The Hill News: Issue 5

January 23, 2015

VOLUME 112, ISSUE 5

News Briefs

Celebrating Wolf

The Hill held a special inauguration lunch for the inauguration ceremony of Tom Wolf ‘67, who was sworn in as Pennsylvania’s 47th governor on Tuesday.

The regular schedule was altered for the special lunch, which started at 12:00 p.m., 20 minutes before the regular lunch bell.

The Dining Hall was decorated in red, white, and blue for the event, and a live video feed of the inauguration was projected onto a white sheet. However, the video froze as Sydney Heilig, the winner of the elementary school essay contest, “Why I Want To Be Governor” was reading her winning entry, so students and faculty couldn’t see Tom Wolf take the oath of office or deliver his inaugural address.

-Sueda Bolukoglu ‘16

Coaches vs. Cancer

Hill basketball took part in Coaches vs. Cancer on Wednesday. The event aims to promote cancer awareness through the nation’s basketball coaches. As boys’ varsity and J.V teams took on the Solebury School on Wednesday, jars were placed around the gym in order to collect donations. But the initiative was focused more on spreading awareness than collecting money. “Part of our team’s mission is to be active in the community,” said Coach Seth Eilberg. “A good cause like this is what we expect our guys to take part in.”

Bringing King’s Spirit to Hill

BY SUEDA BOLUKOGLU ‘16 The instructions were simple enough: “Count how many times the players wearing white pass the ball.” The audiences’ eyes flickered from side to side, following the white-clad players.

The video, with a bare-bones production quality, featured six people passing around two basketballs, three in white and three in black. They rotated around each other, brushing shoulders, dribbling and passing rapid-fire. At the 25-second mark, a man in a gorilla costume sauntered into frame; he stood in the middle of the group, turned to the camera, beat his chest, then marched off. The gorilla was there for less than ten seconds of an approximately minute-and-a-half video, and featured prominently, but half the audience hadn’t see the gorilla at all.

Called a “selective attention test”, the video exemplifies how the viewers are so intensely focused on counting the passes of the ball that they miss something central to the video. In the context of Derrick Gay’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day presentation, it served as a metaphor: certain traits can overwhelm how a person is perceived, so that equally prominent aspects of their identity are unconsciously ignored, or go unnoticed.

“My goal was to connect the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. in a meaningful way to students,” Gay said after the presentation. “To have them challenge their ideas of identity and how they’re interacting with others.”

Gay started his workshop with an

BY CARL GACHET ‘81

Derrick Gay, an educator and consultant, returned to Hill to lead students and faculty in excercises in the CFTA as part of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

excerpt from one of King’s speeches, “What’s Your Life’s Blueprint?”, that segued into a broader inspection of how race and culture relate to people’s understanding of identity. The series of activities ranged from a “world quiz” that called common understandings of race into question, to an exchange of Post-It notes with triggering identifiers scribbled on them. In one instance, the audience was asked to identify countries in the Middle East; most of them could not answer.

“I think my strength is creating a space where people of different backgrounds are able to engage and becomemore aware of multiple perspectives

and individual blind spots,” Gay said.

According to him, a personal challenge in his is the assumption that anyone speaking on diversity who’s part of a “subdominant social group” speaks only from personal anecdotes or experience, instead of empirical evidence, science or history.

“If we recognize people have different needs than we need to give people the support they need in order to maximize their potential. We are trying to create communities where each individual is able to bring his/her full self in.”

-Jimmy Davidson ‘16

Fayerman Dies

Severin Fayerman, a Holocaust survivor and founder of Baldwin Hardware died at his home in on January 12 at the age of 92. Fayerman was born in Poland, witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust as a seventeen-year-old, when much of his family was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.Fayerman immigrated to America in 1945 and started Baldwin Hardware with his father.

After 63 successful years with the company, he retired in 2009. He shared his story openly, chronicling his experiences in “A Survivor’s Story,” his memoir about life during the Holocaust. Fayerman also spoke in front of numerous audiences, including the student body of The Hill School just a couple months ago.

-Sueda Bolukoglu ‘ 16

Exeter students participate in a “die-in” protest in response to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

THE EXONIAN

COMMENTARY | PRESTON TIETJEN

I

Sheltered From the Storm

t has become a tradition at Hill for Martin Luther King Jr. Day to be a “service learning day”, when the school takes a break from its regular schedule to analyze racism, equality, violence, diversity, and other social issues. Derrick Gay, this year’s MLK Day keynote speaker, addressed students on the subject of identity and how that is central to creating the inclusive

community that Dr. King dreamed about.

Gay was by far the most engaging and interesting speaker the school has brought in this year. Gay’s points were clear, thought-provoking, and relevant to our community. A lot of pent up emotions related to issues surrounding race and equality were released, and the whole presentation felt somewhat

therapeutic. This isn’t done nearly enough at Hill; we need to find a better balance between days like MLK Day and the normal academic schedule.

By not making these issues a regular part of our education -- we have a day for Pottstown CARES, a day for MLK, Diversity Week (whatever that is), and a robust community service program, but that’s about it -- the school is aiding

See TIETJEN, Page 3

THE HILL NEWS

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POST-IT QUOTES

VOLUME 112, ISSUE 5

Intro: Brandon Jacobs, the Student Activities Coordinator, set up a bulletin for the Hill community to “open the conversation� regarding issues of discrimination, racial dynamics and the increasing tensions with the police across the country. This was done in the aftermath of the Ferguson, Mo., protests and the events in Staten Island, N.Y.. Here is a sample of what Hill students had to say.

How have these events affected the Hill community?

How have these events affected you personally?

THE HILL NEWS

VOLUME 112, ISSUE 5

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What can we do to ensure events like this don’t happen again?

TIETJEN, From Page 1

Sheltered From the Storm

a culture of ignorance, which is all too evident on this campus. The only time we talk about these issues is when the school makes the time, and that’s not how it’s supposed to work. The school should discuss issues when they happen, to make the discussions most relevant and to connect Hill to the outside world.

Instead, we wait to discuss them, as if we set issues aside for the sole purpose of having something to discuss. As a result, those discussions often seem forced. The issue of race in its current state is a perfect example. When the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner dominated the national headlines and conversation several months ago, Phillips Exeter and Lawrenceville stopped what they were doing and talked about it. The Exonian, the Exeter student newspaper, covered a student “die-in”, where people act as if they’re dead in order to protest -- in this case, protest the killings of Brown and Garner. It was led by their chaplain, Reverend Robert Thompson, whom you may remember as Hill’s MLK Day speaker last year.

We’ve reprinted the die-in photo from the Exonian in this edition. At Lawrenceville, a similar conversation took place. The Lawrence, the student newspaper, wrote about how discussions were led by such student and faculty groups as Lawrentians Engaging in Active Dialogue, Students Talking about Racism, the Diversity Council, the Alliance of Black Cultures, and the Office of Intercultural Programs. According to The Lawrence, “students and faculty alike gathered in the Mcgraw Reading Room for a community forum held to examine the event more closely.”

While other schools were having these discussions just days after a grand jury in Ferguson declined

to indict Officer Darren Wilson in Brown’s killing and people in New York were protesting “I Can’t Breathe” in Times Square, The Hill continued to live life unaffected. That was until Brandon Jacobs, director of student activities, offered a thought for the day at lunch about the two incidents and posted discussion boards in the Student Center dealing with these events.

Students commented on the boards with Post-It Notes.

Until Monday, this was the the only discussion about Brown and Garner we had.

We’ve included pictures of some of the Post-It Notes in this edition. As you can see, while some responses were thoughtful, others were immature and ignorant. That’s at least partially a byproduct of the fact that we don’t talk about these issues enough, which flies in the face of the school’s mission statement that claims Hill “prepares young men and women … for college, careers, and life” and challenges its students to “serve the common good; and be prepared to lead as citizens of the world.”

Another example of this was the map of the Middle East that Gay used in his presentation. He asked students to indicate, using their fingers, which country corresponded with the numbers on the map. When he asked students to identify where Iran was, only a handful answered correctly.

These issues affect all of us to some degree, yet they’re not generally part of our conversation. We’re not asking “those big questions” that Mr. Miller encouraged us to ask in recent his chapel talk. Society’s issues are as relevant to our education as studying Shakespeare or geometry. That’s one of the things that separates Hill from schools like L’ville and Exeter, and

its part of the reason that a much higher percentage of their students are admitted to selective colleges.

Hill has long been known as a conservative institution relative to its competitors. That may be part of the reason that it always seems to find itself trailing society’s social progress. For example, it took Hill until 1998 to admit girls. Exeter and Phillips Andover, the highest-endowed boarding schools in the country, turned co-ed in 1971 and 1973, respectively. As gay marriage became legal in one state after the next, Hill refused to even acknowledge the existence of gay and lesbian students until last year. Even now, in 2015, the Hill remains the only school out of the 10 Schools that doesn’t have diversity education as part of its mission statement or a director of multicultural affairs as a fulltime member of the faculty.

It didn’t surprise us at The News when we got two responses out of a possible 900 to a discussion question concerning race at Hill. They came from Connor Loughnane ‘15 and Rene Harris ’15, and their responses are printed in this issue. Both of them wrote thoughtfully and I want to thank them for their contributions. They are, for sure, taking at least a small risk in offering their opinions in a public forum, and that risk might have kept many other people from answering our query. But it also seems to indicate that many people here feel comfortably insulated from the nasty problems facing this country at home and abroad, and that, perhaps, is an even more dangerous position to take. As another civil rights leader, Malcolm X, once said, “If you don’t stand for something, then you’ll fall for anything.”

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VOLUME 112, ISSUE 5

DUELING TYPEWRITERS

In the occasion of Honor Awareness Week, two members of the Hill News staff took opposing sides to the question: “Should the Hill have an Honor Code?”

COMMENTARY | REED BAUER

COMMENTARY | MADDY LUTWYCHE

Without Honor, What Are We?

It’s Just a Piece of Paper

A

family does not steal from each other. A family does not lie to each other. And like every family, The Hill needs rules. The Honor Code establishes those rules. With The Hill School having the name “The Family Boarding School,” it seems even more appropriate to keep The Honor Code intact. The Honor Code unites the school, and without it The Hill School loses a sense of community.

Along with that sense of community, The Honor Code is deeply entrenched in the school’s traditions.

The signing of The Honor Code at the beginning of the year unites the school in a deeply meaningful ceremony (My angst-filled peers may think differently, but I digress). According to The Hill School’s Instagram, the backpacks outside the Dining Hall during lunchtime is a #tradition. Without the first tenet of The Honor Code, which protects against stealing, this would not be happening. Why would preventing stealing ever be a bad thing?

And let’s face it- The Honor Code makes the school look more appealing when recruiting students. Removing The Honor Code would make The Hill School only the second in the MAPL league to lack one. Do we really want to be compared to Peddie? Universities like Stanford, Penn, Vanderbilt, and Duke all have honor codes, among others, with Harvard moving toward one. There’s a reason why so many schools have an honor code. It creates an atmosphere of academic integrity that is lacking in schools without one. It makes sure education is the main focus of the school.

What are the benefits of removing The Honor Code? If there’s cheating and stealing now, then removing The Honor Code would only increase these

habits. Perhaps not in a day, maybe not even a year, but as each year of students grow separate from The Honor Code, the culture of the school will change.

Students will no longer prioritize honesty and being a model citizen. The Hill School takes pride in the reputation the school’s students have. Taking away The Honor Code wouldn’t help that reputation, it would hurt it.

I

t was my first week at Hill. Standing in line at the Dining Hall, weighed down by what was probably the largest stack of plates I had ever carried, I could easily hear the two people in front of me talking animatedly. “Yeah, it was pretty easy. Number four is B. That was the only hard one,” explained the burlier of the two. The shorter boy replied, in an equally offhanded tone, “What was the essay question?” As a senior girl

Signing The Honor Code.

What does removing The Honor Code say about the school? That it condones cheating, stealing, and lying, or at least thinks they aren’t serious enough to warrant a punishment? This is in complete contradiction to the school’s mission statement. The mission statement says: “…we challenge our young people to work hard; think and reason… serve the common good.” Most people would agree that lying, cheating, and stealing are not the ‘common good’. So why would the school ever think about removing The Honor Code? Lots of cons plus zero pros equals little sense.

in line turned around to explain exactly what the essay question was, I tuned out. Was this going to be yet another school where cheating was rampant and classes were a joke? And these students weren’t just anybody. They were wellknown seniors, one of them was even on SGA! As I have progressed through The Hill’s academic curriculum, my initial encounter with cheating has become slightly tamed. Most kids don’t directly look up the answers to history questions on their phones in the middle of class or write math equations on their arms during tests. However, most students seem to care less about learning than grades, and care less about “honor” than about

avoiding expulsion.

The Honor Code, supposedly one of Hill’s most cherished traditions, is simply a fancy name for a set of rules.

It is definitely not reflective of Hill students’ values. How many times have you, like the seniors who so surprised me, helped your classmates out by telling them about a test or pop quiz? How many times have you heard a dormmate brag about having their parents write their papers? How many sets of other students’ notes do you have in your desk drawer, freely given away during graduation week? How often do you check your roommate’s name off the sign in list? The Honor Code is just a piece of paper you sign that tells you how much you can get away with in your quest for straight A’s and no demerits.

This leads me to another marker of how the Hill values integrity- the way we interact with each other; namely rumors, social media jabs, and contempt for the rules. You would think that at a school filled with the most intelligent group of students I have met, where every student has made sacrifices to come here, that there would be an atmosphere of respect between administration, teachers, and students.

It is this quality, one The Hill so often advertises, however, that I have found lacking. Of course, there are dozens of people here, adults and peers, who I deeply respect. However, the overall attitude of the student body toward the rules, toward honest academic achievement and character building, and toward the Hill community, falls short.

The administration seem to return the same attitude; instead of talking about issues, Hill students tend to be admonished, and we respond skillfully with uninformed criticism and rebellion.

Letters To The Editor A Talk We Need to Have What did we do during Ferguson? We made a paper board for some discussion, yet had little to no follow up or discussion beyond that. What did we do as Israel/Palestine conflicts escalated? We had a day devoted to wearing blue and white to show support for Israel, but that left out the majority of the victims of the conflict out of this ‘conversation’. Right now, following in the wake of the extremist terrorist attack at Charlie Hebdo, what has occurred at Hill in terms of conversation? Absolutely nothing is what.

There are very real issues occurring in the world right now concerning discrimination, not only towards race but directed at religion, gender, and sexual orientation. Yet, almost no conversation about these issues occur here at Hill.

As a white male, I have the complete liberty and ability to tune these events out at Hill. I take issue with that. The Hill constantly likes to boast about how it is creating the world’s future leaders, yet it promotes so little conversation about these issues. This stuff may be awkward or even painful for some to talk about, but I honestly believe we need more of these conversations here at Hill.

-Connor Laughnane ‘15

There’s a World Outside I don’t think we talk about race or other aspects our community enough. My first conceptualization of race at Hill came the night of the first Students of Color Association (SOCA) meeting in Spring 2012. I sat on the floor surrounded by students from various forms, sharing stories of experiences. I was surprised that everyone in the room had at least one story. Many had several. Even more surprising was that I had and would come to have some similar experiences.

The thing is, that as long as we continue to be the diverse community that we are with students representing various races, ethnicities, backgrounds, gender identities, sexualities, abilities, etc. events that happen outside of our bubble do matter. In the SOCA meeting where we discussed the events, quite a few students expressed that once they left the Hill campus, they have to face the impacts of racism in the real world. If we go through the trouble to invite such a diverse student body, why deprive the other students of exposure to other points of view? MLK day and Diversity Week aren’t the only times we’re students of color.

-Rene Harris ‘15

THE HILL NEWS Editor-in-Chief: Preston Tietjen ’15 Managing Editor: Sueda Bolukoglu ’16 Design Editor: Max Holmes ‘16 Arts Editor: Mary Henderson ‘15 Sports Editor: Julia Hernan ’15

Editors-at-Large: Jimmy Davidson ‘16, Maddy Lutwyche ’16, Laura Snyder ’15, Reed Bauer ‘18, Hannah Cummings ‘17 Advisers: Tony Reid ’75 and Diane Richards