Harvard-Westlake School • North Hollywood, CA • Volume XVIII • Issue 7 • April 29, 2009 • chronicle.hw.com

The ChronicleTo the rescuePlay time

Curtains opened on the Playwright’s Festival last week.

Alex edel/chroniclecourtesy of oliviA kestinAllegrA tepper/chronicle

dAnA glAser/chronicle

A16-17 A31

Historic Office

Fueling ingenuity

A4

A look inside the Upper School’s most liberal department.

The economy takes its toll on seniors by influencing college decisions.

A12

news feAtures B section

College crunch

cAtHi cHoi/chronicle

A6

Tacked up in the senior art studio, alongside posters for rhode is-land School of Design

summer art school and news-paper clippings of recent ex-hibitions is a poster with the words “AP Studio Art: Drawing and Painting” plastered across its front. The poster exhib-its several examples of what the College Board has deemed “outstanding concentrations” (a concentration is a 12-piece body of work united by a theme of the artist’s choosing) along with the grading rubric for the AP, detailing what the read-ers look for. It’s as much a

reference for student artists – whether they know it or not – as the frayed references of the historic masters lying below it, because the AP standards in-form the whole art program.

not every classroom has a poster, but the influence of AP exams is felt on campus long before the students sit them in May.

“The College Board provides all the information we need [for AP classes] and checks to make sure we are using it,” Director of Studies Deborah Dowling said.

The College Board commu-nicates the necessary informa-

tion through detailed websites. Every teacher must be “certi-fied” to teach AP, which entails signing a statement that the teacher has in fact read over the curriculum requirements. The teacher is also required to mail the harvard-Westlake syllabus to the Collegeboard, she said.

Aligning the College Board curriculum and Harvard-West-lake’s goals provokes a variety of responses in teachers try-ing to keep up with changes in either program, both past and present.

By Lauren Seo

A nearly unanimous decision to im-pose a new schedule based on a five day cycle for the next school year was made by the Faculty Academic Committee on Tuesday, April 21.

The cycle will function in a way similar to the cycle at the Middle School, basing itself on days A-e instead of on Monday-Friday. To keep the timing of the school schedule the same, an activities period will still be held every Monday instead of every Day A.

The schedule was jointly proposed by math teacher Beverly Feulner, who is in charge of scheduling, and Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts at last month’s upper school faculty meeting.

“It’s really to ensure a consistent expe-rience for all of the students,” Huybrechts said.

Huybrechts said she recognized the shortcomings of the Monday through Fri-day layout as compared to the six day cy-cle since she came to the Upper School.

When Mondays are cancelled for holi-days or break, classes that do not “x” on Mondays meet three times that week, creating an issue for teachers since one of their classes would receive fewer lessons.

Although there are some logistical concerns, Huybrechts sees no harm in testing the waters.

“If the schedule is a hardship for any-one, or for some reason it doesn’t end up working, then we’ll go back to the old sys-tem,” she said. “But I definitely think it’s worth a try.”

Huybrechts approves 5-day cycle schedule

Students and faculty fly to New Orleans to help rebuild a community.

slice into tHe wAter: Swimmers jump off the blocks in the varsity girls’ 200 medley relay race against Ale-

many on April 24 at Zanuck Stadium. Bella Gonzalez ’10, in a red suit, leaps into the pool (center).

IN DEPTH

Water polo coach resigns

Q & ACaptain Maddy Sprung-Keyser ‘09 chats about her high school record.

Students finish up independent studies and re-search projects.

By Sam adamS

Water polo program head Larry Fe-lix stepped down from his post to “pur-sue other opportunities” after a meeting with Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts on March 30. The Athletic Department is conducting a nationwide search for his replacement. Some within the water polo community have speculated that Felix’s predecessor, Richard Corso, is a likely candidate for the job.

During Felix’s four-year tenure as coach of the boys’ team, the Wolverines had a combined record of 81-33 and ad-vanced to the Division I semifinals in 2006. The girls’ team, which Felix had coached since 2000, reached the Division IV finals in 2008.

Coach Felix could not be reached for comment.

“Water polo matters at Harvard-West-lake,” Head of Athletics Audrius Barzdu-kas said. “It’s a sport that has an unbe-lievable tradition at our school. There’s an absolute vibe when you go to a water polo game here.”

see felix, A28

see college BoArd, A10

With Advanced Placement examinations beginning next week, the College Board continues to heavily influence curriculum. A look inside how a corporation dictates the way we learn. By Dana Glaser

Striking College Board compromises

B SectionThe Chronicle . Harvard-Westlake School . Wednesday, April 29, 2009building ideasbright

The Studies in Scientific Research class and Independent

Studies offer chances to explore foreign films, develop iPod

applications and research use of solar power for the school.Photo IllustratIon by CathI ChoI

A2 Wednesday, April 29, 2009The Chronicle

safe!: Joe Cadiff ’10 slides in safe to second base in a game against Alemany on March 27. The Wolverines won the away game 17-15 but lost two games to league rival

Notre Dame in the last week, giving them a 2-4 record in league play. Overall, the Wolverines are inching toward .500 with an 8-10-1 record on the season.

Julie Barzilay/chronicle

preview

off-beat

A6 Students and teachers helped rebuild New Orleans in third annual charity trip.

From tech crises to pre-show rituals: a backstage blow-by-blow of the Playwright’s Festival.

Jack McFadden-Talbot ’09 performed tricks in a childhood circus stint.

A11

A16

A19sports

Boys’ tennis is victorious in 100th straight league game.A25

featuresnews

4-year starter leaves volleyball team after too many red cards.A26

www.chronicle.hw.com

what’s online

Student models and celeb hostesses raise money for breast cancer at Fashion for Action.

Technologic: Natalie Margolin ’10 portrays Mrs. Google in the Facebook universe of Julie Barzilay ’09’s “Magic Touch,” one of 11 original, student-written plays in the Playwright’s Festival.

on a roll: One of the mysterious “Barrel Roll” signs is posted adjacent to a similar-looking Community Council sign in the lounge.

Joe girTon/reprinted with permission

Julie Barzilay/chronicle

courTesy of lucas casso

By Spencer GiSSer

James shaum ’09, the mind behind an exper-iment on musical plants, encouraged students to “do A BArrel roll!!1!” shaum has also posted signs asking onlookers: “have you com-pleted your barrel roll requirement? the dead-line is the 27th of may.”

in at least one case, the signs were posted ad-jacent to the community council’s signs, which said that “the deadline for community service credit is the 27th of may! if you haven’t com-pleted your service, sign up for a project now!”

during a free period, boredom struck shaum. spotting a poster advocating the school cheer-leading team, shaum took a picture of the “Ap-proved” stamp on the poster with his samsung cell phone. the “Approved” stamp is required as evidence of the administration’s approval for all posters on campus.

shaum used Adobe photoshop to attach the picture of an “Approved” stamp onto his signs as well as the harvard-westlake logo, which was present on the bottom of his posters.

shaum printed 30 of his signs and posted them around campus. the school prohibits more than 10 signs per cause or event.

A barrel roll is a term used to describe an aeronautical maneuver where an airplane re-volves around its longitudinal axis during flight. however, shaum’s posters refer to a different type of barrel roll - one from a computer game. he used to play

the original advocate of barrel rolling was engineer slippy toad from star Fox 64, a video game for the nintendo 64, a video game system released in Japan in 1996.

Prom: May 16•Cost: $100 per ticket in US bookstore.

•Location: Renaissance Hollywood Hotel: 1755 North Highland Ave, Hollywood CA 90028

•Time: 7-11 p.m.

runway ready: Fashion for Action model Sarah Kim ’09 prepares to walk the runway for charity.

21 French students placed in the top 10 in their respective classes in the National French Contest.

»

Juniors Charlie Mischer, Ava Kofman, Peter Schwartz and Natalie Margolin were chosen as 2009-2010 Peer Support Coordinators.

»

Upcoming Performances•April 30: Jazz Festival in Rugby @ 7 p.m.• May 1: Orchestra Concert in St. Mi-chael’s @ 7:30 p.m.• May 2: Choral Festival in Rugby @ 4 and 7:30 p.m. •May 2-3: Middle school play, “Romeo and Juliet”, in Bing Performing Arts Center @ 8 p.m. on Saturday and 1 p.m. on Sunday• May 15: Scene Monkeys in Rugby @ 5 and 7 p.m.

» Environmentalist Ann Bradley to speak to students today in honor of Earth Month.

The Chronicle News A3April 29, 2009

Earth Day celebrations culminate with speaker

By Lucy Jackson

The Faculty Academic Committee passed a pro-posal last Tuesday ban-ning student cell phone use during the school day, said Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra, who sits in on FAC meetings. The proposal, if approved by Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts, will go into effect next year, he said.

“We did discuss it and it takes a lot of time to get to the Head of School, but it was voted on,” he said.

The ban would prohibit students from using cell phones anywhere on campus at any point in the school day, Salamandra said.

Although the decision of what students are to do with the cellphones while at school was discussed, no conclusion was reached.

Some suggestions were to leave them in stu-dents’ cars, backpacks or lockers, Salamandra said. “It seems like people would find it difficult to operate without their cell phones even for a short period,” Salamandra said.

While a policy currently exists barring any cell phone use inside academic buildings, a firmer stance was taken by FAC after teach-ers complained that students abused the cur-rent guidelines by texting in class and in the hallways.

While FAC voted to approve the ban, noth-ing has been set in stone, Head of FAC Kent Nealis said.

“There was a discussion in FAC about a cell phone policy,” he said. “What I can tell you is that a recommendation has been made to the administration but that’s as far as it’s gone.”

As of Friday, Huybrechts had not yet seen the proposal, and said she knew little about its contents. As a result, she said, it may take lon-ger for the ban to be officially approved.

“There are some things that are so obviously no-brainer that I wouldn’t even spend three seconds on it, but I don’t really know what this is so it may take a little more time,” she said.

58 seniors will be inducted into the Harvard-Westlake Cum Laude chapter Monday, May 18.

Graduating Cum Laude

Anderson AldenAnthony BakerBenjamin BaradMarni BartaJulie BarzilaySarah BrandonGina ChangCatherine ChoiAriela CohenAllison FarfelAnthony Farias-EisnerSara FleischmanDaria GautDana GlaserSeth GoldmanBenjamin GoldsteinGabriela GrothMary GoodmanAshley HalkettJason HirschhornRebecca Jacobs

Robert KazimiroffSean KeslukJustin KimAaron KirkbrideMaxfield KorbelMiriam LauterCarl LawsonBo Hyun LeeBrandon LevinJessica MarotKate LiebmanJoseph MeyerJason MowBiswaroop MukherjeeRyan NaviJoshua OremanMichael RichardsonAvery RosinCody SchottAdam RothmanJustin Shafa

Emma SokoloffAlexander SonesHunter SpinksCorey SteinEli SteinNatalie StoreyAlexander SteinerKimberly WangEmily WaterhouseJacqueline WeeSteven WeitzWilliam WolffAndrew YuJeffrey YuLian Zucker

Honorary Member:Caroline Cuse

By Hana aL-Henaid

The Environmental Club invited environmental activist Ann Bradly to speak today in Ahmanson Lecture hall during break in honor of Earth Month’s culmination. Throughout the month of April, the Environ-mental Club has hosted a series of events to celebrate Earth month.

In addition to observing a Zero Trash Thursday throughout the en-tire month, the club sold reusable bottles during break on April 15 and 27, arranged a beach clean-up on April 19, distributed ice cream to students who carpool on April 27.

Environmental Club leaders and club advisor and English teacher Martha Wheelock met before spring

break to plan all the facets of Earth Month. From cleanups to ice cream, the logistics came together over the week of March 23.

Julie Barzilay ’09 initiated the Zero Trash Thursdays that were incorporated into Earth Month in order to increase school-wide awareness of trash generation. and to encourage minimal energy con-sumption.

The Environmental Club began promoting the sale of reusable bot-tles in December. When they sell bottles, the club often offers the op-portunity to personalize them with stickers.

Community Council member Ava Kofman ’10 helped Barzilay orga-nize the Dockweiler Beach clean-up

event on April 19.“We were able to not only clean a

large area of the beach, but we also had a great picnic and enjoyed the view,” Kofman said. “Thirty-five stu-dents came and we were very suc-cessful in getting everyone together to help the community.”

Repeating an earlier tradition from the year, the Environmental Club distributed ice cream to stu-dents who carpool or bought reus-able water bottles on April 27 dur-ing break.

As a culmination of the month’s events, environmental activist Ann Bradley has been invited to speak on April 29 by Wheelock, who met Bradley at artist-in-residence Kim Abeles’ reception in March.

michelle nosratian/CHRoNICLE

ice, ice baby: Environmental Club advisor and English teacher Martha Wheelock (left), Catherine Wang ’11 and Courtney Kelly ’11 serve ice cream during break on Monday to students who carpooled to school.

Kent Nealis

don hagopian/cHronicLe

Seniors choose Scene Monkey salutatorian

Senior qualifies as finalist for 2nd time in Physics Olympiad

FAC votes to ban cell phone use

By derek scHLom

Jon Haile ’09, a Scene Monkey and Harvard-Westlake Film Festival co-chair, was voted salutatorian by the senior class in class meetings April 16, Dean Sharon Cuseo said Monday.

Haile will speak to fellow classmates, faculty and guests at the graduation ceremony June 5. The salutatorian typically delivers a humorous address.

He was informed of his selection

last week by Dean Mike Bird.

“obviously I was happy because it will be a lot of fun for me and I’ll do a good job,” Haile said.

Haile has not yet considered the specifics of his speech.

“There are certainly serious things that I feel like I should say but it’s not going to be a downer and it’s not going to be boring,” he said.

Jon Haile ’09don hagopian/cHronicLe

By erin moy

Josh oreman ’09 was picked for a second year as a U.S. Physics Team finalist to potentially represent the country at the 40th International Physics olympiad, held in Mexico from July 12 through July 19.

oreman was picked out of a group of 4,000 students who were tested last January, and he will continue to train during a 10-day physics camp at the University of Maryland, College Park. At the end of the physics camp, the top five students will be selected to travel to the olympiad in Mexico.

During last year’s olympiad, ore-man won one out of the four gold med-als the U.S. Physics Team took home. Though this is oreman’s second year, he feels that his only real advantage is

that “the coaches know I can do phys-ics,” he said.

“I still have to take the same quali-fying exams as last year and score just as well on them — better, in fact, be-cause they expect me to have improved due to my experience last year,” ore-man said.

Though oreman will be missing se-nior traditions such as Prom, senior seminars and the Cum Laude induc-tion due to the training camp, oreman says that he “likes the physics enough to be okay with it.”

“I’ll be happy even if I don’t make the traveling team, though; I’ve had my go and it was great, and I don’t really feel like I need to prove myself further. That said, getting to go to the olym-piad in Mexico would be great,” ore-man said.

GraPhic by alice PhilliPs

The ChronicleA4 News April 29, 2009

By Alice PhilliPs

As the May 27 deadline to complete community service nears, 596 out of 860 students have not yet completed their community service requirement, ac-cording to the list posted in the Chalmers hallway, approximately 69 percent of the student body.

“There are groups of 10 to 15 kids who did individ-ual projects that aren’t in our computer database,” Father J. Young said about possible discrepancies in the list.

“I knew that something like this was going to happen,” said Young. “It’s in the nature of students, and adults too, for that matter, to procrastinate and scramble to finish these things at the last minute. That’s part of the reason why we have so many events [this upcoming month].”

Currently the Community Council has eight events planned before the deadline for students to fulfill their requirement. Seniors who do not com-plete the community service requirement will not be permitted to graduate.

However, if students do not take initiative and plan events for themselves, not all students will be able to fulfill the requirement. The April 19 Dockweiler

Beach cleanup was oversubscribed so the Community Council had to turn down over half of the students who turned in forms.

“There were a lot of community service events at

the beginning of the school year that were undersub-scribed, and it was never the intention of the Coun-cil to have enough spots to serve the entire student body,” Young said.

Gaby cohen/vox

Feel the beat: Jessie Goldman ’11 plays the drums with a young boy at one of the most recent Community Council events, Free To Be Me Drum Circle. There are eight more events scheduled for the month of May.

Council plans more events as deadline nears

By cAtherine WAng

Current junior prefects Reid Lid-ow and Jennie Porter won the Head Prefect election March 23 and 24.

While Porter ran unopposed for the female head prefect position, Lidow beat out candidates Jake Schine ’10 and A.J. Sugarman for the position.

Juniors Jake Gutman, Chase Morgan ’10, Sylvia Gintowt-Gindick and Aarti Rao will become next year’s senior class prefects.

Sophomores Mariana Bagneris, Chris Holthouse, Christin Kanoff and Austin Lewis were voted in as next year’s junior class prefects.

The junior prefect elections were held April 21 at a mandatory soph-omore assembly in Rugby Audito-rium.

Four female and six male sopho-mores ran for two female and two male positions on the Prefect Coun-cil.

The female candidates were Bag-neris ’11, Kanoff ’11, Courtney Kelly ’11, and Jamie Temko ’11. The male candidates were Jonathan Etra ’11, Holthouse ’11, Evan Jackson ’11, Lewis ’11, Danny Marenzi ’11, and Greg Zalevsky ’11.

The election was run by Head Prefect Tessa Wick ’09 and prefect Harry Botwick ’09.

Sophomores, juniors elect prefects for 2009-2010

communitycouncil

May2

Saturday Sunday

The deadline for completing the community service requirement is May 27. The Community Council is offering the following events this month. There will be a sign-up table in the quad this week.

Neighborhood Clean-Up

9

16

23

3

10

17

24

Dream Center

Elderly Care

A Place Called Home

Dream Center

King Middle School Project

Mural PaintingHabitat For Humanity

By AlexiA BoyArsky And cAthi choi

After spending years study-ing at Harvard-Westlake, Delilah* ’09 aimed high. Al-though she had “okay” grades, she applied to an Ivy League school and other reach schools hoping that she would get in. Not even considering the fi-nances, Delilah believed that she would eventually end up at the best school that accepted her.

In March, Delilah found out that she had gotten into Co-lumbia and Northwestern, two of her reach schools.

Although Delilah’s parents had always wanted her to go to UCLA, she assumed that if it came down to one of her top choices and UCLA, they would be on her side.

But when she called her parents at work to tell them the good news, she was a little surprised. Instead of the hap-py congratulations and party planning that her friends had received following their accep-tances into college, her parents instead sounded like “someone had died in their office.”

That night, her parents sat her down for a straightfor-ward talk.

“They told me that they were financially incapable of paying for my school of choice, Columbia. That I would either have to go to UCLA, or take out loans amounting to $120,000 at the end of four years if I went to the schools I wanted to go to,” she said.

“I have to make my deci-sion in four days at this point,” Delilah said on Monday, “and I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

Roxanne* ’09 had to drop her top choice school as an op-tion because they did not offer her any aid.

Although her second choice school, University of Chicago, offered some aid, it wasn’t enough for her parents to be completely comfortable.

“I’m now choosing between University of Chicago and NYU,” Roxanne said. “I love University of Chicago, but NYU gave me so much more aid that I have to consider it.”

Although her parents tell her that they would be all right with her going to Chica-go, Roxanne is more concerned with their situation.

“My parents say it doesn’t really matter to them. They want what’s best for me,” she said. “They don’t want to ad-

mit it, but I think it would be difficult for them and I would definitely feel guilty.”

There are a few students who are simply choosing the cheapest option because of their situations, but the major-ity of students are facing what upper school dean Sharon Cuseo calls “the name versus the money” problem: choos-ing between schools that have offered money and the school that’s harder to get into.

Jane* ’09 is confronted with this problem as she is be-ing forced by her parents to choose UC Santa Barbara or UC San Diego over USC, her top choice school from the be-ginning of the process.

“My parents are not down with paying for USC. They just told me straight up that they can’t,” Jane said. “It definitely happened within the past two years, and it’s partly because of the economy.”

Jane is not on financial aid at Harvard-Westlake, and when her sister went to Georgetown, money was not a deciding issue. But now, be-cause of her parents’ situation in the economic recession, her sole deciding factor is money.

Besides choosing less ex-pensive schools, students are

also pursuing other financial options. While attending UC Berkeley in the fall, Mitch* ’09 plans to not only apply for a work study program but also to take out federally subsidized loans.

“It’ll probably be like four or five thousand dollars a year,” Mitch said. “That’s not so much. My father said he prob-ably would be in the position to pay them off in four years.”

Mitch plans to take out federally subsidized loans which have a low interest rate. Therefore, even if his father is not able to pay them off, Mitch says the estimated $16,000 would be manageable to pay on his own.

Cuseo advises students to only take out loans if they are federally subsidized.

“Those are deferrable while you’re in school,” Cuseo said. “So you can go to graduate

school, and you won’t have accruing interest. Those are never a problem.”

Jane, on the other hand, is not considering taking out loans.

“Loans were never really an option,” Jane said. “Paying them off for the rest of your life doesn’t really sound like a good thing.”

As the deadline for col-lege deposits approaches, both Delilah and Jane have a diffi-cult decision to make.

Although a year ago these decisions would not have been so hard, the economy has se-verely hindered their options.

“Where I want to go chang-es every day,” Jane said. “one day I want to go to SB and the next to SD. I don’t really know where I’m going to go. It’s kind of frightening.”

*Names witheld upon request

Finances affect current college decisionsGraphic by carly radist and daniel rothberG

Money MattersDelilah is choosing between Columbia and UCLA based on her family’s financial situation. Here’s her decision by the numbers: UCLA Columbia

University Fees:

Room & Board: $12,121$13,314

$8,214 $37,470

Total: $21,528 $49,591source: www.ucla.edu and www.columbia.edu

Graphic by daniel rothberG

The Chronicle News A5April 29, 2009

By Sammy Roth

The Rocketry Club travelled to Huntsville, Alabama to launch the rocket which the National Aeronautic and Space Administration commissioned them to build last October.

The club spent over four days at the NASA facility in Huntsville for NASA’s Student Launch Initiative, leaving April 15 and returning April 19. They were accompanied by math teacher Jacob Hazard and science teacher Karen Hutchison.

“We had a blast,” club member Ian Cinnamon ’10 said. “Pun intended.”

Cinnamon, who was primarily responsible for designing the rocket, said the launch was a success. The rocket reached an altitude of nearly 6,000 feet, beating the club’s goal of one mile.

“I was pretty nervous,” Cinnamon said. “One hundred different things had to work as planned in order for the flight to be a success. But the flight was near perfect, I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

NASA had given the club a $3,700 grant to build the rocket as part of the SLI. The club qualified to submit their rocket proposal to the SLI after placing 13th out of over 700 teams at the Team America Rocketry Challenge last May in The Plains, Virginia. The proposal, which was written by Cinnamon, was one of 14 accepted for the initiative from high schools and colleges across the country.

The successful launch did not come without surprises, Spencer Gordon ’10 said. The rocket was supposed to deploy a drogue parachute at its highest altitude, which would begin to slow its descent, and then later on deploy a larger parachute that would slow it considerably more.

The large parachute did not deploy. Fortunately, Gordon said, the club misjudged the effect of the drogue parachute, which slowed the rocket enough to ensure that it landed intact.

“Two wrongs made a right,” Gordon said.The high speed with which the rocket launched was

also unexpected. Because the club underestimated the power of the engine, Richard Liu ’10 said, the rocket took off at 532 miles per hour, by far the fastest launch of any participating team.

“We put a huge engine on a tiny rocket. It was beyond cool,” Liu said.

The club also carried out a biological experiment during the launch. The rocket contained a payload of live bacteria in an attempt to determine the effect of extreme altitude, acceleration and gravity on the bacteria. The club used small light-emitting diodes and wireless cameras built in to the rocket to record and send images of the bacteria during the launch.

The bactera they tested were lactococcus lactis, which is used in the production of many dairy products.

Liu said that their analysis, which they will complete this weekend, could help NASA because

astronauts often take dairy products into space.When they were not preparing the rocket, the club

spent much of their time in Huntsville touring the NASA facilities. They had a chance to see scientists working on projects such as plasma propulsion rocket engines and the next generation of NASA rockets.

Between touring NASA and launching the rocket, Liu said that going to Huntsville was worth missing parts of four days of school.

“It was a great experience to learn more about the technical aspects of rocketry, to learn more about NASA and professional space programs, and a great opportunity for us to show teamwork and accomplish our goals,” Liu said.

By virtue of having participated in the SLI this year, the club is already qualified to submit a proposal next year. Gordon said that the club hopes to accomplish even more next year.

“I’m really excited to go back next year with a bigger and better rocket,” he said.

Club goes to NASA to launch rocket

courtesy of richard liu

rocket science: In Huntsville, Alabama, Rocketry Club members Ian Cinnamon ’10 and Monica Chen ’10 examine the club’s rocket while Spencer Gordon ’10 inspects the bacteria which were later placed in the rocket.

By Julie BaRzilay

“Now go up to your partner and give them a big birthday hug.”

So said Angel Echeverria, the Argentine tango teacher instructing Spanish teacher Roser Gelida’s second period Spanish IV class on April 17. Such an embrace makes for the perfect stance to grip one’s partner and tango the night away - or second period, anyway.

Years ago, Spanish teacher Margot Riemer danced her way into the arms of love when she met her husband at a 10-day Argentine tango workshop in Montreal.

Two weeks ago, Spanish IV students awkwardly embraced and glided across the floor of the dance studio or Feldman-Horn gallery in an attempt to mirror the “smooth, flexible dance” that Riemer is passionate about sharing with her students.

“The Tango Room Dance Center” tango instructors Angel and Julie Echeverria as well as Brian Nguyen demonstrated the ins and outs of the

Argentine tango for one class period as Riemer and Spanish teacher Roser Gelida’s students donned high heels or formal shoes and grooved to Argentine tunes. These teachers hold regular classes at the studio in Sherman Oaks.

In the past, Riemer and Gelida used an instructional video and Riemer’s own expertise to teach a bit of tango when the tango came up in Chapter 6 of the class’s textbook. Students were often not as engaged with the video, and found the steps difficult to keep up with.

“In the classroom, the looks of horror were palpable,” Riemer laughed.

She said students always used to forget to bring proper footwear as well. It is much better with proper shoes on a smooth floor in a more formal setting, she feels.

“It’s one thing to read about it in a book or hear a teacher say something,” she said. “But to learn through dance – to lead and to follow – it is a connection with a culture you can’t make any other way.”

austin Block/CHRONICLE

one two step: Spanish IV students learned to tango in the dance studio with professional instructors. Drew Lash ’10 pairs up with Mark Mackey ’10, while Jenna Hamburger ’10 learns the dance from one of the instructors, Angel Echeverria.

Spanish classes learn to tango

By Emily Wallach

During spring break, 19 upper school students and five chaperones partook in the school’s third trip to New Orleans with the purpose of “doing good for the outside community while building interior community,” chaperone and Chaplain Father J. Young said.

“It was a purple house that we painted on the third day of construction,” Young said. “Liese Dettmer had been living there for a year, and the house needed new paint. We did a lot of touch up work like landscaping and transporting sand,” Young said about the commu-nity service efforts of those on the trip.

The group partnered with Habitat for Humanity to fix four or five houses in Musicians’ Village, an enclave of about eighty houses that are occupied by musicians and their families, in an effort to prevent artists from leaving New Orleans after the damage of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, Young said.

“It was a really rewarding experience to understand the impact that five days of our lives could actually make,” Christine Kanoff ’11 said. “I’ll never forget the last day when we were building the house and [Dett-mer] came out and played the guitar and sang.”

For Young, his best-loved moment of the April 6-10 trip was the appreciation received from the people of New Orleans, this year illustrated in the form of a standing ovation and a plaque of recognition, now hanging on his office wall, from the hotel staff of the hotel where they stayed.

“My favorite part of the trip was the way we were treated by the people of New Orleans,” Young said.

Students were allowed to go out in the French Quarter in small groups at night and eat “great” New Orleans food, Young said. On Friday, their last day, stu-dents and chaperones were able to explore the city and then boarded a flight home.

The ChronicleA6 News April 29, 2009

Administrators at the Middle School have instituted primary elections that will eliminate all but eight candidates for the general election.

Candidates running for class senator will give a speech before the primary. The remaining eight candidates will participate in a town hall class meeting.

“We hope to discourage those students who simply want to win a popularity contest,” seventh grade dean Colby Plath said.

Class representatives will also participate in a leadership class next year similar to the prefect council class, Plath said.

— Daniel Rothberg

inbrief

The significance of African-American history and its relation to current events will be explored by San Francisco District Attor-ney Kamala Harris at a school- wide assembly on Friday.

Harris was previously sched-uled to be the speaker at the Af-rican-American History Month assembly in February, but had to reschedule due to a death in the family.

Assistant Director of Alumni Relations Eli Goldsmith origi-nally suggested that Harris come to speak. He and the Harvard-Westlake African American Alumni Network handled the re-scheduling.

— Jordan Freisleben

Zero Trash Thursdays honor Earth Month

Friday assembly to host San Francisco DA

Bake sale raises money to donate iPods to kids

The Environmental Club des-ignated every Thursday in April as a “Zero Trash Thursday” with the goal of achieving “decreased waste and increased awareness of the planet,” Environmental Club President Julie Barzilay ’09 said.

“All students and faculty are encouraged to minimize energy consumption and the trash gen-eration on Thursdays,” Barzilay said.

— Austin Block

The results of the Chamber Singer auditions were announced on Monday. Of 18 freshmen who tried out, four were accepted, and they will join 11 sophomores. 14 juniors were also accepted into Chamber Singers. One soprano, two altos, four tenors and three basses are returning from this year’s choir. Seven sopranos, seven basses and eight altos were selected for next year’s cast of Chamber Singers.

— Kelly Ohriner

Middle School institutes primaries before election

A bake sale raising money to buy iPods for hospitalized chil-dren was held in the quad by the Tune In Community Service Club, founded by Jordan McS-padden ’11.

The sale, on Monday, raised over $200 to buy iPods that will be distributed to patients at Ce-dars-Sinai Medical Center.

The club is also trying to get Apple Inc. to sponsor them in or-der to obtain more to donate.

— Hannah Rosenberg

19 volunteer to help rebuild New Orleans

courtesy of olivia kestin

Helping Hand: Cindy Ok ’10 (far left) gardens in Musicians’ Vil-lage of New Orleans with Rachel Katz ’11 (far right).

3 serve on jury in local Teen Court By NEha Nimmagadda

The cell door clanged shut behind three Harvard-Westlake students and science teacher David Hinden.

Hinden, the Upper School’s Mock Trial coach chaperoned a trip to the Van Nuys Supe-rior Court for three students to participate in a Teen Court hearing on April 13. Hana Al-Henaid ’10, Andrew Hartford ’11, and Courtney Kelly ’11 sat on a jury of teenagers to hear juvenile cases and toured a criminal holding cell.

“Everything was very in-formal — we were able to ask any questions we had directly to the minor,” Kelly said. “After we had a good idea of the case at hand, we went into a sepa-rate room and deliberated the sentence. The crimes commit-ted by the minors earned them various types of probation — from a curfew, to community service, to letters of apology.”

Al-Henaid, Hartford, and Kelly were on the jury for both of the Teen Court cases heard that afternoon.

The main advantage to Teen Court is that if the juvenile sat-isfactorily completes the terms of the punishment, the crime does not go on his or her re-cord.

“This is meant to be an in-formal process because it gives somebody a chance to [work] off the conditions of probation and not have a criminal record,” Hinden said. “It’s amazing how messed up you can get with even a minor criminal convic-tion at 17, and this really gives kids the opportunity to avoid that. The probation depart-ment looks for kids who they think will benefit from this.”

Though the hearing was not

formatted exactly like a real trial, it allowed students the opportunity to experience a real court and crime, Hinden said.

“Getting to hear the kids’ sides of the stories was a very real experience,” Kelly said. “You always assume that ‘crim-inals’ aren’t like you... but these are really just kids that made mistakes, like any of us.”

“This isn’t a simulated exer-cise,” Hinden said. “They hear a short case as a jury. They make a recommendation as to what the probationary terms should be and the judge will typically apply that, so their recommen-dation is turned into a legal probation order that has to be followed.”

Hinden hopes to expand the experience into a monthly event next year.

“I guess what I would envi-sion is maybe a rotating group of kids that could do it maybe once a year,” Hinden said. “I think the real issue would be faculty coverage because the Teen Court occurs in the early afternoon and somebody would have to miss classes, but we’ll see. If we can do it, it would be a good thing.”

Juveniles recommended by the probation department have to admit to wrong doing and receive consent from guardians to participate in Teen Court.

By SpENcEr giSSEr

Jack McFadden-Talbot ’09 was accepted into Midori Goto’s music studio at USC. Goto, the chair of the string department at the USC Thornton School of Music, currently teaches eight stu-dents in her studio.

Jack McFadden-Talbot ’09 was awarded a Presiden-tial Scholarship from the University of Southern Cali-fornia.

The Presidential Scholar-ship, which covers half the USC tuition, is awarded to 200 incoming USC freshmen each year. The recipients are chosen by USC faculty and staff.

Although Talbot did not

apply for a Presidential Scholarship, he became eli-gible for the award after he applied to the School of Mu-sic.

“I actually didn’t know about the award until I re-ceived my acceptance let-ter,” Talbot said.

Talbot was the only appli-cant to the USC Thornton School of Music to receive the award this year.

Talbot was also accepted to a Julliard-Columbia joint program for a composition degree.

Regardless of the school he attends in the fall, Talbot said he will want to pursue the performance aspect of music in addition to study-ing composition.

Midori Goto’s studio at USC accepts senior

alexia boyarsky/CHRONICLE

play it by ear: Jack McFadden-Talbot (left) plays his violin while Andy Alden ’09 accompanies on piano.

“I would go again in an instant,” Kanoff said. Olivia Kestin ’09, the student organizer of the trip, thought bond-

ing with the group and working on the job site was her favorite part, she said.

“There is a lot of teamwork involved and while working on the homes you really get to become close with other students who you might not have known well before while doing work you also may have never done before” Kestin said.

“It’s rewarding to know that we helped in some way to provide [residents] a new home to re-start their lives,” Kestin said.

Chamber Singers welcome new voices

“these are really just kids that made mistakes, like any of us.”

—Courtney Kelly ‘11Teen Court participant

The Chronicle News A7April 29, 2009

inbrief

Middle school staff plays student softball teams

Actor visits Shakespeare class, returns for encore

Actor Marc Singer (Phoebe ’09) spoke to English teacher Jocelyn Medawar’s Shakespeare class on Thursday and Friday of last week. The class read “The Taming of the Shrew” and had just watched a film with Singer starring as Petruchio. He read scenes from plays and answered questions. Singer surprised the class by coming back on Friday, when he spoke about the use of homophones and words and their meanings in Shakespeare.

— Nicki Resnikoff

Middle school faculty mem-bers are challenging the sev-enth and eighth graders on the middle school softball white and black teams to a game on May 8. It will take place on the brand new Sprague Field at 3:30 p.m. The student teams will be led by coaches Hillary Schwab, Coach Lew Roberts, Carmen Roberts and Zach Bainter.

— Sade Tavangarian

Social Committee taking co-chair applications

The Social Committee formed by prefects Aarti Rao ’10 and Jen-nie Porter ’10 that plans fundrais-ers and theme activities during Wednesday breaks is currently taking applications from inter-ested juniors and sophomores for co-chair next year.

— Sade Tavangarian

Students greet Easter with Para Los Niños

Eleven students participated in a charitable event for under-privileged children at the Cheviot Hills Recreation Center April 18.

From 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., they decorated Easter eggs with about forty kids from the shelter Para Los Niños. Para Los Niños is dedicated to providing a safe ha-ven for children in tough neigh-borhoods or family situations.

The event marked the first time a school-sponsored com-munity service event was held in conjunction with Para Los Niños. It was run through the Leader-ship branch of the organization United in Harmony. Leadership organizes one event per month, according to Cindy Ok ’10, who is on the Leadership board.

— Alex Leichenger

Touchstone contest entries due Friday

Touchstone entries are due on Friday for the middle school and on May 8 for the upper school.

The Touchstone contest cre-ated by the Character Educa-tion Committee, a group of staff members from both campuses, challenges students to write a brief, inspirational expression that represents the school’s val-ues and the character of its stu-dents. It can be the work of a single student or a collaboration.

Entries can be mailed to Rab-bi Emily Feigenson at efeigen-son@hw.com. When submitting entries, the subject of the e-mail should be “Touchstone” and the names of the creator(s) included.

— Emily Khaykin

By Alice PhilliPs

The upper school Junior Classical League team placed sec-ond overall for high schools at the state convention for the Latin organization. Both middle school teams placed first in their respective certamen competitions.

The convention, held at a San Jose high school, was a two day event from Friday March 28 through Saturday March 29. Forty schools sent student delegates to the convention, with 1,309 total students in attendance.

The Upper School sent 17 students to compete at high school levels. The second place overall award was a tally of all points earned in individual, spirit, and academic competitions. The Upper School team also won a second place award for spirit.

“There are plenty of individual awards and academic awards, but none of those matter to me as much as the spirit award,” JCL club adviser and trip chaperone Paul Chenier said. The Middle School sent eight students to compete at middle school and high school levels. Along with two first place awards for the main event, certamen, the middle school teams won nu-merous individual awards for art, dance, and academic testing and the second place team spirit award. The certamen is a “jeopardy”-style quiz competition.

“There are batteries of exams that the kids take when they get there,” Chenier said. These tests on Latin grammar, my-thology, and daily life act as qualification for the individual awards. On Saturday, the certamen, spirit, and cultural com-petitions take place followed by an awards banquet where the officers for next year’s JCL are elected.

Alex Geller ’10 was elected parliamentarian by the delegates after applying, giving a speech and electioneering.

“For a group that’s so small, we produce a surprising amount of leaders for the state convention,” Chenier said. “[The com-petition is] a normal mix of academic rigor and fun that Har-vard-Westlake students seem to enjoy.”

Junior Classical League places 2nd in state

Students win national art, writing awardsBy cAndice nAvi

Melanie Chan ’12, Maddie Lear ’13 and Jack Mankiewicz ’09 won national gold and silver awards in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition.

Lear’s photo, “True,” is a close up of Zelda Wengrod ’13 taken at the Santa Monica Pier.

“Her expression is wise, but the photo brings on a kind of intense serious feeling, like she’s somehow in pain,” Lear said.

All submissions were either sent by mail or uploaded onto Ovationtv.com, which allows all the artists to see and comment on each others’ photos and artistic works of differ-ent mediums from students across the country.

“It’s like MySpace or Facebook where they comment on your work and request to be your friend,” Lear said.

Chan received a gold award for her poem, “Treacherous Steps,” which personifies the dangers of the ocean.

For Chan, the submission pro-cess was fairly simple compared to the visual arts’ process.

“We just had to submit our poem online at the scholastic website and they announced about two months back who the keys were,” said Chan. “The people who got gold keys advanced to be considered for national awards.”

Jack Mankiewicz ’09 won a sil-ver award for his play “Revelation,” which is about one man’s revela-tions over the course of the day.

“All these revelations are pro-jected on the screen behind him,” Mankiewicz said. “He first doesn’t want to go to college and then he decides he doesn’t want to be with his girlfriend.”

Of the 140,000 people who origi-nally submitted pieces to the con-test, only 1,000 got national awards. A national ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York City on June 4 will recognize award-winning stu-dents.

By JordAn Freisleben

In between takes on his new feature film starring George Clooney, director Jason Re-itman ’95 popped into another room to ask Video Art teacher Cheri Gaulke for feed-back.

Gaulke, along with daughters, Xochi ’12 and Marka ’12 Maberry-Gaulke, traveled to St. Louis to observe the making of “Up in the Air.” As the protagonist, Clooney plays an executive whose job entails flying around the country to fire people while trying to achieve his goal of accumulating 10 million frequent flyer miles.

Gaulke has recently been in contact with Reitman for the scheduling of the Harvard-Westlake series Speaking of Movies, where Reitman interviews people in the film in-dustry in front of an audience.

Having grown up in St. Louis, Gaulke de-cided that a trip there with her daughters would be the perfect combination of visiting her parents and spending a day on the set of a feature film.

Gaulke’s experience on Reitman’s set was the first time she had ever seen a former student direct after high school.

“I felt like I was there to learn from him,” she said. “To be on a real film set is really such an experience.”

Gaulke’s daughters, whom she calls “as-piring filmmakers,” got to further under-stand the process of film making.

“I thought it was a great experience to see how things work on a film set,” Marka Maberry-Gaulke said. “It was fun to see how many people were needed and all of their various jobs.”

Both noted that making a full-length film is a much longer process than what they are used to.

“I know that when I’ve made my little three-minute movies, filming and planning everything gets really tiring,” Xochi Mab-erry-Gaulke said. “I can only imagine how tiring it is for all of the crew, and especially the actors and actresses. It takes almost a whole hour to film only a tidbit of a scene [that’s] only a few seconds long.”

Reitman made time to show the work-ings of filmmaking to Gaulke and her daughters.

After returning, Gaulke spent a period talking about her time on the film set to all three of her film classes.

While on set, Gaulke was given a hand-out with a schedule that included the pages of the script that were being shot that day. She has since decided to integrate the idea of a production sheet into her more ad-vanced level classes as an organizing tool for students to use on set.

Gaulke remembers watching Reitman shoot and direct when in high school. Al-though Reitman was in Visual Arts teacher Kevin O’Malley’s class, Gaulke feels that Reitman has always looked at her as a teaching influence.

“He embraces both of us [as teachers],” Gaulke said, “even though he was techni-cally not in my class.”

Although Reitman credits his high school video class with teaching him how to edit, Gaulke feels that he has learned a lot since.

“If I taught him anything, it’s about the size of a fingernail,” she said.

Gaulkes visit Reitman’s set

Courtesy of Cheri Gaulke

Meet Me in st. louis: Video Art teather Cheri Gaulke and daughters Xochi and Marka Maberry-Gaulke visit director Jason Reitman ’95 on the set of his film “Up in the Air.”

Courtesy of Moss Pike

Work that toGa!: Rohun Bansal ’10, Charlotte Shih ’10, and Jennifer Chan ’10 cheer their loudest for the spirit award.

The ChronicleA8 News April 29, 2009

By Olivia Kwitny

Zelda Wengrod ’13 won an award at the Glob-al Kids for Kids festival in Canada.

Her three minute noir film “The Night in Question,” won the Best Film in the Live Action Six Through 12 Years-old category from a pro-fessional jury comprised of four Canadian film industry professionals.

This is one of only two films Wengrod has made.

“She really thought about what made a noir film,” Cheri Gaulke, who taught Wengrod in a Visual Arts class in summer 2007, said. “She watched those types of films to really under-

stand them.”After doing internet research, Wengrod in-

troduced Gaulke to many festivals, including Global Kids for Kids.

“Zelda really impressed me as a director. She was involved in costumes, lighting, and so many aspects throughtout the film process,” Gaulke said.

Entered into contests the in summer of 2007, Wengrod’s film has won awards at the Newport Beach Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival.

“I wold love to pursue filmmaking when I grow up,” Wengrod said. “It’s one of my pas-sions.”

victory is sweet

President thomas C. hudnut watChes as students Cheer as Confetti is released at the Champions’ day ceremony on march 25 during break. the ceremony and parade honored the achievements of the boys’ varsity basketball, girls’ varsity basketball, and girls’ varsity soccer teams. after the ceremony, students received Jamba Juice and cookies.

AlexiA BoyArsky/ CHroNIClE

School squelches senior Ditch DayBy Sam adamS

A proposed senior class “Ditch Day” for Monday April 20 did not come to fruition after a public Facebook event for the day was seen by members of the administration. An email sent to the class reiterated school policy that if a student does not attend all aca-demic obligations, he or she cannot participate in any after school extracurricular activities.

Still, some seniors skipped school on Monday, Tuesday or both.“I slept in until 11, went to breakfast with a few of my friends,

then met a bunch of seniors at the beach,” one senior who partici-pated in the ditch day said. “We played football in the water, beach volleyball, and just laid around. Then we went to an early dinner and all went home.”

Taking place on a day in which members of the Playwright’s Festival, Peer Support and spring season sports teams had signifi-cant obligations, the day chosen for the informal tradition was es-pecially poor, upper school dean Vanna Cairns said.

In addition, an AP Art History exam was scheduled for the day, with teachers threatening to give zeroes to any students with un-excused absences.

“officially, the administration is never going to sanction a ditch day,” Cairns said. “That being said, if the seniors wanted to have such a day for bonding or for whatever reason, it would be better for them to choose a day maybe after APs. The concept of a senior Ditch Day doesn’t have to be adversarial with the administration.”

Few students actually ditched school on the day or the following day, Attendance Coordinator Gabriel Preciado said.

“If they want to do it, that’s fine. They just need to know the repercussions involved,” Preciado said. “It’s a day of rebellion for them, against school and school activities, for them to go out and do something other than sitting and getting an academic workload.”

The ones who did partake in the festivities received detentions that they are schetuled to serve on May 1, but that did not faze the revelers.

“The only repercussion of having a wonderful Ditch Day with all my friends is spending an hour in detention with those same great people,” the same senior said. “Actually, we are looking forward to this detention. We are working on a funny theme for it.”

However, a Ditch Day creates extra work for Preciado, who must separate ditching students from those with legitimate excuses.

“Sometimes we have to weed out those students who are legiti-mately ill or had a doctor’s appointment versus those whose par-ents just gave us that as an excuse,” Preciado said. “We like them to have their fun but we can’t just take an easy stand on it because if we do, what’s wrong with two ditch days? What’s wrong with three, four, five? The list goes on.”

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Go Wolverines!

8th grader’s film wins awards at local and international festivals

Department chairs step down from positions

PrivAte eye: henry woody ’13 stars as detective dirk Callo-way in Zelda wengrod’s ’13 “the night in Question.” wengrod has won awards for this film in multiple festivals.

courtesy of ZeldA wengrod

By alexia BoyarSKy

Although a couple of faculty mem-bers are leaving both campus’ this year, Chief of Finance Rob Levin says that the turnover has significantly decreased this year. Meanwhile, five teachers will be changing positions next year in order to pursue differ-ent aspects of their jobs.

At the upper school, Foreign language Department Chair Javier Zaragoza will be stepping down from his post, in order to “take a break from administration” and return to teaching, Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said in an e-mail to the faculty.

latin teacher Paul Chenier will be taking over Zaragoza’s position starting in September.

“This department is overflowing with teachers who have experience as chair, so that makes the job a lot easier,” Chenier said. “I have plenty of people I can turn to for guidance and advice.”

Middle school Math Department Chair Bob Pavich will hand over his post to math teacher Sue olson, in order to “to return to full-time teaching,” Huybrechts said.

Olson has led and managed the Middle School Professional Develop-ment Committee for around 15 years, Huybrechts said, but she will pass on these duties to history and Latin teacher John Corsello.

Although some faculty members are switching positions, the number of teachers leaving is significantly less than usual.

The Chronicle News A9April 29, 2009

By Sammy Roth

Twelve faculty members toured China dur-ing spring break, learning about Chinese his-tory, air pollution, art and authoritarian rule, among other topics which they hope to incor-porate into the Harvard-Westlake curriculum.

Accompanied by Dr. Yunxiang Yan, the co-director of UCLA’s Center for Chinese Stud-ies, and a faculty group from John Thomas Dye School, the group toured for 10 days, visiting Beijing, Kunming, and Shanghai.

The trip was paid for entirely by Walter and Shirley Wang (Walter ’13), who also arranged for the dozen teachers to take a lecture series on China at UCLA, Head of School Dr. Jeanne Huybrechts said.

Director of Studies Dr. Deborah Dowling, who went on the trip, said that being guided by Yan added a unique element to her experience.

“Having as a tour guide the head of UCLA’s Center for Chinese Studies was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was just extraordinary,” Dowling said. “To go around China just by your-self with a guidebook, you’d see lots of inter-esting things. But to go around with a world-renowned anthropologist, whose expertise is Chinese society, culture and history is just ex-traordinary, you learn so much.”

The other 11 faculty members, all of whom teach at the Middle School, said that they can apply much of what they learned in China in their classes.

History teacher Stephen Chan said that he will be able to use pictures he took on the trip next year in his seventh and eighth grade class-es, and history teacher George Gaskin said that experiencing first-hand the social conditions in China will help him teach students about the implications of political upheavals in China.

“I am sure that the quality of my teaching on Chinese history will be significantly improved because of this trip,” Gaskin said. “The history came alive to me on this trip, and it is my hope

to pass that on to my students when we study Chinese history.”

Biology teacher Sandra Wolchok said she learned a great deal about what China is and is not doing to fight its widespread air pollution.Dowling too took note of the pollution, saying that it was impossible to ignore.

“It was absolutely shocking,” Dowling said. “The pollution was astoundingly bad. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Visual Arts teacher Katherine Palmer said that being seeing centuries of Chinese art gave her ideas for new projects for her students.

“As a teacher and an artist, the trip has given me a greater appreciation for the rich history of art and the hand-made artistry of China,” Palmer said.

English teacher Stephen Chae said that ex-periencing China will help him teach the book “Animal Farm,” much of which concerns totali-tarian authority.

“At various points throughout the trip, it be-came even more apparent that China is a state-controlled nation,” Chae said.

Teachers also spent time as normal tour-ists, visiting the Great Wall of China and the Olympic Water Cube, and shopping. But for Dowling, these tourist attractions were much less interesting than discovering parts of Chi-nese society which challenged her assumptions about what is normal. For instance, she said, Chinese etiquette dictated that waiting in a line can involve pushing and shoving.

“There was no sense of rudeness or aggres-sion or anger involved at all; that was just the etiquette,” she said.

Even more surprising were the toilets, which required that people bring their own toilet pa-per. But Dowling said that she did not consider these differences to be for the worse.

“They’re looking at things from a different perspective,” Dowling said. “They have differ-ent definitions of what is good and what is bad, and how things ought to be.”

Teachers broaden cultural horizons with trip to China

photos courtesy of nat damon

a whole new world: His-tory teachers Stephen Chan, Matthew Cutler, and Karen Fuku-shima, English teacher Stephen Chae and French and English teacher Claire Paster-nack stand outside the Lü Bo Lang restaurant in Shanghai (top). The teachers visit a Chinese elementary school to observe the classroom (center). Bi-ology teacher Sandra Wolchok takes a break atop the Great Wall of China (bottom).photos courtesy of by nat damon

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The ChronicleA10 News April 29, 2009

AP Studio ArtWhen Hall received this year’s AP

rubric, she was confused. At least two or three of the glossy photos of the sample work were clearly based on photographs, but the College Board’s online material emphasized the impor-tance of drawing from life.

She decided to attend an AP Stu-dio Art workshop put on by the College Board.

“I wanted to know what was going on with the rubric, we spent a lot of time at this. The students deserve to be rewarded for what they do, they put a lot of thought, a lot of imagination into it,” she said.

Last year’s senior class scored way below what they would have in any other year, Hall said. She has taught AP Studio Art for over 20 years; she was “shocked” at the scores (out of 15 students, six scored a 4, six scored a 3 and three scored a 2). She believes she discovered the reason when she at-tended the workshop.

“The woman [leading the work-shop] mentioned that last year they had 37,000 or 39,000 portfolios,” she said. The last time she had been to a workshop several years ago, they had received 4,000 portfolios and had hired 100 readers to evaluate them. “And I asked – ‘and how many readers did you have?’ Still 100. So I started to do the math.”

Thinking of how many hours the readers must work, and how tired each group must be after just one hour, Hall asked the leaders of the group, two readers with eight and 30 years of ex-perience, how much time each group dedicated to a single portfolio.

“The woman didn’t answer it, she kept saying ‘everyone is trained re-ally well; they get really fast at seeing what’s going on,’” Hall said. “I said “yes, but how much time?” Finally the wom-an responded “about 15 seconds.” The man interrupted, ‘more like five.’”

In the question and answer ses-sions that followed, the leaders of the workshop emphasized the importance of not confusing the readers, of not making the concentrations “too intel-lectual,” Hall said. They urged teachers to encourage all of their students, even those with learning disabilities, to par-ticipate in the program.

“I’ve always made the analogy to my students that the concentration is like a play, or it’s like a poem, or it’s like a novel with a beginning, middle and end with the grand ‘aha!’ as the thesis,” Hall said.

After she attended the workshop, however, Hall felt she had to inform her classes – the seniors, who were half way through their concentrations, and the juniors who had hopes of doing the same – of the College Board’s new standards.

“They want to get it in a flash – it has to be like a poster, a sign, not a work of art anymore,” Hall said.

Student ReactionHall was surprised to find that sev-

eral juniors still wanted to participate in AP Studio Art the following year knowing their portfolio would only re-ceive five seconds of evaluation.

“I had heard of the restrictions on the readers and how they were going to not have time to look at it, but it didn’t really change my decision because I’ve been doing art since I was so little, and it was like I’d be cheating myself if I didn’t go to the highest I could in high school,” Nicola Kronstadt ’10 said.

When she discovered the “disarray” the AP program was in, Hall discussed the possibility of creating an honors art course not associated with the Col-lege Board but ultimately rejected the idea because in order to be certified as an honors course, a class must have an equivalent regular course. Hall also worried that the shift might affect the popularity of the class.

Spanish teacher Roser Gelida has experienced a similar student reac-tion to AP Spanish Literature. In 2003 the College Board alerted teachers of the class to a massive overhaul of the curriculum to make it more like a sur-vey course. Where teachers were once allowed to choose all the works they taught from a list of four 20th century authors, they were now given a list of over 50 works they were required to teach, some dating to the Middle Ages, Gelida said.

“Now we don’t have room to maneu-ver, to change, to say ‘I don’t like this, I’m going to change this’ or ‘I’m bored of this, next year I’m going to do some-thing different’ or ‘Kids don’t like this, I’m going to change it.’ Can’t do it,” she said. “That’s the list, it’s proscribed, and I have to follow it. And if I have to prepare the students for the exam, I have to teach everything.”

Every year, Gelida gives her students a survey, asking them, among other things, whether they would choose an honors course that focused more nar-rowly on certain Spanish writers or the current AP course. The students choose the AP course every time, she said.

Shelby Layne ’09, a current AP Spanish Literature student, under-stands the statistic but feels she has a different perspective having taken the course.

“If you had the choice between an honors and the AP you’d want the credit for college purposes. But kids don’t know exactly what they’re get-ting into,” she said. “I have learned so much from this class because we have covered a huge volume of work, but I felt that each piece was very rushed. I know a lot of other schools did away with the AP once it changed. For ex-ample, Marlborough only has a one se-mester honors course.”

If students responded in favor of an honors course, Gelida would attempt to create one, she said. Teaching an honors course would be a much easier task, though the class would remain challenging.

Without the pressure of exams, which drive the focus of the class to-ward writing essays, Gelida would add a presentation element and the chance to compare the assigned literature with film interpretations.

“I would hear what the students have to say…That happens with what I am teaching now. I mean there are things that they don’t like, things I can tell are not interesting, but I have to teach it year after year,” she said.

The AP AdvantageDowling, who is a teacher of AP

Physics B in addition to her role as Di-rector of Studies, finds freedom within the restrictions of the College Board.

“We have to teach what they say we have to teach,” Dowling said, “but there’s a little bit of freedom in how we teach it, particularly in what we em-phasize and how quickly we go through stuff.”

The creation of curriculum is an ever-changing process, Dowling said. Teachers are constantly “rethinking” their lessons, changing worksheets and homework problems a little every year.

“I think that any course that is writ-ten by someone other than me is going to make me think ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do it that way,’” Dowling said.

For example, Dowling cited the treatment of rotational motion in AP Physics B as a topic that would go un-der the knife if she had her way. The class right now covers the topic in about a day and a half. Dowling thinks it should be either a few weeks or not at all.

“There are lots of bits in the AP physics course that I think ‘oh that’s a bit silly,’ but I do it anyway because that way, I know the students are get-ting what other students are getting, and the colleges can trust that my stu-dents have got something they can un-derstand” she said.

Preserving a balance between the demands of the test and what the teacher believes is important is a con-cern in the new class AP English Lan-guage, Department Head Laurence Weber said.

“They aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but there’s a research com-ponent, there’s a research passage to the AP [Language] program,” he said. “Our program is the mind of the stu-dent meets the mind of the writer; we want our students in conversation with [George] Orwell and Emily Dick-inson and sort of communing and com-ing away with a larger understanding of life. But we don’t want them going to the AP Language exam not having done the equivalent of our little weird DBQ kind of thing, which is a resear-chy thing they have to do.”

The English department’s AP pro-gram has been in flux for the past few years. This year the department has again settled that all seniors take either AP English Literature or AP English Language, which is a rhetoric course. Though the AP is not offered until senior year, the standards of the test inform the whole Harvard-Westlake English program. Even students read-ing Orwell’s “1984” in sophomore year are working in an AP style of reading, Weber said.

Rhetoric, the study of how writers make arguments, is a discrete study but not unrelated to the study of lit-erature and composition. Both are linked by analysis of concrete detail, Weber said.

“There was an inherent unfairness in providing an AP class to the seniors who were already kind of earning a majority of the higher grades in Eng-lish, so they were getting kind of this double springboard effect, which when we examined it seemed unfair,” Weber said, explaining the decision to include AP English Language in the senior curriculum.

Dowling too sees a number of advan-tages in sticking with the AP program. For one thing, she believes the ability to absorb lots of knowledge quickly (re-ferring to the rush of the crammed AP curriculum some teachers, like Gelida, feel) will be a useful skill in many of the fields Harvard-Westlake students are bound to enter, even if it doesn’t result in perfect retention of AP Physics B in 5-10 years time. She also believes it is “healthy” to set an outside standard.

“It keeps us part of the broader community and not sitting up on our little mountain saying ‘we’re bet-ter than you, na na na na na.’ We can have plenty of courses that go beyond the AP and do more exciting stuff. We have regular Physics for those teach-ers who want to go into the topics they think are particularly exciting at the depth that they want to. We have SSR for students who want to do something that’s really exciting and go beyond what an AP course could ever deliver. But we also have AP for those who want the standardized course,” she said, “and the popularity suggests that people want it.”

AP changes elicit mixed feelings

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Several changes in the AP curriculum by the College Board and by school administrators:

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AP World History now taught by time period AP Comparative Government now has 6, not 5 countries

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The Chronicle News A11April 29, 2009

By Ellina ChulpaEff

Student models walked the runway in the third annual Fash-ion for Action runway show for charity on April 17. Guest host Adam Gregory from “90210” introduced the show, which includ-ed clothing from several brands including Haute Hippie, Ralph Lauren and Nicole Miller. The show also featured a dress de-signed by Hannah Rosenberg ’11.

The show was put together by co-chairs Alanna Bram ’09, Candace Ravan ‘09 and Nisha Shah ’09. The three have been organizing the show and contacting designers since last May, Shah said.

The models were all students who did not participate in Fash-ion for Action in previous years, picked for their abilities to be responsible in showing up to rehearsals and committing to the event, Shah said.

Outfits were styled by the three co-chairs. The show featured both casual resort clothing and formal evening attire.

All the clothing, with the exception of the formal wear lent by A.B.S and Men’s Wearhouse, was donated by the designers to be sold at the event. All attendees received a Philosophy Carrot Cake shampoo, shower gel and bubble bath as a gift for coming.

After the show in Taper Gymnasium, runway clothing and donated pieces were sold in a boutique outside Munger.

The boutique featured designer clothing, jewelry, accessories, handbags, lotions and more at heavily discounted prices. There was also a silent auction which included diamond earrings.

Ticket sales alone generated more than $10,000. All proceeds are going to Fashion Targets Breast Cancer, as breast cancer is one of the most common cancers and one in eight women who live to 85 will have it, Ravan said.

“Fashion Targets Breast Cancer was our immediate first choice charity to donate to because breast cancer is a disease that we are all familiar with and have been affected by in one way or another,” Shah said.

All leftovers from the boutique were sold last Wednesday in Chalmers. The items were discounted an additional 30 to 60 percent, with some items costing as little as two dollars.

“This year we didn’t want the event to be too extravagant because we want to be sensitive to the current economic state. There certainly is a possibility that the event will develop and grow in the future,” Shah said.

Although the fashion show is not scheduled to happen next year, an increase in interest in the following year could bring it back, Ravan said.

Fashion for Action raises money for cancer research

By Emily KhayKin

Last month, Chelsea McMa-hon ’10 won a prize that could save her a lot of walking.

In March, the Social Commit-tee created a competition to pick the winners of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. The winner of the competition would be able to choose his or her parking spot next year. About 140 people entered, but McMahon, who describes herself as “a huge hockey fan,” ended up win-ning.

Not knowing much about basket-

ball, McMahon based her choices off tidbits of information she heard.

For example, she said, “I picked Michigan State because my uncle went to the game and was rooting for them.” The team she picked to be champion was North Carolina, because she “heard someone saying that they were doing really well this season.”

McMahon also selected teams based on their record during the season and their rankings.

“I never picked UCLA for anything because I’m a USC fan,” she added, laughing.

McMahon will submit her parking spot decision to security guard Sand-ers Jackson.

“I have a lot of options right now, but I’m leaning towards the one right next to Taper,” she said.

Walk it out: At the Fashion for Action show, Paris Humphrey ’12 struts her stuff in a Hannah Rosenberg ’11 original design (top left). Guest Host Adam Gregory speaks to the crowd (top right). Adam Maltz ’09 and Dina DeLaurentiis ’09 model side by side (bottom).

photos courtesy of joe girton

Junior picks NCAA winners, earns parking spot of choice

By matthEw lEE

Five sophomores and juniors raised about $25,000 at a charity event benefitting Madison’s Foundation, which connects parents of children with rare diseases.

The event, “Night at the Roxy,” included perfor-mances by celebrity musicians Shwayze and Super Mash Bros and was held at the Roxy in West Hol-lywood March 28.

Jackson Foster ’11, Alice Newman ’11, Patrick Newman ’10, Max Olshansky ’11 and Brooke Pech-man ’11 planned the event with students from The Buckley School, Palisades High School, Brentwood School and Granada Hills High School.

“The event was very successful,” Alice Newman said.

In late August, Pechman met with the founder of Madison’s Foundation, Marcy Smith, and Pech-man said that they were both enthusiastic about a fundraising concert that would appeal to teenag-ers. The foundation is named after Smith’s daugh-ter Madison, who has a rare disease.

Pechman chose a committee of 12 high school students to help plan the event and work to obtain donations.

Tickets for the concert were $48, and about 500 tickets were sold.

Pechman said that there will be another event for Madison’s Foundation next year and that she will continue to work with the foundation.

“Not only was it an amazing experience helping Madison and the foundation, but we all made new connections and friendships,” Pechman said.

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features The ChronicleHarvard-Westlake SchoolVolume XVIIIssue 7April 29, 2009

A12

The history department office’s dynamic consists of playful banter, long-held traditions and peanut-butter M&Ms.Making History

By Lucy Jackson

It’s a lazy Friday afternoon and history teach-ers Larry Klein, Ken Neisser and Dave Waterhouse chat in the third floor Seaver history office discuss-ing the potential cell phone ban, peanut M&Ms and the merits of the newly-designed caffeine-free Diet Coke can. As juniors trickle in to talk term papers with Neisser and Waterhouse tries to finish his grading before the weekend, the three joke around, ever apologetic for the lack of liveliness in the office (“Normally we have a wild party but we knew you were going to be here,” Waterhouse jokingly tells a reporter.)

At one point early in the period, history teacher Dror Yaron walks briskly through the office to his desk at the opposite end, opening Neisser’s M&M drawer and snagging some peanut ones on his way. While the teachers refer to it as the “secret stash,” Neisser, who has left it unguarded during his brief coffee run, seems to be well aware of the depart-ment antics. Waterhouse and Klein follow Yaron’s lead, jumping up to take a handful too.

“I personally never open the drawer, but as soon as somebody else opens it, then it’s fair game,” Wa-terhouse says. “If I started getting in the habit of opening it, it would be gone a lot more quickly and I would weigh a lot more than I do.”

Neisser returns, and the office returns to busi-ness as usual when Waterhouse brings up a histori-cal reference about Watergate.

It’s this mix of business and pleasure that seems to propel the office dynamic. During the period, Neis-ser earnestly counsels a junior on the importance learning about history, while two desks over, Klein tells a sophomore girl to knock loudly and interrupt Eric Zwemer’s class to retrieve the backpack she left in there. He leads her on for about 30 seconds before she catches on and decides to just wait until the class gets out.

“We don’t tease each other or play tricks on each other — we just tease the students,” Waterhouse joked. “It’s Mr. Klein’s specialty.”

All jokes aside, (and there are plenty dispersed

throughout the period) the teachers get serious about some things. Waterhouse retires to the se-cluded back room usually reserved for students tak-ing makeup tests to grade exams himself, and Klein debates pros and cons of a potential ban on student cell phone use during the day.

“I go back there not because the department dis-tracts me, but because to avoid grading papers, I dis-tract them,” Waterhouse said. “So the only way of getting anything done is to isolate myself.”

And when the period ends 15 minutes later as school gets out and teachers and last minute stu-dents file in, it’s easy to see how the office could provide a hectic work environment. Teacher Nini Halkett walks into two waiting students, and Klein immediately strikes up conversation with Depart-ment Head Katherine Holmes-Chuba when she re-turns from her art history class.

“Oh, you have Ms. Holmes-Chuba now,” he says. “This is going to get exciting.”

As the office fills with lively conversation and playful taunting between teachers, it becomes clear that the History Department is built on just that: history. Among the teachers sitting in the office, many of them have been working at the school (and Harvard and Westlake,) for more than 20 years. Francine Werner tops the list with 32 years of expe-rience, followed by Waterhouse and Holmes-Chuba, who have worked here for 30 and 24 years, respec-tively.

The bonds between some of the teachers stretch back further than Harvard-Westlake itself. As a re-sult, the department has several stories and tradi-tions, some of which, like Holmes-Chuba’s carpool with Zwemer, have changed or fallen by the wayside over the years.

“We did [carpool], until she ditched me,” he said. “She moved to Mount Chuba.” Mount Chuba, Zwe-mer’s affectionate moniker for Holmes-Chuba’s new house, is built on a hill, with 54 steps leading up to it and an elevator.

“And a fleet of footmen,” Zwemer adds for good measure. “Yeah, when she moved to the mansion I was kicked to the curb.”

Other traditions, however, remain alive and well, like the year-end department party every year that teachers’ entire families attend. The party works particularly well for the kids, given that Halkett, Holmes-Chuba, Waterhouse and history teach-er Drew Maddock all have children at the Upper School, and although Werner’s children have already cycled through the school, her daughter still bakes treats occasionally for the department, Klein said.

All the history makes for some memorable mo-ments, as well, which becomes clear when Holmes-Chuba and Werner recount the departure of an old colleague.

“Phil [Sweeney] told us he was leaving for Okla-homa, so we all went to see ‘Twister’ in theaters to try to deter him,” Werner said. At his farewell par-ty, the department dressed up in Southern attire to send him off, she added.

Despite the memory-packed past, the teachers of-ten talk current topics instead, debating hot button issues or new stances taken on historical issues.

“There’s somebody who says, what about the whatever, and then Dr. Waterhouse Googles, I Wiki-pedia and Mr. Maddock just knows,” Klein said.

“We’re not afraid to argue,” Neisser added later. “It’s great when someone throws a hot topic out there — you’ve got a lot of opinionated people.”

And while there’s a fair amount of debate among what Klein described as a liberal-dominated envi-ronment, the “new guy” Neisser says there’s a lot of cooperation as well.

“The dynamic in here is interesting, friendly, help-ful — what’s great is that everyone here is respectful of past experience,” he said. “It’s the most stimu-lating environment I’ve ever worked in. If someone says ‘I’ve got a class, can you take it?’ people do it, no question.”

And, true to form, Waterhouse butts in with a joke.

“You know why?” he asks rhetorically. “It’s be-cause we go in to someone else’s class and teach them all the wrong stuff.”

To which Neisser makes a witty retort, and the office banter starts up again.

photos by Cathi Choi and dana glaser

Zwemer has a Kodos figure on his desk from “The Simpsons,” a show he watches regularly.

3

Peanut M&Ms from Ken Neisser’s “secret stash”

1 The past week’s newspapers

Waterhouse’s bobbleheads

Waterhouse jokes about what W’house could stand for, bringing in a historical reference about Watergate.

5

42

history makers: The history teachers, (from left to right) Francine Werner, Eric Zwemer, Leslie Rockenbach, Ken Neisser, Katherine Holmes-Chuba, Dror Yaron and Nini Halkett, work at their desks right after school.

By Austin Block And FAire dAvidson

“People guess better than this! (ouch),” was writ-ten in purple on a student’s failed “Mrs. Dalloway” quiz underneath a circled 1, posted on a bulletin board for the viewing pleasure or displeasure of the whole school.

The board, known as the Wall of Shame, resides just outside Chalmers near the cafeteria, filled with failed or poor quizzes and assorted graded assign-ments.

The Wall of Shame was recently taken down; how-ever nobody seems to know who did it. It is possible that during the campus cleanup before the college night the wall was taken down so that admissions of-ficers and people from other schools wouldn’t see it, said Head of Upper School Harry Salamandra, but it cannot be confirmed.

The wall being taken down is “a little upsetting,” Kimo Thorpe ’09 said. “It was a tradition over the last couple of years.”

There was originally a Wall of Shame at Harvard boy’s school, where in April and May students would post rejections from colleges instead of graded as-signments.

The new wall was originally on a column outside Director of Student Affairs Jordan Church and Fa-ther Jay Young’s offices, but it was relocated to the wall outside.

“[The Harvard wall] had a whole different feel-ing because it didn’t have to do with the day-to-day operations of the school,” Dean Vanna Cairns said, “I actually thought that was kind of therapeutic and it was sort of interesting.”

The wall has remained a senior tradition.“Harvard-Westlake has such high standards for

academic excellence so it’s funny to see tests and quizzes people have failed because it shows no one is perfect and everyone fails a test or a quiz at some point,” Rachel Scott ’09, who had an item on the wall, said.

Seniors posted their own or sometimes friends’

failures and generally thought of it as a harmless joke, but the deans and a few faculty members were unhappy with the displays of ineptitude and/or apa-thy.

“When I see the Wall of Shame I see people revel-ing in their failures,” Dean Jon Wimbish said.

Wimbish thinks that the board gave the impres-sion to visitors, including college representatives, parents and applicants that “we don’t really care that we’re failing,” he said. “In fact, we’re going to joke about the fact that we’re failing.”

Billy Hawkins ’09, who is co-chair of the Student Ambassador Program, often gives tours of the cam-pus to perspective parents and says that most don’t notice the wall.

The few that do have asked Hawkins what it is, and when he explains that it’s a place for students to display poor grades to relieve pressure, they laugh and continue their tour.

“Let’s be honest, the grade is abysmal, but anyone who judges me because I got an F on a reading quiz is a waste of my time,” Alyssa Garcia ’09 said. “I love the Wall of Shame, it’s fantastic. Getting a bad grade once in a while is not embarrassing.”

Wimbish said that he thinks students who get in to college early and post these quizzes, send “a bad message to other students who are not in to college yet or who are juniors and who are thinking about applying early to schools next year.”

Although many things on the wall are failed quiz-zes on subjects students just didn’t understand, many are jokes where instead of trying to guess, he or she tries to make the teacher laugh.

For example, in his AP English Language class, Thorpe answered “He held his nose” to the reading quiz question “How did Guilliver kiss his wife?”

One anonymous senior answered every question on a reading quiz with different food items, for ex-ample, peanut butter and jelly.

Maddie Lenard ’09 put up a bibliography with an attached list of requirements that she was unaware of, adding, “Who knew?”

Despite the faculty opposition, the deans didn’t want to take it down.

“We would love it to come from the students,” Cairns said, “for us to be the police and monitoring and going to places on campus and ripping posters down constantly just doesn’t feel right to us… we like to be more in partnership with your success here.”

A couple of teachers said they felt uncomfortable that their names and their personal comments were on display.

Math teacher William Thill told his students that he disliked the wall, seeing it as more of a condem-nation of his teaching rather than a playful gesture when he sees something he graded posted.

Instead of posting something on the wall, the stu-dent should meet with him to understand the mate-rial, Thill said.

Cairns said that one teacher said, “I think less of that student now when I see that that is the way this student treats the work at Harvard-Westlake” and “This student goes down in my esteem.”

“For some it is cathartic,” school psychologist She-lia Siegel said. “It also certainly dispels the myth that all students at HW get all As. However I also think it makes some people uncomfortable.”

School counselor Luba Bek also added that put-ting something on the wall could be soothing to some because it lowers the significance of the grade, which usually bothers students greatly.

Bek does not approve of public sharing of grades and using poor grades to make other poor grades seem normal.

Although Wimbish said he would be okay with the wall if it is truly serving as a therapeutic method, “It’s hard for me to see it another way than how I’m interpreting it now.”

“Under pressure from my friends on the Prefect Council, I put the quiz up myself,” Harry Botwick ’09 said. “It doesn’t bother me at all that my shameful work is available for public viewing. I think it’s gener-ally understood that the work posted doesn’t neces-sarily reflect the usual quality of a student’s work.”

Seniors display the worst of the worst on a wall in the center of campus.

Question: Justify what [Gulliver] said here.Answer: “I make money.”

AP English Language “Gulliver’s Travels” Reading Quiz

Kimo Thorpe ’09

Features A13April 29, 2009 The Chronicle

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Question: What is the exclusionary rule?Student response: “This is an unfair question to ask a second semester senior.”

AP U.S. Government

Ryan Ashley ’09

Quiz on the Supreme Court

Score: 1 out of 12Teacher response: “People guess better than this.”

AP English Literature “Mrs. Dalloway” Reading Quiz

Jenna Berger ’09

“I asked my English teacher to write something funny so I could put it on the Wall of Shame.”

Overall grade: B+Test/quiz average: AHomework grade: 50%

Geology Honors

Cody Davis ’09“I like reading stuff on the wall so I thought I’d put something up.”

Teacher response: “You don’t need me to tell you that this is not a good essay.

Chris Trader ’09

AP English Language “Gulliver’s Travels” In Class Essay

By AllegrA Tepper

Overheardathw.tumblr.com might boast some incriminating lines straight from the lips of Harvard-Westlake students, but don’t go call-ing Chiara* ’09, the founder and gate-keeper to the site, Gossip Girl. “This is definitely not a gossip website,” Chi-ara said. “It’s just a collection of the ridiculous things we catch each other saying around campus.”

Chiara first started blogging just over a month ago after she and some friends decided Harvard-Westlake students’ one-liners deserved the per-manence and infamy of the web, fol-lowing in the footsteps of bloggers at Yale, Harvard, Stanford and in the Big Apple.

At first the site only featured things Chiara caught, but as the following grew, so did the contributing pool.

These days Chiara posts five or six new quotes a day, each identified only by position or gender. Fellow eaves-droppers send their findings in to the site’s gmail account, and Chiara filters quotations minimally.

“Even if I don’t find something fun-ny, I still post it,” Chiara said. “People have different senses of humor.”

While Chiara made certain the school’s name is never mentioned on the site, Harry Salamandra, Head of School, said the mere usage of the let-ters “HW” affiliate the website with the school. But as far as the vulgar language used on Overheard is con-cerned, Salamandra feels that this generation is more open to crude ex-pressions and doesn’t think it poses an issue.

The blog is followed by Harvard-Westlake graduates in addition to the many current students discover-ing the site each day. Rachel Katz ’11 believes that beyond providing enter-

tainment, the website helps build is community.

“This is really amusing for all dif-ferent types of people, and I think it is more successful at bringing us togeth-er than spirit days or Coffee Bean,” Katz said.

Chiara agrees; many of the e-mails she receives are from peers she rare-ly talks to or underclassmen she has never met.

As for next year, Chiara plans to pass the torch on to upperclassmen interested in keeping a new tradition alive.

Administrators worry more about posts being offensive and malicious than about vulgarity, but Chiara ad-dresses skeptics’ qualms with total confidence.

“We’re not trying to make anyone feel stupid, but sometimes you catch yourself saying something ridiculous, and you have to embrace it!” Chiara said. “People take themselves too seri-ously, and it’s time to lighten up.”

*Name has been withheld upon re-quest.

Have you heard?

All’s a-twitter

iancinnamonName: Ian Cinnamon ’10Follows: CinnDev (Cinnamon’s iP-hone company), Jacob Hazard

gelgelsName: Angela NavarroFollows: Harvard-Westlake Athletics

gracepark115Name: Grace Park ’09Follows: FMyLife, Starbucks Coffee, Britney Spears

jolg92Name: Joe Girton ’10Follows: CNN Breaking News, asherroth (singer Asher Roth)

redrightankleName: Nick Merril ’09Follows: Jacob Hazard, rain-nwilson (actor Rainn Wilson)

Follows: Kevin Weis (Math Teach-er), Jacob Hazzard (Math Teacher)

BobKazName: Bobby Kamiziroff ’09

The ChronicleA14 Features April 29, 2009

Follow you, follow me

Twitter, an online social networking site, has grown in popularity among teachers and students.

Twitter addicts recieve constant updates on the people they follow, ranging from teachers to celebrities.

By Derek Schlom

Bobby Kazimiroff ’09 is being fol-lowed. Forty-two people are acute-ly aware of his activities all day,

every day. For instance, they know that on April 20 his breakfast consisted of cof-fee and a Jamba Juice smoothie. They know that his internet signal that day was not at full capacity. They know that he assisted his mother in aiding a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. They know that he watched “Jeopardy” for the first time in a while, and that the squeaking of his desk chair dis-tracts him from studying for an AP Eco-nomics test.

They aren’t stalkers; they’re his friends. And they are reading his Twitter page.

For those not among the 14 million unique visitors to the site in the month of March alone, Twitter is a cost-free social network-ing and “micro-blogging” site created in 2006 that allows members to write “tweets” restricted to 140 characters, which are then posted onto the user’s profile page and sent to the aforementioned “followers,” who sub-scribe to fellow Twitter users’ posts.

“Updates don’t have to be about any-thing in particular,” Kazimiroff said. “They are short snippets of what you are doing at the moment. In the mornings while waiting to pick up carpool members I often tweet about the weather. If I had a fantastic meal at a restaurant I’ll post an update about it as well. I’ll often comment on how ridiculous the latest episode of Lost was. Anything and everything is a valid topic on Twitter.”

Grace Park ’09, who updates her Twitter twice a day on TwitterFon, an iPhone appli-cation, calls the site “addicting.”

“I follow ‘The Ellen Show,’ Perez Hilton and Britney Spears [on Twitter], so I like being able to get updates, pictures and con-test information from them,” she said.

As Twitter’s popularity grows (from fewer than 300,000 users in June 2007 to six million current Tweeters, including the likes of Oprah Winfrey), the debate wages on between those who consider Twitter a vehicle for the self-obsessed to share mun-dane details of their lives and they consider it a vast improvement over the redesigned Facebook.

User Brendan Kutler ’10 considers Twit-ter a “free, easy-to-use texting service.”

“I realize that a lot of kids have some beef with Twitter, describing it as a void where pretentious people throw useless facts that no one cares about, and, quite honestly, Twit-ter is filled with people who fit that descrip-

tion to a tee,” Kutler said. “But I could make almost the same argument about Facebook. Just as ‘no one cares’ about my 140-charac-ter updates, no one gives a crap about your [Facebook] bumper sticker. Those kinds of double standards really bug me.”

Twitter is “most useful,” user Angela Na-varro ’09 said, when used as a communica-tion tool for social networking. Navarro up-dates her Twitter “frequently.”

“If you just tweet about insignificant de-tails about your life, then yes, it becomes a lame site where people spout on about things no one else cares about. But I use it to keep in touch with my friends, my previous pur-pose for Facebook, a heavy site of photos, videos events, groups and people where it’s hard to keep track of the people you actually care about,” she said.

Kazimiroff, who joined Twitter nearly a year ago, finds Facebook “way too clut-tered,” he said.

“There is way too much going on update-wise every time I log on. With my Twitter account I have a lot more control over the information I receive. No extraneous ap-plications, no ads, just updates from a very specific group of people.”

Still, the “too much information” factor can be high, even among friends. As Tweet-er Nick Merrill jokes, “Advantages [to Twit-ter] include knowing what your friends are up to. Disadvantages include knowing what your friends are up to.”

While citizen journalists have long uti-lized the site (eyewitnesses to the Mumbai terrorists attacks in November 2008 posted updates as the events unfolded), Twitter’s next frontier may well be as a legitimate news source.

British newspaper The Guardian joked on April Fool’s Day that all stories would now exclusively be told in Twitters’ 140-charac-ter format, but reputable papers like the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times now regularly post breaking news updates and links to their respective websites via Twitter pages (Navarro follows the CNN Twitter, and Ian Cinnamon ’10 posts news articles on his page frequently).

Diverse uses for Twitter may be essential in a market saturated with sites for blogging and social networking.

“Despite having a thousand digital ways to communicate with our peers already, Twitter is a fun way to stay connected,” Tweeter Serena Berman ’09 said. “It’s really a site for anything. No rules.”

“I’m glad to be a part of the Twitter cul-ture,” she said.

For more coverage on Twitter, go to Sports A27InfographIc by candIce navI and Lauren Seo

Student: Will you sign my green sheet?Teacher: Where are you going?Student: Coachella.Teacher: No way! You should not be missing school for that. The line up’s not even that good.

Around campusA sampling of some anonymous submissions on the website.

Teacher: Don’t do cocaine, don’t smoke cigarettes. I don’t really think you should smoke medical marijuana because then you’ll just watch TV and listen to music and eat a lot of junk food.

Math teacher commenting on a student’s mistake: God, so many people got this wrong, that’s a chump answer guys.Student: Well, majority rules.Math teacher: Not when you’re wrong...

InfographIc by candIce navI

“SoMeTIMeS You CATCH YouRSeLF SAYING SoMe-THING RIDICuLouS, AND You HAVe To eMBRACe IT!”

—Chiara* ‘09Overheard at HW founder

Overheard@HW consists of soundbites from campus submitted by students.

By AlexiA BoyArsky

F or most people, pears are fruits bought at supermarkets, while sheep are animals played with at petting zoos. Latin teacher Paul Chenier, however, could tell you that pears are the hardest fruit to pick because their skin is prickly and their trees don’t afford enough shelter.

He could also tell you, from personal experience, that sheep aren’t good pets to have, because eventually they will be “utilized,” and they can also be picky about their food.

Growing up in the rural town of Naramata, located in British Columbia, Canada, Chenier spent the majority of his childhood and adolescence on a variety of farms. Although his parents did not own a permanent farm, they rented out property with farmland on it, which Chenier helped out on; he also regularly worked on his relatives’ farms.

“The whole backdrop of my history was farming,” he said. “It doesn’t seem special or odd to me.”

Because he was always “frail and slight,” Chenier said he did not participate in most of the manual labor on the farms, but instead took care of the “baby” plants in nurseries and picked fruits.

Chenier said that the hardest fruits to pick are pears and peach-es because they are “very prickly.” As a child, his favorite task was picking cherries during the summer.

“I would bring buttered bread with me, and after picking cher-ries smash some into the bread and eat it like a sandwich,” said Chenier. “It was shady and beautiful.”

But Chenier’s farming experience went beyond fruits. Instead, his family decided to get farm animals. They started out with two baby sheep when Chenier was in eighth grade.

“They were named Fickle and Finnigan, and they are pretty famous [among my students]; one was named after a character on a Canadian TV show, and one was just named because he was picky,” he said. “I remember waking up in the middle of the night to feed them.”

Because his aunt had a large cattle ranch, the family brood of animals extended to include two donkeys, half a dozen more sheep and some rabbits.

Chenier, however, knew that farming wasn’t for him. Although he was making “good money,” approximately 10 dollars an hour, the hardships of manual labor were always apparent to him.

“[Manual labor] is extremely difficult, and I have the highest re-spect for all of the people that do it on a daily basis,” Chenier said. “There is a romantic side to farming, sure, but I was always looking for other things that I could do.”

He first encountered Latin when he went to college at the Uni-versity of Victoria.

“In my public school, they would teach only French as a lan-guage, and I never felt a connection to it,” he said. “Someone read Virgil to me in college, in Latin, and I was struck by how beautiful it was.”

“I was never interested in language as an end in and of itself,” he said, “I wanted to read stuff by the people who spoke it, and that is what Latin is.”

By his third year of college, he was only taking classes in Latin or Ancient Greek, and he knew that this was what he wanted to spend his life doing.

While studying in university, Chenier also met his wife, former Latin teacher Siobhan McElduff.

Chenier jokes that he knew this was the woman he was going to marry, “because she was in the library section that no one but me ever goes in to,” the section containing Ancient Greek literature.

Chenier says that he when he gets older, he would like to retire in the same agricultural town he grew up in.

“I know every single spot of that town, and it’s full of memories for me,” he said. “It’s where my heart will always be.”

The ChronicleApril 29, 2009 Features A15

All photos Courtesy of pAul Chenier

home sweet home: Chenier revisits the lake near his family’s farm in the rural town of Naramata, British Columbia, Canada.

Back to his rootsLatin teacher Paul Chenier recounts his adolescence on a small Canadian farm.

pieces ofhome

“I would brIng buttered bread wIth me, and after pIckIng cherrIes smash some Into the bread and eat It lIke a sandwIch. It was shady and beautIful.

cherry orchard

mom’s backyard

“I know every sIngle spot of that town, and It’s full of memorIes for me. It’s where my heart wIll always be.

Chenier talks about a few memories from his past.

“[manual labor] Is extremely dIffIcult, and I have the hIghest respect

for all of the people that do It on a daIly basIs.

first job

infogrAphiC by CAthi Choi, Drew lAsh AnD CAnDiCe nAvi

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5:00At Friday’s premiere of Series B of the Playwrights Festival, Chronicle reporters followed 5 students involved in the production throughout the evening. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the Festival, hour by hour. By Alexia Boyarsky, Cathi Choi and Dana Glaserthe curtain

“Curbside,” by Nick Merrill ’09

Actress

Director

5:30 Park takes a stuffed puppy down to Coldwater Canyon and rubs its face in the muddy gutter. For the past few weeks, Park has been coating the puppy, named Elmer, with layers of dirt. When thrown, the puppy unleashes what Park calls “maniacal laugh-ter.”

Park decided to use Elmer as a prop in his play. “The plays always start with dia-logue and you just fall into routine. I wanted to shock people in the audience.” He wanted Elmer to seem “like it fell from the sky.” Elmer, Park says, mirrors the innocence of Wagmeister’s character in the play.

5:45 Actors and directors are dashing around backstage setting up props. Bran-don has no props to set up, so she settles in Chalmers East for some “down time” be-fore the show. The lounge is transformed into a dressing room, cluttered with racks of clothing, bins of shoes, flatirons in every plug and tables topped by a long, low make- up mirror. Several times Brandon walks over and sits down, make-up bag next to her, to apply a layer of pink lip gloss or help Serena Berman ’09 work her hair in to a twist.

Sarah Brandon ’09 “Curbside,” by Nick Merrill ’09

Austin Park ’10

Introducing...

Introducing...

7:06 Axelrad slips into the theater with a group of friends just before the show be-gins.

In the tech booth, a dark, closet-like room at the back of Rugby theater, Barad gets ready to cut the lights. He opens his cue binder, which has scripts of all of the plays and notes on lighting written in it. Eve Bilger’s ’10 recorded voice makes the official announcement that the first play is begin-ning and Barad cuts the lights to black as “What All School Children Learn” begins.

7:48 As the audience feels the long, awk-ward silences that punctuate “Curbside,” Barad frets that Brandon has not stepped fully into the spotlight. Muttering under his breath he urges her “to take just one step forward.”

He turns to Moore. “She’s doing it on pur-pose.” Then he begs through the glass, “Why Sarah? Why?”

Down on stage Brandon, as Julia, accuses Will, “Henry went to the qualifier,” referring to her “supportive” but less-than-intelligent boyfriend.

“Ooh!”A member of the audience breaks the building silence. The crowd erupts in laughter.

“They laughed at parts that we didn’t think were funny and parts that we had stopped thinking were funny after rehears-ing them several times,” Brandon said later. “It was definitely hard to keep a straight face. Having an audience for the first time was really different.”

7:35 After his play ends, Krisiloff meets director Paul Norwood in front of Chalm-ers who tells Krisiloff “Nice adjusting.” They talk about what happened with the prop malfunction, but neither of them know what happened with the “special” lunch box.

7:22 On Rugby stage, Krisiloff plots re-taliation. He asks his Mom, played by Re-becca Contreras ’09, for a special lunch of fried chicken with peanuts for dessert.

Backstage Krisiloff is looking for his “special lunch” containing the deadly pea-nuts. He can’t find it, but it’s his cue, so he grabs the other lunchbox. He walks on stage and swings the box onto the table. Milk flies everywhere. Ryan is supposed to be stealing and eating fried chicken, but in-stead has to eat a milk-drenched sandwich. Improvising, Krisiloff threatens, “Maybe I rubbed peanuts all over the sandwich.” Then he has to pretend a granola bar is ac-tually a packet of peanuts.

7:16 Evan Ryan ’09, plays the bully on stage. He pours milk all over Krisiloff ’s lunchbox. Watching from the soundbooth, Barad laughs at Ryan’s convincing perfor-mance. 7:00WriterJacob Axelrad ’10

“A Mendelsohn Legacy”

Introducing...

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Family reunion: Stacy Shirk ’09 confronts Michael Diamant ’09 as Will Hellwarth ’10 exits.

puppy love: Elmer the stuffed dog is a key element in ‘Curbside,’ featuring Sarah Brandon ’09 and Jono Wagmeister ’09.

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8:00

At Friday’s premiere of Series B of the Playwrights Festival, Chronicle reporters followed 5 students involved in the production throughout the evening. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the Festival, hour by hour. By Alexia Boyarsky, Cathi Choi and Dana Glaser

7:48 As the audience feels the long, awk-ward silences that punctuate “Curbside,” Barad frets that Brandon has not stepped fully into the spotlight. Muttering under his breath he urges her “to take just one step forward.”

He turns to Moore. “She’s doing it on pur-pose.” Then he begs through the glass, “Why Sarah? Why?”

Down on stage Brandon, as Julia, accuses Will, “Henry went to the qualifier,” referring to her “supportive” but less-than-intelligent boyfriend.

“Ooh!”A member of the audience breaks the building silence. The crowd erupts in laughter.

“They laughed at parts that we didn’t think were funny and parts that we had stopped thinking were funny after rehears-ing them several times,” Brandon said later. “It was definitely hard to keep a straight face. Having an audience for the first time was really different.”

7:35 After his play ends, Krisiloff meets director Paul Norwood in front of Chalm-ers who tells Krisiloff “Nice adjusting.” They talk about what happened with the prop malfunction, but neither of them know what happened with the “special” lunch box.

6:30 In Chalmers East, “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5 blares as Brandon and the other actors get up to dance and sing over the chatter. Park plays with El-mer, while chatting with Jason Hirschorn ’09 and Kyle Kleinbart ’09. Wagmeister serenades Park with “Oh, baby give me one more chance…”

“The house is open, do not go on stage!” drama teacher Christopher Moore shouts into the low hum Chalmers East.

Brandon, Wagmeister and Park decide to run lines for their play.

They climb the stairs to Seaver as the sun fades and the sky becomes gray.

“Half the rehearsal process has been finding curbs,” Brandon joked.

They settle on one just outside of Seaver. They are silent, Park standing several feet away like an artist standing back to view his work, watching intently as Wagmeis-ter stares at the ground, Brandon in the offstage position. Wagmeister, playing the role of a snubbed poet, tosses Elmer on the floor, where it rolls several feet, barking mechanically and comes to a stop.

6:42 “Oh, we’re missing props,” Mat-thew Krisiloff ’10 mutters. He’s not sure where the Game Boy or robe are. Assistant Director Ben Goldstein ’09 says Jack Ush-er’s ’10 mom is five minutes away and she has the Game Boy. Director Paul Norwood says he has found a robe for Matthew, it’s on stage left. Matthew heads backstage to check on it and the rest of his props.

6:46 Brandon and Wagmeister let the long, awkward silence stretch on into the impending evening even though they are the only ones to feel it. They stand up off the curb and make their way to the parking lot.

Suddenly the tension in the air relaxes – the rehearsal is over, and Park, Brandon and Wagmeister go over some last instructions.

“Were you shivering for real?” Park asks Wagmeister. Part of his role includes giving Brandon as Julia, the object of his unrequited love, his jacket. “Because that was great act-ing.”

“No, that was for real.” Wagmeister smiles. The sunny day has faded into clouds and cool air. “I’m freezing!”

“It’s okay,” Brandon says, smiling in re-sponse. “You can shiver on command, right?”

6:55 In the backstage dark, Goldstein finds Krisiloff because he’s finally got the Game Boy. Krisiloff sets up his props, and puts two of his lunchboxes on the ladder. In the play, Krisiloff retaliates against a bully in his play by bringing peanuts in his lunchbox. His bully is allergic and Krisi-loff threatens him with them. “It’s ironic I guess because I’m allergic to peanuts. We’re using cashews – it’s the magic of theater.”

6:58 In Chalmers East, Brandon has ducked behind a black curtain labeled “La-dies Only” to change into her costume, a pair of gray skinny jeans and a navy blue, frilled tank top.

“It’s basically what I wear every day, but a little different,” she explains.

She rummages through several bins tucked under clothes racks, looking for her shoes.

Brandon pulls out a pair of beaten-up Converses, tying the laces and listening to Park’s last minute directions.

“Make sure you get that dog all the way to the side,” he instructs Wagmeister.

6:00ActorMatthew Krisiloff ’10

“What All School Children Learn” by Ben Sprung-Keiser ’11

Introducing...

Technology

8:06 Back in the costume shop, Merrill and Brandon hug, celebrating the first successful performance of the play. At one point in the play, Brandon discovers a note from Will in the pock-et of the jacket which she is wearing.

Merrill wrote three real notes – one for each performance of the play – for Brandon to read off stage while the awkward silence balloons on stage.

“He said he was going to write the last one just from him to me. I doubt he will do it though. I told him not to make it anything that will upset me too much,” Brandon said during rehearsal.

“It was great, you guys,” Merrill tells Wagmeister and Park. “When you [Wagmeister] threw the dog off to the side, and the dust went up, it was per-fect.”

8:17 Brandon walks in to the tech booth to gossip and ask what they thought of her performance. She and Barad pick up a friendly banter discussing their favorite plays. They burst into laughter when Bran-don trips and knocks over a walkie talkie. The booth is sound proof.

8:35 It’s intermission and Park, Krisiloff and Jack Kuhlenschmidt ’10 talk about the plays they’ve seen and Krisiloff ’s prop mal-functions.

Axelrad accepts congratulations from his friends. His play “A Mendelsohn Legacy” has just concluded, and he just watched it per-formed for the first time.

“When you write it, you imagine it. But to see it performed — it’s slightly weird but very cool.”

8:10 Problems have arisen in the tech booth. David Shaughnessy (Amy ’08) comes in to the booth to inform Barad of three cues he missed. An apologetic Barad explains that they weren’t marked in his cue book. Five minutes later, at the end of the play, the di-rector returns. He congratulates Barad – the audience didn’t notice a thing, and the rest of the play ran smoothly.

Ben Barad ’09

Introducing...

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Courtesy oF jason hirsChorn

The breakout star of the Scene Monkey’s Friday night show came in the form of an 11-year-old sib-ling. Jason Hirschorn ’09’s brother Adam hopped up from the audience to fill in Nick Merrill ’09’s sentence in a scene set in a tanning salon during an audience-volunteer game called “Pillars.” When Merrill tapped Adam for his next line of dialogue after “The L’Oreal shampoo is running out quick today because—“ Adam quipped “it’s very popular among middle-aged men.” Adam continued to wow the crowd with witty remarks. He signed au-tographs for the Monkeys at the end of the show.

— Julie Barzilay

Kids say the darndest things

puppy love: Elmer the stuffed dog is a key element in ‘Curbside,’ featuring Sarah Brandon ’09 and Jono Wagmeister ’09.

teCh and skills: Ben Barad ’09 mans the tech booth during the show.

dress rehearsal: Sarah Brandon ’09prepares for the show.

Braces bite

“After i drink something with Acid like orAnge juice the cuts [from the brAces] hurt.”

— Amy Zhang ’10

“it’s reAlly pAinful the week After i get them tightened. ”

— Jay Bhatia ’10

“the rubber bAnds Are reAlly Annoying to put on All the time. ”

— Jeff Kim ’10

burden of braces does not fade with age.

“i hAd them in 6th grAde And got them off At the end of 7th, so it’s Annoying i hAve to get them AgAin.”

— Dayna Berkowitz ’10

By Julie Barzilay

Long waits in the orthodontist’s office. Rubber bands snapping mid-sentence. Broken retain-ers strewn across the bath-room counter. For a handful of upper school students, orth-

odontia-related dramas and traumas are not yet a metal-filled memory, but a thing of the present.

For most high-schoolers with braces, spe-cial circumstances are the culprit. Jason Mow ’09 had a cavity filling in a molar that fell out a few summers ago, which allowed a new cavity to develop and go all the way through the tooth. Mow had to be treated by a new dentist the second time around, and the new dentist pulled the molar instead of filling or capping it.

“Long story short, my teeth all shifted into the open space where the molar was, so I had to get braces to fix it back to normal,” Mow said. “They’re holding space open to get an implant when I’m old enough.”

Mow was less than thrilled to hear that he’d need braces as a sophomore, but he grit-ted his teeth and accepted the news.

“It was kind of necessary, so I just wanted to get it over with ASAP,” he said.

Mow got his top braces off a few months ago, and anticipates the removal of the bot-tom ones in about a month.

Claire Kao ’10 is all too familiar with the trials and tribulations of rubber bands and inconvenient dental decoration. She got braces in August of 2007, and hopes to get them off this summer. Kao was initially very depressed about having to wear braces to high school.

“I felt really weird coming to Upper School with braces,” she said. “But, it’s not that bad in perspective. My brother [Kalvin Kao ’04] got his braces the summer before his senior year in college, and will probably get them off a month before me this summer.”

College would be a much worse time to wear braces, she felt. Additionally, she has friends who got braces too early and now have to get braces a second time to correct their newly crooked teeth. She’d rather have them now for a couple of years than have had them in 3rd grade and have to deal with go-ing back for a second round.

She said the social reaction was not as bad as she thought it could have been.

“Honestly, no one had a ridiculous reac-tion,” she said. “Though my six-year old cousin is absolutely fascinated with my brac-es and can never stop staring.”

Alex Edel ’09 is, like Mow, dealing with irregular circumstances. Ever since fifth grade, Edel’s dentists have spoken of a sur-gery she’d need at some point in her future, after her teeth and jaw stopped growing. She

has an underbite because her lower jaw grew more than her upper jaw, and she has had braces to align teeth and set the stage for a major surgery she says she can’t put off any longer.

“I was supposed to get it two summers ago, then last summer, but now I really have to because the braces are starting to wear down the roots of my teeth,” she said. “When I get the surgery, I’ll get the braces off, finally.”

Edel will not be able to eat solid food for three weeks after the surgery, and will need to recover for still more weeks, but she is looking forward to freeing her mouth from orthodontial inhibitions once and for all.

Lauren Seo ’10 has had braces since she was in the fourth grade. Her orthodontist has never promised her a date for the remov-al of her braces, but she said he blames her for the rate of progress in her mouth; shirk-ing rubber band responsibilities is a serious offense in this type of situation.

Mow has to wear Invisalign every day to keep the space open for his future implant, and has discovered an unanticipated side ef-fect.

“I just find that it has definitely cut down on my ‘munching’ habits because I used to always be eating something, but now its just a hassle to take [the Invisalign] out and put it back in,” he said.

Orthodontist visits strike about once a month for most students, and can evoke many different types of emotions and memo-ries for different people.

Eli Stein ’09 had braces from fifth to ninth grade. In Middle School, braces were the norm, he said, though his cousins taunted him with some pretty scary stories.

He had a relatively pleasant relationship with braces and didn’t feel any social awk-wardness about having them as a freshman. He even went so far as to call going to the orthodontist the best part of his experience.

“My dad would always take me to the or-thodontist, and he was in Westwood, right by Diddy Riese [an ice cream and cookie store],” he said. “We would always get ice cream sandwiches when I went to the orthodontist, so it was almost something to look forward to.”

Kao took the liberty of testing out a few orthodontists before landing on her current one.

There was one doctor who insisted that Kao’s jaw was the issue, not her teeth, and told her she would need to wear a chin strap.

“I told her that I would rather not wear unattractive headgear,” she said. “In re-sponse to my outright refusal she said, ‘But look at all these pretty patterns! And, you can decorate it too!’ After I left the office, she apparently told my mom that I was a spoiled brat.”

Brace yourself

“i wish i didn’t hAve them for pictures. ”— Stefani Feldman

’11

A18 Features April 29, 2009health style

“there’s AlwAys food stuck in the brAckets .”

— Sue Lee ’11

Braces and orthodontia still infiltrate the lives of some high school students.

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inFOGRaPHiC BY LaURen SeO and CandiCe navi

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By Alex leichenger

For science teacher David Hinden, a day at the office once consisted of prosecut-ing accused spies and members of the Mafia—men who spent more time be-hind bars than inside a classroom. Lat-

er in his career, he defended them. When Hinden watches “The Sopranos,” he recognizes many of the streets on the show. POOP

“Looking back on it, it seems like the stuff on a television series,” Hinden said. “But when I was do-ing it, it was just what I was doing.”

While working as an assistant United States at-torney, Hinden once wrote a response to the appeal of two young men convicted of spying for the Soviet Union. The story of the case was later made into a movie, “The Falcon and the Snowman,” starring Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton.

Hinden, who now teaches Genetics and Biotech-nology as well as Chemistry, developed an interest in law in high school after visiting a cousin who worked at the Justice Department. He felt he could be a successful lawyer after he performed very well on an AP history exam. He attended Yale Law School before beginning work as a federal prosecu-tor, and eventually as a litigator and defense attor-ney in private practice.

But he started to realize in the middle of his law career that he wasn’t enjoying himself as much as his wife, who was a teacher at Beverly Hills High School.

“I really just got tired of fighting all the time,” Hinden said. He eventually decided to call it quits as an attorney and return to one of his original loves, science. Despite being ready to move on, Hin-den said it was hard to leave a higher-paying job when he had a family to support.

“It was hard to make a change,” he said. “You have to make an act of faith you’re going to land on your feet at the end.” But Hinden said he has been able to retain the positive aspects of his legal ca-

reer by coaching upper school Mock Trial and Moot Court, and is happy with his decision to become a teacher.

“When I think of what I’ve done that is worth-while I think of teaching before prosecuting cases,” he said.

A handful of other teachers also had visions of lecturing a jury before they had visions of lecturing students. History teachers David Waterhouse and Ken Neisser, librarian Maureen Frank and Varsity Basketball Head Coach Greg Hilliard attended law school before deciding to pursue different career paths.

Neisser graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979 and worked for a Japanese law firm for four years, an entertainment law firm for one year, a corporate law firm for two years and was a liter-ary agent for the next 20 years. In Japan, Neisser helped with international transactions involving companies such as Colgate and Isuzu.

As a literary agent, he lobbied for contracts pri-marily for television writers. Although no longer technically an attorney, the skills he learned in law school helped with negotiations, he said. Eventually Neisser moved to working more in the nonprofit arena, which connected him more with schools. Neisser recently earned his Masters degree in his-tory from California State University, Los Angeles, and “got the call that he wanted” last April from Harvard-Westlake.

After graduating from Washington and Lee School of Law, Klein did a judicial clerkship for two years and then practiced governmental law in sub-urban Washington D.C. for five and a half years. However, Klein decided that being an attorney was too much of a “grind.” He ended up coming to Har-vard-Westlake to coach basketball and teach his-tory.

Waterhouse enrolled in the UCLA School of Law from 1975 until 1976 due to his interest in some of the undergraduate courses he had taken at UCLA that touched on the subject of the law.

“I had really enjoyed law-related classes in col-lege, but those tended to be related to government and public policy,” Waterhouse wrote in an e-mail. “But I found that the first year of law school was fo-cused on procedural details and business-oriented law, which I did not find very interesting.” Water-house dropped out of law school after one year and enrolled in graduate school in history, which even-tually led him to his job at Harvard-Westlake.

“Luckily for me, I got this job at H-W in 1981, so I never had to hunt around for temporary college teaching jobs,” Waterhouse said. “I am certainly happy about the way things have turned out.”

Hilliard also tried out law school for one year at Lewis and Clark Law School. He said he entered law school because his father was a successful at-torney, but dropped out because his real passion “was working with kids through sports.”

Frank enrolled at the Boston University School of Law after graduating from the University of Il-linois with a political science degree. At the time, America was engulfed in the Vietnam War and also in a domestic battle for the expanded role of women in the public sphere. Frank was inspired by the “turmoil” of the time and a desire to be more than just a nurse or a teacher, deemed the most appropriate occupations for women. Plus, she knew her parents would be pleased by her entrance into law school.

But Frank never found much enjoyment in the “hostile, confrontational” aspects of being an attor-ney. As a librarian, she finds that the environment is better and the work itself is more interesting.

“I don’t want people who are only cranky when they come to see me,” Frank said. “The interac-tions are completely different as a librarian than as a lawyer.” Frank said that she has “zero regrets” about abandoning her career as a lawyer, but that it did provide her with additional knowledge that has benefitted her in the long-term.

“To be educated is always good,” she said. “No matter what you know, it’s useful.”

The ChronicleA20 Features April 29, 2009

SketcheS cOURteSY OF DAVID hINDeN

the VeRDIct: Courtroom sketches depict science teacher David Hinden addressing the jury.

clASS OF ’79: A picture from Ken Neisser’s law school yearbook shows him with a classmate.

David Hinden:Science teacherConvicted, then defended, mobsters as a federal prosecutor and a defense attorney

Before coaching basketball, teaching history and checking out books they studied and practiced law.Out of practice

Maureen Frank:Librarian

She abandoned law after being repelled by the “hostile,

confrontational” aspects of being an attorney.

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Greg Hilliard:Varsity Basketball Head CoachHe tried out law school for a year at Lewis and Clark Law School.

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David WaterhouseHistory teacherHe attended law school for a year before enrolling in graduate school in history.

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Ken Neisser:History teacherAfter graduating from Harvard Law School, he worked for a Japanese law firm for four years, an entertainment law firm for one year and a corporate law firm for two years.

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Larry Klein:History teacherAfter law school, he did a judicial clerkship for two years and practiced governmental law for f ive and a half years.

don hagopian

PhOtO cOURteSY OF keN NeISSeR

By Matthew Lee

The smooth comping of the guitar and piano enhanced the aura of the au-ditorium. As the tenor saxophone bel-lowed over the rhythmic unison of the bass and drums, the energy of audience at the Fourth Annual Harvard-Westlake Jazz festival increased until the audience members were not only bobbing their heads in appreciation of the sounds, but even rising out of their seat and cheer-ing to feel and be part of the music.

This group was one of the student jazz combos that performed in event on April 18 at the Rugby auditorium. Student mu-sicians from 10 local high schools played alongside six world-renowned jazz art-ists, and the event benefited the Inner-City Arts foundation. Charlie Fogarty ’10 organized the event.

The six musicians were bassist Mar-cus Miller, drummer Bernie Dresel, trumpet player Chris Tedesco, pianist

Alan Pasqua, trombone player Bob Mc-Chesney and saxophonist Bob Shep-pard.

“We enjoyed all playing together,” Sheppard said.

The festival began at 10 in the morn-ing at the upper school campus, where student musicians from different high schools met for the first time and were arranged randomly into big bands and combos.

The jazz artists instructed and con-ducted the students for six hours.

A big band with composer Scott Whitfield opened the concert with “One Kettle for Count,” by Gary Tole. Next, a student combo took the stage and played “Autumn.”

Another student combo took stage followed by a big band led by conductor and pianist Matt Harris.

“It was exciting. The playing defi-nitely exceeded my expectations. With six hours of practice, they were just as

enjoyable as if they had played together for months,” Hank Adelmann ’11 said.

After a brief intermission, in which Marcus Miller auctioned off a bass signed by him for $600, the combo, consisting of the renowned musicians, played its first song of the night, “Jean Pierre,” by Miles Davis.

The combo was next joined by singer Nora Rothman ’09.

“The music was exquisite,” said Bob Bates, president of the Inner City Arts Foundation.

The foundation both provides differ-ent types of art programs for inner city children and trains teachers on how to instruct kids in the arts.

A big band consisting of all the stu-dent musicians and professional musi-cians concluded the concert with “Big Foot” by Charlie Parker.

“I was grateful for such an enriching event,” said Shawn Feldman ’09 after the concert.

Features A21April 29, 2009 arts entertainment

Jazz Festival

all photos by allEGRa tEppER/ChrOnICle

a niGht to REmEmbER: Marcus Miller plays bass (clockwise from bottom left). Robert Reeves ’10 and Shawn Feldman ’09 perform on-stage (left to right). Professional Bob McChesney watches Gaby Leslie ’10 improvise. Nora Roth-man ’09 sings “At Last” with professionals.

Nine juniors, nine sophomores and four freshmen were admitted into next year’s Chamber Singers. They were chosen from the 50 stu-dents who auditioned during the week of April 13-24.

Auditions consisted of singing scales, sight-reading a piece and completing an excercise in tonal memory.

Next year’s choir will be larger than the current one, which has 28 members. Ten returning sing-ers will make up next year’s 32 members.

“It’s a really phenomenal group,” Rodger Guerrero, vocal instructor of all school choirs, said. “They will be the best around.”

The results of the auditions were posted on Monday, April 27 outside the choir room.

— Kelly Ohriner

inbrief

New members picked for mixed choir

Musicians audition for Jazz Band

A curriculum change in the Music Department has dismantled the Concert Orchestra to create two separate Wind and String ensembles.

Music directors Mark Hilt and Shawn Costantino said they made the change to balance sections within the Concert Orchestra.

Costantino will teach the Wind ensemble and hilt will teach the String ensemble.

“[This] would be more efficient and [give] students a much more satisfying experience,” Hilt said.

— Jamie Kim

Hilt to create new wind orchestra

A combo of six professionals played at a music festival coordinated by Charlie Fogarty ’10 benefitting Inner City Arts.

Student musicians practiced a prepared piece and sight-reading skills for the Jazz course auditions, which were held last week for Studio Jazz Band, Jazz ensemble and Jazz Rhythm Section.

Shawn Costantino, director of the jazz program, said he based his decision on each musician’s improvement throughout his or her current course and maturity as a student musician.

Students had to prepare two pieces to play and when the decision day came, Constantino met with students to explain why he chose to move them up or keep them in their current band.

— Jean Park

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Harvard-Westlake School •Volume X VIII • Issue 7 • April 29, 2009

The Chronicle

Rethink proposed cell banL

ast Tuesday the Faculty Academic Committee passed a proposal to prohibit students from having cell phones on their person during school hours. If the proposal is signed, it would replace the current rule which states that cell phones can be used on campus when students are not in a school building.

After four years of intense pressure and work, seniors are well within their rights to request a culminating free day to bond within their class, especially when it’s a tradition as long-standing as Ditch Day.

The administration’s reaction to the planned ditching for April 20 was harsh and unnecessary. Admittedly, the seniors, guided by a student leader in an organized Facebook event, did not pick their day wisely: Peer Support, the Playwright’s Festival, and AP Art History exam combined to make that Monday the worse possible choice for Ditch Day. But for a custom as commonplace as Ditch Day, it seems ruthless and unfair to threaten the main orchestrator with punishment severe enough not only to taint his reputation of the school, but also to put him in jeopardy of having his college acceptances revoked (according to a message sent by the student to members of the event).

In an ideal world, the administration would turn a blind eye to the seniors’ organization of Ditch Day, recognizing that it’s as traditional for senior year as dancing to “Footloose” in the quad during 80s day. However, we realize the trouble posed by an impromptu ditching unbeknownst to the faculty, who plan classes and lectures far ahead of time. The

best solution to this problem is a school sanctioned Ditch Day, similar to setups at other high schools around the country. While an approved Ditch Day may detract from some of the allure of “sticking it to the man,” seniors would still greatly appreciate the day off, even if it wouldn’t be as rebellious as they hoped. Ditch Day could even remain a surprise: when students in January 2005 got two surprise days off from school due to rain, both times the notifications came the night before. Why couldn’t the administration choose a date, ensuring that the teachers have some knowledge of the day beforehand to plan appropriately, and call seniors the day before? While our own, self-organized Ditch Day would still be preferable, this compromise would retain some thrill of spontaneous ditching for the students without disrespecting the teachers.

Regardless of the ultimate arrangement, in crushing the planned April 20 date the administration took draconian measures that completely disregarded the lighthearted nature of a senior Ditch Day. While they could have chosen a better time, the idea was merited, and in the future the school needs to remain open to plans for a day of freedom for seniors — after so much work, we all deserve some playtime.

School should allow Ditch Day

There is no excuse for the blatant cell phone use that has run rampant in classrooms and in the hallways since ownership of Blackberries and iPhones mushroomed: it’s obnoxious, rude and immature. However, although it’s not entirely undeserved, banning cell phone use on campus during school hours is too harsh a measure. While we urge students to please turn their cell phones off during class, we also urge Huybrechts not to sign the proposal.

Maybe this concept doesn’t bridge the generation gap, but it is an unavoidable fact that cell phones are a necessary cog in the machine of a student’s daily life. Coordinating carpools, planning on-campus Coffee Bean, being alerted of an after-school dentist appointment, relaying the yearbook and Chronicle cameras from event to event – without cell phones, these simple (and yes, harmless) activities would suddenly require extensive planning and a lot of running up and down the stairs. Parents want their students to have their cell phones on them in case of a real emergency. We realize there are other phones on campus available for students to use in an emergency, but opening that can of worms will make things inconvenient for everyone involved.

There are the few students in every class whose legs are aglow beneath their desks as they covertly try to muffle the sounds of BBM. But it’s important to remember that the wide majority of students follow the rules, and it’s unfair to return all of the upper school students to a middle school standard

because a few have decided to flout the rules.Secondary motives behind the ban included

eliminating what some teachers see as rudeness when students drift down the hallways, momentarily unengaged because they are texting. It is important to note that the perpetrators themselves probably have no idea they are being rude. To this generation, texting is as natural as chatting with a friend before class. And if a student is sitting at a table in the quad, and happens to pull out their phone, we have to ask – who is that really harming?

Some teachers also fear that allowing cell phones on campus fosters cheating. This could be true – but talking and going to the bathroom could also foster cheating. It is impossible to bring every element of student life under the watchful eyes of teachers, which is why we have the Honor Code; creating more rules to prevent cheating only undermines it.

This proposal has the potential to be like the next Prohibition – attempting to go against the grain of dependence on cell phones will only result in a lot of contraband activity. If the teachers find it difficult to enforce the current rule, which also happens to be much more reasonable in principle, there is no reason to believe it will be easier to enforce an all-out ban. The faculty should return to the old rule with new gusto – if a teacher simply speaks up and asks a student to turn off their cell phone in class, very few students would refuse them. And the ones that would certainly wouldn’t leave their cell phones out of the classroom on account of the new rule.

A22 Opinion The Chronicle April 29, 2009

While Ditch Day for the senior class would ideally include some actual ditching, the truly vital aspect is simply a free day to reward the students for working so hard — and the administration should be more willing to support this.

ANdrEw lEE/CHRONICLE

reader feedback

Letters & Columns

Meeting and subsequently conversing with people online, in any capacity, has always seemed rather shady to me (even before the Craigslist Killer went on the prowl).

I think my perfectly reasonable fear is based on a combination of two adages ingrained into most children: don’t always believe what you read and never talk to strangers. That’s why I’ve never entered a chatroom, though I’ve always felt the urge to connect with my fellow Trekkies, out of fear that my fellow 17-year-old Captain Kirk fan is actually a pedophilic predator pushing 60.

So it was with trepidation that I gently waded into the potentially shark-infested waters of online interaction via a Facebook group intended to facilitate roommate match-ups between my future college classmates. Every member of the group had been judged under the same strict standards by the same admissions committee as me, and they too passed muster. What harm could be done?

I filled out the 30-question survey (no, I don’t plan on playing intramural sports; yes, I consider myself clean; “Franny and Zooey” is my favorite book, etc.) in a matter of minutes and began waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Still waiting…

It’s been more than two weeks and my dance card is empty. I’ve yet to even receive a single message from a prospective roomie. I got some friend requests from a few guys, but they never followed up, presumably after they saw one of the admittedly misguided attempts at humor on my profile page (for example, my religious views are not actually “Oprah, duh.”)

Were my survey answers bad, or “wrong” or scary? I don’t snore (post-nasal surgery, at least). I‘d like a

television in my room. I err on the side of hygiene. All pluses, I thought. So why can’t I get any love?

For now, it seems, I’ll be stuck with a random roommate that I’ll meet on the first day of orientation. What if he’s a total weirdo, or likes the smooth vocal stylings of John Mayer? I knew my fear of strangers was rational!

The Chronicle

Sharing is privilege

I am writing regarding the March 25 issue. Upon receiving the paper, I was surprised to see that the entire front page consisted of yearbook photos; however, upon further reading the issue, I was appalled to discover that nine yearbook photos were printed without permission.

As Editor-in-Chief of Vox Populi, I have always supported other school publications; however, this lack of judgment has caused me to speak out against The Chronicle.

While it is true that yearbook and Chronicle are encouraged to share photos, this should be a collaborative effort; it does not mean that you are simply entitled to them. If a yearbook staff member photographs an event, the photos belong to the yearbook staff.

It has always been policy that if Chronicle would like to use a yearbook photo, permission should first be requested. In the past, yearbook

has always cooperated with your requests [for example, the cover of your Feb. 11 issue was a Summer Brave photo taken by yearbook staff member Daniel Lundberg]. However, this incident has turned sharing into an obligation rather than a voluntary action.

I am very disappointed by the lack of communication involved regarding girls soccer photos. Chronicle specifically asked for state photos (state finals, semifinals, etc.); league games were never mentioned in our conversations and therefore were not included among the list of photos you could not use.

Because of your failure to communicate, the photo of Leah Merkle (taken by yearbook staff member Olivia Kestin) on the cover of the March issue will also appear on page 168 of the 2009 yearbook. In addition, there were eight other photos published in The Chronicle without our permission. I am disappointed with the carelessness of your editors’ decisions and astonished at the audacity involved in these inappropriate actions.

As a consequence, this incident has led me to lose respect and enthusiasm for The Chronicle and I am truly disheartened by the trust broken because of your actions.

— Rebecca Weinstein ’09

Editors’ Response: While we respect the yearbook’s right to withhold certain photos for its own use, we also adhere to the long standing policy requiring that Vox Populi share photos with The Chronicle, given that the yearbook was provided with camera equipment based on that understanding. In this isolated circumstance, we’re sorry for the miscommunication that occurred between the two publications. The photos were properly credited to the photographers.

Room-meDerek Schlom

122 167 16

In this issue, the Chronicle staff editorialized about two school issues.

Here’s what 457 upper school students had to say:

How should the administration approach the idea of a Senior Ditch Day?

Proposed Cell Phone Ban

Senior Ditch Day

How do you feel about the proposed ban on cell phone use during school hours?

1229

280167211

6316

These results are based on responses to an online poll emailed to Harvard-Westlake upper school students through surveymonkey.com.

Graphic by annie belfield, anna etra, ashley halkett and erin moy

“Teachers, the administration and students should set aside a date for when Ditch Day should be. It’s a tradition and they should not totally get rid of it. ”

Melissa Gertler ’11

46 The current rule should be more strongly enforced.

There should be no rules about cell phone use at all.

The proposed ban is acceptable.

Keep the current rule (cell phone use banned only in buildings).

The school should set aside a sanctioned Ditch Day.

The school should turn a blind eye to any plans for a Senior Ditch Day.

Ditch Day is unnecessary and disrespectful to teachers.

The current arrangement is fine.

“Students should be respectful and responsible enough to put their cell phones on silent during class. However, if they would rather text in class than pay attention that is a choice they should be allowed to make. ”

Carl Lawson ’09Online comment

280 46“There’s no reason why the administration should take cell phones away from students during free periods.Using cell phones is no different than kids logging on to Facebook during free periods. ”

“The current rule is fine but the lack of enforcement makes cell phones a problem. Students are not currently threatened by the rule.”

Anmol Amin ’11 Jackie Jasuta ’10Online comment Online comment Online comment

211“Ditch Day is one day out of our lives and if we’re willing to suffer the consequences the school should not have extra punishment for just missing one day of school.”

Online comment

“Senior Ditch Day is not meant to insult anyone. Second semester seniors just want to have some fun. It is completely innocent. “

Jake Schine ’10 Online comment

April 29, 2009 Opinion A23

in the march issue of the chronicle, the front page featured three cif game photographs that were attributed to members of the Vox populi staff. Vox populi editor-in-chief rebecca Weinstein ’09 wrote a letter criticizing the use of these photographs in the newspaper.

Ketter Weissman ’09

feedbackThe Chronicle encourages reader feedback. Letters submitted must be signed and should not exceed 350 words. All submissions must be received by May 18.

April 29, 2009 Opinion A24The Chronicle

AlexiA BoyArsky

Honor overboard

One sunny day in March, my English class was working on a take-home essay in the library tech center. After

reading a poem that referenced the term “lily white boy,” a classmate and I decided to Google search it to look up the potential cultural implications.

Unfortunately, the very first link happened to have a two line analysis of the poem directly underneath the link. Hands shaking from fear, we hastily closed the window and guiltily looked around to make sure that our teacher wasn’t watching.

In hindsight, I wonder why our reaction was so strong. We hadn’t done anything wrong; we hadn’t even thought of doing anything wrong. So why were we so scared that we were to be persecuted?

The answer is the Honor Board. Although valiantly trying to stamp out wrongdoing at the school, it has instead bred a culture of fear.

I think the theory behind the whole Board is that it would be easier and more soothing for students to be judged, at least in part, by a council of their peers, peers who know the

situations we go through and can sympathize with us.

In practice, the vast majority of students are now so petrified of going in front of the Honor Board that every minor scenario that can potentially, somewhere within the realms of possibility, maybe be misconstrued as a wrongdoing is obsessively avoided.

Students have started lying—well, at least heavily withholding the truth. Worried that they may be implicated in situations that may go in front of the Honor Board, students simply don’t come forward with any stories that may result in consequences.

Instead, like Frankenstein hiding from the burning torches, we shell up within ourselves afraid not only of doing bad things, but of doing normal things that may be seen as bad things, or afraid of accidently doing something bad, or even of knowing something is wrong and being punished for the knowledge.

Is that really the type of school we want to go to? Personally, no.

I don’t want to feel as if my every move is scrutinized for the possibility of wrongdoing. I don’t want to feel like

my peers are judging me harder than any teacher would.

We are trying to build a community here, or so every single prefect says in their candidate statements, but scaring the students out of their wits is not the way to go.

Some of the Prefect Council recommendations were downright laughable in how serious they make offenses sound. A student in February had “forgotten to properly cite the author of these particular quotations” in the words of the Prefect Council’s email, and they are put in front of the entire Board and given a zero on their paper? I’m not saying what he did was correct, but forgetting to cite one source?

I was going to claim at this point that I had never done such a thing in my life. Not only could that potentially be a lie, but just the fact that I wanted to protect myself in such a way proves my point. Even when I did nothing wrong, I feel the need to justify myself. That’s just weird.

The story that most clearly demonstrates the paranoia that now encompasses my life comes from just a

few weeks ago. A good friend of mine had come over to my house to watch “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” While watching the stunts and tricks those kids pulled, the only thing that was going through my mind was exactly what the Honor Board would do with this case.

Would they expel him? Probably. I mean, the kid not only made up an excuse, but lied to the principal (multiple times, may I add), set up a fake answering machine pretending to be a mortuary, and blatantly ditched school. Sounds like an expulsion to me. Maybe even a recommendation to go to a wilderness camp for troubled children. Poor, poor Ferris.

Usually at the end of columns I like giving recommendations to the people I’m bashing, but one doesn’t really exist for this. I’m not entirely sure this is the Honor Board’s fault; it’s more likely just the fault of our society, but I can’t really change that. So I guess my recommendation will be to all of us: stop, look around once in a while, and try to live your life instead of only being afraid of the consequences.

“Although vAliAntly trying to stAmp out wrongdoing At the school, they hAve insteAd bred A culture of feAr.”

Don’t passus over

There is something awe-inspiring about standing amongst the rabbis on the bimah, the platform facing a congregation of hundreds of people,

and reading ancient Hebrew words out of an old, frayed Jewish holy book. In many ways, becoming a bar or bat mitzvah is like becoming inducted into a secret society, or at least those were my sentiments when I took the stage four years ago.

For as long as I can remember, I have celebrated the high holidays, spent Sabbath with my family, and attended Jewish day schools. However, since coming to Harvard-Westlake, I have lost touch with religion. I no longer count down the days leading up to Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, and have even lost some of my ability to read and write Hebrew.

For a secular school, Harvard-Westlake contains a disproportionately large Jewish population, so it came as a shock to me when during Passover, a holiday commemmorating the deliverance of ancient Hebrews from Egypt that is observed by abstaining from eating products containing leavened bread, the school provided nothing but unleavened bread called matza and matza-pizza. I didn’t exactly expect Passover-friendly lunches but I expected more from a school with so many Jewish pupils.

Historically a religiously affiliated school whose on-campus Episcopal chapel still is used for weekly services, Harvard-Westlake is now home to a variety of religions, with students harboring degrees of belief ranging from atheists to strict religious observants. Harvard-Westlake tends to skew towards being apathetic towards religion. Sure, there are religious clubs, but they are not very close knit and meetings are more about the free food than anything else. I received a wake-up call in the transition from religious to secular school, but that is nothing compared to the transition I will have to make when I go to college, where there will be fewer people like me.

For now, I am grateful that I am in a place where my religious and cultural practices are respected. It is not the responsibility of the school to cater to the different religions on campus, and students should accept that when they choose to come to Harvard-Westlake rather than a religious school. I have learned not to ask what Harvard-Westlake can do for me, but what diverse aspects of myself I can contribute to unique mix of people that make up our community.

Michelle NosrAtiAN

Last summer I attended the NHSI Journalism Cherubs program at Northwestern University. One of my mentors was eBay cofounder Marylou

Song. I collaborated with her on developing a website for the program which incorporated multimedia features.

Song inspired me to believe in the dream, and work hard for the reality. When she went to work full-time for eBay, it was nothing more than a risky dot-com start-up with three employees. But she believed in her idea, and her leap of faith is proof that risks can sometimes lead to success. I brought this inspiration back with me to school. Drawing on my experience working with her, I decided to enroll in the Studies in Scientific Research class.

The Studies in Scientific Research class with physics teacher Antonio Nassar has a different structure than any other course at school. Formal lectures are replaced by individual guidance. A large component of the learning process evolves from student to student interactions. The class has a relaxed playful atmosphere that is still very constructive. The motto for our class is Einstein’s quote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

I hope my own excitement and creativity will inspire others to put ideas into development, and I’m also enthused to interact with other students who share a strong vision and passion like me. Students discuss and collaborate with one another, using teamwork and getting through difficulties, broadening their learning.

The emphasis of the class is on the value of collaboration and fostering respectful colleague relationships. Peer-to-peer interaction and brainstorming encourages a more imaginative and creative learning process, without the confines of academic pressure and competition. The research class is what I look forward to most throughout the day.

I have developed several iPhone and Facebook applications. I also recently formulated a vitamin and mineral-rich beverage to promote focus and memory retention. The class is playful and stress-free environment, and yet remains one of my most productive class periods.

The research class has made me realize how much leverage there is in science and technology. My iPhone applications, which generate about 20 to 30 sales daily at $.99, are small examples of that. We can have an impact on the world because of the knowledge of our peers, the power of distribution and the power of computers. There is so much that can be done with emerging technologies. Another example is Rory Handel ’09 and Maxx Bricklin ’09, who are developing a new hydrogen system that has proven to increase gas mileage efficiency. All of us are uniquely positioned coming to this school, and having great resources like the Studies in Scientific Research class. We should all be excited about that every day. We are surrounded by wonderful peers who are very hardworking and inspiring. We should really value our incredibly talented peer group.

Go ahead, think big ANdrew lee“hArvArd-

westlAke tends to skew towArds being ApAthetic towArds religion.”

andrew lee/cHRonicle

A25sports The ChronicleHarvard-Westlake SchoolVolume XVIIIIssue 7April 29, 2009

By Sam adamS

Mission League supremacy has reached the cen-tennial mark for the Wolverines’ boys’ tennis team, which was victorious in its 100th consecutive league match in a 15-3 victory over Notre Dame on April 21.

The team has already clinched a top seed going into the CIF playoffs in a year written off by many members of the team as a developmental season be-fore a hopeful championship-winning season next year. The squad is adjusting to the post-Ryan Th-acher ’09 era, and coaches are making an effort to give underclassmen as much playing time as possible to grow young talent.

The streak started during the 2000-01 season, the first under varsity Head Coach Chris Simpson. The team has not lost a game in the league since he was named coach.

“This has been a great run,” Simpson said. “And what we need to do now is put our heads down and get another hundred.”

Team leaders agreed with Simpson.“It’s really sensational that we could finish a

journey that started years ago,” team Captain Joey Friedrich ’09 said.

Though the game was not at home, the victory was an experience.

“The fan base was not as large as it may have been if we were playing at home, but there was an absolute vibe to the event,” Simpson said.

Losses to regional powerhouses Santa Barbara, Palos Verdes and Peninsula in some of the team’s biggest challenges of the season have left some mem-bers of the team disappointed, but optimistic for the future.

During what is considered preparatory season, the varsity squad is starting four freshman players in hopes of developing them into being key parts of a potential CIF champion team next year.

“We have a lot of talent this year, but I don’t know that we have the star power to take a championship this season,” Friedrich said.

Jeffrey Bu ’12, one of the freshman players, de-feated Spencer Simon, the top-ranked high school player in the nation during the narrow loss to Santa Barbara.

Joining Bu as freshman class contributors are

Jackson Frons ’12, Jameson West ’12 and Adam Schwartz ’12.

The team got off to a rough start, losing its first official match of the season to Brentwood. Their next loss, to Peninsula, was attributed by Friedrich to a team crippled by injuries and players settling into their roles for the year.

A March win over Mira Costa in a thrilling 9-9 match marked the team’s largest win to date this season.

After the Peninsula loss, the squad went on a 9-1 tear before falling to Santa Barbara in an away game last Wednesday.

The team’s centennial achievement occurred only one year after another milestone, when the team completed their 100th consecutive victory in both league and non-league play.

League finals begin next Monday with individual league preliminary matches before the finals occur on the following Wednesday.

Tennis wins 100th straight league match

Track team nears season end with individual, relay recordsBy Jack Schwada

As the track and field squad’s season approaches its end, the girls’ team has managed to es-tablish a winning record, while the boys have matched each victory with a loss. The boys have had two victories and two losses, while the girls have won all three matches. Both of these squads are under the leadership of Head Coach Jo-nas Koolsbergen and have set several records.

The boys team set five re-cords this season. Christopher Cheng ’09 set the record for the 800 meter. He was also part of the 6400 meter relay team, the 3200 meter team and the 1600 meter team, all of which set records this season as well.

The girls set two school re-cords this year. Kelsey Geiser ’09set the varsity record for pole vault and Lauren Hans-son ’11, Zaakirah Daniels ’10, Hilary King ’11, and Nicole

Sands ’09 set a school record in the 4 x 200 meter.

The boys are looking to end their season on a win-ning note with two matches ahead of them before the Mis-sion League Preliminaries, the Mission League Finals and maybe even the CIF rounds if the team does well enough. The boys faced Chaminade on Tuesday and tomorrow will compete against St. Francis.

The two matches will have a major part in determining the success of the overall season. The importance of the next two matches has put some pressure on the members of the boys track and field team to come out with wins. This is especially true after a severe defeat last week at the hands of Loyola’s squad.

Yet the team has a very re-laxed approach despite the im-portance of the matches.

“We go out there every time and see if we can come out with

a win,” Adam Bloch ’09 said.The girls have a lot less

pressure on them as they pre-pare for the end of their sea-son. They competed against Chaminade on Tuesday and will face Flintrdige Sacred Heart tomorrow.

Whether or not the girls win these next two matches, the girls will end their 2008-2009 season with a winning re-cord. If they win both matches they will extend their winning record to an impressive unde-feated streak of five games.

Despite the fact the boys might not finish their season on a high note, they are pleased with the season overall.

“We have definitely im-proved,” Bloch said. “This was a good year for track and field and we have set a lot of var-sity records. This is a special team. There are individual ac-complishments, but there are also a lot of squad accomplish-ments.”

InsideSports sectionAthletic Department starts Twittering

Middle school gets new weight room

Page A29

Page A26

Page A28

Eli Stein ’09 scales mountains for fun

ben goldstein/CHroNICLe

smackdown: Todd Albert ’10 (left) rallies before a match against Chaminade on April 21. Team Co-Cap-tain Joey Friedrich ’09 (right) returns a shot during warm-ups. The Wolverines won the match 17-1.

ben goldstein/CHroNICLe

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The Chronicle April 29, 2009A26 Sports

Baseball nears .500 after early losses

COURTESY OF LUCAS CASSO

gOing, gOing: Star outfielder Austin Wilson ’10 makes contact during a spring break tournament in San Diego. The Wolverines have a 2-4 league record.

By Jack Davis

After starting off the season 1-5-1, the boys’ varsity baseball team has rebounded to win seven of its last 12 games to improve its overall record to 8-10-1. However, the squad was swept by league rival Notre Dame last week, dropping its league record to 2-4.

“We have to do better in league,” catcher Andrew Shanfeld ’10 said. “Playing well in tournaments is great and all and it’s good to win non-league games, but league play is what matters. Winning league games is what is going to put us in playoff position and even-tually the playoffs.”

Last Friday against Notre Dame at Franklin Field, the Wolverines jumped out to an early lead as number two hitter and national pre-season All-American Austin Wilson ‘10 singled, stole second, stole third, and scored on a groundout. The Wolverines tacked on another run an inning later, but Notre Dame responded with three, giving them a one-run advantage. The score was 3-2 in the fifth when second base-man Justin Genter ’10 was on third and tried to tag up on a deep popup. How-ever Genter was nailed at home plate on a disputed call, and the Wolverines would never have a chance that good again, eventually losing 3-2.

Despite the loss, the Wolverines would bounce back the next day, beat-ing Inglewood at Franklin Field 7-0.

The victory marked the second shut-out of the season for the Wolverines, both against Inglewood, and represent-ed the recent improvement in pitching that has put the team back in playoff contention.

In the first seven games of the sea-son, the Wolverines gave up 65 runs. In the 12 games since then, the pitching staff has allowed only 52 runs, averag-ing out to about four and a half runs per game, a five and a half run im-provement.

In the teams’ eight victories this season, the pitching staff has only al-lowed 25 runs.

“The pitchers have started to chal-lenge the hitters to put the ball in play which has resulted in a bit of success,” Head Coach Matt LaCour said.

Close games have been an issue for the Wolverines, as three of their last five losses have been by one run, with another loss coming by two runs. La-Cour sees defense as a reason the Wol-verines have had trouble winning close games.

“Our defense late in games this year has not been a strength,” LaCour said. “We need to make the big play in the big situation.”

The Wolverines now prepare for their final six games of the season, all of which are league games.

“This is an important stretch for us,” Shanfeld said. “We’ll be ready though, I’m confident in this team.”

Golf drives through undefeated seasonBy sean kyle

After beating St Francis 179-189 at the Encino Golf Course last Thursday, the boys’ varsity golf team raised its overall record to 10-0 with a league re-cord of 8-0.

Glen Scher ’09 continues to lead the team in scoring average with Bobby Lange ’09 and Jeff Wibawa ’10, second and third respectively. All of them have shot rounds under par.

“Our team is the best that we’ve

ever been,” Scher said. “We still have a while to go but state is looking like a definite possibility.”

The Chaminade match was a team breakthrough.

“Against Chaminade, when at the end we were four under par as a team, we all knew that this particular team that we have now is something spe-cial,” Justin Kim ’09 said. “It’s not just the leaders, we’re relying on just a few players for a win. All of us are doing something great.”

Swimming loses league titles to rivals Loyola, AlemanyBy coDy schott

The Mission League title evaded both the boys’ and girls’ swimming teams this year as Loyola and Alema-ny beat them for first place. For boys’ Head Coach Dawn Barrett, a title was not the only measure of a successful season.

“The season has gone really well,” she said.

The loss to Loyola on April 21 was the first league loss of the season for the boys’ squad. The Cubs more than doubled the Wolverines score in a 125-61 meet.

Though the team finished 4-1 in league play (6-2 overall), it was not enough to surpass Loyola for first place in league.

“This season went really well,” James McNamara ’10 said. “The fact that a swimming team with very few club swimmers is competitive in Division 1 speaks volumes. Losing to Loyola is always a bummer, but many personal records and CIF time standards were accomplished racing a very deep and

fast Loyola team.”In the loss, Loyola parents were an-

gered when the Wolverines stood up to cheer on their teammates.

One of the parents even attempted to move one of the swimmers accord-ing to girls’ Head Coach Darlene Bible. Bible also said that the matter was dealt with by Loyola’s coach.

The girls’ team sported a 3-2 league record (4-4) overall. Bible attributed the 1-2 non-league record to “tough competition preseason.”

Injuries have also hampered the squad, but star swimmer Allison Merz ’10 “is getting faster every week,” Bible said. She thinks the team will be ready for league finals.

“We should be in full form by League finals and CIF,” she said.

Fatigue has also been a problem for the squad.

“The girls are lifting and swimming in the morning and swimming all five afternoons, so they are tired,” Bible said. “If you do not have a good base to taper from, you won’t do well in the taper. We always taper well.”

Volleyball team suspends, removes senior captainsBy alex eDel

After the loss of key starter Sean Berman ’09, the boys’ volleyball team will enter its last week of regu-lar season play with a league record of 5-3 and an overall record of 13-7-2.

The team plays Crespi Thursday in its last league game of the season. The boys lost to Crespi earlier in the season 3-0 but the team has been “playing together as a team in general. We have pretty good chemistry,” Matt Bagnard ’09 said.

The team lost to Loyola twice this season, first on Loyola’s home court.

“The first time we played them, we stepped onto the court and were petri-fied,” Bagnard said. “They were much bigger than us. As soon as the game started didn’t think we had a chance to win.”

After acquiring several cards earli-er in the season the coach had warned the team that there would be repercus-sions from the administration. During the Loyola game last Thursday Berman was given two red cards and Bagnard received a yellow card. As a result, Ba-gnard lost his senior privledges for one week and was suspended for one game, according to Bagnard.

“Earlier in the season the only way to make the team play well was to get really pumped up, and I picked up a

couple cards in the process,” Berman said.

“There were two question-able calls and the ref gave me two red cards and I had to leave the gym,” Berman said, “After the game I was expecting to be suspended for a game because that is the rule according to CIF. I went to talk to my coach and he told me that I was suspended for the rest of the season and

then wouldn’t speak to me anymore about it.” Berman said he got the cards for arguing calls with the referee.

“I was confused both times [I got the red card for arguing calls with the ref-eree] and I guess that she was also con-fused,” Berman said. Berman met with Head of Athletics Audrius Barzdukas and Athletic Director Terry Barnum.

“I then had a meeting with [Barzdu-kas] and Barnum and they didn’t really give me a good reason for it,” Berman said. “I am happy not to be playing vol-leyball anymore because the program has not really treated me well in the last couple of days.”

The athletic department refused to comment on the situation.

“Sean and I are very passionate about volleyball and we both get car-ried away,” Bagnard said. “Sometimes we say things that we don’t mean.”

The team voted on two new cap-tainsto replace Bagnard and Berman Monday.

Sean Berman ’09don hagopian/chronicle

BUTTERFLY: James McNamara ’10 swims the butterfly in a meet.

ALEx EdEL/CHrONICLE

The Chronicle Sports A27April 29, 2009

Athletic Dept. ‘tweets’ scoresBy Jonah RosenBaum

Fans hoping to receive scores of varsity sports games will now have to look no further than the networking site Twitter to get up-to-date news and scores. The Athletic Department has be-gun to “tweet” scores of games within minutes of their completion in an attempt to make it easier for students, parents and fans to stay connected with Harvard-Westlake sports.

“Harvard-Westlake has now gone real time in terms of getting results from games,” Head of Athletics Audrius Barzdukas said. “Our goal is to provide real-time results for varsity con-tests. We are always striving to improve com-munication with our community. We are going to start slow. We don’t expect our coaches to Twitter results from their games or anything like that.”

“Outcomes from games will be sent to a cen-tral point where we can do something like a seven second radio delay, because we want to make sure that we don’t Twitter that we just got jobbed by a referee or anything like that. The scores will be sent to Terry Barnum or Scott Bello, who is acting as our website ad-ministrator,” he said.

The two-week-old Twitter site had 51 fol-lowers and 55 updates at press time Monday. The site has featured scores from swimming, softball, lacrosse, baseball, tennis, softball, golf and track, as well as notifications on delayed starting times and changed location. Tweets on significant accomplishments (such as “Boys Track: Boys 4x400 Relay places first and sets school record”) can also be found.

Posts can come in the form of both texts and online messages. Although some sports sim-ply have their final scores tweeted shortly after the game’s conclusion, others are the subject of more frequent tweets; last Friday’s 3-2 base-ball loss against league rival Notre Dame was updated six times in the span of two hours.

To become a follower of the Twitter site, go to http://twitter.com/hwathletics.

By seth Goldman

After losing four of its previous five games, the lacrosse team rebounded with a 9-3 victory over Crespi on Saturday night. In the game, the Wolverines jumped out to a 3-0 lead by the end of the first quarter and never looked back. The offense had plenty of scoring chances and the defense shut down the Crespi attack. The win brought the team’s league record to 3-2 and their overall record to 6-5.

Since only the top two teams in league ad-vance to the playoffs, the team needs to win all three of its remaining games to make the play-offs. Two of those games come against Chami-nade, while the other is a road game against the same Crespi team that the Wolverines defeated on Saturday.

Even though every remaining game is a must-win, the players are confident in their chances.

“I think we’re a good team right now and we’re well coached,” Greg Myerson ’09 said.

Another factor working to the team’s ad-vantage is that both of its losses in league have come against rival Loyola. When playing all other teams in league, the Wolverines are un-defeated.

Myerson, along with Joey Edwards ’10, Char-lie Weintraub ‘09 and Conor O’Toole ’10, leads an offense that has been playing well in the last four games. The team has scored over 11 goals per game in those contests. However, the play-ers know that in order to make the playoffs, the defense must continue to play well.

In all six of the team’s victories this season, the defense has held the opponent to less than ten goals.

“We’ve been a second half team all season, but now we’re starting to play well in the first half of games,” he said. “If we keep doing that we’ll be able to win games.”

Lacrosse needs 3 straight wins to make playoffs

AllegrA Tepper/CHrONICLE

CrissCrossed: Conor O’Toole ’10 evades a Crespi defender in last week’s 9-3 victory. The squad faces Crespi again next week.

The Chronicle April 29, 2009A28 Sports

By Ben Goldstein

Michael Tromello has designed weight rooms be-fore this one.

“But they didn’t look nearly as good as this. Not even close,” he says, gazing at the vast room around him. To his right, there are six lifting platforms, with red, green and blue weights lining the racks. To his left are two Gravitron machines – a weight-assisted pull-up apparatus that he describes as “kind of like an elevator.” The school’s new strength and condi-tioning coach observes his handiwork, the middle school weight room.

Tromello’s previous weight rooms did the job, but they certainly didn’t standout like his latest one. The equipment at one such weight room, which was part of a health club, was purchased second-hand on eBay.

“But [the middle school’s equipment] is state-of-the-art, brand new,” he said. The weight room, lo-cated on the first floor of the Marshall Center, was one of the campus’ many additions in the moderniza-tion project. When Tromello and Head of Strength and Conditioning Gregory Bishop were designing it, Head of Athletics Audrius Barzdukas told them to imagine they could design their dream weight room with an infinite budget, Tromello said. The final re-sult matches very closely with this vision.

“It’s probably the best middle school weight room in the country,” Barzdukas says.

And Tromello agrees. “I wish I had time in my day, where I could work

out here, but I don’t,” he said. By the end of the day, Tromello is exhausted and heads home to train pri-vately.

“[Barzdukas] wanted 100 kids in here a day – well, that’s happening, easy,” he said. “At least I feel like I see 100 kids a day.”

There are so many student-athletes wanting to train that Tromello, who also coaches fitness classes for P.E., now has the aid of an assistant. Matthew Herold, the assistant strength and conditioning coach at the upper school, now also works at the middle school weight room, Tromello said.

The scheduling system currently in place allows eighth and ninth graders to use the weight room during free periods.

Coaches inform Tromello when they want their athletes to use the weight room, and he works out a schedule with the athletes. Coaches then keep an attendance report of their athletes with Tromello to see who is using the weight room and how often. Since coaching staffs are always trying to spot ath-letes who could play for junior varsity or varsity the following year, commitment in the weight room sug-gests a commitment to the team, Tromello says.

Tromello, who is originally from Thousand Oaks,

graduated from Occidental College and got his mas-ter’s degree in Social Science and Kinesiology. The strength coach played college football and continued his career in NFL Europe for two years.

He comes from a football-playing family, recently helping his younger brother, who just signed with an arena football team, move to Illinois. Weight training has long been Tromello’s passion, as he began train-ing his brother – now a professional athlete – when he was a seventh grader.

Tromello was Occidental College’s strength and conditioning coach for three years. He still works during the football season as Occidental’s secondary coach.

This past summer, Bishop called him, explaining the new job opening at the middle school. Tromello applied and was offered the position.

Although parents’ responses have been largely enthusiastic, Tromello has received one or two con-cerned phone calls, he said.

“They were worried about their kids working out

at such an early age,” he said. Tromello explained that precautionary measures are taken for all of his student-athletes.

“Due to the fact puberty is in full swing for the average middle schooler, it’s my job not to harm this process. In the weight room, everything must be done right and the weight has to be specific for each athlete,” he said.

Though the weight room is still new to the cam-pus, student-athletes like Michael Wagmeister ’13 are already impressed with what it means for the athletic program.

“You walk in, and it’s unreal,” the baseball player said. “It’s huge and it has every machine imaginable. It provides a lot of advantages to athletes playing dif-ferent sports with different schedules.”

As Tromello stands in the middle of the room, pointing out the different pieces of equipment, he says with a smile: “This is a nicer weight room than we had at Oxy… This might even give UCLA’s weight room a run for its money.”

By Cary Volpert

The Wolverine softball squad has found itself fighting right alongside the rest of the pack in the Mission League this year through its first 15 games of the season. Sporting a 1-3 record in Mission League play and a 8-9 record overall, the softball crew will try to build off their most recent 6-2 win over Monrovia, which fi-nally ended a five game losing streak.

“We have pitchers that do a great job but they need their defense to step it up so that they won’t feel they need to strike out every player,” team Captain Emma Katz ’09 said. “The team is doing a lot better at the plate and being more aggressive but there’s still a lot of improvement that needs to be done.”

Katz says success relies on the players working together as a cohesive unit.

“I think when we play as in-dividuals that’s when we make the most errors, but when we work together as a team and

support one another we see good results.”

Chelsea McMahon ’10 agrees with her captain that there is a lot of improvement needed.

“I definitely do not think that [our record] reflects the hard work that our team has put in this season,” McMahon said. “In my opinion we are un-derachieving, and I know that we can do a lot better than we have been. The problem with our team is that we have a lot of new kids, and they need to develop the sort of attitude that will allow them to believe in themselves.”

Besides the team’s below .500 record, the softball pro-gram can still be excited about the young talent coming to varsity.

“I’m looking forward to end-ing the season with a bang,” McMahon said. My goal for the team is to play as hard as we can, regardless of the out-come. We need to walk off the field knowing that we did the best we could, and be proud of it”

EQUIPPED LIKE PROS: The old gymnastics room in the Marshall Center behind the stage has been trans-formed into a state-of-the-art weight room. The switch was part of the middle school modernization project.

SAM ADAMS/CHRONICLE

Middle schoolers work out in new weight room

Softball ends slump with win in tournament

Boys’, girls’ water polo coach steps down

Felix’s departure came af-ter the boys’ water polo team failed to win the Mission League title for the first time in 12 years. The boys fell in the first round of the CIF tourna-ment to Dos Pueblos. Though the girls’ squad, also under Fe-lix’s supervision, went unde-feated in league, the team also did not win in the playoffs, los-ing in the opening game.

Barzdukas called Felix’s departure “bittersweet” and could be a mutually advanta-geous chance for both parties to go in separate directions.

“Coach Felix was a very good coach,” Barzdukas said. “His knowledge of the game is unsurpassed, but anytime somebody new comes in, there’s opportunity. It is on us to take advantage of that op-portunity.”

That opportunity involves a comprehensive search for a new program director, a task that Barzdukas does not take lightly. The candidates for the job, he said, “range in experi-ence from significant and ex-cellent high school experience to significant and excellent in-

ternational experience.” In the interim, Peter Hud-

nut ‘99 is running the program. Enrolled in Stanford Business School for the fall, Hudnut is responsible for calling colleges on behalf of the team’s juniors, as well monitoring the squad’s lifting and conditioning pro-gram. Hudnut played for the silver medal-winning USA team in the Beijing Olympics.

The school has not yet culled the group of candidates into a short list.

“We have a very vocal and thoughtful and involved water polo community and so many people are lending their voices in terms of giving us sugges-tions and opinions in terms of who would be a good coach for our school,” Barzdukas said.

Once a short list has been created, three or four can-didates will be brought on campus to meet with as many people in the administration as possible. After that, the se-lection committee will hope-fully come to a consensus on the best candidate.

One who would be a match for the job, many in the school water polo community believe, is Felix’s predecessor and for-

mer mentor, Richard Corso. Corso ran the Harvard-

Westlake water polo program from 1986-2005 and is cred-ited with bringing the school’s teams into the top echelon of high school water polo. During his tenure, teams combined to win 40 league championships, two CIF titles, seven CIF sil-ver medals and five semi-final finishes. While at Harvard-Westlake, Corso was the Unit-ed States Men’s Olympic Team head coach from 1992-96.

“I would be more than hap-py and willing to have a cup of coffee with the selection com-mittee,” Corso said.

Corso is entering the final season of his contract with the University of Califor-nia, Berkeley at the helm of its women’s water polo team, currently ranked No. 5 in the nation. NCAA rules prohibit recruitment of coaches under contract with another school, and no official contact has been made in regards to the open coaching job.

“They have my résumé,” Corso said.

Additional reporting by Ben Goldstein

from FELIx, page A1

The Chronicle Sports A29April 29, 2009

Rock starBy Cathi Choi

It’s 6 a.m. on Sunday morning and Eli Stein ’09 is late. His cell phone blares “Filter Freak,” a ringtone on his phone, and he jumps out of

bed. Stein says he hates “Filter Freak,” but he has always kept it as his wake up alarm for rock-climbing days and today is no different.

He doesn’t want to keep his rock-climbing partner waiting, so he grabs his gear and bolts out the door. The sun is already up when he starts his drive to the Riverside mountains, which means he won’t have to start his climb in the dark.

On his drive, Stein blasts Power 106 in his Volvo. Forty minutes into the drive, he loses the signal and switches to what he calls “the Inland Empire equivalent.”

He arrives at the mountains where his climbing partner is waiting, drink-ing the hot chocolate he made for his breakfast. Stein grabs a packet of Quaker’s Oatmeal and eats it dry. The flakes and sugary powder are amazing, he says.

The Riverside mountain is not beautiful. There’s trash everywhere and there’s little to appreciate from the mountain itself, which is dry and brown. The climb itself however, Stein says, is really good and a great workout, even if the mountain is “super ugly.”

He straps around his waist a har-ness that has several hooks dangling off it. The hooks, Stein says, are for wedging into the mountain throughout the hike.

He also brings along a rope 220 feet long which attaches him to his climb-ing partner as they make their ascent. Stein describes the climb like a leap-frog: one person will go up 200 feet or so, then hold the rope for the other climber who will go up the next 200 feet. In this process, Stein says there’s a lot of falling.

“It’s good, though,” he says. “If you’re not falling, you’re not trying hard enough. You fall at most 20 feet through air.”

Today, Stein has brought a pair of shoes he calls his “comfortable red ones.” The climb on the Riverside mountain isn’t too demanding, he says, and so he can be comfortable.

In the more difficult climbs he has made, on the Dolomites in Italy, on the Palisades Traverse, Stein brings his “tight yellow shoes” along. Though

they’re extremely uncomfortable, Stein uses them for his footwork, something he says is essential to climbing.

“Climbing is really athletic but it’s also really kind of calming — it is stressful. There always is that danger element,” Stein said. “It’s just you and your partner and it’s just like nothing else that matters in the world besides the next hold.”

If Stein speaks as if he has some expertise on climbing, it’s because he does. He conquered his first big moun-tain as a 9-year-old when he became the youngest person to ever climb Mt. Whitney’s “Mountaineers” route.

He received a letter from then Gov-erner Gray Davis praising him for be-ing a “model of excellence for all Cali-fornians.”

Stein practices climbing in two dif-ferent gyms: Rockreation on Tuesdays and Beach City Rocks on Thursdays. And on the weekends, he’ll go for a climb on either one or both mornings, typically to Malibu Creek State Park, Echo Cliff in Malibu or Riverside Rock Quarry. Echo Cliff is where he feels most comfortable.

“It’s the place where I grew up climbing,” Stein said. “It kind of feels like home.”

One of more significant climbs Stein accomplished was the Palisades Tra-verse.

A year after his Mt. Whitney climb, he, with his dad, tried to finish the Pal-isades Traverse, a predetermined path that crosses five mountains in Yosem-ite Park.

Four hundred feet from the top of the first mountain, the climb got too difficult, Stein said, and they had to turn back down.

This past summer Stein went up to Yosemite again, and for three days out of his trip, he tried the Traverse again.

“That one was really special to me,” Stein said.

The “predetermined path” can sound misleading because there is not one paved trail with signs and posts.

“You know in general where you want to go, but that’s kind of like say-ing you want to go to this one pizza place, and all you know is that it’s in New York,” Stein said. “You know the general path you want to take, but the 20 feet to the left or right — that’s your choice.”

And so, seven years after his failed attempt, Stein returned to the base of the same mountain. It was 2:30 a.m., and he had a light strapped to his head so he could see. He worked up the mountain, Thunderbolt Peak, climb-ing as fast as he could. The thing about climbing, Stein said, is that speed means safety.

“The faster you’re down [from the mountain], the less time some freak accident can happen like a thunder-

storm or falling rocks.”After half an hour, Stein reached

the top of the first mountain.“And it just worked out that we got

up to the top of the mountain as the sun was rising, which was really amaz-ing,” Stein said.

The sunset, however, was more stressful. Climbing in the dark is dif-ficult because it hinders him from see-ing his feet, one of the most important things in climbing, Stein said.

“But one of the nice things is that you can’t see the ground, you just keep going and going.”

Stein finishes his Sunday morn-ing Riverside climb at about 6:45 p.m., about 12 hours after he started, and the one thing he’s feeling is tired.

“While you’re actually climbing, it’s fun, but by the time I get into my car I’m pretty much only feeling that I’m ready to go home,” Stein said. “The ‘that was awesome’ feeling after the climb happens mainly on bigger climbs, like the Palisades Traverse.”

Stein will be back next week at ei-ther this mountain or at the one in Malibu. At 6 a.m., on a Saturday or Sunday morning, he’ll be on his way again, driving in his Volvo, listening to

Power 106. Again, he’ll strap on his harness,

battle through his climb and land back down at the bottom. Why does he keep at it?

He decided a few years ago to not pursue a professional career in rock-climbing. When he was young, he says he completely idolized the people who dedicated their whole lives to rock climbing. But around 14 or 15, he stat-ed to realize the other possible paths in his future.

“I really admire them and it takes a ton of work, and is really rewarding but I wanted my life to be a little bit more multi-dimensional,” he said. “I like to not have to answer to somebody else about my climbing.”

Even though he won’t be climbing professionally, he says that he’ll con-tinue pursuing his hobby.

“There are a lot of things in life that you do and you have no idea what it’ll do for you, or if it really matters in the long term,” Stein said. “But when you’re climbing, you set a goal and you work really hard. You really see it come to fruition through yourself. It’s really empowering but it’s also really hum-bling to realize what’s possible.”

Eli Stein ’09 has been climbing mountains since he was nine years old.

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ROCKY ROAD: Eli Stein ’09 climbs up the mountainside at the Red Rocks in Ne-vada. Stein chose to not climb professionally, but continues to pursue his hobby.

COURTESY OF ELI STEIN

The Chronicle April 29, 2009A30 Sports

jv roundup

Tiana Woolridge/chronicle

By Alec cAso

With a record of 2-2, the boys’ JV track and field team lags behind the girls record of 3-0. The boys did, however, place first at the Oaks Christian meet.

They won their most recent meet against Crespi 69-57, and their next meet is Saturday at Estancia High School at 8 a.m.

“This season has been really hard, but fulfilling,” Adel Kamal ’11 said.

The JV girls’ track and field team has gone undefeated this season. In the Oaks Christian meet it placed second.

The girls’ most recent meet was against Louisville and they won by a margin of 104-21.

Both the boys’ and girls’ teams will be participating in this weekend’s Surf City Invitational at Estancia High School. Two weeks from Friday, the squad will participate in the Arcadia Invatational in prepartion for the Mt. SAC relays a week later.

By TiAnA Woolridge

The girls’ JV Swimming and Diving team has almost completed its season with an overall record of 4-4 and a league record of 3-2.

Head Coach Darlene Bible was sur-prised by the amount of progress the team has made in the water.

“The girls are all getting faster, and we have a lot of great new freshman,” Bible said.

The biggest match of the season took place on Friday against Alemany, and the team lost 75-95. Despite the loss, the team felt it showed progress in the match.

“We’ve been working hard all sea-son, and it really payed off against Ale-many,” Negoro said.

The boys JV swimming and diving team is also nearing the end of its sea-son with an overall record of 5-1 and a league record of 3-1.

Throughout the season, Head Coach Dawn Barrett focused on helping the swimmers discover their best event and developing their skills.

“A lot of the players are new to sport but they are doing very well,” said Bar-rett.

League finals for both the girls’ and boys’ teams will take place at the San Fernando Aquatic Facility next week.

By Alex leichenger

With an overall record of 6-4 and a league record of 2-2, the JV boys’ lacrosse team will face Chaminade at home Thursday and league foe Crespi on the road Monday.

After opening the season with four blowout wins, including a 13-1 win over Downey March 10, the Wolverines slumped to 2-4 in their next six games, including a 6-1 home loss to Crespi Saturday.

Many players on the team are playing organized lacrosse for the first time this year, Head Coach John David Whalen said.

“Our JV lacrosse team is in its early stages of development,” Whalen said. “While this posed an obvious challenge during games, in the long

term, I believe the small squad in this year allowed unparalleled growth of several athletes on the JV.”

Whalen is optimistic about the future of his players and with the upcoming implementation of a lacrosse team at the middle school, for the program as a whole.

“Next year’s varsity will be that much stronger due to the experience the younger boys received on the JV,” he said. “I believe if the players and parents dedicate to it, Harvard-Westlake could very quickly become one of the best lacrosse schools in California.”

Varsity player Cory Wizenberg ’11, who scored seven goals for the JV team against Downey, agreed with Whalen.

“They are all really young and next year on varsity they are going to be really good,” Wizenberg said.

Golf

By AusTin Block

Rival schools have yet to slow the undefeated JV boys’ tennis team, which stands 14-0 overall and 5-0 in league as the season nears its conclusion. The team played against Crespi yesterday after press time.

Aaron Chan ’10 said the team’s biggest win this year was their 12-6 victory against Peninsula because they lost to them 1-17 last year, and he said their most important match left this year is today’s match against Thousand Oaks High.

Camaraderie has been a strong point for the team.

“every person cheers the others on and is excited to be there,” Will Hinson ’10 said. Thats contributed to our success more than anything.”

Strong finish salvages season

Jack Petok ’11 swims in a meet against Alemany on April 24.

By AusTin Block

Only a single loss to Redondo Union High School has kept the JV boys’ volleyball team from an undefeated record with two games left in the season. The team has a 10-1-1 record, a flawless 9-0 league record and is in first place in the Mission League going into the last two games of the season. They played Notre Dame at home yesterday after press time.

The team also beat rival Loyola twice, at home and away.

“Our strength as a team is through our togetherness,” Matthew Goldhaber ’11 said. “When somebody is having a bad game, we help them get through so that we can win the game. Our collectiveness is what gets us through each game on top.”

The team also placed second in a tournament at Royal High School.

“The boys know that they do not need to overly focus on the ‘win’ but to just play their game and the win will hopefully fall into place,” Head Coach Shari Sakamoto said.

By Alex leichenger

With five victories in its last seven matches, including a 30-stroke rout of Viewpoint April 17, the JV boys’ golf team bounced back from an early sea-son slump consisting of three consecu-tive losses.

The Wolverines finished with a 5-5 overall record and a 2-2 league record after concluding their season with a win in a league match versus Notre Dame April 24.

Only two days before, the Wolver-ines lost by 21 strokes to Westlake. The

team posted its best combined score in a 204-213 victory over Loyola March 20 and then went on to defeat Chami-nade, lose to San Marcos, and defeat Viewpoint twice in a row.

Head Coach Greg Hack said that the team has developed better camara-derie as the season has progressed.

“We are playing more as a team now toward the end of the season,” Hack said.

Hack cited rust as the biggest weak-ness for the JV team, but did not con-sider them to have any glaring defi-ciencies.

lacrosse

Young team hits rough patch BaseBall

Team heads into home stretch

VolleyBall

Boys stand first in leagueTennis

Squad starts year undefeated

Track and field

Recent victory adds confidence

swimminG

Wolverines win Mission League

By Alec cAso

The JV baseball team has had an up and down season, posting a record of 6-10 overall and a league record of 2-4. The squad has participated in eight tournaments and has won four of them.

“This season has been really tough but the hard work is worth it,” Daniel Goliger ’11 said.

In its game last Friday against

Notre Dame, the team lost 4-6. It was the second time the team faced off with Notre Dame that week, losing 11-17 three days earlier.

“It was a tough loss for the team.” Goliger said.

The squad played Crespi after press time yesterday at 3:45 at Franklin Field.

The team ends the season with six straight league matches against Cre-spi, Chaminade, and Loyola.

doWn loW: Aaron Chan ’10 goes for the ball in a match against Notre Dame.

Tiana Woolridge/chronicle

The Chronicle Sports A31April 29, 2009

141Boys’ and Girls’ Swimming

League PrelimsFriday at 9 a.m.

San Fernando Aquatic Facility

“It is good to be able to compete with all the other schools at once. It is going to be a really exciting meet.”

—Allison Merz ’10

Softball vs. Flintridge Sacred

Heart Thursday at 3:45 pm

Los Angeles Valley College

April-May Games to watch...

30Boys’ Volleyballvs. Crespi

Thursday at 6 p.m.Taper Gym

“We just need to focus and stay strong against Notre Dame and Crespi.”

—Spencer Eichler ’11

7Boys’ and Girls’ TrackLeague FinalsFriday at 2 p.m.

Los Angeles Valley College 8 Baseballvs. Loyola

Friday at 3:45 pmFranklin Field

“It should be a good game, because FSHA is supposed to have a really good pitcher.”

—Amanda Horowitz ’10

“Loyola is a good team, and for us to win we will put in a lot of work.”

—Max Heltzer ‘11

“This is our chance to show how we stack against the best. Our distance team is very solid, but our sprint team is definitely going to need to show up with their A-game.”

—Nick Hunter ’09

4Boys’ Lacrossevs. Crespi

Monday at 7 p.m.Crespi High School

“We have to win against both Chaminade and Crespi to make the playoffs.”

—Conor O’Toole ‘10

What made you want to swim at Amherst next year?QIt is Division III rather than the Division I schools I was looking at. My biggest draw to the school other than academics and all the other stuff was actually the fact that the swimming program would allow me to do other things. So I would be able to do a capella in school and participate in theatre productions... The head coach at Amherst is really easy going about it.

A

Q How do you balance club swimming and school swimming?

It is pretty easy to balance given the way that [head coach Darlene] Bible structures the program. She lets us swim club every day except for two days a week, and that doesn’t include meets. So, for example, if there are two meets in a week, I can go to club every single day. So it is pretty easy to do both.

A

Q You also sing and act. What made you focus primarily on swimming?

A

What is your favorite thing about swimming?Q

A I really like relays in high school meets. First of all the competition is really fun, and I just really like swimming with the other girls and getting really pumped up and excited for our races.

What part of swimming at Amherst are you most looking forward to?Q

A I am really excited to be on a team. I am on a really small team, and in high school I don’t swim with the girls every day, so it will be really nice to practice with the same group of girls every day. Also, the competition will be really fun, like going to NCAA and all of that.

Q When did you start focusing on backstroke?

My freshman year. I was a breaststroker but there were a lot of breaststrokers on varsity, so I tried to focus on my second best stroke. My first year I was pretty good at it, I mean not great, but I was okay. The more I worked on it, the more time I dropped. Every year I dropped about three seconds which is kind of huge. I liked the stroke a lot.

A I actually felt a commitment to the team in a way that was slightly different from the singing program, because there were so many singers and so few swimmers. I still sing twice a week, like voice lessons, and the theatre stuff – instead of doing actual performances I started writing.

Q Does swimming six days a week interfere with your school work?

Junior year particularly it made it really hard, but I think that it made me focus. It gave me a certain amount of time where I was allowed to do my school work because I was at practice for two, three hours every day. At first it was hard, but it really makes you manage your time.

A

In her own words...

PHoTo AnD inTerVieW BY ALex eDeL

Q What are you hoping to achieve going into CiF this season?

We bumped up divisions into Division I. I really hope that we could try to make it to finals in the relay. I think that it is going to be really tough but I definitely want to make a significant cut in my best time and have a good time.

A

Maddy Sprung-Keyser ’09Varsity Swimmer

Q As a team captain, how do you try to inspire the team?

I just talk to the girls before the meets and try to get everyone excited about swimming, which sometimes is hard after a long day of school. We do cheers with the boys [team] which are never that fun or funny, but we try.

A

Concentration title: FoodConcentration description: “An exploration of food as symbols for things like politics, religion and human psychology.”

“

“

A32 April 29, 2009photofinish

from thedrawing boardIn a culminating show, students displayed artworks from their senior year concentrations.

Twenty-three studio artists showcased their completed se-nior concentrations to friends and family Monday in the Feld-man-Horn gallery.

Concentrations, student-driven bodies of work centered around a single theme, occupy the greater part of the senior year curriculum.

The work displayed was com-pleted by students in two differ-ent studio art classes: Marianne Hall’s Drawing and Painting class, and Arthur Tobias’ design class.

Each of the two classes con-tain some students complet-ing the classes AP Studio Art: Drawing and Painting, and AP Studio Art: 2D Design. Concen-trations completed for the AP contain 12 pieces.

Those students who chose not to participate in the AP class displayed 6 piece concentrations, though many were not finished because they do not have to meet the Collegeboard’s deadline.

The art will be up until May 12.

— Ester Khachatryan

Concentration title: In Search of HarmonyConcentration description: “I wanted to explore art as a medium for politcal expres-sion in terms of taking a stance on individual issues.”

The glasses are supposed to be a symbol of your perspective and the way you see the world.

Sal Greenberger ’09

Alex Haynes’09

It’s a commentary on world hunger. The skeleton, which represents death, is sucking the life out of the continent drawn, Africa.

mondrian lines: Phoebe Novak ’09 in front of her (left) and Ally Kalt’s ’09 groups of artwork that make up their concentrations. Both are part of AP Studio Art: Drawing and Painting class.

artist in her studio: Emma Sokoloff ’09 dons her smock in the Feldman Horn art studio where all students have class.

handy man: Mi-chael Lie-berman ’09 mounts his fourth piece from his group of senior-year artwork.

cathi choi/CHroniClE

cathi choi/CHroniClE

cathi choi/CHroniClE

cathi choi/CHroniClE

dana glaser/CHroniClE

B SectionThe Chronicle . Harvard-Westlake School . Wednesday, April 29, 2009

building ideasbright

The Studies in Scientific Research class and Independent Studies offer chances to explore foreign films, develop iPod applications and research use of solar power for the school.

Photo IllustratIon by CathI ChoI

‘scientific playground’ James Shaum ’09 has designed an experiment to test the current

hypotheses on the relationship between plant growth and sound.Shaum has been performing tests on Stella, a lily that resides in front of

Shaum’s speakers, for a couple years. “Stella only grew flowers when it was hearing southern rock,” Shaum

said, “and I am going to figure out exactly why that happened.”Shaum filled a long planter box with barley, a fast-growing plant that

Shaum expects to germinate within one week of planting. A speaker at one end of the box produces a sound wave designed to be loud at some places in the box and quiet at others. Shaum plans to compare the barley’s growth at loud places and quiet places in the box, which could confirm or deny a possible correlation between plant growth and volume.

Plant veins are the only ways for auxin, a hormone that stops growth, to reach the growing areas in plants. Normally, plant veins allow the auxin to travel freely. Because sound waves vibrate the plant veins, many scientists currently believe that strong vibrations from loud sounds create vacuums in the veins that pull the walls of the veins shut.

“That seemed retarded completely irrational,” Shaum said. “The pinched veins would have many more detrimental effects on the plant. The veins are not completely flaccid, which would prevent a vacuum.”

—Spencer Gisser

Shaum plays to plants

Behind the green door of Munger 202 lies a

Michael Lee ’09, Andrew Lee ’09 and Jason Mow ’09 dedicated their year to creating a natural energy drink that would enhance concentration without causing a crash or any other unhealthy side effects. The resulting product, Brainade, comes in a powdered formula that blends with any refreshment, adding to the drink a taste of agave nectar. The drink is targetted for students.

The three were inspired when Michael and Andrew were up late studying for a history test, and didn’t want to drink another Red Bull.

The pair then began to research natural brain stimulants, bringing in their friend Mow to help with the chemical aspect of the project.

After many tests varying ingredients and proportions, they found optimal results in a combination of organic agave nectar, rhodiola root powder, ginkgo and ginseng. They conducted the tests on themselves, choosing only natural products that would avoid energy or mood swings.

They began testing their product on two groups of ten Harvard-Westlake students, giving one group a placebo as a control factor. They first used IQ tests to determine any improvement in concentration, but the test showed no significant change. Reflecting on the results, the team discovered that IQ tests were irrelevant to testing the product’s efficiency, since Brainade works with focus and attention levels instead of simply intelligence. They came up with memory tests as an alternative, which they will use to test for improvements in the upcoming weeks.

They are also making plans for the product’s potential bottling and distribution, contacting several spokesmen of different manufacturing companies.

“The best part was that we had the opportunity to do things ourselves, rather than being told what to research,” Lee said.

—Lauren Seo

Seniors test Brainade

Alex Steiner ’09 made biodiesel fuel with particular emphasis on the effects of temperature on biodiesel, the nation’s fastest growing alternative fuel industry according to the National Biodiesel Board.

“I started researching biodiesel because I was interested in doing an alternative energy research project and wanted to be able to do a project that was feasible at a high school level,” Steiner said.

After successfully making biodiesel fuel from waste peanut oil in the laboratory, Steiner expanded his research to discover ways to improve biodiesel and expand its market.

“In colder areas, biodiesel users have to dilute their biodiesel with petroleum diesel during winter months so that their cars can run properly. If people in colder areas don’t have to do this, this would lift a big obstacle in running cars on pure biodiesel,” Steiner said.

Steiner experimented with adding table salt to the biodiesel to lower the freezing temperature of the fuel. However, salt had damaging effects on the engine of a car.

Following the example of students conducting a similar study in Spain, Steiner added the compound triacetin to the biodiesel fuel. The results of the data were inconclusive.

“My conclusion is that making biodiesel perform well at lower temperatures, particularly far below zero, will be challenging. On the other hand, there is promise as the solution could be something relatively simple like using table salt as an additive,” Steiner said.

—Ester Khatchatryan

Steiner makes new fuel

Leland Cox ’09 was curious why geckos are able to stick on all types of surfaces. Cox chased his curiosity and de-cided to research this mysterious phenomenom known as the Casimir Force for his Studies in Scientific Research project.

The Casimir Force intrigued Cox because “the way geckos stick to things makes an interesting case for new types of adhesives,” Cox said.

The Casimir Force is a small attractive force that exists between two close, parallel uncharged plates. At incredibly small distances of only a few microns, the force is incred-ibly strong, and will cause the plates to come together.

“I made an acoustic analog apparatus, which is essen-tially a box with speakers and two metal plates in it with a mechanism that replicates the Casimir force using sound instead of electromagnetic oscillations,” Cox said.

Cox has been working on his acoustic analog of the Casimir Force for almost the entire school year, beginning the project during the second quarter of school.

“Making the box wasn’t that big of a problem, it’s just that it is really delicately balanced and hard to maintain,” Cox said. “The apparatus is so delicate and is so small that I had to use a laser to measure it.”

“It’s kind of cool being at a forefront of a field. It’s an area that is really at the cutting edge of physics and it’s re-ally interesting to be investigating it,” Cox said.

— Drew Lash

Cox analyzes geckos

Benj Bellon ’09 has written a paper on population games, along with research regarding the definition of time and principles in computational biology and biophysics.

Bellon wrote a 35-page paper dealing with the subject of population games, which provide a general model of strategic interactions among many different kinds of agents such as network congestions and natural selection.

“A population game is a model that deals with strategic interactions between large numbers of anonymous agents,”Bellon said. “In my paper, I examine population games geometrically.”

Bellon’s findings are interpreted using a graph in order to visualize, draw conclusions and describe the strategic interactions.

However, this is not the only thing Bellon has undertaken this year. He has taken interest in “the attempt to revise the definition of time: the idea of time as the sum of changes within different observable frameworks,” Bellon said.

On the side, Bellon has been studying principles in computational biology and biophysics along with more extreme theories in which he rethinks the idea that the speed of light is always constant.

— Candice Navi

Bellon plays population games

Going green has been a goal this year for the school. The middle schoolers lost their water bottles and gained filtered water fountains with more plans under way. Adam Roth-man ’09, Ben Barad ’09 and Bobby Kazimiroff ’09 were ap-proached by science teacher Antonio Nassar last November asking them to investigate how Harvard-Westlake could go green. The three were already working on a project involv-ing wireless power, but because they were making so much progress, Nassar thought they would be interested in tak-ing on a larger task.

The three students investigated the cost of solar panels and measured how many could fit on the roof of Munger. Then, the team calculated how much power the panels would generate. They have bought one solar panel and have been measuring the amount of energy it could generate.

They went on the roof of the science building to measure the space that could be alloted for the panels and got esti-mates of the cost of the panels and their efficiency from the Internet. The students also hope to get solar companies to offer deals on panels.

They have calculated the overall cost of the project and estimated when the panels will pay for themselves by low-ering energy costs.

“I really do hope the rest of the world will start putting forth a greater effort to go green,” said Kazimiroff. “If HW can manage to find room in its budget for this solar system it would be a great place to begin such an effort.”

—Faire Davidson

Trio goes green

The ChronicleB2 April 29, 2009

Courtesy of Jason Mow and andrew Lee/CHRONICLe

By AlexiA BoyArsky

Chalmers 202 generates several different reactions from passers-by. Some stop and stare in interest at what looks like a mix between a carpenter’s shop and a

used electronic shop. Others hurry by without understanding what is happening. But for the students of science teacher Antonio Nassar’s Studies in Scientific Research class it’s a place to come for 45 minutes a day and experiment.

Second period Thursday sees a flurry of action throughout the room. In one corner, a deep echoing gong produced by an “acoustic laser” is controlled by Nassar.

Down the table from him, eric Arzoian ’09 places duct tape over a long metal tube with holes punctured on to the top. Assisted by Jason Mow ’09, he starts the gas pumping into the tube from one side and hooks up a speaker to the other end. After checking that gas fills the tube, Mow rips off the duct tape, and Arzoian walks behind him with a striker.

Once a fire starts from one of the holes, it quickly spreads to come out of all of the holes. Arzoian turns on the speaker and a single deep note is played. To correspond with the sound wave, the small flames go up or down depending on where on the sound wave they are located.

“We tried this experiment with music and the flames danced with the music,” Arzoian said. “It’s a cool experiment and it visualizes the sound waves,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the far corner from Arzoian’s dancing flames and Nassar’s acoustic speaker, Ian Cinnamon ’10 experiments with what happens when different metals are heated in the microwave.

As he places a crumpled piece of aluminum foil into the microwave and clicks the button,

sparks explode from within and a burning smell wafts out into the room. A few seconds later, the metal is reduced to a small sparking black pile.

In his experiment, Cinnamon studies why thick metal, like lead, heats up more in different parts of the metal. There are hot spots and cold spots, and using heat sensitive paper they can understand why they heat up where they do, he said.

The room itself seems to revolve around a low set black leather couch that stands along one side. Students loaf on to it and discuss everything from college decisions to the current lunch menu and, occasionally, their class projects.

Students in the class are allowed to choose their own projects at the beginning of the year based on something they are interested in or a list of potential projects compiled by Nassar, he said. Other projects being explored this year are bio-fuel, an eco-friendly car and how sounds waves affect cars.

The funding for the class comes in part from the science department’s budget, from school endowment and, for specific projects, from outside funding.

“It really doesn’t cost obscene amounts of money,” Nassar said. “We reuse a lot of things, we don’t really waste materials, we shop on eBay and a lot of the things we use are also used in regular science classes.”

The format of the class is designed specifically to simulate real life research, Nassar said. Students must wait for materials to arrive, they have to design their own experiments and are for the most part left to work on everything on their own, with help from their peers and from Nassar.

“There really are no rules in this class, nothing is out of bounds,” Nassar said. “I think of it as a scientific playground.”

‘scientific playground’ James Shaum ’09 has designed an experiment to test the current

hypotheses on the relationship between plant growth and sound.Shaum has been performing tests on Stella, a lily that resides in front of

Shaum’s speakers, for a couple years. “Stella only grew flowers when it was hearing southern rock,” Shaum

said, “and I am going to figure out exactly why that happened.”Shaum filled a long planter box with barley, a fast-growing plant that

Shaum expects to germinate within one week of planting. A speaker at one end of the box produces a sound wave designed to be loud at some places in the box and quiet at others. Shaum plans to compare the barley’s growth at loud places and quiet places in the box, which could confirm or deny a possible correlation between plant growth and volume.

Plant veins are the only ways for auxin, a hormone that stops growth, to reach the growing areas in plants. Normally, plant veins allow the auxin to travel freely. Because sound waves vibrate the plant veins, many scientists currently believe that strong vibrations from loud sounds create vacuums in the veins that pull the walls of the veins shut.

“That seemed retarded completely irrational,” Shaum said. “The pinched veins would have many more detrimental effects on the plant. The veins are not completely flaccid, which would prevent a vacuum.”

—Spencer Gisser

Shaum plays to plants SSR class has ‘no rules’

Behind the green door of Munger 202 lies a

Michael Lee ’09, Andrew Lee ’09 and Jason Mow ’09 dedicated their year to creating a natural energy drink that would enhance concentration without causing a crash or any other unhealthy side effects. The resulting product, Brainade, comes in a powdered formula that blends with any refreshment, adding to the drink a taste of agave nectar. The drink is targetted for students.

The three were inspired when Michael and Andrew were up late studying for a history test, and didn’t want to drink another Red Bull.

The pair then began to research natural brain stimulants, bringing in their friend Mow to help with the chemical aspect of the project.

After many tests varying ingredients and proportions, they found optimal results in a combination of organic agave nectar, rhodiola root powder, ginkgo and ginseng. They conducted the tests on themselves, choosing only natural products that would avoid energy or mood swings.

They began testing their product on two groups of ten Harvard-Westlake students, giving one group a placebo as a control factor. They first used IQ tests to determine any improvement in concentration, but the test showed no significant change. Reflecting on the results, the team discovered that IQ tests were irrelevant to testing the product’s efficiency, since Brainade works with focus and attention levels instead of simply intelligence. They came up with memory tests as an alternative, which they will use to test for improvements in the upcoming weeks.

They are also making plans for the product’s potential bottling and distribution, contacting several spokesmen of different manufacturing companies.

“The best part was that we had the opportunity to do things ourselves, rather than being told what to research,” Lee said.

—Lauren Seo

Seniors test Brainade

Alex Steiner ’09 made biodiesel fuel with particular emphasis on the effects of temperature on biodiesel, the nation’s fastest growing alternative fuel industry according to the National Biodiesel Board.

“I started researching biodiesel because I was interested in doing an alternative energy research project and wanted to be able to do a project that was feasible at a high school level,” Steiner said.

After successfully making biodiesel fuel from waste peanut oil in the laboratory, Steiner expanded his research to discover ways to improve biodiesel and expand its market.

“In colder areas, biodiesel users have to dilute their biodiesel with petroleum diesel during winter months so that their cars can run properly. If people in colder areas don’t have to do this, this would lift a big obstacle in running cars on pure biodiesel,” Steiner said.

Steiner experimented with adding table salt to the biodiesel to lower the freezing temperature of the fuel. However, salt had damaging effects on the engine of a car.

Following the example of students conducting a similar study in Spain, Steiner added the compound triacetin to the biodiesel fuel. The results of the data were inconclusive.

“My conclusion is that making biodiesel perform well at lower temperatures, particularly far below zero, will be challenging. On the other hand, there is promise as the solution could be something relatively simple like using table salt as an additive,” Steiner said.

—Ester Khatchatryan

Steiner makes new fuel

Other kids in the sandbox

The ChronicleB3April 29, 2009

5Autotune, “T-Pain Effect” iPhone ApplicationAndrew Lee

3GyroballMatt Bagnard, Michael Lee, Corey Vann

7 Solar OvenMatt Bagnard, Corey Vann

1Freezing Water WavesCharlie Grosslight

14Acoustic LaserGavin McCourt, Jason Mow

6Electric carMaxx Bricklin, Rory Handel, Sun Ho Lee

2Vortex Tube for CoolingCarl Lawson

10Mathematical simulation of cancer stem cellsJeff Yu

In total, 28 students are working on 21 projects. Find more on these projects in the upcoming Journal of Science.

InfographIC by aLLegra tepper and MICheLLe yousefzadeh/CHRONICLe

9Standing waves in metals inside microwave ovensIan Cinnamon, Ava Kofman

13

Electric Field in High-Voltage CircuitsAlex de Salazar, Rebecca Jacobs

11

4Vehicle deceleration, energy generationRichard Liu

12RocketryRyan Ashley8

15

Flame tube Eric Arzoian

Computer Simulation of Quantum TunnelingBiswaroop Mikhurjee

Potato GunKayvon Raphael

independent spirits

Nick Merrill ’09 had trav-eled over 5,000 miles to the Isle of Man to explore his passion: linguistics. For that opportu-nity, Merrill said he would have traveled farther.

But Merrill’s three-week trip was a small portion of the five month journey he was embark-ing on with the Junior Summer Fellowship grant he received. Merrill finished his 130 page novel, “The Voice of Man,” on the extinction of Manx, a lan-guage now spoken by a mere 56 people. Until Merrill’s project, no publications about the Manx language or Manx speakers ex-isted in the United States.

“The focus of my book was to study a curiosity,” Merrill said. “The more important purpose

of the book is that Manx’s his-tory tells an important story about the future: many lan-guages may go extinct by the end of the century in favor of ‘international’ languages.”

Using Lulu, Inc., Merrill cre-ated everything from cover art to manuscript format for the book. He learned skills in ty-pography and graphic design along the way. “I didn’t know why languages went extinct, but it was one of those things that scared me,” Merrill said. “The way not being remem-bered when I die scares me. The only way to conquer a fear is to dive into it and figure it out yourself.”

— Allegra Tepper

After her junior English class, Lindsey Ward ’09 knew that she would do an independent study with English teacher Jeremy Mi-chaelson. Originally, Ward signed up for the class to improve her writing. Michaelson recommend-ed some books for her to read over the summer, and of the ten books, Ward chose “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov in 1955.

“I’m discussing and forming commentary on Nabokov’s phi-losophies of writing in the second

part of my paper,” Ward said. Al-though her paper probably won’t be published soon, she will pres-ent it to the SISC.

“Doing this independent study allowed me to take something like a second English class, except I was allowed to focus completely on something that I chose and was interested in,” Ward said. “It was great having the liberty to really dig deep and fall into a work.”

— Candice Navi

As Avery Rosin ’09 toured col-leges last year, guides emphasized how easy it was to pursue pas-sions in college.

On the same trip, Rosin saw a report about Americans explain-ing to kids that dinosaurs were fictitious and “challenging every-thing in the museum with con-servative religious beliefs,” Rosin said.

Rosin wanted to explore how these beliefs were cultivated in different environments.

He rushed the paperwork for his SIR, and paired up with Di-rector of Studies Deborah Dowl-ing. His project was called “When

Does Religion Trump Science?: An Inquiry Into the Debate be-tween Creationism and Biological Evolution.”

“What I liked so much about this project was how it stretched into biology, theology, philosophy, and sociology,” Rosin said.

The social surveying and video were put on hold when Rosin was sick with meningitis in Novem-ber, but his paper combined find-ings about the science of evolution with reflective conclusions about belief systems of religious Ameri-cans.

— Julie Barzilay

The independent study course was designed to allow seniors in good academic standing the opportunity to develop a course for one semester.

An independent study had been a part of Oliver Doublet’s ’09 high school plan since he was a sophomore. After tak-ing cinema studies as a junior, Doublet used first semester of senior year to complete his independent study paper in which he studied how the Alge-rian War for Independence was portrayed through French lan-guage film.

Using the films “Battle of Algiers” by Gillo Ponticorvo, “Le Petit Soldat” by Jean-Luc Godard, “L’Honneur D’un Cap-taine”, and “Wild Reeds” by André Téchiné, as well as some research books, Doublet com-

pleted a 25-page paper.“Since I dropped French this

year, my independent study was supposed to be a language and film study,” Doublet said.

For about 20 minutes once a week, Doublet met with his ad-viser, Cinema Studies teacher Ted Walch, to make sure that he was making progress. The bulk of the work was done in watch-ing the films, Doublet said.

“I probably spent around 50 hours writing in the last week of winter break and the first week back because it was due that Friday,” he said.

— Emily Friedman

Caroline Cuse stood in front of a panel of six faculty mem-bers all waiting to judge her proposal for a study in Optics: Physics and Photography.

As she toured the committee around Feldman-Horn Gallery she explained that through this study, she aimed to increase her knowledge of four principles of physics: reflection, refraction, diffraction, and interference and how they related to photog-raphy.

“I wanted to explore the re-lationship between the two dis-ciplines further, so I created an interdisciplinary study that

would lead me to a greater un-derstanding of light through art and science,” Cuse said.

She spent the semester pho-tographing the four principles, creating calculations and dia-grams, and writing a paper con-taining detailed explanations of the physical phenomena, Cuse said.

“Through my independent study, I discovered the interre-latedness of vision and physical laws, and supported visual rep-resentations with concrete cal-culations.”

— Michelle Youzefzadeh

Justin Levine’s ’09 indepen-dent study explored genres in filmmaking by filming a docu-mentary and a comedy.

He had planned to do an in-dependent study since his junior year and was inspired by a former senior who made a film as part of his independent study. Last sum-mer, Levine and Jack Heston ’09 traveled to India to film the docu-

mentary “Untouchable” about the Dalit people.

“It was very hard to make be-cause we had to cut 20 hours of footage to make a 10 minute film,” Levine said.

Levine also filmed a comedy as part of his independent study called “Semiformal.”

— Nicki Resnikoff

In his search to understand modern-day France, Jason Byun ’09 looked past antiquated icons such as the Eiffel Tower, Marie-Antoinette and Edith Piaf, and focused on race relations in con-temporary France in his inde-pendent study project.

History teacher Francine Werner mentored Byun as he explored interrelations between the three major French ethnic groups: the Arabs, Africans and Asians.

He is studying their respec-tive relationships with the Cau-casian French of Gallic ancestry. Through a 40 to 50-page research

paper Byun plans to address why French Asians have been able to successfully assimilate into French society with relatively little discrimination while Arabs and Africans have faced much more resistance.

“The modern France of the 21st century is as racially rich and diverse as the United States - it’s a country where vibrant Arab, African and Asian cul-tures have had serious influence on the development of con-temporary French culture and language,” Byun said.

— Marni Barta

Caroline CusePhysics and photography

Oliver DoubletFrench film and war

Justin LevineFilm documentaries

Nick MerrillThe Manx language

Avery RosinReligion versus science

Lindsey WardWriter Vladimir Nabokov

Jason ByunMinorities and France

The ChronicleB4 April 29, 2009

ALL GRAPHICS BY CANDACE RAVAN