Issue 4

Page 1

Volume 119 Issue 4

The Record

Female alumni authors share inspiration and challenges

Courtesy of Matthew Aponte

Courtesy of Rachel Baez

an unbalanced representation of gender, Lax said. It was also important to Bartels that current students and recently graduated alumni know that it is possible to write for a living, she said. “It is great that Horace Mann students will hear that you can follow your passions and do this with your life.” see Alumni Authors on page 3.

SING YOUR HEART OUT LaChanze sings on Gross stage.

Broadway comes to SOH Emily Salzhauer Staff Writer The school hosted a fundraiser, Broadway Comes to Summer on the Hill (SOH), last Monday evening. During the event, members of the community watched three Broadway stars, Tony Award winner LaChanze, Pearl Sun, and Leesa Richards, perform musical theater songs on the Gross Theatre stage. Executive director of SOH Markell Parker planned the event. The money raised from the ticket sales went towards supporting SOH’s 7th and 8th grade programs, along with SOH robotics and arts programs, attendee Matthew Aponte (12) said. Since 1994, the school has hosted SOH, a program for about 200 students grades three through six who are recruited from public schools in Harlem, the Bronx and Washington Heights, Parker said. Students of SOH take accelerated classes during the summer and for select Saturdays each school year, he said. SOH normally takes place at the schools’ campus in Riverdale, but has become virtual due to COVID, Parker said. Before the performance, the 90 vaccinated and masked guests gathered in Olshan Lobby for a cocktail hour, where SOH Board Chair Ginger McKnight-Chavers P ‘18 welcomed them. Afterwards, the performance began with two of the Broadway actors, Sun and Richards, singing musical theater songs, Parker said. The singers were also accompanied by a four player band, which included a bass, guitar, piano and a drummer, he said. The guests included HM students and

SOH alums, families and teachers, the executive director of SOH Markell Parker said. Congressman Adriano Espaillat, the first Dominican to serve in the House of Representatives, was also present at the event. It took six months of work to plan this event, Parker said. SOH found these specific performers through families in the community. LD music instructor and MD and UD Carmen Keels, helped secure one of the performers, her friend who is a Broadway performer, Aponte said. The fundraiser was the second installment of “Broadway Comes to Summer on the Hill,” after its inaugural event in 2019. “An important aspect of Summer on the Hill is arts and performance, so this was a neat way to recognize the program in that way,” Director of Institutional Research & Enrollment Management Lisa Moreira said. After that, the performance began with two of the Broadway actors, Pearl Sun, and Lesa Richards, singing musical theatre songs, Parker said. The singers were also accompanied by a four player band, which included a bass, guitar, piano and a drummer, he said. Since Aponte is interested in pursuing musical theater in the future, he especially appreciated the special guests in attendance, he said. “It was pretty amazing to see these actors come to HM to perform,” Aponte said. A highlight of the night for Aponte was when LaChanze dedicated a song about being a lion to him, he said. “She gave me a shoutout in her song and said that she was see SOH on page 3.

Editorial: Indigenous Peoples’ Day, beyond the name The message the school community is sending about the upcoming long weekend — its purpose, its value, and its name — is one of ambivalence. Some students just plan to relax or catch up on school work, others think of it as a time to celebrate Christopher Columbus’ arrival in America, and a growing group has begun to take the time to educate themselves on the culture and history of Indigenous Peoples. The administration has changed the name on the school calendar to “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” a long overdue change. But nothing else has been done to commemorate the holiday. While the administration has begun to move towards a necessary reconciliation with the nation’s history, their decision seems cosmetic and inconclusive. The school community can read the name

October 8th, 2021

Archives showcase history of The Record Max Chasin Staff Writer

Rachel Baez Staff Writer Last Wednesday, six female alumni authors discussed their writing careers in a panel organized by Director of Alumni Relations Kristin Lax and moderated by Upper Division Library Department Chair Caroline Bartels. The panel consisted of Alexandra Budabin ‘96, Val Bodurtha ‘14, Leslie Cohen ‘02, Emily Liebert ‘94, Emma Riva ‘18, and Sarah Seltzer ‘01. The panel discussion will be featured in the virtual “Mann Made” Homecoming program, which celebrates the role that alumni play in inspiring the imaginations of current students, Lax said. The purpose of the panel was to share what motivated panelists to be writers and how the school community influenced their decision. Lax is extremely grateful to these female alumni authors for participating in the panel discussion and taking time to share their reflections on their journeys as published authors, she said. “If you look at the bookcase filled with alumni publications, the vast majority are written by males,” she said. The school was an all boys school until fifty years ago, so it has

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of the holiday on the school’s webpage, then enjoy their day off without any acknowledgment of the history it represents. At best, we might see an email on Monday about the day. However, more substantial actions are necessary. Although some members of the community — a few history teachers, a couple politically active students — have changed the language they use, we as a community have not made a commitment to make the change. As an Editorial Board, we believe that it is necessary to switch our language to acknowledge the colonial history that has long dominated rhetoric in the US about this holiday — and go beyond our words, too. This weekend, in addition to welldeserved relaxation, take time to educate yourself. Learn about the land you are on, whom it belonged to before

colonizers settled the country, and the history of Indigenous people from before colonization to now. Read about the history of residential schools in the US and Canada, the traditions and holidays of various Indigenous peoples, and the Land Back Movement. The school sits on land that once belonged to the Wappinger Munsee Lenape people. As a community member who currently benefits from that land, it is your responsibility to learn about it. When you hear your peers — or your teachers — refer to the long weekend as a celebration of Columbus, correct them. Let’s make an effort to go beyond performativity this Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Over the past two weeks, an exhibit covering the history of The Record was on display for students and faculty in the school’s archive room. “I love this exhibit because there has been so much about the history of the school that has been overlooked that these articles bring back,” Upper Division Library Department Chair Caroline Bartels said. Bartels created the exhibit, and students had to schedule a time with her for a tour. Bartels created the exhibit primarily to showcase all of the fascinating information she found throughout The Record’s history, she said. “In October of 1919, I found out that teachers who fought in World War I were returning from the war to come back and teach at Horace Mann,” she said. Without looking through these old articles, Bartels would never have known that something like this had ever happened, she said. Bartels wanted to display the evolution of the Record, both through its visual appearance and the content it featured, to show students how it’s changed over the years. “The Record first began to look like a newspaper in 1914,” she said. “In the beginning, they looked like stapled pieces of paper, or even pamphlets.” Bartels main goal, however, was to show people what was happening on the first week of every year throughout the school’s history, she said. Around 2008, the school sent out copies of the bound issues of The Record to be digitized. For the exhibit, Bartels went through the digital copies of The Record and printed out the first page of every year she had access to, she said. The school has many of these articles thanks to people cleaning up their parents’and grandparents’ homes and finding old Record issues and articles, Bartels said. The school has also been saving all of the issues of The Record since its founding, she said. However, Bartels has not been able to salvage every issue of The Record in the school’s history, she said. “Certain things are missing,” she said. “We have no copies of the 1916/1917 Record, except for the very end of 1917; the rest have been lost.”1917/1918 is also gone, with no extant issues except for those published by the HM Girls School in Manhattan. see Archive Show on page 3.


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