december 2013 issue

INSIDE

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By Patrick ryan

The Office of Admission will accept as many as 20 new sophomores into the class of 2017 for next year, Director of Admission Elizabeth Gregory said Friday.

The school has enrolled 29 new students into the 10th grade class the past three years. This year’s ninth grade

class is smaller than past years’, and the school tries to maintain the same overall en-rollment at the upper school, which is 866 students this year. There is no maximum capacity for students at the upper school.

“When we can take more in for 10th grade, it really gives us a chance to increase the di-versity of the upper school,

which we love. The kids that we get for 10th grade are usu-ally really wonderful,” Gregory said. “They are older, they are more mature [and] they know what they are getting them-selves into by coming to a rig-orous college prep school like Harvard-Westlake.”

The applicants are usu-ally academically or athleti-cally oriented students looking

for more competitive sports programs or a greater chal-lenge in academics than they are receiving at their current schools, she said.

The school typically re-ceives 100 to 150 applicants for 10th grade, but Gregory said she hopes that number will in-crease. The school will host a

KWANZAA CONFUSION:Many students are unsure of the origin and traditions of the week-long holiday celebration.

Commons to rewrite mission statementBy Jack Goldfisher

President Rick Commons has decided to rewrite the school’s mission statement to be more memorable and re-flective of Harvard-Westlake’s core values.

The current mission state-ment emphasizes the oppor-tunities the school strives to provide for the development of its students’ intellectual, spiritual and emotional capac-ities. It states that students are taught to learn how to live “with integrity and purpose as contributing members of soci-ety.”

Commons said he doesn’t disagree with the current mis-sion statement’s sentiments, but he wants the new one to

be more digestible, which he hopes will help it become a credo that will inform stu-dents’ and faculty members’ daily decisions.

“When I asked my ad-ministrative team what our mission statement was, zero could begin to remember what it was,” Commons said. “The same thing happened when I asked students.”

Commons said that despite the school’s success, having a unifying mission statement is crucial to a real sense of com-munity.

To help achieve this goal, Commons has decided to as-semble a committee of stu-dents and faculty to help him form the mission statement before the end of the school

year.“It’s important that [the

new mission statement] con-tains goals reflective of our-selves and our aspirations,” Commons said. “We hope it’ll reflect what a broad swath of our community would say is important to us.”

Commons said he was in-spired by Johnson & Johnson’s complete nationwide recall of Tylenol in 1982 after cyanide was found in several Tylenol capsules and seven people died as a result of taking the pain reliever.

“Even though the CEO knew that the only infected bottles came from one store, he decided to pull all bottles off of every shelf in the country,” Commons said. “He pointed to

their credo, which said their first obligation was to the doc-tors, nurses, patients, moth-ers and fathers they strived to help and that helped him make his decision. That’s what I want to be able to do, and what I want our students to be able to do.”

Commons stressed the need for the new statement to reflect both the current state of the school and its future ambitions.

“There need to be timeless truths that we hold as self-ev-ident, and we need to be able to say them to each other,” he said, smiling. “Not that I’m comparing this to the Decla-ration of Independence, but we want our credo to be similarly timeless.”

ONthEWEBDR. DOLITTLE:Science teacher Blaise Eitner shows off his iguana, one of many animals in his classroom.

Watch the full menagerie tour athwchronicle.com/eitner

HRONICLEtHE HaRvaRd-wEstLakE

Los Angeles • Volume 23 • Issue 5 • Dec. 18, 2013 • hwchronicle.comC

BUMP IN THE FIELD:The varsity girls’ soccer team suffered an early season loss against Mira Costa. The team is now 2-1 on the season.

A3 PRO BONO: Students and advisers showcased community service clubs at the nonprofit fair Dec. 9.

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LEILY ARZY/CHRONICLE

By noa yadidi

School will begin next fall with the second all-school opening convocation Sept. 2, the day after Labor Day.

After the first-ever all-school opening convocation this year, the administration decided to begin school next year with a similar ceremony, again on the upper school cam-pus, Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said. No planning for the convocation has begun yet, she added.

Huybrechts said that the different oaths taken by mid-dle and upper school student council members may change to a single, unified oath.

However, Huybrechts not-ed that the upper school pre-fects would still need an ad-ditional part written in their oath to account for their Hon-or Board responsibilities.

When creating the calen-dar, the administration con-siders whether holidays will fall on school days and tries to refrain from starting before Labor Day, as it did this year.

“We feel that we can start after Labor Day next year be-cause Labor Day is so early,” Executive Assistant to the President Ann-Marie Whit-man said. “It’s Sept. 1, the ear-liest it could possibly be, so we are taking advantage of that.”

While the administration is not ready to release any further dates such as to when breaks will start and end, Huybrechts confirmed that both Easter and Passover will fall during spring break, un-like this year.

Whitman said that because no extra days off will have to be given for these holidays, it gives the school more leniency on when it can begin.

“We really just look at where holidays fall and then try to focus what makes the most sense to use our time wisely and be mindful of our families and vacation times and other kids that have to be on campus before school starts,” Whitman said.• Continued on page A9

SEASON’S TIDINGS: Head of Upper School Audrius Barzdukas sits on President Rick Commons’ lap during Winterfest Mon-day, right. Oliver Goodman-Waters ’14, left, Alec Zadikian ’14, Jason Park ’14 and Varun Gadh ’14 perform at the Coffee House Dec. 16, top left. Middle school student council senators and upper school prefects sing at annual Christmas service Sunday, bottom left.

Such a Winter’s Day

2014-2015 convocationto followLabor Day

School to accept more sophomore applicants

LAUREN SONNENBERG/CHRONICLE

SCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2013

3700 Coldwater Canyon Ave. Studio City, Calif. 91604

PreviewA2

The ChroniCle, the student newspaper of Harvard-Westlake School, is published nine times per year and distributed free on both the upper and middle school campuses. There are 727 students at the Middle School and 870 students at the Upper School. Subscriptions may be purchased for $20 a year for delivery by mail. Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the seniors on the Editorial

Board. Letters to the editor may be submitted to [email protected] or mailed to 3700 Coldwater Canyon Ave., Studio City, CA 91604. Letters must be signed and may be edited for space and to conform to Chronicle style and format. Advertising questions may be directed to Tara Stone at 310-430-8537. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product or service by the newspaper or the school.

By Sydney Foreman and Julia aizuSS

First, Aidan Yetman-Mi-chaelson ’14 was told to order crumbly bread. Then, he was instructed to ask for oil. Next, he had to demand that the sandwich not be cut. While oil was smeared on the bread, shout that there’s not enough oil, and call the employee by name. Lastly, stuff the pur-chased sandwich down the trash.

With this simple proce-dure, Yetman-Michaelson learned how best to annoy the employees of Subway Restau-

rant. He gathered these in-structions, along with numer-ous knock-knock jokes and short anecdotes, as examples of humor from students.

When Yetman-Michael-son noticed that his math teacher, Christopher Gragg, was throwing out 500 cassette tapes, he took them and be-gan recording jokes on them, approaching both people he knew and people he didn’t.

“I had a bunch of tapes and a lot of free time,” he said.

The most common joke Yetman-Michaelson heard was, “What did one lawyer say to the other lawyer?” the an-

swer being, “We are both law-yers.” After hearing this joke repeatedly throughout the day, he came across a classmate who changed the response of the joke to be, “Don’t be silly, lawyers can’t talk.”

“That’s not a funny joke,” Yetman-Michaelson said. “Af-ter listening to it about 50 times, [this version] started to be funny.”

Yetman-Michaelson used only one full tape for his re-cordings and interviewed about 100 people. He intends to use one or two more of the hundreds of cassette tapes to recreate a similar project with

strangers at The Grove. A few more of the tapes will be used for him and his friend to re-cord “avant-garde, cutting-edge, experimental” music.

Yetman-Michaelson and

his father, English teacher Jeremy Michaelson, listened to the tape in the car ride home. He is also considering playing the jokes on his KHWS radio show.

Senior tapes more than 100 jokes as examples of student humor

offbeat

News A6 FeAtures B4

GOING VERTICAL: Mike Sheng ’14 (#30) drives to the basket against St. Bernard in the University Tournament Dec. 10.

WEB MANAGER:Webmaster Lillian Contreras surveys the school’s website on her computer screens in the Didax House near Saint Michael’s Church.

GREAT MINDS: Jacob Gold ’15, Donhem Brown ’14, Nicholas Abouzeid ’15 and Enya Huang ’15 participate in a Science Bowl scrimmage Dec. 14.

JAZZ HANDS: Andy Arditi ’14, an alto saxophone player, was selected to play in the Grammy Camp Jazz Band.

GRANT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE


SIDDARTH KUCHERIA/CHRONICLE

A&e B10MICHAEL SUGERMAN/CHRONICLE

sports C2

KNOCK KNOCK: Aidan Yetman-Michaelson ’14 records Laurel Rand-Lewis ’16 telling her best joke on his cassette tape.

SYDNEY FOREMAN/CHRONICLE

By Jake SaferStein

Classes in mythology, sur-realism, fly-fishing and robot-ics will be offered next year, along with two new classes in math and foreign language.

The four Independent Studies and Interdisciplinary Research classes added are “The Art and Science of Fly Fishing,” “Mythology and its Meaning: Gods and Godesses; Heroines and Heroes,” “Surre-alism in Poetry, Painting and Film” and “Robotics.”

The Faculty Academ-ic Committee approved the classes at its November meet-ing. The classes will be offered providing enough students en-roll.

The Art and Science of Fly Fishing will be taught by visual arts teacher Art Tobias and science teacher Dietrich Schuhl.

Schuhl’s and Tobias’s goal is to bring together art and science through fly fishing.

“If you fish a lot you have a lot of time to illuminate on things like the physics of the line,” Tobias said. “In the Re-naissance, science and art were the same thing, done by the same people; we want to

combine those two again.” Schuhl and Tobias are still

finishing up the exact cur-riculum, but plan to make the course hands-on; however, students do not need any prior fishing experience to enroll.

Latin teacher Paul Chenier will teach Mythology and its Meaning: Gods and Goddesses; Heroines and Heroes.

“The goal of the class is to read the myths through translated primary sources and appreciate them as liter-ary works, but also to ground them back into historical and cultural context by looking at what role they played,” Che-nier said. “We’ll discuss how the myths relate to history, religion, and art and architec-ture.”

The class will also work to relate myths studied to mod-ern art and culture.

Science teacher and Robot-ics club adviser Karen Hutchi-son will teach the new robotics course. The class will focus on the competition season, with offseason projects decided by the participants in the class. Additionally, the Robotics club will continue to participate in robotics competitions and will be open to students not en-

rolled in the robotics class. “My hope is to have some

instruction, but the class will be very project based and fo-cus on whatever the students want,” Hutchison said.

Surrealism in Poetry, Painting and Film will be taught by English teacher Sa-sha Watson.

“We want to look at sur-realism by looking at examples like reading poems and think-ing about photos,” Watson said. “Then we’ll put it into practice, with projects like writing or maybe even film.”

Directed Studies in Gen-eral Topology, one of the two academic courses added, is an advanced math course for stu-dents who have already taken Advanced Seminar in Math-ematics. It will be taught by math teacher Joe Busch.

Topology is the study of “rubber sheet geometry” that deals with very abstract geo-metrical concepts like taking one shape and folding it into another.

Chinese Literature and Culture Honors will be taught by Chinese teacher Yi Jiang and is designed for students who have completed AP Chi-nese and Chinese V.

hwchronicle.com/news news A3Dec. 18, 2013

Community Council welcomes volunteer organizations, clubs

By Lauren Sonnenberg

Students dressed up in one-sies and decorated cookies in the lounge today as part of the annual Winterfest celebration, hosted by Social Committee and Prefect Council. “Mean Girls” was also screened in the lounge throughout the day. Each day has a different theme and movie playing in the lounge.

“I [was] par-ticularly excited for Onesie Wenes-day because Prefect Council has dis-cussed at length the need for community in a school like ours which can get quite hectic,” senior pre-fect Greg Lehrhoff ’14 said.

Winterfest began with “Merry Mon-day,” during which students were encouraged to dress up in festive clothes and watch “Elf” in the lounge. Wetzel’s Pretzels were also sold on the quad all day Monday. Dur-ing activities period Monday, the Activities, Recreation and Care for Individuals with De-velopmental Disabilities Bell Choir performed with the Harvard-Westlake Jazz Sing-ers. After celebrating during the day, students attended the second Coffee House of the year, which took place in Chalmers lounge.

“It was a great way to pre-form during a time of stress with all of the tests before break,” Dora Palmer ’15 said. “Also, I enjoy being able to ex-press myself and see other tal-ented members of our commu-nity.” Palmer sang and played piano to “Say Something.”

The week continued with Tacky Sweater Tuesday,

when “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was screened.

“I feel like Onesie Wednes-day is an idea that the whole school can take part in, and it feeds on the excitement inher-ent in being ridiculously com-fortable in a place that can sometimes feel overwhelm-ing,” Lehrhoff said. “Based on the community’s reaction to Monday and Tuesday’s Winterfest activities, we’re

projecting a large amount of partici-pation and excite-ment surrounding today’s activities.”

Thursday marks the fourth day of Winterfest, when students are invited to participate in the first-ever “Thermal Thursday” by wear-ing puffy jackets and warm clothing

while watching “Home Alone” in the lounge. Whereas other days of Winterfest are aimed at providing entertainment to students on campus with daily movie screenings and holiday food items, Thursday offers a chance to give back, as stu-dents can record messages for patients at Children’s Hospital in the deans’ conference room. Winterfest will conclude with “Frosty Friday,” when stu-dents are encouraged to wear white clothing and watch “How the Grinch Stole Christ-mas” before snow decorates the quad at the end of the day.

Wintergrams that were purchased last week are being delivered during class meet-ings throughout the week. Sophomores received their Wintergrams Monday; juniors theirs Tuesday. Senior will receive their Wintergrams Wednesday during class meet-ing.

Prefect Council hosts Winterfest, festive Coffee House

BE THE CHANGE: Elizabeth Goran ’15, left, runs the table for the Students Taking on Poverty Club. Noah Bennett ’15, right, colors a piggy bank for Community Service Fair held during break Dec. 9.

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

Faculty approves total of six new ISIR, math, foreign language classes

By MarceLLa Park

Community Council orga-nized service-related activities for every day of the week from Dec. 9 to 13.

To start Community Ser-vice Week, the council held a non-profit fair Monday where clubs and organizations ad-vertised community service opportunities. Wednesday’s activity involved making care kits and writing letters to soldiers as part of the com-munity service project Opera-tion Gratitude, and on Thurs-day students made bracelets for Camp Harmony and ran a bake sale raising money for hygiene kits for homeless stu-dents.

On the final day, students made sandwiches for the St. Francis Center, which serves homeless and low income lo-cals, and painted welcome signs for the Habitat for Hu-manity club.

“I think it’s a really good opportunity for people to get involved and it’s a lot less bor-ing than normal activities fair

because you have people actu-ally interacting rather than just giving out candy,” Stu-dents Taking on Poverty Club founder Elizabeth Goran ’15 said. “It’s actually related to the activity.”

Featured outside of school organizations at the fair in-cluded City Year and Meals on Wheels. A representative from City Year told students about giving a year between high school and college or col-lege and graduate school to tu-tor public school students with a high risk of dropping out. With Meals on Wheels, stu-dents can volunteer to serve the disabled and elderly meals for a nominal price.

The fair was the first fair exclusively for service-orient-ed organizations and clubs. Community Council mem-ber Cosima Elwes ’15 said the council had decided on the fair thinking it might be helpful for students to be able to sign up for a number of community service clubs in one place.

During Tuesday’s junior class meeting, a representa-

tive from March of the Living spoke about a trip to Poland and Israel that students can take to remember those af-fected by the Holocaust, and Community Council showed a video promoting the new 12-hour community service re-quirement for the year that represented time spent using dimes. Freddy Chavez, who works for Homeboy Indus-tries, a program that works with previously gang-involved or incarcerated individuals, spoke about his experiences as a gang member and how his life changed when his two chil-dren were born.

The reception that followed in Chalmers lounge included Homeboy Industries shirts for sale and samples of the baked goods they produce.

At senior class meeting Wendesday, a volunteer from Operation Grattiude visited and spoke about opportuni-ties to help those serving abroad. The representative from March of the Living also showed a video and outlined the trip.

nathanson’s

Greg Lehrhoff ’14

FAC adds four new classes to Kutler Center curriculum

Mythology: Students will read translated myths and connect them to modern culture.

Mythology, The Art and Science of Fly Fishing, Robotics and Surrealism in Poetry, Painting and Film will be offered next year to upper school students. Below is a description of the basic curriculum of each class.

The Art and Science of Fly Fishing: The class will combine artistic and scientific studies through fly fishing.

Robotics: The class will focus on instructing participants in robot-building competitions.

Surrealism in Poetry, Painting and Film: Students will analyze examples of surrealism and create their own projects while studing the history of the movement.

SOURCE: LARRY KLEINGRAPHIC BY SCOTT NUSSBAUM

Dec. 18, 2013A4 News The chroNicle

By Jensen Pak

Vincent Huang ’14 was one of 331 students in the nation to receive semifinalist recogni-tion in the 2013 Siemens Com-petition in Math, Science and Technology for his research in the application of tagging EphB4 antibodies to diagnose cancer.

The competition “recogniz-es remarkable talent early on, fostering individual growth for high school students who are willing to challenge themselves through science research,” ac-cording to the Siemens Foun-dation website.

Huang began conducting research the summer of 2010 with Ram Kumar Subraman-yan, an assistant professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. Subramanyan’s lab stud-ies targeted molecular ther-apy, which negates proteins specific to cancer cells.

Huang’s work in the lab fo-cused on the protein EphB4, which has been found to be present in the majority of epi-thelial cancers. The protein al-lows cancer cells to evade pro-grammed cell death and form their own blood vessels.

“Because EphB4 helps can-cer cells survive through two mechanisms, is not present in healthy tissue and is easily ac-cessible due to its location in the exterior membrane of the cells, it is an ideal and pret-ty unique molecular target,” Huang said.

Huang’s research paper in-vestigates the use of tagging EphB4 antibodies that break down the EphB4 protein.

“We’ve found that tagging the antibodies with fluorescent dye can be used to detect can-cer cells much smaller than those identifiable by current methods of diagnosis,” Huang said. “Tagging them with a different fluorescent dye has been found to be able to detect individual cancer cells in the bloodstream, which will allow doctors to stage more accu-rately cancer patients.”

Parking structure report raises questions on environment, noise, geological impact

By Jessica sPitz

Student ID card scanners were installed in the cafete-rias at the middle and upper schools Nov. 19. While ID cards used to be swiped by caf-eteria employees in order to purchase food, now students simply hold their cards up to the scanner themselves.

“When I first saw the scan-ners I was kind of surprised because they were so cool and it made [paying] so much fast-er and easier,” Sloane Chmara ’15 said.

The new scanners are only one aspect of the initiative Pre-fect Council is in the process of implementing. While still at the middle school, sopho-more prefects Grace Pan ’16 and Alec Winshel ’16 were ap-proached by seventh graders who suggested the use of an ID application, which would make physical ID cards unnecessary.

They contacted Cameron Co-hen ’16, who has experience in coding and programming, to help create an app for iPhones and Androids.

“We noticed that stu-dents easily crack, lose or for-get their ID cards, and were spending tons of money buying new ones or were constantly borrowing their friends,” Pan said.

Pan and Winshel sent a detailed presentation of their plan to Chief Financial Offi-cer Rob Levin, who gave them the administration’s approval. They also enlisted the help of Director of Computer Services Dave Ruben.

When Pan, Winshel and Cohen arrived at the Upper School this year, they teamed up with Charles du Manoir ’15 and Jono Klein ’15, two mem-bers of the Entrepreneur Club. Du Manoir and Klein had had a similar idea of having school

IDs on students’ phones.The app was released to

teachers Dec. 16 and will be available for students to down-load from the app store in the near future. There will be QR codes posted around campus that students can scan on their phones, which will link them immediately to the app.

“Right now there is some more testing to try to make the app and the scanners work as fast as possible, but it’s al-most done,” Cohen said.

Students will be able to log in using their Harvard-Westlake usernames and pass-words. The ID on the screen will resemble normal IDs, with photos, ID numbers, bus stick-ers and barcodes.

“We believe that students will enjoy the benefits of the new electronic IDs because the majority of students have their phone easily accessible,” Pan said.

Siemens honorssenior’sresearch

LIFE LESSONS: English teacher Jocelyn Medawar talks about lessons she learned during each year of middle and high school, left. Math department head Paula Evans asks everyone to smile and discusses the calming effects of doing so during a hectic day. MIC stands for a “moment in contemplation”. There have been eight MIC talks this year, all during activities period in the quad.

Teachers discuss memories ‘at the MIC’REPRINTED FROM HARVARD-WESTLAKE YOUTUBE CHANNEL

By Julia aizuss

The Draft Environmental Impact Report the school sub-mitted for a parking structure on the west side of Coldwa-ter Canyon did not satisfactorily study geological, wildlife and noise impact, the Studio City Neigh-borhood Council said Dec. 11.

The council board voted to send a let-ter with this conclu-sion as its response to the DEIR follow-ing a presentation by SCNC secretary Rita Villa of the letter’s abstract, which has since been posted on the coun-cil’s website.

The board said maps of the bridge site show land on one side of Coldwater is liquefac-tion, meaning the soil could lose strength under stress like an earthquake. The response

cited a geologist saying that, due to the difference in foun-dations, each side of the bridge could react differently during a “moderate to large” earth-quake, causing collapse.

The council was also concerned the structure wouldn’t be compatible with the Studio City-Sherman Oaks-Toluca Lake-Cahuenga Pass Com-munity Plan’s policy to protect neighbor-hoods from develop-ment. The DEIR’s land use analysis failed to study con-

flicts with the community since it only studied what it deemed “relevant” policies in the plan. Villa said the DEIR should have studied all poli-cies, and without doing so, a claim of no significant impact could not be substantiated.

Villa said the DEIR should have discussed plans alterna-

tive to the school’s Parking Improvement Plan, which pro-poses a three-level garage with a rooftop practice field and a pedestrian bridge across Cold-water to campus. The project would also add traffic lanes in both directions in front of the school.

Before the presentation, residents could speak for up to a minute. Support for the plan doubled opposition, with many school parents, alumni and em-ployees expressing support for greater safety and traffic flow. Except President Rick Com-mons and Vice President John Amato, all employees spoke for those who couldn’t attend. Many read letters from local businesses like Five Guys and Ralphs. Among all the busi-nesses’ letters, similar phrases cropped up, such as describing the school as an “economic en-gine” for local business.

Residents opposing the plan urged the school to con-

sider alternatives to building on the west side of Coldwater. They also worried about envi-ronmental impact, geological impact and the plan’s “selfish” nature, as St. Michaels All Angels and Episcopal Church rector Dan Justin called it. Council president John Walk-er predicted six to eight more hearings would need to oc-cur before the council issues a decision. After the council reviews the final EIR, it will submit a response letter indi-cating support or opposition.

Commons said he was ea-ger to address neighbors’ wor-ries, particularly geological concerns.

“I don’t have enough facts to be able to comment [about geological impact],” Commons said. “It’s certainly worthwhile for us to understand. I don’t know the extent to which the science supports the neighbor-hood’s concerns. We have some work to do.”

NEW SCANNERS: Raymond Chung ’15 uses the new scanning system to purchase food in the cafeteria. Instead of handing a cafe-teria employee their school ID, students can now charge themselves.


nathanson’s

Rick Commons

New ID application for scannersto be released to teachers, students

By Noa Yadidi

The workload study com-mittee convened for its first meeting Dec. 12 at the Mid-dle School, where commit-tee members met each other for the first time and went through the surveys and data collected from students in all grades through the workload survey administered in No-vember. Each person on the 15-member committee then received a binder full of the data collected in the survey.

“The committee hadn’t yet looked through everything, so before we move forward with analysis and subsequent rec-ommendations, we want to make sure everyone is up to speed with all the data,” mid-dle school Dean of Faculty and Latin teacher Moss Pike said.

Pike, along with science teacher David Hinden, is over-seeing the project.

The committee, which consists of two students, two parents, deans, teachers and other administrators, hopes to meet every other Thursday from January to May, in at least eight meetings in total.Pike said while the commit-tee did not have enough time at the meeting to analyze spe-cific numbers, some that they briefly looked at verified what they had always thought.

“We know that Harvard-Westlake students don’t get as much sleep as we’d all like, and the numbers reflect that,” Pike said.

Almost 120,000 total data points were collected as part of the survey and it will take time to break the data down, Pike said.


Workloadcommitteebegins dataanalysis

School to host cultural exchangeprogram, second WLSA conferenceBy Patrick rYaN

As a founding member of the World Leading Schools Association, Harvard-West-lake will host the second an-nual WLSA Student Confer-ence in July. The school will also launch a new summer program, the World Youth Leadership Institute, which will take place the week before the WLSA conference.

In conjunction with the WLSA conference, the school will host the first Hudnut Cup, a soccer tournament named after former President Tom Hudnut; it will feature be-tween six and eight teams comprised of students attend-ing the World Youth Leader-ship Institute and the WLSA conference.

The association focuses on collaboration between second-ary schools in China and the West, including South Af-rica, Canada, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. To attend a WLSA conference, the students must speak either Mandarin or English. Initially, the organi-zation was devoted to admin-istrators, as a way of deter-mining the best methods of

teaching and curriculum, but WLSA expanded to host its inaugural student conference in Shanghai last July. Around 120 students attended the conference, including 13 from Harvard-Westlake.

“I had the chance to com-municate with other Chinese students and spending time with those students really gave me a new perspective on Chi-nese culture,” Joss Saltzman ’16 said. “I’ve been studying Chinese for six years now and it was really enjoyable to put all that studying to use.”

Saltzman is also part of the planning committee for this year’s WLSA conference.

“The goal is to replicate that cultural exchange and for us to be able to reciprocate so that the Chinese students can experience our culture,” Saltzman said. “Last year we had a lot of chances to go ex-ploring in the Shanghai area. The idea is to provide simi-lar experiences. Some of the things that we are suggesting are a trip to Hollywood and the Griffith Observatory to re-ally let the Chinese students immerse themselves in our culture.”

“If you’re coming from in-

ner Mongolia for a confer-ence, you want to see Los Angeles, you want to see Hollywood, you want to see Kanye [West],” Head of Up-per School Audrius Barzdu-kas said.

The World Youth Leader-ship Institute will bring stu-dents from China to study at Harvard-Westlake along with students from the Los Ange-les area. The program will fo-cus on Western and Eastern style leadership, globalization, international relations and in-ternational economics.

“It will be an intensive course in leadership and the challenges of leading in a hy-per-connected world,” Barzdu-kas said.

“There is a significant amount of interest from the East, particularly China, to come to the U.S. for educa-tional programs,” upper school dean Jim Patterson said. “A lot of it has developed because there is an increasing inter-est from Chinese students to attend college in the West. In order to help to prepare for that transition, there is a lot of interest in Chinese students attending summer programs in the U.S. at independent

schools and boarding schools.”The school hopes to expand

the World Youth Leadership Institute to two weeks start-ing the summer of 2015 and possibly expand to three weeks in the next five to eight years. Patterson also said he would like to see it develop to the point where financial aid can be granted to students attend-ing the program. He antici-pates that between 30 and 40 students total will participate in the program, focused on leadership development. Pat-terson hopes that those stu-dents will stay another week and attend the WLSA student conference.

“I see a tremendous edu-cational opportunity for both Harvard-Westlake students and L.A. area students to have a cultural exchange and to be in the classroom with students from China,” Patterson said. “The Chinese educational sys-tem is a bit different than the Western educational system.

I think there is a tremendous opportunity for [Harvard-Westlake] as well, to tap into this market and provide an opportunity for Harvard-Westlake and Los Angeles area students beyond what they can find in a traditional high school environment from September through June.”

The idea for the Hudnut Cup came from Barzdukas and WLSA executive director Jack Geagh. The tournament will run for four days in conjunc-tion with the WLSA student conference and will only fea-ture boys’ teams. Three Chi-nese scools and one Canadian school have committed to play in the tournament.

“Mr. Hudnut is a busy man, but we hope that Mr. Hud-nut can present the first ever Hudnut Cup,” Barzdukas said.

The students attending the World Youth Leadership Institute and the WLSA con-ference will be housed in the UCLA dormitories.

“ I see a tremendous educational opportunity for both Harvard-Westlake students and L.A. area students to have a cultural exchange and to be in the classroom with students from China.”

—Jim PattersonUpper School Dean nathanson’s

POST-PRODUCTION: Students in Photography I used the selective developing technique, which involves dripping and paint-ing developing chemicals onto exposed photo paper, in their most recent projects. This method allows the photographer to choose which elements of the picture they would like to highlight. The photographs are currently being showcased in Rugby Hall.

Photography I classes display ‘selective developing’ projectCARLY BERGER/CHRONICLE

By alex McNaB

Detentions can now be served by assisting facul-ty members other than the maintenance staff. Students are required to provide assis-tance to a teacher for at least 15 minutes a day for five days during their free periods in order to complete their sen-tence.

Faculty members that have received assistance through this program include athletic trainer Milo Sini, Assistant to the Head of the Upper School Michelle Bracken, up-per school attendance coordi-nator Gabe Preciado, science

teacher Antonio Nassar and football coach Scot Ruggles.

The previous detention system, which is no longer available, re-quired students to sit quietly in a class-room for an hour on a Wednesday morning or to write a char-acter building essay. The new system was proposed by Preciado in November in order to allow students to serve their sentence while benefiting the school.

Originally, the new deten-tion could only be served in

the morning, but Preciado ex-tended it to include the rest of the school day because midday

rather than morning is when the faculty needs the most help.

Preciado hopes that students will en-joy helping the school community while serving their deten-tions.

“I know mainte-nance needs a lot of help,” Preciado said. “But I know cer-tainly other teachers

could use a lot of help. Maybe [students] can reach out to some teachers that they want

to redeem moments with or just lend a helping hand. I think that flexibility is very important. They like the idea of reaching out to their prior teachers.”

Alex Thal ’14 served his detention by helping the maintenance staff pick up trash on the quad during his free periods.

“I think it’s a better learn-ing experience,” Thal said. “And I also felt kind of good helping out the community even though I was being pun-ished. I kind of enjoyed it ac-tually, because it was a good thing, rather than just sitting in a room wasting my time.”

nathanson’s

Gabe Preciado

Students assist teachers, maintenance staffas part of new detention system requirements

inbriefDec. 18, 2013A6 News The chroNicle

Philomatheans Club screens second movie

Stone-Cutters extends submission deadline

Hub spams students’ inboxes with emails

School Year Abroad applications due Feb. 17

School Year Abroad on-line applications for the 2014-2015 school year are due Feb. 17. Director of Financial Aid, SYA Coordinator and French teacher Geoff Bird will inter-view all applicants.

Students must also submit their high school transcript along with recommendations from their foreign language, English and math teachers as well as their dean. Students can choose to study in Spain, France, Italy or China.

“I just knew I wanted a new experience like some sort of study abroad program, and I liked SYA because it would give me the opportunity to ex-perience an entirely different place in the world while also improving my Spanish,” Jona-than Sington ’15, who is cur-rently abroad in Spain, said.

—Henry Vogel

Stone-Cutters, Harvard-Westlake arts and literary magazine, extended its dead-line to Dec. 16 to allow stu-dents to submit more literary works.

Though more than 130 submissions have been re-ceived for Stone-Cutters, only 25 of those submmissions were literary works.

“Although in recent years the number of visual art sub-missions we’ve received has ballooned, we try to repre-sent literary and visual works equally,” Stone-Cutters editor-in-chief Julia Aizuss ’14 said.

Stone-Cutters plans to come out sometime during spring.

—Jonathan Seymour

The Philomathean Club held its second screening of the year Dec. 9. The club members watched the movie “On the Waterfront” starring Marlon Brando.

“Everyone who came re-ally seemed to enjoy the film and we had a great discussion afterward,” club leader Nikta Mansouri ’15 said.

The club will host another event outside of school during winter break.

—Jonathan Seymour

Students and faculty en-rolled in a section of Advanced Topics in Computer Science Honors and in one of last year’s AP Physics B classes re-ceived spam emails from the Hub from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2.

The Hub sent each ac-count enrolled in either class section upwards of 100 emails, each one containing a notifica-tion of a blog update.

“It is unknown what the root cause of the feed was so the problem can not be blocked [from happening again],” mathematics and computer science teacher Jason Field-man said before he found the bug. “However, once the prob-lem was identified, it was easy to fix.”

—Scott Nussbaum

Board of Trustees approves budget based on long-term financial issuesBy Julia aizuss

In the preliminary tuition and salary budget for the 2014-2015 school year that the Board of Trustees approved Dec. 2, the Business Office considered, in the absence of “noteworthy” concerns, long-term factors like financial aid and the healthcare budget, Chief Financial Officer Rob Levin said.

Levin said it’s preferable for the number of students on financial aid to remain con-sistent in each grade, but the tuition for all independent schools has grown faster than both inflation and income. This means that the pool of students who apply to Harvard-Westlake without financial aid is shrinking, so more of the students who end up attending the school will need finan-cial aid.

Although this is a long-term factor, Levin said for the past couple of years the school has accepted a couple more students each year on fi-nancial aid than usual.

The class of 2014 has a greater number of students on aid than usual, so its gradua-tion “takes pressure off” the 2014-15 budget, Levin said.

However, he said this is counterbalanced by the un-expected number of “emer-gencies” recently — students

whose changing financial situ-ation requires them to obtain financial aid.

“We thought that pace was cooling,” Levin said, after the steep rise of yearly emergen-cies caused by the recession, but it has risen again, from the low 20s to the low 30s.

In 2008, when the reces-sion hit, the number per year of emergencies grew from eight to 40 students in the 2008-2009 school year.

These events impacted the budget and have driven the percent of students on fi-nancial aid from the steady 17 percent the Business Office targets to 18 percent — maybe

18.5 percent by the year’s end, Levin said.

“We try not to budget based on lumpiness,” Levin said. “We try and smooth things out. We look at the bumpiness in finan-cial aid, we look at the bumpiness in en-rollment — the wob-

ble, if you will.” With Harvard-Westlake’s

self-funded healthcare system, Levin said the budget has been cheaper than expected for the past few years, especially since the yearly compound growth rate has been just one percent, a number Levin called “unsus-tainable.”

After budgeting health-care at $2.7 million or below

since 2001, the Business Office reached a “day of reckoning” last year, hitting $2.8 million.

This year, based on the preliminary tuition and salary budget, the healthcare budget may hit $3.3 million, bumping up the compound growth rate to 3.5 to 4 percent, Levin said.

The preliminary tuition and salary budget also does not break even, Levin said.

“It’s got a small six-figure deficit,” Levin said. “Again, that’s in the context of a $70 million budget [in total for the school].”

“There are no consequenc-es right now, because what are the consequences of a weather forecast?” he added.

More often than not, the preliminary budget doesn’t break even, so this is not out of the ordinary, Levin said.

“Early in the game, we have to be a little pessimistic,” he said.

The only budget in the last 29 years that did not end up running a surplus was from 2008-0209, when the recession hit.

All surpluses go towards the school’s reserves of about $15-20 million, which are used either for planned renewal and replacement of tools like fac-ulty laptops and projectors, or “any sort of surprise,” like an earthquake, Levin said.

The Board of Trustees will release the tuition for the 2014-2015 school year in Feb-ruary.

By Noa Yadidi

Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts plans to launch a global education website in the next six weeks to promote and encourage global connections for students and teachers.

The website will be linked to the Harvard-Westlake website and will be composed of stories and pictures of stu-dents and teachers who take part in different global educa-tion initiatives like the yearly Gunter-Gross fellowships and the teacher exchange with Eton College two years ago.

Huybrechts said she also hopes the website will be aspi-rational and foster new ideas for global education.

“If ever there was a 21st century skill it is recognizing that we are a global economy, that we are connected and that probably many of our students will some day work in another country and pre-paring our students for that world,” she said.

The website will also pro-vide more information about activities that students in classes like foreign language and the new world religions course can participate in to connect them to others around the world.

“I can always count on teachers and kids here to give us new ideas because we’re always looking for the next great idea in this area,” Huy-brechts said.

Huybrechts to launch global education site

nathanson’s

Rob Levin

Science Bowl hosts interschool scrimmage, announces formation of training teamsBy JoNathaN seYmour

and siddharth Kucheria

Science Bowl hosted a scrimmage against North Hol-lywood High School and Sher-man Oaks Center for Enriched Students Dec. 14. The scrim-mage was open to everyone in Science Bowl, not just people on teams.

A-team captain Anser Ab-bas ’14, Nicholas Abouzeid ’15, Donhem Brown ’14, Katie Eh-rlich ’14, Marko Fejzo ’15, Ja-cob Gold ’15, Jonathan Hecker-man ’15 Enya Huang ’15, Kevin Zhang ’14 and Larry Zhang ’14 participated in the matches.

Teams consist of four peo-ple each. There are two types of questions, multiple choice and short answer. In toss-up ques-

tions, the person who clicked his or her buzzer was not al-lowed to discuss the question with team-mates and must answer immediately.Questions an-swered cor-rectly were followed by a bonus ques-tion for that team, which t e a m m a t e s were allowed to discuss the question.

“The scrimmage went well,” Abbas said. “I think we need to spend more time prac-ticing. I hope we have another scrimmage soon.”

This year Science Bowl added C and D teams to “en-courage and train the next

generation of Science Bowl players,” sci-ence teacher Nathan Car-din said in an email to club members.

C a r d i n and the stu-dent leader-ship of the club decided to create the C and D

teams this year because more than 40 students, an all-time high for the Science Bowl, ex-pressed interest in active par-ticipation in the club.

“While this speaks incred-ibly well of our club’s current vitality, it clearly made the selection process that much more difficult,” Cardin said.

There are five members on each team, and the A and B teams are composed of juniors and seniors, along with one sophomore alternate each.

“When choosing alternates for the A and B teams, we de-cided to continue on with a philosophical approach that worked well for us last year, choosing two promising soph-omores,” Cardin said. “When deciding on each team, many factors were considered: active participation, content knowl-edge, willingness to be a team player, maturity, positivity, buzzer speed, and accuracy.”

LAB PARTNERS: Jacob Gold ’15, left, Donhem Brown ’14, Nicholas Abouzeid ’15 and Enya Huang ’15 compete in the scrimmage Dec. 14 against North Hollywood High School and Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Students. The next scrimmage is scheduled for Jan. 11.

SIDDHARTH KUCHERIA/CHRONICLE

“ The scrimmage went well. I think we need to spend more time practicing. I hope we have another scrimmage soon.”

—Anser Abbas ’14

inbrief

Six win awards at Model UN meetings

Six members of the Model United Nations club received awards at the first two confer-ences of the year.

Elliot Rollins ’16 and Chris-tina Duval ’16 received an Honorable Mention for their representation of Jordan in the Novice Disarmament and International Security Com-mittee.

Brandon Bergsneider ’16 and William Burford ’16 were recognized in the Novice Eco-nomic and Social Council.

Danielle Brody ’15, Mat-thew Kelson ’14 and David Woldenberg ’15 earned Best Delegate awards within their competition committees, and Shelby Weiss ’16 earned an Outstanding award.

—Kristen Gourrier

Mock Trial makes competition playoffs

The Mock Trial team made the playoffs in the Los Angeles County competition, ranking in the top six schools out of the 90 that participated.

The team participated in three trials for this competi-tion, all of which took place at the Los Angeles Superior Court House.

“I think our team did very well, especially considering that more than half of the peo-ple on it have never competed in Mock Trial before,” team pretrial lawyer and witness Nadia Rahman ’15 said.

—Benjamin Most

A total of 14 students have registered for the an-nual Mammoth ski trip taking place Jan. 24-28. Middle and upper school students were re-quired to register before Dec. 1.

The trip serves as an op-portunity for students in all grades to bond and experience independence.

This year’s trip was or-ganized by Daniel Singer ’17 and Taylor Redmond ’17, with Chief Financial Officer Rob Levin as the lead chaperone.

Students will depart on a chartered coach and will stay at Mammoth Mountain Inn.

—Justine Chen

Students register for Mammoth trip

Seniors, alumni attend yearly reception

Recent alumni and current seniors were invited to the annual alumni reception prior to the girls’ varsity basketball game Monday.

The Office of Advancement invited graduates to provide an opportunity for former students to reconnect with one another, teachers and deans. Current seniors were also invited to meet alumni in the Feldman-Horn Gallery.

Both alumni and seniors were encouraged to attend the basketball game afterwards.

“It’s a great opportunity to support one of the winter sports teams,” alumni administrator Janiece Richard said.

—Eugenia Ko


Peer Support requires new sleepover contractsBy Kelly loeb

A new policy now requires students to sign a contract prior to attending Peer Sup-port sleepovers in order to en-sure proper and school-appro-priate behavior.

“We want people to feel comfortable and safe at their sleepovers, just as they do in group,” Peer Support coordi-nator Sophie Sunkin ’14 said.

The contract reads: “This contract has been made in order to preserve and pro-tect Peer Support as a club, as well as the students associated with it.”

“Everyone’s reaction has been pretty good regarding the contract,” Peer Support group

leader Zita Biosah ’14 said. “In my opinion, it’s a ‘why not’ sit-uation because I would rather sign the contract than have Peer Support become nonex-istent.”

The contract states that there will be no drug OR al-cohol consumption, the host-ing student’s parents must be aware of or present at the sleepover, no students from outside the Peer Support group are allowed and students must act in a way that reflects their group as well as the school in a positive manner.

Failure to sign or adhere to the new contract may result in the student being asked to leave his or her Peer Support group.

Diversity conference remembers Carr ’14, parents deliver closing ceremony address

Teachers to receive new growth handbookBy Noa yadidi

Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts will release a new professional growth handbook to all teachers in January.

Teachers frequently attend workshops and seminar to im-prove their skills, Huybrechts said, and she hopes the hand-book will guide teachers’ pro-fessional growth and develop-ment.

“I think this is a really, re-ally good move for the school,” Huybrechts said.

The handbook will not re-place the current faculty and staff hand-book, and will be shorter to focus on the core values and guiding principles of teaching at school.

“I thought that what we needed was s o m e t h i n g much small-er, and that’s what this will be, and it is sort of what guides us as teachers,” Huybrechts said. “What are our core values and our guid-ing principles? What are our standards of teaching at the

school?” Huybrechts said she hopes

the handbook will be a “more intentional way for us to be writing down what our goals are for the year and then what the plan is to implement those goals.”

Parts of the handbook stress guiding principles that include placing a priority on students as well as valuing col-legiality, professional growth and continuity of care.

“Collegiality is terribly important,” Huybrechts said. “We do a lot of team teach-ing at this school and it’s im-

portant for [teachers] to get along with [their] col-leagues.”

H u y -brechts pre-sented the handbook to the upper school Facul-ty Academic C o m m i t t e e two weeks ago and to the

middle school Faculty Aca-demic Committee last week. She plans to release a copy to department chairs this week and send it to all teachers in January.

“ I thought that what we needed was something smaller, and that’s what this will be, and it is sort of what guides us as teachers.”

—Jeanne HuybrechtsHead of School

THE ART OF ZEN: Members of Peer Support freeze in yoga poses for a nighttime photo scavenger hunt on campus Saturday.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF ALIVIA PLATT

PEOPLE OF INTEREST: Students examine photos from the Dec. 11 CiviTalks. Groups took pictures in pairs demonstrating vari-ous interpersonal relationships ito emulate an experiment by a New York photographer that posed strangers as couples for photos.

CiviTalks posts relationship photosSCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLE

By Sophie Kupiec-WegliNSKi

Justin Carr ’14, former South Africa President Nel-son Mandela and others were remembered Dec. 5-7 at the National Association of Inde-pendent Schools Student Di-versity and Leadership con-ference in National Harbor, Md. Carr’s parents, Susan and Darrell were invited to ad-dress the 1,400 students at the closing ceremony. The theme was “Honoring the Past.”

Carr’s parents showcased their son’s artwork, discussed his quest for world peace and spoke about who their son was. Last year, Carr attended the SDLC with director of book-

store operations Tina Cleve-land, Zita Biosah ’14, Mazelle Etessami ’14, Alexis Ladge ’15 and Malanna Wheat ’14.

“Justin came back ener-gized and said that the confer-ence changed his life, and he met so many great kids from all over the United States who attend private schools,” Susan said.

During the summer, Susan found Carr’s writings about the conference when brows-ing on his computer and was inspired to contact conference organizers.

“Attending the Student Di-versity and Leadership Con-ference in Houston, Texas, was one of the greatest experienc-

es in my life,” Carr had writ-ten. “I always thought that I was a very open and accepting person and that this program wouldn’t teach me anything or help me grow, but I was so wrong. Everyone has prejudic-es that are subconscious, and I wasn’t aware of mine until I came to this program.”

Susan sent an email to the program’s committee about how much the experience meant to her son, along with a photo of Carr with African American astronaut Bernard Harris, whom he met at the conference. Collinus Newsome, one of the planners, replied that she remembered Justin and took that picture of him

with the astronaut. “She said she remembered

him out of the 1,200 students who attended because he was polite and patiently waited and let everyone go ahead of him so that he could be the last one with Dr. Harris,” Susan said. “Justin was looking into the possibility of Dr. Harris be-ing the guest speaker for the BLACC Black History Month Celebration.”

Subsequently, Susan and her husband were invited to address the conference.

“The kids came up to the mic and voiced how in just a few short days, they have changed for the better,” Susan said.

Insolvency unlikely to affect bus service


By Julia aizuss

School bus operations will remain unaffected by Atlan-tic Express Transportation Corp.’s declaration of bank-ruptcy, Bus Service Director Patti Snodgrass said Dec. 4 in an email to all families who use the bus service.

Snodgrass said the school has been in contact with At-lantic Express management for about a month and that riders will not be affected by the bankruptcy.

“We do not foresee impair-ment to Harvard-Westlake bus service,” Snodgrass said. “Were that outlook to change, we would notify you promptly of contingency plans.”

Chief Financial Officer Rob Levin compared Atlan-tic’s bankruptcy to that of air-lines like American Airlines and United Airlines, who have declared bankruptcy in recent years but continue to operate. He called this kind of bank-ruptcy a “reorganization,” in which the people who have ownership equity in the com-pany lose it so that the com-pany can pay off its creditors.

“People who owned pieces of the company, they lose their money, but the company keeps going,” Levin said,

“We don’t have 100 per-cent assurance, but it’s look-ing very good that in terms of the California operation, it’s going to keep operating fine,” Levin added. “So if you’re an investor at Atlantic Express, big news. If you’re a rider on Atlantic Express, as students are, it’s probably going to be a nonevent.”

“There are West Coast op-erations and East Coast op-erations and they are in very different financial states, and we do not anticipate that West Coast service will be chal-lenged at all by the business deals that are going on,” Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said.

Sophomore receives international award for community service work By lizzy Thomas

Association of Fundraising Professionals, an international charity fundraising organiza-tion, honored Jack Stovitz ’16 with its Outstanding Youth Volunteer award last month for his work with the book drive organization BookEnds.

Stovitz was first introduced to the Los Angeles-based BookEnds as a fourth grader at Warner Elementary School, when students were asked to bring in used books for a drive. Stovitz opted to distribute the books as well, a trip that took him to the Venice Boys and Girls Club. To Stovitz, then an avid reader of series like the Magic Treehouse, the lack of books that greeted him and his classmates was sad and shock-ing.

“We showed up and I saw the empty book cases. They had two bookcases, but only

one had only one book on it,” Stovitz said. “It made me real-ly sad because as a kid I loved reading, and here were all these kids who had no books.”

The gratitude at their do-nation, however, prompted a different set of emotions in Stovitz.

“When we showed up with boxes and boxes full of books, the kids just got these huge smiles on their faces and it made me really happy and ex-cited,” Stovitz said.

After the Venice deliv-ery, Stovitz volunteered with BookEnds as much as possible, going on whatever book drives he could make and urging friends to donate books.

He became involved on the charity’s Youth Board before making the leap in seventh grade to its Board of Direc-tors, on which Head Prefect Ashley Sacks ’14 also sits.

This past October, a Book-

Ends volunteer emailed Stovitz informing him that he’d nomi-nated him for the AFP award and that he’d won. Reading the email on the shuttle bus back from cross country prac-tice, Stovitz was floored.

“I was shocked, I had no clue,” Stovitz said. “I was on the shuttle and I turned to my friends and was like, ‘Guys, I’m winning an award.’”

The AFP hosted its an-nual National Philanthropy Day Awards Luncheon Nov. 13. Stovitz left school to attend the luncheon at the Beverly Hilton, where he accepted his award and the picture frame-type plaque that came with it and gave a two-minute speech about BookEnds.

The day’s lone low point came when Stovitz realized fellow honoree and winner of the Celebrity Making a Differ-ence award, Lakers player Pau Gasol, was not amongst the at-

tendees. “I was really excited be-

cause for the celebrity award, Pau Gasol won and I thought

he was going to be there, but the Lakers had a game in Den-ver,” Stovitz said. “It was still really cool though.”

DOING GOOD: Jack Stovitz ’16, right, poses with BookEnds President Robin Keefe. Stovitz was honored at the AFP luncheon as Outstanding Youth Volunteer in National Philanthropy on Nov. 13.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF BOOKENDS

All alumni class reunions to occur in May By Julia aizuss

Reunions for alumni of Harvard School for Boys and Harvard-Westlake will now occur in May in an effort to create a more individual at-mosphere for each class, Di-rector of Alumni Giving Greg O’Leary said.

The reunions, which will now always be on the third Saturday of May, will span half a day. In the afternoon, alumni will have the option to attend a fair that displays student research, independent stud-ies, visual and performing arts showcases and work from the

Kutler Center for Interdisci-plinary Studies classes.

Afterward, alumni can at-tend a cocktail reception in the Feldman-Horn gallery, where they will be able to meet alumni from other years.

Each class will then meet for a separate reunion dinner at a location on campus.

Alumni will be able to vol-unteer to help customize these dinners however they want, O’Leary said.

“We’re going to encourage people to think outside the box, and they don’t have to do anything if they don’t want to, they can just come and have

dinner, but if they want to add something to it that’s person-al to their class, they can do that,” he said.

Responses to an alumni survey given two years ago by the Alumni Office indicated that Harvard and Harvard-Westlake alumni disliked that their class reunions took place at the same time as Homecom-ing. Although attendance at the receptions during Home-coming had been growing in recent years, alumni said they wanted something more “indi-vidual,” O’Leary said.

“It didn’t feel so special to them to come and just have

this big group thing,” O’Leary said.

O’Leary said some classes had begun planning their own off-campus reunions in addi-tion to or sometimes replacing the Homecoming receptions.

“We wanted to do more for them, but we didn’t have the budget to pay for open bar for 50 classes to go and have par-ties,” O’Leary said.

Because of positive results in the survey, the Westlake School for Girls reunion will remain as is, but will be moved from Mother’s Day weekend to the first weekend of May, O’Leary said.

By Jake safersTein

The Chronicle won Best of Show in the “Newspaper Broadsheet 17 or More Pages” category for the Nov. 13 edi-tion and third place Best of Show in “Publication Website Small School” for its online content at the Journalism Ed-ucation Association/National Scholastic Press Association High School Journalism Con-vention Nov. 16.

A total of 36 students on the Chronicle and Vox Populi staffs attended the conven-

tion in Boston from Nov. 14 to Nov. 16 along with eight stu-dents on the Spectrum, which also won Best of Show in the “Junior High Newspaper” cat-egory.

Chronicle Managing Edi-tor Sarah Novicoff ’14 also won fifth place Story of the Year in the Diversity category for her article “1 in 5 students on fi-nancial aid,” which appeared in the November 2012 edition of the Chronicle.

The keynote speaker was Juliette Kayyem ’87, a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for

Commentary and a candidate for governor of Massachusetts. She spoke about her experi-ence as a political columnist for the Boston Globe and en-couraged the audience to har-ness the power of journalism and column writing to “make government do better and be better.”

“Make it personal, because sometimes that is the stron-gest voice you have,” Kayyem said.

After the keynote address, the Advancement Office host-ed a reception for Kayyem at-

tended by Chronicle and Vox staff as well as Boston area alumni.

During the convention, the students attended journalism workshops and seminars and visited various historical sites.

Vox adviser Jen Bladen, Chronicle adviser Kathleen Neumeyer and Chief Advance-ment Officer Ed Hu accom-panied the upper school jour-nalists, and Spectrum adviser Steve Chae and middle school science and debate teacher Alex Ras accompanied the middle school students.

Chronicle wins Best of Show at conventionBEAN TOWN: Sarah Novicoff ’14 accepts an award at the conference, top left. Jake Saferstein ’15, Dominique Gordon ’15 and Grace Kotick ’15 take a selfie in front of a statue of John Harvard, right. Members of the Chronicle staff take a picture on the Old North Bridge.

SCOTT NUSSBAUM/CHRONICLEPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF KATIE EHRLICH

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF KATIE EHRLICH


DARE TO DRAW: Visual arts teacher Marianne Hall watches over a student during a monthly Dare to Dream event at Frank D. Par-ent Elementary School in Inglewood. The project helps students with their artwork since the LAUSD budget does not allow for art classes.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF DARRELL CARR

‘Dare to Dream’ student wins trip to MonacoBy Sophie Kupiec-WeglinSKi

A 10-year old elementary school student participating in Justin Carr’s Dare to Dream Project won an international art contest, winning a trip to Monaco to attend the 38th In-ternational Circus Festival of Monte Carlo.

The contest sponsored by Princess Stephanie of Monaco asked children ages 8-10 from all over the world to make art with circus themes. The win-ning art was chosen by the princess herself.

Justin Carr’s Dare to Dream Project is a monthly initiative in which Harvard-Westlake students go to Frank D. Parent Elementary School in Inglewood to conduct art classes with school children.

LAUSD cut art classes due to budget difficulties.

Justin Carr ’14 planned to start the pro-gram after meeting with teachers from the elemen-tary school.

A f t e r his death last Febru-ary, the Dare to Dream Project was founded in his memory.Justin Carr’s mother, Su-san, found out about the com-petition through a friend.

Her friend asked if the Dare to Dream Project would be interested in submitting

the artwork of students in the program for Princess Stepha-nie’s international contest

for circus art.

Art teach-er Marianne Hall and stu-dent volun-teers guided the children with their drawing by playing circus music, show-ing a map of Monaco and bringing other circus-

related items. All the children submitted their work, with Aniya Connor’s chosen to be shown at the festival.

“We all remember her be-

cause she was the only student who brought in a tackle box of her own supplies. When we were cleaning up, I in-advertently grabbed a set of her markers — because they looked just like a set that Jus-tin had. She politely said, ‘Oh those are mine,’” Susan Carr said. Her Dad said that she loves to draw. It was apparent because Princess Stephanie thought this 10-year-old was talented too.”

Connor and two of her family members will travel to attend the festival, which lasts Jan. 17-21. All expenses includ-ing airfare, hotel and food will be paid for by the government of Monaco.

“It helps the program, it fulfills Justin’s dream,” Hall said.

TASTY TACOS: Seniors receive a free meal of three tacos and a drink from a Tacos El Galito truck on the track field at school last Friday in an event planned by the HWPA’s Grad Night Committee.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF JILL SHAW

Parents bring taco truck to seniorsBy JuStine chen and angela chon

Seniors were treated to free tacos from Tacos El Gal-lito on Dec. 13 by the Harvard-Westlake Parents’ Associa-tion’s Grad Night Committee.

The senior class received an email from Assistant Head of School Michelle Bracken on Thursday instructing them to come to the quad for a “sur-prise”— one which the com-mittee had been planning for a few weeks.

Seniors were given hot pink wristbands from parent representatives of the com-mittee for free tacos on the quad from fourth through sev-enth period and were asked to line up for the food truck on the track around Ted Slavin Field.

“We were just talking about the food trucks that we’ve already had,” senior par-ent Catherine Strom (Arielle ’14) said. “And we wanted to do one that we haven’t had yet.”

Strom said that there was no official reason for the occa-

sion, which was purposefully timed a week before winter break so that students who would be out of town and ex-cused from school early for their vacations could still par-ticipate in it.

“I liked it because Mexi-can food is my favorite food,” Glenne Carter ’14 said. “And it caught everyone off guard be-cause it was a nice surprise to have, in the heat of all the col-lege stuff.”

Other students also echoed

Carter’s appreciation of the relief of stress right before col-lege acceptance letters were to be sent out.

“The tacos were tasty,” William Lee ’14 said. “I thought that it was pretty nice for the parents to do that for us, especially because a lot of people are getting their college acceptance letters and it was kind of nice of them to give us a free meal.”

This event is part of a se-ries of gifts for seniors spon-

sored by the Parents’ Asso-ciation eventually leading up to Grad Night. Seniors had received M&M’s and a quar-ter at the end of first quarter and class sweatshirts from the committee reading “Harvard-Westlake Class of 2014.”

“I thought it was good,” Miles Williams ’14 said. “The tacos were good. I think it’s a good idea and we should have it more often. I think it’s pret-ty relieving. It helps to calm down.

Senior takes first place in debateBy JeSSica Spitz

Shelby Heitner ’14 won the 2013 Alta Silver and Black In-vitational debate tournament Dec. 7.

Heitner, along with Cam-eron Cohen ’16, William Gin-gold ’14, Dario Madyoon ’17 and Nick Steele ’16 competed in the tournament in Alta, Utah. Steele, Heitner and Cohen all advanced past the preliminary rounds and to the semifinals, each receiving a bid for the Tournament of Cham-pions. Debaters must earn at least two bids over the course of the season to be eligible to compete in the final tourna-ment in the spring.

Cohen and Steele lost in the semifinals and Heitner moved on to the finals, where she defeated a student from San Jose, Calif. Heitner also won 14th speaker and Gingold won 12th speaker.

Megan Cohen ’17, Con-nor Engel ’17, Heitner, Annie Kors ’14 and Michael O’Krent ’14 debated at a tournament in Glenbrooks, Ill. Nov. 24. Kors finished the preliminary rounds with a record of 6-1 and advanced to the octafi-nals, where she was defeated. Engel also advanced to the oc-tafinals in the JV division and won seventh speaker. Kors won 16th speaker and received a bid for the Tournament of Champions.

“I’m so proud of our team and how hard everyone has worked and how much we’ve achieved,” Kors said.

“Her dad said that she loves to draw. It was apparent because Princess Stephanie thought this 10-year-old was talented too.”

—Susan Toler Carr

Sophomore admission to increase next yearcoffee for students who have expressed interest in the school in January, where Gregory hopes to increase awareness that the school will be accepting more incoming sophomores. Gregory believes that applicants in the past have decided not to apply to the school since so few a num-ber usually get into the school for 10th grade. The school tries to distribute financial aid evenly among the grades and last year’s applicant pool for ninth grade had a large number of applicants seeking financial aid. She hopes to give large amounts of financial aid to the new sophomore appli-cants.

The sophomore applicants will be notified of their ad-mission decision starting in March, with a rolling admis-sion following that.

“With 10th graders, some-times they don’t know if they want to leave their schools until April or May. So we will probably still be taking kids until June 1,” Gregory said.

• Continued from page A1


Faculty dietin groupprogramBy DaviD WolDenberg

A group of 22 faculty and staff are participating in a Weight Watchers program as a part of the school’s wellness program.

Director of Health Benefits Nicole Ryan came up with the idea of integrating the Weight Watchers program with the school’s program to promote a healthy lifestyle.

“Obesity and being over-weight impacts so many other parts of your health,” Ryan said. “Obesity plays a part in diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, so if we can keep our employ-ees’ weight down to a healthy weight, teach them how to eat correctly, and encourage them to exercise, then we’re going to have a healthier population over all.”

The group, composed of two men and 20 women, meets every Monday to track the group members’ progress and to discuss personal goals.

The name of this particu-

lar branch of Weight Watch-ers is called Weight Watchers at Work.

Weight Watchers at Work specializes in incorporating school lifestyle with their pro-gram. The school is offering subsidies of $96 towards the usual $156.

Middle School Communi-cations Department Head Jen Bladen started participating in the Weight Watchers cur-riculum in November after a friend tried it out.

With her friend’s recom-mendation, Bladen had been participating in the Weight Watchers program outside of school for five weeks before the Harvard-Westlake pro-gram started, and Bladen was able to transfer over her mem-bership.

“Weight Watchers is a sup-port group as well as a dietary program and doing it with people you know adds an as-pect of accountability,” Bladen

said. “I really appreciate that the company that I work for takes care of me [in terms of health].”

Ryan had wanted to in-volve Weight Watchers for some time and finally had the opportunity to do it in late No-vember.

The Middle School has also started its own program and already has 15 members.

The Weight Watchers cur-riculum consists of awarding points for food eating in order to monitor diet.

Exercise is encouraged, but isn’t officially a part of the program.

Members at Harvard-Westlake are also considering starting an unofficial Biggest-Loser contest.

“I had really, really good success right away, I lost ten pounds right away… [and] we lost more than 30 pounds among us, which is really cool,” Bladen said.

Scholarships to benefitfrom Sunday film seriesBy Jacob gooDman

Upper school performing arts teacher Ted Walch will show movies such as “Casa-blanca” and “Chinatown” dur-ing his “Sundays with Ted” film class series.

This is Walch’s second year teaching the class, which is open to any current or for-mer Harvard-Westlake par-ents, alumni and friends of the school.

A total of nine films will be shown, each followed by a lecture and discus-sion session with Walch.

The films will be shown in three groups: “Classic Films about War,” “Films about Kids” and “Classy Directors at the Top of Their Games.”

Each screening costs $50 to attend and the total cost for all nine sessions is $400. All proceeds from the class will go to the Thomas C. Hudnut Scholarship fund.

“I’d love to raise enough to fund one deserving kid for one

full year at Harvard- West-lake, and that’s why my goal is $30,000,” Walch said. “Last year with four classes (at a slightly higher cost) I raised $10,000. I think I can do it, but it’s very ambitious.”

All the classes will be held in Ahmanson lecture hall from 2 to 5 p.m.

The classes will meet Feb. 16 and 23, March 9, April 13 and 27 and May 4, 11 and 18.

“The thing that re-ally sparked it the first the time around was after back to school day,” Walch said. “Par-ents said, ‘If ever you could do a class for us we would be grateful.’ That’s what put it in my mind.”

There have been some efforts around

here to try and fly the trial balloon of teachers at HW of-fering classes for adults. And this in its way is a trial bal-loon. The others, though, might be looked on as extra money for the teachers, but this is not extra money for me, I’m not taking any money; this is a fundraiser.”

“Weight Watchers is a support group as well as a dietary program, and doing it with people you know adds an aspect of accountability.”

—Jen BladenMiddle School Communications

Department Head nathanson’s

7 students receivescouting honorsBy lizzy Thomas

Bee-keeping, teaching at-risk youth and building projects for public parks and churches helped seven stu-dents earn the highest honors offered by the Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts of the USA organizations.

Patrick Albarino ’16, Ami-ya Brown ’14, Eric Knighton ’16, Scott Nussbaum ’15, Wil-liam Ruppenthal ’16 and Nick Steele ’16 all achieved Eagle Scout status in the past two months.

Lauren Sonnenberg ’14 received the Girl Scout Gold Award the last week of Sep-tember. Eagle is the highest rank in Boy Scouts, and in a system where scouts advance one rank each year, is typically reached during a scout’s soph-omore year.

Scouts are required to plan and execute an Eagle Project, a service work that must benefit the community, involve other boy scouts and take at least 100 combined hours of service between all involved.

The Gold Award is the cul-minating distinction in the se-ries of Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards. It involves an 80-hour service project, for which a proposal must be submitted to and approved by the Girl Scout Council of America.

Albarino, Knighton, Rup-penthal and Steele were all part of Troop 223, located in the Pacific Palisades, and were ranked up together in a cer-emony Nov. 26.

Albarino, Knighton and Ruppenthal did their Eagle Projects at St. Matthew’s Par-ish Church, though at differ-ent times in the past year. Albarino built picnic tables and refurbished the Parish’s existing ones, Knighton con-structed a seating area for the Parish and Ruppenthal built

compost bins. Steele did his project sepa-

rately, at the California Wild-life Center, where he built an enclosure to house rescued birds of prey. Albarino, who joined the troop in fifth grade, found the actual ceremony al-most bittersweet.

“I felt really nostalgic when I was being presented as an Eagle Scout about all the time I spent and all the fun I had, and it was a really great feel-ing,” Albarino said.

Brown, out of Troop 10 in Reseda, made a film about ur-ban beekeeping and how view-ers could implement it in their own communities, as well as the crisis currently facing the species as a whole, as Colony Collapse Disorder has killed approximately one-third of all honeybees in the past few years.

Brown, who keeps a few hives at a friend’s house, had arranged to give the film to Honey Love, a non-profit that works to protect honeybees by spreading urban beekeep-ing. With the film completed, he became an Eagle Scout last month, an achievement that afforded Brown, who’d been a scout for seven years, a lot of relief.

“It was a big weight off my shoulders,” Brown said.

Nussbaum fulfilled his Ea-gle Project by building a bulle-tin board structure in William S. Hart Park in Valencia. The structure, the bulk of which Nussbaum built over a week-end in October, will be used by the park to display informa-tion about camping.

Nussbaum officially be-came an Eagle Scout last Tuesday, when he went to the required meeting with the Board of Review, which inter-viewed him about his time as a boy scout and how he planned to use all he’d learned from his

five years of scouting. His an-swers satisfactory, Nussbaum received the Eagle rank right then and there.

“I felt really accomplished that all my hard work had paid off, but it was actually a little anti-climactic – they just shook my hand and said ‘Con-gratulations, you’re an Eagle Scout,’ but it was still really good,” Nussbaum said.

Sonnenberg taught the past two summers at the Ste-phen S. Wise chapter of the Children’s Defense Fund Free-dom School, a nationwide ini-tiative that provides summer and afterschool enrichment to at-risk youth. Sonnenberg, a

longtime dancer, taught dance in the afternoon in addition to the more school-oriented teaching in the morning.

The Gold Award Sonnen-berg received in September was a long time in the making.

The last stage of Sonnen-berg’s 11 year Girl Scout career began when she submitted her proposal to the Girl Scout Council of America in June, 2012, and wrote a draft of her curriculum and taught it two times at the Freedom School that summer. The background of her students required ad-ditional research before she would be ready to teach one day a week this past summer.

“I was trying to find a teaching style most effective for kids from troubled homes, so I did a lot of research prior to submitting my curriculum,” Sonnenberg said.

In returning this summer to teach dance to the same group of students, Sonnenberg found that the extensive re-search and organization paid off in an unexpected way.

“Because I’d spent so much time organizing it, research-ing it and planning out a cur-riculum, I was able to develop a different kind of relationship with them – student-teach-er as well as just friend-to-friend.”

HONORED SCOUTS: Patrick Albarino ’16, left, Eric Knighton ’16, William Ruppenthal ’16 and Nick Steele ’16, all members of Troop 223, are awarded Eagle Scout status at a ceremony in November, top. Lauren Sonnenberg ’14 conducts a dance class at the Stephen S. Wise Chapter of the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School, an initiative for afterschool enrichment for at-risk youth, bottom.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF LAUREN SONNENBERG

nathanson’s

Ted Walch

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF CHRIS STEELE

By Claire Goldsmith

Recent unconnected out-breaks of meningitis have caused Harvard-Westlake alumni at two college cam-puses to take preventative measures against the disease, including recieving injections of an unlicensed European meningitis vaccine.

Those at Princeton Univer-sity received the first dose of a foreign meningitis vaccination Dec. 9 —12 after eight cases of meningococcal-B, a virulent strain of bacterial meningitis, developed at the school during the past nine months.

With the involvement of the Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention, the out-break has become a prominent topic of discussion at Princ-eton, students said.

“Students love to talk about it,” Princeton freshman Ari-anna Lanz ’13 said. “There’s a saying that ‘nothing ever hap-pens in Princeton’ and that there’s ‘never any trouble in the Orange Bubble,’ so it’s a little exciting when it appears that the bubble is going to burst.”

Meningitis is an infection of the me-ninges, membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord.

Men ingococc a l meningitis, which students at Princeton have contracted, is caused by the bacterium Neis-seria meningitides.

According to the Nation-al Institute of Health, about 2,600 people per year in the United States get the illness, and between 10 and 15 percent of cases are fatal.

Another 10 to 15 percent result in brain damage, deaf-ness and other residual effects.

Although the state of New Jersey requires a meningitis vaccination before students enroll in any university, the standard shot does not protect against this rarer form of the disease.

After the seventh case since March developed at Princeton, the school and the CDC arranged for a European vaccination called Bexsero to be administered to students to prevent a continuing spread of meningitis.

Bexsero, which is manu-factured by the Swiss phar-maceutical company Novartis, is as of yet unlicensed by the Food and Drug Administra-tion.

The vaccine was approved for use in the European Union in late January of this year and in Australia in August.

Princeton provided the vaccinations to all under-graduate students, graduate

students who live in dormitories and oth-ers in the community who were particular-ly susceptible to the illness.

According to a poll by the Daily Princ-etonian, 76 percent of students planned to get the vaccination.

Overall, 5,268 in-dividuals, 91 percent of those eligible, re-

ceived the vaccine, a university spokesperson said.

“We have been given a lot of information, countless emails, flyers and talks,” freshman Morgan Hallock ’13 said. “One of my [water polo] teammates is on the Student Health com-

mittee here at Princeton, and she has been working non-stop to host informational meet-ings, make videos for aware-ness and let people know about the options regarding the vac-cines.”

Princeton organizations distributed information about the outbreaks and also gave students plastic cups with the slogans like “Mine Not Yours” to discourage sharing of cups and utensils.

Because meningitis spreads through saliva, the CDC and Princeton encouraged stu-dents to be careful about their hygienic practices, cover their mouths when coughing and avoid sharing drinks or food.

“I would definitely say that the university has giv-en me sufficient information about the meningitis includ-ing how to best avoid it and what symptoms should worry me,” Princeton student Chad Kanoff ’13 said.

The CDC describes poten-tial symptoms as a high fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, confusion, sensitiv-ity to light and, later in the ill-ness, a rash or spots on arms, legs and torso.

The health organization took definitive action in the Princeton outbreak in part because adolescents are at an increased risk of contract-ing meningitis, and the risk increases when people live in close quarters and share food and drink.

The CDC has not recom-mended that the school can-cel events and has said that Princeton students should not worry about spreading men-ingitis to their families when they return home over the holidays.

Talk of meningitis has flooded the campus and news vans have lined the campus to interview students receiving the vaccination.

“I have received messages from friends and relatives who are more afraid of the disease for me than I am for myself,” Lanz said. “There are often com-petitions and tournaments on campus for students of all levels of edu-cation from many different institutions, and participation in those has significantly decreased due to fear of the illness.”

“The only person [with meningitis] I knew was a fresh-man girl, but she is back and in classes already,” Kanoff said. “I am not that worried about the meningitis and would say that it hasn’t changed the campus atmosphere at all.”

Kanoff, Lanz and Hallock all elected to receive the vac-cine when it was administered last week.

“The vaccine was free, easy to receive and came with mi-nor health risks,” Lanz said. “The danger of getting menin-gitis or meningococcal disease is far, far worse, and I would take advantage of any oppor-tunity to improve my health.”

Four students at the Uni-versity of California, Santa Barbara also contracted men-ingitis B, and the State of Cali-fornia has asked the CDC to consider approving the vac-cine for use at UCSB.

One freshman lacrosse

player had to undergo an am-putation of both his feet due to complications from menin-gitis, according to NBC News.

The school provided antibi-otics to students close to those with meningitis.

“I was pretty wor-ried, espe-cially when the outbreaks first began,” UCSB sopho-more Liliana Muscare l l a ’12 said. “I was hyper-aware of not t o u c h i n g anything and

always sanitizing my hands. I became a bit of a hypochon-driac—always thinking I felt a neck-ache or nausea coming on.”

USCB officials asked stu-dents to refrain from “social events that involve close per-sonal contact, alcohol and/or smoking and where eating utensils and cups/glasses may be shared.”

“Student Health on cam-pus has been sending out email updates with each new person affected, and also a description of the symptoms,” Muscarella said. “It is pretty helpful and reassuring that we’re being looked out for, but I still get worried that someone who contracted meningitis might have sneezed on the desk I’m sitting at in class or something like that.”

The clusters at Princeton and UCSB are not connected, the CDC said.

A staff member at Univer-sity of California, Riverside, has also been treated for the disease.

Alumni face college campus spread of meningitis infection


“ I became a bit of a hypochondriac – always thinking I felt a neck-ache or nausea coming on.”—Liliana Muscarella ’12

nathanson’s

Arianna Lanz ’13

Alumni in college protect themselves from meningitis outbreaks at Princeton University and University of California, Santa Barbara.

HRONICLEtHE HaRvaRd-wEstLakE

Los Angeles • Volume XXIII • Issue V • Dec. 18, 2013 • hwchronicle.comC

Editors in ChiEf: Jack Goldfisher, Noa Yadidi

Managing Editors: Claire Goldsmith, Sarah

Novicoff, Jensen Pak, Patrick Ryan

ExECutivE Editors: Julia Aizuss, Lizzy Thomas

PrEsEntations Editors: Mazelle Etessami, Sydney

Foreman, Emily Segal

sPorts Editor: Grant Nussbaum

nEws Managing Editors: Elizabeth Madden, Lauren

SonnenbergnEws sECtion hEads:

Sophie Kupiec-Weglinski, Nikta Mansouri, Jake

Saferstein, Jessica SpitznEws assistants:

Angela Chon, Justine Chen, Cole Feldman, Kristen

Gourrier, Eugenia Ko, Jonah Ullendorff

oPinion Managing Editors: Beatrice Fingerhut, Kyla

RhynesoPinion sECtion hEads:

Haley Finkelstein, Kenneth Schrupp

oPinion assistants: Alexa Bowers, Kelly Riopelle

fEaturEs Managing Editors: Eojin Choi, Morganne Ramsey, Lauren Siegel

fEaturEs sECtion hEads:Carly Berger, Marcella Park,

David WoldenbergfEaturEs assistants:

Sacha Lin, Benjamin Most, Su Jin Nam, Lauren Rothman

a&E Managing Editors: James Hur, Alexander McNab

a&E sECtion hEads:Leily Arzy, Zoe Dutton

a&E assistants: Sharon Chow, Siddharth

Kucheria, Kelly Loeb, Pim Otero

sPorts Managing Editors: Lucy Putnam, Sam SachssPorts sECtion hEads: Elijah Akhtarzad, Mila

Barzdukas, Jordan Garfinkel, Tyler Graham, Audrey Wilson

sPorts assistants: Bennett Gross, Caitlin

Neapole, Jonathan Seymour, Henry Vogel

ChiEf CoPy Editors: Jivani Gengatharan, Enya

Huang, Jessica Lee

Managing Editors of ChroniClE MultiMEdia:Henry Hahn, Eric Loeb

art dirECtor:Jacob Goodman

ChiEf PhotograPhEr:Scott Nussbaum

ads and BusinEss ManagEr:Tara Stone

ChroniClE onlinE wEBMastEr:David Gisser

advisEr: Kathleen Neumeyer

The ChroniCle is the student newspaper of Harvard-Westlake School. It is

published nine times per year. Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion

of the seniors on the Editorial Board. Letters to the editor may be submitted to [email protected] or mailed to 3700

Coldwater Canyon, Studio City, CA 91604. Letters must be signed and may be edited

for space and to conform to Chronicle style and format. Harvard-Westlake has an enrollment of 870 10th through 12th grade students. The Chronicle is also

distributed at the Middle School, which has 727 7th through 9th grade students.

Stories go through a rigorous editing process and are rewritten by the writers

listed on the byline or with additional reporting credits.

editorial

Be more supportiveFor weeks, only one topic has occupied the minds,

and unfortunately the mouths, of the senior class. With acceptances, deferrals and rejections streaming in from colleges, chatter about where our peers are going has risen to a fever pitch.

It’s natural that this talk arises, and that it can often leave people with hurt feelings.

Not everyone is going to go to their first-choice school, and attempting to leave this tumultuous pe-riod without upsetting someone seems like trying to navigate an army across a minefield without hearing a single boom.

It’s important to use common sense in deciding whether or not making that celebratory post or wear-ing that crewneck is really necessary or worth it in a time when so many of your classmates and friends feel vulnerable and upset.

However, there’s no scenario in which accruing and then disseminating information about where people are applying to college, their GPAs and legacy statuses promotes any sense of community among our already competitive student body. Sure, some of us compile mental lists of people that we know are applying to our top choice, but the list containing more than 150 students’ names and early application schools should never have been externalized.

It’s crucial, though, not to condemn one person’s actions as wrong before you consider that you may have been doing something similar all along.

Making a list is obviously neither an Honor Code violation nor an affront to our moral character as a class, but it certainly lacks the sensitivity that we’d hope to have as a community in a time of widespread anxiety. Besides the list’s creator, though, each stu-dent who forwarded the list bears the burden of responsibility for spreading information that was personal and at times incorrect. Forwarding this kind of gossip, which is often outright speculative or mis-

leading, is irresponsible and just as offensive as creat-ing the list in the first place.

The actions of the senior class are, in reality, a manifestation and an indication of a larger problem. The fervor surrounding the college applications pro-cess and the contents of those emails or envelopes has reached a degree of hostility that is untenable if we want to foster any true sense of community among a class of people sharing its last six months as any sort of formal group.

Our class in particular has been described by deans as nosy, uptight and sensitive with regard to college competition. We’ve also had an exceptionally talented class academically, as we have often required additional sections of AP and honors classes that oth-er years did not need, and our sports teams and other school organizations have achieved success under the current senior class. Where we could use some im-provement is in our empathy for our classmates.

We had an opportunity to be a stellar class in almost every way, and we may have squandered it by feeding into the growing problem of vicious competi-tion extending beyond trying to achieve the most you can through hard work and ambitious pursuit. This problem extends far beyond the events of the past few weeks or a list of names and colleges; we as peers and friends need to learn that while we are inherently competitive with one another, we need to respect each other above all else.

This means perhaps not boasting about your ac-ceptance next to people who got rejected from their dream school, and also trying your best to be happy if someone who absolutely couldn’t contain his or her excitement posts on Facebook about where he or she’s going to school. We all know we’ll end up at good schools and most of us will have great experiences at our colleges, so for now let’s try to be as supportive and respectful as possible.

Take service seriouslyFor years, students have been participating in com-

munity service geared towards their interests. For ex-ample, musicians perform at old age homes, singers sing at community centers and athletes have started to get more involved in doing team community service.

When we students use our talents to do good for oth-ers and the greater community around us in areas that we are passionate about, we become passionate about and connected to the hands-on service that we’re pursu-ing.

So, why is it then, that each year, nearly 100 students fail to complete the community service requirement? And now that the requirement has been doubled to 12 hours instead of six, how can we expect that number not to rise?

The problem begins in the seventh grade, when hands-on service is deemphasized through the advertise-ment of indirect activities like walks. While this is not true for everyone, from a young age, many of us begin to think of community service as an irritation and it loses the meaning it is intended to have.

The “hands-on” service requirement is not actively enforced at the Middle School and even less at the Up-per School. Students can easily exaggerate the number of hours they’ve completed.

Community service is an integral aspect of a thought-ful lifestyle. We are obviously not born with the urge to feed the homeless, but it’s a mindset that a good holistic education should inculcate.

Last week, Community Council hosted its annual Community Service Week. While it may have been intended to open our eyes to new ways to complete the new 12-hour requirement, nothing there was anything we hadn’t seen before. In fact, roughly 75 percent of more than 400 polled students said they thought Com-munity Service Week was ineffective.

While Community Council continues to suggest op-portunities old and new, we still see the service as noth-ing but an extra chore we must trudge through in order to graduate.

How can we be expected to see the requirement as anything besides a box to check off when Community Council itself trivializes opportunities by emphasizing that they can be completed quickly and easily?

Community service should be recognized, but does not need to be rewarded with Dippin’ Dots.

If our leaders in community service are passing off the service as just something quick to get done, our mindset towards community service will never change; however, it is not Community Council’s job alone to steer us in that direction — it has to start within us.

A great example of how students are taking their talents and interests outside the classroom to foster commitment to community service is the new Dare to Dream arts program. Dare to Dream is an excellent way for artists to take their hobby beyond their own creations, and students who are interested in this type of service are being led to it by teachers. Even students who are not participating in art classes are welcome to join and are sought after. Dare to Dream is a step in the right direction, but we need to go further.

Community Council needs to find a way to deal with students directly as well as to reach out to clubs and or-ganizations not already represented on campus. Instead of relying on email announcements, or in the case of Community Service Week, word-of-mouth alone, per-haps it could develop a directory catalogued by interest with all available opportunities that could be accessed online and on the Hub.

We know students have the capacity to care, but we need to reevaluate the importance community service has in our day-to-day lives and education.

OpINIONThe Chronicle • Dec. 18, 2013

Over the past holiday breaks, I have noticed a number of changes

in my regularly-observed traditions.

As my older sister went off and moved to college, I was left to pick a pumpkin carving design out alone. When Thanksgiving approached, I had to pull out an extra chair for one of her college roommates who would be spending the break with my family. I was nervous because I had not had a normal conversation and free time with my sister in four months. Between the stress of starting junior year and the new home my sister had moved to, I was sure that we would both be different people. We had a good relationship throughout our childhood, but I feared we had grown more distant.

And I was right. My sister had gone away and found a new group of friends that she loved. I had started to look at colleges and was thinking about a new life of my own. We did not have the same relationship as when we both lived under the same roof and saw each other every day. We could no longer share our stories about the big things happening at our different high schools or laugh together about a funny video one of us had found on YouTube. Additionally, I feared that my sister would spend more time with her friend from college than she would with me. In a few short months, I worried that our relationship would be forgotten.

However, my sister and I remained the same people and only had more experiences to share with each other. I got the chance to ask her how to survive junior year and if going off to college is as glorious as I have heard it to be. She shared some amazing experiences and opportunities she received at college. Immediately I knew that nothing could challenge the bond between us.

Furthermore, I got to meet one of my sister’s roommates who quickly became accustomed to my family’s quirks. My sister and I enjoyed mocking her Minnesota accent while she poked fun at our stereotypical California surfer lingo. Rather than getting in the way of my relationship with my sister, her roommate became a part of my family, and it was refreshing to have another teenager around during the holidays. It was reassuring to hear that my sister was having such a good time at college and it gave me motivation to continue through the remainder of the semester with the hope that I would get to hear more about college life during the next break.

As we sat down at the table and my dad brought out the turkey, I realized that things had changed, but that was just part of life. My sister had gone away and grown into a different person, but she was still a part of my family and nothing could change that.

One day, I will leave my parents and have my own experiences as an individual. I’ll become my own person and have different experiences that lead me in a different direction, but I’ll always be part of a family that links me back to the simplest of times.

I encourage everyone to take this holiday season as an opportunity to experience your family as it never will be again. Take the free time as a chance to catch up on relationships and experiences because by the next holiday, they will have changed. School can be stressful and get in the way of spending time with relatives, so break is an opportune time to cash in on some overdue bonding.

Relish the time that you spend with family in the present, and enjoy the traditions your family has this winter break.

My mom pestered me for days to help her decorate our Christ-

mas tree this year (yes, we are a nice Jewish family with a Christmas tree). Swamped with homework and supple-ments, I resisted until she fi-nally admitted that she was so insistent because the holidays felt especially poignant this year, since it’s the last winter I’ll be living at home.

Recently, I’ve been think-ing about this a lot, not be-cause I’m worried about living at school or by myself in the future, but because it repre-sents a completely different reality than the only one I’ve experienced. Unless I move back in after college, every time I stay at my house now will be a vacation — winter break, spring break, or part of a summer — but I’ll always be returning to a new home somewhere else.

I’ve called my current house “home” for my entire life, and pretty soon that’s going to change entirely. There’s so much of my life tied up in memories of my house, its surroundings and the convoluted city in which I live.

My house is in the can-yons (we are, as my family likes to say, hill people) and everywhere I go requires a 10-minute drive just to get to the Valley or the Westside. It may seem a little annoying to be separated from most things by a series of twisty canyon roads, and I certainly felt that before I got my driv-er’s license, but I’ve come to appreciate the relative calm of where I live. Despite living in the nation’s second larg-est city, my house feels much more remote, like a treehouse in the forest.

Driving out of the canyons, however, I remember what I don’t like about Los An-geles. It’ll always be the city I grew up in, but I’ve never really felt at home outside of my neighborhood. Hollywood and Wilshire make me feel unsettled somehow, like I am lost in a sea of cars with the sun beating down on me.

Also, traffic. I live my life by the tides of hundreds of thousands of cars, chang-ing my schedule based on where all these other people will be at any given time. I’ve spent so much time sitting in my car at a stoplight or just

waiting in a line of cars, and I wonder what I could have done with that time instead. Our urban sprawl just exacer-bates this – my friends don’t live just down the street in that idyllic small-town vision, but instead they’re miles away, in completely different sections of the city.

It’s not that I want to flee to a small town, because I think growing up in a huge city like this one exposes you to so many cultures and experiences that it’s difficult to take those influences away. I’m grateful for these things that are so specific to L.A.: some really excellent after-noons at the Getty Museum and LACMA, learning to sail a boat by myself, a love of sushi, getting to see movies before they’re released and being able to swim outside in the January sun.

Unlike my mom, I don’t feel so poignant about leaving this behind (or at least, not yet). I think can bring with me those things I like about this city even while establish-ing my own roots somewhere else. After 18 years here, I’m ready to call a new place home.

Changing my idea of homeBy Claire Goldsmith

JACOB GOODMAN/CHRONICLE

Embracing new traditions

By Scott Nussbaum

A new take on a long-standing rite of passageBy Lauren Sonnenberg

My Bat Mitzvah was a really big deal to me; I’d attended Hebrew

school twice a week since first grade, I’d learned the bare minimum of a new language and had studied for months before the big day. The day of my Bat Mitzvah was much like I anticipated — I was excited and relieved. The day lived up to that which I had built up in the months beforehand.

But as quickly as it came, it ended. I was left with a series of memories, some cool presents and a sense that something had ended and something else was about to begin. I was staring into the abyss of adolescence, with anticipation and dread.

I expected the college application process to have a

similar effect. I’d spent years hearing about college. It was the next step, the next reward for learning a new language (though this time it wasn’t Hebrew, it was calculus).

While my Bat Mitzvah preparation required me to compose five minutes of pithy observations about that week’s Torah reading, the college application process required far too many drafts of my Common Application essay, which I was told needed to “give the reader a sense of myself.” Much like that speech five years ago, which might as well be a lifetime ago, I tried to cram in as many ideas as possible, get it over with and submit it, never to speak of it again.

But submitting college apps turned out to be nothing

like my Bat Mitzvah. After my Bat Mitzvah speech, I went to a party with loud music and celebration. After submitting my applications, it was quiet. No celebration. No music. It was anti-climactic as the calming silence engulfed me.

I didn’t feel a rush of relief or a pit in my stomach when I pressed submit. Rather, I felt a lack of control. It was almost like Space Mountain. A slow climb to the top to be followed by a rapid ride that is out of my control, the direction of which cannot be anticipated in the darkness. So, I calmly submitted my apps, double — checked that they had gone through, put my laptop in its case and left my cousin’s house.

The six weeks since then

have been fairly calm, as I await the inevitable thrill that will take me somewhere I cannot control. For all of us (at least us seniors), we’re in a limbo between high school and college, and all we can do is wait.

Some may react with a sense of resignation and calm. Some, no doubt, are anything but that. But we all are waiting. Some will find a quick end to the wait, as 93 percent of our class applied early. We would like to believe we have chosen, with wisdom exceeding our years and our experience, that one special college that will change our lives in ways unimagined.

The truth is that most of us will have to wait until spring to find out what lies ahead. What is certain is

not that we have necessarily chosen the “best” place, or that the “best” place will choose us. What is true is that we have all shared this preparatory journey together and now will face an uncertain future in a new and strange place that will challenge and excite us—wherever it is.

The Bat Mitzvah speech is over. It is strangely silent now. Before, we faced adolescence, kicked off by a party that celebrated our passage to high school.

Now we wait and wonder, ready to move on to the unknown and a different sort of celebration. It is a celebration of accomplishment, a celebration of relief and a celebration of change.

hwchronicle.com/opinion opinion A13Dec. 18, 2013

Dec. 18, 2013A14 OpiniOn The chrOnicle

I would take Mythology and Its Meaning: Gods and Goddesses; Heroes and Hero-ines in a heartbeat. The same goes for Surrealism in Poetry, Painting and Film. Of course, there’s one insurmountable barrier separating me from these classes: they’re two of the four new Kutler Center courses approved for next year, and I’m graduating in June.

A barrier still remains, though, when I imagine what would have happened if these new courses were offered this year. I’m still taking the five core academic classes (Eng-lish, math, language, science and history), and I doubt I’m alone in this respect. I’m also enrolled in that one elec-tive that’s more a way of life (Chronicle), another elective (Philosophy in Art and Sci-ence) and a directed study (Ancient Greek).

Chronicle is non-negotia-ble, in the way that for other students the class period for Vox Populi or Community Council or Prefect Council is non-negotiable. (It now may be the same next year for Robotics, which in its switch from an afterschool club to a Kutler class will restrict participation and experimen-

tation on the part of students only able to join a club that’s been slimmed down to focus solely on competition.)

I’m only allowed to take Greek because, as a directed study, it meets just two days a week, so I’m not quite taking a full eight periods of class (which is, as we all know, forbidden).

What this gets down to is that if you’re a student tak-ing five core classes and one elective dedicated to a major extracurricular, you prob-ably have space for one more elective. In the Kutler Center alone, there are now 18 class-es, all reserved for juniors and seniors. So, have at it, folks—if you can.

I get it: I’m maybe not as typical as I think. Some students drop history or sci-ence after junior year, and some drop their language after sophomore year, opening up space for electives more suited to their interests—and, in a sense, a senior choos-ing to still take a history or language is taking an elective suited to his or her interest.

But is it so unexpected that a senior enrolled in Latin Literature Honors is also into mythology, or that an AP Art History and AP Lit Student

would like to take a class on surrealism?

Even if some core subjects become so-called electives by senior year, am I wrong in thinking students would end up taking one of them over the new Art and Science of Fly Fishing?

The specter of college admissions always looms, and, okay, maybe I’m taking AP Bio right now because my dean has insisted on the traditional bio-chem-physics sequence, not because of my love for the subject.

But, again, I’m not alone. Harvard-Westlake is at its core a college preparatory school, and its premium on academics means that stu-dents will most likely be pushed to take traditional, “legitimate” classes, while more offbeat electives like the Kutler Center’s may be given only the schedule space left over afterward, no matter a student’s foremost interest in World Religions or Unconven-tional Leadership or Middle Eastern Studies.

I hope that students are able to take World Religions once the rest of their academ-ic checklist is fulfilled. If not, I’d like to know who all these electives were designed for.

Who is the Kutler Center for?By Julia Aizuss

At a school that has a reputation for priding itself on college acceptances, why do we not have pride in each other’s college acceptances?

I remember a day last May. My older brother, who attended Sierra Canyon High School, had been ac-cepted to and had chosen to attend Harvard. My family was proud, to say the least. And following suit with the typical spirit found at Sierra Canyon, my family decided to use window paint to write on the car window short phrases including, “Harvard bound!” “Congrats, Class of 2013!” and “We love you, Michael!”

On this day in May, my mom pulled into the school parking lot to pick me up at the end of the day. But as the brightly painted car slowly approached the crowd of students I was standing with, I was mortified. I jumped into the car, threw my backpack in the seat behind me and told my mom to drive away as fast as she could. I did not want anyone to know the car with the writing belonged to me; however, I did not escape fast enough.

Less than 30 seconds had passed before my phone vibrated. I looked down and read the following text from a fellow Harvard-Westlake student: “Wow. Was that your car with all of the Harvard stuff on it? That’s so rude and inconsiderate.”

First I was shocked, then embarrassed, then angry. Was it a crime to be proud of my brother for getting into the school of his dreams? Was it so wrong to want to celebrate his accomplishments and share them with the world? Well, growing up as a student at Harvard-Westlake, I was taught the following answers: yes, it was a crime, and yes, it was wrong.

But why is that the case? In my opinion, it actually

makes perfect sense that our school, students and admin-istrators alike, condemns all outward forms of celebratory expression. We all know the

facts: we attend one of the top schools in America; we are taught by some of the most incredible teachers; we are surrounded by students who excel in a variety of different areas - academics, athletics, robotics, the arts - the list goes on forever.

At a school filled with students who are all excep-tional in one way or another, it makes sense that we com-pete for the same spots at the same prestigious colleges or universities. So yes, I under-stand why this is the case, but I still do not understand why it has to be this way.

Yes, this is a stressful time for everyone. Sopho-mores are preparing for their first midterms at the Upper School. Juniors, well, it’s junior year. And seniors are just beginning to find out about the long-awaited college acceptances, or for some, the dreaded rejections.

Now is the time for us to have each other’s backs. We can’t just come together as a community in times of tragedy; we must of course unite as one to comfort each other through the hardships but also through times of good fortune.

I am by no means suggest-ing we not think before we act or that we should disregard the feelings of others; rather, I am urging my classmates to support each other.

We understand what everyone must go through to get that acceptance letter (or in our day… email), and we shouldn’t put each other down for wanting to celebrate success.

Let’s end the resent-ment we have been known to exhibit. When your friend or classmate gets into college, run over and give them a big hug because when you get your acceptance letter, what-ever school it may be from, you’re going to want that same congratulatory hug.

Let’s have pride in each other and in our college acceptances. It’s time we cel-ebrate together.

It’s time for us to celebrate together

By Ashley Sacks ’14

Los Angeles’ weather makes me insecure because the tempera-

ture in Hawaii is 30 degrees warmer. My best friend lives in Honolulu, a city nicknamed Paradise, and because of that, I feel an irrational sense of competition with a place that I try against all reason to convince myself is worse than Los Angeles.

I have spent all fall in a big, yellow jacket and HW basketball shorts, walking through the morning dew, still in denial of the fact that at 6 a.m. on a mid-December morning, Los Angeles’ eternal summer is no more than a myth. To put away my shorts and my summery sunglasses would be to admit defeat. It would symbolize my conces-

sion to the City of Honolulu that Paradise really is a better place than the City of the Angels, and that defeat would, through my twisted young adult logic, somehow amount to an ultimate admission of my lack of worth for living in a place known more for its smog than for its surf-ing. Perhaps it is because of puberty or teenage angst that this same process of competi-tion, denial, and decrease in self-worth replicates itself in a number of situations in my life. I combat my feelings of inferiority with excuses.

Kennedy Green ’14 has a better grade than I do in Spanish class, but it’s okay be-cause I didn’t take Spanish all last year, so I really can’t be expected to speak Spanish as

well as she does. Covi Bran-nan ’15 is a better actor than I am, but both of her parents are actors, so it only makes sense that she inherited some natural talent. Sinclair Cook ’14 speaks Chinese better than I do, but he’s been studying Chinese since sixth grade. Sure I spent my junior year in Beijing, but nine months in China doesn’t make up for three additional years of study, does it?

I know that my reasoning is flawed and my excuses are ridiculous and that the very process of explaining myself in such a way demonstrates my lack of confidence, but I can’t help it. I have been search-ing for a place inside me that is content with what I have and who I am, but, as of yet,

I can’t find it. Sometimes, I feel that I am only good when I am better than others. Even my accomplishments are decreased by a feeling that someone else did it better, and that drives me crazy.

I don’t feel this way all the time. I actually am generally regarded among my friends and those who know me as being extremely confident and supportive of others.

Rather, what I am describ-ing represents a state of mind that is most powerful in my lowest moments, and I am not proud of this.

I don’t advertise my oc-casional absence of self-assur-ance or parade my part-time resentment of the successes of others.

I am ashamed, and I do my

best to not only hide but also to get rid of the self-deprecat-ing sentiments that overcome me.

I would not consider myself a particularly jealous person, but I believe that my light is often dimmed by the shadows cast by the greatness of others. Probably, this is all just a phase, and I’ll grow out of it.

One day, I’ll find encour-agement and confidence beyond rare moments of total superiority, but not today.

Today, I have to be from the best place. I have to get the best grades. I have to be the best actor, the best colum-nist, the best Chinese speaker. I have to go to the best college if only to prove to myself that I’m worth it.

EUGENIA KO AND KELLY RIOPELLE/CHRONICLE

guest column

Seeking self-worth from being the most successfulBy Alex McNab

Dear Editors,I think your Oct. 15 Opin-

ion piece “Choosing between my education and my educa-tion” (written by Julia Aizuss ’14) misses a few important points regarding the college process and in-class learning.

The article asserted that it was important to attend on-campus college meetings to “show interest” in schools you are applying to, and that having these meetings during class time leads to a decline in the quality of the education we’re receiving at Harvard-Westlake. I disagree with both of its key assertions and feel it fails to acknowledge the coun-terpoints to its arguments.

Firstly, the sole purpose of college informational sessions is not just to write your name down to demonstrate inter-est, as your article asserted. The purpose of these sessions is to learn about the schools you are applying to and make a connection with the person who will be reading your ap-plication. Not everyone has the resources or time to fly

to each college they’re apply-ing to. College websites often have limited information and emailing an admissions direc-tor isn’t as effective as in-person conversation.

Regarding the issue you raise about missing class time for these sessions, I think you’re ignoring the provisions our teach-ers make to help us when we miss class for any reason.

Nearly everything we learn in class is on the internet, in the reading or in a peer’s notes.

If those resources aren’t quenching your unwavering thirst for knowledge, then you can meet with a teacher during a free period or after school. I don’t see how miss-ing class leads to a lower quality of education. Teachers aren’t offended if you miss class for a legitimate reason, and accordingly, if you take time to independently learn class material, your teacher

will be impressed with your commitment and will be will-ing to answer your questions.

Furthermore, I would argue that these sessions

actually save time in class. Assuming that you are applying to eight colleges, which is roughly average, you would miss the equivalent of one full day of school.

If you wanted to replicate the experi-ence and actually meet your admis-sions person and these sessions didn’t

exist, you would have to miss much more than one day of school. I would personally much rather miss a period of school to meet someone than miss a day of school to fly cross country.

Ultimately, I feel that you are too quick to criticize great opportunities that we’re lucky to be provided with by our school.

—Matt Klein ’14

letter to the editors

Appreciate the opportunities

quadtalkThe Chronicle asked:

“No, I wasn’t aware of the event going on and the ones that were happening were making PB&J sandwiches in the lounge. I don’t know how that gets my community service done.”

—Jules Gross ’15

—Jacob Byrnes ’14

“Do you think students are overly sensitive about the college application process?”

“We didn’t do anything for the community. It didn’t morally teach us to help the community, it just teaches us to buy cookies that will help the community.”

“Students should try to not get jealous of their classmates when they get into certain colleges and just support them if they get rejected from the college of their choice.”

—Mathew Gooden ’15

“I think that students should refrain from posting anything on Facebook about their college experi-ences at all and maybe try to keep it more private and mind your own business.”

—Anelise Florescue ’14

“I think it was very effective seeing the reps from Community Council promoting commu-nity service. It entices students to act on their own behalf.”

—Hunter Brookman ’16

Yes

No

222

187

409 students weighed in on the Chronicle poll

Yes

No

235


176

hwchronicle.com/opinion opinion A15Dec. 18, 2013

nathanson’s

Matt Klein ’14

“Do you think students are overly nosy about where others are applying to college?”

“In what ways can classmates be more supportive of each other throughout the college process?”

“Do you think that Community Service Week was effective?”

Working with kids

324 students weighed in on the Chronicle

poll218

“How do you plan to complete your community service requirement this year?”

Volunteering at shelters

118Walks to raise

money

55

Helping the environment

directly62 Fundraisers

47

“Do you think Community Council does a good enough job promoting and bringing opportunities to students’ attention?”

Yes

No

196


228

ONtheWeB

More

As is

61

287Less

“How many hours do you think students should have to do?”


77

Helping out: Nikta Mansouri ’15 interviews Marc Shkurovich ’15 about community service week and the community service requirement.

Watch a video of his and other responces at hwchronicle.com/quadtalk

Dec. 18, 2013A16 exposure

’Tis the SeasonStudents and faculty celebrate

the last week of school before winter break with Winterfest. From “Merry Monday,” “Tacky Tuesday,” “Onesie Wednesday” and “Thermal

Thursday” to “Frosty Friday,” the week-long festivities feature

performances, food and movies. Wintergrams

were sold last week and are being delivered this week during class

meetings.

LET IT RING: The ARC bell choir performs for students in the lounge during break Dec. 16.

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

CHRISTMAS CAROLING: Mem-bers of the Jazz Singers perform in the lounge during break to celebrate “Merry Monday.”

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLE

SWEET TREAT: Sophomore prefects Grace Pan ’16 and Alec Winshel ’16 sell Wetzel’s Pretzels on the quad.


NAUGHTY OR NICE: Gwynn Pol-lard ’15, Anton Beer ’14, Netanya Perluss ’15 and Diana Kim ’15 pose for a picture with President Rick Commons dressed up as Santa.

NIKTA MANSOURI/CHRONICLEMR. & MRS. CLAUS: Anser Abbas ’14, left, and Aaron Anderson ’14 pose behind cut-outs of Santa and Mrs. Claus in the lounge.

SYDNEY FOREMAN/CHRONICLE

SOUND WAVES: Physics teacher Jesse Reiner sings and plays the guitar at Coffee House in the lounge after school Dec. 16.

LAUREN SONNENBERG/CHRONICLE

FeaturesThe Chronicle • Dec. 18, 2013

Some crazy kids have gotten all too addicted to a game about candy.

• See page B12

By LeiLy Arzy

In many ways, hatred dominates Roxanne’s* ’14 life. When her par-ents explained that they

were getting a divorce, Rox-anne distinctly remembers them emphasizing that they were going to co-parent. But since that day, they are rarely in the same room and never speak unless absolutely nec-essary.

“I do not want my parents in the same room because I have seen it happen and it goes terribly, but at the same time I wish they could just put aside their differences and be my parents,” Roxanne said.

Because her parents nev-er speak to each other, Rox-anne said it is easy for her to lie about her location by saying she is at one of their homes when she is not.

When she was younger, her par-ents’ divorce was not as big an issue. As she got older though, the separation has become more of a problem.

“It is very frus-trating to every two days have to go back and forth between houses,” Roxanne said. “I keep all of my things packed in a bag and sometimes I just leave it in my car. I have to be very conscious of what I am doing, where I am going and whose house I am going to be at. All my plans have to be centered around this inconvenience.”

But one of the worst re-sults of her parents’ divorce is that her parents have de-veloped a need to compete for her love and attention.

“They try to one-up each other and try to make me like one more than the other,” she said.

Roxanne’s relationship with her father was further weakened after he remarried.

“I would not let my dad be a part of my life for a really long time,” Roxanne said. “I really felt like he had a new family, and I was not a part of it. I did not want to be a part of it. I was just happier at my mom’s house, with my mom and brother, where my old life was still intact.”

When she was younger, Roxanne was wary of her stepmother’s presence and did not want her in the house.

Roxanne was unwilling to form any kind of relation-ship with her, telling her fa-

ther that she hated her. Now, however, Roxanne is working to improve her relationship with both her father and stepmother.

“When my stepmom tells me what to do, it is very hard for me to listen to her be-cause she is not my mom,” Roxanne said. “I do not like her telling me what to do, but at the same time it is a hard position for her to be in be-cause she needs to discipline me, but I feel like she does not have the authority to.”

Like Roxanne, Jay* ’14 has a poor relationship with the woman his father began dating immediately after his parents’ divorce.

“My dad is living with his girlfriend and has been dat-ing her for like five years,” Jay said. “I hate my dad’s girl-friend. She’s a ter-rible human.”

Like Roxanne’s parents, Jay’s par-ents rarely com-municate with one another. Because of this, getting permis-

sion for trips or any other type of co-parenting is diffi-cult.

His parents separated when he was 12 years old, and it came as a complete shock.

“I really had no idea be-cause they tried really hard to not fight in front of us,” Jay said. “My brother knew just because he was older, but I was blindsided by it. It seemed like all of this was coming out of the blue. It was just weird to think that they were really happy and then realize that they actually hat-ed each other.”

Because of the façade Jay’s parents had sustained, he thought he lived in an or-dinary, close-knit family, so news of the divorce created a change that school counselor Luba Bek often sees in the cases that come to her.

“[The shock of divorce] comes from a really cohesive family unit that used to pro-vide you support, comfort and familiarity,” Bek said. “Life becomes this really confusing maze, and after the divorce you do not know where to go.”

Although Camden* ’14 was aware of his parents’ fighting and sensed that something was wrong, he felt the very same confusion

over why his parents could not make their relationship work and never expected their seperation to be handled in court.

“I saw the world through a very small lens,” Camden said. “I just thought it would be easy for it to be fixed overnight, like I wanted them to wake up and get back together so that we could live as a family. I remember just wanting my parents to be happy and live together.”

It was not until years lat-er that Camden learned the main reason for his parents’ divorce was that his father had been saving money for his college tuition, while his mother was spending that money on herself, resulting in their divorce.

While Roxanne’s parents competed for her love, Cam-den’s mother punished him in order to get back at her ex-husband.

“In order to cope with her pain, she would punish me, so I was often put in the middle,” Camden said. “I definitely held a grudge against my mom for a long time, and I still kind of hold a grudge [against her]. A part of me wishes that she would just come out and apologize and understand that she was wrong, but she’s not that kind of person.”

“The worst case sce-nario is when the par-ents put the kid in the middle, that is the most traumatic place to be,” Bek said. “When mom talks about how bad dad is and dad talks about how bad mom is, then the kid is re-ally confused and has no idea what to do and where to go with that.”

Camden says he is still frustrated by the way the divorce was han-dled, especially when it went to court. While his parents were ar-guing over cus-tody, a representa-

A HouseDivided

nathanson’s

Luba Bek

B2 Features the ChroniCle DeC. 18, 2013

tive c a m e

to Camden’s home to ask

questions about his living situa-

tion and parents. Not understand-ing the point of the meeting and the effect it would have on the next six years of his life, 12-year-old Camden told the representative that everything was okay with his mom, even though that was not the case.

“I did not under-stand at the time that what I said would be told in court,” Camden said. “[The representa-tive] went to the court and said my words ex-actly. So when my dad would be arguing that I did not like being over there, because it was exactly how I felt, the court heard my state-

ment which sounded neutral, so the court went with my words.”

Although Camden was reluctant, his father thought his son should go

to therapy to help him deal with the confusion of the situation.

“I knew it would not help, but at the same time I thought it would not hurt just to know how to be better at dealing with certain

situations with my parents,” Camden said. “The thera-pist told me to use ‘I’ more. ‘I feel sad,’ or ‘I feel angry when this happens.’ And

avoid ‘you’ com-ments like ‘you did

this wrong’ or ‘you never do anything for me.’”

Camden said that he did not find therapy very helpful in dealing with his parents, but it did help him deal with future situations by learning to commu-

nicate in the best way possible without try-

ing to point a finger at anyone.

“I had been dealing with my

parents’ divorce for so long

by myself that I had kind of de-veloped my

own ways of therapy,” he said.

Camden believes that the divorce has made him the per-son he is today.

“All of this is very deep within me and hidden,” he said. “It does not really come up that often, like it does not come up with my friends. [The divorce] does not affect me to the point where I can not function, but I mean it bothers me.”

W h i l e Bek believes that being put in the middle can be incredibly emotionally draining, she said that some of the worst divorce cases are when one of the parents has an affair.

“It is confusing. It is a sense of betrayal,” she said. “Because if dad is having an affair with somebody, then the kid feels like the dad betrayed not only mom, but him or her too. ‘Why are you doing it to me?’ is the ultimate question.”

Grayson* ’16 was 4 years old when his parents got a di-vorce, after his father cheated on his mother.

“All I remember is police being at the house because my dad would not leave,” Grayson said.

Grayson’s father ended up moving out of the state entire-ly, and the two rarely speak to one another, except for an occasional phone call and at Christmas gatherings.

“At this point I know it sounds terrible, but I do not care about what he is doing anymore,” Grayson said. “In a way, I think the divorce kind of benefitted me.”

Bek believes that the most significant relationship in a person’s life is the relation-ship with the person’s same gender parent. She believes that Grayson is using a de-fense mechanism to no longer care about the absence of his father, because caring about him would cause a great deal of pain.

Grayson says he has formed a tight bond with his stepfather whom he considers his real father.

“[My stepfather] is inte-grated completely into my life,” Grayson said. “I love him, and I talk about him as if he is my dad.”

Grayson says that while his mother was single, it was hard for her to handle rais-ing all three of her children alone. Grayson said his eldest

brother played a father figure dur-ing that time.

“He became that older role model that a young kid wants,” Grayson said.

Like Grayson, several of the students who were inter-viewed for this story found that, while the relationship with their parents may have weakened, the relationship

they shared with their sibling grew stronger.

“I feel like bonding is a common thing with sisters because she is the only per-son that can know exactly what I am go-ing through, but when she

left for college it was a lot harder for me to deal with on my own,” Demi* ‘15 said.

For five years now, Demi’s parents have been separated and have been planning to get a divorce.

“My parents’ relationship fluctuates, and sometimes they get back together,” Demi said. “If your parents are di-vorced then it is easier to get accustomed to, but, with my situation, it is always changing because sometimes they are together and sometimes they are not. Sometimes I wish that they were divorced.”

“There are very few cases where kids come to me and say thank god my parents are getting divorced,” Bek said. “It happens. The kids get tired of fighting, but, even then, they want their parents to stop fighting — not necessarily get a divorce.”

Like Demi, Roxanne said that she is now happy that her parents got a divorce because she does not understand why they ever got married in the first place. However, she finds it upsetting that her parents’ divorce has fundamentally changed her view of marriage, a result of her parents’ di-vorce, and she now thinks that she knows the harsh truth about relationships.

“The one thing that I hate about this experience is that it has made me not believe that relationships can be success-ful,” Roxanne said. “I know that when I am older I want to be married, but I have some is-sues trusting that [marriage] can work. I do not have a sin-gle relationship to look at that has been successful.”

**Additional reporting by Eliza-beth Madden

*Names have been changed

Students whose parents are divorced often face physical and emotional hardships from growing up in separated families.

GRAPHIC BY JACOB GOODMAN

Features B3hwChroniCle.Com/FeaturesDeC. 18, 2013

“ The one thing that I hate about this experience is that it has made me not believe that relationships can be successful.”

—Roxanne* ’14

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The Techie

Dec. 18, 2013B4 Features the chronicle

MULTITASKING: Web Manager Lillian Contreras, at her post in the Didax House, demonstrates how her job requires three computer monitors. Contreras uses the Dell computers to write code for the school’s website and the Mac to test her programs for Apple products.


The web manager was studying geography and science at UCLA when she fell in love with computer programming.

By Marcella Park

Every day at work in the Didax House, a green build-ing at the edge of campus near Upper St. Michael’s park-ing lot, Web Manager Lillian Contreras sits in front of two monitors writing code for the school’s website. Around her is a setup much like that of faculty department offices on both campuses, with cubicles in an open room.

She always has two brows-ers open to test her work on, her email and two programs to write in, and she uses a Mac com-puter nearby to test that whatever she writes also works for Ap-ple products.

She re-cords each week’s tasks in a notebook that she car-ries around everywhere she goes on school business, such as meetings on both cam-puses.

Contreras first became interested in programming when she was about to gradu-ate from UCLA after studying environmental studies and ge-ography.

When Contreras found that she was good at using a database at the tax law firm she was working at, her boss’s brother advised her on classes to take in computer science.

“I really liked it, and from there I didn’t turn around,” she said. “I just decided to do that. So that’s how I was able to get in.”

Before she started taking programming classes, Contre-ras said she had no idea she would be working with com-puters for a career, especially since computers were only starting to be so commonly used then.

“I liked that degree [in en-vironmental studies and ge-

ography], and I was thinking of going to get my master’s in that, but then I really got turned on to computer sci-ence,” Contreras said. “It was really odd, I think, because my major, what I graduated in, is not what I’m doing now.”

In 1996, at the same time she was taking night classes in programming, Contreras started at Harvard-Westlake as an assistant working tem-porarily for former President Tom Hudnut. When a position opened up in computer ser-

vices, Contre-ras became a permanent staff mem-ber in that department, then made up of five peo-ple and now grown to 13.

She fo-cused on building the school web-site, which was barely starting at that time.

Now, she is in charge of build-ing and maintaining pages on hw.com.

She works with other peo-ple to generate content, often setting sections up for others, like the communications and admission departments or stu-dent organizations, to fill. She also works on connecting the website with information from Didax, the school’s in-house database.

As part of the educational technology committee, Con-treras took part in vetting products and visiting schools to do research in preparation for the launch of the one-to-one program at the Middle School. When students, teach-ers and administrators come to her for help with comput-ers or the website, “it’s a lot of figuring out what we have and what we can use, or if we can use a third-party system,” she said.

Contreras, the daughter of immigrants, grew up in

Los Angeles. She always liked math and science, and wanted to be an astronaut when she was growing up.

“I don’t really like writing creatively,” she said. “I do like creative things, but I’m not good at that part of it, where-as in the sciences and math it makes sense to me, and writ-ing code makes sense to me, versus trying to write a novel or something like that.”

Contreras said she might like to go to a different field in science, but probably will not because she enjoys her job now.

She also goes to business and educational technology conferences to see what and how others in her field are using technology, in addition to subscribing to RSS feeds, eNewsletters and listservs for information. The conferenc-es help her decide what new products to buy with the com-puter services budget.

“Sometimes it is fast-paced, and you just have to keep up with it,” Contreras said. “Working here, they re-ally allow you to go and see what’s out there, and not only on the tech side but on the ed-ucational technology side.”

The computer services de-partment works year-round, and Contreras said she enjoys changes in environment that come with having fewer or more people on campus while school is out of or in session. The department’s work hours also vary by season, she said. During the summer, the de-partment gets ready for the school year through tasks like updating computer labs.

“It’s a different setting, it’s quieter, there’s less people, we can dress more casually, whereas when school starts, we get more calls from teach-ers, emails, communication, things like that,” she said. “So it’s very nice in that way, be-cause although we’re here, it’s a very different energy, and then you can feel the energy going up as school starts.”

Contreras said she spends about 60 percent of her time writing code or working with

technology and the rest of her time communicating with people about her work. Her fa-vorite part of her work is “the feeling of finishing it and it ac-tually working.”

The Didax House does not “get much traffic, so we can focus on writing code or fig-uring systems, or build serv-ers,” Contreras said. Even so, she does not think people from her department are isolated from the rest of the school since they have to work with other departments to fix prob-lems on both campuses. The open-room setup in the office “encourages, facilitates, talk-ing about an issue, and all of us can give our input on it, instead of us being completely separate, in separate offices,” Contreras said.

The department often eats lunch together, often attend-ing meals hosted by technology vendors, or, if they decide not to walk to the school cafeteria, driving to nearby restaurants.

Contreras said she tries to get involved outside of her job by attending performing arts events like the school musical and choral concerts.

A Spanish speaker and friend of Spanish teacher Javi-er Zaragoza, she also routinely helps chaperone the trip to Spain sponsored by the world languages department.

As for hobbies, “I like visit-ing Disney parks,” Contreras said. “So usually I am visiting Disneyland or going to Orlan-do, to Disney World. I really love that.” Since she has no children, going with her hus-band is really a passion of her own, she said.

Contreras won the Gar-rett Hardin early achievement award in 2005 and has been at Harvard-Westlake for 16 years.

“I love working here,” Con-treras said. “I feel that the administration really sup-ports the faculty and staff, and they treat us well, and I think that that’s a testament to the school and how students love teachers, because we all are happy here.”

“Working here, they really allow you to go and see what’s out there, and not only on the tech side but on the educational technology side.”

—Lillian ContrerasWeb Manager

highstakes

By Sydney Foreman

Melvin*, The BrainOut of the two schools

he applied to, Melvin* has only heard back from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was deferred. He said it was “kind of disappointing, but definitely not out of the blue.”

Had he been accepted to MIT early action, he would have continued applying to schools. It would have, however, made him drop schools he wants to attend less than MIT off his list.

Melvin stands by his decision not to apply early decision anywhere since he has not visited any schools.

“Early decision would have been a giant commitment,”

Melvin said. Melvin will be hearing

back from University of Chicago later this afternoon, which he is “banking on” for an acceptance.

“[MIT and UChicago] are tied for where I’d most like to go at the moment,” Melvin said.

Thelonius*, The Artist

Thelonius* arrived home on Friday to purple and white balloons, which his parents purchased in honor of his acceptance to the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. He has no regrets about apply-ing early decision and intends to maintain his effort in his schoolwork.

“I think I’ll be less stressed,

which usually ends up with me doing better work,” Thelonius said.

He does not believe he will spend that much more time on his art and music, now that he has been accepted. He does not intend to major in fine arts, but his interest in the arts will definitely continue in college.

“In New York, I’m looking forward to the music, art and fashion scene,” Thelonius said.

Daisy*, The All-aroundAlthough she was hopeful,

Daisy* was as “surprised as anyone else would be” about being accepted to Columbia University.

“I can finally get really in-vested in the school,” Daisy said.

She has begun thinking

about her living situation for next year. She is leaning to-wards having a roommate rather than living alone.

Daisy is partiuclarly en-thusiastic about the core cu-riculum at Columbia.

“I love science, but I want to keep learning about the hu-manities, especially in a city filled with so much culture,” Daisy said.

In general, students have been very supportive of her acceptance, she said.

Florence*, The AthleteFlorence* decided later in

the process to apply to Tulane University, Elon University, Villanova University, Univer-sity of Notre Dame and Uni-versity of San Francisco. Thus far, she has been accepted to

Tulane and Elon. Her top choice, however,

has changed from Georgetown University to Bucknell Univer-sity.

“I’ve talked to people that go there, and I haven’t heard anything negative about it,” Florence said.

She is being recruited by the school and is looking for-ward to the sports program there. She is also attracted to the school for its size of ap-proximately 3,500 students.

“It seems to have a strong sense of community because it’s a small school, but it’s not too small,” Florence said.

Florence will be making an official recruitment visit to Bucknell next month.


Hearing back from colleges After applying early to colleges in November, these four seniors have started to hear back about their varied decisions.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JACOB GOODMANFlorence*, the athleteDaisy*, the all aroundMelvin*, the brain Thelonius*, the artist

hwchronicle.com/features features B5Dec. 18, 2013


By Morganne raMsey

Had Lucas Hernandez ’14 stayed in public school after gradu-ating from middle

school, he would have attend-ed Leuzinger High School or Lawndale High School, the two high schools in the Centinela Valley Union School District. At these schools, less than 40 percent of students met state expectations on standardized tests during the 2011-2012 school year.

Leaving those “bleak” op-tions behind, Hernandez chose to attend a private school for his high school years. Hernan-dez is one of the 15 percent of students at Harvard-Westlake that came from a public school, a proportion that is slightly higher at the upper school than at the middle school, As-sociate Director of Admissions Melanie León said.

The public schools that are most represented at Harvard-Westlake include Walter Reed Middle School, Milliken Mid-dle School, Paul Revere Middle School and Culver City Middle School.

Coming to Harvard-West-lake, however, presented its own set of challenges for Her-nandez, who found the transi-tion difficult.

“During the first quarter, teachers were lenient, but af-ter that you had to kick it into gear,” Hernandez said, “But the fact of the matter is, you can’t change your life and the 13 years of disadvantage you’ve had against most of the other students at this school.”

Kennedy Green ’14, who attended Culver City Middle School, said the differences in academic rigor were most ap-parent when she tried study-ing with her friends from out-side of school.

“When I took [AP United States History], I thought it’d be helpful to have a study session with my friends from Culver, and I realized that they were missing chunks of things that I thought everybody needed to know,” Green said.

Lizzete Medina ’14 said

the biggest difference between Harvard-Westlake and her middle school, Lennox Middle School, was the classroom en-vironment, where there were normally around 30 kids.

“The teacher would teach to whoever was listening,” Me-dina said, “Usually the people who cared sat in the front, and the people who didn’t would sit in the back and talk the entire time.”

Hernandez, Medina and Green all said that the work at their respective middle schools was so easy that they didn’t try but still got good grades.

“I was in the honors track, and I didn’t feel a whole lot of challenge,” Green said. “It made me wonder what the regular track was like.”

Academically, Hernandez said that he was vastly under-prepared for all of his classes except for math: on his first Biology Honors lab, he re-ceived a seven percent.

“At my middle school, it was ‘did you get the right an-swer’ — here it’s ‘I don’t care if you got the right answer, prove it to me,’” Hernandez said.

Grace Chung ’14 came to Harvard-Westlake in the sev-enth grade from Emerson Middle School, and she also struggled to make the aca-demic transition. However, she didn’t think to ask her teach-ers for help.

“[At Emerson], if you met with teachers, there was a connotation that you had a mental problem,” Chung said.

Medina said the circum-stances at Lennox were simi-lar.

“I feel like I can depend on my teachers here,” Me-dina said. “At Lennox, you would hate your teachers. You wouldn’t see them as people.”

While these students ex-pressed making a difficult academic transition, Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said she did not think that kids from public schools are necessarily unprepared.

“Kids who have gone to very good independent schools have been taught study skills and learning strategies,” Huy-

brechts said. “Often the kids who are near the top of their class in public school have ei-ther learned or figured out on their own those very same study techniques and learn-ing strategies. Half the battle in succeeding in school is just learning how to learn.”

Green said that the differ-ent academic cultures led to vastly different expectations. Only 38.6 percent of the class of 2011 at Culver City High School took all of the classes required for admission to the California State University system or the UC system, the same classes required to grad-uate from Harvard-Westlake.

“At Culver, you were ex-pected to graduate, or at least c o m p l e t e your cred-its at the adult school,” Green said. “I think it’s i m p o r t a n t that here you are expected to succeed. The fact that they’re ex-pecting some-thing makes you want to surpass it.”

In addi-tion to making the academic transition, these students also had to make a social transi-tion.

“I’d say jokingly that I would have to learn a whole new vocabulary to interact with these people,” Green said. “It was true.”

Chung said that the social transition was jarring because most people at Emerson didn’t have much money. Many of her friends were in foster care, and she said that there were kids whose families were involved in gang activity. Her-nandez said the socioeconomic difference was the first thing he noticed when he came to Harvard-Westlake.

“People here leave their phones around,” Hernandez said, “At middle school, most kids didn’t even have cell phones. Their families couldn’t

afford them.”However, Hernandez and

Medina had a support system to help them make the social transition. They both came to Harvard-Westlake through the Richstone Educational En-terprise Program, now called the “Young Eisner Scholars.” The program prepares under-privileged youth to attend bet-ter secondary schools.

“Eisner helps you and drives you into this world you become a part of,” Hernandez said, “He changes your life for the better.”

Green said she was grate-ful for the opportunities she has at Harvard-Westlake.

“I feel like people don’t un-derstand how good we have

it,” Green said. “Every day I inter-act with my friends from other schools that don’t have any-thing close to what we have here.”

G r e e n , H e r n a n d e z and Chung all keep in touch with people from their

middle schools, but find that the differences in their high schools can sometimes make interactions difficult.

“They don’t have education anymore,” Hernandez said, “They’re taught to sit down and wait for the teacher to get off of Facebook. We don’t compare schools because it’s not fair.”

“I try to keep in touch,” Chung said, “but I try to dis-tance myself because what they’re struggling with is com-pletely different than what I’m struggling with now.”

In spite of the differences, Hernandez said that if he had to make the decision again, he would choose to go to a private school over Lawndale.

“I would have been vale-dictorian, but I wouldn’t have learned anything,” Hernandez said.

“ I think it’s important that here you are expected to succeed. The fact that they’re expecting something makes you want to surpass it.”

—Kennedy Green ’14

Adjusting to a private school was made more difficult for some students, they say, because of disadvantages they faced at public middle schools they attended.

PERKS: Lizette Medina ’14, top left, works on her drawings in an art studio in Feldman-Horn. Grace Chung ’14, top right, stays after school to work on her English essay as she looks through her copy of “Pride and Prejudice” in the library. Lucas Hernandez ’14, bottom left, wrestles a practice dummy in the wrestling room in Ham-ilton Gym during a free period. Kennedy Green ’14, bottom right, sings into the microphone on the Rugby Auditorium stage.

MORGANNE RAMSEY/CHRONICLE

Overcoming the past

By Alex McNAb

What is Kwanzaa? In a poll of 388 Harvard-

Westlake students, 59.5 per-cent didn’t know.

“I’m not sure if it’s just for people from Africa or African-Americans in general,” Aliyah Daniels ’14, who identifies her-self as an African-American, said. “It seems like an alterna-tive to Christmas. I guess it’s time with family and friends and food. It’s just like another holiday really. I don’t know that much about it to be hon-est.”

“It’s a holiday,” Kayla Da-rini ’16, who identifies herself as half-white and half-black, said. “Black people cel-ebrate it. That’s all I know.”

“It’s something my white, Christian grandmother tells me I should cele-brate,” Anai Finnie ’15, who identifies herself as half-black and half-white, said.

“It’s a holiday that no one participates in,” Mon-tana Reilly ’16, who identi-fies herself as Caucasian, said. “It’s like Christmas and Hanukkah. It’s a winter holiday where you get pres-ents I think. Christmas is for Christians. Hanukkah

is for Jews. Kwanzaa is for ‘Kwanzaans.’”

However, there are no Kwanzaans because unlike Christmas and Hanukkah, there is no religious group as-sociated with Kwan-zaa. Rather, Kwanzaa was founded in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, the chair of the Af-rican Studies De-partment at Califor-nia State University Long Beach and co-founder of the black nationalist group Organization Us, as the first holiday cre-ated specifically for African-Americans. Its purpose is “to give blacks an op-portunity to cel-ebrate themselves and their history,” Karenga said.

The official website of Kwan-zaa emphasizes “the continued rapid growth of Kwanzaa” and “the profound s i gn i f i c ance Kwanzaa has for African-Americans.”

However, 59.1 percent of 384 students of varying races said they don’t care about Kwan-zaa, and 22.7 percent of 387 students said they don’t care about their cultural history.

“I do recognize slavery,” Rebecca Armstrong ’14, who identifies herself as an Afri-can-American, said. “[But] I have no connection with my African roots. I have no idea where I’m from. [My Afri-can history is] less important [than my African-American history] because I’ve never been connected to it. I expe-rience racism every day, but I have no connection to Zimba-

bwe or Namibia.”“There’s no need

[to know about my history],” Finnie said. “Knowing about it won’t change any-thing. It’s not like it’s something that hap-pened to me. I know what happened, but I’m not going to let it dictate anything I do.”

Upper school his-tory department

head Katherine Holmes-Chu-ba disagrees with this view of history. However, she doesn’t oppose it.

“There are some people who just think the past is the past and I’m living now, and I think that’s just personality,” she said.

Some students said they don’t celebrate because they aren’t aware of the proper customs and traditions of the holiday.

“[I don’t celebrate Kwan-zaa since] I’m not sure what it’s about,” Darini said. “I’m not sure how to celebrate.”

Of 361 students polled, 64.8 percent first learned about Kwanzaa in school, but the comprehensiveness of these lessons varied greatly. Many students who spent a week learning about Christmas and another week learning about Hanukkah were only given one day of class to learn about Kwanzaa. However, other schools were more in-depth in their lessons. Some schools don’t mention the holiday at all. Armstrong said she first heard about Kwanzaa from children’s books.

Holmes-Chuba suggested that the Black Leadership Awareness and Culture Club could educate the community about Kwanzaa.

“It’d be helpful to have the [BLACC] remind us [about Kwanzaa]” she said. Miles Williams ’14, one of the leaders of BLACC, doesn’t agree.

“We should have more black education,” he said. “I think it’s a shame that all I get to learn about in school about black culture is a few pages in a history textbook.”

Williams, who identifies himself as black, acknowledged a widespread ignorance of Kwanzaa even within BLACC, but Williams believes that this is in part because the purposes of BLACC and Kwanzaa aren’t actually as complementary as they appear.

“BLACC is more about be-ing black, whereas Kwanzaa is more about African val-ues,” Williams said. “They’re not completely interrelated.

BLACC is more about being black in America.”

However, Williams, who has been celebrating Kwan-zaa since second grade, wishes that more black people would do the same.

“I wish that more black people would celebrate it,” he said. “Some people are just ig-norant of their African roots. I can’t guarantee that [if ev-eryone celebrated Kwanzaa] it would lower crime rates or anything, but I think it would bring [black people] together.”

Williams realizes that his ideal of universal Kwanzaa cel-ebration is far-fetched. He’s the only person he knows that celebrates Kwanzaa.

“I tell people that I cele-brate Kwanzaa,” he said. “And they look at me funny. People are caught a little off-guard by it.” Williams said he receives this reaction even from stu-dents in BLACC.

Not all observers are as se-rious or as dedicated as Wil-liams is.

“It’s not that important to us. We just do it because why not?” Marianne Veronne ’15, who has been celebrating since kindergarten and identifies herself as half-black and half-white, said. “We don’t take it seriously. Kwanzaa literally takes half an hour. Sometimes, we forget to do it, so we’ll have double Kwanzaa one day.”

When describing the traditions and cultural aspects of the holiday, Veronne continually consulted her iPhone for proper names of traditions.

Scrolling her thumb across the screen of her phone, Veronne said, “The mat is called the mkeka. Didn’t know it was called that. I guess the corn represents crops?”

Then, as she explained the ritual of dispersing evil spirits, Veronne said, “It’s kind of just a fun thing to do. It’s not like we truly believe there are evil spirits in our house.”

According to the official website of Kwanzaa, the proper way to celebrate is by placing the mkeka over a table located in a central part of the house. The kinara (candle holder), mazao (crops) and kikombe cha umoja (Cup of Unity) are placed on the mkeka “to sym-bolize our rootedness in our tradition,” the website says. Seven candles — three red candles, three green candles and one black candle — are placed in the kinara. The black symbolizes “the people,” the red symbolizes “their struggle” and the green the future and the “hope that comes from their struggle.” Kwanzaa lasts seven days, and, on each day, another candle is lit. Every day represents a value, such as umoja (unity) and kujichagu-lia (self-determination). The Cup of Unity is used to pour tambiko, a ceremonial tribute of thanks to ancestors. Afri-can art and books about “the life and culture of African peo-ple” are placed on the table “to symbolize our commitment to heritage and learning.”

Although official kina-ras and Cups of Unity can be purchased, Williams’ family

makes do with what they al-ready have around their house.

“We just sort of use like a nice wine glass for our unity cup,” Williams said. “[And] we don’t have an official kinara. We just use what we have. We make it work.”

The mazao is supposed to consist mainly of corn and be eaten in a feast on the last day, but in Williams’ house, they eat soul food instead.

“My mom makes fried chicken, collard greens, and black-eyed peas and stuff,” Williams said. “It’s pretty ste-reotypical, but it’s good so I like it.”

For the tambiko, the Wil-liamses use water.

Williams got all of his in-formation on how to celebrate the holiday from a children’s book his mom bought him in second grade.

Gifts on Kwanzaa, which are optional, are supposed to be a book and a heritage sym-bol, but Veronne’s grandma Marcheta just gives her and her brother a dollar each day.

“I don’t feel connected to African culture,” she said. “It’s not like we’re celebrating our ‘Africanness.’ When we talk about the principles [of Kwan-zaa,] we apply it to our own

lives.”Veronne, who is

biracial, added that her white rela-tives are usually visiting during Kwanzaa.

Ve r o n n e , like Williams, hopes more will observe Kwan-zaa.

“More black people should

celebrate Kwanzaa be-cause it’s fun, but it’s not going to last,” Veronne said.

Of 381 students, 49.1 percent said they can’t tell whether Kwanzaa will last, while 34.6 percent said it will and 16.3 said it won’t.

“When people refer-ence Kwanzaa, it’s not genuine,” Daniels said.

“If we were to cel-ebrate Kwanzaa, it would be to prove that we’re not ignorant to the years of s--- that happened,” Finnie said. “It seems unnecessary. I don’t think I need a holi-day to sit and think about stuff. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about how my ances-tors were taken. I look in the mirror, and I remember, ‘Oh yeah.’”

hwchronicle.com/features features B7Dec. 18, 2013

KWANZAA

To celebrate or not to celebrate:

nathanson’s

MilesWilliams ’14

nathanson’s

MarianneVerrone ’15

GRAPHIC BY JACOB GOODMAN

Arts&EntErtAinmEnt The Chronicle • Dec. 18, 2013

Jazz bandsperform in Rugby

Winter choral concert features 4 groupsA WINTER FANTASIA: Students from Chamber Singers, Wolverine Chorus and Bel Canto combine on stage to sing the 13-minute long “Fantasia on Christmas Carols,” composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams and conducted by performing arts teacher Rodger Guerrero.

PIM OTERO/CHRONICLE

By Sharon Chow and Su Jin nam

Jazz classes performed in “An Evening of Big Band Jazz” Dec. 14, exploring both con-temporary and classic jazz in the filled Rugby Auditorium. From 7-9 p.m., upper school performing arts teacher Shawn Costantino conducted the Studio Jazz Band, Jazz Band and the Jazz Ensemble in the annual winter jazz con-cert.

“The younger band, with a lot of the sophomores, played better than ever,” Costantino said. “Each different band had their highlights. They were all really good. ”

The 25-person Jazz En-semble opened the show with “When Big Bands Ruled the Earth,” composed by Larry Neeck, and closed their four piece section with “Boogie Stop Shuffle” by Charles Min-gus, featuring many soloists, including Rachel Porter ’16 on the bass.

“[The song] showcases how hard we’ve been working this entire year,” Porter said.

After the Jazz Ensemble, the Studio Jazz Band took the stage to perform their five piece set, which included “Boplicity” by Miles Davis and “Chill Factor” by Gregory Ya-sinitsky.

“I’ve been in Studio Jazz band for the past three years, and this is the best that it’s ever been,” Studio Jazz Band tenor saxophone player Zach Saunders ’14 said.

Jazz Band closed the con-cert with pieces including “5-5-7” by Pat Metheny, “Ah-That’s Freedom” by Thad Jones, and “Night Train” by Duke Ellington. Tenor saxo-phone player Jeremy Tepper ’15 was featured as a soloist in “Ah — That’s Freedom”.

“We have a lot of good songs, and a lot of good musi-cians,” Tepper said. “5-5-7 es-pecially has a lot of changes in tempo that make it really fun and interesting to play and lis-ten to.”

Annual chapel Christmas service features singing, readingsBy Lizzy ThomaS

Readings from the Bible and choral offerings from the middle school Madrigals high-lighted Sunday night’s tradi-tional Christmas service in St. Saviour’s Chapel.

One student council mem-ber from each grade, as well as Parents’ Association Head Becky Prange (Marco Maren-zi ’17 and Alesandra Marenzi ’12), Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts and President Rick Commons read a pas-sage each for a total of nine passages. Student Council Senators India Brittenham ’19, Mason Rodriguez ’18 and Matt Thomas ’17 and prefects Hunter Brookman ’16, Sarah Winshel ’15 and Greg Lehrhoff

’14 read as well.Those in attendance sang

traditional Christmas carols “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” “The First Nowell,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “Joy to the World.” The Madrigals, conducted by middle school performing arts teacher Nina Burtchaell, sang “Of the Father’s Love Begot-ten,” “The Shepherds Sing” and “A Child is Born in Beth-lehem” with Sara Lucas ’17 as a soprano soloist and accom-panied on harp by Claire Den-nis ’18, on clarinet by Brennan Lee ’17 and on piano by middle school performing arts teach-erhfvy Christopher Wong.

Chelsea Pan ’14 played the flute, Sara Zhao ’16 the violin, Ray Kim ’14 the clarinet and Sam Lee ’16 the cello in the in-strumental offering “Holly and the Ivy.”

Father J. Young led the service and delivered a homily at the end that highlighted the disparity between the “Christ-mas card” image of Christmas and the actual intended take-away of the story.

“We always have the op-tion of visiting the story once a year, with Christmas card imagery, and appreciating it as sweet but not really grasping its whole meaning. The story’s true value comes in its gritty reality, its affirmation of the human experience,” Young said.

By Pim oTero

All upper school choirs sang in the annual holiday concert, titled “A Winter Fan-tasia” Friday, Dec. 13 at the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica.

H-W Jazz Singers, Bel Canto, Wol-verine Chorus and Cham-ber Singers, as well as a number of student and out-of-school m u s i c i a n s performed.

“I think that the con-cert was won-derful,” cho-ral teacher Roger Guerrero said. “The students were all at their best. I couldn’t be any prouder of them. The music they made moved many hearts and brought tears to many eyes.”

The concert opened with a candlelit procession by all choral groups, who performed

“Stille Nacht,” accompanied by harpist Maria Casale and “Bashana Haba’ah.”

The female choir group Bel Canto followed with six pieces, two including harp: “Duermete Niño lindo, a Mexican Lul-laby” and “Maria Walks Amid

the Thorn.” “Carol of

the Birds” featured stu-dent musi-cians Vivian Yang ’16 on flute, Tom Fuller ’15 on clarinet and out-of-school oboist Ra-chel Van Am-burgh.

“I think e v e r y t h i n g

went great, and I really en-joyed playing with the chorus,” Yang said. “Everyone worked very hard and put a lot of time and effort into the show.”

The all-male Wolverine Chorus then performed three pieces, “Riu, Riu, Chiu” with James Hansen ’16 on tenor drum, “Der Herr Segne Euch”

and “Ding! Dong! Merrily on High.”

“The pieces, overall, went incredibly smoothly,” Hansen said. “We really were well-prepared for this concert, and it definitely paid off.”

Jazz Singers closed the first half of the concert with five pieces, with each song performed entirely a cappella. Their first song, “Chove Chu-va”, featured solos by Marcella Park ’15, Michelle Lee ’14, Mac Colquhoun ’14 and Aiyana White ’14.

Other songs included “Mi Y’maleil” from “Arise and Be Free, A Suite for Chanukah,” “Lo, How a Rose E’er Bloom-ing,” “The Holly and the Ivy” and “Go Tell It on the Moun-tain.”

“My favorite songs were ‘Seek the Lord’ because all the harmonies were really cool, or ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ because we all had a lot of fun practicing that song,” Benny Weisman ’15 said.

After a short intermission, the Chamber Singers per-formed six songs; “Seek the Lord” had solos from students

Maddy Abrahams ’14 and Lee. Others included “Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied,” “Senex puerum portabat,” “Jesus, Je-sus, Rest Your Head,” “Christ-mas In the Straw,” and “Was-sail Song.”

All choral groups joined with a chamber orchestra spe-cially formed for the 13-min-ute-long piece, “Fantasia On Christmas Carols.” The cham-ber orchestra included stu-dents from the middle and upper school Symphony Or-chestras and the University of Southern California.

A performance of “Peace, Peace,” in which seniors broke off to sing “Silent Night” over the rest of the combined choirs, ended the concert.

“Everyone worked really hard and there were a lot of rehearsals before the show,” instrumentalist Sara Zhao ’16 said.

“After the performance, there’s a feeling of achieve-ment,” Kenneth Noble ’16 said. “It’s about creating a piece of art; in performance, it’s not just about the journey, it’s about the destination.”

I couldn’t be any prouder of [the students]. The music they made moved many hearts and brought tears to many eyes.”

—Rodger Guerrero Performing Arts teacher

LESSONS AND CAROLS: Performing arts teachers Nina Burt-chaell and Christopher Wong led the Madrigals into the Chapel.


hwchronicle.com/ae a&e B9Dec. 18, 2013

Young artists take big prizesClaire Nordstrom ’15, Amita Pentakota ’14 and Xenia Viragh ’15 are YoungArts Scholarship winners for singing, dancing and photography.

By Sacha Lin

Three students were named YoungArts Scholarship winners for 2014 for their submissions in visual or performing arts.

Claire Nordstrom ’15 won merit in voice, Amita Pentakota ’14 won honorable mention in world dance and Xenia Viragh ’15 won honorable mention in photography.

Y o u n g A r t s provides scholarships and workshops with master artists.

All three winners have been invited to participate in the Los Angeles Regional Program, where there will be workshops, showcases, and

exhibitions.Viragh prepared five

portraits and a photo story told through five other images for her submission.

The photo story portrays a Sri Lankan festival Viragh attended during the summer.

“We were driving from one destination to the next, and then we stopped at a temple to see what it was like,” Viragh said. “It turned out it was the night of

this crazy festival. They were washing elephants in the lake, and there were people running around and performing. It was very, very magical.”

The portraits, which were taken in Bangkok, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, have a warm and intimate nature, Viragh said.

“It was really cool living abroad, having such a unique lifestyle in Asia and just being exposed to very different things and wanting to capture that and remember it,” Viragh said.

Kevin O’Malley and a friend in the photography business helped Viragh decide which photos to submit.

“I didn’t want to just submit random photographs that didn’t correlate, so I spent a lot of time looking through my images and choosing ones I could fit together,” Viragh said.

Nordstrom sang the Eva

Cassidy rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” “Stuck Like Glue” by Sugarland, “Your Song” by Elton John, “Lovesong” by The Cure and “Make You Feel My Love” by Bob Dylan.

“I chose these songs because they are a collection of varying styles,” Nordstrom said.

Nordstrom said she has always known that she wanted to be a musician. Last year, she released a song on iTunes called “Yet...”

She also applied to YoungArts last year and won honorable mention in the same category.

Pentakota had to submit two pieces to apply for the World Dance category: one of technique and the other a choreographed solo piece.

She performs Bharata Natyam in her video submissions, a traditional dance form that tells a story through the use of facial expressions and movement. She has been learning Indian classical dance since she was 4 years old. She regularly attends dance classes with her teacher Viji Prakash, who encouraged her to submit to YoungArts.

“Dance is a really big part of my life and my main extracurricular. It’s something that I do when I’m worried,” Pentakota said. “It’s kind of like breathing for me. I thought that this would be a really good way for me to show how much I love dance, so I decided to submit to YoungArts.”

SONG, DANCE AND SNAPSHOTS: Claire Nordstrom ’15 pauses before the mic as she prepares to sing, top left. A soapy Sri Lankan man bathes, top right, and a Bur-mese girl laughs, bottom left, in two of Xenia Viragh ’15’s photo submissions for YoungArts. Amita Pentakota ’14 clasps her hands, striking an Indian dance pose, bottom right.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF CLAIRE NORDSTROM, AMITA PENTAKOTA AND XENIA VIRAGH

nathanson’s

Xenia Viragh ’15

By Pim OterO

The preparations for the upper school play “The Match-maker” started during casting the week of Nov. 18.

The actors have been read-ing and memorizing their lines for their first run through of the play, which is scheduled to take place on Dec. 15. The rehearsals are being held on Mondays through Thursdays after school, as well as on Sun-days from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Tickets for the show will be on sale beginning in early January.

“Things are going very well,” stage director Sarah Jensen ’14 said. “[Performing arts teacher Ted] Walch is an amazing director, and the actors are all great. Many of them are almost completely off-book, which is very impres-sive this early in the process.”

The set design was com-pleted during the casting, and the stage-hands have since started construction of the set it-self.

The most progress on the set has been made in the con-s t r u c t i o n of the flats of the main set. Flats are the pieces of scenery that are used in a play to give it the appearance of having a background.

“I think it’s going really well,” Sophie Sunkin ’14 said. “Everyone is so talented, and I think a lot of good work has

been coming out of it. We are still putting it all together, but

I think, in the end, it’ll be a great show.”

“ T h e Matchmaker” is a romantic comedy farce by Thorton Wilder that takes place in New York dur-ing the 1880s-90s.

The play depicts the compl i c ated story of sever-al characters’ i n t e r tw ined

journeys for love and adven-ture.

“It’s really well cast, I like everyone in the show and I’m really excited to perform in it,” Joey Lieberman ’14 said.

Cast ListBuy me a ticket, make me a matchHorace Vandergelder:Ambrose Kemper:Joe Scanlon:Gertrude:Cornelius Hackl:Ermengarde:Malachi Stack:Mrs. Levi:Barnaby Tucker:Mrs. Molloy:Minnie Fay:A Cabman:Rudolph:August:Miss Flora Van Huysen:Her Cook:Musicians:

Alex McNab ’14Conor Belfield ’14Jacob Goodman ’15Sabrina Batchler ’15Brooks Hudgins ’14Emma Pasarow ’14Angus O’Brien ’14Covi Brannan ’15Joey Lieberman ’14Autumn Witz ’15Sophie Sunkin ’14Bryce Terman ’15Jacob Goodman ‘15Oliver Sanderson ’15Delilah Napier ’15Katherine Calvert ’15Sam Clement ’14 Kirk Woo ’14

SOURCE: TED WALCHINFOGRAPHIC BY LAUREN SIEGEL

“ Everyone is so talented, and I think a lot of good work has been coming out of it. We are still putting it together, but I think, in the end, it’ll be a great show.”

—Sophie Sunkin ’14

Dec. 18, 2013B10 A&e The chronicle

By Tara STone

Tenor saxophone player Andy Arditi ’14 received the news Dec. 3 that he had been selected to play in the 2014 Grammy Camp Jazz Session, a program created to present opportunity and recognition to talented high school musicians across the country.

The program is part of the Grammy in the Schools pro-gram, which is associated with the Grammy Foundat ion according to the organiza-tion’s web-site. With the original goal of ad-vancing new generations of musicians and cultivat-ing apprecia-tion for re-corded music, the Grammy Camp program helped launch musicians like Aaron Parks, Gerald Clayton and Grace Kelly.

“People like them repre-

sent the future of jazz,” Arditi. said. “It’s an honor to be asso-ciated with them.”

Arditi was one of 32 high school students chosen to play in the session and was one of only 18 musicians from across the country to qualify for the big band, which consists of five saxophones, four trumpets and trombones, piano, guitar, drums and bass.

The players, selected from 12 different states, will arrive

in Los Ange-les by Jan. 17 to rehearse, perform and record to-gether at var-ious Grammy Week events, including a recording at Capitol re-cords, under the direction of Justin Di-Cioccio of the

Manhattan School of Music, professor of music Ron Mc-Curdy of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and assistant

professor of music Leila Heil of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

“I know playing with the top high school jazz musicians in the country will be an ex-tremely humbling experience and will inspire me to reach a higher level of playing,” Arditi said.

The students will also per-form at USC where they will open for Vampire Weekend at a benefit concert. Grammy Week will culminate with the 56th annual Grammy Awards Jan. 26, which the student mu-sicians are invited to attend. The Jazz Session members will then perform at the Grammy Celebration afterparty, he said.

Arditi looks forward to “at-tending the Grammys and just having a really great time.”

Arditi has been playing the tenor saxophone for eight years, studying under Bob Sheppard and performing arts teacher Shawn Costantino, though he does not take regu-lar lessons anymore. At school, Arditi plays in the big band and Advanced Jazz Combo. He

is also a member of the Col-burn Monday Night Band at the Colburn School of Music in downtown Los Angeles. The band is a combo, and members meet downtown every Mon-day night to rehearse together from 7-9 p.m. Arditi has spent his summers attending various jazz programs at Interlochen, the Skidmore Jazz Institute, University of California San Diego and the Port Townsend Jazz Workshop.

“The workshop at Port Townsend was probably the best and most advanced one as the faculty included jazz giants including Terrell Stafford, John Clayton, Gerald Clay-ton and Jeff Hamilton,” Arditi said.

In order to compete, Ar-diti uploaded an audition video in which he performed three songs: “Billie’s Bounce,” by Charlie Parker “It Could Happen to You” by Jimmy Van Heusen and Miles Davis’ “Four.” While the first was required, Arditi said he chose the two latter to “demonstrate his playing of different tempos and forms.”

Saxophonist selected to be in Grammy band

By SiddharTh Kucheria

Chamber Singers and Jazz Singers performed at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Com-mittee Christmas party at the California Club Dec. 14. They sang songs from the Winter Choral Concert, which was the night before. Approximately 75 people attended the perfor-mance. The singers performed last year, and it has since be-come an annual event.

“The concert went really well,” chamber Singer Alex Berman ’14 said. “The atmo-sphere was so festive, and we’re fresh out of our winter concert so we knew exactly what we needed to replicate and what we needed to fix.”

As a section leader, Ber-man tried to create a more relaxing environment for the other singers.

“I understand how nerve-wracking singing in a new en-vironment can be, and we per-form better when we are more relaxed,” she said.

“They make a donation to our scholarship fund,” per-forming arts teacher Rodger Guerrero said. “These are the most influential music power-brokers in all of Los Angeles so it’s a pretty important event.”

Choirs sing at LA Phil gathering

LEND ME A TENOR: Andy Arditi ’14 performs at the Winter Jazz concert “An Evening of Big Band Jazz” in Rugby Theater Dec. 14SU JIN NAM/CHRONICLE

Bookstore associate to perform in Christmas showBy enya huang

Bookstore associate Allie Costa will perform in “Lit-tle Miss Scrooge,” a musical mashup of “A Christmas Car-ol” and “Great Expectations,” at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura.

Costa plays Tiny Tammy, a female adaptation of Tiny Tim and Charity Pecksniff, a Charles Dickens character.

A director with whom Cos-ta has worked several times recommended her to Rubicon

Theatre casting director Lisa Tyzzer, Costa said, and she got the part in late Novem-ber.

“When I was offered the role, I was flattered, excited and very happy,” Costa said. “It’s an honor to be part of this show. Everyone involved is professional, dedicated and talented, very kind and collab-orative.”

“Little Miss Scrooge” is di-rected by “Les Misérables” di-rector John Caird with music and lyrics by “Jane Eyre” and

“Daddy Long Legs” com-poser Paul Gordon.

The plot revolves around Estella, a busi-nesswoman and descen-dant of Ebenezer Scrooge who will foreclose the Harthouse Hotel in Ohio, where she finds that the proprietor is childhood friend Pip Nickleby, Cos-ta said.

“I am having a blast,” Costa said. “My favorite scene comes in Act II, when I visit Estella during the Ghost of Christ-

mas Future sec-tion and sing the song ‘Life,’ which begins quite in-nocently before morphing into a rock song where I belt my heart out.”

Costa took a leave of absence to rehearse six

days a week with the cast and production team.

“Little Miss Scrooge” opens tonight and runs to Dec. 23.

“ I know that playing with the top high school Jazz musicians in the country will be an extremely humbling experience. ”

—Andy Arditi ’14

nathanson’s

Allie Costa

Students perform for elderlyBy cole Feldman

The Harvard-Westlake Outreach Performers sang and read poetry to residents at Sunrise Senior Living in Playa Vista Dec. 14.

The 17 club members, who have been practicing since September for this event, per-formed an assortment ranging from ghostly narrative poetry to original pieces.

The performers also con-ducted interactive improvisa-tional games with the audi-ence.

“I think performing at the nursing home was really re-warding,” Covi Brannan ’15 said. “Although, in the mo-ment, it may seem like the residents weren’t too into it and bored, I’ve realized how much appreciation they have for us coming and sharing our art.”

The club members will re-ceive 20 hours of commuity service.

They plan to perform once more at a children’s hospital later in the year.

Improvisation program expandsBy Marcella Park

Both improvisation groups had their first rehearsal Nov. 22, three days after perform-ing arts teacher Michele Spears’ announcement that the program will expand to two groups this year.

Spears announced the ex-pansion in an email Nov. 19 to students who auditioned for Scene Monkeys. One group will remain the Scene Mon-keys, and the other is yet to be named by its members.

Spears will coach the Scene Monkeys, and her friend from outside of school, Dave Bushnell, will coach the new group.

Jensen McRae ’15, who joined Scene Monkeys last year, said she thought branching into two separate improvisation groups was a good idea because she re-members being very nervous about her first year when she was working with more expe-

rienced students. The second group will

help those new to impro-visation and performing become more used to it, McRae said.

Alan Yousefzadeh ’15, a member of the newly cre-ated group, agrees that expanding into two groups will be particularly helpful for students with less expe-rience on stage.

“It was definitely a great year to do it since there is so much talent,” Yousefza-deh said. “The second group gives people who are natural-ly funny but may not have had as much experience perform-ing a chance to gain some ex-pertise before possibly joining the Scene Monkeys in the fu-ture.”

Auditions started Oct. 25 and went through multiple rounds before the final groups were decided on.

McRae said that this year’s auditions were longer than usual.

Emma Pasarow ’14, who has participated in Scene Monkeys since her junior year, said she is excited about the new expansion.

“I think it’s great,” she said. “Scene Monkeys is my favorite club to be a part of at school, and with two groups more people have the oppo-runity to join in and be a part of it too.”

Pasarow said that the best part of the expansion was that they were able to cut fewer people.

Out of the 54 who au-ditioned, 32 students were selected to become part of one of the two improvisation troupes.

Seventeen were placed in the Scene Monkeys, and 15 were placed in the new group.

“With all the talent, both new and old, it’s going to be a great year,” Pasarow said. “I can’t wait.”

The program will contin-ue to hold open improvisation workshops for all students over the course of the year.

By Scott NuSSbauM

Glass blower and sculptor Sarah Gilbert visited the up-per school campus Nov. 18 and discussed her work with glass, embroidery and photography during fifth period.

Gilbert attended graduate school for glass sculpting at Brown University.

Her work has been show-cased in museums across the country, including the Chrys-ler Museum of Art in Virginia.

In addition to her college studies, Gilbert spent three months at the Glass Center of America in New Jer-sey working with glass and sculptures.

“My main i n s p i r a t i o n is 16th cen-tury Venetian glass,” Gilbert said. “That is really the pe-riod in which glass blowing was at its height.”

Gilbert said that she she aims to incorperate different modern elements into more classic styles from that time period.

“My greatest interest is taking the styles exhibited at

that time and putting a mod-ern look to them,” Gilbert said. “I feel that makes it much more relatable to the audi-ence.”

Gilbert has created exhib-its integrating the shape of body parts into common piec-es of silverware, placing vases inside other vases and model-ing an apple tree found outside her grandmother’s house.

According to her official website, Gilbert’s work also explores “questions of materi-ality and subjectivity” as well as “how objects shape our ex-periences.”

The dis-cussion was open to all s t u d e n t s rather than being exclu-sive to those taking art classes.

A m b e r S h o o s h a n i ’15 attended the discus-sion and said

she found Gilbert’s work in-spiring.

“I saw that you can find mediums for art everywhere you look,” Shooshani said. “Even if it may be in an un-expected place, like finding the texture of a knuckle on a fork.”

hwchronicle.com/ae a&e B11Dec. 18, 2013

Glass blower, sculptor discusses her artwork

By Su JiN NaM

Advanced Dance I will hold a special outreach perfor-mance showcase during school today. The showcase is for The Arc of the United States, an organization dedicated to helping adults with intellec-tual and developmental dis-abilities.

The dances will be based on fairytales, like the Ugly Duck-ling or the Evil Stepsisters.

“I’m really excited to be a part of the show,” Drew Mir-man ’15 said. “It will be really special and great experience for ARC, and for all of us per-forming in it.”

There will also be a special evening peformance that will be open to everybody later in the dance studio at 7 p.m.

Improvisation group members

Conor Belfield ’14Noah Bennett ’15Zita Biosah ’14Molly Chapman ’14Clay Davis ’14Tara Joshi ’14Greg Lehrhoff ’14Grace Levin ’14Joey Lieberman ’14

Alex McNab ’14Jensen McRae ’15Daniel Palumbo ’14Emma Pasarow ’14Kayla Shenassa ’14Tom Thorne ’14Aiyana White ’14Autumn Witz ’15

Unnamed group

Donhem Brown ’14Katherine Calvert ’15Elizabeth Edel ’16Jared Gentile ’16Jacob Goodman ’15Alex Haney ’14Sophia Lopez ’14Delilah Napier ’15

Dora Palmer ’15Oliver Sanderson ’15Teddy Sokoloff ’15Bryce Terman ’15Genevieve Thomas ’16Shelby Weiss ’16Alan Yousefzadeh ’15

SOURCE: MICHELE SPEARSINFOGRAPHIC BY SHARON CHOW AND PIM OTERO

Scene Monkeys

“ The second group gives peo-ple who are naturally funny but may not have had as much experience per-forming a chance to gain some exper-tise before possibly joining the Scene Monkeys in the future.”

—Alan Yousefzadeh ’15nathanson’s

By laureN rothMaN

Second drafts of Play-wrights Festival submissions were due Friday Dec. 13. 49 plays were submitted, and the final deadline is Jan. 16.

These one-act plays will be evaluated by a panel of judges in January, and those chosen will be cast and rehearsals will begin with professional direc-tors.

The process will be over-seen by drama teacher Chris-topher Moore.

The judges will include professional writers, teachers, directors, actors and drama-turges.

“These wonderful, dedi-cated and talented profes-sionals volunteer their time and expertise to this Festival,” Moore said in an email.

The Playwrights Festival will take place in Rugby The-atre from Thursday April 24 to Sunday April 26.

Dancers perform in charity show

By aNgela choN

Max Cho ’15 marched in the Hollywood Christmas Pa-rade Dec. 1 for the fourth year in a row.

He has been a member of the Pacific American Volun-teer Association, a non-profit organization where students participate in various com-munity service activities, for four years and was recently appointed Junior National President. Every year, PAVA members organize a cultural marching band that plays tra-ditional Korean music at vari-ous events.

The performers, dressed in traditional Korean attire, ei-

ther played an instrument or danced in the parade.

Some members walked be-hind the performers, holding flags.

“The Hollywood Parade has really become a PAVA tra-dition,” Cho said. “For the past few years that I’ve performed, I played various different tra-ditional Korean instruments.”

PAVA worked closely with Mayor Eric Garcetti ’88, who got PAVA a spot in the parade. The band consisted of over 220 elementary, middle and high school students from 14 dif-ferent school districts in the state. Members gathered ev-ery Saturday for four months at Glendale Community Col-

lege to rehearse around the football field.

“Preparation is always fun,” Cho said. “The fact that you get to meet various kids from all over California, all committed to represent their Korean culture, is always an energizing experience.”

Cho was proud to be one of the leaders of the band.

“I felt proud that we were all together that night cel-ebrating an American tradi-tion by performing a tradi-tional Korean art form,” Cho said. “Through four years, I’ve become exposed to my Ko-rean culture, and I can say I’m proud of who I’ve become throughout the process.”

“ I saw that you can find mediums of art everywhere you look, even if it may be an unexpected place.”—Amber Shooshani ‘15

Playwrights submit drafts

Student marches in Christmas parade

32 students were selected to be part of the improvisation program.

JINGLE BELL MARCH: Max Cho ’15 twirls his baton with the Pacific American Volunteer Asso-ciation student marching band in the annual Hollywood Christmas Parade for the fourth year in a row.

PRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF MAX CHO

CravingRaking in almost $1 million daily, the worldwide phenomena Candy Crush Saga

is just as popular at Harvard-Westlake.

By Zoe Dutton

Hunched over an iPhone, Alex Florent ’15 holds her breath as she swipes the rain-bow bon-bon into a pair of red jellybeans. A second passes, then: “Sugar rush!” The screen explodes into a cacophony of brightly colored candy and fireworks. Flush with excite-ment, she exhales and eagerly moves on to the next level. The game is Candy Crush Saga, and Florent is a self-proclaimed addict, estimating that she plays 24 hours a week.

“I spend literally every mo-ment of the day playing it,” Florent said. “I walk to class playing it. I play it while I eat. I just do it constant-ly.”

Since it was first launched as an app for mobile devices a little over a year ago, Candy Crush has been played over 152 billion times and is the first game ever to simultane-ously reach No. 1 in downloads on iOS, Android and Facebook.

According to a Chronicle poll of 401 students, 39 per-cent play Candy Crush, and of those, over 40 percent devote more than a hour per week to it.

“Candy Crush is my ther-apy,” Florent, who is on level 346, said. “It’s the one thing I get to hold on to. I would be better off stopping, but I’d rather not.”

Though others agree that the game is habit-forming, they don’t believe it negatively impacts their life.

“I would call myself addicted,” Lydia Weber ’14 said. “I think I’m okay, though. Probably if I played anymore it would be bad, but I do it as a treat for my-self.”

She estimated that she spends 30 minutes per day playing Candy Crush and is at level 176.

Natalie Lim ’15 said that the game also provides a source of stress re-lief.

“It definitely distracts me sometimes,” Lim said. “I don’t

really wish I could [stop play-ing it] though. It doesn’t really waste my time. It’s entertain-ing. “

She is cur-rently on level 374.

“My parents just think it’s a waste of time,” Lim said. “They play games on their phones though, mostly Asian things, like mahjong. Not as much [as I do], though.”

O l i v e r Sanderson’s ’15 parents don’t disapprove of Candy Crush; in

fact, his mother plays it too.

“Oliver was on the couch playing it and I was like ‘What are you doing?’ And then: ‘I want some of that,’” Sanderson’s moth-er Mich Mathews-Sprandlin said, laugh-ing. “It’s just nonsense fun.”

She had played game apps like An-

gry Birds and Ruzzle before, but never to the same degree as Candy Crush and said she grew bored with the others fairly quickly.

Experts say the game’s ability to maintain players’ in-terest is key to its success. According to a TIME magazine article, London-based software company King specifically de-signed the game to make it almost impossible to quit, us-

ing mathematical equations to bal-ance the difficulty and achievability for maximum addictive-ness. There are over 500 levels, and new ones are added ev-ery two weeks.

“The game developers have a very intelligent, sneaky way of designing it,”

Sanderson said. “It was puzzling and you had to strategize and they would always make the challenges just barely out of reach, so

you would just keep trying to beat it, and it was all the more gratifying when you finally won.”

W h i l e the game is free, af-ter players use up five lives they must wait 30 minutes before the next round unless they are will-ing to pay. T h i n k G a m i n g

estimates that King makes $875,382 daily. In comparison, Angry Birds, another popular mobile game, takes in an esti-mated $6,381 each day.

“I have spent a lot of money on this game,” said Meredith* ’14. “I have no idea the exact amount. Probably like $200. I would not be surprised if it were around that.”

Meredith is on level 425 and spends at least three hours per week playing it.

Only 11 percent of Candy Crush players at Harvard-Westlake said they spend money on the game.

“I don’t gener-ally pay money for it,” Florent said. “Though, one day I was super into it and spent like $200.”

Weber has found a trick to avoid the extra fees.

“I don’t pay money, but my sis-ter taught me a cheat where you can

change the date on your phone so you don’t have to pay for extra lives,” Weber said. “So I don’t pay, but I do get to keep playing.”

Despite the game’s addic-tiveness, some players have successfully undergone Candy Crush “withdrawal.”

“I am on a long-term hia-tus from Candy Crush,” math teacher Bill Thill said. “I just got to a point where I hit level 95 and I tried it like a hundred times and it just became clear that I wasn’t going to succeed unless I was willing to waste my life. I chose my life over Candy Crush.”


nathanson’s

Oliver Sanderson ’15

Candy Crush is my therapy. It’s the one thing I get to hold on to. I would be better off stopping but I’d rather not.”

—Alex Florent ’15

“

Crushthe


nathanson’s

Natalie Lim ’15

nathanson’s

Lydia Weber ’14

SCREEN SHOT OF CANDY CRUSH SAGA

SportSThe Chronicle • Dec. 18, 2013 NEXT LEVEL:

Bakari Bolden ’14, left, competed in the Northwestern Mutual World Challenge Pro-Amateur Tournament Dec. 4.

Dethroning Monarchs

C3

Wolverines look to rebound from 5-0 loss to Mira Costa

Girls’ Soccer

EYES ON THE PRIZE: Warren Snyder ’14 aims for goal in front of a Mater Dei defender in the boys’ water polo team’s 9-6 CIF Finals win over the Monarchs Nov. 23.

CAITLIN NEAPOLE/CHRONICLE

KING OF THE HILL: Water Polo Program Head Brian Flacks ’06 raises the CIF title plaque after his team defeated Mater Dei.

CAITLIN NEAPOLE/CHRONICLE

LEAD PASS: Forward Courtney O’Brien ’15 chases after the ball in the girls’ soccer team’s 2-0 victory over Oaks Christian Dec. 11.


On the biggest stage of high school water polo, the boys’ varsity water polo team overcame the Mater Dei Monarchs, who handed the Wolverines their only three losses of 2013, to win the CIF Division I Championship.

Boys’ Water Polo

• Continued on page C3

By Mila Barzdukas

Despite losing the sea-sonal battle, Harvard-Westlake won the post-

season war against Mater Dei, beating the Monarchs 9-6 in the CIF Division I finals and writing a storybook ending to their season.

By the fourth match up this season, the Wolverines knew their opponent.

“We really focused on de-fense this time around,” cen-ter Ben Hallock ’16 said. “We knew we couldn’t rely on our offense because it would be hard to get past their goalie, so we focused on keeping them to under six goals.”

The Wolverines made the first blow off a quick goal by center defender Warren Sny-der ’14 in the first possession, and center Raphael Raede ’15 capitalized on a 6-on-5 play to make the score a quick 2-0. The Wolverines would go on to lead for the rest of the game.

Mater Dei scored off a skip shot, but Raede’s second goal and Johnny Hooper’s ’15 back-hand goal made the score 4-1, keeping control of the game away from the Monarchs. By

halftime, the score was 7-3 due to two goals from Hallock and a second goal from Snyder.

Goalkeeper Anthony Ridg-ley ’15 kept the Wolverines in control, with numerous blocks throughout the first half in key momentum plays.

In the third period, the Wolverines were unable to get the ball past the 6-foot-9-inch Mater Dei goalkeeper McQuin Baron, and the Monarchs scored to make it 7-4 going into the fourth quarter.

The Monarchs attempted a comeback, but they were un-able to come close as the Wol-verines ran the clock down in possession.

“The win was probably the biggest, most exciting thing that has ever happened to me,” Snyder said. “It’s what we always have been working on, and all of our work finally paid off. It was also the biggest adrenaline rush. I might have shed a tear.”

The Monarchs were the only team that beat the Wol-verines this season, and they did it three times, which add-ed to the heated rivalry and Wolverine motivation. In past years, the Monarchs seemed

unstoppable, besting Harvard-Westlake in the CIF Quarter-finals last year 15-6 and win-ning the CIF title for the past five years.

“We beat them in the game that mattered,” Jake McCabe ’15 said. “Before the finals, Coach Flacks told us that the previous losses didn’t matter, and this was the game that meant everything. We knew we’d get them back when it re-ally mattered.”

This is the first CIF cham-pionship for the program, as well as the first ring for Head Coach Brian Flacks ’06 as head coach of the boys’ team.

“It’s a really big deal,” Hal-lock said about the win. “So many people care about this program and put so much into it, and to be a part of it is re-ally, really cool.”

Totalwaterpolo.com also named the Wolverines as the number one water polo team in the nation on its website.

The team returns all but Snyder and Peter Tilton ’14 for next year’s season.

“It’s a really good feeling that we ended my last season in the best way we possibly could,” Snyder said.

By Eric loEB

For the second consecutive season, the girls’ soccer team’s first loss came at home against Mira Costa, this year by a score of 5-0. Going into this seasons Dec. 13 matchup, Wolverines took the field against the Mustangs following two consecutive shutouts to begin their campaign for a CIF championship, following last year’s semifinals loss to Cham-inade.

The team defeated El Camino Real 3-0 on the road in its season opener, and Oaks Christian 2-0 in its first home game. Players primarily attri-bute the victories to forward Courtney O’Brien ’15, who has scored three of the team’s five goals on the year, and stellar goaltending.

“We were a lot more fo-cused in the first two games,” Head Coach Richard Simms said. “Jackie Ridgley [’14] played well in goal.”

However, players also ac-knowledged a large discrep-ancy in talent between the rosters of their first two op-ponents, and their own, which features multiple players com-mitted to Division I colleges, in addition to individual award winners within the competi-tive Mission League. The Wol-verines also cited this as a rea-son for their flat performance against Mira Costa.

Game to watchJAN. 24

Boys’ basketball vs. Loyola

For the first time in three years, the Wolverine-Cub rivalry will coalesce on the grounds of Harvard-West-lake rather than at a neutral site. The Wolverines face a tall task, as the Cubs are currently undefeated in the 2013-2014 season.

Taper Gymnasium

Dec. 18, 2013C2 SportS the chronicle

In the last year of his four-year varsity career, Sheng has been the Wolverines’ main leader and facilitator. For his penultimate meeting with Loyola, Sheng will be matched up with Cub star Parker Jackson-Cartwright, who will be attending the University of Arizona next year. Shutting down Cartwright will be crucial to stymieing the Cubs’ offense and giving the Wolverines the advantage, both mentally and strategically.

KEY PLAYERMichael Sheng ’14

OFF THE DRIBBLE: Guard Michael Sheng ’14 isolates against a St. Bernard defender with the clock winding down in the boys’ basketball team’s 64-52 win over the Vikings Dec. 10. Sheng has averaged 14.4 points per game through eight games this season.


Boys’ Basketball

By Jordan Garfinkel

After a solid 2012-13 sea-son, the girls’ basketball team has picked up where last year’s team left off and have opened with a 4-2 record, most re-cently defeating Hart 59-41 Dec 16.

The Wolverines begin play Wednesday in the Santa Bar-bara Tournament Of Champi-ons.

They began the season with three wins in a row, including a 63-24 blowout against Ver-dugo Hills.

Freshman guard Sydney Tsutsui ’17 posted 17 points, and 6-foot tall forward Ca-mille Oswald ’17, who scored 13 points, both shot 75% from the field.

The Wolverines finally hit their first bump in the road

against Fairfax, falling 47-36. Despite the loss, the team bounced back and defeated Burroughs 77-63.

Guard Teeana Cotangco ’15, one of the vet-erans and leaders of a young Wolverine team, pointed out the specific areas of the game where the team can step up their game.

“They came back stronger in the third quarter and we fell be-hind,” Cotangco said. “I think being more aggressive on defense will help us improve and win easier.”

Guard Lindsey Tse ’16 scored a team high and career 33 points in the victory against Burroughs.

“Everyone’s effort and

dedication has really contrib-uted to our success,” Tse said. “We’ve all been working really hard to get to where we are.”

Although the team is young, with three freshmen, Tsutsui, Oswald and forward Lauren Lapesarde ’17 receiving quality play-ing time, the Wolver-ines have been able to bond and gel as a team both on and off the court.

“I think that the fact that we are all so close translates onto

the floor, making us a great team,” Oswald said.

“This year we’re more well-rounded,” Cotangco said. “Everybody contributes every game. We’re better, skill-wise, all around, where everyone

has had a few years of game experience.”

The Wolverines’ teamwork is displayed in their consistent and efficient fast break, which has been an aspect of the game that the team has excelled in these first five games. Despite the success on the run, there is still room for improvement, especially in the rebound-ing and defensive areas of the game.

“Our ability to transition into our fast break and finish easy layups has really helped us get to being 4-1 early on in the season,” Cotangco said. “One of our strengths would be the ability to run the floor and get layups,” Oswald said. “I don’t think our team nec-essarily has weaknesses but more things to work on, like execution.”

Sophomore lifts team to double-digit victoryGirls’ Basketball

Wolverines search for consistency following loss in tournament finalsBy Grant nussBaum

Coming off an opening eight game stretch full of highs and lows, the boys’ var-sity basketball team heads into the Desert Heat Classic Dec. 26 eager for more consistency from its 4-4 record.

The team started its sea-son off in dramatic fashion against Palisades Dec. 4, as the Wolverines came back from 16 points down in the fourth quarter to win 70-66 in over-time, highlighted by Derick Newton’s ’14 buzzer-beating layup to force the extra period. However, the Wolverines’ sea-son took a wrong turn as the team lost its next three games in the Santa Monica Tourna-ment. Newton, who scored 37 of the team’s 70 points in the first game, suffered an ankle injury in the first quarter of the team’s third game against

Brentwood Dec. 6. Newton has not played

since, but is expected to return in the Desert Heat Classic. Led by veterans Michael Sheng ’14, Alex Copeland ’15 and Bryan Polan ’14, the team was able to resurge and win three straight games in the following Uni-versity High School tourna-ment. Sheng and Copeland were named to all-tournament teams with 23 and 21 points respectively against Univer-sity Dec. 13, while Polan put up a career-high 30 points in the team’s 94-64 win Dec. 11 against Dorsey. Polan’s seven three-pointers in the blowout win tied a school record for most threes in a game.

“I feel like with Mike, Derick and I, we have three threats, and that, when we’re all playing, it’s really hard to stop us,” Copeland said. “With Derick out – both he and Mike

have a lot of experience with injuries – I’ve just had to take on a bigger role. I think we’ve both been doing a great job. I get ready to just do whatev-er the coach needs me to do, whether it’s scoring a lot, or trying to get shooters involved, or getting the ball to Derick. Now that I need to score, I’m ready to score.”

The Wolverines, however, were unable to complete the undefeated streak at the Uni-versity High School, falling to Windward 54-48 in the tour-nament finals. With Newton out, head coach Greg Hilliard has had to experiment with distributing the forward’s minutes among different line-ups.

The team, as Hilliard said in November, contains several young but inexperienced play-ers. Outside of Newton, center Sam Weintraub ’14, Sheng and

Copeland, who have all played on varsity since their respec-tive freshman years, no other Wolverines have spent more than two years on the varsity team. Weintraub, sidelined with a hip injury, has yet to play this season.

“We do have a lot of guys that don’t have much varsity experience,” Copeland said. “I think, especially early on in the Santa Monica tournament, we didn’t come to every game as focused as we could have been and knowing how intense we have to be to be successful. I think we’re starting to learn that. Even though we couldn’t pull out a win against Wind-ward, we played really hard, and I think we’re starting to learn, starting to get better at doing what we need to win – playing defense, playing hard, getting 50-50 balls, stuff like that.”

Facts &Figures

3-pointers made by Bryan Polan ’14 against Dorsey, a new Harvard-Westlake basketball record.

7The number of

points scored by Lindsey Tse

’16 against Burroughs in

the Burroughs Tournament.

33

The ranking of the girls’ soccer team

in the National Preseason Polls

by studentsports.com.5

The number of Wolverine medalists at the Newbury Park Invitational wrestling tournament.

4

Junior Varsity

Boys’ basketball (4-5)Last Game:W (79-64) @ Campbell Hall

Girls’ basketball (4-3)Last Game:L (58-55) vs. Hart

Boys’ soccer (1-1)

L (5-1) vs. Cathedral

Girls’ soccer (3-2)Last Match:W (3-2) @ Newport Harbor

Last Game:

nathanson’s

Lindsey Tse ’16

SportS C3DeC. 18, 2013 hwChroniCle.Com/SportS

Former water polo standout wins gold

For the third year in a row, the seventh grade football team won the league champi-onship, beating Oaks Christian 12-9 Nov. 9. The team finished the season with a 4-3 record.

Head Coach Scott Bello believed this win brought the team to a successful finish.

“I am extremely proud of all the fall teams that com-peted and got better as the season went on,” Bello said in an email.

The eighth grade team fin-ished the season 2-5.

—Jonah Ullendorff

Ashley Grossman ’11 won gold at the Canada Cup play-ing for the USA Women’s Water Polo National Team. Grossman notched three goals for her team, beating Canada 11-8 in the finals Dec. 7.

During her senior year as a Wolverine, Grossman led the girls’ water polo team to its first CIF Southern Section girls water polo title and was named player of the year in her senior season.

—Caitlin Neapole

7th grade football team wins league

Water polo players invited to U.S. team

Five varsity water polo players were invited to an Olympic training and recruit-ing camp, and seven players were named to the first, sec-ond and third All-CIF teams.

The senior national team coach recruited Warren Sny-der ’14, Johnny Hooper ’15, Raphi Raede ’15, Ben Hal-lock ’16 and Felix Brozyna-Vilm ’17 to attend the camp, which will give the players an opportunity to be chosen for the American World Cup team this summer, the World Championships next summer and the Olympics the follow-ing summer.

Snyder, Hooper and Hal-lock were named to first team All-CIF, while Raede and Mo-rio Saito ’15 were named to second team All-CIF and An-thony Ridgley ’15 and Duncan Froomer ’16 were named to third team All-CIF.

—Henry Vogel

The baseball team added varsity pitching coach Joe Guntz, junior varsity coach Greg Garrison and junior var-sity coach Greg Fowble to its program Nov 23.

Guntz replaced Ethan Katz who took a job with the Ana-heim Angels.

Garrison is taking over the duty of junior varsity coach from Thomas Cassidy, who is now the head coach at Calaba-sas High School. Garrison was previously an assistant at Pep-perdine University.

The other junior varsity coach, Fowble most recently worked as the head coach at Brentwood High School.

The baseball team will start its season Feb. 22 in its first official scrimmage at O’Malley Family Field.

—Bennett Gross

Baseball team hires two new coaches

Wolverines set sights on upcoming Mater Dei matchup

Girls’ Soccer

ALL SMILES: Baseball head coach Matt LaCour celebrates with former President Tom Hudnut after the baseball team’s CIF Finals win May 31.

JACK GOLDFISHER/CHRONICLE

Senior golfer plays in PGA Tour Pro-Am

LaCour awarded NHSBCA National Coach of the Year

By Sam SachS

The 2012 PGA Rookie of the Year Jordan Spieth part-nered with Bakari Bolden ’14 in the Northwestern Mutual World Challenge Professional- Amateur Dec. 4. The tourna-ment, hosted by Tiger Woods, was held at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks for the last time as it will move to Isleworth Country Club just outside of Orlando, Fla next year. Bolden and Spieth scored a twenty under par to finish sixth in the pro-am.

“Definitely, by far, one of the most amazing expe-riences of my life just to be

able to watch and kind of just pick up on the subtle nuances that Jordan had, and like just to be able to watch him and see how he carried himself was pretty amazing,” Bolden said about playing with the pro-fessional. “Definitely an opportunity that I’ll take with me for the rest of my life. I mean, it was just an amazing opportu-nity. I am so happy and just excited to be able to have that chance to play with him.”

Spieth finished tied for

16th in the PGA Tour tourna-ment leaderboard by posting a nine over and a 297 four round

total. Zach Johnson

barely edged out Tiger Woods to win the tournament by posting a 13 under par.

“I started off well, and then I got to my second hole and things kind of weren’t going to well for me on the second hole,” Bolden said.

Bolden had a triple bogey on that second hole.

“But, then I was able to

pick it up after that, and I ended up playing well,” Bolden said. “I was happy with how I played.”

“[Spieth] really didn’t give me any tips, but he kind of taught me things here and there,” Bolden added. “Jor-dan just told me what to do, gave me a couple of little tips to hit certain shots. He told me to ‘just keep working at it’ to ‘just keep working hard’ and that one day, you never know where golf can take me so I just gotta keep working at it. He basically told me just to never quit so I’m going to take those words and I’m going to run with them.”

By henry Vogel

Baseball program head Matt LaCour was named 2013 National Coach of the Year by the National High School Baseball Coaches Association. LaCour, who was selected to coach the U15 USA Baseball Team that won a gold medal at the Baseball Classic last sum-mer, coached the varsity base-ball team to its first ever CIF title and national champion-ship in 2013.

He received the award at the NHSBCA Convention in Arizona the weekend of Dec. 8. Since he was there to collect his Regional Coach of the Year award, it came as a surprise

to him when he was named National Coach of the Year as well.

“Considering it comes from my peers in the same busi-ness, it is a great honor to be recognized for the things our program has accomplished,” LaCour said. “This is an award for our entire coaching staff, seventh grade through varsity, and all of our players. Indi-vidual accolades are always a result of being a part of teams that do great things.”

LaCour earned Coach of the Year honors from the Los Angeles Times and the CIF Southern Section as well last June.

Since LaCour’s arrival as

head coach in 2006, the base-ball team has been a peren-nial contender, ultimately culiminating in its first-ever CIF Championship, and has produced three Wolverines who have been drafted by Ma-jor League Baseball organiza-tions.

Next year, LaCour hopes for his team to develop the mental and physical tough-ness it takes to compete at the highest levels of the game and come to the field each day with a mindset of becoming a bet-ter player and teammate.

“If we can do these things, the results on the field will take care of themselves,” LaCour said.

WALK THE LINE: Mackenzie Howe ’14 (#7) dribbles the ball down the field in girls’ soccer’s 2-0 win over Oaks Christian Dec. 11.


• Continued from page C1

“We have so much talent on our team,” O’Brien said. “I think that we started out this season feeling somewhat enti-tled to winning games because of the talent we have, which is not the mindset we need to be in to win games against great teams like Mira Costa.”

Ful lback M a l a n n a Wheat ’14, echoed simi-lar ideas.

“So far the season is where it should be,” she said. “We started off strong win-ning our first two games but in a way I’m happy we lost last Friday. It reminded us of that feeling last year brought and we’re aiming for a differ-ent season this year. I think the message received was that we don’t deserve to win unless we show up ready to play and prove it and we fell short Fri-day night.”

Simms says injuries have also been an issue.

“We have some players

that spent a significant time out injured in the fall,” he said. “They are not as close to being 100 percent as I had thought so that will take a bit more time. The goal is to be healthy and clicking when the playoffs

arrive.”B l e n d -

ing talent is s o m e t h i n g players say will be the team’s pri-mary chal-lenge this season, espe-cially at the b e g i n n i n g . The team has been adapting to major sty-listic changes implemented by Simms.

“I think our team is still getting used to playing together again,” O’Brien said, alluding to the fact that most of the girls have been playing on separate club teams. “We’ve only had one or two practices with our entire team present and are still getting used to our new formation.”

Following the loss, the girls’ enter the Mater Dei Invitational with a 2-1 record, with an opening matchup against Los Alamitos today.

The team is also scheduled to play Foothill and Bishop Amat, both teams, along with Los Alamitos, which last year’s squad did not face.

Despite the loss, the Wol-verines still consider them-

selves major contenders in CIF.

“Our expectations are the same,” said Brianna Gazmar-ian ’15. “We all believe in one another and know that if we dig deep enough we will go far.”

nathanson’s

Bakari Bolden ’14

inbrief

“ I think the message received was that we don’t deserve to win unless we show up ready to play and prove it and we fell short Friday night.”

—Malanna Wheat ’14Defender

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By Elijah akhtarzad

After losing 2-1 to Cathe-dral High School last Thurs-day in the squad’s first home game of the season, the boys’ varsity soccer team will face Redondo High School in the South Holiday Tournament this Thursday.

The Cathedral Phantoms took a 1-0 lead within the first 10 minutes of the match.

The Wolverines notched their only score of the match off a set piece pass from Matthew Glick ’15 to Cole Fletcher ’15.

Going into halftime with the score tied at one apiece, Cathedral scored once again in the second half to take a 2-1 lead that would eventually give them the win.

In the squad’s upcoming South Holiday Tournament, the Wolverines will face the defending Mission League Champion and rival Loyola Cubs, if they are able to ad-vance to the finals by winning their side of the tournament’s bracket.

The squad lost both match-es last season against the Cubs, who finished the year unde-feated in Mission League play.

Although the Wolverines lost valuable seniors this year including team captain and leading scorer Ty Gilhuly ’13, the team gained three return-ing athletes who did not play last year.

Glick, Jack Temko ’14, and Fletcher all returned to the program and are all making a big impact on the team’s suc-

cess. Fletcher took a year off

from soccer in order to join the basketball program last year.

“Although I played basket-ball last year, I played soccer for my club team starting in February so I was prepared to come back this year,” Fletcher said. “Players in both the bas-ketball and soccer programs are great and they equally get in the mode of games and practices.”

Glick missed all of last season due to an ACL injury he suffered during the foot-ball season. Temko was absent for all of last season since he was playing in the U.S. Soc-cer Development Academy, the elite soccer league in the country, instead of playing for

the Wolverines.“High school soccer is

still really fast, but Academy is just another level,” Temko said. “The reason I came back to playing in high school was that although I loved my team at Academy and traveling around the nation, I missed the school environment, be-ing with all my good friends and playing in front of the crowd I know.”

Although the Wolverines will have three additions this year, they will be missing for-ward Matthew Gooden ’15 due to his decision to play Acad-emy soccer for the remainder of the season.

The team will kick off its Mission League season Jan. 8 against Crespi at Ted Slavin Field.

“At the beginning of last season, the team was still get-ting used to a new coaching staff, and we were not play-ing at the level we would have liked to be playing at,” Henry Quilici ’15 said.

“However, by the end of the season we were a much stron-ger team and we were all fairly happy with our performances. This year, we are treating pre-season training more seriously which will allow us to play at our full potential from the first game of the season.”

Boys’ Soccer

Girls’ Water Polo


MAN ON: Jack Temko ’14 fights off a Cathedral defender in order to keep possession of the ball for Harvard-Westlake. The Wolver-ines’ next home game is their Jan. 8 league opener against Crespi.

ELIJAH AKHTARZAD/CHRONICLE

THROUGH BALL: Jon Nelson ’16 (#23) chases down a through ball in the Wolverines’ home opener against Cathedral. Harvard-Westlake lost to the Phantoms 2-1 Dec. 12 to start off the season.

ELIJAH AKHTARZAD/CHRONICLE

3 starters return to program after season-long absence

Team finishes 3rd in tournamentBy Mila Barzdukas

The Wolverines tested the waters of competition Dec. 6, taking third place in the Mistletoe Classic in Newbury Park. They posted victories over Moorpark 17-4 and Ca-brillo 16-7 in the first round and the quarterfinals of the tournament, respectively. A championship victory fell out of grasp when the squad lost to Newbury Park 8-5 in the semifinals, but they rebound-ed back with an 8-3 win over Buena to claim third place.

“I think that we surprised

a lot of people,” goalkeeper Daily Hartmeier ’16 said. “It was more of a learning expe-rience than just trying to beat everyone. We still have a lot of work to do but we’re better than we expected to be.”

Hartmeier said the tour-nament was a good test of the team’s endurance.

“It was hard because most of the girls were continuously playing because we don’t have a lot of subs but I think the amount of work that we put in was really good,” Hartmeier said.

The team’s roster is larger

thanks to three late additions to the squad. First time players Amira Yashruti ’17 and Megan Cohen ’17 joined the team at the start of the season, along with Genevieve Thomas ’16.

“Everyone has been so wel-coming,” Thomas said. “It’s good that the team is a little larger now too because then the subs can give the starters more rest.”

The Mission League season does not start until early Jan-uary. The team was supposed to play a non-league game against Mater Dei on Dec. 10, but there was a location mix-

up where both schools drove to the other team’s pool. The game is yet to be officially re-scheduled, but will probably be played in January or February, Hartmeier said.

Thomas thinks the the team is ready for league play

which starts Jan. 9 against Notre Dame.

“What we don’t have in size, we make up for in work ethic,” Thomas said. “League will be tough, but I think with hard work, we can rise up and get the title.”

“ [The Mistletoe Classic] was more of a learning experience than just trying to beat everyone. We still have a lot of work to do but we’re better than we expected to be.”

—Daily Hartmeier ’16goalkeeper nathanson’s

By tylEr GrahaM

Coming off a strong off-season in which wrestlers were expected to work out three times a week, the wres-tling team began the 2013-2014 campaign on a good note. The team placed second in the Turkey Duals at Birmingham High School Nov. 30, but lost in the Bishop Amat Duals. The team also competed at the Newbury Park Individ-uals, where four Wolver-ine wrestlers were medal-ists.

U n d e r the veteran leadership of senior wres-tlers Jake Bracken ’14, Alex Lange ’14 and Patrick Halkett ’14, the squad will at-tempt to maximize their off-season efforts and succeed in their meets. Coming off a win-less season, the team has a positive outlook on the outset of their young season.

“The team is doing a lot better this year because we have a lot of new guys who

have been working with us for a while,” Lange said. “A lot of the older guys trained over the summer and learned a lot.”

Although the team has al-ready earned a second place tournament finish, many wrestlers feel that their best tournaments are still ahead of them. The Daily News named Harvard-Westlake a team that

could develop into a ris-ing power in CIFs South-ern Section.

“My sea-son has gone pretty well as I have a per-sonal record of 12-1 and have been improving a lot,” Bracken said. “As a team, we are very young

and do not have the depth as some other teams do, but we are definitely all getting bet-ter. Moving forward, I think we can improve on some of the things we’ve already done.”

The Daily News also recog-nized Bracken and Jake Adler ’17 as wrestlers who could emerge as stars by the end of the season.

“Being named a ‘wrestler to watch’ by the Daily News means a lot to me and moti-vates me to work even harder for the remainder of the sea-son,” Bracken said.

With a new crop of wres-tlers coming into the program, such as Adler, the team is still meshing, but individual per-formances have been strong to this point. At the Newbury Park Individuals, Halkett,

Bracken, and Adler medaled in the 113 pound weight class, and Malcolm Neill ’15 medaled in the 182 pound weight class.

“Individual progress has been pretty good, but team progress is somewhat slow,” Halkett said. “We are start-ing to take in new guys, and they don’t really know their strengths and weaknesses yet and we have to kind of teach them not only the basics, but also how to fight and how to be

aggressive.”The squad will next play in

the Rosemead Tournament at Rosemead High School start-ing Nov. 20 followed by the Tournament of Champions at Cerritos College starting Jan. 3.

The Wolverines’ next league match isn’t until Jan. 8, when Harvard-Westlake will play host to the Chaminade Eagles. That will be their final home matchup of the season.

hwchronicle.com/SportS SportS C7Dec. 18, 2013Wrestling

15% Discount for Harvard Westlake StudentsPick-ups and Dine-ins from the regular menu

Inexperienced team features two ‘wrestlers to watch’

MAN DOWN: Alex Valdez ’17 pins a Bishop Amat wrestler during a Dec. 11 dual in Hamilton Gym. The Wolverines lost the home match 41-21. Harvard-Westlake won’t host another match until Jan. 8.

CAITLIN NEAPOLE/CHRONICLE“Being named a

wrestler to watch by the Daily News means a lot to me and motivates me to work even harder for the remainder of the season

—Jake Bracken ’14

Winter Edition coming out in January


By Audrey Wilson

CIF Playoffs are definitely the pin-nacle of the season; it’s what we work for the entire year. There are some important divisional games before that, including the Palos Verdes game and the Los Osos game in January, but everything is just leading up to and preparing for playoffs.

Which game are you lookingforward to most this year?

Why did you decide to start playing water polo, and will you continue in college?

How has the boys’ water polo team’s success at CIF this year affected your team’s attitude toward the upcoming season?

I really got into it the summer before my freshman year, and that’s when I started playing club. The middle school water polo program got me interested. I was a swimmer growing up, and they advertised joining the water polo team my freshman year, and my dad thought that it would be a good idea since I’m a swimmer. My friend who played also really wanted me to play, and I tried it. I will continue to play in college next year at Princeton University along with my old teammates Morgan Hallock ’13 and Camille Hooks ’11.

We are so excited for the boys, and in a lot of ways it is a motivator for us too. It’s a little bit of a challenge we have; we have that to live up to as well as our own legacy from the past, so there are big shoes to fill. It’s also a great motivator because we just want the Harvard-Westlake program in general to be the best that it can be. If we can pull off two CIF wins in a year, that would be crazy.

Both of our CIF championships in 2011 and 2012 were definitely the highlights. The second win, in 2012, may be my favorite because it was a back-to-back win, and I played a much bigger role on the team as a sophomore. You can’t get any better than that.

What has been your favorite moment of your Harvard-Westlake career so far?

IN THE SWIM OF THINGS: Center Sydney Cheong ’14 holds off Alemany defender while attempting to pass. Cheong is committed for water polo at Princeton University.

PATRICK RYAN/CHRONICLE

Well, our team goal is always to win CIF, and if not win, then get as far as we can. Our coach always says we have three goals, which are to win League, win CIF and have the highest team GPA. Individually, I want to lead the team to CIF and improve on personal skills in areas of play that I’m not nec-essarily as good at. This is going to be a big year for me for expanding different facets of my game.

What are your team and individual goals for this season?

Do you play water polo outside of school, and if so, what is the commitment like?

I play club water polo, and I am at Rose Bowl Water Polo Club this year. While we are not allowed to play club during the school season, in the off-season, we have practice every day plus tournaments most weekends during the fall, summer and spring. Time- wise, school and club are the same, but the practices are very different. In high school you play with a lot of dif-ferent age groups at a lot of different playing levels, whereas in club it’s all 17-18 year-olds, and most of them are really experienced players. It’s a differ-ent experience, but they are both really fun and both very intense.

SINKING THE SHOTQ&A with Sydney Cheong ’14

Stats:

Overall record this season

4-1

94Goals scored last season

NATHANSON’S

How has the girls’ water polo team’s string of success motivated your team?

It’s a huge motivator because we all feel like we have so much to live up to in order to keep a great legacy going. I’ve been lucky that I have played with some really amazing players, and I feel like I have big shoes to fill. It’s a big driving factor because you don’t want to be the first year to not be successful.

december 2013 issue

Documents

upper school

school year

new students

new mission statement

schools mission statement

students intellectual

unifying mission statement

grade class