Tottenville. Realizing that she had long strokes and fast feet, her instructors encouraged Lara’s parents to put her on a team so she could swim competitively. The next year, at seven, Lara was enrolled into the Blue Arrow Swim Club (BASC), where she swam competitively and practiced every

day for almost eight years.

Lara decided to move to the Asphalt Green Unified Aquatics (AGUA), located in the Upper East Side, because the BASC was moving to a new pool with a shorter lane size of 20 yards (as opposed to its former 25 yards). Both Lara and her two younger siblings (in elementary and high school, respectively) received merit scholarships and were exempt of the fee to join. Although Lara no longer swims with BASC, she considers her coach there to be the most influential in her swim career. He is “everything to me, and has helped me with my technique and was my bio tutor,” she said.

At AGUA, Lara swims six times a week. Each day, swim practice is from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., and is dedicated to a different type of training. For example, on Tuesdays, dubbed “Tempo Tuesdays,” the workout is a series of sprints; on Thursdays, the swimmers practice circuit training. However, practice includes more than just swimming. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, before

Untouchables Win Championship

Alice Oh / The Spectator

Anne Duncan / The Spectator

All on the Young Bloods

Senior and co-captain Philip Shin and senior Josef Omar fence side by side against opponents from two different schools.

By Jason Lee and Omar Siddique Last year, the Untouchables walked out of Townsend Harris High School with their heads held high and a gold trophy in their hands. This year, the only thing that changed was the venue. Stuyvesant’s boys’ fencing team defeated Benjamin N. Cardozo High School, McKee/ Staten Island Tech, and Beacon High School at Queens College en route to its second consecutive PSAL Championship. The team maintained a perfect 8-0 record throughout the regular season and took first place in the division, enabling them to seed

first in both foil and épée heading into the playoffs.

The team was pressured about its chances at a repeat, despite having won the championship seven out of the past nine years. However, the Untoucahbles didn’t let this pressure get the better of them. “The [team] gets nervous and loses confidence,” senior and co-captain Philip Shin said. “But throughout the season, Ryan and I, the captains, helped boost the team’s morale so we could go into the playoffs with confidence.” The captains’ pep talks and words of advice carried continued on page 26

Girls’ Volleyball

practice, the team engages in an activity called “dryland,” in which swimmers stretch and do core exercises. When there is dryland, practice starts an hour earlier. As if swimming in the afternoon isn’t enough, Lara wakes up at 4 a.m. for hour-long practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays that start at 5:30 a.m.

Academics and swimming can sometimes interfere, and there are times where Lara is forced to prioritize. But some of her teachers understand how intense swimming can get, especially English teacher Maura Dwyer, a former Stuyvesant Penguin herself. For example, Lara said, “[Dwyer] will sometimes ask about meets and how my times are.”

As AGUA practices interfere with Penguin practices during the Public School Athletic League (PSAL) girls’ swimming season, Bologna and Lara have an agreement that she must swim with the team at least two times a week. When I wondered aloud if two practices a week gives Lara enough time for her to bond with the team, she insisted that it was. With the time spent together during their annual bonding day sleepover, plus the time it takes to travel to meets and the Seward Park Pool for practice, all the Penguins are close and supportive. “The team wouldn’t be the same without her [Lara],” junior Kimberly Wong said.

In fact, one of Lara’s most memorable experiences as a swimmer was with the Penguins.

During Opens, held on Novem-

ber 10, 2013, she broke the PSAL record for the 100m backstroke with a 57:12, a feat that Lara and continued on page 26

Vixens Crushed by Cardozo

By Erica Chio After losing to the Cardozo Lady Judges during the playoffs for two of the past three years, Stuyvesant’s girls’ volleyball team knew it was in for a tough game when it traveled to Queens for the quarterfinals on Wednesday, November 20. The first seed Lady Judges had an undefeated season, in which they had won all but one game in straight sets.

Although the Vixens were able to score the first point of the game, the rest of the game was filled with errors. They seemed nervous from the start and were unable to communicate or pass as well as usual, causing miscues that gave the Judges a series of points that put them in the lead. One recurring mistake in the first set was service reception. “Receiving the serve—the very first pass—[we] were too quiet, also maybe scared, a little timid,” coach Vasken Choubaralian said.

Furthermore, the Judges were exceptionally good at serving, tallying up 18 aces throughout the match. “The way [the Judges] set up their defensive is just by running a really good serve, which messes up our offenses. And therefore, it makes defense much easier for them,” Choubaralian said.

When the Judges were up 12 points, Choubaralian called

a time-out to boost the players’ confidence and advise them to focus on their passing. However, the Vixens were unable to pull ahead and scored only three more points before losing 6-25.

During the second set, the Vixens passed better and had higher energy. They were able to force the Judges to earn their points, especially with senior Paula Carcamo’s blocking. Carcamo was essential because Judges senior Anja Malesvic, who totaled six out of the Judges’ 14 kills, was on the other side of the net. On one of Malesvic’s attempted kills, Carcamo was able to block the pipe so flawlessly that the Vixens were sure that the point was theirs. But the Judges showed why they were seeded first, managing to pancake the ball and eventually win the point.

At game point, senior and co-captain Alice Li was subbed in, although an ankle injury had put her out for the majority of the season. “It felt right to be on court with my teammates again,” Li said. Despite the emotional moment, the Judges got the point to win the set 25-9, ending the Vixens’ season.

Although the Vixens lost to Cardozo for the second year in a row, they are not disappointed, continued on page 27