TMP 35 Issue 1 - Graduation Issue

The Milton Paper Graduation Issue

JUNE 09, 2017

VOL. 35, NO. 01

MILTON’S INDEPENDENT WEEKLY STUDENT NEWSPAPER

Opinion

News

The Value of Reflection

How Safe is Milton Academy?

By MOLLY WILSON We are not stagnant people. We are a society driven to succeed. We are constantly trying to improve ourselves, to be the better version of who we are today. Thus, we fixate on the future, a realm in which our proposed better self will exist. In the pursuit of improvement, we decide that next time we will listen closer, care more, speak louder, be better.

Yet, in this mission to improve, reflecting on the past is often disregarded. In our desire to listen closer, we do not consider why we did not hear those around us clearly. In our desire to care more, we do not contemplate the factors that led to our apathy. In our desire to speak louder, we do not consider why our voice was muffled. In our desire to be better, we do not consider the past failures that led to our current shortcomings.

We do spend a significant portion of our time thinking about the past, but rarely in a constructive way. We will ruminate over moments of painful awkwardness or intense discomfort, playing these short episodes over and over in our head, wondering how we could have alleviated the unease we felt in that isolated moment. For moments of clear wrongdoings when an obvious action would have prevented the undesirable outcome, we will mull over this act as well, fabricating alternative stories that we wish could have been the reality. However, contemplating the past in this way does not lead to self-improvement.

In our pursuit of our better selves, we need to identify our weaknesses by reflecting on the past. For example, when we receive a graded essay from our English

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Inside This Issue SENIOR PROJECTS

page 6/12

MILTON CUM LAUDE

page 8

SENIOR REFLECTION

page 18

MATRICULATIONS

page 27

By EMMA JAMES Milton Academy’s campus, comprised of 125 acres sliced with two major commuter roads and no gates, is the epitome of an open campus. Jokes about literal strangers being able to walk into Forbes Dining Hall for a free meal aren’t uncommon. Moreover, just a few weeks ago, the driver of a car coming down Centre Street yelled the n-word at a group of black students, and despite a search by campus safety and the town of Milton Police Department, the driver’s identity was never found.

I sat down to speak with Campus Safety Director Jay Hackett, who recently won a national security award, about how such a small group protects such a busy campus.

Officer training and daily schedule: When hiring, Campus Safety looks for applicants from police academies and departments, most of which require hundreds of

hours to complete training programs. Officers that don’t come from this background are sent to a one-week academy program to learn the basics, then to a “school resource officer training, designed for municipal police officers working in school environments,” described Mr. Hackett. Currently, one officer is fire-prevention certified and five officers are EMTs; Campus Safety sponsors their recertification, which consists of fifty hours every two years.

Campus Safety also hires a third-party company to update the officers on campus issues, such as diversity training, the night before students return to campus from summer break each year.

During the day, two officers are always on patrol, three during evenings, and two during nights. The two night-shift officers stay until 8:15 to help the morning-shift control intersections and crosswalks. Officer patrols are divided into two sections, “the main quad

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Alumni Interview:

Austan Goolsbee '87

By NIHAL RAMAN AND JAKE GRIFFIN

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Last week, we spoke to Austan Goolsbee ’87, acclaimed economist and chief economic advisor to the Obama Administration. Goolsbee served on President Obama’s economic council until 2011, and he chaired the council from September 2010 to August 2011. Goolsbee is currently the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

TMP: What is your personal definition of economics?

AG: Basically, it’s the study of human decision-making in the face of scarce resources and the impact of incentives and things like that. My part of that word is oriented around data and what the profession calls applied

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PAGE 2

The Milton Paper The 35th Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief Managing Editor Editor at Large Opinion Manager News Managers Senior Editors Website Editor A&E Editor Elizabeth Foster

Navpreet Sekhon and Rachel Handler NihalRaman Jonah Garnick Aditya Gandhi James DeLano and Emma James Edward Moreta and Alex Millard Coalter Palmer Faculty Sponsor Lisa Baker

Sports Editors Thomas Elliot James Oh

Layout Editor Zoe Camaya

Associate Editors Pierce Wilson Natasha Roy Rishi Dhir

Opinion Editor Molly Wilson

News

Opinion

Abby Walker Evita Thadhani Lyndsey Mugford Sarah Alkhafaji Brendan Hegarty Susan Urstadt Hana Widerman Nathan Smith Sarah Palmer Max Litvak

Celena Eccleston Rachel Ding Serena Fernandopulle Vivian Soong Willa DuBois William Kim Jack Weiler Jessica Wang Pierce Wilson Jessica Kim Drew Bartkus Bodhi Becker Katarina Stephan Olayeni Oladipo Maggie Shields

A&E Madison Lynch HannahHachamovitch Maggie Adedamola HannahHachamovitch Jane Yang Jennifer Lim Humor Jake Griffin Janelle Davis Lyndsey Mugford Drew Bartkus

Sports Kendelle Grubs Liam Kennedy James Oh Sophia Li Katherine McDonough Columnists Jessica Wang Malia Chung

Milton’s Independent Weekly Student Newspaper “A Forum for Discussion and Thought” Founded 1979 • Publishing Weekly Since 1983 Founders David Roth • Mark Denneen The Milton Paper is an independent, student-produced publication. It does not necessarily represent the views of the students, faculty, administration, or Milton Academy itself. Please do not copy or reproduce without permission.

LettersPolicy:TheMiltonPapergladlyacceptslettersfromanyonewhosendsthem.Wedonotpromise topublishanyorallletters,andweretaintherightstoeditlettersforcontent,length,andclarity.Wewill notpublishanonymousletters.Ifinclined,pleasetaketheopportunitytowritetous.Sendlettersbymail (Letters to the Editor, The Milton Paper, Milton Academy, 170 Centre Street, Milton, MA 02186), by email (TheMiltonPaper34@gmail.com), or by personal delivery to our office Warren 304.

Editorial

Introducing The Milton Paper’s 35th Editorial Board First off, we would like to thank The Milton Paper’s 34th Editorial Board for an outstanding year! From Trump’s election to tension on campus in the past month, TMP 34 most definitely had a full plate— probably a larger plate than past Editorial Boards have had for a while.

As the new Editorial Board, TMP 35 hopes to help maintain the energy that students have displayed throughout this past year. We acknowledge the long-enduring fire that students have concerning issues both on and off campus, and we would like not only to maintain conversations, but also to be participants in as many outlets as possible. We would like to keep both the administration and the student body accountable for continuing active discussion about social issues that affect our community deeply and that cannot be neglected. We will hold our entire school community—students, faculty, and administrators alike— responsible for both creating and participating in opportunities for making change.

We have spoken up, but now we all must put in the work by showing up again and again. We, as an Editorial Board, will not allow our community to slip back into frequent neglect of difficult issues on campus.

To achieve this, we will make small changes in how TMP works. We hope that our changes will allow the Paper to keep administrators on track towards upholding the many promises that they have made this year. In addition, we want to foster honest yet respectful debate among students, dialogue which clears the air around rumors and tensions.

In past years, this publication has focused on recounting events already known to the Milton community. We, however, pledge to try to investigate and reveal new information. We hope to dispel what shrouds the truth: rumors and ignorance. Our news section plans on releasing breaking news articles; we will work to elucidate generally overlooked issues on our campus, of which many students remain unaware despite the noticeable impact of these problems on campus life. We will try to dig deeper into investigations than surface-level campus chats often do, and we have the grit and perseverance to seek the truth from faculty and students alike.

With this approach, we hope to mend our ratio of news to opinion articles so that it is more balanced. We plan to imbue the Paper with a nuanced dynamic that will provide readers with a huge spectrum of opinion along with factual insights into campus events. While we would like the Paper to speak to as many ideas as possible—even, and perhaps especially, traditionally unpopular ones—we still want to uphold our title as a newspaper by ensuring that our primary concern is the news section.

The Milton Paper hopes to be involved in all of the upcoming battles that occur on campus, not only by writing about them but also by being participants in them on the ground level. We believe that in order to be true journalists, we must hold ourselves accountable as an Editorial Board. If we write about an idea but do not follow up with our words in real life, then we nullify our sentiments and jeopardize the credibility of TMP. In short, TMP 35 hopes to be a catalyst during this next school year.

We cannot wait to get started in the fall, and we are all honored to be doing what we love.

Finally, congratulations to all of their seniors on completing their journey! •

News Fast News: The Year in Review

PAGE 3

}SEPTEMBER

Summer: Librarians remove 13,000 books from Cox Library.

30th: Tom Brady visits campus to film an Under Armour commercial.

{

OCTOBER

5th: Jonathan Mooney captures our attention with his speech adressing stigmas around learning disabilities.

14th: TMP 34 tells us why we should vote yes on #4.

21th: Bring-your-parents-to-school-and-get-them-to-donate-to-TMP day.

}

9th: Donald Trump is elected as 45th president of the United States.

15th: “The Mourning After” issue of TMP highlights students’ reactions to Trump’s election.

22th: The nicest bathrooms on campus are built in the Admissions Hallway. Coincidence?

29th: The U.S. Surgeon General—Vice Admiral Vivek Murthy, M.D., M.B.A—visits campus as Milton’s 49th Alumni War Memorial Lecturer.

DECEMBER{

NOVEMBER

1st: A TMP investigative report by Jimmy DeLano ’18 and Jack Sloane ’18 finds that Campus Safety parking tickets do not need to be paid.

14th: Recreational marijuana is officially legalized in Massachusetts ;D

}

9th: Mateen Tabatabaei ’17 roasts the Upper School community for excessive social media usage, then uses social media less than three months later.

21st: Many Milton students participate in the Women’s Marches in Boston and Washington, D.C.—part of a global protest against President Donald Trump. Responses to an Instagram caption stating that “the future is female” cause commotion on social media.

{

FEBRUARY

JANUARY

5th: The New England Patriots win Super Bowl LI. 21st: Administrators reveal the findings of an investigation—spurred on by a Boston Globe Spotlight article last spring—that the school contracted an outside firm to conduct. The investigation reveals that Rey Buono, a member of the Milton faculty from 1973 to 1987, engaged in multiple incidents of sexual misconduct involving at least twelve male students during his tenure at Milton. It also concludes that Headmaster Jerry Pieh (1973–1991) had knowledge of Buono’s misconduct.

}

3rd: The decision to offer US History to Class III students is announced.

7th: The SGA passes the “2 Different Gender Plan,” an amendment to the SGA Constitution which aims to combat the overwhelming male presence on the SGA. 8th: Female students skip class for the Women’s Day Strike and spend the day with Bingham Reader Jamaica Kincaid.

27th: Students return from spring break to find new motion-sensing LED lighting installed.

{

APRIL

MARCH

15th: TMP pulls the ultimate prank by moving TMM’s entire office into the Student Center.

18th: White and Male Privilege posters are emailed to all Upper School students and placed around the Student Center.

19th: Kailee Silver ’18 and Greg Livingston ’18 are elected as the 2017-18 Head Monitors.

}

2nd: A TMP investigative report by Marshall Sloane ’17 on the distribution of health and safety checks in each dorm reveals the inequality between the number of checks per dorm and exposes how current practices do not meet administrative standards.

5th: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is terminated as the summer reading book for Class IV English. Ms. Sabin shares her thoughts on the book in TMP’s Faculty Issue.

22nd: #miltoniscancelled. Students walk out on administrators during Monday morning assembly. A sit-in begins in the Student Center during recess and continues throughout the day. Students send a list of demands and questions to the administration. Alumni write a letter to the administration in support of the student protesters.

23rd: The sit-ins continue in Mr. Bland’s office, the Deans’ offices, and the Admissions hallway. Administrators answer questions and commit to several future changes. Faculty members run a program for students in which various teachers discuss and define racism, explain its historical context in America, and participate in a “Privilege Walk.” The program concludes with small-group discussions for students and faculty.

25th: Rodney Glasgow speaks at a programming session designed to help mend the community divide.

MAY

News

PAGE 4

Where Protesting and Graduating Collide

By EVITA THADANI As the school year comes to a close, Milton Academy celebrates the departing seniors and the end of the academic year with a graduation ceremony. Throughout the two hundred and nineteen years of our school’s history, graduation has included the same traditions, but this year those traditions might be interrupted.

Over the last month, hundreds of students from all classes protested racism in both our social culture, as well as the Disciplinary Committee’s response, by walking out of Monday morning assembly and sitting-in for two academic days in the Student Center, the Admissions hallway, the Dean’s Office, and Mr. Bland’s office.

A rumor that some students might have protested these issues by walking out on graduation recently emerged. In response to such hearsay, Nathan Strauss (I) sent a letter to the student body on Wednesday, May 31st in which he stated that “this day is not about the administration or the institution of Milton Academy. This day is about us, the Class of 2017.” Another senior, anonymous, expressed how “graduation is meant to celebrate the seniors,” and that “[she has been] waiting for this day [her] entire life, and [she] hopes no one is disrespectful enough to walk out.”

Both graduation and student protests have a deep rooted history at Milton, but today would have been the first time they clashed.

Graduation has included many memorable traditions since Milton’s founding in 1798. Seniors, expected to wear white and blue, hold flowers as a bagpiper leads them to their designated seats. The quirkiest graduation tradition is that the last person to get a diploma receives a sock full of quarters. This tradition dates back to 1986, when John Mackenzie, the Student Dean at the time, concluded that the last person to get a diploma deserves a reward for waiting the longest. Mr. Mackenzie chose to give this person a sock full of dimes. Every senior contributed a dime. Over the years, the dimes changed to quarters, and the nearly two-hundred quarters add up for a nice prize.

Over Milton Academy’s history,

students and faculty have protested for and against wars, fought for social justice both inside and outside the community, and held demonstrations right here on campus. During 1917, a group of teachers sent a message to President Woodrow Wilson, expressing their support for the U.S.’s participation in WWI. The school also helped male student volunteers prepare for the military by allowing them to train during the school year. In fact, President Wilson’s encouragement during WWI to grow more local food instigated the school’s decision to create a farm on campus. While the boys were training for the military, girls gathered funding from the campus farm to help those suffering from the repercussions of war.

While students were active in both WWI and WWII, the majority of students and faculty opposed the Vietnam War and help protests against U.S. participation in the war beginning in 1969.

Students and faculty agreed to cancel classes for students with decent grades if those students promised to spend thirty to forty hours each week protesting against the war. Similiarly, students protested against the war in Iraq in 1991 and classes were again cancelled to discuss the issue.

Milton Academy students have a history of standing up for what they believe in, whether it is supporting a war, raising money for a cause, or fighting racism on campus. We Milton students are in an environment where protesting has generally been accepted and supported by the administration and the faculty for several decades.

Graduation traditions are deeply ingrained in our school’s history, but so is activism, and which do students value more? Students know that a walk out of graduation would definitely reach the news, and perhaps spark other schools to stand up to racism in their communities.

But, at the same time, graduation is a time to celebrate the success and hard work of the senior class, not the failures of the administration. Hopefully in promising to reshape our Milton morals, the administration will also take the opportunity to reevaluate our traditions—protesting and graduating alike—and foster growth on all levels in our community. •

Indoor Graduation is WRONG

Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month

By PIERCE WILSON This May was Asian-American Heritage Month, and Milton’s Asian Society, lead by history teacher Vivian Wuwong, Andrew Song (II), and Vivian Soong (II), planned an entire month of activities to engage the community on issues of diversity, inclusion, and Asian culture.

To begin the month, Mr. Parisi directed a production of playwright David Henry Hwang’s Yellowface. Yellowface is a semi-autobiographical play about David Henry Hwang in which he casts a white actor to play an Asian character, and madness ensues.

The play deals with themes of representation and cultural appropriation. The choice to stage Yellowface was especially monumental in Milton’s history because it was Milton’s first Asian play.

On Tuesday, May 16th, Asian Society partnered with Milton’s Public Issues Board to host a Straus dessert, Acting Asian American, with two Asian-American actors: Christina Chan and Michael Tow. These two actors participated in a discussion about the lack of representation of Asian-Americans in American media and how the model minority myth discourages Asian people from pursuing careers in entertainment. William Yu ‘09 moderated the discussion and added an interesting perspective as a past Milton student. Furthermore, Yu launched “#StarringJohnCho,” a viral social movement that depicts today’s Hollywood blockbusters with an Asian-American actor, John Cho, as their leading man.

Additionally, last month in Forbes Dining Hall, Asian Society put pamphlets on tables which detailed different ‘fun facts’ about Asian-American and Asian-International students at Milton. These pamphlets served as a sort of history lesson for many. Learning the history of the Asian diaspora at Milton is important because, too often, we get caught up in the Milton bubble, and forget that, not too long ago, it was an anomaly to see a nonwhite face here at Milton.

For the final week of Asian-American Heritage Month, Asian Society partnered with Gender and Sexuality Perspectives (G.A.S.P!) to bring in Franny Choi for a Wednesday assembly. Franny Choi is a Korean-American spoken-word poet. Choi writes about a multitude of topics including racism in America, the model minority myth, and

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News

PAGE 5

How Safe Is Milton?

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 areas and the perimeter, which is East Campus, West Campus, and outlying buildings,” Mr. Hackett explained, and in the evenings the third section includes Straus, Wigg, and Warren, called “the big three.”

Most buildings are open until ten o’clock on weeknights and until seven o’clock on Friday and Saturday nights unless there’s a campus event event. If a building is ever without a chaperone at night, the Administrator On Duty (AOD) will ask Campus Safety to lock it.

History of IA access and Ware Hall upgrade: The IA system was first established in 2007 as a test for Robbins and Forbes Houses, and, by 2009, all dorms were card access only.

IA access in academic buildings was originally designed for faculty members to get in after hours to eliminate the need for “master keys” that, when lost, posed an unavoidable threat to all buildings. By now, the only exterior door master keys belong to Campus Safety officers.

Ware Hall already had card access on the doors for faculty after-hour access, but the problem was related to the distinction between the three Milton Academy schools. The entire Lower School was always meant to be entirely locked from the outside except for faculty IA access or buzzing-in. But, because Greenleaf is connected to Ware Hall, the Lower School was not actually locked in. Mr. Hackett said that Campus Safety and the Dean’s Office “figured it just made sense to provide exterior security for all of the Lower School, most the Middle School, and Upper School Math and Language.” Because the door is held open most of the time between classes and, thus, most students don’t need to use their IA’s for access, the additional security measure had little cost.

Right now, Mr. Hackett doesn’t envision putting IA access on each of the fifteen academic buildings, but “if [Campus Safety] can keep you safe while you’re in class, that’s a primary objective.”

How keeping Milton safe differs from college and other high schools: As the former head of security at Babson College, Mr. Hackett said that keeping Milton Academy safe is quite different than a public school or college. In terms of IA building access, he stated that “if you go to Milton High or a general school that’s one building, you go to the office and you check in.” In general, Milton most closely compares with “a smaller college, with north-south, east-west commuter roads running through it,” said Mr. Hackett, “but not like Curry College with a front and rear gate.” A big distinction between Milton and college life, besides open campus status, is the structure of dorm families.

Besides medical transports from houses, campus safety rarely gets involved in residential life at Milton, whereas in college, officers check dorms every night.

Although being a Milton freshman boarder and a college freshman are both first experiences away from home, Mr. Hackett recalled far more vandalism and cooking malfunctions at Babson, because “[Milton] students tend to respect more.” Parking, on the other hand, is a shortage on every campus.

Why you should definitely register your car: Mr. Hackett knows not every car is registered, but “does [he] have someone out there walking the parking lots, writing tickets like they do at colleges? No.” The primary role of the patrolling officer is medical transports to the Health Center; he acknowledged that Milton is “down parking spaces and crunched every day of the week.” Ultimately, the benefit of registering your car on an open campus is to offer peace of mind, if nothing else; if an officer finds a car without a sticker on campus late at night, Campus Safety gets an immediate red flag.

Camera surveillance feeds: Most cameras on campus are configured with the focus to monitor

IA access doors; with multiple lenses, cameras fit on corners can watch doors and, for example, roadways. Although the town of Milton has cameras for street surveillance, extra eyes are preferred within our campus. Each cruiser is equipped with laptop-sized screens they can use to access camera feeds, but generally, Campus Safety won’t monitor surveillance unless an incident requires it.

When you call 2911: When a student calls 2911 or 911 from campus, the call is sent to all on-duty officers in cruisers and the AOD. If, for example, the call is placed from the ACC, the trainer staff will get a text that “911 was just called from the ACC,” Mr. Hackett mentioned; the staff member phones are programmed to get notifications about calls placed from RSG, ACC, squash courts, CSG, and the outside emergency phones by fields. This automatic locating system “gives everybody a quicker response time.”

The outside emergency phones, the “Blue Light System,” were installed fifteen years ago, a time before cellphones. Most are located on the exterior reaches of campus. Though they probably passed their prime, the blue light phones still work and they don’t cost anything to keep; if nothing else, Mr. Hackett said, “if something happens, at least people can see a phone.”

The rights of students as minors: Milton requires students to sign away many privileges, arguably including freedom. However, Campus Safety has never searched a person, and only searches dorms if something needs to be taken as evidence, though those situations are handled through the Dean’s Office and house families. Mr. Hackett compared this hands-off approach to public schools, where it isn’t uncommon for police to walk drug-sniffing dogs down hallways. Though he can’t promise that no one will ever be patted down, “it would have to be a real severe incident if an officer involved were to.”

What Campus Safety worries about: “It’s the world around us that we can’t control,” shared Mr. Hackett.

Campus Safety reduces risk as extensively as possible with practicing lockdowns, training to barricade doors, having street smart, but the final responsibility is in the hands of students. Hearing “this was three hours ago” is not nearly as helpful as “something happened three minutes ago,” especially when responding to a medical emergency or tracking down a culprit. “I can’t control what’s driving through Centre Street right now,” Mr. Hackett admitted, “and the more people communicate with adults, the faster we are.”

What officers want you to know: Ultimately, interactions between students and authority, even if only during a five-minute medical run, are “the best community policing tool we have.”

In an ideal world, because of Milton’s proximity and accessibility to a city, Mr. Hackett recommended that “RAD (Rape Aggression Defense) be a mandatory freshman class,” not only to teach invaluable skills, but also to generate interactions with Campus Safety “in a positive light.”

At a time when police are becoming less and less trusted, closing the divide between the student body and Campus Safety is challenging, but necessary. As that gap closes, students will be less wary about calling for help in emergency situations and will be more inclined to keep officers in touch with day-to-day campus issues.

“See something, say something.” We as students have heard it, but Mr. Hackett stressed that we need not fear reporting. Campus Safety strives to be resource, not a punishment. Let’s treat it that way. •

News

PAGE 6

Administrators Host Town Halls To Review Handbook

By PIERCE WILSON On May 30, 2017, Mr. Heard sent an email to the Upper School inviting all students to two “town hall” events.

During these gatherings, which took place on Wednesday and Friday of last week, students had the opportunity to discuss different sections of the Upper School Student Handbook with the deans: Ms. Bonenfant, Mr. Heard, and Mr. Ruiz.

In response to the protests during the week of May 22nd, the deans wanted the opportunity to review the “Standards” section, which discusses school expectations, and the “Appendix” section, which covers disciplinary responses.

During the week of protests, many people mentioned that the “Standards” section states that any sort of harassment (based on actual or perceived race gender, nationality, etc.) is grounds for “serious disciplinary response.” However, based on several incidents, students felt the administration was not honoring that particular part of the handbook.

In past years, a committee of administrators and faculty has reviewed and edited the handbook each summer in order to keep up with technology and the rapidly-changing student body. According to Mr. Heard, one recent change that came out of these meetings regards the clause on cyberbullying. Ten years ago, cyberbullying was not as widespread nor as easily traceable as it is today, so the committee added a cyberbullying clause to the “Standards” section. Supposedly, these reviews ensure that the handbook is clear and accurately reflects Milton’s population.

Because of the handbook’s fluidity, students must sign it before the start of every school year. In signing it, students commit not only to living by the handbook’s rules but also to being aware of those rules. As many pointed out during the town hall meetings, expecting all students to have read and understood the entire handbook is more than a little farfetched. Ms. Bonenfant noted that, going forward, administrators might consider different ways to ensure that students understand everything outlined in the handbook. Simply reading the “expectations” for the year during Convocation is not the most effective approach.

Although many students have observed the vagueness of the administration’s addresses, not many people attended the town hall on Wednesday. This

was likely due to the fact that the notice was sent out less than twenty-four hours before the event. Ariane DesRosiers (III) notes that she was glad to see the deans so open to hearing students’ criticisms and active on the promises made during the sit-ins. More people attended on Friday, however, and apparently both days saw important strides in terms of figuring out how the handbook could better suit both student and administrative needs.

The deans, Mr. Ruiz in particular, began the meeting by conceding that the handbook was not perfect, nor was it designed to handle situations of inclusion effectively. Mr. Heard went on to explain that, especially in those matters which involve people and their treatment of other people, the handbook is intentionally vague, in order that the discipline committee may consider specific circumstances. “With things like drugs and alcohol, whereabouts, or even cheating, it’s really simple,” Mr. Heard explained. “One person made a choice which he or she knew was a violation of the handbook and should learn from that decision. However, with things like bullying, it becomes a lot more complicated.”

Many have also vocalized that our entire discipline system is flawed in these types of issues, as there are really only three levels of response: a DC statement read to the whole community accompanying a suspension, a Deans’ Committee outlining goals the student can follow, and no punishment at all. Only one of these situations— a DC— yields any transparency; throughout the entire movement, students have been pushing for more clarity. However, Mr. Ruiz explained that the goal of all of Milton’s disciplinary proceedings is to provide a learning experience for students, and that he wonders how much a student will want to change his or her bigoted beliefs after simply being suspended.

All in all, the town halls seemed to be effective, and the summer will give the administration plenty of time to review the handbook, now equipped with the new information gathered from these meetings. The deans will be doing so not only with a faculty committee but also with a student committee. Hopefully, everyone’s views and experiences will be considered. We’ll just have to wait until September 8 to see what the deans decide. •

Senior Projects

By COALTER PALMER After their inception in the early 1970s, senior projects became a haven for student self-expression. This opportunity gives soon-to-be alumni a chance to put an exclamation point at the end of their high school careers.

This year’s projects were as all-encapsulating as ever. Students participated in internships, staged performances, read and published books, and wrote computer programs. With the help of several friends, Harrison Jia dove into projects with the sole purpose of “going viral,” an objective that he accomplished by making the front page of Reddit.

Other students focused on solving issues pertinent to the everyday lives of Milton students.

Ivan Kouzmine set out to revamp the open-lab system by digitizing a process that has always been done in paper and pencil. He created a program that lets students sign into and out of the lab with the swipe of an IA. Citing a similar desire to do a project that “felt specific to Milton,” and that included a creative component, Eshani Chakrabarti spent her time in the Cox Library Archives compiling photos and yearbook pages from the 1960s and 70s.

She ultimately produced a video documentary to piece together her findings—which included letters written by Robert Frost and Milton alumni T.S. Eliot.

Projects that culminated in live performances ranged from political debates to readings of student-written picture books; Other students produced stand-up comedy, dance recitals, and numerous instrumental performances spanning a variety of genres and personal experiences.

Tristan Manuel spent his month writing eight EDM (electronic dance music) songs, which he performed live in the orchestra room last Wednesday. Olivia Zhong and Anooshka Gupta combined their performance-oriented project with a research component, studying the history and culture of Zumba and then choreographing and performing their own interpretation of the genre.

Several seniors decided to put their efforts towards charity; Matt Tabor and Stevie O’Connor organized a school-wide wiffle ball tournament.

They constructed an impressive small-scale replica of Fenway Park on the football field and donated all entry fees collected from participating teams to the Jimmy Fund. Knitting and crocheting an assortment of hats, scarves, socks, mittens and quilts, Isabel Basow donated all of her creations to Goodwill.

When asked whether they found the project period to be stressful, the senior class was divided. While the general consensus of surveyed students was that projects were only moderately stressful—a 4 on a scale out of 10—nearly 40%

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News

PAGE 7

Interview With Austan Goolsbee '87 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 microeconomics.

administration handle the adverse feelings?

In 2010, the New York Times asked you,“What does this economy need right now?” In response, you spoke a lot about the government protecting the middle class through cutting taxes and implementing unemployment benefits. How would you respond to, “What does this economy need right now?” today?

For the first two years of the Obama administration, the Democrats were in control of Congress and had big majorities. So, they were doing a lot of things and generating a lot of opposition from Republicans, but that didn’t stop things from getting done. Then after the 2010 midterms and for the rest of [Obama’s presidency], [Congress] was almost in trench warfare, and the opposition would hold up anything that Obama tried to do. They would try to hold up his appointments, they would try to hold up the legislation, hold up a bunch of stuff like that.

President Obama himself, probably more than any person I’ve ever met, is open to the ideas of people that he disagrees with. I thought that was a weird thing to come out of the public perception, among Fox or conservatives at least, that President Obama is very ideological and was trying to push his ideas through. My experience with him was that he was very open; he would frequently bring in conservative columnists, talk to them, and try to get their perspectives. In my world, several times he brought in Republican economists, and he would want to know “What do you think about what we’re doing?” and “What do you not like about it?” Certainly, having a dialogue effuses some of the tension.

The biggest change from 2010 to today is that, in 2010, we were at the beginning of realizing that we were not going to have a depression. We had dodged a bullet, we were coming out of a financial crisis, but we were still very much in the crisis mode. Now—it sounds weird to say—but my view is that the economy needs to stop thinking in a crisis mentality. It’s not really about what we can do in the next three months to make things better. The time for that style of thinking has passed. We now need to make sure that we’re making investments in things like science, education, and economic infrastructure.

Obamacare seemed to be quite a moderate plan. Can you speak to the reactions you received after proposing it?

The Affordable Care Act was premised on a Massachusetts plan which was passed by a Republican and itself came from a somewhat famous conservative think tank’s health plan.

So the notion that Obamacare was a government takeover of the health system is a completely inaccurate caricature. It preserved the private sector and employed the health system that we’ve had in the US for decades.

It emphatically did not move towards a government takeover of the health system.

It’s a perfect example of the dynamic in today’s politics that it doesn’t really matter what any individual or any party was for some time ago because it’s all about the here and the now and the partisan conflict. Many of the ideas of Obamacare were things that Republicans were pushing as the alternative to Clintoncare, but now they are not acceptable to Republicans because their ideas are being put forward by the Democrats. That does happen with Trump—some of that does happen the other way, but for the eight years of the Obama administration, I would characterize Obama trying to come up with what were historically moderate or bipartisan decisions with a group of Republicans in Congress who would vote against it just because Obama was for it. It doesn’t really matter whether they were Republican ideas before or not.

In your time in the Obama administration, there was a lot of dissent. How did your

Speaking of the complications in politics and how it muddles fact, can you speak about Trump’s presidency, how he’s taken the spotlight, and how he’s gained such a following that he can refute facts and opinions to the point of controlling Congress?

I don’t know if I would describe it that way, but I will say this. First, the campaign and now the context of the administration have sounded scary and a little bit sad. Most campaigns fundamentally are about policy ideas, or at least, policy ideas are a major component of the campaigns. [The candidate must come up] with ideas in which the person says, “Here’s what I want to do as president” and has to defend those ideas, and a lot of the policy work in a campaign is critiquing what the other people propose and putting forward what you propose. That forces a certain discipline which is actually very helpful once you get to office because usually what presidents do is very similar to the policy ideas that they ran on, and it prepares the country, because they had debate throughout the campaign, for what [the president] will try to do. On either side: If Obama comes in and tries to pass healthcare, re-regulate the financial sector, and pass a stimulus, that’s what he said he was going to do. Before that, George Bush said that he was going to cut taxes and pass privatized social security.

Donald Trump ran in a way that was totally different in that he didn’t have any specifics.

When Sean Hannity asked him what he was going to replace Obamacare with, he literally said that he would replace Obamacare with “something fabulous,” and that was it.

That was his health plan. And if you run on “something fabulous” and you win, I don’t find it a surprise at all that they can’t agree on what should be in the replacement bill or that they can’t pass any legislation or they don’t know what they want to do because they didn’t have any specifics. I find it sad that we might be moving into an environment where, when we’re looking at who’s going to run for president, we’re no longer asking “Who has a good idea?” We’re asking “well, who is the biggest celebrity that we can get?” and “Who is somebody who can appeal to people who never vote?” And so the Rock is going to run against Tom Hanks and they’re going to try to get Oprah Winfrey to run, and Mark Cuban might run. In that world, I think that something important is lost.

The part that scares me—I guess it’s old-fashioned—is when you serve the country in any context, in the government, in the administration, if you’re elected to Congress, or in the military, you take an oath of office.

In the oath of office you say that, “I will protect the Constitution from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.” I think we have a good idea of what “foreign enemies” of the Constitution are, but I think we’ve never really confronted what a “domestic enemy” of the Constitution even is. For me, this is what a domestic enemy of the Constitution is. We don’t have to respect facts, everything is cynical. You can be in it just for yourself, to invest in your own companies, or the Secret Service are following behind Donald Trump in his golf cart, and Trump Industries is billing the US taxpayer $80,000 to rent golf carts to the Secret Service. In a world where there are massive conflicts of interest, no disclosures, all of that stuff is just taken for granted.

I think that we have normalized things that we never should have normalized, and that’s what scares me. The dream is dying when that happens.

What stood out to you from your time at Milton and what do you remember most?

I’d had no family exposure or anything to Milton, and I came from California. I was a boarding student; back then Hallowell was a boys dorm. Back then, I was a cultural misfit or something, and going to Milton really changed my life and my worldview. It was a momentous thing. I remain tremendously close with my best friend from high school

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News

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Milton’s Cum Laude Society Selection Process

By JIMMY DeLANO Milton calculates neither grade point average nor class rank. Although the absence of these scales may reduce stress and competitiveness, the lack of a grade point average or class rank complicates the Cum Laude Society selection process. In fact, most Milton students do not know how this process even operates.

The Cum Laude Society, an association which recognizes the academic achievement of high school students, honors the top twenty percent of the graduating class and up to five percent of the junior class. Historically at Milton, however, only one or two juniors have been recognized per year.

To determine the list of students inducted, a committee made up of adults, who earned Cum Laude and/or Phi Beta Kappa—the collegiate version of the Cum Laude Society—calculates the grade point average of all members of the senior and junior classes. A senior’s grade point average aggregates the individual’s sophomore year-end grades, junior year-end grades, and senior first-semester grades. A junior’s grade point average includes the individual’s sophomore year-end grades and junior first-semester grades. These conditions remain the same for students who go abroad for a semester—often to either CITYTerm, the Mountain School, or Chewonki—and for students who leave Milton for the full year on a School Year Abroad program. The committee treats those grades as if they were from classes at Milton.

These grade point averages are not weighted. Therefore, a B+ in foundations math and a B+ in honors math both count for a 3.33 towards a student’s grade point average. Ms. Bonenfant does not know the exact reasoning behind that decision.

However, she guesses that Milton expects that “students [will] take courses at levels that are appropriate for each individual.” Therefore, she reasons, “if two students are working equally hard and have the same grade, and one is in regular math and the other is in honors, it doesn't seem fair that one should have an advantage because of the level.”

With the grade point averages calculated, the committee looks at the list of numbers and comes to a consensus on how many people are inducted. “Thank goodness,” Ms. Bonenfant discloses, knocking on the table, that “there hasn’t

been a tie” with the final two students.

She explained that neither student would be inducted, because the addition would violate the twenty percent condition for any Cum Laude Society class.

Ms. Bonenfant also dispelled some myths regarding the Cum Laude selection process. The most common belief—earning an A-minus average lands a student in the Cum Laude society—is not necessarily true. Since members of the Cum Laude Society rank in the top twenty percent of their class in terms of grade point average, an A minus may be in the top twenty percent of one class but not in another. In his feature article for Non-Fictions English class, Logan Troy (I) noted that “last year, 57% of Class II grades fell in the A range. For classes that qualify as electives, that percentage rose to 74%.” Therefore, the “A-minus average” myth is not always true and will fluctuate over time.

Another myth is that teachers have the ability to vote students into and out of the Cum Laude Society. When asked if this statement is true, Ms. Bonenfant laughs as she says, “Clearly that’s a rumor that has no basis in fact. I haven’t heard that one before, but it’s pretty funny. But not true.”

Nothing can disqualify a student from the Cum Laude Society. While a D in one class can dramatically lower a student’s grade point average, if that student had all A’s other than that one bad grade, the student could theoretically still be in the top twenty percent of the class. However, Ms. Bonenfant adds that having an academic DC on a student's record would spark “a conversation for the Cum Laude committee.” However, she notes that this conversation has never occurred, as a student with an academic DC on his or her record has never been in consideration for the Cum Laude Society.

This honor commemorates the elite academic students of each class. As Ms. Bonenfant noted, “you see an occasional B+, but you don’t see many B’s. You're talking about an average that’s pretty close to an A-.” Her statement and Logan’s findings illustrate the increasing difficulty of being inducted into the Cum Laude Society. As time goes on and the average grade rises, the margin of error between those students at the top shrinks.

Therefore, the Cum Laude Society will continue to become even more competitive. •

Austan Goolsbee CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7 many, many years later. I set him up with his wife, and I see him around. The times I had with him and the crew from Hallowell are some of my best memories. They’re some of my best friends. I spent a lot of time with the speech team and the trips with them and the coaches would be some of the other big ones.

It’s hard to translate this to the modern world, but if you can go back to a time where there were no cell phones, our senior year, we decided to engineer a dorm switch with a girls dorm in the middle of the night. We had an honor among thieves; we realized that we were breaking a rule, but we were only going to break one rule. We were all going to sneak in on one side of the street and they sneak out on the other—we didn’t talk to each other or have any interaction with each other. And we engineered the whole thing. We snuck through the cemetery and we crawled along the wall, and they snuck out and we went in, and the whole thing worked. Actually, the joke was on us because there was poison ivy along the wall and then we slept in the beds in Goodwin and they got poison ivy when they slept. But the look on the faces of the dorm heads...they woke up and came down and the entire girls dorm was full of a bunch of boys. That was priceless. •

Heritage Month CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 the intersection between being Asian and being LGBTQ+. As intersectionality–the theory that all forms of oppression are interconnected– becomes increasingly prominent, the co-heads of G.A.S.P! and Asian Society felt that instead of forcing students to choose between hearing their respective speakers, they could do better by speaking to the intersection of two marginalized identities. Choi shared several poems with students, and Hana Widerman (III) testifies that each and every one was powerful in its own respect. One poem in particular, titled “For Peter Liang,” stood out to many students. In this poem, Choi addresses Peter Liang, an Asian-American police officer who killed an unarmed black man. Choi used this tragedy to elegantly bring the Asian community into the conversations about police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, a task which has proven difficult in the past.

The leaders of Asian Society did an excellent job planning Asian-American Heritage Month, and they reminded the community of just how important it is to consider the different voices and experiences that make up our school. •

Opinion The Value of Reflection CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 teacher, taking the time to actually read the comments and understand where our various weak points reside will allow us to more clearly communicate our thoughts in writing and craft a better essay the next time.

When we offend someone, taking the time to understand how our actions led to someone else’s pain will allow us to be more considerate people in the future.

As individuals, we are not solely responsible for this failure to learn from the past. In both the examples above, our environment does not support this type of reflection. Teachers often return essays at the end of the period, typically on our way out the door. As we scramble to get to our next class, we may not have time to actually read over the comments. When we offend someone, we are told to quickly make amends and apologize rather than to consider the source of the conflict. As a society, we pursue tangible success, and do not value this kind of introspection.

Furthermore, this disregard for the past often comes from our neglecting the notion that the person we were yesterday is in many ways the same person we will be tomorrow.

The factors that led us to make poor choices and give up opportunities in the past will likely still exist in the future. Therefore, without conscious intervention, we are likely to repeat mistakes. In fixating so much on the future without reflecting on the past, the realm in which our weaknesses can truly be identified, we make the assumption that improvement will come along without this conscious intervention. To ensure that the future selves are in fact better versions of our past selves, we must take concrete steps to consciously reflect on the past in a constructive way.

In the tangible, teachers should allot at least ten minutes at the end of class for students to look over graded work. Instead of simply brainstorming personal and team goals before an athletic event, as some Milton teams do, we might also take time to come together after the event to reflect whether we met our goals. Yet, many of the steps needed to constructively reflect on the past are not grounded in the tangible, but rather require that we begin to train ourselves to embrace the discomfort that comes with reflective introspection.

In order to improve, one must have a goal—a desire that can be identified by contemplating the future—as well as an awareness of the discrepancy between one’s actual behavior and one’s desired destination. This awareness can only be achieved by reflecting on the past. Thus, purposeful reflection is essential for self-improvement, and as a society and as individuals we need to place a greater value on reflection. •

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Stop Forming New Things

By MARSHALL SLOANE I devoted most of my time at Milton Academy to the Speech Team and The Milton Paper. The moments I spent competing at tournaments or writing articles had a profound impact on my development, education, and identity because of both the authentic satisfaction I reaped and the feeling that I contributed to something greater. I appreciated how the speech awards I won bolstered the program’s superb reputation and rich history and how every news piece or editorial I authored reinforced the Paper’s role as one of Milton Academy’s most important mediums for thought, discussion, and positive reform. The history of both of these organizations may have been important to me, but Milton Academy’s student body seems to be forgetting about the added power that longstanding institutions possess since more students appear to be forming their own organizations rather than working to improve those that already exist.

Society would never improve without new ideas or groups, so Milton students’ urge to create something new makes sense. A new organization can advance an underrepresented group or ideology. The new representation then satisfies Milton Academy’s mission and improves the experience for students. Unfortunately, I worry that many of the new entities on our campus have not actually introduced something new; instead, many seem to be redundant.

A club or publication that serves the same mission as another only weakens the power that both groups have on campus. Students have only so much time to read an issue of a student newspaper or attend a club meeting, so the scarcity of time means that groups that serve the same mission will weaken one another by stealing the precious attention that any student group requires to actually have an impact.

Student publications represent one of the most troubling examples of this phenomenon. A newspaper succeeds when it becomes versatile and multifaceted. In order to be multifaceted and versatile, the entity must be able to write on many topics with authority, and a newspaper can do this successfully only when it has a substantial pool of possible

Senior Projects CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6 of all surveyed students listed stress levels at a 5 or above, suggesting that the senior project period isn’t always as easy as it may appear. One senior in particular listed his stress level at a 10, which on the survey’s scale was described as “during the months of May and June my resting heart rate never fell below

writers and a good range of sections. New publications steal readership and take writers, thus weakening the established publications.

Sometimes a new publication or newspaper can be a necessity. For instance, publications that specifically address issues important to a particular demographic introduce an essential voice to the community. However, the vast number of publications devoted to specific social issues or demographics have to compete with one another for attention and talent.

The competition then reduces the quality and readership for all the publications.

The 34th editorial board of The Milton Paper regularly criticized college culture.

The college process forces students to take on an extreme amount of stress and work. The formation of these new clubs and publications serves as one of the most apparent byproducts of our college culture. Students subscribe to the belief that being the founder of something new adds to their application. The value we place on a resume boost allows many to overlook or justify the adverse effects that may result from forming their new organization.

Forming something new will rarely affect an application the way in which many expect it will. Writing for a publication and reaching an editor position will appear similar to forming another publication that seems redundant.

Many forget that most readers of our applications know a great deal about Milton, and they will appreciate devotion to an institution such as The Milton Paper.

Millennials and post-millennials identify and value institutions less than any other generation in recent memory, according to a Pew Research Center study from March 2014. Milton should work against this trend.

Many of us came to Milton because of its long history of great academics, activities, and students. We should treasure Milton Academy’s existing clubs and publications in the same way that we value the opportunities that exist at Milton due to its history of excellence. If a student believes that something wrong exists at Milton Academy, that student will almost always work to correct the flaw rather than leaving to attend another institution. It is time that we approach clubs and organizations with the same mindset. •

120 BPM.” As stated by one senior when asked to give some advice for next year’s students: “Senior projects are what you make of them. They can be as stressful or stress-free as you want.”

The expansive range of this year’s projects is a testament to the intellectual and experiential diversity found at Milton Academy and the seniors’ growth over their high school careers. •

Opinion

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Reply All

By NAVPREET SEKHON Starting in the 2016-2017 school year, the ATS department allowed students to address emails to all Upper School students. While this is a useful tool for what we tend to use emails to the student body for (i.e. club announcements, applications, sports, etc.), it has also allowed students to create email chains.

Throughout the school year, students received numerous futile and irrelevant emails that pertained to far less people than the actual audience, but in the recent weeks, the amount of chain emails has spiked. With “reply all’s” of up to ten emails rather than addressing the targeted individuals, students made the emails into thought forums. Not only are the email chains problematic, but also the emails meant to upset others or sent as jokes are simply unnecessary. Particularly in this past school year, the Milton community struggles with addressing individuals in person and instead chooses feuding through emails, Instagram, or Facebook. Most people learned the basic rule of using the Internet: be careful of what you put online. We seem to have forgotten to treat emails in this way.

ATS granted permission to send emails to all upper school students so we could send out our usual announcements without asking others to forward the email to their class conferences, along with the other appropriate uses. Surely, no one wanted us to go as far as attacking other students over email.

Students’ choosing “reply all” to emails has recently become more common while remaining just as unproductive. Receiving over seventy emails in one day, approximately twenty of which resemble forums or email chains, means we just might be abusing our ability to address all upper school students.

In addition, the emails demonstrate that we don’t think before we send. Is the email relevant to the entire student body? Will it offend people? Why do we want it to offend people?

After speaking with faculty, administrators, and students, I’ve come to the conclusion that many of our rash actions are due to immaturity. Ranging from fourteen to nineteen years old, we act naively and rashly, as demonstrated by our use of the media and these emails. Acknowledging that many teenagers react rashly doesn’t undermine our work or emotions; instead, this fact should lead us to reconsider our actions.

Because most students carry our phones in our pockets, we so easily can use our trigger fingers. When one feels angry, reaching into the pocket, writing an aggressive email, and sending it to all upper school students comes easily. Yet four students who sent rude emails during the times of the demonstrations

confessed that they all regretted pressing send or choosing reply all. Sending these all-school emails demonstrates how easily we confront or attack others through our phones, but we lack that stance in person.

Some admitted to feeling naive and rash, but the common problem lies in our immaturity.

Not to target the underclassmen, but noticeably more emails came from Class III and Class IV. Hardly any thought or chain emails came from seniors (possibly because they may be less involved in school news now), so this trend may come from shifts in maturity. Having witnessed myself drastically mature from freshman year to junior year, I noticed that more upperclassmen wait to react, and when they do, their thoughts are better formulated and more relevant. In general—with emphasis on general—maturity comes with age, and we recognize those who don’t “act their age.” For example, because the organizers of the demonstrations on May handled the situation far less aggressively and primarily sent out emails regarding logistics and planning, concluding that the angsty emails came from younger, frustrated participants isn’t a stretch. After speaking with one person who sent an offensive email, the student explained feeling as though “[the organizers] weren’t voicing everyone’s opinions—we feel like they shouldn’t be speaking for everyone else.”

Even so, this incident combined with the many other rude emails just emphasizes how often we all react without taking time to process our emotions.These “reply all” emails bring personal bitterness to the entire student body’s inbox. Truthfully, receiving these emails neither intrigues me, makes me laugh, nor makes me respect either party; rather, they annoy me. Not everyone needs to receive the emails lauding or attacking the sender—why make the individual conversations public?

I often find myself extremely frustrated and wanting to reply to the chain emails with, “Stop responding.” Then, I realize my email would be hypocritical and useless. Actually, it might trigger even more responses that fill up everyone’s inboxes, which I desperately want to avoid. Throughout the year, few students were models for thoughtful and relevant personal emails, but even those emails didn’t need the reply all follow-ups.

The campus is tense, and our inbox is blowing up with joke emails or target emails only aggravates us even more. Trying to engage in healthy, productive conversation is hard enough, and our phones buzzing with crude comments doesn’t help, so let’s work towards self awareness and maturity in this stressful period and for the time to follow. •

CITYterm Reflection

By EDWARD MORETA The Friday of graduation marks two weeks since I graduated from the semester program CITYterm. I’m always intrigued with the task of writing about something that has just happened to me or an experience that seems so close that I really can’t get a handle on. There are some things that are important to me now that may be different ten weeks later, or ten years from now. As well, every time I’m asked about the program, I explain it differently, and I never feel like I give the experience enough justice. As well, this is CITYterm through my lens, and asking anyone else would probably yield a different take but still an important one all the same.

I think the fact that I cannot truly explain the program in one way, or feel like every time I explain it I do not give it enough justice, speaks to the magic of CITYterm.

So what the heck is CITYterm anyways?

CITYterm is a semester program (fall and spring) based at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Within the program, there are usually twenty-nine to thirty-two kids in each semester, depending on the term. The program is run by six to seven adults, counting out to about thirty-six people in total within the whole program.

And yes, we count the faculty, because the faculty usually do the same thing us students do. We call faculty by their first names, most of them live in the same building as us, and they eat and work while we do the same. They are just as present as we are.

CITYterm is project based, with different classes from week to week, and assignments that only have feedback when returned—no grades (even though at the end they are required to give us letter grades). Along projects, CITYterm is all about experiential learning, off the idea that experience is the best teacher and platform to learn something and put it to use.

So usually, we can learn or see something in the classroom, and then go do exactly what we learned in New York City three times a week. Along with these school-related trips into NYC, we are also allowed to do things within the city on Saturday nights and Sundays with friends within our term, ranging from seeing improv shows at the UCB Theatre in Chelsea to going to the One World food court in Flushing, Queens.

When I applied for CITYterm at the end of my sophomore year, I wasn’t applying to “reinvent myself” or try to change who

CONTINUED ON PAGE 11

Opinion CITYterm CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10 I am. Instead, I felt like I needed a change of scenery. I felt too entrapped by family and Milton to do things I wanted to do. Of course, that was my intention in going to CITYterm; everyone had different reasons to go, and almost every person comes out of the program being grateful for something they didn’t know they needed but received anyways—our goals and wants changed throughout the five months.

And this experience all begins with some key things. The quality of the experience truly depends on how immersed every person is within your program. Everyone must be fully engaged and present within the program to have it work in the way it does. So everyone, for the most part, must give her all and be fully immersed in the program—and usually, everyone does immerse himself fully as, for the first time in most of our lives, everyone wants to be there, and everyone is in charge of her own experience. There’s always an off day or two, but you quickly forgot those with everything going on.

Things like being in the City so much and doing work that felt both equally hard but meaningful contributed to my love for CITYterm.

But for me, it’s about the people who I was surrounded by, who were always there whether it was just to sit down and have a conversation or go and do something they had never done before. It’s truly magical to be surrounded by people who are just as into something as you, in a place where people try their best to listen, take risks, and care as much, where you are all doing work that is meaningful for you.

As well, I think it was the exploratory and creative parts that were the most exciting to be a part of. On the first day, David Dunbar, Co-Founder of the program, said the founders had no idea what to expect at the beginning of the semester. And in part, this was true. The only thing the teachers provide is the canvas; the classes, the assignments, the administration that makes a school run. The stuff it would be impossible for the students to do.

All of the work, all of the energy, everything else comes from us. We make the place run and do its thing effortlessly, by just being ourselves and willing to be there—and so, we’re the painters, who then become the interpreters, because just like art each person takes what they’d like from it differently.

And at the end, we have created something as a collective throughout the five months, for the group and by the group, but most importantly for ourselves, where we all take expected and unexpected things from a messy painting that was not there when we arrived, but was most definitely there when we left. •

PAGE 11

Let Nazis Protest

By JONAH GARNICK The “So I Don’t Get DC’ed” Statement: This was originally submitted, in modified form, as an English Paper.

In Germany, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust–well, at least publicly. For me, someone who lives in a country that permits Nazis to protest, this seems odd. As a human being and especially as a Jew, I find Holocaust denial painfully repugnant (as I hope you do, too). But the notion that an opinion, expressed just in words, can be illegal is almost foreign to me. I use the example of Holocaust denial specifically because it relates to my own identity; we must remember that there is a specific historical basis for this criminalization.

But the suppression of free speech is a trend across Europe. The vast majority of European nations ban speech that incites hate against any identifiable group, with fines and jail time as punishment for violations.

Though the circumstances are different, on American college campuses, we also see this suppression regarding administration-restricted, not government-restricted, speech. From experience reading the news and speaking with my college-age brothers, I’ve noticed this growing anti-free speech sentiment among younger Americans, a feeling that is buttressed by statistics. A 2015 PEW Research poll found that forty percent of American millennials support the government’s censoring speech offensive to minorities. A poll reported by The Economist found that only fifty-seven percent of American millennials support the right for speech offensive to a minority. Is banning speech productive, though?

For those of us who seek a society without racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, is this the route to take?

No, it’s not. And in this article, what I intend to do is show why banning speech is ineffective and defend the most vulgar expression of freedom of speech: hate speech.

In defining hate speech, where better to look than Wikipedia? According to the site, hate speech is “speech which attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender.” This is distinct from “fighting words,” the most notable restriction of free speech in America (the Supreme Court, in 1942, ruled that words that tend to incite an immediate “breach of the peace” are a limited exception to the First Amendment). That hate

speech is about content but fighting words are about the mode of expression makes all the difference.

The definition of hate speech itself gives rise to the first issue: who is to determine what counts as an attack (as offensive)?

Presumably, the minority the statement pertains to the minority. And here’s where it gets hairy. The vast majority of British muslims (though this trend doesn't stop at England’s borders) find depictions of Muhammad offensive: seventy-eight percent of British muslims found Charlie Hebdo’s depictions of Muhammad deeply offensive (the BBC poll went on to show that twenty-seven percent of british muslims sympathize with the Charlie Hebdo attackers). So what are we to do about offensive depictions of Muhammad? Do we ban them? The ban on depictions of the Prophet is an islamic religious law.

And thus, if we ban them, this potential restriction on free speech becomes, in fact, the imposition of religious law on all.

Another issue: what if the speech is right? A liberal myself, I know the idea that hate speech could be somehow accurate is initially confounding. I guess, more accurately, I mean something that appears as hate speech. By definition, calling Islam profoundly misogynistic would likely count as hate speech (as an offensive attack on a religion, and certainly a gross generalization), and yet, considering Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Iran, Yemen, and Egypt’s dismal record on women’s rights; female genital mutilation; honor killing; etc; there may be some legitimacy to the point—I use this example because this is the kind of argument that is being questioned for potentially violating European hate speech laws.

In general, the solution to social ills is more, not less, speech. The greatest civil rights movements in American history all began as movements with minority (as in, not “majority”) support. Tolerating some bad speech—some horribly offensive speech—is necessary to advance social causes. Hate speech may even turn those who witness it, disgusted, to your side.

And we must remember that suppression of speech is not the way to change minds. It is a shameful reality that millions of Americans, on both sides of the aisle, think black people are “less intelligent” and “more rude” than whites (according to a 2016 Reuters/Ipsos Poll). It is one of the innumerable products of over four-hundred years of slavery and oppression.

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Arts & Enterainment

PAGE 12

Senior Projects: Art Edition

The Glorification of Addiction in Music

By LIZ FOSTER

Trek by Emily Jiang

By HANNAH HACHAMOVITCH This year, well over forty seniors pursued either a half or a full senior project related to visual arts or music.

Cora Enterline chose to paint multiple still-life paintings of objects from her everyday life. Thea McRae was inspired to paint five life-size—or larger than life—oil self-portraits, each featuring a different fabric that she had collected. Chloë LeStage and Wesley Hudson created a multi-media gallery with ceramics, sculpture, and live music.

Peter Duke transformed pop songs into jazz melodies, along with creating “Stinky Pete’s One Man Band.” Inspired by a summer camp, Sam Oldshue travelled to a different place in Boston every day, sketching in a different medium each time and using those preliminary sketches as templates for final paintings. Emily Jiang created a multimedia magazine with art, fashion, and poetry.

While each of these seniors had varying degrees of experience in their media of choice—from being complete novices to being trained performers—all shared one common inspiration: the ability and willingness to focus on the arts for an extended period of time.

Thea explained, “After thirteen years at Milton, I realized I hadn’t spent nearly enough time painting. Senior projects were the perfect opportunity.” Peter elaborated on his decision to explore music: “I was also thinking of doing acting or theatre or performance, but I chose music mostly because it gave me an opportunity to really focus on something that would be really hard to do and learn. I’ve always been inspired by jazz artists like Brad Mehldau who turn pop to jazz because I think it honestly sounds better when it’s jazz. It’s such a cool feeling when

you recognize the melody, and something that I don’t do that often.” Emily used this opportunity to “catch up” on the lack of art in her senior year: “This past year with college apps and everything, I really had no free time [to do art]...I decided that I wanted to actually create something that I was proud of.”

These seniors, inspired by the opportunity to create art uninterrupted, all shared the experience of struggling with their projects and crafts. Cora realized that “sitting down to paint for five hours was way harder than [she] thought” so she “[forced herself] to work for one or two hours, walk around campus a few times, and then come back.” Emily struggled similarly: “I kept on taking a day off here, a day off there until it came to crunch time.”

Chloë, since all her ceramic pieces leaked, decided to place “a plastic bucket inside each of them and just not stress!” She continued: “It took me while to figure out how to handbuild ceramics well, but part of being an artist is the struggle, so I appreciated it.”

The seniors raved about the success and satisfaction they found from their projects.

According to Peter, his two projects were “exactly what [he] wanted.” Sam found his project “very relaxing and freeing.” Being able to do whatever he wanted with his art was “so new, and so fun.” Thea not only enjoyed her project but also learned more than she expected: “ I didn’t know that I could leave a leg missing in a painting—and I learned that at the Matisse show in the MFA—and saw dimensions used in weird ways and was really inspired.”

Many of the artists have included their pieces in this issue and hope you made it to see their senior projects this week. •

MORE ART ON PAGE 14

The media’s glorification of negative behaviors is nothing new. Portrayals of mental illness through a tortured, glamorous perspective have torn through big and small screens alike. Music, however, has generated a subculture of embracing negativity and forcing it into a positive light.

The 2000’s rap industry began to paint drug addiction as a fun subculture rather than the harsh reality that it is. Future’s “Xanny Family” and Mike WiLl Made It and Miley Cyrus’s “23” both glamorize heavy drugs, from prescription Xanax to lean, also known as “dirty sprite” or “sizzurp.”

The most confusing aspect of the “Drugs Are Cool” message is that many rap legends have died as a result of drug overdoses or are suffering as a result of consuming too many drugs. In 2015, A$AP MOB leader A$AP YAMS was found dead, having accidentally overdosed on a variety of drugs, including opiates and benzodiazepine. YMCMB legend Lil Wayne began to suffer from seizures following a heavy period of lean consumption, leading him to quit in 2009.

With so many of its iconic members struggling with drugs, why does the rap industry continue to glamorize addiction?

Rap is not the only genre to make harmful habits look like a fun experience.

Rockstars of the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s created an image of badass men snorting cocaine left and right and screwing anything that moved. Artists like Ozzy Osbourne, Keith Richards, and Iggy Pop spent most of the prime of their careers in drug-induced stupors, only leading to their sobering up later in life.

The rock ‘n’ roll subculture made it not only acceptable, but nearly necessary for artists to be on some drug. Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon gained popularity amidst tales of their frequent LSD use, while David Bowie and Mick Jagger revelled in their reputations as coke fiends.

These toxic behaviors, however, do not make these artists bad people, but rather indicate that they suffer as a result of the subculture which their art led them to join.

Artists should not get a free pass for creating songs centered around drugs.

Public figures hold powerful influence,

CONTINUED ON PAGE 13

Arts & Enterainment Let Nazis Protest CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11 But we must consider the effectiveness of criminalizing this kind of speech. The political leaders who profess these beliefs could be punished, sure, maybe that’s true, but punishment likely won’t change any minds. If anything, it will martyrize these leaders. It will reinforce these ideas in the minds of those who hold them.

If these hate speech laws were truly effective, we wouldn't see the rise of such potent, anti-semitic, neo-Nazi fascist movements in Europe. We wouldn't see the strength of the “Bloed, Bodem, Eer en Trouw” in Belgium, or the National Front in France, or Golden Dawn in Greece. We wouldn't see fifty-one percent of racist hate crimes in France directed towards Jews (who represent one percent of France’s population). We wouldn't see phrases like “Death to the Jews” or “Jews to the gas” shouted commonly on the streets of Britain. The situation is becoming so dire that Jewish leaders have been urging Jewish Europeans to flee.

More free speech would not have necessarily prevented the rise of these hateful movements and these dangerous sentiments. Two-thousand years of anti-semitism has embedded Jew-hatred in European culture, but hate speech laws have not helped a bit. What they have done is criminalize dialogue on controversial, though legitimate, issues of immigration and culture clashing—the vast majority of this anti-semitism is unfortunately found in Europe’s Muslim communities (see Mehdi Hasan’s 2013 article on the topic in The New Statesman).

So, what’s the best way to fight Holocaust denial? Racism? Xenophobia? Sexism? Prejudice against the LGBTQ+ people? Well, it is certainly not to criminalize it. The best way to fight heinous speech is more speech. If you are a liberal like I am (hopefully conservatives will agree too), you recognize how horrible the views of David Duke and other Holocaust deniers are. But what we must all recognize is that suppression is not the answer.

Well, at least in the public domain, suppression is not the answer. The situation becomes more nuanced when discussing private institutions, especially Milton Academy and our recent scandal.

So, should Milton Academy permit hate speech?

Kinda.

The Milton Academy administration has an obligation to make students feel safe, supported, and comfortable. They obviously have an obligation to eliminate—or, more realistically, minimize—harassment

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

PAGE 13

Boston Calling

By ADI GANDHI This past Memorial Day Weekend found Harvard Square in turmoil due to Boston Calling Music Festival. A three-day, multistage festival established in 2013, Boston Calling this year moved from City Hall Plaza, its original venue, to the Harvard Athletic complex, an area offering space for more stages as well as a stand-up comedy component.

Already dealing with a new venue, festival organizers had to push through a series of last-minute difficult circumstances.

Just four days prior to the start of Boston Calling, the terrorist bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester heightened security and safety concerns. Lineup fluctuations, too, caused issues, and artist Solange cancelled her performance with little notice and was replaced by Migos. Even more, heavy rain turned parts of the venue into a marsh.

Yet, despite these circumstances, the blissful aura of music festivals cut through the uncertainty, and festival-goers, for the most part, were able to enjoy themselves.

This aura of festivals comes in part from the energy of live music performances.

This unique vitality transforms songs when they are performed live—much in the same way that a sports game is more exciting to watch in person and surrounded by other spectators as opposed to alone at home. The spirit of a live performance, ineffable like adrenaline, is difficult to not enjoy, especially when one knows the song or artist well.

Boston Calling also owes its success to its lineup. An effective lineup summons crowds due to some combination of both popular and underground artists, and this year’s Boston Calling supplied both of these types of artists. While the crowd for Chance the Rapper stretched along more than half of the length of the venue, little-known acts such as Cousin Stizz also received sizable audiences due to the amount of crowd members who were

Addiction Music CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12 regardless of if they wish to or not. Being in the limelight places a level of accountability onto stars. Just as we expect celebrities to not be offensive or rude, we should expect them to set the example when it comes to safely consuming drugs and alcohol.

But perhaps the artist is not entirely to

waiting for the headlining act.

Thanks to the aforementioned energy of a concert, as well as the talents of the artists in the lineup, non-headlining artists found an audience despite their rank in the lineup. There was a magic in the way that the crowd members, many of whom were unfamiliar with the minor artists, began to sing along to unknown songs until even fans of the indie band The 1975 were cheering on Detroit-based rapper Danny Brown. Lineups at festivals such as Boston Calling allow for deserving artists to spread their fanbase and for music-lovers to broaden their libraries.

However, like any other event or institution, this year’s Boston Calling was flawed.

While some of these unsettling details were no more than just details—for example, the suspicious and overly fast ferris wheel and the lack of excitement both in the crowd and on stage during Migos’s set—other aspects of the festival merited more than a concerned glance.

For one, the security appeared highly nonchalant. Guards with loose wrists and noncommittal expressions waved metal detectors over festival entrants. Perhaps festival managers wanted to allow in all their guests as soon as possible. Still, given the fact that a bombing had taken place at a concert the same week of Boston Calling, the security should have been more careful regardless of inconvenience in scheduling.

Thus, the lax-seeming security at Boston Calling did not ease any worries that festival-goers might have had inconcerning safety.

I do not point at these flaws simply for the sake of noticing them in detail, nor do I condemn Boston Calling as a whole because I want to discuss these gaps and imperfections in planning. Rather, I want Boston Calling to evolve in the coming years into an experience as fully enjoyable as it can, and hopefully will, be. Yes, Boston Calling was a success, but it has clear areas which need attention and improvement. • blame. The public so often chases after the behaviors of the rich and famous, a product of our society’s misconstrued notion that some people are significantly better than others based upon their talents. If we as a society were to stop mimicking the choices of celebrities, perhaps Xanax wouldn’t be as popular, and perhaps we wouldn’t have to watch friends die tragically of codeine overdoses. •

Arts & Enterainment

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Senior Project Art CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12

Let Nazis Protest CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13 and bullying. But, Milton is an intellectual space. Much of this comes down to intention.

If a student says something that offends another student just to harass, just to hurt, he should be punished (to a degree decided by the administration). However, if a student, in making some sort of genuine point or argument, no matter how misguided, offends another student, he should face only the consequences that face Nazis who march publicly (social pressure, public ridicule, etc). I would much prefer a student be open about his or her anti-semitic views rather than hide them. At least that way, I can begin a dialogue, engage in a painful discussion, and hopefully change his mind.

We should have no banned opinions.

I worry about modern leftism. I fear that, with the desire to criminalize non-violent speech, it risks losing its liberal roots, morphing into a subtle kind of neo-fascism.

This fight, the fight for freedom of expression, for Enlightenment ideals to forward the rights of all, should become, of all sides, the left’s fight, because, if not, we’re all doomed. •

Hands by Cora Enterline

Cup by Wesley Hudson

Cup by Chloe LeStage Man Against Tree by Sam Oldshue

Self-Portrait by Thea McRae

Arts & Enterainment

Artist of the Year: Chloë Walker

By JANE YANG Chloë Walker ’17 has energetically seized her final year here at Milton to continue growing tremendously as an artist, contributing to Milton’s arts community in both the visual and the performing arts.

Having taken six visual art courses during her time here, Chloë is a familiar face around the Art and Media Center. As the Art Editor of Magus Mabus, she has helped to promote visual arts visibility at Milton—she even designed this year’s Beatstock t-shirts!

Chloë extended her passion for visual arts through her senior project. She weaved together her experience with arts and non-arts courses at Milton into a series of paintings and photographs that address the traditionally negative connotations of female sexuality. “Women’s sexuality is either something that is assumed not to exist, or something to be ashamed of or embarrassed by,” says Chloë. “With my senior project, I wanted to make art that would begin a dialogue about these issues and would force people to confront feminine sexuality and see its beauty and strength, as well.” Statements such as these indicate Chloë’s admirable

eagerness to engage with difficult issues through her art.

The Milton community has also felt Chloë’s inimitable presence in the realm of performing arts. Chloë has been a member of EP!C, Milton’s all female a capella group, for two years. As fellow EP!C member Madison Lynch ’18 notes, Chloë brings an incredibly “positive energy” to the group and acts as a “leader and mentor figure.” Chloë’s fantastic voice and dedicated contributions have made an enormous impact on EP!C during her tenure.

Chloë is no stranger to the stage, either, having acted in theatre productions during each year of her high school career. Most recently, she starred as Marty in Grease, this year’s spring musical. She also delivered noteworthy performances in The Crucible and in this year’s fall play, Tartuffe. Her stage presence has brought new life to every production in which she’s participated.

For her wide-ranging and meaningful contributions to both the visual and the performing arts communities at Milton—and thus to the Milton community as a whole—The Milton Paper is pleased to name Chloë Walker as one of its 2016-17 Artists of the Year. •

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Artist of the Year: Evan Scales

By RACHEL HANDLER Evan Scales ’17—a skilled visual artist in the fields of photography, film, and graphic design—has contributed to the Milton community immeasurably through his dedication to his work and to its impact on the school as a whole.

Many of us recognize Evan’s name from the “Evan Scales Visuals” watermark which is nearly omnipresent on the social media accounts of those in the Milton community. Evan has been involved in freelance photography and video since 2014 and in graphic design since even earlier. He runs much of his work through his company, Evan Scales Visuals. He involves himself in the surrounding community, as well, working part-time—and soon full-time—at Jackrabbit Design, a marketing and design firm in nearby East Milton.

Evan is seemingly omnipresent on campus, always around to capture the intensity and emotion of events from sports games to Beatniks to school productions. Students of all grades cherish and share Evan’s photos—from senior portraits to athletic action shots—and his work has also featured

prominently on Milton’s website. His incredible talent in documenting and preserving the most important moments in our school lives makes Evan an invaluable arts presence on campus. His willingness to dedicate both time and labor to photographing school life is indicative of his selfless spirit.

Aside from documenting campus life, Evan has, in his own words, spent much of his time at Milton “experimenting with different techniques” in his art. He’s often gotten the opportunity to do so through the array of visual arts courses he’s taken here—including both regular and advanced filmmaking and regular and independent photography. Evan particularly enjoys photography’s ability to “get [people] to think a certain way,” often even “without [their] knowing that they are.” This drive to dig into the nuances of his art exemplifies Evan’s creativity and skill in his work.

For his continuous dedication to the Milton community and for his laudable skill in capturing important moments with care and nuance, The Milton Paper is honored to name Evan Scales as one of its 2016-17 Artists of the Year. •

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Coach Backstory: Troy Crichlow

Sports

Patriots Draft Review

By KATHERINE MCDONOUGH On most days, you can find Troy Crichlow (‘99), the Milton girl’s varsity tennis coach, teaching lessons or running clinics at the Weymouth Club. In his time coaching at Milton, Troy has lead the team to six ISL titles and three New England titles.

Troy grew up in Milton, MA, and went to the public school system through the 8th grade before enrolling at Milton Academy. Troy spent 3 years on the Milton Academy varsity boys’ tennis team (he was injured in his Freshman year), earning All-ISL honors each of his years on the team and leading the team to two New England championships, one in his Sophomore year and the other in his Senior year. Additionally, Troy played on the varsity basketball team during his Junior and Senior years.

Through extensive training in and outside of school, he eventually ranked in the top 5 junior USTA players in New England and in the top 100 nationally, and he was also the 2004 USTA New England family of the year recipient. Troy’s tennis and academics led him to Georgetown University where he continued to train and work his way up the ladder to eventually becoming captain of the team, #1 singles player, #1 doubles player, and MVP of the D1 team.

After Georgetown, Troy coached on the Men’s Doubles ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) World Tour, and he remembers the time as “an incredible experience where [he] got to see the world's greatest cities and work with players at the highest level of the game, while also developing a lot as a person and career wise.”

Troy has been the director of 100+ USTA tournaments (Levels 7,6,4, and 1), and he currently serves on the USTA New England Board, the USTA diversity and inclusion board, the USTA New England National selection committee, and the South Shore initiative board of directors. He was awarded the 2016 William Freedman Award, “which honors a person or persons who have made outstanding contributions to the development of junior tennis.”

Troy’s students, however, don’t just respect him for his long list of tennis accolades, but also for his dedication to coaching while simultaneously being more than a coach. His students often express that you can come to Troy with anything-- his approachable and non-judgemental demeanor makes him just as much a friend as a coach. •

By TOMMY ELLIOT Since Bill Belichick became coach and GM of the Patriots in 2000, he has never gone into a draft with fewer than 6 picks.

He drafts an average of 9 players each year.

This year, however, the Patriots dominated the free agent market, using their picks to lock up veterans at key positions, and entered the draft with only 4 selections, none of which were their own.

The first of the Patriots’ picks did not come until round 3 when the team picked Derek Rivers, a defensive end out of Youngstown State. Rivers had an impressive career at the small FCS school, setting the career record for sacks at 41 over his 4 year career. This pick addresses one of the largest concerns on the Patriots roster since they lack depth at the position. Even with the development of Trey Flowers and the addition of Kony Ealy from the Panthers, Belichick tends to employ a rotational strategy, which values fresh legs over a single dominant player.

Next, the Patriots addressed another position in which age and depth are a concern. 2 picks after Rivers, Belichick selected Antonio Garcia, an offensive tackle from Troy. After a dominant season from RT Marcus Cannon and a solid performance from LT Nate Solder, the Patriots released veteran OT Sebastian Vollmer who has since retired after 9 seasons in the NFL. This left the Patriots with only 4 backups to line, and after a 2015 season riddled with injuries, depth was needed.

Garcia is very athletic and is able to play well against speedier pass rushers, even

though he struggled to push forward in the run game. Due to the coordination and teamwork needed across the line, it is unlikely that Garcia sees the field barring unforeseen circumstances.

With the 131st overall pick, the Patriots selected Deatrich Wise, a defensive end from Arkansas. Wise didn’t see the field much at Arkansas because he was a rotational player throughout most of his career.

However, his tangibles are all exceptional.

Wise stands at 6’5” and 274 lbs. Seen as a raw prospect, Wise often gets lost in the run game and can be easily contained by double teams. He will largely play as a rotational player behind the likes of ageing vet Rob Ninkovich.

The Patriots’ final pick of the 2017 Draft was offensive tackle Conor McDermott from UCLA. McDermott was picked at 211th overall. At UCLA he primarily played basketball until a shoulder injury derailed his future. The 6’8” McDermott was voted to the 2nd team all PAC-12 in both his junior and senior years. Similar to Garcia, McDermott will likely ride the bench most of his rookie year but definitely has potential to come in as a swing tackle.

Overall, the Patriots 2017 draft was filled with rotational players unlikely to see the field. However, draft picks were mostly used to trade and acquire vets that can contribute right away such as WR Brandin Cooks and RB Mike Gillislee.

ESPN predicts the Patriots to win an NFL high 12.5 games this year and are again favorites to win the super bowl. •

ROLL STANGS

Sports

PAGE 17

Mustangs of the Year:

Clare Lonergan

Wesley Hudson

By JAMES OH AND TOMMY ELLIOTT

By TOMMY ELLIOTT AND JAMES OH

Clare Lonergan (I) has been awarded Mustang of the year honors for her contributions on her three varsity sports teams: field hockey, ice hockey, and softball. Clare was given the ISL Award of Excellence this Spring. From the fall, Clare said that one of her favorite moments was “during field hockey season, when we drove all the way to Holderness on Halloween and it started to absolutely downpour.

We played through the crazy conditions of freezing cold and rain/hail. We won in a well played game, which made the whole experience worth it.” Field Hockey finished the season strong with a 9-8-1 record.

In regards to the winter season, Clare commented, “I loved so much about playing ice hockey at Milton. It was so special to me.” Clare helped lead the Girls Varsity Hockey team to an 10-11-2 record. When asked about the special moments from this year, Clare said she enjoyed, “[playing] on a line with 2 of my best friends, Sara O'Connor (I) and Abby Furdak (I). We'd been bugging Coach Stone to put us together for years, so we were beyond pumped to play together and we really clicked well.” Clare also said that “it was also extremely exciting when we made it to the NE tournament last year; especially given where we started my freshman year, this team accomplishment really demonstrated how much immense progress we've made since then.

I also fondly remember our game against Nobles this year.

Though we lost in overtime, we played so hard to overcome a 3-1 score going into the third period. It was our best game of the season and I was so proud and happy to end the season on such a well played game.”

To finish off her Milton sports career, Clare was a captain of the varsity softball team. Clare felt that “playing softball at Milton was also an extremely fun experience.” Her favorite memory from the season was, “when [Milton] beat Lawrence, a typically pretty tough team. Though we were definitely underdogs going in, we had really clean defense and consistently produced offensively all across the board, which led to a great team victory!” Softball finished the season at 5-5.

Due to Clare’s accomplishments across three different varsity sports teams, she is surely a deserving Mustang of the Year. •

Wes Hudson (I) is The Milton Paper’s Mustang of the Year. This year, Wes contributed on the varsity football team as a run-stopping linebacker and as a power running back. His offensive and defensive contributions helped lead the team to a 6-2 record and a share of the ISL title with Belmont Hill, BB&N, and Lawrence Academy. On the season, Wes commented, “a few memorable moments were probably beating Nobles during football season because it's always good to beat Nobles and especially good when it’s your last time playing them.” During the winter season, Wes participated in several non-sports extracurricular activities. He helped arrange Beatnik, the student music and arts showcase. He toured South Africa with the Milton Academy Jazz Program. And he wrote for Milton’s arts and music magazine, Magus Mabus.

In addition to his contributions on the football field, Wes is also known for his role as a captain on the track and field team this spring. Although Wes suffered a shoulder injury and was forced to sit on the sidelines for much of the track season, this setback did not stop him from helping his fellow teammates improve. Before every track meet, Wes instilled positivity and excitement into his fellow teammates so that everyone performed to the best of her/his abilities. Wes knew how to celebrate after successful track meets and how to encourage his teammates after disappointing ones.

Wes’s athletic career at Milton ends with his being accepted to Bowdoin to play football this coming fall. On this accomplishment, Wes said “it felt like an amazing culmination of all the hard work I've put in these past 4 years.”

Wes’ achievements as a talented athlete and supportive teammate make him our male 2017 Mustang of the Year. •

Letters

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Senior Reflection:

Henry Westerman I’ve been thinking probably since Freshman Year about what I should write my senior reflection on. I even have a note on my phone with different collected quotes, themes, and other things worth discussing in this article that I’ve thought of while driving home from school, or while musing in the shower, or during a particularly scintillating conversation in the Stu, among other instances. Of course, at a certain point I realized that I wouldn’t be able to include everything, but I hope what follows lives up to the importance that I, at least, have placed on this particular capstone article to my TMP career.

Interestingly enough, I’d like to start with something I don’t usually discuss: the things I hate about Milton. Despite my overall optimistic and grateful attitude when discussing Milton in general—half of my Senior Project, after all, was a book about what makes Milton special—there are some things that have always unsettled me about this place we call our school.

Firstly, I’ve never understood why Milton students love talking about how stressed we are. I use “we” here because I engage in this behavior, too. At a certain point, it is almost like we stress ourselves out more in order to have that shared experience with our peers, which just escalates further and further until people have serious problems.

The same thing goes for procrastination; somehow, it is the exception and not the rule, even among such brilliant students as ourselves, for people to complete a project over time instead of the night before. People who pull all-nighters are considered heroes, and though I respect the endurance, strength, and dedication that it takes to stay up all night working, you’ve got to consider the situations that got you to that place which perhaps shouldn’t be rewarded.

Yet even in my criticisms of these behaviors, I see another flaw of Milton, one that is more serious than simply stressing out too much about things that may or may not matter: we, as a whole community, suffer from a serious lack of empathy. If you take a close look around our daily lives at Milton, you’ll notice this truth exposed all around you. For example—though this may be more a product of our highly-developed critical thinking skills, or the high levels of cynicism among the student body—we find a way to criticize and discredit every single speaker who comes to campus in one way or another, even the Surgeon General of the United States! Another example of this is the toxic college culture that seems to slide down the pH scale with every passing year; in slandering others with excuses for their college acceptances or denials, we fail

to empathize with our peers and recognize their whole stories as we would with a close friend. This underlying void of compassion builds a culture of aggression (or, at least, passive aggression) that at times boils over into full blown crisis, as we’ve seen multiple times this year.

But this isn’t what Milton has to be.

There’s a reason, after all, that I still keep such a positive attitude toward Milton’s future. And that is because I—like many of my peers, teachers, and mentors—believe so deeply in the idea of Milton. Milton is a truly unique place, unlike anything any of us will experience in the rest of our lives.

Every time I walk past Facilities, I am reminded that Milton is quite literally a small city—or, in terms that are often repeated, a microcosm for the rest of the world— which revolves entirely around the lives of the roughly 1,000 students who choose to spend our adolescent years here. That choice which we all make means that we all care at least a little bit about being a part of the Milton community; we all want to learn from the best teachers, train with the best coaches, act in the best productions, you name it. At the same time, teachers choose to come teach here because they truly care about their students and about the community that we are all a part of. I really felt this sense of caring when I had the honor of participating in a recent faculty meeting and could feel the passion among the faculty towards better understanding our lives as students and improving our situations in whatever way they could. In the end, it is the people—students and educators of all kinds—that make Milton special, not the lush lawns or the gleaming white columns (in fact, we tend to take Milton’s physical beauty too much for granted at times, in my opinion; taking a moment to appreciate a sunset over the Chapel has become one of my favorite pastimes this spring, an everyday wonder I only recently discovered). As long as all the members of the Milton community continue to believe in what makes Milton special, no trials will be too difficult for us to overcome.

Over the years at Milton, I’ve changed in more ways than I can summarize. I used to spend every free period in the Library doing work or wasting time on the Internet; now, I wouldn’t be caught dead in Cox except in the most dire of situations. I used to cower at the thought of having to socialize in the Stu during my eighth period free; now, I barely finished my senior project on time because I wasted too much of my last weeks with my friends (sorry Mrs. Baker!). A lot of things have gone into making me the person I am today, but again I mostly have the people

here to thank. Those friends, classmates, teachers, coaches, counselors, and others whom I have known here have shaped me in more ways than I could have ever imagined, and I am extremely grateful for each and every one of you. I hope in these final days I had the chance to let many of you know your impact on me personally, but to those whom I did not reach, I cannot thank you enough.

Recently, I realized that I lived much of my life at Milton as if it were a dream. I fell into the lull of springtime sun on my revisit, and I’ve moved through Milton’s countless twists and turns in a blur ever since. For too long I marched through school with my head down, pushing on from class to class, weekend to weekend, without taking the time to look up and appreciate all the amazing things going on around me. I didn’t make an effort to make real friends here until my freshman spring; I didn’t start to see my teachers as human beings, capable of both making mistakes and providing unrivaled wisdom, until my sophomore winter; I didn’t discover how amazing every Milton play is until my junior fall; I didn’t start staying late on campus just for the fun of it until later than I would have liked, though I made some of my favorite memories in those late evenings after day student dinner. There are so many things I’ve discovered that I wish I’d known I had to try—things like HS&R, or a capella, or Dance Concert—that could have helped me grow so much and brought me so much joy.

So, my advice to you, reader, is this: never be afraid to ask for help. A question left unasked is always left unanswered.

Everyone around you—even those you might consider to be out of your reach, and especially those who have been here longer than you have (yes, I mean both students and adults)—has an amazing story to share, which can help you figure out how you want to shape your own. Sometimes all it takes is a single conversation to forge a relationship that might last for the rest of your Milton career and beyond. And if you’re scared to talk to someone, just pretend that you already know them well, and start talking to them as you would with one of your close friends. Though you might be uncomfortable at first, you never know what random, awkward conversation could be the start of something wonderful.

In the end, it’s your choice how you make the most of your Milton experience.

But don’t wait to take those leaps. Believe me, the Milton dream doesn’t last forever.

And I think, with all your help, I’m finally ready to wake up. •

Letters

PAGE 19

Senior Reflection:

Malcolm McCann The legacy I leave behind at Milton is not one defined by athletic success. In my time here I have played on two official teams. The first, of course, was the Class IV Boys Soccer team of 2013, of which I have fond memories running around the glorified parking lot referred to as Upton Field.

The second was the JV Lacrosse team of 2014, of which I have few fond memories. Some distinctly recall me as a lacrosse player, while many others have no recollection. Hidden under my helmet and layers of padding, I was a standout player, not for expertise, but conversely for my fundamental inability to play the sport of lacrosse.

Each day, at the beginning of practice, I would face an immense struggle to find a passing partner willing to be with someone who couldn't catch or throw nor pick up a lacrosse ball (I’ll always owe some gratitude to Harrison Smith). I never played in games unless the winner or loser had already been decided, and at that moment I would get my five minutes. My field awareness on the lacrosse field was abysmal, and any time I was near the ball–missing a pass or failing to pick up a grounded ball–I was hit or whacked until the referee would feel pity and mercifully toss a flag in the air.

At this point, my five minutes would come to an end and I would find myself on the bench again because only the best players who were part of the “man-up squad” were allowed to play when we were “a man up.”

After the first few games, I remember being told in an email by the coach that I shouldn’t show up to the away bus because there wouldn’t be enough seats. I remember feeling really hurt and offended, and I remember dreading lacrosse practice to the point I soon after discontinued my attendance, which the coach either a) did not notice or b) did not care.

After returning from the summer an eager sophomore, I tried out for the JV soccer team, which included numerous trials and, of them, I only remember one: the mile run. For twelve minutes of pure torture I finally exposed myself to the entire group–the coach particularly–that I was not meant to be there, a truth that was solidified in an email that night when I got the cut. I was cast out with no sports credit for the fall season and given the lack of space in Intramural soccer, the only place I could turn to was P.E. I showed up to my first Physical Education class to discover I was alone, the only one in my section of P.E. The options presented to me were to spend thirty minutes exercising in some form, and my

form of choice was to meander around the track, alone. In plain clothes, three times a week, I walked the large oval, staying in my lane. I had become a wanderer in the Milton community. I thought a lot while walking the track, yet the ultimate destination of my thought process repeated the same question continually in a mantra-like fashion: “What the fuck am I doing here?”

Finding Your Place is perhaps the most important aspect of social life at Milton.

Where do you sit in the Students Center/ Forbes? With whom do you hang out?

How do you spend your time? are all floating questions that, if unanswered, can leave you feeling alone and excluded like I did after JV Lacrosse and JV Soccer. Life in Your Place is where you feel comfortable, it's where your personal social expectations are met, you meet genuine friends, and you enjoy Milton Academy. Life out of Place is a suffering that’s difficult to endure, and it manifested itself in the image of a younger Malcolm looking at his feet as he took one step at a time in thirty minutes of unwanted solitude.

Finding Your Place in the community is an existential excursion. Your identity as a Milton member, whether concrete (team/ dorm member, race, gender, etc.) or abstract (academic passion, extracurricular interest, etc.), is intrinsically tied to your social comfort zone. “Who you are” is your identity in Your Place. This omnipresent truth of Milton social life emphasizes knowing “who you are”– it’s a quandary that will confound a young teenager, but its answer is the most important gift that Milton can give.

While I didn’t know who I was while I walked the track each day that fall, I began to understand who I was not, an important lesson. Knowing who you are not is much easier than knowing who you are. When I chose to play JV Lacrosse or Class IV Soccer I was thinking about who I wanted to be rather than accepting who I was not.

I was not an athlete. I was not meant to play any form of sports at Milton. I was not someone who connected with others by talking about sports or video games.

I was not someone who could talk about basketball shoes. I was not someone who enjoyed dances. And I was not someone who was interested in participating in Milton’s toxic hookup culture.

I saw people I wanted to be friends with and tried my best to act and be like them.

Trying to be who you are not is a futile, upsetting task. I stopped being a follower and started being a leader in search of the place in this community where I was myself most comfortable and happy.

I decided to ditch my lonely walks on the track and started managing the Boys Varsity Soccer Team, which entailed filming their games, and for the mandatory manager exercise I would play Intramural “Hack” Soccer on the quad without officially signing up.

Once you stop being who you’re not, you find yourself slowly becoming who you are. As I started playing Hack Soccer, I befriended a cult-like group of seniors who worked together each week on the 32nd Editorial Board of The Milton Paper. They talked of Paper meetings late on weeknights and different investigative topics. They were students doing ardent research about the school and publishing on topics the school’s administration would rather keep quiet. It wasn’t long until I was talking with former Editor-in-Chief Alex Garnick about what my first piece would be about.

For weeks I investigated the economic and environmental burden of Milton’s quad to dispel or verify the myth that we have an excessively costly quad. After being denied particular budgetary information from Facilities, I personally calculated and researched the seeds, the fertilizer, the water, the pesticide and all the other significant costs associated with the landscape. I ultimately found the quad cost approximately $10,000, and not millions as people often embellish to their friends. After this came a plethora of other investigative pieces from analyzing the door alarm system at our school to deciphering yearly and seasonal trends in DC’s just to name a few. The time I didn’t spend playing formal sports and milling around in the Students Center, I spent writing for The Milton Paper. I became enormously attached to this publication quickly and started a crossword section later that year.

I devoted hours upon hours of work into the production of this publication my sophomore year as a writer/crossword constructor and junior year as an associate editor.

The single greatest moment in my Milton career came in junior spring was when I received an email telling me I would be Editor-in-Chief of this publication, a feeling so evocative that it felt greater than getting into college in full honesty.

This job, this publication, this obsession, has truly become my identity at this school. The people on my Editorial Board who felt the same irrational passion for this high school construct became my

CONTINUED ON PAGE 20

Letters

PAGE 20

Senior Reflection:

Eli Burnes

Didactic reflection, which should be the substance of a piece like this, often falls into usual patterns. Clichés and common narratives, such as “work hard,” “expand your perspective,” “kindness matters,” and “it's the small things that matter,” often subsume moralizing lectures. These clichés, because we are so tired of hearing them, have morphed into universal punching bags. Anyone can claim to hate them without a rational explanation.

However, clichés and tired narratives are prevalent because they get at the core of the human condition and contain valuable advice.

Expanding one’s perspective is absolutely crucial to all education, as is hard work. Kindness truly is important. All clichés are clichéd for a reason, and unfortunately, hearing these clichés over and over again often can dull us to their meaning.

For the first two and a half years of high school, two clichéd pieces of advice—“be open to expanding your perspective,” and “don’t fear failure”—glanced off my mind without any internal resonance. I thought, of course I am open to expanding my perspective—I read so many books and I listen to what other people have to say. As for the failure cliché, well, I had never really failed in life up to junior year, and if I had failed, I hadn’t realized it.

Part way through my junior year, when filling out the course survey for my Reading Consciousness class with Ms. Braithwaite and Ms. DeBuhr, I admitted that, yes, the course had made me question my core values. Of course, the class could not change my actual values: transcendance is fake, souls obviously do not exist, computers could easily be as smart as humans (we are just computers), and Plato is probably one of the dumbest people ever. I was a devout materialist/monist with a deep skepticism of anything that pretended not to be rooted in the physical world. A year later, after reading a lot and mulling over these ideas, my philosophy has relaxed.

Last night, when reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac, I stumbled upon this happy passage. “‘Rollo Greb is the greatest, most wonderful of all. [...] Man, he’s the end! You see, if you go like him you’ll finally get it.’ ‘Get What?’ ‘IT! IT! I’ll tell you—now no time.’”

The conversation, between two people at a party about a man who is full of vigor, leaves much to be desired in detail, as the character is described only in an abstract sense. However, the quick exchange gives the impression that Rollo has accomplished something greater, perhaps transcended, to the “IT.” I now believe in transcendence and some conceptions of spirituality, though largely as human constructs. In this sense, the “IT!” is deliberately left ambiguous for us to project concepts onto an idea. My perspective on spirituality and

transcendence, and additionally, my moral beliefs on agency and responsibility, have significantly changed in the last year. This level of change would seem impossible to the wideeyed “open-minded” freshman that I once was. Time and circumstance, and a little bit of patience, are solely responsible for the change in my beliefs. I learned, largely by accident, that open-mindedness is not a binary state of mind but rather a constant battle against internalized concepts and narratives.

The summer after eighth grade, I was able to compete at the Optimist Worlds in Lake Garda, Italy, with a team of the top five American opti sailors. The regatta went horribly, and I placed 120th or so out of the few hundred sailors. I did not have the speed to keep up with the top boats in the fleet, so every race was torturous and paranoid, particularly ones in which I started fantastically. I was so nervous for the regatta that I sleep-walked into and slept in a hotel room full of middle-aged German road bikers. I came into the regatta fearing failure, and when I failed, I failed again. After the regatta, I shied away from high performance competitive racing, and I did not compete at a competitive regatta for nearly a year.

Despite the constant lectures on not fearing failure, it was not until I came to run The Milton Paper that I realized how much I feared failing. After the first few mistakes Malcolm and I made as Paper heads, we joked that the Paper was taking away parts of our souls. I came to realize that this is how I perceived failure and stress, and that I had subconsciously feared this emotion. The fear of failure often does not manifest as legitimate fear but as slight bias towards actions with lower stakes, and a lowering of mental stakes for activities that seem stressful. I opted out of social situations or sailing competitions in which I feared failure, and I lathered my decisions in a layer of rationalization that covered up what I now know to be a fear of failure.

I learned about perspective and failure from experience and reflection and not from a clichéd lecture on how to live. If my life is to serve as any guideline, it is possible that the tired concepts of perspective and failure that I have discussed may seem irrelevant or clichéd or boring to you. I hope this is not the case, but if it is, here are some other cool things I am thinking about right now that I think my four years at Milton have taught me. Things are often less complex than they seem. We are responsible for our actions and perspectives.

Emotions are created, and suffering is a choice.

We live in a world of cultural narratives from which we construct experience. Things, even objective things, can be completely different when viewed through a different lense. Farewell, Milton! •

Malcolm McCann CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19 closest friends. I found My Place. I was beginning to understand who I was.

I abandoned all sense of desire to be like other people around me and instead became a leader of myself. Liberated from the encaging inevitable failures of the cliché self-conscious teenager, I was able to follow each passion and curiosity I felt. I became a leader in Milton’s outdoor community and have made many true friendships through our Outdoor Program. In my free time I stopped watching Netflix and began reading books voraciously and became obsessed with literature. In my senior year I decided to begin an Independent Course reading Joyce’s Ulysses in full with Mr. Idsvoog, and it became the most rewarding academic experience in my time as a learner. I never focused on only getting good grades and never let the college process corrupt my experience.

Looking back, I have grown as a person into my role and place in the Milton community. I am an independent thinker. I am a writer. I am a reader. I am an outdoorsman.

I am a lover of art history. I am politically active. I am a listener of British progressive rock. And I am so much more that together makes Malcolm McCann ‘17. I now feel true to myself. I now know better who I am because I first knew who I was not, and that is the greatest gift I received during my time at Milton.•

MB For Life

Letters

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Senior Reflection:

Henry Burnes This past Wednesday, when I read the letter that I wrote to myself freshman year, I was shocked by the person behind the pencil four years ago. He was cocky and not focused on the important and meaningful aspects of living—the letter was short and superficial.

My freshman self hadn’t taken the time to dive into the nature of his character and his aspirations for personal growth; rather, he had focused on material goals.

Amidst the disappointment I felt in reading the letter, I came to an appreciation of how much I have matured and changed over my time at Milton. When I began my journey at Milton, I thought little about the person I was.

I held the belief that the general outline of my person had already been decided, and that all that was necessary was to grow intellectually and to accomplish my goals—in academics or in sailing. I had little appreciation for building deep friendships with my peers, and I lacked a perspective on how much those friendships would come to change me throughout my time at Milton.

At times in my Milton career, I fell victim to a trap of judgment, a skepticism around the intentions of my peers. I cared little about how much I actually knew of a person and instead allowed the judgments of others—or brief impressions of their personalities—to impact my thinking. In my freshman and sophomore years, I barely knew some of my now closest friends, and I often had distinctly negative, and largely baseless, opinions of them. When I did reach out to others, I

often feared rejection and protected myself by never stretching too far, which is often a natural tendency, but one we must reject wholeheartedly.

As I’ve progressed through Milton, I’ve come to appreciate how much I lost through that skepticism in my beginning years at Milton. Everyone has a story, and once you understand that story, to some extent at least, it’s difficult to not want to form a relationship with them. At their core, each student at Milton is a good person—we all have our flaws, prejudices or insecurities, but when we get to know each other, on a deep level, the good qualities of our peers vastly outweigh the bad. I still catch myself falling victim to the trap of judgment, and it takes consistent effort to stay out of it.

There will be people at Milton that you find difficult to interact with, or lack motivation to become friends with. At points, you may think that you dislike a person to their very core. But even in these cases, stay open-minded. Don’t judge a person for something you hear about them, understand that person’s story, and come to form your own opinions about them. If we make positive assumptions about each other’s intentions, and trust that each and every one of us act out of genuine will, our community will become far stronger.

Much of how I live my life now has come from the impact of the relationships I have with friends. Passions of mine that I now hold close to my heart would not have been

possible without close friends to expose me to them—friends I wouldn’t have made without deliberate effort. I regret the skepticism I felt through my beginning years at Milton, and I regret losing out on the meaningful relationships I could have formed earlier if only I had trusted in the honest intentions of others and reached out.

Though I hate to end on a one-size-fitsall, how-to-live-your-life prescription, a few concluding thoughts to end this piece are necessary. Whether you have one year left at Milton or three, allow yourself to be vulnerable, to reach out, to trust and connect with students around you, even if those interactions make you uncomfortable or you have no desire to do so. Expand beyond your immediate group, and get to know students you normally wouldn’t consider spending time with.

When you get to know someone's story and learn something about why they act the way that they do, you then have some capacity to judge. We do not have the emotional capacity to form deep, meaningful relationships with much more than a handful of our peers, and we should choose to surround ourselves with people who can support our identities.

But even in this process of selection, we have an obligation to expose ourselves to a range of perspectives, to learn more about ourselves through branching out, and to remain open minded, an obligation which we must embrace. •

Senior Reflection:

Marshall Sloane I have been accused of advancing a “liberal agenda” throughout my time at Milton. At first, I tried to process what those accusing me of indoctrinating my peers intended. Did they see my announcements and articles as some grand ploy to advance alternative facts? Were all of my actions really viewed as part of my quest to advance a partisan agenda? To be frank, I never really cared if some perceived my “liberal agenda” as a negative because, like it or not, I always have and always will stand by my partisan crusade to push forward the Democratic platform. After seven years at Milton Academy, I can confirm that this school can take the credit for molding my passion for liberal politics.

High school at Milton feels like a second act to me, for it followed three fantastic middle school years that pushed me to grow and become a better learner. However, high school forced me to take the next step. I

wanted to find my passion, and, in the first weeks of my freshmen year, I came upon the organizations to which I would ultimately devote much of my time. I attended my first meeting of the Forward Looking Liberal Action Group, signed up to be a writer for a Milton publication, and joined the Speech Team. Over the coming years, my connection with and love for each of these facets of my Milton experience would grow, yet some of these activities would play a greater role in my experience than others.

Senior year has felt like the perfect capstone to my Milton experience. By the time I started this fall, I felt as though I could finally have a real impact on Milton and change the place I had come to view as a home. I was also lucky enough to have a terrific group of friends around me that had a similar aspiration, so, when we arrived on campus in September, we had a quest: stand up for our

values and try to be as badass as a bunch of nerdy prep school students can be.

The Milton Paper became our voice at a time when Milton Academy needed to confront a series of unexpected issues. After all, no one really knew how Milton should respond to Donald Trump’s campaign and eventual victory in November. Civil discourse, an idea that may have seemed logical and attractive, quickly became impossible as Donald Trump’s platform and statements appeared to conflict with basic human rights and Milton’s values. Many questioned how an institution that strives to create an inclusive and diverse community could even remain neutral about a candidate that brags about assaulting women, intends to target Muslims, lies about his past, mocks disabled individuals, and appears to conflict with

CONTINUED ON PAGE 22

Letters

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Senior Reflection:

Chloe Kim

I’ve been writing and deleting draft after draft of this supposed-to-be-reflection, and I decided I can’t reflect because I don’t really have anything to say. So instead I’m going to give a tour. I love giving tours, and I want to give as many as I can before I leave Milton. Catch you in Admissions.

I introduce myself and walk you down the Admissions hall, then up the red stairs to the English wing. Milton uses Harkness tables, which encourage students to lead class discussions on their own. I have both loved and dreaded these tables—loved because I learned so much from both my classmates and my teachers, and dreaded because at one point I found myself listening in class not necessarily for the sake of listening, but to catch something to respond to. At the table, you need to be vocal to be rewarded with good grades, even if you learn better from listening.

We go down the English hall, and to the left is our beloved TMP office. Ahead, there’s Computer Lab 2, our second home base. TMP means a lot of things to a lot of people, and it is more than the (almost) weekly papers we published. The friendships made here are stronger than paper, and the very existence of TMP verifies the intellectual spirit of the student body and fosters the free thinkers of our generation. TMP was one of the highlights of my senior year, and I’m so grateful for all our moments and all the friendships I’ve made.

Next stop: the library. It used to be one of my frequent destinations, but it got weird this year, so I don’t really go anymore. Students use this space frequently during the day, especially during research paper season. I struggled to come up with my U.S. History paper topic, and at the last minute I decided on Japanese internment. Little did I know, it was the most popular and thus most basic topic in research paper history. Don’t do it, kids.

And once, the Milton panel of The Tavern used the second floor conference room to hold a meeting, and a librarian aggressively confiscated all the chips and candy I bought for the group. Then we got yelled at whenever we became a little loud or laughed too hard. Good times.

We walk out the front door and follow the curved path to Kellner, then down to King. Are you familiar with Stephen King? He was actually a Milton Academy parent and donated this theatre. I look across the stage and think about how I used to play the violin but quit during my first week here. Goodbye to ten years of practice, tears, and lessons. It was the first independent decision I made here, away

from home, and also one of my best. I quit because the violin made me miserable, and doing so was crucial in shaping my successful Milton career. Always trust your gut, and late is better than never.

Close by is Pritzker. Science, as a humanities-oriented student, was just one of those bitter pills I had to swallow. I took Honors Bio because I thought I had something to prove, and it was absolutely the worst experience of my life. While Hemingway comes easily, transduction pathways and hemoglobin, not so much.

I don’t think I ever received over a 75% on a test. I took the class for college, but looking back, taking Regular Bio wouldn’t have mattered. Honors Bio is a course for students in love with science, and it’s hell even for them. Writers, historians, and beatniks of our generation: just don’t do it.

We jaywalk and are about to approach my favorite part about the tour: my dorm, Millet. You stay in the same dorm for all four years, so you become incredibly close to your dormmates. Over my four years, I’ve loved, roof-topped with, fought with, gone rogue with, stayed up all night with, slept in the same bed with, cried with, and been to Maine, Bermuda, and New York with the Millet girls in my grade—I know them inside out. Will I keep in touch with all of them? Or even all of my non-Millet friends? To be honest, probably not. But not all relationships that don’t last are relationships that have failed. Because here’s the thing: we grew up together, and that will always mean something.

700 words ago, I said I’d give a tour because I have nothing to say. I think I figured out why: it’s not at all that my Milton experience wasn’t meaningful or eventful enough for words, because it was. And it was also so much more. I don’t have anything to say because I am out of breath.

I’ve been running so hard for four years that, now that I’ve finally reached the finish line, I’m panting too hard to speak.

And perhaps that is the goal: to live your Milton experience so fully, freely, and ferociously that, at the end of your four years, you really have nothing left to say.

Finally we have come to the end of the tour: we exit west campus and enter the vast, green quad. Here I’ve said goodbye to three classes of seniors at their graduations, and now it’s my turn. Only a year ago, TMP 34 was busy setting up our booth and handing out the graduation issue, our first issue as a Board. This time it is TMP 35: you guys have no idea what’s coming. Thank you Milton, and thank you TMP—you take my breath away. •

Marshall Sloane CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21 nearly every Milton value.

I knew that I could not sit still in the 2016 election. Was my realization that I needed to take action the moment when my liberal agenda was born? Maybe. I would certainly like to believe so.

However, the origin story for my crusade remains irrelevant. By the time September wound to a close and October commenced, I continued to author a series of news pieces about how Milton Academy decided to cope with and confront the 2016 election. I soon discovered just how powerful news articles could be. These pieces served as a way to not only expose difficult issues, but also chronicle a historic moment at this incredibly old institution. I felt a sense of purpose at a time when I could have easily felt powerless in an America where Trump’s campaign disagreed with all my core values. My articles may not have had as strong of an impact as I hoped; nonetheless, my mere effort to shape people’s perspectives and my sense of fufillment made the dozens of articles worthwhile.

I appreciate the hodgepodge of challenges Milton can throw at its students. The course work, clubs, and athletics can become so challenging that we fall into a meaningless and tragic cycle.

We can never forget about the importance of finding some way to serve an idea or group greater than ourselves. The 34th Editorial Board of The Milton Paper was a real team. We made mistakes together, learned together, and succeeded together. More importantly, we had a chance to shape the ideas and values of Milton Academy. I was far more fulfilled by my work at the Paper than at any other time at Milton. I always thought that I would be happy if I went through life being content with mere satisfaction. I now know how wrong I was. The time I spent competing at tournaments or finishing assignments was important and educational, yet The Milton Paper allowed me to be happy and emotionally whole.

The 34th Editorial Board had our last meeting a couple of weeks ago, and, toward the end of the gathering, we got into a huge debate about a series of philosophical and political issues which I should probably not write about in this reflection.

At one point, all of us were standing and yelling at each other. The final moments of our last meeting serve as a perfect representation of my time at The Milton Paper. Our editorial board was just a group of teenagers who cared way too much about something that not many other people even read cover to cover.

I came into Milton as a shameless opportunist striving to check off boxes and to add components to my resume. I now realize that being passionate about what you do and being focussed on emotional fulfillment will always be far more important than the accomplishments you can list.

As for my liberal agenda, rest assured, it won’t be going away anytime soon. But these past few years at Milton have reminded me to smell the roses—and invest in a decent set of clothes— along the way.•

Letters

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Senior Reflection:

Mateen Tabatabaei I can hardly believe my first day at Milton as a freshman was 30 pounds ago. Milton has seen my growth from a naive, skinny 14 year old to the muscle-bound, bearded, learnéd stud I am today. To clarify, that’s “muscle-bound” by the alternate set of standards for a Varsity Golfer and Hack Soccer-er like myself. Also, I wasn’t always this sarcastic.

Despite being generally quite naive, freshman-Mateen rightly knew he could not sing.

I knew then, as I know now, that I left behind whatever passed for a decent singing voice in the 5th grade when the ensuing hormonal overdose left my vocal cords devoid of any range or the ability to match a pitch. Luckily, whenever I began to lament my lack of a singing voice too much, there was an acapella group, a Beatnik, or Dalton Letorney Himself to keep me content.

Just as Tiresias lacks vision but acquires the ability to “see” by clairvoyance, Milton has allowed me to discover and develop a “voice” that supplants the deficient singing voice I possess. (As a bonus, Class IV English, Founding Voices, and the Two Year English courses have left me adept at making pretentious literary references, and have inspired in me a passion for the humanities).

I consider this voice to simply be the confidence and ability to express and stand for my beliefs and principles.

I owe my comfort with speaking in front of crowds to the Speech Team, Debate Team, and the endlessly patient and skillful Ms. Marianelli who tolerated my tardiness to tournaments and myriad missed meetings with more composure than should have been humanly possible. I leave Milton confident in my ability to talk in front of a large audience without the magnitude 6.0 leg tremors I used to face.

In every class I’ve taken and on every single day I’ve gone to school these past years, I have learned something new. This may strike you as unsurprising, for, after all, learning is the very basis for receiving an education. Not every school, however, lives up to this ideal.

I consider the knowledge I’ve acquired to be a blessing and a testament to the quality of our teachers and the rigor of our curriculum.

That being said, I believe I have learned more from my time writing for The Milton Paper or acting as Opinion Manager than in any other lone facet of my Milton experience.

Through TMP, I discovered a community

of like-minded students: intellectually curious and fond of the notion that we are practically the next Woodward or Bernstein.

I looked up to people like Harry August and Alex Garnick and Hari Patel, Editors-in-Chief and board members of TMP’s 32nd board, more than they can ever know.

They sparked in me the drive to follow suit and make it onto the board, and they inspired in me a passion for sharing my opinions with the Milton community and constantly improving on my work. Engaging in a form of writing wholly different than that of English class sharpened my critical thinking and rhetorical ability while providing an avenue for experimenting with my writing style and voice without the threat of a poor grade looming. Following the arc of my articles from the mundane (“Cable vs. Netflix”) to the edgy (“The Dangers of Political Correctness,” or “Why I Don’t Participate in TextLess Days”) reveals how much my voice has developed. The healthy risks I took in my writing bled into other facets of my Milton experience, and I feel that’s been for the better. I’m still learning to toe the line between being edgy and being abrasive, but I’ve found much more reward in this pursuit than in lingering within the zone of comfort.

I was lucky to ascend to a board position alongside some of my closest friends at Milton, but the grueling, unending work of publishing every week has strengthened our friendship like nothing else could. We’ve made quite some memories, both fond and bitter, together. On Parents’ Day, TMP’s primary venue for fundraising, when the internet fell pray to the malicious work of hackers, our technical specialist Alex Iansiti circumvented the DDoS-ing of half the freaking internet to bring back to life the Squarespace service we relied on for collecting donations. When News Manager Marshall Sloane received flak for what people perceived as a biased Monday Assembly outline of the policies and stances of the presidential candidates, we as a board came to his defense with an editorial about his being “biased towards the truth.” Sounds like a classic liberal euphemism in hindsight, but as we wrote it we felt like crusaders battling valiantly for friendship and the sanctity of the entire institution of journalism.

We willfully entrenched ourselves in the Paper Office or Computer Lab, three times

a week, producing issue after issue with occasionally wavering but never extinguished zeal until campus safety literally kicked us out as the time approached 10 PM. This was done to the significant detriment of our grades and sleep. A little known secret: we realize that the only consistent readership of our editorials and articles is probably us on the board. Yet we still feel that our work is crucial and momentous. We persist in regarding ourselves as the defenders of reason on Milton’s campus, and as the final bulwark against the otherwise inevitable evolution of The Administration into a totalitarian regime. Ignorance may be bliss, but there’s something particularly satisfying about intimately knowing of your own self-delusion and voluntarily permitting it to remain intact.

And the self-delusion we maintain about the importance of our work as high-school journalists is among the most noble ones I can think of.

I love this Paper, I love this school, and yet I feel ready to move on. I look with eagerness and intrigue to what my future holds, but feel no joy to leave behind the peers and teachers I’ve come to cherish.

Still, change is inevitable. With my class graduated, the Upper School becomes unrecognizable compared to how I found it.

Sure, the general apparatus remains intact.

The same teachers and administrators remain, the same buildings and fields still stand, but the students who populate Milton—the lifeblood of our school—is wholly renewed.

The philosopher Heraclitus believed that “one cannot step in the same river twice.”

He believed the world is in a state of flux, or constant change, and that everything eventually returns to the fundamental ruling principle of fire.

I’ve made my trek through the Milton river as I found it, and it has carried me quite a ways. Heraclitus’s theory of everything reverting to fire seems dark, but if we are to interpret him in terms of the lingo of modern-day Milton Academy, then indeed my time at Milton has been “fire.” It has been “lit.” It has been four fateful years I will never cease to cherish. It has begotten friendships I will never lose. And it has given me a voice I will forevermore take pride in singing with.

Long Live The Milton Paper. •

Long Live The Milton Paper

Letters

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Faculty Reflection:

Susan Marianelli I was teaching public school in Indiana in the spring of 2004 when I came across an ad on the National Speech website for an opening at Milton Academy. I had been applying to other schools, so I thought, “Why not?” Obviously, thirteen years later—the rest is history.

I knew absolutely no one in Massachusetts, I knew absolutely no one in Boston, and I knew absolutely no one at Milton. But I wanted to teach, I wanted smaller classes, and I wanted to coach speech. Coming here, I got all three.

My greatest enjoyment was the ability to meet and work with so many students over the years.

Spending time with the students— talking about everything from world peace to man buns—has given me such hope for this country and for the world. I truly believe that being here has kept me young. While I tire more easily, and sometimes after a long weekend speech tournament I take a little longer to rest up, my happiness in teaching and being here has remained constant. Milton, at times, is difficult to navigate, but the ability to work with students has been unsurpassed and totally rewarding.

I do not plan to, as one student asked, “Go off the grid.” I hope to continue to work with young people.

I am just not sure exactly how. As I taught my last public speaking class last week, I was sad. I estimate that, while here at Milton, I have listened to over 10,000 speeches between public speaking and the speech team. One student I listened to four times a week for almost two years.

Insanely, I loved every minute of it.

Obviously, there has been a lot of great success. Marshall Sloane was Milton’s first National Speech Champion since 1988, but the most important success has been the look on students’ faces when they feel they have done the job, when they are proud of themselves and of the work they have produced. “Prior Planning does Prevent a Poor Performance and Winning is a By-Product of Excellence.” That will never change. Seeing it in play and watching students realize that it is true is the greatest joy for me.

As I look back on these years, I have made lasting relationships with students, faculty, and staff. I look to

the future and my return to Indiana to be with my family, blessed to take with me so many amazing memories that I will keep with me in my heart.

Just last week, I had breakfast with Sam Rosen ’09. He was in my first Freshman English class in the fall of 2005. We talked about the fact that what really bonded us was not just English, but college basketball! During March Madness each year there have been many texts between us. Martin Page ’12 called me a few months back and offered me a job this summer to work with him coaching speech students from across the country. When I started to cry, he asked if he had offended me. I said, no, that I was honored. I told him no, but who knows—maybe next year. He said the door was always open. Two of my students, Wiley Caine and Ben Pariser ’06 have volunteered to move me back to Indiana. I am not sure what this trip will be like, but it will be a memory that I know will be spectacular, regardless of the outcome!

Mr. Emmott and Mr. Moriarty have been my support and protectors throughout my years here and for that I am eternally grateful.

Without Marjorie, Traci, Mary, Ed, Chris, and Nick I would not have had money, vans, or health! Ted and Don took me to places in Europe I never thought I would see. The crazy memories of those trips will make me smile over and over for years to come.

However, it is time for me to step aside and for someone younger to step in and start their life in teaching. To begin their journey as an adult, making, I hope, just as many if not more awesome memories. I am grateful for the opportunity that Milton gave me in bringing me out here from Indiana in 2004. I am grateful to all the students who took the time to stop and get to know me and to open up to me so that I could know them. I am grateful to a community that was there for me when I needed it. I hope that I leave Milton a little better. I know I leave with so much more than I could have ever imagined. •

Faculty Reflection:

Don Dregalla After forty-two years of teaching (thirty-seven at Milton Academy), I know that it is time to call it a career and perhaps do something else for a few years. Milton Academy has been very good to me, and I think that I have done a pretty good job for it as well.

Back in 1980, the chair of the music department, Jean McCawley, took a chance on hiring a person with virtually no orchestra experience to build an orchestra that was just then put into the school day. I thought honestly that I would be here for a few years, and then move on to something “bigger and better.” That year we had a group of eight students and four faculty members, who were not that great, but our audiences thought we were pretty good. After that year, I moved into Wolcott House, joined the school community, and began to build an orchestra.

I am very happy that we now have two orchestras at school and now two instrumental groups in the middle school. From eight students to over one hundred, we have done pretty well. I am quite proud of all of the tours that our groups have made, too, reaching over eighteen countries. Students have witnessed where classical music was born and seen some very historic places.

I also had the chance to be a middle school baseball coach, an acting middle school Co-Head for a year, and a Class Dean for the classes of 2007, 2010, and 2013. In short, I have been very lucky. I have been most fortunate to have worked with some wonderful students over the years, and, of course, some outstanding colleagues both in and out of the music department. Those people I will miss dearly.

It is, however, time to start the next chapter, and Kathy and I will be moving back to Ohio, where I have family and the cost of living is much lower. I wish the school and all in it the best for the future. •

Thank You For Your Time At Milton!

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Meet The Milton Paper's 35th Editorial Board!

(Left to Right) Coalter Palmer, Adi Gandhi, Jonah Garnick, Edward Moreta, Nihal Raman, Rachel Handler, Navpreet Sekhon, and Emma James

Name: Rachel “Is a Good Dancer” Handler Position: Editor-in-Chief Hometown/Dorm: Dover, MA Favorite Book: On the Road by Jack Kerouac Grammar Pet Peeve: Passive voice Inner Crayola Crayon Color: Atomic Tangerine Favorite Flik Meal: The paper plate Fun Fact: I used to introduce myself to mannequins in department stores Most Likely To: Be found napping in the TMP office Senior Crush: Maggie O’Hanlon Name: Navpreet “Nah I Quit” Sekhon Position: Editor-in-Chief Hometown/Dorm: Los Angeles, CA; Millet House Favorite Book: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton Grammar Pet Peeve: Their, they’re, there Inner Crayola Crayon Color: Purple Mountains’ Majesty Favorite Flik Meal: Weekly Thanksgiving meal Fun Fact: I researched the neuro-sociopsychology of using profanities.

Most Likely To: Stay calm for an entire Paper meeting Senior Crush: John Paul Daley Name: Nihal “It’s Just Slant” Raman Position: Managing Editor Hometown: Brookline, MA Favorite Book: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess Grammar Pet Peeve: Could’ve vs. Could of Inner Crayola Crayon Color: Tiger's Eye Favorite Flik Meal: Ed’s Special Vegetable & Bean Stew Fun Fact: I didn’t eat meat until I was 12 Most Likely To: Make dad jokes before being a dad...“I guess that makes me a faux pa”...Shut up nihal.

Senior Crush: Marshall Sloane

CONTINUED ON PAGE 26

PAGE 26 Name: Jimmy “I Swear It’s Not Photoshopped” DeLano Position: News Manager Hometown: Milton, MA Favorite Book: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand Grammar Pet Peeve: Possessive before a gerund Inner Crayola Crayon Color: Metallic Seaweed Favorite Flik Meal: Cream of Broccoli Soup Fun Fact: I once fit 22 grapes in my mouth Most Likely To: Apply to colleges based on the quality of their chocolate milk Senior Crush: Katherine Vallot-Basker Name: Jonah “I Swear I’m a Liberal” Garnick Position: Editor-at-Large Hometown: Weston, MA Favorite Book: American Pastoral by Philip Roth Grammar Pet Peeve: When people use “and I” incorrectly Inner Crayola Crayon Color: Jazzberry Jam Favorite Flik Meal: Revved Up Mac n Cheese Fun Fact: I once rolled four strikes in a row in Wii bowling.

Most Likely To: Turn FLLAG Alt-Right Senior Crush: Matt Magann Name: Alex “Jane Whom?” Millard Position: Senior Editor Hometown/Dorm: Bronxville, NY; Hallowell House Favorite Book: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Grammar Pet Peeve: When people incorrectly use “I” instead of “me” to sound fancier Inner Crayola Crayon Color: Wisteria Favorite Flik Meal: Turkey tips (still unsure what part of the turkey that is) Fun Fact: Once I ate twenty Gogurts within an hour to try to win a prize Most Likely To: Steal a lava lamp from the Stu Senior Crush: Evan Scales Name: Emma “Why Can’t We All Just Get Along” James Position: News Manager Hometown/Dorm: Villanova, PA; Millet House Favorite Book: The Hours by Michael Cunningham Grammar Pet Peeve: Confusing “further” and “farther” Inner Crayola Crayon Color: “Mauvelous” Favorite Flik Meal: Magic Bars (no, but seriously) Fun Fact: Ate a watermelon-flavored Chapstick in 2nd grade.

Most Likely To: Confuse “further” and “farther” Senior Crush: Wayne Harding Name: Coalter “Yes I Still Go Here” Palmer Position: Web Editor Hometown/Dorm: Deutschland, Germany; Norris House Favorite Book: Ladle Rat Rotten Hut by Howard L. Chace Grammar Pet Peeve: Superfluous commas Inner Crayola Crayon Color: Big Foot Feet Favorite Flik Meal: Bread and butter Fun Fact: I am on the Paper Editorial Board Most Likely To: Be Accidentally Left off the Masthead (sorry) Senior Crush: Peter Duke Name: Edward “Mr. Steal Your Girl” Moreta Position: Senior Editor Hometown: Boston, MA Favorite Book: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault Grammar Pet Peeve: When people tell me their grammar pet peeves Inner Crayola Crayon Color: Brown Sugar Favorite Flik Meal: The chocolate milk Fun Fact: I broke my head when I was in pre-school and got 7 stitches Most Likely To: Expose da snakes Senior Crush: Keisha Baffour-Addo Name: Aditya “XO Tour Llif3” Gandhi Position: Opinion Manager Hometown/Dorm: Nashua, NH; Goodwin House Favorite Book: Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Grammar Pet Peeve: “their” vs. “his or her” Inner Crayola Crayon Color: Bittersweet Favorite Flik Meal: The eggs they make on the weekend that are raw and burnt at the same time Fun Fact: I once made a guide for amateurs about the Warriors cat series Most Likely To: Write an article about why something is problematic Senior Crush: Thomas Hannah

Matriculations

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Ad Nauseam

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Before Graduating Bucket-List 1: Close your eyes and cross the street Tuition ain’t going to pay itself.

2: Sneak into a D.C hearing; yell words like “objection!” and “OVERRULED!” Get D.C.’d.

3: Debate Marshall Sloane ’17 by exclusively citing Buzzfeed's prestigious article “34 Foods All Pregnant Women Crave.”

4: Tell a DSG she’s a DSG. Run. 5: Play Ultimate Frisbee with fidget spinners and effectively lower your chances of intimacy by 110%.

6: Use your double legacy to get you into Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Go to Columbia.

7: Eat a mint, a mango, a créme brulee, or a fruit medley in the Cox Library stairwell!

8: Break off the relationship that’s been on “lingering” status since sophomore year.

9: Write your name on the Cum Laude plaque in crayon.

10: Donate to TMP. Printed on 50% post-consumer waste. Please recycle this paper. www . themiltonpaper . org