The Black & White Vol. 57 Issue 6

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B&W

Walt Whitman hits 200 page 14

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Print Editor-in-Chief Eva Herscowitz

Print Managing Editor Jessica Buxbaum

Print Managing Editor Eric Neugeboren

Print Production Head Julia Rubin

cover artwork by JULIA RUBIN

Print Production Managers Sophie deBettencourt, Jana Warner Production Assistants Zoe Chyatte, Noah Grill, Sam Nickerson, Sam Rubin, Joey Sola-Sole Print Copy Editors Mira Dwyer, Matthew van Bastelaer News Editors Zoë Kaufmann, Sydney Miller, Matthew Proestel Sports Editors Chris Atkinson, Max Gersch, Elyse Lowet Feature Editors Camerynn Hawke, Julia McGowan, Yiyang Zhang Columnist Editors Maddy Frank, Jenny Lu Opinion Editors Ella Atsavapranee, Katherine Sylvester Graphics Manager Landon Hatcher Business Managers Matthew Boyer, Lexie Johnson, Azraf Khan News Writers Zara Ali, Meera Dahiya, Joseph Ferrari, Katie Hanson, Blake Layman, Max London, Lukas Troost, Anna Yuan Feature Writers Danny Donoso, Jack Gonzalez, Aditi Gujaran, Clara Koritz Hawkes, Anna Labarca, Jack Middleton, Alex Robinson Opinion Writers Will Brown, Dana Herrnstadt, Emma Iturregui, Hirari Sato, David Villani Sports Writers Sara Azimi, Mateo Gutierrez, Harry Kaplan, Ally Navarrete, Bennett Solomon, Isabel van Nieuwkoop, José Wray Business Assistants Khanya Dalton, Min Yeung

The Black & White is an open forum for student views from Walt Whitman High School, 7100 Whittier Blvd., Bethesda, MD, 20817. The Black & White’s website is www. theblackandwhite.net.

The newspaper is published five times a year, and the B&W magazine is published biannually. Signed opinion pieces reflect the positions of individual staff members and not necessarily the opinion of Walt Whitman High School or Montgomery County Public Schools. Unsigned editorial pieces reflect the opinion of the newspaper.

All content in the paper is reviewed to ensure that it meets the highest level of legal and ethical standards with respect to the material as libelous, obscene or invasive of

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Photo Director Lukas Gates Photo Assistants Annabel Redisch, Kurumi Sato Senior Columnists Shehrez Chaudhri, Ariana Faghani, Rebecca Mills, Jeremy Wenick Puzzles Editors Cam Jones, Eva Liles Editorial Board Ella Atsavapranee, Cami Corcoran, Meera Dahiya, Joseph Ferrari, Lukas Gates, Max Gersch, Clara Koritz Hawkes, Jack Middleton, Ally Navarrete, Hirari Sato, Jessie Solomon, Katherine Sylvester, Ivy Xun Adviser Louise Reynolds

theblackandwhite.net Online Editor-in-Chief Thomas Mande Online Managing Editors Hannah Feuer, Rebecca Hirsh Online Copy Editors Jesssie Solomon, Ivy Xun Multimedia Editors Anjali Jha, Maeve Trainor Multimedia Team Luka Byrne, Sam White Online Production Head Selina Ding Online Production Assistants Kyle Crichton, Alex Silber Communications Director Cami Corcoran Social Media Director Naren Roy Head Webmasters Anthony Breder, Caleb Hering

privacy. All corrections are posted on the website.

Recent awards include the 2018 and 2017 CSPA Hybrid Silver Crowns, 2013 CSPA Gold Medalist and 2012 NSPA Online Pacemaker.

The Black & White encourages readers to submit opinions on relevant topics in the form of letters to the editor, which must be signed to be printed. Anonymity can be granted on request. The Black & White reserves the right to edit letters for content and space. Letters to the editor may be emailed to theblackandwhiteonline@gmail.com.

Annual mail subscriptions cost $35 ($120 for four-year subscription) and can be purchased through the online school store.

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

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few years ago, commentators prophesied that newspapers would be too old, boring and awkward in size to quench the mewant-iPhone thirst of dim-witted millennials and iGen-ers. Young people were too busy playing Angry Birds to inform themselves about global politics and breaking news, traditional news consumers were aging and the thought of paying for newsprint now available via Java seemed nonsensical.

Newspapers were going to die. So why didn’t they?

Despite the looming dread that newspapers would succumb to obsolescence, die a slow, painful death and finally join the ranks of travel agents, The Walkman and roadmaps, print journalism is alive and kicking. Since the first continuously-published newspaper, the Boston News-Letter, published its first issue on April 24, 1704, newspapers have endured censorship scares, and journalists have outlasted

a barrage of threats and intimidation.

The war on the press continues into the 21st century, where leaders averse to the first amendment are alienating reporters and claiming good journalism is “fake news.” Yet print and digital subscriptions for the largest newspapers are on the rise. Without overlooking media layoffs and the ever-increasing number of news deserts—communities lacking any form of local news outlet—journalism has managed to survive.

The secret to this media miracle lies in the platform’s necessity and adaptability. As long as we live in an interconnected age, newspapers will fill the void to inform and interpret.

And as long as we live in a democracy, they will do so ethically and truthfully.

We are lucky to live in a technological age where there are countless ways to purvey the truth, from front page stories, to news notifications, to editorial documentaries, to podcasts and to

Snapchat news channels.

So, in the spirit of adaptability, The Black & White will deviate from its monochromatic moniker and be printed in all color: next year, our paper will transition from a newspaper-magazine hybrid to a magazine. We made this decision in response to declining reader interest in the newspaper editions and the success of this year’s magazines.

Our website, www.theblackandwhite. net, will continue to publish breaking news, as well as opinion, feature and sports stories. Our magazine, The B&W, will expand upon its five-year legacy and continue to highlight indepth feature stories, news analyses and student voices.

Thank you to our dedicated readership for supporting and engaging with our work throughout the year. We look forward to many more years and many more editions—this time in magazine form.

Jessica Buxbaum Managing Editor

Eric Neugeboren Managing Editor

Eva Herscowitz Editor-in-Chief

Photo by LUKAS GATES

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CONTENTS

table of

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Issue 6, May 2019 Local family sweetens community with Sarah’s Ice Cream

8 10 14

Math teacher Susan Wildstrom leaves 50 year legacy

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Student-athletes deal with body image standards

18

Anatomy of a Talent Show act

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Sports photography offers new look at athletics

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ESOL department builds tight-knit community, suffers staffing cuts

24

Tackling the gender gap in SGA

28 32

Class of 2019 destinations

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Junior creates film to spread awareness about suicide

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A roundtable discussion about race at Whitman

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B-CC students create pop-up museum as commentary on 21st century issues

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One student’s terrifying experience with synthetic marijuana

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Art teacher Nancy Mornini to retire after 20 years of community-building

43 44 46

A writer’s experience with Asian-Americans stereotypes

Gen Z in their own words Remembering Walt Whitman’s legacy on his 200th birthday

Class of 2019 sports destinations

A guide to today’s slang Mega crossword: mythology and folklore

Junior Liam Gilbert-Lawrence at the team’s meet against Churchill Jan. 5. Whitman parent Adam Hirsh took this photo from the 10-meter platform at Kennedy Shriver Aquatic Center.

Read more about sports photography on page 20.

Photo by ADAM HIRSH

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eam it’s r c s u o y m a e r i sc

’ s h a r a s andmade

h cr eam e c

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Photo illustration by JULIA RUBIN

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by DANA HERRNSTADT

After eight years and one week, Sarah Park sold her Prince George’s County delicatessen—the one she opened after years of working multiple jobs to provide for herself and her 28-year-old daughter, Annie. Since immigrating to Montgomery County from South Korea in 2000, she has been a waitress, a cashier, a Lord and Taylor employee and has delivered Korean newspapers to households each morning. Last June, she thought she was ready to retire. But after three months jobless, it became clear she wasn’t.

“I felt like ‘oh, my god, am I really retired?’” Sarah said. “‘Uh, probably not.’ I started researching what I really wanted, and one of my neighbors said ‘Sarah, your ice cream is the best. Do the business.’”

The “business” turned into Sarah’s Handmade Ice Cream, a Bethesda ice cream and bubble tea shop that replaced Wow Cow March 7. Sarah is the owner and chef, Annie is the front of house, and Rollin Amore—Sarah’s life partner and financial advisor—is the handyman and helps with finances. Each night, after the family leaves around 10:30 p.m., they head to Sarah and Rollin’s Chevy Chase home to discuss the day.

“Once we go home, with a glass of wine, the three of us talk,” Sarah said.

“It’s not necessarily business talk, because we end up always [talking] about ice cream.”

Sarah was born in South Korea in 1961. While she was growing up, it was rare for Korean women to pursue education past high school, but Sarah and her five sisters all earned bachelor’s degrees.

Sarah said she largely attributes this to her dad’s constant support and sacrifice.

He encouraged his daughters to read and wouldn’t allow them to watch television, though radio was permitted.

“We would always complain, and my dad said, ‘only stupid people watch TV,’” Sarah said. “‘Smart people read books,’” she laughed. “Something like that.”

In Korea, Sarah worked as a journalist, writing for a daily newspaper. It was hard work, and she often slept in the newsroom to make deadlines. Once Annie was born in 1991, she knew she wouldn’t be able to raise her daughter and continue working for the paper. So she quit and began to freelance.

Eventually, Sarah said she came to realize that she didn’t want her daughter to grow up in what she believes is

a male-centric society, so in 2000, she immigrated to the United States. Sarah had a cousin in Maryland, so she moved to Montgomery County, where she has remained since. Annie attended Tilden Middle School and Walter Johnson High School.

The family’s first few years in the U.S. were tough; Sarah worked as a cashier in a deli, making only $8.50 an hour. She eventually had to pick up extra jobs, sometimes working three at once, to pay bills and pay for Annie’s violin lessons. She attended evening classes at Montgomery College to learn English, all while focusing on Annie’s education.

“My number one goal was to educate her,” Sarah said. “I tried my best to raise her well. I never relied on any man, and I teach her to do that. I don’t know if I’m a feminist or not, but I’m a strong woman.”

Now, Annie teaches writing and violin at Montgomery College. She works with a lot of immigrants: people just like her mom, who recently came to America for a better life and are slowly tearing down the language barrier.

“It’s funny how that’s evolved,” Annie said. “She’s been a great partner and role model in learning how small businesses work. Watching how she finds little joys in the things that she does has been really inspirational.”

And Sarah does find little joys: chatting with customers, pistachio ice cream and working closely with her family everyday. She started making ice cream with a small kitchen ice cream maker as a hobby, just vanilla and strawberry for Rollin. Eventually, she started sharing with her neighbors as well (“I don’t want him to eat too much,” Sarah said).

Now, Sarah sells not only the expected vanillas and chocolates but unconventional flavors like Matcha, Thai tea and Korean pear. To come up with flavors, Sarah scours the internet, visits other ice cream shops and consults her many cookbooks. For each flavor, she makes five or six different recipes and combines the best elements of each to create her own signature recipe.

“She has a very good sense of putting foods together, which flavors work together,” Rollin said. “She’s very creative in that regard. And so far, she’s made some great ice creams.”

Annie, who has loved to travel since her semester abroad in Spain, often finds tastes or trends in other countries and brings them home to her mom. When

she stopped in Bali, Indonesia, during a four-month backpacking trip, she noticed how successful restaurants with vegan options had become. And when she travelled to Japan and Hong Kong, she noticed the popularity of bubble tea.

She brought the idea to Sarah and now they sell bubble tea in their own shop.

They brew the tea hot, cold or loose-leaf, without any artificial syrups, and they even make cashew and almond milk for people who can’t have dairy.

“She always inspires me, saying ‘mom, we should try this or that,’” Sarah said. “We didn’t have it back in Korea— just hot tea.”

Their philosophy of no artificial flavors or colors holds true for most of their ice cream flavors as well; instead of using red food coloring for strawberry ice cream, Sarah uses beet powder. She has to be careful, though—too much powder means the ice cream tastes less like strawberries and more like beets.

“Once I start something, my goal is always to be perfect,” Sarah said. “I want to make the right thing, serve the right thing. Health and good ingredients—that’s important.”

The first flavor the family made in their factory was mango sorbet to test out the machines. The second flavor was chocolate velvet, a rich hazelnut chocolate that Sarah invented.

“Or was it oreo?” Rollin said.

“Chocolate velvet,” Sarah said, brushing stray chocolate chips from the wooden counter into her palm.

Not many shops make their own ice cream anymore. The machinery is expensive, and the process is time consuming. Sometimes, Sarah comes to work at seven in the morning and doesn’t leave until 11 at night. But she loves it. In the future, she might consider expanding, but for now, she just wants to appreciate selling ice cream with her family.

“I just want to enjoy being here,” Sarah said. “I want to enjoy my life. I always work hard. I’m always a positive person. Whatever I do, I always put 100 percent in.”

She also wants to be a friendly neighborhood face; she loves chatting to customers and putting her own spins on classic flavors. She likes seeing kids smile, cones in hands.

“In Korean, the word ‘family’ means ‘people who eat together,’” Annie said.

“There’s something about food that just brings people together, and being able to share that is something that inspires her.”

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Wildstrom to retire after 50 years of ‘enthusiasm and passion’ by DANA HERRNSTADT

M

ath teacher Susan Wildstrom may be small in stature, but in her 50 years teaching, she has made up for it in spunk.

Wearing green, dangly earrings, a polka-dotted sweater and socks covered with pictures of cats, she was quick to mention that she also owns socks with giraffes, cookies and milk and constellations.

“It’s called joyofsocks.com, and they have fabulous socks, reasonably priced, free shipping,” she said. “Write this down.”

Wildstrom, who has taught math for 50 years—38 at Whitman—is retiring after this school year. Her eccentricity has become a staple of the Whitman math department, and her stubbornness has caused the occasional rift with MCPS authority figures. Wildstrom has integrated herself into the wider math community as well; through her participation in American Mathematical Association conventions, she’s become friends with many math professors and PhDs. Wildstrom designed Whitman’s Multivariable Calculus curriculum in 1998 and has piloted various other classes throughout her time at Whitman. For the past 50 years, Wildstrom has worked to change students’ perception of math from a required subject into an inspiring and exciting journey.

“She’s the best math teacher I’ve ever had,” junior Emma Salafsky said.

“Her passion for the subject is infectious.

You want to love it, too.”

In her lessons, Wildstrom emphasizes that there’s more to math than textbook problems and formulas. Through her reading assignment, she teaches students that math exists in many forms— not just what they learn in the classroom.

Students choose a book from the math library in her classroom, which holds around 300 books, and write a page about what they read.

“I credit Mrs. Wildstrom for turning me into a mathematician, and in large part for my becoming a researcher,” said Scott Kominers (‘05), now a business professor at Harvard. “She taught me that math was something I could help create.”

Wildstrom’s love for math began early, when she was growing up in Cleveland, Ohio. Her family immigrated

there before she was born, after her father escaped Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp in Germany. Since it was still early in the war, and because he had a sponsor who would allow him to come to the United States, he was able to escape after six months. Wildstrom’s grandmother taught her to read, so she started kindergarten ahead and soon became interested in math.

“It always made sense,” she said. “I like math because there is often a single correct answer, but there are usually lots of different ways that you can arrive at the right answer. History? I can’t remember history for my life. I grew up wanting to be a math teacher. I knew it was going to be math, I knew it was going to be a teacher, and I knew it was probably going to be high school.”

At her own high school, Wildstrom was president of the math club, editor of the yearbook and a member of chorus.

Her school had 3,000 students, and the students who took AP and honors classes were also football captains, newspaper editors and club presidents. When asked if she was part of this “ruling clique of intellectuals,” as she put it, Wildstrom laughed.

“Ooooh, yeah,” she said. “I was an important kid in high school. Everyone liked me.”

Since many of the students at Wildstrom’s school didn’t have the financial resources to afford college, most of her grade either went to community college or didn’t go to college at all. Wildstrom, however, went to the University of Michigan, where she met her husband, Steve.

They married right after graduation. He passed away in 2015.

“My husband was a Renaissance man,” she said. “He knew a little bit about so many things. He loved math, but he was a journalist. He wrote economic analysis for a while; he was an editor and then he wrote a column about technology. His inner math geek got to come back out.”

Wildstrom took advanced classes throughout high school and then majored in math at Michigan, though she struggled with calculus classes throughout both. Ironically, she now teaches the most advanced calculus class in the school. When MCPS assigned her an AB Calculus class in 1990, she was less than thrilled.

“They dragged me kicking and screaming,” she said.

Right out of college, Wildstrom started teaching at a high school in Southside, Michigan, and then at schools across Montgomery County, including Seneca Valley High School, Churchill High School and Tilden Middle School.

She started at Whitman in 1981.

Most recently, she taught RapidLearner Pre-Calculus—an accelerated form of honors Pre-Calculus—and Multivariable Calculus; she wrote the curriculums for both classes, and she’s taught just about every other math class throughout her career.

As she continued to teach, Wildstrom discovered what was important to her and what wasn’t. She doesn’t hold grudges against students (“it just is purposeless”) and she doesn’t make rules she isn’t prepared to enforce (“you lose credibility”). She encourages students to think beyond her lessons and gives out bookmarks as prizes to students who “advance the discussion.”

“Sometimes somebody will make a remark, and it’ll be dead wrong,” Wildstrom said. “But we’ll stop. We do some exploring.”

At Seneca Valley, Wildstrom taught Algebra One Part One, a class for students who struggle with math. She was skeptical at first, but it ended up becoming one her of most rewarding and formative teaching experiences, she said.

Even though she now teaches some of the most advanced math classes in the school, her philosophies about math have stayed the same: she thinks math shouldn’t be a race against time, and she emphasizes that there’s more to math than what’s taught in the classroom.

“The kids thought I was a god. They were wrong—I’m a good teacher, there’s no question about that,” Wildstrom said.

“They thought I was a god because ‘Mrs. Wildstrom made me understand math.’

What they didn’t put together was that we were going slowly. We could spend two days, maybe three days, on a topic.

We could wait until they got it.”

And Wildstrom loves when her students get it. To her, it’s the best part of teaching.

“You look out into the sea of kids, and, all of a sudden, their eyes go boing!” she said. “If you can bring enthusiasm and passion into the classroom, it might

wildst 8

Math teacher Susan Wildstrom is retiring after 50 years of teaching. Throughout her career, she has left a lasting impression on her students, even inspiring some to pursue math-related careers. Photo by KURUMI SATO

be contagious to the students.

And if it’s contagious to the students, they might open up their brains and their minds to it.”

Wildstrom encourages her students to reflect on their experiences in class or anything pertaining to math through email journals, and she tries to respond to every email.

When Olivia Pomerenk (‘16) was taking RL at Whitman, she emailed Wildstrom about Pythagorean Triples, a topic she was particularly interested in concerning the side lengths of triangles. Wildstrom’s positive feedback and genuine interest in Pomerenk’s studies after that inspired her to major in math at the California Institute of Technology.

“She’s one of the first genuinely brilliant women in math I encountered,” Pomerenk said. “Most of my previous teachers had been male, so I could actually envision myself pursuing math more concretely than before. She knew I would end up in math even before I did.”

Pomerenk and many other students have stayed in touch with Wildstrom through college and beyond.

“We email back and forth throughout the year, and try to catch up over coffee once or twice annually,” Pomerenk said. “I would count her as more of a friend and colleague than just a past teacher.”

Throughout all of her years of teaching, her favorite class to teach has been RL. RL students are mostly underclassmen, and Wildstrom likes them because they’re curious about the concepts, not just about their grades.

Linear Algebra and AP Statistics teacher Elizabeth Doschek took Wildstrom’s Multivariable class when she was in high school. Years later, Doschek began substitute teaching for Wildstrom’s classes. Wildstrom supported her the whole way, and even recommended her to teach Linear Algebra class. She transitioned from Doschek’s teacher, to her mentor, to her colleague and friend.

“She’s so eager to help people,” Doschek said.

“That’s her. That’s how she is.

I think that passion she conveys to her students is what they remember decades after.”

Twenty years ago, MCPS mandated that all math teach-

ers take a multi-day training class over the summer to teach Algebra One. Wildstrom had already been teaching for over 30 years and didn’t feel the need to participate. So she skipped the training.

“Because I’m snotty and snide and insubordinate,” she said.

The next summer, MCPS mandated teachers take a geometry course. Again, Wildstrom stayed home.

“So I’m not permitted to teach Algebra One, Algebra Two, or Geometry,” Wildstrom said happily. “Although, by now, they’ve forgotten.”

Over the years, Wildstrom has become part of a vast network of mathematicians through her participation in conferences held by the Math Association of America and the American Mathematical Society. For a time, she helped organize the American Mathematical Competitions, run by the MAA. “She’s a really big deal within the mathematics community,” said Katie Kinnaird (‘04), who teaches computer, statistical and data sciences at Smith College. “It’s a bit like being around a rock star.”

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A token of Wildstrom’s classroom is her “Michigan Lady.” The life-sized doll used to belong to math teachers Stephen Hayes and Meg Thatcher, but one summer, it appeared in Wildstrom’s room with its hands positioned in an innappropriate gesture. Wildstrom stuck it behind the copy machine.

Years later, sifting through her late husband’s belongings, she found one of his Michigan sweatshirts. She put it on the Michigan Lady and dragged the doll to the corner of her classroom, and it’s remained there ever since. But she’s not going to take the doll with her at the end of the year. Instead, it’ll stay at Whitman, where some other teacher can place a new sweatshirt on it’s chest and put it in the corner of their classroom.

Fifty years is a long time, and Wildstrom is ready to spend time with her grandchildren in retirement.

“I think it’s nice if I walk out of the building while people still think I’m not senile, and I can still stand up,” she said. “You know, leave ‘em laughing.”

strom

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Who is W

Over the past month, The Black & White reached out to hundreds of students to find out what makes them different from their friends. The project models a recent New York Times piece that asked thousands of Generation Z members the same question. The following pictures and quotations were randomly selected from the roughly 150 responses we received. To view all of the photos and reponses, visit theblackandwhite.net

“My father passed away a few years ago, but I still try to live life with as much positivity and optimism as possible.”

- Alex Lewis, 12

“I run the race of life with gratitude, composure, urgency, thoughtfulness and the intention of winning.”

- Greg Garner, 10 10

Whitman?

“I never try to be a perfectionist, but I will always be a learner till the day I die. I may not be the best at everything, but I strive to do all my tasks to the best of my ability.”

-Tony Joseph, 9

“My dream dinner would include me, Ms. Talaat, and Albert Einstein. John Malkovich would be our waiter and Machiavelli would pay.”

- Nora O’Prey, 12

“I wish we grew up without social media.”

- Mira Kisslinger, 9 11

“Unlike a lot of my friends and people my age, I still love to read and write and hope to be an author.”

- Skylar Chasen, 9

“I can be really outspoken. I’m not afraid to give my opinion or disagree with people, and it can come off as abrasive. It’s important to be nice to people, but if I think someone is wrong, I tell them.”

- Leah McLaren, 11

“I’m fully prepared to make fun of myself if it’ll be funny. I also can literally sleep for 18 hours straight.”

- Riley Sullivan, 10

“I’m loud, extra and I genuinely like talking to people I don’t know and learning weird but interesting things. I also really like being with people and hate being by myself whoops.”

- Saira Rathod, 11

“I am an artist-engineer, and I have largely shaped my life goals around 2000’s NYC romantic comedies.”

- Alisha Dhir, 12 12

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Let’s celebrate our school’s namesake on his 200th birthday

by EMMA ITURREGUI In Whitman students: in their own words, over one hundred of Whitman’s two thousand students reflect on their idiosyncrasies. Together, they comprise Walt Whitman High School. Many of those same students know close to nothing about Walt Whitman, who was not only a pioneer of modern-day poetry, but a proponent of inclusion.

Thanks to an endowment from a parent, hundreds of ninth graders over the years have received a slim volume of Whitman’s poetry during the first week of school. The poetry goes mostly unread. AP Literature is the first class where students formally study Whitman’s poetry. But the class—limited to seniors—isn’t required, leaving hundreds of students without exposure to Whitman.

“My impression is that before my class, most students do not know much about Whitman,” AP Literature teacher Eric Ertman said. “I think it would be a shame if you spent four years in any building named after an individual and did not know anything about that individual.”

Celebrating what would have been his 200th birthday this year, Walt Whitman was one of the first American poets to openly address sexuality, gender roles and equality in his poetry.

In a school where the entryway banner declares “Love not Hate,” we’re still not learning about one of the country’s most powerful, progressive poets. And he happens to be our school’s namesake.

“You might also get a sense of the of the spirit of the building, by considering who Walt Whitman was, what he wrote about and the manner in which he lived his life,” Ertman said. “I think it can be helpful to think of a man who has celebrated life and all that it has to offer, and maybe just help us appreciate just what

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we have in front of our noses.”

Whitman often faced backlash from readers and other artists, especially after readers discovered his poem, “Leaves of Grass,” spoke joyfully of same-sex love.

This backlash became local 10 years ago, when members of the radical Westboro Baptist Church came to the school to protest the school being named for someone who was believed to be homosexual.

During the protest, students and staff turned their backs silently to the protesters across the street. Art resource teacher Nancy Mornini designed T-shirts featuring an image of Whitman on the front and his words from the poem, “cool and composed,” on the back. This peaceful demonstration in support of Whitman embodies exactly what he preached: showing respect for all members of society and fighting for the rights of others.

“Be curious, not judgmental…. stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people,” Whitman wrote in ‘Leaves of Grass.’

Whitman’s poems were integral to poetry as an art form and to formulating modern values: he celebrated the nation’s diversity and paved the way for future poets to use free verse and casual prose. He spoke of the importance of protecting nature for generations to come, addressing his poems to future readers. The core message of respect for others and appreciating variety in thought is something we should all take to heart.

“I think he lived his life in a way that we should, in a courageous way that I think we could all use for motivation for our own lives,” Ertman said. “I think that had he lived in a later time, he would have been perhaps a little happier, but he made the best out of his life. He

celebrated all aspects of himself and his life and the world around him.”

Especially in light of recent events of hate speech in our community—including an incident where a student posted racial slurs on social media and more recently, students wore splotches of a black facial mask with a racist caption—it’s critical to remember that we need to make all members of our community feel valued. Our namesake was ahead of his time in promoting inclusion and recognizing that differences are strengths, and his presence still lives on today.

References to Whitman appear throughout the school. Along many of the exterior walls are decorative blocks with faint outlines of grass, an allusion to Whitman’s famous poetry collection “Leaves of Grass.” Most students don’t know that the school’s literary magazine, Eidolon, is also the name of a Whitman poem in which a seer advises a poet to incorporate true realities of the world in his work. A framed portrait of Whitman hangs in the main first-floor hallway, and the robotics team, “The Body Electric,” is a nod to a Whitman poem.

Learning about Whitman won’t instantly remedy many of the issues students and teachers face. But learning about the values Whitman espoused can build a like-minded community and provide students with a positive figure to rally around. Whitman’s 200th birthday May 31 should serve not only as a reminder of how far we have come in building an open-minded community but also how critical recognition of our failures and continued improvement is.

As the years pass, the leaves of grass etched into our school’s tiles may grow fainter, but Whitman’s spirit will live on in the building. It’s up to us to become a community he would be proud of.

Artwork by ZOE CHYATTE

Student athletes confront unhealthy body standards

Photos courtesy MATTHEW LINDSTROM and by ADAM HIRSH

by ALLY NAVARRETE & JOSÉ WRAY Some students’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.

When it’s time for a performance, Maya, a junior, finds herself worrying about how she looks in a crop top or leotard. Her mind races with thoughts about how her body appears in the mirror compared to other dancers around her. For dancers, this is normal, Maya said. Even after dancing for five years, she still struggles with how she looks in front of others.

“When you go to a dance audition, they make you write down your weight and height. They look at you, and you’re in a leotard, so it’s not like you can lie,” she said.

“It’s a terrible system, and it trains people to hate the way they look.”

Most athletes encounter standards and stereotypes regarding how they “should” look; conventional body norms dictate that dancers should be delicate and thin, wrestlers should have defined muscles and swimmers must be tall and lean.

Striving for these standards can hinder athletes so much that their performance and mental health suffer, said Drew Anderson, an associate psychology professor at the State University of New York, Albany. Anderson researches eating disorders and obesity and has worked with athletes struggling with these issues.

Although the stigma surrounding mental health has decreased in recent years, athletes and coaches often don’t address body image concerns, Anderson said.

“There’s a lot of silence around this. I think frankly a lot of coaches don’t want to know because they’re scared of what will happen if they ask questions,” Anderson said. “A lot of times, athletic directors will say, ‘that’s not a problem for us,’ and you can tell they just don’t want it to be a problem.”

In her four years coaching Whitman POMS, Alexa Ciesinski has seen multiple girls struggle with body image issues, which at times have contributed to disordered eating and other mental health concerns. Aside from watching for warning signs, the most important role for a coach is to create a safe and comfortable environ-

ment, she said.

“The first step is creating a vulnerable space and letting them know that your priority is on their mental health so they feel like they can come tell you things,” she said. “You have to act as a liaison at times between the girls and the parents, and then other times you have to be the support network for the students when they don’t want to tell anybody else.”

Psychologists look for certain warning signs regarding athletes’ physical health, Anderson said.

“When you start seeing people do extra workouts because they want to affect their body or they’re starting to do things that might not be great for their performance nutritionally, those are real red flags,” Anderson said. “It gets to be such a component that they’re doing unhealthy things and they’re spending too much time, and that’s the problem.”

In sports like gymnastics, eating disorders are common; McCallum Place Eating Disorder Centers found that 43 percent of women in aesthetic sports have disordered eating patterns. To help these athletes, some coaches, like Freestate gymnastics center head coach Linda Hallwig, are more proactive. Some of Hallwig’s gymnasts have quit after experiencing eating disorders and other mental health issues, so she watches her gymnasts “like a hawk,” she said.

“I give them a list of healthy snacks to bring. We talk about protein, fruits and vegetables, and that your body is important,” she said. “The main emphasis is health, and not some weird idea of trying to look like somebody else that you’re not going to be.

It’s a lot of encouragement, a lot of verbal positive reinforcement.”

Though some coaches are proactive, judgemental remarks are common. Swimmer Claire Sorkin, a sophomore, stands at only 5 feet and 1 inch, and her coaches often comment about her height.

“I’ve had coaches tell me I can’t be good at events because I’m not tall enough,” she said. “It frustrates me because it’s sort of like my coach doesn’t believe in me.”

Basketball player Carter McGloon has also heard coaches say she’s too thin and weak, she said.

“When I step on the court, the first im-

pression a coach sees is that I’m not strong and I’m skinny compared to the other players, and they automatically think I’m not as good as I am,” she said. “It makes me feel less confident about my playing, and that my skills are completely overlooked.”

Some coaches, like Hallwig, choose to be more careful with their words.

“In gymnastics, we have a lot of coaching courses that talk about positive coaching. They tell you to be very careful about pointing out things like if a child’s not strong enough, not tall enough, not short enough,” she said. “You never point those things out.”

Physical standards for male athletes tend to take a different form.

“For men, there’s kind of mix, so it’s a little more complicated. We’ve missed studying men for a while,” Anderson said.

“You get some kind of a breakdown between what’s similar to women—the lean and thinner ideal—and a muscular ideal.”

For wrestlers, the uniforms, or singlets, are tight and revealing. Wrestlers will often judge how competitors look in a singlet and even wear a smaller size singlet in order to fill it out more and look more muscular.

“If you step out on the mat and you’re looking small in your singlet, and weak, then you’ll be less intimidating than if you step out and your muscles are bulging through and you can see a six pack,” wrestler Matt Lindstrom said.

Rower Finn Berkhout sometimes compares his physique to that of his teammates, but also knows not to cross the line.

“If I start focusing on that too much, I’ll start doing things that aren’t good for myself or my body,” he said.

Through his research, Anderson has found that athletes often fall into a trap when they’re struggling with body image issues. They may experience short-term results from overworking their bodies, but in the long term, they put their health at risk.

“People get lulled into this idea that weight loss or focusing on leanness is going to help because sometimes, early on, it doesn’t really help or hurt them,” he said.

“It usually doesn’t work that way. It’s not until really far into it that we start to see effects that hurt people’s physical performance.”

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The anatomy of

a talent show act

by ALEX ROBINSON

From April 12-14, Whitman Drama put on three performances of Talent Show, an annual production of 20 student acts. With acts ranging from spoken word poetry pieces to hard rock songs, each performance is unique—and the small details that go into each act stack up for a truly iconic show. Senior Meghan Carey’s cover of the 80’s pop sing-along “Gloria” was no different; her performance was infused with well-planned details that made her act both memorable and downright fun.

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One night during Hell Week, the week leading up to the show, Carey got hot in the middle of rehearsal and took off her jacket. She did it during every performance after that; during opening night, her backup singers even caught the jacket when she threw it off, she said.

All the small details of the performance—from senior Obi Onwuamaegbu creating a dance for the back-up singers to do in the middle of one rehearsal, to Carey deciding to send her back-up singers into the audience clapping at the end of the song—came about very “organically,” she said. In fact, the five months of prep work leading up to the show were characterized by this same spontaneity and carefree fun.

“Everybody is just sort of enjoying themselves, and really trying to make their acts individual,” Carey said.

“Everybody’s just playing and singing and doing what they love.”

The color theme of Carey’s act was hot pink, an idea that costume director Keah Sharma suggested since it matches the fun, bright energy of the 80’s pop classic. Carey picked her outfit first to “set the energy” and let the rest of her crew choose how they wanted to express the theme.

“Why not just let them express themselves and do whatever they want?” Carey said.

Since she was in an act right before “Gloria”—she sang “I Will Survive” with Whitman’s all-female a capella group, Pitch Please—she had to change costumes quickly. She would run offstage, change her jacket and exchange her red skirt for a hot pink ensemble, with other people backstage cheering her on.

Small moments like these make performance time hectic, but overall the adrenaline rush of performing makes Talent Show “a really cool experience,” she said.

Reaching out to instrumentalists is an informal process, Carey said. She already knew some from the Whitman music community, she contacted others through a spreadsheet created by Talent Show Director Davis Gestiehr, and saxophonist Sam Coleman and trombonist Arthur Varner didn’t join the act until the week before the show.

Everyone involved in the production is extremely talented and well-rounded, she said; during one rehearsal, one of her guitarists wasn’t there, but Gestiehr was able to pick up the chords in minutes and fill in.

“It’s a lot of very multifaceted people,” Carey said. “I feel like you get to see sides of people that you didn’t really see before, because people are just very comfortable in that environment.”

Since audition dates aren’t announced until December, and acts don’t rehearse at Whitman until two weeks before the show, Carey said groups practice “anywhere that has a drum kit,” which makes the atmosphere very collaborative. One common practice spot was senior Gabby Helf’s home, since her family has so many instruments, Carey said.

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Photos by LUKAS GATES and HARLEY POMPER

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sports photogra

Capture the action in fro

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ou wouldn’t know it, but swim and dive team photographer Adam Hirsh has always been afraid of water. During his four years photographing the team, he routinely bent over the edge of the 10-meter diving platform—12 feet of water below him—to capture a swimmer’s backstroke start or a diver’s inward tuck from above.

“I always ask permission from the managers if I can go up there and they’ve always said yes. They usually say, ‘oh, just don’t jump,’” Hirsh said.

“Trust me, besides the fact that I have a lot of expensive equipment, I’m not jumping from the 10-meter platform.

I’d be the last person to.”

Hirsh’s fear, and his mere presence, often goes unseen; sometimes, fans may not even notice sports photographers like Hirsh snapping photos at games and meets. Sports photography encapsulates everything from action shots of athletes, to the bench’s reaction after big plays, to the fans on the sidelines. For high school athletes, these photos can preserve great memories or promote big games.

“One big part of these photos is advertising your sport, and using them to get more fans to come to your games,” girls soccer player Meagan Olsen said. “It’s nice to show the Whitman community who they’re supporting.”

For college or professional sports, photos can be used on school websites or in advertising. The University of Vermont used freelance photojournalist Alex Edelman’s (‘09) photos

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for promotion during his time at the school.

“For basketball, I shot every game my senior season, including road games,” Edelman said. “The university was pretty happy about it because it was like free marketing. They would use the pictures to promote the program.”

Although photographing sports makes for exciting final products, the quick play, restricted shooting spots and fast-paced action make sports photography extremely challenging.

Despite the impressive shots, most sports photos never see the light of day. Hirsh averages about 2,500 to 3,500 photos per event and ends up deleting around 90 percent of his shots after editing for about 10 to 12 hours, he said.

Even though photographers mostly photograph action shots during the game or meet, quieter moments are sometimes worth capturing. While shooting the Washington Capitals, Edelman spent weeks trying to photograph goalie Braden Holtby spraying his water bottle and wetting his hair.

At the start of the game when the team skates onto the ice, only rotating spotlights light up the rink, so Edelman had to wait for the perfect moment when the light hit Holtby to capture the shot.

Other challenges include more lighting issues and finding the right shutter speeds. Lighting differs between indoors and outdoors, and the shutter speed needs to be adjusted to capture the best shots in different lighting.

While photographing sports

comes with some difficulties, sports photographers said they have found that the better they know the sport, the easier and more fun it is to shoot. Professional photographer Mike Lewis specializes in shooting water sports, including underwater shots of swimmers and shots of racing. He enjoys his work because he gets to shoot a sport he loves, he said.

“I grew up swimming competitively, and I still swim. It’s just a big part of who I am,” Lewis said. “These two worlds, the way they’ve intersected and overlapped in my life— I’m super fortunate. It’s just a matter of two of my strongest passions in life coming together and giving me an opportunity.”

Lewis once photographed Australian Olympic swimmer Kyle Chalmers in the Mediterranean Sea for Adidas. The crew set up lights underwater in the ocean rocks, and Lewis held his breath while a French diver pulled him under the surface to get the shot.

“I’d say ‘go,’ and then he would grab me by the waist. He would hold me down on the bottom and I’m not in scuba gear,” Lewis said. “The swimmer would come over the top of me and as soon as the swimmer passed, he would just throw me up to the top of the surface to get my breath.”

Lewis has also worked with Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time.

“That’s been exciting,” he said.

“There was one time where I was lying on the bottom and we were doing dive shots. It felt like it was a jet airplane just rushing right over the top of me.”

aphers

ront of the lens

by ALLY Navarrete Sports photography connects photographers to the events and subjects that they shoot. For Hirsh, photographing Whitman sports teams allowed him to be more involved with his daughters’ athletic careers, and he loves giving athletes and parents a way to permanently remember high school sports.

“The kids devote a lot of time to their sports, and the parents devote a lot of time and money to their kids’ sports,” Hirsh said. “Few athletes and their parents have a decent action shot of them doing what they love. I find it personally rewarding that I can provide that kind of experience to the students and the parents.”

Diver Liam Gilbert-Lawrence appreciates the work Hirsh does for the swim and dive team and enjoys looking through the photos after a meet, he said.

“There’s a part of me that knows that in years coming, I’ll look back on these,” he said. “Another part is that it’s just a really cool picture, and I like seeing it. I might post it somewhere or show it to family members when people ask about diving.”

Each photographer said they’re always learning new techniques for different sports. It’s also impossible to know what will happen in a game, meet or match, making it more exciting.

“I’ll go to a news event, say a candlelight vigil. You know what’s going to happen there.

People are going to be emotional, there are going to be candles,” Edelman said. “In sports, most of the time, I have no idea what the outcome is going to be.”

Still, sports photographers need to be willing to learn from trial and error, Edelman said.

“I think what makes people successful is the persistence of trying and failing over and over again,” Edelman said. “It’s like any other art.”

Photos by ALEX EDELMAN, ADAM HIRSH and MIKE LEWIS

Junior Anna Bedratenko (left) smiles with other students in ESOL resource teacher Sonja Maroni’s classrom. Due to a decreased staffing allocation and the creation o program is shrinking dramatically—from 13 classes to four.

C

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ome fifth and sixth period, when most classrooms empty for lunch periods, the ESOL rooms are filled with commotion. In one corner of A-334, students are working away at assignments, while another group sit by the teacher’s desk, chatting with teacher Charles Wang.

Students file in and out, some eating their lunches and talking about their favorite Japanese-pop bands, some just coming by to greet friends.

Almost all of the 20 or so students sitting in Wang’s classroom are in the ESOL program. ESOL, which serves as the students’ first interaction with the American school system, is currently composed of around 50 students, 13 core classes and a range of shelter and bridge classes.

But due to a decreased staffing allocation and the creation of a new ESOL program at Churchill High School, Whitman’s program is shrinking dramatically—from 13 classes to four. The program is losing two full-time teachers next year, leaving only one part-time teacher to teach the remaining four classes. ESOL students who live in the Churchill cluster who cur-

rently attend Whitman will be joining Churchill’s program next year.

With a loss of both teachers and students, resource teacher Sonja Maroni sees Whitman’s program shrinking substantially next year. That loss will be felt by international students and the entire community.

Although many international students eventually find their place at Whitman, coming in can be incredibly intimidating, junior Anna Bedratenko said. When she came to Whitman from Ukraine her freshman year, her English was limited to the phrase “good morning,” she said.

“When I moved, I spoke terrible English; I could only say a few words, all with a terrible Ukrainian accent,” she said.

“The language was new, the community was new, everything was new. I barely understood how everything worked.”

To help students like Bedratenko acclimate, Maroni started the Whitman International Club 20 years ago when she came to Whitman. Today, the 200-member club represents over 60 countries.

Maroni began International Night— the clubs biggest event of the year—the

following year.

The club gives students coming in “a place” right off the bat, Maroni said.

“I wanted our students to fully participate in the Whitman experience, and it’s hard to do that sometimes as individuals, especially as individuals who feel different from everybody else,” she said.

“When you get to be a part of a group right away, it not only enables you to feel proud of who you are, but you also get to meet a lot of other people in your situation.”

Maroni, who grew up in a household that spoke three languages—English, German and Polish—has always been comfortable in multicultural environments, she said.

“I’ve always loved working with people from other countries and always liked bringing people together,” Maroni said.

Right away, students feel that sense of community.

“It’s a neutral place, because everyone’s from a different place, but we all share similar experiences. You see people that had the same experience,” senior Josefina Pedreros said. “So you’re not alone.

It feels a little bit like home.”

by CLARA KORITZ HAWKES and HIRARI SATO Photo by LUKAS GATES

tion of a new ESOL program at Churchill High School, Whitman’s

Students also find other students from their home country. Finding those people who understand your home language is special, sophomore Pedro Alfonso Machado said.

The club is busy all year long, hosting a welcome picnic at the beginning of the year, culture lunches, an end of the year soccer tournament and, every February, International Night.

The club’s student leadership organizes International Night completely independently, assigning performances, food stands and emcee roles. Students rehearse outside of school, choreographing their acts and staying after school every afternoon for two weeks before opening night.

Beyond performing acts for the entire school, spending so much time together helps foster a “spirit of union,” Machado said.

Soccer is another way through which the club comes together. At almost every event, students will start playing soccer because it’s a sport everyone knows. At the picnic, the tournament and a lot of the outside school events, the entire club will play together, Pedreros said.

Students don’t just bond through events, though. Often, they’ll go to a homecoming dinner together each fall, and other than that, just spend time together outside of school—not as ‘club mates’ or because they feel they have to—but because they are all friends, Machado said.

Those same experiences and sense of unity translate into language practice, too. Although Whitman offers five levels of ESOL, as well as shelter classes and bridge classes, many students attribute the development of their English skills to interacting with friends and classmates.

“There are so many people from different countries and it’s our second language, so we feel comfortable talking to each other,” ESOL 3 freshman Gael Garma said. “We can only speak to each other in English, so we practice our English with each other.”

In turn, that practice helps students perform better in class.

Once students finish ESOL 5, they “graduate” the class and take on-level or honors English. They can also take bridge classes, which combine English 9 and ESOL 5. The International Club gives

them a safety net after they exit ESOL. Being a part of such a diverse group of people expands their view of the world, Bedratenko said.

“When I lived in Ukraine, it was a pretty homogeneous society. Here, because of the club, I have met so many people from all over the world,” she said.

“Those perspectives are the best thing the club has given me.”

That translates to increased political awareness, too.

“I think the club has made me more tolerant. Like, when it comes to cultural and racial issues for example.” Pedreros said. “These past few years, with Trump and the wall, I’ve definitely paid more attention to it because of the club.”

The bonds that the students form is what sets the club and community apart; at the end of the day, the club is a “family,” senior Akaash Palaparthy said.

“It’s comforting to know that there are others like you who are new to the American life and are willing to take baby steps to be a part of it,” Palaparthy said.

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SGA sees gender gap in election results, follows national trend

BY KATIE HANSON AND ALEX ROBINSON ARTWORK BY JANA WARNER

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Only 2

SGA Presidents

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in the last years have

identified as

Female 25

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fter Student Member of the Board candidate Zoe Tishaev outlined her platform in a video March 21, both male and female students were quick to remark that she “didn’t know what she was talking about,” “had good ideas but an annoying voice” and “wasn’t likable but said good things.”

Tishaev lost to John F. Kennedy High School junior Nate Tinbite, who earned 74 percent of the vote. The results and Whitman students’ reactions to Tishaev are indicative of a larger trend: gender disparity in student government elections.

In the past 15 years, there have only been two Whitman student body presidents who identified as female.

This pattern isn’t new to Whitman, or to the country as a whole; student governments nationwide are traditionally male-dominated. Until 2014, The Ohio State University never had an all-female presidential winning ticket, and Georgetown University didn’t have an all-female executive

or just a higher quantity of girls,” student body president Azraf Khan, who has been in the SGA for four years, said. “There’s no other contributing factor to why people vote for other people other than ‘I like them more.’”

But what makes a candidate likeable? According to a 2016 study by Rutgers University, desirable traits for officeholders are consistently associated with masculinity and male candidates. Even when women display leadership qualities, like assertiveness and likeability, they are perceived differently than men; a 2016 article from the Atlantic reported that Hillary Clinton tended to lower her voice over the course of her speech, likely in an attempt to appear more masculine and therefore dominant, but her voice still received criticism from both parties.

In an informal lunchtime survey, one eighth of the boys surveyed said that male candidates appeared more likeable and “could appeal to a wider audience.”

It scares me going into the workforce knowing that guys get paid more and get chosen more for jobs over more qualified women.

- junior Julia Choppin team until 2012.

Sheryl Freedman, who was the Student Government Association advisor for 10 years, called the trend a “systemic cultural issue” and says people often don’t believe women are as capable of leading. A 2018 Pew Research Center Study found that most Americans believe women are equally as able to lead as men, but that women have to do more to prove themselves to reach leadership positions, especially in politics.

In this year’s election for the SGA Executive Board—the president, vice president and class officers—four male and five female students ran.

Every boy who ran won, while only one female student earned a position.

“What I’ve noticed with most elections that I’ve ever been a part of is that boys will come out on top, even if there are either more qualified girls

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Junior Ellie Block, a presidential candidate in this year’s election, said that she was wary of being humorous or putting her face on posters during her campaign. She said female candidates are often judged for their appearance on posters or labeled “annoying” when trying to be funny.

“When girls try to be funny it’s seen as ‘oh, they’re being annoying,’ but when guys try to be funny, they’re funny,” Block said. “If I were to go up and give a strong speech, people would say ‘she can’t pull off that persona’ because I’m a girl.”

Other female members of the SGA agreed with Block. They said they have to be cognizant of what they wear when they deliver their speech, how much campaigning they do and what they post on their social media.

Luckily for some female candidates, the leadership class offers an

opportunity for students who don’t campaign or lose their campaigns to join the SGA: students can interview before the Executive Board to join the class.

Of the 18 girls in next year’s leadership class, 12 interviewed to be in the class and most did so after losing an election; but out of the 11 boys in the class, all but three earned a spot in the class by winning an election.

The SGA students we spoke to also said the trend isn’t reflective of the work and input of female students during the leadership class, since leadership members without titles usually do just as much work as titleholders.

SGA advisers Katherine Young and Anne Chiasson said in wake of the recent election results, they’re focusing on including more girls in higher positions within the leadership class. The two chairs for the biggest events, Homecoming and Charity Month, are both girls.

“The truth is that while the positions are important, really the class works together as a whole,” Young said. “What we’re most concerned about is that we have a diverse group in the class at-large because there’s people that can interview into the class that aren’t elected. No voice is stronger than another in the class.”

On a county-wide level, out of the past 20 Student Members of the Board, only five have identified as female, including current SMOB Ananya Tadikonda.

“Implicit bias does exist, and I always wonder when I step my foot into the door what my colleagues, the broader people I work with and my peer constituents see me as because I’m so different than the previous SMOBs, being a woman and a person of color,” Tadikonda said. “I really want to show young women that they can see themselves in this role, too.”

In colleges, this disparity usually stems from a lack of female candidates, according to a 2014 article for Inside Higher Ed. A 2017 Politico study found that women are reportedly less likely to consider running for office, which could contribute to why women only make up 20 percent of Congress, 25 percent of state legislature seats and 12 percent of governorships.

But in high schools, the gender

gap in student government has less explicit causes. Voters often rule out women for having voices they consider annoying, according to Stanford Unviersity professor Penelope Eckert. Trends like vocal fry, where a person’s voice drops off at the end of sentences, and uptalk, a rising inflection at the end of sentences, are both more common among women because they often have a greater vocal range, Eckert said in a 2014 interview for Radio on Z. But very recently, the tides seem to be shifting on the collegiate level.

Seventy percent of the top 10 universities and 50 percent of the top 10 public universities identified by U.S. News & World Report currently have

female student body presidents.

Still, junior Julia Choppin, who ran for treasurer this year, said that this year’s election results worry her.

“It’s disappointing. You get very discouraged when you feel as if you’ve put as much work, if not more, into something as someone else, but they get whatever it is you’re running for,” Choppin said. “It scares me going into the workforce knowing that guys get paid more and get chosen more for jobs over more qualified women. You’re teaching it in high school with these elections.”

Tadikonda has a more positive outlook on the future of student government elections. During her term as SMOB, Tadikonda established MoCo

EmpowHER, a county-wide advocacy organization that provides a platform to encourage female students to enter leadership positions. She hopes this program will pave the way for more diverse representation in student government.

“There are a lot of assumptions made about women in leadership positions who are a powerful, strong voice,” Tadikonda said. “I think it’s important to be cognizant of that because we shouldn’t feed into the stereotypes, but rather do our best to defy them. I think that’s a really important distinction between this generation and the previous: this generation is all about defying those stereotypes.”

Perspective: Student body president Azraf Khan reflects on the gender gap in SGA elections

by AZRAF KHAN This year, the winner of every single SGA election was a boy. That means that the candidate with the most votes— whether it be for treasurer, student body president, any of the class presidents or the SMOB—was male. While more girls ran for a position, most of whom had been in SGA for their entire time at Whitman and some even before Whitman, the winner of every election was male. This isn’t just an outlier case. It’s a historical trend. Four of the five last SBPs have been boys, as well as many of the class presidents during my time at Whitman.

Admittedly, I’m a beneficiary of this bias. I’ve never lost any election I ran in, and, while I’m not saying I was unqualified for any of my elected positions, being a male candidate clearly gave me a distinct advantage in every election.

For years, people have told me that no one cares about SGA elections. Viewed as a popularity contest, elections entail most students simply voting for their friends. No one cares who’s “qualified” and, more importantly, no one cares about the candidates’ policies.

That means that most SGA elections are largely based on which candidates students “like” more, normally putting women at a disadvantage; typically, girls vote for candidates they’re friends with regardless of gender, and boys usually vote for other male candidates. This trend is probably part of the reason I won my freshman year election.

Even in national elections, women get less media coverage and less support than their male counterparts.

Despite their policy prowess, candidates like Elizabeth Warren are written off as “unlikeable.” This seemingly meaningless label is applied to a plethora of candidates

with one common trend: they’re all women. While there are male candidates that people don’t immediately like, it rarely becomes the sole reason that they aren’t elected.

Likeability is one reason why Hillary Clinton struggled in 2016. It’s also why Amy Klobuchar was written off in the democratic primary, whereas Pete Buttigeg gets media coverage for days, despite both candidates polling under 10 percent.

My intention isn’t to undermine the ability and success of male candidates, this year or historically. I’m only pointing out a trend that has hurt the Whitman community and the world as a whole for years. I’m sure most male candidates would agree that the sexism and crowding out of female voices in our elected positions does a disservice to the school and the individual candidates.

There are several solutions to reducing the gender gap in SGA elections. The first comes from the SGA itself.

Without debates about policy and the ability for the student body to ask questions, the likeability factor will continue to predominate. Implement a debate as part of the speeches! Hold town halls with all the candidates at lunch.

The second is more personal. As someone who has undoubtedly benefited from entrenched sexism within the SGA election, I implore you to think hard before you vote in any election. This problem isn’t created or perpetuated by only boys or only girls; both genders contribute to the problem. Your vote is important, both because the people you elect will change the school you go to and because it matters to the people who are putting themselves out there to be judged by the whole school. Don’t be irresponsible with it.

Azraf Khan is a Business Manager for The Black & White

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WWHS CLAS Ethan Abikoff Valentina Acevedo Carrasco Beza Addis Madison Ades Adela Alou Fernandez Theodore Andonyadis Madeline Andres Meric Arda Kian Ashaari Shanthi Ashley Christopher Ashy Ethan Askarinam Mateo Asturizaga Christopher Atkinson Ella Atsavapranee Maitreya (Duke) Avhad Doruk (Tim) Ayhan Aimy Ayo Ryan Babbit Andrew Baker Jackson Barlow Robert Barrett Pranoy Basu Emily Battan Sebastian Beck Evan Beckley Natalia Beltran Chloe Benard Egor Berezin Andrew Beusse John Blackwelder Eduardo Blatt Caruso Weldon Borie Taylor Borie Gavin Bowen Matthew Boyer Cassandra Branson Hanna Bratt Aaron Bratt Lucas Bravo Anthony Breder Perry Ann Brody Jodi Bronfman Ian Brown William Brown Jessica Buxbaum Luka Byrne Daniel Calder Steven Canfield Emilio Cano Renteria Simon Cantor Adam Cantwell Brandon Carboni Justin Carboni Meghan Carey Sophia Carter Harrison Carter Lawson Carver

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Arizona State University, Tempe Matthew Cauley University of Maryland, College Park University of Chile Benjamin Chapman University of Maryland, College Park University of Maryland, College Park Gabriela Chatwin Towson University Indiana University, Bloomington Shehrez Chaudhri University of Michigan, Ann Arbor University of Navarra Alexander Chen University of Maryland, College Park Villanova University Ethan Chen Purdue University Elon University Andreas Christofides University of Maryland, College Park Gap year Callia Chuang Harvard University University of Maryland, College Park Sarah Clement University of Maryland, College Park Pitzer College Francesca Cohen-Dumani College of Charleston Montana State University Zachary Cokinos Lynn University Elon University Noah Conlan Gap year, working Villanova University Rebecca Cook Pennsylvania State University Skidmore College Jereme Corbin Davidson College University of Pennsylvania Cameron Corcoran University of Wisconsin, Madison Gap year Julia Curran Haverford College Purdue University James Davenport University of South Carolina University of Toronto, St. George Avery Davis Gap year University of North Dakota Ryan de Lissovoy Georgetown University Tulane University Isaac De Marchi Skidmore College North Carolina State University Sophie deBettencourt Johns Hopkins University University of Colorado, Boulder Manon Dehareng University of Amsterdam University of Maryland, College Park Tyler DeMartino West Virgina University University of Florida Danielle Depollar Xavier University of Louisiana Gap year Alisha Dhir New York University Georgia Institute of Technology Philip Diby Montgomery College University of Maryland, College Park Anna DiCarlo Virginia Tech Towson University Zixuan (Selina) Ding New York University Texas A&M University Milan Djordjevich Oberlin College University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Kasey Donaldson University of Maryland, College Park Columbia University Naomi Douek Bucknell University University of Brasilia Ryan Dwight University of Maryland, College Park Worcester Polytechnic Institution Miriam Dwyer Tufts University University of Maryland, College Park Ahmed Elfeshawy College of Communication & Information East Carolina University Emma Engels Lehigh University University of Maryland, College Park Tandis Esfandiari Southern Methodist University University of Toronto, Victoria Nicklas Eussen Occidental College Marist College Morgane Evans Dalhousie University, Halifax Haverford College Nora Fadul University of Maryland, College Park University of Vermont Ariana Faghani University of Maryland, College Park University of Maryland, College Park Mariana Fajnzylber Brown University Washington University in St. Louis Lucy Faust University of Virginia Towson University Matei Fawzy University of Colorado, Boulder Vanderbilt University Jessica Feigin University of Wisconsin, Madison American University Hannah Feuer Northwestern University Middlebury College Lucille Filyaw Pennsylvania State University University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Marcella Finelli University of Maryland, College Park Bowdoin College Joshua Fisch University of Chicago Gap year, moving to Illinois Aliza Fisher Yale University Princeton University Grace Fisher Fordham University Pasadena City College Maxwell Fletcher College of Wooster Miami University Colby Fong University of Maryland, College Park Elon University McAlister Forbes Duquesne University University of Pennsylvania Austen Fourkas University of Maryland, College Park Western Michigan University Madeleine Frank University of Virgina University of Maryland, College Park Thomas Fratantoni University of California, San Diego University of South Carolina Andrei Freund University of Wisconsin, Madison University of Tennessee, Knoxville Hanna Freund University of Mississippi

SS OF 2019 Audra Fried Elizabeth Frimpong Joseph Gabriele Ryan Gaines Kira Gandalfo Orion Gangopadhyay Elizabeth Garner Matthieu Garreau Alejandro Garzon Lukas Gates Yasmeen Gauri Absera Gebreysus Max Gersch Max Gershefski Davis Gestiehr Linus Ghanadan Danny Ghauri Ila Ghosh Ethan Gilman Bennet Goeke Marisa Goldberg Samantha Goldberg Andrew Goldsholle Natasha Goldstein Ari Goodfriend Jane-Mei Gorman Natalie Gottret Murillo Harry Greenberg Ian Gregory Boxiong (Barry) Gu Jianan (Joanna) Gu Rohit Gude Sofia Guerra Oropeza Charlotte Gump Phoebe Gurdon Anatoly Gurevich Ryan Gurney Ana Gutierrez Miguel (Mickey) Gutierrez John Haddad Kendall Hall Amanda Halliday Rachel Halliday Patrick Hamilton Mizuki Hanada Sang Hanna Benjamin Harris Daniel Harris Elizabeth (Rae) Harrison Danylo Hartzler Landon Hatcher Camerynn Hawke Danielle Hazan Yasmine Helbling Gabriela Helf Lillian Heller Ava Henderson Elizabeth Hepburn

New York University Caleb Hering Gap year/Colorado College Hood College Alexandra Herrera Boston College George Mason University Eva Herscowitz Northwestern University University of Maryland, Baltimore County Molly Herson Elon University Gap year James Hester University of Maryland, College Park Georgetown University Ashley Hilburn University of Maryland, College Park Cornell University Rebecca Hirsh University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Dawson College Anne Hodgman St. John’s College Fairleigh Dickinson University Katherine Holden Pennsylvania State University Gap year, photography Claudia Holm American University University of Pittsburgh Gregory Hooke Catholic Charity Community Options Morgan State University Grace Horn The Ohio State University Hamilton College Corine Hwang St. Mary’s College of Maryland College of William & Mary Samuel Ikenson University of South Carolina Belmont University George Imperial College of William & Mary University of Maryland, College Park Lily Isenstein Occidental College Boston College Patrick Ishimoto Montgomery College St. Mary’s College of Maryland Arteen Issagholian Montgomery College Amherst College Lily James Boston Conservatory at Berklee Carnegie Mellon University Keira Jevtich University of Delaware University of Maryland, College Park Anjali Jha Georgetown University Tulane University Alexandra (Lexie) Johnson Trinity University Denison University Julia Johnson University of Virgina University of Tennessee, Knoxville Sarah Johnson Williams College Loyola Marymount University Sydney Johnson Hampton University Towson University Tabitha Johnson North Carolina State University Pennsylvania State University Cameron Jones University of Maryland, College Park University of Maryland, College Park Ziyad Kamal University of Maryland, College Park Montgomery College Jaraad Kamal University of Maryland, College Park Loyola University Maryland Harry Kaplan Oberlin College Bryn Mawr College Lucas Kaplan Syracuse University University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Lucas Kaplan University of Maryland, College Park Universidad Anahauac Mexico Benjamin Katz Tufts University Massachusettes Institute of Technology Zoë Kaufmann Grinnell College Gap year, working in marine conservation Lindsay Keiser University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Indiana University, Bloomington Julia Kempster Gap year, moving to New Zealand Trinity College William Kevorkian Brandeis University Montgomery College Ryan Khaghani University of Maryland, College Park College of Charleston Azraf Khan College of William & Mary Furman University Elias (Tikki) Khan University of Toronto, St. George Tulane University Abraham Kheirbek Cornell University Haverford College Amir Khosrodad Montgomery College Tufts University Juneau Kim Parsons School of Design Loyola University New Orleans William Kiracofe Gap year, volunteering Rhode Island School of Design Matthew Kirschner Yale University University of Florida, Gainesville Nikolas Klemola Tango Gap year, military training in Finland University of Vermont Alyssa Kline University of Pittsburgh University of Chicago Florian Knollmann Middlebury College University of South Carolina Margaret Knox Dartmouth College Montgomery College Ethan Kohan Coastal Carolina University University of Maryland, College Park Anna Koretsky Brandeis University Washington University in St. Louis Riley Kuehn Dickinson College Washington University in St. Louis Jacob Kuhn Northeastern University University of Toronto, St. George Geoffrey Kulp University of Rochester Macalester College Sushant Kundal University of Maryland, College Park Adult program in Montgomery County Casper Kuran Allegheny College Syracuse University Tijs Kuzee Wageningen University & Research Duke University Emily Lane University of Southern California

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WWHS CLAS Jared Lapidus Aubrey Lay Farland Lee Julia Levine Amanda Levy Alex Lewis Daisy Lewis Jason Lewis William Lewis Hancheng Li Haocheng Li Jerry Li David Liden Isabel Lieber Eva Liles Matthew Lindstrom Robert Lloyd Alexei Lohr Benjamin London Nicolas (Nico) Loomer Santos Eric Love Elyse Lowet Jenny Lu Sebastian Ludwig Katherine Luo Alexander Luu Jacqueline Lydon Alexa Lyman Stephen Lyons Ningping (Peter) Ma Byron Ma Paige Macdonald Caroline Macdonald Ryan Machado-Jones Phillip Macy Riley Maehle Sydney Maggin Aarushi Malhotra Henry (Hank) Malmgren Thomas Mande Jacobo (Jack) Margolis Laura Marhefka Elena Markowitz John (JP) Marquardt Eric Marquez Martinez Louise Marzolf-Miller Nakaba Matsuno Jay McClelland David McConnell Ethan McDonald Breanna McDonald Evin McDonald Julia McGowan Brooke McLeod Molly McPhaul Christelle Mecherkany Jonah Mendel Zachary Merenstein

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Vanderbilt University Benjamin Meron Harvard University College of William & Mary Raphael Metz University of Maryland, College Park University of Maryland, College Park Allison Meyers Vanderbilt University Dartmouth College Nicholas Meyers Denison University Brown University Joseph (Ben) Mickum, Jr. Virginia Tech Indiana University, Bloomington Sydney Miller University of Nebraska, Lincoln Washington University in St. Louis Rebecca Mills Lafayette College Case Western Reserve University Oana Mirestean Cornell University Washington University in St. Louis Sean Mitchell University of Maryland, College Park University of Washington Joseph Moakkit University of Maryland, College Park University of Washington Shaayan Mohammadian High Point University Montgomery College Peter Montgomery Naval boarding school/U.S. Naval Academy Arizona State University, Tempe Claire Mordan University of South Carolina Georgetown University Carlota Moreno Alcaraz Charles III University of Madrid University of St. Andrews Kaitlyn Mundy Bryn Mawr College Northwestern University Silap Muratnazarov Montgomery College University of Maryland, College Park Michael Murphy University of Delaware Colgate University Gabriel Murray Drexel University University of Wisconsin, Madison Elise Mytelka Rollins College Montgomery College Sophia Nahabedian Tulane University Loyola University Maryland Ayano Nakamura Bates College Stanford University Kevan Nathani Gap year in London/University of Miami University of California, Los Angeles Nathan Nemeroff University of Maryland, College Park St. Mary’s College of Maryland Emma Neuffer Gap year University of Maryland, College Park Eric Neugeboren University of Maryland, College Park University of Maryland, College Park Sophie Nichols University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Princeton University Samuel Nordheimer University of Maryland, College Park Cornell University Allison O’Connor Denison University University of Maryland, College Park Nora O’Prey Grinnell College New York University Annika Oehlerking The Arc Montgomery County Yale University Joseph Oleynik University of Maryland, Baltimore County University of Maryland, College Park Margaret Oleynik McDaniel College Towson University Obidike Onwuamaegbu University of Southern California Radford University Lauren Oppenheim Elon University The Ohio State University Leo Orchin University of Maryland, College Park University of Oslo Bella Owen Occidental University Parsons School of Design Nima Padash Northeastern University University of Maryland, College Park Akaash Palaparthy University of Toronto, Scarborough Middle Tennessee State University Philip Palim Erasmus University Rotterdam Duke University Mara Parau Santa Barbara City College Emory University Neil Parikh University of Maryland, College Park University of Maryland, College Park Jeremy Parker Yang University of Wisconsin, Madison Tulane University Ava Parsa University of Maryland, College Park University of Maryland, College Park Eric Paxson Franklin & Marshall College University of Pittsburgh Josefina Pedreros Gap year University of St. Andrews Emmi Pejo University of Maryland, College Park Gap year, moving to Japan Mariana Pennybacker Colgate University Monmouth University Olivia Personeni Loyola Marymount University Gap year, landscaping Raymond Peters University of Delaware College of William & Mary John (Henry) Petillo Tulane University Howard University Lucas Picone Northeastern University The University of Texas at Austin Leah Prinz Macalester College University of Southern California Matthew Proestel University of Wisconsin, Madison Emerson College Kaiyu Qin University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Belmont University Luca Quadrani College of William & Mary Montgomery College/UMD, College Park Gianni Rasetto Emory University Brown University Jane Rauh Towson University University of Maryland, College Park Aryana Ravery University of Maryland, College Park

SS OF 2019 Sophia (Sophie) Reilly Amy Richards Etienne Richart Benjamin (Bo) Rider Elias Ringkjoeb Noah Rivera Ana Roig Miranda Romberg Melissa Romero-Ramirez Nathan (Natan) Rosen Kristine Rossi Max Rothman Naren Roy Julia Rubin Regina Rudd Rodrigo Ruiz Benjamin Rumsfeld John (Jack) Ryan Roxanna Sabouriane Marco Saenz Mariana Sanchez Rubiano Charles Sandbloom Matthew Sands Isabel Sanfuentes Thomas Santora Nathan Schaefer Tobias Schecter Raymond Schleien Ethan Schwartz Emily Schweitzer Gabriel Segal Urban Seiberg Elyssa Seltzer Kristin Sequeira Ava Setter Gregory Shaffer Ali Shafii Celia Shapiro Brendan Shaver Amanda Sherman Jacqueline Shipp Charlotte Sienkiewicz Rian Singleton Sophie Slater Jessica Solomon Talia Solonsky Aliya Sorensen-Tanenbaum Lillian Spear Dylan Spicer Jeremy Spicer Thiago Sposato Maya Stallard-Wilder Katherine Stender-Moore Daniel Stevens Camelle Stillwell Jackson Strause Lucas Sturla Abby Sun

Jie Sun Rice University William (Tucker) Sutcliffe Temple University Katherine Sylvester Carleton College Hassan Syyid Cornell University Sophia Tello UiT- The Arctic University of Norway Sujitta (Belle) Thanomsingha University of Maryland, College Park Gigja Thordardottir Scripps College Leia Till The Ohio State University Bert Tillet, Jr. The George Washington University Maeve Trainor Lehigh University Arielle Tycko Florida Gulf Coast University Maya Valencia Duke University Matthew van Bastelaer Haverford College Simone van Nieuwkoop James Madison University Arthur Varner University of Maryland, College Park Karoline Waldinger Georgetown University Tyler Waldvogel Denison University Zehan Wang University of Maryland, Baltimore County William (Billy) Ward Gap year/Hood College Jana Warner Michigan State University Landon Warner Universidad de Los Andes Eleanor Wartell Clemson University Owen Wassiliew Indiana University, Bloomington Ethan Waxman University of Maryland, College Park Jeremy Wenick Virginia Tech Bennett Werbel North Carolina State University Zachary Werkman Macalester College Alex Westerman University of Maryland, College Park Samuel White University of Pennsylvania Eric Whyman Tulane University Morgan Wiese Stanford University Halle Williams University of Southern California Thomas Wilmarth University of Wisconsin, Madison Margaret Wilson University of California, Santa Barbara Sydney Winkler Michigan State University Benjamin Wolfe University of South Carolina Benjamin Wolstein University of Maryland, College Park Christopher Wu Cornell University Tina Xia University of Mary Washington Alison Xiao University of Maryland, College Park Felix Xu University of Vermont Ivy Xun Elon University Dingcheng (Gavin) Yang Arizona State University, Tempe King Yearwood University of Pittsburgh Isabella Young Emory University Dalton Yu Virginia Tech Chenhao (Eric) Yuan Champlain College Yussef Zaki University of Maryland, College Park Alyssa Zambri University of Georgia Lydia Zebrak University of Toronto, St. George Rachel Zeidenberg Colorado State University Jinqiang Zhang University of Maryland, College Park Shijian (George) Zhang Washington University in St. Louis Yiyang Zhang The Ohio State University Yourong (Theresia) Zhang University of Maryland, College Park Yunlong Zhang University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Montgomery College University of Maryland, College Park

Carnegie Mellon University Gap year, theater tech apprenticeship Yale University University of Maryland, College Park St. Mary’s College of Maryland Chulalongkorn University Ryerson University University of Virgina Arizona State University, Polytechnic The University of Edinburgh California Institute of Technology Parsons School of Design University of Wisconsin, Madison University of St. Andrews University of Wisconsin, Madison Pennsylvania State University Lehigh University Tulane University Gap year (service)/Colorado State University Tulane University Emory University University of Wisconsin, Madison Clemson University Cornell University Muhlenberg College University of Wisconsin, Madison University of Maryland, College Park Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology University of Virgina Haverford College Princeton University Clemson University Arizona State University, Tempe University of California, Santa Barbara Miami University University of California, Santa Barbara Gap year, music/Columbia University University of Maryland, College Park Duke University University of California, Los Angeles University of Maryland, College Park Johns Hopkins University University of California, Berkeley University of Maryland, Eastern Shore University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Georgia Institute of Technology University of Maryland, College Park University of Maryland, Baltimore County University of Richmond Indiana University, Bloomington University of California, Santa Cruz The Ohio State University Boston College New York University Parsons School of Design University of California, Irvine

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Sports Destinations With 38 members of the class of 2019 committed to play a sport in college, this year’s graduating class has the largest number of sports recruits in recent years. This year surpassed both of the past two years, exceeding 2017’s 25 commits and 2018’s 14 commits.

Girls varsity basketball coach Peter Kenah attributes the high number of recruits to the extraordinary group of players and their social media skills.

“Students are better at making their highlight packages than they ever have been,” Kenah said.

“With the use of social media, students are able to market themselves rather than having to rely on the coach to possibly do it for them.”

Depending on the school and the sport, all student athletes have different recruitment processes. Some coaches scout athletes at showcases, and some athletes reach out to the coaches themselves or go to recruiting camps.

California Shanthi Ashley - Pitzer College Bella Owen - Occidental College Olivia Personeni - Loyola Marymount Univ.

Gabe Segal - Stanford Univ.

United kingdom Scotland Louise Marzolf-Miller - Univ. of St. Andrews

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Vermont New York Ohio

Jackie Shipp - Univ. of Vermont

Maine

Danny Calder - Bowdoin College

Alexa Lyman - Cornell Univ.

Ethan Waxman - Cornell Univ.

Max Fletcher - College of Wooster Andrew Goldsholle - Denison Univ.

Harry Kaplan - Oberlin College Jason Lewis - Case Western Reserve Univ.

Ben Rumsfeld - Denison Univ.

Massachusetts

Sarah Johnson - Williams College

Rhode Island

Amanda Levy - Brown Univ.

Connecticut

Aliza Fisher - Yale Univ.

Ryan Gurney - Trinity College

Pennsylvania Aaron Bratt - Haverford College Justin Carboni - Univ. of Pennsylvania Julia Curran - Haverford College Naomi Douek - Bucknell Univ.

Riley Kuehn - Dickinson College Nathan Rosen - Lehigh Univ.

New Jersey

Morgan Wiese - Princeton Univ.

Maryland

Sophie deBettencourt - Johns Hopkins Univ.

Sebastian Ludwig - St. Mary’s College of Maryland Jack Ryan - Univ. of Maryland-Baltimore County Margaret Oleynik - McDaniel College

Missouri

Washington, D.C.

Katie Stender-Moore - Washington Univ. in St. Louis

Claudia Holm - American Univ.

Breanna McDonald - Howard Univ.

Virginia

Ryan Machado-Jones - Radford Univ.

Brendan Shaver - Univ. of Mary Washington Leia Till - Univ. of Virginia

West Virginia

Tyler DeMartino - West Virginia Univ.

Texas Evin McDonald - The Univ. of Texas at Austin Sophie Reilly - Rice Univ.

Icons courtesy THE NOUN PROJECT; map by ALEX SILBER and JOEY SOLA-SOLE

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Junior spreads mental health awareness, creates short film

by ALEX ROBINSON

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The summer after ninth grade, junior Amelia Montagnino’s summer health teacher started the mental health lesson by asking anyone who had a connection to the topic of suicide to stand up. At the time, Amelia didn’t know anyone who had suffered from suicidal ideation and didn’t have a personal connection herself; but all around her, people began to stand.

Surrounded by people on their feet, Amelia realized the seriousness of mental health issues within her community. And although she didn’t know it at the time, if she had to do the same exercise today, she would be one of the first people standing, she said.

Two years later, after spending more

than 250 hours making a 10-minute suicide awareness video titled “Swimming,” Amelia hopes other students will begin to recognize when people around them are suffering and understand how they can help. As of now, she plans to air the film during an extended third period class in May, accompanied by a trigger warning beforehand and a follow-up writing activity.

“There can be things in life that you don’t really realize are real, and you don’t understand how much they impact people; but then just wait a few years and that could be the most impactful thing in your life,” Amelia said. “Understanding those things and having a more open mind about what people might be going through was a

big hope of mine for the video.”

Last year, when sophomore Jojo Greenberg died by suicide, Amelia was heartbroken. The girls played on the junior varsity volleyball team together, and after the death of Greenberg—whom Amelia compared to “the sun”—Amelia said she felt powerless in helping herself and the people around her through their grief.

This “pent-up emotion” only grew more intense that winter, when she spent a lot of time with her cousin, who was suffering from depression and suicidal ideation. Amelia would skip school to spend time with her in the hospital, text her throughout the day to check in and worry about her constantly.

As a way to channel her emotions

towards something positive and impactful, she decided that winter to create the video.

“If someone’s going to listen to you for even one second, it’s showing you that they have even that tiniest bit of hope, and you need to grasp that,” Amelia said. “So that became one of the main messages of the video: to reach out for help and reach out to help.”

Though her mother, Trish Montagnino, was worried about her taking on such a heavy and painful project, she said Amelia’s commitment was “unwavering” throughout the process. Amelia has been making videos her whole life, Trish said, and this project is another manifestation of her daughter’s ability to reach people.

“She has a way of capturing emotions to make people feel something,” Trish said. “I can think of several videos she has made that have really touched people, even just like a small appreciation video for her aunt.”

One of Amelia’s primary goals was to depict the topic of suicide realistically.

Adult-made suicide awareness programs, like the county’s “Signs of Suicide” video, fail to resonate with students because they sound staged, she said, so the conversations that many students end up having about mental health are in a joking manner.

Instead, Amelia focused on highlighting teenage voices and raw experiences that other students could empathize with.

“There’s such a contradiction around suicide because we joke about it so openly, but then when it comes to talking about it and being serious about it, we have such a hard time conceptualizing that it’s a real thing,” Amelia said. “I want the video to open people’s eyes to the people who are struggling because the ways people struggle with suicide and mental health are so different.”

The video starts with a dramatic reading of junior Jordan Shaibani’s piece “Drowning,” which details Shaibani’s personal experience with mental illness. Shaibani originally wrote the piece in teacher Omari James’ ninth grade English class, but this year she has started sharing it more and performing it at slam poetry competitions.

Amelia first heard the poem freshman year, and when she

Junior Amelia Montagnino drew these images as part of her short film. Montagnino created the film to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness. Artwork by AMELIA MONTAGNINO

decided to make the video, she reached out to her immediately. Shaibani hopes her poem will be able to reach people in ways that traditional classroom lessons can’t.

“Writing helped put me in a meditative state where I could sit just with my thoughts and say, ‘This is how I’m feeling, and this is how I’m going to translate it so other people can understand,’” Shaibani said. “Mental illness can be such an abstract concept if you’ve never felt it before, so I hope that it changes someone’s mind, or shows someone suffering that someone else is feeling the exact same way as them, or helps someone understand how a friend is feeling.”

Three other people are featured in the video: two other students from the DMV area who have suffered from depression and a local suicide hotline operator. The two girls share their stories and their paths to recovery, while the hotline operator talks about what happens when you call a hotline number.

Amelia wants these teen speakers to help students recognize when their friends are suffering. For students who are suffering themselves, she also wants to make it less daunting to reach out for help.

In-between and overlapping the different clips, she added background music, digital imagery and messages of support.

She spent the entire summer filming and editing the video before she finalized the project in early August.

After viewing the video, students will write down their sources of strength and ways they can reach out to help others in the future. She hopes—if it’s a success— the video will spread throughout the county and be able to help more students.

“If I had to pick one takeaway, I would hope that after watching this video, students have an open mind about the people around them,” Amelia said. “Even if it’s not visible to your eye, understanding that suicide is a real problem, and it needs real attention, and real solutions are so important.”

Scan the QR code to view the short film 35

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Over the past two years, Whitman students have been involved in several serious racist incidents. Last year, students attended a schoolwide assembly after a student was called N-word, and last month, two students were suspended after a photo of them wearing splotches of a black facial mask, captioned with the Nword, spread across social media. These serious incidents shed light on a smaller, yet frequent issue in the school and community: ignorance of others and their situation, and bigotry.

In response to this issue, Whitman’s chapter of the Minority Scholars Program organized seminars in April that addressed race at Whitman.

To understand how community members view race relations at the school, The Black & White hosted a roundtable with students and teachers April 29. The discussion occurred just before news of the blackface incident surfaced.

Participants: Science teacher Mira Chung (10), junior Khanya Dalton (9), special education teacher Veronica Garner (12), senior Breanna McDonald (8), Japanese teacher Yukiyo Moorman (7), senior Obi Onwuamaegbu (6), junior Harley Pomper (11), English teacher Cody Therrien (3), senior Gabe Murray (2), junior Jordan Shaibani (4), junior Damonte Young (1) and junior Anna Yuan (5).

What do you wish other people at Whitman knew about minority students?

Khanya Dalton: “When it comes to minorities, specifically black people, I have friends who have never had a black friend before me, not really even acquain-

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by MADDY FRANK a

photos by LU

tances, so that respect is hard to come by.

We need to make people understand that things they haven’t encountered yet are still important, and people just inherently deserve respect. They shouldn’t have to wait to have more people to corroborate their story.

Obi Onwuamaegbu: “I think respect is definitely a big one. If an African American doesn’t want to be called the N-word, then you hear people say, ‘No, I hear it in rap songs all the time. One white rapper used it.’ You get pushback. So just respect the wishes of minorities. I also think that listening is a really good thing. We need to, as a community, open our eyes to minorities and their fights and struggles.

The sooner we acknowledge there’s a real issue, the faster we can get to solving it.”

Anna Yuan: “I’m an Asian-American, not an Asian. There’s a very big distinction. At the root of it, there’s some similarities, but our experiences are very different.”

Mira Chung: “I was born here; my parents were born in Korea. I went to Walter Johnson, which is considered pretty diverse. I was called a twinkie when I was growing up in high school; it means yellow on the outside and white on the inside.

I don’t take any offense to that, because I understand my culture at home, and it’s not necessarily something that I share. I think what some of you understand is that Asians don’t really express their culture.

Yuan: “I think way too often, in the United States, we look at Asians, and we think there’s only Koreans, Japanese, Indian and Chinese. There’s at least 40 other Asian countries, with very different languages, very different cultures, who have

very different experiences that we just don’t even know about. I’ve never experienced blatant racism, but I’ve had friends completely break down because everyone thinks of them as a calculator and all they do is spit out numbers. Yes, I’m Asian but that doesn’t mean all I am is smart; I have many other things to say.”

Damonte Young: “I hate when I hear, ‘I’m not racist because my best friend’s black or my auntie’s sister’s cousin’s brother is black or I don’t see color.’

Well, you clearly do see color because the first thing you see when I walk into the room is that I’m black.”

Onwuamaegbu: “Going back to what you said about being color blind, one reason I just don’t like hearing that is just we’re kind of throwing away the idea of the celebration of diversity. I think that’s something that’s often lost when trying to tiptoe on eggshells to not be perceived as ‘racist.’”

What do you think about the N-word?

Veronica Garner: “I’ve been at Whitman since 1989, so I’ve experienced the ups and downs of the problems that have faced Whitman. In regards to the N-word, growing up in an area that was segregated and having to go through integration and hear white people around yelling the N-word at me, I have a different perspective than younger people might have. I don’t like the word being used in conversation.”

Cody Therrien: “I taught at Kennedy High School for 14 years. Forty percent of my students were African American. At Kennedy, I heard the N-word probably 20 times a day, just thrown around the hallways and there wasn’t ever a big thing about it.

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I was used to teaching African American and Latino literature there and fell in love with African American literature. I was almost like, ‘Do I even want to teach it here? Is there a reason to?’ I taught it this year only because I ran into a senior who was in the computer lab who was African American, and I was like ‘So, how much African American literature have you read here at Whitman’ and he said ‘Not very much. We read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ freshman year.’

Do you guys understand why that bothered me? ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is not African American literature. And he was a really smart kid, and he thinks Harper Lee is African American literature.

At that point, I was like, ‘I’m going to do my August Wilson unit.’

I of course encountered that N-word again, and at Kennedy when we read it, the students were like ‘yeah, I just used that word at lunch.’ It was a big problem here, and we decided not to use it. I think it’s a whole different dynamic here.

Whereas at Kennedy, they were comfortable reading that word out loud in class, the white students used it in front of the black students, and here it was like a twoton heavy thing just dropped on the class when I even brought it up. ‘This word’s in there, what are we going to do about this?’

And it was dead silence.”

Breanna McDonald: “It’s something the black community has reclaimed for itself. It was used to target and belittle us as a whole population, and to take that word back, and take the power away from that word, it’s something that belongs to us.

It’s something we’ve reclaimed to mean family, to mean unity, and it’s not just a word; it has so much more historical context than any other word in the dictionary.

It cuts more deep than any other word that

I’ve ever heard. People need to be very well-educated about the historical context of why the black community has decided to reclaim that word.”

Therrien: “I mean, I don’t want to live in a world without rap music. I listen to Rock the Bells radio every day. It’s basically old-school rap from my generation, and I sing along to all of it if I know the words, and I don’t stop when it gets to that word if I’m in the car by myself..

It’s been reclaimed, it’s been reused artistically, it’s taken on a whole other meaning. The problem is educating people and making sure they understand that. It’s not a word I would use loosely.”

What can Whitman do to improve?

Gabe Murray: “After my presentation today, one student was saying that they hadn’t realized how serious the issue is; he just found it really eye-opening.

This is just getting the conversation started and educating people that it’s a big issue at Whitman.”

Jordan Shaibani: “The stories written by The Black & White and the writers on the staff could be more diverse. There’s an opportunity gap when it comes to writers on The Black & White. You’re not getting perspectives of minority students. All the stories on Shorts are pitched by people who aren’t people of color.”

Yukiyo Moorman: “How many of you have taken an Asian language? Everyone’s studying Spanish or French, or another European language; no one steps into the Asian languages. American students are still totally ignorant about Asian values, systems and what they think. You have to understand the Asian mind to get the much bigger picture about all minorities. We have to talk about American values versus non-American values. That’s what’s missing at this school.”

Harley Pomper: “I do other county work as well. MCPS is very much pushing the student voice which, on the surface level, is nice and people feel included. But what I also feel is that the administration of MCPS is clueless about how to deal with race relations, and they’re looking for young voices because they have no idea about what’s going on. We shouldn’t be the ones empowering equity initiatives.

That shouldn’t have to come from us.”

Chung: “Sometimes it’s really hard to add a race curriculum inside of classes.

Literally, the one time I talk about race and ethnicity is when I talk about DNA, because I talk about how everyone’s the same, and that’s it. I don’t know where to add it because the state regulations state you have to go through all of this material, because you’re going to be tested at the end of the year. Showing you the teacher’s side, I think those are the types of struggles you’re going to be facing when you push for more lessons about race in different classes. Like, I’ve had moments where I’m like, ‘I want to add this, but I can’t.”

Young: “I think, for the administration, in order for them to help students, they need to be more open with students, honest to students and actually listen to them because I know they’re stressed with other things. I know that for me, I didn’t feel like I had that many teachers to actually go to when I first came to this school last year.”

Therrien: “Do you think it matters what color your teachers are?”

Young: “I don’t think it matters as long as you are actually willing to listen.”

Anna Yuan is a writer for The Black & White

37

B-CC students create pop-up museum on cultural toxicity

by KATIE HANSON

Bethesda-Chevy Chase and other county high school students organized a pop-up museum in a former Bank of America in Bethesda; the museum was open to the public from April 26 to 28. Exhibits in the museum addressed topics like body image, gender inequality and the recent college admissions scandal. Everything about the museum was student-made: the exhibits, the T-shirts, even the website. Most of the B-CC students involved spent the majority of the school year preparing for the museum by researching topics related to toxicity in their anthropology class. Other students became involved through their journalism class, which anthropology teacher David Lopilato also teaches, or through other teachers. This is a selection of exhibits from the museum:

1

With his research project earlier this year, B-CC junior Camilo Montoya traced how toxic masculinity begins in boyhood and continues throughout lifetimes. For the museum, he created a documentary about the trend, interviewing boys and men to gauge the pattern of their relationship with masculinity.

“We don’t come out being bad people. It’s just things in our lives that change us into being bad people or doing bad things,” Montoya said. “I want to remove the stigma that men have to behave a certain way. As long as you’re good, you don’t have to meet any standards. All that should be taught at an early age.”

2

Pink walls covered with edited photos of social media models next to unedited versions of the same photos greet visitors in an exhibit by Grace Carter and Nicky Schmidt, a junior and senior at B-CC, who wanted to portray how social media sets unrealistic expectations for young girls.

The girls also took photos of visitors and edited them with Facetune, a popular editing app. Carter said the exhibit is personal to her because she has often compared herself to edited images posted on Instagram.

“On Instagram, there are a lot of models with these really curvy yet skinny figures, and we know that’s not an achievable body to have,” she said. “It’s really toxic for young girls who feel like their bodies aren’t good enough. We want to remind people that they are beautiful as they are.”

5

In wake of the recent college admissions scandal, B-CC senior Dan Neveretil based his exhibit on the unfair nature and superficiality of the admissions process. His exhibit follows the style of a beach boardwalk cut-out, where participants stick their heads in wooden cutouts. But in his version, instead of mimicking beach-goers, participants mimick people rowing or volunteering in developing countries. Neveretil said the museum is especially important to him and other students because it gives them a chance to talk about the problems affecting their daily life in an open forum.

“The message is really important because a lot of adults and people who aren’t immersed in teenage culture don’t really see the harmful aspects until something really blows up,” Neveretil said. “What we’re doing here is tracking down the root of those problems and creating art about it. It’s also a really great opportunity to get a lot of kids togethers to express themselves creatively. That doesn’t happen a lot on such a large scale.”

6

To B-CC senior Pria Dahiya, the only way to overcome toxicity is through love because “love is everything and everything is love.” Dahiya performed a show as a drag queen, Miss Stepps, who read an essay on stage about what Lady Gaga means to her. She said she became involved in the event when Lopilato persuaded her in a unique way.

“Mr. Lopilato caught me in a fishnet, like an actual net that catches fish, in the middle of the night,” Dahiya said. “He went into my house and he caught me and he snatched me up and he said ‘You have to do a show’ and I went ‘No don’t make me,’ but here I am.”

3

7

4

8

Conversations on sexual assault and violence shouldn’t be viewed as “taboo,” said B-CC junior Maissa Kobellekeita, who wanted her exhibit to spark a conversation on the topic. She displayed statistics about sexual assault and quotes from survivors on a clothesline next to clothing.

“One of my closest friends was molested, and I was present and tried to stop it. I wanted to show people’s stories and statistics,” Kobellekeita said. “I want people to be more aware that the girl or the boy doesn’t ask to be abused. It doesn’t matter what you wear, no one should touch you if you don’t want it because of the clothes you wear or your behavior. “ When strangers would ask Montgomery Blair High School senior Nyrene Monforte where she was from, she always felt uncomfortable. As a person of color born and raised in the United States, having people constantly ask her about her identity made her feel like she had “perpetual foreigner syndrome.” Based on this experience, Monforte created her own experimental film designed to discourage people from questioning other people’s identity. Monforte hopes the film encourages people to be more empathetic and adjust their language when asking people of color about their heritage.

“It’s not something I’ve always dealt with, but recently in public, people have been asking me things like that, and it made me feel weird,” she said.

38

A few random questions about your favorite color or the type of clothes you wear can’t determine you sexuality, said B-CC senior Ella Goldblum, who created a room that mimics a Buzzfeed quiz on sexuality. After participants complete the survey, the quiz says it has no answer: only the participant can understand their own sexuality.

“Sexuality is a really complex thing. No should feel pressured to use any kind of label for it. No one should feel pressured to be straight,” Goldblum said. “Everyone should just feel comfortable to exist in the space where they don’t know exactly what they are.”

After a friend’s older brother called her fat, B-CC senior Annie Mitchell said she struggled with her body image.

With her exhibit, she focused on the prevalence of body insecurities. She included images from her classmates of their insecurities. Mitchell also created a mural to represent a personal stream of consciousness about her own body.

“My inspiration was just that there’s a lot of things that go unspoken,” Mitchell said. “My friends and myself struggle with not just body image, but also the things that people don’t see that are below the surface. I just want people to know that they’re not alone with their insecurities and that there are other people who are going through the same thing.”

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Photos by LUKAS GATES

8.

39

HELP

THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST

s terrjdgban RXPERIENCR S KING

MUCD.

EVERYTHING IS

spinning

IN CYCLE OF BAD I CAN’T breathx pn

I wrote this message on the Notes app right after my reaction started. At that point, I had shut off all the lights and the music, and I knew that something had gone wrong. But I didn’t know just how bad the trip was going to be. My head was spinning very rapidly, and I’m pretty sure my entire body was spinning as well, though I can’t be sure, as I was entirely incapacitated. Writing that message was physically challenging, which is why it’s full of typos. I wrote the note to give my parents context when they found me, and as a personal remider of what had happened. Right after I shut my phone off, the trip got worse; that’s when I was pushed into the corner of my room.

I found the message when I woke up.

I accidentally took k2 and had the worst night of my life. This is my story.

Imagine the worst nightmare of your life.

Imagine the worst nightmare of your life, but this time, it doesn’t end.

No matter what you do, you can’t snap out of it. You lose all sense of reality and descend into what seems to be an infinite loop of suffering: your own personal hell. You beg for death because anything is better than this, but you don’t get relief. You resign yourself to the thought that you will be experiencing this horror forever.

But somehow, it ends. You wake up in a hospital bed with cuts all over your body and your parents by your side. It takes hours, days, to calm yourself down and realize that this is reality, and that you’re alive.

I accidentally took K2—a deadly, synthetic form of marijuana—and had the worst night of my life. This is my story.

Like most kids in my social group, I had smoked weed. I had been high no more than six times, but it was enough to know that it wasn’t my thing. I like being in control of myself and my situation, so dissociatives like marijuana only stress me out. But I was at a low point in my life for a while, and I thought weed could provide some much-needed entertainment.

Over the course of a week, I set up a deal with one of my friends. On a Friday, for $60, I got a dab pen and a cartridge of what I assumed was weed.

Around 11:00 that evening, I pulled out the pen, and with The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” playing, I took one hit. As soon as I blew the vapor out the window, I knew I was in for something unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

As I lay in bed, everything moved in slow motion. It wasn’t unpleasant at first, just strong. But then the music turned ominous, and the nightmare began.

I was suddenly squeezed into the smallest, loneliest corner of my bedroom. I distinctly remember thinking, ‘today is the day I die, and all the suffering and hard work in my life will have been wasted.’

That’s the last time I thought in terms of self, because from that point on, it was an endless loop of my worst nightmares—nightmares from my earliest childhood. I forgot the faces of my parents, of my brother, of myself; I lost all sense of reality. Patterns came and went, but I clung to them, hoping they would save my life or at least let me die. The color red, the time 11:03, my father—they helped me stay sane.

It’s hard to explain, but it seemed like I was stuck in a mathematical program, a simulation that repeated experiences on loop. Outside of it all, it felt as though scientists had created a mathematical equation to test the concept of personhood, of infinity. They were subjecting me, their guinea pig, to various forms of experience, of suffering. I realized that the reality we live in, the reality that I have since managed to return to, was nothing but a scene in this hellish infinity.

There were brief flashes of reality.

At a certain point, I found myself lying on a minimalistic, dirty-white version of my floor, begging my dad to hug me. Then back to the abyss. More nightmares, and then pinned down on the carpet by two, three, seven police officers. Then back to the abyss.

And then reality. My parents. I’m naked, lying in a hospital bed. There’s a catheter in my penis. Not pleasant.

Then back to the abyss.

I must have floated in and out of reality for hours, but when I became myself again and realized I was going to survive, it was around 11:00 the next morning. My high had lasted 12 hours. Doctors confirmed that I had K2 in my system.

To this day, I don’t really know what happened. I know my parents found me huddled in a corner, screaming and bashing myself against the wall, my eyes open. I know I bit my mother. I know six or seven cops had to restrain me. I know I spit in one cop’s eyes and had to be handcuffed and sedated. I know I’m lucky to be alive. I don’t know much else.

Writing this is painful because it forces me to relive the worst night of my life. Weeks after the fact, I still get flashbacks. But I’m writing it nonetheless, because I don’t want other people to go through what I went through.

At Whitman, we subscribe to a work hard, play hard mentality. I’m an AP student, I’m going to apply to great colleges and I have a clear idea for my future. I’m a child under adult levels of stress.

Like many Whitman students, I’ve used drugs and alcohol to relax and have a good time with friends. I’m not an addict by any measure, but I am familiar with illicit substances.

But the scary truth is we don’t know what we’re putting into our bodies. What happened to me could easily have happened to anyone who smokes at Whitman. When we pick up weed from random kids, we’re always taking a gamble. What we see is sometimes not what we get.

It’s not my job to preach. I’m a child who made a wrong decision and more than paid the price for it. But I hope my story is a lesson. For your sake, for the sake of your parents, for the sake of your younger siblings who have to see you writhing around the floor screaming in terror, be careful. We like to think that nothing can touch us—that we’re invincible. But I learned the hard way that I’m not as safe as I’d like to think.

41

MORNINI

Photo by LUKAS GATES

Art teacher TO retire after 20 years at Whitman

by SARA AZIMI If someone were to walk into room D-212, they would think art teacher Nancy Mornini has a family of 50. Numerous college stickers like “Arizona State University mom” and “Tufts University mom” completely cover the blackboard next to her desk. Confused parents at back to school night always ask her how many kids she has, Mornini said. But the stickers aren’t from her kids; they’re gifts she receives from students when they commit to college each year.

Mornini will retire at the end of this year after 20 years of teaching art at Whitman. She has contributed to the community throughout the years, from creating T-shirts for numerous events to forming Whitmaniacs, the school’s spirit club.

Before working at Whitman, she taught art at Chestnut Lodge, a psychiatric hospital in Rockville. She was notified of an opening in the art department in March of 1990 and decided to switch jobs; she was ready for a change, she said.

Since she began working at Whitman, her selflessness and willingness to help others has been evident. When basketball player Marie Hatch (‘16) broke her ankle during a playoff game, Mornini designed Whitman basketball T-shirts with Hatch’s number 25 on the back for the whole team to boost morale.

“She is just the most giving person,”

42

Kenah said. “She’ll always say, ‘whatever you need, let me know,’ and then she follows through with it. Whatever it is, she makes time for it.”

Mornini’s own high school emphasized school spirit and hosted different activities throughout the year, and she wanted to replicate some of that spirit with Whitmaniacs, she said. She started the club in 2007 with the help of a couple of her students on the football team.

Whitmaniacs has created numerous school spirit shirts and shirts for different events, like Battle of the Classes and Homecoming, but they have also created shirts during more serious times, like when the radical Westboro Baptist Church came to Whitman to protest the school’s namesake in 2009, or in 2017, when two students and one alum died.

“I like making shirts because it’s a way to unify everybody in the community,” Mornini said. “The Whitman Strong shirts were originally just for teachers, but they grew in popularity and found a way to bring people together during that tough time.”

Breaking the news of her retirement to her classes was emotional for Mornini and for her students, she said. Students and teachers don’t just see her as a teacher or colleague, but as a friend.

“She has a really personal connection with all her students,” sophomore Jordan Lerner said. “You can trust her—she’ll always be there for you if you need her. It’s

going to be really hard to fill her shoes.”

Mornini debated between retiring this year or next, since she’s close with many juniors. She ultimately decided that the timing was right for her to leave now, she said.

She plans to stay around by substituting next year. And while she doesn’t see herself being a full-time art teacher again, she still wants to make art and hopes to take art classes, she said.

The bonds that Mornini has created have been her favorite part of working here, she said. Her relationships last beyond graduation; she often keeps in touch with her former students and becomes friends with them on social media.

“I’m going to miss the people. That’s going to be really hard for me,” Mornini said. “I’m a real people person and like being connected, and I like being busy and having a purpose, so I’m going to have to redefine what my purpose is.”

After she leaves Whitman, Mornini plans to help her husband, Joe, run Team River Runner, a non-profit organization he started in 2004 to help veterans and their families heal and find a community through paddle sports. The organization has become a huge success, growing to 65 chapters across the country.

“The veterans are like our family,” Mornini said. “I have my own family, my Whitman family and my Team River Runner family, and I’m excited to spend more time working with them.”

I’m a banana— and proud of it.

by ANNA YUAN

Artwork by JANA WARNER

Words such as “banana” and “Twinkie” are often used as ethnic slurs toward Asian-Americans who are considered to have lost touch with their heritage. The views in this blog are all my own and do not necessarily reflect opinions of the Asian-American community.

Since freshman year, I’ve been casually called a “banana” by friends, acquaintances and people I barely know.

And yes, they’re referring to the fruit. My parents are Chinese, making me “yellow on the outside,” but I was born and raised in the United States, making me only “yellowishwhite” on the inside.

Food metaphors like “banana” or “Twinkie” have been used as slurs to make fun of Asian-Americans like me, who look Asian but act like a “normal” American. Being called a banana, even by my friends, always frustrated me.

Having grown up in the U.S., I’ve never felt a strong connection to my Chinese heritage.

In homeroom last month, I mentioned to a friend that I don’t speak Chinese at home despite the fact that my parents are from China. As soon as I said that, at least five other Asians stared at me in shock. But they weren’t ready for what came next: I told them that I don’t play the piano or violin, and I took Chinese in school to actually learn Chinese, not to get an easy language credit.

When I visited China two years ago, strangers told me that even though I looked Chinese, they knew I was American just by the way I acted and looked.

But in the U.S., people only see my “yellow” exterior.

I’ve always felt like some people are only “friends” with me to get the answers to the chemistry homework, and I’ve had people say they wanted me in their group project because I was Asian—and assumably smart enough to do all the work for them. Every time I heard that, it made me feel like I was being reduced to just my intelligence, which I knew was not indicative of who I am as a person: I have my own opinions and experiences to share, too.

While I don’t see myself as culturally Chinese, I definitely do have a stereotypically Asian side when it comes to academics. Instead of having a social life last summer, I spent weeks in the library with my friends, completing SAT practice tests all day—and I actually had a lot of fun doing it.

At the same time, I don’t fit in well with many of my white, American counterparts. I spent most of my childhood struggling with Kumon homework or watching educational programming on PBS, so I never had a stereotypically American experience. I never understand classically American Spongebob references, I’ve been to Starbucks a grand total of three times in my life and I just recently began understanding “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation” references.

I knew that I wasn’t Asian enough to be fully accepted

by Asians but also not white, which lead to me having a hard time finding a group I belonged to at Whitman who would understand having a foot in both worlds.

Since I wasn’t willing to reshape my identity, I began to look for people just like me. And I found them. We formed what we now call the “Extreme Stress” squad. We’ve been good friends for over three years and typically bond over cringy school-related jokes and overstressing about nearly everything.

Although I found a group that I felt I belonged in, it still took me a while to truly accept my identity. It may seem trivial, but another big turning point for me was watching “Crazy Rich Asians” last summer. It was the first time I had seen so many Asians and Asian-Americans on screen, playing roles that were more than comedic relief or exaggerated accents.

The character I related to the most was the main character, Rachel Chu, a young, successful Chinese-American professor.

Halfway through the movie, Rachel’s best friend tells her that she has so much trouble fitting in because she’s like “some unrefined banana. Yellow on the outside, white on the inside.” Instead of moping around about how she can’t fit in with her boyfriend’s strict, old-school Asian family, Rachel decides to embrace her Asian-American identity. Seeing this, I realized that I could do the same and accept my Asian-American identity instead of trying to be just Asian or just American.

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I didn’t have to wait for other people to become more accepting. All I had to do was accept myself and my identity first.

And now, there’s nothing I’d rather be than a banana.

43

LET’S

get this

bread

QUAKING

GOAT ing TEA SPILL

THE tweak

yeet

weirdokay

but

flex

finna

g

The all-you-need-to-know guide to 2019 slang

by CAMERYNN HAWKE AND JULIA MCGOWAN Artwork by Zoe Chyatte and Julia rubin It’s safe to say that, as teens, our slang vocabularies are ever-changing. “Slang,” which is short for “short language,” is when language is recycled and given a new meaning. With the emergence of social media—especially Twitter and Instagram—teens are connected all across the globe, meaning slang has become a global venture. While regional slang still exists, worldwide slang has exploded across the Internet in recent years. Hopefully, this dictionary will leave ostracized children, parents and everyone in between feeling “high-key hip.”

Let’s define, shall we?

FINNA

GOAT

noun a. Abbreviation for “Greatest of All Time”

i. Another variation is “WOAT,” meaning “Worst of All Time.”

b. First coined when Muhammad Ali’s wife Lonnie Ali

created G.O.A.T. Inc. to license the late

boxer’s products. LL Cool J popularized the phrase with his 2000 song, “G.O.A.T.” Now, the word is written without the periods as “GOAT.”

x

ya

verb a. Definition: Gonna, going to, fixing to. b. Origin: Comes from the blending of “fixing” and “to” in parts of the Southern United States. c. Usage: “Are you finna write your essay tonight?”

QUAKING

verb a. Shocked b. Used as an alternative to “shook,” popularized by YouTuber Shane Dawson. c. “Just saw Matt walk down the hallway. I had the biggest crush on him a few years ago.

Seventh grade-me is quaking.”

SPILL THE TEA

expression

a. Used to encourage someone to reveal gossip.

b. Originated in black drag culture to denote the same

meaning.

c. “I have to tell you what Becca said yesterday.”

— “OMG... spill the tea!”

wEIRD FLEX BUT OKAY

YEET

exclamation a. Used when doing an action suddenly.

i. Also sometimes used as a replacement

for “yes.”

b. “YEET” was originally a dance move trending on video-sharing social media platform Vine in

February 2014, until it developed into an

exclamation.

c. *Throwing a soda can into the recycling can*

— “YEET!”

lET’S GET THIS BREAD

exclamation

a. Let’s get this money!

i. Used to describe the pursuit of a goal.

b. Coined in 2007 in Alabama rapper Rich Boy’s song, “Let’s Get This Paper.”

c. “Let’s get this bread! Let’s go to work!”

expression a. An unorthodox display of wealth or power, but no judgement passed. b. First appeared on Twitter Dec. 1, 2017, when a user replied to a tweet posted by Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner. The tweet stated her 2017 accomplishments. c. “My old school had a lot of glass walls.”

— “Weird flex but okay.”

TWEAKING

verb a. Freaking out, laughing very hard b. Originally used to describe a methamphetamine high. c. “You were tweaking when Jessica spilled water all over her outfit!”

45

Mega crossword: mythology and folklore

by CAM JONES and EVA LILES

46

ACROSS: 1. Moving structure used in parades 6. “To be born” in Paraguay 11. Acronym for a person or department serving as the coordinator of an activity or program 15. “Pretty Woman” male lead, Richard 19. Capital city of Hauts-de-France region of France 20. Mistress of Zeus and mother of Tityos, alternative spelling of Jupiter moon 21. Popular flavor of purple Bubble tea 22. Brie Larson Oscar film 23. 7’1” retired NBA player, Shaquille 24. Alternative to cursive 25. German exchange student on “The Simpsons,” affinity for chocolate 26. Moderately large amount 27. Married duo that rules the Greek mythological underworld 31. Comes after all of the following: place, door, shower, yoga 32. Bite sized Hershey’s chocolate 33. AKA sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk 37. Common allergy, legume 40. Dull pain, sometimes the result of old age 42. Commonly used to abbreviate 1/60th of a minute 43. American TV channel, has a kids version 44. Evaluation done by a physician to answer a legal question, abbr.

45. Pokémon trainer, “Satoshi” in Japan 46. Agamemnon’s murderer and wife 50. My Player Basketball Association, abbr.

51. You use these to chew 53. Not many, not few 54. Uncommon, scarce 55. To cherish fondly 56. Describes an accumulation of decibels 58. By the mouth 60. Involving measurement 62. Whitman students can take no more than eight of these 65. Print managing editor of The Black & White, Neugeboren 67. Intellectually alert, also a shoe company founded in Portland, Oregon 68. National Democratic Institute, abbr.

70. Steals from someone or something 71. Vocational Education Journal, abbr.

73. Latin form of Adam’s companion

74. Used to increase the quality and quantity of website traffic, abbr.

75. Vaughn’s costar in “Wedding Crashers” 76. Exclamation indicating excitement or joy 77. Capital of country with Machupicchu 78. Ryder’s costar in Edward Scissorhands 80. Stealing, taking, snatching; British English 82. Preparing via mental or physical exercises 85. Trunk of a flower 87. Past participle of “lie” 88. River along the German-Swiss border 89. A person, place, or thing 91. Greek goddess of rainbows and delivering messages 93. “Did I do that?”

96. A clue that is given 97. “King of the Wild Frontier,” an American folk hero 100. Plural masculine “the” in Baha California 101. Indicates a doctor or surgeon who works in otorhinolaryngology 102. Completes these word fragments: cord, sund, mart, tutor 103. British insurance company, former sponsor of Man. United 104. Cycling company created in France in 2001 105. Masculine “that” in the Galapagos 106. Horrified, afrighted, shocked 108. Type of battery found in laser pointers or LED pen lights 110. High tibial osteotomy, abbr.

111. Elusive Scottish lake creature 120. The shape of Coolidge’s old office 123. Labels for xbox controller front buttons 124. To vocally present 125. Apples, lemons, and peaches each grow on _ ____ 126. Popular Greek cheese 127. “Art” in Patagonia 128. Broken and useless 129. Reynolds, Philippe and Lochte 130. Ultron, Stone, and Innocence are all these 131. Portrayed Achilles in “Troy” alongside Diane and Orlando 132. Environmental Services Association of Nova Scotia, abbr.

133. Country home to the world’s current “Forgotten War” and the Houthi Rebels

DOWN: 1. An intentional fall by a player after little to no contact 2. Group of forwards or players that play shifts together in hockey 3. “Smell” in San Salvador 4. An archaic expression of pity or concern 5. Son of the Greek hero Odysseus 6. Protective goddess of the dead, sister of Isis and Osiris 7. Common producer of steel 8. First born son of Adam and Eve, mur dered his brother Abel 9. A sea eagle 10. Gain something that you once had 11. Small earrings, often diamonds 12. What people follow on hikes 13. Ontario Real Estate Agency, abbr.

14. City in Spain best known for La Mezquita, an immense mosque dating from 784 A.D. 15. Grab firmly 16. A term used to terminate the sale of goods and services 17. Young kangaroo in Winnie the Poo 18. Quick response patient care provider that comes before the paramedics, abbr.

28. Port access control list, abbr.

29. More kind than others 30. Employee Self-Service, abbr.

34. American folk story following a man who sleeps through the American Revolution 35. Give someone the confidence to do something 36. 1499, 1782, or 2019 37. A player on Washington’s MLB team, for short 38. Utilize 39. Elaborate structure built to hold the Minotaur 41. Striker who once shone on Chelsea and Barcelona, Samuel 42. Marked messily 43. Boy or girl not yet 13 years old 47. Belgian Center Mid on Juventus, ___ Can 48. One of Jon Snow’s best friends in Game of Thrones 49. Popular Climbing Center, Earth _____ 50. & cheese 52. Throw lightly 55. Biblical wrongdoing 57. Former flashy NFL return man, Hester 59. What cats have nine of

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To oil again Sob A feeling of intense dislike Strongly influencing later developments.

66. Line of text below a photo 69. Suffix used to make one of the inflected forms of English verbs 72. American psychologist and creator of primal therapy, Arthur 75. Geometric and flowing designs and folk motifs 77. Rest on a surface 79. Slang name for addictive narcotic often referenced in rap culture 81. Most folklore are this type of tale 83. Small insects that may try to infiltrate your pantry 84. A man

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69

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123

61.

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121

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86. Private investigator and hitman from “Breaking Bad” 88. Titaness daughter of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus 90. College Hockey, abbr.

92. Something belonging to the Egyptian goddess of healing 94. Lip balm stored in egg shaped containers 95. Primary stock exchange in the UK, abbr.

97. Blind date service ran by The Washington Post 98. The Lost Colony of ________ 99. Known for popular song “Africa” 102. To some extent 107. Titan condemned to hold up the celestial heavens for eternity 108. Largest artery in the body

117

109. Behaved in a specific way 112. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, abbr.

113. Long and distinct period of history 114. Town in Vietnam home to a popular trekking base 115. Knock into a dazed state 116. An inflammation on the eyelid 117. Rail vehicle running along urban streets 118. Canadian-American animated comedy television series about three boys, abbr.

119. Rural Entrepreneurship Support Network, abbr.

120. “One __ _ kind” 121. Relax to the point of complete inertia.

122. Consumed 47

BROUGHT TO YOU

BY WHITMAN SGA